Necropolis PD

by Nathan Sumsion

  Ms. Greystone stops speaking. I wait patiently for the conclusion to the story, or even a point of some kind.

  “And?” I prompt, exasperated.

  She looks at me quizzically. “And what, Detective?”

  I raise both hands above my head in frustration. “What do you mean, ‘And what?’ You didn’t tell me anything about Clark or Meints! Meints is a genius. He knows everything about everything. I knew that. Clark is Mr. Congeniality. He knows people everywhere, and he’s a smart-ass.”

  Greystone scowls, not impressed with my mood. “I can see that you are growing irritable being confined to your home. I will leave you to your solitude.”

  She floats through my wall then, leaving me more confused than enlightened.

  Chapter 29

  Between you and me,” Greystone confides in me the following afternoon while I eat something at my counter that may have once been a hamburger, “Captain Radu is sure that Detective Finnegan has escaped back to the mortal world.”

  “That door I saw him go through?”

  She shakes her head. “No, Detective. As we have told you repeatedly, there was no doorway. You may have suffered from a concussion or hallucinated.”

  “Whatever,” I snap. I know what I saw. Finnegan walked through an open door into the darkness beyond. It appears that I’m the only one who saw it. Or at least the only one who will admit to seeing it. I suspect that Captain Radu saw it, as well. I just don’t know why he would lie about it. He wouldn’t let me enter the alley to prove it either. Any time I tried moving in that direction, my limbs would seize up. I don’t know what whammy the captain hit me with, but I had no option but to return with him.

  “Why do you think he’s gone back to the real world—as you call it?” I ask sourly.

  She shrugs. “The ghosts have been combing the city for any trace of him. Our best scryers have been looking ceaselessly. Our trackers have been searching through the sewers and tunnels below the streets. If he were still in the city, they would have tracked him down by now. Even if he could obscure his exact location, we would find some trace. The only explanation we can come to is that he has managed to escape the confines of the city.”

  Greystone continues, uneasily. “Anyway, the captain is certain Detective Finnegan is gone for the time being, but since we have no way of knowing where he is, we can’t let you go around unescorted. When Detective Marsh has recovered, he will accompany you again.”

  I don’t respond, so we spend the next several minutes pointedly ignoring each other. I pick up my sketch pad and start drawing a masterpiece of Finnegan mangled on the ground after falling and being shot a few times. It is my fondest recent memory.

  But I’m curious. There are paths, exits from this city—ways to go back home. Clearly, there must be if they think Finnegan used one. Was that the doorway he used? Could my way home be that close? Was that why Radu kept me away from it?

  I want nothing more than to drop everything and just run, go home, leave all this insanity behind me. Let me go back to art classes, admire young coeds, hork down ramen noodles, and get some crappy job behind a convenience store counter.

  And Amber. I want to see Amber again if she hasn’t already moved on. It’s times like this I wish I could speak to my brother again. He gave the worst advice in the world, but at least he’d listen to me.

  Without some way to hide there, though, someone would follow after me to either drag me back or just kill me. The only thing worse than living with this insanity here would be to bring it back home with me.

  And that just makes everything worse—knowing I can find a way back and knowing with equal certainty that I can’t use it. Greystone is just irritating me now. It’s nothing she’s doing; in fact, she seems to be uncharacteristically nice today, but even looking at her just drives home the point how alien everything is. I childishly ignore her questions. After some time, she realizes she can’t shake me out of my foul mood, so she makes some excuse to leave and departs.

  The days crawl by. I don’t exactly have much to do. No TV, no phone, no radio. No social media or internet. I doodle some sketches of people I’ve met here, but none of them are good enough to make me want to finish them.

  Reading a couple of books kills some time. Marsh gave them to me a while back. One is on the history of a bayou and the forgotten parts of it that tie to this city. Written in nearly illegible scrawling cursive and broken English using colloquialisms from about a century earlier, it doesn’t hold my attention long. The other book is worse, but it has pictures of horses, so I stare at it for a few hours.

  On the third day, I wake to someone knocking on the front door so hard I’m afraid it’s going to rattle off the hinges. I stagger over to the door and open it. An ugly face grins at me.

  “Hey, Marsh,” I greet, rubbing my eyes. “C’mon in.”

  “No,” he says. “Your place is a dump. Let’s go.”

  I choke back a curse, mildly irritated. “You’re the one who put me here!”

  “Which is why I know how bad it is,” he agrees. “Let’s hit Warner’s.”

  “Fine. Give me a sec.” I splash some water on my face, put on a clean shirt, and join him out on the stairwell. My definition of a clean shirt has changed a great deal in my time here. There are laundry services, but for people who aren’t bothered much by the stench of decay, spring-scented clothing isn’t a high priority. If it’s not overpowering and it doesn’t walk away on its own, I’ll call it good.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask as we walk down the stairs. I notice the officers aren’t outside my door anymore. Good riddance.

  “Not bad. Back’s almost normal. I can stretch without splitting the skin. And I didn’t see any reason to try and speed up the healing, so it’s almost as good as new.”

  “Speed up the healing? Why don’t you always do that then?”

  He shrugs. “I can do it, but it’s not always a good idea. Stuff doesn’t always heal right. If I need a short-term fix, I can get things to work well enough, but I almost always have to rip pieces off and try again. It has to be an emergency for me to want to do it, and you cooling your heels for a couple days didn’t seem like an earth-shattering problem to me.”

  I nod and pause for a second. There’s been something I’ve wanted to say, but not sure how I should do it. Sighing, I plunge forward. “I just wanted to say thanks, Marsh. You saved my life back there.”

  Marsh waves away my words with a swish of his hand. “No sweat.”

  “No, seriously, Marsh. That fireball thing Finnegan threw at me would have killed me. Thank you.”

  He nods but doesn’t say anything, which means we’re done talking about it, I guess. We walk the rest of the way to the bar in silence.

  We find a booth inside Warner’s. The place is relatively empty. I guess every bar has a lull. Some guy is at the piano playing a semi-upbeat tune, which sounds oddly out of place. Someone stops beside our table, and I glance up. I almost shriek out loud as I look at one of the most repulsive faces I’ve seen in my life. Not to be cruel, but the girl standing at our table looks like her head was run over by a bulldozer. Her short black hair is sticking up every which way. Her nose is smashed flat to her face and crooked like it’s been broken in two to three places. She has two large teeth protruding out of a mouth with no other teeth to be found.

  I cough awkwardly to cover my reaction. Marsh gives me a curious glance. “Hey, gorgeous,” he says to her without a trace of irony. “Can we get some breakfast?”

  “No,” she says, shifting uncomfortably.

  Marsh and I both raise our eyebrows.

  “Uh, look,” Marsh says patiently. “You’re new here . . . ?”

  “Maude,” the waitress supplies her name quietly.

  “You’re new here, Maude,” Marsh continues. “So maybe you don’t know how this waitressing thing works. But gen
erally—and I’ll admit I’ve never done it, myself, so I could be wrong—I tell you something I want to eat, you go get it for me, and if you don’t screw that up too bad, I’ll give you something nice for your trouble.”

  “It’s not that,” she says haltingly.

  We both stare at her waiting.

  “We found something out back. Warner wants you to come see.”

  “That’s not something you want to hear from someone who’s going to cook your food,” Marsh says, getting up. “Lead the way.”

  “So, Maude,” I ask as I follow them back through the door leading into the kitchen. “I haven’t seen Annabelle lately. What’s she up to?”

  Maude lurches a bit but keeps going, shoulders slouched. “Ask Warner,” she says.

  We go through the kitchen, and that horror show will stay burned in my brain until the day I die. Let’s just say, sanitary food preparation isn’t too important here. I’m not sure what creatures were quivering and cawing before being hacked apart by cleavers, but I decide to not look too closely. The steel countertops are blackened with grime and mold. The grill has a layer of sludge covering it. It’s amazing I haven’t been killed just by eating the food here.

  Maude weaves her way past the two short-order cooks and out the back door. The alleyway is clogged with garbage and debris, and the stench is devastating. I can’t help but cover my nose with my hand, and I struggle to keep the contents of my stomach down. Some of the piles of trash are taller than I am. Clearly, the garbage men don’t get around here too often. But then, if I had enough willpower to overcome the grip of death to continue living, I don’t think I’d take that opportunity to clean up other people’s garbage either.

  Warner is standing next to an open dumpster. He looks pissed, impatient as he waits for us. His black clothes are actually a solid, deep black; they aren’t faded out like most people wear. Even with the grim set to his face and morose expression, he looks out of place here in the garbage and refuse behind his place. Despite everything, I’ve always thought of Warner as a class act.

  “Finally. Our city’s finest. What took you assholes so long?” Warner asks, arms crossed, glowering at us.

  Never mind. He’s a dick.

  “Any reason we’re standing out here instead of eating our breakfast?” Marsh asks.

  Warner grinds his teeth, calculating his answer. Finally, he waves away what he wanted to say and settles for, “Yes, and I don’t know what to make of it. We wouldn’t have discovered it if it weren’t for the smell.”

  “Seriously?” I ask, gesturing to our surroundings and trying not to gag. “What could possibly smell worse than this?”

  “See for yourselves,” Warner says, stepping back from the dumpster to give us room.

  Marsh and I step up to the dumpster and look in. Annabelle’s corpse looks back at us, half-buried under several bags of trash. Not her corpse laying down where she decided to take a nap, but her lifeless, totally dead corpse with burned out eyes, laying where it had been dumped.

  I swear.

  “No kidding,” Marsh agrees, frowning. “She was the best waitress in town.”

  Maude harrumphs and returns back inside.

  Another murder. This time someone I know. And of the very few people I know in this town, one of the ones I sort of liked. She was cranky, only spoke to me when absolutely necessary, probably wouldn’t have cared if I’d lived or died, but I knew her. I pound my fist against the dumpster in frustration.

  “Marsh, we’ve got to find who’s doing this.”

  “No wonder you’re a detective, with that brilliant insight of yours.” Marsh turns to Warner. “Tell me about her. She have any friends? Enemies? Cranky customers?”

  Warner shrugs sadly. His cantankerousness is gone now, uncertainty mellowing his mood. “I don’t know too much about her. She is . . . was a good worker. She never had any problems with nobody.” He opens his mouth to say more, then just shrugs helplessly again.

  I remember back a few weeks ago, to the last conversation I had with her. “I know someone who knows her,” I say absently, more to myself than anyone else.

  “Who’s that?” Marsh asks, surprised. Like I’m not allowed to know anyone besides him.

  “What’s-his-name, the scholar in back.”

  “Frank?” Warner offers.

  “Yeah. I want to ask him a few questions. You want to come with me, Marsh?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. That guy pisses me off. You can deal with him. Just don’t leave the bar.”

  I nod and head back inside, trying to wipe some of the grime off my shoes on a thoroughly useless mat outside the door.

  “And tell Greystone to send a crew out here to clean this mess up,” he calls after me.

  I nod again and weave my way through the kitchen, trying to keep my eyes locked on the door ahead. The cooks ignore me, and I ignore what they’re cooking. I think that our relationship is exactly as it should be. I return to the bar and head over to the back room where Frank is typing up some notes.

  “Hello, Frank,” I greet him as I approach the open door.

  He doesn’t look up from his typewriter and continues clacking away, but at least he responds. “Detective,” he says, politely.

  “I’ve got a few questions for you if you don’t mind,” I say as I step inside the room.

  Frank doesn’t stop typing, but nods. “Of course. Anything I can do to help,” he says.

  It irritates me that he won’t stop what he’s doing, but I’ll let it slide for now. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Annabelle.”

  He tsks sadly. “Yes, poor soul. Just awful what happened to her.” He glances over at the piles of notes stacked by the typewriter. Sure, they stay neatly stacked for him; they’d be all over the floor if I was typing.

  I get ready to ask him a question, but I pause. Something’s off here. My brain can’t decide what it is yet. He’s not being rude; he even seems reasonably helpful. There’s no reason I should suspect him of anything. But something about him is bothering me. What is it?

  “Detective?” he asks, glancing up at me.

  I shake my head, like the act will actually clear my mind of its confusion. “When was the last time you saw her?” I meet his gaze, but it makes me uncomfortable. It’s not crazy, but it’s intense. I lean against his table as he continues to type. He’s watching my expression now instead of his hands.

  “The last time I saw Annabelle, I believe, was the last time we spoke, you and I. She finished her shift here. I did not see her after that.”

  “Did you ever see her outside of work?”

  He shakes his head and looks back down at his hands as he continues plunking on keys. “No, not really. I spend most of my time here working on my research.”

  What is going on here? Something is really distracting me now. It’s his typing. Unlike many here in Meridian, I don’t have years of experience in using archaic contraptions and forgotten inventions. But one thing I’ve become intimately familiar with during my short time as a detective is working through mountains of paperwork on a typewriter. I know how the machine feels in front of me, the tactile sensation of keys underneath my fingers.

  Whatever Frank is doing, it doesn’t ring true.

  “Detective? Is something wrong?” he asks, but I ignore him now. I watch his fingers as he types, and then it clicks.

  I don’t feel anything when he presses a key. I hear the clacking of the keys, I hear the bell chime when he reaches the edge of the page, and I see him use the carriage return to start a new line, but there is no vibration from the typewriter. My wrists are still sore from endless hours of that vibration, but I feel none of that here.

  If the typewriter isn’t working, what exactly is he typing? I look closely and blink in surprise. There are no letters on the page. Actually, the keys don’t move at all when h
e types. How is this possible? I’m leaning against the table, but I’m not feeling any tremors or feedback. What the hell?

  Frank stops typing, or feigning typing, or whatever it is he is doing. The sound of the keys clacking lasts a few more seconds before fading out. I look back up to see Frank staring at me intently.

  “Well,” he says, surprised. “No one has been able to do that, not for a very long time.”

  “Been able to do what?” I ask, confused.

  “See through my glamour. And it is a very powerful glamour, Detective Green.” Frank seems to be mulling something over. Reaching a decision, he abruptly stands up.

  He walks around the table and over to the entrance of the room. He quietly closes the doors, shutting off sound from the bar outside. At least, it looked like he closed the door, but I swear it seemed like his hand wasn’t actually touching it. I don’t spend too much time dwelling on it because it occurs to me that we’re alone in the room together, and the space feels much too small. Suddenly the stacks of books, papers, and photos pinned to the walls feel like they are closing in on me.

  He walks about halfway back towards me and stops, sizing me up.

  “I had hoped to avoid this. Ever since I saw you here, I feared you might be a problem.”

  I definitely don’t like the direction this conversation is taking. I make sure to stay out of arm’s reach. He must have seen my concern on my face as he waves an arm dismissively. “Do not be concerned, Detective. I have no intention of harming you today. I am merely deciding how to proceed.”

  He has no intention of harming me. Today. Don’t think I didn’t hear that part of it. “How about you just get to the point, Frank.”

  He smiles mischievously. “Very well. I will, as you say, get to the point. I know who is responsible for the demise of our poor, beautiful waitress.”

  I stare at him. “OK, I’ll bite. Who?”