Underneath her, out of her sight, two bedbugs wriggled out from under the toilet, where the bowl was bolted onto the floor. It had been sloppily sealed with silicone and the bugs oozed from a small gap. More bugs followed.

Brandi yawned. “You called me ’cause of that, are you kidding me?”

“Don’t you know anything? The rats, you know, the rat flu?”

Brandi grunted sleepily, said, “Yeah, that’s awful.”

A steady line of bugs emerged through the hole under the toilet. More crawled from the air vent in the ceiling.

Brandi yawned again.

“Oh, no. No. There’s no way you get to go to sleep. Don’t you hang up. I’ll keep calling. There’s nobody at work. So don’t think I won’t. I’ll call and call and call, and you’re gonna have to talk to me sooner or later so it might as well be now, bitch.”

Bugs burst from the gap between the toilet tank and the wall and marched steadily down the wall.

A fresh spasm jolted Janelle’s abdomen and she closed her eyes, riding the latest wave out. Brandi heard the sounds and wrinkled her nose, “Are you fucking kidding me? Please don’t, oh no. You’re in the bathroom right now, aren’t you? Oh. My. God. You are sooooo disgusting.”

“Bitch, please. Don’t. Just talk to me. I just wanna die.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay. That bathroom, what? It’s in the basement, you told me. So it’s probably just a rat that’s trying to get to shelter or something. It doesn’t care about you. It’s gonna be okay. Really.”

“But what about the disease?”

“It’s only if they bite you or something. So just chill, you’re okay, okay?”

The spasm passed, and Janelle wondered if she should dare to wipe herself and insert a new tampon. She had to get used to that thought for a while, and rested her head on her knees. Through half-closed eyes, she watched a little bug trundle confidently along between her shoes. She blinked, and watched the bug move with a purpose, straight to the used tampon.

The bloody cotton tube was crawling with insects.

She gasped and jerked her feet off the floor. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You won’t believe this. Oh my god.”

“What?”

“This, this is how my morning is going. I’m not even going to try to tell you.” Janelle gave an unhinged giggle. “You need to see this yourself so you can see. I’m going to send you a video.”

“Oh, come on, I—”

Janelle hung up. Clicked on CAMERA, then switched over to VIDEO. Bracing her feet on the walls, she got a shot of the tampon, with what looked like fat red ants clambering all over it. She zoomed in. The lighting was awful, and the zoom didn’t do much but blow up all the pixels, but it looked like the insects were relishing the fresh blood. She zoomed back out to give some perspective. Several lines of bugs marched on the used tampon, all from under her toilet.

She scratched absentmindedly at her waist with her left hand, still focused on the phone in her right. The sight of the bugs had not sickened her; they hadn’t added to her nausea. Instead, she found the movement and documentation of the bugs fascinating. The opportunity to prove to her roommate that this morning was by far the worst morning in the history of the world was enough to satisfy her and settle her gag reflex.

Even when she looked away from the phone’s display and saw that the bugs had moved up the toilet en masse and were now crawling across her thighs was not cause for immediate panic. She stood, forgetting the lines of bugs that crisscrossed the floor, and experimentally tried to brush the bugs off her torso. They weren’t much bigger than bell pepper seeds, and clung to her skin with the same stubborn tenacity as those same seeds, resisting being washed away by the kitchen sink faucet or even the vegetable knife.

She finally realized that the bugs were now surging up her high heels and up her legs, settling on her bare skin and latching on somehow. Before, when she had first seen the bugs, there had been dozens. Now, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, jockeying for position, fighting to find an empty patch of skin, so they could sink their strange, undulating teeth into her exposed flesh.

And only then did she start slapping at the bugs. She might have been slapping at the wind. The bugs continued to rise from the floor, unfolding up her legs like a horrible wave. She grabbed at her skirt and tried to pull it up in a vain attempt to stop the bugs from crawling into her pubic region.

The bugs though, smelled blood, and flowed up her legs and wriggled under her damp panties.

Janelle jerked the bolt open and stumbled out of the stall. The bugs had reached her armpits. Her heels slipped. The phone dropped from her hands as she reached out for support. Dizzy from the loss of blood, she fell into the wall, and sank to the floor. There was time for a final exhale, and the bugs swarmed over her skull, crawling into her open mouth. Her nose. Her eyes.

CHAPTER 51

8:47 AM

August 14

They spent the night at the bar until the bartender kicked them out at four. Ed, Qween, and Dr. Menard crashed at Sam’s apartment, while Sam sat in the kitchen, chewing nicotine gum and drinking ice water. When the sun filled the kitchen, he woke everyone up and they wordlessly piled back into the car.

Ed decided to go out for breakfast at The Golden Waffle. They filed inside, exhausted. The place was empty except for one cab driver who didn’t want to go home to his wife. A sleepy waitress gestured at the empty dining room and told them to sit anywhere they felt like. The cook eyeballed them from inside the kitchen as if they’d interrupted something important.

The meal was a quiet affair. When they were finished, Sam took the check and told the waitress, “More coffee.”

They sipped their coffee in silence. Qween finished her mug and snapped her fingers to get the waitress’s attention. She pointed at the empty cup and waddled off to the bathroom.

When she was out of earshot, Sam spread his hands, palms out, and looked Dr. Menard in the eye. “Sorry about the tap on the head there. I jumped to conclusions. I ah . . . sorry.”

Dr. Menard touched the raw spot on his forehead and winced. He shrugged. “I’ll live. Could have been worse, I guess.”

“Things can always be worse,” Ed said. “You’ll have to accept our unofficial apologies for the time being. You want to file a complaint or anything like that, I suppose somebody might get back to you in a couple of months. Or years. There’s not much rush to investigate things when cops overstep their bounds here, you understand.”

Dr. Menard shook his head. “Understood.”

The waitress refilled their mugs. More customers trickled inside. The place grew louder.

“So what now?” Dr. Menard asked.

“We find ourselves a bar, baby,” Qween said, settling back into the booth.

“Damned if I’ve got a better idea,” Sam said.

“I could go to the media,” Dr. Menard said. “Let people know what’s really going on down here. Get the public’s attention. You guys know somebody at the newspapers or one of the TV stations, right?”

Sam snorted and shook his head. As a general rule, detectives did not hang out with anybody associated with the media.

“Maybe,” Ed said. “I got maybe someone that would listen.”

Sam was curious. “Who the hell do you talk to?”

Ed said, “None of your damn business.”

Sam grinned. “Oh, now I know. It’s that short one, that poor girl they send out to car crashes and bad weather.”

“Yeah. So what.” A pause. “Don’t you dare tell Carolina.”

“Never.”

Ed wandered away to make the call. They heard him say, “Is this the famous hotshot girl reporter, Cecilia Palmers?” and laugh.

Qween said, “I already tried this, and nobody listened.”