George tensed. He hated it when they couldn’t move freely. The closer they could get to the house, the less the strain on Andi’s body and mind when he opened himself to the arthropods, but also the higher the chance they were detected before he could find anything useful. With a sigh, he parked the Escalade two houses down.
“Here, I brought ibuprofen. Perhaps it helps if you take them beforehand.” He leaned over to the passenger side to open the glove compartment where he had stored two bottles of water and four ibuprofen. When he handed them to Andi, his partner was staring at him with a strange expression.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Andi selected two of the pills, getting them out of their casing with a cracking sound. “It’s just, you’re always thinking ahead. I could get used to this.” The implication was clear. Andi knew George would leave in about eighteen months. Deliberately, George ignored the subtext, as well as the little voice in his own head demanding he finally face reality. Instead, he uncapped the water bottle for Andi and held it out to him. “If I were really thinking ahead, I would have come up with this idea sooner.” He frowned. “Why didn’t you think of it?”
Andi shrugged. “Easy. The pain pills always make me a little woozy. Doctor said they have that effect on some people, and I’m part of that lucky and illustrious group. When I was still working alone, I preferred the pain over a delayed reaction time. Especially when I had to get home somehow. Car accidents are nasty.”
“You don’t have to worry about delayed reaction times anymore. I’m here.”
“I know. Thank you.” Andi swallowed the two pills and washed them down with half the water from the bottle. “I’m good to go.”
Conveniently for them, a small alleyway separated the house from its neighbor on the right, the shed in the garden with its back to the fence providing excellent cover. Andi leaned against the decorative stone wall guarding the house from the alleyway and closed his eyes. Even if somebody came by and wondered what they were doing, it simply looked as if Andi was exhausted and they were taking a break, enjoying the autumn sun in the process. George stayed close to his partner, waiting for the oral tour through the house and lives of Josephine Garr and Tabitha Clemént. It didn’t take long. Andi’s expression got that faraway quality George had learned to both welcome and fear, meaning his connection to the arthropods in the area was now fully open and working.
“The soil is good, there were blobs bringing new earth, dark and rich, new flowers, sleeping, it’s getting cold, there’s spaces in the wood, planks, it’s warm there, safe, two blobs in the house, moving, moving, stress, loud, the colony was disturbed, acid in the trash, everything ruined, no food, contaminated, bad, no cocoons, there should be cocoons, why should there be cocoons, prey, the net is broken, a breeze from above, lazy, cold, poison in the kitchen, they destroyed the nest, death, all gone, empty, where to hide, the flowers taste good, need to feed, the dead season is coming, so tired, must go underground, where the cold can’t reach, the host is dead, find another one, rot, decay, a feast, mating, I’m caught in the net, can’t get free, prey, finally, food, warmth, the breeze is too strong, need to, need to, the blobs left in the dark, they never do this, late, I need to dig, the wood’s too hard, there’s something in it, bad, the clothes are wet, drip, drip, drip, strange water, not the one from the faucet, what’s a faucet? Dripping, cold, it’s broken, where do I go now, deeper down, stone, death, no hiding—”
George decided it was time to end this. Andi’s speech pattern was getting more and more distorted, losing all coherence, resembling the chaos Andi described to him as the natural state of his connection to the insects. He grabbed Andi’s arm to shake him out of his stupor. Sweat was beading on his partner’s brow, and his skin looked even paler than usual. It took him what seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes to yank Andi back to him, back into reality, all the time calling his name and murmuring reassurances that he was there, that Andi could come back, that it was safe. Finally, Andi’s eyes lost the daze and focused on George. He shook his head like a cat that had gotten wet.
“They were definitely there. At the cabin. In the cabin. I recognize them more clearly from the woods. And there was this strange substance again, not the ketamine, though they had some in the house at some point. Something else. I wish I knew what it was. I have a feeling it’s important.” Andi’s shoulders slumped. “Or maybe I’m just confused.”
It broke George’s heart to see his partner so dejected. Intellectually he had known their cases wouldn’t always be as clear-cut as the Castain case, with them knowing the culprit way before they had enough evidence to prove it. As George was learning bit by bit, too much information was a problem when you didn’t know what exactly you were looking for. It was like fishing for sardines. There were so many fish, you could never hope to concentrate on just one, constantly being distracted. At least they had confirmation that the two women had both been at the cabin and that they had ketamine in the house. How they would prove that George didn’t know yet. He offered Andi his hand to help him up, and his partner took it.
“Let’s go and talk to them.”
9. Abysses
WHEN THEYrang the bell, it took some time until Tabitha Clemént answered it. Andi felt her moving through the house—
Rising from the chair behind her desk, the wood no good, not real wood, the fake one that neither provided food nor nesting space, to the door, down the steps, heavy footfalls, she wasn’t careful, slippers slapping against the tiles in the floor, slap, slap, slap, loud, vibrating through the house, coming closer, stopping at the intercom, a crackling, the air in waves, unsettling—
“Who is there?”
George stepped toward the little camera on top of the bell, showing his badge. “This is Detective George Donovan from the Charleston PD. I’m here with my partner, Detective Andrew Hayes. If you have time, could we perhaps ask you some questions?”
Nervous, her adrenaline spiking, shuffling—
“I don’t think so.” Short and to the point. George wasn’t one to give up easily, though.
“Please, Ms.—is it Ms. Clemént or Ms. Garr?” Smart move, showing her they already knew something, but not whether it was her or her friend inside the house, giving her the illusion of an advantage she didn’t have.
“It’s Mrs. Clemént.” She sounded grudging, ready to cut them off.
“Mrs. Clemént, we’re truly sorry to disturb you, but we’re investigating a murder, and we have photographic proof you were close to the place where it happened. We were hoping you could perhaps provide us with some information to help us?” George was a very clever man, subtly telling her they had the means to link her to the crime, at the same time making clear she wasn’t a suspect by appealing her to help. Andi didn’t know how much of it she was buying—the woman was a lawyer after all—but her stress levels went down considerably. She still didn’t open the door, though.
“What do you want to know?” Still grumpy, but she was cooperating.
“We understand you were at Lake Moultrie last Wednesday afternoon. May I ask why?” George acted as if it was perfectly normal to conduct an interview via the house intercom. Then again, the man had worked in Narcotics. Drug addicts tended to be highly suspicious of cops.
“We go there regularly. Hiking.”
A valid reason. And most probably true because Tabitha Clemént was now calm as could be. She was telling the truth.
“It seems to me you chose a rather interesting parking spot.” No accusation from George, no direct question why they would park off a rarely used side road when there were huge parking spaces available in the area. Mrs. Clemént huffed.
“When we go hiking, we like to be alone. In the afternoons, the parking lots are usually full.” True and plausible. If it hadn’t been for that strange substance Andi had felt in the house, outside, and now everywhere in Tabitha and Josephine’s house, he would have believed her.
“I understand. Did you see anything unusual? More cars parked outside the parking lot, perhaps other people hiking there?”
