Principles of Spookology (The Spectral Files Book 2)

by S. E. Harmon

  He always ate methodically, with so much concentration, almost like there would be an exam later about his meal. If I had to guess, it was probably a side effect from his early years in foster care, years when he wasn’t sure what he’d get to eat, or when. Those were times he only talked about when I pushed, and even when he opened up, it was clear he’d rather not. Hell, I was lucky his mouth didn’t just slam shut like a disturbed clam. The topic he liked to sidestep the most was that of his late sister, Anna.

  When he was younger, Anna went missing from a group home. Her disappearance was one of the reasons he went into law enforcement in the first place. It turned out that Anna died of an accidental overdose, or at least that’s what she told me on his porch last year.

  It wasn’t all bad news, though. Danny had suspected their father for many years, and I could put that to rest. Paul McKenna might excel at shitty parenting, but he wasn’t a murderer. I hoped that would tip the scales from grief to relief. Knowing how good Danny was at taking responsibility for things that weren’t his fault, that was probably a little too optimistic.

  I still hadn’t delivered Anna’s message. I promised to let him decide when and where, and I was determined to keep my word. But part of me wondered if he resented having the choice at all.

  “You know I love you, right?” I asked.

  The skin around his eyes crinkled as he stared at me for a moment. We didn’t trot out that phrase all that often, and I preferred it that way. It made things all that more meaningful when we did.

  He leaned over and kissed my forehead like he was someone’s grandma, a move that melted my heart even further. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Do you think our relationship is dependent upon how well you do in these sessions? Because that’s not what this is about.”

  Isn’t it? What if I couldn’t get things under control? I used to think the worst thing would be telling Danny I saw ghosts and him not believing me, him thinking I was crazy or some shit like that. Now I knew the worst thing would be losing him again.

  His phone buzzed with a text, and he sat up a little to worm it out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen. “Looks like Saunders is ready with a preliminary report. Maybe he can finally shed some light on who the hell else was crammed in that trunk.”

  I nodded. The two squirrels apparently came to an agreement about the acorn and ran up the tree together, one after the other, leaving it behind. I cast him a sidelong look as he polished off the rest of his muffin. “You didn’t say it back, you know.”

  He looked at me blankly. “Say what?”

  “That you love me.”

  “In other obvious news, the sky is also blue.” He made a sound that was a little exasperated and a little fond too. “Of course I love you. More importantly, I like you.”

  “I think you need a refresher course on the difference between love and like.”

  “I know what love is, Rainstorm.” He leaned over and dropped a kiss on my downturned mouth. “Love is this unstoppable force that you have very little control over. Sometimes you love the people that you shouldn’t. Sometimes you love people who’ve hurt you over and over again.”

  I knew he was thinking of his parents—his birth mother, the drug addict, who’d been more concerned with scoring her next hit than taking care of her children. And his father, a volatile tempered man who’d been in prison most of Danny’s life for homicide. When it came to picking parents, Danny had pulled two Joker’s Wild from the deck.

  He shook his head, as if shaking off the past was that easy. “That’s love for you. Making decisions all on its own. I don’t have any say in that. I love you because my heart says so.” He sent me a crooked smile. “I like you because I say so.”

  For that alone, I could forgive him for shaking me out of bed at the crack of dawn to get bitch slapped by a guru. #Neverforgetthough.

  “I like you too,” I said quietly. “In the very best of ways.”

  We were seconds away from skipping into the sunset when something hit me—something very important. A small laugh escaped as I shook my head in amazement.

  Danny furrowed his brow. “What?”

  “It’s just so fucking hard to believe.”

  “What is?”

  “That the same man who uttered those achingly beautiful words could be the same man who gave me a Valentine’s Day card with ‘love ya, Danny’ scrawled on the bottom.”

  “I drew an arrow to the line that read ‘you’re my heart,’ didn’t I?” he demanded.

  “That you did,” I said, amused.

  “If I could say it better than Hallmark, I wouldn’t have spent almost five bucks on a card.”

  Clearly done with all the soul searching and deep talk, Danny turned the radio back up a pinch. Then he tried to break off another piece of my muffin, and I snatched it out of his reach. Yeah, I loved him—more importantly, I liked him—but that was quite enough of that.

  Chapter 12

  The ME’s office was never my favorite place to be—even less so when we were going to see a body. The building was always just a hair over the temperature of ice, and our reception from the taciturn ME was usually no better. There was also always an extremely high chance I was going to run into a ghost. I looked back at Mason dogging my steps. Nowadays, bringing ghosts with me seemed to be more my style.

  When I glanced over at Danny as we walked down the hall, he didn’t seem to be having the same sort of trepidation—he looked chipper, as he usually did when a case was heating up.

  He glanced at me. “You all right over there?”

  “Yeah. Just a little sorry I ate so much.” My stomach rumbled a bit on cue. “If I’d known Saunders was going to call, I probably would’ve put the brakes on that last muffin.”

  “You don’t have to come, you know. I can update you afterward.”

  Mason gave me an anxious look, and I sighed. “He wants me to go, so I have to go.”

  We put on gloves and masks before we went through the double doors and into the mostly stainless-steel room beyond. Modular steel cabinets and countertops spanned the back wall. The room had a very distinctive smell, a special blend used to mask the smell of advanced decomp. It smelled like a mixture of harsh disinfectant and wintergreen, and in my humble opinion, it wasn’t fucking working. They should try something stronger. Like a butane and a match.

  Saunders either didn’t notice, or had burned off his nostril hairs long ago. He was writing busily when we entered, using a dry erase marker on a glass window. He was standing next to a dead body and he didn’t seem to notice that either. My gaze flitted here and there like it couldn’t quite decide where to rest—the table full of vicious looking knives, or the heftier tool I knew was for removing the brain.

  My gaze briefly settled on the bag resting between the corpse’s knees. From experience, I knew it was filled with organs. A body was returned to the family as whole as possible, so he would put that bag in the body and sew everything up like a macabre nesting doll.

  My morning muffins threatened to reappear, and I swallowed repeatedly to get it under control. “Good afternoon, Saunders,” I said crisply, my voice a little muted from the mask. “What do you have for us?”

  “Detectives.” He capped his marker and put it on the table. An older, bristly man with white hair and eyes dark as polished obsidian, he spared little time for pleasantries. “You’re late.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Danny said smoothly.

  “Well, at least it gave me a chance to get started on Mrs. Roberts here.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of a corpse on the stainless-steel autopsy table. “Can you believe she was in a trunk for eight weeks?”

  Certainly smells like it. I glanced over at the portly blonde woman. The researcher in me couldn’t help but be morbidly fascinated. “Why is she so well-preserved?”

  “The same things the killer did to prevent smell from escaping actually preserve
d the body. And then of course, there’s the corpse wax….”

  He left the phrase dangling like bait on a hook, and like a curious fish, I had to risk a nibble. “The corpse what?”

  “Absolutely not.” Danny cut Saunders off even as he opened his mouth gleefully. “If we’re not working the case, I really don’t need to know all the grisly damn details.”

  “You don’t find it fascinating?” I asked.

  “No,” he said shortly. “Maybe you and Saunders can chat about it later. Alone.”

  “Maybe we will,” I said, sending Saunders a crooked little smile. He practically beamed in return. Figures the nicest conversation we’d ever had would be about corpse wax.

  Saunders pulled a pair of long, purple gloves from a box on the counter and walked over to a cart where he’d assembled two sets of tea-colored bones. I was practically vibrating with the urge to ask who the second body was, but I knew better than to rush Saunders when he was in his element.

  “Preliminary examination puts the larger victim as a male, Caucasian, in his thirties. Normally I wouldn’t have a name for you yet, but everything seems a little different with the PTU.” He sent me a telling look, his white eyebrows arched. “I was informed that you know this man?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I hedged. “What about the other body?”

  “Also male, but younger. Early twenties. Trauma is contained to the neck.” He eyed me again. “I don’t suppose you have a name for this one as well?”

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  He shrugged. “Thought I’d check. I sent his disarticulated jaw to the forensic odontologist for identification purposes.”

  It was all so cold and clinical. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mason circling the cart, his eyes fixed on his bones. I couldn’t really manage a word of comfort. What was there to say? That old pile of bones wasn’t him—it wasn’t anyone at all anymore.

  It was like we were here and then we just… weren’t. Anyone who’d seen a dead body came to that eerie realization. Without a soul to animate the features, a body was little more than a shell with an expiration date. I wasn’t sure if that made the thought of death easier or harder.

  I realized that Saunders was still talking and struggled to tune back in.

  “My examination shows blunt force injury to Mason’s skull. The hyoid bone was also fractured.” He touched the vee of his neck and then showed us the injury on the skeleton.

  Strangulation. I frowned. Unfortunately, that could account for a full spectrum of blunt neck trauma—hanging, throttling, chokeholds, and the like. Any method that brought on death by compression of the major airway was on the table. And if it was by the hands, well, it wasn’t quite as easy as the movies portrayed.

  “We’re probably looking for a strong male,” Danny murmured, echoing the direction of my thoughts.

  I had a few of those on my suspect board.

  The killer had probably looked Mason in the face and watched the light fading from his eyes. He probably pressed down harder, even as Mason begged and clawed at his killer’s arms, asking for that very basic function of breathing. He watched as Mason struggled for one last desperate gasp… then tightened his grip and refused even one last sweet rush of air. It was more than just personal. It was monstrous.

  The ultimate act of power.

  “Was death caused by the trauma to the neck or head?” Danny asked. “Or both?”

  “Hard to say at the moment.” Saunders looked at us accusingly. “It’s not as though you brought me any internal organs.”

  I blinked away images of FedExing him a bag of someone’s insides. When your kidneys absolutely, positively must be there overnight.

  “You have a strange wish list, Saunders,” I said. “I really hope I don’t get you in the Secret Santa raffle this year.”

  “I’ll do some experimenting to figure out the weapon that caused the head injury.” He pointed at me. “And I want a crockpot. Mine is on the fritz.”

  “Are you going to hit watermelons?” Danny asked, sounding a little too amped.

  Saunders launched into an explanation about how of cantaloupes better mimicked the shape of the human head, and other things that I would normally find fascinating. Only I was a little distracted by Mason’s distress.

  “It’s all right,” I murmured.

  His eyes went wide. “It’s not all right. Help me get back in.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said without moving my lips.

  He ignored me and climbed on the table, laying on the body, and damned if it didn’t give me a start to see his spirit settle so perfectly over it, like it belonged. I’d like to say I was a hundred percent sure it wouldn’t work… that he wouldn’t pop up on the table like something out of the fucking Thriller video. I was a man of science, for God’s sakes.

  But I’d seen a lot of inexplicable shit in the past few years.

  I was equal parts relieved and sad for him when he made a desperate noise and sat up, still half enmeshed with his bones. “You’re the medium. Do something.”

  “I’m pretty sure the guy you’re looking for is God,” I hissed.

  Luckily Danny and Saunders were still chatting about the best way to hit a cantaloupe with a nine iron, with a little too much fucking relish, in my opinion. I was getting rid of all the golf clubs in his garage, ASAP.

  I turned back to Mason. “What’s gone is definitely gone. Haven’t you seen Pet Cemetery?”

  “That’s your guide for how all this works?”

  I sighed. “I just meant that you’re on a new path now, one that I don’t even know the end of. But your journey here is over. There’s nothing left.” I lifted my hands helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you were truly sorry, you would fix this.” He lay back down and stared at the ceiling. “I need to get back. What about Luke? Who’s going to take care of Luke?”

  It didn’t seem like the time to ask if Luke had strangled him to death. “Luke is doing all right,” I finally said. “For the first time in his life, he’s standing on his own two feet.”

  “What about my mother? Who’s picking up her prescriptions?”

  “Casey.”

  “And who exactly is taking care of Casey? He’s fragile, you know.” His eyes flew wide. “Oh, God, I almost forgot about Hunter. What about Hunter? I need to go back.”

  “You can’t,” I said a little louder, just so he’d finally get it. “You just can’t.”

  “I most certainly can,” Saunders said tartly as he washed his hands at the sink. He dried off his hands with paper towels that looked rough as sandpaper. “I’ve already sent the sample to the lab.”

  He strode out of the room before I could even utter a word. When I looked back at the table, Mason had disappeared. Danny and I stripped off our masks and gloves and washed up. After a quick shared glance, we headed for the door Saunders disappeared through.

  His actual office was small and cluttered, with medical posters occupying most of the space on the walls. He looked up, briefly startled that we’d followed him in. “Yes?” he asked pointedly.

  I wasn’t deterred in the least. “How long before you’ll have an ID for the second vic?”

  “You know how this works, Detective. Cold cases don’t get priority unless you have a hot lead.”

  “Pun intended?” Danny raised his brow.

  “I couldn’t resist.” He shrugged. “I only gave you guys a sneak peek because I don’t want Christiansen doing his usual… thing.”

  I didn’t appreciate the air quotes or the dramatic fingers that accompanied them. Danny hid a grin. I had no defense because even I could admit I had no fucking patience. That wasn’t exactly an exalted quality in the cold case sector.

  My “usual thing” usually involved blowing up the ME’s phone and popping up unexpectedly until I got my results. The CSIs probably had similar complaints about me, but no one was ever in a hurry to process cold case evidence. There was always something
more important, more imminent, than a dusty old file people had already given up on. If you weren’t persistent, your evidence would be processed sometime around the next millennium.

  “I do have something for you guys before you go.” Saunders rifled through the file cabinet and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to me. “That was found in the trunk. Could be nothing, but I thought you’d want to know.”

  I turned the bag over in my hands to find a small piece of black plastic. It was about two inches long, curved and ridged. I handed it over to Danny so he could get a look at it.

  When I glanced over at Saunders for clarification, he was rifling through the small refrigerator in the corner. He pulled out a brown bag and then a little plastic container with something white and gelatinous in it. It wobbled alarmingly. Then he grabbed a spoon.

  A spoon.

  I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I blurted out, “What the hell is that?” And are you going to fucking eat it?

  “It’s part of my lunch,” he said with a scowl. He shook the container at me. “My wife makes dynamite rice pudding.”

  Danny elbowed me, and I smiled weakly. “Oh, right.”

  “I’m going to grab a sandwich from the diner next door,” he said. “I meant to have a snack earlier, but I got a little busy and there’s no eating in the lab.”

  So if it wasn’t for bloodborne pathogens, you’d eat right next to Mrs. Roberts’s well-preserved corpse? I bit down on my tongue so the question wouldn’t spill out. And frankly, I had more important matters to worry about than our ME’s questionable taste in lunch companions.

  I looked down at the evidence bag again, eying the little half-moon shaped plastic. “So what do you think this could be?”

  Saunders pointed a finger at himself. “Medical examiner.” He turned the finger on me. “Detective. Go detect.”

  Wiseass. I squinted at him. “It’s probably a good thing you work with dead people.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he muttered as he shuffled past me. “Don’t I fucking know it.”