The residential street was upscale but not posh. Recently gentrified. It was also quiet, especially that early in the morning. I was leaning against a tree when she came out, box in hand.
“Dr. Alexander.” She stopped in shock on the stairs of her upscale three-story condo building.
Not Uchewe. Not Alex.
“Jeez, you surprised me.” She stepped down slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“Going somewhere?” I nodded to the car parked at the curb. The trunk was open. There were suitcases and a couple boxes, just like the one in her hands.
She lifted it as if to show off and smiled. “After what happened to Alonso, I dunno. That kind of thing really makes you examine your life. I guess I figured it was finally time to move on. Not exactly the best of circumstances, but believe it or not, I’m pretty excited.” Her smiled faded. “Are you okay? You don’t look so well.”
“Did I tell you about the fieldwork I did in Africa? For my dissertation? I can’t remember if I mentioned it.”
“I’m so sorry,” she interjected as she walked to the trunk. “I know it’s rude, but I really can’t talk right now. I’m in a bit of a hurry. But I have your number. I can call.”
“I never thought I’d see that many dead people again.”
“Dead people?” She set the box with the others and turned. “What are you talking about? Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“I couldn’t figure it out,” I said. “I knew I had all the pieces. But I just couldn’t figure it out.”
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” she said and turned for her purse.
“No one was supposed to care, right? Half a dozen junkies die every day in this city. Every. Fucking. Day. Plus a handful of homeless. No one even knows. It’s not like they get an obit in the paper. You said it yourself. No one would have cared about a bunch of dead illegals, either. Not if I hadn’t sent out that health alert. Just like no one cared about Cheri Cardenas.
“But Alonso . . .” I raised a finger. “He was the one that didn’t fit. And of course the little boy.”
“Dr. Alexander, you’re worrying me.”
She had her hand on her purse. But she hadn’t bothered to get her phone. Hadn’t dialed that ambulance.
Across the street, a man in sweats and trainers carried an athletic bag into a gym—heading for his early morning workout.
“There are more out there,” I said. “Aren’t there? Bodies. Dozens. In a glowing ring of death. Glowing with dark light. Light that doesn’t come from the sun.”
She just looked at me. Not like I was crazy. Not like she was confused. There was just nothing. She had no expression at all.
“When we spoke on the phone, you said I needed to have someone I could talk to about the little boy. But . . . I never said he was a boy. All I said was that there was another victim who was seven years old. I never gave a gender. He didn’t hit the news until later, so there’s no way you could’ve known. That’s the shitty thing about text messages. There’s a record of everything we say. Just ask my wife.”
“People use the masculine for an unknown gender,” she said calmly, like she was trying to fit me with a straight jacket. “It’s simple sexism, Doctor. Nothing nefarious.”
“Yeah . . .” I sighed. “I thought of that, too. I mean, makes no sense, right? Just a figure of speech. But you know what? The police pulled all of Alonso White’s phone records—so they could track his movements in the weeks before his disappearance. Since he’s a principle in a public health investigation, I get access. I went through them. I’ll be damned if he was ever near the Outreach Center. Not even once those final days, which means you lied. Why would you do that?”
A car passed on the quiet street. I watched it disappear.
“My guess, finding the bodies in the basement was an accident. But then, you all had to expect a couple of them would be found. Sooner or later. After the fact, it would hardly matter. There would be no way to tie them back to you. That wouldn’t be a problem. Noooo. The problem, as you so eloquently put it, was me.”
She stepped up onto the curb. But still her face was blank.
“It must have taken a lot of planning. That many dead all at once and in such a precise configuration. That means you couldn’t have done it by yourself. Those wealthy investors you mentioned. The ones who liked to use the Outreach Center as a tax write-off. Have offices downtown, do they? How many similar places did they fund? It’s a good way to exert influence over who gets hired into key positions, right? Like a clinic ‘director’ who runs a Meals on Wheels program. Three years and still waiting on your license to show up from the city. I’ve heard of bureaucratic nightmares—shit, I even work for one—but that’s something else. So I checked. The city has no record of a Dr. Massey. Neither does the State of New York. Or Texas. Your license hasn’t shown up yet because one isn’t coming. Because you’re not a doctor.
“The trays in the corner. The ones with the pink lids. Is that how it worked? You and your colleagues spend a few months casing the neighborhoods. Get to know all the usual clientele. Identify the candidates. Poorest of the poor. Runaways. Homeless. The mentally ill. Folks desperate for something to eat. In a metropolis of, what, 18-20 million? Shit . . . I bet you were spoiled for choice. And when the time was right, you slipped them a different tray. The one with the fresh mushrooms baked into a pot pie.
“I bet it was going great, too. Until I sent out that health alert, right? Suddenly, you panicked. All that planning. No one was supposed to notice. No one was supposed to care. They never had before. You couldn’t just sit by and hope for the best. Not after all that work. Months of preparation. Years, maybe. You couldn’t just leave it to chance. You had to know what we knew, how close we were. You needed a way to keep tabs on the investigation, to know if your plan was in jeopardy. That’s why they picked you, right? To come forward. The pretty southern girl with the heart of gold trying to do good in the big city. Like something out of a storybook. You contacted me. Practically threw yourself at me, too. Of course, killing me might raise questions, or at least make it look like I was onto something.
“But, if you could discredit me . . .
“The Alonso file wasn’t lost. It wasn’t lost because there never was one. Because his lawyer was right. Alonso White was never sick. You made it up. But the best lies have just enough of the truth to be convincing. My mom taught me that. That’s why you used a real person, one who really had gone missing, a neighborhood saint whose shocking disappearance had even made the local papers. Someone we had to care about, at least enough to show up at your door. But someone you knew we’d never find. Because your people had already taken him. I sent out my health alert, and you replied. Sent your report to the DoH. And I jumped. Mr. Eager-to-Please. I showed up that same day. And now you knew who was running the investigation. Alonso was your colleague, you said. Your patient, even. So you had legit reasons to ask all kinds of questions. You were good, too. Really good. I never once suspected. And why wouldn’t I share? We’re all on the same team, right? That’s how science works.”
I shook my head. “Jesus. Ollie tried to warn me . . . And you found exactly what you needed. You found out you had nothing to fear from me. I told you straight up that the investigation hadn’t even been opened. Not officially. That I was acting on my own time. So it all looked cool. No reason to worry about one eager beaver from out of town who’d be gone in a month.
“But then ICE found the bodies in the basement, and we got the EAP. That damned health alert started linking things together that should’ve stayed separate. I got the case officially opened, which meant a lot more people would be looking into things. You had to shut it down quick. Throw us off the scent. Shouldn’t be hard, right? I mean, what sane person will believe a story about a carnivorous jungle fungus? All you had to do was give the nice, reasonable city managers over my head a genuine reason to doubt.
“Most people don’t even have a clear idea of what chemotherapy is, let alone where to get the cocktails. But a ‘doctor’ would. Wouldn’t be too hard either, if she was bold and unscrupulous. And pretty.”
“You’re actually deranged,” she said softly. “Listen to yourself. You’ve been working too hard, ‘Che.’ You should get some rest.”
“What’d you all do?” I asked. “Camp out on the street until you found the cutest little made-for-TV face you could? Someone who looked like my brother even? That was a nice touch. He was groggy when he got home. Passed right out. Because you sedated him. Not enough to put him under. Nothing that would show up on the labs. Maybe just a whiff of ether. Wouldn’t take much with a seven-year-old. He didn’t tell his babysitter he’d been injected with something because he didn’t know. You went in through his back, where he wouldn’t see the mark, and into his abdomen, where it would mimic the symptoms of a tummy ache. I bet you even waited with him for a bit. Just to make sure he came out of it okay. Did you walk him home? Hold his hand? Ask him questions about school? Send him upstairs so he’d be sure to be found when the time came? Yeah. I bet you did. Such a nice stranger lady. It’s never a woman, right? Stranger danger. It’s always a dude.
“Jesus . . .” I shook my head. “You killed a little kid just to wind me up and drag a red herring across the trail. But I gotta hand it to you. It was brilliant. It fuckin’ worked. He was the outlier, and the only one anyone cared about, and nothing I did would ever make him fit my theory.”
I stopped, mouth open. I didn’t know what else to say.
“What are you gonna do?” she asked calmly. “Call the police?”
“And tell them what? That you’re part of some cult or something that’s growing a human toadstool ring thirty miles wide? That you ritually slaughtered an innocent man, a saint, so you could open a doorway to Hell?”
“Ha!” She laughed. Genuinely. “Is that what you think? That we’re some kind of devil worshipers?” She shook her head. “There are older gods than devils, Alex. Before The Masters. Before Christ. Before Moses. Before the high priests of civilization took it all for themselves. Real gods. Powerful gods. Who don’t hide in some distant heaven. We were promised the earth. And we will have it. Whose universe do you think this is, full of darkness and pain? We belong to them, Alex. We always have. Some of us are strong enough to admit it.”
I knew I was right when I showed up. I’d figured it out the night before. Lying awake. Trying to make sense of it all. But there was still some part of me that wanted to believe I was wrong.
Seeing her face then, it made me sick.
She smiled.
“You’re right,” she said. “Junkies and homeless die in droves. Immigrants are trafficked. Women are driven into prostitution. Every single day. And no one cares. They wish it wouldn’t happen, sure, but they don’t do anything about it. You know why? Because those people aren’t worth caring about. Not really. Dozens of them just went missing and there’s not a single story on the news. People are more worried about whether or not some celebrity farted on stage, or what the President had for lunch, and they always will be. So go back to Atlanta, Dr. ‘Alexander.’ Go back to your wife. Tell her it was all your fault. Beg her to take you back. Raise your child. Because that’s the best you’re going to have.” She stepped close to me. Her face was within inches. I could smell her toothpaste. “You can’t stop us. We’ve been here since the beginning. We’ll be here at the end. The world is ours now, and there’s nothing you can do. Because you’re just like the rest of them, an insignificant little worm.” She breathed the word into my face.
She had me there. I used to think I was a pretty smart guy. But Milan was right. Now it felt like I barely knew anything.
“You’re right,” I said with a slow nod. “I am.”
She smirked condescendingly.
I nodded toward the sidewalk behind her. “But he’s not.”
Amber spun and saw the chef standing stone-faced with his hands in the pockets of his fantastic coat. He was pale. He looked worse than I did in the greenhouse. But he was alive.
She stepped back toward her house—right as Mr. Dench stepped out through the front door. He’d gone in and cleared it from the rear. Amber tried to get past me then, but I stepped into her path as Milan, in the Jaguar, slowed to a halt in the street. The big engine growled like a jungle cat. We had her on all four sides.
I glanced to Dr. Massey’s neck and saw the symbol on a chain, the same one I’d seen on the wall in Jersey—an upside-down triangle with swooping ends tipped in tiny circles. I guess there was no reason for her to hide it now. Dench came down the stairs and she eyed him defiantly. I could see the bulge of his gun in his coat pocket. I’m sure she could, too. She gripped the amulet around her neck, closed her eyes, and whispered softly in fervent prayer. She repeated the words, over and over, and all I could do was stare as the wackest shit I’ve ever heard came out of her mouth. Words that made my skin crawl.
Dench took her arm. “In the car,” he said.
Dr. Massey turned for the black Jag, but Dench stopped her.
“Not that one.”
He meant her car.
She looked at him again, shocked. I think she understood then. She understood that Amber Massey, MD had quit her job the day before. She’d told everyone she was moving away and said her goodbyes. She’d packed up her belongings early one morning and drove off from an empty apartment. She wouldn’t be missed. Not for months.
The chef approached her. “You will tell me everything of the coven.”
“Go to hell,” she sneered.
“I’ve been,” he said flatly. “You may yet give them my regards.”
She pulled. But Dench held on. He pushed her into the car.
Étranger looked at me. Like he was waiting to see if I wanted to come.
“I don’t wanna know,” I said.
He nodded and got in after his companion.
Milan was smirking at me playfully from the driver’s seat of the Jag. “Don’t look so dour,” she said through the open window. “You’re still the clever man.”
“You know, it’s rude to mock people.”
“I’m not mocking. We found them again. Thanks to you. It wasn’t the chair or Granny or some costly spell. It was you. That’s all that matters.”
I stood in the street and watched the others drive away in Amber’s car.
“What are they gonna do to her?”
“Trust your instincts, Doctor. You don’t wanna know.”
My face flushed with guilt.
But then I thought about Alonso White. And the Chinese couple, who wanted nothing but a better life, holding hands in death. I thought about little “Alvin” with the cherub face and the dimpled smile.
Fuck her.
I got in the Jag.
“Maybe it doesn’t feel like it yet,” she said. “But you were a soldier today.”
“Soldier?”
“In a war. A very, very, very old war.”
“Granny said the war ended.”
“Lots of people think that.” She looked down the road after the departing car. “But a wise man once told me that civilization is just one long war, punctuated by brief interludes of peace. You picked a side today.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Cemetery.” I sighed. “There’s someone I need to see.”