The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (6 page)

Stan went on. “You’ve never let me come out with you on a hunt, Eddie.”

“I could never forgive myself if you got hurt—”

“You’re not my dad. I’m a grown man and can make my own decisions. So, what? I’m just supposed to wait around till you call and then you let me do some Google searches—shit that anybody with half a brain could do? Is that all I’m good for?”

“I can’t believe you kept this from me!” Eddie shouted.

“I’m a ghost hunter too, Eddie! You know how much it means to me.”

“If you had just told me all this—”

“You would have shut me out.”

Eddie looked deep inside himself and knew Stan was right. Did it make a difference that his motivation was a good one? He didn’t want Stan or Moira getting hurt.

No. Good intentions paved the road to hell. He shouldn’t have shut Stan out. He should have asked Stan to be his partner. Stan was a good investigator and much better with tech than Eddie was. He possessed skills Eddie lacked, skills that would have served Eddie’s clients well.

Why had he done this?

He’d told himself it was to protect Stan. But there were ways for him to have involved Stan more deeply without risking the guy’s life. At the very least, he could have brought Stan in for casing the property and setting up the tech. But would Stan have agreed to such a limited involvement?

No way. Stan wouldn’t have participated by degree. Eddie’s choice was limited to letting him all the way in or keeping him out.

And besides, Eddie’s decision to keep Stan out had ultimately been proven right. Eddie had faced death on several investigations. If Stan had been present on any of them, he would have been in serious danger.

But as Eddie looked deeper into his own psyche, he wondered if that was the only reason. Perhaps his ego had kept Stan away also. Ever since he’d gotten cleaned up, Eddie had taken pride in solving problems without asking for help. He didn’t need assistance. He could stand on his own two feet and take on the world.

In marginalizing Stan, he’d wanted to prove himself.

Stan said, “You know what? Forget about the weekend gig. You can find somebody else to pick up your fucking dry cleaning for you.”

Stan hung up.

Eddie’s arm dropped to his side. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Somehow he’d managed to alienate his best—and only—friend in the whole world.

He looked at his phone and thought about calling Stan back. But he was due at the station by 9:00AM and needed to get a shower.

***

“Eddie, this is Chief Knotts,” Christie said.

Knotts was tall and had gone soft around the middle. He had a crew cut, probably the same one he’d had for the last thirty years. But he looked competent. He wore a shirt and tie and Eddie spotted a uniform hanging from a closet behind the chief’s desk.

Knotts stood and offered his hand. “Mr. McCloskey, thank you for coming out here to help us.”

“This is what I do. And please call me Eddie.”

He was still thinking about his conversation with Stan when he shook Knotts’s hand.

Christie smiled at him. She gestured at the other man in the room. “This is my partner, Detective Harney.”

Harney was short, and trying to make up for it.

Based on what she’d told him yesterday, Eddie didn’t expect a warm welcome from Harney. And he didn’t get one. Harney stayed where he was. He was dressed in plain clothes, a button down shirt and a pair of slacks. He nodded professionally at Eddie but made no move to offer his hand.

Eddie read the message loud and clear.

“So what are your preliminary thoughts?” Knotts asked.

Eddie was taken aback. He hadn’t been prepared to share anything. His head was still spinning from his conversation with Stan, as a matter of fact. Christie shot him a quick, apologetic look, meaning she would have warned him of the meeting with the chief if she’d been able to.

Which meant she hadn’t known it was going to happen, probably had just found out.

Eddie pointed at an empty chair. He didn’t care if he was sitting or standing, he just wanted a moment to collect his thoughts. “Mind if I?”

“By all means.” Knotts sat and Christie did too.

Harney went back to the corner of Knotts’s office and leaned against the wall.

Eddie knew that less was more here. He already had Christie’s respect and to keep it he had to play nice in the sandbox.

“Two people experiencing similar paranormal phenomena—”

Harney cut him off. “You know that for sure?”

Eddie looked over his shoulder at the man. “I don’t.”

Harney said, “But that’s why we brought you out here.”

Christie folded her arms and didn’t turn around to look at Harney. “He dropped everything he was doing last night, came right out here, was in Stahl’s house an hour later. He’s been on the ground for less than twelve hours and for five of those he was sleeping.”

A lot less than that, Eddie thought. “I’m going to take another run at Stahl’s house today and need to get inside Fellov’s tonight as well.”

“Then you’ll know?”

“Hopefully.”

Harney made a face. The chief didn’t offer his opinion on the matter, just watched Eddie and how he reacted to the questions.

Eddie made a decision. From then on he wasn’t going to give Harney the time of day. He reported to Christie and the chief, but he didn’t owe the other detective anything. The guy had made his thoughts clear. So there was no point in trying to make nice.

Eddie nodded at the chief. “Two people experiencing similar paranormal phenomena is very rare when those people are in different locations.”

“Why?” the chief asked.

“Let me give you some theory.”

“Yeah, let’s hear this,” Harney said.

Christie said, “Go ahead, Eddie.”

Eddie kept his eyes on the chief. Harney fidgeted in the corner, clearly pissed off that Eddie was now openly ignoring him.

“Ghosts in general are extremely rare. What few there are, or what few we can observe, they’re linked to this world for some reason. Nobody knows why but the general theory is ghosts are tied to a place because of some emotionally-charged event or series of events. They’re usually traumatic in nature. Abuse. Cheating spouse. Murder. You get the idea. Ghosts haunt, for lack of a better word, the places these traumatic events happened to them.”

Eddie paused to make sure the chief was following. Knotts nodded.

Eddie continued. “Most ghosts are tied to a specific place. And I mean:
one specific place.
One event, above all others, stays with them and that becomes their obsession. Until they can accept what happened and move on.”

Eddie took a breath.

“Notice how I said
most
ghosts.”

“What about the rest?” Knotts said.

Eddie didn’t answer right away. “So if this follows the usual path, that means we have two ghosts of similar descriptions exhibiting the same behavior in two different places, relatively close in time to each other.”

Eddie let that hang for a moment. Nobody filled the silence, not even Harney.

“It’s too early to say for sure, but from the look of things we’re dealing with the rarest of the rare,” Eddie said.

“What’s that?” the chief asked.

“A traveler.” Eddie looked over at Christie. “Extremely, extremely rare. Very few credible accounts of them from reliable sources.”

Harney grunted.

Eddie ignored him. “I’ve never encountered one and don’t know anyone else that has. But if it’s a traveler, then it’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous enough to kill?” Knotts asked.

Eddie nodded. “What few credible accounts we have of travelers are consistent. Travelers are nasty. Sadists.”

Christie sat forward in her seat, never taking her eyes off him. She was interested in what he had to say, but he couldn’t tell if she was buying it. Going by her intense expression, he got the feeling there was a lot more than the outcome of this case at stake.

Eddie said, “Instead of a
place
, a traveler will follow a
person
wherever they go. Which helps us. If we can find the person, we can find the ghost.”

“Do you think that’s happening here?” Harney said.

“I don’t know.”

Harney blew out a big breath.

The chief said, “How do you propose to find out?”

Time to drop a little knowledge. “I researched this town last night. The place we always start is a traumatic event. Such as Adrian Perks.”

The three cops looked at each other. Eddie knew he was striking a nerve, but they’d asked him out here to find the truth and not to pussyfoot around and give them the safe answers.

“Why would you look at him?” the chief said.

“A serial stalker and rapist in life translates into a mentally unbalanced ghost in the afterlife. He didn’t die a peaceful death, so that means he’s a deranged ghost with a big ax to grind.”

“Fellov fits the profile,” Christie said. “Perks went after all kinds of women, but most of them were older.”

“Not seventy years old,” Harney said.

“The fifth woman was almost sixty, so we’re in the same ballpark,” Christie said.

While the detectives talked, Eddie watched the chief closely. The man’s face betrayed nothing. He couldn’t tell what the chief was thinking.

Harney shook his head. “Fine, seventy isn’t out of the question. But Stahl doesn’t fit the profile. He’s a thirty-something guy. Perks never stalked or raped any men. And Chief—” Harney stepped forward and addressed Knotts as if he were the only one in the room. “—that is a closed investigation and there is no need to open that file to an independent consultant who isn’t even a licensed PI.”

Christie shot out of her chair. “Stahl was friendly with Kelly Taggert.”

The chief looked past Harney at Christie. “Taggert?”

“Kelly Taggert was Perks’s third victim. Stahl and she dated briefly. At the time, the facts made Stahl look like our guy for the rapes. We questioned him extensively and were close to bringing him in when the next victim came forward with new information that exonerated Stahl.”

Her recall was excellent. So good that Eddie wondered if she’d been the one chasing Perks. He also wondered, briefly, if she’d been one of the cops that had shot the rapist in front of the grocery store.

As gruesome as the crimes were, at least it gave them a plausible lead. In a few short hours, that was pretty good. Last night he’d gone to bed not knowing where the hell to go next, and dreading nothing would turn up at Fellov’s or Stahl’s house when he went back. But right now they had a trail to follow. Perks had a somewhat connection to Stahl and a potential connection with Fellov.

The chief nodded, then addressed Eddie. “I want to make sure I understand. You’re saying that Perks could be a ghost now and is still stalking women. But if it’s Perks then for him to have appeared at Stahl’s or Fellov’s houses, he needed to be
connected
to those places in some key way.”

“Or Perks is following someone else around. Someone who went to those houses also.”

Christie said, “Hold on. Fellov described the ghost as a woman.”

Eddie nodded. “I know, that’s a sticking point for me.”

“A pretty big one,” Harney said. “And why exactly would he kill Stahl? There’s no clear motivation.”

Eddie just kept on ignoring Harney. “What did Perks look like?”

“Long hair,” Christie said. “Slight frame. He looked like the guy that always got picked last for kickball growing up.”

“He didn’t look like a woman, though,” Harney said. “Chief, are we really going down this path?”

Eddie said, “When we don’t understand what we’re seeing, our brains will pattern the object in a way that it does make sense. Ghosts only vaguely resemble their living selves.”

Harney shook his head. “I repeat: why would Perks kill Stahl?”

In an even voice, Christie said, “I don’t know, but it’s a lead. We can either follow it or not. But we don’t have much else to go on, right now. Do we?”

Harney’s face went red. “We have real police work to do, like contacting known friends and family, tracking whereabouts, confirming stories.”

The chief finally weighed in. “All of which you’re doing, Harney. You’ve already got everything on Stahl. I see no reason why we can’t take parallel paths here. You stick with what you’re doing, Christie stays with Eddie.”

Christie relaxed a little in her seat. Eddie wondered if the chief had been close to shutting down the paranormal angle.

“Okay, but there’s another question we haven’t even addressed yet.” Harney folded his arms. “Assuming Perks is the ghost, who is he
traveling
with?”

To Eddie it felt like the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees.

Christie opened her mouth to speak, but Harney seemed to anticipate what she was going to say.