Ghost Maker

by Robin D. Owens

  “How long? How many has he killed?”

  The nun’s form shuddered. Dammit. He had to remember to soft-pedal death to ghosts, even more than human survivors. He had no tact at all and he needed this spirit talking.

  Clare sent mentally, You are very strong to be able to help them, and us.

  Sister Julianna Emmanuel responded. It took him . . . two months? And only in the last month has he been able to take four children at the times of the months he feels proper for his ritual. So . . . he has . . . She wailed and Enzo cowered. He killed one this month, and four last month, and one each for the three months prior AND I COULDN’T STOP HIM. I COULD ONLY HELP THEM DIE!

  Her scream was uncanny. Clare shot Zach an angry look, began muttering soothing words with lilting tones and telling the phantom how brave she was. It took long minutes while Zach kicked himself for letting anger get the better of him and push the young woman. But, hell, that was eight kids. They’d find eight bodies in that burying ground.

  Finally, when both females and the dog seemed steady, Zach said, Help us stop him. Tell us more about him. You said he had trouble with . . . modern life?

  The nun raised her head, and the eerie silver streaks on her face were gone. She nodded. He is now a man out of his time and he is aware more of this gray dimension, too. He is stronger for both of those qualities. That also disturbs me.

  “I’m sure.”

  Enzo tilted his head. Whatever era the ghost came from, though, I think he’d sense Clare. He sniffed and moved closer to Clare, sticking his nose inside her purse. Or would feel the knife.

  A frisson of alarm zipped down Zach’s spine. The specter possessing a live body could feel Clare and her ghost-killing knife but she couldn’t sense him? Recipe for disaster.

  He’d think about that later when he didn’t have a witness to tease info from.

  He went on with the questioning, probing about the time period of the original ghost—describe the cars, describe the clothes the people she saw wore, what the spook-when-he-lived wore. Zach winnowed and wrung details from the Sister of Mercy until all of them, even Enzo, wore thin, literally.

  Clare put a hand on his arm. Enough, Zach.

  “Two last questions.”

  The nun’s form solidified a little more.

  “Do you know the name of the girl who got away? And where I can find her?”

  She is dead. I helped her cross over to heaven some years ago.

  Dammit. “All right. And when the evil spirit possessed a new body because . . . uh, when did that car crash happen, do you recall the weather?”

  Spring! Then the phantom fluttered. That is all—

  Yeah, enough, he wouldn’t get more out of Julianna Emmanuel. So he wrapped it up, exuding gratitude, hiding the grim.

  Thank you. You’ve been a great help.

  The phantom of the young woman perked up. You will be able to find him?

  We’ll give it our best shot. He paused. Though we may have to speak with you again.

  Now she drooped.

  Thank you SO much. You’ve been very helpful, Clare sent, and continued, helpful to us to find and stop this person, and, of course, in other ways.

  I did help those—the unfortunates he preyed upon, captured, and . . . Her figure did a slow spin, as if she denied the ultimate fate of the kidnapped youngsters, even though since she helped them leave their bodies—die—she must know their fates. Still, Zach got the impression that the nun had absolutely no fear of death. Well, how could she since she was a ghost herself and the gray dimension didn’t seem to affect her like others Clare had worked with?

  And Zach might have to read all those journals of Clare’s great-aunt Sandra, instead of just listening to Clare talk about the Cermak gift the woman had written about. For sure, if he wanted to be solid in his understanding of the curse-gift-psychic ability. Especially if he ran into another case like this one.

  I encouraged their souls to fly free to heaven, and suppressed as much pain and fear as I could manage, the ghost nun continued.

  I’m sure you did, and that they were very thankful for your aid. Clare offered womanly comfort to the Sister of Mercy, who, Zach reminded himself, was about the same age as the kids who’d been killed. Okay, maybe he was being too harsh on her. Because this whole damn situation infuriated him. Keep a lid on it. He’d been through a lot of crazy-making situations in his career. He must find and use that control he’d learned. Be a cop. That’s what was needed here, a good cop.

  The nun disappeared. Clare put her hand on his shoulder, leaned a little on him. Made him feel useful, though they hadn’t gotten nearly enough information to stop the creep. Zach’s bad leg had fallen asleep, and he didn’t look forward to standing since he hadn’t used his ankle brace as well as his supportive shoes. Something that he’d remedy from now on, until he closed this case. He had to be able to move as quickly as he could.

  “So,” he said as they walked to the car. He continued to scan the area, kept his dominant hand free for his weapon, his cane also ready to lash out. Clare matched his pace but had recognized his intense work mode and didn’t grab onto him, gave him some room. “From what the Sister of Mercy said, the guy originally operated around here, or Colorado Springs, and in the fifties. Probably hunted in Denver, then, too.”

  “It’s sad,” she said.

  “It’s more than sad,” he spit out. “It’s an outrage.” The very idea that an evil being could possess a body made Zach’s mind explode—not with weirdness so much as pure rage—the possessing ghost would trash the rep of a deceased person. Crime beyond Zach’s comprehension. Infuriating. And now something he had to think about when he became defunct. He’d damn well—uh, not a good word—he’d darn well hang around to see his own old body would be taken care of right . . . though if he died of extreme old age, a phantom wouldn’t want his worn-out carcass. That thought cheered him a little, diminishing his anger.

  Once inside his truck, he gestured to Enzo. “You come sit between me and Clare.”

  The Lab crept forward. Clare winced. “Sit on me,” Zach ordered. It was better that Clare’s wound not be disturbed.

  “You really think the bad ghost in a human can sense Clare’s knife?”

  It is a ghost-killing knife. Clare sees ghosts of the Old West; Sandra Cermak saw ghosts of the era of Prohibition and gangsters. The dog glanced at Clare, then away. We don’t know what time period Clare’s heir will see—

  “Yes, we do,” Clare added calmly. “If my niece Dora follows me, she is attuned to colonial and revolutionary America, just as I loved the history of the Wild West when I was a girl traveling all over Europe with my family.”

  “So the knife can kill spooks of any time period, any age,” Zach said.

  Yes.

  “Which it means it can kill this ghost. Clare has a good weapon.”

  Yes.

  “But the haunt could sense the knife and consider Clare a threat.” That sucked.

  A long pause, and Enzo wiggled around on Zach’s lap to stare him right in the eyes. I think the bad spirit has known of Clare since the first day we came to town because she carries the knife all the time like she’s supposed to.

  “That’s really bad.”

  “I can kill him,” Clare said. “That’s really good.”

  Zach looked at her. “Can you? Can you stick a knife in a human being?”

  Her mouth tightened, then she jerked a nod. “Yes. Because I can see the ghost, not just the human being. I’ll be able to see this middle-aged male.”

  “I got the idea from the nun that the specter can make the human bigger and stronger or something.”

  Clare shrugged. “Maybe so. But that’s not going to stop me. You brought down our body armor, so it’s not going to stop us. You’ll find him, and we’ll get him,” she vowed.

  “He can se
nse you, but you can’t sense him. I want you to be very careful. That’s a promise I want you to make. Absolutely no going after this guy alone.”

  “I can promise that.”

  “Someone comes after you, and you scream bloody murder. Not only mentally to Enzo, who can get to you quickest, but physically. Scream and shout and yell. Better you look stupid or crazy than get hurt. Got that?”

  Her hazel eyes shaded to green. “Yes. I promise.”

  “And your phone has the panic button app on the front.”

  “Ah—”

  “Put it there, Clare.”

  “Okay.”

  He raised his brows.

  “I promise.”

  “Good.” He leaned and kissed her, sweeping his tongue across her lip to give himself a taste of her. He’d just decided to probe a little deeper when his phone went boing, boing, boing. He drew back.

  “That’s a new ringtone,” Clare said. She had special rings for every-damn-contact, while he was selective.

  “El Paso County Sheriff’s Department,” Zach said as he accepted the call. “Springs, Clare. Colorado Springs.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  Zach took the call from the deputy he’d spoken with early that morning before they’d left the graves. “Updating me?” he asked.

  “That’s right.” The guy sounded exhausted, like he hadn’t been to bed yet. Zach could empathize.

  “Looks like eight bodies. All children under eighteen from the ones we’ve identified.”

  “Really bad,” Zach said, but that matched what the nun ghost had told them. At least they’d found all the lost ones.

  “Yeah, and the info we have places them from Denver, like you said.” A little pause, then the deputy said abruptly, “This reminds me of something.”

  “Yeah?” Zach asked, his mind zooming, thinking how he could weave the knowledge the Sister of Mercy had just given them into the conversation, to maybe prompt the guy’s memory. After all, this man was a cop, and local. “Serial killer of street kids,” he said, loudly, then continued, “Don’t like to think about that, or secret burial fields, or whether there are kids we need to find, quick.”

  “Wait . . . wait . . .” A sound like snapping fingers. “The fifties. I remember hearing of a case in the fifties.”

  Zach held his breath. Names were power; everyone said so. It was one of those psychic/magical rules. “Who?” he asked.

  Murmuring, the guy said, “Bound, starved, and dehydrated, then stabbed in the heart. No other torture. Yeah, I’ve heard of this modus operandi before.”

  “Also one killed every week,” Zach said.

  The man grunted. “I’ll get it. I will.”

  “I can look—”

  “Leave it to us, Slade.” Then the deputy mumbled, “Bet I can get it in fifteen minutes.”

  “Please update me if you do.”

  Zach heard muttering.

  “No one will be as interested in what you say as I am,” he offered. Sometimes he’d gotten obsessed with a case and others had gotten tired of listening to him.

  “Hear you on that,” the deputy said, but promised nothing. “Oh, one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your current missing person’s case? Tyler Utzig wasn’t found buried in the field.”

  “Good. That’s good that Tyler isn’t there.”

  “Later,” the cop grunted before he hung up.

  That’s good, Zach! Isn’t it good? said Enzo, bouncing back from his unusual depression.

  “Yeah.” And he was damn glad the cool spirit had left his lap to gambol back and forth from truck cab to bed.

  “Clare?” he asked. She was messing with her phone. “You searching for our fifties perpetrator?”

  “No.” She glanced at him, then back to her toy in her hand. “Not really. Nothing popped up immediately and I don’t have access to the law enforcement databases you do.” She held up her phone, showing him the app with the big panic button that would shriek at the highest volume, notifying him and Rickman and whoever else she’d programmed into it . . . Desiree, maybe.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  An unfamiliar number showed up on his phone as it brrrrr-riiinnged. He punched it. “Slade.”

  “Got a rumor about Tyler and his whereabouts,” said Jim’s smoky voice. “Think it came from one of the kids who drifted into one of the shelters. I can’t check it out. Not my job.”

  “I’ll be up to make the rounds, check it out in person.”

  A grunt tinged with approval. “Good.”

  “Can we meet—”

  But the call cut off.

  He turned to Clare. “I must head up to Denver.”

  She nodded, reached for the door. “The sooner you go, the sooner we’ll find out if Tyler is safe in Denver.”

  “Wait. I want you to go back to the villa.”

  Her expression turned stormy. “And I want to reassure Julianna Emmanuel. The more I think about it, the more I believe we didn’t leave her in a good emotional or spiritual place.”

  Chapter 28

  “Clare, I don’t want you by yourself!”

  She gestured widely. “I’m on the busy main street of a thriving town. You go to Denver. I’ll call Rossi, see how soon he can pick me up.”

  Zach waited until the call went through and Rossi agreed to meet Clare in an hour and a half at Cheyenne Spring, right on the street, easily observed from the busy shops, close to Navajo Spring—and it had benches.

  She put her hand on the door handle, and Zach’s phone signaled the call back from the El Paso County deputy.

  “Putting it on speaker for you,” he said, then opened the line. She leaned forward.

  “Got a name for you,” the deputy said. “Jonathan O’Neill.”

  “They do a profile of him at the time?” The deputy would be able to look at the file in hard copy since Zach didn’t think it would have gotten entered in any database. Who knew if he could get any facts? Even in the cop databases he had access to, all he’d probably find would be gossip and what people recalled about the case. And any info posted on the general Internet could be completely wrong.

  “Profile? Wasn’t as sophisticated then as we are now. But, yeah, and when they found O’Neill it was like what they’d thought: white male, late forties, plenty of practice, very organized and”—his voice hardened—“been doing it a while.”

  Zach could hear the underlying thought, And someone else is copying him now on my turf and my watch! and sensed the man’s outrage he suppressed.

  “That’s what the profile reads right now, too, and we’ll be looking for the guy.” The deputy’s voice turned downright grim.

  “But El Paso County is more populated now,” Zach pointed out.

  “Yeah. We don’t know if the current killer is living in Colorado Springs, or Manitou or in wherever-the-fuck canyon.”

  No use telling the deputy sheriff that the guy might not even be a guy, or middle aged.

  The last evil ghost he, Clare, and Enzo had tangled with had been female, and she’d been pretty damn nasty and dangerous. She’d given Clare her wound, and they all still dealt with the fallout. The way this case was proceeding, it could be the same thing. And Zach sure couldn’t tell his colleague that they were dealing with a ghost possessing a human whose spirit had already moved on, nor that the profile could be wrong.

  “When they apprehended O’Neill, did he say why he did what he did?”

  “He was a psychopath, no more, no less, had no empathy for other people. Only time he felt emotion was when he hunted and kept his captives, watched them starve to death, got a big charge out of killing them. He talked the same old crazy shit. He fed off the energy of the kids as they starved, they got tastier. Crazy shit.” The deputy snorted. “
Don’t know how much this guy will copycat O’Neill, and I’d better talk to the rest of my team. Later.”

  Zach looked at Clare. “You heard?”

  “Yes.” She read an article on her phone, glanced up at Zach with tears in her eyes. “I don’t think this will be helpful.”

  Sighing, Zach shook his head. “If it isn’t official, or the cop’s notes, probably not.” He touched her cheek. “Go talk to the nun.”

  “I’m not going to ask her about Jonathan O’Neill. She’s my case.” Clare stroked his cheek in return. “Go take care of yours.”

  Zach couldn’t help himself. “Stay safe and in the public eye. Leave with Rossi as soon as he gets here.”

  “All right.”

  He kissed her and she hopped from the truck. “I know the schedule of the yoga sessions at the main lodge. I might drop in on one.”

  “Be around people, good.” He paused. “I’d like to take Enzo if he could come. He’s getting stronger.” He paused, trying to put his intuition into words. “He saw the field last night. Must have been some scent—maybe a spiritual scent—of the guy who made it. Fresh odor of the living body the evil spirit inhabits might have transferred to the one he buried. Or the kid who just died might have had some contact with the other living captives who left a trace odor. If Tyler is in the hands of this psychopath, and this kid now in the shelter connected with him, Enzo might be able to tell.”

  Frowning, she said, “That’s a long string of ‘perhaps.’ Not very solid.”

  “Sometimes we gotta follow a fragmented what-if line of deduction.” He could feel the skin tighten over his face. All the myriad facets of this case got to him. “And Tyler is my case and priority like it isn’t anybody else’s.”

  “Since you’re going to Denver, you think it’s a . . . faint line of inquiry . . . worth pursuing.”

  “Yes.”

  Enzo hopped to his feet and loped over to sit in the passenger seat. I can do this! His tail wagged. Or I can TRY! His muzzle wrinkled. I know the smell of the lost boy. His long sniff echoed in the cab.