Paranoia bloomed.
I locked the bathroom door and wrapped a plastic bag I had taken from the kitchen over my hand and stepped into the shower. I set the water as hot as I could stand it, and let it pound me until my headache began to fade. I tried to think my way through this discovery and everything it implied.
No one had been in the room with me. I had felt Aaron’s presence, but now I wondered if I had let the footlocker containing the evidence of Ghost’s fame and infamy go to my head. I might have experienced some kind of panic attack and cut myself by squeezing the edge of the CD’s jewel case. Those things weren’t sharp enough to kill yourself with - barring an episode of total mania - but sharp enough to cut the thin skin at the wrist? Possibly. So, okay, it was a factory defect, and I had been squeezing the edge too hard while I imagined Aaron creeping up behind me.
Ghost killer.
But had I really written that word in my own blood? Was someone accusing me of murder? Of killing Ghost? Accusing Ghost of being a killer, more likely. Trying to send me a message. Aaron - had it come from him or was it about him? The album was full of media innuendo blaming Ghost for random crimes. Did someone in the Copeland family blame Ghost for Aaron’s death?
Make yourself at home, Ghost.
Rick kept calling me Ghost. At first I thought it was a nickname, that he’d just been teasing me. He didn’t believe me when I explained it to him, and then there was the matter of my hair changing color. I had to face this much - Rick Butterfield believed I was Ghost. And who is Rick Butterfield friends with? Where would he get such a silly notion?
Annette. Annette thinks I’m Ghost.
Oh, shit.
That could not be right. She knew me. She had been to the house. She knew about Stacey. She had talked with the police. Detective Bergen had been involved, he would have let her know I was me, James Hastings, body double and poseur. Not Ghost, millionaire rap artist and scourge. I hadn’t played Ghost for over a year. After Stacey died—
Wait. Why hadn’t Bergen mentioned Aaron? He must not have known. He might have missed it. Annette might have covered it up. Why would she?
Had Annette mistaken me for Ghost? Had she targeted me? Chosen to get close to me because of my connection to him?
I’m worried about you
, Stacey had said in Laurel Canyon that day, begging me to quit my job.
What if you get hurt?
I didn’t get hurt. Stacey did. What if it had not been an accident at all, but revenge? What if Stacey was a casualty, like the news headlines in the scrapbook, that went unnoticed? Arthur striking back at me by killing Stacey . . . because he thought I was Ghost and that she was Ghost’s girl. Was that possible? I had been ensnared in some form of conspiracy? But why now, a year later? Annette knew I wasn’t Ghost. It didn’t make sense.
I turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. I went back to the bedroom to throw on some clean clothes. The bedroom door was open but Annette was not in the bed. The bedding had been kicked aside.
‘Annette?’ I called out, walking to the top of the stairs. ‘Annette? Are you down there?’
She didn’t answer.
I dressed quickly and searched the rest of the house. I went out back and checked the courtyard and pool area. The garage.
The Mustang was gone. Annette was gone.
If she wanted to get back at me, why had she fled? What the hell was going on here?
‘She doesn’t know who she is,’ I said to the empty garage. ‘Who is she, Arthur? Who is she now?’
Her head injury. Do you really think it’s a coincidence she slipped and fell in our bathtub? That could have been staged, easily. Do you really believe she dyed her hair white, took up OCD gardening, and learned how to make love to you just like Stacey, all in a matter of a couple weeks? She’s playing games with you. This is all part of her plan.
Except that there were too many unexplained phenomena. This was not a skit. This could not have been choreographed. Annette knew things and said things only Stacey knew. Annette was changing, that was certain . . . but into Stacey? Really? Why would she be worse now? Here, in Sheltering Palms?
Once we got here, way out in the boonies, the - call it the Stacey effect - got scrambled, or had been exacerbated. Annette was a wreck now. The effects of revisiting the scene of her family trauma.
Or.
Stacey knocked Annette down. She used the rabbit paintings to get into Annette’s head long enough to cause her fall. She took Annette so she could be with me. She’s not ready to let go. And maybe I wasn’t ready to let go of Stacey. Maybe Stacey was protecting me, trying to stop Annette from doing whatever the hell she was doing to me. Maybe Stacey was fighting inside of Annette, surfacing, trying to warn me, keep the evil at bay. Difficult to accept.
Yes, but what did I believe? What did I feel when I looked into Annette’s eyes? When we had sex? When Blaine screamed at the sight of her? It wasn’t just her hair and the clothes or a few catchphrases. It was something inside her. A palpable thing, a wrongness others can sense.
Stacey. Stacey was trying to reach me.
But what did it all have to do with Ghost? Aaron? The footlocker?
I would never be at peace until I got to the bottom of what happened to Aaron - and how it was connected to Stacey. I needed to know what happened to this family before Stacey was killed. I needed to find out if Annette was running a game on me, trying to make me pay for what she perceived as Ghost’s sins, or if she was for the love of God harboring the soul of my dead wife. And what I needed most of all was a good night’s sleep. My mind was coming apart, and yet I was thinking clearly enough to understand this could all be a case of one severely deranged or damaged man, a grieving husband looking for an excuse to keep his wife alive. Only one other person knew Annette better than I knew her. One other place she might have run to.
I went back to Rick Butterfield’s house.
33
The SP’s ramrod answered the door in his grippies, one hand rubbing the shaving rash of his slab chest. His belly bulged obscenely above a purple marble pouch from which orange tarantulas of fur descended his thighs and blotted out his knees. His hair was flat, his eyes sagging, making him look even more
North Dallas Forty
than usual. His left big toe nail was yellow and standing upright like a matchbook cover, and he stank of cigarettes.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You brought back my gun.’
Shit. I had left the gun at the house. Probably not smart. ‘Annette’s missing,’ I said. ‘Is she here?’
He noticed but did not comment on the bandage on my wrist. ‘What do you mean, “missing”?’
I explained that she had been disoriented when I came home, but had disappeared while I was getting dressed. I told him her car was gone.
Rick shook his head in disappointment.
‘But I’m not really here about Annette,’ I said. ‘I’m here about Aaron.’
‘Okay. And who’s Aaron?’ Rick was not a good poker player.
‘I know you know,’ I said. ‘It’s over. Whatever it is, it’s over.’
Rick sighed. ‘She’s probably crying on Debbie Duncan’s shoulder again, or down at the Rat Tail flirting with Luke. You want to come in for a drink? Wait it out in the Rick Room?’
‘I didn’t stick around to find out what kind of bullshit you pulled last night, but I have a pretty good idea. You think you are the sheriff in this little hamlet? Unless you tell me what the fuck is going on with Annette, Aaron and Arthur, right now, you’ll find out who the real sheriff is. The LAPD will bring the hammer down on you so fast, by the end of the week you’ll be back in Chuckwalla getting your salad tossed by the same cons you used to tickle with your nightstick.’
Rick remained unimpressed.
‘Why does she think I’m Ghost? Are you both that stupid?’
‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘You’re in retirement now, like Jay-Z.’
‘No, Rick. Not like Jay-Z. You want my bank records? You want to see my contract for employment? For fuck’s sake, grow up. I found the Ghost collection, all right? The footlocker in Aaron’s room, the news clippings. It’s a shrine. The only thing missing is the sacrificial chicken and voodoo doll. She blames Ghost for his death, Arthur’s death, or both. And I guess since I was the one who played Ghost for three years, and since I’m the one standing here, that means Annette blames me.’
Rick leaned to the side and removed a Winston from a table near the door. He lit it and exhaled smoke at my head. ‘What makes you think he’s dead?’
‘I saw him two nights ago, in one of the empty houses,’ I said. ‘And last night, on the street. He followed me. He’s here.’ I waved my bandaged wrist. ‘The little fucker cut me, but every time I turn around he winks out of existence.’
‘Interesting.’ Rick’s façade was crumbling. ‘What did he look like, this boy that supposedly cut you?’
I described Aaron, noting the black sweatshirt, his pale face. ‘And his feet,’ I said. ‘His feet were bare. Bare and white as snow.’
‘Are you queer? Can I go back to bed now?”
‘Rick, listen. I haven’t worked for Ghost in a year. Whatever happened, I am very sorry, but I haven’t done anything. If there was a misunderstanding, I am a victim, too. I am trying to help Annette. We’ve been to the hospital together. We’ve spoken to the police. They know who I am. Do you understand? My wife is dead.’ My voice cracked. ‘Stacey’s dead. I want to know what happened. I need to know, and I will not stop until I know the truth. I don’t have a god damn thing left to live for, so let’s get it over with, whatever it is, or else my next call is the LAPD.’
Rick was staring at me with a mixture of fear and sadness I would not have thought possible from him.
‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘You’re not him. You’re really not him.’
I sighed with relief.
‘Oh, Christ.’ He threw his cigarette onto his dead lawn. ‘This is bad. This is . . . she told me . . . oh, man, look, I was only supposed to keep you entertained for a day or two.She won’t return my calls. I haven’t talked to her in weeks. She said she would let me know what to do once she was sure you - shit, hold on a minute.’ Rick turned and opened his front door. ‘I got to get my clothes. My car keys. Stay put.’
He left the door open. He leaned to the right, reached for something, then stepped out of view.
‘When did this start?’ I said. ‘When did she first tell you about me?’
I heard vague fumbling sounds, a drawer opening and slamming. A zipper opening.
‘Rick?’
‘Sorry, can’t find my keys.’ He reappeared, still in his purple underwear. He was holding a syringe, flicking the base and then squirting a fine thread of clear fluid onto the sidewalk.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I said.
Rick glanced up and down the street again. ‘She might need to be subdued.’
I took two steps back. ‘Hey.’
Rick kept rolling it between his thumb and forefinger like a cigarette. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her. We’ll get through this together. Hate to do this to my own sister, but she’s been through so much.’
He stepped down the porch, onto the sidewalk. He smiled at me.
His sister?
Before she changed. The red hair.
‘How much you wanna bet,’ he said. ‘I can catch me a real live Ghost?’
I turned and ran. In three strides I was over his lawn, flying over the sidewalk. I was wearing sneakers. Rick was in his bare feet, carrying an extra seventy pounds of meat. There was no way he was going to catch me.
Yes, but the way he went after those crawlers last night. That buffalo can move.
But only for short distances. If he doesn’t catch me in the first hundred feet, I will leave him in the dust.