Ghost of a Chance

by Dan Willis

  Hoping it was Danny with good news, he scooped it up eagerly.

  “Hey, handsome,” Leslie’s voice greeted him. “I tracked down the reporter you wanted.”

  “Just a second,” he said, pulling out his notebook and sitting down at the desk. “Go ahead.”

  “William ‘Billy’ Tasker, born in Georgia and studied English at Duke University. He graduated in twenty-nine and got a job with the Miami Herald. He won an award for some exposé he wrote about corruption in the state senate. After that he got hired at the New York Times.”

  “He what?” Alex was shocked. “How did that muckraker go from the Times to a rag like the Sun?”

  “I couldn’t find out,” Leslie said. “I don’t know why he left the Times or when he got hired by The Midnight Sun. I did find a story by him in the Sun that’s two years old, so he’s been working for the tabloid at least that long.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, I talked with Hannah. She wants to know how you’re doing.”

  “Tell her the police are on it now and we should know something in a day or two,” Alex said. “How is she holding up?”

  “She’s great,” Leslie said, a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “But she’s eating me out of house and home. I hope you get paid soon.”

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “She must be a nervous eater.”

  “No,” Leslie said. “I suspect she’s in a family way. She threw up this morning. Blamed it on her nerves.”

  Alex’s head dropped down on the desk. He’d been feeling the pressure to find Leroy, to get him home to his sweet wife, but that had mostly vanished now that he had the police involved. With the news that Hannah was likely pregnant, that weight dropped right back on his shoulders.

  “Leroy will be thrilled,” he said, not bothering to hide the weariness in his voice.

  “Just find him, kid,” Leslie said. “For both our sakes.”

  “Are you coming back here?”

  “No,” Leslie said. “It’s after five, I’m headed home.”

  Alex thanked her and hung up.

  Despite Hannah’s condition, there wasn’t anything Alex could do to speed Leroy’s recovery along, so he pushed them out of his thoughts.

  Turning to his notes, he couldn’t believe that Billy Tasker, the tabloid hack, had worked for the Times. A while back he’d made a friend of their sports editor, a man named Jared Watson. Alex resolved to give him a call, then remembered Leslie saying it was after five. Sports reporters didn’t work late, so he’d have to call in the morning.

  With a sigh, Alex put away his notebook and picked up the discarded rune list. Making his way back into his vault he assembled the pens, paper, and inks he would need and set to work. He started with the hardest ones first. It was an old habit he’d picked up from Father Harry.

  Always do the hardest jobs first, he would say. Then when you get down to the end and you’re tired, the work is easy.

  It had been a year since Father Harrison Clementine had died. As Alex thought of it, he was ashamed. In all that time, he hadn’t been back to the grave once since the funeral.

  Resolving to go on Sunday made him feel better, and he set to work on a complicated cleaning rune that someone wanted for a painting that had been damaged by smoke. He kept going, rune after rune, until he found himself drawing a circle inside a square then adding a symbol that looked like a lighthouse being attacked by a steam shovel.

  Once the minor restoration rune was done, he did it three more times, then crossed it off Leslie’s list, last of all, and set his pencil aside. His back ached and his hand was cramping, so he poured himself another drink, then got up to pace around a bit and get his blood flowing.

  Since the vault had no windows, he had no idea how much time had passed, but a quick glance out into his darkened office told him it must have been a few hours. He checked his watch and found it was seven-thirty.

  “Iggy’s going to be mad that I’m late,” he grumbled, heading back to the drafting table. He picked up the stack of runes he’d drawn and carried them out of the vault, shutting off the light and locking the door after him.

  Leslie had their mostly-empty cashbox in her desk drawer and Alex locked the runes in there, leaving a note on the desk telling her where to find them. In the morning she’d call the people who ordered them and, hopefully, get paid.

  He had just put on his hat when the phone in his office rang. A wave of weariness flooded him, but the thought that it might be Danny with good news impelled him back into his office.

  “Lockerby,” he said, picking it up.

  “Alex,” Iggy said.

  “I know I’m late,” Alex said with a smile. He was surprisingly glad to hear the old man’s voice. “I had a few things to finish up here. I’m just on my way home.”

  “Stay there,” Iggy said. “There are cops here looking for you.”

  Alex felt a surge of adrenaline burn away his exhaustion. Had the Mayor or Chief Montgomery changed their minds and loosed Detweiler on him?

  “I’m sending them over to you now,” Iggy went on before Alex could ask why cops wanted him.

  Iggy wouldn’t tell the cops where he was if they intended to lock them up, that much was sure.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Get your kit together,” Iggy said, his voice heavy and serious. “The ghost has killed again.”

  23

  The Seal

  It was pouring down rain when the police cruiser that picked up Alex pulled up in front of an Inner-Ring address. The Wentworth Building was a luxury high-rise, strictly upper crust. Alex remembered seeing the building listed as the address for one of the members of North Shore.

  “The Lieutenant’s waiting for you inside,” the officer who picked up Alex said. He wore a sadistic grin indicating that his pulling up on the far side of the street in the pouring rain was no accident.

  “Thanks,” Alex said. He pulled out his rune book and tore out a barrier rune, licking it and sticking it to the brim of his hat.

  “What’s that?” the driver’s partner asked.

  Alex didn’t answer, just lit the paper with a match.

  “Hey,” the driver protested as the flash paper burned away, filling the interior with light and smoke.

  “Thanks, fellas,” Alex said as the air around him distorted for a moment. The feel of the rune taking effect was so subtle that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been paying attention. He hadn’t realized it before, but he’d grown so used to the sensation of magic that he’d begun to tune it out. With the week he’d been having, he resolved to savor every bit of magic he could.

  As the cops continued to protest, Alex picked up his kit and stepped out of the car into the pouring rain. The world around him seemed to shimmer as the barrier rune repelled the rain, sending it spattering away from him. It was only a dozen yards across the street and he’d certainly been wet before, but he didn’t want to show up at a crime scene looking like a drowned rat.

  Detweiler would like that, after all, and Alex wanted to deny him any such pleasure.

  He dismissed the rune during the elevator ride up to the thirtieth floor. The man operating the elevator was short and built like a fireplug, with a square jaw and big hands. He wore a tuxedo and maintained an air of quiet dignity despite having to ferry cops and P.I.s up to a murder scene.

  “The Gordons’ apartment is to the right,” he said when they reached their destination.

  Alex stepped off the elevator and found himself in a short hallway with only three doors. One was the door that accessed the stairs. The other two were for the apartments on this floor. That idea made Alex shake his head. How big were these apartments?

  At the right end of the hall, a policeman in a blue uniform stood guard at an open door. Alex could see many more officers moving about inside.

  “Lieutenant Detweiler sent for me,” Alex told the man at the door.

  “You Lockerby?”

  When Alex n
odded, the man stepped aside.

  “There you are,” Detweiler growled as soon as Alex came in. “It’s about time.”

  “Sorry Lieutenant,” Alex said, keeping his voice and expression neutral. “Your boys went to my apartment, but I was at my office.”

  “Spare me the details,” he said, clearly in a foul mood. “I need you to look over this crime scene.”

  Alex looked around. At least half a dozen officers and detectives that Alex could see were milling around. The apartment was enormous. From where he stood, Alex could see a sitting room, formal dining room, a solarium, and what looked like a library in the distance.

  The elevator man had said the crime occurred at the Gordon residence. Marcellus Gordon was one of the names on the North Shore Development articles, and Alex knew from the research Leslie had done that he was married.

  “Where is Mrs. Gordon?”

  “She was in hysterics,” Detweiler said. “I had some of the boys take her over to the hospital.”

  “Is there a back way out of this apartment?” Alex asked.

  “There’s a back door that goes out to a stairwell, but it’s locked and barred from the inside.”

  “Did you double the guard here like the Chief said?”

  Detweiler’s face turned red and his eyebrows knit together.

  “I didn’t bring you here to ask stupid questions,” he exploded. “Of course I did. There were two uniforms in the lobby and three up here, one outside the door and two in the apartment.”

  Alex wanted to find fault with that just to be a contrarian but he had to admit, five officers should have been plenty.

  “What did your men say happened?” he asked.

  Detweiler looked like he wanted to stay angry, but his color faded and he sighed.

  “Come with me,” he said, then headed off through the parlor to the formal dining room. A huge table of light wood with gold art-deco inlays occupied this room, with seating for six. A mahogany sideboard held a full service of gleaming silver and a china cabinet opposite shimmered with dishware.

  To the left a door on a swinging hinge led into the kitchen. It was bigger than the dining room with massive countertops, an electric stove and range, and a cold box big enough to keep a side of beef. In the center of the room was a simple dining table with four chairs around it. A tea service had been laid out on the table and Alex saw four cups and saucers along with bread and butter and the teapot. There were scuff marks on the tile floor around one of the chairs.

  “So your men were here, having tea with Mrs. Gordon when it happened,” Alex stated, assessing the scene.

  Detweiler’s face went red again, but Alex held up a placating hand.

  “Just an observation, Lieutenant,” he said. “No judgement.”

  “Mr. Gordon went upstairs to his office,” Detweiler explained. Alex wondered just how big this apartment was that it had an upstairs. “About five minutes later, the officers report that they heard him fall down.”

  The Lieutenant led the way through a door on the far side of the kitchen and into a long, paneled hallway. This ran down to a spiral staircase that led up to a small sitting room. Another door and short hall later let them to Mr. Gordon’s office. It was quite the most elegant office Alex had ever seen, with a small mahogany desk, comfortable-looking chairs, a gas fireplace, and bookshelves on the side walls. Frosted glass sconces lined the walls, radiating white light, but reflecting purple light back on the walls through a bit of colored glass. The only thing out of place in the room was Mr. Gordon’s corpse.

  He lay face up next to a thick pool of his own congealing blood. Alex could smell the tang of iron in the air. There was far too much blood for the ghost’s usual stab wounds. On top of that, a red line of spatter ran up the wall near the body.

  “Our ghost was in a hurry,” Alex guessed.

  “That’s the way we figure it,” Detweiler said, nodding at the body. “His throat’s been cut.”

  “You kept your men out,” Alex said, noticing that the carpet was mostly undisturbed.

  “Once my men called it in, yeah,” Detweiler said.

  Alex looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “There are only two ways into this apartment, Lockerby,” he said. “Through the front door and the back stairs. I checked the door to the stairs, it’s locked and bolted. That means that the ghost got in here past five alert policemen.” He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Unless this King fellow is really a ghost, he must be using magic. That’s your department, so get in there and find out how this maniac is doing his disappearing act.”

  Alex set his kit down on the floor and took out his multi-lamp, ghostlight burner, and oculus.

  “What’s that for?” Detweiler asked Alex as he readied his gear.

  “This lets me see magical residue,” Alex explained. “If someone used magic to get in here, this should reveal it.”

  “How would someone do that?” the lieutenant asked. “I mean if it was a sorcerer doing this, they’d just turn these guys into toads or something, right?”

  Alex agreed. This didn’t seem like something a sorcerer would cook up. With their power they could exact much more painful and personal revenge without leaving a trace. Whoever was doing this was getting the best revenge they could manage.

  So, Alex thought, if I wanted to murder someone to avenge my dead wife, how would I do it?

  “A powerful runewright could do it,” Alex said, sweeping his lantern carefully over the body. “There’s a thing called a linking rune that allows a runewright to connect a person with an anchor.”

  “And that lets you walk through walls?”

  “No,” he admitted. So far there were no traces of magical residue on the body, so he expanded his search to the room. “But when the rune is activated, it moves the recipient from where they are to wherever the anchor is.”

  “Like when sorcerers teleport?” Detweiler said.

  “Exactly like that.”

  “What?” Detweiler almost yelled. “You knew that all along, but you didn’t say anything until now? That would explain everything.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Alex corrected him. “King might be able to use it to escape from the murder; runewrights even call these things escape runes. That said, how did he get in?”

  “The same way,” Detweiler said, as if it were obvious.

  “In order for that to work,” Alex explained, “King would have had to get into this room at some point and draw an anchor rune in here to connect the spell.” Alex swept the ghostlight around the room. “If there was an anchor rune in this room, it would have left magical residue that would be obvious. Think of it as the magical equivalent of a scorch mark.”

  “That would still work,” Detweiler said. “King got in through the back stairs, then locked and bolted the door. He kills Gordon and uses one of these escape runes to get away.”

  “There are two problems with that,” Alex said. “The first is that escape runes are powerful, they’re expensive, and there aren’t many runewrights who can make them.”

  “That doesn’t mean that King didn’t get his hands on enough to get his revenge,” Detweiler said. “What’s the other problem?”

  “Escape runes are fueled by the user’s life energy. That means that every time King used one, he’d be burning a year or more off his own life. The spell could very well kill him at any time.”

  “You said that King’s wife died, his son disgraced some skirt and disappeared, and he spent twenty years in prison,” Detweiler pointed out. “Sounds to me like he’s a man who doesn’t have anything to lose.”

  Alex hated to admit it, but the Lieutenant had a point. He and Iggy had ruled out using escape runes, but that was before he knew about Duane King and his story. Detweiler was right, King was a man with very little to lose, one who might be willing to trade years of his own life for revenge.

  “Do me a favor, Lieutenant,” he said. “Go ask the men you had stationed here if they checked the door
to the back stairs when they came on duty. Also ask them if they swept the apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Alex said. “If it was locked and bolted when they got here, and they cleared the apartment, then we still have the problem of how the ghost got in.”

  Detweiler grumbled, but headed back down the hall and down the spiral stair. Alex ground his teeth together. He’d swept the entire room with his ghostlight and the only magic he found were three alchemical bottles on a shelf. One potion was to regrow hair, one was for indigestion, and one was for virility.

  That one looked well used.

  Alex blew out the burner and replaced it with the silverlight. This time the room lit up with bluish-purple marks, mostly fingerprints. Alex examined the blood on the floor. There was cast-off spatter from the knife, indicating that the killer was left-handed.

  As Alex examined the spatter on the wall he wondered why there didn’t seem to be any voids.

  The killer must have come up behind him, which means he’s right-handed, not left-handed.

  The killer being behind Gordon explained the lack of any voids where the dead man’s blood would have landed on the killer, but what about the knife? It was unlikely that the killer had a rag handy to wrap up the bloody knife, so it must have dripped on the ground.

  Kneeling down, Alex examined the floor carefully. There were a few drops of blood outside the pool. That explained it — the blood pool was obscuring the cast-off from the bloody knife.

  Standing up, Alex mimed coming up behind Gordon and cutting his throat. He would have had to step back when the body fell.

  Turning his light on the floor again, Alex found a tiny stain out and away from the body. It looked like it had been obscured by someone walking on it, either the killer or one of the policemen who found the victim. After a minute of searching, he found another near Gordon’s desk.

  The waste basket next to the desk was made of a tightly woven wire. As Alex examined it, he found one last drop of blood on the top of the narrow rim.