“Yes. But they are still here. They won’t leave me alone.” He grew quiet again, drinking. She heard his weight shift and settle, and for a moment she thought he might have drifted off. She pressed her ear against the door, straining to hear him.
“Would you like to come out now?” he asked suddenly, his voice loud, and she bit back a cry and bore down on the lock.
He laughed and sighed. “No? That’s a pity.”
Another hour passed in silence. Francis Sweeney drank, and Dani sat and then stood, the room growing more and more unbearable.
“I’m going to go now, Daniela. You’ve made it so easy for me. I will miss you. I suspect many will. Do you think Mike will come back when he hears? I hope so.”
She heard a clanking and a rattling of the handle, and a small scream escaped her throat.
“I’m not coming in. Don’t worry. But you’re not coming out either. Farewell, dear girl.”
Then he retreated, his tread heavy. She held her breath, trying to track his progress. She thought she heard the entrance door open but couldn’t be sure. A high, narrow window covered by a metal grate sat at the southwest corner of the wall, and she pulled out the locker drawers, climbing them like stairs until she could see out through the window. In the moonlight, she could see Francis Sweeney walking down the street, pulling her wagon behind him. She frowned, puzzled, and then she began to weep.
He was actually leaving.
Her hope was short lived. Sweeney had wedged something through the door handles, barring her escape, and when Dani unbolted the door and tried to open it, it didn’t budge. If she could break the glass on the window she could scream for help. Not that anyone would come. The street was as dead as the regular inhabitants of the morgue. She climbed back up, but the holes in the grate covering the window were barely big enough to peer through, and she couldn’t loosen it, though she tried until her fingertips began to bleed and she was sweating profusely.
She remained atop the shelves where at least she could see the street, where at least she could observe whether he returned, but after several hours, she feared she would doze off and fall, and she’d begun to shake with fear and fatigue. She climbed down on wobbly legs and sat with her back against the door so she would hear Francis Sweeney if he came back.
The room was not completely airtight—Mr. Raus had complained about cold air escaping into the cavernous warehouse and costing him money—but it felt airtight. The air was close and dry, hot from the August heat, and Dani spent the remainder of the night trying to conserve her energy and control her emotions. Tears were a luxury she couldn’t afford, not when she had nothing to drink and her dress was stiff with perspiration.
The faulty refrigeration suddenly kicked on sometime around dawn, and she moaned in horror. It felt so good, but it would kill her. Sweeney was counting on it.
It became too cold very quickly, and she rose and began to pace to keep warm.
From the sunlight poking through the grate-covered window, she tracked the passing of the day. Her aunts would know she was missing by now. They would know she’d never made it home. They would come. Mr. Raus was out of town, and the aunts would not be able to get inside, but they would get help. Someone would surely come. Someone other than Frank Sweeney. Oh, please God. She had no doubt he’d left her for dead but feared he would come back to see for himself.
The faulty refrigeration groaned to a shuddering halt after two hours, and she almost wept in relief again, but her eyes were dry and her throat drier. The floor was concrete, and the metal drawers where the dead were kept weren’t any warmer, even if she’d been willing to crawl into one. She managed to fall asleep sitting on her haunches, her arms wrapped around her legs and her head tucked into her knees as the room warmed again, the August heat of the warehouse outside the cold locker slowly raising the heat inside of it.
She dreamed of clothes. Piles of them. Whispering to her. Weighing her down.
She thought she heard Sweeney return and rolled against the door and clung to the lock, knowing that if he came back now, she wouldn’t have the strength to stop him.
But the door did not rattle, and the stool was not removed, and she considered climbing the shelves once more, but her head spun and her legs trembled when she tried to rise, so she stayed put, her back against the door.
The temperamental system whirred up again at nightfall, and she hardly noticed when it clanked off again. Or maybe she’d simply gotten too tired to feel it.
“Where is Francis Sweeney?” Malone repeated, louder. Eliot flinched but met his gaze.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, crestfallen. “I have several units walking the Third and scouring the Run and surrounding streets looking for him, but no word yet.”
“You don’t know?” Malone shouted. The activity around them ceased as the whole room stopped and stared.
“He was released last week, and I’ve been trying to get a court order to get him locked up again. We’ve had a tail on him ever since, but he’s enjoying himself, jumping on and off the streetcar suddenly to make his detail scramble, buying drinks for his ‘shadows’ at the bars and then slipping out the back door. He’s loving every minute of the chase, and we keep losing him. Then this happened.” Eliot tossed his hands toward the evidence tables. Flesh, bones, buckets, and battered clothing were being photographed while clinicians watched with clasped hands and blank faces.
“Find Francis Sweeney,” Malone bellowed, including the gawkers in his command. Policemen, medical examiners, lab technicians, officials, insiders. They all stared.
“Malone!” David Cowles was pushing toward him, panic in his stride, but Malone didn’t care.