50
Victoria choked back the urge to vomit.
The room was covered in blood. She stepped forward carefully, realizing the sound she’d heard was the plastic drop cloths scratching against the furniture in the breeze from the ceiling fan. X had laid out the sheets exactly the way she had done the night of the Gala.
A pained groan escaped her lips as she took it all in. Bloody streaks and drips broken by congealing clots and yellowish lumps of gelatinous blobs. Stumbling backward, Victoria’s chest heaved. She coughed and leaned heavily on her knees as the floor tilted.
In through the nose, out through the mouth, Victoria blocked everything else out, shrinking her world to the air in her lungs and the hard wall behind her. The worst of the dizziness slowly receded, and as she raised her head her gaze landed on the dresser.
Avoiding the largest of the blood splatters like a kid pretending the floor is made of lava, Victoria crossed the room. The plastic sheets covering the drawers were smeared with blood, dark and rusty, the pattern forming two words.
OPEN ME
From downstairs, a phone blared to life, making her jump and almost drop the filet knife on her foot. That couldn’t be her phone. She hadn’t turned the sound on. Not since 2003.
The ringing stopped. She waited. For what, she didn’t know. X to come barreling up the stairs. An axe-wielding psycho in a Ghostface mask. Warren’s liquefying zombie corpse. It didn’t matter that his body had been cremated, the ashes spread under the bridge of a waterfall in the Adirondacks.
But the house remained quiet. Victoria resolved to concentrate on the message on the dresser.
OPEN ME
Tracing the letters close to the surface, dread pooled low in her gut. If X had seen her laying the plastic, he’d also seen the mahogany box.
They’d never found the murder weapon.
Victoria dropped the filet knife and tore at the plastic sheets covering the bottom drawer, not thinking about the blood scraping beneath her fingernails and the matter sticking to her skin. Whatever reservations she may have had about getting dirty were quickly forgotten, replaced by a burning need to know.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the outline of the box became visible, but it was too much to hope that X hadn’t found it. Wishful thinking would get her killed.
Victoria gripped the side of the box, thumbed over the brass latch, and opened the lid.
“Shit,” she hissed, shoving the box out of her hands. It hit the back of the drawer with a hard thunk and jostled the contents.
Victoria gagged. The hunting knife was gone. In its place were Warren’s eyes. The opaque whites had taken on a beige tint. The irises were black marbles set in the center of overcooked egg whites. Pink strands of muscle dangled from the back like tentacles.
How were these the same eyes she’d stared into over dinner on date nights? The same eyes that had cast judgment on her decision to stay on at Livingston. Warren wasn’t here; his ashes had been spread and his soul, if there was such a thing, was long gone. But that didn’t stop the swell of emotion from bringing tears to Victoria’s own, very much alive, eyes.
The phone rang again.
Victoria jolted at the sound and stumbled like a newborn calf toward the hall, stopping briefly to peel off her socks to avoid spreading blood throughout the rest of the house. At least her common sense hadn’t completely abandoned her.
In the kitchen she found her phone, but there was no incoming call. The lock screen remained the same, the time covering Warren’s face as they posed for the photographer after Warren’s keynote last winter. She turned it over in her hands, thumbed into the home screen and flicked back and forth in the menu. No missed calls.
A phone was still ringing. Victoria swiveled, following the sound from the kitchen, past Warren’s office, to the door that shouldn’t be open.
Perfect, she thought. Only good things come from basements.