A Ghostly Light

by Juliet Blackwell

  “So you’re saying maybe the security team could provide some insight into what Thorn was doing here, or whether he knew anyone local who might have had reason to kill him?”

  “Exactly. They could look into the sailors in the harbor, or maybe some of the residents of Point Moro, for starters.”

  “Good idea. They might be on it already, but I’ll talk to Ellis about it,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll get out of your hair and make sure the caterer makes plenty of sandwiches for tomorrow—this looks like hungry work.”

  • • •

  Construction workers tend to start out the day early, and finish up early as well. By four o’clock most of the crew had cleaned their tools, stashed their equipment in the storage shed, and caught a ride back to Point Moro on the Callisto.

  “Are you about ready?” asked Landon as I locked up the shed.

  “Just about,” I said. Now that it was quieter, with the sun hanging low and orange in the sky, I felt newly emboldened. I wanted to see if the woman who threw herself off the tower was the same one I’d seen in the attic, and furthermore, what her story was. “I want to try climbing the tower stairs.”

  “Great. I’ll go with you.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate the whole damsel-in-distress thing, Landon, I really do. But the tower was a crime scene crawling with cops, and Buzz and Krauss checked it out for the third time just an hour ago on their rounds. There’s nothing in there except . . .”

  “Blood.”

  He was probably right. I had learned on my first murder scene that after the police completed their investigation and released the crime scene, it was up to the owners of the property to clean things up. Thus the rise of one of the more gruesome new career choices: crime scene cleanup.

  Landon pushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Doesn’t it ever get to you?”

  “What?”

  “The blood. The emotions. The . . . death.”

  Of course. But, truth to tell, I had grown increasingly inured to the death. Maybe that’s what came of seeing too much of it, like Annette Crawford, who, after several years working homicide with the SFPD, approached horrific crime scenes with detached acceptance. Or maybe I felt as I did because I now knew, beyond a doubt, that death of the physical body was not the end of the line.

  The sensations I had felt in the attic today were more troubling. The woman saying—but not saying—Find . . .

  What was she searching for?

  “It gets to me, of course it does,” I said to Landon. “But I try to focus on what, if anything, I can do to help. And in this case, it means I need to try to climb that tower. And I need to do it by myself.”

  “On one condition: I’ll guard the door.”

  “Agreed.”

  Landon took up his post right outside the entrance to the tower, and gave me a kiss for luck. I stepped inside, my boots ringing loudly on the stone floor. The echo bounced off the circular masonry walls.

  Landon was right, the evidence of the crime was still here. Thorn’s blood had dried in dark pools on the floor, and in reddish-brown streaks against the light gray stone. A small evidence tag near the wall had been forgotten, a little yellow triangle lying on its side, as if drunk.

  I closed my eyes and focused, summoning the memory of what had happened that day: Thorn tumbling, head over heels. The knife, the blood, his wide-open eyes. Why hadn’t I thought to guard the door, or at least to keep an eye out for the murderer running from the tower? I would have saved myself—and Alicia—a lot of grief. As Annette had pointed out, this wasn’t my first murder; you’d think I’d get better at it.

  Speaking of being angry at myself . . .

  Okay, Mel, I told myself. Here goes. Up the tower. No big deal.

  I started climbing. I kept my breathing regular and steady, kept my eyes focused straight ahead. This is good, I thought. I can totally handle this. Look at me go!

  Without meaning to, I glanced at the center of the spiral. The empty center. The floor seemed to fall away, farther and farther down, as though I was thrusting upward. I couldn’t stay upright and collapsed onto the step, overwhelmed by dizziness and nausea. I put my head between my knees.

  “What’s your problem?”

  I jumped at the voice and opened my eyes to see Thorn in my peripheral vision, looming on the step right above me.

  I swallowed, hard, and lied. “Nothing.”

  “C’mon, then,” he said. “You say I died here, right? Let’s go see if we can find anything. Maybe we can talk to the lady in the white gown.”

  “You go on ahead,” I said, still trying to keep the world from spinning. “Let me know if you see anything.”

  “Why don’t you want to go up?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t feel like it right now, that’s all.”

  “What is it? Scared to see the blood, the evidence of what happened to me? I died!” His face was very near mine; I still couldn’t see him directly, but I could sense him. “I’m dead, you understand? Dead!”

  I nodded. Thorn had been a violent man; there was no reason to assume he wouldn’t be equally out of control in the afterlife. And though he was a ghost and therefore theoretically immaterial, I wasn’t sure what he might be capable of if he gathered sufficient energy to manifest in our world.

  Even if I didn’t have a fear of heights, I would not want to be at the top of the tower with the likes of Thorn Walker. I could easily imagine him pushing someone down the tower steps, just because he could.

  Yet another reason to rid the island of this specter.

  “I know you died, Thorn.” I chose my words with care. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to put things right—”

  “I didn’t have a chance at all, don’t you see? I was making amends, I was trying. I was trying! I never catch a break.” His voice lost its angry edge and became whiny.

  And then I heard footsteps clanking on the metal steps. Farther up the tower, a woman in a long white gown slowly climbed the stairs.

  She turned and looked at us. Her eyes were blank, disturbing. But her despondent visage answered one question for me: I was now sure this was the same woman I had seen in the attic of the Keeper’s House.

  Suddenly Thorn disappeared. A moment later I heard him at the top of the tower. He screamed.

  And tumbled down the stairs again, all seventy-four steps.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I hugged my knees to my chest, kept my head down, and told myself to breathe. I knew what I had just seen wasn’t real. It hadn’t happened again but was an echo of the past. After a moment both specters were gone, and I was once again alone in the tower.

  But I sensed the anguish the woman—or Thorn?—was feeling. I could feel it lingering still, mingling with the dizziness and nausea of the acrophobia. Not for the first time I wondered why I had to have this “talent” for seeing ghosts, for understanding them.

  Once my heart regained its normal rhythm and my breathing slowed, I realized: She needed something from me. Surely that was what was going on. Thorn wanted me to find out who killed him, and the woman in the white dress needed me to understand her story.

  Now all I had to do was figure it all out.

  I gathered myself together and stepped outside, grateful to breath the chilly fresh air.

  Landon’s eyes held a thousand questions, but he didn’t say a word. Just let me be quiet with my thoughts.

  I glanced at the jagged rocks below the tower. Where had the woman fallen? How long had she lain there? What could have compelled her to jump to her death?

  Off in the distance was the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, and hunkered down on the Marin County side of the span was the rather fetching, Art Deco–era San Quentin prison. I had visited an inmate there once. Someone who seemed like a potentially decent man who hadn’t caught many breaks in life, and who landed in prison
for making a series of stupid, tragic decisions.

  Remembering this, I wondered: Was Thorn actually redeemable? It was hard to move past the whole wife-beating thing, but if I was prepared to forgive murder in some cases, why couldn’t I be open to the idea that Thorn had wanted to change his life? And if he honestly had come to Lighthouse Island to make amends to Alicia, did that mean the Palm Project had helped him understand and control his angry outbursts? And now that he was dead, was he still seeking a chance to redeem himself?

  I surveyed the courtyard scene: the Keeper’s House, the sheds, and the foghorn building. From the top of the tower, I imagined, one must be able to see all of Lighthouse Island, aside from one or two small hidden coves.

  As the sun gave up the day, the light atop the tower began to blink its warning.

  “Ready to go, Mel?” Landon finally said. “Duncan’s waiting.”

  I nodded. “Ready.”

  • • •

  I read the keepers’ logs late into the night. The handwriting changed (and was easier or harder to read) as new keepers took over, but the entries were similar: Most were a single line noting the direction of the wind, any ships that had passed, tasks accomplished that day. The notes gave a fascinating glimpse into what life was like on that isolated island: the never-ending cleaning, the frequent supply runs, the incessant demands of maintaining the light.

  As I was falling asleep, my tired eyes fell on entries from 1905, which I had read while still in the attic:

  October 9 Wind NE, cold, light, foggy. Sustained an injured ankle. My search is fruitless. My heart is broken. Several vessels have passed. Mr. Vigilance has fallen.

  October 10 Wind NE squally. Still I search.

  October 11 Wind SW. Search is fruitless. I shall not relinquish hope.

  October 12 Wind S. Light haze. Since Mr. Vigilance has departed this earth, keeping the lamp has fallen to me. The search continues.

  • • •

  A woman’s ghost was still bound to the lighthouse. Did she tend to the lamp after all these years? And did her search yet continue?

  And what could she have been searching for, on such a small island?

  • • •

  The next morning, bleary-eyed, I stumbled downstairs to the home office of Turner Construction. Supplies were being ferried over to the island on the barge today, and the demo crew was on track to finish today or tomorrow, at the latest. I had asked Ramon to serve as foreman on the island, to oversee the supplies and the completion of the demolition. Much of the crew would spend the day loading and unloading the barge, and organizing supplies.

  I checked in with the suppliers and the trucks, the barge operator. Everything seemed to be going well.

  “Day two and still on schedule,” I bragged to Dad as I filled my travel mug with coffee and kissed him good-bye.

  It was the little things.

  Landon had a class to teach, and after yesterday seemed somewhat reassured about my safety on Lighthouse Island. Besides, I would be back working in San Francisco today; I had to go pick up the expedited permits at City Hall, which, as it happened, wasn’t far from the California Historical Society, on Mission. It was high time I checked in with my favorite historian.

  “Hi, Trish!” I said as I entered the archive and spotted her behind the counter.

  Trish was wearing a bulky, hand-knit sweater over dowdy beige corduroys, and her glasses hung on a beaded cord around her neck. She was as unassuming as one might expect an archivist to be, but I happened to know she had a wicked sense of humor and a rabid commitment to social justice. Ever since she had joined us for a tamale feast at my dad’s house a few months ago, we’d started getting together occasionally outside the realm of the archive.

  “How’s it going, Mel?”

  “Good. Actually, maybe more ‘interesting’ than ‘good’ per se.”

  “Sounds like a story there.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. But I was hoping you could help me: I’m looking for information on Lighthouse Island and the Bay Light.”

  “You and everyone else.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Someone has taken our file, I’m sorry to say. All I can offer you now are a few items that are online, or you can look through the old microfiche if you’re dedicated. Also, you could probably access the original plans or blueprints through the Coast Guard. They’re in charge of lighthouses.”

  “Actually, the architect has been working from the original blueprints. But what do you mean, someone took the file? Are we allowed to check things out?”

  “No. It was stolen.”

  “By whom?”

  She shrugged. “If only it were that easy. In the past month or so, there’s been an inordinate level of interest in Lighthouse Island.”

  “Could this be connected to the renovation project Ellis Elrich is funding?”

  “I would imagine. There was an article about the controversy in the SF Chronicle a while back,” she said, donning her reading glasses and scrolling through something on a computer screen. “Uh-huh, it’s right here. Starting about six weeks ago, we received several requests to view the file. Then one of our interns noted that someone had removed most of the documents in the file. And then the whole thing disappeared.”

  “How is that possible? Don’t people have to leave their driver’s licenses to see the file?”

  She nodded, shuffled through some papers in a drawer, and placed an outdated Michigan ID on the counter.

  “The intern who accepted the ID didn’t check to make sure it was current.”

  “Something similar happened a while ago here, with a file from another job I was working on. Does this sort of thing happen a lot?”

  “No, actually it doesn’t. You must have the golden touch, Mel, but then you work on some interesting properties. Clearly we’re going to have to tighten up our security. We keep a close eye on the rare books because folks try to steal those all the time. They’re worth good money. But the documents in the stolen file wouldn’t have any market value. They were mostly Coast Guard brochures or declarations, copies of contemporary articles about the lighthouse and the keepers, announcing new commissions, that sort of thing.”

  I picked up the ID. The photo of a handsome young man was slightly discolored with age, but it could well have been a younger, thinner, long-haired version of Major Williston.

  Why would Williston steal the archive’s file about the island?

  “Can you tell me anything about the history of the lighthouse, and the island?” I asked, checking the time on my phone. “I can’t read through the microfiche today, but I’ll see if I can make some time soon.”

  “Nothing special comes to mind. The island lighthouse was developed in the late 1800s to help guide ships up and down the strait. Mostly related to the post–Gold Rush boom of San Francisco.”

  “Ever hear any rumors that it was haunted?”

  “It’s a lighthouse.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Aren’t lighthouses always associated with hauntings?”

  I smiled. “I guess so. They’re . . . evocative, aren’t they?”

  “Very. So, you’re working on the project out there?”

  I nodded. “The renovation of the Wakefield Retreat Center in Marin went well—is still going well, since we’re really not finished yet—so Ellis Elrich hired me to work on Lighthouse Island. It’s a public-private partnership . . . it’s all pretty exciting.”

  I thought it best to leave out the whole dead body aspect of things.

  “I’ll bet. I’d love to come see it sometime.”

  “Of course. Let me get things in hand, and then I’ll arrange for you to come for a visit. We could have a picnic. The boat launches from Point Moro, near Richmond, just a ten-minute ride. So, nothing else about Lighthouse Island, or the Bay Light itsel
f that you remember off the top of your head?”

  “To me the most interesting aspect of Lighthouse Island doesn’t have to do with the architecture, but the fact that for many years the lighthouse keeper was a woman.”

  “A woman lighthouse keeper?” As in my ghostly apparition? Interesting.

  She nodded.

  “Was that common?”

  “I wouldn’t say it was common, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t unknown,” Trish said, warming to her subject. “Back in the day, lighthouse keeping was one of the few professions women could perform that paid them the same as their male counterparts.”

  “We’re talking back in the nineteenth century?”

  “As far back as that,” she said with a nod. “Many years before women had the right to vote in the United States, an impressive few were landing federal positions as lightkeepers. Several female lighthouse keepers in the Great Lakes, for instance, even had lower-paid male assistants working under them, which was virtually unheard of at the time.”

  “Fascinating. How did a woman become a lighthouse keeper? Did they just respond to ads, or . . . ?”

  “Most were the wives, or sometimes the daughter, of a keeper. The skills required for lighthouse keeping are very specific: Not only did keepers have to have knowledge of the lamps and the clockworks, but they also needed the dedication and grit it took to live in isolated, harsh locations, battered by winds and rain. And the bravery to climb the tower during a storm and scan the waters, looking for trouble. Most times the official male keepers were assisted by their wives, especially when there wasn’t an official assistant keeper; for instance when they were sick or as they grew unable to climb the steps, that sort of thing. Upon the keeper’s death his wife or daughter sometimes applied to take over. They could easily demonstrate they had the skill and experience to do the job.”

  “So they chose to stay on, despite the isolation?”

  “Just like the men, a lot of these women wound up keeping the lighthouse the rest of their lives. I suppose it can be addictive, that kind of solitude. And beautiful views, to boot.” A wistful note came into her voice. “I think I would do quite well, frankly, as long as I had enough books.”