Devil Dead (10 page)

 

As time went by, Diana became more and more afraid of her mommy, because Luna now had some kind of needle that she put in her arm that made her get all nervous and stuff. That's when she paced the floor, back and forth, back and forth, especially when the man who came up on the back porch with all those little plastic bags of medicine was late. It was all very strange and creepy, and Diana always lived in fear and prayed every single day for her mommy to be nice all the time.

Andrea Quinn lived on the top floor, so Claire and Novak headed for the elevator bank, which happened to be located near the student mailboxes. Claire turned out to be right about Novak's “off the charts scary” factor. Three sleepy female students were also waiting by the elevators for the up arrow to flash on, their loaded backpacks weighing them down. All three took one gander at Novak's size and bulk and gruff and backed off to wait for the next one.

Claire and Novak stepped inside and the doors slid softly together. “You always scare off everybody like that, Novak?”

“Yeah. That's the way I like it.”

“I get that.”

Claire pressed the button with a number 5 on it. As they rode up, swiftly and surely, Novak suddenly became highly inquisitive. “When're you gonna tell me why we're really looking for this kid? And why you don't just contact your cop buddies at the police department and put out a BOLO or a missing person? Better yet, why haven't you already done that?”

Overcome by the sheer and unexpected volume of his verbiage, Claire stepped out into the hallway when the bell dinged their arrival at the fifth floor. “Not a good idea right now.”

“Look, I don't like bein' kept in the dark. Not good for my health.”

“You won't be. Truth is, I don't know a whole helluva lot more than you do. Just that her parents are worried about her. Want us to find out if she's all right. Want to keep the authorities out of it for now.”

“Gotta have reasons for something like that.”

Claire hesitated, but he was right on and she knew it. “All right, fine—her father is a deported arms dealer and criminal. He doesn't want to contact the police or get her picture plastered all over the newspapers, for fear of endangering her even more.”

“Not Jonas Quinn?”

“Yep. Jonas Quinn. Know him?”

“I know who he is.”

“You still on board?”

“I'm okay. Now that I know the score.”

Novak failed to comment further on the subject, as he silently trailed her down the hall. They found Andrea's room at the far end of an extremely silent floor, which was a phenomenon that had not come to pass all that often in Claire's short college experience, just up the road at LSU. “All the Tulane dorms this quiet, Novak?”

“This is a dorm that caters to more serious kids.”

“I didn't know there were any serious college kids.”

“You got that right. Studious kids are supposed to live here. Wall's not known as a party dorm. That would be Monroe and Sharp. Fun places. Butler is the honors dorm.”

“That where you lived?”

“I lived off campus. Commuted.”

Claire didn't think studious college kids were probably all that common, either, but she tapped a knuckle on the door and waited impatiently. No answer, not then and not the second time, either. So she swiped the key and opened the door. They stepped inside quickly and found a dorm room that looked as if nobody had touched it for two years, much less lived in it. The walls were yellow, the furniture the same as downstairs, light veneer with some metal parts. There was a door that probably led to a bathroom, two beds, two desks, two built-in wardrobes, and a Tulane pennant on the wall between a picture of a laughing red devil with horns and a pentagram poster stamped on slick black paper with what was supposed to be blood spatter all over it. Nice. Claire felt right at home.

Across the room, the tall window stood open, the screen intact, but the brown blinds were drawn all the way up to the top. The room was ice cold. Most dorm windows weren't designed as open invitations for high and/or drunk collegians to take air walks, but maybe these serious and studious kids liked to breathe fresh air to stimulate and fire up the synapses in their gray matter.

Novak said, “Well, either she's a neat freak who likes to be freezing cold, or she's long gone.”

“Yeah. Well, let's search the room and see what we find.”

Watching Novak surreptitiously, Claire saw him open a drawer in the nearest desk and rifle through its contents, all without leaving fingerprints. Looked like he knew what he was doing. She walked to the twin wardrobes and slid open the two doors of the one on the right. Inside were about two hundred too many clothes stuffed on hangers and about twenty shoe boxes stacked on a top shelf with little photos of the contents stuck on the end with Scotch tape. “Well, somebody is very organized and loves her footwear. That's plain to see.”

“She's a woman.”

“I don't like shoes.”

“Those high-top Nikes you got on are nifty.”

Nifty? “Thanks, I think.”

“I'm gonna check out the bathroom. See if it adjoins another room.”

Novak tapped politely on the door, which showed he had some gentlemanly attributes—at least until he just barged into the bathroom without waiting. Claire examined the clothes in the closet, wondering how they got that many garments inside and why they wanted to and what kind of girl Andrea Quinn really was. She took her arm and pushed back a load of the coat hangers as best she could, because she had found that people had a tendency to hide things in the backs of their closets. That's when somebody darted out at her so quickly and unexpectedly from inside that Claire didn't have time to react. Then she cried out in pain when a sharp blade came down hard into the flesh of her left arm. At that point, pure survival instinct took over. She grabbed her screaming assailant by the front of the shirt, spun around with him, and tried to kick the legs out from under him. In moments, she had the guy down on the floor on his back, her Glock pressed against his left temple. That's when she found out that it was a young girl struggling violently under her weight. Unfortunately, however, it wasn't Andrea Quinn.

Novak was there in seconds, but several seconds too late. He stopped and stood over them. “I guess you know there's a pair of scissors stuck in your arm.”

“No kiddin', Novak. Hey, I could use some help here. You know, that partner thing needs to kick in a little.”

Novak took hold of Claire's good arm and pulled her up to standing. Then he jerked the screaming and struggling girl up by the back of her green Tulane hoodie and flung her across the room as if she were a bag of rags. The girl landed in a heap on the nearest bed and then began to sob hysterically into the pillow. “Don't hurt me, don't hurt me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's the devil, the devil's in me now!”

Novak frowned down at Claire's wound. “You okay?”

“Oh, sure, I'm just right as rain. Except for this big pair of sharp scissors stuck in my arm.” The pain was pretty massive, but Claire tried not to groan like a big baby in front of Mr. Super Sympathetic. Instead, she tried to see how bad it was. All she knew was that it had penetrated the fleshy part of her upper arm and hurt like hell.

“Looks like what they say about you is true, Morgan.”

Claire held her arm tightly against her side so that the scissors wouldn't move around and hurt even more. She looked up at Novak. “Yeah, and what would that be?”

“You find trouble everywhere, every time. Not a good personality trait for a private dick. Not for anybody, really.”

“Oh, man, Yoda's got nothing on you, oh wise one.” Claire ignored him then and attempted to pull the rip in her jacket far enough apart to see how much she was bleeding. Of course, the scissors weren't of the little manicure variety that most normal people would get stabbed with. Hell no, not for her. She got the worst possible kind, of course. Great big, strike that, honking huge, dress shears. In fairly deep, too.

Not happy, she stuck her forefinger through the big rip in her favorite jacket. The leather one that she'd bought with her own hard-earned money, damn it. It appeared to be a deep puncture wound, but the blade had not nicked the bone, thank God. It still hurt like the devil, though, now that her assailant was subdued and crying over on the bed and Claire's rush of adrenaline was petering off. Black was gonna flip out. First day on the job and this? Looked like his well-laid plans just were not gonna pan out, after all. Unfortunately for her.

“Don't pull them out,” Novak suggested calmly. “I'll take you to the emergency room after we question the girl. They can stitch you up.”

Claire grimaced and jerked the scissors out. Blood spurted a little bit and made a red stain on her white polo shirt and the jagged hole in the leather, but it wasn't gonna send her to the ER. Gingerly, Claire shrugged out of the coat and reached under her shirt and applied pressure with her fingers. She looked over at the moaning girl, still writhing around on the bed.

The girl was a user of the highest and most horrendous degree, no doubt about it. If they gave awards for drug addictions, she'd win the Oscar for Best Junkie, hands down. Claire could tell by looking at her, and the kid was probably addicted to crack and crystal meth, or maybe did ecstasy and/or cocaine, or all of it. Her face was gaunt and her cheeks looked sunken, like a Halloween skeleton mask. She was extremely thin and her skin was covered with sores. Her dark eyes still darted around wildly, and her pupils were dilated, big and black. Her terrified behavior was not dissipating with Novak's less than reassuring reassurances. She had very short black hair that looked unwashed and unkempt and oily and at least six pounds of black makeup smeared around on her eyes. Something told Claire that the pentagram poster belonged to her. Then all a sudden, the kid started screaming big time and to the top of her lungs.

“Look at her. She's high as a kite.”

Novak said, “Yeah, she's strung out all right. Ecstasy or PCP. Something like that. Crystal meth, maybe.”

“I guess we should get an ambulance in here. Let them check her out. She doesn't look so good.”

“Go ahead. I'm gonna see if she'll tell me anything.”

Claire jerked her phone out of her pocket with her free hand and punched in 911 and watched Novak walk over and kneel down in front of the girl. It was soon apparent that he wasn't wearing kid gloves. “Hey, kid, stop your cryin' and yellin', and listen up. We're not gonna hurt you. Just calm it down, already.”

“You're the devil, you're the devil, and she's a demon! A she-demon!”

Well, that could be
, Claire thought. In her present mood, anyway.

Novak didn't seem to be in the mood for utter nonsense. “Hey, stop with the crazy talk. Nobody here's a demon. We're trying to find Andrea Quinn. This's her room, that right? You know her?”

“Don't touch me, don't touch me! You're evil, evil . . . you're all evil. Witches, demons, Satan's spawn! I wanna die! I can't take it anymore. I wanna die!”

Novak grabbed her shoulders and gave her a rather hard shake, but just one. “Tell me where Andrea Quinn is. We've got to find her.”

“The devil's got her, the devil's got her. I barely got away. Satan's coming, he's coming, he's gonna find us all, he's gonna send us into hell's fiery lake . . .”

“Who's got her?” Novak shook her again. Once. “What's your name? You live here?”

Two loud thuds sounded on the door, and Claire quickly pulled it open. There before her stood a couple of college girls, and behind them, a campus cop could be seen racing down the hall with some kind of nightstick clutched in his right hand.

The redheaded girl at the door said, “Hey, lady, what're you doin' in here? We heard screamin' and yellin' and stuff so we called up security.”

Claire kept on clutching her bleeding and aching arm. “We found that girl over there hiding in the closet, and she went all hysterical over nothing. We're trying to calm her down, that's all.”

One of the girls peeked around the corner, apparently not believing Claire's story was credible. Claire couldn't blame her, not with a guy the size of Colorado leaning over a screaming, weeping girl. Novak stood up and stepped away from the screeching kid as the cop arrived and stepped into the room. As innocent as a giant baby lamb, he was.

“What the hell's going on in here?” Breathless Campus Cop demanded in his best official tone, but got no further than that because at that very moment the hysterical girl screamed even louder and jumped off the bed. Before anyone could move a muscle, she darted across the room as if the devil really was after her and took a flying, headfirst swan dive out the open window, taking the window screen with her.

Everyone just froze where they stood for a second or two, all of them gaping at the window, struck silent with utter shock and disbelief. Then the two girls started screaming their heads off, and Claire ran over to the windowsill, where a stiff cold breeze hit her in the face. Outside, five floors below on the concrete sidewalk, the girl was lying dead, lots of blood flowing out of her head, her arms and legs twisted in grotesque, unnatural angles. A crowd of horrified college students were backing away from the broken body, their cries and screams echoing up the side of the building. In the near distance, Claire could hear the siren blare of the ambulance that she had called only minutes before.

Novak said, “C'mon, let's get outta here.”

Before Claire could join him and fly the coop, the campus cop grabbed her by the back of her shirt. Something she didn't particularly care for, not from him, or anybody else. He was strong, though, his big biceps straining hard to bust out the seams of his blue uniform shirt.

“You ain't goin' nowhere,” he told Claire, swinging her around and exhibiting quite a bit of cop fierce. Then he stopped and stared at Claire's bloodstains. “Hey, you're bleedin'. What happened in here?”