Scry Me A River: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (Blood Visions Paranormal Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Arie gave them a polite nod as she crossed back to the center's entrance. The two men tipped their heads in reply. The women just watched.

  When Arie got back to the staff break room, she carefully covered the lunch table with plastic to prevent cross-contamination, using masking tape to secure it. Then she pulled her face mask on and went to the first cubbyhole to start the process of sorting and emptying. The first one was unlabeled and held an assortment of articles: sunscreen, an economy-size bottle of unscented lotion, a box of generic adhesive bandages, and a sewing kit. None of it seemed to have caught any biomatter spatter, and Arie tossed everything into a garbage bag. Grabbing another, she moved to the next box: Rachelle.

  Her cubby hadn't fared as well as the first, but Arie only had to set aside a bit of paperwork and a roll-on deodorant. Arie used the masking tape to make a label and put the items on the table. A cloth makeup bag had been shoved to the back, along with a brown Burger Barn cap that smelled like grease and fried meat. They were both free of biomatter, so they went into a garbage bag along with the rest of the stuff in Rachelle's cubby.

  The third box had been stuffed nearly to capacity, and Arie had to toss the front layer since the cubbyhole had caught a great deal of Bernie Reynolds when the gun blasted him away. Cindy, the label read. Arie brought a worn copy of The Duke's Idle Whim over to the sheeted table, along with a baby's pacifier that would probably be tossed, a nearly full bottle of Woman's Day vitamins, and a bottle of baby lotion. The sweet smell combined with the copper-penny stench of blood and the sharp tang of acidic brain matter, causing Arie's stomach to heave. Ironically, most of the paperwork in Cindy's cubby had escaped the biomatter bath. Arie shoved it into a bag labeled with the nurse's name and moved on.

  The next storage box was nearly empty, which meant the biomatter had sprayed liberally throughout its interior. Arie removed a spiral notebook, two pens, and about half a dozen sheets of paper. The top page, an employee schedule for the center, had taken the brunt of the spray, but the blood had soaked through or stained the edges of most of the other papers as well. Arie stacked everything on the table.

  From the fourth cubbyhole, a green plastic water bottle with a fading River Rest Senior Center decal on it earned its spot on the kitchen table, but it and a pair of cheap sunglasses had served to protect many of the other items stuffed into the cubby. Arie tossed a Chap Stick, a neon-pink plastic makeup bag, and an iPod with the earbud wires twisted around it into a trash bag that she labeled Karen. No paperwork, Arie noticed. Just as she was moving on, though, she caught a glimpse of something white in a back corner of the cubby. Reaching in, Arie pulled out a crumpled tissue wrapped around a hard lump. It didn't have any biomatter on it whatsoever, but Arie's curiosity got the better of her, and she unfolded the tissue, uncovering a gold ring with three parallel rows of tiny diamond chips encircling the band. Little black gaps indicated a few missing stones. Arie tossed the ring into Karen's bag and moved on.

  The last cubbyhole belonged to someone named Tiffany. It was the box farthest from the spot where Bernie had shot himself, and it also held very few items. Aside from a spiral notebook with Caring for the Elderly written on it in purple marker, it held only a few memos; the same schedule Arie had pulled from most of the others; a photocopied article on breastfeeding; and a month-old National Informer with banner headlines announcing an alleged sexual encounter between the First Lady, two extraterrestrials in lab coats, and a Chihuahua. The Chihuahua looked the most ill at ease. Arie tossed everything into a new trash bag and labeled it.

  While she'd been clearing the boxes, Grady had started wiping up the worst of the contaminated area. From a bucket of rags soaking in a solution of disinfectant and decontaminate, he would pull a rag, use it to scrub at the blood, then toss it into an empty bucket and get a fresh one. The process was slow, but it kept the area and cleaning supplies free from cross-contamination. He would probably go through at least two dozen rags, Arie knew. That was another task they had an unspoken agreement about: Grady often handled the big "mess" while Arie handled the detail work.

  She was grateful. Regardless of her coworker's surfer-dude ditziness, Arie knew how lucky she was to have Grady as a partner. For one thing, he managed to overlook the admittedly weird reactions she often had on the job.

  Like now, for instance. Although she wasn't working with the larger-pooled areas, even the mere dots and thin tapering streaks of the blood spatter were proving difficult to handle. Vibrations, both visual and physical, emanated from each tiny speckle as if calling to her—well, not "as if." The blood really was trying to speak to her.

  Arie worked steadily on clearing the employees' storage areas. Although he wasn't supposed to, Grady was listening to his iPod, the wires from his earbuds running down into the collar of his biohazard suit, to the inner pocket where he kept the device. His head bobbed gently, and his eyes, though ostensibly focused on the job, were transfixed in an inwardly self-absorbed stare. Despite the buds, Arie could hear the tinny sound of steel guitar leaking from his ears. She'd warned him before about the decibel level he was exposing himself to, but like most males, he didn't listen. Or maybe he had decided that the secret place the music allowed him to escape into while he was cleaning up the vile and malodorous remains of his fellow humans was worth the price of his hearing.

  Either way, Arie was on her own. Turning her back to her coworker, she took a deep breath and pretended to scrub a strip of wood separating one of the cubbyholes from another. While she did, she peered into a particularly vibrant—to her, anyway—splotch of blood.

  A bright camera flash of white light.

  My hip aches from having to flop down on the stupid blanket she had to bring. Red-and-white checked. Wonder where Viv managed to find that? I can smell fried chicken comin' from the wicker basket. Hope she brought that chocolate cake from the bakery, too. She knows I like that. The perfect picnic setup. She probably planned it for weeks. And now she has to screw it all up with all this crying bullshit. She's not a pretty crier, either. Course, what woman is? Viv. You'd think with a name like that she'd be vivacious or va-va-va-voom. Nope. She's just a wet mess. Wait a minute... What's she...?

  The woman with short gray hair and mascara running down her cheeks pulls a small box from the picnic basket. Smiling shakily, the woman hands it to Arie... er... to Bernie. Arie can almost feel the shiny blue wrapping paper crinkle in her fingers.

  For me? At least she stopped the waterworks. And... What's this now! A gold watch? It's not a Rolex, but it'll do. I give her a smile. What the hell? She earned it.

  Flash.

  I bet that dang Dr. Slocum is going to make me wait again. Well, fine. That just gives me more time with luscious little Lucille. Can't tell me Slocum isn't making time with her already. No sixty-year-old doc is going to hire a twenty-three-year-old receptionist with a banging body like that unless he wants to do her himself. Probably already has. He wasn't asking me for those extra samples of The Pill for himself. But if I plan this right, I can give her a sample of my own "pill" before I have to deliver my pitch to the old hack.

  Flash.

  An unearthly chorus wails and chants, “Holy, holy, holy.”

  Holy geez, he's looking at me like I just walked up the church aisle with dog crap on my shoe. Worse. Like I'm the dog crap. Twenty-five years old, and he thinks he knows more about this world than his old grandpop. What is all this bullshit? "It's not my fault your dad's been playing hide the sausage with some dumb broad. What did you expect, anyway? He's a man, isn't he? When are you gonna grow up and realize there's no such thing as happily ever after?"

  The Voice thundered, "The blood cries to Me."

  Flash.

  Good thing Phyllis thought to bring the candles. Course, like any female, she's all gooey for the romance even if she says she doesn't care. But at least this way, we don't have to mess around with the lights. Anybody walking across the parking lot would see us for sure. And the dark is nice. Makes it a little
hard to keep from spilling the booze all over the place, especially since we're stuck using these dang Dixie cups. Music's nice, though. Can't stand that jungle music they listen to nowadays. Give me some Frankie Sinatra to listen to any day. Phyllis likes dancing to him, too, the silly ninny. She might like swaying to Ol' Blue Eyes, but she hasn't had two hip replacements. Not that you can keep any female from her gooey, lovey-dovey fix. Not if you want to get lucky, anyway. Hopefully, I'll only have to spend a few minutes belly rubbing before I bend her over Carly Horse's desk and slip her the ol'—

  "Dude, how clean are you trying to get that thing? You're rubbing the paint off."

  "Oh, sorry." Arie could tell her face was flushed, though the biohazard mask kept it hidden. Already, she could feel the beginnings of a migraine pulsing behind her eyes.

  "Have you finished clearing those boxes out yet?" Grady stood, backing off a few feet from the spot where Bernie Reynolds had bled out, to check his progress. He was making headway, and the bucket of soiled rags was nearly full. "I'm going out to the front. Do you need anything?"

  For a split second, Arie was tempted to ask him to bring her back a can of Sprite from the cooler they kept in the front of the van. Her stomach was displaying the first signs of nausea that she'd experienced on the job in a long time—most likely caused by the visions rather than anything else. She knew Rich and Bruno, BioClean's most experienced crew, bragged about taking breaks and eating their lunches in the middle of crime scenes, but Arie never really believed them. Guts, maybe. Arie could easily picture him peeling off his disposable gloves so he could munch on a roast-beef sandwich in the middle of an abattoir, but he'd probably only do that if he was showing off. At least she hoped so.

  As Grady left, Arie became aware of a low hum of conversation coming from the main room—the staff, showing up for their emergency meeting. If so, that would be a good time to hand over the bags of their personal objects and maybe get them to sort through the blood-contaminated articles she'd stacked on the table. Removing her soiled gloves, Arie tossed them into a red biohazard trash bag and gathered up the other bags. When she was far enough away from the blood zone, she also pulled off the top layer of disposable booties so she wouldn't track biomatter through the building.

  The voices grew louder as she entered the main room, but Arie didn't mind. At least these voices were outside of her head, where they belonged. Jane Clarkson stood with her slightly hunched back to the staff break room, talking with several women. A flash of envy shot through Arie's heart as she took in their work attire: fresh, lightweight scrubs in a variety of bright, cheerful colors. Arie approached the group, feeling like a cross between a space invader and a fruit bowl in her bright-yellow biohazard suit and blue booties.

  When Jane realized the women were staring over her shoulder, she stopped talking and turned around. "Oh, hello. Can I help you?" Despite a tone of professional crispness, the director leaned heavily on her cane, a furrow in her brow indicating she might be in pain.

  Arie held out the bags. "These are yours. I mean, they're your things I pulled out from the cubbyholes."

  The women eyed the bags with concern. Nobody reached for them.

  "Are they...?" Even Jane sounded cautious.

  "Oh! It's all clean," Arie assured her. "I separated out the stuff that was, um, contaminated. I put it all on the table. We're going to need you —"

  "On our lunchroom table?" one of the nurses said. Her face scrunched up in an ick-face, which was entirely at odds with her perky, high-pitched voice.

  "Oh, I covered it," Arie said. "The table, I mean." This was why she needed Grady to do all the talking. Arie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Let me start over. I put the items that were blood free in these bags and labeled them with the names that were on the cubbies they came out of. The things that were contaminated with biomatter are on the break-room table, which is completely covered with plastic sheeting to protect it. Before we leave, I'll be sure to disinfect that area anyway. Just in case."

  The women relaxed, and one of them, a black woman with short-cropped hair, took the bags and handed them out.

  While she did that, Arie turned to the director. "Sorry about that."

  "Don't worry about it. After all, we are nurses. It's just... When it's your own things that might be covered with..."

  "I understand," Arie said. "Nobody would like that. But, um, unfortunately, I'm going to need for each of them to come back and look at the stuff that was affected. Much of it is paperwork. I'm guessing a lot of it can be thrown out, but I'd hate to be wrong."

  Jane pinched the bridge of her nose and nodded. "We have a few things to go over, and then I'll send them in, one at a time."

  "Okay, cool. Thanks."

  Arie saw Grady returning from the van with a fresh bucket full of rags and scurried after him. Next time, she'd remember to let him handle the living. She had enough trouble with the dead talking to her all the time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Holy crud!" Chandra said. Her green, kohl-lined eyes grew wide as the import of what Arie told her registered.

  The two girls sat at the kitchen table in Grumpa's house, where Arie had lived ever since she'd been evicted from her own apartment and been forced by her mother to move in with her grandfather.

  "You mean you're the only one who thinks it's murder?" Chandra asked. "Everyone else thinks it's suicide?"

  "Not counting Bernie and, of course, the murderer, yes."

  Arie had considered not telling Chandra about the death visions she'd received—and continued to receive—from Bernie Reynolds's blood. She’d seriously considered it… for about two seconds, anyway. Somehow, telling another person would make Arie feel as though she was accepting responsibility for doing something. She wasn't ready for that. Never would be. The fact that the visions were continuing to plague her every time she looked at something reflective was worrisome, though. When that had happened before—the only other time she'd cleaned a murder scene—the unceasing, intrusive visions had nearly driven her crazy, and they hadn't stopped until she'd finally accepted responsibility to do something about it.

  Still, as much as Arie wanted to avoid thinking about the whole thing, not telling Chan was never really an option. Chandra had been Arie's best friend since sixth grade, and the idea of her not knowing everything going on in Arie's life was ludicrous. Plus, she'd brought brownies.

  "So, what are you going to do?" Though Chandra's mouth was full of fudgy goodness, it didn't filter out the eagerness of her tone.

  "Me? Nothing. There's nothing to do. I'm just a... a janitor." Arie got up to pour each of them a glass of milk.

  "A janitor who speaks to the dead. That's not nothing."

  "I don't speak to the dead."

  "That's merely a technicality. They speak to you." Chandra flicked back a lock of fuchsia hair that had fallen over her eye.

  True. And apparently, they didn't know how to shut up. At least, Arie didn't know how to shut them up. Even as she poured the milk, an image of a young Bernie Reynolds lovingly fondling the front fender of a red convertible flashed into Arie's mind.

  It's finally mine. Took long enough, didn't it? How many doctors' asses did I have to kiss to get my little beauty here? How many little pills did I have to convince those arrogant white-jacketed donkeys to approve purchases for before I could finally get behind the wheel of this babe magnet? Worth it, though. Worth every pucker and every penny. Look at her shine. Look at—

  "Arie, did you hear me?"

  Milk splashed over Arie's hand. "Dang it!"

  Chandra snorted. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to cry over spilt milk?"

  "Why would she be crying?” The raspy voice caused both girls to jump. “It ain't her spending the money for the milk she's dumping all over the floor, is it?"

  Arie's grandfather—Grumpa, for reasons all too apparent—was standing arms akimbo in his puke-green, scrawny-butt-skimming, ratty bathrobe. His legs from midthigh down were road-mapped w
ith varicose veins, two pale doorknobs for knees, and chicken-pale, goose-bumped skin. Chandra gagged, but for Arie, that was an all-too-familiar sight. She was forced to live with the guy, after all.

  "It's just a little spill," Arie said, already wiping the counter. "Why don't you—"

  "What is That Girl doing here, anyway?" Grumpa asked. He'd known Chandra since she was thirteen but always insisted he couldn't remember her name, resorting to generic pronouns instead. His slippers slapped against the tiled floor as he stalked over to the counter and grabbed one of the glasses of milk for himself. In his haste, milk slopped over the rim. "Look at that. You missed a spot."

  "You did that. Clean it up yourself."

  "And why is she eating all my food?" he groused. "I'm not made of money, you know."

  "I pay for the groceries, and besides—"

  "The groceries are for me, not for anybody you pick up off the street."

  "Hey, old guy!"

  Grumpa turned his scowl to Chandra, who was holding the brownie pan aloft. "I made these brownies, not Arie. So if you want any, you'd better be nice."

  Grumpa froze, his face scrunching as though he were suddenly experiencing bowel cramps.

  "It's a struggle being nice, isn't it?" Chandra smiled sweetly. She brought the pan to her nose, inhaling the delicious aroma. "Mmm. So good. And all you have to do is be a little bit—"

  Grumpa stomped forward and snatched up the brownie Arie had left on her plate. "Humph. Just make sure you two clean up in here before this one leaves." He waved the brownie at Chandra, crumbs sprinkling the tabletop. "You're supposed to be taking care of me, not the other way around," he said to Arie.