For once, I beat Carl and Darla to the office. But since I was still unclear on my password, I couldn’t fire up my computer. And that big touchscreen? I didn’t even know how to turn it on. Still, I had to do something, and the big stack of textbooks Carl had been digitizing was the only thing I could figure out how to access. I thumbed through one after another, looking for what, I didn’t know. One eventually caught my eye: a brown, cloth-bound book stamped with the title Case Studies.
Boring? Only on the surface. Maybe it was like the aversion-whammy on the FPMP parking lot entrance—something to deflect the attention of the casual observer—or maybe it was just a poor choice of titles. Once I got into it, though, I was fascinated.
Woman in Jacksonville burns her own house down, claims she had to get rid of the old busybody who died there twenty years before.
Top probate attorney admits finding directions to wills and insurance policies and all kinds of secret stashes scrawled on his desk blotter when he wakes up from his frequent benders.
Owner of a cadaver dog admits the animal’s as dumb as a box of rocks, and reveals he’s the one who’s been leading authorities to the bodies.
My officemates arrived sometime while my nose was in the book. I was thoroughly engrossed when a subtle electronic tone sounded and brought me back to present-day reality. I figured it was the inscrutable device in my pocket, but Carl pulled out his cell and went to take the call outside before I did anything embarrassing, like trying to answer a phone that wasn’t even ringing. Darla wouldn’t have noticed anyway. She was hard at work graphing the movements of the mediums in the haunted office and paying no attention to either of us.
I looked back at the book in my hand and realized…maybe we were barking up the wrong tree. All the mediums in the narrative had one thing in common: they were dealing with sentient ghosts, not repeaters. The office we were using as our obstacle course wasn’t really haunted. Yes, there was some residue there. But what if it was too subtle to be sensed by lower level mediums? Maybe it would take an actual ghost to sort everyone out.
“What was the first sentient ghost you encountered?” I said, breaking the silence in the room.
Darla turned and leveled me a look of cool assessment. “Why?”
“Just working on a theory.”
“I don’t actually have a memory of it. I was just a baby.”
“Fine. If you don’t remember—”
I thought she resented the intrusion, so it surprised me when she went on. “I was a vocal toddler. My parents always figured I liked to babble. And then one day a kung fu movie was playing in the background, and I was having the time of my life chatting with the ninjas. In Cantonese. Turned out our house was built on a Nineteenth Century railroad camp, and I hadn’t been talking to myself all that time after all.”
“Wow. Do you still…?”
“Not really. A word here or there. What about you? What was your first?”
The thing that got me committed my senior year of high school was the hideous pile-up with the bloody, wailing victims, but it seemed like my ghost cherry had been popped well before then. The clown in the movie theater? That was the earliest one I could think of. And yet there was something nagging at the edge of my awareness that insisted the clown ghost wasn’t my very first, either. But to say my memory was shoddy was being generous; whole portions of my life are buried deeper than the denizens of Graceland.
I was on the edge of grasping some elusive memory when everything lit up, from the multiline phones on both Carl’s desk and mine, to the giant touchscreen on the wall—which filled itself with the face of Laura Kim, looking down at us as if she was talking into her watch. “Vic, are you there?”
“I am.”
“I need you in the South Stairwell, first floor, right now.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “South Stairwell, so that’s, um,…”
Darla said, “I know where it is.”
“And hurry,” Laura told us.
“Quickest way is through the annex hall,” Darla said. I half-expected her to add a dig about how it wasn’t very surprising I had no idea where I was since I apparently knew nothing about anything—but whatever was going down, it was big enough to swing the focus off my ineptitude, at least for the time being. We hurried over to the South Stairwell, but when we reached the door, we discovered a line of very grim-looking agents blocking our way. No doubt they were all regular people, if you encountered them in their regular lives. They might enjoy baseball, for instance, or kung fu movies. Here, though, in this capacity, they formed an impenetrable wall of highly trained muscle.
But then one of them noticed me and said, “Agent Bayne?” And I saw the smallest glint of awe in his eyes. Or maybe fear. Whichever it was, I suppose the important part was that they let us through.
I wasn’t shocked to find a body at the bottom of the stairwell, though I was somewhat surprised to realize I knew her. “That’s one of Andy Parsons’ co-workers,” I said.
“Colleen Frank.” I thought it was Darla speaking, initially. Then I realized Darla was standing in front of me. And I hadn’t seen her lips move.
I turned and saw Colleen’s ghost standing on the stairs between the first and second floor, hands on railing, with a blob of blood and hair, and probably brain matter, clinging to the rail between her hands. “I was hoping you’d get here before I had to go.”
“You don’t have to take off right away.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s like gravity. It’s like sleeping. It’s like eating another cookie when you swore you’d stop at two. Maybe you can try forcing yourself to stay put, but eventually, you’ll get sucked in.”
I realized, once she said that, if I really thought about it, I could feel the hint of a tug. And when I opened myself to the white light, it was a definite pull. I did my best to get centered so I didn’t drift toward the pull myself. “So what can you tell me?”
“I was pushed.”
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. “Any idea who?”
“No, they were behind me. But it was deliberate. I know that for sure.”
“Think,” I said. “Hard. Any unusual gait? Any cologne, any shadows cast?”
“No, nothing.”
“Any detail might turn out to be important, even something you don’t think is significant. If there’s anything at all you can remember, you really need to tell me.”
She rolled her ghostly eyes. “If there were any way to ID them, don’t you think I would have mentioned it? I’m a federal agent, not an IHOP waitress. Swear to God, so sick of men treating me like I’m oblivious. So if you’re done mansplaining what I should have looked at as I was hurtling to my death—”
Murder victims aren’t much use when they’re defensive. Which would make the next question even harder. “Any reason someone would have for killing you?”
“Again…if I knew, don’t you think I would tell you?” She made a wrap-it-up type gesture. “Let’s get this show on the road. I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Are you so sure there’s no motive? Like Andy Parsons?”
“What about Andy?
“Maybe he told you something he shouldn’t have—maybe one of your colleagues was worried you’d talk.”
“About what? The only thing Andy ever told me was how he planned to stack the team in his fantasy baseball league.”
“Nothing about a conspiracy?”
“Hello—I think I’d remember if he said something I actually found interesting.”
“So you know nothing about an incriminating document. One that came from your printer.”
She held up her hands. “I’ve been on assignment since November at the public library. The only printers I deal with are the ones in the computer lab—the one where all the winos go to sleep and watch porn.”
“If that document wasn’t yours, then whose was it? Only four of you shared that device, and one’s already dead.”
“I have no idea. Whoever it belonged to, they di
dn’t confide in me. Sorry, guy. Guess you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
And with that, she was gone.
When her presence dissipated, and along with it the seductive pull of the veil, I became aware that the spreading pool of blood was now touching my shoe. And that Darla was staring at me, hard.
I exhaled.
Quietly, she said, “I always thought you were faking.”
I let out a mirthless laugh. She looked away and crossed her arms. I said, “I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to fake the shit I see.”
“I know, right?”
Imagine that, me and Dead Darla, having a moment over the cooling corpse of a fellow agent. But before I could figure out how to awkwardly extricate myself without ruining our fragile truce, Darla’s phone buzzed. She answered, rolled her eyes, then put it in my hand. Laura Kim. “Update me, Vic. What’s going on?”
“She didn’t know anything.”
“Her spirit is there? Okay, what do you need? Salt, Florida Water?”
“None of that. She’s moved along.”
“You saw her spirit. You need to clean up that stairwell before it becomes permanent.” She held her hand over the receiver and called, “Patrick? Arrange to have the stairwell locks deactivated. Actually, call a mason, we’ll brick it off.”
“Laura, take a breath,” I said. “It’s not haunted.”
“You’re sure about that? Positive?”
“Totally. And Agent Davis will back me up on that, too.” I looked to Darla and she nodded. “Call in your CSI team. Maybe there’s some kind of evidence in here. But don’t lose any sleep over her ghost. It’s gone and it’s not coming back.”
Chapter 19
I had to stay put while the forensics techs crowded into the stairwell so they could take note of my shoe. I imagine Laura Kim would’ve thrown it away, but I settled for wiping it off with a couple of alcohol swabs. It wasn’t like they were haunted now. Besides, I liked the way they fit.
Weird to think I had ever presumed Laura was the Assassin. All the circumstantial evidence had pointed to her, and even so, it was obvious she didn’t have it in her to take another person’s life. I wasn’t even entirely convinced that the assassin existed, because it seemed exactly like the sort of thing Roger Burke would tell me to mess up my head.
Then again, I couldn’t deny somebody was killing FPMP agents.
When Darla and I got back to the office, Carl was busy at the scanner. “Say, Carl,” she asked, “did you know an agent named Colleen Frank?”
He looked up sharply. “What do you mean, did?”
Shit. Here I thought she’d actually been pretty smooth. A lot slicker than me, anyway. I probably would’ve started out with something really tactful like, Guess who just died?
“There’s been an accident,” Darla said. I almost corrected her, too, but then I realized that she was in that stairwell, same as me. And while I might not know exactly how accurate her reception was, at the very least, she’d heard my end of the conversation. If she was calling the obvious murder an accident, she must’ve had a good reason.
Carl dropped the book he’d been holding. “What happened? Is she—?”
“She fell and…it was quick. She didn’t suffer. I’m really sorry.”
“Excuse me,” he said, and strode out of the office. The door slammed behind him.
I looked at Darla. She looked at me. Before I could figure out what to say, she said, “I don’t know whether your info is classified or not, and I don’t know who’s under investigation and who isn’t. That’s for Internal Affairs to sort out.”
“Why would they be looking at Carl?”
“Not just Carl. They’ll investigate everyone in the building. Good thing we both have an alibi.”
Of course, Carl had nothing to do with it. Okay, he’d left the room abruptly a few minutes before Colleen Frank tipped over that railing. But he was always leaving the room abruptly. Damn, Jacob was gonna have his work cut out for him. I’d need to get to him ASAP and tell him what I knew.
“I’ll deal with IA,” I said. “Can you write up the official report?”
“I could,” she said, as if she wasn’t really sold on the idea. “So, you’re the lead. What do you want it to say?”
“Whatever you think is best. You were there. You know what happened.”
That answer seemed to please her—weird, since whenever I gave actual thought to what I said, it went over like a lead balloon. “Okay, then. I’ll handle it.”
“But make sure you note that I was only asking her the sort of questions any investigator would ask. I wasn’t mansplaining.” Darla sniffed a little laugh, and I insisted, “I wasn’t.”
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
* * *
Jacob was disturbed, to say the least, when I broke the news about Colleen Frank’s death. While he paced back and forth in his office, I sprawled in one of his reasonably comfortable chairs and enjoyed the plant-free ambience. “The two deaths are obviously connected,” he said. “What if the leak was worried about being found out, so they started killing their office mates?”
“Which would mean we’re looking at either Agent Garcia or the fake schoolteacher.” Yeah. That sounded more likely than an assassin.
“Her name is Agent Lipton.” Jacob checked his notes. “Peter Garcia and Veronica Lipton.”
“And if one of them is the leak, the other one had better start sleeping with one eye open.” I thought back to the meeting in which we broke the news of “Andy’s” death to his colleagues. Angry and smug. You’d think psychic empathy would give us more to go on. “Did Bly notice anyone feeling scared during our grief counseling, like they were worried they’d get caught?”
“Not that he mentioned.”
“I think he’ll need to take another look at each of them.”
“As soon as possible,” Jacob agreed. “In fact, I’d rather interview them separately, in case they’re working together.” I realized he was gauging my reaction just a little too closely when he followed that up with, “We should split up. One of us with Bly, the other with Stefan.”
“No.” It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t give a damn.
But Jacob, being Jacob, plowed right on ahead. “It’s the perfect opportunity. We’ll be informing them of another colleague’s death. One of us brings a ‘counselor’ with us to soften the blow, take the tack that we’re concerned for their emotional well-being. The other takes a more physical approach. They all know Bly as an investigator. We make that suspect think we’re worried that they might be next in line.”
“Stefan is not a trained law enforcement officer.” Hell, I wasn’t even sure Stefan was a legitimate human being.
Didn’t matter. Jacob railroaded me anyway. “We need to do it now. Before they collude. Or before they disappear.”
“I’m not talking you out of this. Am I?”
“The longer you argue with me, the more chance we have of losing one of them. Or both.”
One thing I did have time for…a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. On one condition.” Psych-resistant or not, there was no way in hell I was giving my treacherous ex an opportunity to pick Jacob’s brain. “Stefan is with me.”
“Whatever you think is best.” Ha. Said the guy who’d just steamrolled me flatter than an FPMP agent in an industrial wood shredder.
I buzzed Patrick and let him know what I needed. “Let’s see. Agent Garcia.” There was the sound of a keyboard. “Here we go. He’s in the field at the moment—setting up surveillance on ex-agent Richard Duff. Medium. Huh. Did you know him?”
Einstein? Did I ever.
Chapter 20
I got to the Lakewood Manor assisted living facility five minutes early. I aim to get everywhere five minutes early, though in this particular case, I felt nervous and rushed anyway, despite the fact that Stefan had a tendency to show up whenever he was damn well ready. At least he did when we were younger. Who’s t
o say if the MO was still working for him?
Sad part was, instead of putting together a game plan for what I’d tell Garcia, I was using the camera app on my new phone to make sure my hair looked okay. I had no idea what was up with that. And I didn’t want to know.
While I watched from the lobby, a black town car let out Stefan in front of the building. He adjusted his glasses, small wire-rimmed things with smoky lenses, then strode across a steaming grate in the pavement. The warm air caught the hem of his flared coat and made it billow in the fog.
Leave it to Stefan to look dramatic just walking to the door.
As he mounted the stairs, something reared up deep inside me. A pang. Though what I might be longing for, I had no idea. Not for him. Clearly, I wouldn’t touch him if he was the last man on earth. I yearned for something way more complicated than that. An idea, maybe. The potential of something we might have been, if it weren’t for Camp Hell…or the fact that all along, he’d been blabbing all my carefully guarded secrets to anyone who cared to ask.
He got a load of me and his hazel eyes widened. “So,” he said with overdone briskness. “You’re the agent I’ve been assigned to. You must be thrilled.”
That annoying pang in my gut morphed into something a lot more familiar: anger. “I’ll need you to do some actual work. Think you can handle it?” Laying it on a little thick, I know, especially since Stefan is the last guy you want to insult, unless you’re wearing adult diapers.
But if anything, my annoyance seemed to please him. “By all means, Agent. Just tell me what to do.”
“I’m about to inform someone that his co-worker is dead. You get a read off him, see if he’s feeling anything I need to be worried about.” Even as I said it, I realized how vague the request was. Because strong emotions are difficult to put names to. Wasn’t I just wrestling with a mysterious pang myself? If I heard a colleague died and I thought I was next in line to be rubbed out, I’d feel fear. But wouldn’t I be just as scared if I was responsible, and it seemed like the net was closing in?
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