by J N Duncan
“Yep, it’s an ugly one too. You back on the job already?”
Jackie winced. “Sort of. I’m allowed to push paper for the next two weeks.”
Denny paused. “Not supposed to involve you then, Jack. You know that, right?”
“Den, come on,” she pleaded. “Just give me a little something. I’m dying out here.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “just don’t let any of this get around. It’s my ass if it does.”
“Mum’s the word.” Her stomach danced with excitement. Finally, something to focus on.
“I’ll send you a couple of crime-scene pics to look at, but what we’ve got here is a Hispanic male, twentyseven, with bullet wounds to the knee, head, and groin, as well as a large, vertical knife wound running from groin to sternum. Second vic has a single gunshot wound to the face.”
“Ouch. Someone was sure pissed off,” she said.
“Wounds are similar to the Hispanic woman and white male killed earlier. All were affiliated gang members except the white guy. I think he was the woman’s boyfriend or something. Might just be internal gang violence, but this has marks of some kind of ritual killing. Both vics were eviscerated and shot in the head. I think the other two were just unfortunate enough to get in the way.”
Jackie frowned. “Hold on. There’s been more? When did this murder happen?”
“Last night, about two AM from what we can tell.”
Nick’s hands turned white on the steering wheel. “Damn it. It’s our ghost. She knows who she’s after.”
“What? Who?” she asked.
“The ghost. She knows her killer . . . or killers,” he said. “They need to figure out who else the vics might be associated with. Fast.”
“I got that,” Denny said. “I’ll pass that along to Pernetti.”
She groaned. “Pernetti is in charge of this? Great.”
“Sorry.” Denny laughed. “Everyone deserves their shot.”
“Or not. So what happened at the first one?”
“That one was worse. The vic was pregnant.”
Eviscerated a pregnant woman? “Fuck. What’s wrong with people?”
“Got me, Jack. Anyway, we’re still trying to confirm the connection between the two murders, and I really don’t want to be caught feeding you info when you’re supposed to be parked at a desk.”
“OK, thanks, Den. This is great.”
He laughed. “You got a twisted notion of good news there, Jack.”
“Just nice to hear some work-related stuff, you know?”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll tell you if anything else comes up.”
“You rock. Talk to you later.”
Jackie hung up. It felt good to sink her teeth into something again. Maybe, just maybe if she came up with something useful for them to go on, Belgerman might let her back in to help out, even if on the side. If she could show she was holding things together, he would. Tillie on the other hand—convincing her would take more work. For the Wicked Witch of Illinois, holding it together wasn’t enough. She would actually have to talk about shit better left unsaid.
They were winding their way through a wealthy neighborhood, with its groomed and manicured streets of three-hundred-thousand-dollar homes, splashed by the colors of fall leaves. The front of the brown, Tudorstyled home still had crime-scene tape across the front that nobody had bothered to remove. There was a blue van backed into the driveway, its rear opened to the raised garage door. It was a cleaning-service van.
Nick parked the Porsche along the curb in front of the house. “That’s convenient. Though I was looking forward to impressing you with my lock-picking skills.”
Jackie gave him a questioning look. “Because being a concert pianist, biochemist, and a gourmet cook aren’t good enough for me?”
He grinned and those rare lines on his face emerged that made him look all too human and far from dead. “You’re a tough woman to please, Agent Rutledge.”
“Not really,” she said and opened the door. “I’m just a cantankerous bitch, that’s all.”
Nick laughed and followed her up the driveway to the garage. As she stepped beneath the frame of the garage door, Jackie felt a sudden wash of cold pour over her. She froze. The amused smile and almost decent mood vanished in an instant.
Deadworld. Something was here or had been, and it wasn’t Laurel. She licked her lips. “Nick?”
“You feel that?” he asked, surprised.
She nodded. “What the hell? This isn’t Laurel.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. Is it very strong?”
“Faint,” she replied. “I’m shocked more than anything. How am I able to feel that? I thought it was only Laurel.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Perhaps the trip to Deadworld has made it so you can sense the dead.”
“Fuck that!” She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m no psychic. One ghost is enough, thank you very much.”
A rather round black woman came out of the door to the house carrying an overstuffed green garbage bag.
She paused, giving Jackie and Nick a wary eye. “Can I help you with something?”
Jackie pulled out her ID. “FBI, ma’am. Just here to do some follow-up on the crime scene.”
“Ugh,” she replied, shaking her head. “You folks better catch the sons of bitches who did this. Ain’t right.”
Jackie nodded. “We will, don’t you worry.” She stepped around the muttering woman and went inside, where the cold of the dead intensified.
The house had been trashed. Even with the cleanup in progress, there were still broken bits of picture frames, shattered vases, dirt from planters, and assorted other household items strewn around the floors. Dishes were broken in the kitchen, bookcases knocked over in the living room. A lamp base lay on top of a video cabinet beneath a wrecked flat panel television. Behind the sofa against one wall was the dried rust-red blood splatter of one of the victims. The cushions, once a sage green, now sported a splotchy, dark pattern of blood. The sickly sweet smell of blood and death was still faint in the air.
Another cleaner, a rail-thin black man, was randomly tossing the debris into a bag he held in his hand. He nodded at them and continued to work in silence.
“Really wanted to pull off the appearance of a robbery, didn’t they?” Nick said as he stepped over and around the debris to get to the bloodstained sofa.
Jackie did not answer. She stood in the main entry, where stairs went up to the second floor and a hallway led down to what appeared to be an office. She had thought she heard something, and it was making her stomach knot up. Jackie closed her eyes and caught it again, this time holding onto the sound, a barely audible keening, almost like a . . . baby.
She whispered. “Nick?”
He stood up from where his hand had come to rest on the couch. “This person has moved on or is no longer around here. What is it?”
“Can you hear that? I swear it sounds like crying.”
Nick nodded, his grim face staring at her curiously now. “That’s the babe, I think. You can hear that?”
The cleaning man edged around behind Jackie and quickly walked toward the back door. Jackie turned around in a slow circle, until she finally determined a direction. It was above them. She pointed at the ceiling. “It’s up there.” Jackie then dropped her hand and turned back to Nick. “What’s going on here, Nick? Why can I hear that?”
“Not sure,” he said and put a hand on her shoulder. “You OK? You’re looking pale now.”
“’Cause I’m fucking freaking out here, Nick. Why can I hear a crying baby? I don’t have psychic abilities. I don’t!”
“Maybe you do now,” he said. “Let’s go up and check things out. This could be very important if it’s true.” He headed up the stairs, but Jackie balked. Halfway up, Nick turned. “It’s safe, Jackie. It’ll do little more than scream its lungs out at us. Annoying, but hardly dangerous.”
Easy for you to say, Jackie thought. Could something have happene
d to her on the other side? Could it be more than just Laurel? Could it be every fucking thing out there? “It needs a damn off switch,” she said, and marched up to find the screaming dead baby.
The temperature dropped with each step up. The smell of blood and death ramped up a notch. By the time she reached the landing, it wasn’t just cold, it was freezing.
Jackie frowned and began to breathe through her mouth. The odor had grown incessant, cloying at her stomach. If she didn’t know better, Jackie would have sworn someone had just been gutted. The landing wrapped around the stairs, the four doors going back all closed. She walked toward the back, feet silent on the runner stretched the length of the floor. There was no doubt where the screaming was coming from. Nick was already there, opening the door, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do. When he opened the door, Jackie’s stomach lurched but nothing changed. The noise level remained constant, and the smell still gnawed at her stomach.
Nick waited for her, just inside the doorway. “Bloodstained bed, Jackie. That’s all. A lot of blood though.”
She walked up and stopped next to Nick. Even breathing through her mouth wasn’t enough. The stench of blood and human insides filled the room like a cloud, thicker than normal air. “God. You’d think we were wading in it the way it smells.” She tried to hold her breath.
“Tell me if you see the babe’s ghost,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be materialized.”
The room looked like what you’d expect from any suburban master bedroom: a long dresser against one wall, a queen-size bed with matching head and footboards, matching bedside tables, a chair and ottoman beside the window. From there, the rest was in total disarray. Lamps were broken on the floor. The mirror above the dresser had fallen behind and there were shards of glass strewn over the dresser’s top. Pictures were broken and torn on the floor. Someone had taken a knife to the chair and ottoman, with stuffing billowing out of its many wounds. The bed had been stripped, but the bloodstain remained. It was enormous. Blood spatter from the gunshot wound to the head adorned the headboard and splashed the wall behind.
There was no baby to be seen. Yet the muffled wailing continued, persistent and distressing. Jackie squatted down and peered under the bed. Her breath was already beginning to run out and her stomach would not deal with another lungful of the fetid air. She walked quickly over to the dresser, opening the drawers, only to reveal a scattering of rumpled clothes. Jackie could not localize the sound. It emanated from every part of the room. Across the room from the bathroom, the closet door was open, and Jackie ran over to look, only to find a neatly ordered space filled with shoes and suits and dresses.
Finally Jackie had to walk over to one of the windows and slide it open in order to suck in some of the cool fall air. “How the hell am I supposed to investigate crime scenes like this? Walk around with a goddamn gas mask on?”
“You learn how to tune it out. It takes some practice,” he said. “Is the smell of blood really that strong?”
Jackie sucked in a lungful of good air. “It’s like someone’s guts have been baking in the summer sun for the past three days. It’s bad.”
When she walked back over, her gaze froze upon the middle of the bed. The blood there did not look soaked in but now glistened like it truly had been freshly spilled. Jackie blinked and rubbed at her eyes only to find the stain appeared to be seeping back out of the bed, a fresh pool burgeoning up from within the mattress.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ,” she said, staring in rapt horror. A moment later it sank back in, leaving the normal, dark, day-old stain. “Did you see that, Nick?”
“No, but I felt something. The wail is a bit clearer too,” he said. “What did you see?”
Jackie pointed at the mattress. “The um, the blood was seeping up out of the bed.”
He raised an eyebrow and walked over to the bed. “Curious.” Nick reached down and touched the mattress. He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, his mouth drawing into a thin, grim line. “He’s here all right. Just on the other side.” He stood back up and looked at Jackie. “Recent deaths tend to make the wall between a bit thinner.”
Jackie stared down at the brick-red stain, about four feet across. It took a lot of soaking blood to make a stain that big. “That’s nice to know.”
“Touch it and see,” he said, giving her a nod toward the bed. “Please. I’d like to know if you’re able to make any sort of contact.”
She took a half step back. Contact? “What do you mean?”
“Just if you get any greater sense of the spirit of the babe. Its voice should be sharper, like it literally is just a few feet away. You may almost feel like you can reach out and touch it.”
A shiver ran down Jackie’s spine. Touch it? Are you fucking insane? Despite the apparent ease with which Nick had performed the action, this was not a normal thing to do. This was downright creepy. Jackie slowly leaned forward half expecting the blood to come surging up at her once again, but nothing happened. In what must have looked like slow motion to Nick, Jackie reached down with the tip of her finger and touched a small splotch of blood near the edge of the bed.
The wailing cries pierced her skull in full-on surround sound, eardrum-ringing rage and terror. The blood repooled upon the mattress, churning and splattering across the surface as though something lay there, squirming in the gore.
Jackie staggered back, mouth agape, her ears ringing. The feeling of death swam through her like a tidal surge, colder than ice, and flashes of memory flooded her brain. The bone-eating cold of Deadworld. Her stomach revolted, and Jackie stumbled to her knees, retching up the morning coffee onto the carpet.
Jackie clutched at her head and screamed, “Get out! Get out, get out, get out!”
A moment later Nick was at her side, arms around her. His cool, calm voice in her ear. “It’s gone, Jackie. The door’s shut. It’s gone now.”
She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and tried to listen between her own ragged breaths. The babe’s cries were distant once again. “Nick? Can we get the hell out of here? Please? Now?”
He pulled Jackie up to her feet and walked her toward the door until she had regained her equilibrium. At the bottom of the stairs, the cleaning crew stared at her with wide-eyed curiosity. Nothing to see here, not a fucking thing. Jackie hurried past them and out the door into fresh nondead air.
Chapter 8
At the top of the stairs to her apartment, Nick said, “I’ll make some coffee or will that be too harsh on your stomach?”
Jackie had not considered that he would want to come in. She thought he was just getting her to the door and making sure she didn’t throw up yet again. He had refused to let her pay for getting the floor of the Porsche cleaned. There weren’t many things more humiliating than losing it in a guy’s car, unless of course you were so drunk you didn’t even remember doing it. Regardless, she did not want Nick fussing over her in her apartment. Fussing was the start of a slippery slope that Jackie did not want to consider right now. She just needed some time to collect herself and calm down.
“Nick.” She stopped and looked up at him, her hand resting on the doorknob. “I’d rather be by myself for a bit, if you don’t mind. My brain is fried. My stomach hates me, and I just need quiet for a while.”
“That’s fine,” he said, with no hint of disappointment. “We should probably talk about what happened some more. Get Shelby and maybe Laurel if she’s available. I don’t want you running around thinking you’ve gone insane, Jackie.” He offered her a faint, wry smirk. “You’re just psychic.”
Jackie opened the door. “God. Please don’t call me that. I’m not a psychic.”
“But you do have some psychic abilities. We can help you figure it all out, Jackie.”
She gave him a wan smile. But I don’t want it figured out. I just want the fucking stuff to go away. “Thanks. I’ll call you later, Nick. And I’m really sorry about the car. I still can’t believe I did that.”
“Don’t worry, Jackie. It’s fine. Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions or just want to talk about things.”
Jackie nodded and closed the door, leaning back against it with a sigh of relief. If he’d pressed, she probably would have let him in. He was just so damn polite about everything. Nothing she said or did or wanted to do put him out of sorts. It made you not want to say no to him, and that feeling had the butterflies in Jackie’s stomach doing handsprings. Bickerstaff waltzed up and rubbed himself against her ankles and Jackie picked up the tabby, holding him tightly against her chest and rubbing his ears.
“Hey Bickers, baby. Guess what Mommy saw today?” He purred and rubbed his face against hers. “That’s right, a ghost. Can you fucking believe it?” Bickers pulled back to look at her and then rubbed the other side of his face against her. “I know. Freakiest fucking thing ever. Mommy would just as soon never do that shit again.” She dropped him down to the floor where he trotted toward the kitchen. “Hungry? Well, let’s see what the hunky old vampire has for you today.”
She served Bickerstaff up his dinner and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Probably not the best thing for her stomach, but the tequila would kill it.
“Laur? You around by chance?” she yelled out into her apartment. “Could use your help with this one. Kind of important.” The only sound was the cat hungrily slurping up cat food. She could sense no dead people either, but Jackie wasn’t sure if that meant anything or not. “Laur!” After a minute, Jackie finished off the first beer and walked to the bathroom. She needed a shower badly. Even though she hadn’t vomited on herself, she felt as though the stench of blood still clung to her, had coated her skin and soaked into her clothing.
A shower, another beer, and she was at least cleaner. Still no sign of Laurel. Jackie had really hoped she might hear or at least somehow be aware of what had happened.
“Laurel!” Jackie yelled for the seventh or eighth time. She had lost count. “Where the fuck are you?”
Why wouldn’t she come? Jackie needed her now more than ever. She needed someone to explain what the hell had happened back there in that house. She wanted to know if that was a normal experience and more importantly how you stopped doing it. Even after two hours and a hot shower, she could still sense the cold that lingered in her body. Her joints had a faint, arthritic ache to them. It didn’t hurt, but she could tell it was there. The dead had seeped into her bones. Pouring herself a glass of wine, Jackie wrapped up in a blanket and flipped through channels on the television, completely at loose ends.
