Phantoms

get back to normal pretty soon,” she said, but even as she spoke she realized how stupid that statement was.
    “Are you going to sleep now?”
    “Not quite yet.”
    “I wish you would,” Lisa said. “I wish you’d lay down right there on the next mattress.”
    “You’re not alone, honey.” Jenny smoothed the girl’s hair.
    A few deputies—including Tal Whitman, Gordy Brogan, and Frank Autry—had bedded down on other mattresses. There were also three heavily armed guards who would watch over everyone throughout the night.
    “Will they turn the lights down any farther?” Lisa asked.
    “No. We can’t risk darkness.”
    “Good. They’re dim enough. Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?” Lisa asked, seeming much younger than fourteen.
    “Sure.”
    “And talk to me.”
    “Sure. But we’ll talk softly, so we don’t disturb anyone.”
    Jenny lay down beside her sister, her head propped up on one hand. “What do you want to talk about?”
    “I don’t care. Anything. Anything except… tonight.”
    “Well, there is something I want to ask you,” Jenny said. “It’s not about tonight, but it’s about something you said tonight. Remember when we were sitting on the bench in front of the jail, waiting for the sheriff? Remember how we were talking about Mom, and you said Mom used to… used to brag about me?”
    Lisa smiled. “Her daughter, the doctor. Oh, she was so proud of you, Jenny.”
    As it had done before, that statement unsettled Jenny.
    “And Mom never blamed me for Dad’s stroke?” she asked.
    Lisa frowned. “Why would she blame you?”
    “Well… because I guess I caused him some heartache there for a while. Heartache and a lot of worry.”
    “ You? ” Lisa asked, astonished.
    “And when Dad’s doctor couldn’t control his high blood pressure and then he had a stroke—”
    “According to Mom, the only thing you ever did bad in your entire life was when you decided to give the calico cat a black dye job for Halloween and you got Clairol all over the sun porch furniture.”
    Jenny laughed with surprise. “I’d forgotten that. I was only eight years old.”
    They smiled at each other, and in that moment they felt more than ever like sisters.
    Then Lisa said, “Why’d you think Mom blamed you for Daddy’s dying? It was natural causes, wasn’t it? A stroke. How could it possibly have been your fault?”
    Jenny hesitated, thinking back thirteen years to the start of it. That her mother had never blamed her for her father’s death was a profoundly liberating realization. She felt free for the first time since she’d been nineteen.
    “Jenny?”
    “Mmmm?”
    “Are you crying?”
    “No, I’m okay,” she said, fighting back tears. “If Mom didn’t hold it against me, I guess I’ve been wrong to hold it against myself I’m just happy, honey. Happy about what you’ve told me.”
    “But what was it you thought you did? If we’re going to be good sisters, we shouldn’t keep secrets. Tell me, Jenny.”
    “It’s a long story, Sis. I’ll tell you about it eventually, but not now. Now I want to hear all about you.”
    They talked about trivialities for a few minutes, and Lisa’s eyes grew steadily heavier.
    Jenny was reminded of Bryce Hammond’s gentle, hooded eyes.
    And of Jakob and Aida Liebermann’s eyes, glaring out of their severed heads.
    And Deputy Wargle’s eyes. Gone. Those burnt-out, empty sockets in that hollow skull.
    She tried to force her thoughts away, when that gruesomeness, from that too-well-remembered, grim reaper’s gaze. But her mind kept circling back to that image of monstrous violence and death.
    She wished there were someone to talk her to sleep as she was doing for Lisa. It was going to be a restless night.
     
    In the utility room that adjoined the lobby and backed up against the elevator shaft, the light was off. There were no windows.
    A faint odor of cleaning fluids clung to the place. Pinesol. Lysol. Furniture polish. Floor wax. Janitorial supplies were stored on shelves along one wall.
    In the right-hand corner, farthest from the door, was a large metal sink. Water dripped from a leaky faucet—one drop every ten or twelve seconds. Each pellet of water struck the metal basin with a soft, hollow ping .
    In the center of the room, as shrouded in utter blackness as was everything else, the faceless body of Stu Wargle lay on a table, covered by a dropcloth. All was still. Except for the monotonous ping of the dripping water.
    A