Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (5 page)

Her head bobbed, possibly in agreement. Alex didn’t dare make contact with her mother’s mind.

“Thank you,” Alex said to Kern. She stood and offered her mother one last smile, but Stephanie’s attention was elsewhere. She followed her gaze, which landed somewhere on the wall
between
two windows. “I’ll be back when I can,” she murmured.

“Your company is always a pleasure,” Kern said.

I bet,
she thought,
with my mother like that.
Even her small amount of time with the woman had been unnerving, and Alex made her way back to the foyer, completely disregarding the creaking of the floorboards beneath her hastened steps.

She had bigger things to worry about, though. There was still the matter of the mysterious tenant and his vendetta against whoever Arthur Brennan was. With that much psychic energy being thrown around, Alex knew she wouldn’t sleep well until the issue was resolved. Even a dozen floors away, she could hear his fury.

But what exactly am I going to do?
As she climbed into the taxi, the answer wasn’t abundantly clear. She was the furthest a person could be from a sympathetic grief counselor, and she surely wasn’t about to up and move from
her
apartment building. A mounting migraine threatened to rear its ugly head as she felt the stress building up. She swore inwardly as the cab pulled away from the house.

And she still hadn’t had any coffee.

The address Wally
had given for Sara Portoso’s apartment led to a building that was significantly nicer than the one Brennan lived in now.

It was a hulking beast of a complex half a dozen stories tall that took up the size of half a city block. Brick walls inlaid with columns of concrete, with steel-and-concrete balconies for every apartment that looked out on the street below. The lobby, basically a waiting room for the elevators, was visible through the glass of the windows and front door. Equally visible was the security camera that stared back at him.

He tried the handle to the door, but it refused to budge. An electronic scanner of some kind was wired to the door; only tenants with swipe cards would be able to enter the building. As far as campus living went, Kelsi Woodill had been living in a fortress. Her fourth-floor room would have been all but inaccessible to a stranger. Her body had been discovered inside the apartment in her very room, so presumably she had returned home safely. If someone had accompanied her, the security camera would have seen, and the police would have had a suspect.

Brennan looked at the camera again. Ordinarily, he would have held his silver shield up to the glass and had whoever was watching buzz him in. He wasn’t here in any official capacity, though; Bishop had specifically stonewalled him from getting involved in the case. He wasn’t sure why. But if it somehow got back to her that he was here, he didn’t know what kind of trouble she would stir.

“You’re tying my hands here, Bishop,” he growled.

“Excuse me?”

Brennan turned and saw a young man with a confused look on his face. He was supporting a large brown bag of groceries in one arm and held a small white card in the other, no thicker than a quarter. “Sorry,” Brennan said, “just talking to myself.”

The young man huffed and shifted the bag’s weight. “I just need to get through,” he said. Brennan stepped back and let the college kid swipe the key card.

“Here, let me get that for you,” Brennan offered, opening the door.

The kid held the bag in both hands and nodded his thanks.

Piggybacking
, Brennan thought.
Is this how the killer got in?
A flash caught his eye; a sliver of light had glinted off the glossy black casing of the security camera.
No, he would have still been seen entering the building.
Grocery-boy pressed the button for the elevator, but Brennan ignored him and took to the staircase on the left.

During his years as a Sleeper, Brennan had learned to put up with two types of pain: psychic trauma and physical debilitation. When he’d lost his wife to the same Sleepers he’d once served with, he had been exposed to emotional pain of the highest magnitude. Now, as his body was starting to show the wear and tear of his years, he put himself through a new kind of pain that kicked his ass every day: cardio.

Nothing made the body weak faster than a desk job and donuts, and that was exactly what Brennan had been subjecting himself to for the past few years. The past three months of running were now paying dividends as he climbed four flights of stairs without breathing hard at the top.

He emerged from the stairwell into a fairly short hallway. Ensconced lights hung from the walls and the tile floor had recently been cleaned. No cameras in the hall, which was unfortunate; it might have given them a view of the killer. There were only four rooms in view before the hall turned sharply to the left, but Brennan didn’t need to look far; Kelsi Woodill had died behind the door closest to the stairs.

He walked up to apartment 402 and knocked on the door. A moment later, a young woman answered. She was brunette, relatively short, and looked more mature than her years. She wore a sweatshirt that was a few sizes too large, though it still curved amply over her chest.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Sara Portoso?”

“Yes?”

He showed her his shield. “Detective Brennan. I’m with Odols Homicide, do you mind if I come in?”

“Of course.” Sara gulped. “I mean, no, I don’t mind,” she said, standing aside to let him in. “I already spoke to the other detectives, I told them everything I know.”

“I understand. I’m just following up, making sure we didn’t miss anything.” He looked around the apartment as he spoke. Unlike one dead pharmacist he once knew, everything they owned seemed average, ordinary, perfectly within a college student’s budget. “You didn’t happen to notice anything missing from the apartment, did you?”

Sara shook her head. “No, nothing of mine is missing. I don’t know exactly what all Kelsi had—” She choked back a sob when she said her roommate’s name. “I’m pretty sure everything is here, though.”

Brennan placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t hear or see anything strange on Friday night?”

“I’m not much of a partier,” she said. “I was already in bed and asleep by the time she came home. I knocked on her door in the morning to wake her up, since we were supposed to study for midterms together. She didn’t respond, so I opened the door and…found her.” Sara sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “Oh God…there was so much blood,” she said in a horrified whisper.

That story was consistent with what Wally had told him at the station. The killer had been swift and silent, so effectively so that Sara couldn’t hear the murder happening through the thin wall that separated their rooms.

“Do you mind if I take a look around her room?” Brennan asked. Sara didn’t say anything, but she waved a hand toward the other bedroom. It had two yellow strips of “Do Not Cross” police tape across the door, and a question suddenly occurred to him. “Are you still
living
here?”

Sara sniffled again and raised one dark eyebrow at him. “Of course not. I came by to pick up a few things; the school is paying for a hotel room until everything is moved out of her room and the carpet is replaced.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. “Even still, I think I’m going to find a new place. It doesn’t feel right to stay here after what happened.”

Brennan nodded absently. He was more amazed that he happened to intercept Sara at the right time; it had completely slipped his mind that she might not have been here at all, in which case the trip would have been for nothing.

He made his way to Kelsi’s room and opened the door. The room smelled like a crisp autumn breeze, sharply at odds with the metallic scent of blood that he had expected. A wooden frame was all that was left of Kelsi’s bed; the comforter, pillows, sheets, and even the mattress had all been soaked through with blood. A dark red, almost brown stain marred the carpet directly beneath and next to the bed.

That’s Kelsi’s lifeblood,
Brennan thought.
All that’s left of it, dried to practically nothing.

There was a small jewelry box on a dresser. Inside, he found a dozen different pairs of earrings and several matching bracelets. Some of the pieces were fitted with valuable gemstones, and one even had a few diamonds.
Not the sort of thing you’d leave behind during a burglary,
Brennan thought.

Nothing else in the room was speaking to him. Whatever had caused her murder, money apparently wasn’t a motive for the killer. Wally had disqualified sexual assault as a motive, too, during his autopsy.

Brennan closed the door behind him and rejoined Sara in the modest living room. As he passed the kitchen, he glanced out the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. It looked like Sara had collected herself, though her eyes were still slightly rimmed with red. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?” Brennan suggested, tilting his head toward the balcony.

She nodded and led the way, and the chilly air made her shiver as they stepped outside. Wordlessly, Brennan shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her sweatshirt. Sara mumbled her thanks. Brennan inhaled deeply, and he heard her copy him as she took in a brisk breath.
Good
, he thought. The air would do her good.

Brennan took the opportunity to look around, particularly straight down toward the street four stories away. The balcony looked out over an alleyway; at night, it would be empty of everything except dumpsters and telephone poles. It was a long way down—or a long way
up
. There were balconies all the way down, and it wouldn’t take much more than a modest length of rope to climb up to the next level. But to climb four floors, murder someone, and then scale back down the building, all without being detected? The strength and dexterity they’d need would be phenomenal.

A few minutes passed before Brennan realized the silence had turned awkward. Sara glanced anxiously at him before sliding the heavy jacket from her shoulders. “Thanks again,” she said. “I should really be getting the rest of my stuff.”

“Of course,” Brennan said. They started walking toward the front door. “Is there anything I can help you carry downstairs?”

“Oh, no, it’s fine. I’ve got it.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Sara. I’m sorry for your loss.”

She sniffled, and Brennan feared the tears might start flowing again. But she simply gave him a small smile and closed the door behind him. Brennan contemplated the elevator at the end of the hall.
That way be quitters,
he thought.

He sighed, then turned and took the stairs.

Alex arrived back
at her apartment just as the sun was beginning to set.

It would have been sooner, but she’d had an essential stop to make. She took a heavenly sip from her cup of java and sighed in bliss. Coffee was just the thing she needed after visiting her mother. She paid the taxi driver and stared up at her apartment complex. A behemoth of a building, it held its ground in the very center of Odols. And somewhere far above, there was a strange man with one serious grudge.

And if I don’t make him stop, I’m never going to get any sleep.

She felt a buzz in the air the moment she stepped into the building. Something, or someone, was different than usual. She searched intangibly with her mind, touching upon the thoughts of everyone in the lobby.

If I work through the night, I can get the project done by—

—wonder if the pool is open—

—isn’t my job to watch a bunch of spoiled—

—I can sense you, you know.

Alex was startled back into herself, and she quickly walled away all of the others. Still, though, she felt the buzzing sensation as she walked stiffly to the elevator.
What was that?
Nobody had ever been aware of her psychic presence before, not even a whiff. Now, somebody was here that knew about her?
Impossible.

She kept her guard up even as the doors closed, leaving her alone in the rising metal box. A deep breath, and she started to mull it over. Another person with powers? It made sense, actually. Her father was ever-young, or as close as could be, and she was a mind-reader. She would be ignorant to believe that she and her father were unique in their gifts. Surely there were others.

The thought chilled her. Ghost stories from her childhood came unbidden to her mind. Sleepers, they were called. They were monsters that invaded the dreams of naughty children. It was a tale that mothers made up to scare their kids into behaving. But what if it wasn’t?

Were these Sleepers just other gifted people? Could so many have the same power? Her father was the closest relation she had, yet their gifts were nothing alike.

More importantly, Alex wondered who had sensed her in the lobby. It was entirely possible that she had wandered right past the man she was looking for, the angry tenant from the sixteenth floor. If that was the case, he was very psychically powerful
and
held a death wish for someone, a volatile combination.

The elevator dinged loudly and opened onto her floor. Alex walked quickly down the hall and fumbled with her key while opening the door to her apartment.
It’s the coffee making me jittery,
she assured herself.

Once she was inside, however, she felt another pressure on her mind.

Arthur Brennan.

It was the same kind of red sensation she had felt in the dead of night, a strong psychic presence coming from above her. She hadn’t felt it in the lobby, though, which made her think it was the angry tenant.

But if he’s still upstairs,
she thought,
then who did I encounter in the lobby?

“Oh shit,” she swore to the empty apartment. “There are two of them.” One roaring red presence of violence and one buzzing mind of polite curiosity. “In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say lobby-guy was bemused.”

Alex shook her head and opened a cabinet, pulling down a bottle from the top shelf. She helped herself to a generous glass of a sweet red wine. She lifted the glass to her lips and paused. “Talking to myself,” she said into her wine. “First sign of insanity. I’ll drink to that.” She toasted an imaginary guest, stared at the open space with heavy eyes, and then gulped down half the glass in one go.

Her mother had gone crazy. Little things at first, small signs of forgetfulness, but it had gradually evolved to where she no longer recognized faces or places. “I wonder if she was like me, once,” Alex said bitterly. She gently swirled the wine before taking another sip. The alcohol did its work over the next couple minutes as she finished her glass and poured another.

Getting drunk just as she was on the verge of being discovered had not been her plan, but she slowly realized that she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything, not even sleep, while her mind was active with the thoughts of the enraged man. Thus reasoned, she drank a good amount of the second glass.

“And who the hell is Arthur Brennan?”

Her curtains didn’t answer.

She knew it wasn’t a good idea, but the wine had put her in a good mood, and Alex pulled out her phone. Her thumb swiped down through her list of contacts until she reached the S category: Sam was the first in the grouping. He picked up on the third ring.

“Hey, what’s up?”

He didn’t address her by name. Even with her thoughts muddled, Alex knew he was with somebody. “I’m here by myself and wondering what you’re doing,” she replied. Her words sounded thick, but she preferred to think they came off as sultry over the phone. She heard him inhale sharply.

“Ah, really not the best time,” he said.

Alex heard typing in the background. She also knew that Sam was not a one-woman kind of guy. “Are you on a dating site right now?” she asked, feigning anger.

“Are you drunk right now?”

“Hey, who’s accusing who?” There was a pregnant pause. “Whom. Who’s accusing whom?”

Sam chuckled into the receiver. “I wouldn’t have corrected you on that, I have no idea how those are used. But I guess that answers my question.”

“Can I expect you later tonight?”

“Might need a rain check on that one.”

Alex had no feelings for the man, but she still found herself disappointed. The wine was setting her on fire in other ways, and she hadn’t expected to be turned down.

“Fine,” she said. “But be warned, I might rain check your rain check.”

“Life is fraught with risks,” Sam said, and the call ended.

She looked at her phone for a full minute, and when he didn’t call back she tossed it onto the leather sofa. “Screw him,” she muttered before she started giggling to herself. “That’s what I was
trying
to do.”

Arthur Brennan.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” she said, raising her glass to the ceiling. She brought it to her lips and finished it off, and the voice died down to a whisper. She couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming, but she could drown them as they arrived. The clock told her it was far too early to sleep, but the alcohol coursing through her system said otherwise. Napping sounded like an excellent idea.

As she flopped down onto her bed, Alex knew instantly that she’d made the right call.