Vandermein

IX

I feel like I should elaborate on that last part. When I tell you they didn't have a face, I don't mean that it was just smooth skin where a face belonged. I also don't mean the skin was gone, or that I was gazing at a skull or a burn victim.

I mean, where a face should be, was nothing. I saw straight through the head at the gaudy rose-colored paint job of the apartment wall.

The figure threw a hood up over its head and rushed to collect the piles of papers from the apartment floor.

"Sir! You guys can't keep trying to sneak into peoples' homes like that. You come down here or I'm calling the police!" It was a middle aged woman who sounded like she'd been smoking five packs a day for the last 30 years.

"I just forgot my key," I assured her. "Nothing suspicious here."

"I sure would say it looks suspicious, sir! And I don't recognize you from around the building either."

I slid down the metal pipe, the concrete screws adhering it to the wall cracking and groaning as I went. I needed to cut the mystery person off in the hallway, and fast. Whatever they were running with was certainly critical to piecing this all together.

The nosey resident kept shouting obscenities at my back as I ran, but I paid it no mind. I rushed up the apartment stairs, hoping I picked the right direction to catch the runner. When I turned the corner and looked down Boone's hallway, his front door was open, but there was no sign of the faceless person.

I rushed down anyway and past Boone's door, hoping to catch a glimpse of them get in a car so I could tag it and follow its location later. There was a railing at the end of the hallway that looked over the parking lot. I saw no fast movement, no one rushing to a car or holding papers.

At this point, the odds of finding them were diminishing by the second. They were quick, no doubt about that, and I wasn't exactly a spring chicken anymore. At very least this person was distinctive: a hole where a face belongs. If they stopped anywhere and made any sort of fuss I'd be able to triangulate their location.

Defeated for the moment, I walked back to Boone's apartment. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that it might have been Boone without the face. But the body type was wrong: smaller, faster. It was hard to tell whether it was male or female (or other, I'm not evil), but it didn't seem like Boone. But then again, did I even really know the man?

His apartment was small, much smaller in person than I expected. There was a main room that served as both living room and bedroom, a corner with a small kitchenette, and a little bathroom.

The place was filthy. He had overflowing trash bags of rubbish around, and the place smelled generally of dirty cardboard and stale beer. Above the desk, the corkboard contents were either taken or ripped in the attempt. The figure left quickly and tried to take whatever they could with them.

Nothing left was any immediate use. Though there were more of those strange brown smudges on the desktop.

Then it struck me: when I first met Veronica, I noticed she had makeup caked on her face. It was far too much, as if she were hiding something. I assumed in the moment that it was the black eye and split lip, but what if the heavy makeup was hiding the absence of a face in the first place.

There was still a thousand missing pieces to that theory: how is there no face, why would Veronica set up her boss, how is this connected to the freighter and dead children?

But that could wait. I left Veronica home with my wife and kids.