Holly what up? It was her friend Ronit. Like everyone else in her life other than her parents and Joe, Ronit knew her as Holly.
In bed. U?
not even midnight come out
wtf no way. we’ll hang tmrw
come on
gt bed
whatev
tmrw
She sealed the exchange with two red high-heeled shoe emojis. Then she turned toward her balcony door, which was a few feet to the left of the window that held the AC unit. Something was making a tapping sound on the glass of the balcony door. Or maybe it was a scratching sound; she couldn’t tell.
The door was an unusually beautiful piece, with a lacquered wood frame and a full-length glass panel. It was the creation of the owner of the building, a red-faced Italian man who made wine in his basement and treated Halle like a granddaughter. She turned off the AC unit so that the room was quiet. At first, there was nothing. Then she heard it again, something between a tap and a scratch, like a tree branch brushing against the glass. Except there was no tree in reach of the glass. With a crook of her head, she sat up and swung her legs over to the floor. Seconds passed with just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchenette. Nothing else.
She hooked her phone to its charger and went to wash her face before bed. The bathroom was through a narrow door to the right. An old wooden crucifix hung just next to it. Halle blew a kiss toward it as she approached the bathroom.
There it was again.
Scritch, scritch.
She turned and walked back toward the balcony door. The glare didn’t allow for much of a view outside, but she could see her potted plants on the right side: a coleus, a heart of Jesus, and some impatiens, limp in the summer heat. She placed her fingertips on the glass.
Scritch.
She heard it for a split second, down and to the left. She looked in that direction but couldn’t see a thing. She had some begonias on that side. Could be there was a bird on the balcony, some stray gull or an ugly blackbird. They might peck at the flowers. Or maybe it was a cat. It wasn’t hard to reach her balcony. A cat could almost jump to it from the ground. She stood back, straining to get a view, but saw nothing. She paused and then opened the door a few inches. Hot, damp air rushed in, the kind that would frizz her hair in seconds. She poked her head out and looked down.
A big hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face into the doorjamb. Too shocked to form a scream, she let out something between a cry and a moan. Her face felt like it had been split down the middle, her eye socket like a thin shard of glass had been jammed through it. Her left hand, still inside, splayed against the wall. Her right hand clutched the doorknob.
She felt the attacker’s grip loosen, then close again around more of her hair. In a reflex, she yanked her head back and lost a clump, pulled from her scalp like patches of grass. In a ballerina twist she spun around and flung herself into the apartment, her hands reaching forward like a drowning person’s. The red robe flew open, exposing her breasts and the rounded curve of her stomach, dwarfing the baby-blue panty triangle beneath.
She lurched a step forward. The attacker’s big hand found purchase again, this time like pincers on her neck. She gagged and felt him draw close. She could almost smell him now, an earthy scent like wet cement. His other hand slid across her stomach. The sensation of spreading fingers over her body made her want to retch. Instead, she drew a breath to scream. He moved the gripping right hand around to her throat and choked the scream quiet. Then he pushed her through the door and bumped it shut behind them both.
Panic crawled up Halle’s belly, a blooming sensation like she’d been plunged into cold water. The last thing she focused on was the ancient wooden crucifix—her grandmother’s—the one that opened in the back to reveal holy water, two candles, and crumpled, yellowed directions for last rites. Crazily, she remembered in that moment how weirded out she and her grade-school friends had been when they first discovered that the wooden back slid open to unveil such creepy stuff inside: the vial, the curled paper, the thin, white candles.
She reached for the crucifix in those last seconds, her eyes like saucers. The man gripped her shoulder with his left hand, felt for her jaw with his right, and wrenched her head back as far as he could manage with a savage twist. There was a sickening series of snaps, like breaking wishbones.
Then the darkness around Hallelujah Rossi ate her whole.
CHAPTER 28
Saturday, July 29, 2017
7:30 p.m.
There was no headboard on the dead woman’s bed, just a mattress and box spring pushed against the wall. She had a wealth of pillows, though, including an embroidered one with the names of twenty Brooklyn neighborhoods stitched over its surface. Above that pillow, on the yellowing plaster wall itself, was a message, written out in OPI’s Lincoln Park After Dark nail lacquer: