Author's Note: I've attached today a super cool video that the amazing @syl_via_17 made for The Hunt of Altswood High! It's super cool and everyone should definitely check it out, it's less than a minute long! In other news, all my exams are at last over so I have time to update frequently. (Yussss) Stay tuned, stay groovy, and tell me who you currently think is the stabby-stabby killer. (Just kidding, no one has been stabbed. Yet.)
Chapter 9 - Culprit
I couldn't have been passed out for more than a short minute. When my brain finally restarted again, my vision had returned, albeit in a slightly blurry manner. A mess of debris and metal lay in front of me, swallowed up by small fire that steadily licked at the collapsed wood.
I forced myself upright, despite the wrenching burning in my shoulder. It didn't feel like I had been impaled by anything. As I lifted the scrubs to inspect the damage, I could see scrapes all down my arms and a few sharp cuts on my legs, but the worst damage was a shallow gouge at my collarbone that pulled at my left shoulder.
Heavy thumping sounded from the ceiling above. The hospital staff couldn't have not heard that monstrous boom. I tried to pick myself up, clenching my fist at the floor. Only my hand felt too empty.
The report. Where was the report?
Filled with a sudden fervour, I pivoted at the waist and searched all around the damage. The papers were gone. When I reached for my phone, for the back up pictures, I realised it had been snapped cleanly in half.
I stared down at the two pieces of my phone in disbelief. The incision was too straight to have been a result of the explosion.
I got to my feet, my knees knocking together. I needed to get out before the hospital staff could catch me down here. I needed to get out before whoever took the report and broke my phone decided to get rid of me as well.
The elevator rumbled, starting its ascent.
I turned on my heel and ran for the back stairs, taking them up by three. When I emerged, the hallway was in chaos, with hospital personnel rushing by in panic. No one looked twice at the fraud of a nurse in scrubs that were too big.
I slinked back into the room where I had left my stuff, ripping off the surgical mask and trying not to panic as I tore off the scrubs. There were blood stains on the sleeves and giant, gaping tears through the pants. It wasn't as bad as my own clothing, where there was a hole along my torso and a stain that was getting bigger and bigger at my collar.
I winced, shoving the scrubs deep into my bag with the two pieces of my phone. It would be better if the hospital missed a pair rather than it finding the scrubs bloodied and wrecked in the trash. I shouldered my giant bag onto my good shoulder and hobbled back into the hallway, cursing the room for not having any bandages.
Maybe the nurses would think my bloodstains were haute couture.
I tugged my wig back into alignment and hobbled past reception. I was out the doors and onto the street before anyone could stop me, and while I had gotten a few strange looks, everyone was more occupied with moving in the direction of the loud explosion.
My head was still reeling over what had just happened.
I didn't even have my phone to call someone about it.
As I hobbled vehemently, putting pressure on the gouge at my collarbone and trying not to think about how I was walking away from the hospital, a rental car cruised by. It slowed to my pace, but the two middle-aged tourists inside simply peered at me, making no move to stop and help.
"Gee, thanks," I muttered when they drove off, "I guess I'll just die on the roadside then."
Thankfully, a street I knew well was coming up at the next bend, even if the house was situated deep within its long, winding driveway.
Somehow, I put one foot in front of the other and walked to the front door. Even if I could barely see anymore, I managed to raise a fist and politely knock on the towering door, waiting for the loud music inside to turn off before footsteps hurried to the foyer.
Gabriel opened the door, still twirling a pencil in his hand. It dropped from his fingers and clinked to the floor the moment he saw me.
"Luca?" He looked me up and down. "Holy sh—Is that blood?"
"Unfortunately," I said.
That was when I fainted.
***
"You have some explaining to do."
As consciousness slowly returned, a weight settled next to me, creaking the frame of the bed I had been placed on. I peeled my eyes open slowly, immediately wincing at the bright light streaming through the window.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Gabriel went on. He didn't seem sorry at all, prodding at my left shoulder vigorously with a wash cloth. "Is that sunshine startling? Would you say almost as startling as going MIA for an hour before showing up on someone's doorstep dripping in blood?"
I winced, squeezing one eye shut and squinting up at him with the other. Gabriel wasn't usually this... I wanted to say sassy but that sounded ridiculous.
"I wasn't dripping in blood," I protested, trying to sit up. From what I could see of the ceiling, this looked like Gabriel's bedroom.
Gabriel firmly pushed me back onto the pillow.
"Lie down," he said, edging on a command. He tore at a roll of gauze. "Only slightly bloody, excuse me for exaggerating."
I tried to ignore his glower, rubbing at the scratches on my face. "What happened?"
"Oh, I will tell you what happened," Gabriel practically seethed. "You dropped like a sack of dead potatoes and I almost called the police. But I know you, and I know you love skirting on the edge of the law, so I went rummaging through your bag for answers and what did I find? Bloody, shredded clothing and your phone, knifed in half."
I smiled weakly. "Did you carry me up here?"
Gabriel wasn't amused. "Pitched you over my shoulder like an actual sack of dead potatoes," he said darkly.
I sighed, squirming over so I could encircle my arms around his waist. "Thanks."
"Don't try softening me up," Gabriel grumbled, sounding relatively softened. He went quiet, smoothing down my unruly wig. "The last time you went missing on me, you ended up nursing two bullet holes."
The memory sent a cold shiver down my spine. I looked up. "That's not going to happen again."
Gabriel didn't look so certain. "What were you doing, Luca?"
I blinked, countering the question with another. "Where's my bag?"
"Over there," Gabriel gestured behind him. "What else are you carrying in there? It's almost as heavy as you are."
I bolted upright, almost blacking out again as all the blood rushed from my head. I would ignore his comment about how heavy I was, for now.
"Careful!" Gabriel exclaimed, but I was scrambling from the blankets, trying to locate my bag through the three spinning versions in front of me. Though my wounds had all stopped bleeding, I strongly suspected I was concussed.
I tipped the contents of my bag onto the carpet, throwing aside the scrubs for my laptop. "Oh, thank goodness." There wasn't a single scratch on it. Whoever orchestrated that blast didn't know I had it with me.
Gabriel crouched beside me as I booted the laptop back to life. "What's the matter?"
"I snuck into the hospital," I told him, "again. I was in the morgue."
"You were where? Luca, you said you were at the high school!"
"Okay," I said, holding out my hand. "Clearly I lie sometimes without thinking it through, moving on now. I went to the morgue and I pulled out Birdy's dead body."
Gabriel put a fist to his mouth, taking a moment. Finally he removed it, realising he hadn't heard wrong. "You did what?"
"Well, first, I hacked into my dad's email and found a suspicious report," I explained, as if that made it better. "Her autopsy labelled her death as natural despite some really dodgy toxicology results. So I took it into my own hands to examine her dead body—" I held up a finger, "—and yes, I'm aware that's disturbing, but I found injection sites."
Gabriel tried to jump in but I held up my finger again.
"Not done yet," I said. "There was another version of her autopsy report. The original stated her death to be homicide, and clearly—she suffered a heart attack and her organs had heightened levels of potassium and chloride. What drug induces heart attacks? Potassium chloride. How do you get potassium chloride into the body? You inject it. What did she have on her body? Injection sites. I don't know about you but I see a correlation."
"Well, where did the report go?" Gabriel asked, following along now.
"You see all this?" I said, gesturing at my dirtied state. "I had the report. I left the morgue. I stepped into the hallway. And then—bam." I clapped my hands together. "Giant, freaking explosion.
Gabriel blinked at me. "You're kidding."
I shook my head. "Not kidding. The elevator doors open and this device rolls out hissing steam. Next thing I know I'm waking up with my phone in two pieces."
"Oh my—" Gabriel needed another moment to recover. Then: "Luca," he practically screamed. "Remember what I said about the bullet holes? Take me with you next time!"
I shrunk down. "Noted."
Gabriel exhaled loudly, picking up what once was my phone. "Okay, this definitely looks deliberate." He frowned. "But why?"
My screen had finally loaded.
"Because I'm willing to bet they were watching me when I took photos of the report," I muttered. I logged into the photo library, and crossed my fingers. "But if there was a signal, the pictures on my phone automatically uploads through the Cloud into my laptop."
The library booted up and I sat back, covering my mouth with my hands. The loading wheel turned and it turned and it turned.
It stopped.
"Damn it!"
I kicked my laptop across the room.
Gabriel calmly stood to retrieve it, squinting at my screen. "It didn't upload?"
"Last sync was five hours ago," I sighed, burying my face in my hands. "No signal in the morgue."
"Okay, next plan," Gabriel said. "Who signed the original report?"
"Same guy who signed the second one." I wracked my brain. "Dr. Phillip— Rothman? Roman? Renman?"
The keys on my laptop went tap tap tap as Gabriel dug around the internet. "Phillip Rolland—"
"Oh, at least I was close—"
"—has been reported missing after failing to attend two of his shifts at the local hospital this morning. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts should contact police chief Richard Fern."
I massaged the bridge of my nose. "This is bad."
We sat in silence for a steady minute.
"This is really bad."
"Coincidence?" Gabriel tried to suggest, but even he knew that sounded preposterous. "Luca, you realise what this means, right?"
I rested my face on my arms. "That there's another serial killer on the loose?"
"Well, yes, but—" Gabriel couldn't look away from the screen. "This time they're being smart about it. Covering every single track into an explanation, and you know how much Bottle Island loves its implausible explanations." He lifted his eyes. "The killings have started again, but no one is going to believe us."
***
"You get any news about that missing doctor yet?" I asked Dad as he locked up.
Dad peered over his shoulder, only his eyes visible over the collar that stuck up on his windbreaker. "Not yet. Why are you suddenly so interested in this case?"
"Just curious." I shoved my hands into my pocket, holding back a wince as the scratches along my arms pulled. Since the incident three days ago, they had scabbed, but I had a terrible habit of picking at them.
I couldn't seem to stop picking at everything.
"You're sure you've contacted all his family in the mainland?" I asked as we got into the car.
Dad sighed, letting the engine stall. He settled his hands at his sides, and with all his black clothing, he looked at if he was camouflaging into the car seat.
The wind blew quietly outside, a gentle but persistent presence. There was nothing brewing yet, but the news forecast predicted the biggest storm Bottle Island had ever seen approaching within the week. Its messengers had arrived.
"Loosh, what is this about?"
You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Not yet, anyway. Dad had a lot of faith in me, but even I knew that if I blabbed everything now, I would sound like a maniac. After my outburst on the phone about exogenous and endogenous sources, Dad already thought I was starting to lose it. That was my mistake. I had had enough of being seen as crazy for an entire lifetime. Now, I was going to get proof.
"I'm worried," I said instead. "Before we arrived in Bottle Island, the worst that would happen was the tide rising a bit too high on the coast and someone's picnic blanket getting a bit wet."
"And here we are attending yet another dead kid's memorial," Dad said sombrely.
"Here we are," I echoed.
I turned to look out the window, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. My stomach was constantly in some sort of low-level twisting pain. Whether I was surrounded by people screaming in my ear or the quiet of my own room, I couldn't escape the cycle of my thoughts, rolling over and over again, imagining every terrible thing that could happen from this moment, imagining everything I wasn't doing to put a stop to this mess. Even if Dad shook off my absurd suggestion, I couldn't help but notice that Bottle Island started crumbling when I arrived. I looked around the faces of these people who had lived here all their lives and wondered if they thought about it too: if they blamed me.
I knew it was the stress talking. The townspeople of Altswood didn't hate me. Rebekah Gray went on a killing spree at a time coincidental to my arrival. Whoever was continuing in her footsteps—well, I didn't know what was motivating them. I wished I did.
"We're here, Loosh."
I blinked, registering the sight outside the window. A group of townspeople dressed in black made their way into the town hall, climbing up the steps as if it physically weighed on them to move. Somewhere inside, we would be mourning Birdy's ashes in a small, bronze vase.
Her family had decided on cremation once it was announced that her death was natural, unsuspicious. And why wouldn't they? They didn't know that I had frantically asked Dad to extend Birdy's investigation the moment that I discovered the pictures hadn't uploaded into the laptop. They didn't know that I had lied and said I had overheard her in a fight with someone who had threatened to kill her as an excuse, only to be told Birdy Lu had already been cremated.
They didn't know why the hospital had moved her cremation date up, only that the hospital logs suddenly read that Birdy's body should be sent to the crematory immediately after the alleged gas leak in the lower floors. They didn't know that the incineration destroyed the evidence of her murder.
I asked after the strange timing at the hospital of course. It seemed that every doctor thought another doctor handled those logs.
It all circled back to this: someone was constantly one step ahead of me.
"Getting colder, isn't it?" I said, getting out from the car. A bird flew overhead, cawing. I glanced down, checking the time on my new phone. Well—I couldn't even really call it a phone. It was some pre-paid brick from the grocery store, and it would have to do for now.
Dad shivered. "Get inside, quick, quick."
Inside the town hall, murmuring echoed from every corner of the room. At the very front, there was a portrait of Birdy, smiling and younger than she had been when she died. I couldn't look at it without seeing Birdy shot in the head and collapsed on the sidewalk, blood pouring from the wound. I couldn't look at it without seeing her dead face, weak and cold and brittle.
I tore my gaze away from the picture.
Seats were folded out in neat rows, and I gestured for Dad to move up along the front where I had spotted Annabelle and her parents.
"Ever think about how we never did anything on this scale for any of the kids that died during the Hunt?" Annabelle asked when I sat down, without even starting with a greeting first. Meanwhile, Dad exchanged pleasantries with Mr. and Mrs. Martinez.
"Not for Daphne either," I said. My eyes searched the room, at last stopping on Birdy's parents, who stood at the corner of the hall. They were unspeaking, but Mr. Lu held his wife up, an arm around her shoulders as they absently watched people file in.
"I guess Birdy was lucky," I whispered. "She had people who cared."
Annabelle slouched into her seat, looking tired as she stared ahead. "Maybe we feel better mourning those who were taken by something we can't explain instead of a gun we could have stopped."
Annabelle didn't know about what I found in the morgue. For now, it was better if she didn't. It was safer.
A man stepped onto the podium, tapping the microphone. The hall quietened, coming to order as he began speaking, thanking us all for attending. I didn't even know who he was.
My attention started to drift, inspecting the rows of people methodically. Though I was searching for Gabriel or Jules, who had both said they would be here, my attention snagged on another familiar face instead.
Of all people, Maire Reeve was sitting in the second row, dressed in black.