It was getting late. Yo-Yo and the Bobs would be expecting her to meet them at the Diner soon. She didn’t want to go, but she absolutely did not want to spend the rest of this night alone.
Then something occurred to her. One of those instinctive things that seemed to come out of nowhere but felt right. Kind of right. She sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the three business cards she had on her night table. Sticks, Monk, and Detective Martini. Picked one up. Called the number and waited through four rings before he answered.
“This is Rain Thomas,” she said.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Hi. Didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I didn’t expect to call you.”
“You did, though,” said Monk. “What can I do for you?”
“How much do you know about the way that boy hung himself?”
A pause. “Some. Why?”
“He hung himself with a shower curtain, right?”
“Yes,” agreed Monk.
“Did you see it?” asked Rain.
“The curtain? No, why?”
“Can you find out if it had a pattern on it?”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to say right now.”
“Look, Rain, if you know something about the case, then you should tell me about it. I can help. And I can run interference with the cops. Trust me.”
“Can you just find that out and let me know?”
He said, “Only if you promise to tell me what’s going on. No crap about blogging or Neighborhood Watch or any of that. The truth.”
Now it was her time to pause. “Monk,” she said, “do you believe in monsters?” She expected him to laugh. She expected him to make some snarky comment and hang up.
He said, “There are a lot of ways to answer that question. But, in general … yes, I do.”
Rain closed her eyes. “Call me when you find out about the pattern.”
She hung up, walked and fed Bug, got dressed, and went to meet her friends. She took the knife with her.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Monk Addison’s cell phone rang as he was nosing his car toward home. When he saw who it was, he pulled to the curb but left the engine running.
“Doc,” he said, “thanks for getting back to me.”
“Monk,” said Dr. Silverman, “what do you need?”
“Kind of an oddball request,” said Monk, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
“Oddball? From you? I’m shocked.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He kissed a cigarette out of the pack and slapped his pockets until he found his lighter. “I’m calling about the kid we came and looked at today.”
She paused. “Considering what happened, I’m not surprised you’re calling.”
“What, you mean because of Rain Thomas freaking out?”
“No, about what happened to the body.”
“You lost me,” said Monk. “What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?” she asked, clearly surprised. “Someone broke into the morgue and stole the boy’s body.”
“They did what?”
“Stole it,” she said, “bold as you please. In all my years, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not in Brooklyn. Doing that is bad enough, but then to go and burn it all the way over on Lincoln Avenue is beyond—”
“Whoa, stop,” insisted Monk. “Back up. You’re saying someone stole the kid’s body and then burned it?”
“Yes. They doused it with some kind of accelerant and set it on fire, right on the corner of Lincoln and Third. Whatever they used created an intense fire, because the body was literally incinerated, and it continued to burn despite the rain. There’s nothing left but ash and some of the heavier bones.”
“How’d they get the body out of the morgue?” demanded Monk.
Silverman described the few details she had, which were thin. The surveillance cameras in the hallway outside of the morgue had been on the fritz since the week before Christmas. Slick, the security guard, was on a pee break. There was a three-minute window for someone to enter the morgue, locate the body, remove it without stealing a cart, wheelchair, or gurney, and then vanish without being seen by anyone. The subsequent dumping and immolation of the victim was done with equal precision.
“Witnesses?” asked Monk. “At the morgue or on the street where it happened?”
“None the police have so far identified. Anna-Maria is understandably furious, and quite frankly, I’m pretty upset myself. Why do something like this? Was it malicious vandalism? Was it some kind of ritual thing? Personally, I’d love to see Anna-Maria put whoever did this in jail for a very long time.”
“Shit,” said Monk. “Any luck getting an ID on the kid yet?”
Silverman sighed. “None, I’m afraid. We’re running DNA, but with a boy that young, it’s unlikely there’s anything on file. Might be more useful comparing it should anyone choose to step forward and claim to be a relative.”
“Damn,” said Monk, staring out at the night. “Listen, will you answer one thing more for me?”
“Okay, what is it?”
“The shower curtain he used to hang himself with … did it have a pattern on it?”
“That’s an odd question,” said Doctor Silverman, “but … yes. It did.”
“What was it?”
“It was a clear plastic curtain, heavy grade, with a print of a painting. You’ve seen them. I guess they’re popular with the college dorm crowd. There are a lot of these things. Monet, Klimt, Frida Kahlo, I even saw a Kandinsky once. This one, though, was Van Gogh. You know, the swirly one. The Starry Night, I think it’s called.” She paused. “Monk, why do you want to know this? Do you know something about this case? What are you into?”
“To be honest, Doc, I don’t know what the hell I’m into.”
He ended the call, flicked the cigarette out the window, pulled a U-turn, and drove back to the brownstone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
They met like mourners. Quiet, haggard, sad-eyed.
Rain saw Yo-Yo and Gay Bob first, but Straight Bob was crossing the street and arrived at the same time she did. Straight Bob was walking very stiffly and carefully.
“You okay?” asked Yo-Yo.
“Wasn’t watching where I was going,” he said without looking up. “I, um, walked into a fireplug.”
They all looked at him, and he avoided looking back.
“Well, ouch,” said Gay Bob slowly, the skepticism clear in his tone. “That’s got to smart.”
Rain looked them up and down. Yo-Yo was taking long drags on a cigarette like she was trying to burn it all the way down with each puff. Gay Bob looked like he hadn’t slept in a month. “Okay,” said Rain, “what’s wrong with everyone?”
Gay Bob said. “Been a day, honey.”
“Well, no shit,” she said.
Straight Bob looked over his shoulder at the intense darkness. It wasn’t raining yet, but they all knew it would. He shivered. “I don’t want to talk out here.”
No one argued, and they went inside, found their favorite table, and sat staring at anything but one another.
Finally, Rain couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t know what’s going on with you guys, but I’ve had a really, really fucked-up day. Want to know what I did this afternoon? I went to the morgue and looked at a dead kid. He hung himself last night in the building on my block. I saw them take him out. Yo-Yo was with me.”
Yo-Yo’s head snapped around toward her. “You went to the morgue?”
“That’s kind of sick,” said Straight Bob.
“That’s kind of badass,” said Gay Bob.
“Why?” gasped Yo-Yo.
“I know why,” said Gay Bob. “You thought it was going to be the kid you saw on the train, the one you thought was maybe your son? Am I right?”
Rain said, “Maybe.”
“And.…?” demanded all three of them.
“It’s complicated.”
Betty arrived to take thei
r orders but paused, frowning. “Geez, what’s with you four? This is usually my happy table.”
They mumbled through their orders but did not answer her. She shrugged and drifted off.
Rain turned to the others. “She’s right. What is wrong with everyone? And if anyone says, ‘Nothing,’ I’m going to punch them.”
Gay Bob tried on a smile. Yo-Yo’s face was blank.
Straight Bob put his face in his hands and began, very quietly, to sob.
“Hey, hey,” said Gay Bob gently, putting a tentative hand on his friend’s shoulder. “What’s all this?”
Straight Bob’s voice was small, far away. Lost. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
Yo-Yo laced her arm through Straight Bob’s, and Rain took his hand. They clung together like that. There was no judgment in any of it. They had all stood up in meetings and talked about the things they had done to feed their addictions; the bad decisions made willingly, the paths of self-destruction walked with careful determination. Yo-Yo had given hand jobs at ten dollars each to make money. Gay Bob once kicked two guys unconscious for a minor infraction at Pornstash and then robbed them in the alley behind the club. Rain had her own list of crimes. Stealing from her parents, stealing from friends by pretending to borrow money she never intended to pay back, running street scams on kindhearted strangers. Stealing meds in two of the rehabs. If she hadn’t gotten into the last program, she knew for sure she’d have started giving blow jobs to truckers on the Jersey Turnpike, because that’s what a lot of girls did.
When Straight Bob could manage—and it took time—he wiped his tear-streaked face but didn’t look at anyone as he told them about the videos he watched. And the number of times he’d forced his raw and bleeding cock to stiffen, and how he punched his own groin over and over again when he could no longer accomplish even a marginal erection. He said that he passed out on the kitchen floor wearing a T-shirt and socks. He admitted to sitting in the shower for an hour, crying and thinking about how easy it would be to kill himself.
“What were these videos?” asked Yo-Yo quietly, bending to kiss his hand.
Straight Bob sniffed and shook his head. His face was red and swollen, and Rain worried about his blood pressure. “What does it matter?” he said. “It’s not what I watched, it’s that I couldn’t stop. I. Could. Not. Stop.”
“Tell us anyway,” said Rain.
He shook his head, and they sat in silence with him. But eventually he told them. Every detail.
As he spoke, Rain felt like she was being punched back into the Naugahyde cushions of the booth seat. Beaten by his words. Destroyed by them. In her mind, the chains holding the Box of Rain closed rattled as something inside fought to escape.
The nurse.
The nurse.
Goddamn it.
The nurse.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Monk parked across from the brownstone and stood studying it for a moment, trying to read its façade like a poker player across a table from him.
The building knows, he thought. It was a strange thought, but not for someone like him. He went inside and slowly climbed the stairs. He was halfway up the second flight when he heard someone cry out in abject horror.
“Oh, Jesus! Oh, my God!”
It was a man’s voice, and it was filled with unbearable horror.
Monk raced upward, taking the last steps three at a time. He wished he’d brought his gun, but as he reached the third-floor landing, it was clear he would not need it. No gun was going to help what he saw.
A young man with black hair and paint-spattered clothes leaned against the far wall, his beard flecked with fresh vomit, and more vomit was splashed on the wall and on his shoes. Midway down the hall, the rickety ladder lay on its side. Above it, swinging slowly from a rope attached to the exposed pipe, was a naked Japanese man.
The man’s face was purple, his thick tongue lolled perversely from between slack lips, and his sightless eyes stared through Monk and through the wall behind him and on out into the big black nothing. The swinging body was covered with crude tattoos that looked self-inflicted, like wounds. Old and new, some crusted with blood. The tattoos were words, written in kanji. Monk could read the language well enough.
Watashi o yurushite.
Repeated hundreds of times.
Forgive me.
And across the hall, written in a different hand, were words in English.
They are coming!
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“No,” whispered Rain. She gripped the table to keep herself from falling off the edge of the world. Straight Bob sat with his head against Gay Bob’s chest, heavy body quivering. “No, no, no, no, no, no, “no. It can’t be the nurse.”
Suddenly, everyone at the table was staring at her.
“Wait, what am I missing here?” asked Gay Bob. “Rain, do you know something about this nurse?”
“Of course I do. She’s always with him and—”
Rain screeched to a stop, horrified about what she had started to say.
“With … who?” asked Yo-Yo.
“No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t say his … I mean, he isn’t—” Rain babbled, trying to backpedal.
“No,” snapped Gay Bob. “No more of your famous Rain Thomas evasive bullshit. You’ve almost told us about something more times than I can count. Don’t look surprised; I’m a junkie, but I’m not stupid. Even yesterday when you were telling us about what happened in the city, you were clearly leaving stuff out. You’ve done it enough times. We all know you’re hiding something.”
Straight Bob and Yo-Yo nodded.
Run, begged her parasite. Get out of here before he finds out.
Rain sat with her back pressed into the cushions and her palms braced on the edge of the table. She did want to run, but her need to understand what Straight Bob saw in those videos was a more powerful and immediate force.
“This nurse,” she began slowly, “she has curly black hair, doesn’t she?”
“Wh-what?” gasped Straight Bob. “How could you possibly know that?”
“She does, doesn’t she?” After a moment, Straight Bob nodded. “And green eyes?” asked Rain. “Bright green, like a cat’s, am I right? They look like those color contacts, but they’re not. It’s her real color, but no one else has that same color.”
Straight Bob gave her an accusatory look, as if he was offended that she could know something that was part of his fantasy world, however damaged. He nodded again.
“Her lipstick is always red,” continued Rain. “Very bright and dark, like blood in a bad horror movie. Too red. She’s about five-five or -six. Slim build, but busty.”
“Yes, but Rain, how do could you possibly know what she looks like?”
“Because I’ve been seeing that evil bitch for ten years,” said Rain.
“What?” demanded Gay Bob. “Where? And how?”
“I don’t know how,” said Rain. “But remember when I shared that dream I had about when I had the baby? When I woke up and I was in the hospital room and thought I saw a doctor and a nurse take my baby?”
“Oh, shit,” said Yo-Yo. “You shared that at the meeting over by the ballpark. You told us the nurse licked all his features off his face. That was some disgusting shit.”
“You’re saying that’s the same nurse?” asked Gay Bob, confused and visibly shaken.
“That was the first time I saw her,” said Rain.
Yo-Yo frowned. “The first time…?”
“Yes,” said Rain, nodding slowly. “I’ve seen her hundreds of times since then.”
“In porn videos?” asked Straight Bob.
“No. In real life.”
“You’re losing me,” said Gay Bob. “You’ve been seeing her where? Is she in NA with us? Is she a local porn actress or something with a substance abuse issue? Is that who she is? Is that why you both have seen her?”
“I only saw her on the videos, and only recently,” said Straight Bob.
“I d
on’t know who she is,” Rain admitted, “and what’s worse, I don’t know what she is. But I know she was here at this diner, sitting at that table over there last night. Remember the nurse getting into that old car when we were leaving? That was her. She was also one of the EMTs Yo-Yo and I saw taking the dead kid out of the building.”
Gay Bob’s eyes snapped wide. “Wait, wait … the Cadillac last night. Holy shit.”
“What?” they all asked.
“I dreamed about it. And the people inside it. A doctor and a nurse, and some freak—maybe some kind of zombie—driving it.”
“Did she have black hair and green eyes?” asked Yo-Yo.
He nodded. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and he looked around, his eyes wild. “Fuck me. What is this shit? Are you saying you, me, and Straight Bob are having some kind of visions of the same nurse?”
“The nurse and the doctor,” said Yo-Yo, and they all looked at her.
“What?” croaked Rain.
Yo-Yo opened her purse and took out a folded piece of paper. “I wrote this last night, and I’ve been carrying it around with me all day.” She chewed her lip for a moment and then handed it to Rain, who unfolded it. The first lines were unbearable.
Absolutely unbearable.
Doctor Nine
Is as thin as a bone.
He is a scarecrow
From a blighted field.
She flung the page away as if it had stung her and filled her with a deadly poison. Gay Bob caught the page. Read it. He sagged back, his face going dead pale.
“No,” he breathed. “This isn’t … this isn’t…”
He was unable to finish. Straight Bob took the page from him and frowned. “This isn’t about the nurse,” he said. “Who the hell is Doctor Nine?”
Rain almost screamed to hear that name spoken aloud. Her parasite and all her inner voices did scream. And the chains on the Box of Rain groaned to the breaking point.
Gay Bob took the page back with a hand that shook so hard he dropped it, picked it up again, dropped it again, and left it lying there on the table.