Caroline stepped into the foyer, and a young woman in a simple navy blue suit pulled an inner door open as if she’d been waiting for her. The first thing that struck Caroline was the smelclass="underline" the same terrible stench of death that had emanated from Rodney’s torn throat only a few hours ago now permeated the entire lobby. She took an involuntary step backward as the foul aroma filled her nostrils, and would have fled back out into the bright morning sunlight had not Frank Oberholzer’s firm hand held her steady.
“Jesus, Hernandez,” she heard the detective say. “Does the whole place smell like this?”
The woman in the navy blue suit nodded. “We haven’t figured out where it’s coming from. And you don’t get used to it, either. At least I haven’t.” She turned to Caroline and offered her hand. “I’m Detective Hernandez.”
Caroline barely noticed the proffered hand, and only half-heard what Maria Hernandez had said as she tried to get a grasp on what was happening.
Everything about the lobby had changed.
The furniture seemed to have grown decades older overnight — the sofa sagged, its cushions looked lumpy, and the upholstery on everything was frayed and faded. Nor was it just the furniture that had changed — the murals on the walls and ceiling had darkened to the point where they hung over the room like a funeral shroud, making it feel as if the strange world they depicted were somehow closing in around her. The sliver of moon — which had looked oddly brighter to Caroline only a few days ago — had somehow vanished, and the storm clouds appeared heavier and lower. The strange horned creatures that before had been barely visible in the thick foliage seemed now to have emerged, and were waiting eagerly to snatch scraps from the table around which the ravenous men sat consuming their feast.
But the feast had somehow gone, leaving the table bare except for some grisly stains that looked in the dim light of the lobby like congealing blood. The fireplace — which had always held a burning log no matter how hot the day or night — was dark, and even though Caroline was at least thirty feet from it she could feel a draft creeping from its depths.
A draft that felt as cold as death itself.
Shivering, she turned away from the fireplace and found herself looking straight at the doorman’s booth.
The booth in which lay Rodney’s body.
That was where the smell was coming from, of course. But why hadn’t they found him? Yet even as the question formed in her mind, so also the answer began to take shape, and almost against her own will she found herself walking toward the booth.
Her footsteps on the cold marble of the floor echoed in the gloom, for the sconces on the wall seemed unable to conquer the darkness that had fallen over the lobby, and the throbbing of Caroline’s own heart echoed the sound of her feet in its turn, growing louder with every step she took. She came at last to the booth, steeled herself against the heavy stench of death that seemed to be permeating her very pores, and looked over the counter to the floor behind it.
All she saw was bare marble — black and white marble — in the same checkerboard pattern as the rest of the lobby.
No sign of Rodney’s corpse, no spreading stain of his blood. Only the smell — the terrible smell that had spewed from his wound.
Frowning, feeling utterly disoriented, she turned to look at the woman in navy blue. “Where is he?” Her voice echoed in the emptiness, just as had her footsteps and the beating of her heart.
“Who?”
“The doorman,” Caroline breathed, her voice taking on an edge of desperation. “His name was Rodney.” Uncertainly, almost as if she was no longer certain exactly where she was, she turned back once more to the spot where she’d last seen him, his throat ripped and spewing blood, his fingers spasmodically reaching toward her. “He was here.” She hesitated, then: “He was dead.”
Hernandez shook her head. “Not there,” she said. “We didn’t find the doorman, or anybody else.”
Then Frank Oberholzer was beside her. “You want to show me where you found Laurie?”
Nodding silently, Caroline led him to the door to the basement, then down the stairs. Someone had turned on more lights, and the bright glare of naked bulbs had banished the dimness of the night before. When they came to the place where she’d slammed the door — slammed it on Tony’s fingers — then locked it before she and Ryan bolted upstairs, they found it standing open.
But there was no sign of Anthony Fleming’s fingers, nor even a stain on the concrete floor where she’d seen them fall.
They passed through the door, then down the narrow passage to the door behind which lay the room where Ryan had found Laurie. The uniformed officer who stood just outside raised his hand in something that wasn’t quite a salute.
“Lab guys aren’t here yet.”
“We’re not going to touch anything,” Oberholzer replied. “Just taking a look.”
This area, too, was brightly lit by bare bulbs that hung from the low ceiling. Six gurneys stood against the far wall; four of them were empty, but two were not.
On one of the gurneys lay all that was left of Rebecca Mayhew. Her abdomen gaped open; her torso had been gutted of its organs. Her skin had been stripped away to leave her decomposing flesh exposed, and her empty eye sockets gazed sightlessly upward. Maggots were still writhing in the rotting meat, and as Caroline and the detective drew close a cockroach vanished into one of Rebecca’s nostrils.
On the other gurney lay a boy, his body not yet gutted. He appeared to be a year or two older than Ryan, and everywhere his skin was scarred with the marks of the needles that had tapped every secretion his body had held.
Her eyes flooding with tears, Caroline turned away, and a moment later Oberholzer led her back upstairs, where he guided her gently toward the elevator. “I think we should take a look at your apartment,” he said, his voice as gentle as his touch. “Whatever we find, it can’t be any worse than what we just saw.”
Her eyes as frightened as a rabbit’s, Caroline looked back toward the doorman’s desk. If the bodies of the children were still there, what had happened to Rodney’s? She had killed him — she knew she had! Killed him, and left him bleeding right there! But now—“It isn’t possible,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I know what happened — I know what I did—”
“Let’s just go upstairs and take a look around.” Oberholzer pulled open the door of the elevator’s cage, and Caroline let him steer her inside. Oberholzer closed the door, pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the car started to rise. As the doorman’s desk slid out of her view, Caroline finally looked at Oberholzer, her ashen cheeks stained with the tears that had overflowed as she gazed into the lifeless face of the boy in the basement. “They’re all gone, aren’t they?” she whispered. “Not just Rodney — all of them.”
“We’ll find them,” Oberholzer replied, his voice as hard as the look in his eyes. “We don’t let people disappear who do things like that.”
The elevator lurched to a stop at the fifth floor, and as Caroline gazed at the door to Anthony Fleming’s apartment she felt a strange sensation of disconnection taking place inside her. Not our apartment, she thought. His. The door to the apartment stood open; a uniformed policeman stood in the hall next to it. And the same stench of death that permeated the lobby and the basement now poured forth from the rooms into which she had taken not only herself, but her children as well.