Dead Endings: Chapter 8

Cailen woke up a couple of times during the next few hours, but much of it was hazy and none of it was fun. She was content to drift as people poked and prodded and asked her questions she didn’t feel like answering. Gabriella’s face swam in and out of certain parts, as did Everett’s.

When she finally emerged from her dreams, she was alone and in a strange room. She touched her face. It was warm and soft under her fingers, except for a strip of bandage that covered her right cheek and ear.

Still alive, she thought, and sighed.

The deep, piercing ache that followed that breath made her wonder just how much of her was in a decent state, though. With trembling hands, she probed her side underneath the hospital gown.

Thick dressing covered her entire rib cage. A fair amount of the bandaging was bulked around the side where the knife had gone in. She couldn’t feel much directly through the bindings, but its very presence disturbed her.

With a wince, she settled back into the pillows. As she’d thought in Elizabeth’s basement, her entire ‘plan’ had been horrible. She’d had a chance to use the slight return of control she’d stolen back from Ethan to struggle and scream and rail at her attacker, but she’d resisted–and it had been the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.

It would’ve been me or Gabriella, though. So she’d done it. Grateful to be alone, she buried her face in her hands and cried tears of relief.

Several days and tests later, Cailen was deemed fit for visits both official and friendly in nature. To the police she had little to say. She didn’t know what Gabriella had already told them, and mentioning ghosts wasn’t an option, so Cailen simply acted the part of a tired, slightly traumatized victim. She gave them the vaguest of timelines: she’d gone for drinks, she’d felt sick, she’d woken up in a basement with a crazy person… The hospital confirmed that her system had been loaded with alcohol and diazepam, and she’d had a knife stuck in her, so it wasn’t a hard sell. When the police mentioned Elizabeth’s death, she was careful to keep the cool relief off her face.

Following that interview, Cailen finally got a moment alone with Gabriella. She received a tearful hug and a small plate of bacon cupcakes before they carried out a hushed exchange of information.

On the night Elizabeth had drugged her, Gabriella and Everett had been at the station to visit Gabriella’s detective friend. They’d waited a long time at 1 Police Plaza before meeting with Detective Abrams and laying out their unusual case. Both had silenced their phones when going into the station, and had been so engaged with relaying every detail to try to help the police make a plausible connection that neither had noticed Cailen’s messages. When they had returned late to find her gone, however, Gabriella had seen her text and replied that they would wait up. Only Cailen had never returned. Determined to hear the news, Everett had crashed on the couch and was on hand when Elizabeth’s call had come in a few hours later.

“What exactly did she tell you?” Cailen asked.

“That you’d had too much to drink and seemed ‘sick.’ She called it an emergency…which it was,” Gabriella added wryly when Cailen made a face. “I brought Everett in case we needed to carry you home.”

Cailen sighed. “I thought as much, but how do we explain to the cops why my company was so terrible that she felt the need to knife me?”

“Total, full-blown psycho meltdown.”

“Uh, that’s how you’re framing it?” Cailen raised an eyebrow. “The ol’ Norman Bates explanation?”

Gabriella rolled her eyes. “Well, given what I heard from Detective Abrams, it actually makes sense. After you went under to get patched up, I talked with him again. You know how Elizabeth’s fiancé killed himself?”

“Inadequately?” Cailen added dryly.

“There was a police report on it. Well, apparently he’d recently started hearing things.”

Cailen leaned forward. “Don’t tell me the guy was a sensitive!”

“No, no. Schizophrenic,” Gabriella said sadly. “Which was just starting to manifest. From the sounds of it, he went downhill fast, too. He turned delusional and obsessive. He killed himself right in front of her.”

Cailen grimaced. “So that’s what she meant when she said she’d stayed with him even when he ‘turned on himself.’ Still don’t think that’s a free pass to just knife a bunch of people.”

“It’s not, obviously,” Gabriella said, “but Ethan died months ago, and she was able to hear or feel something from him all that time. Spirits don’t have much spectrum. They’re single-minded by nature, and what we saw of this guy was one point hammered home over and over again at each murder.”

“‘Kill yourself,’” Cailen said softly. “She tried, y’know. She showed me her arms.”

Gabriella nodded. “There’s a hospital record of it. So when she went after Jacob Warner, she was already pretty unhinged. And remember his old lady neighbor? She thought we were both exes or something, and Everett told me that the first time you guys went to his apartment, she said something along the lines of him having bad taste in women.”

Cailen thought back. “Yeah, I guess she did.”

“And you told me that Elizabeth said Jacob had agreed to go in for a double suicide. Detective Abrams found security footage at a bar nearby where you can see them both leave together.”

“She did, but you remember watching Warner’s death in his apartment. That guy didn’t seem suicidal in the slightest…” Cailen suddenly made a face as she understood what Gabriella was leading towards.

“Wooooow.” Cailen whistled. “That’s the most desperate thing I’ve ever heard. So he played along with her just to get laid?”

“That’d be my guess. He picked the wrong emotionally distraught woman to try his hand with, though, that’s for sure.”

Cailen fiddled with the EKG lead wires stuck to her chest. “So he invites her up, she thinks she’s found a sympathetic someone to end it all with, and he negs on the deal. She’s like, nu-uh, and decides to make the invite to hell mandatory. The knife goes in, the knife comes out, the spirit goes in…”

“And Ethan comes out,” Gabriella finished. “Instant ghost telephone.”

Cailen had to suppress a laugh, but Gabriella wasn’t smiling.

“Victim number two, Portia Jones, is kind of a question mark, but after Elizabeth found out she could actually talk to Ethan this way, maybe she didn’t need another reason.”

“Just a murder of opportunity?” Cailen ventured.

Gabriella shrugged. “No idea, but going by the timeline, you can see the period between murders gets shorter and shorter. That smells of desperation. Desperation culminating in killing whoever’s convenient, even if it’s your own friend.”

“Christopher Markle.”

Cailen tried to imagine what it would take to push her to kill Gabriella or Everett…and couldn’t. It was an alien thought. Cailen was no saint, but she didn’t think she could ever be willing to end a friend’s future, no matter how far gone her own life felt.

Gabriella folded her hands together. “Elizabeth had never been in the system before, but now I’m sure they’ll match her prints to evidence found at Christopher’s place. And even if they can’t figure out how she knew Portia Jones, her prints will match that murder scene, too. Add all that to your little run-in, and the fact that she used you to bring in another victim, and the police see the trail of a serial killer.”

“They love that shit,” Cailen said in an awed voice. “I watched seven seasons of Law and Order,” she qualified.

Gabriella snorted. “To the police, she’s some poor girl, broken up over her fiancé’s suicide, who snaps and starts killing people. Why? Maybe she thought she’d send Ethan some company. Maybe she liked what she saw when he killed himself. Who knows? Some of it was calculated, some indiscriminate, and she majorly picked up the pace at the end; all the hallmarks of a psycho in total meltdown.”

Cailen gave her a crooked smile. “Compared to the reality, that actually seems plausible.”

“You mean that a ghost was haunting her and she used her victims’ bodies to play undead telephone?”

“You forgot the best part.” Cailen pouted. “She and her cinnamon-scented lover got tracked down by a guy who smells ghosts, tricked by a chick who hosts ghosts, and smoked by another chick who exorcises them.”

Gabriella let out a breath. She sounded relieved, but tired. Cailen reached over and squeezed her hand; it looked like she needed it.

“It’s over, she reminded her. “And I think I want a bit of a break from ghosts.”

Gabriella smiled. “Just a bit?”

“And from Everett, too. Tell him if he has any more mysteries, he can shove them up his–”

“But he brought you such a nice gift,” Gabriella interjected. She gestured to a matte black, cylindrical container by the window. Cailen hadn’t noticed it before.

“What is it?” Cailen asked warily.

“Some kind of booze,” Gabriella said with a shrug. “‘La Frog’ or something.”

Cailen’s bottom lip trembled. “Bring it here,” she said hoarsely.

Clearly amused, Gabriella fetched the container and handed it over. Cailen traced the green and silver label reverently. Her fingers lingered on the stylized “18” and feather crest. She pulled the lid off the top of the container and slid out a large green bottle.

“Laphroaig,” she corrected Gabriella. “Eighteen-year-old, single malt scotch whiskey.”

“Scotch, whiskey, whatever,” Gabriella said, unmoved.

“Distilled on a remote island off Scotland!”

“Yay?”

“There’s a castle!”

Gabriella laughed. “I’ll take cocktails or wine over whiskey any day, but I’m happy for you, Cailen.”

“Can I have a sip?” Cailen asked, but she was already working at the seal on the top.

Gabriella snatched it away from her. “Dream on, invalid. Heal up fast and I’ll let you have some when you get home.”

Cailen felt she deserved a sip, but it was hard to argue with a jiu-jitsu enthusiast who wasn’t in the hospital for being stabbed.

So she settled back in the bed and fantasized about her return home. The minute she stepped into that apartment, she’d have a nice, big tumbler of it while sinking into her couch. Gabriella could sip her own and realize the error of her ignorant ways.

And Everett would have a glass. Cailen would pour it herself.

Proceed to Chapter 8, page 3–>