Wendy immediately shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said, “but I don’t like the sound of it.”
Both of them were too terrified to go into the living room.
“You should call somebody,” Wendy said.
Gabby grabbed her phone and called the police. And, for whatever reason, her fingers ended up connecting her to the same detective. When his sleep-clogged voice answered, she said, “I don’t know if you can hear this going on in the background,” she said, “but that’s happening in my living room.”
He came awake almost instantly. “What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed, as softly as she could. “I don’t know. It’s coming from the living room.”
“Stay in your room,” he said, “and lock your door, if you can. I’m on my way.”
As she turned, Wendy was here in the room with her, shutting the door quietly, and the two of them sat and waited on the floor, their backs against the door. Then, all of a sudden, the noises stopped.
They looked at each other, and Gabby jumped up. “I don’t know, but maybe it’s safe to look now.”
“Hell no, it’s not safe,” Wendy said, in an adamant voice, rising to her feet. “We’ll wait for the detective to come through.”
“But what if he doesn’t come?” Gabby said.
“I’m not going anywhere until the detective gets here! Did he say he was coming?”
“Yes. He said he’s on his way,” she replied. She turned to the door, put her ear against it, and looked at her friend. “It’s quiet out there.”
“I know,” Wendy said, “and somehow, somehow that seems even worse.”
Gabby hated to agree with her, but, when she opened the door a bit, she heard just this weird deathly silence. She immediately slammed the door shut again, then turned to look at her friend.
When a loud bang came from the living room, the two women jumped together, arms around each other, as they clung tightly. Then they heard footsteps coming toward the bedroom door.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Wendy whispered, and they backed up toward the window, where they could look out of their third-floor apartment. “We’re never getting a third-floor apartment again,” Wendy whispered. “If we were on the first floor, we could be out and gone by now.”
The two women trembled as the footsteps stopped just outside the bedroom door. Gabby’s phone rang. With their arms clenched around each other, Gabby was too scared to even look at her cell. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she said, quickly trying to turn off the noise. If the intruder didn’t know someone was here, he did now. But her cell rang on, and, as her fingers fumbled, she answered it.
“It’s me. I’m outside your building now.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Come in. Come in. Come in. He’s right at our bedroom door.”
“I’m here,” he said. “Just stay on the phone with me. I’m on my way in. Did you see him?”
“I can’t see anything,” she said. “Whoever it was stopped just outside my bedroom door. Some horrible noises were out there.”
“Okay. I’m at the front door. I’m putting the phone in my pocket, just stay on the line.”
And, with that, the two women grabbed hold and waited. They heard something more in their apartment, but Gabby didn’t know what it was. Then more footsteps. Finally the bedroom door opened, and it was Damon. She looked at him in shock; then she raced toward him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “What happened?” And then, as he reached out to her, she didn’t give a damn. She threw herself into his arms, and he wrapped them around her.
Damon said, “I’m here. Easy now. Take it easy.”
Now Wendy clutched him, right beside Gabby. With his arms around both women, they burrowed close, looking for that reassurance that whatever hell had gone on was okay now. Finally they calmed down enough to look up at him, questions written all over their expressions.
“Give me a moment. Just step back in your room and stay here.”
“No problem,” Gabby said. The women both stepped back, but, with the door open, they could watch as he headed back out to the living room. Then she heard him on the phone but couldn’t understand what he said. Gabby looked at Wendy, the two of them standing there, close to each other.
When he finally came back, his face was grim.
“What did you find?” Gabby asked.
“I think it’s one of your roommates,” he said hesitantly.
“Oh, my God, who?” Gabby asked.
“Who’s here right now?”
“We don’t know,” Gabby said. “When we went to bed last night, it was just the two of us.”
“And would you have expected your roommates to be home by then?”
“Sure,” she said. “We all live here. Well, except Liz. She stays with her boyfriend sometimes.”
He pulled out his notepad. “Liz who?”
They immediately shared the names of their three other roommates.
“Okay, I want descriptions,” he said.
“Can we leave here?” Gabby asked.
Wendy said suddenly, “I want to go out in the living room.”
He looked at each of them, shook his head, and said, “No, you can’t.”
And then Gabby realized. “Oh, my God,” she said, “something really bad happened to somebody out there, didn’t it?”
He looked at her slowly, then nodded and said, “Yes.”
Gabby took a deep breath and then another deep breath, but she felt herself starting to hyperventilate.
Wendy grabbed her friend’s arm and said, “Come sit down. Come on. Come sit down. It’ll be okay.”
“It doesn’t feel like it’ll be okay,” Gabby said. “Don’t you realize somebody died in our living room?” she cried out. “Somebody we know?”
“I know. I know. Let’s sit down.” Wendy pulled Gabby over until the two women sat on the bed. Then Wendy described her other three roommates to Damon. “Liz is tall, like five-eight or maybe five-ten,” she said, correcting herself quickly with a shake of her head. “Long dark hair, almost black. Tessa is smaller, brown hair, a little bit more mousy, scrawny. And Betty is shorter, a little stockier build. Auburn hair.”
He wrote everything down, then nodded and said, “You both stay in here. Do you hear me? Don’t move.”
Gabby stared up at him, her eyes huge. “Who is it?” she asked in a voice barely over a whisper.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Promise me that you’ll stay here?”
She looked at the door and wished she didn’t want to see beyond, then nodded. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll stay.”
He nodded, then closed the door and left them alone.
*
Damon walked out from the last bedroom down the hallway, checking on the other two bedrooms, but nobody was in them. For five women, only three bedrooms were in this apartment. At this point he wasn’t even sure who the body belonged to or whether it was male or female. Of course it didn’t help that the head was missing. As he walked back, carefully retracing his steps, he waited for his partner and the forensics team to show up. When he heard noises outside the apartment complex, he pulled out his phone and checked with his partner.