Ghost Town (30 page)

But instead, she took one hand off the steering wheel, reached across the seat, took Sarah's hand, and squeezed it hard. “I love you.”

Sarah opened her mouth, and for a second, Pattie thought she would continue the argument. But she smiled and said, “I love you, too.”

“Good,” Pattie said, smiling. “Now that we've got that settled, let's—”

She broke off. Standing on the road in front of them was an
ivory-fleshed woman with long raven hair. They were going too fast to stop, and out of reflex, Pattie yanked the steering wheel hard to the right—at eighty-five miles per hour.

The laws of physics can be a real bitch sometimes, and when what was left of the Citation finally rolled to a stop, Pattie and Sarah no longer had to worry about getting to a hospital, for no doctor in the world could help them anymore.

Peter Hoffman was
an Exeter native. Growing up in the “Most Haunted Town in America” had been fun when he was a kid, especially when the Dead Days festival came around. But by the time he was in high school, he had grown tired of living in a perpetual spook show, as so many Exeter teens did, and more than a little embarrassed by it. So after graduation, he took classes at Tri-County Community College for a year before moving to Indianapolis to enroll in the police academy. It wasn't so much that he wanted to be a big-city cop as that he just wanted to get the hell out of Exeter and never return. He was the youngest of four children, all of whom had moved out of town as soon as they could. His mom died of breast cancer when he was in junior high, and his dad remarried during Peter's first year of college and moved with his new wife to Florida. So it wasn't as if he had anything or anyone to tie him to Exeter.

And then he met Beth.

She had been working at a Steak and Shake in downtown Indy back then, and Peter ate there often, partly because it was the best he could afford but mostly so he could see her. She was a petite brunette with jet-black hair, full lips, bright blue eyes, and the most joyful smile he had ever seen. It took him two months to work up the courage to say hi to her, and when he did, she gave him that wonderful smile and said, “What took you so long?”

Six months later, they were married. Everything was great between them, except for one thing: Beth was fascinated by his
hometown. She loved anything to do with the paranormal or the occult, and when she found out that he was from Exeter, she peppered him with questions about what it had been like to grow up there. “Was your house haunted? Did you ever see a real ghost? Do you know anyone who did? Is it really the most haunted town in the country? How do they know? I mean, it's not like they can take a ghost census or anything.”

Her fascination with Exeter had almost driven him away, especially when he began to get the feeling that she was primarily interested in him because of his hometown. But he stuck it out, and eventually, Beth's interest in Exeter waned—that, or she figured out that it was bugging him—and her questions stopped. But when Halloween rolled around, she asked him to take her to Dead Days, and while he had been reluctant at first, he gave in and was surprised to find himself enjoying the festivities, truly enjoying them, for the first time since he was a kid. Dead Days was all new to Beth; she loved every second of it, and her enthusiasm was contagious. They returned to Dead Days the next year, and when Peter graduated from the academy and learned that a job had opened up in the Exeter police department, he made the mistake of mentioning it to Beth.

She urged him to apply, which he did, mostly to humor her. He got an interview, and before he knew it, he was offered a position. He didn't want to take it. But Beth had said, “Imagine how much fun our kids will have growing up there!” It was the “our kids” that did it. He took the job and moved back to the town he'd once wanted so desperately to escape. He told himself that whatever he did, he would never apply to be chief, but when the old chief retired, there really hadn't been anyone else who wanted the job—or could do it as well as him, for that matter—and so he had taken it. And he had been chief ever since.

It had been hard going the last few years since Beth had died from uterine cancer, but all told, it hadn't been a bad life. He
still found Exeter irritating, but over the years, he had developed a grudging fondness for the town, and he even looked forward to Dead Days—not that he would ever admit it to anyone. But this year . . . Jesus Christ, what a mess! Seven people dead, and who knew how many more if he couldn't persuade Mayor Shinn to cancel the parade. When he had called her from the college library to talk to her about it, she had accused him of being drunk on the job and threatened to fire him. He couldn't blame her. If one of his people called him with a wild story about killer ghosts that swam through the air, he would have thought the same thing. He had persisted, though, stressing the number of people who had died so far. “Whatever the cause of their deaths,” he had said, “it's clear something bad is going on here. Do you really want to fill the streets with hundreds of more potential victims tonight?”

That had given her pause but not for long. “Can you imagine the kind of shitstorm the media will stir up when they find out the Most Haunted Town in America canceled its annual Halloween parade because they were afraid they had a murderous ghost on the loose? Exeter will be the laughingstock of the country!”

He had continued trying, but the mayor's mind was made up. She disconnected, but not before telling him that if he wanted to keep his job, he wouldn't say another word about ghosts until Dead Days was over.

He turned his attention to getting the crime scene at the library squared away, and once he was satisfied that his people could handle things without him, he had gotten into his cruiser and headed off in search of the mayor. She was stubborn, and once she made up her mind, she didn't change it easily, but he hoped that if he spoke with her face-to-face, he could make her see how serious the situation was.

She wouldn't be in her office. Normally, she wouldn't be in on a Saturday anyway, but this was Dead Days. Throughout the week, she appeared at one event after another, sometimes giving speeches,
sometimes introducing speakers or performers, sometimes participating in apple-bobbing, face painting, or storytelling. No event was too small, no activity too juvenile. She was indefatigable when it came to hobnobbing with her constituents, especially during this time of year, and she had told him on more than one occasion that being highly visible during Dead Days was how she kept winning elections. He had tried calling her several times to find out where she was, but she hadn't picked up. Either she was too busy, or she was ignoring his calls. He suspected the latter. If this had been a weekday, he could have called her assistant and gotten her itinerary, but no one was in the office on weekends, especially not this weekend. So that meant he had to track her down.

Exeter wasn't big enough or dangerous enough for the mayor to feel she needed a police escort when in public—and in general, he agreed with her—so he couldn't just call his people and get her location. He had called the department dispatcher and asked her to tell the officers on patrol to call in if they spotted the mayor, but he didn't expect to hear anything. He'd had to pull about half his people off patrol to help out at the library, and while the town hired extra security for Dead Days, they were locals who were paid minimum wage and generally not the sharpest knives in the drawer. His plan was to head downtown, drive around, and see if he could spot her. If that didn't work, he would head over to her house, park outside, and wait. She would return home to change into her costume before the parade. She always rode on one of the floats, and every year, she chose a different, more elaborate costume. The townspeople always looked forward to seeing their mayor reveal her latest Halloween finery, and she kept her outfit a closely guarded secret. Whatever it was, it would take her at least a couple of hours to get ready, and he hoped he would be able to persuade her to cancel the parade before she applied her first line of makeup. But that was a last resort. The sooner he found her, the better.

He decided to start at Oakgrove Park. Every year, the town held
a scarecrow-making contest there on the Saturday of Dead Days, and while the mayor wasn't one of the judges as far as he knew, she usually made an appearance at the event. He figured it would be a good first stop. Who knew? Maybe he would get lucky.

Oakgrove was in the midst of an upper-class suburban neighborhood, and as he approached the park entrance, he saw a man standing on the sidewalk. Peter had never seen the man before, he was sure of that, and yet there was a nagging familiarity about him, as if he should recognize him. The man was facing the street, and as Peter drove by, slowing to take a better look, he grinned and waved.

And that's when Peter remembered: he
had
seen the sonofabitch before, at least a picture of him. It was Mitch Sagers, the bastard who was stalking Ms. Lozier, the one she suspected might have committed one of the murders at the museum. After she had told Peter about Mitch, he had contacted the Ohio BMV and requested that a copy of Sagers's driver's license be sent to him. It arrived via e-mail shortly thereafter, and he'd had the photo copied, downloaded to his officers' phones, and printed out in hard copy as well. He had ordered his people, along with the temp security, to keep watch for Sagers, but after what had happened at the library, Peter had forgotten about the man. But there he was, standing on the sidewalk, taunting the chief of police as he drove by.

Cocky motherfucker,
Peter thought. That, or he was batshit crazy. Probably a little of both.

He whipped his steering wheel to the right, parked his cruiser with the front passenger-side wheel up on the curb, and exited the vehicle without pausing to turn off the engine. He had his gun drawn before he spoke his first syllable.

“Mitch Sagers!”

The man didn't react, just stood there grinning like an idiot. He didn't seem concerned that a police officer was pointing a gun at him. More as if he thought it was amusing, as if Peter were
nothing more than a child trying to act tough while holding a squirt gun.

“Put your hands on your head!” Peter ordered.

Sagers still didn't respond, but there was something about the way the man was standing, head slightly cocked to the left, a small furrow in his brow, that gave Peter the impression that he was listening to something only he could hear.

Peter started walking slowly toward him. “I told you to put your hands on your head!”

Sagers's gaze was fixed on him as he approached, but he remained relaxed and continued grinning. Peter had never seen anyone stay so cool when they had a gun trained on them, and he found it more than a little spooky. For an instant, Peter was tempted to forgo his training and put a bullet in Sagers, maybe one in the leg or the shoulder. Not enough to kill him but enough to take the starch out of him. Something told him that Sagers was that dangerous, although the man had done nothing to indicate that he was any sort of threat. Aside from allegedly strangling someone, that is. Peter stuck to his training and didn't fire, although his finger did tighten on the trigger.

He was about to order Sagers to lie facedown on the ground, but then the air to the man's left rippled, almost like waves of heat distortion rising off summer asphalt, and for an instant, Peter thought he saw a woman standing next to Sagers. Bone-white skin, raven-black hair, a dress as dark as night, eyes as empty and cold as the depths of space. But then the air rippled again, and she was gone—if she had ever been there in the first place.

Sagers turned and ran toward the park entrance. Peter almost squeezed off a shot, but he restrained himself. The scarecrow contest. Families, kids. He didn't want to start a panic or, God forbid, hit anyone with a stray bullet.

He should have run back to his car, got on the radio, and called for backup. But Sagers was already inside the park, with all of those
innocent people, and Peter didn't want to give the sonofabitch the chance to hurt anyone else. Still holding on to his weapon, he ran into the park in pursuit.

The scarecrows were being constructed on one of the soccer fields. There were more people watching than building, most of them snacking on food they had bought at the concession stand—apple cider, hot chocolate, pumpkin muffins, skull-shaped candy, and caramel popcorn balls. Peter remembered how much Beth had loved the popcorn balls, always eating too many and complaining about how her stomach hurt afterward. Funny the things you missed when someone you loved died, and funny how you remembered them at the strangest times.

Luckily, Sagers wasn't running toward the soccer field. He was headed deeper into the park, and Peter followed. Past the playground and tennis courts, past the fenced-in field where folks could let their dogs loose to play. Peter wasn't like some cops, who let themselves go once they hit middle age. He tried to eat right and exercise, even if he didn't always manage to do so as regularly as he would have liked. In the academy, they taught you that your mind and body were two of your most important tools as a law-enforcement professional, and it was important to keep both of them fit. But even with his adrenaline pumping, Peter found himself becoming winded and slowing down.

Getting old,
he told himself. Time was when he could have run down a suspect with no problem. Now, if he didn't pour on the gas, Sagers would get away.

Maybe I should've put a bullet in him after all,
he thought.

There were woods at the back of the park, with a few hiking trails and a small stream where elementary-school science teachers would bring their students to gather water samples and collect tadpoles. Sagers plunged into the woods without stopping, and by the time Peter got there, he was sucking wind and trying to ignore the painful stitch in his side.