She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,220

at the top left corner stated the current date and time, seconds ticking off. The bottom right simply said, CHARTER OBSERVATION TEAM 309 – SUBJECT “D” – LEVEL 2 SUB 3.

The image was blank.

Trudeau stared forward, the butt of the pen sticking out of his ear with surprisingly little blood. Several drops found their way to the white jacket of his suit.

Fogel turned back to the Mac, pulling it closer.

Trudeau had several programs open—spreadsheets, a web browser, e-mail. She brought up his e-mails first and scrolled through his inbox. 6,324 unread messages.

Fogel was a stickler for a clean inbox, virtual or otherwise, and so many messages, so much clutter, made her twitchy. Brier never deleted his messages after reading them. His inbox had always been like this.

Not really like this.

Trudeau’s messages were all bold, unread. As if he didn’t check his e-mail.

Fogel scrolled back through the messages, scanning the subjects.

Lower your mortgage.

Movie and showtimes.

Advertisements for local car dealerships.

Spam, all of it. She didn’t see a single personal or business-related message from a real person.

Fogel clicked over to the Sent folder.

The last sent message was dated 8/12/1993—nearly five years ago.

The message was from Trudeau to 6491charter with a cc to lolivercharter. The subject simply said, “We need to talk about Doctor Durgin. Possible problem with ‘D.’”

Fogel clicked back over to the blank video feed:

CHARTER OBSERVATION TEAM 309 – SUBJECT “D” – LEVEL 2 SUB 3.

Subject “D.”

Fogel opened Trudeau’s web browser. The last page he viewed was for TicketMaster—Patti LaBelle in Philly, 9/20/1993.

She returned to his sent e-mails, nearly ten thousand of them, dating back to the mid-eighties. Fogel tried to remember when she first started using e-mail. Probably around that time with AOL.

You’ve got mail.

She still had nightmares about that voice.

Fogel returned to the video feed:

CHARTER OBSERVATION TEAM 309 – SUBJECT “D” – LEVEL 2 SUB 3.

Someone could come into this office at any moment. She was pushing her luck. She had a decision to make, and it took her all of two seconds to make it.

Fogel closed the top on the MacBook, unplugged the cable, and tucked the computer under her arm. Beneath the MacBook she found a faded yellow Post-it note with the number 392099 written in blocky handwriting. She scooped that up, too.

She opened the office door slowly, just enough to peek out into the hallway.

Fogel was alone.

To her right was the door leading back to the lobby. On the far left end of the hallway was an elevator. She scrambled from Trudeau’s office to the elevator and hit the call button.

Nothing happened.

A keypad, identical to the one in the lobby, was built into the wall beside the elevator controls.

Fogel glanced at the Post-it note, keyed 392099 into the pad, then pressed the call button again. This time, the button lit up and she heard the whir of motors as the car approached. A bell dinged, and the doors slid open with a squeak. Inside, a couple of the light bulbs were out.

She took one last look down the hallway, thought about the shitstorm of trouble she’d find herself in when she eventually got caught snooping around this place, then stepped inside the elevator.

Fogel keyed in the code again and pressed the button marked 2-3.

The doors squeaked shut.

The elevator ascended.

Fogel wasn’t sure what she expected to find when the doors opened. Maybe a burley security guard (or three), a wide-eyed lab rat or research assistant, possibly a janitor. The doors opened on none of those things.

The doors opened on another white hallway, the walls covered in the crimson stains of dried blood and nearly a dozen bodies lying on the floor.

Fogel pressed against the back wall of the elevator and froze long enough for the doors to close. Before they could seal completely, she stepped forward and placed her hand between them, tripping the sensor, causing the doors to reverse.

Fogel stepped slowly into the hallway, with Trudeau’s MacBook held tightly at her chest like a makeshift shield against whatever happened here.

From the state of the bodies, she knew it had happened a long time ago. Several years, at least. She thought about the last e-mail Trudeau sent, dated 8/12/1993.

The first two bodies she encountered, just outside the elevator, appeared to be a man and a woman. Both were dressed entirely in white, the material stained in various shades of yellow and brown and the bodies themselves nothing more than dried out husks, years into decomposition. Mummy-like. The nails and hair long, dried lips folded back in sadistic grins,