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An ambulance was summoned after all, but not for the dead men. A van came for them, late in the day, marked with the word coroner. Deirdre sat in the ambulance, a blanket around her shoulders, and listened to someone softly weeping. It took quite a while to figure out the weeping was her.
One of the EMT’s sat next to her, a comforting arm around her shoulders. Wiping her eyes on a tissue the woman handed her, Deirdre blinked out at the bright day.
‘Have they found her yet?’
She didn’t have to explain who she meant. She’d already asked everyone about Stacy. The detective had questioned her briefly, and she’d told him about waking up under the bed, about the dead man with no eyes, about Stacy’s jeans and phone on the floor beside her. She’d told him everything she remembered. Which wasn’t much.
‘You were wearing a costume, last you remember?’ he’d asked, going over everything for maybe the twentieth time.
She’d nodded. ‘Darryl gave it to me. I was trying it on, for a photo shoot we were going to do today.’
‘But when you came too, you weren’t wearing this costume?’
‘No. I don’t know where it is.’
‘You don’t remember taking it off?’
She shook her head, and wondered why they were making such a fuss over the bird suit. ‘Where’s Stacy?’ she asked again. ‘You have to find her.’
The detective had exchanged looks with the EMT, and the woman had led her back into the shade to sit down, while the man and his notebook had gone off in search of the Professor. He was sitting in the shade of a tent-like structure the police had erected soon after they’d learnt the extent of things in the house. James looked to Deirdre like he was about to pass out. He knew even less that she did. She bet anything that he wished he could have another drink.
‘I want to go and find Stacy,’ she said, and tried to get up, tipping the blanket from her shoulders.
The arm tightened around her. ‘The police will find her,’ the woman said. ‘You have to let them do their job, love.’
‘But they haven’t found her yet!’ Deirdre strained forward to see through the yawning doorway. ‘There’s a secret room. Deirdre found it behind the bookcase.’
The ambulance officer said nothing, just patted Deirdre. Subsiding back onto the seat again, Deirdre slid the phone from her pocket and sat looking at the photo of her and Stacy, arms around each other, grinning for the camera.
‘She’s got cancer,’ she said.
The patting stopped a moment, then resumed. ‘What sort, love?’
Deirdre shivered, though the day had turned as hot as all the others. ‘Breast cancer,’ she said. ‘They tried everything. Double mastectomy, chemo. Radiation. None of it worked. It just kept spreading.’
Leaning forward, Deirdre rested her elbows on her legs and tipped her head into her hands, still hanging onto the phone. ‘This was her last job on the show. We argued about her doing it, because she was sick, and I wanted her to spend her last months at home. We could have gone on a cruise. She wouldn’t listen, said she needed to prove there was life after death, and this experiment they were doing would mean that.’ She looked up, and blinked at the woman. ‘She wanted to prove life after death so I would be okay. Not for her own benefit, but for me.’ Did the woman understand? ‘She was here because of me.’ There was a lump in her throat that made it hard to swallow. ‘And now she’s gone, and I didn’t get to say goodbye.’
The hand squeezed her shoulder. ‘You don’t know she’s gone, love. We don’t know what’s happened here yet. They’re trying to piece it together now.’
‘She’s gone,’ Deirdre said. ‘Otherwise she’d be here.’ She paused. ‘I want to go home now.’
But there were more questions to answer. The detective showed her Jeremy’s big camera. They played some of the footage for her, and it was a shock to see Stacy’s face on there, eyes wide and staring in the darkness.
‘Is this you, Deirdre?’ the man asked. ‘Can you confirm this is you in the costume?’
It looked like her. He’d pressed pause, and let her stare at the small screen, take in the bird girl in the picture, rising out of the darkness, wings spread.
‘I don’t recognise the mask,’ she said. ‘I never wore a mask. Just the bodysuit.’
‘But it looks like you.’
‘I don’t remember this,’ she said.
He asked her again – ‘What’s the last thing you do remember?’
She blinked at him, looked again at the green and black picture on the camera screen. Her mouth was dry, and she could hear her own heart beating. It sounded dry too. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a squeak.
‘Stacy found a secret room,’ she said. ‘Behind the bookcase. She pulled the door open, and I must have fainted or something after that, because I don’t remember anything until I woke up this morning.’
‘Fainted?’
‘I don’t know. I guess so.’
‘Do you know where the bird costume is now?’
She shook her head.
‘What were you wearing when you came to this morning?’
She’d answered that one already, but he stood waiting to hear it again anyway. She licked her lips and wished for a drink of water.
‘I was in my underwear,’ she said.
‘You’d taken the costume off?’
‘I guess so. I must have.’
‘You weren’t wearing the clothes you are now?’
She shook her head. She’d answered this one too. ‘I found the jeans on the floor next to me.’
‘And are they your own?’
She didn’t want to say. The EMT gave her an encouraging squeeze. ‘They’re Stacy’s,’ she whispered.
‘Do you think Stacy might have the bird costume?’
‘I don’t know.’ She glanced past him at the house. ‘I don’t want to stay here tonight.’
‘The house is a crime scene,’ the detective said. ‘You won’t be staying here tonight.’
‘I can go home?’
The man exchanged glances with the ambulance woman. ‘I think you’d be best off spending the night at the hospital,’ he said. ‘They can run some tests, find out why you blacked out. We would like to know why.’
Deirdre wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she didn’t have any choice in the matter. In a matter of minutes, the ambulance doors were closed, and they were rolling down the driveway, away from the house. She wondered what they were doing with the Professor.