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Setting the car to drive, I step on the gas, and the car lurches forward before halting fast when I slam on the brakes. For Chrissakes, teenagers have a better handle on driving. Hands set to ten and two, I steer the vehicle back onto the mostly empty road and head in the direction of Calvin’s place.
This little diversion isn’t a typical part of my guilt trip, but last night, I went to bed with paranoid thoughts of police snooping around his house after a while, and finding things. Things like the medical record I know he still has in a box on the floor of his office, one which belonged to a lawyer. The lawyer he murdered because I supplied the information packaged in a handy little file for his perusal. A record they could easily trace back to my department at the hospital.
Not to mention the nudes he has stored on his computer that he emailed to my boss a while ago, which could be seen as motive on my part.
A number of small clues would send even a newb investigator to my door, and because I’m a shitty liar, the idea of that terrifies me. More than the hallucinations and nightmares and bad dreams. Having to keep all the lying details straight, while looking into the eyes of a skeptical investigator, follows a close second to thoughts of BASE jumping off a skyscraper.
If it came down to it, though, I’d probably opt for the skyscraper and a parachute. Considering Calvin was buddies with half the police in the city, my odds would be better, even with a faulty chute.
Two homeless guys are in the thick of a brawl on the street corner, but barely distract my thoughts as I pass. Los Angeles is a city that never sleeps. Any time of night, one can find junkies stumbling about, and it’s certainly not unusual to catch a spectator’s view of fights like these. Maybe one of them will die in the scuffle, and for a split second, I wonder what the victor would do with the body? Discard it? Or leave it and run?
I turn the car down Loma Vista, and pull up to the curb in front of a single-level Mission Revival-style home. Cinder blocks and a plank of wood create a makeshift porch, and the window shutters hang cockeyed, clinging to the house by sheer will. A total dump, if not for the half mil price tag.
Scanning the slumbering neighborhood, I scamper across the sun-fried lawn, which crunches beneath my ballet flats, and punch in the security code to enter. The door clicks, disengaging the locks, and I slip inside.
Something knocks my toe as I stumble toward the curtains to close them. “Ow! Fuck!”
I flip on the light to find boxes set out by the entrance. A peek inside reveals some kind of electronics—walkie-talkies and what looks like small cameras.
Rubbing against the fabric of my shoe, I frown and keep on toward the bedroom. An eerie feeling chases after me as I walk through Calvin’s house, which isn’t as filthy as one might expect if judging by the exterior of the place. The inside is fairly well-kempt and organized, and I can’t help but feel like Calvin’s going to jump out of the shadows any minute, screaming at me to leave my shoes by the door.
Once inside his room, I try not to look at his bed, where I’ve spent hours doing things I wish I could erase from my brain. How messed up does a person have to be to make someone literally sick everytime they think of sex with said person?
Had Damon not come along, I’d have thought myself ruined for good. That I’d never enjoy being with a man again. Under normal circumstances, I’d be craving my dirty priest like a girl lusting for her dildo after anAvengersmovie, but with Mamie’s funeral and my creeping paranoia over the last few days, all I can think about is not tripping up during the eulogy and spilling the location of Calvin’s dead and undoubtedly decaying body.
The box with his files usually sits next to his desk in the corner of his bedroom, but tonight, it’s not there. My toe throbs a reminder that this was a bad idea, and only getting worse by the second. The more time I spend in here, the more fingerprints and trace evidence police will have when they finally come looking for him.
I throw back the closet door to find it’s not in there, either. Or under the bed. I can’t find it anywhere in the bedroom. I search the hallway closet. Nothing. The bathroom. Nothing. Kitchen cabinets and cupboards. Nothing.
Panic blossoms in my chest, as it begins to settle over me that I may not find that lawyer’s file tonight and I’ll have no idea what Calvin did with it.
In an effort to keep moving and avoid a break down, I head back into his bedroom and begin the tedious process of disconnecting his computer. It takes a good thirty minutes to unhook the monitor and speakers, and I carefully cart each piece out to my car, always scanning so no one can catch me and call the cops. My nerves are cold and rattled, but I keep on until the entire computer is packed.
On the return trip to lock the place up, I catch sight of a gleaming white crawlspace cover on the side of the house.
Oh, God, no.
I know if I don’t look, I go home to nightmares of police finding the box down there and showing up at my work. If I do, I go home to nightmares of whateverImight find down there, and knowing Calvin, it could damn well be a dead body.
With a deep breath, I round the house and come to a stop before the entrance.
Please be locked. Please be locked.
To my utter disgust, it isn’t, and a waft of mold and dirt hits my nose. With my luck, I’ll end up with a black mold infection that kills me, and Calvin will get the last laugh, as always.
I flick on the flashlight of my cellphone and wave it around, to see the small space is really as horrific as I imagined, with it’s low ceiling and stained concrete walls. Stacks of boxes line the wall to the right, across the dirt floor I’ll have to crawl over to get to them.
I step down into the entrance, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up at the thought of someone coming along and locking me down here. Once on my knees, I do another sweep, and let out a squeal when I pan over the darkness and find two glowing eyes staring back at me. The small critter skitters off, but my muscles won’t relent their tight clench of my stomach. I contemplate the odds of police finding that file, so I can abandon this madness and get the hell out of here, but shake those thoughts off. I have to find it. The male to whom it belongs is the victim of murder that Calvin committed, and the hospital name, where I work, is smack on the header.
It takes twenty minutes of fishing through slightly damp boxes before I find the one I’m looking for, and I damn near clap at the sight of the file. Crackles of movement behind me are a reminder not to spend too much time celebrating down in this shithole, while the mice and rats and whatever else lives down here decide I’d be enough food to get them through the winter.
I climb out of the crawlspace, and the second I’m standing upright, my arms jerk with shivers as I brush out any webs or bugs from my hair, with the sensation of something sliding over my skin sending me into a swatting dance.
“What are you doing here?” The unfamiliar voice shoots a paralyzing jolt of panic through my back, and I twist to someone standing behind me.
Familiar, but I’m not immediately certain as to how.
The young man wears a sleek, black suit, with his hair slicked back, like something out ofWall Streetor a Tarantino movie. I’ve seen him before, but where?
