The Girl In White

by Shannon Reber

  Now, Safe*Zone’s security system was the best in the world. It had never been tampered with after they had asked me to rewrite my algorithm to keep people from doing what I had done.

  Safe*Zone was the reason I had gotten the free ride offer to MIT. So far as I knew, they contacted my mom several times a year to offer me a job.

  The police had been less impressed by me than Safe*Zone had. The cops had taken me into a room very much like the one I was in and put the fear of God into me. Or they’d made me more careful.

  The first thing I’d done when I got home after that stay in the holding room was to write an algorithm to hide everything I did. I didn’t leave a single footprint anymore. That particular algorithm could probably earn me enough money to buy a country. There was no way I would sell it.

  I wasn’t interested in helping hacktavists with their causes. I had my own causes to champion so learned to hide in plain sight.

  Detective Bukowski leaned back in his chair, his arms folded as he looked at me. “Your record may be sealed but I was one of the officers who had to bring you in. It sticks out in my memory,” he said and shook his head. “Your skills seriously impressed our tech guys. They couldn’t figure out how someone so young had even understood how to get past the system. The thing I remember most was the look on your face when your mom walked in. I’ve seen the way abused children look at their parents and the mix of terror and belligerence on your face still makes me want to arrest her.”

  I tipped my chin back, my nose crinkled in confusion. “My mom never laid a hand on me,” I stated, baffled why he would think that.

  “Abuse isn’t always physical, Miss Meyer.”

  I turned my eyes down to look at my hands folded on the table. I did not want to talk about my mom. I had come there for a reason. It had nothing to do with my past.

  I didn’t look away from my hands as I began to speak, not wanting to see pity in his eyes. “I don’t believe that Manuel Brumoso and CJ Tucker killed themselves,” I blurted out before beginning to fill in details.

  I skated over the fact that I had hacked into the ME’s database to look at the pictures. I made it sound as though the memory had just come to me. The fact that the string to Emma’s sweatshirt hadn’t been there was proof in my mind.

  Bukowski didn’t look like he was at all blown away by my revelations. “Miss Meyer, I appreciate the fact that you chose to bring this information to us. There’s nothing about what you told me which justifies the idea of exhuming the body of your friend.”

  I shuddered in horror at that idea and shook my head wildly. “No. I’m not asking you to do that. I’m asking you to look into it. I think that whoever killed Manuel and CJ also killed Emma. I know it.”

  “How do you know that, Miss Meyer?”

  I paused, unable to tell him it was because Emma’s ghost had begun appearing to me. He’d have a psych consult called before I could even blink. Instead, I went with something he might be able to believe.

  “There was something about the body that reminded me of Emma when we saw CJ last night. I’ve been trying to figure out what it was and the more I think about it, the more certain I become. Whoever killed Emma killed Manuel and CJ.”

  “You think someone out there is targeting you?”

  Me? Why would he think that? I opened my mouth to tell him that wasn’t true. The look on his face brought me up short.

  Bukowski folded his arms over his stomach, that pose obviously meant to show me his disbelief of all I’d said. “I don’t have time for this, Miss Meyer. If you want to tell me the truth, I will listen. If you want to keep spinning lies and half-truths for me, I’ve got an investigation to run.” He stood up and turned toward the door. When he was next to me, he stopped and pulled a card from his pocket. “The truth is all I’m willing to listen to,” he reiterated and walked away.

  SIXTEEN

  I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to do. What I did know was that I needed help. I wasn’t a cop or an investigator. I was an eighteen-year-old girl with a lot more baggage than I wanted to contemplate.

  I took out my phone and began to do another search. I should go talk to Ian. It was so much easier to chicken out. What I did instead, was run a search for the paranormal investigator I’d found online the day before.

  It was probably a stupid idea. I couldn’t come up with another. I needed far more caffeine and maybe even a few hours of sleep. Only one of those was possible right then.

  It almost made me trip over my own feet as I walked into a gas station. Several of the girls from the party were leaving. Infinity shot me a sneer and pitched her voice loud enough for the whole gas station to hear her. “Oh look, little Einstein has removed her claws from Ian. Maybe he finally realized that hanging out with a criminal was a bad move for his social life,” she shrieked with a sneer.

  I ignored her and walked over to the drinks cooler, taking out a six-pack of energy drinks. I was going to need every one of them. With so much going on in my head, it was easy enough to stay awake. What wasn’t easy was keeping my mind from going to the far darker places like it took me to when exhaustion wrapped its arms around me.

  She continued to mutter with her friends like she truly believed putting me down would heighten her in the eyes of the guys around us. There were quite a few and they did indeed seem besotted by her. I couldn’t have cared any less if I tried. It appeared that only made them more determined to put me down.

  I closed my eyes and counted quietly to myself. I wanted to turn around and tell Infinity to grow up. I wanted to, though didn’t. If I let go of my temper, it would take me days to reel it all in.

  I paid for my drinks and turned to leave, that time almost bumping into Dylan. It seemed I had picked the absolute wrong gas station to stop at.

  He shot me a wide grin. “So our boy finally admitted he has feeeeeelings for you, didn’t he?” he asked and laughed loudly as he motioned over his shoulder toward the girls. “Only way the scags would be out for your blood today.”

  I didn’t respond. I had to get out of there fast. I needed a boost of energy and a slew of answers. It was the only way to keep me from going postal.

  Dylan pulled me around and grinned in the same charming way he’d been doing since the age of six. “If you ever think about using your voice box again, you should talk to Ian. He’s a tiny bit messed up. That Blossom girl called him a few hours ago and he went ballistic. I haven’t seen him that mad in years. He actually argued with his dad when he called not long after he hung up with Blossom. Ian doesn’t argue with his parents, ever,” he reminded me, his usually snarky expression dimmed by what seemed to be worry for his friend.

  I closed my eyes and groaned. Why would Blossom have done that? Why would she tell Ian of my suspicions about him? Why wouldn’t she leave it alone?

  I turned my head down, sure Dylan knew everything that had happened. “You’re right. Ian only ever argued with me,” I agreed and worry gnawed at me as well.

  Like he had chosen to look over my lack of faith in Ian, Dylan quirked his brows at me. “Did you know CJ?”

  I shook my head, my mind flashing to his body dangling over the trail. A shiver passed its way over me, horrified by so many things recently.

  Dylan blew out a loud breath. “He was a good guy, almost as much a boy scout as Ian.”

  I looked out the windows of the gas station to distract myself from the anxiety that rose inside me. It didn’t particularly surprise me to find that those girls were still there. They looked like they planned to ambush me or something, all of them staring in at us with poorly disguised rancor.

  I didn’t have time for them. Infinity was nothing more than a troll. I had strong feelings about such people and not a single one of those feelings was complimentary.

  Dylan glanced in the direction I looked and let out a derisive chuckle. “Oh, you’re going to get shivved,” he said and gave me a wink. “Get ready. I’m about to take one for the team.”


  Before I could say a word, he walked out of the gas station and moved to stand next to Infinity. He gave her his most charming smile and began flirting in such an open way, it was almost embarrassing to see.

  Those girls lapped it up. All of them clung to him like cats on catnip. It was appalling considering the fact he was, so far as I knew, dating Serena.

  Because he’d done it to distract those girls, I decided to ignore that particular violation of the friend code. It didn’t make me happy but I wouldn’t go and blab about it to Serena. There WERE uses for the kind of charm he possessed and he had used it for my benefit. Looked like he might actually be a friend.

  I waved to him as I pulled out of the parking area. The warmth of friendship was a nice comfort after all the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. It was like the hugs from Darlene and my dad, relieving me of some of my burden.

  I guzzled down one of the energy drinks and allowed my mind to flicker through everything I needed help with. Who had known Emma, Manuel, and CJ? Who could possibly want to kill them in the exact same way? Why had Emma begun appearing in front of me? What did it all mean?

  I was used to answers coming to me in a finger snap. I was not at all accustomed to things not making sense to me. School had always been so easy, I didn’t have to try at all. This was a very different kind of education than I was used to.

  To throw everything I had always believed to be truth out the window and open my mind to the idea that death was not the end . . . yeah, that made my brain hurt. Legends were things I had always believed to be nothing more than an escape from reality. What if that wasn’t true? What if Keats had it right?

  I grimaced at that idea. Keats wanted a story. Likely, what he would do was take a small segment of what we had both learned and turn it into something huge. I would have to keep an eye out for any articles he wrote and be ready to shut it down fast.

  It surprised me as I pulled up in front of the address listed on the site, to find that it was an old apartment building. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. Somehow, it was welcoming . . . at least sort of.

  I took in a deep breath and got out of my car. I had no idea if this was a colossal mistake or not. If I could get some answers, it didn’t seem like it could possibly be a bad idea.

  The only real issue with my plan was that I didn’t have a lot of money to throw around. If they’d let me set up a payment plan or something, I’d be able to hire them. Otherwise, I might have driven across the city for no reason.

  The interior of the building was clean but old and very dated. Everything from the faded brown all-weather carpeting of the halls to the weird, copper striped light fixtures all made the place both dark and a bit shabby. It looked like the set of a zombie movie or something.

  That thought almost made me smile. Almost. I held it back and stopped in front of the door the site had listed as the paranormal investigator’s office.

  A sign next to the door read ‘PI Erkens,’ with a shady figure of a guy holding out his hand as the business’ logo. It was a kind of creepy image. The thing that struck me, was the fact I had met an investigator the night before whose name was Erkens.

  Could it be the same guy? Was it possible that he was already working on the case? If he was, who was paying him?

  I knocked on the door, taking out my phone as I did. The guy had said his name was TC Erkens. Okay. I needed to find out if it was the same guy.

  My mouth fell open when I began to read the information that came up. TC Erkens had been a police officer for thirty-five years before he had been asked to retire because of a failed psych evaluation after a post-incident counseling session. I wanted to read further. That was when the door opened.

  And it was the guy from the night before. His bulldog’s expression got even surlier when he saw me.

  Before he could say anything to boot me out, I held out my hand between us. “My name is Madison Meyer and I’d like to talk to you about what I saw last night,” I said boldly, praying he wouldn’t take the old man’s stance that I was too young to know the truth about the world.

  He glowered at my hand before he made a harrumph noise and beckoned me in.

  I dropped my hand, my eyes moving all around as he closed the door behind us. The place looked like it hadn’t been dusted in twenty years or so. Papers, books, cork-boards, and filing cabinets were so crammed into the space, I could hardly turn a full circle. That was when the smell of pierogis hit me in the face. It was my favorite food and I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day. I almost drooled as the glorious, buttery scent wafted through the air toward me.

  Erkens shot me a look of disgust before he took out a take-out carton and unceremoniously dumped two of those glorious pastries on a paper plate. “I won’t be able to concentrate on whatever you’re saying if I have to listen to your stomach grumbling,” he said and motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs.

  The chair he’d motioned me to was so covered by books and papers, there was no way to sit. Since that was where he’d pointed me to, I gathered up the detritus and set it precariously on the top of the stuff in the other chair. When that was done, I sat and gratefully picked up the plate.

  A moan of pure pleasure escaped my lips as I took the first bite. I was starving, yes. The thing was, they were the best pierogis I’d ever eaten. “Where did you get these? They’re amazing,” I asked through my mouthful, too much in awe to bother with proper manners.

  “A place I like to call, my kitchen,” he said grumpily as he polished off his own meal and began glugging water out of a gallon jug next to him.

  I stared at him, again awed. “Takeout is the only way I’ve ever had them.” I motioned to the container. “My best friend’s mom always did stuff like that, using takeout containers as storage.”

  He frowned and jutted his chin out in an impatient way. “Miss Meyer, you—”

  “Madison,” I corrected, unwilling to let him get into a rhythm of scolding me. If I cut him off early, it was possible he would back off a little.

  He didn’t even look like he’d heard me, his frown intensifying the tiniest bit. “I have work to do. If you wouldn’t mind getting to the point, I’d be grateful.”

  I turned my eyes around his cluttered office, my hands clenching and unclenching in my lap. “My point in being here is to try and figure out what’s going on. I never believed in ghosts. Now, I’ve seen one several times in the last few months.”

  “Emma Gregory?” he asked in his usual gruff tone.

  I inclined my head and took out my phone. I brought up the picture Keats had shown me and handed the phone over. “I saw her during the day last week, in the middle of the bookstore I work at but no one else saw her. Now she’s visible and solid enough to be seen in a picture. I don’t understand any of this and I need to.”

  He stared at it for a while before he handed the phone to me like it carried some horrible disease. “It’s because now she doesn’t care,” he said with a sigh as he leaned forward in his chair and rubbed at his mouth. “Spirits don’t always come back. Sometimes, if they choose to come back all they do is hang around. Other times, they’re trying to tell you something. I think that’s what’s happened to Emma Gregory. I think she’s trying to communicate with you and the fact she can’t is changing her. It’s altogether possible the person who murdered her is the one who’s murdering these boys.” There was something in his eyes which told me there was more. Before I could ask him about it, he went on. “The spirit you see isn’t your friend, not really. When a person dies, the soul is supposed to move on. Staying on this side of the veil changes them.”

  A shiver worked its way up my spine. “I did notice that,” I whispered, the food churning in my stomach. “Emma was the kind of girl that everybody loved. She knew it, expected it. She was confident and happy with her life. The ghost of her is angry. It’s like she remembers me and wants to tell me something but doesn’t know how.”

  “How many times have you seen h
er, the exact number?”

  I had to think, trying to recall everything weird that had happened in the last few weeks. “I’ve seen her four times in the last week. I’ve felt her near me a lot more times than that and Ian said he’d felt her as well.”

  “Felt her in what way?”

  “Cold.” I rubbed my hands up and down my arms to ward off the chill of even the memory. “The temperature drops twenty degrees and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s like a feeling of wrongness. It’s always so nice to see her it’s hard not to be excited.”

  Erkens gave me a hard look and leaned forward. “You can’t do that. The more you hold on, the stronger a hold she’ll have on this world. You have to let go and it’s possible she’ll move on, on her own.”

  I didn’t want her to move on. I wanted her to stay right there, to make things as good as they used to be. I wanted there to be a way to bring her back.

  I looked away from him and slowly got to my feet. “I’d like to hire you to look into this. I don’t have much money. If you’ll let me pay in installments, I should be able—”

  “I’ve already been hired to figure this case out.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “By who?” I asked, confused about who would be willing to hire a paranormal investigator for a case that must seem like a normal murder investigation to most people.

  Erkens made that same harrumph noise and turned to his computer. “The P in my job title may stand for paranormal but it also stands for private. I do not divulge the names of my clients,” he snapped as he made irritated noises.

  I looked from him to the computer in front of him and all of a sudden, a plan formed in my mind. He had shown a mix of nervousness and disdain for my phone. He was also abusing his poor old computer in a way that made me want to hug the thing. Maybe that was the way to get him to trust me.