“What if we’re blowing this all out of proportion?” Roxie asked, staring straight ahead at the dashboard. “When I was in the ER with Hutch, he kept asking about bears, and the doctors fixing him said there were some bad animal attacks about a dozen years ago or so. He said that Caudry attracts some crazy wildlife.”
“If this is all just a bear or a coyote or a big, furry alligator,” I said, causing Roxie to wrinkle her nose at the mention of the gator, “then we just let animal control and the police take care of it. Della Jane sounds like she’s gonna light a fire under them, and they should have captured or shot it real soon.”
“But why does this Della Jane person even care so much?” Roxie turned to face me. “We’re just a dinky rundown little carnival. It’s not like we’re the Beatles or something.”
“The carnival has been packed every night.” I shrugged. “It’s sorely lacking in entertainment around here. She’s trying to build this town back up, and she’s gotta start somewhere, and apparently that’s with us.”
“I guess,” Roxie said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Not that I blamed her. I didn’t completely understand Della Jane’s passion to protect us either. I’d neglected to tell anyone that she was Gabe’s mom, mostly because I didn’t want to talk about Gabe.
I had finally decided that it wouldn’t make any sense for me to see Gabe again. That was painful enough to think about, and I knew it would only hurt worse to say it aloud. Between the animal stalking us and the seriousness of Gabe’s feelings for me, it all felt like a disaster waiting to happen.
But disaster or no, it didn’t change the fact that I actually felt something for Gabe, and my chest ached at the realization that I’d never see him again.
“Come on,” I said, opening the truck door.
As we ascended the rickety stairs along the restaurant, I breathed in deeply, preparing to get my last good breath before the stench of Leonid’s apartment overwhelmed me. But as we kept climbing, I realized that I didn’t really smell anything. No sulfur or acetone.
Roxie was ahead of me and reached the landing before I did. She wrinkled her nose. “Luka was right. It does stink here.”
I inhaled through my nose, and I smelled what she was talking about—tangy, pungent, sickly sweet, and utterly wretched—and while it did make me want to gag, it didn’t smell anything like it had before, and it was much fainter.
I shook my head. “No, this isn’t it.”
“Well, whatever. Let’s get this over with.” She knocked on Leonid’s door while I tried to place the scent. I was certain I’d smelled it before.
When Leonid didn’t answer, Roxie knocked loudly again, pounding on the thin wooden door so hard the frame began to splinter.
“Roxie, take it easy.” I put my hand on her arm before she broke the door down. “He’s probably not home.”
“Or maybe he is home, and he’s hiding because he knows he’s the reason we came to this godforsaken hellhole!” Roxie shouted at the closed door.
“Maybe,” I said as calmly as I could. “Or maybe we should just come back later.”
“No!” Her blue eyes were wild, and her jaw was set. “I can’t take this damn town anymore! I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”
I was about to ask what she planned to do, but she slammed into the door with her shoulder. It didn’t give yet, but the frame splintered and cracked. It wouldn’t take much more for her to break it down.
It was then that the smell finally hit me. Last summer, when we were packing up to leave, I’d discovered a cooler sitting behind the campsite. I opened it up to discover ten pounds of rotting meat that had been for the tigers. Zeke had forgotten about it, and it had been sitting in the sun for a week.
That was the smell coming from Leonid’s apartment—rotting flesh.
“Roxie, I don’t think you should—” I started, but it was too late. The door gave way, and the noxious air billowed out.
“What the heck, Leonid?” Roxie asked, and began gagging.
Since she was struggling to suppress her gag reflex, I went into the apartment first. I’d pulled my T-shirt up over my nose and tried to breathe in only through my mouth, but I didn’t have to go in very far to see the problem.
As I walked in, I noticed that all the stacks of newspapers and magazines that clogged the pathways had been written on. A single word in bright red marker, over and over again in Leonid’s chicken scratch.
Beyond the stacks of papers in his living room, I discovered him.
Hanging from his ceiling like a forgotten fly strip, was Leonid. The noose had been made from braided electrical cord, and his head hung only a few inches from the ceiling to keep his long legs from touching the floor. His head lolled to the side with his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his skin had turned an angry purplish-red.
Then, as if she were standing beside me whispering in my ear, I heard Blossom’s voice saying, “They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed.”
39. the hanged man