No. She somehow doubted he’d managed to chop off both of his own arms.
How close had he gotten to Chelsea? What the fuck had happened to him?
Beulah found a window, thickly covered by black burlap, and opened it. Fresh air—what passed for fresh air in Downside, that was, which meant it stank of poverty and old grease, but thankfully not of death this far from the Slaughterhouse—began to chase a bit of the suffocating heaviness away, but not much. Not enough.
With that feeble air came light, enough for Chess to see the pills strewn everywhere. She snapped on a latex glove, bent to pick one up with a superstitious shudder.
Vapes; Vapezine. Heavy psychotropic, one she didn’t have a particular interest in. Hallucinatory meds never really did it for her. The odds of a good trip just weren’t good enough. But the floor in that room was littered with them, shiny hot-pink-and-white capsules all over the carpet, crushed into it like bright candy melting in the sun.
“Lookin like he spend himself some time on the other side,” Lex remarked. “Strong shit there.”
Chess dropped the pill she’d been inspecting. “I guess so.”
“That’s not all he was taking, either,” Beulah said. Against the window she was a silhouette, silver-edged in the dark; she held up a couple of empty pill bottles. “He didn’t buy these from us. He had a prescription. Lots of prescriptions, for all kinds of shit.”
Chess looked at the labels, looked around. “How old are the scripts?”
“Recent. All of them in the last few weeks. All the same prescribing doctor, too: Pritchard, in Cross Town.”
“So he was taking more than just—” Something snapped into place then, the thing that had been bothering her since the second she saw the pills on the floor. Or rather, the other thing that had been bothering her, the thing that had nothing to do with the case at all.
She needed air. “I’m, um, let’s go, okay? Let’s get out of here, and I’ll call the Church.”
“What? But shouldn’t—”
No. She couldn’t stand there another minute, not without a smoke, and another handful of pills, and she wasn’t about to put anything into her mouth in that foul death-chamber. “I’m going to get some air, okay; I’ll be right back.”
She banged her knee against something as she stumbled out of the apartment, the dull circle her flashlight cast bobbing before her as if on a spring. She started to turn right to head back to the street but had the presence of mind not to go down there alone, so instead she went left and up, to the next floor and the roof access door she hoped would be there.
Her breath grew shorter with every step, panic creeping from her stomach to her head, hitting her harder and harder. That body in there, that body all alone on a bed in a room full of pills, the body of someone who’d gone on a hard run that never ended. It was hers. It was her body, her future, what her future could be. What her future would be now that she’d fucked up everything with Terrible, fucked up her entire life. Again.
The roof door—thank fuck it existed—burst open with one heavy shove; her rubbery legs carried her out onto the flat cement surface, wandering from one side to the other like a pinball while she tried to get herself under control. Dead and alone in a room full of drugs, rotting and alone with pills crushed into the carpet. Dead while nobody gave a fuck, a lonely addict’s death in silence with no one to even notice. Tears poured down her cheeks and she couldn’t stop them; her breath whistled in her chest. Without Terrible that’s what she’d be, no one cared, no one really gave—
Wait a minute. If Aros had found Chelsea—so she assumed, and it seemed like a reasonable assumption—and if she’d killed him like that … how long would it be before she realized Chess was on her trail, and found a way to do the same thing to her?
Terrible hadn’t called. Hadn’t texted. Hadn’t tried to get in touch with her at all.
Well, what the fuck was she, surprised?
No. Just sick. But what else was new.
Thankfully, this wasn’t the time to brood about it. Even more thankfully, she was stuffed so full of Cepts that brooding would be almost impossible even if it had been the time. Not completely impossible, of course; she could still feel the stab there, the emptiness beneath her ribcage where everything important was supposed to be. Where it had always been empty until he came along, and which he’d left empty again when he’d torn himself away from her. It felt like death.
But she could get through it. She could and she would, because she had to.
Elder Griffin finished looking at her hastily typed report and sighed. “Oh, Aros. So disturbing, he didn’t seem at all … well. I am sorry, Cesaria.”
Chess nodded. Yeah, she was sorry, too. She was getting only part of her bonus money, and if she was going to finish every night at the pipes like she had the last two, the cash in her account wouldn’t last more than another couple of months, tops. Sure, another case might come in, but it might not. She’d gone five months once; that had been the first time she’d gone into debt with Bump, two years before.
Not to mention that whole Chelsea-might-try-to-kill-her thing. And the memory of that body cold and ignored on its diseased bloody bed. And the feeling of walking blind into something big and murky and dangerous, something waiting for her with claws extended.
Elder Griffin’s curtains were open; gray light from the unhappy sky flooded over his desk, made his expression hard to read. “He did ask for permission to rent the place, feeling it would help him to fit in. He said the students refused to speak to him. Did you find that a problem?”
“Kind of.” She shifted in her seat. Yes, kind of, until the son of the local drug lord kissed her in front of a crowd. Then they talked.
“I suppose it matters not. When will you perform the Banishing?”
“Tonight, I think. Might as well get it over with, right? Have you heard anything about Chelsea Mueller, where she is? Any picture yet?”
He shook his head. “Her physical file should have been housed here, but as you know, it has also disappeared, along with the records in the computer. Aros seems to have deleted it. We are hoping it will be retrieved from the backups by tonight.”
At least that was one thing. The Squad would go with her to make an arrest once they had a face, an address.
Elder Griffin’s chair sighed as he moved. “May I ask, have you yet received the evaluation form for me?”
“Oh, um, yes. I’m going to start it this evening before I do the case paperwork, if that’s okay.” Shit, she’d forgotten it; well, she hadn’t forgotten it. The truth was she didn’t want to fill it out. She wanted to give him a negative report so he’d have to stay with her. She’d lost Terrible. She didn’t want to lose him, too.
But he nodded, smiled his gentle smile, and she knew she couldn’t do that. Just because she didn’t deserve happiness, just because she’d ruined her only chance at it and gotten her ass dumped, didn’t mean he didn’t deserve it. She could help him, and she would. Chess Putnam, fairy fucking magicmother.
“Sir, do you know if Aros had some family in the area that I could talk to? Or maybe one of his training Elders in his last post?”
“He had no family, no,” Elder Griffin replied, leaning back to open a drawer in his desk. From it he pulled a pale-blue file. Aros’s employee record.
She took it from him, opened it while he continued to speak. “Of course he had high recommendations from the Elders in his previous office— Indianapolis, that was—and an excellent record.”
“Nobody there knew he had all those prescriptions?”
Elder Griffin shook his head. “As far as we can tell, he did not. What information I’ve managed to get so far indicates he started on those while handling the Mercy Lewis case. I hate to say it but I am glad he removed himself. Were it discovered he was so compromised …”
“Right,” she said, rather louder than she meant to. “Um, so he started on the case and he was fine, and then it just went bad.”
“Yes.”
Thanks to Chelsea. So she assumed; so she’d put in her preliminary report.
She flipped through the pages he’d given her: more pictures of Aros’s apartment, copies of notes and papers handed in by the Recovery Team who’d picked up Aros and done the crime scene work on his place. What the fuck?
Aros had notes about Jia … lots of notes about Jia. Well, she guessed that wasn’t too big a surprise, given that Jia had somehow been involved with Chelsea and Aros had apparently discovered Chelsea.
But he also had notes about Beulah. And about Beulah’s father. Along with an address Chess recognized. Their home address.
Chelsea had to be getting power from somewhere; she didn’t have enough on her own. Chess had suspected it came from Aros, of course, but with Aros dead …
That brought her right back to Slobag. And his witch.
She needed to find out who the hell that was.
Beulah sat behind her desk; she looked up and smiled when Chess entered. “Hey, Chess. Why didn’t you call me and let me know you were coming? I would have waited outside for you. Did they give you any trouble?”
“There wasn’t anyone out there.” Chess sat down uninvited in the cushy blue chair opposite Beulah’s desk. “Besides, I didn’t know if you’d be here. Aren’t you only supposed to work a few days a week?”
Beulah shrugged. “Interesting stuff going on. I don’t want to miss it.”
“Right.” She looked at Beulah, sitting there with her shining hair hanging straight down. How much did she actually know, what might she tell? Assuming Chess could trust anything Beulah did say, which she wasn’t entirely sure she could. “Why do you do it, anyway? Work here. Lex doesn’t have some kind of outside job.”
“Lex is a boy. My father wouldn’t let me take over the business even if Lex wasn’t older. This is something to do, really. And I can get to know a lot of people, people who might be useful one day.”
“Like me?”
Beulah smiled. “I think Lex already had you there, no pun intended.”
Chess’s answering smile felt stiff, like a pair of wax lips. “So you don’t really have much to do with the business. Like you don’t know about the day-to-day stuff.”
“Some of it I do.” Beulah’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Speaking of you knowing people, though … that girl Jia. Who were her friends, do you know? What kinds of stuff did she do?”
“You already know some of her friends. Vernal, Maia, that gang. Jia wasn’t … she wasn’t as in with them, if you know what I mean? Always seemed to be on the edges a little bit.” Beulah leaned back; the soft leather chair in which she sat tilted, rocked gently. “She was more serious, wanted to go to college. She did a lot of community stuff, too, with Mrs. Li and her girls’ groups.”
“Seems like there are a lot of groups here. Was Mrs. Li the only one whose groups Jia joined?”
“No … I don’t know, really, but she was in a few, I think. I know she was in one of Mrs. Li’s, yeah, but one of Mr. Li’s, too. I didn’t know her really well.”
Uh-huh. “What about Aros? Did she seem to have any kind of relationship with him?”
“Not that I noticed, no. But then I wasn’t paying attention. Why?”
Chess shook her head. “No reason. Oh, I wanted to ask, too, if you’ve ever heard the name Chelsea Mueller? It’s only a side issue, really, but—”
“Isn’t that the cousin? Lucy McShane’s cousin? I thought her name was on that file you showed me.”
Damn. Beulah had seen that, hadn’t she. “Yeah, I just wondered if you’ve heard of her recently, like maybe Jia or someone else mentioned her.”
“Hmm. Not that I can remember, but—”
A tap at Beulah’s office door. It opened. Monica stood in the doorway, her cheeks almost as red as her hair. That day she wore a hideous bile-green and mustard-yellow polka-dot dress with an empire waist; she looked like the physical embodiment of a hangover.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt. Hi, Chess. Beulah, I wonder if you have a second? I want to show you something, on my desktop.”
Beulah glanced at Chess, who opened her mouth as fast as she could. “I’ll be fine, you go ahead. I’ll just sit and wait here, okay?”
Yes! Beulah nodded. Chess was alone in her office, and that was a very good place to be. It might not last long, but then it didn’t have to, really. Being caught was bad form, but technically Chess had the right to look at every single sheet of paper in that office.
And she’d try to do exactly that.
She kept one eye on the door while she rifled through Beulah’s drawers. Notes about school projects, a contest they’d be holding about ancestry—she gave that one a stronger examination. It looked innocent enough, but given Beulah’s apparent views on the Church …
Not her department. And not a point she could press when she needed help from Beulah, either. Instead, she kept going, her fingers skipping over the tabs, until she found a file marked GIRLS’ PROJECTS.
She flipped that one open. Pay dirt. Awesome. Jia’s spidery little signature at the bottom of a page with a few other names; at the top were listed Mr. Li, one of the history teachers, and Monica. Repainting a home for the elderly, performing a traditional dance …
It wasn’t a surprise to discover that Jia lived—had lived—on the same street as Aros’s apartment—on that same block, in fact.
She scribbled it all down in her notebook, even though she didn’t need to. That, at least, she knew she wouldn’t forget.
Beulah’s voice outside the door. Chess slipped the file back into place and turned her back on the desk just as the door opened. No point trying to get back to her chair; throwing herself into it would look more suspicious than simply having gotten up to have a bit of a wander around the office.
To complete the effect she turned her head a bit. “This is a nice print, where did it come from?”
It was a landscape framed in dark-blue metal, and actually rather dull; just a handy excuse for standing where she did, not at all the sort of thing Chess would imagine Beulah liking enough to display in her office. But what did she know?
“It was here when I got the office, actually.” Beulah came around behind the desk. Chess stepped away, almost stumbling in her haste.
That was when she noticed the two Styrofoam containers in Beulah’s hands. Beulah raised one of them. “I didn’t know if you’d be hungry, but I brought you some lunch anyway. Laurie’s made a ton of food.”
“And she packed it in Styrofoam?”
Beulah smiled. “No, we keep a supply of these. I just figured it would be easier than carrying it in my bare hands, you know?”
“Right. Thanks.” She was hungry, surprisingly; but then, when was the last time she’d eaten? A couple of days ago, maybe? Certainly not since the argument. She’d barely been able to keep her pills down, much less actual food.
Speaking of which, she wanted to pop back into the little office for a few of those, too. She was starting to crash from her earlier dose and it wasn’t pleasant.
But the food smelled good and Beulah watched her expectantly, so she unwrapped the plastic spork Beulah handed her along with the food and started to eat. It was some sort of rice dish, in a thick sauce, with flecks of beef throughout.
After the first bite her empty stomach came to life with a vengeance. Only the vague desire not to look like a total pig kept her from shoveling it in, instead just eating faster than normal. Especially since it wasn’t bad at all, save the sort of awkward aftertaste, like chalk on a—
Fuck. Oh fuck, oh shit.
Beulah stared at her. Chess couldn’t help noticing that Beulah had a different meal in front of her, what looked like the kind of noodles Chess bought at the Market sometimes. Made sense. “Are you okay? You look pale all of a sudden. You ate awfully fast.”
Yes, and if she didn’t get up and get her ass to the bathroom soon, she’d be even paler.
As in dead. “I’m fine, I just— I have a lot to do, so I’m going to call myself done and leave you to your lunch.”
“Oh, no, you should stay. Or I’ll go with you, I’m not that hungry. And we can talk some more.”
“I can’t, I need to get going, really, I have some stuff to check in the files at Church—”
“Can’t you do that later? You—”
Enough. “I can’t,” Chess said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Her left hand kept a death grip on the food container; she’d need that, even though she knew it was essentially pointless. She knew what the lab would find, or at least had a damn good idea of it.
Her right hand turned the knob and flung the door open. She launched herself out of it, almost knocking into Laurie, who gave a melodramatic yelp as if Chess had pinched her ass rather than simply invaded her personal space for a few seconds.
No time for her, either. Chess managed to get out of the office before she started to run, past a couple of kids roughing up another one, past the open classrooms where the history of the Church was being taught; she caught the words “Salem witch trials” as she sped past, knew they were discussing the Church’s origins.
Finally the bathroom on her right. She threw herself into it, already letting her bag fall, already reaching up to shove her finger as far down her throat as it could go. She’d never been good at this, which really irritated her. It seemed she could be sick at the drop of a dime, except when she really needed to be, and then she turned into Iron Stomach or something.
It wasn’t working. How much time did she have? And what were the pills supposed to do, anyway?
It had to have been pills. That chalky, faintly bitter aftertaste couldn’t be mistaken for anything else, especially not by her. Someone had dissolved some medication— Vapezine, Chess bet—in water or sauce, or opened the capsules, and mixed it with her food.