The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) (2 page)

—Two days before—
 

Andrea Nox pushed through the double doors at the entrance of the Beacon City police station and felt the energy of the place hit her like it was her first da
y.

She made her way through the people that were already beginning to gather in the oval lobby, taking in the sights and smells of a busy cop shop. The fading sunlight streaming in through the frosted glass of the doors illuminated the small crowd of criminals, victim
s,
and police. They all needed something, with none of them getting it as quickly as they would like. She stepped to the dark wood counter at the top of the oval room and pulled an ID card from her bag.

“What?” the man at the desk asked her without looking up.

Andrea slapped her ID card on the counter in front of him. “Detective Nox,” she sai
d.
“Are you new?”

The man at the desk inspected her card, glancing up at her face occasionally as he did. He slid the card back to her. “I’m Cassid
y.
I just transferred from Low Point. I’m sorry, Detective,” he said, pausing to scratch the back of his neck, “I’m gonna have to—”

“Nox!”

Andrea looked up and saw a flushed head appearing over the railing on the second floor. “Hynes!” she called up. “What’s going on?”

“Come on up! He
y,
Cassidy, let her through,” Hynes shouted over the rising babble of voices.

Cassidy opened the swinging, hip-high saloon doors at the side of the desk without a word. She passed through and ran a hand over the old wooden bannisters as she went up the stairs, feeling familiar grooves and missing chunks.

She got up to the floor that Homicide had to itself. A notice board on the wall to her left was packed with yellow and white sheets of paper. Andrea saw sketches of suspects, local event sign-up sheet
s, and a notice concerning union meetings about increased danger pay. Under this was a reminder about memorials for fallen officers. She lingered, eyeballing the reminder and pushing down all the feelings that were fighting their way to the surface.

The first thing she noticed after pushing through the door into the bullpen was the quiet. Compared to the noise from downstairs, it was like a library up her
e.
She saw a pair of detectives she didn’t recognize taking a statement from an older woman who was switching from tears to anger and back again. Another older detective hunched over his desk. None of them looked up as she entered. Her old spot stood empty, one of a pair, in the middle of a row of seven identical twin desks.
Standard issue
, she thought as her gaze passed unseeing over the familiar dark green lamps on each one. A similar color adorned the walls, giving the room an old and tired look.

Hynes had already returned to his desk and was on the phone by the time she arrived, and as she approached he finished his conversation and hung up.

“Nox,” he said, standing up to greet her, “good to see you here. This place has gone to shit without a woman’s touch.” He grinned at her with yellowing teeth and shook her hand. “How the hell have you been?” A flicker of dismay appeared on his brow as soon as he asked, and he let go of her hand.

Andrea dreaded that look, even as she expected it. “I’m good, Hynes. It’s a good feeling to be back here, you know?”

He nodded, this time relief flitting across his face and disappearing. “I can imagine. That’s that real police gene fucking with you.”

Andrea smiled in spite of herself. Hynes was old school, a grumpy cliché, foul-mouthed and a drunk, but he was honest. If there was anything complimentary to be found in his statements, he meant it.

“So where is everyone?” she asked, indicating the empty seats around them.

Hynes sighed and sat back down. “It’s that time of the year, Nox. Murder rate is set to pass what we had this time last year. Everybody is out on the street, trying to get the soft cases cleared. You know, the domestics and the amateurs that can’t roll over a working man without plugging the poor bastard. The only reason we’re up is because of the dip in the numbers, after...” Hynes trailed off, looking down at his hands clasped between his legs.

Andrea nodded. “Go on, say it. After that girl got killed.”

Hynes looked back up at Andrea. “Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat, and said, “Anyway, that’s all done, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s done.” Andrea looked down at Hynes’ hands as well, feeling that things had changed irrevocably since her last time here. There was a sense of something small breaking off inside her, tiny yet acutely painful. “Is Cap in?”

Hynes looked back up at Andrea, grinning on one side of his mouth. “He’s been waiting for you.”

Andrea looked up to the end of the bullpen, and through frosted glass she saw a silhouette of a man sitting at a desk. The letters on the door spelled out '
Captain Hugo Slade, Homicide'
.

*****

As Andrea pushed through the door into the office, Captain Hugo Slade looked up from a desk that was drowning in paper and bound folders.

“I guess you didn’t learn how to knock since we last saw each other,” he growled as the door swung shut behind her.

Andrea stood motionless, expressionless as they stared at each other for a few seconds before she grinned. “One da
y,
Cap, I’ll catch you doing something you’re not supposed to be.”

Cap’s face slowly filled up with a smile of his own, his brown eyes still holding her green ones. He stood up and came around his desk to embrace her. “Welcome home, Nox,” he said in a softer voice, “we’ve been waiting for you.”

Andrea closed her eyes and hugged back, silent and content.

After a few seconds, they pulled apart, and sat on opposite sides of the desk, Andrea lifting a pile of papers from her seat before she sat. She now saw the bags under Cap’s eyes had gotten a little deeper and a little darker than she remembered, and the lines around them had grown.

The office didn’t seem that much different from the last time she had been here, except for maybe a few extra bundles of files and papers stacked around the room on any available flat surface. There were pictures on the walls of Cap with assorted members of the Beacon establishment, some with forced smiles and others with restrained grins. Andrea knew there was one in his drawer of him and his family. One section of the wall was dedicated to a certificate of lifetime membership for the Beacon City Marksman’s Club.

Cap looked at her over the papers piled up in front of him and cleared his throat. “Look, Annie, I know you don’t like to hear this stuff, but I want to say something.”

Andrea shifted in her seat.

“I did what I could after Lyons— Those bastards at Internal Affairs. I couldn’t stop them, Annie. I hope you know that. We all missed something, all of us were complicit, but they wanted a scapegoat. I would have done mor
e,
but with everything going on at home...” Cap trailed off, looking down at his desk.

Andrea shook her head. “I know, Cap. You don’t have to say anything. I know you did what you could.”

Cap met her gaze again, a slight smile shadowing his lips. “You know, your old running buddy, Hynes out there, gave a helping han
d,
too. Busted up the lead investigator’s nose. Allegedly.” Cap winked.

Andrea grinned. “O
h,
yeah? How’d he get away with that?”

“The little shit offered Hynes a promotion if he agreed to give a false character statement against you. Three people overheard it, so he had no comeback after Hynes knocked those little Gestapo glasses off his face.”

Hynes, you scrappy bastard,
she thought. A flash of unease followed as snatches of memory came to her. Fragments of questions from beside a hospital bed floated to the surface of her mind and disappeared just as easily.

She brushed a lock of black hair back from her face, thought of somethin
g,
and smiled again. “‘Complicit’? Since when did you start reading the dictionary?”

Cap looked at her with his mouth open in a small O, then chuckled as he opened one of his desk drawers. He pulled out a thick dictionary and tossed it on the desk where it landed with a deep thud, sending little motes of dust into a beam of light that made it through the blinds. “A present from Marcy. She said I needed to broaden my vocabulary, with all these press conferences and interviews I’ve been doing.”

“How is she, Cap?”

“Marcy?” Cap sat back in his chair.

Andrea noticed how the chair didn’t sink as much as it used to, and the light showed Cap’s color dip a little. She fancied that maybe his memories were fueling themselves with his blood.

“We get by. She’s getting better, day by day. Some of that old fire came back to her when I told her I was coming back to work. Argued for the best part of a week. I was just happy to see her do something other than cry or look out the window.” Cap’s grin was cold now, as different to his earlier smile as ice is to boiling tar.

Andrea hesitated. “And Karen?”

Cap breathed out a heavy gust of air, deflating. “She’s quiet, Annie. I thank God and the Jewish Guy that we got her back, and you of course, but I don’t know if we got all of her.”

Andrea looked at a patch of nothing on the corner of the desk, and said nothing. There was nothing to say without ripping open wounds that had been difficult to heal.

“She eats, she sleeps, and sometimes she screams when the nightmares come, but she hasn’t said a word since.” Cap rubbed a hand over his eyes. “It’s hard on me and Marcy, sure, but I can’t bear to think of what it was like for my little girl.” His fist clenched on the desk, his eyes shut just as tight.

Andrea sat forward. “I’m sorr
y,
Ca
p.
I shouldn’t have brought it up. I was stupid.”

“Bullshit. If you and me can’t be honest with each other there’s no point in us speaking.”

They sat quiet for a few seconds, each in their own heads.

“So,” Andrea said, “I’ve got a question.”

Cap looked at her with a hard face. “I can guess. You want to know why you’re back here.”

Andrea nodded, thinking back on the stories she used to hear about Cap. She imagined that back in Cap’s heyday—the fifteenth century, according to some wits in the bullpen—a similar look was the last thing many a deviant hard case saw before they were either rubbed off the planet or locked in a cage.

He passed her the folder he had been reading when she arrived. She started to leaf through the reports and then saw the crime scene photos. Her mouth fell open slightly and her eyes widened. “Is this—”

“Yes. Steve Solas. Son of Arthur Solas, mayoral hopeful and political rising star. At least, what was left of him. This is some messy shit, Annie. I need someone sharp, off the books. Do you want it?”

Andrea didn’t hear him. She was already reading over the reports. Cap smiled again. It was the smile of a proud father, watching a child leave the nest for the first and last time.

At Mercy Hospital, two nurses were talking outside the room where Robert Duncan’s mothe
r,
Leann
e,
was dying.

A sign on the wall read '
Visiting Hours: 2pm to 8pm
,' and the clock above the sign showed 7:50. One of the nurses, was just about to finish a very long day that had seen her tend to the aftermath of a nearby accident involving multiple cars. Three had died on the way to the ER, and a fourth had passed on the operating table.

She had been affected by the fourth, a young girl, as she had held out some hope that the girl would survive. Her mind was stuck between the tragedy of it, and wondering why it had gotten under her skin when she had seen so much over the years. As such, she missed the last thing her recently arrived colleague had said.

“What’s that?” she asked.

The other nurse tutted at her. “I said, after the excitement of winning the holiday wore off, we were fighting again. Couldn’t decide on where to go. I swear, even when we have good luck it turns to shit.”

She nodded, her mood matching the pessimism of the other nurse’s outlook. She was about to tell her about the people who had died in front of her during the day when a buzzer went off behind their station.

The second nurse leaned over and saw the blinking light indicating Leanne Duncan’s room and rolled her eyes. “O
h,
come on, I’ve just started the day. She’s the first one I have to deal with?”

The first nurse felt a sudden, maniacal urge to slap the other across the face that she suppressed with more than a little effort. “She’s not that bad,” she sai
d,
instead.

“I’d rather be dragged over rocks by the hair. She’s a wagon, and you know it.”

“Whateve
r.
I’m going down to clock out. I’ll see you over the weekend?”

The second nurse waved over her shoulder as she went into the room. “Yeah, sure thing.”

“It’s about time,” Leanne croaked from her bed as she entere
d.
“I’ve been buzzing for ages.”

“Evenin
g,
Mrs. Duncan. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’d be better if you cleaned up a little in here. You know, my son is coming to visit today.” Leanne pulled the sheets of her hospital bed up just past her chest and raised the bed a little with the remote that hung over the rail on the side.

The nurse sighed and took an empty cup and removed the flowers from the vase on the bedside table. “You know we’re nurse
s,
Mrs. Duncan, not servants or decorators. I’m medically trained and I’m here to ensure your health and well-being. Not just to make the room look nice for visitors.”

The woman in the bed cleared her throat. “You change the sheets, do you not?” she asked, and then sniffed.

The nurse stopped mi
d-
step on the way out the door and threw daggers from her eyes.

Leanne tipped her a wink back.

The nurse grunted in exasperation and left. “Bitch,” she said under her breath, and bumped into Robert Duncan outside the room, almost knocking the fresh flowers he held out of his hand.

“Hi. I’m not too late for visiting hours, am I?” he asked, and flashed her a smile.

She found herself smiling back. “No, you just made it. Take as long as you like. The flowers are beautiful.” She stopped short of babbling. Smiling silentl
y,
instead, she nodded and stepped aside to let Robert into his mother’s room.

“H
i,
Ma. Are you winding up the nurses again?” He stepped to the bedside table and placed the new flowers in the empty vase. Then he leaned in to hug his mother. He pressed lightly, afraid to injure her now frail body.

“It’s the only entertainment I get around here. If you came to visit a bit more often I might find healthier ways of distracting myself from my surroundings.” She sniffed again, and used the bed remote to move the top half of the bed into a sitting position.

“They’ll smother you in your sleep, by the look of things. I don’t think they understand your sense of humor.” Robert took off his jacket and sat in the leather chair beside the bed.

“And who says I’m joking? If your father were here... Well, he wouldn’t have stood for it. This is supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the country, and I’m treated like a secon
d-
class citizen.”

Robert looked around the private room allocated to his mother. Besides the very comfortabl
e-
looking bed, the bedside tabl
e made of real wood,
and the leather chair he was sitting in, there was a hig
h-
definition TV on the wall, a view of the palatial hospital grounds, and remote control for everything from the windows to the light and heat. He knew she also had twent
y-
four-hour access to what amounted to room service for the food and drinks her doctors had allowed her to have, within moderatio
n,
of course. He honestly didn’t know if his mother was being serious or not, and didn’t care to ask. His visits were infrequent, and he preferred to think of his mother in positive terms while he was here.

“So how have you been feeling?” He settled back into the chair.

“I’ve had pains, but they give me relief for that. It makes me drowsy sometimes, but I have nothing else to do so I don’t mind a few extra naps. I barely slept, worrying over the years about you—and your father—and I suppose I’m overdue a few hours of rest.” Leanne plucked a tissue from a box on her bedside table and coughed weakly into it. "But never mind me, what’s been happening with you? How is that girl you’re seeing, what’s her name?”

“Eliza. And we’re not seeing each other anymore.” Robert knew she remembered her name, but didn’t bring it up.

“Eliza. That’s a pity, I thought you might have stuck this one out. What happened?”

“We just weren’t right for each other.”

“Well, that’s life, I suppose. You’re young and handsome; you’ll find someone else before too long. Maybe try out that Internet dating thing, I hear those nurses banging on about it to each other; they say you can pick and choose the type of person you want before you even meet them! Incredible, the world today.” She sniffed again, and reached for her call button.

Robert stopped her hand. “What do you need, Ma?”

“I’d love some fresh orange juice; they can bring it in for us.”

“They’re not servants, Ma. I’ll go get it, I'm a bit peckish myself. You want anything else while I’m in the cafeteria?”

“A tot of brandy, if you can?” She tipped him a sly wink.

Robert forced a grin, and nodded. “You’re a chancer. I doubt there’s a bar in a hospital, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Robert, you’re a good boy.”

“Thanks, Ma; you’re not so bad yourself.”

He stood and kissed her on the forehead and squeezed her hand. She held onto his for a few seconds before he turned and left the room, carrying his jacket in his hand.

As he passed the station outside the room he raised a hand to the nurse. After he went down the hall and out of sight around the corner, the nurse thought about how different he was from his mother. She was daydreaming about having her own child with her husband, foreseeing a happy home brought together by a baby when another buzzing sound went off on the panel in front of her. This sound was more urgent than the previous one, and she stared for a second before realizing that it meant Leanne was coding. She glanced at the clock above the sign and saw that she was only fifteen minutes into her shift, then she burst into the room she had left what felt like only moments befor
e
.

*****

Robert went down two flights of stairs and walked along the hall that connected to the cafeteria stairs at the other end of the building. When he had first arrived, he had wondered why it was so far away, but he began to notice that the antiseptic and medicinal smells faded as he made his way down. It was evening, usually a busy time, but he passed no one. No nurses rushing back to work, no patients shuffling along, hugging the wall for support. He opened the double doors to the cafeteria.

It was quiet in ther
e,
too. Two men and a woman, all in doctor’s whites, sat at a corner table at the far end of the room. There was also a man asleep in his tray on his own at a table in the middle. The only other people were the two women working at the food counter and a man in a gray t-shirt and sweatpants. The man in sweatpants was queuing for food with a tray piled high with snacks in front of him.

Robert went to the counter and one of the ladies arrived to serve him, beaming at him. He ordered and sat down nearby.

“I tell you, the service in here is horrendous,” Sweatpants at the food counter sai
d.
“Isn’t that right, Tina?” He turned his head and raised his eyebrows at Robert. “If I wasn’t sick already, that food would have me upstairs flat on my back in Intensive Care.”

“You be careful no
w,
Jimmy, or you’ll be eating your dinner off the floor with a pair of broken hands,” the first lady said.

She smiled at Robert, and he realized that they were joking with each other. He smiled a little to himself, and relaxed in his chair.

“Go on and sit down,” the dinner lady, sai
d.
“I’d say you’ve enough on that tray to keep you going.”

“I’ll sit down, but I want you to inform me immediately as soon as those sandwiches are up and running. A man can’t live on pastries and fruit.” Jimmy joined Robert at his table and opened up a bag of potato chips. He offered the open bag to Robert.

“N
o, thanks, I’ll wait for my own.”

Jimmy shrugged and stuffed a handful into his mouth.

He stopped mi
d-
chew, and asked, “You don’t mind if I sit here and wait with you, do you? I hate waiting on my own.”

Robert looked around at the empty tables and chairs and shrugged. “I guess not.”

Jimmy smiled through a mouthful of chewed chips. Robert couldn’t help but laugh, which made Jimmy’s smile even wider.

He dropped the plastic bag on the tray, wiped his hand on his pants and stuck it out in front of him. “Jimmy. Nice to meet you.”

Robert took his hand and shook. “Robert, nice to meet yo
u,
too. What are you in for?”

Now it was Jimmy’s turn to laugh. “Sounds like we’re locked up. Can you not tell?”

Robert frowned, shook his head.

Jimmy groaned, and slapped his forehead theatrically. “I forgot, I’m not wearing the bandage anymore. Memory has gone to shite. I banged my head. A subdural something or other, I was out cold for a day or so. Surgery and everything, just got the bandages off yesterday. Look.” Jimmy turned his head and pointed to a small scar on the back hidden in a tiny patch of shaved hair. “They say I was lucky not to have any brain damage, but I’m not so sure. I mean, I forgot the bandage was off, what else am I liable to forget?” He turned to the girls behind the counter. “Tina! What’s my name again?”

The man sleeping at the middle table snorted and muttered something before falling silent again. The girls shook their heads and laughed.

Jimmy smiled and turned back to Robert. “They’re a gas, that pair. Nicer than a few of the nurses, I tell you. So what’s your story? Wait, hold on, I know. You’re here to visit”—Jimmy put a finger to his temple and squeezed his eyes shut for a second—“your mother.”

Robert’s face gave away his surprise, and Jimmy gave him a toothy smile. “Knew it, I’m brilliant at guessing.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m a psycho.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can read minds. I read your thoughts and got the answer.”

“Psychic, you mean.”

“Yeah, that one.” Jimmy chuckled. “Only messing. You’re wearing outside clothes and you smell like perfume that older women wear. Deduction, my boy.” He put his hand to his chin, and affected a serious, thoughtful expression for a few seconds before chuckling again.

“That was good. I was never great at reading people.” Robert sobered at that thought
.
“So what happened? An accident, or what?”

Jimmy finished off his can of iced tea in one gulp and peeled a banana. He brandished it as he spoke. “It’s a funny story. I was working for a subcontractor installing electronics equipment, and we were coming up on the end of the contract. Our supervisor waddles in and says, ‘I know ye’ve been working hard boys, but I’m sorry, there’s been some management issues, so we won’t be gettin’ paid’”—Jimmy did a rough imitation of a countrified man who only took shit from higher-ups, and Robert grinned again—“and I thought, well, fuck this, I’m taking a long lunch and a longer drink. So I went down to the nearest bowry, I had a few small ales and a couple of large ones and I went back to finish the job. Professional pride and a skinful of dutch, you know?”

Robert, who had often had a drink on the job, nodded.

“About half an hour after I get back, I trip on a loose wire while I’m backing up unrolling some cable and bust my head on one of the steel cabinets. I woke up in a bed upstairs.”

Robert raised his eyebrows. “Shit. That’s a bad bit of luck.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t even claim off the accident because I had a drink on me. Chances are I would’ve tripped either way, but you can never know. So now I have to go looking for work as soon as they discharge me. I’m treating this like a holiday. The boss, fair play to him, sorted me out with this lovely hospital. The room is as good as any you’d get in a hotel, plus you get a free check up, so fuck it. I’ll drag out the symptoms for an extra day or two and get back to it.”