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  “No one could blame you for that,” he said, pulling back to examine her. “You look like shit, kid. You really do.”

  Piper’s laughter was just as false as his.

  “I could always rely on you for tact,” she said.

  “I wanted to say something when I first saw you, but you know, that tact thing you mentioned. You look like you’ve seen the wrong side of a sunrise for quite some time now.”

  “Don’t sugar coat it.” Piper tugged at her ponytail self-consciously. She actually couldn’t remember the last time she looked in a mirror. At least she probably should’ve checked herself before leaving the car. With her luck, she probably reeked of liquor from her recently completed bender. “Don’t spare me, Harrison. Just let me know how you really feel.”

  “Hey, you’re on my turf now. It’s almost midnight and you show up on my doorstep? I’m pretty sure I have a free shot coming my way. Have you eaten?”

  He was still examining her in a fatherly way that was starting to make her uncomfortable. It was time to shift focus.

  “Speaking of turf,” Piper said, motioning around the entranceway and toward the living room. “Did the records department throw up in here?”

  “Yeah, you know what’s funny?” He looked over his shoulder at the mess in the living room and sighed. “It’s like anything. You get caught up in your own head and you lose track of all the little things around you until they become too big to bother with. Laura was always good at that. She kept this old hulk in order. I’m pretty sure even the dust around here was afraid of her, like everyone else.”

  Having mentioned his wife’s name, it stood between the two of them like a physical being. Piper looked down again, feeling her cheeks begin to burn.

  “I heard when she passed, Harrison. I should’ve said something. I might’ve sent a card or called or…”

  Harrison shook his head.

  “You know, it’s fine. I probably wouldn’t have done anything either if I were you. She wasn’t the most well liked. Come to think of it, cancer was probably the one thing on this planet with the balls to take her down. The entire old Dixon guard showed up for the funeral though.”

  Piper was surprised again when he placed his arm around her for the second time. This close to her, she thought she could smell scotch on his breath. When had he stopped being a just a social drinker? He started leading her down past the stairs to the kitchen, his bare feet pushing a clear path for them along the way. “You would’ve loved it. All of Dixon’s founding families, all dressed up in full mourning gear. Even Brynn Entler managed to drag her bony ass down from the castle to pay her respects.”

  He squeezed her shoulder, sending a shock of tenderness through her that took her off guard again. She watched him, more fragile than she remembered as he left her side to turn on the kitchen light. There was a spurt as the old wires took their time to pay attention. Soon the kitchen was illuminated by a series of dutifully humming glass fixtures. They showcased a kitchen that hadn’t been used for food in quite some time.

  Like the rest of the house, it was littered with papers. The island that had once had at least three hand picked staff members cooking for Laura’s impressive social circle was now covered with damp damaged boxes, empty bottles and pizza boxes filled with the crusted remains of their own gore. Despite herself, despite her best intentions to see Harrison as a man and not some kind of surrogate father, Piper felt her heart tighten at the slovenliness of it all. Was he really as lost as all this suggested?

  He interrupted her sentimentality by practically pushing her into one of the tall chairs that surrounded the island. Once top of the line imports, they were now greasy with fingerprints and pockmarked with cigarette holes. She could’ve called sooner. She really could’ve.

  He clapped his hands together suddenly, breaking the weight of the guilty silence in the room.

  “Food!” he announced. “I can’t guarantee anything of substance. I let the staff go a few days after Laura passed. What do I need staff for? It’s bullshit. I took care of myself for years. It’s embarrassing. Fucking embarrassing.” His curse word dispersed into the air, its aggressive jocularity falling wasted on the room.

  Piper watched as Harrison opened the refrigerator. Over his shoulder, Piper could see that it was practically empty. Harrison stood as if seeing it for the first time and then quickly shut the door. There had been nothing in there but vodka bottles, most almost empty save for a few inches.

  He placed two hands on the marble island, spread out and authoritative despite his PJ bottoms and housecoat. “Why don’t I order a pizza first?” he said lamely. “Then you can show me what you’ve been clutching in that hand of yours this whole time. Pepperoni, sausage and anchovy then you can tell me why you’d drive for eight hours straight to get me out of bed.”

  Piper’s hand clenched involuntarily. She could feel the paper growing moist in her nervous hand. She shook her head, feeling the remaining weight of her hangover complain in the back of her skull.

  “Let’s skip the pizza,” she said.

  Under the unsteady lights above, she placed the papers on the island and slid them across the marble. The paper stuck slightly as it passed the countless stains that had collected like crossed off days on a calendar since Laura’s death.

  He reached out and met Piper halfway, taking the now mangled wad of paper from her. He stared at her, his eyes bright despite his haggard appearance. Harrison lifted the pile and began to unfold it.

  There was no noise in the kitchen except for the occasional groaning of the house as it settled its skirts for the night. Acutely aware of her own breathing, Piper found it almost impossible to relax as Dixon’s head detective slowly unfolded her drawings.

  He grabbed his lips beneath his palm, crushing his own flesh as Piper watched his eyes take in the work. They skated across the first image, taking in the detail of a drawing she had no recollection of making.

  “This is Agatha Stone. No question. You’ve seen her commercials, right?”

  “I’ve been in hiding, Harrison, remember.”

  “Right, well she considers herself to be a local celebrity. She used to hang out with Laura when she was alive. She has a way of working herself into the pockets of anyone with a net worth over eighty-thousand. She owns some kind of furniture store.”

  As he examined the picture, Piper was drawn to an organized pile of paperwork and photos in front of him. Out of the many mounds of documents in the room, this one seemed to be the least neglected. Just when he was about the lay Piper’s drawing down on top, she stopped him.

  “That’s…” her spine contracted in on itself like a slinky falling back into place. There was a black and white photo of a familiar woman at the top of the pile. All it took was a glance. “Harrison, is that who I think it is?”

  Harrison paused before settling her drawing on top. He looked down at the photo, a look of weariness on his face that Piper was starting to realize was now his go-to expression. He smiled at her then, a small, genuine smile that she hadn’t seen since she was a preteen.

  “I haven’t given up Piper.” He met her gaze. Piper’s felt a flood of unfamiliar emotion. For the first time in her life, she felt a wave of pity for Dixon’s toughest detective.

  “It’s an old one,” Piper said, softly. She picked up the photo of her mother. “I haven’t seen that in years.”

  Nestled against her mother’s black-and-white décolletage was the necklace that Piper had seen for the last three visions. Clearer than she’d seen it in her dreams, the necklace gripped her eye making it impossible to look away. Had her mother really been that young? Defiant black eye makeup, half seductive smirk, she looked younger than Piper.

  “I never gave up, Piper. I won’t.” He shook his head as if to confirm it to himself. His hand was shaking when he dropped Piper’s drawing and picked up a pack of cigarettes. Piper watched as he lit one. Like a man on death row, his trembling hand performed the delicate ritual and he closed
his eyes as the nicotine hit him. “I won’t give up.” He exhaled the smoke between the two of them. The chemical heaviness felt real, comforting even. “I’ll find her for you. I told you that when you were a kid and I’ll tell you that now.”

  There were tears in her eyes suddenly. That was a common occurrence these days and it was frankly starting to get on her nerves. She fought against the lump in her throat, inhaling his smoke purposely to ground her.

  “There’s more,” she mumbled, doing her best to disregard the photo of her mother. “There’s…well, keep going.”

  Harrison examined her over his plumes of smoke then turned back to her drawings. He looked carefully at the second picture of the younger, heavy set girl.

  “Her daughter. I’ve only seen her once. These are fantastic. Extremely life-like. I mean, I can easily understand why I’ve seen your name all over since you left, but you can’t tell me you drove all the way back to Dixon just to show me your new work.”

  Piper shook her head. Her neck suddenly felt weak, as if it were about to crumble under the weight of her skull.

  “Harrison, it’s the last one,” she said. “You need to look at that one.

  The room was silent again. Her eyes closed, Piper could hear the sound of the second paper being discarded and then, most horrible of all, the catch of breath in the detective’s throat.

  One second. Two seconds. Ten.

  There wasn’t a movement from Harrison. He was stiff where he stood, Piper’s final portrait in his hand. She could almost hear his heart beating, or was it hers? She looked up, unable to take it any longer. Why wasn’t he speaking?

  The detective’s face was blank with shock. She’d seen that look before when he had called her in to work with witnesses back in day, but she’d never thought she’d see it on him. It was the look of a horrible inevitability. The look of a secret that finally surfaced, infected and ancient, demanding to be seen.

  He ran his hand over the lower part of his face, scrubbing at his flesh.

  “It can’t be.”

  “After you left a few days ago, I lost it. I’d been trying so hard, but seeing you and seeing the pictures?” Her voice was still muffled with emotion. “I have painted every single one of those people. Adam and the rest of the sane world, they told me that it was to do with the bullet position in my brain but I knew, I knew all along that it wasn’t. These people needed my help, Harrison. They needed my help but all I did was slop their pain onto a canvas. That boy?” Her voice began to crack but she forced herself onward. “The latest one. The preteen? I’d already been dreaming about him for three days. Three days Harrison.”

  She found herself crying again, wiping away her tears as soon as they fell.

  “These women, Agatha what’s her name and her daughter? They’re the latest. I saw them in a dream and then when I woke up there they were. I have no memory of drawing them, Harrison. No memory of drawing him.”

  She could feel her heartbeat, quicker than normal, thudding through her pulse points.

  “He’s doing it all. It’s the same man, Harrison. The same man from before.”

  “The same man you drew a picture of five years ago.” The detective was fixated on the picture. The corners of his mouth were twitching. “The same fucking picture I threw out.”

  Piper’s heart seemed to halt in her chest painfully as Harrison suddenly crumpled the drawing into his fist. He walked to the counter across the room and bent over the sink like he was going to be sick.

  Piper waited for him to speak, counting the seconds obsessively in her head as the detective hung his head, struggling not to drown in what seemed like a tidal wave of emotion.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “I should’ve said something back then, Piper.”

  Her mouth was suddenly dry.

  “Said what?”

  He took a deep breath, raising his head to the ceiling as if to collect himself. Piper looked away as the bald spot that seemed to be developing at his crown caught the light.

  “I should’ve told you that I knew who he was. That day when you came in with that picture, that first day I sent you in there like an idiot. My god, I was so desperate.” His back still to her, he took a deep drag of his cigarette. The smoke billowed up and out of him, becoming a strange shape before dissolving above his head. Piper was reminded uncomfortably of the blackness she had seen in her dreams - tarry, swirling and so very cold.

  “The man in your picture.” He spoke plainly, turning to face her. He gripped the sink for support, his cigarette tight in his lips like a pacifier. “Piper, I know who that is.”

  Piper felt her stomach drop painfully. It seemed to plummet through her legs and into the floor, leaving her head feeling weightless and unreliable in its wake.

  “Who?” It was a triumphant effort to form the word. It weighed a hundred pounds as it dropped from her mouth, blinking like a time bomb and demanding an answer.

  “I knew it immediately back then. I was too caught up in Dixon bullshit to say anything. The Entler’s, they had the entire city in their pockets. I mean for fuck’s sake, Piper, they owned every factory and every production line. That department store was the heart of the damn city back then. We were in their pockets, as much as everyone else was. The actions of that fucked up family meant more to our city than the mayor did.”

  Piper stared at him. Barely looking at her, the words poured out of him like blood from an artery. Between puffs of cigarette, he clumsily wiped tears from his narrow face.

  “Who is it Harrison?” she asked softly. Every muscle in her body ached. She was tired. So very tired.

  “It’s the same person you directed us to five years ago Piper. It’s the son, Kingston. Kingston Entler.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  * * *

  The Harrison Residence - Dixon City

  It was dark. A thick, blanket like darkness that felt more crowded than empty. Piper measured her breathing carefully, gripping her thighs as a way to reinforce to herself that she was solid, that the darkness wasn’t dissolving her piece by piece. There was no noise except for her breaths which seemed impossibly loud in her head.

  She blinked, her senses so alert that she could feel her lashes brushing her cheek as she did so. She found no frame of reference. Piper moved her head slowly, searching the nothing that surrounded her for a sliver of light, even the tiniest speck. She was finding it more difficult to keep her breath steady. Her inhalations were becoming ragged.

  Focus.

  She let go of her thighs and slowly kneeled down. She dropped her hands to the floor then retracted them as she felt cool concrete under her searching fingers. Was it a warehouse of some sort? A storage room? Piper could feel the dark pressing down on her. She forced herself to move her hands outward despite the way her instincts growled at her.

  There was something out there.

  Something in the blackness was watching her. She could feel it with as much certainty as she felt the concrete. For a moment, she thought she heard breathing and her nerves crackled with electricity.

  Keep breathing. Steady breathing was the key. As soon as she lost control of that, she’d lose control of everything.

  Her hands shaking, she continued to reach out into the darkness. Someone was there. More than one someone. There was a legion of eyes on her, she could feel her skin crawling under their unyielding stares.

  She stepped forward. Her arms outstretched, she was able to move about three feet until her hands hit a hard surface. As cool as the floor but with a familiar wood grain texture, Piper moved her shaking hands downward until she hit what felt like a metal door handle. It was a curved industrial shape, devoid of the soft roundness of those found in a house.

  A light was suddenly at her feet. A perfect, narrow rectangle appeared, spilling forward enough to shine on her shoes. Only they weren’t her shoes. Piper stared down at the well-polished buster browns of a young boy, one white sock higher than the other.

  “Your fath
er said I should at least leave a light on for you.” Piper jumped as a voice suddenly spoke from behind the door. Trembling with rage, the voice seemed to sear through the wood. It was a terrible sound. A whisper of absolute disgust that made Piper’s stomach churn. “He wanted the light in the room on. I told him that you didn’t deserve it. Not after what you did.”

  Piper felt her bladder weaken. A depth of guilt that adults simply weren’t capable of swept through her and she found herself pounding on the door.