The Jodi Picoult Collection #2

by Jodi Picoult

  Belatedly, he became aware of Shelby taking in his ruined clothes and wet hair. She must have called the police because she was worried about him—something his sister would definitely do. “It looks worse than it is,” Ross said, thinking that if she could see how scarred he was on the inside she’d be horrified. “But I’m fine. You can call off the search party.”

  At that, Eli Rochert stepped forward. “Actually,” he said, “I came here asking you to join it.”

  Ross wanted to be in his bedroom at Shelby’s place, with the lights off and a bottle of Jameson’s at his side, as he carved Lia’s name into his arm with the tongue of a knife. Maybe he would bleed, maybe it would hurt—although Ross would bet on neither of these. He knew what no one else seemed to be able to figure out—he was already dead; his body just hadn’t caught up to the rest of him.

  Sitting in the interrogation room at the Comtosook Police Department with Eli Rochert and his behemoth dog, he supposed, offered torture of a different sort. Scattered across the conference table were evidentiary pictures of Lia’s body after the hanging, boots she had worn, even the dress that she’d been wearing when she appeared to him. Seeing each of these was a cut deeper than any Ross could have made himself.

  “You, uh, said when we last met that you had started to investigate the history of Cecelia Pike’s death,” Eli said.

  “Lia,” Ross murmured. “She likes to be called Lia.”

  The cop resisted rolling his eyes, but just barely. Well, fuck him, Ross thought. I don’t want to be here either.

  “You . . . saw her, then?” Eli asked.

  “You’re not going to believe me if I say I did, so why are you even asking?”

  “Look. I’m not crazy about consulting a psychic—”

  “I’m not a psychic,” Ross interrupted. “Sensitive, maybe.”

  “Jeez, no matter what you’re doing in this state, it always comes back to Civil Unions.”

  “Not that kind of sensitive.” Ross couldn’t stand it anymore; he turned over one gruesome autopsy photo of Lia so that it was no longer visible. “The kind of person who’s receptive to spirits. This one, in particular.”

  Eli hesitated before speaking. “Mr. Wakeman, a week ago, you begged me to reopen a seventy-year-old case. Against my better judgment, I did. And I’m interested enough to keep digging, even though it’s something I have to do on my own time, instead of the department’s.” He flattened his hands on the table. “You indicated there might be foul play involving Spencer Pike. What made you say that?”

  “The Abenaki claim to the land. Pike’s absolute fit when I brought it up. And the fact that there was a ghost at all—from everything I’ve been taught, ghosts only come back for a reason. I assumed that if there was a ghost on the property, it was a Native American—maybe even the one accused of murder. But the one I found turned out to be Lia.” He turned away. “I’m sorry you wasted your time.”

  “It may not have been a waste,” Eli said. “According to what you just told me, if Lia Pike came back as a ghost, then something about her death probably didn’t sit right.”

  Her face flashed in front of Ross’s eyes, and he got to his feet, intent on leaving before he fell apart in front of this cop. “Being murdered when you’re eighteen usually doesn’t sit right. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Officer Rochert . . .”

  “Can I show you something, before you go?” Eli handed Ross a piece of paper, one he recognized as a crime-scene report dated from the 1930s. “Pike says Gray Wolf hanged her. According to the officers on the scene, there was sign of a struggle. There are photos of the porch where the body was found hanging, photos of footprints, photos of a broken window in the master bedroom. I’ve got DNA matching the victim’s blood, plus DNA from two different males who were also placed at the scene.”

  Ross swallowed around the brick in his throat. “Sounds like you’re well on your way to proving Pike right.”

  Eli continued as if Ross had not spoken at all. “But there’s also evidence that doesn’t add up. Things that make me wonder if you aren’t right about Spencer Pike getting rid of Gray Wolf. And possibly his own wife.”

  “Listen.” The room was swimming in front of Ross. “I can’t talk about this right now.”

  “I don’t want you to talk. I want you to help.”

  Ross looked up. “I’m not a detective.”

  “No,” Eli agreed quietly. “But you apparently know how to find things the rest of us can’t see.”

  SEARCH INVENTORY: Pike Homicide, Sept. 19, 1932

  SEIZED FROM THE ICEHOUSE PORCH:

  Noose, cut

  Leather pouch

  Pipe

  Photographs: sawdust on porch w/footprints, body cut down

  SEIZED FROM VICTIM:

  Boots

  Dress

  Underwear/sanitary napkin

  Photographs: autopsy

  SEIZED FROM MASTER BEDROOM:

  Photographs: broken glass window

  Photographs: interior of house—ransacked

  List of names—dinner party following week

  Sheets, pillows, coverlet, nightgown—stained

  Swaddling blankets

  Metal basin

  By the time Ross got home, it was daybreak. He walked inside, thanking a God he no longer believed in that Shelby did not seem to be around. Making a beeline upstairs, he shut the door of his room behind him, crawled into bed fully clothed, and finally let himself go to pieces.

  Most of the time when Ross thought about his life, he imagined living it alone. The very concept of a family did not appear to be in the cards for him. He was not commitment-shy, or unattractive, or too free-spirited to settle; but whenever he tried to give his heart away, he found himself holding it out to a person who was no longer there.

  There were women. The waitress in Duluth who took him home with the extra beef stew one night; the soccer mom who had never been told by her businessman husband that she was worthy of more than that life; the scarred breast-cancer survivor who had to be reminded how beautiful she still was. But these were women who needed him for a night or two, who dropped him the moment they saw how much Ross needed them. After all, who could love someone like him—a man who sometimes could not get out of bed even though he had not slept for weeks, a man who had tried to kill himself so many times that he believed he was invincible, a man who could not even love himself?

  Ross pulled a pillow over his head. He wanted a woman who would feel about him the way he felt about her—as if she’d been missing something until they met, willing to give up everything to follow him from one world to another, certain that every disastrous second she’d spent alone had only been leading up to this moment.

  He wanted a woman who did not exist.

  There was a knock on his door, which Ross ignored. Maybe Shelby would think he was asleep. He ducked further beneath the covers.

  “Hey.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand resting gently on the blanket covering his shoulder. “I know you’re not asleep.”

  He tugged down the blanket. “How?”

  “Because you never sleep.”

  “There’s always a first time,” Ross said.

  He watched Shelby pleat the edge of the sheet into a fan, then let it fall apart. “What did the police want?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He came all the way here, and took you all the way to the station, for nothing?”

  “Leave me alone, Shelby. If you want to be a mother, go practice on your son.”

  “My son isn’t the one who’s crying.”

  Ross touched his fingers to his cheeks—Christ, he hadn’t even noticed. “I can’t do this now.”

  “Ross, talk to me . . .”

  He fell onto his back, his arm covering his eyes. “Shel, look. I haven’t found out that I have six weeks to live, unfortunately. I didn’t commit a felony. I just had a really shitty night that made me remember why it’s no use falling in love. So go back to your room or t
he library or wherever and let me lick my wounds, all right?”

  “You got dumped by that woman you’ve been seeing?”

  “I haven’t been seeing anyone.” But he had. Just not in that way.

  “Who is she?”

  Ross came up on an elbow. “She,” he said, “is the ghost of a woman who was killed seventy years ago.” He had the satisfaction of watching Shelby’s jaw drop, and he sank back onto the pillows. “Exactly.”

  “You saw a ghost?”

  “I saw a ghost. I touched a ghost. I kissed a ghost.”

  “You kissed a ghost?”

  “I fell so hard for a ghost that everything inside me is still black and blue.”

  “Ross, come on—”

  “Don’t, Shelby. Just don’t. I’m absolutely, a hundred percent, totally aware of what did and did not happen to me out there.”

  His voice was riding high, his eyes wild. “Ross,” she said gently, “there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  He turned on her. “How do you know? Maybe if you can’t see something, it doesn’t mean it’s not out there. It only means your eyes aren’t tuned quite right, or it’s too well camouflaged, or you just haven’t been lucky enough to find it yet.”

  He was speaking of himself, but to Shelby, he might as well have been speaking of Ethan, and what the future might hold for the scientists searching for a cure to XP. She suddenly understood that whether or not Ross’s ghost was real, right now, it was what he needed to believe. What he needed her to believe.

  She had been there, herself.

  Ross pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “God, maybe I am crazy. Maybe I should have myself locked up.”

  “You’re no crazier than anyone else. We all do it.”

  “See ghosts?”

  “Fall for someone who doesn’t exist.” Shelby stroked his hair. “Infatuation’s just another word for not seeing clearly. When you start to love a person—that’s when they become real.”

  Ross turned toward his sister on a sob. “She left,” he choked out. “She left me.”

  Shelby bent low, kissed him on the crown of his head. “Then find her,” she said.

  Date: September 21, 1932

  Time: 1:15 PM

  Interview of: Mrs. Wilmetta Sizemore

  Interview by: Officer Duley Wiggs

  Location: Comtosook Police Department

  Q When did you last see Cissy Pike?

  A. At the Ethan Allen Club, a week ago, when we were having dinner with our spouses and her father, Harry Beaumont. I’ve known Cissy for years; she was the perfect wife, so enamored of Professor Pike and so clearly anticipating the birth of her baby.

  Q. Was there anything unusual about her that night?

  A. I don’t think so . . . no, wait. There was a moment where poor Cissy spilled a glass of wine. One of the help, a Gypsy boy, came over to assist but took liberties, touching Cissy’s person while trying to clean up the mess. Professor Pike, well, he quite rightly ripped the waiter up one side and down the other. [Pause] I don’t know the Gypsy boy’s name. But you all might want to find out.

  “Goddamn,” Eli said, when he heard the crash. He ran downstairs from the bathroom, half his face still lathered with shaving cream, to find Watson hiding under the coffee table. One quick look at the living room told him there either had been a recent B&E, or a 150-pound dog chasing something. The TV had been knocked off its stand, the pillows tossed from the couch, and one ladderback chair was now tipped over beside a broken window. Eli crouched down near the dog. “Give it up.” He held out his hand, and Watson sheepishly opened his mouth so that the mouse dropped into it.

  Eli tossed it out of the shattered window. “Well, this is great, Watson. We can open a McDonald’s drive-through in our very own home.” The dog’s ears flattened. “I suppose you’re going to tell me it wasn’t your fault. Oh, that’s right, you’re smarter than that. You’re not going to say anything at all.”

  The dog whined and snuffed his nose further into the carpet. Eli put the couch to rights, and then gently set the television back on its pedestal. This, at least, wasn’t smashed. Sighing, he walked to the window and moved the chair that had broken it. A rainbow of shattered glass lined the sill, but since the window had been broken from the inside, most of the shards had landed somewhere in the azalea bushes.

  Suddenly, he turned and charged up the stairs, this time with the dog at his heels. In his bedroom, Eli overturned a pile of folders on his nightstand until he found the manila envelope containing the crime-scene photos. The photographs taken after the Pike homicide were seventy years old, but they had been made with 4x5 negatives—still the best source around for excellent detail. Eli squinted at the shot taken inside Cissy Pike’s bedroom. The focal point of the picture was the bed, but the window was just behind. Something sparkled on the sill. What about the floor?

  Eli scratched his jaw, surprised to remember he was still covered with shaving cream. “When I finish, Watson,” he said, “we’re going for a drive.”

  Rod van Vleet put his face very close to Ross’s. “Let me get this straight,” he enunciated. “You actually found a ghost?”

  Ross nodded. “Isn’t that what you asked me to do?”

  “No!” Rod threw up his hands and walked away. “I asked you to come check out the property. I never actually expected you to find anything.” He sat down across from Ross in the narrow on-site trailer. “So what am I supposed to do now? Douse the place with Holy Water? Wait until my foreman’s head starts doing 360s?”

  “It’s not a demonic possession. Just a ghost.”

  “Oh, well, fabulous,” Rod said. “I’m glad you’ve cleared that up. And what do I do when it starts coming after my workers?”

  “That probably won’t happen. Curtis Warburton always said that ghosts tend to do their own thing.”

  “Then she should be willing to move somewhere else.”

  Ross shook his head. “According to Curtis, human spirits only leave if they want to. If they’re comfortable where they are, or emotionally tied to the place, or just stubborn, they don’t budge.”

  “Curtis said. According to Curtis. What do you think?”

  For a long moment, Ross was silent. “I don’t really know anymore,” he said finally.

  “Well, let me tell you what I think, then. If a judge happens to believe in this crap and thinks there’s a spirit floating around here, I lose my permit to build. That means one of us is going to have to disappear . . . and for a nominal fee, I’m sure I can count on both of you to do that.”

  The color drained from Ross’s face. “I can’t make her leave.”

  “Then I’ll find someone who can.”

  They stared at each other, and then, without another word, Ross slammed out of the trailer. Rod stood in the doorway and watched him go. The workers he passed didn’t even bat an eye. Then again, they were being paid to do a job—and minor setbacks like frozen ground in August, or shovel handles that split at the touch of a hand, or nails that simply would not burrow straight, were all just a path to fat overtime checks. So he had a ghost in his strip mall. So what? Maybe he could even capitalize on it. Launch a breakfast café called “Restaurant In Peace,” and sell boo-gels and scream cheese. When the press interviewed him, he’d deadpan and say the place was a great undertaking.

  Or maybe . . . he wouldn’t build a strip mall at all. New England was full of creepy old B&Bs stuffed to their dusty rafters with stories of hauntings. If he already had a ghost, why not build a hotel around it?

  After, of course, he had found someone to officially evict the thing.

  Just in case.

  Rod whipped his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 411. “Angel Quarry,” a voice answered.

  He checked the number, then hung up and redialed. When the operator picked up on the other end, Rod exhaled. In truth, he’d been expecting the quarry again. “Yes,” he said. “I’m trying to find a Mr. Curtis Warburton.”

  The
Forensic Lab in Montpelier prioritized cases depending on severity. Which meant that although evidence from a homicide that needed processing might be returned in just a day’s time, a simple burglary might not yield results for several weeks. Eli knew this well, which was why he was even now holding a conversation with Tuck Boorhies, a technician he’d worked with in the past. “A murder?” Tuck said. “In Comtosook?”

  “That’s right,” Eli said. He did not mention that the event had occurred seventy years ago.

  Tuck took the print from Eli. “Jeez. What’s with the black-and-white?”

  “Crime-scene photographer is a purist. How long is this going to take?”

  “How long are you going to stand there breathing down my neck?” Tuck answered, but he scanned the print into the computer programmed with Adobe Photoshop. “Now, what part do you want blown up?”

  Eli showed him on the screen, and the computer zoomed into the bedroom window and the wooden floor in front of it. The technician punched buttons, highlighting the contrast between light and dark. “What do you see?” Eli asked.

  “A floor.”

  “What do you see on the floor?”

  “Nothing,” Tuck said.

  Eli grinned. “That’s right.”

  Ten minutes later, he had a print of this enlargement, as well as some others, including a zoom taken from a photograph shot outside the house below Cecelia Pike’s window. There on the grass, near the feet of the ladder still propped against the house, were small winking chips that looked like broken glass. “There’s no glass inside,” Eli said to Watson, a half-hour later on the drive home, as the bloodhound panted beside him in the cab of the truck. “But there is glass outside. That means no one took her out; she broke out. But if she was being abducted, why would she have broken out?”

  Eli slowed as a car passed him. “She wasn’t abducted, that’s why. She was running away. Why else would you go out the window, instead of using the bedroom door? Because you don’t want someone to see you leaving. Or because you try going downstairs, and can’t, since the bedroom door and window have been locked by someone trying to keep you there.”

  He turned to the dog. “Next question: why was the downstairs of the house wrecked? Pike says on the police report that Gray Wolf entered the bedroom through the broken window. If that’s true, then he wouldn’t walk downstairs with the victim to make his escape—he’d go out the way he came. Which means that house must have been tossed by someone else.” He thought about staging this crime, and what it might accomplish. Then Eli put on his blinker, turning off at the exit. “All roads,” he said, “lead to Spencer Pike.”