Tainted (28 page)

I should be shocked when it works. Should be. The door unlocks with a quiet metallic click.

A vacant metal staircase spirals up six floors. Even in a higher-rent building like this one it smells like urine and cheap beer.

Ignoring the smell, I take the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor and let myself in with the key card. The dim hall lights add to my apprehension. It looks like a hallway in a horror movie, going on and on into darkness. Knowing Hailey, she used the far stairwell and knocked out the light bulb at her end to foil the security camera in the center of the hall. I look up, giving the lens under the red light a clear view of my face. Too late to sneak past if she’s here and patched into the security feeds. Still, I pat my knife, taking small comfort in its weight. Better to have a little protection and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Anemic light washes under her door when I reach the unlit end of the hall. I creep to the side of the door, watching the light for passing shadows, listening for movement, anything to cue me to activity on the far side of the panel.

The hall closes in and stretches out at the same time, vertigo and pressure, twisting me from the light, driving me to face what’s in our old haunt. Thinking a wordless prayer, I slide the card key through the lock. No effect. So, she is worried about getting caught, despite baiting me here. My knife makes a soft snick sound when I open it. The weight of the building bears down on me as I use the blade to force the lock to release. I snake through the opening, suck in a gasp at the cold air inside the apartment, then spin and lock the door behind me. I could throw the chain lock too – but if Hailey is using this place, it will alert her something’s wrong if she comes back.

Past the three-quarter wall partitioned foyer, the brilliant desperate madness overwhelms me. I blink, rub my eyes in disbelief.

Pictures, ticket stubs and receipts, computer print-outs and chronicle clippings line the walls from floor to ceiling. Progressing from our first date until current events, the inner walls of Hailey’s supposedly abandoned loft are now a shrine to our relationship.

Cardboard cones hold dried flower arrangements by appropriate pictures. Crystal headed-stick picks skewer dry, faded corsages beneath the formal dance portraits. A stuffed animal hangs crucified beside an apology note I wrote after a fight. Expensive jewelry glitters, dangling from more pins, draping picture frames.

The schism between surreal and scary happens where I stand. The next wall segment is mostly stolen candid shots of me watching Emma, me at Shelley High, me at Memorial Gardens when I didn’t know why I stood there. All accompanied by Hailey’s handwritten notes, suppositions of my “obsession” being a side-effect of my resurrection. The farther down the wall I walk, the harsher her language becomes, the fatter the letters, the darker the ink until it looks like a child wrote:
RUIN HER!!
à

Past the installed French doors, in what once was Hailey’s bedroom, stands a pictorial representation of the past two weeks, centered around a life-size picture of Emma in the middle of the opposite wall. Black, white and red strings web through the air, connecting images, items, people.

I stumble back, my heart suddenly racing like it’s not mine and wants out of my body and wants the hell out of here.

Pictures of the bridge where Emma crashed and drowned fill the left half of the inside wall, surrounded by measurements: angles and speed, wind speed, water depths, temperatures, estimated times for car submersion, hypothermia onset, drowning. Strings go from Emma to a picture of Trent to various factoids. Medical read-outs, blood tests, chemical formulas with vials taped beside them, plaster the right half of the wall.

A chill runs down my spine when I see replicas of the scented bath products I bought for Em for Christmas. They hang on the wall affixed next to an equation that contains components of our life-sustaining formula, with chemical elements I don’t recognize.

Closest to the room’s corner hangs a fillable aerosol inhaler beside a modified version of the formula with even more chemicals I don’t know.

Paul would know them.

I dig my cell phone out, and snap a still of the different versions, and their accompaniments. Then I step back and take pictures of each half of the wall.

Emma’s image takes up the center of the middle wall, with stolen past medical records on her left, most current readings on her right. To either side hang pictures of Trent and Katrina, one an apparent victim, one an apparent accomplice. Strings web from Trent to Emma and the bridge segment, to Emma and images snapped at the Reindeer Games and mounted to the left side of the third wall.

Strings stretch from Katrina to Emma, to shots of the animal attack taped to the right side of the back wall. They trace through the cold air to the right side wall, closest to the corner, and a picture of Emma by the house fire.

Written between the pictures are more formulas, facts, rates of absorption, times of death.

The close end of the right wall, nearer the door is blank.

Hailey isn’t finished with Emma yet.

The chill in the apartment clenches my heart, strangles my lungs. There’s not enough air inside Hailey’s web of lies and murder. I was right. Hailey’s bent on Emma’s ruin. She turned her obsessive, criminal brilliance against the girl I love. Hailey masterminded it all.

Instinct says to run, to grab Emma and put as much of Michigan between the girls as possible.

I can’t do that. This systematic destruction has delivered Emma into the hands of the police. We are going to need every bit of evidence we can get against her to save Emma.

Careful not to disturb anything, I take pictures of her notes, her stolen readings, and the walls. I open my message program, and send the entire gallery of horror to Paul. He’ll be able to decipher them, figure out what Hailey did to Emma and how to fix it. The data-heavy file will take a few minutes to send. I back out to explore the rest of the loft while I wait to send copies to the police.

Massive sheets of plastic drape from the ceiling, sealing off the kitchen. Knowing Katrina and Hailey swiped chemicals and drugs from Ascension, I peer through the heavy grade plastic rather than walk in. Lab equipment lines the counters, a couple of aerosol containers sit open beside a distillation coil immersed in an evaporation bath.

A small vibration notifies me the file has been sent successfully. Weak light flashes back from a nearby small diamond bracelet as I open the web browser, and search for the White River Police Department’s email. Pacing the wall of windows, I delete the formula images from the file folder, attach the new version, add the loft’s address as a subject line, and click send. The police will come, they will see the formulas, but hopefully Paul can create an antidote first.

Sound from the hallway announces someone’s approach. It must be Hailey. I fling a glance at the progress bar. The file transfer isn’t complete. Holding my breath, I inch behind the billowy black lengths of Hailey’s prom dress where it’s nailed to the wall, high beside the window and mimicking a drape.

In the movies, the person stupid enough to go behind the curtain gets caught. I just want to buy my phone enough time to send the email.

Her key scratches in the lock, the tumbler grinds as it turns, probably due to me forcing it with my knife. Warm air gusts in from the hallway when the door opens, sucked into the void of cold air. The skirt I hide behind ruffles. Light hits the tops of my shoes. I lift the phone enough from my chest to check the progress. Nearly there.

Please, I pray silently. Please
…

Light footsteps pace, the sounds echoing and hard to track in the furniture-less room. Her shadow cuts swaths of light and dark beneath the dress, then stops. The darkness spreads beneath my feet, thrown and growing as Hailey approaches. The fabric cocooning me slowly presses in, then smashes tight against my face obstructing my breath. I shove my phone into my pocket, and struggle against the solid black net gagging me. I shake my head and can’t dislodge the pressure. My lungs burn.

The skirt rips beside my face, and the mouth of an aerosol distributor appears in the gap.

Inhaling is instinctual when the fabric comes away from my mouth and nose. The mist from the aerosol spray is cold, medicinal in my sinuses and throat. A cough racks my chest, and only draws in a bigger recovery breath, and a second blast of the stinging spray.

In a flash, the fight leaves me. Thought flees. An appalling sense of detachment fills me. My brain is there, but doesn’t care to engage in escape, in fighting, in anything until…

“Give me your phone, Alex.”

My phone? Of course. I don’t need it. I hold the phone out. A dainty hand snatches it away. Whoever is here needs it more than me.

“Good boy. I wish you hadn’t waited so long to come here. Now you’ve forced me to rush things.”

Rush what? A sharp thorn of something stabs in my head. I was here for something. Here to do something.

The slim hand tucks the phone in my pocket.

“Now,” she says, “You’re very tired, aren’t you, Alex? You’ve been working so hard, chasing me. I think you should go to sleep.”

Sleep is good. I nod, even though I can’t see her through the hole rent in the fabric.

“Good.” The girl pulls the black material away from me. Black hair, pale green eyes. Hailey.

She lunges at me, and jabs a hot sting into my neck. The heat spreads, flooding into the hollow the aerosol made. My joints loosen, muscles turn warm. I make a grab for her when she steps away with a syringe in her hand.

“Have a nice nap,” she says. “Come and find me when you wake up. You’ll know where to look.”

I go numb from the brain down, my legs fold at the knees, the floor rushes at my face. Dust whisks up when I hit the carpet, then my vision blurs and blackens.

“Come find me,” she says, “where it all began…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Consciousness returns, a chaos of light and sound screaming into my head.

Where am I? Why am I on the floor?

Why is my stomach so damn upset?

Acid and chunks burn a path up my throat. I roll up onto my hands and knees and vomit. A room of papers, sparkles and gouges spins in my vision. My stomach spasms and hurls more out onto the floor. The floor rocks like a ship on the big lake. My guts cramp up, but nothing comes out.

“Alex Franks?” someone asks, crowding close.
Who wants to know?
I can’t spit it past my locked jaws. “We got your email. We’re here to help.”

A hand settles on my shoulder, a badge looms into my view. I try to shake the hand loose, then see the face behind the badge.

“Officer Duncan?”

“It’s OK, Alex,” he catches me when my equilibrium gives out and pitches me toward the puke beneath me. He shows me a used syringe, identical to the ones we have preloaded with the sedative my father created, twenty to thirty minutes of unconsciousness with hardly any side-effects. “You’ve been drugged. Can you sit up?”

“I can’t stay here.” I want to push him away, but my arms don’t agree with the command to move. “I need to go.” Hailey said to meet her somewhere. But where? My brain feels fuzzy and limp. Images swirl behind my eyes, pictures and bridges, red and black string, a girl. And a blank section of wall. Emma. She’s in terrible danger. “Where’s Emma?”

“She’s back at her friend’s house.” Officer Duncan keeps a hand on my back and one on my chest, gently rocking me back until I can sit on the floor. “I had Officer Herschel drive Emma, and I came here.”

No. The Ransoms’ isn’t good enough. Coordination is all but gone when I try to stand. The Good Cop officer stands with me, arms held out to brace me when I waver and pitch. Paramedics rush in then, followed by a crew of people with cameras and boxes and clear plastic bags.

“The forensic team from Muskegon County is here,” Officer Duncan tells me as the paramedic guides me to sit on a window seat. “Can you tell us anything about this place, Alex?”

“It belongs to Hailey Westmore.” I take deep breaths of the cool air and refuse the oxygen mask a medic tries to strap over my face. “I thought Hailey was involved in Emma’s disappearance last night and came here looking for her.”

“That was very risky,” the cop says, glancing at the syringe.

“She dosed me with an inhaler, too.”

“That’s impossible,” the police officer argues. “The remains of Hailey Westmore were found in the wreckage of her lake house.”

“What?” I blink. That can’t be right. “No. Hailey was here, just a little while ago.”

Cameras flash around the main room. I shoot a glance toward the French doors. They’re still closed.

“I’m sorry, Alex. We found Hailey’s body when the firefighters examined the scene.”

Frustration boils over to anger. “I said she was
here
.” I shout. “I saw her!”

“Try to calm down,” the officer recommends. He points at the syringe again. “You were probably hallucinating from the drugs.”

“That’s just a sedative!” To hell with calming down. The anger flushes out the weak, foggy feeling. I stand and push away the paramedic. “I know what I saw, Officer Duncan. You might’ve found a body, but you didn’t find
hers
.”

I stagger to the French doors, throw them open, reach in and flip on the light. It’s like a giant spider’s lair with the strings webbing from point to point. “If Hailey Westmore is dead, how did she post pictures of the fire she supposedly died in? How did her neighbor send me a photo of Hailey and Emma outside, with the fire behind them?”

The police and scene crews stare in silence. Officer Duncan is the first to move, a stunned expression on his face.

“Am I under arrest?” Why did I ask that?

“No.” He shakes his head. I can track his focus from image to image, to the lines connecting them. “But you need to stay in town in case we need to speak with you. And I need to see that picture.”

“Then I’m leaving.” Shut up, I think, I need to shut up. “I’ll send you the picture later.”

“Wait, Alex.” He places a hand in my path to the door. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Give us anywhere else to look?”