"Show me your hands!" a croaking and unsteady voice snaps. Since my hands are currently shoved over my mouth to keep me from screaming and/or vomiting, I don't intend to immediately comply with that order. I hear the click of what I realize is a gun cocking and two more unsteady footsteps before a sharp tap echoes through the room. The footsteps pause, and I hear the stranger mutter, "What the fuck is this?"
There's another shuffling sound, some rattling, and the man speaks again.
"What the fuck were you thinking, coming here with nothing but a stun gun? Come out and tell me who the fuck you are? I know you're in here, I heard you!"
Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth…in through the nose, out through the mouth. Calm down and breathe.
I have nothing else on me, no weapons or anything that could possibly help. I have the envelope of cash, I have the police file. I could maybe...throw something? Distract him long enough to get past him to the door? Since I can't currently feel anything below my waist and my hands are shaking hard enough to mix drinks, I don't see that happening. Bribery? Oh, God, what do I even do? What the fuck was I thinking, coming here like I could help? I've got to-
"I'm only gonna ask one more time. I'm FBI, and my gun is out and pointed right about where your head probably is. Now get your ass up and out in the open so I can see you before I shoot you through the dead asshole you're hiding behind!"
What the FUCK did you just say to me?
I don't realize I've moved or spoken, but suddenly I'm standing and facing this strange man, my chest heaving, a haze of red coloring my vision, my teeth grinding painfully as the next words leave my mouth like someone else is speaking for me.
"If you ever say anything like that about my friend again, I'll shove that gun so far down your goddamn throat you'll shit bullets for a month."
The man who stares back at me seems as startled by my words as by sudden appearance. He's wearing the black dress I recognize from what I thought was the woman lying prone upstairs, but the mess of dark, sandy hair is gone replaced by some sort of cap over his real hair. Behind the gun pointed directly at me, underneath the garish make-up, I seem to recognize the man looking back at me with wide, shocked eyes and a gaping mouth, and I feel my temper back off a couple of cautious steps.
"Agent Smecker?"
He glares at me suddenly, his mouth closing into a hard frown, adjusting the aim of his weapon. I see my stun gun clutched in his other hand.
"You've got five seconds to tell me who the fuck you are, or-"
"I'm Grace. The one Connor and Murphy asked you to send the detectives to watch tonight. I'm with them; only...they're...they weren't here when I got here...and…"
My sudden temper flare melts under the sight of the second gun pointed at me this week. Smecker's frown deepens before I see understanding flash through his eyes, and he slowly lowers his weapon.
"How the fuck did you even get here?" he asks, baffled. He squints at me, looking more than a little dazed and out of sorts. "I sent the three...well, fuck. Nevermind." He seems to come to his own conclusions about how I got away from the detectives, which is just as well. I don't think I could explain my night so far to him if I tried.
He takes a step towards me but stumbles, dropping the stun gun to clutch the back of his head. I take a hesitant step towards him, not sure how much I can help in my own unsteady state, but he waves me off with an irritated flap of his gun.
"I'd ask if you're okay, but...um, do you need me to...call someone?" I don't know who I would call. I'm probably guilty of at least a few felonies and misdemeanors at this point, and judging from his get-up and what seems like a severe lack of back-up, I get the feeling this wasn't exactly a bureau-sanctioned operation for him, either.
"No...no, I just...need a minute," he says, eyes squeezed shut in pain. "Somebody clocked me earlier; I don't know how long I was out for. Came up here to help your guys when I heard about the extra men Yakavetta had called in. What are you doing here? You could have been killed, and-"
He winces again, cutting himself off. I don't know what to do for concussions besides keep the person awake and check their pupils for dilation, but Smecker doesn't seem like the type that wants to be fawned over, so I opt for talking.
"I was fixing Greenly some sandwiches, and I heard Duffy and Dolly over the radio, talking about the Yakavetta place and how you told them there would be all these men up here. R...Rocco…"
My throat tries to close up, the backs of my eyes stinging, but I aggressively clear my throat and try again.
"Rocco and the guys didn't know about the extra men; they thought the rest of Yakavetta's big guns were still out of town, and I tried to get up here in time to give them this so they would at least be prepared." I pull the folded file from my jacket pocket and hold it out to him. His eyes narrow as he realizes what I have.
"Fucking Greenly. Fucking Boston PD. Fucking morons." He sighs and starts to shake his head but stops with another wince.
Smecker is silent for a long time; he looks like he's thinking hard, and I don't want to interrupt. He finally straightens and says, "We've got some work to do before we can get out of here, if you're up for it. There's no telling if Yakavetta's coming back tonight, so we need to get started. Now, first, tell me how you found your way down here."
I explain briefly about the blood trail that I followed, and he nods, eyes searching the room.
"Nothing in here that can help with that. Let's check back there." He motions to the rest of the basement, and when he stumbles again, I silently steady him with a hand to his upper arm. If I'm leaning on him just as much as he's leaning on me, neither of us a comment on it.
Out in the basement proper, tossed against a far wall, are the black gym bags the boys were carrying when they left the house. They must've been in a hurry when they left here to not try to take those with them. Either that, or they weren't able to because-
"You're not injured, are you?" Smecker asks sharply when I do some stumbling of my own. I shake my head, refusing to show too much weakness in front of him. Something about this man drives me to hide what I'm feeling, to put on a mask of indifference to the horrors around us. But the thought of them too disabled to take their bags affected me more in a physical way than I would've thought possible.
"I'm fine. Just...tired and worried. Those are their bags over there against the wall. They kept their…er…equipment in them. I guess they…couldn't take them when they left."
"I'm sure they got out of here," he says, his voice oddly sympathetic. His eyes seem the tiniest bit softer, but I don't trust it. This man is too sharp, he knows how people work, and he knows what to say to them. After a brief, awkward silence, he says, "They should have some ammonia in those bags. We need to get every spot of blood you saw on your way in and look around to see if we can find anymore. Then we need to find something to take care of the room your friend is in back there."
"I don't…"
"What is it?" he snaps, the impatience creeping back into his tone and eyes. He obviously doesn't want to have to babysit me, but he's stuck for now, so that's just fucking tough.
"Why do we need to clean that room? It's just Rocco and the other dead guy back against the wall."
"Sweetheart, did you not see the other two chairs in there? And the handcuff sticking out of the other dead guy's back? Your other friends were in there tonight, too, and there's a good chance a lot of that blood is theirs. So, unless you want any forensic evidence pointing back to them, we need to find...there! We can use that."
His eyes come to rest on a nearby wall, the one I couldn't fully process earlier, and I turn to see a coiled hose hanging from the wall, hooked up to a spout coming up out of the floor. The shelf I saw is stocked full of industrial-sized jugs of bleach. I remember all the drains I saw in the floor and shudder, trying very hard not to think of why someone would need such a large room full of drains and bleach with a handy hose hookup nearby.
Except I don't really have to think about it at all because I've already seen why.
Under Smecker's direction, I spend the next several minutes spraying down the blood splotch trail with the cans of ammonia that I found, then bleaching and hosing down every bit of the room where Rocco's body sits.
I can't bring myself to turn the hose on Rocco himself, though. The idea is too gruesome, too macabre, and while I understand Smecker's point that he may have gotten the boys' blood on him, I just can't do it.
Just before Smecker opens another jug of bleach to douse my friend, I reach over and peel the pennies from his closed eyes. Agent Smecker glances at me questioningly, his eyebrows knitted together, and I turn from him, shoving the coins in my pocket.
"The media thinks the pennies are to mark the bad guys. I know that's not why Connor and Murphy did it for Rocco, but that's what everyone will think once he's found. They'll think he's just like all the other assholes here, that he's the monster and not the victim. But he's not one of the bad guys, and he never was, and I refuse to let the world remember him that way."
My tone leaves no room for argument, though I can feel Smecker's eyes on me. When he finally speaks, there's a new note of something like respect in his voice. "Do you know why they put the coins on people's eyes?"
I shake my head, refusing to look at him.
"It's to help people get to the afterlife, to pay their way in, so to speak. Charon, the Ferryman, St. Peter; name the religion, and there's someone in charge of letting people into the afterlife. I haven't talked to Connor and Murphy yet about why they do it, but that's the best I can surmise. I can't say I share their beliefs on that front, but taking the coins seems-"
He cuts off as I turn to face him, my eyes ablaze. I speak quietly but clearly, enunciating every word carefully so he won't mistake my meaning.
"Whoever's guarding Rocco's afterlife is welcome to come see me for any outstanding fees. I won't leave the coins on his eyes or the stigma that comes along with them. If Connor and Murphy have issue with what I've done, we will deal with it together. Thank you for your concern. What's left to do here?"
He sighs, looking almost as worn out and broken down as I feel. He nods towards the body behind Rocco. "Wipe down the cuffs sticking out of that guy's back. Don't want any fingerprints."
We're finally done hosing down the little room, and I turn one last time to my friend. His face is cleaner, some of the blood washed away by Smecker's efforts, and the bleach is already washing streaks of color from his jeans. I touch his cheek again, unwilling to completely say goodbye, my face set into a tight, hard frown.
"I love you, Roc."
I hear a clinking sound behind me and turn to see Smecker digging around in a little bag I haven't seen before.
"You got me thinking about the pennies. It looks like the boys didn't have time to do their thing before they left; we're going to have to cover for them if we want it to look like everyone else here was the bad guys. Here, take these. I found them in the one of the bags they left." He drops a couple of pennies into my palm and nods towards the guy in the corner.
"Turn him over on his back and cross his arms over his chest. Close his eyes, leave the pennies, and grab the stun gun on your way out. I'll start on the guys upstairs."
In what is probably the grisliest act I've ever performed, I do as I'm told and tug at the dead man until I have him on his back. Though he's shorter than Detective Greenly, he feels so much heavier, and it takes me longer than I'm proud of to get him into position. I place the pennies carefully over his eyes, wondering for a moment what goes through Connor and Murphy's heads when they perform this ritual.
I can't even begin to imagine.
I stand, pushing off the ground to catch my balance, and realize I am practically saturated with gore like something out of my nightmares. The fumes of blood and bleach rise up suddenly, as if I haven't been swimming in them for the last however long. I expect to feel sick; I expect that surge of nausea and pain that's accompanied every other ghastly realization or revelation I've had tonight.
I expect it, but it never comes. I should feel appalled, thoroughly repulsed by myself and everything around me, but I can't even find it in myself to be disgusted right now. I hear footsteps again, and Smecker appears in the doorway, looking as if he's just come to the same conclusion I have. I have a flash of curiosity, bright and brief, as to why Agent Smecker is in a dress in the first place, something I maybe should have questioned earlier, but I let it go as quickly as it appeared. Insignificant details.
"Should I hose and bleach us, too?" I ask him. He's as filthy as I am, so it might be a good idea to at least get our hands clean.
Before I can answer, a ringing sound echoes from the depths of the little purse Smecker has slung over his arm, making both of us jump. Frowning, he reaches into his bag and pulls out the phone.
"Smecker," he barks, glaring at the floor. I see a variety of emotions begin to cross his face, starting with annoyance, followed swiftly by exasperation, and finally resignation. Smecker's eyes turn to me, his expression suddenly unreadable, though I'd call it far from pleased.
"No, Duffy, you don't have to call in backup."
Shit.
"No, I'll explain everything, but you don't have to call anyone in. She's not in danger. I know exactly where she is. I'm going to need your help, though. Get a change of clothes from her room, then stop by my hotel and pick up a change of clothes for me. I need you to drive out to Dedham and meet me at the address I'll text you when we get off the phone...Yes, Dedham in Norfolk county...Yes, that is the same town where Yakavetta lives…It's less than an hour's drive, you'll survive. "
He listens for another couple of minutes, his face stony, and I can hear the explosive cursing from the other end.
"Duffy, tell Greenly to shut the fuck up and quit whining. He's not dead, he'll be fine. It'll take you about an hour to get out here, so get going. Oh, and bring some petroleum jelly, some paper towels, and a can of gasoline. A five gallon can should do it."
With that cryptic order, he snaps the phone shut and stashes it back in his purse.
"We should hose off our hands and arms," he says, nodding back out to the main room. "We'll take my car out to an empty lot, text the address to the three Stooges. I saw some trash bags on the shelf; we can sit on those in my car. The idiots will bring us a change of clothes, we can burn these. The petroleum jelly with help get blood off anywhere it's dried by then."
"But...won't we have to tell them what happened? I mean, they pull up and we're both covered in blood, you're in a dress, and I literally assaulted one of them. How does this not end with me in prison and you under investigation?"
"Still working on that part," Smecker mutters, upending the remains of one of the bleach containers over my forearms. I turn my face away, holding my arms out so he can hose them off. I return the favor, then help him gather everything we're taking with us.
Smecker heads out the door, expecting me to follow along. A rushing noise begins in my ears, the overwhelming sensation to let the emotions rush in and tear me apart becoming almost unbearable. Rocco sits silently behind me, waiting for a good-bye I don't think I can make.
Before I can change my mind, I rush from the room and throw my cowardly ass up the stairs after Smecker. I know I'll regret not touching him or talking to him one last time, but I just can't bring myself to see him like that again at least in person. With my track record of nightmares, I'm sure I'll see plenty of Rocco in my dreams.
If I can ever manage to sleep again, that is.