Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

I heard another soft scuffle, this time closer.

The stranger was approaching me, one slow step at a time. He, or she, was just on the other side of the copy machine now.

“Gemma,” the voice whispered in a singsong voice. “Where are you?”

A low electrical hum began and the copy machine gave a shake and lit up with red and green buttons. In a far corner of the cavernous space, lights began flickering on. Then running footsteps and a door slamming and as the lights came on in my corner, dazzling and blinding, I stood and jogged down the corridor in the direction of the noise.

“Gemma?” Finn called.

“Down here!” I said. “Hurry.”

I reached the end of the corridor and saw a door to my right and one to my left.

Damn.

Which door, which door… I ran to the door on the right and pushed against it and then looked down and saw a rusty padlock gripped by an equally rusty chain.

Finn met me on my way to the door on the left. “What is it?”

“There’s someone else down here,” I panted. I hadn’t run this much in months.

Next to me, Finn bent down and removed a small snub-nosed revolver from an ankle strap.

“Nice,” I said as I pushed open the door.

“Like my American Express and condoms, I don’t leave home without it,” he replied.

Above us, a dark staircase loomed and I hurried up it as fast as I could, Finn behind me. We reached the top and I pushed open another door and we emerged into bright afternoon sun at the back of the library in an old parking lot.

It was empty, save for the tangled weeds and trash that lay in the cracks and holes of the cement. A tall chain-link fence lined the perimeter of the parking lot and I sighed as I saw a dozen different holes cut into the wire.

We spun around but there was no one in sight. From the looks of it, no one had been there for months.

“So it wasn’t you?” I asked Finn. We were back in the basement, picking through the materials to decide what to take home and what to leave for another day.

“How could it be? I was clear on the other side, trying to find a light switch.”

“But you didn’t answer when I called.”

He sighed and looked at me. Rubbing at the five o’clock shadow on his chin, he replied slowly, “Because, as I just said, I was on the other side of the room. I didn’t hear you.”

I put a few folders in my shoulder bag and looked around.

“Anyway, are you certain someone else was down here? You know, it was pitch-black. Our minds can play, ah, tricks on us sometimes,” Finn said. He held the folder with the Danny Moriarty transcript and I watched him flip through it, alarm bells going off in my head.

I looked back at the desk. A mountain of stuff, piles of it, and in the first few minutes of searching, we found a decades-old confidential police report pointing a big fat finger at one of our colleagues.

Scratch that, we hadn’t found anything.

Finn had found the folder.

Finn.

How many times had I watched as the two of them, Finn and Lou, left work together, headed to one of the taverns on the south side, their heads together, their laughter comfortable, familiar? Too many times to count.

I tried to keep my voice casual. “Finn, how well do you know Moriarty?”

He shrugged and tucked the folder into his briefcase. “Well enough, I guess. We’ve shared a few beers, you know, the usual. I mean really, Gemma… how well do any of us know one another?”

We drove back to the station in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I dropped him off and wondered, again, how it was that I ended up driving everyone around so much. You’d think someone would give the pregnant lady a break here.

My stomach growled and the next thing I knew I was parking in front of Chevy’s Pizzeria and Arcade. I squeezed through a group of teenagers and entered a world of pinball machines and arcade games, comforting lights and sounds and laughter. The smell of mozzarella and garlic and roasted tomatoes hit me hard and I made my way to the back of the restaurant and found an empty booth near the restrooms.

I sank into the leather seat. And then I looked up and saw Darren Chase emerging from the men’s room, his ball cap angled low over his eyes, but not low enough to miss seeing me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He slid into the booth before I could stop him. “Are you here alone?”

I nodded. Out of habit, I’d taken my cell phone out of my purse and laid it on the table. I started playing with it, turning it over in my hands. “You?”

He leaned back and took off his ball cap and ran a hand through his dark hair and nodded. “Yup.”

A waiter stopped by and set two menus down, then gave Darren an exaggerated gasp. The young man’s laminated name tag read “Fitch,” and he had decorated it with more glitter and sparkle than I’d seen since my high school homecoming dance.

Fitch eyed Darren the same way I eyed the pepperoni pie the waiter carried against his hip.

“You can’t still be hungry, sir. You had the Double Triple Threat,” Fitch said.

Darren laughed. “No, I’m full. I’m just keeping the lady company.”

Fitch drew a hand across his brow. “Phew. I was about to get the boys on the phone and tell them we had a tiger loose at Chevy’s.”

The waiter gave out a tiny roar and winked at Darren and then turned to me. “Uh-oh, what’s this? Eating for two, are we? What can I bring you, babe?”

“Oh, I’m not staying. I’d like a large cheese with mushrooms and black olives to go? I… I just needed to sit down,” I said. Fitch looked at my belly and nodded, then eyeballed Darren again and spun around and left.

When had I decided to make it a to-go order?

When Darren Chase had sat down. All six feet three inches, two hundred lean pounds of him.

“I’ll wait with you till your order comes,” Darren said. He smiled and I couldn’t help smiling back.

“So…”

Why couldn’t I stop playing with my phone? My hands were spinning it around on the table like it was a roulette wheel. And was I sweating? Jesus. This was worse than a middle school dance.

“So… hey, thanks for the tip about the library. Tilly is, uh, great. She’s very helpful,” I said. I looked around the arcade in hopes of spotting someone, anyone, I knew, but all I saw was a sea of Abercrombie hoodies, low-rise jeans, and trucker hats, inexplicably on the heads of teenage girls.

I wasn’t yet thirty and trends were passing me by like messengers on bicycles, fast and furious.

Darren said, “Gemma.”

I looked at him and he leaned forward and placed a hand over mine, stilling the spinning phone. “I’m not going to bite. I can leave if you want me to.”

I jerked my hand back and put it in my lap.

And then felt like an asshole.

I said, “No, that’s okay. I’m… it’s been… there was someone in my house last night.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks and I bit my lip. “Damn it, I’m fine. It’s just shaken me up a bit.”

Darren grabbed a handful of napkins from the silver dispenser at the end of the table and handed them to me. I dabbed at my face. Fitch dropped off a pitcher of water and two glasses and I waited for him to leave before speaking.

I was beyond embarrassed and surprised that I had lost it like that.

“I’m sorry, I’m normally a little more composed. It’s been a rough week.”

Darren nodded. “There’s no need to apologize. Is there anything I can do?”

“Not really,” I said. “Unless you can catch Nick Bellington’s killer, solve a thirty-year-old murder mystery, and deliver a baby in, oh, about three months. Preferably vaginally, so she doesn’t miss out on the whole birth canal experience. Apparently that’s very important, and if I have to have a C-section, she could end up going to state school, dropping out halfway through, and doing nails at the Nail Express on Highway Nine.”