by Shutt, Tom
“It’s this guy I’m seeing,” she said.
“Is he giving you a hard time?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. He’s actually really sweet. We met a few weeks ago, and he has been nothing but a gentleman to me. But in spite of all that…there’s no connection. I don’t feel anything for him.”
“You just met him,” he said. “Give it time to develop.”
Alex frowned. “I’ve given it time,” she groaned. “How long does it take for humans to develop feelings for each other?”
James glanced around the room, but it seemed that Kern had made himself scarce. Alex’s father looked at her steadily, and she could sense him carefully arranging and protecting his thoughts. “I can’t promise that it will ever happen,” he said. “When your mother and I first met, we butted heads all the time. There wasn’t a single thing we could agree on. One day, something just clicked, and everything fell into place.”
“Yes, but you two are normal!” Alex protested. She sat back in her chair with her arms crossed. She didn’t meet his eyes when she spoke. “What happens if I never know love? What kind of person doesn’t love?”
I love you, her father replied. I’ve always known exactly the kind of person you are, and I know the woman you’ll grow into. And we love you.
We, she thought. He’d said “we.” It was as good a subject as any, just so long as the focus wasn’t on herself. “How is she?” Alex asked.
James’s eyes crinkled slightly, but otherwise he showed no reaction to the change in conversation. “Your mother is doing fine. She has good days and bad days,” he said, reaching for a sandwich wedge. He briefly held it in his hands, considering it, before tearing it roughly down the middle. “Today is a bad day.”
“Can I see her?”
Her father hemmed and hawed momentarily. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea. She has been in a lot of pain recently, and the doctor recently increased the dosage of her medication.”
“She’s going to get better, though, right? It comes and goes.”
“We can always hope.” It didn’t sound like her father was holding on to much hope. “Meanwhile, I have a new drug under development that shows promise. Trial testing starts in a month, and if those results are promising, we should be able to go ahead with human test subjects by year’s end.”
Alex sipped quietly at her drink. She and her father both knew that her mother wouldn’t survive to see Christmas at the rate she was going. “Is there any way to accelerate the process?”
“Not legally,” he said simply.
There was no sense in hiding it; everyone in the market was culpable of some wrongdoing, and Alex would have known about it regardless. She reconciled it with the fact that he was producing medicine that saved people. If that meant going through backchannels to bypass red tape, she fully supported him.
“When we were still a separate entity,” he continued, “it would have just been a matter of depositing the right amount into the right people’s bank accounts.” His expression soured, and he bit violently into the other half of his sandwich. “Now that we’re merged with SymbioTech, though…No, there’s too much oversight, too much risk involved.”
“So you work for them now?”
“They would never phrase it that way. Significant downsizing from my own company, and all of their executives are now our executives.”
“If it’s such a raw deal, why did you agree to sell to them?”
James sighed. “If it were up to me, we wouldn’t have. But the board of trustees decides what’s best for the company, and with the direction the market was moving, SymbioTech seemed the way to go. We couldn’t beat them, so we joined them.”
“At least you live to fight another day,” Alex said, giving a false smile. “And now you get to use their resources to get what you want.”
Her father smirked. “That is one over-simplified, naively optimistic way of looking at it.” Thank you. She could feel the royal blue feel-good emotions that accompanied the thought, and she felt truly happy for the first time all day.
“Speaking of work,” she prompted.
“I’ve been working out of the home office today,” he said, gesturing to the library.
“Ah, I see.”
“But if you need to go for some reason, by all means, don’t let me keep you.”
Alex frowned as he said that. She thought the monthly visits had been enough, but the emotions carried in her father’s words indicated that he missed her far more than he let on. Whenever I leave, he’s only left with her.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “Something came up recently that I really do need to attend to.”
James nodded. “Of course, I understand. I do hope you get to visit us again soon.” He leaned in to kiss her on both cheeks, and then brought her in for another hug.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promised.
I love you.
“Love you too, Dad.” Alex slowly disengaged from her father and started walking toward the front door. As she left, James returned to his study and closed its two doors behind him. The family photos stared down at her as Alex made her way to the foyer. At some point, Kern had appeared just a step ahead of her, and he accompanied her the rest of the way.
“I took the liberty of calling a taxi for you,” Kern informed her.
She looked out the door to where a gray-and-yellow car waited in the roundabout driveway, its engine purring while it idled. “Kern,” she said, suddenly rounding on him. “Do you think you could tell the driver to wait a few more minutes? There’s somebody I forgot to visit.”
Kern’s one good eye twinkled approvingly as he nodded. “Of course, Miss Alexis.”
“Just Alex,” she corrected. Alex left him and proceeded down one of the first-floor hallways. The hardwood floor had been worn down over the years by many passing feet. She took care to avoid the floorboards that creaked, keeping mostly up against the wall. She flinched as one board groaned loudly in protest beneath her foot; she could have sworn it was one of the more solid ones when she was growing up. Her father didn’t suddenly appear, and she tiptoed the rest of the way to the solid oak door of her mother’s bedroom. She knocked softly on the door and, hearing no reply, quietly let herself in.
When her mother was gripped with illness, her father made all the necessary arrangements for her to live on the ground floor of their home. An old parlor room, once home to poker chips and billiard tables, had been retrofitted into her new chambers, complete with an easily accessible personal bathroom. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city to the south and green pastures to the west, and they were tinted at such an angle that the setting sun would not disturb her sleep.
Stephanie Brüding was a shadow of her former self. She lay prostrate in her bed, her head propped up by a multitude of pillows. Her face was blank and expressionless, and her eyes stared vacantly toward the windows. If she heard Alex enter the room, she gave no indication of it.
“Mom?” Alex called. No response. She walked closer to the bed and raised her voice. “Mom, it’s me, Alex.”
A flicker of movement, and then Stephanie’s head turned toward her daughter. Alex felt a pang in her chest. There was no recognition in those eyes, only a mild interest in the new person in the room.
“It’s Alex,” she repeated, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. From the doorway, she could have pretended that her mother was the same as she’d remembered from her childhood. Up close, she could see the effects of the disease on her mother’s body. She had lost a lot of weight, an unhealthy amount, and her cheekbones and jaw stood out prominently. Her eyes were sunken and watery, and her skin had aged prematurely. Gray was now the dominant color of what was left of her hair.
Alex swallowed her misgivings and reached out to one of Stephanie’s gnarled, bony hands. It was clammy, but she smiled into her mother’s eyes. “It’s so nice to see you,” she said, her lie dripping with warmth. She wante
d to see her, but never like this. It was the old Stephanie that she wished were here right now.
Stephanie’s face broke out into a smile. “Oh, you too, sweetie,” she said. “Yes, it’s very nice to see you.”
Alex seriously doubted that her mother knew who she was anymore, but she nodded. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Would you like to see it?”
Her mother fussed with her blanket. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m so tired today, perhaps another time.”
“Okay,” Alex said, patting her hand. She didn’t know what else to do, so she just rubbed the leathery skin of her mother’s hand as they stared outside. Her taxi was waiting for her, but she knew that these moments were limited; a few months from now, her father would be a widower.
“Now that is love,” said a voice from the doorway. She looked up, startled, only to see Kern standing in the doorway. He had a stupid grin on his face, one that somehow made him seem younger and older at the same time.
Kern, you sly dog, she thought. So you did hear Father at lunch. He was wrong, though. Alex wasn’t doing this out of love for her mother, only pity and a sense of obligation. She returned his smile, though, since that was what he was expecting, and then turned back to her mother. “Mom,” she said, leaning in toward that withered face. “Kern is going to keep you company now.”
Her head bobbed, possibly in agreement. Alex didn’t dare make contact with her mother’s mind.
“Thank you,” Alex said to Kern. She stood and offered her mother one last smile, but Stephanie’s attention was elsewhere. She followed her gaze, which landed somewhere on the wall between two windows. “I’ll be back when I can,” she murmured.
“Your company is always a pleasure,” Kern said.
I bet, she thought, with my mother like that. Even her small amount of time with the woman had been unnerving, and Alex made her way back to the foyer, completely disregarding the creaking of the floorboards beneath her hastened steps.
She had bigger things to worry about, though. There was still the matter of the mysterious tenant and his vendetta against whoever Arthur Brennan was. With that much psychic energy being thrown around, Alex knew she wouldn’t sleep well until the issue was resolved. Even a dozen floors away, she could hear his fury.
But what exactly am I going to do? As she climbed into the taxi, the answer wasn’t abundantly clear. She was the furthest a person could be from a sympathetic grief counselor, and she surely wasn’t about to up and move from her apartment building. A mounting migraine threatened to rear its ugly head as she felt the stress building up. She swore inwardly as the cab pulled away from the house.
And she still hadn’t had any coffee.
Chapter Seven
The address Wally had given for Sara Portoso’s apartment led to a building that was significantly nicer than the one Brennan lived in now.
It was a hulking beast of a complex half a dozen stories tall that took up the size of half a city block. Brick walls inlaid with columns of concrete, with steel-and-concrete balconies for every apartment that looked out on the street below. The lobby, basically a waiting room for the elevators, was visible through the glass of the windows and front door. Equally visible was the security camera that stared back at him.
He tried the handle to the door, but it refused to budge. An electronic scanner of some kind was wired to the door; only tenants with swipe cards would be able to enter the building. As far as campus living went, Kelsi Woodill had been living in a fortress. Her fourth-floor room would have been all but inaccessible to a stranger. Her body had been discovered inside the apartment in her very room, so presumably she had returned home safely. If someone had accompanied her, the security camera would have seen, and the police would have had a suspect.
Brennan looked at the camera again. Ordinarily, he would have held his silver shield up to the glass and had whoever was watching buzz him in. He wasn’t here in any official capacity, though; Bishop had specifically stonewalled him from getting involved in the case. He wasn’t sure why. But if it somehow got back to her that he was here, he didn’t know what kind of trouble she would stir.
“You’re tying my hands here, Bishop,” he growled.
“Excuse me?”
Brennan turned and saw a young man with a confused look on his face. He was supporting a large brown bag of groceries in one arm and held a small white card in the other, no thicker than a quarter. “Sorry,” Brennan said, “just talking to myself.”
The young man huffed and shifted the bag’s weight. “I just need to get through,” he said. Brennan stepped back and let the college kid swipe the key card.
“Here, let me get that for you,” Brennan offered, opening the door.
The kid held the bag in both hands and nodded his thanks.
Piggybacking, Brennan thought. Is this how the killer got in? A flash caught his eye; a sliver of light had glinted off the glossy black casing of the security camera. No, he would have still been seen entering the building. Grocery-boy pressed the button for the elevator, but Brennan ignored him and took to the staircase on the left.
During his years as a Sleeper, Brennan had learned to put up with two types of pain: psychic trauma and physical debilitation. When he’d lost his wife to the same Sleepers he’d once served with, he had been exposed to emotional pain of the highest magnitude. Now, as his body was starting to show the wear and tear of his years, he put himself through a new kind of pain that kicked his ass every day: cardio.
Nothing made the body weak faster than a desk job and donuts, and that was exactly what Brennan had been subjecting himself to for the past few years. The past three months of running were now paying dividends as he climbed four flights of stairs without breathing hard at the top.
He emerged from the stairwell into a fairly short hallway. Ensconced lights hung from the walls and the tile floor had recently been cleaned. No cameras in the hall, which was unfortunate; it might have given them a view of the killer. There were only four rooms in view before the hall turned sharply to the left, but Brennan didn’t need to look far; Kelsi Woodill had died behind the door closest to the stairs.
He walked up to apartment 402 and knocked on the door. A moment later, a young woman answered. She was brunette, relatively short, and looked more mature than her years. She wore a sweatshirt that was a few sizes too large, though it still curved amply over her chest.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Sara Portoso?”
“Yes?”
He showed her his shield. “Detective Brennan. I’m with Odols Homicide, do you mind if I come in?”
“Of course.” Sara gulped. “I mean, no, I don’t mind,” she said, standing aside to let him in. “I already spoke to the other detectives, I told them everything I know.”
“I understand. I’m just following up, making sure we didn’t miss anything.” He looked around the apartment as he spoke. Unlike one dead pharmacist he once knew, everything they owned seemed average, ordinary, perfectly within a college student’s budget. “You didn’t happen to notice anything missing from the apartment, did you?”
Sara shook her head. “No, nothing of mine is missing. I don’t know exactly what all Kelsi had—” She choked back a sob when she said her roommate’s name. “I’m pretty sure everything is here, though.”
Brennan placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t hear or see anything strange on Friday night?”
“I’m not much of a partier,” she said. “I was already in bed and asleep by the time she came home. I knocked on her door in the morning to wake her up, since we were supposed to study for midterms together. She didn’t respond, so I opened the door and…found her.” Sara sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “Oh God…there was so much blood,” she said in a horrified whisper.
That story was consistent with what Wally had told him at the station. The killer had been swift and silent, so effectively so that Sara couldn’t hear the murder happening through the thin wall that separated th
eir rooms.
“Do you mind if I take a look around her room?” Brennan asked. Sara didn’t say anything, but she waved a hand toward the other bedroom. It had two yellow strips of “Do Not Cross” police tape across the door, and a question suddenly occurred to him. “Are you still living here?”
Sara sniffled again and raised one dark eyebrow at him. “Of course not. I came by to pick up a few things; the school is paying for a hotel room until everything is moved out of her room and the carpet is replaced.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. “Even still, I think I’m going to find a new place. It doesn’t feel right to stay here after what happened.”
Brennan nodded absently. He was more amazed that he happened to intercept Sara at the right time; it had completely slipped his mind that she might not have been here at all, in which case the trip would have been for nothing.
He made his way to Kelsi’s room and opened the door. The room smelled like a crisp autumn breeze, sharply at odds with the metallic scent of blood that he had expected. A wooden frame was all that was left of Kelsi’s bed; the comforter, pillows, sheets, and even the mattress had all been soaked through with blood. A dark red, almost brown stain marred the carpet directly beneath and next to the bed.
That’s Kelsi’s lifeblood, Brennan thought. All that’s left of it, dried to practically nothing.
There was a small jewelry box on a dresser. Inside, he found a dozen different pairs of earrings and several matching bracelets. Some of the pieces were fitted with valuable gemstones, and one even had a few diamonds. Not the sort of thing you’d leave behind during a burglary, Brennan thought.
Nothing else in the room was speaking to him. Whatever had caused her murder, money apparently wasn’t a motive for the killer. Wally had disqualified sexual assault as a motive, too, during his autopsy.
Brennan closed the door behind him and rejoined Sara in the modest living room. As he passed the kitchen, he glanced out the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. It looked like Sara had collected herself, though her eyes were still slightly rimmed with red. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?” Brennan suggested, tilting his head toward the balcony.