Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (3 page)

Arthur Brennan.

Alex woke with a start. Her whole body shivered with fear, though she had no rational reason to explain it. Despite the absence of clothes, she wasn’t cold; far from it, she felt far too warm from the heavy bedspread and the snoring man beside her, whose body was a living radiator. Her legs were tangled in the silk sheets, and she struggled silently against them until she could free herself from the bed.

The air was deliciously cool against her skin. She stretched with both her arms and her mind. She touched dozens of people, their minds humming as they dreamed. Sleeping was a dull activity for most, as far as Alex was concerned. Their dreams never reached anything close to exhilarating, and she wondered sometimes if she was the only person who was truly
alive
, truly aware of how precious her time was. Her father certainly didn’t, but he had good reason to disregard time.

No, it wasn’t the cold that had awoken her. She tried to calm herself, to make the goose bumps on her arms disappear, but whatever had disturbed her sleep was still affecting her on some level. She walked to the closet and wrapped a long white bathrobe around herself.

Every light was off, but she didn’t need them to get around her apartment. Eyes wide open, she pretended that she was a mountain lion, a predator perfectly at ease with the dark. After all, what woman
didn’t
secretly wish to be a cougar one day?

Alex glanced at the kitchen clock; it was just past two in the morning, and the building was absolutely dead. The white robe swished around her legs as she walked out the front door. She was in the middle of a long hallway which continued for a long while in both directions. She continued to probe, but everybody on her floor was sound asleep. Her footsteps made no noise on the padded carpeting on her way to the elevator. The doors slid open with minimal creaking, and the usual ping that sounded the elevator’s arrival was subdued at night, so it would likely go unnoticed. But now which way to go?

A pressure weighed on the top of her head like an oncoming migraine. She lifted her chin toward the ceiling, and the weight shifted to her forehead.
Up it is.
Alex pushed the button for the top floor, just to be sure.

She leaned against the metal handholds as the elevator ascended. Almost immediately, the pressure on her skull doubled in intensity, and pretty soon she was white-knuckling the railing.

Arthur Brennan.

She heard the voice more clearly now, and she trembled as its familiar aura touched her mind. It was definitely the same thought that had woken her, though she had no idea what it meant. More so, though, she was disturbed by the person the thought was originating from.

As a young girl, she had accepted that every thought carries emotions, and every emotion radiated a color of some kind. Pleasant thoughts, ones of compassion and love, were royal blue. Violet or purple often accompanied envious thoughts, which were almost always tinged with a little greedy green as well.

The thought that carried that name, Arthur Brennan, was coated with deep, blood red dripping in black malice.

It was utterly fascinating.
Something new
, she thought. The residents of Harcour Towers had always been greedy and self-absorbed, and those attributes rarely amounted to much thinking. It took someone with a real degree of passion and fury, not to mention a heaping amount of brainpower, for Alex to hear them from so far away.

Through trial and error, she determined that the voice was coming from the sixteenth floor. She didn’t dare leave the elevator, not now at least. The last thing she needed was to confront a nigh-homicidal maniac with attachment issues. There was little variation in the brainwave activity; whoever it was, they were single-mindedly
obsessed
with Arthur Brennan.

“Whoever the hell that is,” she muttered, jabbing the down button repeatedly. The psychic pressure was too much, and it was getting to her. The boring humdrum background noise of a thousand plebeians thinking common thoughts? No problem. But this madness was something else, something she couldn’t handle right now with little sleep and no coffee.

If Sam stirred at the noise made by her return to the apartment, Alex never saw it; he was still sound asleep when she crawled back under the covers and curled up against his comforting warmth. With a dozen floors between her and the belligerent thought, her mind was much quieter, and she embraced sleep as tightly as a familiar lover.

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“Rise and shine,
sleepyhead,” said Sam, a subjective millisecond later, as he tore open the wall-length curtains.

There he goes again
, she thought,
thinking he’s clever.
Blinded by the sudden light, she tracked his thoughts.

Sensory thoughts, like a lot of other things, went completely unnoticed by normal people. The brain processed too much information in any given day to assign much importance to one sense, so most people took it for granted that they had an audiovisual suite come standard with their bodies. But each one of those impulses from the eyes, every decibel picked up by the ears, even the slightest sense of touch on the hairs of their hands, was translated into a thought the brain could understand. Background noise. And what they could see, Alex could see.

In a large enough group, she could see and hear everything. For all intents and purposes, she could
be
everywhere.

Blind and startled, she borrowed on his thoughts. She saw herself on the bed, through his eyes, and reversed the angle in her head. She flung a pillow across the room that caught Sam flatly across the face. She heard his surprise even as she primed and launched a follow-up strike. They didn’t do any harm to him, but it was the thought that counted. She thrashed her way out from under the covers and promptly pulled the curtains together again.

“Glad to see you’re in a good mood today,” he said. Even after being hit with pillows lightly coated in drool, he had a grin on his face, one that was too infectious to resist for long.

“I’m—” The memory of several hours ago came to the fore. A nighttime walk prompted by an angry voice cursing the name of a stranger. She filed it away for later. “I’m fantastic, actually,” Alex said, adopting a smile of her own. “But no morning before coffee.”

“Morning comes whether you like it or not.” He was wearing only a pair of boxers as he embraced her. His body wasn’t as warm as it had seemed under the covers, but she still indulged him in a brief hug.

“But it stays out there,” she said, gesturing toward the window, “unless you let it in. No morning before coffee,” she repeated.

Sam sighed. “I can take a hint. I’ll get us a couple cups from the lobby—” Alex made a face at that suggestion. “—I mean, from anywhere
but
the lobby. Who would even suggest lobby coffee? An idiot, that’s who.”

“I knew you’d understand,” Alex said. She patted him lightly on the cheek and moved to the closet as Sam started pulling on yesterday’s clothes. “There’s a coffeehouse I know that uses the best imported beans you’ve ever tasted.”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“Oh, just two blocks that way,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the window.

“Okay, great, we can go there on the way to the shuttle station.”

“I’m actually feeling a little gross from last night and thought I’d take a shower. You don’t mind buying them and bringing them back here, do you?”

Sam stared incredulously at her with his coppery eyes. She knew what he was thinking, and her mouth curled slightly in anticipation. “You want me to walk two blocks to fetch you a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, beaming back at him. She clasped her hands and just barely pouted with her lower lip, making the perfect image of a desperate girl pleading for a small favor. That, and she was still fantastically naked. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She had to stop herself from grinning as his thoughts raced to what that promise could hold.

He ran a hand through his short, curly hair. “All right, I can do that,” he relented. He grabbed his jacket and pecked Alex on the cheek as he headed out of the room. “Be back before you know it,” he called. The door closed loudly behind him.

Alex strolled casually into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She waited until the steam started to fog up the mirror before stepping into the spray of hot water.

“Ohhh yes,” she moaned. The water cascaded onto her back and flowed in rivulets down her legs as she combed her fingers through her hair. Her skin was turning red from the heat, which someone weaker might have described as scalding, but she didn’t mind. Sex was good on any day of the week, but the shower afterward? It was heavenly.

Five minutes into the shower, she heard her phone go off in the other room. She let it ring out, content to remain in soapy bliss. Anyone who was calling this early in the morning—actually, she didn’t know what time it was, but anyone who called at
any
time in the morning was generally nobody she wanted to talk to. Besides, no morning before coffee. She had to keep to her own rule.

The phone rang for a second time, though, and the list of people who had her number was fairly short. Add persistence at an annoying time of day and Alex felt certain she knew who was calling, as well as the fact that she would do well to answer.

She turned off the water and dried herself as quickly as she could. Her feet still made marks of condensation on the floor as she retrieved her phone from the bedroom. She dialed back, and a man picked up on the first ring.

“Alexis,” he said without preamble. “I thought you were coming over for breakfast today.”

“Yeah, I still am. Why? What time is it?” she asked even as she checked the clock. Quarter past eleven. “Shit, Dad, I must have overslept.”

“Another one of your men?” he asked. It didn’t sound like a question, and she didn’t dignify it with a response. “It’s too late now, breakfast is over.”

“I can still make it for lunch.” Her father didn’t answer, which she took as an invitation to continue. “I’ll be there in half an hour. How does that sound?”

“Great,” he said, “see you in twenty.”

Alex sighed as her father hung up. Brüding family meals were battlefields, and every conversation was a potential landmine. The best she could do was survive. But that also meant that morning was coming before coffee, something that displeased her greatly. She dialed Sam’s number.

“Hey,” he answered. “Did you know that café was actually five blocks—?”

“Yeah, sorry. About that—I’m actually going to need a rain check on that. My dad just called and I’m late for lunch.”

“Oh, okay. Well I already paid for the coffee…” he said, his voice trailing off.

“Lucky you,” Alex said. She shrugged on a dress shirt as she nestled the phone between her ear and shoulder. “Looks like you get double caffeinated today.”

“You’re seriously not going to join me?” It didn’t take a mind-reader to hear his disappointment.

“I really can’t, babe. Dad’s a hard case.”

“All right, I get it. Go,” he said, “have family time.”

“Thanks, I knew you’d understand.” She bit her lip as she slipped on a pair of low-heeled shoes. “And I can still make good on my promise tonight,” she said softly, letting that statement make its way to the more primitive parts of Sam’s brain.

“I’ll call you tonight when I’m free.” The excitement in his voice was palpable.

“Ciao, lover boy.”

The Odols Police
Department was an ugly, squat building of gray stone and red brick.

It was located less than a hundred steps from Brennan’s apartment. Its proximity was a double-edged sword. It was close enough that severe weather could largely be ignored, as he’d only be exposed to it for a few seconds. However, by the same token, the city could be shut down and he would still be expected to walk to work.

Today, though, the weather was unseasonably warm, one last hurrah of summer before the city was plunged into half a year of heavy snow and harsh winds. Brennan’s phone buzzed just as he pushed his way through the glass double-door entrance.

“Detective Brennan, just returning all your missed calls. What’s up?” It was Wally, the resident pathologist for OPD.

“I’m walking into the station now,” he said. “I thought I’d drop by and get another once-over of the body before you give her over to the family.”

“You have some kind of fetish I should be warned about? This is the fifth time in three days that you’ve visited her.”

“Shut it. I just need to catch this guy, and she’s our best lead at the moment. Hey, I’m heading down the stairs, I’ll see you in a few.”

He ended the call. The only staircase which led to the basement was located in the back of the building, close to an emergency exit that opened into an alleyway. The hallway was bleached white, like the rest of the building, and framed photos of past police chiefs at formal functions hung from the walls. He turned the corner and stepped quickly down the flight of stairs, the beats of his feet on metal echoing hollowly in the empty chamber.

The pathologist was there to meet him at the bottom. At five-and-a-quarter feet tall, he was not an imposing figure. His dark head was cleanly shaven, except for a thin stripe of hair that ran down the middle to the nape of his neck. He wore a thermal shirt and khakis, and small studs pierced the lobes of his ears.

“Hey, Detective,” he said, offering his hand. The long sleeve of his shirt rode up, and a hint of black ink was visible on the skin beneath.

“Wally,” Brennan said enthusiastically. “I didn’t know you had tattoos!”

“Just a few.”

“It’s surprising to see you without your lab coat on.”

“I’m a real person outside the morgue? Huh. This is a startling revelation.” Wally looped a clean white apron around his neck and cinched it at the waist. “Besides, that’s only for practical purposes, not a fashion statement. Sanitation, for one thing.” He handed an identical apron to the detective. “Plus, it’s colder than Bishop down here,” he added with a grin.

Brennan grunted. His old partner had been given a commendation for excellent fieldwork and bravery in the line of duty following the botched rescue attempt at the hospital. Brennan and Sam had attempted to save her from a violent drug lord and had found themselves in need of rescuing. Shortly thereafter, a promotion had lifted her from detective to lieutenant, and she was now effectively in charge of the homicide division. His boss. He hadn’t realized that he wasn’t the only one feeling the distance that her promotion created.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure she has a lot on her plate,” he said, pulling on a pair of neoprene gloves. “Having to handle these cases as her first assignment on the job
can’t
be good for her morale.”

“Let’s make this quick,” Wally suggested. “The funeral home arranged to pick up the body at noon, so you have about fifteen minutes.”

The morgue was a medium-sized, rectangular room that took up a third of the station’s basement. Wally hadn’t been lying when he said it was cold down there. Even without the air conditioning on, it was easily ten degrees cooler than the lobby upstairs. Square hatches with empty metal slabs inside lined one wall; against another wall was a cleaning station. Three raised tables stood in the center of the room, and one of them was occupied.

“Kelsi Woodill,” Wally said. “Twenty-one years old, nursing student at Odols University. She was last seen leaving from a party on campus, and her body was discovered the next morning by the roommate, Sara Portoso.” Wally sounded bored as he spoke, and he probably was; he’d said all of this before, and it was only Brennan’s commitment to ritual that made him recite it now. He circled the table. “Lividity puts the time of death somewhere between midnight and two o’clock. Midnight going into Saturday, just like the others.”

“So she was surrounded by other people all night?”

“If it was a good party, sure.”

“Did her roommate hear or see anything suspicious during the party?”

“What do I look like, a witness?” He gestured to the table. “All I know is what the body tells me while it’s on the slab. No signs of sexual assault or other trauma. Single fatal stab wound to the back. It severed the spinal column and she bled out quickly; with sensation to her lower half cut off, I doubt she felt anything. It’s a peaceful way to go, if you think about it. No suffering.”

Kelsi Woodill’s hair hung limply from her pale scalp. She had a gymnast’s build, short but powerful, and she would have been attractive in life. Less than a year and she would have been out in the working world, a full adult. Whatever Wally might suggest, she had met a violent end, and she’d been robbed of her life.

“But why was she killed?” Brennan asked.

Wally shrugged. “Why were any of them killed? It seems that our killer has nothing in common with any of the victims. The only real link between any of them is the cause of death.”

Brennan rubbed at his chin. “I’m going to have to speak with her roommate.”

“I didn’t think you were working this case.”

“Not officially, no,” he said. “But Kelsi Woodill is our fifth victim, and we are no closer to finding the killer than we were three months ago. Even if Bishop doesn’t realize it, we kind of need all hands on deck with this one.”

“Fine, all right. I’ll give you Sara Portoso’s contact information, but I need something from you as well.”

“What is it?”

“A favor,” he said. He stared up at Brennan with intense, dark eyes. “I don’t know what I could need, or when, but you’ll owe me one.”

Brennan appraised the man with new eyes. “Absolutely. A favor for a friend, I can do that.”

Wally smiled, but still hesitated. “Lieutenant Bishop was very clear in keeping you away from these murders…I could lose my job.”

“This won’t get back to the lieutenant,” Brennan promised solemnly. “It’ll stay between you and me.”

The pathologist breathed out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good,” he said. “Come with me.”

They tossed the gloves as they left the room, and Brennan was grateful to be away from the too-pale corpse of the young woman. It was still cool in the hall, but not nearly as cold as in the morgue. He followed Wally down the hallway until he ducked through a door on the left.

“My office,” Wally explained. It was a small room, less than two cubicles’ worth of space pushed together, and the antiseptic smell of the morgue wafted in the air. Wally retrieved a manila folder from his desk and thumbed quickly through the pages within. “Ah, here it is,” he declared, pulling out a single sheet. It was the incident report that had been filed with the discovery of Kelsi Woodill’s body. In the witness section, under her name and address, was Sara Portoso’s phone number. Brennan took a few seconds to add it to his own contact list, then handed the sheet back to Wally, who replaced it and the folder on the desk.

“There,” Wally said, sighing again. “It’s like you were never even here.”

Brennan raised an eye. “I wasn’t. You were down here alone, waiting for the funeral director to arrive.”

Wally opened and closed his mouth. “Exactly.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” Brennan assured him. “When this is all over, we can grab a drink and discuss that favor.”