If he expected Nessa to be intimidated, he had another thing coming. It was hard to look at the man without punching him in the face. She might have tried if she’d thought she had a chance of doing some damage. “You think I don’t know the law? I was married to a cop for fifteen years. Until you find something, you have no right to keep her locked up. And if you think you’re going to plant something there, I’ll have you know there will be witnesses. Where is she?”
“In a holding cell, Ms. James.” He stopped and sniffed at the air. “What is that smell?” he asked the desk officer.
“I believe it’s mold, sir,” Jones wheezed. “It’s been like that for an hour or so.”
“Chief Rocca, are you going to tell me you’ve got Harriett Osborne locked up for possession of a few measly mushrooms in a building with a serious mold problem? Look at that!” Nessa pointed her index finger at the ceiling, where a patch of furry black mold had snuck past a door at the back of the room and was now creeping across the ceiling tiles. “You know black mold is toxic, right?”
As if on cue, the door to the holding cells opened and another young officer appeared. “Sir?” The boy’s face was unnaturally pale, and he clutched at his throat with one of his hands. “Sir, I think we have a problem back in the holding cells.”
“Then deal with it!” Chief Rocca barked.
The young cop stood there for a moment, mouth open and chest heaving. Then he fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
“Get him out to the parking lot!” Nessa ordered. When Jones and Rocca stood frozen in shock, she knew it was time to bellow, “Do what I say, damn it! I’m a nurse!”
The two men rushed to the collapsed officer. Each took an arm, and together they dragged her patient out the front door.
“You,” she ordered Jones once they were all outside, “hold the kid for me. We need to keep him upright. Chief Rocca, you call an ambulance.”
While Rocca made the call, Nessa quickly frisked her patient. Just as she’d expected, there was an albuterol inhaler in his pants pocket. The kid was asthmatic. She shook the inhaler and opened his mouth, making sure his tongue wasn’t blocking his airway. Then she held his nose, inserted the inhaler into his mouth, and sprayed.
“Inhale slowly and hold, honey,” she told the barely conscious boy. As he began to cough, she counted to sixty. “One more time, okay?”
After the second squeeze, the boy’s breathing remained labored, but at least he was getting air into his lungs. Nessa could hear an ambulance in the distance. She left the kid with Jones and marched up to Rocca.
“If you keep my friend locked up back there in some mold-infested cell, I will sell everything I own to fund the biggest motherfucking lawsuit this county has ever seen.”
“Bring her out,” Rocca ordered Jones.
“Are you kidding?” Nessa scoffed. “That boy is not going anywhere. He’s gotta keep the patient in an upright position until the EMTs get here. If you’re too chickenshit to go back in the station, just give me the damn keys already.”
Keys in hand, she stomped back into the building, following the path of the thick black mold on the ceiling to the door that led to the holding cells. When she opened the door, a stench unlike any she’d ever known washed over her. Peering inside, she wondered if she might have opened a portal to outer space. Everything beyond the threshold was a pure, inky black. She took a tentative step forward and felt the mold squish beneath her feet like a sodden shag carpet. Slowly, her eyes began to differentiate between the wall to her right, the floor beneath her, and a jail cell to her left. Fearing the worst, she frantically wiped the mold from the cell’s bars until she located the keyhole. When she opened the cell door, she saw what she’d been dreading. A human shape sitting upright on a bench, every inch of it covered in mold. It seemed to have been overcome almost instantly, like a figure buried by ash at Pompeii. The body was rigid and the mouth stretched wide-open in one last scream.
“Oh Jesus,” Nessa sobbed. “Harriett.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not Jesus, and it’s definitely not me,” announced a voice from the cell next door.
Nessa rode a wave of relief out of the cell and down the aisle. Harriett was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the center of a perfectly mold-free circle, her eyes closed. Until that moment, Nessa had only seen the benevolent side of Harriett’s powers. The flowers that lured you in with seductive fragrances. The elixirs that cured headaches and hangovers. Now, at last, Nessa had witnessed Harriett’s dark side firsthand. She’d always known it was there. But she’d clearly underestimated what it could do.
“What the hell, Harriett? You scared the crap out of me!” She pointed back the way she had come. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Do what?” Harriett’s eyes slowly opened. In the dim light of the holding cell, her irises seemed flecked with glistening gold.
“Kill the man in the first cell,” Nessa whispered.
“I had to. I promised Lucy.”
“Lucy?” Nessa was confused.
“Do you know who he was?” Harriett asked. “That was the man who broke into Jo’s house.”
“I thought he was under house arrest awaiting his trial,” Nessa said. “Why did they bring him back in?”
“Perhaps because they knew I would soon be in an adjoining cell?” Harriett offered. “Who knows what Rocca had in mind, but the man and I had an interesting chat before he died. I offered him a chance to confess his sins. I probably could have helped him survive the mold, but after I heard his sins, I didn’t feel so inclined. He was hired to scare the three of us out of Mattauk. He thought killing Lucy might do the trick.”
“He told you that?”
“People get chatty when death’s at the door. He also informed me he was getting paid very well to stay silent.”
“Who was paying him?”
“He didn’t know. He said he’d never met his employer, and he claimed he’d never heard of Spencer Harding.” When Harriett rose to her feet, she seemed to be a few inches taller than she had been before. “So do you think I did the wrong thing?” she asked.
The question felt like a test, Nessa thought. But she knew the right answer, and she had no problem giving it.
“No,” Nessa said. “The man was a monster.”
“The mold ate him alive,” Harriett informed her. “He died in terrible agony.”
“He was going to kill Jo’s baby. I’m sure he killed others. He got what he deserved.”
Harriett nodded. “I’m so glad we see eye to eye on this subject.”
Nessa watched Harriett walk out of the cell and through the police station, her bare feet leaving a trail of jet-black prints. Something important had just been decided. Nessa wasn’t entirely sure what it was. But she knew things would be different going forward.
Outside in the parking lot, the young officer Nessa had saved was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. The chief of police was waiting to ambush Nessa and Harriett when they emerged.
“What have you done to my station?” he snarled at Harriett.