The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (2 page)

“Two weeks before he left,” I said.

Dr. Gladman did some mental math. “Okay. So let’s say July.”

He typed something into his computer and I looked around his office. I saw the latest DSM-IV manual on a shelf next to a bunch of other psych texts.

Gladman pointed at his monitor. “He had three visitors in July.”

“Three?”

“Sally Pastrana came twice a week, his attorney on two separate occasions, and an undergrad psych major doing research for her thesis.”

I knew the attorney well, going all the way back to Eamon’s criminal trial. His name was Gordon Bell and he’d done his best to make me look like a fool when I testified.

“Who was the undergrad?”

“Name is Janine Poss. She’s a student at Bryn Mawr.”

“You met her?”

Gladman nodded. “I always interview Eamon’s visitors before they see him. Especially if it’s their first visit.”

Janine was the only wild card here. “You confirmed she was who she was?”

“Didn’t have to. I know the head of the psych department at Bryn Mawr. He referred Janine to me. He knew what she was working on.”

Another dead end. I’d been at this sporadically since my best friend, Stan, had called with the news of Eamon’s departure. I was being careful. I didn’t want the pursuit of Eamon Moriarty consuming my life. I could see that happening easily. I have an addictive personality.

I let out a big sigh. “So, doc, which side of the dissociative identity disorder debate are you on? Do you think it’s real or are multiple personalities patient-driven bullshit?”

He didn’t answer. Shrinks avoid questions better than politicians. “Eddie, I wish I knew what was going on as much as you do.”

“Two men show up, the middle of the night, flash some federal badges, produce a redacted Court order, and spirit Eamon away. I wonder what Gordon Bell would have to say about that.”

“Gordon Bell.” Dr. Gladman had had his share of run-ins with Gordon over the years, as the lawyer had continued to represent Eamon throughout the lengthy appeals process. “I’m glad to say I haven’t seen him in almost two years.”

“You stopped interviewing him when he came in to see Eamon?”

Gladman’s jowls shifted into frown position. “No.”

“But you just said he was here in July.”             

Gladman shook his head. “I said Eamon’s
attorney
was here.”

Now I was confused. “Bell is Eamon’s attorney.”

“Was.”

“What?”

“I sent you an email in…” Gladman consulted his monitor again. Clicked his mouse a few times. “…June. He got a new attorney.”

“The one who came to see him in July?”

“Yes. Sheldon Weaver. He visited in June twice and then three times in July.”

“Do you have his information?”

Gladman rifled his Rolodex. Pulled out a card. “Sheldon Weaver, of the law firm Krone Johnson Weaver.”

I took the card. “A named partner.” I checked the address on the business card. “And you didn’t happen to videotape any of the lawyer-client conferences they had, did you?”

“Now, now, Eddie. You know I can’t. Attorney-client privilege.”

“Just thought I’d ask.” I held the card up. “Mind if I borrow this?”

***

I drove till I found an unsecured wi-fi connection. Still sitting in the driver’s seat, I googled the information I had on Sheldon Weaver and his law firm. I got exactly zero hits.

That was impossible.

I believed in the omnipotence, not necessarily the benevolence, of the almighty Google. If something existed, Google found it.

Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence, but all the same the search engine hadn’t found anything. I didn’t know how to take that. All law firms maintained a web presence of some kind. Even if the internet generated zero business for them, they had a professional-looking page so they appeared respectable.

I called Stan.

“Jesus, Eddie, I’m just putting the kid down,” Stan whispered.

“Sorry. My psychic abilities aren’t working today.”

In the background, I heard the unmistakable cry of an infant. Followed by Stan cursing. Followed by Stan cursing me.

“Thanks a lot, Eddie.” Stan killed the call, and I waited. He always called back in a few minutes. I found a good jam on the radio. The phone rang before it was over.

“That was a close one,” Stan said.

“Almost a case of somnus interruptus.”

“Funny. What’s up?”

“A lawyer came to visit Eamon in June and July. His name is Sheldon Weaver. I can’t find him online.”

“That’s solid work there. The Staties should offer you a job.”

“Can you do a little digging?”

“In all my spare time.”

“You and I both know you live for the weird shit I ask you to do.”

“I’ll need a few hours.”

“Why? You just put the kid down.”

Stan laughed. “Okay, Eddie. You really have no idea how married, home-owning, parents fill up their time.”

It was meant in good humor but the jab stung me. The last serious relationship I’d had was with a TV show. Of course the network had prematurely cancelled it.

“I’m just funning you. Give me a call if you find anything.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I found the nearest mall and got lunch there and putzed around. My cell rang once. It was a number I didn’t recognize, which usually meant a prospective client trying to reach me. I was too wrapped up in the search for Eamon Moriarty so I let it to go voicemail.

I got back in my car and drove the hour and a half back to my apartment in Philly. I found a ballgame and decided to use all this pent-up energy in a productive way. I did a quick workout, mimicking the training I’d seen on the special features for the Spartacus series. When I was done, Stan still hadn’t called back.

I tried reading an old Robert B. Parker novel. I loved Spenser, but his adventures didn’t distract me from thinking about Eamon and the mysterious lawyer and law firm with no web presence.

The sun went west and the day petered out. The local sports station was playing a vintage Sixers game. I watched that for a little bit, went back to Spenser, then looked for a movie.

The number I didn’t recognize called my cell again. It reminded me I hadn’t listened to my voicemail earlier. The caller left me a second message. Persistent. I didn’t like persistent callers. They usually worked for the government and they usually had bad news for you.

I couldn’t settle on a movie. I turned the old Sixers game back on and watched Dr. J light up some lanky white dude with a thunderous dunk.

Finally Stan called.

I said, “I’m sitting in my apartment and starting to find meaning when I paste together random passages from the newspaper. Tell me you found something. Fast.”

“I know you’re lying because they don’t make newspapers anymore.”

“I was being hyperbolic to illustrate a point.”

“Hy-per-bol-ic. Got it. Sorry, pal, but I couldn’t find anything.”

“You’re joking.”

“For a change, I’m not. There are three Sheldon Weavers practicing law in the United States. They live in Oregon, Montana, and Texas. None of them are employed by a law firm matching that name. No law firm exists in the US with that name. At least none I can find.”

“Don’t spare me the bad news.”

He laughed. “Sorry, pal. But I don’t know who this guy is.”

“Well…shit.” I can be witty on command.

“Why don’t you come out for a visit tomorrow?”

Stan had married Moira, my first and only love. I hadn’t seen either of them in years. The last time I saw Stan, he was picking me up after I’d gotten out of the joint. Stan and I talked by phone and email. When I was stumped, I called him. I’d missed their wedding and still hadn’t gone out to see their baby girl.

It was easy to rationalize my behavior. It was easy to rationalize anything. I imagined our encounter would be more awkward than a racial joke in mixed company.

I really needed to get over it and go see them. But of course I said, “I got a new client hounding me. Let me see what’s going on.”

“Alright, see you in five years, dude.”

“Mr. McCloskey, I’d like to hire you. I can pay you whatever you want. I’m well-funded and well-motivated. My name is Morgan Turner. I’d like you to begin immediately.”

The voice on the voicemail was smooth, high-class, educated, sure of itself. Morgan Turner sounded older than me but that might have just been because of his diction and perfect elocution. The second voicemail was along the same lines. He left me his numbers. All of them. Home, business, cell. And his email address. And he directed me to his business’s website. Probably to impress me.

Unlike Sheldon Weaver’s mysterious law firm, Morgan Turner’s business maintained a very active, albeit dignified, web presence. He was a financial planner and consultant. In Oregon.

I’d never been to Oregon. From what I heard I wasn’t missing much. Some wiseass in a bar once had pointed out my mispronunciation of the great state. He informed me the last syllable was pronounced -gin, and not -gone, and that anybody thinking otherwise was a plain fucking idiot.

I told him it was a fair mistake, given the vagaries of English pronunciation. He said I was a plain fucking idiot.

I asked him,
How do you pronounce the words polygon and paragon?

He fumbled for an answer and eventually told me those words were different because they were from the math and sciences. Obviously.

I said,
Fair enough but how do you pronounce the word spelled g-h-o-t-i?

Gotty?
he asked.

I left it at that and went back to my pint. Those were back in my drinking days. Sometimes I missed the beer, but more than that I missed the bar banter with assholes like Mr. Oregon.

I called Mr. Turner back.             

“How you doing? This is Eddie McCloskey.”

“Thank you for returning my call.” I heard him adjust the phone. “I’d like to hire you, Mr. McCloskey.”

“Eddie will do just fine, Mr. Turner.”

“So will Morgan.”

I’d already made a friend.

“What’s the job?” I asked.

“I need you to find someone.”

Not my usual thing but I had an aversion to turning down money. “Who?”

“My daughter.”

“Forgive the question, Morgan, but is your daughter still with us?”

“I very much hope so.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. You see, I specialize in—”

“Paranormal investigation. Yes. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Did you try the cops first?”

“Yes.”             

“And?”

“She’s a grown woman. Just because she vanishes one night…”

“How about a PI?”

“He didn’t find her.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Okay.”             

“Okay you’ll take the job?”

“Sure.”

“That was easy.”

“That was but the rest won’t be. Let me ask, why did you call me?”

“Before she vanished I thought she was possessed.”

Oregon was beautiful country. Lots of timber, big rivers bloated with salmon. We landed in Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford. I’d grown up near another Medford twenty plus years ago. But that was all the way over in New Jersey.

There was a driver in a black suit waiting for me holding a sign with my name on it. He told me his name was Strongbow. I tried not to hold that against him with my Irish heritage. He took my bag.

He led me away from the baggage claim to a new Lincoln parked very illegally right outside the gate.

Nothing but blue skies. But I knew better. The Pacific Northwest wasn’t going to fool me.

“Okay, how long till it rains?”

He smiled as he put my bag in the trunk. “Might be awhile. Medford sits in a rain shadow.”

A rain shadow. He had to be taking the piss, as the Brits say. “I mighta been born during the day, but I wasn’t born yes—”

He held up a hand. “I’m not kidding you. Look it up on your phone.”

“I still use a rotary. What’s a rain shadow?”

We got in the car. I stretched out in the back. It had been an eight hour flight from Philly. I could never sleep on planes unless I was drunk. And I didn’t drink anymore.

“Medford sits in the Rogue Valley on the good side of the Cascade Range. We don’t get a lot of rain because of that.”

“Learn something new every day. You work for Turner for awhile?”

“Couple years.”

“Just driving?”

He kept his hands on the road. Hands at ten and two. “What does that mean?”

“Sorry, East Coast humor.”

“Oh.” He made a left. “It’s a great job, and Mr. Turner takes care of me.”

But not well enough that Strongbow could call his boss by his first name. “You know his daughter?”

“I know all three of his daughters.”

The plot thickened. “How old are they?”

“Twenty-six, twenty-three, twenty.”

“I wish I was that sexually disciplined.”

Strongbow didn’t laugh.

“Mrs. Turner still around?”

“No. She passed away a few years ago.”

It was good to get the local guy’s knowledge. “So which daughter disappeared?”

“Daughter number one. Twenty-six years old. Megan. Long brown hair. She has that English rose look about her.”

I pictured her and in my mind she was lovely. “Married?”

“Divorced.”

“Her ex still around?”

“He lives in the area.”

“Was theirs one of those fabled amicable partings?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Turner.”

Strongbow was a model of discretion.

“She dating again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Attractive?”

“Megan is a very good-looking woman.”

“So probably dating.”

He said nothing.

“Any guys come around?”

“In my brief time here, I’ve seen a few.”

“Recently?”

“You’ll have to talk to Mr. Turner about this.”

“How about girls? Any of them come around?”

His eyes almost popped out of his head.

“As friends, I meant.” But I enjoyed getting the reaction.

“Megan was very popular but she’s very career-oriented.”

“And what’s her career?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Strongbow didn’t hesitate. “Talk to Mr. Turner if you want more details.”

“Okay.” I shifted in the seat. “The other two daughters around?”

“They are.”

I waited for him to volunteer information. He didn’t.

“What are they like?”

He’d kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel the whole ride and hadn’t taken his eyes off the road for a second. But now he looked at me through the rearview mirror.

“Melanie, twenty-three. Mia, twenty. Before you ask, yes, they’re very good-looking. You’ll get to meet them.”

The driver spoke and acted like ex-military. If it walks like a duck…

“Turner really likes M names, huh?”

Strongbow said nothing.

“So you were Army?”

“Hell, no. I was a Marine.” He gave me the jarhead stare through the rearview and his eyes bled
Semper Fi
.

“Officer?”

“Hell, no. I worked for a living. Did you serve?”

I smiled. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“What branch?”

“Let’s put it this way. My uniform was an orange jumpsuit.”

I saw him figuring that out. When he did, he said nothing. He just filed it away.

I let it go. “A rain shadow, huh?”

“Yes. A rain shadow.”

I checked the sky for clouds. Nary a one. “How far to the house?”

“About a half hour.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m gonna check my eyelids for holes.”

Thirty-three minutes later I was up again. It felt like thirty seconds to me.

Turner had a great house. It was postmodern, boxy-looking, with a lot of glass. It screamed money. I imagined there was an atrium with a garden inside.

I got out and went for my bag but Strongbow was having none of it. “Right this way.”

We crossed what could only be described as a concrete drawbridge up to the double doors. Strongbow led the way. I took in the grounds. In addition to the house, Turner had a lot of acreage.

We stepped into the foyer. Strongbow told me to wait there and took my bag down a hallway to the right.

I waited.

From the hallway to the left, Daughter Number Two or Three appeared. She was either twenty-three or twenty, I knew, but she looked older than that. I was thirty-five and I would have made a pass at a bar.

She bit her lip and looked at me. She was wearing an evening gown. I checked my watch. It was only three-thirty. Thank God. For a moment I’d been worried I was underdressed.

She walked over to me and felt the need to say something when I didn’t. “So you’re the ghost hunter.”

“You’re overdressed.”

Then she giggled and turned around slowly. She looked back at me over her shoulder and then her eyes rolled back like slots. She fainted. I grabbed her. Her body was slack. It was all so theatrical, it seemed rehearsed.

At that convenient moment a butler came in and found me propping the lady up. In grabbing her, I’d accidentally gotten a fistful of boob. It didn’t seem to bother him. He was a tall, thin middle-aged man. He had intelligent, cutting eyes that were as grey as his hair. He walked purposefully toward me and took the lady. Her eyes opened but there was nothing behind them.

“This started this morning,” he said. I took it he was referring to her medical condition.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Then he seemed to remember his manners. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McCloskey.”

“Likewise, but call me Eddie, okay? I’m assuming that’s Mr. Turner’s middle daughter, Melanie?”

She was young, but not even the casinos would card her. She really looked close to my age.

The butler smiled slyly. “It is.”

Score one for my powers of observation. “So where’s Mr. Turner?”

“Standing right in front of you, Eddie.”

Oh.

Shit.

***

Mr. Turner was dressed like a butler. He had on a dinner jacket. But he obviously wasn’t a butler. You didn’t get to ten mil by waiting on people. You got there by being a genius, going to Harvard, or marrying a rich widow.

He led me through French doors. I offered to help him carry his daughter. He was struggling a bit. But he politely declined. He acted like this was old hat to him. He deposited the girl in a high-backed, cushioned chair in a study. It looked especially designed for the purpose of fainting daughters. He punched out a quick text—probably to the actual butler—then told me to follow him.

The house was just big enough to qualify as a mansion. But the size wasn’t the most impressive part about it. Design-wise it was the most interesting place I’d ever seen. Probably twenty years old and resembling a European villa. Inside, there was a lot of open space. Many of the walls fell short of the ceiling, making it airy. Arches instead of thresholds. He led me to the pool room. It didn’t smell like chlorine. It smelled like the sea.

Outside he had an infinity pool with a weir and catch. That was two more pools than I had but who was counting.

“Drink?” Morgan Turner said.

“No thanks. I’m a teetotaler.”

He poured himself one without comment or apparent judgment. Either he was a lush himself or had genuine sympathy for another human being.

Probably a lush.

“That
was
Melanie.” He sipped his G and T, then seemed to remember he was dressed like Jeeves. “I have a function this evening. Last minute. I’m more or less a figurehead at the firm anymore, but they still need me to attend these things.”

“What’s on the schedule tonight?” With a daughter missing, I wondered what could be so important. But maybe he needed something to keep his mind off the troubles.

“I won’t bore you with the details of local politics,” he said. “But I keep a pulse on all things I can. My firm employs a lot of people around here, so naturally I have to keep up appearances.”

I waited for him to say more but he didn’t.

I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you from your picture online.”

No hard feelings there. “Old picture. I have aged a lot in the last few years.”

So had his middle daughter. “You’ve had a rough go of it.”

“Strongbow must have told you about my wife. And now Megan and Melanie.”

I didn’t want to get the local guy in trouble after he’d fed me some info. “He only told me that Mrs. Turner had passed after I prodded him.”

He nodded and got a faraway look in his eyes.

I said, “Now what’s this about Melanie?”

“It’s Megan that’s missing.”

“I know, but you just said
and Melanie
.”

“Yes.” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead as if to smooth it. “Dear Lord, I don’t even know where to begin.”

I’d already taken out my notepad. “Just start talking. It’ll all come out. If it doesn’t I’ll ask questions.”

“Before Megan disappeared, do you know what she was doing?”

Then I put it together. “She was fainting.”