The Thin Wall

by E. M. Parker

  Sullivan took her flashlight to the wall in search of nail holes where his work may have been previously displayed and taken down, but she found none.

  After searching the open areas of the room, she ventured inside the closet. When she turned on the light, she immediately noticed a tall trunk in the far-right corner, tucked behind a neatly-hung row of work uniforms. When she cleared out the uniforms, she realized that the trunk had been turned vertically with the lid faced against the wall. The presence of powder residue told her that forensics had conducted a surface examination of it. If they found anything inside, it obviously wasn’t enough to justify moving it out of its original position.

  Still, Sullivan felt compelled to look.

  She attempted to move the trunk out of the corner, but after several tries, it wouldn’t budge. There was something very heavy in there. And despite the forensic team’s apparent lack of interest in it, Sullivan’s adrenaline spiked when she considered the possibilities.

  “Hey Marcus, come in here,” she yelled from inside the closet. “I think I found something!”

  Greer quickly made his way in the room. “What is it?” he asked as he stuck his head in the closet.

  Sullivan pointed to the trunk. “There’s something really heavy in here. I’m having a hard time moving it.”

  Greer motioned for her to come out of the closet so he could slide in. “Let me have a crack.”

  He grabbed the top edge with one hand and gave it a yank, but the trunk only moved a few inches. “So it’s like that, huh?” he told the unyielding object. “You’re not getting the best of me that easy.” This time Greer took the edge with both hands, set his feet, and drove them hard into the ground. The trunk moved a few inches further. He set his feet again and pulled. After several more goes, he finally moved it far enough out to allow him the space to push it the rest of the way. Once it was finally out of the closet, it took both of them to set it down horizontally.

  “What the hell is in this thing?” a thoroughly winded Greer asked.

  “We’re about to find out,” Sullivan answered as she removed the latch and flipped the top open.

  The pair stood frozen as they stared at piles upon piles of magazines. The visible issues ranged from vintage editions of Reader’s Digest to recent copies of Art in America.

  Greer sighed as he began digging through them. “So this is your smoking gun? A trunkful of The Watercolor Artist and Popular Photography? Hopefully there are a few Playboys in here or something. That way we’d know the guy actually had blood pumping through his veins.”

  Sullivan shook her head as she joined him in combing through the magazines. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was nothing to find here, but they continued digging until they reached the bottom of the trunk.

  “Well this was a major waste,” Greer said as he fanned through the last magazine, a New Yorker from 1992.

  “There’s no way we would have known unless we looked,” Sullivan said defensively. “At least we confirmed that he really was into art. Unfortunately, it looked like he was far more interested in reading about it than actually doing it.”

  “Story of his life, I bet.”

  Sullivan looked around the bedroom, at its no-frills décor, and bare walls, and crisply made-bed, and neatly-organized closet, and she indeed saw the story of Tisdale’s life. He was simple. He was predictable. He was bored. He was lonely. And he was dead by his own hand. Sullivan was slowly becoming convinced of it.

  “Hell of a sad story if you ask me.”

  Greer nodded his agreement. “What do you say we get this back in the closet? There may be some keepsakes here that his next-of-kin might be interested in.”

  Tisdale had a younger sister in Des Moines. She was appropriately devastated by Sullivan’s call, but informed her that she was bed-ridden and would not be able to make the trip out. With no one else to claim him, Tisdale’s personal effects would most likely be turned over to the state. Still, Sullivan saw no need to leave the trunk in the middle of the bedroom. “You do the pushing, I’ll navigate.”

  Between the two of them, they guided the trunk back into the closet with relative ease. But when Greer attempted to give it a final push into the corner, it caught on something. He pulled it back a couple of feet and pushed. Again, it caught.

  “Chloe, can you look in there?” a frustrated Greer asked. “The trunk keeps getting stuck.”

  Sullivan looked in the corner, but could not find any obstruction. “There’s nothing in here. Just keep trying.”

  Greer pushed again, getting only a few inches before running into the unseen barrier. Sullivan crammed in the tight space to help push. With her help, the trunk started to move. Then there was a loud crack, like the splintering of wood, and the left front of the trunk suddenly dropped into the floor.

  “What the hell was that?” Greer asked in a slight panic as he rushed to pull the trunk out of the hole.

  Sullivan quickly moved in, shining her flashlight at the floor. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  Greer moved the trunk out of the closet and rejoined Sullivan. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked as he looked at the floor.

  Sullivan nodded and moved closer. She estimated that the small opening measured no more than two feet by two feet. The edges of the floor where the hole had been cut where jagged, creating an uneven fit for the plywood covering. “Piss-poor construction, but it’s definitely a trap door.”

  “So that explains why I couldn’t slide the trunk in. It kept bumping up against it.”

  “He must have kept the trunk on top of it because the door didn’t close all the way,” Sullivan speculated. “It was open just enough for us to tear it off the hinge when we forced our way through.”

  “Brilliant summation, my dear Watson. So what the hell is it here for?”

  “Let’s find out.” Sullivan kneeled in front of the shallow opening. When she pointed her flashlight inside, she saw the edges of a large, black notebook.

  “The elusive artwork?” Greer asked.

  “Could be.”

  “Okay, step back so I can get the door off.”

  Sullivan nodded and backed away.

  “Just make sure you keep the light on it,” Greer said. “If there’s something alive in there, I want to see it before it has the chance to crawl up my leg.”

  Sullivan thought about the family of genetically engineered rats that she imagined where living inside Tisdale’s walls, and she shuddered.

  The door had been designed to be flipped up and to the right so that it could rest on the wall. But since it had been torn away at the hinge, Greer had to carry out the entire door. He set it down on the opposite wall and allowed Sullivan to move in.

  “Well? Any creepy-crawlies down there?”

  Sullivan shined the flashlight into the hole. Instead of one large notebook, she now saw four, along with a small composition pad and an envelope that looked to contain photographs. Fortunately, there were no creepy-crawlies. “You’re safe, detective.”

  “That’s a relief,” Greer said with an exaggerated sigh. He bent down for a closer inspection of the items. “These are definitely sketchbooks,” he said before retrieving one of them. “Let’s see where Mr. Tisdale’s artistic sensibilities led him.”

  He could not hide his disappointment as he flipped through blank page after blank page.

  “Or not,” Sullivan said, equally disappointed.

  Greer looked as if he had given up on the pursuit entirely when he suddenly stopped flipping. “Holy...”

  “What is it?”

  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds as he stared at the page.

  “Marcus?”

  Greer looked at her with a grim expression.

  “Please don’t tell me we have another group of potato eaters on our hands,” Sullivan said with a nervous smile.

  “It’s way worse.” Greer handed her the notebook.

  The sketch was a detailed recreation of the
crime scene as Sullivan and Greer first discovered it, right down to the noose dangling in the doorway and the chair situated underneath it. The only thing missing from the sketch was Tisdale himself. The bottom right corner and been signed and dated. D Tisdale – Apr 6th.

  “This was dated one week before his body was discovered,” Sullivan said.

  “He obviously planned it out ahead of time.”

  “Perhaps.” But something didn’t seem right about it. She continued studying the sketch until she figured out what that something was. “What do you think this is,” she asked Greer. “Directly behind the chair near the floor.”

  After looking at it for a long time, Greer drew the same conclusion that Sullivan had. “It looks like a small hand wrapped around the doorframe.”

  Sullivan nodded. “And perhaps the shadow of a head peering around the corner?”

  Greer took the book and flipped to the next page. This sketch of the doorway wasn’t as detailed as the last, but it did reveal a closer view of the hand. The shadow was also more apparent now. Based on its scale in comparison to the doorway and chair, it belonged to a child.

  “Well Dr. Freud, here’s your chance to psychoanalyze,” Greer said without any trace of humor in his voice. “What does this tell you about Donald Tisdale’s mindset?”

  Sullivan didn’t offer an answer as she took the book back from Greer and flipped to the next page. The formless shadow now loomed in the middle of the doorway, its face frame by two red dots that were apparently meant to represent its eyes.

  The shadow took more form on the next page. The red eyes were larger now, with a jagged line that looked like a snarl outlining its mouth. The black mass grew larger and more frighteningly detailed with each subsequent sketch, until the last page in the book revealed what it actually was: a young girl whose ghostly features were contorted with malevolent anger. It was the same young girl who Sullivan saw running away from Tisdale’s apartment door. She was as sure of it as she had been of anything in her entire life. But she locked the revelation away in the deepest part of her consciousness that she could access.

  “What the hell is that?” Greer asked.

  Sullivan answered the only way that she could, at least for now. “I have no idea.”

  She put the book aside and reached for the next one. It was filled with the nature sketches that Finley had spoken of. There was also a sketch of the exterior of Corona Heights. It loomed over the desolate surroundings like something out of a nineteen-century gothic horror novel. Sullivan wondered if that was what the building really looked like, or if it was more the result of artistic embellishment. She had never surveyed the exterior closely enough to know for sure, but it certainly felt appropriate based on how she felt every time she came inside.

  Greer put the sketchbook aside and reached for the third. It was blank.

  That left one more.

  “Please Lord, let there be something in this one besides mountains and friggin’ trees,” he said in what Sullivan assumed was a lame attempt at a prayer.

  Despite the terrible execution, Greer’s prayer was answered.

  This book appeared to pick up where the first one left off, showing what looked to be the same girl, but with brighter, more appropriately human features. Gone were the flaming red eyes and crooked, evil grin. The girl depicted in this sketch looked content as she stared out of a window onto a bustling scene of activity outside. This sketch was the only one to have a title: Lost in Dream, and it was signed by Tisdale and dated Dec 16th.

  The book revealed more sketches of the same girl, mostly head portraits. In one, the small, inverted outline of a man was visible as a reflection through the girl’s eyeglasses. The detail was breathtaking, even if the subject matter was inexplicably disturbing.

  “Do you think it’s his granddaughter or something?” Greer asked, eager to grasp at any logical explanation that he could.

  “No one we’ve talked to, including his sister, ever indicated that he had children. So I highly doubt it’s his granddaughter.”

  “Then who is she?”

  Sullivan put the last sketchbook aside and reached for the envelope. As she’d suspected, it contained a large stack of photographs. She split the stack, giving one half to Greer while she kept the other. They began flipping through them simultaneously and with equal speed, desperate to find any real-world clue that could shed light on who the girl may have been.

  It was Greer who found the first photo. “I think we got her.”

  When Sullivan saw the photo of the young girl sitting alone on Tisdale’s couch, she grabbed the last sketchbook to compare it with the drawings. From the glasses, to the pigtails, to the easy, trusting smile, it was an exact match.

  “Keep looking,” Sullivan said as she turned back to her own pile. “There have to be more.”

  And unfortunately, there were.

  The girl was photographed on Tisdale’s couch on four more separate occasions, the trusting smile on her face appearing to diminish in each one. Then came the photos of Tisdale and the girl together. Some were on the couch, where they sat side by side, others were in the recliner – the same one that he used to assist in his own hanging – where she sat in his lap. She looked uncomfortable in some and outright frightened in others. The scene was unseemly at best. At worst?

  “Damn it, Marcus. This is not good.”

  “It’s worse than not good,” Greer responded before handing Sullivan another photo.

  She almost didn’t take it for fear of what she might see, but the job demanded that she divorce herself from any emotion that may interfere with her ability to assess the situation objectively. So after she took the photo, she closed her eyes and clinched her stomach, prepared to assess whatever she saw with a clear mind and an objective heart.

  She opened her eyes to a close-up shot of Donald Tisdale and the girl sitting close together. Tisdale was kissing her on the cheek as she appeared to recoil in disgust. The rest of the photo almost failed to register with Sullivan, either because of the shock that she felt when she saw it, or the brief, but necessary, denial of its very existence.

  Arthur Finley sat on the other side of the girl, kissing her cheek at the same time Tisdale was.

  Before Sullivan had time to fully process what she was seeing, Greer held up another photo. “This is another shot of the girl by herself. Look where she’s standing.”

  The photo showed the girl in the hallway standing in front of the closed door of an apartment. The only visible numbers were 60, but Sullivan was quickly able to surmise the rest.

  “Apartment 607. Do you think this could be Natalie Shelby’s daughter?”

  “Makes total sense with the story we heard about her boyfriend going after Tisdale for trying to befriend the girl.”

  “It might also explain why Natalie couldn’t have given two shits when we told her that Tisdale was dead.”

  Greer continued to study the photo. “There’s something about this girl.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like I’ve seen her before. I can’t place it, but she definitely looks familiar.”

  “Could you have seen her around the building?”

  Greer looked at Sullivan with heavy eyes. “No. It was someplace else.” Failing to connect his thoughts, he shook them away. “Never mind. I guess it’s not important right now. Who do you want to talk to first?”

  “I’d love to hear what Arthur Finley has to say about this,” Sullivan answered, fighting to contain her mounting anger.

  “Let’s go,” Greer answered, making no effort whatsoever to contain his. “But after that, we need to find Noah. It might be time to revisit your theory about what happened here.”

  Sullivan appreciated the acknowledgement, but she could take no satisfaction in it. “Afterward, we should bring forensics back in here for another round. Somehow they missed all of this.”

  “Like it appeared out of thin air.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Sound fami
liar?”

  “The blood on the floor.”

  “Blood that didn’t match Tisdale’s, or anyone else’s in our registry.”

  “Do you think it could have belonged to…” Greer stopped short of finishing the sentence.

  “What?”

  He stared at the pictures, and suddenly Sullivan knew exactly what he was about to say. She didn’t want to finish the sentence either.

  “Let’s just go find Finley.”

  Greer let out a heavy sigh. “Right behind you, sport.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THOUGH THERE WAS NO GOOD WAY to accurately measure time in the endless black void of that closet (for all she knew, time could have stopped altogether), Fiona estimated that it had been about twenty minutes since she last heard anything from Natalie. Her epically irrational rant had come to a merciful end before that, but the pacing, punctuated by grunts and mumbled curses, continued. Her once furious energy seemed to ebb with each deliberate step, until, eventually, there was nothing.

  Olivia had been quiet the entire time, afraid, like Fiona was, of making even the slightest bit of noise. But when Fiona heard the rustling of her bedding, followed by those first tentative footsteps across the creaky wood floor, she knew it was time to move.

  “Are you okay in there?” Olivia whispered from outside the closet door.

  Fiona was alive, and at this point, that was enough. “Yes.”

  “I think it might be safe to leave now. I’m going to make sure. Stay here until I come back, okay?”

  Do I really have a choice? “Okay.”

  With that, Olivia slowly made her way out of the bedroom, the floor groaning under the weight of each uncertain step.

  Fiona knew there wouldn’t be much time to contemplate the story she was going to tell the police after she called them from her motel room, but she knew it would be important to contact them before Natalie could. There most likely wouldn’t be time to grab any of Olivia’s things before they left. They would both have to make do without much. But at least Olivia would be safe, and that was the only thing that mattered. Fiona could not say how she would have felt about the plan if she’d had the luxury of thinking it through. But she didn’t have that luxury, so for now, there was no other option to consider.