by Linda Welch
The road got rougher and we bumped along as we drove down the other side of the hill. A small white farmhouse huddled in a basin at the bottom, a large barn and stable on its east side and low outbuilding on the west. A water well towered above the roof of the house and another hill rose behind that. A propane tank bigger than any I’d seen sat near the house behind what could be a vegetable garden.
Like every property we’d passed, the farm was a small fenced enclosure in a vast sea of fields. Tall bur oak and cottonwood provided partial shade to the house and outbuildings. A stand of ponderosa pine at the rear gave some protection from the wind. A few apple trees clustered on a patchwork strip of grass and dirt facing the farmhouse.
The sun dropped below the horizon. It looked as if every inside light glowed through the farmhouse windows. Bright white security lights glared from the walls, and one shone like a beacon from atop a post tall as a steeple. We drove onto hard-packed dirt in front of the house and wove between cars, a pickup, North Platte police and county sheriff’s vehicles which nearly filled the yard. The paramedics and county coroner were still there. Officers with flashlights walked between trees and a blur of wild shrubbery.
We found a space to park and everyone got out. We met between vehicles, then Vanderkamp led us to a short, dour, white-haired man with bristling white eyebrows startling in a walnut-colored face. On the far side of fifty, he dressed neatly in black slacks, boots and a cream long-sleeved shirt open at the neck. The badge pinned to his snakeskin belt identified him as County Sheriff.
“Sheriff Simons?” Vanderkamp asked. They shook hands. “Is the crime scene clear?”
Simons had a walkie-talkie in his hand. He pressed a button and spoke into it. “Everybody out.”
“I’d like to wrap this up before morning,” he told Vanderkamp.
Vanderkamp nodded. “You can bring me up to date while Agent Gunn and Miss Banks are in there.”
Me and Gunn?
I twisted my mouth into a sour moue before saying, “Didn’t we go over this before? I work alone.”
Gunn discretely motioned for us to move away from Simons. We strolled to the small orchard, leaving the sheriff and Vanderkamp chatting. Gunn raised his palms to me. “Miss Banks, I heard you speak to Miss Hulme. Why can’t I do the same here?”
I didn’t want to tell him what first came to mind: I don’t know what I look like if I see a shade’s death through their eyes. I see it as if I watch a movie behind my eyelids, but for all I know, I may look like a freaking maniac having a psychotic episode.
“You’ll distract me, throw me off focus.”
“I’ll listen and observe, nothing more.”
I turned my eyes heavenward as I thought. I could dig in my heels again, and as the agents wanted me here, surely they’d cave? But how long would we stand out here arguing? I was desperate for privacy with Royal so I could tell him about Rio Borrego and that would not happen till we finished here.
I swung on Gunn. “What can I expect to see in there?”
I didn’t like his smile. “Nothing pleasant.”
Thanks a lot.
I glanced at Royal and saw his concern in his ridged brow and taut jaw. I tried to smile. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
So off I trotted with Gunn at my side. He pulled plastic gloves and footies from his jacket pocket and handed them to me when we reached the backdoor. I leaned on the clapboard wall and slipped the footies over my shoes. I didn’t need the gloves, I wouldn’t touch a thing, but our audience in the yard didn’t know that. I gave Gunn a wry look. “Profiler, huh?”
He shrugged both shoulders. “Easier that way.”
I looked back. Royal stood near the orchard, his hair a glimmer in the lights from the house. An officer turned on a flashlight; the beam washed over Royal, creating sparkling threads in his copper-gold hair, making him a beacon in the rapidly gathering gloom.
“Agent,” I said as Gunn opened the door, “whatever I do and say, you do and say nothing. If I look like I’m about to pass out, you don’t touch me.”
“If you do pass out, I let you go down?”
“I won’t, but you may think I’m going to.” I remained on the step. “I want your word before we go in there.”
He stepped inside. “You have it.”
I followed him in.
***
They were remodeling. Fresh, pale terracotta paint on the walls, shining new linoleum in marbled shades of beige and cream. New cabinets and countertops and a shiny beige ceramic sink sat under the window facing the yard. Cabinets along the north wall still lacked countertops. Cartons containing cabinets and a dishwasher were stacked against the south wall. An open door gave to a living room, but Gunn led me along a short passage to a tiny hall paneled in oak, barely wide enough for two people, with two open doors leading off. I glanced inside a bedroom where I saw the foot of a queen-size bed and corner of a dresser, and followed Gunn through the other door. I smelled the strong metallic tang of blood, but not rotting like in the Fensham house.
A short staircase went down to an office. With off-white walls and a mulberry carpet, the room was neat and just big enough for an oak wall unit holding books and a few bowling trophies, and a small desk loaded with books and papers which stood under a narrow window high on the west wall. A tall man clad in a black T-shirt, faded blue jeans and scuffed white sneakers stood at the desk with his back to me, a wad of papers crumpled in one hand. His smooth, shining black hair reached his waistband.
He whirled, hair flaying out, hand clenching on the papers. Brown skin, the glint of a slanting black eye.
“Miss Banks?” Gunn asked. I felt his hand on my shoulder as I opened my eyes on reality.
Disoriented, I shook off his hand.
The den didn’t look neat now. White sheets covered two bodies. One lay at the bottom of the stairs, the other between the stairs and desk. Blood spatters fanned from the bodies on the floor, over the carpet and up the wall like a huge red spider web. Blood discolored the desk and splotched a laptop, books and papers, and more which littered the floor.
The forensics team had positioned yellow cards with large numbers on them all over the room and upended, transparent plastic cups covered small objects they wanted to protect from contamination. Some could be tiny specs of bloody matter on the carpet. The team had already packed some removable items in sealable plastic bags stacked in a corner.
A woman with long black hair in a ponytail knelt facing me on the other side of the body near the desk, a body clearing lying prone. Her left hand hovered above the outline of a shoulder, her right a hairsbreadth from his lax fingers which stuck from beneath the sheet. Her head came up as Gunn and I went on down the steps. I didn’t see a mark on her. Her expression made me think she was surprised at the moment of death, but not alarmed.
I had a hunch she didn’t have time to be afraid. The killer was extraordinarily fast.
“Watch where you put your feet,” Gunn warned.
He need not have bothered. I refused to step in any blood. I stopped on the bottom step.
“Are you getting anything?” Gunn asked.
I held onto the banister so hard my knuckles were white. That the bodies would still be here did not occur to me. What I saw seemed surreal: the shade of a woman kneeling near her mortal remains and those of her husband. How do you open a conversation with a person when their body lies between you?
Nothing for it. . . .
“Hello, Gwen,” I said softly.
She stared at me for a few seconds, then her hands went to her mouth. In the room as it swarmed with police, ignored by them, she worked out what happened to her and David. Now I troop in and speak to her. Poor woman, she didn’t know what to think.
“Where’s David? Why am I here and he’s not?”
I made my hand relax. “He hasn’t . . . risen, yet. Don’t worry, he will get here.”
“But where is he now?”
“I don’t know, Gwen. I think it’s . . .
like he’s asleep. Some people take longer to wake than others.”
I looked back over my shoulder at Gunn. His face seemed paler, the scars standing out as white slashes. So he was not as blasé with this as he pretended.
As I had too many times before, I explained everything to Gwen, how I could talk to the lingering dead, that she and David would remain in their home until their killer died.
I let my gaze settle on her husband while she digested that. If I stayed long enough, would I see David materialize? Would he blink into being, or rise up from his dead body?
“I saw myself on the floor,” Gwen said. “I guessed what happened when all those officers came in and ignored me. I yelled at everyone. I tried to touch one and my hand went through him. I was terrified.”
She looked down at herself. “But you know what? I feel fine. How can I be dead when I feel no different?”
I didn’t have an explanation for her. “Gwen, who did this? What did you see?”
“I came down to use the computer and found a man here.” She rose to her feet and turned away. “He stood over there, at the desk.”
Something hit me hard in the chest and I realized it was my heart thumping in objection to what my eyes saw. I’ve seen a few badly torn-up victims, including the Fenshams, but Gwen Welsh took me by surprise, I think because she seemed untouched until she turned away and I saw her from the rear.
Imagine a woman whose back has been opened along the spine from nape to buttocks. Imagine a broken vertebrae sticking from that horrible, bloody, gaping fissure just above her hips. I can’t go into more detail, my brain won’t let me. The gruesome factor wanted to ride up my throat and spew. The killer ripped half her spine out.
I felt the blood drain from my face and sweat broke out in beads on my scalp. My armpits were damp, my skin felt cold and clammy beneath my clothes.
I brushed wisps of hair off my cheeks and brow. “What did he look like?”
“Very tall. Early to mid-twenties? He had long black hair. I mean true black, not dark brown. And his eyes were so dark, I thought they were black too, except eyes don’t come in black, do they?” She paused, went on. “His skin tone was dark, bronzed. He had high, broad cheekbones. I think he came from one of the South American countries. When I saw his face I thought of the highland Maya of Guatemala.” She swiveled to face me. “David and I were on mission there two years go.”
I got excited. This was the best description so far.
“He was . . . beautiful,” Gwen added.
If he was Gelpha, he had to be beautiful. “Okay, so you saw him at your desk. What happened then?”
“I blacked out, or thought I did.”
“You didn’t see him attack you?”
“No, nothing. One moment I was looking at him, the next I opened my eyes and,” her gaze sank to her husband’s body, “found David.”
Who must have come downstairs after her, and found her like that.
She didn’t know how the man killed her. The horrendous wound on her back - would David tell her when he rose? How did shades see each other, as they were now, or when still alive?
“Is anything missing?”
She swung her head, looking at the den. “I can’t tell if anything is gone. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Paperwork. Papers. The man in Bella Vinca looked at papers. Searching for information. He didn’t ask the victims if they had what he needed; when he didn’t find it, he killed them.
Or did he find it?
“Who’s that?” Gwen asked, tipping her chin at Gunn.
“FBI Agent Gunn.”
“Can he see me?”
“No.”
“Why is he here?”
I cocked my head at Gunn. “To watch me.”
As I stood on the bottom step, regarding Gwen from across the small room, tiny shivers made their way up my spine and along my shoulders.
***
As I walked through the kitchen with Gunn trailing me, I spun around, hauled back and slapped his face. I didn’t hold back, either. A nice, sold thwack.
He clapped one hand to his cheek as the other came up to where his jacket hung open, but he made a fist before he reached his weapon. His face was a picture, as if it didn’t know what expression to wear.
“I told you not to touch me. You gave me your word.”
He lowered his hands. My hand print stood out, white on his reddened cheek. “I apologize,” he said through his teeth. “I thought you passed out.”
“Think yourself lucky I didn’t use my fist.” I turned from him and walked out the backdoor.
Twilight had descended to night. Two big searchlights on tripods were set up, blazing hard white light on the outbuildings and surrounding trees and brush so men and women could continue their search. Royal waited with Vanderkamp, his hair a halo in the dimmer light beneath the apple trees.
I noticed Gunn tried to keep his face turned from the light.
A host converged on us as Gunn and I came out the house. They thought I was a profiler. I had to tell them something. How did a profiler decide on a profile? I’d give them something; I just hoped they would not ask on what I based my conclusions.
Vanderkamp saved me. “Give us an hour to debrief Miss Banks and we’ll get back to you.”
What a relief. I ducked my head and followed the agents through the yard to our rides. Gunn indicated Royal and I should get in back of Wesson’s cruiser. I clambered in first, Royal after. Vanderkamp took the seat next to Wesson. Gunn climbed in Gold’s pickup. We slowly wove through the other vehicles and up the hill.
Away from the farmhouse, we ran into night black as pitch. The air conditioner kicked in and the car’s interior cooled to bearable. The headlights barely made a difference, picking out rough verge and fences alongside the dirt road. Wesson turned on the wipers.
I peered at the darkness. “Is it raining?”
“Farmers water in the evening. The wind is blowing it across the road,” Royal said.
A jackrabbit raced ahead of the car before veering off beneath the fence and into the field, its rear end frantically hydraulicing. I felt imprisoned in a small, stuffy cocoon unenhanced by Wesson’s enthusiastic application of cologne.
“We need to talk ASAP and we can’t do that in an airport lounge or on the plane. I suggest we find a motel,” Vanderkamp said.
“Sounds good.” I wanted to be alone with Royal in the most desperate way and I felt tired, sapped, a familiar angst in my chest. Royal nodded agreement.
A little of the restriction in my chest dissolved. “I have to ask someone to see to Mac.”
I would not ask Janie to drive down the canyon and take Mac to her place unless I had to. I could probably talk a neighbor into letting him in the backyard later this evening and giving him his kibble. Wanda knew where I hid the spare backdoor key.
But Jack and Mel would give me hell when I got home. If only. . . .
I had an idea. I tugged my cell out my hip pocket and punched in a number. Vanderkamp watched me with narrowed eyes. The phone rang four times, then the answering machine picked up.
“Hi, this is Tiff Banks. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
I held the phone a little way from my mouth. “I must be losing it. I meant to call Wanda, ask her to take care of Mac till we get home at. . . .” I gave Vanderkamp a quizzical look.
“Tomorrow afternoon at the latest,” he said.
“Oh, okay.” I jiggled the phone. “And I dialed my number.” I snapped the cell shut.
So I sounded like an idiot; now my roommates knew when I’d be back. They would not fret the entire night and tomorrow, and take it out on me when I got home. Well, they’d probably still take it out on me, but at least I had not left them in the dark.
Then I phoned Wanda. She agreed to take care of Mac’s needs.
We crested a hill and the glow of North Platte spread before us.
“Mortensen,” Vanderkamp said, “you were a detective f
or Clarion Police Department, popular and respected. Your superiors say you could easily have risen in the ranks, yet you left the Force to work with Miss Banks.”
Royal’s jaw set. “What does that have to do with these investigations?”
“Nothing. I’m curious. Is it the nature of the work? Are you interested in the supernatural?”
The agent didn’t see the secret in Royal’s smile – if people knew what he was, they would call him supernatural.
Royal lifted the back of my hand to his mouth and caressed it with his lips. “I know or care little about the supernatural. You could say I based my decision on with whom I work, not the work itself.”
Talk about laying it on thick.
Vanderkamp went slightly pink and harrumphed deep in his throat.
Worn out, I turned my head, closed my eyes and hid my face in Royal’s shoulder, but horribly slain bodies paraded through my mind, clamoring for attention, for me to help them. I’d seen too many in the past week. If only they were dream people, not real folk whose lives were snuffed out, never to fulfill the promise life gave them. If. . . .
Royal’s strong arms gathered me in. My cheek on his chest, his heart beat as loud and steady as the whump-whump of the wipers. I snuggled in, grateful he knew how I felt. I can keep a clinical attitude for just so long when we’re on a murder investigation, then the walls come tumbling down, and I had never seen anything this ghastly.
***
Surprised and pleased the Bureau sprang for a halfway decent motel, I stood in the spacious lobby of the Hampton Inn while Agent Gunn checked us in at the desk. An elderly man peered at me through his bifocals from where he sat on a long couch.
Royal tipped his chin, signaling me to join him. We followed Gunn inside the elevator as he pressed the button for the third floor. I focused on the blank walls, barely hearing the elevator music.
We stepped out the elevator. The door tried to slide shut behind us, but Gunn held it open with his hand. “Half an hour.” He let the door close. The light indicated it stopped on the fourth floor where Gunn and Vanderkamp had a room.
