Shit.
“This is it. This is what we’re supposed to find. There’s – I hope to God there’s only a clue bricked up inside and not some poor schmuck. Buried alive.” Her stomach was doing something she wasn’t sure it had ever done before. It felt very dense, like it had its own specific gravity, distinct from the rest of her body. “In a jester’s costume,” she croaked.
“Ah,” said Archie. “The cask of amontillado marks the spot.” He nudged her with his elbow. She tried to nudge back.
But she felt sick and weak, and all she could think of was the last time she read “The Cask of Amontillado.” In high school, under duress in English Ten. Ms. Heck’s class.
With Abby Hobbes.
Abby used to sit at the desk behind her. Abby kept up a running commentary throughout class, even though they both loved it, and loved Ms. Heck. Not being able to shut up was how you knew Abby Hobbes loved something. And Abby loved that “The Cask of Amontillado,” with its pathetic, drunk clown buried alive, was Tuesday’s Achilles’ heel. Are you seriously freaked by this? This is so tame. This is lame. It’s masonry. It’s a drunk asshole and a psycho and unnecessary home improvement. “For the love of God, Montresor!”
Tuesday could still hear her cackle. Focus on the task, she told herself. Focus. There’s nothing here that can actually hurt you. It’s theater. It’s a game. It’s one hundred fifty thousand dollars plus expenses in your pocket. It’s the possibility of five million more.
“We need a tool, a hammer or something.”
“How about an elbow?” said Archie. “Or a shoulder?” And he threw himself sideways at the wall.
It did not work.
Tuesday laughed a weak laugh and felt, for the moment, better. When she realized Archie was smiling at her, and that he hadn’t really expected to break through, she thought seriously about pushing him up against it and sticking her tongue down his throat.
Focus, she told herself.
They found a hammer and a rubber mallet in the supply closet. Tuesday took a picture of the graffiti, one without and one with Archie (“Should I make finger guns?”), and sent them to Dorry, who responded immediately: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then they stood in front of the bricked-up wall, weapons raised like bats. Tuesday paused.
“This is not how I expected my night to turn out,” she said.
“Me neither,” said Archie.
They swung.
Tuesday had never tried to break down a wall before, but she could tell right away this wall had been built to fall. Whatever the mortar was, it was still soft; the bricks started to give on the second swing. By the fifth swing, they’d knocked whole chunks clear. They pulled the wall down with their hands, brick by brick.
Her feet felt the earthquake-ghost again, stronger this time, closer – vibrating down their track, not the opposite one. “Careful,” she told Archie. “I think a train is com—”
Archie chose that exact moment to shine his phone on the black hole they’d been making.
And on the corpse of Abby Hobbes hanging inside.
Strung up by her wrists. A multicolored ruff around her neck. Her face a bloated gray moon. Lips black. Soft rotten holes instead of eyes. Found. After all these years vanished, found. Found dead and bricked up in a tunnel underground.
Tuesday didn’t scream. Later, she would be proud of herself for at least that.
What she did was turn and bolt out of the alcove like an electrified rabbit, toward the oncoming path of a Green Line car that would have splattered her across the tracks if Archie hadn’t lunged after her, flung his arm around her waist, and yanked her back from the edge and into the pile of dust and bricks.
The train ding-dinged.
“We’ve been made,” Archie gasped.
The train car’s brakes squealed, then shrieked.
Tuesday couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t close her eyes. She couldn’t—
It couldn’t be.
It could not be Abby.
“Are you okay?” Archie asked.
She scrambled off him and onto her knees, wrapped her fingers over the edge of the broken brick wall, and peered inside.
A red emergency light flashed.
And no, of course.
Of course it wasn’t Abby. Abby wasn’t here. Abby wasn’t anywhere.
This was a dummy. A blank mannequin, obvious now in the low red glow, hanging by its handless wrists from some kind of metal frame. It was dressed in full motley, garish red and purple and green and yellow harlequin, with a twisted jester’s cap, bells on every twist. Hanging around the dummy’s neck, alligator-clipped from each side like a dental patient’s bib, was a furl of parchment.
Archie leaned above her, into the hole, and retrieved it.
Tuesday heard shouting down the tunnel. Far but drawing closer.
“They’re coming,” she said. Her voice was too loud. She pressed her lips together.
“Take this.” Archie shoved the parchment into Tuesday’s hands. “For, uh, various reasons – I’ve got to go. I hate to, but I do.”
“What are,” said Tuesday. “What are you talking—”
She looked beyond the alcove. The train that had almost punched her card was stopped fifty feet up the tracks, purring mechanically in a pool of red and white light. In the other direction, she saw three uniformed T personnel booking it through the station, almost to the tunnel’s entrance.
Her body took over. It pushed her to her feet, it pumped her legs. She ran. She was aware of her fingers curling around the parchment. Of the sound of Archie’s feet crunching through gravel, of the whirring beast of the train car on her right as she passed beside it.
She was not, however, aware of the crosstie until it caught the tip of her sneaker.
Tuesday felt the world shift. She thrust out her arms, but it was too late. She whipped straight down on her face.
Archie’s footsteps at least had the decency to stop.
“Are you okay?” he hissed.
“I’m not dead,” she said. The palm of her right hand and both forearms were studded with bright points of pain, rocks and gravel and please dear God (Montresor) nothing worse. Her ankle hurt. She’d wrenched it. She pressed herself up on her elbows.
“They can’t know—” Archie’s voice rose. “Not yet.”
“What—” Tuesday frowned. Of course. Of fucking course. “You have got to be kidding me,” she growled.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll find you.” And then she heard his footsteps again, faster, farther, until Archie had melted into the black.
She lay on her back. She unrolled the now-bedraggled parchment and had time, just, before the cops were upon her, to snap a picture of it, a series of obscure symbols written in neat black pen:
“A freaking secret code,” Tuesday murmured.
Aww, said Abby Hobbes, sharp, in Tuesday’s rattled head. You got a love note from the Zodiac.