Chapter 2

A light rain left the scent of petrichor hanging in the air. Nolan jogged across the street in front of the sheriff’s office, his mind racing. His pockets had been emptied when he was arrested so he would need to improvise.

The Subway restaurant less than a block away was busy. Nolan darted in the front door and grabbed a rewards card from the plastic holder at the register before continuing out the back exit. Nikki’s apartment building was three blocks away. He felt like sprinting the entire way, but didn’t want to draw more attention to himself than necessary.

Cliffview Apartments were built like old motels with open breezeways. Nolan kept his head down as he jogged up the stairs to apartment nine. Nikki’s place.

He slipped the Subway rewards card in the door and wiggled it into the jamb. The locks, like everything else in the complex, were cheap. The one on Nikki’s door was a slant-latch, like you would find a mobile home. Each of the units had a dead bolt, but Nikki never used it. Partly so Nolan could come and go as he pleased.

The lock popped open and Nolan stepped inside.

The part of Nolan’s mind that knew Nikki was dead flooded him with grief. Thankfully, the part of his mind that wanted to find out who killed her and bury them shoved those feelings down. The scent of the awful Dollar Store lavender candle Nikki loved hung in the air.

He stepped into the open living area and looked left into the studio kitchen. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed hard. If he was going to help Nikki, he would have to do something he swore he never would.

Nolan drew in a bitter breath of lavender air and closed his eyes. The voice of his father entered his mind.

You are starting off 0 and 2 on this one, kid. The voice of Nolan’s father rang in his head.

It wasn’t really his father. At least he didn’t think. But Nolan knew what his dad would have said and using his voice helped transfer Nolan to an objective place.

Okay, what do we know?

“Nikki Bowen. 28. White female. Unmarried.” Nolan paused, as if he was waiting for the voice of his father to comment on Nikki being single. He did not, so Nolan continued. “She has an MD-PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Kentucky. She’s in the last year of residency at the local hospital.”

What does she have that someone would want?”

Nolan bristled at the question. Nikki was great. She was brilliant, passionate, scatter brained, funny… He realized his tangent wasn’t helpful. “She’s broke. So not money. She does research part time for some local firm because her mother is sick and needs special care.” Nikki was raised in Michigan, where her mom still lived.

What does she know?

That question gave Nolan pause. He and Nikki were close, but everyone had secrets. He certainly did.

Nolan scanned the sparse apartment. The wall to the right was bare, save for an old couch with tan upholstery and a wobbly wire coffee table pushed up against it. Directly on the far wall in front of Nolan was a filmy picture window with sliding panes on a stubborn metal rail. Thin blue curtains floated on gentle currents, seeping from the porous windows.

An outdated thirty-two-inch LCD TV sat on a short end table. A thin layer of dust covered it. Beside the TV was a cheap designer’s desk with a thin gray laptop closed on it.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

To his immediate left was the kitchenette with a small over, aluminum covered cooking coils on the top and dingy white microwave hanging above it. The aged compressor of a small refrigerator clunked rhythmically as it always did. Old, brown cabinets circled half the kitchen, some with their door drooping sadly ajar.

A tiny table with a pair of folding chairs completed the décor.

A doorway between the kitchen and living room led to Nikki’s bedroom. Nolan swallowed another lump.

You need to see what you can find. We likely don’t have much time.

The voice was right. Nolan quickly scanned the couch and end table for anything out of place before moving to the laptop. He flipped the lid up and the screen lit up revealing a Windows login screen. Nolan drug a chair from the kitchen and perched on it before the computer. He entered 100581, the birthdate of Nikki’s late older sister, and hit enter.

The computer crunched on the password and Nolan thought about how he had helped Nikki install the various security software the hospital required her to use.

The computer unlocked to a myriad of open apps. Email, Word and Excel documents, Firefox browser with a ridiculous number of open tabs, and a VPN login screen. He cycled through the browser tabs, but it was mostly research for school or work. Excel contained spreadsheets of various calculations, and Word held a half-finished research summary on Molecular Modeling. It didn’t look like a school assignment and wasn’t addressed to anyone. On a whim, Nolan pressed the print button and soon pages started spitting out on the compact inkjet printer on the self below. Nolan grabbed the pages, locked the computer, and closed the lid.

Next, he turned to the kitchen and began rifling through the near-empty cabinets and drawers. He found nothing of interest there. The freezer was barren. Even the stacked ice cube trays were empty. When he yanked open the refrigerator a funky odor him and he saw the half full container of moo goo gai pan they had shared almost two weeks ago. He moved to slam it shut, but saw a curious brown paper bag in the very back.

Inside the bag were two long sticks of medicine that looked like epinephrine pens, and a small glass vial. The pens had a label that read Benepali and the little bottle read Cyproterone. Nikki didn’t take any medicine Nolan was aware of and he didn’t recognize the names of these. As he put them back in the bag, the echo of a car door slamming got his attention.

Nolan stuffed the bag in his back pocket and hustled to the thin curtain. Down in the courtyard were two sheriff’s deputies standing at the open trunk of their cruiser. One pulled two Wal-Mart bags from the trunk and the other draped the strap of a camera over his head. They closed the trunk and moved toward the building.

“They are coming here,” Nolan thought. Panic rose, and he ducked out of sight of the window.

Stay calm. You know the exits.

He did. It had become a hobby as a kid, something his father encouraged. Nolan always counted heads and exits.

Nothing he had found made sense, so he didn’t know if it was valuable. He had to get somewhere to make the things he found make sense. Darting to the computer desk, he grabbed a can of compressed air and dashed into Nikki’s bedroom.

The smell of her perfume hung in the air and almost derailed him, but his father’s voice still rang in his mind, giving him focus. With a twist of the latch and a powerful tug, the bedroom window opened just as a key entered the front door lock.

A key… Where had they gotten Nikki’s key? She only had the one. The freedom of the cool night was just a foot away, but he couldn’t leave. Not yet.

Nolan stepped to the side to get a view of the deputies as they entered. He was away from the window in the dark room and they wouldn’t be able to see him. He hoped. The first deputy stepped in quickly and began unloading his grocery bags on the table.

A small stack of books came out, but Nolan couldn’t see the titles. Next came a pair of long dark candles and a plastic bag what looked like chicken bones. Two rattle cans of red spray paint were in the second bag. The officer with the camera grabbed one and disappeared. Nolan heard him yank the top off, shake the can, and begin spraying.

Nolan grasped for a clue what the two were doing when the first deputy says, “Ima hit the bedroom.”

The deputy grabbed the can from the table and Nolan stepped backwards out the window, his foot finding the top run of the old metal fire escape ladder. As he pulled his head through the window, he saw a bright red corner of a pentagram spray painted on the wall above the couch.

The revelation that two sheriff’s deputies were planting satanic evidence in Nikki’s apartment made his head spin.

Move. Deal with it later.

The voice set him scurrying down the fire escape, which ended about eight feet above the ground. He dropped with a grunt and sprinted through the breezeway, not knowing if the deputy had heard the commotion.

Once he cleared the part lot of the apartment complex, he turned north. Towards the hospital. Towards some answers.