The Ghoul Next Door (13 page)

I sucked in a breath. “She was pregnant and stabbed
twelve
times?” I was repulsed by the idea.

“Yes. The coroner’s report with photos was released to the cops this morning. I obtained a copy through back channels.”

By back channels, Gilley meant he’d hacked into the PD’s computer network, but I wasn’t about to call him on it. Besides, I was way more concerned with the fact that Heath had apparently bumped into a completely different murdered woman on the same street. “So who did we make contact with?” I asked out loud.

“Got me,” Gil said.

Heath shifted in his seat, and I could see him mentally going over the information he’d gotten from Amy. I could tell he might be doubting himself, but I knew better. “That could explain the scent of blood,” I told him, trying to put the pieces together.

Heath nodded absently. “Two woman stabbed to death on the same street, though?”

“It’s Boston,” I told him. “Not the safest city in the world. Besides, there’s no telling how long poor Amy has been haunting that spot. Her ghost could be a hundred years old.”

Heath ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t get that feeling, though, Em. I mean, maybe her ghost could’ve been a few decades old, but you know how spooks from centuries past feel different?”

I did know. It’s tough to put into words, but a ghost from the eighteen hundreds feels very different from a ghost from the late nineteen hundreds. It’s sort of in the way they communicate. The older the ghosts, the more formal and reserved they tend to be.

“Are you sure you got the name right?” Gil asked. “Maybe it was Brook and you just missed the name and the age.” I knew he was trying to be helpful, but he came across as a little too doubtful for my taste.

“I know what she told me, Gil,” Heath said, his voice a bit hard.

“Sorry,” Gil said quickly.

Heath sighed. “It’s cool, dude. What can I say? I only tuned in to one dead girl today, and it wasn’t the murdered girl from last night.”

Gil began typing on his laptop as if he had a sudden thought. A moment later he said, “Whoa!”

I leaned forward. “What’s ‘whoa’?”

“I put a search into the
Boston Globe
, and guess what I pulled up.”

“Do we have to guess?” I asked wearily. “Or can you just tell us?”

Gil made a face and swiveled the laptop around so that we could see the screen. Heath and I both squinted at a headline that read,
MURDER ON COMM AVE
.
The tagline underneath read,
Young woman’s throat slit in brutal stabbing attack.

“When was that?” I asked. I couldn’t quite make out the date.

Gil swiveled the laptop back around. “April sixteenth, nineteen seventy-five.”

My brow shot up and Heath looked equally surprised. “I knew I wasn’t wrong,” he said.

“The victim’s name was Amy?” I asked Gil, who appeared to be skimming the article.

He nodded absently. “Amy Montgomery. She was eighteen. According to her roommate, she went out for a late-night walk because she couldn’t sleep. When she didn’t come home, the roommate went looking for her and found her body a few doors down.”

“Did they catch the killer?” Heath asked.

Gil typed something and skimmed more of the screen before he answered. “Yes. The brother of her best friend was charged six years later and convicted. He got life.”

I turned to Heath. “Think whoever tried to get into your head was Amy’s killer?”

Heath shrugged. “Don’t know. Could’ve been.”

“I’m lost,” Gil said.

Turning to him, I explained that a spook had tried to take Heath over while he was communicating with Amy. “If Amy’s killer is dead, then his ghost could’ve come back to the scene of the crime and tried to get inside Heath’s mind.”

Gil frowned and typed some more on his computer. “Couldn’t have been the same guy,” he said after a bit.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because Amy’s killer—Guy Walker—is still alive. At least he was alive as of six months ago. He gave an interview to the
Globe
last November and you’re not gonna believe what he says happened on the day he killed Amy.”

“Try us,” Heath said to hurry Gil along.

“He claims that a demon made him do it.”

I shuddered, but then I wondered how common that excuse was. Certainly that was a common theme with schizophrenic sociopaths. “Any hint in Walker’s record of schizophrenia?”

Gil scanned his computer screen. “None that I can find, but I think most people would read the article and think it a foregone conclusion.”

I lay back against the cushions, thinking about the creepy coincidence of Guy Walker murdering a woman on Comm Ave in exactly the same manner that Brook Astor had been murdered. And this whole “demon made me do it” excuse was a bit too close to home to ignore.

“Think Walker’s demon could be connected to Luke’s demon?” Heath asked me.

I nodded. “It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore. What do you think?”

Heath raised his arm toward me as if to show it to me, and when I looked, I saw that it was covered in goose bumps. “The goose bumps never lie,” he said. “There’s a link.”

I reached out and gripped his hand, rubbing away the goose bumps. “What do you want to do?” I said to him. I was ready to quit this gig. It felt creepy and dangerous on a level that we’d experienced too often before, and had been frustratingly helpless to quit. But this time was different. We could walk away without fear of getting sued into the ground by a network hungry for ratings. The worst that would happen to us if we walked this time was that we might be accused of being accomplices in a murder, but I had faith in Mack as my attorney, and also the solid alibi that the recordings gave us. I also considered that if we walked, we’d feel pretty guilty about it, but I was willing to shoulder that if Heath wanted out.

So it was with some surprise when he replied, “I think we need to stick with this case for now. This could be bigger than we originally thought. More lives could be at stake if we don’t keep digging.”

I nodded, knowing what I had to do next. “I have to go back to Comm Ave.”

Heath’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“One of us has to try and make contact with the girl who was murdered yesterday, sweetie. And after what happened to you today, I don’t think it’s safe for you. That leaves me to try.”

Heath gave me a look that clearly said he was not about to be left behind. “We’re going together,” he said firmly.

“Okay.” I relented. “But you’re wearing magnets. And I want you to wait on the other side of the street.”

“No.”

“Heath . . . ,” I said with a sigh.

“I’ll wear the vest, but I’m not going to be that far away from you, Em. If you get in trouble, it’ll come on fast and furious.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “Whatever this spook is, it apparently likes to haunt men, not women.”

Heath scowled. “Yeah, it doesn’t like to haunt women. It likes to kill them. I’m going with you. I’m wearing a vest. And I
will
be on the same side of the street.”

“Okay,” I said, giving in with another weary sigh. “How about we get some subs and map out a plan?”

Heath’s hard expression softened. “I could eat.”

“Me too!” Gil said enthusiastically. Of course, Gil could always eat.

I stood up, stretching. “I’ll go this time,” I told them. “It’s my turn anyway. Write down your orders, boys.”

Gil reached for his phone and tapped at the screen. A few seconds later I had an incoming text from him. “Turkey BLT on wheat,” I read.

Heath followed Gil’s order by texting it to me, and after kissing him on the lips, I grabbed the keys from the dish on the counter and headed out. As I got into the car, I smiled wickedly. That’d been a little too easy.

I drove straight to Comm Ave and had to circle the block twice before I found a parking spot. Getting out of the car, I turned my phone to silent and jogged down toward Courtney’s place. I slowed when I was in sight of the door. I then walked on the outside edge of the sidewalk, wary of the spot where Heath had encountered Amy. Hastening my pace, I continued down the sidewalk to the second door marked with the big yellow
X
. Once I was there, I paused to take a few deep breaths. The stairs leading up to the door were crisscrossed with more yellow tape, and the stains on the steps indicated why. There were rust-colored blotches that turned my stomach. Backing up slightly so that I stood on the very edge of the curb, I eyed the sidewalk up and down the block. A makeshift memorial had been set up at the base of the steps and two bouquets of wilting flowers leaned against the stone column to the side of the stairs. Briefly I wondered whom they might have been from, but I knew I couldn’t spend time speculating. I stood still and closed my eyes, reaching out with my sixth sense. A series of sensations assaulted me. I felt the dramatic violence of the area. I felt the fear and panic of the victim, and then I also felt her pain. Involuntarily, I put a hand over my chest. It wasn’t quite like I could feel the knife going into the poor woman, but it was close to that sensation. She’d felt many of those stab wounds before one had pierced her heart to end her life and I shuddered against the sensation of that coup de grâce, because it felt the most pronounced. I could also smell that familiar scent of blood wafting under my nose, and I had to fight hard against the ensuing nausea it caused. And through this sort of chaos of sensations I attempted to find and talk to the spirit of the murdered woman, but it was like flailing around in a smoke-filled room. She didn’t seem to be within easy reach of me.

So, I backed off trying to find her and concentrated on the imprint that her attack had left on the ether. There was a clue there. I could feel it in my gut. I sifted through the attack, going back over it a few times, using my intuition to pick it apart, and at last I had the clue I’d been looking for. It was a eureka moment for me and I opened my eyes only to come face-to-face with Detective Souter.

“Miss Holliday,” she said with a slight sneer.

“Detective!” I replied, shocked to be caught in front of the crime scene.

“Want to explain what you’re doing here?”

My palms started to sweat. Should I answer that? Would Mack want me to take the fifth and call him? Would getting caught here make me look even more suspicious?

I felt flustered but also a bit excited by what I’d discovered in the ether, and I decided to take a chance. “She was grabbed from behind,” I said.

Souter’s furrowed brow rose in surprise. “Excuse me?”

I moved closer toward the stairs. “She was coming down the street from this direction,” I explained, feeling the ether out as I went. “And someone came up behind her. They put her in a choke hold and twisted her slightly toward the stairs. . . .” My voice trailed off as I demonstrated, but the minute I lifted my right arm up high, as if I was about to wrap it around someone’s neck, I hesitated, then lowered my arm and reached up with my left arm instead. “He grabbed her with his left arm,” I continued, talking it out. “And he used his right hand to stab her.”

Souter came up next to me, her mouth slightly agape. “You saw this?” she asked me incredulously. “You’re telling me you witnessed the murder?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m telling you what happened. The attack left an imprint on the ether.”

She squinted at me. “Come again?”

But I was still working my way through it. “His first attempt was a little shaky,” I said. “The knife hit her dead center on the breastbone.” I shivered as that thought really sank home. “She screamed. He was really fast. He tried again and again. It took”—I closed my eyes, slowing down the event in my mind like slowing down the reel of a movie—“four, no, five stabs before the one that killed her. She died instantly from that blow, but I know he kept going.”

I moved back from the steps and caught Souter’s eye. She was staring at me, her expression hard and suspicious. Still, I decided to go ahead with the recounting because the tape of Heath and me at Courtney’s house during the time of the murder was a solid alibi and I was hoping to pull out clues for Souter to chase . . . ones that would lead her away from Heath and me and also maybe even away from Luke.

“Did Decker confess this to you?” Souter asked me.

I shook my head. “I told you in the interrogation, Luke didn’t say a thing to me when he came through the door, and I believe you also saw that for yourself on the tape that Gilley recorded of the events inside the house that night. Still, I know how it looks—Luke was covered in the victim’s blood, but don’t you see?
That
proves he couldn’t have done it, Detective.”

“What’re you even talking about?” she all but yelled.

I turned to face her and looked her squarely in the eye. “Luke didn’t murder anybody. The fact that he was covered in blood proves it.” I pulled out my phone, prepared to dial, when Souter’s hand landed on my arm.

“Color me curious, Holliday,” she said. “How does
that
prove he didn’t murder the vic?”

I pointed to the stairs. “See all that blood?” I asked. She nodded. “The murderer grabbed Brook Astor from behind. The blood splatter was away from her attacker. I doubt he got much on him at all. But Luke was covered in it. No, I have an alternative theory, Detective. I think Luke came by shortly after the attack and found the victim bleeding on the stairs. I think his immediate instinct was to try and help her. Hell, I bet he probably tried to revive her, but when he realized she was too far gone, and saw himself covered in her blood from his efforts to try and save her, he must’ve panicked and bolted down the street to his sister’s house, looking for anybody who could help.”

Souter let go of me and crossed her arms like she thought my theory was pretty far-fetched. “Or,” she said, “he could’ve been struggling with her while he was stabbing her, and she turned in his arms and he got the blood on him that way.”

I rolled my eyes and pointed down at our feet. “Then show me the evidence of that, Detective. The stairs are where she bled out. Not the sidewalk.”

“It’s still a pretty flimsy theory, Holliday.”

I shook my head and muttered, “It’s not flimsy, Detective. It’s actually a solid theory that I’m positive Luke’s lawyer will offer the jury, and I’ll bet it’ll be good enough to get at least a few jurors thinking reasonable doubt.” I then focused on my phone, and finding Heath’s name in the contacts list, I pressed the call button and put the phone to my ear. “There’s one other thing you’re forgetting,” I said as Heath’s phone began ringing.