The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(4)

“‘S for the widows, so I can see ’em when they creep up on me,” the man grumbled. He might have been in his late thirties, a little older than me, but his eyes were sunken and his pale skin was pockmarked with acne scars and wrinkles that had come a decade too soon.

“Sorry?”

“Saw ya lookin’,” he said, gesturing around him. I realized he meant the paint. “Black widows. Tunnels are full of the bastards. I seen webs with forty, fifty of ’em, just nestled there, waiting. One bite, you swell up like a water balloon. The roaches are bad, but those widows, man, they’re mean.”

I fought the urge to slap at my arms and legs, already imagining them crawling with shiny spiders. Instead, I took a step forward and offered him my hand.

“I’m Daniel. You been down here long?”

He took it with a firm grip and a nod. “Eric. Been here…man, six years? Seven? Better than the streets, once you get used to it. Nobody hassles me down here.”

“Good to meet you, Eric. I was wondering about somebody else who might have been crashing down here. You ever see this girl?”

I fished the ragged newspaper article from my pocket and showed it to him. They’d run it with a high school prom picture of Stacy smiling like a girl with a future made of diamonds. Eric frowned.

“Shit, man, that was the cops that did that.” He shook his head.

“That did what? Came and fished her body out?”

“No,” he said, “the cops brought her down here.”

I suddenly remembered the bad feeling I got sitting across the table from Jud. The roller coaster ratcheted up another notch toward the inevitable plunge.

“It was a couple nights before the last rain,” he said. “A couple of ’em came down with that poor kid in a body bag. Dumped her about a hundred yards up Tunnel C, near the water intake.”

“How do you know they were cops?” I asked.

“Me and a few of the other guys down here, we pressed ’em, wanting to know what they thought they were doing. One of the cops, he flashes a badge in our face. The guy was a detective, no joke. Told us to get the f*ck back, and then he shows us the gun in his waistband. We got back.”

“You sure it was real?” I desperately wanted him to be wrong. “You can buy badges—”

Eric shook his head, giving me a sad smile. “I used to be on the job, before I got a bad habit and ended up down here. I know badges. They were real cops. Skinny guy with a face like a hatchet, and a bodybuilder with a blond perm. Hatchet-face was the one who liked waving his gun around.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“Man, who am I gonna tell?” He scuffed his gym shoe on the dank concrete. “You think anyone wants to hear anything we have to say? They’d just say I killed her, or maybe those cops’d shut me up for good. I felt bad, but I’d rather feel bad than feel dead.”

I nodded. “They didn’t leave anything behind, did they? I mean, besides the girl.”

“Nah, and if they had, it woulda been picked clean five seconds after they left. Hell, me and my buddy Amos took turns standing guard over the kid’s body until the rain came, just to make sure nobody messed with her. It ain’t right, you know? It just ain’t right. You can have a look down Tunnel C if you feel like it, but I wouldn’t if I were you.”

“Why’s that? Black widows?”

A nervous look crossed Eric’s face, his gaze darting toward the darkness at my back. He shook his head and lowered his voice.

“Nah, man. That kid? She’s still down here. And she ain’t happy about it.”





Three



I couldn’t guess which habit had sent Eric’s life into a tailspin. In Vegas, you can pick your poison: booze, gambling, sex, meth. It’s all here and waiting for you, twenty-four hours a day. He didn’t come across like a junkie, though, and the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me he wasn’t sharing some alcoholic fever dream.

“No such thing as ghosts,” I said, keeping my voice light.

He curled his chapped lips into a grin. “You know. You know what’s up. Don’t pretend you don’t. You got that look.”

“Maybe I do. Anybody else see this maybe-ghost?”

“My buddy Amos,” he said. “He don’t live down there no more. He went topside, said getting beaten up on the streets was better than one more night in Tunnel C. Couple of other guys took off a couple of days later, haven’t seen ’em since.”

“But not you? Aren’t you scared?”

Eric waved his hand. “She stays over there, I stay out here. We don’t bother each other none. Besides, when she gets close, you know it. There’s a smell. Gives you time to run.”

“What kind of smell?”

“You’ll know it when it hits you. Seriously, man, you don’t want to go down there.”

I dipped into my pocket, palming a five-dollar bill while pretending to adjust my flashlight with my other hand. I unfolded the cash with a spread of my fingers and offered it to him.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m a magician.”

Eric snickered and took the bill with a nod. “You could do a card trick for her, but I don’t think it’ll help.”