Hidden Pictures(66)

As I stand up, I notice the surface of Mitzi’s nightstand. Along with a lamp and a telephone I see a handful of cotton balls, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a length of latex tourniquet.

“What is it?” Adrian asks.

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. We should go.”

We walk back to the living room and Adrian finds the notepad on the sofa, tucked beneath the heavy wooden spirit board.

“That’s it,” I tell him.

I flip past shopping lists and to-do items before arriving at the last used page—her notes from the séance. I rip the page from the pad, then show it to Adrian.



I took Spanish in high school and I had friends who took French and Mandarin, but these words don’t look like any language I’ve ever seen. “The name Anya sounds Russian,” Adrian says. “But I’m pretty sure this isn’t Russian.”

I take out my phone and google IGENXO just to be certain—and it might be the first time I’ve googled a phrase that doesn’t return a single result.

“If Google doesn’t know it, it’s definitely not a word.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of cryptogram,” Adrian says. “One of those puzzles where every letter is substituted by a different letter.”

“We just decided she can’t speak English,” I tell him. “Do you really think she’s making up brainteasers?”

“They’re not complicated if you know all the tricks. Give me a minute.” He grabs a pencil and sits down on Mitzi’s sofa, determined to crack the code.

I start poking around the living room, trying to imagine why Mitzi left the house with her TV on and her back door open, when something crunches beneath my sneaker. It sounds like I’ve stepped on a beetle, some small insect with a hard brittle shell. I lift my foot and see that it’s actually a thin plastic tube, orange and cylindrical, about three inches long.

I lift it off the floor and Adrian looks up from his work.

“What is that?”

“A cap for a hypodermic needle. I think she’s been injecting herself. Hopefully with insulin, but this is Mitzi we’re talking about so who knows.” As I move around the room, I discover three more needle caps—on a bookshelf, in a wastebasket, on a windowsill. When you factor in the rubber tourniquet, I’m pretty sure we can rule out diabetes.

“Are you finished yet?”

I look down at Adrian’s notepad and it doesn’t seem like he’s made any progress.

“This is a tough one,” he admits. “Normally you look for the most frequent letter and you replace it with E. In this case, there are four Xs, but when I change them to Es, it doesn’t help any.”

I think he’s wasting his time. If I’m right about Anya’s language barrier—and I’m pretty sure I am—then communicating in English would be enough of a challenge. She wouldn’t try writing in code. She’d want to make things easier for us, not harder. She’d try to make her message clearer.

“Give me another minute,” he says.

And then there’s a knock at the back door.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

It’s a man’s voice, unfamiliar.

Maybe one of Mitzi’s customers, visiting to have his energy read?

Adrian stuffs the sheet of notepaper into his pocket. And when we enter the kitchen, I see the man at the back door is wearing a police uniform.

“I’m gonna need you to step outside.”





23


The cop is young—he can’t be older than twenty-five—with a buzz cut, dark sunglasses, and enormous arms covered in tattoos. There’s not an inch of bare skin anywhere between his wrists and his shirtsleeves—it’s all Stars and Stripes, Bald Eagles, and passages from the Constitution.

“We were checking on Mitzi,” Adrian explains. “Her door was open but she’s not here.”

“So you what? You just walked inside? Thought you could take a look around?” He offers this theory like it’s preposterous, even though it’s exactly what happened. “I want you to open the door and slowly step outside, do you understand?”

I realize there are two more cops at the edge of the yard, stretching long ribbons of yellow tape from tree to tree. Farther out, deeper in the forest, I can see flashes of movement, jackets with reflective surfaces. I can hear men shouting discoveries to each other.

“What’s going on?” Adrian asks.

“Hands on the wall,” the cop says.

“Are you serious?”

Adrian is shocked—clearly, this is his first experience being frisked.

“Just do it,” I tell him.

“This is bullshit, Mallory. You’re wearing gym shorts! You’re not concealing a weapon.”

But just the mention of the word “weapon” seems to escalate the confrontation. Now the two cops with the yellow tape are walking toward us with concerned expressions. I just follow the instructions and do what I’m told. I press my palms against the brick wall; I lower my head and stare down at the grass while the cop pats my waist with his hands.

Adrian grudgingly stands beside me and plants his palms on the wall. “Absolute bullshit.”

“Shut up,” the cop tells him.