Easy Innocence

Chapter 22

THE STINK slammed into Georgia like an angry ocean wave. Nausea climbed up her throat, and her skin turned clammy. She automatically reached for her holster before realizing she wasn't carrying. She stumbled back outside and gulped down deep breaths. Seconds ago she'd fretted about the coming of winter. Now she needed to suck clean, cold air into her lungs.

A few more breaths steadied her. Wrapping her pashmina around her nose and mouth, she went to the front door and peered in. Nothing looked disturbed. The usual assortment of flyers lay on the table; the floor was clean. She opened the door. Again, the smell attacked her, but this time she was prepared. She tightened the scarf and pushed through.

At first she thought it was a dead body, but aside from the problem of how a corpse managed to get into her building, the smell wasn't right. She'd been around corpses before. Underneath their rancid odor was a sickly sweet smell. This was fresher. More rotten. Fishier.

The doors to the first floor apartments were closed, and everything was quiet. Too quiet. Where were her neighbors? The smell had to have seeped into their living rooms. Why didn't she hear exhaust fans, street noise from open windows, loud complaints? For that matter, why was there no sign in the lobby? Unless no one was home. She considered it. It was Friday night, and most of her neighbors were young. They could be out. It was possible she was the first tenant to discover it.

She gripped the banister and forced herself to climb the stairs. The smell grew stronger with each step, and the clammy feeling overspread her skin. But her initial shock was gone, replaced with a grim anger. Who had the balls to do this? How did they get inside?

She saw it before she reached the second floor landing. On the floor outside her apartment door was a pile of what could only be described as gray muck. Disembodied fish heads with glassy eyes stared vacantly into space, while fish tails, entrails, and skeletons were splattered in clumps across the carpet. Bloody carcasses and scales covered the rug, glimpses of silver and red threaded through the mess. She tried not to let disgust overpower her, but there was no way to avoid stepping through it, and she cringed as she reached for her key.

Bits of muck clung to her shoes and the bottom of her jeans as if they had jumped of their own accord. The smell snaked into her nose, her throat, her clothes. She shuddered, imagining crud leaching through her shoes and socks onto her skin. Is this how Sara Long had felt at the Forest Preserve with the bucket of fish guts on her head? She stabbed her lock with her key. She and Sara Long now had something in common.

***

An hour later, after scooping up piles with a spatula, stuffing them into double-bagged garbage bags, and throwing them in the alley dumpster, most of the gunk was cleaned up. She left her apartment door open and opened her windows. She set two fans on the landing, hoping to vent the worst of the smell through her apartment rather than her neighbors.' She found rug shampoo under her sink and worked it into the hall carpet. It was only a first step; she'd rent a steam cleaner tomorrow. But there was no way she could get through the night at home. She called her friend Samantha and left a message on her cell.

She was on her hands and knees rinsing the carpet for the third time, cursing the specks of silver scales that had embedded themselves in the fibers, when the door to the vestibule downstairs swung open.

"Jesus Christ!" The voice was loud. "What the hell happened?"

Georgia peered over the landing. It was the man from the third floor. With the wife named Sheila. He clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. She called down. "There's a-a problem."

"That's an understatement." He yelled through his hand. "What in Christ's name happened?"

Georgia explained.