The Scent of Murder (21 page)

The back door was locked, but since five out of eight bottom windows were broken, it didn't make a whole lot of difference. As I knocked the remaining shards of glass out of the second window to the left with the end of my flashlight, I tried to suppress my growing sense of unease. I mean, why should I be nervous? Could it be because the last time I'd gone into a deserted building looking for Amy, I'd almost gotten blown into tiny little pieces? Or maybe it was because I was about to voluntarily walk into a place where you learned how to embalm people? If this were a movie and I were in the audience, I'd be telling my character, “Don't go. Turn back.” And when my character went in, I'd turn to my friend and say, “how can she be such a moron?”

Simple. My impatience was getting the better of me.

I just wanted to wrap this up.

Besides, I thought I had everything covered.

Fat chance. The truth is, no one ever does—unless you're God. And even he has trouble on some days.

Oh well.

I took a deep breath and climbed through the window. Welcome to the fun house. I turned on the flashlight the moment my feet hit the floor and moved it in a semicircle. I was in a large room. It smelled musty. And something else. Something acrid, something chemical. My light caught chairs over by one wall. A large blackboard took up another wall. Wooden shelves laden with large jars full of dark liquids—that I had a feeling I didn't want to know about—lined a third. Four stainless steel tables sat in the room's center. I heard a rustling noise. Mice, I told myself, but I shivered anyway.

My sense of foreboding grew.

I couldn't imagine Amy voluntarily hiding out here.

In the dark.

Alone.

I couldn't even imagine doing it with a friend.

This made no sense.

None at all. And in the past couple of years, I've grown not to like things that don't make sense.

I grasped the flashlight and bat with my knees, cupped my hands, and yelled out for Amy.

Her name echoed in the dark, as if I were in a canyon in some unnameable country.

I stood there with my head cocked, listening for an answer.

From far away, I heard the unmistakable sound of a door slamming shut.

The front door.

It had to be.

I cursed and started to run.

The door to the next room was slightly ajar. I crashed through it. And that was the last thing I remember.

T
he first thing I did, when I came to, was sit up. Which was a mistake. My head started pounding, the room started spinning, and I threw up. Great. I have a concussion, I thought, while I puked. By now I recognized the symptoms. I should, I've had enough experience—not that this was an area I'd ever wanted to acquire expertise in. When I was done, I gingerly explored the back of my head. It was very tender, I could feel a bump, but my fingers came away dry. No blood. For a change. I wondered who had hit me. Amy? Then who had I heard down at the other end of the building. Who else had been here?

I groaned, as I picked up my flashlight—thank God I'd put in new batteries. Otherwise it would have probably gone out-by now—and started to get up. I was moving my hands to give myself better leverage, when I felt something hard under my fingers. I brought the light around. It was a brick. Then I noticed two more lying on the floor close by. I had an idea. I got up and dragged a chair that was standing nearby over to the door. I had to wait for a second for the new wave of dizziness to pass, but when it did, I climbed up and shined my light on the top of the door. It was dusty, except for three clearly defined spaces—spaces I was positive the bricks had occupied.

I climbed back down before I fell off. Cute. No one had been waiting. I'd walked into a booby trap. And I was pretty sure I knew who'd set it: Amy. It was the kind of thing she'd do. Amateurish, but effective. Just like the mousetrap she'd put in her desk drawer. I wondered if she'd ever read the Hardy Boys when she was growing up. Another wave of dizziness hit me, and I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. Knowing Amy, she hadn't meant to kill anyone or even injure them that badly, just to slow them down. Which she'd certainly done. When I could, I opened my eyes and shined my flashlight on my watch face. Twenty minutes had passed since I'd first come in. Amy was long gone by now. I wondered if Toon Town had known about Amy's little surprise when he'd sent me in. Or was this something she'd thought up on her own?

I promised myself I'd ask her, if I ever got the chance. Which was seeming less and less likely.

I followed the same route going out of the building I had coming in.

I'd had my share of surprises for the evening. I wasn't anxious for any more.

I'd taken five steps, when I groaned. God, I couldn't believe it. I'd left my keys in the ignition. I'd been so fixated on getting Amy that I'd turned the motor off and just walked away. I checked my pockets anyway and then, just to be sure, I checked them again. The only things I found were some pennies and a stick of gum.

As I climbed out the window, I told myself maybe Toon Town and Amy hadn't taken off.

Maybe Amy had just run away and left Toon Town collapsed in the cab. But I didn't think so.

And then I thought about Amy driving. She had to be. Toon Town certainly couldn't.

The thought hurt worse than my head did.

I started to pray that I was wrong.

But I wasn't.

The spot where my cab had sat was empty. It was gone. Along with my backpack and my phone. And the worst part of the whole thing was that I couldn't blame anyone but myself.

I started looking for a phone booth. All the stores were shuttered for the night. There were no houses and, even if there were, I would have hesitated to knock. This was the sort of neighborhood where people were apt to answer with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. I kept going. The rain was lighter now, but it was cold, the drops numbing my skin. I turned up my collar, hunched my shoulders, put my hands in my pockets, and tried to keep to the wall as much as possible. A dog yipped off in the distance. The humming of the streetlights kept time with my steps. Half a block later I spotted an AM-PM Mini-Mart and headed towards it.

A pay phone sat off to one side of the parking lot, well out of the way of the two gas pumps. I accidentally kicked a Snapple bottle as I walked towards it. It rolled down the tarmac, stopping just short of the street. I sneezed, as I dug some quarters out of my jacket pocket. I called my house first. No one answered. I called Tim's house next, hoping he'd gone back there. But he hadn't. Which left me with one choice.

I took a deep breath and dialed George's number. I'd been going to call him anyway. This just wasn't the way I wanted to do it. He picked up immediately—he'd probably been studying or working on his paper.

“I'm glad you phoned,” he began. “I've been thinking about the other night. I was out of line.”

“So was I.” I was surprised at how happy I was to hear his voice. “I had no call to say what I did.”

“You want me to come over? I'm about ready to take a study break.”

“Good.” I gave him an extremely abbreviated version of what had happened.

“That wasn't what I had in mind.”

“I know.”

He sighed. “All right. Give me the address. I'll be right there.”

I went into the store after I hung up. It was small, its merchandise shoehorned into several shelves, most of which were filled with snack foods of various kinds. The black-and-white checkered linoleum floor needed to be washed and one of the overhead neon lights flickered in a way that indicated it was going to have to be changed soon. The clerk glanced up when I came in, then went back to reading a book. He was maybe eighteen or nineteen and had the look of a college student. During the time that George took to arrive, which was twenty minutes, he didn't do anything to indicate he was aware of my presence.

Which was okay with me, because I wasn't in the mood to make polite chitchat. I wasn't even in the mood to say hello. I spent the time watching the rain falling, wishing my headache would go away, thumbing through yesterday's edition of the
Herald Journal,
and trying to piece together what had happened.

I was still trying to do that when George roared up. As I walked out, he leaned over and opened the Taurus's door. I got in. The seat was soft. The air smelled faintly of George's aftershave. I could feel my muscles start to unknot. Why were we always fighting? I wondered. Why couldn't we just talk things through?

“Let's go,” I said, and closed the door.

“Not until I know what's going on.” George turned off the engine and waited.

“Fine.” Since I had a pretty good idea where Amy was going, fifteen minutes really weren't going to matter much, one way or the other. I settled into my seat and told George about the kidnapping ploy and finding Toon Town and how we went to Gerri Richmond's and then to the embalming school building. I told him about the booby-trapped door and how I'd gone in one end of the building and Amy had gone out the other and driven off with my car.

“How'd she'd get the cab started?” George asked. He'd been silent until that point.

I was going to say Amy had hot-wired it, but I was too tired to lie, so I told him the truth. George started laughing before I'd even finished. At another time I would have joined in, but not now. Now all I felt was an irrational anger. Anger at George for laughing. Anger at Amy for doing what she'd done—making a fool out of me. But most of all, what I felt was anger at myself. Then, as quickly as it had come, the rage subsided and I began to smile. The situation really was pretty funny. I looked over at George. He'd stopped laughing and had begun making soft popping noises with his lips—a sign that he was thinking.

“Where do you think Toon Town would have gotten his hands on a bugging device like the one you described?” he asked.

“Remember, he installs security systems for a living. He probably has access to lots of stuff.”

George shook his head in disgust at himself. “That's right. I forget. And even if he didn't, he could get it through the mail.” He followed a man walking into the mini-mart with his eyes. “It's amazing what you can get through catalogs.”

“Isn't it,” I observed, as a car drove down the street, rap music blaring out its window, the sound waves echoing in the night like the wake of a boat.

George waited until it was quiet before he continued talking. “So at the moment,” he said, “as far as you know, Amy and Toon Town have the diamonds.”

“Yes.”

“And Amy took them from her father's apartment?”

I nodded.

“And someone's been chasing her ever since.”

I nodded.

“I guess you were right, after all.”

“I wasn't going to say it.”

“At least not tonight.”

I shrugged and smiled.

George drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “What I'd like to know is, where this guy came from and how come whoever is following Amy knew she'd taken them.”

I could think of three possibilities. I ticked them off. “He either saw her coming out of her father's apartment, or Amy told someone, or he figured it out.”

“Those three possibilities all depend on the fact that this person already knew the diamonds were there,” George observed.

“I know.”

George shook his head. “Dennis was a moron. He should have just transferred the money to the Cayman Islands like everyone else. It would have been a hell of a lot easier. On him.”

“Well, his wife said the funeral was nice.”

“Let's hope he found that thought comforting.” George started drumming his fingers on the dashboard again. “The question is: where did the money come from?”

I thought about Frank and Charlie arguing over the balance sheet. Then I thought back to when my family had run a business and what had happened there. “He was skimming off the family business. He had to be. It's the only thing that makes sense.”

George nodded his head in agreement and turned the key in the ignition.

“All right,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

I brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes before I answered. “I figure, given Toon Town's condition and the fact that Amy's probably behind the wheel, they're going to go to the ER room at St. Ann's, the house on Easton, or Toon Town's home.”

“Which one do you want to start with?”

“St Ann's. It's the closest.”

“What if they're not in any of those places?”

“I guess I'll have to call it in.”

George put the Taurus in reverse and backed up onto the street. “Boy, Connelly's gonna love this when he hears about it.” He took a left.

“Maybe he won't.”

“And maybe jellybeans won't melt in the rain.”

We were passing the school when I saw my cab.

It was parked right where I'd left it when I'd gone in the building.

G
eorge raised an eyebrow. “I guess they didn't get very far,” he observed.

“I guess not.”

George parked a little way down the street, and we got out and started towards the cab. Both of us were silent. Both of us were uneasy. George liked the unexplained even less than I did. When we reached it, I hesitated for a few seconds before opening the door to the driver's side.

“Here goes,” I said, afraid of what I was going to find.

But everything looked the same. I checked the rear seat. My backpack and cell phone were still there.

George zipped up his Windbreaker. “Why do you think they came back?” he asked.

“Maybe Amy left something inside.” It was the only answer I could come up with, but it wasn't very satisfying. Where was Toon Town? Unless he'd had a miraculous recovery, I couldn't imagine him walking across the street, let alone through the building. And I sure as hell couldn't imagine Amy carrying him.

“So what do you want to do?” George enquired, as I closed the cab door. A small smile played around the corners of his mouth. I could tell he knew what I was going to say. I didn't disappoint him either.

“You have a flashlight in your trunk?” I asked. I would use mine if I had to, but the beam was weak, and I would have preferred something of a better quality.

“We could wait until they come out,” George suggested. “It might be easier.”

“Not for me.” I was cold, I was tired, I was hungry, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my night in a car—even if I were with George.

“I figured.” He walked back to the Taurus.

He returned a minute later carrying two substantial-looking metal flashlights. He handed one to me and we walked across the street. This time I made a full circuit of the building. There were three exits, not two, as I'd previously thought. One in back. One in front. And one on the right side of the building. I checked each of them. The one in the back and the one on the side were locked, but the one in front wasn't.

“They must have come in this way,” I observed, and pushed the door open with the flashlight handle. Nothing fell down. Amy had missed an opportunity—or maybe she just had something else waiting for us inside. George played the beam of his flashlight up, down, and around. It caught squares of linoleum floor tile, bulletin boards, and a covered radiator, but no trip wires.

We looked at each other and stepped inside. Nothing happened. George made as little noise as possible shutting the door, but the click seemed to reverberate throughout the hall. I sniffed the air. It smelled old, as if it had been there for fifty years or more. I took a step. The linoleum groaned. George took a step. The linoleum groaned louder.

“Forget about trying to surprise them,” he whispered. His breath was hot on my ear.

“I know,” I whispered back.

But just the same, we tried to make as little noise as possible, as we moved across the hall. I'd taken about ten steps, when we came to another door. It was open. I inspected the floor with my flashlight. Its beam picked up drops of something dark. I nudged George to show him. Then I squatted down and touched one of the spots with my finger. It was wet. I brought my finger up to my nose and sniffed.

“Blood.” I wiped my hand on my jeans. If I had to bet, I'd say it was Toon Town's. I was surprised he'd gotten as far as he had.

George grunted and focused his beam of light in front of him. There seemed to be more spots, but then some of them scuttled away and I realized they were roaches. I repressed a shiver. I hate those things. Probably a holdover from all my years in New York.

“I guess the trick is to follow the spots that stay still,” George said, as he moved ahead.

I didn't reply. The dark disoriented me, and I was glad that the Windbreaker George was wearing was fluorescent. It stood out in the dark like a beacon, tethering me to him. I kept listening for sounds, but the only noises I heard were rats scuttling out of the way and the sound of my heart beating in my chest. George and I seemed to be in the main reception area now. The space felt bigger. A large kiosk squatted in the center. I caught glimpses of a stairway with a bannister off to the left. Three doors loomed up in front of us.

George and I both stopped. A car roared by outside and the noise made us jump.

“You see any more spots?” George asked. He was still whispering, even though Amy and Toon Town had to have heard us by now.

I fanned my flashlight in a half circle. My beam picked up something I thought might be a spot about three feet in front of me and off to the right a little. I walked over and, when it didn't move, I squatted down and touched it with the tip of my finger. It was wet. Then I saw more blood splatters. They led to the middle door. I stood up and indicated the path with my flashlight. I caught a whiff of George's cologne as he brushed by me. I followed. He paused in front of the door. I heard him swallow. I heard him take a deep breath. Then he raised his leg and kicked the door open. I felt a movement in the air, as the door flew back and crashed into the wall. The dark amplified the crash and it reverberated through the room. For a second, before George and I lifted our flashlights, the door framed a rectangle of blackness that seemed absolute, the definition of nothingness. Then I heard a moan.

George turned back to me. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Yes.”

We heard the moan again. It was fainter this time. And it was coming from inside the room. Our lights picked up desks and chairs, a piece of crumpled paper on the floor, a blackboard with writing still on it, and then a figure huddled on the floor in the far right corner. George checked the doorway for traps. There weren't any, and we went through. The air smelled of chalk dust and fresh urine.

“Toon Town?” I asked, as I walked towards the figure in the corner. I was positive it would be him.

He groaned, then answered yes in a voice so low I wouldn't have heard it if I weren't almost next to him.

George and I squatted down beside him. He turned towards us and I heard the intake of George's breath as he looked at Toon Town's ruined face. His eye and his mouth had swollen even more since I'd seen him last. In the light, his injuries seemed grotesque. He was barely recognizable.

His mouth moved. He was forming words, but they were garbled, and I couldn't understand what he was saying. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Can you say that again.”

He tried. I could see his face contorting with the effort. “I'm shot,” he finally managed to get out.

George played his flashlight's beam over Toon Town. The midsection of his shirt was saturated with blood. George picked up its edge, looked, then put it back down.

“He's been shot in the stomach,” he said. I couldn't read the expression on his face. It was too dark. Then he rested a finger on the side of Toon Town's neck. “His pulse is low.” He unzipped his Windbreaker and draped it over Toon Town. I did the same with my jacket. I touched his hand. It was cold and clammy. I wondered if he would live.

George bent over Toon Town. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I'm going to call someone to help you right away, but I have to know: is Amy hurt, too?”

Toon Town groaned. “I don't know. They took her.”

“Who is they?”

Toon Town closed his good eye.

“Please tell us,” I begged. “I know you don't want anything to happen to her.”

A spasm crossed Toon Town's face. “I don't know where they took her,” he said, when it had passed. “I didn't see. They shot me. Then they left.”

George sighed. “I'm going to call for an ambulance now.”

Toon Town said something I couldn't catch.

“They'll be right here. You'll be fine.” George patted Toon Town's hand, trying to reassure him. But I could hear the lie in George's voice. I wondered if Toon Town heard it too. Then George stood up. “I'll be back as soon as I make the call,” he said to me. He started walking towards the main entrance. I could hear his footsteps echoing through the room as he went.

Toon Town pulled on my sleeve. I leaned down. He pulled some more. I leaned closer. My ear was just a couple of inches away from his mouth. His breath was sour. “I didn't mean for it to happen this way,” he told me. He made a strange mewling sound. It took me a few seconds to realize he was crying. “I thought Amy would be all right. I wouldn't have called if I didn't. You believe me, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted a little candy. That wasn't so wrong, was it?” Toon Town made a rasping sound and grabbed my hand with his. It felt as if I were shaking hands with the iceman. A few seconds later, he slackened his grip. His hand fell back down. He began to ramble. “Families. You can't trust them at all. You think you can, but you can't.”

I leaned closer. “Are you talking about Amy's family?”

“Worse than mine,” Toon Town mumbled. “Mine might hit me, but at least you know where you stand. Not like hers. Double-dealing sons-of-bitches.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I was gonna go down to Mexico and live on the beach. Why should they have all the fun just because they were born better than me?”

“Do you mean her brother? Her cousin? Her uncle? Her mother? Who?”

But Toon Town didn't answer my question. I don't think he even heard it. “I'm smarter than they are. Just because I couldn't afford no college education.” And then he stopped talking.

“Come on,” I said. “Tell me.” I leaned even closer.

But he didn't. He shoulders arched up. He made a gargling noise. Then his head fell to one side. I realized I couldn't feel his breath on my face anymore. I sat back and rested one of my fingers on his neck. I couldn't feel any pulse at all. Nothing. Toon Town was dead. I closed his eyes and stood up, wishing that I felt sorrier about his death than I did and wondering who it was that Toon Town had been talking about.

I gave him one last look and headed for the door. There was no point in sticking around. Toon Town didn't need me now. I held the flashlight to my watch. George had been gone five minutes at the most. It seemed like fifteen, though. I walked through the room quickly. I wanted to get out as soon as possible. I didn't like this place. I wouldn't have liked it in the daylight, and I sure as hell didn't like it now in the dark. I was walking through the reception area when I thought I heard something. I stopped and listened. There it was again. It was a song. I made out the first stanza to “Three Blind Mice.” Then I heard a giggle. The sound seemed to drift out of nowhere. I wondered if that was because the dark had affected my spatial perception, or because the acoustics in the building were strange.

Then the same person—it sounded liked a young girl—started singing “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” She was slurring the words as though she were either very drunk or very stoned.

Amy?

But that didn't make any sense.

Given what Toon Town had said before he died and the way he looked, I would have expected her to be dead, not stoned or drunk off her ass.

But if it wasn't her, who the hell else was it?

By now, whoever was singing had gone on to “London Bridge.” She'd gotten to “take a key and lock her up,” when I realized the sounds were coming from the direction of the stairs.

I briefly entertained the notion of going out and getting George, but I decided against it. If the person singing was Amy, I wasn't going to need him and, if it were someone else, I didn't want them slipping out the side or back doors while I went out the front. As a possible witness to what had happened here, I wanted to make sure they didn't go away.

I walked towards the stairs, aimed the beam up, grabbed the bannister, and started to climb. I'd gotten to the fourth step when I heard a crunch. I'd stepped on something. I hoped it wasn't a giant roach. I lowered the beam and looked. I'd stepped on a small bone. The roach would have been better. I shone the beam up the next couple of stairs and saw more bones. Little ones. A small pile of them. I swallowed. My heart was pounding, as I went up to inspect them. I lifted one up and the others came with it. They were all attached.

I saw the clasp and started to laugh. I was holding Amy's bracelet. So it
was
Amy upstairs. The girl was amazing. Nothing seemed to touch her. As I slipped her bracelet in my pocket, I wondered who her guardian angel was and if maybe he could care for me, too.

I redoubled my pace. Amy was singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” when I got to the second floor. By the time I got to the third floor, she'd just finished. I swung my flashlight around. There was nowhere else to go. I couldn't go any higher. Amy had stopped singing now. I couldn't hear anything. Everything was quiet. I stood absolutely still and listened as hard as I could. Then I heard footsteps.

Above me.

Amy was on the roof.

Jesus, I thought, as I walked from room to room swinging my flashlight this way and that to make sure there were no booby traps, this girl doesn't make anything easy for anyone. I was in too much of a hurry to watch where I was going, and I kept crashing into things. Rats scurried out of the way. I started shouting out Amy's name. I don't know if she heard me or not, but she started singing again. Finally, in the fourth room, I found the way up to the roof. It was one of those pull-down metal staircases that you could raise and lower. As I climbed up, I realized that even though it was night, it was lighter outside than it had been inside.

The first thing I did when I clambered out onto the roof was to take a deep breath of fresh air. God, it was good to be outside, away from the must and the mold. The sky was still grey, although the clouds had thinned enough for me to see the moon behind them.