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Could I stop procrastinating? Mrs. Fitzgerald might be bleeding out while I flustered about a nothing burger on my door.
I clenched and unclenched my sweaty hands as I headed for the elevator. Should I have brought a weapon? Like what? A kitchen steak knife? I was being dumb. My building might be for lower-income folk, but the management did a good job keeping out the unsavory types. We’d not had a single violent incident since I’d moved in, I reminded myself as I slapped the up button beside the elevator. The display showed the cab sitting on the ground floor. Despite tapping my toe in impatience, it didn’t budge.
My lips pursed. Wait, or use the stairs? It was only a single flight—said every hero in a horror movie before getting pounced.
Monsters aren’t real.
I tightened the sash of my robe before heading into the stairwell in my pink fuzzy slippers. The concrete landing and stairs were clean if musty. Better than the pee smell of my last building.
I heard and saw no one as I pounded up to the next floor and burst into the hall. A hall quiet and empty. A rapid pace had me in front of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s door. where I knocked lightly first.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
No reply. I rapped a little harder and called out, “Mrs. Fitzgerald, are you okay?” Still nothing, but a glance showed her door bore the same scratches as mine. Deep gouges. Rats she’d claimed. Odd how no one else’s doors showed the same abuse.
My hand went to the knob, and I expected it to be locked. Single women always took great care. To my surprise—and unease—the handle turned and the door opened.
I kind of wished it hadn’t because the inside of her place looked trashed. The pictures on her wall were torn down. Couch shredded with stuffing all over. Her collection of fragile figurines smashed. I don’t know how I’d not heard the destruction apart from a few thuds that came from her bedroom—the place with the dripping red stuff. Her open living room window blew cold evening air, fluttering her curtains.
“Mrs. Fitzgerald?” I whispered her name as I headed for the partially ajar bedroom door. A part of me really wanted to run away. My gut could already tell this wouldn’t be good.
Her room proved too dark to see. I reached for the light switch and flicked it then blinked. Not just because of the brightness but because my mind couldn’t quite grasp what the hell I looked at.
When I did figure it out, I fled to the hall, where I dry heaved in horror until my wits found me and I pounded on the nearest door. A man answered in boxers and a shirt.
“What the hell?” he groused. “Do you know what time it is?”
I pointed and managed to hiccup, “She’s dead. Murdered! Police. Call.”
Being a man, he didn’t believe me and had to go looking for himself. The neighbor came out of Mrs. Fitzgerald’s apartment a few seconds later, pale and shaking.
His face was haunted as he looked at me and murmured, “They strung her intestines across the room like some kind of God’s-eye weave.”
Oh, so that’s what I’d seen. I dry heaved again.
I was sitting on the hall floor with my head tucked between my knees when the cops and paramedics arrived. As if they could put poor Mrs. Fitzgerald back together. She’d been strung up, quite literally, by her guts. They’d been ripped from her stomach and then used to suspend her. She’d bled out, the pool of blood being what seeped into my apartment.
Who could do such a thing? And why? Did Mrs. Fitzgerald have enemies?
The detective I’d met only the day before came to stand in front of me. Not that I looked him in the eye. I stared at his shoes. Brown leather loafers touched by the hem of his pants.
“We meet again, Ms. Butler.” His low voice had me peeking upward.
“Not by choice,” I muttered. “Who killed Mrs. Fitzgerald?”
“I think that’s supposed to be my question,” he replied as he crouched in front of me. Detective Williams cocked his head. “Odd how that’s two murder scenes you’ve been at.”
“Not by choice!” I hastened to correct.
“Yet here you are.”
“Because there was blood dripping into my bedroom.” I grimaced. “I’m going to have to toss my mattress.” Because no way I’d be able to sleep on it.
“I’m surprised it seeped into your place. This building is concrete built.”
“Tell that to the stain on my ceiling.”
“Can you show me?” He stood but didn’t offer a hand.
