Before I Wake (13 page)

The soles of Arden’s shoes slapped rhythmically on the asphalt as she took the final curve of the jogging path and headed for Building 50 and her room. It had been two days since her stint in isolation, and her brain was beginning to feel less foggy, her thinking less muddled.

Yesterday, Harris had mentioned the possibility of one—or even two—more sessions.

Arden didn’t want to go back.

You have to.

There had been times when she could have sworn she’d been in the tank, even though she knew she must be confusing this visit with the previous one.

Same place.

Same drugs.

“And a similar technique,” Dr. Harris had told her, “which brings about a conditioned reaction. It explains why patients who’ve been treated with painkillers for serious injuries experience the same pain years later when given the same drug. Conditioned reflex. It makes sense when you understand that information associated with physical or mental trauma is encoded at the cellular level.”

At least the day was beautiful, Arden thought. Crisp, but not too frigid. Sun shining. A chill wind occasionally caused fallen maple leaves to scurry across her path and march in a row like little soldiers. Shadows were long and dark, almost black, the way they were in early winter when the air was dry and the sun was low in the sky.

She kept finding herself transfixed by the shifting pattern the few remaining dead leaves made on the sidewalk.

Upon entering the building, Arden headed across the lobby toward the stairs, passing an old woman with an aluminum cane waiting for the elevator.

“Arden?” the woman called after her in a hesitant voice.

Arden paused.

“I’ve seen you talking to my friend, Vera,” the woman said. “She didn’t come down for breakfast, and I’m going up to check on her. We always eat breakfast together.”

Vera’s friend didn’t come right out and ask for company in her mission, but the subtext was obvious.

Arden backed up. “I’ll come with you.”

“I’m Betty Stewart.”

The elevator shimmied to the fifth floor as Arden and Betty stood side by side, facing the door. “Told Vera it was a bad idea to have a room all the way up here, but she said she wanted a view and to be as far away from everybody else as possible.” Betty laughed. Her stooped shoulders, draped in a thick sweater, shook.

The elevator stopped and the door clanged open.

“Her daughter-in-law tricked her into coming here, you know,” Betty said, stepping into the hallway.

“That’s what I heard.” Apparently everybody knew the story.

“I wanted to come,” Betty told her. “I like it here. It’s nice having people around all the time. I used to live alone and hated it.” She paused, raising a long-nailed finger to her lips. “I always get mixed up. Only been up here a few times. Here it is. This way.” She pointed. “I remember seeing that fire extinguisher.”

Arden was once again struck by the magnificence of Building 50’s architecture. From where they stood, the detailed arched doorways repeated themselves, leading off into infinity.

“It’s spooky up here,” Betty whispered loudly, jolting Arden our of her admiration for the way sunlight fell through a tall window, making a contrast of light and shadow on a particularly lovely stretch of molding.

You knew when your mind was beginning to slip, she thought, because you paid special attention to insignificant details. To the way light fell, the way doorways were outlined by shadow upon shadow upon shadow, and leaves left a pattern on the walk.

Something nagged at her brain. A smell. A memory…

Arden put out her hand, stopping the woman.

Her other hand automatically reached for the gun she used to wear at her waist.

It wasn’t there, of course. When would she quit reaching for something that wasn’t there?

Death had a smell.

Not always of rot, which a novice might think, but of other things. And blood had a distinctive, recognizable odor. Metallic, combined with something heavy and sweet.

“Stay here,” Arden said.

Betty lifted a large-knuckled hand to her throat. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes grew large. “That’s Vera’s room. Should we call somebody? Should we go back downstairs and find somebody?”

Arden didn’t take her eyes off the door. “No need to get ahead of ourselves.”

It could just be the smell of age. Or an imprint left behind by someone who’d lived there decades ago.

Arden approached the room, stopping in front of a door someone had painted in several layers of thick black enamel in an unsuccessful attempt to cover up the years.

The door was ajar, looking as if it hadn’t quite latched. Arden reached for the ornate knob—and saw that the catch plate had been ripped from the wooden frame.

She pushed the door open further.

She paused to listen, then stepped inside.

A single bed. Unmade. No signs of struggle.

“Vera?”

Her voice came out too loud in the small space. Arden crossed to the bathroom door, which was also painted black, also ajar. With her fingertips, she gave the door a slight push. It swung open practically by itself.

Draped over the claw-foot tub, her body tangled in a transparent shower curtain, was Vera. The woman’s throat had been sliced from ear to ear and she was very, very dead.

Nathan Fury was walking toward the Mercy Unit and the Webber Institute when his cell phone rang.

Arden.

“You might want to come to Building 50,” she told him. “Fifth floor.”

He was about to ask why, when he heard the sound of a far-off siren, followed by another and another.

“We have a dead body,” Arden said.

He disconnected and headed for Building 50 while the sun shone brilliantly and blindingly in the sky and the sound of sirens drew nearer.

Inside, people had gathered in the lobby, looking nervously at the elevator, stairs, and ceiling as if they could see through all the layers to the horror above.

Fury slipped through the crowd and took the stairs. He was slightly out of breath when he reached the fifth floor.

He found a young policeman hovering just inside the door to the crime scene. Fury flashed his badge and the cop relaxed in relief, then quickly stiffened again as he obviously recalled what was waiting for them inside.

“Where’s Arden Davis?” Fury asked. At the blank look his question received, he elaborated. “The woman who found the body.”

“Oh. Her. She and the old lady went down the hall and around the corner. I told them someone would be there soon to talk to them.”

Fury nodded, then did a quick visual perusal of the room.

“In there.” The officer pointed.

He was about twenty-five, light haired, a few freckles on his face. Most likely his first homicide, from the way he was acting.

Fury crossed the room and sidestepped into the bathroom, careful not to touch anything. The old woman was tangled in a clear shower curtain, her throat sliced.

It was a chillingly familiar MO.

He stared at the woman’s chalky face and blue lips.

What kind of monster murdered a helpless old woman?

The same kind of person who murdered schoolchildren and infants.

Directly behind him, the officer made a choked sound, then scrambled from the room.

Fury looked down. They were in luck—if you could call it that. The perpetrator had left a fairly well defined bloody shoe print on the white tile floor.

Didn’t clean up his mess. Amateur, or blatant.

Five minutes later the place was thick with cops and detectives. Fury answered a few questions, left his cell number, then went in search of Arden. On the way, he passed the young officer who was now sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, eyes closed, sweat pouring down his face.

The guy should stick to traffic tickets. Some cops just weren’t meant for homicide.

Fury found Arden in a suite down the hall that had been designated for interviews. She sat in a metal folding chair, her arm around an elderly woman wearing a bulky sweater and white Velcro-fastened walking shoes, whom she introduced as Betty Stewart.

“Have you been down there?” Arden was dressed in black sweatpants and a navy-blue sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled into a short ponytail, her face pale and free of makeup.

He nodded.

“We’re waiting for somebody to take our statements,” Arden said.

“It’s awful.” The old woman fingered a cotton handkerchief with pink embroidered flowers and looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I was afraid something was wrong when she didn’t come down to breakfast, but I never dreamed it would be anything like this.”

Arden patted the woman’s hand, then got to her feet. She grabbed Fury by the arm and steered him away. “Do they have any idea who did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Motive?” she asked.

“Nothing stolen. No obvious signs of rape. They found a knife, but it’s not the murder weapon. Too small and dull.”

“Used for defense?”

“Most likely We’re hoping she got in a pass or two. Police are keeping their eyes open for someone with defensive wounds. They’ll also be testing blood samples.”

“Think it could be a resident?” Arden asked. The ease with which she dropped into her old FBI role didn’t escape him.

“You saw the crime scene. What do you think?”

“Had to be someone strong. That gash in her throat had a lot of strength and anger behind it. It couldn’t have been made by some weak eighty-year-old.”

“Not all of the residents here are necessarily weak. Many are part of the independent living program.”

“When I was little, we raised sheep. The wolves and coyotes killed the sheep and ate them. They had a reason. But domestic dogs… that was another thing. They played with the sheep. They tortured them. But they never ate them. In one night, we lost twelve sheep. None of them were dead when my dad found them, but they were all so severely injured that they had to be put down.”

“Did you ever find the dogs that did it?”

“That was even more disturbing. Two were some kind of mixed breeds, but one of them ended up being this fluffy little poodle. We actually found sheep wool in its teeth.”

“So you’re saying this was done for fun. For pleasure.”

“Blood sport.”

He thought so too.

“Security here is a joke,” she said. “Anybody could have gotten in. Plenty of places to hide.”

“The killer could be someone from town.” Fury frowned in thought. “Someone from out of town. Somebody just passing through.”

“It was the shadow people,” Mrs. Stewart said loudly from her seat under the window.

Fury looked from her to Arden, his eyebrows raised in question.
What’s she talking about
?