19. Diem

19

Diem

T allus found the first one. I found the following three. Then they kept appearing, and I knew we had a problem. We separated the files marked DECEASED into their own pile and counted them.

“Diem, there are eleven of them. What the ever-loving fuck?”

“I don’t know.”

I could barely rub two brain cells together at that point, and no matter what path I took to explain the mess, I encountered a dead end. What had we found? What did it mean? After our visit with the dear old doctor, why had Hilty stormed his ex-wife’s house and confiscated these files? Who were these people? And why were over half of them marked with the word DECEASED?

My skin itched and buzzed for a cigarette, but I tamped it down and did my best to ignore the craving. Why had I given my smokes to Tallus?

“D?”

“I said I don’t know.” There was more bite to my tone than I intended, and I told myself to calm the fuck down.

“Amber and Allan both have files.”

My brow creased. “I know.”

“Do you think the rest of these people are like them? Do you think… they killed themselves?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hilty and Rowena are working together, aren’t they?”

“I… don’t know.”

“He lied to us. He said he hadn’t talked to her, but he had. This is proof. They’re back to their old games. The trial we found from the eighties was real. The judge dismissed it. Holy fuck, D. It was really real. I was right. They found a way to—”

“Tallus, shut up. I’m trying to think.” I bit the inside of my cheek, cursing my sharp tone. I clenched my fists. My body was a furnace, and the air conditioning in the Jeep was barely penetrating. A fire burned in my core. One built from self-loathing, self-hatred, regret, anger, longing, and guilt.

And it wouldn’t go out.

My mind had been in a twisted knot all day, and I’d not slept a wink in almost forty hours.

What the hell were we looking at?

When Tallus came to me about Madame Rowena, I had almost laughed him out of the office. Because it was ridiculous. Impossible. But… what the fuck had we stumbled upon?

I wasn’t laughing anymore.

“I have to put these back.” I grabbed the ones Tallus had gathered in his lap and added them to my pile.

“What? Stop. We can’t put them back. This is proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“They’re killing people with mind control.”

“There’s no such fucking thing as—”

“Okay, okay, I concede. Not mind control, but something to that effect. I don’t care what you call it. People are dead, Diem. A lot of people, and Hilty and Rowena are covering it up. You can’t ignore this.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face and did all I could to talk myself off a ledge. When I spoke, I did so slowly. “We don’t know anything. It looks suspicious, but it could be explainable.”

“Explainable? We should report it.”

“We’re not reporting it. We have nothing to report.”

Tallus huffed. “You still don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that… I…” My nostrils flared. “We have to… Tallus, I’m fucking tired. I can’t think right now. I need to put these files back before Hilty discovers they’re gone. We took pictures of everything. We can look at it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? We can’t wait on this.”

“We can. We are.”

“But what if—”

“No.”

“Diem—”

I was fast losing control, unable to repress the frustration any longer. As I ground my teeth, a low, rumbly growl sounded in my chest.

Tallus scoffed and cocked his head to the side. “Oh, hell no. Don’t you growl at me. If you want to be frustrated, be frustrated.” He tossed my crumpled pack of cigarettes across the console. “Smoke a fucking cigarette if you have to, but we are part… nonpartners, and you do not get to make all the decisions on your own. I have a voice too, and I don’t want to wait. It’s…” He fished his phone from a pocket. “It’s not quite eleven. One hour, Guns. We work until midnight. Let’s go back to your office and at least look some of these people up. Find out how they died… or if they’re dead. Then , we get some sleep.”

“Then, you go home.”

He smirked, and all the heat from his speech evaporated. “Don’t want me in your bed again, huh?”

My stomach flip-flopped like it had been doing all day. Sweat dripped from my brow. I shook my head, unable to meet his eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him there. It was that I couldn’t function with him so close, and there was no way in hell I could sleep beside him, and I desperately needed sleep.

“No,” I said so quietly I was surprised he heard.

“Then I’ll go home. One hour. Do we have a deal?”

I nodded and met Tallus’s eyes. His smile was calming. Reassuring. Comforting. It doused the flames that had been burning all day.

“It’s kinda hot when you get bossy,” I said. “No one’s ever dared to put me in my place.”

The mischievous smirk I adored filled his face, and he reached out and snagged my chin in a firm grip. “Babe, I’ve got your number, and when you figure your shit out, I think we’re gonna be all right.” He pecked a soft kiss on my mouth and sat back, buckling his seatbelt. “Get moving, Guns.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I snagged the stack of files and escaped the Jeep, heading back toward Hilty’s office.

***

It was after midnight, and Tallus was asleep on the couch.

Fuck my life. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

After returning to my place, we’d made a list of all the people in the files the doctor had retrieved from Rowena’s, sorting them into two categories: DEAD and ALIVE. We noted their ages, genders, dates of birth, and any other significant details we could find in the files.

Whatever convoluted theory we were chasing, whatever jokes I’d made, or insults I’d tossed about, the truth was, Tallus was right. We were onto something. I didn’t like it.

We divided the list of dead clients between us and proceeded to see what we could find online about each person. Specifically, how and when they had died.

Eleven deceased. Amber and Allan’s stories we knew.

Two more proved to be unexplained or unexpected suicides. Another two had died from drug overdoses. Of the remaining five, their causes of death were not readily available in the details provided by the internet.

The window was large. The deaths spanned more than sixteen months. To anyone else, they wouldn’t appear suspicious. Nothing outwardly connected them. They were of various ages, genders, and ethnicities and lived in different parts of the city. The causes of death so far could be explained without raising red flags. Families may have had to make peace with questionable or unexpected suicides, but such was life. You never really knew a person’s inner demons.

Neither of us was focused on the time. Both of us were determined to dig deeper and find answers. Tallus, for all the shit I gave him, was dedicated and committed when it came to investigating a case. I admired that about him. He wasn’t lazy. He wasn’t scared to take risks.

He didn’t shy away from a challenge. Or me.

At some point, I stepped out for a cigarette, and by the time I returned, Tallus was out cold on the couch, half sitting, half slumping in the corner, head cradled on the armrest, knees drawn up so he was in a fetal position. The man had done his best all night to ensure he didn’t take up any more space than he had to, knowing my bubble was about three times its usual size.

I stalled when I found him, face slack, glasses crooked, and air passing through his parted lips.

For the first time all day, I allowed myself to openly admire him, the man who’d taken me to bed the previous night. The man who’d dismantled my armor. The man who’d made it okay for me to not be okay.

The only other person who’d given me that kind of freedom was my therapist.

Tallus would be my undoing, and the more I considered his words and gentle touches, the more panicked I became. I would fuck this up. I would hurt him. I could never be what he wanted me to be. It was impossible.

My father would always be in the background of my mind, laughing and calling me a failure, a useless waste of space. Eventually, I would believe his taunts and run.

I scanned the apartment, unsure what to do.

I didn’t want to wake him or kick him out, but I couldn’t bring myself to share a bed. It was a level of intimacy beyond my reach. Quietly, I collected the papers and notepads he’d gathered in his lap and set them aside. He could have the whole couch if he wanted. It was a loveseat, and Tallus was tall, but it was better than nothing.

I retrieved the blanket off my bed—I didn’t have an extra and the aircon was making the room cold—and laid it on top of him.

He didn’t stir.

Next, I removed his glasses and placed them on the table nearby.

Okay. Good. Perfect. This could work. Tallus could sleep on the couch. That was fine. Safe. If he woke in the night and wanted to go home, he could.

I lingered, unable to take my eyes off him, wanting desperately to touch him, feel his mouth on me again. Tallus made it seem so natural.

Defeated, I used the bathroom, collected our research and my iPad, and crawled into bed. I had ways of getting answers. I had access to places I shouldn’t. If I could figure out how the last five people died, maybe it would help.

But a severe lack of sleep caught up with me before long, and I was out cold in no time.

***

I awoke midmorning the following day peppered in sweat and with the vague impression of a nightmare lingering on the outskirts of my brain. My muscles ached like I’d spent three hours at the gym, pushing to failure on every set, but no matter how hard I strained, the details of the dream wouldn’t come back. It was bad, whatever it was. The suffocating pressure against my sternum and an ominous disquiet kept me on alert as I crawled out of bed.

I’d lived my whole life a coiled spring. The sensation wasn’t new, but it was uncomfortable.

Tallus was gone, of course. The blanket I’d given him was folded on the couch. I found a sticky note pinned to the fridge when I retrieved a bottle of water. Keep me updated and call with any information, or I will hunt you down. My case, Guns! You’re my bitch, remember? He’d signed it Holmes.

I huffed and left the note where it hung as I packed a gym bag and headed out for an hour to decompress and shower away the lingering stress that had woken me.

Tallus wasn’t technically a paying client. As interesting as his psychic case had become, I had real work to do if I was going to pay the bills and keep my head above water. So after my session at the gym, I spent a few hours returning phone calls, responding to emails, doing research for an independent company that was struggling with an employee who they were convinced was skimming the books, and compiling data for the lawyer I’d spoken to several days ago. I picked up a surveillance job and another dime-a-dozen case of suspected infidelity.

It was close to five when I sat down with the information we’d collected. I hadn’t texted or called Tallus. Based on the stream of raging messages he’d sent over the course of the day, he wasn’t pleased with my silence.

I didn’t have anything yet. What did he want from me? I wasn’t exactly a chit-chat-about-my-day kind of guy. He knew that. Was I supposed to send him pictures of my breakfast? Ask him how life was going? Fuck if I knew, so I didn’t respond. He’d be off work and breaking down my door within the hour, so what was the point?

Keeping busy had reduced my stress by several degrees, and if I could keep it under control, maybe I would be able to lay off the goddamn cigarettes. Again. As it stood, I’d fallen back down that miserable hole and was having trouble getting out.

I started by printing physical copies of the information we’d found. Spreading the pages on my desk, I arranged them into two groups: Living and dead. The first group I dismissed. The second group I organized into three subcategories: Suicides, overdoses, and unknown.

Technically, drug overdoses could fall into the realm of suicide. Had their deaths been intentional? Accidental? It wasn’t always cut-and-dry. I kept that in mind.

Amber, Allan, and two new people landed in the suicide pile. The newbies were a thirty-two-year-old guy named Collin and a forty-five-year-old woman named Virginia.

In the overdose pile, I had a twenty-two-year-old kid named Ezra and a twenty-nine-year-old woman named Kennedy.

The remaining five, the unknowns, were people of various ages as well. The youngest was twenty-three, and the oldest was sixty-one. I drew the stack of unknowns in front of me and got to work, seeing what I could find. I started with my connection at the Center of Forensic Pathology, but Kelly refused to help even when I offered to up his payment.

“I’m sorry, man. I can’t afford to lose my job. Checking out one autopsy, sure. Eleven? Fuck no. Someone’s gonna ask questions. If I poke into one and someone notices and asks why, I can say the family showed up with questions, and I helped them find answers, but if I’m flagged accessing eleven files, I’m going down. They monitor us, you know. It’s not like the old days.”

“Two hundred.”

“Dude, it’s not about the money. Are you listening? Everything on the computer is monitored. We live in a digital world now. No more paper files. Welcome to the new age, brother. It’s not easy to sneak around these days. Everyone has trust issues. No one more than the goddamn government. I can’t help you.”

Irritated, I hung up and switched directions, determined to figure out why these people went to see Rowena in the first place. Eliminating the living was a rookie mistake. We had to look at the bigger picture if we were going to get answers.

I brought the dismissed files forward and spread them out, which gave me a total of twenty-six files. I started from the top and read every page.

In under ten minutes, a haunting discovery made me sit upright.

“Not possible.”

I sifted through the files again to be sure, but facts were facts. The last thing I wanted to do was admit that Tallus and his theory of mindfuckery was possible because it wasn’t. If he saw what I saw, he was going to be insufferable.

“Fuck.”