Ghost Hunter

by Paige Tyler

  “She got home fine. I think she was still a little freaked out by the whole ghost encounter up in Delhi, but she didn’t say anything. She’s a lot tougher than I gave her credit for.”

  Wes grinned. “I told you she wasn’t the type who scared easily.”

  Trace grunted in reply and went back to reading his email. Though he’d never admit it to his friend, he was damn impressed by how Cassidy had handled herself in that basement. Getting zapped by a ghost would have freaked out a lot of hunters he knew, but she’d kept her head. In fact, she looked as if she’d been ready to charge right through the thing when he’d jumped over the railing. She hadn’t even lost it when he’d blasted the sonofabitch with his shotgun. Instead, she’d followed his order and hightailed it out of there with Bella and Robert. He grudgingly had to admire her spunk.

  No matter how cool she’d been at the house, though, encountering a ghost wasn’t something she did every day, and he’d been concerned about her. That was the reason he’d asked Robert for her number. After two days, she was starting to grow on him. How the hell could she not? It wasn’t very often a hunter like him ran into a beautiful woman like her who could hold her own in front of a ghost. Of course, he’d never admit that to Wes. The other man would only bring up the subject of Trace giving her a little personal one-on-one ghost hunter training again. As much as he might admire Cassidy or find her attractive, there was no way he was ever going to act on it. His life was complicated enough already. The last thing he needed was a woman in it, even if she was as beautiful as Cassidy Kincaide.

  Trace frowned again as he realized he’d spent the past few minutes staring at the email he’d gotten from a fellow hunter and hadn’t read a word of it. Giving himself a mental shake, he went back to the beginning and started reading again. He was halfway through the email when the front door burst open and Cassidy ran in. He was about to rib her for being late when he noticed how pale she was. He thought for a moment the ghost from the house in Delhi actually had followed her home last night, but then she slapped a newspaper down on the table in front of him.

  “I want to hire you to find a ghost,” she said breathlessly.

  Trace raised a brow. “You already hired us. Since we’re ghost hunters, finding them sort of comes with the package.”

  She didn’t even crack a smile at his dry sense of humor. Instead, she shook her head and jabbed her finger at the picture on the front page of the newspaper. “I don’t want you to find any ghost. I want you to find this ghost.”

  Trace looked down at the newspaper, his brow furrowing. The picture was of a crowd of people standing in front of a brick apartment building. Although Cassidy’s hand was hiding most of the headline, he saw enough to know the picture had something to do with the murder that had happened in Stamford last night. Cassidy was pointing at a guy in the back of the crowd. Even though the man’s face was half hidden by the woman standing in front of him, Trace could make out short blond hair, close-set eyes and a slightly crooked nose. While he might be a little creepy looking, the guy was way too corporeal to be a ghost.

  Trace lifted his head to see Cassidy regarding him expectantly. The woman who had held it together last night was completely gone to be replaced by one who was totally freaked out. In fact, freaked out didn’t even cover it. She looked positively terrified. All from seeing some guy in a newspaper.

  “Cassidy, this guy doesn’t look like a ghost to me. What makes you think he is?”

  She swallowed convulsively. “Trust me, okay? He’s a ghost. I need you to find him and kill him or exorcise him or whatever it is you do. Please.”

  Trace frowned. Damn, she was almost hysterical. “Okay, Cassidy. Calm down. I can see you’re serious about this and I want to believe you, but you’re going to have to give me a little bit more to go on. Why do you think this guy is a ghost?”

  “I just know he is.”

  “Cassidy, ghosts don’t normally stand around in a crowd of people, especially not a crowd of people having their picture taken,” Wes said. “It’s hard for any ghost to maintain a substantial form for long.”

  “He’s right,” Trace said. “Look, you’re probably still a little shaken up from seeing the ghost last night. An encounter like that can be traumatic and sometimes you can start seeing things that aren’t there.”

  She stiffened, recoiling as if he’d hit her. “Don’t patronize me, Trace. I’m not still shaken up and I’m not seeing things that aren’t there. He’s a ghost, I know it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Her lower lip trembled as she hesitated. “Because I killed him, okay?” she finally blurted out. “I killed him!”

  Trace stared at her, stunned. Whatever he’d expected her to say, it sure as hell wasn’t that. On the other side of the table, Wes looked just as shocked. So did Robert and Bella.

  “Maybe you should sit down and tell us everything, Cassidy,” Trace said quietly.

  When she hesitated again, he thought she was going to turn and run out of the office, but after a moment she pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. She didn’t say anything right away, but instead stared down at the picture in the newspaper. Finally, she tucked her long hair behind her ear and lifted her head to look at Trace.

  “His name is Carson Del Vecchio and he’s the serial killer everyone calls the Stamford Stabber,” she said in a soft voice. “He killed my roommate and tried to kill me, but I killed him first.”

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe it,” Bella breathed. “You’re the one who pushed him off that balcony. The story was in all the newspapers for weeks, but the police never released your name.”

  Trace hadn’t seen that one coming. Although he hadn’t followed the story of the Stamford Stabber as religiously as Bella, he’d read enough to know the hell Cassidy must have gone through. It certainly explained why she was so freaked out by the guy in the photo. She was probably jumping at shadows and seeing the killer’s face everywhere she looked.

  “Cassidy, you’ve been through a lot…” he began.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say.”

  Trace sighed. “Cassidy…”

  She looked at Robert. “Are you hooked up to the internet right now?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Um, yeah.”

  “Good. Then Google the name Carson Del Vecchio. I want Trace to see what that bastard looks like and compare the picture on the net to the one in the newspaper.”

  Trace wanted to tell her he already knew what Del Vecchio looked like, but he knew he’d be wasting his breath. Instead, he waited patiently for Robert to find a picture of the guy.

  “See?” Cassidy said when Robert turned the laptop around so Trace could see the screen. “It’s him.”

  While Trace had to admit there was some resemblance between the men in the two pictures, the photo in the newspaper wasn’t very high quality, so he couldn’t say for sure. Plus, the guy was the most average looking dude he’d ever seen. A lot of people probably looked like him.

  Across the table from Trace, Cassidy was looking at him earnestly. “You said nasty people tend to come back as nasty ghosts. What if this freaking psycho was too insane to go to hell like he should have? What if he came back to keep killing?” She took a deep breath. “If you won’t help me, then I’m going to go to the cops. They need to know they aren’t looking for a copycat. They need to know they’re looking for a ghost.”

  Trace swore silently. If she told the cops something like that, they’d only think she was crazy. Hell, if she told anyone outside this room they’d think she should be in a psychiatric facility. He should know. He’d been in that situation before, where everyone around him thought he was crazy when he knew he wasn’t. If it wasn’t for that, he would have immediately pointed out how impossible what she was saying was. Ghosts didn’t go around murdering people regardless of how crazy they’d been in the living world.

  He was going to have to han
dle this carefully, though, or Cassidy was going to run off to the cops and try to convince them the killer was a ghost. With her past history of trauma, they were likely to lock her up in a padded room with a tight-fitting, white jacket for a very long time. Even if they didn’t, the press was likely to get hold of it and have a field day painting her as a whacko. It would destroy her life.

  “Okay, I’ll check it out,” he said quietly.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Bella and Robert look at him incredulously. Wes seemed to be even more surprised. From the expressions on their faces, Trace would think he’d announced he was Elvis’ long-lost alien love child.

  “Can I talk to you for minute?” Wes asked, getting to his feet.

  “I’ll be right back,” Trace told Cassidy.

  Pushing back his chair, he followed the other man into his office and closed the door.

  “This is a wild goose chase, you know that, don’t you?” Wes asked.

  Trace nodded. “I know, but you saw Cassidy. If I don’t agree to look into this for her, she’s going to go to the cops and they’ll think she’s crazy. I know some guys at the Stamford PD. I’ll take a drive out there and see what they can tell me. One of them should be able to give me some information I can share with Cassidy that’ll convince her Del Vecchio’s ghost didn’t kill those women. It’ll take a couple hours.”

  Wes sighed. “Okay, I see your point. I’ll go with you then.”

  “Actually, I’m going to have to take care of this one myself. I got an email from Brice. He’s up in Maine and has run up against something he can’t handle on his own. He asked if we’d give him some backup.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  Trace shook his head. “No, just that he was in Clay Harbor, Maine, and that he needed help. But if a guy like Brice is asking for help, it has to be serious. I thought we’d both go up to check it out, but now I have to take care of this thing with Cassidy.”

  “Okay, I’ll check it out.”

  “I’ll meet up with you as soon as I can.”

  In the main room, Cassidy was talking quietly with Bella and Robert, and she looked up when he and Wes walked out of the office.

  “I’m going to go talk to some cops I know in Stamford and see what I can find out about the murders,” he told Cassidy. “Why don’t you go back home and try to relax?”

  She got to her feet. “I’d rather go with you.”

  He gave her a small smile. “Cops tend to be pretty close-mouthed in front of civilians. It’s better if you go home. I’ll call you. I promise.”

  While that part about cops not liking to say too much in front of civilians was true, the biggest reason he didn’t want her tagging along was because he was afraid she might have a meltdown if she heard something that reminded her of her experience with Del Vecchio. Trace expected her to point out he was a civilian now, too, but to his surprise, she nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “As long as you promise to call me.”

  “I will,” Trace assured her.

  Before Trace left, he pulled Robert aside and told him to make sure Cassidy got home okay. He would have offered to follow her home himself, but she seemed to want to stay and talk to Bella for a while.

  Trace knew a lot of cops in the Stamford area, so he made some calls on the way there to see if any of them were on the task force investigating the killings. Fortunately, one of them was, a former fellow NYPD detective named Ted Muncie.

  Of course, the only drawback to Trace knowing the local cops was that they knew him, too. Or more precisely, what he did for a living. Which meant a lot of them thought he was a whack job, including Muncie’s partner, Dan Simpson.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the resident ghost hunter,” Simpson sneered as Trace walked into the diner where Muncie suggested they meet. “See any ghosts lately?”

  Trace smirked. “I don’t know. Your girlfriend was a little pale when she came over to my house last night.”

  Simpson’s face went red. “Fuck you.”

  Trace chuckled. He’d learned to ignore what people thought of him a long time ago. Besides, it wasn’t as if Simpson would do anything more than spit out cuss words. Trace could easily kick his ass and the other man knew it.

  “Give it a rest, Dan,” Muncie said. “I agreed to talk to Trace. If you don’t like it, you can always go somewhere else.”

  Muncie’s partner swore under his breath and pushed back his chair. “I’ll meet you back at the station.” Giving Trace a disdainful glare, he threw some money down on the table, then left.

  After his partner walked away, Muncie got up and held out his hand to Trace. “Damn, it’s been a long time. How the hell have you been?”

  Trace shook the other man’s hand. A good ten years older than Trace, Muncie was carrying a little extra around the gut and his red hair was showing more gray than the last time Trace had seen him, but otherwise he looked the same. “Good. I’m doing good. How about you?”

  “Can’t complain. Listen, forget my partner. He hasn’t been around very long, so he thinks he knows everything.” Muncie gestured for Trace to take the chair the other man had vacated.

  Trace shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard that shit a thousand times. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Bullshit it doesn’t,” Muncie said. “But whatever. We’re just two old friends having a cup of coffee, right?”

  “Right.”

  Trace would have said more, but the waitress came over, interrupting him. He ordered a cup of coffee while Muncie asked for a refill on his.

  “How’s business been?” Muncie asked after the waitress left.

  “Good.” While Muncie might not think Trace was the whack job everyone else did, that didn’t mean the cop wanted to hear all the gory details.

  Muncie nodded. “You see Brenda lately?”

  Trace had known the question was coming. Brenda was his dead partner’s widow. Muncie had been in the same NYPD precinct back when everything had gone down all those years ago. He knew Brenda almost as well as Trace did.

  “Yeah, I still check on her every few weeks. She’s doing all right. Tommy Jr.’s getting big. He’ll be starting running back for the varsity team this season.”

  Muncie watched as the waitress refilled his coffee cup. “Junior’s a good kid. Tom would have been proud.”

  Trace’s mouth edged up. His old partner had played football in high school and would have been thrilled to see his son on the field. If only his life hadn’t been cut short in a warehouse that night. Trace’s hand tightened around his cup and he hastily took a gulp of coffee, not caring that it burned his throat on the way down. Anything to get that memory out of his head.

  Across from him, Muncie set down his cup and regarded him thoughtfully. “You said on the phone you wanted to talk to me about the case I’m working. You got some information about the murders?”

  That was Muncie’s way of asking if there was any spooky shit going on with his case. The cops who knew Trace usually went out of their way to avoid discussing the kind of stuff he got involved in and the ones who did talk about it made sure they laughed about it. But get a few beers into them and every one of them would start telling him about the strange crap they’d seen on the job. They would never admit it openly, of course, but deep down most of them knew Trace was solid. They also knew if he was asking about one of their cases, things were about to take a turn for the Twilight Zone.

  “No,” Trace said. “I saw it on TV and thought it sounded interesting.”

  Muncie’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. We haven’t had coffee together in what, three years? And if I remember correctly, the last time we did you made me pay for it.”

  Trace chuckled. “Okay, you got me there. But you make more money than I do, so you should be paying.”

  The other man let out a snort. “Right. From what I hear, money hasn’t been an issue for you since you left the job.”

  “It never was.”

&n
bsp; Muncie leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Enough about who makes more than who. I’ll pay for your freaking coffee, okay. What’s this about, Trace?”

  Trace had spent the better portion of the drive to Stamford thinking about what he was going to say to Muncie and decided it would be best to stick as close to the truth as possible without revealing too much of it. “I need to know if there’s anything unusual about your case. I have a client who’s convinced you have more than your average run-of-the-mill serial killer on your hands.”

  “Uh-huh,” Muncie said. “And does this client of yours have a name?”

  “She does, but it’s not important.” Trace sipped his coffee. “I’m not looking for the details of the investigation, Ted. I need something to tell my client. Something to put her mind at ease. Something to convince her the cops are after a regular, everyday fucked-up-in-the-head person.”

  He emphasized the last part, knowing Muncie would understand exactly what he meant by it.

  The other man was quiet for a long time. Too long for Trace’s liking.

  “Wish I could tell you what you want to hear,” Muncie said finally. “But I knew the moment you called what you were after. Truth is, I’m not sure it is a regular, everyday fucked-up-in-the-head person we’re looking for. I’m not sure what the hell it is.”

  Shit. Muncie wasn’t some newbie detective. He’d been on the street for a long time. If he thought there was something weird about the case, then there was.

  “I’m listening,” Trace said quietly.

  Muncie looked around as if paranoid someone might be listening to them. Even though it was obvious no one was, he still lowered his voice anyway. “First off, there have been four murders, not three. The first woman didn’t have any family, so we kept it out of the news, figuring we could use the information if we ever catch the sonofabitch doing this. We’ve got every cop in Stamford working this one along with the county cops and the state major crimes division. We’ve even brought in the Feds to help and we’ve still got nothing. No suspect. No physical evidence. No DNA. Hell, we can’t even pin down what the murder weapon is. This is worse than the Stamford Stabber case.”