The Ghoul Next Door

by Victoria Laurie

  “Yeah, I know, it’s not perfect, but maybe those two got a little confused when they wrote their names in the closet. It looks a little like a tree, though, when you just look at the image. I think that maybe Mike may be one of our older killers.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Run with that theory and see what you can come up with. If you’re right, then you’ll want to look for someone maybe in the sixties or even earlier. And if that’s the case, then maybe we can rule him out due to age.”

  Gil nibbled on a potato chip. “I wish I could find this Lester Atkins,” he said. “Or who that freaking house belongs to.”

  “What did you guys find out about it?” I asked, remembering that Gil and Kendra had been left to that task when I’d bolted the day before.

  “Not much.”

  “How much is not much?” I pressed, because Gil was looking guilty.

  “We blew off the search right after you left and went to find food and drink.”

  I sighed. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you called Kendra and gave the search another go.” As that came out of my mouth, I remembered that I still hadn’t heard from her. Reflexively I patted my rear pocket. Then I remembered that I’d left my cell upstairs in my messenger bag. I excused myself and headed up to retrieve it. There was a message from Kendra. I tapped the voice mail as I hurried back down the stairs. “Hey, M.J., listen, I’m always careful when I’m working this kind of a story, and you can explain all you want about this morning, but first I think I’ve figured out the link between this Sy the Slayer and the Stoughton Street house. I’ve got a deadline to make and some other stuff to run down first, though, so plan to meet me in the parking lot of the nursing home across from the hospital a little later. I’ll call you after three with the time and I’ll fill you in when we meet up.”

  I walked back into Gilley’s place and told the guys about Kendra’s message. “Does that mean I don’t have to call her and go back to that dungeon?” Gil asked.

  “Dunno, Gil. Depends on what she tells me this afternoon.” I then heard a beep and looked at my phone. “Dammit,” I said as an image of the battery popped up with a red stripe across the bottom.

  “What?” Heath asked.

  “My phone’s out of juice. Gil, you got a charger nearby?”

  “On the counter,” he said. “You can take mine off,” he added. “I’ll put it back on later.”

  I put my phone on the charger and stared at it a little frustrated. There wasn’t any other lead we could track down before I talked to Kendra, and I really wanted to go for a run to work off some of my anxiety, but I didn’t want to leave the condo without a phone. “Gil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I borrow your phone while I go for a run?”

  Gilley narrowed his eyes at me. “No way, M.J. If memory serves me, I believe you’re on your fourth phone in less than a year and they’re crazy expensive. You have a habit of destroying your gizmos and I need that phone. Besides, my charge was pretty much out too, and as I just plugged it in when you went upstairs to get yours, I don’t think there’s enough battery for you to use it.”

  “What’s with all our phones not holding charges?” I said.

  “Can probably blame it on Sy,” Heath said, before he pulled his own phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “Take it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m gonna stay here and keep an eye on things.” He motioned subtly with his chin to Gil, and I understood. Gil was likely to get tired of wearing his vest at some point and Heath wanted to be nearby should Sy show up unexpectedly.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go,” I said.

  “Oh, you should go,” Heath said. “Besides, there’s not much we can do on this case until you hear back from Kendra. Go for a run. It’ll do a lot to settle you.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him. “Thanks, sweetie.”

  Gilley yawned loudly as he sat back and gave a pat to his full belly. “Y’all do your thing. I’m gonna get in another nap.”

  I waved to them and headed out.

  The run was just what I needed and I went a little longer than I’d planned. Heath was right. It was the perfect day for a good long run. When I got back to the condo, I snuck into Gilley’s place and saw him sleeping comfortably on the couch, his vest draped over him like a blanket. I tiptoed over to my phone and took it off the charger, plugged in his, then headed upstairs, where I found Heath on the computer typing away. “How was your run?” he asked absently.

  “Really good. You were right. It’s a gorgeous day.”

  Heath didn’t say anything else and I walked over to peer over his shoulder. “What’cha doing?”

  “I’m digging into Murdering Mike. Gilley showed me how to get into this database where I could fish around for anything that might look like it could fit.”

  “He taught you how to do his dirty work, huh?”

  “He’s a talented hacker,” Heath said. “And I’m a quick learner.”

  “Any luck?”

  Heath sighed; sitting back, he swept a long lock of hair out of his eyes. “Nothing yet. I’ve been going year by year, and I’m almost done with the sixties. Although, there was a string of murders that went unsolved close to that neighborhood, but the women were all strangled.”

  I shook my head. “In every other case the women were stabbed and/or their throats were slashed,” I said. “Doesn’t fit that Sy would get the men he possessed to change methods.”

  “My thinking too.”

  “The thing that puzzles me is this elusive murder weapon. I mean, has anyone done any kind of comparison to the wounds of the other murders? I know it sounds crazy, but what if, in each case, it was the same murder weapon?”

  Heath’s brow furrowed. “You think?”

  I shrugged. “It could be,” I said. “I mean, how else is it that in every single case the knife used just vanishes? What if the knife originally belonged to Sy, and he has the men use it to murder these women and then he has them stash it in a familiar place to him so that the next killer can find it?”

  “The only familiar place it could be would be the house on Stoughton,” Heath said, and I could see an idea sparking in his eyes. “You up for a road trip over to that house to snoop around again?”

  I checked my watch. It was almost three. Kendra was going to call me soon to tell me what time to meet up, but I could certainly go with Heath and root around with him. “Okay, but if Kendra calls, we may have to go meet her.”

  “Sure.”

  “And we’re both wearing vests,” I told him.

  “Okay,” he said. I knew I’d get no argument there.

  “What about Gil?”

  “I checked on him fifteen minutes ago and he was sleeping like a baby under the vest. I think as long as he’s covered in magnets, he’ll be okay.”

  “Good,” I said. “Let me take a really quick shower and we’ll go.”

  Heath and I were in the car and headed to Stoughton Street just ten minutes later. When we got there, it was pretty obvious that the police had already had a run through the place. The front door was smeared with fingerprint dust and when we cupped our hands and peered through the glass window, we could see that much of the home had been emptied.

  Heath stood back and looked at me. “How’s your radar for finding stuff?”

  “Not great. Yours?”

  “Not bad.”

  I waved a hand at him, “After you, then.”

  Heath stood back from the house and stared down at the ground. My own feelers could sense him flipping on his radar and searching the area for anything that might point to a murder weapon. He then lifted his chin and said, “This way.”

  I followed him around back to the bedroom window. Heath walked right up to it and pulled up on the sill. It lifted with a bit of a creak
. “You’re going in there?” I asked anxiously. Not only was it breaking and entering, but I was worried about Sy the Slayer making another attempt to get into Heath’s head. Even though he had his vest on, I still worried that he might be vulnerable.

  “Yeah, I’m going in,” he said. “You coming?”

  I bit my lip. I was normally a straight-as-an-arrow kind of girl, and breaking the law wasn’t something I was ever comfortable with. But this was a special circumstance. “I guess,” I muttered, moving over to the window.

  Heath went in first and I followed. The room felt brighter and then I realized why—it’d been freshly painted.

  As if we were both thinking the same thing, Heath and I moved to the closet and he opened it up. The interior gleamed with a fresh coat of white paint. “Shit,” he said.

  “Do you think Eades knew the police were likely to visit?” I asked.

  “If he’s in the loop about what goes on here, then, yeah, probably.”

  “Do you think he has the murder weapon?” I asked next. “Or could he be the right-handed guy we’re looking for?”

  Heath shook his head. “Don’t know, Em. He was a little gruff when we met him, but I don’t know that I got a killer vibe off him.”

  “Me either,” I said with another sigh. I turned away from the closet and walked around the small bedroom. All Luke’s stuff had been removed, but the place still had a stifling quality to it.

  “Where else should we look?” I said.

  Heath didn’t answer, so I turned around only to find him still staring at the closet. “Heath?”

  My sweetie bent down and ran his hand across the carpeted floor. I moved to peer over his shoulder. “What is it?” I asked.

  “There’s something under here,” he said, and I realized he still had his radar turned on and was feeling out the place for any evidence left behind.

  I bent down too and waited for him to figure out what he was picking up on. At last he reached into the far left corner and tugged on the edge of the carpet. It came up easily. “Would ya lookit that?” Heath whispered.

  Under the carpet was a thin plank of wood that didn’t belong with the other planks. Heath fiddled with the edge of it to get it to lift up and there we saw a narrow well, the perfect place to hide a knife. Heath got out his cell and clicked it on to shine some light into the well. It was empty except for a few smudged rusty-looking spots along the side and at the bottom of the well.

  I sucked in a breath. “Is that blood?”

  “I’d lay odds that it is,” Heath said.

  “So that’s where the murder weapon for at least one, if not all, of the murders has been hiding.”

  “Yep.”

  I put a hand on Heath’s shoulder. “Does your radar sense that it might still be here?”

  “No,” Heath said. “I’m thinking this empty well was what I was supposed to find.”

  I felt a cold shiver snake up my spine. “We find that knife, we find our killer.”

  Heath replaced the thin plank of wood and pressed the carpet back into place. “What’re your thoughts about telling the police about it?”

  I wavered with indecision. “I don’t know. I mean, maybe they already found it?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it, Em. I think they poked around in the closet, saw that it was empty, and moved on.”

  “So what do you think? Should we call and tell them about that hiding spot? And the names on the back of the closet? And if we do, how do we tell them we know about it?”

  Heath stood up and closed the door. “Let’s not call them yet,” he said. “It could make things even worse for Luke. For now let’s lie low and wait for Kendra to call.”

  I looked down at my watch. It was almost four. “I wish she’d call already.”

  “She probably got tied up with something. Come on, let’s head back to your place and chill out until we hear from her.”

  We drove back to the condo in relative silence, both of us tense after being in the Stoughton Street house.

  When we entered my condo, I found Gilley on my couch with Doc on his shoulder. “Hey, baby!” Doc called, adding a wolf whistle.

  I couldn’t help but smile. Doc had this little birdie voice that was most similar to my voice at the age of eleven when he’d first come into my life. Sometimes he could imitate Gilley’s deeper voice and sometimes he used my adult voice, but for most new words he learned, he kept it in that sweet upper octave.

  “Your phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Gil said moodily.

  My brow furrowed and I took the cell out of my back pocket. “No, it hasn’t.”

  Gil lifted the cell next to him high in the air. “Yes, it has. You took my phone and left me yours.”

  I felt a jolt of alarm and clicked the phone in my hand to turn it on. Sure enough Michel’s photo greeted me. It was Gilley’s wallpaper. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled, stomping over to the couch. “I took the phone off the charger!”

  “Which was my phone,” Gil said without a hint of apology. “I unplugged yours after it was charged and put mine on.”

  “How the hell was I supposed to know that?” I snapped, grabbing the phone out of his hand and throwing his on the couch. I was so mad because I knew I’d likely missed Kendra’s call. “And why the hell didn’t you answer my phone when it rang and call me on yours if you knew I had it?”

  “You had yours locked,” Gilley snapped back. “Jeez, M.J., it’s not my friggin’ fault!”

  I knew I owed him an apology, but I was too wound up and anxious. I quickly unlocked my screen and saw that I had two voice mails from Kendra. I motioned for Heath to follow me out the door and listened to the first voice mail as we raced down the stairs. “Hey, M.J., it’s Kendra. I’m finally free. Let’s meet at four o’clock. The parking lot of the nursing home right across from the hospital. Man, do I have a great lead to tell you about!”

  The voice mail ended and I swore several more times as Heath and I raced to the car. “She wanted to meet at four!” I growled as we got in, and Heath squealed the tires as he backed out of the space. “Damn Gilley!”

  “It’s only quarter past,” Heath said. “We can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  I called Kendra to tell her that we were on our way, but I got her voice mail. “Son of a . . . ,” I muttered while I waited to leave her a message. Finally it clicked over and I said, “Kendra, it’s M.J. I’m so sorry. Gilley had my phone and I didn’t realize you’d called. We’re on our way. We should be there by four thirty. Please call me if that’s an issue.”

  I hung up and laid my head back against the seat rest, so frustrated that I’d missed her call. “Hey,” Heath said, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “It’ll be okay, Em.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and let it out nice and slow, trying to calm my nerves. Then I tapped the phone screen again and clicked on Kendra’s next voice mail. “Hey, M.J., not sure if you’re getting my messages. I’m gonna send you an e-mail just in case. Hope something gets through. Okay, call me back if you can.”

  I switched from the voice mail over to e-mail and read Kendra’s message, which was essentially the same as what she’d already told me on the voice mail. “Leave it to her to be cryptic about this big lead of hers,” I muttered.

  “Try calling her again,” Heath suggested.

  I did and the line picked up, but I didn’t hear anyone say anything. “Hello?” I said. “Kendra?”

  Something odd sounded in the background. It was a sort of wet gurgle. “Kendra?” I repeated, pulling the phone away to check the contact ID and make sure I’d dialed right. “Hello? Hello?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to listen. It was the oddest thing—I could hear a sort of liquid bubbling, but not much else. Maybe some traffic in the background, but nothing intelligible. “Kendra?” I said loudly. “Can you hear me?”

 
“What’s going on?” Heath said.

  I gripped the phone tightly. Alarm bells were starting to go off in my head, and I just knew Kendra was in trouble. “Kendra!”

  With two beeps the phone disconnected.

  I dialed right back and waited with mounting panic as the phone just rang and rang, then finally went to voice mail. “Kendra! It’s M.J. If you’re in trouble, just hit the callback button!” I hung up the line and crossed my fingers. No calls came in. “She’s in trouble!” I said, turning to Heath.

  “We’re almost there.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

  “How far?” I asked even as I turned my head right and left to see where we were.

  “A few blocks,” he told me.

  My knees bounced with anxiety. Should I call the police? Would we get to Kendra quicker? Was she even in the place she said to meet us? Maybe she was somewhere else and in trouble.

  Heath pushed the accelerator and darted around other cars as he zoomed down the street. I had to grip the handle over my door to hold on while he made a very sharp right turn. The car jolted as it hit an uneven elevation and Heath screeched to a halt in the first available parking space. We jumped out of the car and looked frantically around. “That’s her car!” I yelled, pointing to the silver Honda across the parking lot. “Kendra!” I shouted, darting toward her car.

  Heath came up right next to me and we ran stride for stride to the car. As we got within a few yards, however, I saw a smudge of bright red against the car door. “Oh, God!” I gasped, knowing it was blood.

  Heath reached out and grabbed my arm, halting me. “Wait!” he said, looking around. “Just wait, Em!”

  I pulled against his grip. “It’s hers!” I said, close to panic. “She’s hurt!”

  Heath was looking all around and he moved with me to the car. He peered inside the vehicle and shook his head; then he looked to the right and left sides of it and shook his head again. “Where?” he said. “She’s not here, Em. . . .”

  “Kendra!” I shouted. Some people coming out of the nursing home looked over at me, but I ignored them. “Kendra!”