Condemned: A Thriller Read online

  The bed was neatly made. Throw pillows were piled against the headboard as though someone were about to settle in to read a book or watch the news. Flies crawled all over them and the dark spatter that ascended the wall behind the headboard clear up to the ceiling. The plaster was pitted and cracked and dotted with desiccated clumps of tissue and bone.

  I looked away and saw the dresser cleared of everything except a diamond ring and a note written in an unsteady hand. I saw the phrases “Please forgive me” and “I will always love you” and understood that the rest of the words were intended for eyes other than mine and once read could never be unread.

  Several wooden jewelry boxes were shattered on the floor, as though someone had simply flung them from the dresser and stomped on them. If there had been anything of value in them, it was gone now, and I had a sinking feeling I knew where the contents had gone. Or at least the gemstones.

  Something tapped my shoulder and I nearly came out of my skin. I stumbled backward and looked down at the ground, where a tiny white pupa writhed on the stained carpet amid chunks of rotted plaster. I glanced up and saw a black, amoeboid shape on the ceiling that reminded me of oil. The plaster sagged with absorbed fluid, which had dried and cracked and now offered a view of the wood-slat floor of the attic above me. Another maggot tumbled through the gaps between planks as I watched.

  I nearly tripped over my own feet in my hurry to get out of there.

  The front door burst inward so hard the knob struck the wall with a resounding crack that reverberated through the floor. I looked over the railing and was blinded by a flashlight shining directly in my eyes. I heard shouting as though from miles away and raised my hands up by my head. The light swung as whoever carried it ran up the stairs and bodily shoved me against the wall. My legs gave out and I slumped to the floor. I caught a glimpse of Aragon’s face and then she was headed down the hallway, her small frame silhouetted by her light. Her beam showed me what I had missed the first time. The stains on the ceiling where the plaster had absorbed as much blood as it could hold before giving way and dropping the remainder onto the carpet. The attic stairs hung down from the wood-framed hole in the ceiling.

  Aragon made a sobbing sound from deep in her chest, and when she looked at me there were tears in her eyes. She turned, waved away the flies, then shined her light first upon the thin steps mottled with brown crust, then up into the darkness.

  Somehow I stood and walked slowly down the hall, the floor canting beneath me. Aragon shined her flashlight backhanded with her left hand and braced her right wrist on her left to steady her gun as she climbed up into the attic.

  Her light spread across the exposed rafters high above her. Cobwebs cast strange, swaying shadows. She peeked over the edge, then ducked back down. Drew two sharp breaths. Blew them out. Went up slowly, shining her beam in a circle around her. I watched her feet until they disappeared and I heard the groaning of old wood as she walked across the ceiling. The diffused light faded with each step she took.

  I don’t know what flaw in my character or my genes caused me to follow Aragon, but before I knew what I was doing, I was halfway up and squeezing my shirt so tightly over my mouth and nose that my teeth ached. I heard the buzzing of flies and beneath it, a faint crackling sound.

  Aragon stopped and stood stock-still at the far end of the attic, her childlike form further diminished in outline. Her light fell upon the remains of two men suspended from the ceiling by ropes around their necks, just long enough that their toes touched the ground. Their bodies no longer looked human. They were swollen and bruised and alive with maggots, which I now realized were the source of the crackling sound. Their arms were bound behind their backs. They’d been dead for so long that their flesh hung from their bones and distorted their features. Based upon the sheer amount of blood crusted to the floor and the numerous lacerations, I could tell their suffering had been both tremendous and prolonged. They’d been tortured to such an extent that I couldn’t even speculate as to whether it was the wounds on their necks, abdomens, or groins that had been the caused of death. As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts.

  “The lacerations to their throats and abdomens were for show. They would have caused a great deal of pain and blood loss, but they wouldn’t have been fatal. He wanted them to see the sheer volume of blood they were losing. Wanted them to know fear.”

  Her voice was flat and emotionless. I stared at her back and saw her posture sag with resignation as she reached the inevitable conclusion.

  “The edges of the wounds show signs of healing. He kept them up here for a significant amount of time. They were forced to stand on their toes to keep the rope from tightening around their necks. He waited until they couldn’t stand anymore before…before emasculating them.”

  She shined her light at the rear wall, where desiccated clumps of flesh only vaguely identifiable as human phalli were nailed to the exposed joists.

  A million conflicting thoughts raced through my head before slowly coalescing into something resembling the truth about what had transpired.

  “I had no idea,” Aragon whispered.

  “You knew Janae killed herself?”

  “Everyone knew. I just couldn’t…I couldn’t talk to him about it.”

  “He never told me.”

  The words sounded like the most pathetic of excuses, even to my own ears.

  “You expected him to call you up crying? You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

  “As well as you do?”

  “Fuck you. He’s my partner. And I was there for him. Where were you, huh?”

  There was nothing I could say.

  She rounded on me and shined her light in my eyes.

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “I was looking for Dray.”

  “Why?”

  And then it hit me.

  “You were following me?”

  I held up my hand to block the light, but still couldn’t see her expression. She didn’t have to answer.

  “Why were you looking for him?”

  I shrugged.

  “What do you know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you’re holding out on me, so help me I’ll reach down your throat and pull it out myself.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’m as shocked as you are.”

  “He hasn’t been here in at least a month. Where else would he go?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  She lowered the light and stared me down for what felt like a full minute before turning away and speaking with her back to me.

  “Get out of here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They can’t find the place like this. At least not yet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Erase any trace that we were here. Then I’m going to find him. I have to hear the truth from him. And I have to be the one to bring him in.”

  “Detective—”

  “I said go!” she shouted.

  I nodded to myself and walked away. The last thing I wanted right now was to wait around for her to change her mind and call in what we’d discovered here. I’d lose the whole night being grilled by police, who’d want to know every facet of my relationship with a man I considered my best friend, a man I had known all my life, and yet hadn’t really known at all. A man who had been my brother in every sense of the word. A man who had needed me…and I hadn’t been there for him.

  Besides, where I was going didn’t concern them anyway. This was about Dray and me. It always had been. It was only fitting that it should be just the two of us in the end.

  The front door was barely closed behind me when I heard Aragon start to cry.

  TWENTY -FIVE

  Memories overwhelmed me as I drove. So much of my life had been lived with Dray right there beside me. I remembered things I hadn’t thought about in years. Pressing our palms into the fresh concrete at Virginia Park and using a stick to write our name
s beneath the prints. Hanging out at the student center at Wayne State when we were in high school, pretending to be college students so we could meet girls who obviously saw knew better. Riding our bikes to the old Majestic Theatre and getting greasy slices of pizza in Midtown. Building a tree house that was really nothing more than a precarious balancing act of warped plywood that never should have held our weight. Going to the zoo with our mothers, back when mine was still around, and later, when his refused to leave me behind.

  I’d seen the evidence with my own eyes, and yet I still couldn’t believe Dray could have done it. Maybe he wouldn’t have if I’d been there like I should have been. I’d always been somewhat neurotic, while he was laid back. I was calculating and he was impetuous. We’d always balanced each other out. Brought out the best in each other.

  I hoped there was still time to make it right.

  I drove aimlessly through the nearly deserted streets of downtown until I was confident I wasn’t being followed, then parked off Broadway in the lot behind the Detroit Beer Company. I paid no attention to the career drunks and the hipsters and they returned the favor. My goal was simply to use the vantage point to convince anyone who might have been monitoring my whereabouts that I was about to try to forget a bad night by enticing an even worse hangover, while really I wanted nothing more than to park close enough to the building that I could take advantage of their Wi-Fi.

  It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for on the Detroit Free Press website.

  Janae’s obituary summarized her life in a single, succinct paragraph. Beloved wife. Daughter. Sister. Cherished aunt. They’d held her visitation at the S.K. Schultz Funeral Home on Garfield and invited friends and family to share their memories on a dedicated website. In lieu of flowers, her family asked that donations be directed to Covenant House Michigan, the organization for which Janae worked as a counselor at their Crisis Center for At-Risk Youth.

  Her picture looked just like her, or at least like I wanted to remember her. She had a smile on her face and laughter in her eyes. She’d been beautiful and intelligent and I’d known the moment Dray first introduced her to me that everything was going to change. I’d felt a sense of displacement, like water being forced out of a full pool because someone else jumped in. And yet she’d always made room for me, always found a way to include me when it was important and never made me feel like an imposition.

  Staring at her face in black and white, as though taken in another era, really brought home a sense of loss. I felt an uncomfortable tightness in my chest. I never would have thought it had she still been alive, but I loved her, too. Not like Dray did. More like a sister, someone you take for granted and think will always be there until suddenly one day she’s not.

  The date was April 6th. More than three months ago.

  Three months.

  I felt the weight of her eyes upon me from the screen and backed out of the death notices. The rest of the top results on the first page of my search for her name linked to the Covenant House site, the UM-D alumni newsletter, and various fundraisers and charity events. It seemed fitting that even after the fact, her life should take precedence over her death, the details of which I found at the bottom of the second page.

  The story was archived at the DFP website, cross-filed under Local News and Metro Detroit. It originally appeared on page 4B of the April 6th edition and consisted of a whopping half-inch of page space. It was obviously printed as a follow up to the previous day’s piece.

  The victim of the apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound reported yesterday has been identified as Boston-Edison resident Janae Rogers. Neighbors first called emergency services at 11:43 a.m. to report hearing a single shot fired from the house on Longfellow Street. Paramedics arrived on the scene within minutes and transported her by ambulance to Henry Ford Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. She is survived by her husband Aundray, an officer with the Detroit Police Department.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked out the window. The night seemed somehow darker, the buildings silhouetted by the glow of urban sprawl reminiscent of tombstones.

  The first page of that same issue featured a picture of a thirty-three year-old actress who’d played a character whose name I couldn’t remember on a sitcom I couldn’t quite place. She’d overdosed after being released from state-mandated rehab stemming from a recent string of arrests. Her face was printed in color and showcased her bright blue eyes and white-blond hair.

  And in that moment I felt Dray’s pain.

  Here was a woman whose sole claim to fame had been accompanied by a laugh track and whose intervening years had been spent in a downward spiral of addiction and crime. Her face graced the front page, while the love of his life—a woman who devoted everything she had to the service of others—was buried two sections back, between blurbs of no real consequence and a liquor sale at Shake’s Pier Spirits.

  I set aside my laptop, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot. I tried not to think about what could have happened to Janae that had traumatized her to such an extent that she’d felt her only way of dealing with it was to kill herself. I tried not to think about Dray, who risked his life every day to protect the weak and vulnerable, and yet hadn’t been able to protect the one person who mattered most to him. Both of them had invested their professional lives into making this city a better place. One had committed herself to steering those most at risk toward a better, more productive path in the hope of showing them a future free of crime, a future in which they could be more than part of the problem, they could be part of the solution. The other stood up to the evils of the city he loved and gave voice to the voiceless and justice to those who’d lost all faith in the concept. They’d given all they were to this city and come up wanting. In the end, it was all for naught.

  This city could never again be what it once was. I understood that now. It was a romanticized fairytale, a dream we all shared, a Kodachrome memory of a past never meant to survive. Those of us who thought differently were only deluding ourselves.

  The proof reared up over the trees before my very eyes as I turned left off of Michigan onto Vernor and headed south through Roosevelt Park.

  Here was where the dream was born and here was where it died.

  Michigan Central Station.

  And somewhere inside was my best friend in the world.

  My headlights swept across a lot addled with chunks of asphalt and riddled with weeds growing through the cracks. Broken glass reflected from the dirt and trash. I listened to my engine tick for several minutes as I summoned the courage to get out of my car and approach the building. My shadow stretched away from me toward the chain link fence and the front door on the other side.

  I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that only one of us would be coming back out.

  TWENTY -SIX

  Michigan Central Station was once considered a sentinel of progress in a city renowned for it. Designed by the same firms responsible for New York’s Grand Central Terminal, it was once the world’s tallest railroad depot, meant to impress upon all who passed through its gates the grandness of the Motor City and the jobs that awaited all who made the journey. It was an awe-inspiring Beaux-Arts monument that embodied the romanticism of rail travel in an era when most depots featured weathered wooden buildings painted with soot and ensconced in a perpetual haze of smoke. The first trains steamed across the tracks on the day after Christmas in 1913, and went on to ship countless thousands of men off to two world wars, peaking in 1945 with more than four thousand travelers every day. By the time the final train departed in 1988, fewer than a half-dozen trains rumbled through the outskirts of downtown on any given day, victimized by the very industry the station had initially been conceived to support.

  For nearly three decades, the station has served as the poster child for the urban blight that typifies the fortunes of the city. No longer did the barrel-vaulted halls echo with boarding announcements over the loudspeakers, promising
almost mystical journeys to faraway lands like Buffalo and Rochester, which might as well have been on a different continent a few years earlier. The marble floors were now cracked and buried under dust and debris. The waiting room modeled after the public baths of Ancient Rome was covered with graffiti. The friezes in the coffered arches lay in shards at the bases of sixty-eight-foot-tall Corinthian pillars. The forty-foot windows with wrought iron grills allowed the air and pigeons to pass unperturbed through the shattered panes. The bronze chandeliers and doors were long gone, auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, alongside elaborate mahogany benches, Italian globes, and copper skylights.

  The eighteen-story office tower built onto the rear of the depot had fared little better. From the outside it resembled a hotel, minus the cracked stone, faded wainscoting, and shard-rimmed windowpanes. The rooms looked just as one would expect after decades of neglect and exposure to the elements. Plaster crumbled from walls carved by scrappers. Antique desks and chairs existed in various states of deterioration beside modern furniture black with mold and ravaged by vermin and birds alike, their fecal matter crusted to floors carpeted with broken glass.

  While the city made a concerted effort to keep it from becoming a permanent home to junkies and petty criminals, those efforts were largely of the public relations variety and consisted of merely fencing off the building behind chain link coiled with concertina wire, from which shredded plastic bags and trash flew like flags. Scraps of waterlogged carpet hung over the razor wire and entire sections of the fence had been bent upward from the ground in so many places that any attempt to fix it would be a complete waste of time.

  I never really knew this place in its prime. I had the most fleeting memory of staring up at the ninety-six-foot ceilings and a clock frozen at one minute ‘til seven as little more than a toddler, while waiting for someone to arrive on an Amtrak train that screeched along the rusting rails outside. Now it was just another ruin in what would one day be a ghost town. I wondered if the ancient Greeks had once looked upon such marvels as the Acropolis and thought the same thing.