“Swell,” muttered Monk. “Just what we need. More goddamn rain.”
“It’ll stop eventually,” she said.
“Could say the same about everything.”
Rain shrugged.
“Hey, by the way, sister, what’s your name? I never asked.”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Try me.”
“It’s Rain,” she said.
He laughed.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Got to make a couple of calls first to make sure we can do this,” said Monk, lingering in the foyer of her building. “You can wait in my car if you want.” He pointed to the old black Jeep Wrangler Rain had noticed earlier.
“I’ll wait,” she said.
“Suit yourself.”
Monk called the morgue to make arrangements to view the body. He put it on speaker so Rain could listen. It seemed legitimate, and that dialed her tension down a bit.
“Okay,” he said, pocketing his phone, “we’re good to go.”
He opened the door to go out but stopped when he saw that she wasn’t following. He sighed. “Look, how about I give you the address and you can meet me there?”
“No,” she said, “it’s cool. Let me make a quick call first, okay?”
Rain called Yo-Yo, got her voice mail, and explained who she was with and where she was going. Rain also ran through the shower and shielded her phone while she took a picture of Monk’s car and license plate. Then she stood under an awning while she sent it to Yo-Yo via text message. Monk looked amused, but when she looked at him, he nodded.
“Smart,” he said.
“I—” she began, but faltered in embarrassment.
“You have good safety instincts, Rain,” said the investigator. “Don’t stop short. Take a picture of me, too. And of my business card. You don’t know that I’m not a crazy ax murderer. Send enough information so that if I go all Hannibal Lecter on you, the cops will be able to find me.”
She did.
Once they were in the car and driving through the downpour, Rain tried to get a better look at the faces on the man’s arms and neck. She knew Monk was aware of her watching, but he didn’t comment. Finally, she came right out and asked. “What’s with the faces?”
Monk drove a couple of blocks in silence.
“I said, what’s with the—?”
“I heard you,” he said.
“And?”
“And it’s none of your business.” He wasn’t brusque or mean about it, but he didn’t leave a door open for more on that topic. Rain let it go. After a minute, Monk said, “So what’s your real interest in this kid?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s too freaky.”
Monk gave her a sideways look, then nodded, and the rest of the trip was silent except for the patter of raindrops and the whisk of the wipers. They arrived at a large, blocky redbrick building that looked too old to be of use to anyone. Cars with official plates crowded the small lot, and there were two ambulances standing quietly side by side to the right of the entrance. Rain thought the place looked entirely appropriate for where they’d take people who’d committed suicide. It was cheerless, heavy, and oppressive. Monk parked in a visitor slot and they ran for the door, trying and failing to stay dry. Monk bought hot coffees from a stand in the lobby. That helped, but there was a chill worming its way through Rain’s skin down to her bones.
They took the elevator down to the basement, where the lights were too bright, revealing old paint, cracks on the walls, suspicious stains. There was an intensely unpleasant medical stink to the air. A bored security guard sat behind an old desk reading a novel called The Shadow People. The title tickled at something in Rain’s memory, but it flitted away and she didn’t try to chase it. The guard, who looked like a retired cop, looked up as they approached.
“Hey, Monk,” he said.
“’Sup, Slick.” They shook hands, and Rain thought maybe Monk slipped the guard a folded bill, because the man slipped his hand immediately into a pocket.
“Little heads-up,” said Slick, “Anna-Maria’s in there with Doc Silverman. She won’t be happy to see you.”
Monk winced.
As they went past the guard, Rain asked, “Anna-Maria? Is that the cop?”
He looked surprised. “Detective, but sure. You know her?”
Rain briefly explained about the business card Joplin had given her.
“She’s a good cop,” said Monk. “But she’s not the friendliest person you’ll ever meet. It’s all about the job for her. Doesn’t like most people. Treats me like I’m dog shit on her shoe.”
“Why?”
“Because bounty hunters like me don’t have to follow the same rules and restrictions that tie her hands. I can kick a door without a warrant and all kinds of stuff. She resents me, and I guess I can dig why.”
“Swell,” said Rain. “This should be fun.”
There were two women in the morgue. One was old, with a Bette Midler face, gray-red hair in a loose bun, a white lab coat, and sensible shoes. The other was a thirtysomething petite brunette with a lovely face spoiled by a stern, thin-lipped mouth. The younger woman wore a dark blue pantsuit over a white blouse. Marginal lipstick and eyeliner; no smile. Suspicious eyes.
“Monk Addison,” said Detective Martini in about the same way someone might say head lice. Her lip even curled. “What do you want?”
“Nice to see you, too, Detective.”
“You don’t have business here, Monk. Get out.”
Monk held his hands up in a “no problem” gesture. “I’m on a case.”
“A case,” said Martini, crushing the word with her disapproval. Then her eyes clicked over to Rain. “Who’s this? Since when do bounty hunters have interns?”
Monk introduced Rain and explained where she lived and that she might have seen the victim. Martini gave Rain a more thorough evaluation and then asked to see her ID. Rain was already thinking that this was a bad idea, but there was no way to back out of the moment, so she produced her nondriver state-issued ID. Martini studied it, compared the photo to Rain, then handed it back.
Scowling with disapproval, Martini said, “Tell me exactly where you saw the boy.”
Rain had prepared an edited version of events. She described the boy she’d seen and gave a vague description of a tall white man with dark hair and sunglasses.
“He was wearing sunglasses in the rain?” asked Martini.
Rain shrugged. “What can I say? He had sunglasses on. Maybe he didn’t want people to see his eyes.”
The detective made a face like she was sucking a piece of lemon. “Did you see the man strike the boy?” asked Martini.
“What? No.”
“Did you see him inflict any injury?”
“No. It wasn’t like that,” Rain said quickly. “It was just a feeling I got when I saw them together. I got a creepy vibe.”
“A creepy vibe,” said Martini flatly. “That’s it? That’s all you can give me?”
“It’s all I have.”
Martini closed the notebook but didn’t put it away. “Very well. I take it you’re here to view the body for purposes of possible identification?”
“Well, I can’t actually identify him other than saying if it was the kid I saw with that guy.”
“Understood.” Martini turned to the doctor. “Navah, would you mind?”
The doctor, who had remained silent and observant until now, stepped forward and offered her hand. “I’m Dr. Silverman. Thanks for coming in, Ms. Thomas. It’s a brave thing you’re doing.”
Rain shook her hand, and there seemed to be more warmth in the medical examiner’s hand than in the whole world. Rain wanted to cling to it.
“Have you ever viewed a body before?” asked the doctor.
“No.”
“Are you sure you want to do this now? It can be unnerving.”
Rain took
a breath, held it, exhaled. “That kid must have been in hell to want to kill himself. If it’s the same kid I saw, then maybe you guys can help figure out why he died. Why he needed to kill himself. Or maybe figure out what he was running from.”
Martini, one eyebrow cocked. “What makes you think he was running?”
“Of course he was,” said Rain. “Why would you kill yourself if you weren’t running from something?”
The others exchanged looks, but no one answered the question. Without a further word, Doctor Silverman led them through the second set of doors.
INTERLUDE NINE
THE MONSTERS AND THE BOY
“Do you know what ‘hope’ is?” asked the doctor.
The boy was six, and this was a question he’d been asked dozens of times every month as long as he could remember. The boy watched TV all day and it was on all night, but he did not know the answer to the question.
No matter what answer he tried to give, there was a belt waiting. Or a big wooden spoon.
If he said nothing, it was the belt or the spoon.
Every time.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The room was very cold and very horrible.
The steel doors, the dissecting table, cameras, lights, all of it. Like it was in every cop movie, every morgue scene, every horror movie. Clean but not cleansed of every bit of misery that had passed through there. Rain could feel the hurt, the harm, the loss, the grief, the pain, the terror, the shock, and all the rest of it, as if all those emotions were spread like a veneer over every surface.
The doctor opened one of the metal doors, reached in, and slid a tray halfway out. The body was shrouded in a black rubber body bag, and Silverman glanced around at them before she touched it.
“You sure you’re ready?” she asked Rain.
“No,” admitted Rain. She nodded, though.
Monk stood close beside her, and Martini positioned herself on the other side of the slab. Rain guessed that the cop wanted to study her face. Go ahead, she thought, have fun with that.
Doctor Silverman unzipped the bag and gently parted the folds to expose the boy’s face and upper shoulders. Rain was relieved to see that there were none of the big Y-shaped surgical cuts she’d seen in movies. As if reading her thoughts, the doctor said, “An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” asked Monk. “Not today?”
“It’s the earliest available slot,” said Silverman apologetically.
Martini snorted. “Murders come first, and this is Brooklyn after all.”
The boy did not look like he was asleep. Nor did he have the waxed mannequin look people have in coffins at viewings. He was blue-white pale and looked empty. His hair was brown and looked almost translucent. His lips were parted to reveal dry white teeth, and one eye was half-open. The color was a dark brown covered with a milky glaze. The lips were faded to a dusty rose and looked chapped. The flesh around the boy’s neck was bruised, but even the bruise had gone pale. The skin, though, had a horrible crimped look to it. Rain stood there, taking in the details but otherwise unable to move, speak, blink, or even breathe.
“Ms. Thomas,” said Detective Martini, “can you identify this boy as the one you saw on the street and on the subway?”
“I … I can’t be sure,” she mumbled. “I need my glasses.”
She reached into her purse and brought out the old woman’s glasses. The doctor had a quirky half smile, as if surprised to see so old-fashioned a pair of glasses on so young a woman. The detective’s expression was as cold and uninformative as a reptile’s. Rain closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them and looked at the body.
Everything that she could see through the unbroken parts of the lenses was exactly the same as it had been a few seconds ago. Every single detail. But out of the corner of her eye, through that sliver of disjointed glass, there was definitely something different. Something wrong. Her heart stopped beating as if an invisible hand had reached into her chest and crushed it. Her breath died in her chest, turned sour, turned to poison, because the boy she glimpsed through that sliver of glass was the same one she had seen before. The one from the street in the city. The one from outside. The one from the train.
The one with Noah’s face and Noah’s eyes.
The room, already cold, went colder still. It reached unreal numbers, became a kind of cold that could not be measured. A degree of killing frost that touched her heart, her soul, and threatened to crack her into a million jagged pieces.
Don’t scream, she told herself, shrieking it inside her mind to drown out the sounds that wanted to burst from her constricted throat. Don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream.
Everyone was looking at her. How much time had passed? Two seconds? Ten? More? Time had no meaning at all except that it was measured by the roiling breath trapped in her lungs.
Breathe, you stupid cow. Breathe or they’ll know. It was her own voice, and the parasite, and all the others who wanted to own her mind but did not want her to be caught. The parasite spoke louder.
Breathe or they’ll make you talk. They’ll make you tell about him.
Him. Not the boy. Doctor Nine.
A fly buzzed in the air and landed on the crenelated edge of the zipper on the body bag. Its tiny wings fluttered for a moment, and Rain could see it wash its face with thread-thin arms. Then the fly crawled over the edge of the open flap and disappeared inside. A moment later it reappeared, walking across the bruised and icy flesh of the dead boy. The fly walked toward the thickest part of the ragged marks left by the knotted shower curtain and then stopped. No one seemed to notice it. Not the doctor, not the detective, not even Monk.
Did they not see it or…? Or was it that they couldn’t see it?
No. He only wants you to see.
The fly stood there, its multifaceted eyes seeming to stare up at Rain as if daring her—and her alone—to brush it away. As if saying, Go on, girl. Touch this skin. See if you can chase me from it.
Rain’s hands were like knots of ice at the ends of her arms. She looked sideways through the cracked glass at the boy. Then she blinked and the face changed. It was a boy’s face, but it was wrong. The dead boy was suddenly older. Not ten. Closer to twelve or more likely thirteen. There was the faintest shadow on his chin and upper lip. The signs of a puberty that had started before his life stopped.
No! She shouted the denial inside her mind. This is not my son.
And yet a voice—the boy’s voice from earlier today—whispered to her. Not yet, but it will be, he said. It might be. This is me if he wins. You have to do something, Mommy. He’s almost strong enough now. He’s almost able to come all the way through.
Rain snatched the glasses from her face and nearly snapped the frames, putting them back into the dark safety of her purse. As she did that, she heard the detective’s voice speaking as if from a great distance.
“Ms. Thomas, is this the boy you saw?”
“No.” The word came out jagged and rough. The body on the slab no longer looked like the one she’d seen last night. It was a trick. An evil, sly, cruel trick, aided and abetted by the broken glasses. She cleared her throat, coughed, tried again. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not him.”
The detective narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She backed away from the table.
“No doubts?”
“This isn’t him,” insisted Rain. She wanted so badly to be anywhere else but here. She gave a violent shake of her head. “I can’t do this.”
Rain turned and fled the room.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Yo-Yo went into the stall of the bathroom down the hall from where the NA meeting at a neighborhood rec center was about to start. It was a dingy little cubicle and not particularly clean. She cleaned the seat, covered it with pieces of toilet paper, removed her jeans and underwear and hung them on a hook, and stood for a moment, not sure whether she needed to pee more than she wanted to thro
w up. Her stomach had been a mess for a week now. At first she thought it was the spicy Guatemalan food she’d eaten at a neighbor’s birthday party. Several days of Tums and Pepcid later, she was beginning to worry that it might be something else.
The nausea bubbled and surged for a few moments, but then it settled back. Yo-Yo sighed, sat down, and stared at the inside of the closed door. There was a lot of graffiti scratched or inked onto it. Names, crude diagrams of oversized male genitalia, phone numbers, obscenities. The most recent stuff was written in black Magic Marker.
He’s coming.
And below that was:
The Shadow People are always hungry.
It should have been meaningless to Yo-Yo, and yet it made her skin crawl. She looked down so she wouldn’t see it. When she finished, she got cleaned up, dressed, and walked down the hall in time to see the meeting’s coordinator stack the last of the folding chairs against the wall.
“Hey,” she said, “what’s going on? Was the meeting canceled? Is everything okay?”
The coordinator, a short Asian guy wearing a TRENTON MAKES—THE WORLD TAKES sweatshirt, turned and frowned at her. “You’re Yo-Yo, right? That’s your name?”
She was surprised, because this was the first time she’d been to this particular meeting. “Yes, why? How’d you know my name?”
His frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”
She walked over to him. “I asked how you know my name.”
“I know, but I’m missing something here. You just told everyone your name.”
“Everyone—who? I was in the bathroom.”
He looked completely confused and wore a quizzical smile. “At the meeting. You were the first person to speak. You stood up, introduced yourself, and talked about your addiction.”
Yo-Yo stared at him. “Bullshit,” she said. “I was in the bathroom for five minutes. The meeting is supposed to start at five.”
“It did.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I mean five this afternoon. Now.”
The quizzical smile gave way to irritation and then was immediately replaced by concern. “Look, miss,” he said, “I have to ask. Are you using? Have you used today?”