The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (7 page)

“Don’t you even bring that up.” Harney pointed at Eddie. “Not with him in here.”

Eddie had no idea where this was going but somehow Harney’s question led to a very sensitive place. All the same, he needed to know.

Eddie said, “Chief, I’m here to help. But I can’t help if I have half the story. I’ve signed the NDA your attorney drafted. I’m a good guy. You can trust me.”

Chief Knotts looked him dead in the eye. “Eddie, please excuse us. Detective Christie will come find you when we’re done in here.”

***

Eddie sat in Christie’s cubicle and opened his laptop. The one Stan had given him.

Stan had also given him the juice on Perks the stalker and rapist as well. During the whole meeting, he kept thinking about Stan and their last conversation. Eddie really needed to call his friend back and apologize. No, not just that. He needed to make it up to Stan.

The best way was to start acting like a real friend again. He had a million reasons why he hadn’t been in close contact with Stan over the years. But at the end of the day, reasons were just excuses.

He had to call later, though. The investigation had just grown legs so he needed to focus on that. It was time he dug for his own information. He couldn’t keep asking Stan to do this shit for him.

He went online and searched for everything he could find on Perks. The guy was a textbook psychopath. He’d started out stalking. Three women in as many years had filed restraining orders against him. One article mentioned a rape charge that had been brought against him in college, but was later withdrawn. Too much grey area: the woman had been drunk so her memory wasn’t very reliable and she had admitted to going to his dorm voluntarily.

Perks had eventually donned a black mask and broke into houses to rape women. He’d started with women he didn’t know but eventually couldn’t help himself and had attacked women he
did
know. Though he’d worn a mask, one of his later victims thought they had recognized him and shared her suspicions with the police. After that the net had closed pretty quickly. When they’d finally built a solid case to bring him in, the call went out and a patrol had spotted him in the grocery store. Detective Christie, one investigator on the case, had gone to the store to arrest him and the fateful shooting had followed. When confronted, Perks had moved like he was reaching for a weapon, and Christie had opened fire.

All that was well and good, but Eddie didn’t want to lose sight of the other two things Stan had found. As much as Eddie hated to admit it, Harney had asked good questions in there. The gender of the ghost had been reported as female, and if it was Perks then he likely needed someone to travel to these places so he could do his dirty work.

Which kind of fit. Stahl had reported a prowler twice, the second time being the ghost. But the first time could have been a live person.

Then something clicked in the back of Eddie’s mind. He had a sneaking suspicion why they’d asked him to leave the room a few minutes ago.

“We need to talk.”

Eddie turned in the chair and saw Christie. “What’s up?”

“Come on back into Knotts’s office.”

“This is going to be good.”

In a toneless voice, Christie said. “That would be one way of looking at it.”

***

Back into Knotts’s office, only this time Harney wasn’t there.

“Have a seat, then I’ll let you two get back to work,” Knotts said.

Eddie took the same seat. The chief had been polite before, but now there was an edge to him. He was back to all business.

“What I’m about to tell you cannot be released to the public. It will obviously fall under the NDA you signed but I want to stress the importance of this information.”

Eddie looked at Christie. She was deadly serious also.

“Okay.”

The skin around the chief’s eyes crinkled as he narrowed his eyes. “If this ever becomes public information, the town will sue you and I will deny ever having shared it. Is that clear?”

“Couldn’t be much clearer.”

The chief watched him a moment, then finally nodded. “To this day, we are certain Adrian Perks was the man responsible for these rapes.”

“Okay.”

“He was guilty as hell, there is no doubt about it.”

Eddie’s suspicion was correct. “He didn’t act alone, did he?”

***

Christie did her best to hide her surprise. Eddie had guessed correctly. She’d been right in asking him to come out here. He was an unconventional choice to assist in police work, but he had a good mind.

All the same, though, the chief didn’t want him being
too smart
.

The chief said, “For some time we pursued that as a possibility but in the end we believed Perks acted alone.”

Christie said, “Stalkers and rapists almost always work alone, so the theory was pretty far-flung.”

“But you must have thought it for a reason,” Eddie said. “Just like physicists think there are twenty-seven dimensions instead of twenty-six or twenty-eight.”

Again he surprised her with his knowledge. Just like Liam. Her ex-husband had often surprised her with how much he knew. He always seemed to have some vital piece of information at hand, just the bit of knowledge you needed at any given moment. He’d been good at solving problems and had lived on the edge, which had been a big part of the attraction. And after a long, hard day dealing with ugly crimes, she’d enjoyed coming home and letting him be in charge.

The ink on their divorce papers wasn’t completely dry yet. The painful memories of their separation still fresh in her mind.

Christie had caught Eddie looking at her earlier, and of course his comment in the car last night had not gone unnoticed, no matter how much she tried to play it down.

It was harmless flirting, but also the last thing Christie needed at a time like this. Not just personally because of her recent divorce, but also professionally. If the chief even
suspected
there was something between them, her credibility would be shot and he’d shuffle her off this case.

“Perks
probably
acted alone,” Christie said. “Though it was a point of contention. Ultimately we knew Perks was guilty for the assaults. There were just a couple things that gave us pause.”

She knew the chief wouldn’t let her last statement go without commenting. “If we had had an opportunity to question Mr. Perks, we would have closed those loops. Like Christie said, two people working in concert under these circumstances is unlikely.”

“I notice you said two
people
,” Eddie said. “Any chance the second person was a woman?”

“Even more unlikely,” Knotts said. “Women aren’t generally rapists.”

Christie knew what Eddie was going to say next.

He didn’t disappoint. “I’m not here to Monday-morning quarterback your investigation, Chief. But I do need some details in order to help you.”

The chief nodded. “Christie will fill you in. But keep in mind very few people know this. We never once shared this with the press or victims. Doing so now wouldn’t help anybody. These people have suffered enough and I don’t want to reopen any of their wounds. Is that clear?”

Christie realized the chief wasn’t just asking Eddie. He was also asking her.

“Yes,” they both said.

The chief nodded and faced Eddie once more. “What else did you find during your research of our town?”

Eddie gave her a quick look before continuing. She wondered where he was going next.

“Two women. Tonya Schubert and Tiffany Engel.”

She caught him watching their reactions to the name drops. Christie had a lot to say about both, but deferred to the chief. Knotts had okayed bringing Eddie in, but she knew the chief wanted her to play things closer to the vest, mostly out of political reasons. Knotts didn’t want an outsider seeing any of their dirty laundry. She understood that to a point, but at the end of the day she was motivated by clearing cases. Protecting the image of the department was important, but she’d never let image take precedence over solving crime. Not that the chief did, but she knew that in his position he had to consider both things, sometimes equally.

“Tonya Schubert was practically an angel,” Knotts said. “She had a bad habit of picking the wrong guy to fall in love with, and it cost her her life when it came to Rory Tomlinson. For her to now be terrorizing people as a ghost would be completely out of character.”

Christie was not surprised that the chief left out his connection to Tonya. His family had been close to hers.

Eddie nodded. “Considering how she died, this behavior would not be out of the question.”

“But what’s her motivation as a ghost?”

“Did she know either Stahl or Fellov?”

Christie jumped in. “It’s possible, but only because this is a relatively small town. They never came up in the course of our investigation.”

She remembered that one all too well. It had been her first big one.

“Something to look into,” the chief said. “And again, she’d likely need a traveler, correct?”

Eddie nodded. He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t.

The chief shifted gears. “Tiffany Engel is a different story.”

Christie waited for him to continue, but he nodded at her.
Go ahead and share
, he was saying.

“Engel was under investigation at the time of her disappearance,” Christie said. She watched Eddie’s eyes and there was no surprise in them. He’d already known this, so it had come up in the course of his research.

She went on. “She ran a home health agency with her husband. You know what that is?”

“Not really,” Eddie said.

She got the sense he did. He wasn’t a cop, but it was a cop’s move: playing dumb and asking other people to explain things. She liked him but resolved to be more careful around him. And Christie wasn’t one to let someone else’s intelligence intimidate her. She didn’t shrink from challenges. She saw them as opportunities to raise her game.

Christie said, “Many people that require medical care are unable to leave their homes because of their conditions. The agency sends a nurse or social worker out to the home to provide care right there. That way the patient doesn’t need to arrange transportation for their regular check-ups.”

Eddie nodded.

She said, “We got an anonymous tip that they were overbilling so we started looking into it.”

Eddie frowned. “Why was she under investigation, but not her husband?”

“They were estranged. He still had equity in the business but he’d ceded control of the operations to her almost two years before we started looking at her, and the tip we got was of more recent activity. Mr. Engel just collected a paycheck. It wasn’t my case but I remember some of the details. We wanted to build a stronger case against Tiffany, but then she disappeared.”

The chief stood, signaling the meeting was over. “I’ll expect at least two reports a day. First thing in the morning and then again in the early evening. Thanks again for assisting the department, Eddie.”

***

Eddie got into the passenger seat. It had clouded up and the temperature had dipped. Weather-wise, March could go either way on you. Right now it had decided to revert to winter.

He waited for Christie to shut her door to the unmarked cruiser.

“Alright, so level with me. Was Perks working with a woman?”

Christie started the engine but kept the car in PARK. “Working with someone? Maybe. A woman? I doubt it.”

Eddie nodded. “Every time I investigate, there’s at least one thing that challenges my worldview.”

“That’s because you only take on paranormal cases,” she said, a bit of a challenge in her voice. “So that’s what you see. If you worked regular cases, you’d see how often things repeat themselves and how likely your first hunch is to be correct. It’s always somebody who knew the victim. If they were married, it’s the spouse nine times out of ten. People are people.”

“I get that. But like you said, I only take paranormal cases. And if that’s what this is, we need to think outside the box.”

She put the car in REVERSE and backed out of the spot. Christie didn’t speak until they were out of the parking lot.

“You’re preaching to the choir, Eddie.” She made a right. “I am the one that called you, remember?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Thanks a lot for getting me into this mess.”

One corner of her mouth smiled back. “I’m taking you to see Daria first.”

He got a feeling she was asserting her control of the investigation. Fine with him. At the end of the day, it was her job on the line, not his. Besides, he liked her take-charge attitude.

“Can I ask you something personal?” Eddie said.

“You can ask.”

“Are you married?”

“What does that matter?”

He couldn’t get a read on her. She asked not too quickly, not too slow.

“Your last name,” he said. “Christie isn’t exactly an Asian name.”