Chapter 13

Bright, pink, neon lights. Steady shouting and hollering. The steady beat of club music.

Strippers. Women in skimpy lingerie. Men throwing money around like nothing at all.

I am standing in front of the stage. I feel out of place, like I don't belong. There is no one around me. They all stand far away and stare at me as I stand there doing nothing. But I don't know what to do! I'm lost, there must be some way for me to get out of this club thing. I see an exit sign and run to it, but there is no door to run out of. There is just a wall. I turn back to the crowd around me, the crowd staring at me. I see Ryan and George Whitney among them. Colin Jackson stands in a corner. Suddenly, there is a noise.

A scream.

It is a man. He is onstage with a familiar figure. The figure is holding something, something sharp that looks vaguely familiar as well. I have to save the man! I scream out for him to move, but he does nothing. The figure turns toward me with the sharp object and leaves the man behind. She is coming after me! I scream and look to Ryan. He looks frantic.

“Katie!” Ryan screams. I can't move! I can't do anything. He screams again.

“Katelyn!”

~**~

“Katelyn!” Ryan's voice sounded far off, distant, and frantic, “Katie, wake up!”

I did just that. At first, I was lost as to where I was or why it was so dark. Then I looked up into Ryan's concerned eyes.

“Katie?”

I sat there in silence before I felt the salty tears roll from my eyes. Ryan tilted my chin up and wiped tears away with his thumbs.

“Katie, talk to me. Did you have a nightmare?”

Not able to speak, I nodded. “Yeah...” Hoarse whisper.

Without warning, Ryan pulled me tightly against his chest and let me cry for a minute. I mentally punched myself for being so weak. I was really showing my strength, wasn't I?

“You're okay, it's okay. Everything is okay, baby.” I felt lips against my hair.

Then it hit me. The steady tugging at the back of my mind came into clear view. The nightmare that I had had only a few minutes before had brought the idea that had been forming for the past few days to the front of my mind.

“Ryan,” I said, pulling out of his embrace, “Ryan, I need to get to the lab.”

“Why?”

“I remembered something.” I said, jumping out of bed. I frantically moved around my dark room, looking for clothes. I watched as Ryan shut his eyes while I threw on a new shirt and jeans. He opened them again and looked at me.

“It's eleven at night, Katelyn. Can't this wait?”

I shook my head. “I think I can prove Olivia did it.”

That certainly got his attention. Ryan jumped from the bed, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me out of the apartment and into the garage. We hopped into the Sequoia, and Ryan drove as fast as he possibly could out of the parking garage and into the street.

Thank God I have my crazy revelations in the middle of the night.

When we pulled onto Main St., it was deserted. For the so-called heavily populated area I lived in, it was pretty quiet at night. The only vehicles on the street were a bus and a taxi. Ryan drove past them, earning himself several honks. I glanced over at the speedometer. 109 km/h.

“Ah, what the hell?” Ryan said with a laugh. I watched him flick the mini sirens in the car. Blue and red lights flashed in my eyes while an earsplitting siren rang out. The few cars on the street pulled to the side to let us by.

At the rate Ryan was driving, we arrived at the Geffersonian in minutes. I jumped out of the car and slammed the door, running up the pavement to the entrance. I pulled on the glass doors. Locked. Shakily, I reached into my pocket, hoping my key was there. My hand struck metal. Fumbling, I shoved the key in the lock, twisted it, and pushed the door open.

“Come on!” I shouted to Ryan. We both sprinted down the pristine halls of the Geffersonian. As we reached the Anthropology lab, I saw a light on in the examination room. Someone had to be there. Perfect.

We ran into the lab. Standing at one of the x-ray machines examining some x-rays was another one of my many grad students. He turned quickly, almost dropping the x-ray.

“Oh, Dr. Amos. Hey!” He said, brushing black hair from his eyes. I did a quick introduction.

“Ryan, Justice. Justice, Ryan.”

Ryan nodded to Justice. Justice looked to me.

“Is there anything I can help you with?”

I nodded. “I need the Hadley and the Nichlson bones.”

Justice nodded, and entered a room in the corner called bone storage. Minutes later, he carried out two boxes. One was marked Hadley, the other, Nichlson. I took the boxes from Justice and set them on the examination table. I picked out the ribs from each box and placed them on the table in separate sets.

The idea that had sprung in my mind had something to do with the stab marks on both victim's ribs. I picked up the third and fifth ribs from each set, the ones that had the most prominent stab wounds, and grabbed the medio-cam, dragging it over them. The stab wounds were instantly magnified for me, and I picked up each rib in turn, rotating and examining it under the medio-cam.

Something about the stab wounds told me they weren't from an actual knife. The weapon had been something much less wide, and more narrow and pointed. The same weapon the figure had used in my dream.

“Stay here.” I said to Ryan. He nodded. I ran from the Anthropology lab, down to the corridor where the Geffersonian meets the FBI. I entered the FBI and flew down a hallway that led to the temporary custody cells. The night guard was standing by the metal bars that blocked the cells from the hall.

“Hi, I work for the Geffersonian as an anthropologist, and I need the suspect Olivia Rose's shoes from when they brought her in for questioning.”

The night guard looked me over, and decided I was acceptable. He disappeared behind a counter and cam back out, holding a large plastic bag with stilettos encased inside. The heels looked around nine inches tall, and made of metal. Perfect.

I made my way back quickly to the examination room. Ryan stared at me as I flew into the room with the shoes.

“What are they for?” He asked. I held up a hand to silence him as I tore the shoes from their casing. I tested the tip with one finger. Pretty sharp. Hands shaking, I lined the heel of one shoe up with the stab marks in the rib.

“Ryan,” I whispered, “Hadley and Nichlson weren't stabbed to death with a knife. They were stabbed to death with a shoe.”