by Linda Palmer
“OhmyGod. OhmyGod. OhmyGod. Were they all like that? No wonder they can’t talk to us.” Knowing she simply wanted me to feel what she’d felt, I wasn’t really afraid. But I was horrified. I wiggled until Cooper set me on my feet and then began to pace in a circle, my cold hands on my burning cheeks. “We’ve got to tell Detective Simms. He has no idea there are so many. If he did, he’d have the FBI involved.”
“A serial killer in Martinsburg?”
It did sound too crazy to be true. But I now knew better. “Should I call him tonight so he can get hold of whoever he needs to?”
“I don’t know. Those women all seem reluctant when it comes to the cops. Remember how that spirit disappeared when he got here? Maybe they’ve given up on that kind of help.”
“Maybe, and it’s actually too dark to see anything if he does come out here. I mean, we’ve tried that before.” I stopped digging circles in the dirt with my feet and went to Cooper. We hugged, him with his chin resting on the top of my head. “Do you work tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Will you go with me to the police station?”
“You know I will. Now let’s get out of here.”
I broke free of his embrace. “Just one more thing.” Steeling myself, I peeked through those double doors into the shadowy interior of the barn. “We’re leaving now, but I’ll be getting you some help tomorrow. I promise.”
It wasn’t until we got home that I realized my neck was okay again. Apparently I now knew what I needed to know about cause of death. What I didn’t know was who’d done it.
On Friday, my parents left pretty early for a second Thanksgiving celebration at my aunt’s house in Shreveport. I begged off, telling them my boyfriend and I had plans.
I called to be sure Detective Simms would be in his office before we went to see him just before lunch. He said he would and didn’t ask questions, thank goodness. I didn’t want to attempt an explanation over the phone.
Sergeant Mark waved us on back as if he knew why we were there. Detective Simms met us at his door and pointed to the chairs. “What’s up?”
I told him I’d seen more apparitions in the barn.
He took a small notepad out of his pocket and began scribbling in it. “Apparitions plural?”
“Five.”
Detective Simms’s gaze clashed with mine. “Five?”
“Five. Are there five missing women?”
He sat back. “At the moment, there’s one women currently missing in Martinsburg. Then there are the three bodies—”
I caught my breath. “Three?”
“Yes. The last victim died in the hospital. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to give us any information before she passed.” He rubbed his buzzed head, frowning slightly. “You were there that afternoon, weren’t you?”
“There where?” I asked.
“At the hospital. I just remembered it. You and Cooper, standing in the hall. You didn’t, by any chance, see that woman’s spirit depart her body, did you?”
I found myself wishing I’d confessed the sighting before. “I might’ve. I mean, I did see a ghost in the hall, and she looked very…new.”
The detective’s whole demeanor changed. He leaned forward, his gaze nailing me to my chair. “What did she tell you?”
“Not a thing, and that’s the problem. I see these poor women, but they give me nothing. I don’t understand why they’re coming around at all. If they’d give me a clue, then I could help. Otherwise…” I shrugged, baffled. “Have you called in the FBI?”
“Not yet.” Tension suddenly radiated from Detective Simms like heat from Tagliaro’s brick oven. “I thought I told you to call me if you had anything to report.”
I felt Cooper stiffen beside me. “No, you told us to stay out of it, which we did. When you gave us your card and said to call you, we did that, too.”
Was it my imagination, or did the good detective seem a little put out to be corrected?
“You’re exactly right,” he said with a strained smile of apology. “Sorry if I’m a little short today. I’m getting some heat from the higher ups to call in the feds, but this is my case, and I hate to do that without more evidence that we really have a serial killer on our hands.”
“But the FBI handles this type of thing all the time, don’t they?”
“MPD is not without expertise of its own.” As if hearing his own sharp tone, he gave me a sheepish smile and shrugged one shoulder. “Cops are territorial, Mia, and we’re making progress. I’ve brought in several men for questioning and actually have a couple more coming in today. Naturally I’ll call for reinforcements if my leads don’t pan out.”
I tactfully abandoned the touchy topic of federal assistance. “Do you think it would help if we went back to the barn together? There must be a reason they’re there. Maybe I can talk them into coming out and telling us who killed them.”
“What I want to know is why they hide from the law,” said Cooper. “Especially if they’re using Mia specifically to get to you.”
I thought about that for a second. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Let’s do this,” said Detective Simms. “Based on the number of spirits you’ve encountered, I want to check the surrounding parishes for missing persons’ cases. Sometimes we don’t share information the way they should. I’ll call you two once I’m done, and we’ll go back to the barn, maybe with some names of possible victims. That will demonstrate our sincerity.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said with a nod.
We left the detective’s office soon after. On the way out, we saw another cop and a man walking down the hall toward the conference rooms. Dressed in a sloppy T-shirt and baggy jeans, he leered at me as we passed him. Cooper sort of flinched. But I didn’t ask any questions then.
I waited until we got in the truck before drilling him. “Did you pick up something from that man in the hall?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“He’s got blood on his hands.”
That took my breath. “So he could be our serial killer?”
“I didn’t get anything that specific, but yeah, I guess he could.”
I suddenly felt a little better. To cancel out residual ickiness, we decided to eat somewhere and go to a holiday matinee. I suggested Tagliaro’s, of course. Why pay when we could dine for free, right? And there was no restaurant warmer in décor or ambiance.
Having helped out with catering that one night, Cooper now knew several of the servers and greeted them by name when we got there. We ordered grilled chicken with risotto and, of course, ciabatta, my fav, which we dipped in olive oil to eat. All came in lunch sized portions. Cannolis with a creamy filling finished off the meal.
I loved that more than one person stopped by to speak with us. They all liked Cooper, and no wonder. What wasn’t to like? Dressed in jeans that hugged all the right places and that maroon long-sleeve tee that looked so good with his tanned neck and face, he begged to be kissed. Saving that until we were outside, I pretty much attacked him in his truck, laying on a big fat smooch.
“What’s that for?” he asked with a pleased grin.
“Because you’re you. When we lost contact with one another, I figured I’d never see you again.” I thought about that for a second. “Do you believe in fate?”
“Yes.”
“So do I, which means I should probably write the legislators of our amazing state and thank them for interfering in parish business. Because if they hadn’t, I’d be going to school in Ville Cachée and have no idea you lived just down the road a piece.”
He got very serious. “I’m sorry I never contacted you when we moved to Louisiana. Believe me, I thought about it a lot.” Cooper stared at the restaurant for a moment, though I don’t think he was actually seeing it. “It’s crazy to say I fell in love with you when I was eight, but I swear that’s what happened.”
“That’s probably a little young for a first kiss, too, but we still did it.”
Cooper grinned. “Yeah, and don’t think I didn’t brag about it when I got back home.”
That made me grin, too.
“I need to check my PO box if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
He twisted the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. We didn’t talk much on the drive to the post office. He left the motor running when he got out to go inside. I saw he had a couple of letters in his hand when he came back out. He held up one and grinned just as he got to the truck.
“Bet this is my deed.”
I felt a thrill for him. How very cool to have land and a house, all paid for.
We looked at it together, skimming the legalese until we got to the map and physical description. I saw that all four corners had been defined by GPS coordinates and automatically checked to see if Cooper’s unit was portable. It was.
“Do you really want to go to a movie?” he asked as if reading my mind.
“Only if you do.”
“Not so much. Why don’t we take a drive or something?”
“And where will we be going?” I had a pretty good idea.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind exploring the woods around my house. That is, if you want to. We won’t go anywhere near the barn.”
I guessed his hesitancy stemmed from worry that I’d see more apparitions. Instantly, I needed to set him straight on something. “I’m not afraid to go there, if that’s what you’re thinking. The place is gorgeous, and I love it. I am sorry that the spirits of those poor women seem to be congregating in the barn, and I sure hope it’s not because they died in it. But even if it is, I won’t let that spoil everything. I hope you won’t, either.”
Cooper’s relief told me that was exactly what he’d been worrying about. “It seems really disrespectful to love that place so much when some bad things might’ve happened there.”
I knew what he meant. “Yeah, but life goes on. And those women, probably more than anyone else, would want us to celebrate it instead of mourn. Their own lives were cut so short, after all.”
“Once this is resolved and every victim we’ve seen accounted for, we could hold a memorial service, just you and me.”
“I really like that idea,” I said, touched by his sincerity. “Detective Simms might even want to come. It would definitely give him resolution, something I don’t think he got when he was in the military.”
*
Chapter Fourteen
We got there in plenty of time to explore the entire property way before dark if we got started right away. I wrote down all the GPS coordinates on a napkin he had in his truck because we didn’t want to walk around with a deed in our hands, especially if it might rain.
And it was surely looking as if it could, the reason I’d brought along my slicker that morning. We also tore a bath towel he kept in his truck into strips so we could mark the corners. I noticed that the towel smelled like him after a football game—one part sweaty boy, three parts cologne or soap or something—and tucked an extra strip into my bag to sniff later.
Cooper disconnected the GPS from the stand mounted in the dash of his truck. After checking that it was fully charged, we both put on our rain gear—him, his blue jacket and me, my yellow one. I could imagine how we looked as we headed into the woods at the front of the property near the two-lane highway. Two more splashes of vivid color amongst a forest of orange, red, and gold.
Leaves rustled under our feet with every step. I could hear cars passing, as well as songbirds and those noisy crows. Caw. Caw. Caw. A low rumble of thunder told me the rain might be getting closer, but I didn’t mind. Checking out the grounds of Cooper’s place was nothing but fun. I got no bad feelings and honestly didn’t have a care in the world.
We found the first corner easily enough and marked it with a stout stick and one of the towel strips. Cooper used a rock to drive the stick into the ground, which was damp enough to take it. In summer, we never could’ve done that.
We set out again, our eyes on the GPS as we tried to figure out which way to go. I noticed that the screen flickered a couple of times, but didn’t worry. How lost could we get with the highway so close we could hear the radios of passing vehicles?
It took quite a while to find the second corner, proof that we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. It was one thing to be in a spot and find our coordinates. It was another to know the coordinate and walk straight to it. So with the sky getting darker by the minute and lightning illuminating the rolling black clouds sweeping across it, we struggled with a learning curve, making more than one wrong turn in the process.
I still didn’t worry. I’d never felt so safe, so carefree. Not a single ghost had popped into view yet, and I wasn’t getting any weird vibes, either. I played with the idea that the guy with the murderous thoughts at MPD had confessed, thereby eliminating any need for his victims to contact me ever again.
“Is this great or what?” Cooper began walking backwards, keeping just ahead of me as he talked. “There’s just so much I can do here.”
“Such as?” I asked, humoring him.
“I could divide it into lots and develop a subdivision.”
“You wouldn’t!”
He gave me an impish grin. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. I could take up farming. I could offer guided turkey or deer hunts—”
“Only if you can find your own way around.”
“I could even—” Cooper’s sentence ended with an oomph! Right before my eyes, his hands flew up in the air and his legs sank into the ground past his knees. I heard a soft thunk to my left.
I tried not to laugh, but watching him struggling to get out of the hole he’d stepped into to was simply hilarious. It didn’t help that the ground broke off in chunks around his arms when he tried to get enough leverage to heave himself up. By the time I offered help, that cavity had some size, and my boyfriend had both feet buried up in the bottom of it. He grabbed my hands. I dug my heels into the wet dirt, hoping I didn’t land down there with him.
“What’s this?” Cooper abruptly released me and bent to pull something long, narrow and whitish from under his feet.
My heart skipped a beat. Was that a bone?
He bent again and began kicking dirt around. “Holy shit, Mia. Would you look at this?”
I edged closer and cautiously peered into the hole. Oh God. That looked like the top of a human skull. “Get out of there now!”
Cooper pretty much clawed his way up with me pulling on his belt to stop him sliding back down. Filthy and panting, he collapsed on the leaf-strewn ground. I knelt beside him. Goose bumps skittered up my arms and not just because of the chill in the moisture-laden air.
“Do you think…?” I couldn’t even say it.
“I do.” He sat up and glanced around. “I wonder how many other graves are on this property.”
My stomach lurched. “We should go back to the truck.”
“Yeah.”
I helped him stand and then went to work brushing dirt and mud from his jeans and jacket. “Where’s the GPS? We need to mark this spot so the police can find it.”
Cooper looked blankly at his empty hands. “I had it a second ago.”
“Did you drop it in there?” I pointed, but didn’t dare look in that horrible hole.
Clearly the braver one of us, he walked to the edge and glanced down. “I don’t see it.”
I suddenly remembered that thunk. “Uh-oh. I think you might’ve dropped it when you went down. I heard something land somewhere over there.” I pointed to my left.
Without answering, he stepped around the hole and a tree, negotiating tangled underbrush. “Here?”
“Yes. No.” I wanted to cry. “I’m not sure.”
Clearly sensing I was about to lose it, Cooper turned and came back. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got our phones.” He pulled his out of his pocket to check the signal, as did I. No bars. I glanced at his. None on it, either.
“So we’ll find our way to the truck witho
ut them. Can’t be far. We haven’t even walked a mile.” At that moment a drop of rain hit the top of my head. I looked up just in time for another to land in my eye.
Then the heavens opened up, drowning us. Cooper grabbed my hand and started back the way we’d come. Blinded by the downpour, I could barely keep up with his long strides. It didn’t help that my feet kept catching in brambles I didn’t remember stepping across the first time we’d passed through that area.
Though we should’ve been back to the truck in no time, we never found it. Knowing the slightest veer off a course with no path could mean losing our way, I abruptly braked.
Naturally, Cooper had to, too. “What?”
“Are we lost?”
“I don’t see how we could be.”
“Well, I do.” A wind kicked up, rattling branches that had already lost their leaves and making those that hadn’t lose more. I could barely hear what Cooper said because of the thunder, a constant rumble in the background.
Letting go of my hand, he slowly turned to scan the woods around us. “Is that the house?”
I squinted against the rain, just making out distant shadows that could’ve been a structure. It was hard to tell. How had it gotten so dark without us noticing? “Have you got a flashlight?”
“No. You?”
I shook my head.
“Is that a light?”
Looking where he pointed, I saw what appeared to be a beam of light, sort of bobbing between the trees as if someone might be carrying a spotlight of some kind. “I think it is.”
Our gazes collided.
“Getting any vibes?” asked Cooper.
“No. You?”
He hesitated. “No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Why would I?”
A little weirded out, I grabbed his hand. “What should we do?”
“Find out who it is. We’re lost, and—”
“I knew it!”
Cooper winced. “Everything is okay, Mia. These woods don’t go on forever. Even if we never find whoever’s carrying that light, we’ll come out on the road or a field or something and get our bearings there.” He bent his knees slightly to look me in the eye. “Okay?”
