Rarity: Part 2

I hear a ringing. I do my best to ignore it. It's my cellphone, and anyone who calls my cellphone before ten in the morning deserves to leave a message.

But when the phone by the bed rings, I answer it. Not everyone gets my home phone number. "Hello?"

"Ms. Crouse?"

"Hi, Jacob, what's up?" Jacob is the guy I relayed my information to a couple of hours ago. He's whom I always end up talking to with the local police. I told him to use my first name ages ago, but he doesn't. It's sort of cute. I use his first name as retaliation.

"I wanted you to know that we checked out the house. We couldn't get a hold of the owner –"

"I told you, Frank Fioli-Sternson's the owner. Koit Finerson Flanders is a really bad pseudonym."

"Agreed, but we have no proof of that, other than it being an anagram," Jacob sighed. "Anyway, we couldn't get a hold of the owner, so we left a message and checked the place out. It's pretty much empty. Nobody there, nothing suspicious."

"Oh." I sigh. "I'm still certain that it was her."

"That's all right, we can still hope. There's been quite a few girls gone missing from the downtown the past several years; hopefully she won't be the next to stay missing."

I'm asleep again almost as soon as Jacob hangs up - two warm and cuddly cats see to that. It takes me a while to remember the conversation at all when I get up for the day.

I call my client - Abigail Fioli-Sternson - at around four-thirty, and tell her what's happened. She thinks for a while, then asks me to meet her at the house, the address of which I've given her. She wants to see for herself - and as wife of the owner, as it were, that should be just fine.

I'm there by six, ferry ride and all. I park across the street again, and wait, spending the time by binding my mousey hair into a slightly less sloppy ponytail. I'd read, but it's already getting too dark, and I'm too used to not turning on the light in my car to break the habit even when I'm not on surveillance.

And I wait.

And wait.

By a quarter to seven, I'm starting to wonder where she is. She'd call my cellphone if she got lost, I assume, but I haven't heard a thing. I check to make sure I have reception - three bars, should be fine.

I pour a cup of hot chocolate from my thermos and wait some more. I feel that I shouldn't leave.

At about half past nine, someone comes walking down the house's side of the street. I instinctively still, and watch. When he crosses beneath a streetlight, I see that it's Frank Fioli-Sternson.

He enters the house. No lights appear inside, at least not that I can see. I realize a bit later that I haven't had a good blink since he went in, and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.

When I open them, nothing has changed.

It's past ten when the garage door slides open. A small silver BMW backs out, Fioli-Sternson at the wheel. I can see him looking around, adjusting his mirrors - he's much more alert tonight. He lets the car idle while he closes the garage door - it's not automatic - and then he's off.

For a moment, I'm torn. I want to follow him. But he seems to be paying attention to his surroundings this time, and I said I'd meet his wife here… so I don't. Instead, since I know where the guy is now, I call his home phone number, hoping to reach my client.

It rings, and continues to ring. No one picks up. No answering machine picks up.

I try Mrs. Fioli-Sternson's cellphone. I get her voicemail. I tell her I've been waiting several hours, and saw her husband arrive and leave, and ask her to call me.

I end the call and have a bracing drink from my thermos. Usually I try to hoard its contents and end up finishing it long before my surveillance ends anyway… But right now, I'm not worried about running out.

I'm going to check out the house myself.

Of course, the front door is locked. I consider trying the back, but that would involve dealing with the fence, which is six feet tall and close enough to the neighbors that I'm afraid of attracting undue attention. In addition, there could be dogs in that yard - or the neighbors' - for all I know, and the last thing I need is to be savaged by defenders of the territory.

So I pull my kit out of my denim jacket and pick the lock. It's one of those things that comes in handy to know.

Now, I know that what I'm doing isn't exactly on the up and up. However, I've no doubt that Mrs. Fioli-Sternson will see to it that I have no legal trouble. This was her idea, after all…

With a gentle click and a push, the door opens to the darkness inside. I slip in and allow the door to close behind me.

I wait, standing very, very still, but I hear no hint of movement in the black space. The telltale scent of dog is absent, but there is the scent of cigarette smoke. I pull out my flashlight and twist it on.

The dining room is on my left, and the living room is on my right. Both are nearly empty; there's a card table with folding chairs at one edge of the dining room, and a papasan in the living room, but apart from that the rooms are unfurnished. I proceed forward, into the hallway.

The kitchen, to the left, is fairly bare. I check out the bathroom and the two bedrooms - all silent and apparently un-lived-in, with a mattress and some candles on plates in the larger bedroom the only evidence that this is a love-nest.

I look at the last door in the hallway - it must be a closet, given the size of the house and its placement at the end of the hallway. Its door is the same as those of the bedrooms, solid but cheap. I open it.

It is indeed a closet. The three walls are lined with shelves; some towels and blankets are folded on a few of them, but that's it.

As I turn away, the flashlight's beam sweeps low, and something out of place catches my eye - a long, thin, silvery line in the carpet. It would never have been seen in daylight; it is only the angle of my flashlight that catches it.

The carpet in the closet is a separate piece from that in the hallway - it's the same type, and the two join together pretty well, but they are definitely two separate pieces. The silver line seems to be coming out from underneath the carpet of the closet, trailing out across the carpet of the hallway.

I crouch and stare at the seam in the carpet for a few minutes. The silver strand is exactly that - one platinum blonde strand of hair. Coming out from underneath the closet's carpet.

Fioli-Sternson's hair is short and peppered grey. His wife's hair short and black.

But Jenny MacDougall's hair is long and blonde.

Part of me says, I really don't want to bother, because it's very unlikely that any good will come of it. Part of me says, oh, what the heck, I'm being paid to snoop here.

I reach out and pick at the edge of the carpet in the closet.

Nope, it's not tacked down.

I give it a tug, and it slides easily aside.

There is a flat, solid trap door set into the floor of the closet.

It's not a closet at all. It's the stairwell to the basement that the police didn't suspect this house had. The hedges around the outside are thick enough that there was no evidence of basement windows, so they didn't know to look for it.

I know I shouldn't.

I reach in my pocket for my driving gloves, and slip one on, and lift the ring of the trap door with two fingers, using as light a touch as possible. I gently pull the door open.

It had a fairly airtight seal, I notice. The air that wafts up to me from the black pit smells… a little like the meat freezer at the supermarket. And it's cold. I can see a few wooden steps leading down into the absolute silence.

I have never been afraid of the dark, but my nerves are telling me that I might want to start. I really, really want to seal this back up and get out of here right now. I think to myself that all I need right now is for Fioli-Sternson to come back, but somehow I suspect that he's not coming back.

I have to know.

I lean the trap door open and carefully descend the steps just far enough to sweep my flashlight beam around.

The basement is unfurnished and dank, with concrete walls. It seems to be one large room that spans this half of the house, with a brick wall as the far end. The floor is bare concrete, and appears to be swept clean... Except for one spot of red at the bottom of the stairs.

I stare at the spot at the bottom of the stairs. It's a dusty pale red, like the bricks in the far wall. It looks as though someone dropped a brick there.

As though someone dropped a brick there after sweeping the rest of the basement clean.

I stare at the spot.

I stare at the brick wall.

I have a bad case of what I believe are called "the willies" right now.

I shine the flashlight along the top of the brick wall. I breathe a sigh of relief - the support beams along the ceiling end at the wall with a cross-beam, as they should. It appears that the wall was built with the house.

However, there is that one door-sized patch of the wall where the mortar looks several shades darker than it does in the rest of the wall.

I swallow. I have to know.

I creep down the rest of the stairs, avoiding the area of the fallen brick, and cross the room, keeping my flashlight beam on the floor to make sure I'm not stepping on anything important. When I reach the wall, I stare at that odd mortar.

It looks wet. It looks really wet.

With my ungloved hand, I reach out and poke it.

It's wet.

Ohgod.

I place my gloved hand flat on the middle of the newly laid bricks and push. The mortar's so wet that they slide inward, at first bowing improbably, and then… A large group of the bricks fall into open space with a series of wet thuds.

The smell is suddenly stronger.

Every fiber of my being is screaming at me to run now. I should just leave, get to the safety of my car, call the police. I definitely knew enough now - a hidden basement with half of it bricked up was suspicious enough. I didn't have to look. I could smell it. I didn't need to look to know. I knew already.

I look.

I really wish I hadn't. I can be pretty stupid sometimes.

A couple of hours later, I'm sitting in the police station. Still sitting in the police station. And it's a couple of hours yet to go before Jacob comes on shift, so I can't quite help feeling like a suspect. Jacob is much easier to talk to than the random six officers I've dealt with so far. Jacob wouldn't have wasted the first hour asking me repeatedly why I was in the house in the first place.

I'm in a sterile little interrogation room. I've been alone for ten minutes, and I'm starting to think of getting my book out and reading, only somehow Renfield's sparrow problems don't seem so interesting at the moment.

I get out my cellphone and stare at it. Still no calls from Abigail Fioli-Sternson. The first thing I'd done when I'd reached my car was called the police, and then I'd called her. After not getting through to her home again, I'd left a message on her cellphone telling her to go to the police station and contact me. And then I'd chugged the rest of my hot chocolate, which really did help a bit.

I really, really hope that she was asleep and just hasn't checked her voicemail yet. I stuff my phone back in my pocket.

This place smells like lemon disinfectant. I breathe deep. I can't get that other smell out of my head. That dank scent of cigarettes and raw meat…

Lemon lemon lemon lemon lemon.

I pull my book out of the big inside pocket in the left of my jacket. Anything's better than thinking right now.

A few minutes later there's a knock at the door. It's one of the officers to whom I'd talked to before. He enters, then steps aside, gesturing for someone else to enter. "Ms. Crouse, this is Officer Seras Victoria of the Hellsing Organization. They've just been sent up from London due to the circumstances of the case, so we're going to need you to tell them everything again."

The woman who walks through the door is around my age, a few inches shorter, and wearing a ridiculously short-skirted uniform that I don't recognize. I've never heard of the Hellsing Organization, so I've no idea of what they do, although if they've been flown up from London at this hour, they're probably some independent group that tracks down serial killers or something. At least it's Hellsing and not Van Helsing; I'd have to be weirded out then.

Seras extends a hand to me; she's got a clipboard and tape recorder cradled in her other arm. "Pleased to meet you," she says with the instinctive subservience of someone who's recently been promoted and isn't used to it yet. "I'm sorry, I usually don't handle this part of the investigation. Only we're a little short-handed at the moment and I'm one of the few we've got with proper training for this at all."

I rise and shake her hand. "No problem. Ivy Crouse, PI." I have always wanted an excuse to introduce myself like that, but now that I've said it, it sounds rather silly. Oh well. At least Seras doesn't bat an eye.

"You're an American?"

"Started out that way," I answer. "Where should I begin?" I ask as we sit across from each other at the table.

"Um… well…" She looks down at her clipboard. "When did you first see the victim?"

"I saw a woman leaving a club downtown the night before last with Frank Fioli-Sternson, whom I was covertly observing at his wife's request. I followed them to the house, watched her enter the house with him, and watched him leave without her around five forty-five the morning of the day before yesterday… the 26th. I saw a picture on the news yesterday morning and realized that the woman was Jenny McDougall." I have to check my internal clock - yep, it's past midnight; it was all yesterday now.

She nods, scribbling something on the clipboard. "Which club was it?"

"The Red Devil, on Seventh."

"Right… Did you observe the house on the night of the 27th?"

"I did, but saw only Mr. Fioli-Sternson arrive and leave again."

"So it was seeing the picture on the telly that prompted you to phone the police yesterday morning."

"Yes," I say patiently. I've had to tell this story what feels like twenty times in the past four hours. Once more can't hurt.

"And what prompted you to go back to the house yesterday afternoon?"

"Well, after I slept and got up for the day, I notified my client - Fioli-Sternson's wife Abigail - of what I'd observed, and she wanted to meet me at the house to inspect it for herself. The police had already called me and told me that they hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary there when they'd checked it out."

"And you're aware that this house belongs not to Mr. Fioli-Sternson, but to a gentleman named Koit Finerson Flanders?"

"I fully believe that Mr. Fioli-Sternson bought the house using that as a pseudonym. It's an anagram of his name."

Seras doesn't even raise an eyebrow. She simply nods without looking up from her clipboard. That's new; nobody else today has accepted that explanation without giving me an eyebrow twitch at the least.

"And what happened then?" She prompts.

"We were to meet there. I waited for several hours, but she did not arrive. Instead, Mr. Fioli-Sternson arrived on foot, and later left in a silver BMW that I know from previous research is registered to Koit Flanders."

She nods again. "And why did you then break into the house?"

I hate this question. It's the one that they're always the most skeptical about. I hate feeling defensive every time I get to this part, like no matter what I say, they're going to try me for murder because I found the bodies.

"I'm not sure. I felt that something might be wrong."

Again, she doesn't bat an eye. Wow.

The next question should be "How did you gain entry," which had early on resulted in my lock picking kit being confiscated. But it's not. "How did you find the trap door?" Seras questions.

I blink, mentally fast-forwarding the story. "I happened to see a hair caught under the carpet of the closet, so I pulled up the carpet. It wasn't tacked down."

"And how did you determine that part of the wall in the basement was false?"

I hate that question, too. I don't think that any of the local police quite believe me. I think they think I'm party to this somehow, with prior knowledge of the scene.

"I was suspicious; the other three walls of the cellar were concrete, and there was a bit of powder from a brick at the bottom of the stairs, like someone had dropped one there. And when I looked more closely, the mortar was wet."

She nods again. I start to relax a little.

"What did you see when you broke down the wall?"

Well, there goes that relaxation. "Bodies," I mumble. I don't really want to describe all this again.

"I'm sorry?" Seras asks, looking up with an absolutely innocent expression, like she's taking down my grocery list.

"Bodies. Several were bricked into alcoves in the wall, just visible from the shoulders up. The only one I recognized was Jenny MacDougall, who was… folded… with these restraints…"

"It's called a Scavenger's Daughter," Seras says helpfully.

I blink. "Huh?"

"It's a called a Scavenger's Daughter. It's a compressive torture device…" She suddenly catches herself, looking a little embarrassed. "Sorry, I, um… They had one on display in the Tower of London for a while…" She trails off, then clears her throat. "Was there any blood on any of the bodies?"

That's a different question. I try to remember. I don't particularly want to. "I'm not sure. I don't remember any." …Which did seem a bit odd, come to think of it.

"Any signs of violence, other than the obvious? Wounds on the bodies?"

I swallow. "Also not that I can remember. I didn't get that good a look at them."

"What did you do after discovering the bodies?"

I take a deep breath. "I went back out to my car, called the police, called my client, and came here." I feel a bit better now. At least I didn't have to describe the torture device in detail this time; Seras had obviously been briefed already anyway. "Has anyone gotten a hold of my client? I'm a bit worried about her."

"I'll get them to send someone 'round to check, if they haven't already," she says. "I think you can go now."

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