The Restorer

by Amanda Stevens

  “Maybe longer.”

  I went over the kills in my head. Afton Delacourt was murdered fifteen years ago, this unknown male at least ten years ago, Jane Rice nine years ago, and Hannah Fischer and Camille Ashby mere weeks ago. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the timeline. No continuity to the killer’s victims or methods, although such a large gap might indicate he’d been out of commission for whatever reason until recently. It might also mean all the bodies had yet to be discovered.

  “Do you think more bodies will turn up?”

  “John seems to think so.”

  “How do we find them?” I murmured. “A combination of electrical resistivity and terrain conductivity? Ground penetrating radar? It would take forever to check every grave.”

  “I imagine the simplest way is to find the killer,” Ethan said.

  My gaze dropped to the skeleton. “He must have family, friends. Someone who’s been missing him all this time.”

  “One would think.”

  I studied the remains, a tightness in my chest. He’d been left in that chamber to be forgotten. “You said last night you’d identified some interesting characteristics.”

  “Yes. I can’t tell you who he is, but I can tell you how he died. The breastbone is punctured and cuts in the ribs indicate wounds to both sides of the front chest and two more in the upper back. Seven major wounds altogether. And more could have penetrated the soft tissue without touching bone. It was a vicious kill.” He noticed my grimace and said, “Let’s move on to something a little less gruesome.”

  I nodded.

  He opened a black plastic bag and displayed the contents. “Interestingly enough, the clothing that was found with the remains may be our best hope of identification.”

  “Really? I only saw bits of fabric. Hardly anything.”

  “On the body, yes, but some other items were found nearby. Shoes, belt and, more important, a leather letterman jacket. The rats didn’t leave us much—”

  “Wait a minute.” The room started to spin. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself. “Did you say a letterman jacket?”

  “Maroon with a gold letter, possibly a V or W.” He glanced at me in concern, then closed the bag. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. You’ve gone as white as that sheet.”

  It was a gold W, in fact. I knew because I’d seen that jacket on a ghost lurking in the garden at Rapture and again last night as he’d leered at me through the shackle that dangled from his wrist.

  THIRTY-NINE

  A simple Google search led me to the library at Westbury High School, located north of the Crosstown, in an area that had languished for years but was now on the upswing. A pretty librarian named Emery Snow showed me to a room where all the yearbooks were stored.

  “They go all the way back to 1975,” she said, running a finger along the maroon-and-gold volumes. “That’s when Westbury opened.”

  Since Ethan estimated the skeleton had been in the chamber for at least ten years, I used that as my reference point and worked back. It was a tedious task. After a few books, all those bright, shiny smiles melded together. I started to wonder if I would even recognize the face of that ghost.

  And then I found him.

  His name was Clayton Masterson and I experienced the blackest mood as I stared down at his picture. His mouth curled in that same sneer I’d seen last night, his eyes gleamed with the same cunning cruelty. Shivering, I glanced over my shoulder to see if someone—something—had crept up behind me.

  No one was there, thank goodness. I could hear Emery humming behind the desk. I took comfort at her nearness, her normalcy.

  I glanced back down at the photo and tried to muster up something akin to pity. As a young man, he’d been viciously murdered, his body hidden away all these years. I should feel something. But I did not. I could see only hate in his eyes, an emotion that seemed to ooze from his very soul. Little wonder that he’d met a violent end.

  Suppressing a shudder, I carried the yearbook out to Emery’s desk. Since it was summer, the library was mostly empty and eerily silent. I resisted the urge to glance over my shoulder yet again as I spread the pages open before her.

  “Did you find who you were looking for?” she asked. I’d told her very little about my search, only that I was trying to locate a former Westbury student who had disappeared over ten years ago.

  “I think so. Now I’m wondering if anyone might still be around who was here when he attended.”

  “I graduated from Westbury. So depending on the year…” She turned the yearbook over and glanced at the front. “I was a freshman. The student body was pretty small back then so it’s possible I can help you. I have to say, though, that I don’t remember hearing anything about a missing student.”

  I pointed to Clayton Masterson’s photograph. “Do you remember him?”

  She seemed to recoil exactly the same way that I had. “Vaguely. He was a few years ahead of me, but I seem to recall some scandal. My aunt mentioned something once. An arrest maybe. He and his mother lived in her neighborhood.”

  “Do you think your aunt would be willing to talk to me?”

  Emery smiled. “Oh, Tula will talk to just about anyone. The trick is getting her to shut up.”

  Tula Mackey waited for me on the front porch of her tiny Craftsman-style cottage on Huger. As her niece predicted, the woman started talking the minute I walked up and didn’t stop to draw a breath as she led me into the house and down a small hallway to a sunny, yellow kitchen, where she offered me sweet tea and cookies. I accepted the tea because it was rather warm in her house and holding the glass gave me something to do with my hands.

  Finally, she sat down across from me at the dinette, her eyes bird-bright and avid as she watched me sip the tea. “Emery says you’re looking for that Masterson boy.”

  “I’m not looking for him so much as I’m trying to find out what happened to him,” I explained. “I can’t say much more than that, but anything you can tell me about him would be a big help.”

  She tucked her gray hair behind both ears. “He and his mama lived a few houses down from me in that blue two-story on the corner. So I have a lot of memories of that boy, none of them good.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “He was a bully,” she said. “The meanest one I ever saw. I’m not talking malicious in the way kids can be to one another, but so cruel and sadistic his own mama was afraid of him.”

  “Can you describe his physical appearance?”

  “Average height, I would say, with a stout build. Not fat, mind you, but solid muscle. Wide shoulders, big arms. Hands the size of hams. He looked liked he could pick up a car if he had a mind to. He played football for a time, but he was too vicious even for that. Hurt another boy so bad they had to kick him off the team. I reckon that set him off. Sports was about the only thing he ever took any pride in. You never saw him without that jacket, even when the weather was warm.”

  “You say he was a bully. What kind of things did he do?”

  “He murdered my poor little Isabelle.” She picked at the neck of her blue-flowered housedress. “Prettiest white Persian you ever laid eyes on, with a real sweet disposition. She was a house cat, but she got out one day and I must have walked the neighborhood a dozen times over until I finally found her hanging from a tree in my own backyard. He’d strung her up like a deer waiting to be gutted.”

  My stomach churned at the picture. Strung her up…like Hannah Fischer and Afton Delacourt. But at the time of Hannah’s murder, Clayton Masterson had already been dead for years, viciously murdered, his body left to rot down in that chamber.

  “The way he tortured that poor creature…” Tula broke off, tears pooling in her eyes as she touched a napkin to her nose. “I never got over it. I still can’t go out in the backyard without seeing that sweet little kitty hanging from that tree.”

  I murmured my sympathies and gave her a moment while I mulled everything over. The more I learned, the more confused I be
came. Who had carried on Clayton’s legacy? “How did you know he was responsible?”

  “He had the nerve to brag about it,” Tula said angrily. “He killed Myrtle Wilson’s little Pekingese, too. She found him just like poor Isabelle. And there were other animals. Squirrels, rabbits, even possums. It got so you hated to go outside because you didn’t know what you might find hanging from the trees.”

  The grotesque imagery made me shudder. “Did anyone ever call the police?”

  “That boy was far too clever for the law. Even when he was little he knew how to hide his tracks. And by the time he was grown, people around here were too afraid to call the authorities, afraid he’d burn their houses down around them while they slept. Then that little girl on Halstead went missing. A couple of detectives showed up and took him in for questioning. They never could prove he had anything to do with her disappearance, but I think they must have found something on him. They sent him to one of those detention halls for juvenile delinquents. Or maybe it was a mental hospital. His mama moved away while he was gone. I never saw her or the boy again. Or the other one, either, come to think of it.”

  “The other one?”

  Her face softened. “He was a quiet, scrawny little thing. He and his mama lived in a rental house a few blocks over. From everything I heard, she wasn’t much of a mother. A drinker, they said. Always bringing strange men home with her. Some example she set for her boy. He never stood a chance. I used to see him out wandering the streets at all hours. Or just sitting alone on the front porch. I guess that’s why he took up with Clayton Masterson. Poor kid was lonely. The two of them were inseparable for a while, but I don’t think he had anything to do with killing those animals. Not by choice, anyway.”

  “What do you mean, not by choice?”

  She leaned forward, her eyes clouded. “Used to be a vacant lot by the river. A lot of kids played over there. One of the neighborhood boys claimed he saw Clayton and the other kid back up in the woods one day. Clayton had strung up an old mangy dog and he tried to get the other boy to kill it. When the little one refused, Clayton bound their wrists together and forced the knife into the kid’s hand. Forced him to plunge the blade into that poor dog’s heart.” She leaned back, hand clasped to her throat. “Can you even imagine such a thing? You know what I call somebody like that? A natural-born killer, is what.”

  I was afraid she might be right. “What was the other boy’s name?”

  “I don’t think I ever knew. He and his mama kept mostly to themselves. I did hear rumors that she was from a well-to-do family and they’d disowned her years ago.” Tula paused with a pensive frown. “They said she was a Delacourt. But you know how people love to talk.”

  As I drove away from Tula Mackey’s house, my first instinct was to call Devlin. I’d made an important discovery, but revealing it could be tricky. How could I explain that Clayton Masterson’s ghost—and that letterman’s jacket—had led me to him?

  I’d have to give the matter careful consideration, and in the meantime, I decided to go see Tom Gerrity. He was the one who had sent me to Ethan Shaw in the first place, and it was apparent to me now that he’d known all along what I would find there.

  I used my phone to look up the address of Gerrity Investigations. The office was located north of Calhoun not far from where I found myself now. The area had once been residential, but most of the original houses had long since been converted into apartments and offices or torn down to make room for ugly brick commercial buildings that housed a variety of businesses.

  Pulling to the curb, I scoped out the immediate vicinity. Gerrity’s was in one of the shabbier buildings on the block, an old Charlestonian-style clapboard with drooping porches and peeling paint. No gardens here, only a tangle of scrubby brush and weeds that hadn’t seen a mower in months.

  As I headed up the cracked sidewalk, I took another look around. Since my conversation with Tula Mackey, I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding—that no matter what I did or where I went, my destiny was on a collision course with a killer.

  The outer door was unlocked, and I stepped through into what had once been an elegant foyer. Now the grungy space and its threadbare accoutrements—gold velvet armchair, moth-eaten rug and sagging Venetian blinds—served as a lobby for a handful of shady endeavors. After checking the row of mailboxes for a name and number, I climbed the creaky stairs to the second floor and found Gerrity Investigations all the way at the end of a long, dim hallway.

  The door stood open, but the office looked deserted. I paused on the threshold to glance around. Like the rest of the building, the space had seen better days. An old metal desk faced the doorway. The only other furniture was an equally battered filing cabinet and a couple of plastic chairs.

  There were no other doors. The one room apparently comprised the whole of Gerrity Investigations.

  Bending backward to glance down the hallway, I walked over to the desk and glanced at the items littered across the surface. Pens, broken pencils, yellow legal pad, stapler, paper clips—nothing out of the ordinary.

  I heard the squeak of footsteps outside and hurried back over to the door. A man strode down the hallway, but he wasn’t Gerrity. They were probably around the same age, but the newcomer was white, a few inches shorter and a few pounds heavier than Gerrity.

  Darting back to the desk, I resumed my inventory. The only personal item in the whole space was a framed photograph of police cadets on graduation day. As I scanned the faces, a thrill of discovery raced through me. I recognized Tom Gerrity and Devlin. And too late…the man I’d seen in the hallway.

  Sensing his presence, I turned to find him in the doorway, one hand beneath his khaki jacket as if reaching for a weapon. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

  Quickly, I set the frame back on the desk and backed away with my hands in front of me in a manner I hoped was non-threatening. “I’m looking for Tom Gerrity. I have some information for him.”

  His brows rose at that. “And what information would that be?”

  I was pretty nervous by that point, but if anyone knew how to conceal fear, it was me. “Are you a colleague of his?”

  “You might say that.” He let his arm drop to his side as he walked slowly into the office.

  Now that he’d apparently decided not to pull a gun on me, I breathed a little easier. “Do you happen to know where I can find Mr. Gerrity?”

  “You’re looking right at him.”

  I stared at him in bewilderment. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Tom Gerrity.”

  “I’m Tom Gerrity. Leastways, last time I looked.”

  I didn’t see the slightest resemblance between this man and the Tom Gerrity I knew. Could there be two private investigators in Charleston with the same name?

  Then I glanced back at the photograph and felt a strange sense of destiny again.

  “Were you hired by Hannah Fischer’s mother to find her?” I asked slowly.

  “That’s privileged information,” he said. “Unless you want to tell me why you’re really here, I think we’re done.”

  “I’ve been working with John Devlin on Hannah’s case.” My gaze dropped briefly to the photograph. “I assume you know him.”

  His contemptuous smirk made my skin crawl. “Oh, I know him all right. What’s he to you?”

  I didn’t like the way he looked at me. Nor the way he spoke about Devlin, but I was careful to keep my disgust concealed. I didn’t want to upset him. Not yet at least.

  “I told you, Detective Devlin and I have been working together.”

  “You’re not a cop.”

  “No. I’m a consultant.”

  His gaze flicked over me in a manner that told me just what he thought of that revelation. “So what is this information you have for me?”

  “I’m afraid there’s been a miscommunication. This is the man I’m looking for.” I picked up the photograph and pointed to the man who’d been masquerading as Gerrity.

  His eyes flared
and he took a menacing step toward me. “What is this…some kind of sick joke?”

  I held my ground. “No, not at all. As I said, there appears to be some sort of miscommunication—”

  He grabbed the picture from my hand and lay it facedown on the desk, as if my having seen it, let alone touched it, was some kind of affront to him. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re after, but you tell Devlin the next time he sends someone to snoop around in my office, he’d better watch his back. I won’t bother filing a complaint. I’ll handle the problem myself. And as for you…” His eyes narrowed menacingly. “You want to find Robert Fremont? Then I suggest you try Bridge Creek Cemetery in Berkeley County.”

  “Robert Fremont?” Where had I heard that name? Then I remembered. Robert Fremont was the name of the cop killed in the line of duty. The one whose grave I had promised Gerrity—rather, the man pretending to be Gerrity—I would pay special attention to.

  Cold fingers curled around my spine.

  How could I not have known? It seemed so obvious to me now.

  Fremont was dead and I was his conduit…between this world and the next.

  FORTY

  I sat in my car for the longest time before I dared start the engine and drive off. My hands shook so badly I didn’t trust myself behind the wheel.

  How could I not have known he was a ghost?

  How could I not have felt the cold breath of death down my collar? The chill of his otherworldly presence?

  A ghost masquerading as a man had entered my world and I had no rules to deal with such an entity.

  I glanced at the sky. The sun was still shining, but that slow westward glide had already begun. Dusk would fall in a matter of hours. The light would fade, the veil would thin and the ghosts would slip back through. I had no protection at all now except for the walls of my home.

  When I got there, I locked myself inside. Not that a bolt would keep them out, but I also had to worry about a killer.

  How had my life come to this?