by M. D. Archer
“I know, I know,” Mom says eventually. “But I swear she is sneaking out at night.”
“What? No. She wouldn’t. Not with the Crawler.”
“I’m just getting this feeling. Haven’t you noticed the changes in her too?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s something sinister. Let’s just keep an eye on it.”
So now the Internet, Dana, and my parents are watching me.
Good one, Tamzin.
Mom and Dad eye me guiltily when I enter the living room—they only stopped talking about me moments ago.
“Hey, Tam,” Dad says with an awkward smile. “How are you going?”
“Good, thank you,” I say politely, calmly, taking a seat slowly, trying to act the opposite of how a meth-head would behave. “What are you watching?”
“The news. They’re releasing the CCTV footage from the night that Jennifer was killed,” Dad says. “You’re not going out at night, are you, Tamzin? Not after dark?” he adds, eyes full of worry.
“Promise me you won’t. Even when you are with Chris,” Mom chips in.
My stomach tightens uncomfortably, but I nod.
The anchor leads with a recap of the murders and then plays the CCTV tape. Jennifer’s nightmare had begun when she left her friend’s house, a ten-minute walk across campus. A tall, shadowy figure could be seen stalking behind her as she stumbled through the streets, obviously scared for her life. The images are grainy, blurry, and you can’t see much of anything, except… there was something about the figure chasing her. As I watch, the tightness in my stomach becomes almost painful.
I need to talk to Dana.
Chapter 18
To my left is the grassy verge leading down to the city cemetery, but I don’t know why I’m here, or even how I got here.
I’d been waiting outside Dana’s office, unable to reach her by phone or any other way, until Tim came along and told me she was at some all-day workshop off campus. Then, as he was standing in front of me jabbering on about when she might get back, a weird feeling crept over my shoulders to the top of my neck.
He eventually left—maybe my glazed expression discouraged further conversation—and the feeling intensified, become a flooding sensation, washing a blank, white fog through my head. Images of the cemetery appeared in flashes, and before I knew it, here I was, with no memory of how I got here.
I take a few tentative steps down the verge, picking my way through the historic gravestones, dread creeping up from my toes like dampness spreading from dewy grass. At first it had been intriguing, but now a sick feeling of foreboding is escalating rapidly. The eerie cemetery vibe is weirdly contrasted with the normal everyday sounds of cars, trains, and pedestrians going about their daily business. Wrought iron fences shield some gravestones from the others and the shaggy grass has trapped all sorts of interesting smells. But one in particular stands out, and I know why I was brought here, what I’m going to find. A dead body. Not like you might expect to find in a graveyard. A fresh one. Under that tree right over there. I take a step forward, then back, wanting but not wanting visual confirmation, uncertainty preventing any progress until something else enters my awareness. It’s hard to detect over the stench of death, but it’s there and somehow familiar.
I have to get out of here.
But it’s too late. My brain has received two new pieces of sensory input, both of these easily identifiable—a dog and the crackle of a radio.
“Are you okay, miss?” Two police officers and a police dog are coming toward me.
“Yes, I’m okay, but—”
The dog is going berserk.
“But?”
“There’s a body.” I point. Both officers freeze. The dog continues to bark and strain at his leash excitedly, not knowing whether to focus on me or the body. One of the police officers follows the direction I’m pointing, the other officer steps toward me.
“Don’t move. Stay exactly where you are,” he says with a cautioning hand.
“I didn’t do anything,” I blurt.
The officer nods. “Regardless. This is a crime scene.” He steps past me to confer with his colleague for a moment and then pulls out his mobile radio unit.
“Dispatch, this is 244. Send a unit to city cemetery, east side. We have a body and a witness.”
A crackle of static masks the response.
“Yes. We’ll bring her in once the unit gets here.”
My shoulders drop. Great.
THEY TAKE ME to the central city police station.
I have to wait in the lobby for at least half an hour before I’m ushered into a detective’s office, housed deeper within the bowels of the station.
The furniture is minimalist and modern looking, but the office screams clutter. The desk is overrun with papers, files, and coffee cups; and what collectively could only be described as crap, has taken over the remaining surfaces in the room. The precinct may be keeping up with the times, but not this guy. The detective’s smallish frame is further diminished by bad posture, but I get the sense I should not judge him by this, or the messiness of his office.
“Detective Parsons,” he introduces himself, flicking his eyes up to make brief but direct eye contact. He has inquisitive eyes with bags underneath that look like permanent fixtures, and his skin has a kind of pallor to it that suggests not enough time spent outside, or that he has an unhealthy diet. Or perhaps he is just overworked and over-caffeinated.
“Is it a Campus Crawler victim?” I can’t help myself.
“No,” he barks, a gut reaction. “Too early to tell,” he adds. “And confidential,” he warns, an afterthought. Even though it’s another young woman that appears to have been killed in the same way, it’s far too early for them to know for sure. Forensics and crime scene analysis will take at least a couple of days, but I already know. Deep down, I know she is another Crawler victim.
That makes three.
He returns his eyes to the file he has opened in front of him. His computer screen remains dormant as he taps a pen on the creased looking pages.
“So what were you doing there? In the cemetery?” He squints at me—that part of the cemetery is a known hangout for druggies—but then leans back, apparently satisfied with my clear and focused eyes. “Why?” he repeats.
“I, uh… like it there. It’s peaceful.” I hold his gaze. Does he believe me? We sit there in silence for a beat and then he shrugs.
“Whatever floats your boat. So I have Tamzin Walker in front of me, yes?” he asks, reading off the file. Before I can respond, he leaps up with surprising speed and agility and scoots out of his office.
“Hey, Wilson,” he calls as he disappears around the door. When he returns, he has yet another manila file, which has a coffee ring on it. Why isn’t this all computerized?
“Okay, come with me,” he says, gathering up his papers as he stands.
“What’s happening? Are you questioning me? Don’t I need a lawyer?”
“That sounds a lot like the talk of a guilty person. Do you have something to hide?”
Something to hide? He has no idea.
When I stand up, I ramp up the intensity in the room a few notches.
Parsons regards me with interest. “You’re okay,” he says, holding out a calming hand. “You’re over eighteen, right?”
I nod.
“It’s just a couple of questions to help with our enquiry. It’s standard protocol.”
I hesitate. Does this mean I don’t have to talk to him?
“Look, this is just a friendly chat, and the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you can go. You don’t need a lawyer.”
“Okay, fine.”
Parsons has a bit of a pit bull vibe, and I think this might go away quicker if I just answer his questions. It’s not like I’m guilty of anything, after all. We walk down the hall, me following half a step behind him. It’s not until he opens a door marked INTERVIEW ROOM B that a pang of nervousness shoots through me. What if he was ly
ing about the friendly chat and he’s actually going to interrogate me like they do in cop shows? I can’t imagine that going particularly well.
He turns on the light. The fluorescent pallor does its best to illuminate the gray walls and dingy décor. I was anticipating some sort of unpleasant smell and I was right. Stale coffee and, I think, traces of cigarette smoke.
You’ll be fine, I tell myself. You are Lucan. You have the upper hand here.
He takes a seat and busies himself with the files.
“So tell me, Tamzin Walker, where were you on April 4th?”
Oh no. Even though it’s weeks ago, I know the answer, sort of.
“Uh, I was out, uh, at a bar.”
“At Spider? Correct?”
“Uh…” Dammit. The other file must be Carly King’s.
“What? You can’t remember?”
“Not really,” I mumble.
Parsons blows out a gust of exasperated air. “Try harder, Miss Walker,” he warns.
“I can’t! I was too drunk,” I admit, folding my arms across my chest. “I only have a hazy memory of being there.”
Parsons leans back. “I see. Well, apparently you were there. And guess who else was there that night.”
I slump in my chair, knowing the answer but waiting for him to finish.
“Carly King. Which means you are connected to two homicides,” he continues, narrowing his eyes at me.
“I’m not connected to them.”
“You’re not? How do you explain being in the same place as both victims then?”
“I can’t.”
“What sort of answer is that?”
“It’s the only answer I’ve got,” I say, trying not to sound belligerent, trying to control my voice so that the anger I’m starting to feel doesn’t come through.
We lock eyes and I manage to hold his gaze for a couple of seconds before looking down. I need to know what he’s thinking so I can give him the answers he wants and get out of here. I focus on his forehead, lined like someone who uses their eyebrows a lot, and concentrate.
Is she just an unlucky bystander? Is it possible she has been inadvertently linked to two murder victims?
As he sits back in his chair, once again squinting, trying to get a measure of me, I start probing again, hoping that my face isn’t doing anything weird. He rubs his brow and then shakes his head before continuing to flick through the file.
She doesn’t exactly fit the profile of a serial killer. Maybe it’s just bad luck? Just a location thing?
“My aunt teaches at the university. She has an office at city campus and she lives on Emmerson Street, so I walk past there all the time. It’s just bad luck,” I interrupt his thoughts. “And Spider is a student hangout.”
He frowns, shifting in his chair and looking uncomfortable. He taps the file a couple of times before pulling out a third, previously hidden, file from underneath.
“Where were you on April 2nd, in the evening, between 9:00 p.m. and midnight?”
I look at him in shock. My birthday.
“Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
That date is significant. If she doesn’t have an alibi for Jennifer Bright, then….
I sit back, stunned. Jennifer Bright, the first victim, was killed the day I turned nineteen. The day I Became.
“Miss Walker, answer the question.”
“I can’t… I, uh…” I stand up.
Parsons also stands up. “Where are you going?”
“Are you arresting me?” My voice is shaky and I’m not surprised—my whole body is trembling. “You can’t just keep me here without charging me, right?”
In his hesitation, I know the answer, so I heave myself toward the door and let myself out.
“Come back. You can’t…” He tries one more time, but I keep going and he doesn’t follow me.
Outside, I try and get control of my breathing.
It’s not a coincidence, none of it is.
The scent I’d recognized earlier at the crime scene was Lucan, I’m sure of it. Of course it was. The message I received was Lucan, telling me where the body was.
The first Campus Crawler victim was killed on my birthday and the second was taken after being in the same bar with me and then placed where I would find her on Lakeshore Drive. This last one, even more obvious, left for me like a present to unwrap and a telepathic card telling me where to find it.
The Campus Crawler is Lucan, and he’s doing his best to link me to his murders.
Chapter 19
The smell of beer and other remnants of last night’s partying greet me as I walk into The Public House.
I was summoned here this morning. I wasn’t told why, but I’m not expecting a cozy brunch. I look around for Vincent, noticing how a bar bereft of customers seems sad and lonely.
It’s only been a day since the third victim was officially linked to the Crawler, and with no concrete leads, the city is riddled with tension. Mom and Dad are freaking out, and that is without even knowing about my involvement. They’ve been insisting on chauffeuring me around and keeping in contact at all times. It’s a pain. Luckily I can use Dana and Chris as excuses for my absences. I’ll tell them that Chris and I broke up eventually; I just need him a bit longer so that I can move around freely. I haven’t seen Nikolai in days and this feels intentional. His distance seems disapproving. The Consillium knows that I found the body. I told Dana and she had to tell Vincent. And now I have this Lucan version of a trip to the principal’s office to deal with.
“We need to talk,” Vincent says, entering from the back room. His eyes do not convey warmth and trust; they are cold.
I’m in trouble.
“Coffee?” he asks, moving behind the bar, ever the host.
“That would be great.” I hover near the door until the coffee is ready. Vincent brings them over to a table in the corner and sits down, gesturing at me absentmindedly, like some sort of Mafioso boss. As I take a seat, he sips at his espresso, looking out the window, watching people as they either bustle down the road, full of their important busy lives, or amble casually, window shopping on their way.
“I have a Lucan friend on the police force—” he starts to explain.
“It wasn’t my fault!” I interrupt. “I don’t know why or how I stumbled on the body. They took me into the station. What was I supposed to do?”
“—and my friend told me that recently they have picked up on a bit of unusual activity in the city,” Vincent continues. “Anonymous tips about crimes in progress, or crimes that have been thwarted somehow. They started recently and they are always at night, always in the same central city area, and do you know what else?”
I gulp and shake my head.
“A couple of people have mentioned seeing a tall brunette female.”
Oh no.
“Quite striking, apparently. Quite noticeable.” Vincent raises his eyebrows at me.
“Vincent—”
“And then there is the matter of the Spiderman video currently heating up the Internet.”
“Technically, Spiderwoman.”
Vincent silences me with a look and sets down his coffee. “Tamzin, I specifically explained to you that the number one rule is to not risk exposure, and your response is to moonlight as some sort of crime fighter? Scale buildings in full view of any idiot with a phone?”
I shake my head. “It was so dark, I didn’t think, and the crimes… they needed my help. How am I supposed to ignore people who need help?”
“Tamzin, you’ve been going out at night with a purpose. That is not the same as stepping in and saving someone’s life when there is no alternative.”
I slump in the chair. I know he’s right, but I don’t know how to have these abilities and not use them.
“So what now? Am I in trouble?” I ask in a small voice.
“Yes. You are.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I whisper.
Vincent shakes his head, s
eeming to still be deciding as he takes another sip of coffee. “Normally a case like this, deliberate flouting of the rules, would be brought up for judgement by a panel of Consillium Principali, but…”
I look up.
“Because you are new, just learning the rules, and your intentions were good—”
“Please. I’ll stop moonlighting. I promise,” I beg.
He thinks for a moment but finally nods. “This is a formal warning, Tam. You got that?”
Nodding, I stand up and knock back my coffee in one go, keen to get out of here.
“Wait, you need to tell me what happened with the body you found.”
I sit back down and sigh.
“More coffee?”
I shake my head. The strong brew I just downed is already swirling unpleasantly through my system. I skipped breakfast, too anxious to eat, and now I was regretting it.
“How did you come across the body?”
“I… uh… don’t know. I kind of found myself there, and then I smelt something.”
“And Dana said you think the Crawler is Lucan?”
I nod. “It’s hard to explain. There are a few things… like the image on CCTV—you saw that too, right?”
Vincent nods, seeming weary. “Yes, I did notice that. They did have a Lucan appearance, a Lucan gait.”
“And there was a weird but familiar scent at the cemetery… and I think the reason I went there was because I got a message… maybe?”
“What was the message?” An even deeper line knits his brows together.
“It wasn’t like a normal message. It’s all hazy, and it was just like… go to the cemetery. I think they wanted me to find the body.”
“But you have no idea about who it might be?”
I shake my head.
“We need to shut him down, immediately. This is our number one priority.”
I nod. Lucan exposure aside, the Crawler seems intent on screwing up my life.
“Just let me know what you need me to do.”
Vincent shakes his head. “No.”
“No?”
“You are to stay out of this, Tamzin. The Consillium will deal with it. This is what we do.”