“Was the other woman with him?”
“She was,” Jirel said. “But she was dead.”
Loretta’s head tilted to one side like a curious dog. “Dead?”
“She was murdered.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Aviira watched Loretta closely. Her behavior wasn’t an outright red flag, but there was something about it that made her nervous.
“Do you know who did it?” Loretta asked.
“Not yet, but we’re looking into it. We think the person may be connected to whoever left the bodies in the shed under your property, actually.”
Loretta moved her eyes toward Aviira and they locked gazes for a moment. The woman said, “Oh really?”
“We’re curious if you’ve ever heard of someone named Celeste Payne.”
Loretta cleared her throat very quietly and in the same breath said, “No, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that name.” The motion was all very smooth and quick, but Aviira knew immediately that it was a lie. The other woman looked back at her again, and Aviira maintained her neutral expression. They were both in full-on bluff mode.
“Not the previous owner of the home, perhaps?” Jirel prompted. “We’re trying to find out if she may have some connection to that property.”
Finally, Loretta looked back at him. “No. I’ve never heard of that person before.”
Jirel nodded casually. “Fair enough,” he said. “We figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Of course,” Loretta said softly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“On a somewhat more serious note,” he said, shifting his weight to one leg. “I’m afraid we have to ask you where you were on Sunday.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Why?”
“It’s just to clear up any potential involvement with Miss Howard’s death. When an estranged spouse’s significant other turns up dead we typically look to the other party as there tends to be plenty of motive involved.” He made a sympathetic face. “It’s just protocol, I’m afraid.”
A laugh escaped her. The sound was incredulous. “Why on earth would I ask you to seek out my husband if I was intending to engage in murder?”
Jirel didn’t budge. “We’d still like to make sure all of our bases are covered. This is for your benefit as well, I should point out. As long as you have an alibi, everything will be fine, and we’ll be out of your way.”
“Are you sure Aiden didn’t kill her? I told you she was dangerous. Maybe he came to the same realization. Maybe it was self-defense.”
A beat. Jirel cleared his throat. “Aiden is not being considered a suspect at this time.”
“You knew her name,” Aviira said.
Loretta looked at her. “I’m sorry?”
“Aiden’s girlfriend. He claimed that you never met her, much less would have known her name…but you told us her name was Hazel the first day we spoke to her.”
There was a tense silence.
“He met me for coffee several months ago,” she said quietly. “He left his phone on the table when he went to get our drinks and received a text from her. That’s how I knew her name, detective.”
Aviira ignored the tone of disdain that came with the word detective. “How did you know it was the same person you’d found him with last summer?”
Loretta stiffened. “I do not see why I am being questioned as though I am the guilty party in this,” she said.
“If you can tell us where you were on Sunday, we can go on our way,” Jirel said, engaging a clear peacemaker tone before tensions got out of hand.
She lifted her chin. “Sunday I was at a funeral,” she said. “My dear friend Elaine, who you may remember, passed on Friday in a terrible car accident. There was some indication that it might have been suicide.”
“Yes, we’re aware,” Jirel said gently. “We visited the crime scene that morning.”
“Yes. Well. That’s where I was on Sunday.”
Jirel glanced at Aviira and she only responded by raising her eyebrows at him. “Well,” he said to Loretta, looking back at her. “I think that’s all we need, then.”
“Good,” Loretta said. “May I wish you luck on the rest of your investigation.”
***
“You believe a word she said in there?” Jirel said.
“Not many of them.”
Aviira paged through the files from Tito as Jirel drove them south on the highway to take a look at Park Vista. They had gone through them that morning over coffee on Jirel’s patio after awakening from their drug-assisted sleep. It was in those files that they had discovered the name Celeste Payne, the woman who had been under investigation fifteen years earlier for suspected activity with corpse reanimation. A cursory search of the internal Society databases returned nothing on the name, just as Tito had indicated.
“For starters, I think we should look up if her friend was really buried on Sunday,” she said. “She died on Friday. That’s a quick turnaround.”
“You think she would be dumb enough to lie about that knowing we could easily find that out?”
Aviira shook her head. “I don’t think she’s stupid…but for some reason I don’t believe that she’s being entirely forthcoming with us. Specially about this Celeste Payne person.”
“Well…if she really had known who this Celeste Payne was, she probably wouldn’t have admitted it.”
“I think that goes without saying,” Aviira murmured. “But she definitely knows who she is. Or was, whatever the case may be. She was definitely lying about that.”
“You can really tell that easily?”
She didn’t look at him. “It’s just this…thing I have. Maybe it’s genetic or just a bloodline trait or something but I can always tell when people are lying to me, and I can somehow bluff the shit out of people without really trying. You read my case files on the undercover case. How else do you think I got away with fooling all those people that long?”
He was still for a moment before he turned his head to look at her.
“Moira told me,” she said before he asked.
His brow furrowed. “When did you talk to Moira?”
“Few nights ago.”
Jirel turned his eyes back to the road and was quiet for a minute. She looked over at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Why, is that a problem?”
He shook his head.
“I just told you I can see right through that kind of shit,” she reminded him. “Why does that bother you?”
“It doesn’t.”
She continued to stare him down until it was evident that he wasn’t going to budge. Finally she looked away and shook her head and muttered, “Cool.”
If it were Jensen, she would have picked a fight. Somehow now, it didn’t seem worth it.
They drove in a strange, tense silence the rest of the way.
The abandoned hospital that had at one time been known as Park Vista was tucked away off a dirt county road deep in the woods. One could drive past it on the road and not even notice that it was there, especially since the decades of abandonment had allowed the natural vegetation to grow unchecked and hide the huge building. The only reason they knew where to find it was by using the GPS map on Aviira’s phone with the satellite picture that showed it clearly even if it could not be seen from the road.
It was the perfect place to carry on with illegal activities and never be found.
Jirel parked the car off the side of the road and Aviira got out. He eyed the sky for a moment—looking gray in the west already—and pulled a leather jacket out of the trunk before walking up the trail with Aviira. She watched him for a second as he put on the jacket. She wasn’t sure why he was irritated by the idea that she had talked to Moira, but it was a tension that bothered her.
“Nice threads there, Mr. Zuko.”
He gave her a funny look. “What?”
“Danny Zuko? From Grease?” She stared back at him as she realized he wasn’t getting the reference. “Come on. J
ohn Travolta.”
He shook his head.
She groaned. “Jesus. How have you never seen Grease?”
“I didn’t even speak English till I was sixteen, so there’s a good start. What is it, a movie?”
She shook her head in mock exasperation. “It’s a musical.”
A laugh burst from him unexpectedly, clearing the tension immediately. “A musical?”
“Yeah, so?”
“You really are a closet nerd.”
“Look who’s talking,” she said with a faked scoff. “Everybody has seen Grease. Loser.”
He smiled. She stared until a small laugh bubbled up.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head. “Just nice to hear you being a smartass again.”
Aviira looked at him for a moment before the side of her lip bent up, cocking the scar in the corner up into a haphazard smile that made something in Jirel’s stomach curl in on itself.
“I believe that’s the first time I’ve been complimented for being a smartass,” she said.
“Everybody needs to be good at something.”
She reached out and pushed him with one arm and he pretended it hurt. She grinned, and when he looked back, he had a hard time believing he was looking at the same person he’d met barely two weeks earlier.
The trail came up on a small hill and when they reached the crest of it, the hospital lay sprawled out in front of them. They both paused and sobered, stood there and took it in for a minute. It put a tickle at the back of Aviira’s neck, like a shiver that wasn’t quite ready to come on.
The breeze picked up and it smelled like rain.
Finally Jirel glanced at Aviira and started walking, a hand on his holstered gun.
“You think if there were Creepers out here they’d eventually…you know, get out?” she said.
He shook his head slowly. “I think if they got out, someone would know about them,” he said. “But I’m willing to bet there’s something about this place that keeps people from poking around. Buildings don’t just sit abandoned these days…people squat in them, use them for drug havens, things like that.”
“Yeah, but way out here? I bet you most people don’t even have any idea this is here.”
He shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know. You knew about it. It’s not very difficult to find.”
“If you know it’s here.”
“Well…either way. I think if there were Creepers wandering around out here, eventually someone would find out.”
Aviira had an uneasy feeling in her gut as they walked closer to the building. “When I was at the psych home I had a lot of time on my hands so I did a lot of reading on places like this,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Lot of fucked up shit allegedly went on out here.”
“I believe it.”
“Chaining people to beds and early experiments with electric shock treatments…” She paused and failed at containing a shiver. “One of the wards was apparently for young women who were sent here by their families when they got knocked up out of wedlock. I read something about a plot on the grounds that’s full of unnamed babies.” She scowled at nothing in particular. When she glanced over at Jirel, he was looking similarly unsettled.
When they got closer to the building, they could see that it had clearly been in a state of abandonment for many decades. Windows on the first floor were covered over with thick boards that had peeled in exposure from sun and rain. Above, on the second and third floors, windows that hadn’t broken appeared almost rippled. Bricks were missing out of entire sections of the overhangs and grass and other weeds had grown tall against the side of the building where the sun shone. Ivy and morning glory climbed the walls in thick, tangled vines.
Whatever had been going on here, nobody had been doing it in a long time.
As they turned the corner of the building, a sizeable fox darted out from a tree that had long since fallen across the path and flew right past them. Both of them jumped and turned to watch it run into the trees.
“Jesus,” Aviira murmured.
When she glanced back over her shoulder, Jirel was gone. She scanned the immediate area in confusion.
He had been right there next to her…
“Jirel?”
Behind her, a raven gave a loud caw from a tree. She turned around and saw, just for a moment, a little girl standing by the corner of the building in the trees where they had just come from. Her brow furrowed and for the briefest of seconds she wondered if she was actually dreaming. The girl was only there for the length of time it took for her to have this thought, and then she stepped out of the trees and disappeared around the corner of the building.
“Hey!”
Aviira jogged after her and turned the corner of the building at a run. The girl was walking away from her but paused and looked back when Aviira shouted at her to wait. She was all blonde curls and beautiful gray eyes. She wore a pink dress and shiny black shoes and couldn’t have been more than five years old. The sun moved out from behind a cloud and brightened her face, illuminating the white veins around her eyes. They curled around the sides of her face and disappeared under her dress only to reappear in beautiful swirls on the backs of her hands. She seemed strangely familiar to her in a way that Aviira couldn’t quite place.
“Hey,” Aviira said, quieter, holding out her hand like she was afraid of startling her. But the girl only smiled at her and took off at a sprint down the length of the building.
Aviira ran after her, but for a young child she moved with speed and seemed to have no problem navigating the rocks and tangles of weeds and ivy that choked the path. She disappeared around the next edge of the building and by the time Aviira reached it, she was gone.
She paused, turned to look out into the trees hoping she would catch sight of the girl’s pink dress disappearing into the brush. There was nothing but the tree limbs as they danced in the wind that was picking up swiftly.
She knew it didn’t make any sense, knew it was probably a bad idea, but she went after her anyway.
Aviira passed through the threshold of the thick brush and pushed the leaves and thin branches out of her way. The underbrush was thick and she had to pick her steps carefully to avoid the tangles of vine and thick roots that had grown gnarled and crooked out of the ground.
After about fifty feet of picking her way through the thick brush, she heard something that made her stop.
“Hey!”
She turned her head to the left, toward the small voice. The little girl was standing there by a young aspen tree. Beyond her, Aviira could see the brush ended and the sun was so bright at the girl’s back it was nearly impossible to see anything behind her. The girl smiled and made a motion with her hand for Aviira to follow, then stepped out beyond the tree.
Aviira jogged after her and cleared the edge of the brush, stepped into a clear field. The sun blinded her momentarily and she raised a hand to block it. When her vision adjusted, she lowered her hand and squinted to try to find the little girl, but she had gone. The wind had died down and the only sound was the thick, rhythmic hum of crickets.
She took in a slow breath as she realized what she was looking at.
Dozens of gravestones laid out in no particular pattern filled the field in front of her, nearly a hundred in all. They were plain, most of them in various states of crumbling into nothing. Wildflowers and tall grass had overtaken the spaces between the stones.
Aviira glanced down at one of the stones near her feet. The monogram, crudely carved and fading from the cheap stone, read Infant 1902. She winced and felt a stab of some weird pain she had never felt before.
Morbid curiosity got the better of her, and she moved up the length of the forgotten cemetery. Many of the stones said nothing at all. Most of them had only Infant carved upon them, and dates that spanned from the late nineteenth century into the early twenties. A few had names, but only first names—Benjamin 1899, Mary 1914. Nea
r the back of the rows were a few stones that were slightly taller than the rest. Two of them read Unknown, but one read Eugenie Richtofen 1890-1910 and below that inscription read Louise Richtofen, 1906-1911.
She felt a heaviness land on her shoulders the more she took it all in.
“Vira?”
She turned her head. Jirel was approaching her from the tree line. He looked bewildered.
“You okay?”
Aviira nodded and started walking back toward him. She watched his face as he took in what she had been looking at. He was wearing an unsettled expression by the time she reached him.
“Did you see her too?”
He raised his eyes to Aviira, squinting in the sun. “What?”
“The girl, did you see her?”
His eyes flicked toward something behind her and then back. “No.”
She stared at him, tightening her jaw. After a second she shook her head helplessly. “Well. There’s either a little kid running around, I really am crazy, or something else is going on out here.”
Jirel’s eyes passed over the graveyard. “I’ve got my money on the latter.”
The fact that he sensed the same made her feel better, if only marginally.
“You were right there next to me and then you were gone,” Jirel continued. “I turned around and all of a sudden I was alone.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I was looking for you when I saw that little girl.” A shiver went down her spine. “Who I have a feeling might have been buried right over there at one time.” She pointed toward the gravestone she’d seen near the back with the two names inscribed.
The sky darkened suddenly and the sun disappeared almost immediately. The wind picked up then, carrying with it the warm scent of a thunderstorm that was about to hit. Jirel and Aviira looked at each other and wordlessly started back toward the copse of trees.
On the other side, Aviira was almost surprised to see the building waiting there as it had been; she almost felt transported after the experience following the ghost girl—or whatever she was—and somehow wasn’t sure if reality was still there.
When the rain began to fall, it was nearly hot. It fell in delicate sprinkles at first but quickly became pelting, and they picked up their pace as they moved down the length of the building heading back in the direction where they had left the car on the side of the road. Thunder rumbled overhead.
Shadows of Old Ghosts Page 20
