Killing Ways

62

Ren went around the side of the building and found a doorway with a glass upper half and a window beside it. She looked through into a narrow hallway tiled in pale green. She noticed a small crack in the pane. She looked left and right, saw no one, then struck the crack with her elbow. The glass was old, and shattered easily. Ren covered her hand with her jacket, reached inside and unlocked the door. She turned on her flashlight and went in. To the right, the door into the tower was padlocked. Ahead, an open door led into the main factory, and to the left was a long hallway and an old-fashioned sign over the architrave that read ADMINISTRATION. Ren started with the padlocked door, yanking on it hard.

Shit.

She turned and went down the hallway. The air smelled of damp, and paper and age. There were offices on both sides, all the way to the end.

May find tools in offices. May break padlock. May be delusional.

She pulled out a pair of gloves and put them on.

As she walked, she moved her flashlight along the ground ahead, picking up the thin, threadbare carpet, stained for reasons she didn’t want to consider. She directed the beam up and down the bare walls. She went through the first door on the left: half-open file cabinet in the corner, single broken chair, missing desk, one poster, and marks on the wall from four missing ones.

Why leave one? I never get that.

What was so amazing about the other four?

She went over to the file cabinet, pulled each drawer open wide. There were loose file tabs, an eraser, an orange ticket stub. In the bottom drawer, she found a lonely romance novel with an illustration of a handsome couple clutching each other as if the end of the world was just over the cover.

That writer is dead now.

She walked on, imagining the men and women who worked there and she understood Kurt Vine and how he could want to honor people this way. Real people with lives and loves and families spent their days there with real hopes and dreams and problems and ambition.

And then they died.

Great.

Imagine people coming into an abandoned Safe Streets.

They’d find weird shit in my drawers. They’d question the whole operation...

In the last office, Ren sat down at one of the desks and slid out the top drawer. There was a stack of Seventies-looking brochures — the top one from a furniture company. She started flicking through it, then went to the next one — stationery supplier, then the next one—

Why am I so distracted? Jesus.

She thought about the past and the present and how tenuous everything felt, and how strange futures were, how they could turn from something bright into one big shitshow, based on something as simple as an ordering or reordering of thoughts and the decisions that followed.

Or the words of a horoscope.

She left the admin offices and went into the warehouse. It was at least fifty thousand square feet contained under high ceilings, hung with fluorescent lights. Long narrow tables were pushed back against the walls. Light filtered in dimly from the rows of window at the top of the wall. The floor was concrete, mainly dust-covered, but with trails where it had been disturbed.

So someone was walking here recently. Running. She looked around. Several someones.

There was no sign that toys were ever made there — the bins from Kurt Vine’s photos weren’t here; neither was the wooden doll’s head.

They may be about to put the building on the market.

Ren’s boot crunched over something. She looked down and saw broken glass in blue, green, clear — all the colors that were taken out of Donna Darisse’s feet.

Yes — this is where Donna Darisse was killed. The fucking horror of being hunted through this place.

The flashlight picked up a dark stain on the concrete close by. There were more stains as they walked in further. She could smell bleach and urine. But it was a newer smell, not from as far back as Donna Darisse’s murder.

Ren’s heart started to beat a little faster.

Relax. Relax.

She heard a sound behind her.

Oh.

Fuck.

She looked around. A man stood in silhouette in the doorway holding a tire iron.

Joe.

Thank. Fuck.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Ren, walking over to him. ‘Didn’t you wait for the graduation?’

‘I guess I’m not a great peacemaker.’

‘Jesus — it’s his graduation.’

Joe shook his head. ‘I couldn’t stand by his side after what he did. I must sound like an asshole, and maybe I am. But I’d feel like a hypocrite. I’m even more anxious now to nail this son-of-a-bitch while Shaun is safe.’

‘Did you follow me?’ said Ren.

‘Of course I did. I saw your eyes... you had something. You should have told me.’

‘I wanted you to go to with Shaun. Whatever this is can wait.’

‘And you believe that...’ said Joe. ‘Have you spoken to Gary about this?’

‘Gary... no.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, here I am breaking and entering...’

She looked down. Joe was holding bolt cutters. Ren smiled. ‘I thought that was a tire iron that I was about to be beaten to death with.’

‘Duke Rawlins is not getting near you,’ said Joe.

Ren went very still. I’m your do-over. You couldn’t save Anna. You think you can save me. ‘I’m not worried about Duke Rawlins.’

‘You should be.’

But I’m fucking invincible. ‘Now, are you done trying to scare the shit out of me in a darkened and abandoned warehouse? Because it’s not working.’ Because I’m fucking invincible.