by Stacia Kane
“I’m not scared,” she repeated, and felt rather than saw Jillian’s raised eyebrows and little smirk of condescending amusement.
“Well, just the same. Be careful, okay? Stay with me, which means stay with Trent and Vaughn. And—well, Downsiders are like ghosts. The rules are the same, you know what I mean?”
Chess smiled; in that, at least, Jillian had the right idea. “Don’t look at them, no eye contact, don’t talk to them, no sudden movements, don’t approach.”
“Right.” Jillian slid the car off the highway, onto the exit at Cross Street. “Because I have to be honest with you. If something happens, if real trouble starts and we’re attacked or something … there’s really not much we can do about it. Even with Trent and Vaughn. There’s just too many of them.”
Also like in the City, Chess thought, but she didn’t reply. Instead she just nodded and watched the buildings go by, the stately red brick and stone, the shiny steel, of Triumph City’s good side replaced by crumbling walls and glassless windows; wide tree-lined streets and sidewalks had given way to broken pavement jutting from the earth like it was trying to get up and flee. Graffiti everywhere; litter everywhere; bodies slumped against walls or sprawled on splintery porches or automotive skeletons, smoking and drinking cheap booze out of paper bags.
Something about it made her feel … well, better. Like all that vibrant life, downtrodden and cheap as it was, reached through the car to caress her skin. People just living their lives, just being who they were, and that was okay.
She couldn’t imagine how that would feel.
Jillian turned left, then right, passing bars full of people even in the middle of the day. With every foot the car advanced Chess felt more … “comfortable” was the only way she could describe it. Or, less comfortable in the car and more eager to get out, to join the crowds and just disappear into them. No one would care what she did there. No one would judge. No one would expect anything from her, be it grades or anything else.
She didn’t realize her hand was moving until the cold metal door handle touched her skin. Damn, had Jillian seen—? No. Okay, good. Jillian’s eyes focused directly on the road, her mouth twisted in a little frown. Concentrating, or trying to look tough? Chess didn’t know. All she knew was that the same way the Church’s tidy cottages made her feel antsy and awkward, just being in Downside made her feel like she fit in.
“So, have you always lived in the cottages? On-grounds? I thought Squad members didn’t always.”
“We don’t. I wanted to, though. I mean … it’s cheap, they take all the bills out of our checks so we don’t have to worry about rent and utilities, and, you know, all the single Elders and stuff live on grounds, so … Everybody hangs out, it’s fun. You’ll love it.”
Ugh. No, she would not. “Everybody hangs out” sounded like slow torture. “But how do you—do they ask you where you want to live, or …?”
“They assume you will. For the Squad it’s different. We get to choose. But for everyone else, I think they have to get permission if they want to live somewhere else.”
Chess filed that one away to think about later, because Jillian was pulling the car up to the curb outside what had once been a stately home and was now a fairly typical Downside apartment building with a lawn full of weeds and broken glass and a couple of holey sheets tacked up inside the windows to keep out prying eyes.
Trent and Vaughn stood outside; they couldn’t have looked more out of place if they’d worn clown suits and written COPS on their faces in black marker. Something in the way they stood, the way they watched the street … Chess didn’t know what it was, exactly. She just knew they didn’t look like they belonged. They didn’t look like victims, no, but they didn’t look like they belonged.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
“This is where the last murder happened.” Jillian turned off the car and reached for her door. “Last week. Tom Imry. He’d been dead for a couple of days when he was found.”
“Wait.” Chess grabbed Jillian’s arm; she didn’t want to, but she had to ask the question and she didn’t want the men to hear, because if they heard it they’d know she was basically implying they were stupid.
Or they were actually smart, which would mean the answer made her look stupid. “So … a random ghost murder and only one person in a building full of them died?”
“We don’t know if the building was full. We don’t know exactly when he died—it was Sunday, it seems, but it could have been anytime after about ten Saturday night and before daylight, since of course ghosts wouldn’t be wandering around during the day. Although they could have waited in there with him until Sunday night and left after it got dark. He wasn’t found until Tuesday.”
Trent opened Chess’s door before she could reply. “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the teenager. Come to dazzle us all with your theories?” To Jillian he said, “What’s so important?”
“Cesaria found something.”
“Her pacifier?” Trent gave a satisfied bark of mean laughter. Yeah, ha-ha, shithead.
“No.” Jillian closed her own door behind her and walked around the car to stand at Chess’s side. Nice of her. Unnecessary, but nice. “She found a connection between your victims.”
Trent’s mouth fell open. Double ha-ha. “What—what connection? There’s no … We looked.”
“Not hard enough. Have you heard of the New Hope Mission?”
Trent and Vaughn looked at each other, confusion all over their faces. Dumbfounded wasn’t the most attractive look for Trent, Chess noticed with some satisfaction.
But Vaughn spoke, and he’d been decent to her, so she felt a little bad. “The Warings were part of that, right? You found those souvenirs in their closet.”
“They were all part of it,” Jillian said. “All of the victims were affiliated with the Mission—as employees or volunteers—when Haunted Week happened.”
“That was not in their files,” Trent said. The indignation on his face would have made her laugh if she hadn’t hated him too much to feel anything but anger.
Vaughn looked at Chess. Really looked at her, so her face warmed. “You found this?”
She nodded. And waited for someone else to speak, which no one did. So she said, “I was—Jillian let me look into Mark, so I could get some experience investigating. So I wanted to check on the Mission itself, and, well, there was the list.”
“Pure luck,” Trent said. What the hell had happened to him in his life to make him such an asshole? Or had he just been born that way?
Stupid question, really. All people were born that way. Trent just hadn’t had it socialized out of him.
Jillian glared at him. “It wasn’t luck.” Well, that was nice of her. “Cesaria raised questions about the Warings and the Mission from the beginning, and about Mark Pollert’s involvement in it.”
“Did you find anything else on him?” Vaughn asked her. Asked her, Chess. Damn, that was pretty cool.
“Orphan. His parents died in a fire when he was ten. Lived at the Mission from 1993 onward—he was thirteen when he moved in. Then he lived with the Warings for a couple of years after Haunted Week until he started working at the slaughterhouse.”
The slaughterhouse wasn’t too far away from where they stood, if the smell in the air was any indication. Chess knew it was, actually; she’d been past the slaughterhouse a few times, and if she had the cross streets right, they were maybe eight or nine blocks downwind.
At least it wasn’t summer yet. Just thinking of the stench of the slaughterhouse combined with the others—smoke, dirt, sweat, rotting garbage, human waste—turning the Downside air into a foul chowder, unpleasant and somehow thick against her skin, made her stomach turn. That was a smell she’d never forget. Just like so many other things. But she forced those thoughts from her mind and focused on what Vaughn said next.
“How many others were there?”
“Six. Mark, two other couples, and then one other man.”<
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“You have their names?”
Chess held up her notebook, pleased that she’d thought to scribble the information down before she and Jillian left the Church.
Vaughn took it from her with a quick nod of thanks. “So … we need to get in touch with these people right away.”
Trent glanced at the list. “I don’t suppose you checked to see how many of those who worked at the Mission are now deceased. Or how the ghosts escaped from the City.”
“They were Summoned,” Jillian said. “But as far as we could tell they had nothing to do with the Mission.”
“Any other connection to any of the victims?”
“Not that I saw, but I’d only just opened the first file when Cesaria showed me what she’d found.”
“How many others who worked at the Mission are dead now?”
“We didn’t look. I wanted to get this to you guys as soon as possible. But Cesaria wrote down the names. If you have your computer, you can access the files from here.”
Vaughn considered that for a minute while Chess became aware that they weren’t alone. Well, she’d known that already, but as they stood there she felt eyes on her; on them. More and more every second. The street seemed quieter than it had. The Squad presence had been noticed; hell, they’d been spotted the second the car came down the street. But now they were standing around outside, and that made everyone nervous. Nervous people were dangerous.
The others noticed it, too. Vaughn handed her back her notebook, glancing around as he did so with his eyes squinted against the afternoon sun. “Maybe we should go inside.”
“Good idea.” Trent turned to Chess. “Maybe you can stumble blindly into some information in there, too.”
Chapter Nine
Whatever Tom Imry had done after the Mission closed, it hadn’t paid very well. Yeah, she knew that already; people who made money didn’t live in Downside. But—“Wait a minute.”
“What?” Jillian looked up from Tom’s bookshelves, where she’d been scanning the titles while Trent and Vaughn accessed their laptop, mumbling to each other and—in Trent’s case—shooting Chess the occasional baleful glare.
“Mark,” Chess said. “He didn’t mention it.”
“What do you mean?” Vaughn asked. He sat perched on the edge of the cushion on the book-propped couch, in front of a window covered with a tattered, bloodstained blanket. Chess didn’t like to look at the bloodstains; some of them, she knew, would be from Tom’s untimely demise, but some … They were faded and watery—more like rust stains—and they reminded her of fireworks or flowers, with dark splatty heads and long trailing stems. She recognized those bloodblossoms. Someone had been cleaning needles in that room, filling them with water and emptying them again so they’d be ready when the time came for another fix. She’d seen it done. She’d been made to do it.
Damn, not even any of the sacks of shit who’d put a roof over her head had cleaned their spikes against the walls. That was hopelessness. That was truly not giving a shit anymore, about anything.
But then, that was where the needle led. Always had, always would.
“Mark didn’t say anything about the others.” Chess pulled her attention off the blanket and back onto Jillian and Vaughn. “Four people he knows—or at least used to know—including the Warings, have been killed in the last couple of weeks, and he didn’t say anything?”
“He probably didn’t know,” Trent said.
“Their deaths weren’t in the papers? They had no contact with each other, really?”
“Their deaths weren’t news.” Trent glared at her. “We’re not telling the public, remember? So maybe they had obituaries, maybe they didn’t, but even if they did, the details of their actual deaths wouldn’t be made public. And who the hell knows if they stayed in touch with each other? We didn’t find any evidence of a connection between them, remember?”
Fuck it. She cocked her right eyebrow, let her gaze rest on him just a beat longer than necessary. “Yeah. I know you didn’t.”
Vaughn stood up, fast, like the couch had an ejector seat, and reached for her. She started to flinch away but he had her; his grip on her arm was surprisingly gentle as he led her toward the open doorway off the kitchen area. “Since you did find the connection, why don’t you come with me and see if we can find something else relating to it? Maybe there’s something in the bedroom.”
There were a lot of things in the bedroom. Especially junk. Long twisted ropes of dirty sheets across the floor, wires and bits of paper and needle caps and spent matches, clothing so full of holes it looked like only the copious stains held the fabric together. Evidence of a life nobody cared about, not even the person living it. Evidence of lost hope.
“I know Trent can be a pain in the ass,” Vaughn said quietly, surprising her. “I know he can be a jerk. He’s just trying to toughen you up—he was trained by one of the meanest sons of bitches I’ve ever known, and he thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to go.”
Chess didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say to that, anyway—That’s okay? Because it wasn’t, not really, and Trent wasn’t some kind of loving but tough grandpa, he was a dickhead who hated her for no good reason.
Vaughn seemed to want her to say something, though. She decided on “Sure.” That seemed noncommittal enough.
And apparently it was, because Vaughn’s face cleared. “Okay. Good. Thanks.”
Another few seconds passed while they both stood there like people on a blind date, not knowing what to say or do or if they’d even find something to say or do. Stupid, really. Chess clasped her hands together in a brisk let’s-get-to-it gesture, the sort of thing she associated with Church Goodys or matrons or whatever. Not the sort of thing she would ever do unless she felt totally uncomfortable, which she did. “So, you wanted to search around in here?”
He blinked. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”
He took one side of the room and Chess took the other, though she thought it was probably going to be a waste of time and she suspected Vaughn did as well.
They were wrong. The first thing she found, after searching only a couple of semi-empty drawers, was a copy of the picture. The one in the Warings’ spare room, the one with the graininess of a pre-digital photograph. If Tom Imry had had a copy of it, was he in it? Who else was in it? Were all of the people in the picture dead? If not, were the still-living ones in danger?
She asked Vaughn.
“I don’t know,” he said, taking the picture from her to give it a closer look. “We’ll have to look at the files of the people still alive, see if we can match the faces. I don’t know how easy it’ll be—maybe Gloria Waring will have some idea who they are.”
Duh. She’d actually forgotten about Gloria for a minute there; she’d gotten so excited about investigating on her own she’d forgotten that part of investigating meant questioning witnesses. “Maybe Gloria has a lot more information than she thinks she does, huh?”
He nodded. “You and Jillian should talk to her soon. If you get to her place in an hour or two, you can probably catch her right around dinnertime, so she’ll be sure to be home.”
Wow, that was kind of a scummy thing to do. But then, Chess figured scummy was sometimes the only way to get things done, at least for the Squad or anyone else doing any investigating. Or, well, anyone who needed anything else done, really; everything was scummy to somebody, right?
Whatever. The point was, she needed to go interrupt Gloria Waring’s dinner, and she needed Jillian to go with her, so it was time to leave the Trent-free peace of the bedroom and go do it.
Or so Chess thought. Jillian had another task for them first; well, not for them, for herself. Apparently she wanted to check in at the Church, so they headed back over there. Chess was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball from all the back-and-forth driving they’d done that day, not to mention just plain tired and wondering if the day was ever going to end.
“Besides,” Jillian said as she opened one of the wi
de double doors at the Church’s entryway, “this way we’ll be sure to catch Gloria at dinner or right after, right? It’s only four-thirty now, and I didn’t think keeping you hanging around there with Trent was such a good idea. Although, you know, Vaughn—”
“Should I wait here for you?” Chess interrupted, waving her hand at one of the benches lining the hall. Yeah, she knew. Knew that she was already sick of the cloying hints about how he really seemed to like her—where Jillian got that from she had no idea; sure, he was nice enough, but he wasn’t flirting or asking her out—and how she could do a lot worse than him, and that was after only twenty minutes in the car.
Jillian sighed and looked at her watch. “Why don’t you head on back to your room, and I’ll call you when we’re done? I don’t know how long it’ll take. We don’t want to be at Gloria’s until at least six, so you might as well go relax or something.”
Relax? Relax, when they were so close to maybe finding something? Relax when that closeness might be due to her own work, to the clue that she’d actually found all by herself?
Relax, when that stuffy blood-covered apartment had stirred so many memories and they were starting to clang and rattle in her head louder and louder, when the only way she could possibly hope to drown them out—the only responsible way, the only way she should do it—was by working?
But Jillian’s expression didn’t brook argument; she clearly wanted Chess gone, so Chess would have to make herself gone. “Great,” she managed. “Okay, sure. Just call me when you’re ready.”
“I will.”
As soon as Jillian’s back disappeared into the open doorway of Elder Griffin’s office, though, Chess turned away and headed for the stairs. Yeah, she could go back to her room … or she could visit the library and see if she could learn anything more. No, she didn’t know the Church login Jillian had used—and wasn’t quite daring enough to use it unauthorized even if she had—but she could access the Internet if she wanted to, and she could check the shelves and the Restricted Room for any books about transporting ghosts.