House on Haunted Hill

“We’re doing interviews throughout the building, ma’am. Do you have a few minutes to answers questions?” Max asks as he enters Gemma’s room. He stops at the sight of the large television in the wall, the channel listing making him temporarily forget why he is there. “I need to start harassing rich suspects like you. Please tell me there isn’t a massaging chair in here or I’ll genuinely hate you, Cook.”

“I was attacked by a pool cleaner last night. Still want to trade?” Gemma asks while she makes sure nobody saw her partner enter. Locking the door behind her, she tosses a towel to the man and nods her head toward his satchel. “Consider that a souvenir. What can you tell me about the massacre?”

Max pulls a bug detector out of his bag and moves about the suite, the device making clicks and beeps. He stops to shake the machine and work one of the dials, which makes Gemma think he never read the instructions. The cautious man takes his time scanning what movies have told him are the usual hiding places. Making his way into the bathroom, he takes a second to stare forlornly at the bathtub and rub his lower back. Max turns back to the doorway and jumps when he finds Gemma standing right behind him. The red-haired woman claims the bug detector and places it on a nearby shelf before guiding her fellow police officer to a recliner that is so comfortable that he nearly falls asleep.

“The whole thing is disturbing, so expect the media to run wild with catchy headlines and conjectures,” Max explains while he puts his feet up. He waits for Gemma to return with glasses of ice water and take a seat on the couch. “Before he got kabobbed, the chef admitted to lacing the bachelorette party’s drinks and food with a hallucinogen. The lab will need a few days to analyze the evidence. He wanted to make the bride’s husband-to-be back off on that lawsuit. I don’t know if he expected that one bridesmaid to go, for lack of a better term, feral. She did some horrible things to the stripper and the other girls. Worst was how she killed the woman, which I’m telling you only to share the horror. She literally ate her. Didn’t get very far with the bones, but she devoured the flesh and organs. Made room by occasionally vomiting into the bathtub before going back to work. By the time we arrived, she was in a trance and muttering about voices.”

“Sorry if this sounds cold, but I’m glad I’m not on that case,” Gemma replies, shuddering at the vague visual in her head. Eyes falling on the refrigerator, the detective decides to find trash bags to get rid of the remaining food. “Ms. Addison has an alibi on this one. If she convinced the chef to do it then there’s no way to prove it. He would have done it for free and she’s not stupid enough to leave a trail. The flagpole was creepy.”

“I was there and I still don’t know how it happened.”

“Overheard people saying a person on the roof knocked over a flower pot that broke off the flagpole.”

“Then where is the flower pot?”

“Impaled on the other end of the flagpole.”

“Well then I should get to business since that sets the mood.”

Pulling a folder out of his satchel, Max holds the file to his chest and taps his fingers while he thinks. Taking a peek at the pictures, he shivers and takes a long sip of water that includes an ice chip that he crunches. He eventually offers the folder to Gemma, but keeps a tight grip on it when she tries to take it. A brief struggle goes on until Max lets go and adjusts his chair to allow him to lean forward. Clearing his throat, he pulls out his cellphone to send a message to one of the other detectives about running late. The response he gets is a smiley face that he cannot decipher, so he accepts it as understanding. If he returns to the precinct and gets yelled at then he can always feign ignorance.

“That’s what I found on Dawn Addison during the first few hours of my search. I would have gotten more, but I had to come here for obvious reasons,” Max explains, running a hand through his hair. Watching his partner’s face, he is not surprised to see her eyes widen slightly. “I couldn’t find anything older than seven years ago. Three of those were spent at an asylum called Raven’s Hold. The place was on an island off the western coast and designed for tough psychological cases. Very little information about it or this Dr. Rutherford who died in the fire that destroyed the place. Only reason I know Dawn Addison came from there is because of an old photograph I found online. Printed it out before the site crashed, which adds to the creepiness.”

“Thanks for this. I could see her setting fire to this place, but it doesn’t explain where she got the money to start a hotel,” Gemma says as she looks through the pictures. Stopping on a deed, she reads it over twice before holding it out to her partner. “Going by all of this, Ms. Addison disappeared for one year after Raven’s Hold burned down. Then she bought a property in Las Vegas and turned it into a profitable casino. I see there were several disappearances, but no murders during that time. Mob ties were hinted at since those who went missing all ran up a really high gambling debt.”

“One of the last pages disproves that since the last month saw a lot of local criminals vanish after entering the place,” Max points out while he gets another glass of ice water. Checking his phone, he can see a text message waiting for a response and frowns at how he muted the device again. “The chief wants me to head for the morgue once they look at the bodies. Probably all I can do on this case unless the survivor recovers.”

“The casino collapsed into the ground a week before Heaven’s Nest opened here,” Gemma states, the detective not hearing what her partner has said. Hearing a snort of derision, she closes the folder and hands it back. “If I keep that here then Ms. Addison can find it. She might expect me to be looking into her past, but I’d rather she not know how far I went. Strange events follow her, which means she’s either the cause or the real target. My money is on the first option since it makes no sense to harass a person with such theatrics for so many years. Do you think you can search further into her history?”

With a chuckle, the man pushes his glasses back up and makes his way to the door. “I knew you would ask that, so I have some feelers out. This woman is nearly a ghost if you peek behind the curtain. Still, she had to come from somewhere. Keep yourself out of trouble because this may take a few days. Paperwork takes time even when it isn’t for something so elusive, which defines Ms. Addison perfectly.”

“You seem impressed with her.”

“More terrified considering the death, destruction, and disappearances in her wake.”

“In that case, stay safe, old man.”

“You too, slightly younger woman.”