Ghost Maker

by Robin D. Owens

“This is cropped to keep others out of the picture?” Jim asked.

  “To protect their privacy, yes.”

  “Hmmm. Ya know, might be good to see if anyone else in that shelter hit the streets.”

  Zach had anticipated him. “The full pic is coming through.”

  “The second from the left of the five,” Jim stated, his voice more educated, “Jeremy. He was on the streets, haven’t seen him lately.”

  Consulting his notes, Zach said, “He didn’t stay at that shelter, either. I’ll ask around.”

  Jim grunted.

  “Jeremy’s older than your Tyler, sixteen going on seventeen. Think I heard he got tired of the streets earlier and left.”

  But something in Jim’s tone stirred the hair on the back of Zach’s neck. Yeah, he’d been getting a bad feeling about this since he couldn’t trace Tyler quickly.

  “Left or was taken?” Zach asked, voice low.

  “Not my job to keep an eye on the street kids, but I occasionally ask around.”

  “More missing than usual?”

  “Mebbe.” Jim gave a fruity sniff, like he wanted to sniff their trail out and find them. Zach could relate. “But it was summer, and kids get a wild hair to hitchhike to California or Florida.” He paused. “Mebbe even to New Mexico or Arizona.”

  “Yeah.” Zach cleared his throat. “Think you can pull together a list for me about—”

  “Don’t have a lot of time to spend on this. Haven’t heard of no official missing persons on any kids, girls or boys, other’n your Tyler. Mebbe if I c’n grab a coupla minutes I could write down a lista those who ain’t around no more. Nothin’ says they jus’ didn’t leave Denver, though.”

  “I got that. Would really appreciate it if you could note down anyone else missing who might have associated with Jeremy and Tyler.”

  “Only got street names.”

  “Anything is good.”

  “’Kay, I’ll make some time, send it to Ginni as well as you.”

  “That would be great. Like I said, I can put in time on this—and any other case—maybe find one, get a lead on others.”

  “Yeah.” A little quiet from Jim. “Doesn’t smell right,” he muttered. “Not related to my primary operation, so didn’t really put the facts together.”

  “It was summer.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Still, got a bad feeling about this.”

  “So do I.”

  A thumping crash echoed and Zach thought Jim might be calling from an alley.

  “Gotta go.”

  “I’d like to come up and talk—”

  “I got your references from Ginni, I’ll check ’em out.” Jim disconnected the call.

  So all Zach could do was wait.

  Worry about Tyler.

  Worry about Clare.

  Worry about the four crows cutting through the blue sky like a jagged line of barbed wire, circling around and cawing, then settling on the top rail of the wooden fence marking the golf course.

  Four for death.

  * * *

  More pressure came, even a sulfuric smell when Rossi drove Clare and Enzo up the canyon to Ute Pass. Ghosts here, maybe, but not feeling right. Native Americans, maybe, Enzo said.

  She’d been sure that a Native American wouldn’t be her healing ghost since she’d only been able to help one such person transition, and all their brief communication had been done in images and surges of emotions. Apparently her mind-set allowed her to interact mostly with ghosts of European descent.

  The pass itself, a disappointing intersection of highways, marked a lessening of tension. “We need to go back into town,” Clare said. “I won’t find what I, ah, want outside the settlement.” The town hadn’t grown this far, and during the time period she was sensitive to, only travelers’ temporary camps would be out this distance away from Manitou.

  Harry turned around when the road through the narrow canyon allowed, and drove back to the town. He displayed no impatience or curiosity, but didn’t seem entirely sympathetic, either. Perhaps it was because Enzo occasionally dripped invisible ghostly drool on the shoulder of his nice jacket.

  She’d always thought he’d had a touch of some extra gift, but now she understood that he denied it as much as possible.

  She’d done that, once, but didn’t have the luxury of continuing to ignore the Cermak ghost seer gift. Not if she wanted to live and stay sane.

  Anything, Enzo? she asked mentally. Even if her spirit guide couldn’t nose out the sister’s ghost, she liked having him near for companionship. A few seconds later, her barely visible friend pulled back inside and sat next to her, panting with a doggy grin. This is a nice car. He wiggled his insubstantial bottom. It feels and smells good. He also sniffed, then stuck his head through the seat before him.

  Harry yelped.

  He is smelling better all the time! Enzo said. I like him. Another loud sniff. He smells better than the car, even!

  “Clare, I’m feeling a draft. And I’m being distracted. I hate being distracted while driving or on the job,” Harry stated in a flat tone.

  “I hear you, Harry,” Clare said aloud, then continued telepathically to her dog, Enzo? Please stay back here with me.

  A yip and Enzo withdrew from the front, grinning at her. I love you, Clare. This is a very interesting town. A LOT of ghosts. Most from our time period, too.

  “More phantoms than usual,” Clare sighed. “In the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, about one-third of the people living in the area had tuberculosis. And it’s a little depressing, the amount of people who died from that disease here,” Clare murmured. “Forty percent went into remission. No cure for tuberculosis until about fifty years ago.”

  Harry grunted. “Not a way I’d care to go.” He didn’t sound nearly as cheerful as he was when he’d picked her up.

  Like many mountain towns, Manitou Springs strung out along a canyon with only two or three main streets. Harry drove well, but though she extended her senses, she couldn’t pinpoint the nun who could help her. Once again, spirits pressed around the car, voices yelling at her—to stay away.

  Without asking her, Harry wound up a hill and through iron gates. On one hung a green and white sign that read Crystal Valley Cemetery.

  “Best place to find ghosts, right? A graveyard?” Harry asked as he pulled into the cemetery and parked near a small building set in a wide meadow ringed on three sides by hills.

  Chapter 18

  She and Harry stayed in the car; Enzo shot through the door and galloped out. A dog! There’s a ghost dog for me to play with!

  “Crystal Valley Cemetery,” she murmured. She grimaced. “Apparently one of the local doctors, Dr. Isaac Davis, donated some of the land.” Clearing her throat, she went on. “He also, ah, experimented on cadavers, ah, scientific embalming tests, to study and preserve corpses.” The doctor’s first specimen had been his dog, Spot. Probably the same dog romping with Enzo.

  Dr. Davis absolutely flipped her “ewww” switch. She pointed to the stone building. “We’re next to his laboratory.”

  Harry’s grunt held disgust.

  Staring intently at the building, Clare focused her ghost seer sense to discover whether Dr. Davis might be an apparition she’d work with to move on. She thought she’d have to help the nun after that ghost healed her, but Clare wouldn’t put it past the Powers That Be to try to get a twofer or threefer from her while she was in the area.

  Nothing online or in books stated that Dr. Davis remained a ghost, but he certainly was associated with several. If Dr. Davis’s ghost lingered anywhere, it should be here in the cemetery and the lab he built for his studies, his fine and private place. But though apparitions thronged and milled near the building, not one of them went inside. She strained, but felt no spirit moving through the stone hut.

  With a deep breath, she did the
best she could to block the thick and shifting phantoms, this time trying a mental shield. Some of the specters might not even be of her time period. In a place like this, she felt all spirits more, though she wouldn’t be able to help them transition.

  Unless the Cermak knife could kill any ghost, modern or ancient. Perhaps even beyond the birth of the first ghost seer? More questions. It would take a lifetime to learn the rules.

  Clare looked at the trees, the grass that would have been green in the spring and early summer but now appeared as the standard Colorado yellow brown, the gravestones. “A pretty enough place.”

  Harry coughed. “Clare?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sounds like you’ve been visiting a lot of cemeteries. Which one do you like?”

  She paused. “Are you shopping?”

  “It’s something a guy thinks about now and then.”

  She wondered if Zach did. She didn’t think so. But he was ex–law enforcement and Harry Rossi was ex-military, what Zach called “special ops,” a SEAL or Ranger or Green Beret or something. She got the idea that Harry had been close to death more times than she cared to imagine, more times than Zach or her.

  She said, “Most cemeteries I’ve visited here have been, ah, peaceful, lovely in their own way.”

  “Nothing impressed you as a place you’d care to rest?” Harry questioned.

  “Nooo.” She had decided that she’d prefer to be cremated.

  “Can you let me know if you find a good place?” he asked.

  “I can do that.”

  “Good.”

  Clare pointed to a small white building to her left, drawing on facts she’d committed to memory, though she thumbed on her phone. “Theresa Kenny built her own mausoleum before she died, and often sat there in a rocking chair.”

  Harry stared in that direction. “I don’t think I’d go that far. But a pretty, peaceful place to rest after all I’ve been thr—done? Yeah, I’d like that, and I’ll trust you to tell me where that might be, Clare Cermak.”

  “I can do that,” she repeated.

  Thick shadows began to gather around the car, nearly obstructing her vision. A low murmur rose.

  “You aren’t getting out?” Harry asked.

  “Not today. What—who—I want isn’t here.”

  “Okay,” Harry said, hitting the ignition.

  Clare felt Enzo running toward her.

  Clare, Clare, there are very old ghosts here, Enzo said as he leapt into the car. They are a lot more interesting than all the people who got sick and died.

  She glanced at her notes on her phone. “The Native Americans used this as a burying ground, too.”

  Harry grunted. “Where next?”

  “I’m hungry. Why don’t we head back into the business district?” She could practice being normal among ghosts, calculate how long the bubble would hold if fueled by her mental energy. Strengthen those mental muscles, too. She suppressed a sigh.

  This time he drove faster and up to the speed limit.

  “Plenty of places to eat,” he said. “Say when.”

  She felt nothing from the nun, and far too much of a thickening of the atmosphere from other spirits. Then she noticed that across the street, one of the spaces between buildings had been converted into a bricked courtyard. At the end of the patio stood a newer-looking building that housed a restaurant. “Stop at the next zebra crossing, please, Harry.”

  He did.

  “Just let me off here.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, go see your lady.” His lady of the area.

  “If you’re sure. You have my number.”

  “Yes. I’ll call if I need you.” The minute she exited the car, ghosts stopped progressing down their boardwalks and watched her. Most of the nearby ghosts . . . lingered, perhaps curious. Some actually moved into her space, into her, wanting to sense her, but didn’t care to truly attract her attention so they could move on. Or the time wasn’t right for them to transition.

  Harry rolled down the passenger-side window. “Clare?” he asked, frowning.

  She flicked a hand at him. “Go ahead.”

  His frown deepened. “You sure?”

  “Yes,” Clare hissed between gritted teeth, curling her toes in her cross-trainers, trying to feel the poured-in-the-last-couple-of-decades concrete walk under her feet instead of any impressions from long-dead masses of ghosts and phantoms emanating up from the ground, or what must have been flagstones or boardwalks in the previous era.

  YES! Enzo shouted.

  Harry flinched, gave her a salute, and headed up the canyon. Most of the apparitions had scattered at Enzo’s yell, and he raced up and down the sidewalk and across the street as if herding them away from her, a first.

  Thank you, Enzo, she said mentally.

  He panted beside her, and his eyes solidified from clouds into orbs. You are most important now. He paused. Not even the healer ghost. YOU.

  “Nice to know,” she murmured aloud since no other living person crossed the street with her. Pretty much alone, she hurried down the few buildings to the courtyard . . . and met a young phantom couple holding hands on the way.

  She gave them a slow nod.

  You can see us! the young man—just out of his teens?—said. His mouth moved, but Clare heard the words in her head.

  Oh! She CAN! exclaimed the girl ghost, who looked younger than the man. Alger, she can see us.

  He frowned. She can probably make us move on. He dropped his girlfriend’s—no, she wore a wedding ring—his wife’s fingers, drew her hand so they’d linked arms. Clare got it; they were connected. She lifted her chin and sent her own thought back to them, I can help you transition to whatever comes next. IF you want, and if it’s the right time.

  They shared a glance, and she heard static in her head as if they discussed this on a not-quite-private channel between them.

  Maybe, said the girl.

  I don’t know, whispered the man.

  They stared at Clare.

  She will help us go. If we want, repeated the girl.

  Alger gave Clare a lopsided smile. We need to discuss this.

  “Yes,” she said. With a wave to the couple, she walked off the sidewalk and down the pretty courtyard to the restaurant, but she sensed they trailed her and she kept glancing at them from the corner of her eye. The sign over the door announced Deli Delish. Beyond the deli stood a retaining wall for the hill, with condos above.

  Oh, a dog! The young male ghost snapped his fingers. Hello, Master Dog, how do you do?

  I do fine! Enzo said. He gave Clare puppy-dog eyes.

  “You can stay out here while I go in,” she said.

  Enzo grinned then gamboled around the couple, chuffing. She watched them until she reached the door.

  Though Deli Delish’s building seemed to have been built in the 1950s, it still sat in the old part of town, but when she stepped into the New York–style deli, she found some relief from the ghosts. The upscale place had black-and-white-tiled flooring, glass counters, and tabletops of black marble. The variety of food—and much to go—indicated to Clare it would be her favorite place to eat in town.

  Behind the counter stood another young man, perhaps a late teen, eighteen? She wasn’t as good as Zach at calculating age and height and weight. This youngster was thin, bordering on skinny with a smooth, pale complexion and curly light brown hair. For a moment, it appeared as if a shadow passed over him, too. She blinked and it was gone, no doubt an effect of the strain at keeping the shadowy couple in sight.

  She walked up to the counter, her gaze mostly on the offerings in the case, and stood.

  “Welcome to Deli Delish,” he said. She glanced up at him and he flushed as if embarrassed by the name. Behind him and through a door Clare could see a man and a woman working at a commercial
kitchen counter. The man had the same shade of curly hair, and she deduced the place might be a family-run enterprise.

  Bells on the door rang behind her and she hurried to decide what she wanted. “I’ll have the matzo ball soup, small.”

  “Coming right up.” The boy—the plastic rectangle name tag of white letters on black read Martin—moved with teenaged awkwardness to a big pot.

  The smells made her mouth water, and so did the look of the pastrami sandwich someone else ordered. Tomorrow. She’d be more prepared with being in a town teeming with ghosts of her time period tomorrow. Maybe even Zach would be with her, too, taking a lunch break from his job.

  His case disturbed him. He’d thrashed around in the good-but-not-their bed last night, and she thought he had bad dreams.

  As she ate people came in and out, ordered, and found a table like she did, or took their food away or ate on the patio. Clare reviewed her notes on her tablet as she spooned in fabulous soup.

  The moment she folded her paper napkin on the saucer, Martin was there to take the dishes away, even before she’d put his fifteen percent tip on the table. He hurried back with a dishcloth to clean the table, bumped against the chair where she’d placed her bag, and knocked her tote to the floor. Turning red and apologizing profusely, he dropped the cloth on the table, rushed to pick up her bag and the brush that had fallen from the main compartment, and handed both to her.

  She smiled and took the items. “No problem.”

  He ducked his head. “I hope you had a good lunch.”

  “I did, and I’ll be back.”

  Her phone rang with the new upbeat rock tune she’d just programmed in for Harry Rossi. She did like knowing who called before she had to get her phone from her purse pocket and look.

  After a quick organization of her tote, she stepped away from the table and walked close to the door, but not out.

  “Hey, Clare,” Harry said.

  “Hi, Harry.”

  “Zach will pick you up in about twenty. Meet him by the town clock,” Harry said.

  “He’s done already?”

  “That’s right. You can make it to the town clock?”

  She must have tottered around more than she’d thought, and Harry had observed that. “It’s only a block and a half away. Yes.”