The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (18 page)

“What color hair did she have?”

“She was blue, but if I had to guess I’d say her hair was brown in real life. It just looked like it would be.”

“What was she wearing?”

Margaret didn’t answer. She looked away, like she’d just thought of something.

“What is it?”

“She had this wound on her head.” Margaret tapped her temple. “I think she was shot.”

“You think she was shot in the head?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yes, you asked me what she was wearing and that made me think of the blood on her shirt.”

“There was blood on her shirt?”

She nodded again. “And that made me think of the wound on her head. Some of the blood on her shirt must have dripped down from her head.”

Eddie knew it was important. He could see Christie taking that information in and comparing it to something she already knew. He wondered if Schubert had been popped in the head.

Eddie said, “So what happened, after you closed your eyes?”

“I heard the sirens. By then I’d lost my resolve to die because I started thinking about the rest of the family, my children and grandchildren, and how much I wanted to see them again. So I opened my eyes and she was gone.”

“Was there anybody else here?”

“It’s funny you ask me that…”

“Why?”

“When I had my eyes closed, I heard what I thought were footsteps. I thought it was the ghost leaving, but now that you ask me that question, I realize it couldn’t have been the ghost.”

He knew why but wanted to follow her train of thought. “Why do you say that?”

“The ghost was hovering. When it moved toward me, it floated. It didn’t take steps. I think somebody else was in here.”

He got in Christie’s car for the last time that night. 4:03AM. Margaret’s son had picked her up and taken her to his house, after asking Christie a lot of questions. The crime techs had started over once Margaret had told them about the footsteps on her hardwood floors. They were trying to find evidence of the living intruder.

Christie said, “What is it?”

Eddie shook his head. “I need to do some research, but I have an idea.”

“What?”

“It’s too crazy to say out loud.”

“Nothing is too crazy for this case.”

Eddie told her. He didn’t know much about the subject but from what little he did know, it seemed to make sense.

“Felicity and Alicia didn’t report anything like that,” Christie said.

“Neither did Engel.”

Christie nodded. “Okay. I take it back. Even that is too crazy for this case.”

Eddie laughed. “That’s why I need to do some research.”

Christie turned in the driver’s seat and put her hands on the steering wheel. “Tonya Schubert was shot in the head, following a violent struggle with Rory Tomlinson.”

Eddie had been planning on asking her that very question. “So we have an eyewitness pointing us to Schubert.”

“And also confirming what you thought: somebody alive is helping her.”

“See? I told you this would be easy.”

She rolled her eyes. “You said no such thing.”

Christie drove him to the motel. He wanted to invite her inside. What was the harm in asking? If she said no, she said no.

“I’m headed back to the station,” Christie said. “I want to dig out Schubert’s file.”

“You need to sleep,” he said. Which was funny, because he hadn’t planned on letting her sleep if she came up to his room.

“Detectives sleep when they can. And right now, I can’t.”

“I’ll come with you then. I can do my research at the station.”

She gave him a look, and he realized part of his motivation was to let her know he didn’t need to sleep either. Mid-thirties and acting like a teenager.

She surprised him by agreeing. “Okay, but I won’t be much company.”

“Neither will I.”

***

Meade woke with a start. It was early. He hated when he was up early because there was nothing good on TV for hours.

With all the drinking, he never slept a regular schedule anymore. He vowed to throttle it back, like he did any time he woke at a weird hour, or hungover, or sick.

He popped out of his recliner, accidentally knocking the bottle of Wild Turkey on the carpet over. It would have spilled, but he must have finished it last night.

Problem was, he needed a drink to fall asleep. The booze dulled his mind and kept his thoughts from wandering. When he didn’t imbibe before bed, he would think of the past, and how that had limited his future, and how the present held little excitement for him.

His bladder sent him a message:
empty now
. He stumbled a few steps forward. His back was stiff from sleeping in the recliner again, but if he slept in his bed, then his neck bothered him the whole day. Damned doctor was leery of prescribing him more pain meds, suggesting without saying that Meade was developing an addiction.

Bleary-eyed, he made it without incident into the bathroom and flicked on the light. As he stepped up to the bowl, his eyes went wide.

He’d left the photographs out.

Meade’s heart went from zero to warp speed before he could unzip his fly.

The cop and that ghostbuster had been here a day ago and if he were a gambling man, he’d bet they were coming back soon. Shit, maybe today. And here his dumbass had left the pictures out on top of the toilet.

Had he even looked at them last night? Meade couldn’t remember. His memory wasn’t the best anymore. Trying to remember was like walking through a fog. Had the pictures been out when the cop had looked around the house?

A cold sweat broke out on his back and the urge to piss went away, despite the fact his bladder was bursting at the seams. Had the bitch-cop seen the pictures?

No.

No way. They would have arrested him on the spot. He calmed as reason took over and managed to piss. But the worry didn’t entirely go away.

Meade had to be more careful.
A lot more careful.

As tough as he was, Meade didn’t want to go to prison. He knew he wouldn’t make it. He figured rapists were treated only marginally better than pedophiles.

***

The men with knives came for Eddie again. Except this time they were being led by something.

A ghost
.

She led their mad charge, her long brown hair streaming behind her. She reached out two bony arms that were tattooed with bruises. The ghost turned her head to look back at all the growing crowd behind her. When he saw her profile, he noticed the bullet wound to the head. The blood rivered down her face and darkened her clothes.

They were coming for him. Faster than ever before.

He looked left and right but realized he was in an alley, his back to an unscaleable brick wall again. The only way out was forward. But forward was only death. The men with knives would carve him up. He would suffer before he died.

And the ghost was there too.

Who knew what she could do to him? She had killed three people, just by scaring them. But maybe she was even more powerful than that. Maybe she—

“Eddie.”

He sprang up on a weird couch in a room he didn’t recognize. A pile of papers hit the floor next to him. He realized he must have been reading them before he dozed. His laptop was open on the conference table, but the monitor was dark.

His heart was going a million miles per hour.

“Eddie, you’re with me in the police station.”

Christie was sitting on the edge of the couch. Her hip was flush to his side. Her hand on his shoulder.

“Eddie, it’s me, Christie.”

He was in a cold sweat, and his chest was tight. He squeezed his eyes shut and took long, deep breaths. He couldn’t slow his heart down. It was beating furiously, like he’d just sprinted for an hour.

“Eddie—”

“I’m okay, just give me a little space.”

He turned on the couch and put his feet on the floor and put his head between his knees. Deep breaths. In and out.

Her hand squeezed his shoulder. She stayed right there, glued to his side. As he started coming out of the terror, he noticed how close they were. Was she sending him a signal?

He managed to calm down and sat back up. “What time is it?”

“Almost seven.”

His chest felt like it could explode from all the pressure. He remembered where he was. In the conference room they’d been using. The whiteboard was right over there and filled with all the names of the victims, witnesses, and their short suspect list. There were more notes under Schubert’s name written in Christie’s perfect handwriting.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He felt something nudge his shoulder. He looked and saw a cup of coffee. He smiled and took it.

“Much better now,” he said. “Thanks.”

“What was that about?”

He sipped the coffee. “The last big job.”

“What happened?”

“Oregon.” It was all he needed to say.

The event had made national headlines. A big town, not quite a city, in Oregon where hundreds of people had been stricken by an inexplicable psychological illness. It had caused them to turn on each other. So many people dead in a short span of time. For no reason. Or, worse than that, for a reason they still didn’t understand. Something in the water, in the air, in the environment…something had triggered a mass psychogenic illness.

And in order to survive, Eddie had been forced to kill. More people than he ever wanted to count.

His name was supposed to be kept out of the press, but somebody leaked it to the media. Christie had researched him before calling, so she would have come across the story.

“You want to talk about it?” she said.

“Never again, for as long as I live.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“What are you, a shrink?”

She smiled and sipped her coffee. She looked tired. And also beautiful. He wanted to reach out and put his arm around her.

No, he hardly knew her and she had shown zero interest. What was he thinking? He needed sleep and he needed to get his head on straight.

Christie said, “I’m not a shrink. But what do they understand? They’ve never been under fire.”

She looked over at him, and her eyes went deadly serious.

“I have. I know what it’s like.”

“I did what I had to do,” he said. “There were no options.”

“But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”

He shook his head no, sipped some more coffee. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to fall apart on you.”

“I’m not worried. You had a nightmare, that’s all.”

She was so easy to talk to. He wanted to spill his guts. He wanted to overshare. He wanted to invite her in to his nightmare.

He wondered why her husband had left her. Maybe he had a wandering eye? Or maybe she’d just fallen out of love with him? He had no idea and wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time. Maybe there would never be a time to ask.

He caught himself staring at her. She just looked back, calm and serious as ever.

“We’re going to figure this out,” he said. “I always get the job done.”

“I know. That’s why I called you.”

He felt better. The pressure in his chest had decreased. He stood and stretched. His neck was sore, probably from sleeping crooked on an old couch. He put the coffee on the conference table and noticed she was in different clothes.

“Did you go home?”

She stood. “I keep a spare outfit at my desk.”

“Did you sleep?” he said.

“Enough. And better than you.”

He smiled. “Mind if I grab a shower and change at my motel?”

“I’ll drive you.”

***

The man held out a palm.

“We can’t go back there.”

The ghost’s face twisted into something horrid. She always surprised him with what she could do. Thank God, though, she could barely interact with the physical environment. She couldn’t stab him or shoot him or torture his body.

But she could do a lot worse.

The ghost did not need sleep and woke him at all hours. She followed him everywhere, even to the office. He had no time to himself. No matter where he was, she could get inside his head.

She was always putting bad thoughts in there. Horrible images that filled him with dread and haunted him, even in those moments when she wasn’t around. He knew this was how she killed. He knew she could kill him if she wanted.

He feared she still would, when they were done, despite her promise to go away when it was over.

At first he’d argued. At first he’d tried to persuade her they couldn’t go through with it. But she didn’t listen. Didn’t even engage him in a debate. She didn’t have to.

Because she could get into his head whenever she wanted. And, failing that, she could tell the world what he’d done.

Then his life would be over. Prison would be inevitable. By the time he got out, he’d be old and infirm. Incapable of starting over. He’d be forced to rely on meager social security checks and live out his days in a retirement community or a home.

He couldn’t stomach the thought of the next twenty years in prison, followed by a lonely twenty more years of disgrace.

So he did what she told him.

Many times he’d considered paranormal help. There had to be someone who could make her disappear forever. Maybe a priest? But there was an obvious problem with that approach. As soon as he
tried
anything like that, the ghost would reveal the big secret.

So he was stuck. Trapped in this psychological hell where he was more or less forced to do a killer’s bidding.

It helped a little that the people they killed deserved to die. All of them except for Fellov. He’d tried to talk her out of going to Fellov’s house, but the ghost had forced him. It was part of the larger plan.

Part of the larger plan
he’d
actually suggested.

And now Fellov was dead because he’d gotten this brilliant idea to throw the police off his trail.

An innocent’s blood was on his hands. He should turn himself in and accept the consequences for his actions, both past and present. Who was he to stand above the law?

But he knew he wouldn’t turn himself in. He was too much a coward for a brave act like that. He’d run first…

But that wasn’t really an option either. He’d tried to run last week. He’d driven four hours to get away. Like always, the ghost couldn’t stay with him in the car. But as soon as he’d stopped, she’d found him almost immediately.