Breviary was a greedy God. Clara over a tub, slicing length-and width-wise, so that her wound would bear four points. Betty tethered to a hospital bed, dreaming of what she could have been, only she’d been born with black wings too heavy to flap. Jayne, all dressed up, but too scared to go to her act, so she’d stayed home and rubbed out her own face. The tenants at a cocktail party, screaming with delight. And then, in her mind, a terrible door opened, and everything went black.
“Letmeohhh,” she whispered. Her voice slurred like her mouth was filled with hardening wet cement. “Ahhllscream.”
Their faces up close were worse than she’d remembered. Paper-thin skin pulled so tight it looked as if it might split apart and bleed.
Marty didn’t have any eyelashes, and she wondered if it was because the doctor had cut them out when he’d widened the man’s eyes. Only his hands showed his age. She remembered, then, that Jayne had known Marty’s name that night they’d all crowded outside her door. The sneakered outfit she’d worn on the date with the old man—it had been too casual for dinner at a restaurant, or even a walk in the park, and now she knew why. The date had taken place inside the building.
“Itwasssyou?” she asked lashless Marty as a pair of uniformed cops got off the elevator. “You hurt my best friend?”
Marty blinked his slits. His grip on her arm tightened until it pinched, and she knew. It was him. The man who was so good and kind and full of promise that Jayne had been afraid to say his name. She looked up at him now, and saw that in his vanity, he’d lined under his eyes with brown pencil, and his fake hair was slick with pomade. Jayne. Poor Jayne. She’d trusted too much.
The EMTs were the first to leave 14E. They wheeled Jayne out on a gurney with a white sheet over her body. One of her saddle shoes stuck out. Its sole was broken, and her feet were geisha-tiny. Audrey would have cried, but her chest hurt too much.
After asking some questions of the tenants, the uniformed cops were the first to leave. It happened so fast, and she was shaking so hard, sweating, too, that she didn’t think to speak or even try to stop them.
“I can’t believe this. Can you believe this?” one of the tenants asked.
“She was always so quiet. I had no idea,” Loretta answered.
“—Kept to herself, mostly,” Evvie added.
“—Poor girl!” Galton said as he clapped his hands together, unable to contain his jubilation.
The last to leave were the detectives—a man and woman dressed in brown suits a few sizes too tight, like they’d bought them when they got their promotions and hadn’t upgraded since.
“Her name was Jayne Young. Her family came from Salt Lake City. Like we told you, Loretta found her and called 911,” Marty told them. “That’s all I know.”
“Terrible,” Loretta chimed in. “She left her door open and the light on. I didn’t even have to go inside.”
“The killer,” Audrey said. Marty and Loretta squeezed her arms. The feeling was a sphygmomanometer’s sleeve, tightening.
“Killer?” the male detective asked. He had black hair that was gray at the temples, and he looked tired, like he’d been woken from a sound sleep and was still debating whether he gave a shit about the dead girl in the poodle skirt.
“Them. All of them. Got inside her. Mader do it. Sacrifice, so their door would open,” Audrey panted.
The man came closer, and Audrey saw he didn’t believe. He was looking at her the way people used to look at Betty; with narrowed eyes and poker faces. “How did they do that? Because it looks like she hung herself,” he said.
Audrey blinked. She thought she felt a tear roll, but her cheeks were numb. The left side of her chest throbbed, and she wondered if the injection that the kind-looking old man had given her might induce a heart attack.
“Do you know something?” he asked.
“They do,” she said.
He looked Audrey up and down, from soiled blue sweat suit to blood-crusted bare feet. “Would you like to come to a hospital?” he asked. Then he turned to the other detective. “Donna? Why don’t you call another van for this nice lady?”
She winced. Nice lady—code for crazy. That van wasn’t going to a hospital, it was going to Bellevue. She realized then that these detectives were in on it. So were the EMTs. Everybody in