He liked to think of it as his building; it took up an entire city block. He’d worked there for thirteen years and thirteen years was a long time. Long enough to see his three children old enough to attend college. It was dull, mindless work, but he didn’t care, because it left him with time to find other ways to generate income.
He pushed through the employees’ entrance. Paid his ten-dollar debt to the guy at the desk. His father had taught him the invaluable lesson of paying any debts immediately. Last night, the Cubs had surprised everyone and won two out of three against St. Louis. The security guard was a Cubs fan and bet with his heart. For once, he’d won. Herman, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about one team or the other.
One level down, he followed the utility corridor all the way from the Clark side of the building to the east side. He always made sure to unlock a certain door the first level down as soon as he started his shift. This wasn’t part of his regular job, but he had to uphold his end of the bargain. This provided access to the building from the relative privacy of the alley. He found the chain already unlocked.
Those rich pricks.
They had forgotten again. Or they were breaking another rule, going in or out during the daytime. It got dark back here, but not dark enough. It needed to be night; otherwise, someone passing on the street might see them. He locked the chain tight again, as a reminder to the bastards. If they were outside and needed in, well then, that was too damn bad.
He moved with an urgent purpose now, heading down another level to a forgotten storeroom that had been sealed off decades ago. Before retiring, Herman’s predecessor had explained that the room had been repurposed and outlined the deal he’d struck. It served as a crash pad for a small group of stockbrokers and was a place for a quick snort of coke to get pumped for the trading floor and fuck girls from the downtown bars. Over the years, it had dwindled to just two brokers. Still, they paid Herman rent and everybody kept quiet.
But lately, they had been slacking off adhering to Herman’s rules.
Vest-wearing ass-clowns.
He tried the door. It was locked.
He swore in Croatian, dug around his front pocket for the key. He stepped inside, and locked the door behind him. The place was dark and filled with furniture looted from the Chicago Board of Trade. A couple of desks with outdated computers, office chairs, a couple of leather couches. He switched on one of the lamps and the room grew a little brighter with the muddy light. They’d decorated the concrete walls with stolen street signs and abstract images taken from beer advertisements and horror movie posters.
Herman wrinkled his nose. The place smelled. Bad. The desks were covered in fast food containers and white Chinese food boxes. It didn’t look like they used the half fridge in the corner for anything but beer. The garbage can was overflowing with old food. This was just the first room.
They had walled part of the room off using cubicle partitions, presumably for a bit of privacy. The first room was empty. Which meant they were probably outside, and Herman would be damned if he was going to clean this mess up himself. They would follow his rules or he would find someone else to rent the room.
He went to check the back room before he locked up the place for the night, just in case they were sleeping off an early drunk. Herman knew they had at least two couches behind the partitions. He just hoped they didn’t have any girls back there. Girls didn’t listen. Girls were loud. Girls were trouble.
There were no lights in the second room. If anything, it smelled worse back here. Something rotten. And something else too . . . something that smelled strangely like the bear claws he used to buy every morning, until he stopped because he couldn’t shake the feeling he was wasting money on something frivolous.
He fished his penlight out of his pocket to check the couches.
Sure enough, there they were. Illuminated in the narrow, weak yellow beam, he could see one of the brokers still passed out on one of the couches. The other one had rolled off the second couch and lay facedown on the floor. He shook his head. Stupid, arrogant assholes.
“Hey,” he said, kicking the frame of the closest couch. “Wake up. You forget the rules, hey?”
Neither man moved. In fact, they seemed unnaturally still.
Herman kicked the couch again. “Hey! Time to wake up. I’m talking to you!”
Still no movement.
He aimed the light straight into their faces and his gut knew before his brain figured out that the two brokers were dead. Something looked wrong with their skin, but it was hard to tell in the wavering light. They both seemed unnaturally pale, and the skin looked puffy almost, something akin to the texture of a rough sponge.
He backed out of the room, knees buckling. He dropped into an office chair and pushed himself across the room. He could not understand how they had died. For the first time in over six years, if he could have found a cigarette, he would have broken his solemn vow. He placed a trembling hand out to the desk to steady himself.
He switched the flashlight off. It wasn’t much help in the first room anyway. He took several deep breaths, focusing on just inhaling and exhaling, long and slow. He needed to think this out. But the two corpses in the makeshift room, not ten feet from where he sat, kept getting in the way of making a decision. He felt paralyzed. He pulled his hands into fists and tried to just breathe.
The CO2 he exhaled caught the attention of a dozen bugs dozing under the chair’s seat. They set out to the edge of the fabric, thousands of years of instincts directing them to a large warm-blooded mammal.
To feed.
To spawn.
The bugs found Herman’s slacks. Their jaws could not penetrate the fabric, so they latched onto the threads, wriggling along on six legs. They stopped when he moved, and just hung on, and when they felt the stillness, they worked their way closer to the warmth of bare flesh.
Herman couldn’t feel them. The thought of fingerprints had just crossed his mind. He jerked his hand off the desk and wiped it with his rag. He stood up quickly and patted his pockets, making sure nothing had fallen out. His wife was always watching those police forensic TV shows, and it seemed like the cops would inevitably find some hair or some damn thing to discover the killer. He backed out of the room, hoping he hadn’t touched anything else.
Outside, in the corridor, he locked the door and twisted the rag around the handle. He could always call 911 later, after he figured out what he would say. In the meantime, he would do his job and stick to his usual routine. He could always claim he found them later.
He started up the stairs, moving slow, and had to pause near the top to catch his breath.
The bugs crawled up under his shirt and over the waistband.
Herman opened the door to the basement and rubbed his sore back, rolled his shoulders, and made sure to lock to the door behind him. He still couldn’t feel the bugs.
CHAPTER 25
3:21 PM
August 11
Sam shook his head at the empty hallway. “What a fuckin’ asshole.” He called back to Captain Garnes, “You want to write this up?”
“Hell, no.”
“Me, neither. He say who he’s with?”
“CDC.”
“Ahhh . . . shit.”
“Shit is right. Listen, I’m sorry, but when this comes down, I’m passing this down to you, you know?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
“I got no time for the kind of shit that’s gonna rain down, understand? What the hell are you doing here anyway?”
“Prisoner transfer. Some homeless woman.”