Catacomb

by Madeleine Roux

  “Dunno.” Jordan squinted down at his hands, then at the empty futon he had vacated. “Must have sleepwalked. Probably in a bed, my body was like: mattress? Comfort? What is this new devilry?” He chuckled to himself, then tilted his head to glance at Dan. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just had a bad dream. That’s all.”

  “Sorry to wake you up.” Jordan stretched and stood, shuffling back over to his futon. Clearly, neither one of them wanted to acknowledge that this had happened before, to both of them. In both cases, the unexplained nighttime vigils belonged to people who had lost it afterwards. It seemed like a bad omen now.

  “No more late-night-Houdini antics,” Jordan added, crawling into bed. “I promise.”

  But sleep was now the furthest thing from Dan’s mind. He rolled over, waiting until he was reasonably sure Jordan had fallen back to sleep before turning on his phone. Checking the time, he winced. If he couldn’t get back to sleep now, he would have a very long day ahead of him.

  Oh well.

  He crept from the futon to the desk. Nightmare aside, it felt weirdly refreshing to be awake while everyone else in the house was asleep. He really had missed his alone time over the past few days in the car. He never felt fully charged without it.

  Dan muted the sound on the laptop, navigating to Jordan’s email and the exchange he’d been having with Maisie Moore. Dan reread her last message, then copied her address into his phone. Closing the email and the laptop, he went back to the futon and typed out a message on his phone, asking when she would have time to meet up for lunch. She might think he was weird for sending an email at three in the morning, but at this point, he was way past caring what other people thought was weird.

  Before he’d even put his phone to sleep and made a go at falling asleep himself, his phone flashed with a new email.

  It was from Maisie Moore.

  How about tomorrow at noon? it read. Or today, I guess it would be. Here are directions to a sub shop I know. Should be easy to find. I was happy to get your message. Haven’t been sleeping myself. Not since your friend brought up Evie and Marc. See you soon.

  Jordan and Abby tagged along as far as the shop itself, pausing outside while Dan stared up at the sign, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to come with?” Abby asked. She rubbed his arm, but it did little to comfort him.

  “It seems kind of personal, Abs,” Jordan said. That morning, Dan had gone through the motions of asking Jordan for Maisie’s email address and pretending to message her. This was supposed to be the trip when they stopped keeping secrets, but it seemed some habits were hard to kill. “Dan, it’s cool if you don’t want us to come.”

  “Thanks, Jordan. And yeah, I think I’d like to talk to her alone. I’ll let you know what she says,” he answered, leaning toward the door. “I promise.”

  It was almost noon and the city baked, pockets of hot haze rising up from the sidewalks. Pedestrians took cover under the shop awnings, but there was no escaping the moisture filling the air. Jordan and Abby lingered on the curb for a second, and then Jordan took her by the wrist, tugging her away. “It’s broad daylight, Abs, he’ll be fine. And anyway, we won’t stray far. He can always call if something comes up.”

  “Exactly,” Dan said, giving them a wave. “I won’t take long.”

  He wasn’t actually sure about that. If Maisie had known his parents well, then he might want to grill her for hours. Dan dodged into the small, brightly painted shop, going to the expansive deli counter and ordering half a sandwich and a soda. There were only two other people there to eat, a couple cozying up to each other in the corner. Dan took his sub and got a table—the one farthest away from the couple. He forced himself to eat and avoided the temptation of checking his phone every ten seconds. Was she running late or ditching him altogether?

  Finally, the bell chimed over the door, and a short, curly-haired woman bustled in. She wore a crisp blue blazer and a matching skirt. A pair of high heels was tucked into her handbag, swapped out for a pair of simple white tennis shoes. She zeroed in on Dan at once, and he blanched, seeing the look of recognition dawn on her face.

  “Dan?” she asked, stepping cautiously up to him and offering her hand. “Or is it Daniel?”

  “I prefer Dan. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah. Wow. You—my gosh. There’s definitely a resemblance. One second, sweetie, let me grab a coffee.” She shook his hand firmly and then hopped over to the counter. A moment later, she rejoined him with a steaming cup of black coffee. “Sorry I’m late. I don’t come into the city much.”

  “It’s not that far for you, is it?” he asked, his sandwich forgotten. “Isn’t Metairie right next door?”

  “It is, but that doesn’t matter.” She shrugged and hung her bag on the chair next to her. “After the Whistle went south, I just couldn’t stick around here. I finally settled in at the Metairie Daily because they let me work from home. I don’t like to leave the house if I can help it, and this place . . . Well, their car crash really did me in. This city just felt all wrong after that.”

  “Car crash?” Dan’s hands curled into trembling fists. “What car crash?”

  “Oh, kiddo.” Her shoulders drooped. She didn’t seem the type to mother anyone much, with her impeccable manicure and flashy handbag, but she reached across the table, patting his wrist lightly. “Your parents. That’s how they . . . that’s how they went. It was an accident. Just so, so tragic. I thought things were looking up for them and then that. It was awful.”

  Dan nodded, numb. “I see.”

  “They were wonderful people, sweetie. It’s a damn shame you didn’t get to know them.” She sighed and sipped her coffee, taking her hand back. “Would you mind showing me those letters you found? I’m not sure I want the memories back, but you went through all this trouble to find me. I might as well take a look.”

  He couldn’t feel his hands as he pulled the letters out of his backpack and pushed them across the table. Abby had insisted on putting them in a ziplock bag to reduce the smell. “They were in an abandoned school in Alabama.”

  “Arlington,” she said, smoothing her palm over the plastic. “It was a dump, but they were desperate. Trax Corp. had more than an army of lawyers out for blood, and the money to put people on their tail. With the warrant for their arrest, there were bounty hunters sniffing around, too.”

  Dan tried to pull back from the shock of knowing, really knowing, that his parents were gone. Now there was nothing left to do but figure out who they had been and why they hadn’t wanted him. Why he hadn’t been in the car with them. “I found a police report from a time when my dad got arrested. What was that all about, anyway? What was this Trax Corp. doing?”

  “They were a pharmaceutical company. When your parents first started investigating them, it was for rumors of animal cruelty, which was bad enough.” Maisie lowered her voice and dipped into her bag, pulling out a stack of papers so thick it took a giant pink rubber band to hold them together. “But that was the tip of the iceberg. They were selling drugs that hadn’t passed the safety trials, and of course it was all done under the table, a kind of modern smuggling ring. Your parents found out about it. That’s when the real trouble started.” She took a long sip of her coffee. “My last year at the Whistle, I did one of the most ethically questionable things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s true, your father finally got caught—that must have been the police report you found. I knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, but I also knew Trax Corp. had all the ammo. So, I helped put together the money to post your father’s bail, reuniting him and Evie, knowing full well they intended to go back on the run. Six months later, investigations into Trax Corp. finally got them shut down, and a week after that, your parents were dead.”

  She passed him the stack of papers with a sad half smile. “I made copies of everything from that investigation. I know that must seem strange. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to gi
ve them to you. But you look so much like Marc. Maybe you’ve got his curiosity, too.”

  “Unfortunately,” Dan mumbled. “And my mom? I couldn’t find any trace of her. There’s nothing about Evelyn Crawford online, at least not one that seems like she could be my mom.”

  “Evelyn Ash,” Maisie corrected. “Marc and Evie never married. They were a little rebellious like that. Ahead of their time.”

  “What else?” Dan asked. “What were they like? I mean, before this whole Trax Corp. thing. I just want to know them.”

  “They were smart. Your mother was funny. So, so funny. She hated when I edited her articles; I always took out the snarky bits. But she was a better investigator than she was a writer. She could never keep her opinions out of it, not even close. They’d be proud, I’m sure. You seem like a nice kid.”

  That’s when her phone buzzed, chirping from inside her purse. She jumped, then reached for it, her mouth twitching at the corner. “I . . . should go.”

  “Are you sure? I feel like I have a million questions.” Dan stood with her, watching her snatch up her purse and hurry away from the table. He didn’t understand what the sudden rush was.

  “Shit. I shouldn’t have come here. God, you’re an idiot, Maisie.” She shoved her phone in her bag, leaving her coffee on the table as she backed toward the door. “Take that stuff,” she hissed, nodding toward the stack of papers on the table. “Take it, read it if you have to, but don’t tell anyone I gave it to you.”

  “Ms. Moore, if you’d just—”

  The bell rang and the door slammed shut behind her. Dan glanced back at the table, scooping up the papers and shoving them into his backpack before running out after her. The lunch-hour pedestrian traffic swept along the sidewalks, bumping him side to side as he glanced both ways down the street.

  He heard a screech of tires and then a scream, followed by a loud, hollow thunk. Dan pushed against the crowd, finding that everyone on the sidewalk had suddenly stopped. He knew it was her. He knew it, and yet he had to see. Why had she run? What had made her panic like that?

  Dan broke through to the curb and then stopped, standing perfectly still as gawking pedestrians huddled around him, vying to get a look at the woman lying curled and lifeless under a taxi.

  The driver of the cab was nowhere in sight.

  Neither was her purse.

  Only a fool would think these things were a coincidence.

  “She’s dead?”

  Dan pulled Abby into the closest café and Jordan followed. Coffee cups and bowls of soup had been abandoned at each of the tables. Every shop on the street stood empty. Everyone was still trying to get a look at the gruesome tragedy unfolding on the street. An ambulance siren whined, growing closer and closer.

  “She just ran out into the street!” Dan dropped into a booth, pushing aside the teacups left there. “She got a text and then she just up and ran. Something spooked her.”

  “That poor woman.” Abby shook her head, folding her arms on the table and leaning forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Who do you think it was?”

  “I’d say it was Trax Corp., except we already know they were shut down almost twenty years ago. I don’t know. She gave me a giant stack of stuff to look through—maybe there’s something in there,” he said. He pulled the papers out for them to see, glancing at the barista to make sure they weren’t being observed. The workers were too busy clambering over the counter to get a look at the chaos outside.

  “Do you have your laptop on you?” Dan asked, pulling the rubber band free from the pages.

  “Obviously not. Are you crazy?”

  Dan played with the rubber band for a minute, then bound the pages up again. “You’re right. We should get out of here. It’s going to be even more of a zoo when the police get here.”

  They slipped through the ring of rubberneckers, the whispers rising around them like a hushed tide. An ambulance had arrived, and EMTs were shoving would-be helpers out of the way to get to the body. They were unfolding a stretcher on the cobbles as Dan turned the corner on the block. It didn’t matter how quickly they transferred Maisie to a hospital; he had seen the body, and he was certain there was no saving her.

  “I know this goes without saying,” Abby whispered as they speed walked back to Steve’s apartment building, “but this might be a sign that you shouldn’t dig any further into this Trax Corp. thing.”

  “I’m with Abby. I have to live in this city now, Dan. I don’t want it to get weird here.”

  “It’s already weird,” Dan muttered. “And anyway, I have these files of hers now. What do you want me to do, throw them away?”

  “Maybe!” Jordan shouted, stopping at the foot of the building stairs while Dan sprinted up them. “Just think about it. This was trouble enough to put your parents on the run. They were fugitives, Dan. I know they’re your parents, but has it ever occurred to you that maybe they weren’t good people?”

  Dan skidded to a stop at the door, rounding on his friends staring up at him from the first step. “Yes! It has, actually. Considering they abandoned me, the thought had crossed my mind over and over and over again!”

  “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, Dan, you’re not the only one here who’s been abandoned by their parents. But you don’t see either of us stomping around putting all of our lives in danger. That’s all you and your creepy Crawford ‘bloodline,’ like always.”

  Dan thundered into the house, not bothering to shut the door behind him. It only stung more that Jordan had made a good point.

  “Don’t you need my computer?” Jordan called, watching him discard his shoes and clomp across the foyer.

  “I’ll use Steve’s!” Dan shouted, evading them, desperate to be alone.

  Uncle Steve’s office was empty. It was clear the man didn’t spend much time in there, though the ancient computer worked well enough to get him online. Dan slumped down into the office chair, slamming the stack of papers down onto the desk next to him. The fury had gone out of him. Now he just wanted quiet.

  As usual, Jordan wasn’t wrong. So far Dan had very little to prove that his parents were decent people.

  Maybe that proof was hidden somewhere in Maisie’s collected research. Most of the articles were fairly dry stuff, but Dan ate them up like a man possessed, trying to make organized piles of related stories. There was a lifeline of information in the articles somewhere, he could feel it. But it was finding that lifeline that proved the challenge.

  From what he could piece together, it looked like the Trax Corp. investigation, small stakes as Maisie had told him it was over lunch, had uncovered discrepancies the company had successfully hidden up until that point. Dan reopened the articles in order, going back and starting from the beginning.

  Trax Corp. Exec Fails to Make the Numbers Add Up

  Trax Corp. Hopes to Revive Image with Charity and Outreach

  What Is Trax Corp. Hiding in Troy?

  Dan read that last article again. A quick skim wasn’t enough. His parents had risked everything over this investigation—enough to drive them to a life on the run from authorities.

  For a long moment, he closed his eyes, allowing those thoughts to subside. He plunged back into the article and tried to be as calm and objective as possible. “Sources” had led Maisie Moore to believe that Trax Corp. was smuggling untested, experimental pharmaceuticals to treatment centers and hospitals all over the country. This was worrisome, she concluded, because not only were those drugs not regulated or approved by the FDA, but without proper documentation, there was no telling how long the company had been profiting from the operation off the balance sheets.

  Though none of the shipping manifests list the contraband drugs, Trax Corp. has close ties to suppliers like AGI and the Cambridge Group. When reached, neither AGI nor the Cambridge Group agreed to comment for this story.

  Dan opened a browser tab and searched for AGI, which turned out to be a now-bankrupt company that acted as a central distribution and log
istics center for Kentucky-based hospitals. The Cambridge Group was still in business, he found, and at last, he thought, reading their company statement, he had found his lifeline.

  Proudly serving New England hospitals and facilities since 1962.

  He was breathless as he followed the rabbit hole of the Cambridge Group’s history. They didn’t seem to care about hiding it—it only took a perfunctory search of their accolades and awards to find a credible listing of the specific hospitals that had used them for distribution, buying everything from hospital gowns and bedpans in the old days to supplies like iodine, penicillin, lithium.

  Worcester State Hospital, Danvers State Hospital, Metropolitan State . . .

  And Brookline.

  Dan stared at the word, feeling for all the world like he had been slapped hard across the face. Mentally he traced the map of the hospitals on the list—Missouri, Chicago, then east to New Hampshire and Brookline. It could be a coincidence, he allowed, or it could be the one other bond besides blood linking him to his parents.

  He started, hearing his phone buzz noisily across the room. Dan closed down the articles and browser tabs, rubbing his sleep-deprived and screen-addled eyes.

  His relief that the message wasn’t from Micah was short-lived.

  Thanks for passing along your number. This is Oliver. Think you can meet this afternoon? I found something you might want to see.

  Dan sighed, squishing his face down into his cupped hands and breathing until he could muster the energy to respond. Maybe it had been a mistake to give Oliver his number. But he wasn’t about to blunder into another creepy séance for no damn reason.

  “What did you find?” he texted back. “I’m supposed to be having fun while I’m here, not playing detective.”

  Here’s a pic. Any relation?

  It took a minute for the photo to load, but once it did, Dan felt his stomach drop out. He knew who they were. Oliver didn’t need to send a follow-up message, but he did.