by RJ Blain
Kenneth took my father’s phone and sighed. “I bet the body bag’s in the dumpster.”
“We’re going to have to go dumpster diving, won’t we?”
“We are.”
I considered the options and fixated on the worst-case scenario. “And because it’s our investigation, we get to do it, don’t we?”
“It’s like you’ve done this before. I hope you’re not too attached to your clothes. Let’s grab a box of gloves and get to work.”
“Because gloves are going to save us from a dumpster?”
“No, so we don’t leave our fingerprints on anything we pull out of the dumpster. The forensics guys should have bags we can use to sort through the trash.”
“Think they have some clothes pins?”
“Why?”
I pinched my nose closed with my fingers and pointed at the dumpster with my other hand. As I didn’t want to sound like a duck, I arched a brow and waited for him to figure out what I meant.
“Won’t hurt to ask.” Kenneth sighed and headed for the hotel. I followed, regretting my choice to attend the retreat. We returned to the crew still working at clearing out the ceiling. “Got a spare box of gloves and bags? We need to go through the dumpster.”
One of the two men hard at work tossed the requested items down and managed to smack Kenneth in the head with both.
“Nice aim,” I complimented, bending over to grab the gloves and leaving the bags for Kenneth. I glanced at my father and smiled. “Guess who gets to help with the dumpster diving? My parents. Aren’t you so happy you conned me into helping the FBI today?” To make it clear I wasn’t accepting no for an answer, I handed the box of gloves to Dad. “And no magic tricks from either of my mothers.”
“You’re feeling vindictive today.”
“You got a room at this hotel through nefarious means.”
“A cancellation isn’t nefarious, Emma.”
“It is now.”
Kenneth shook his head, caught my elbow, and pulled me down the hall. “However entertaining it is to watch you argue with your father, we have a dumpster to search.”
Someone from the ceiling tossed another box of smaller bags down along with a marker, which my father retrieved. “Don’t mess up any evidence.”
“He’s talking to you,” Kenneth informed me.
I stepped on his foot. “No, he’s not. He’s probably talking to my father.”
“I’m talking to all of you!” the forensics guy howled.
I scowled while Kenneth laughed. “It’s not funny.”
“It is funny. Give it a few months. You’ll laugh whenever you can. The rest of the time? You’ll be wishing you hadn’t gotten out of bed in the morning.”
I turned my glare to my father. “Is this really what you want for your only child? A life of wishing I hadn’t gotten out of bed in the morning?”
“Don’t be a drama queen, Emma. It’s not that bad.”
Dancing skills and superb balance didn’t make me immune to leaning too far forward straining to reach the next damned piece of refuse for sorting. With an indignant squawk, I tumbled head first into the dumpster, landing with a crunch, a crash, and a squish.
Without the squish, I might’ve endured without screaming, but a wet, sticky, oozing substance accompanied the squish, which my nose immediately recognized as decaying organic matter, likely of human origin.
I’d never forget the stench of human decay.
I launched out of the dumpster, landed in a crouch beside the dumpster, and fought the urge to run screaming to the nearest bathroom. “I found a body,” I announced.
Huh. Who knew I could sound almost calm following screaming my head off and flying out of a dumpster without the benefit of wings?
Kenneth rubbed his forehead, grabbed his phone, and called someone. “I need a team to the dumpster behind the resort. It appears we might have another body. We’re also going to need a change of clothes for my partner, as hers will need to be confiscated for evidence collection. Bring in a woman for the base examination, please.” Kenneth pulled his phone away from his ear. “Will you need an ambulance, Emma?”
“No. I need a change of clothes and a head to toe decontamination.”
My father sighed. “I’ll go to your room and bring the clothes if you give me the key.”
“Take mine,” Kenneth ordered, pulling out his wallet. “No ambulance, just sanitizer safe for lycanthropes. Thanks.”
My father took the room key from Kenneth and herded my mothers to the room.
“If you even think about doing anything inappropriate in Kenneth’s suite, I’ll add three bodies to the dumpster,” I warned.
The trio dared to laugh at me.
Kenneth stood on his toes and peered into the dumpster. “You did find a body. Looks like you dislodged the garbage hiding her when you fell in.”
“Brown hair?”
“Yep.”
If I ever got my hands on the serial killer, there’d be another murder: hers. How brutal the murder would be depended on a lot of factors, including what weapons I had at my disposal and if I could figure out how to use them.
The instant I made it home, I’d accept Kenneth’s offer of self-defense lessons, and I’d one-up him with the inclusion of creative fighting lessons. Surely I could find someone who could teach me how to use anything handy to protect myself.
I wouldn’t tell my instructor I had secondary motivations involving the brutal murders of serial killers with a fetish for women with brown hair.
“Today is the worst, Kenneth.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
“Fortunately for you, this isn’t your fault.”
“Do I want to know what you’d do if it were my fault?”
“You’d be joining her in the dumpster. It’s up for debate if you’d be breathing when you joined her.”
“I’ve met a lot of lycanthropes, but you’re one of the crankiest.”
Kenneth’s amusement annoyed me, but I settled with wrinkling my nose at him. “What’s the plan now?”
“Once the team gets here, you’ll be checked head to toe for evidence, your clothing will be confiscated, and the technician will give you a basic medical check over to ensure you’re fine and don’t need to b treated for shock. Fairly standard protocol. It won’t take too long, and the tech will probably do it in a bathroom so you won’t put on a show for the entire resort.”
“Small blessings.”
“Hey, at least you won’t have to do this in an ambulance. That’s common.”
“I’m very grateful a bathroom is an option.”
“All that said, I’m really impressed you didn’t puke. I might have.” Kenneth peeked into the dumpster again. “Scratch that. I definitely would have.”
“I screamed. That’s almost as bad.”
“Don’t sweat it, Emma. I probably would’ve screamed, too.”
“Well, that’s something at least.”
Chapter Ten
Plans often led to disappointment, and I questioned why I bothered making them. If I lived life off the cuff, I wouldn’t have to deal with my plans falling apart. No matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t remember how I’d become separated from Kenneth, the forensics lady responsible for collecting my clothes and checking for evidence, or my parents.
How the hell had I gotten into a basement worthy of a horror movie? Add some graffiti, and a movie studio wouldn’t need to do any editing for atmosphere.
I blamed magic. Magic could alter memories, coerce people into doing things against their will, and create more problems than I cared to think about. Most had some special trick, but I’d never tried to find mine. Having Dad’s lycanthropy virus had been enough for me.
Assuming I lived long enough, I’d be able to fly one day.
Unless I figured out what was going on and why, I wouldn’t be flying anywhere. I worried I’d end up as corpse number five.
I should’ve
asked Kenneth to stop, drop, and teach me something about self-defense before we’d walked anywhere. Then again, wandering around the resort with the forensics lady, my parents, or Kenneth should’ve been as safe as it got.
A soft laugh behind me sent chills creeping through me. I turned and came face to face with Cathy.
“You just can’t seem to help yourself, can you? You have to take as many men as possible, don’t you?”
Stupidity needed to be criminalized. “What are you talking about?”
“Kenneth wasn’t enough for you, so you had to take that other hunk, too?”
Other hunk? What other hunk? I blinked, and it struck me there was only one other man I’d been keeping company with at the resort: Dad. “Uh, about this tall, brown hair, a bit too muscular for his own good, dressed in jeans and a dress shirt?”
“Yes, him.”
“That’s my father.”
Cathy gaped. “What?”
“He’s my father. You saw the angel, I presume?”
“Yes. I’d been wondering about that.”
In a way, I was relieved; her reply confirmed I hadn’t hallucinated walking with Kenneth and my parents. I could handle a memory lapse, which I presumed was some form of compulsion meant to lure me to her. If she layered an aversion targeting Ma, Dad, Kenneth, and the forensics lady before compelling me to follow her, I could understand how we’d been separated.
It also meant the woman was a lot more dangerous than I’d thought.
As appeasing her curiosity might help me live longer, I opted for the route of cooperation. The only way to lie to an angel was through omission, and I’d done it enough times to Ma I held hope I could trick the other dancer for a while. “She’s one of my mothers. Dad wanted to talk to Agent Bernard, so I was walking with them.”
“He’s mine.”
I needed to have a long talk with Kenneth about how much trouble he made for me whenever he breathed the same air I did. Worse, I’d have to lecture him about his unforgivable tendency to make me like sharing space with him.
I hadn’t even had a chance to put much thought into if I wanted to give him a chance to contract my virus. I figured I’d get there eventually, assuming the psychotic drug dealer didn’t kill me first. “That’s between you two. It’s not any of my business.”
Yet. It wasn’t any of my business yet, and as soon as I decided either way if I’d accept any moves from him, once it was my business, Cathy would regret her decision to lure me off.
I had nails and teeth. I could do some damage to the bitch’s pretty face.
Damn it, Dad was right. I needed to have my virus levels checked again. Violence wasn’t supposed to be my first solution to problems, especially when I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet cardboard box.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m a fond supporter of free will, Cathy.” I was also fond of living, and I didn’t want to find out through personal experience if she was the person killing dancers with too close of a resemblance to me. “I came here to dance.”
“You seemed pretty disappointed when Kenneth called your name.”
“There’s a reason for that.” It involved my tested patience and my lycanthropy virus, two things she didn’t need to know. “I came here to expand my skills for work.”
“For work? You? You don’t look like a professional.”
“I work at a theater as an on-call replacement if a dancer is out and is mandatory for a performance. I learn the routines of the important roles as a backup in case of emergency. When I’m not doing that, I handle the other backup dancers and work backstage.”
“You’re really a professional.”
I shrugged. “I’ll never be a prima ballerina, but I like the work. Most of the time, I’m just a nameless face on the stage filling in so the show can go on. The theater is undergoing renovations right now, so it was perfect timing to go to the retreat.”
While pretending to pay close attention to Cathy, I checked out the basement for routes of escape. The wasted space annoyed me. Why have such a large basement and not use it? Surely a resort needed storage space.
A thought crossed my mind, one I didn’t like at all. What if I wasn’t at the resort anymore? The building could easily be part of a windowless warehouse somewhere.
“This isn’t what I expected. Getting the amateurs out of the way is one thing, but career dancers? No, the world needs more of the serious dancers around. What am I going to do with you? This wasn’t part of my plans!”
I’d been lured into the clutches of a psychopath, and like every other serial killer I’d read about in college, she had a skewed view on life, an agenda, and a purpose, which made her dangerous. “What were your plans?”
If I got lucky, she’d view it as an invitation to spill all her secrets. I wondered if I could land a spot as the prosecuting lawyer. I could take Colorado’s bar exam and pass it with a little work. I bet Dad wouldn’t mind spotting me for a long-term hotel in exchange for me kicking the bitch’s ass in court.
I just needed proof she’d been behind the murders.
“I only want Kenneth. Once he’s mine, I have no plans. A few kids, I guess. We’ll make beautiful babies.”
Passion so often dictated a person’s course of action destroying and creating life in equal measure. How many lives would Cathy destroy before she got what she wanted?
“I guess those other women had infringed on your turf?”
“They’re his type, and I can’t have any competition. He’s always appreciated a challenge. He’ll appreciate the unsolvable mystery I’ve left for him.”
“Unsolvable? Unsolvable how?”
Cathy waved her hand. “Oh, it’s simple. My magic ensures they can’t check any of the sites thoroughly. They’ll never figure it out. I took my time with them and made sure to protect the important evidence, of course. His colleagues like to think they’re so smart.”
While we hadn’t pieced together Cathy was the one behind the bodies, we’d already narrowed the suspect pool to a woman without much effort. “Oh. That’s clever.”
Not.
“I know, right? Do you want to see how I did it? You’re not a threat. Hell, you don’t even like him. This’ll work. I can help you with your career, you can help me. It’s perfect.”
Mental illness could happen to anyone, but I’d never met someone so obviously afflicted I didn’t need a professional to diagnose that Cathy had entered batshit crazy territory. “You want me to help you?”
Manic glee lit her expression, and she grabbed my hand, pulling me across the open space towards one of the doors. “It’s perfect. This one’s too heavy for me to carry on my own, although I haven’t finished with her yet. It took me weeks to ensure she’d come here so I could get her alone. You can help me finish her off. I’m taking the slow route with her. She’s gotten close to my Kenneth one too many times. It’ll take a few more hours before I’m ready for the next stage. We’ll have to wait a while before we move her. She’ll be easier to drag around after she starts stiffening up.”
I wouldn’t blame Dad’s contribution of the lycanthropy virus for my desire to beat Cathy into a vaguely human-shaped puddle. “I see. Where is she?”
I’d start the beating as soon as I could and try to help her next victim. I could only hope I wouldn’t be too late.
Cathy guided me through a door which led into a small room lit with battery-powered lanterns in the corners. Someone had knocked out the concrete wall to access the raw earth and stone behind it before digging a tunnel large enough we could walk through without touching the ceiling. Ruts in the loose soil exposed where she had dragged a cart or wheelbarrow down the passage countless times.
“Watch your step. The last one threw up on the floor. Wouldn’t want you to step in it.”
Gross. I followed in her footsteps, my gaze locked on her throat. I understand the desire to strangle someone; the thought of wrapping my hands around Cathy’s throat tempted me far too much.
The tunnel opened up to a small, dug-out room primed for collapse, illuminated with more camping lanterns. Without any visible support structures and a lot of loosely packed soil making up the walls, it was only a matter of time before it fell in on itself. A hose dangled from a hole in the ceiling with a nozzle attached to the end, the handle taped so it showered water into a pit below. I bet the moisture would elevate the collapse risk given time.
Or flood the whole place out.
I really didn’t need more problems.
Cathy pointed at the center of the room. “She’s in there. I gagged her because I got tired of listening to her screaming.”
I took a few tentative steps forward, keeping an eye on the lunatic masterminding the murders of other dancers, and peeked over the edge. Sure enough, a gagged and bound woman sat at the bottom of the pit, which slowly filled with water.
I eased away from the hole so I wouldn’t join her. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” Cathy hopped forward a step to admire her handiwork.
I wound up and punched the bitch in the throat. When that didn’t do more than make her gasp and choke out a cry, I did it again, putting more force behind the blow. Four hits later, she collapsed to her knees, clutching at her neck.
“You’re a piece of shit.” I spotted a worn, mud-encrusted shovel leaning against the wall, snatched it, and to make sure she stayed down, I swung with every bit of my strength and smashed it over her head.
Cathy slumped into a heap at my feet.
Later, I might even feel guilty for sucker punching the woman, but I had bigger things to worry about. I had no idea how long the woman had been in the pit, and if it filled up with too much water, she’d drown. I dropped my improvised weapon, headed for the hose, and grabbed it, going to work unraveling the rope so I could shut the damned thing off. Tired of fighting with the layers of duct tape, I kinked the hose, tied it in a knot to make sure it stayed kinked, and scowled that I’d only managed to reduce the flow.