Wild Wild Death

by Casey Daniels

  “And this Brian, he’s the one who hit you over the head?” The sheriff had pulled out a little notebook and a pen and he stood above me with it, waiting for the details and looking a bit put out that he’d written down the whole thing about Jimmy Choo, then ended up crossing it out and starting again.

  I hated to admit I didn’t know anything for sure. Yes, I’d seen Brian in the house. But I hadn’t seen who’d come at me with the California redwood that had smacked me over the head. Goodshot had been there, though. Along with his lady friends. I was sure of that, and I struggled to sit up so I could look around and find them and ask them exactly what had happened, but there was still no sign of the ghosts. “Goodshot… He was here,” I muttered. “He must have seen everything. He could tell you… No, he couldn’t tell you, he could tell me, because he can’t tell you, of course. But if he told me, then I, I could tell you.”

  I saw the look the sheriff and Jesse exchanged, but before I had a chance to tell them I wasn’t as crazy as their glances seemed to say, the paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher and I was so busy wincing from the pain that shot through my head and shoulders, I didn’t have a chance to say anything at all. They wheeled me to a waiting ambulance.

  “No, really.” Maybe Jesse couldn’t hear my feeble protest. Maybe that’s why even though he was walking along beside me, he ignored me. “I don’t want to go to—”

  He squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. I’m coming with you to La Jara,” he said, and when the paramedics slid the stretcher into the ambulance, he hopped in and sat down beside me.

  It wasn’t until we’d started on our way that I realized he was still holding my hand. My brain might have been scrambled, but I got the message. It went something like this: hand holding had to be some Southwestern touchy-feely police procedure designed to get a victim talking. Little did Jesse know, it wasn’t going to work on this particular victim. “I can’t tell you what happened because I don’t know what happened,” I said as if he’d been following what I was thinking. “I came around the corner and I didn’t see—”

  “Of course you didn’t. The guy probably came up behind you. But you said someone else was there. Goodshot? Weird name. There’s a story in my tribe. About an old-time Indian named Goodshot. He was—”

  I pretended to drift off to sleep.

  A good idea, yes?

  Apparently not what the paramedic riding in back with us wanted to see. She put a hand on my arm. “I need you to stay awake, Ms. Martin,” she said. “Just for a while. Are you dizzy?”

  I tried to shake my head no, but since it made me dizzy, that wasn’t very smart.

  “But she is confused, right? I mean, she must be with the way she’s talking.” She was looking over me and at Jesse when she said this. “You said she talked about someone else being there with her, but—”

  “He was.” If Jesse wasn’t going to stand up for me, I had to do it myself. “Goodshot was there and Kitty and—”

  “No footprints in the dust except Ms. Martin’s and the attacker’s.” This from Jesse, and I had to give him credit, even though he was using all that police-y logic to prove I was talking out of my head, he didn’t do it in an arrogant sort of way. Not like Quinn would have done. In fact, when Jesse looked away from the paramedic and back at me, there was a sort of hot chocolate warmth in his eyes that made the pain inside my head disappear. At least for a couple seconds. “You were probably seeing things. You know, because of that smack on the head.”

  “I didn’t… I wasn’t… He was there before…”

  Before I was hit on the head. That was the last time I saw Goodshot clearly. Because after I was clunked…

  Another wave of memory crashed into my brain. Ghosts popping like soap bubbles. Not out of existence. I may not be a philosopher, but I am enough of a thinker to know that my getting whacked on the head or not getting whacked on the head can’t possibly affect the way the Other Side works.

  It could, though, have an impact on how I see the Other Side.

  Or didn’t see it.

  These thoughts spent some time swimming around inside my brain. They were on a third lap when I realized Jesse was watching me carefully, an expectant sort of look in his eyes. Like he was waiting for me to make sense. Or to not make sense. And like whichever way I went would help determine the outcome once we made it to the ER.

  No-insurance girl did her best to get her act together.

  “Goodshot was there before…” Had I been feeling more like myself and less like somebody with a head full of jelly, I might have remembered that there was no use arguing with Jesse, even when he was trying to lead me into talking by echoing what I’d said earlier. For one thing, he was Jesse, and it wasn’t going to work. For another, I couldn’t explain Goodshot and the other ghosts even if my head wasn’t whirling.

  It was best to change the subject. Easy. Even woozy, I had questions that needed to be answered. “You.” Since Jesse still had a hold of my hand, it wasn’t hard to tighten my hold as a way of letting him know this was important. “You were at the Laundromat. Oh, and my good jeans!” There was no way I wanted those jeans to spend the day in the dryer and maybe walk off with someone who wasn’t me. I tried to sit up, to tell the driver we had to turn around and go back to the Laundromat so I could pop inside and save my jeans, but both Jesse and the paramedic pressed me back into place.

  “You left,” I managed to say when they got their way and I settled down. “You drove away, Jesse. I saw you. And… and you didn’t know about Norma. How did you—”

  “End up back in Antonito? Damned if I know!” He chuckled, but not like it was funny, more like something weird had happened and he didn’t understand it, and didn’t like admitting it. “I was on my way back to the pueblo,” he said, “when a call came in on my radio. The call said that a woman had been attacked in Antonito and she needed help. The call requested backup from any police officer in the vicinity. Technically…” This time, Jesse glanced at the paramedic.

  “I know I was out of my jurisdiction,” he said, and even in my mushy-head state I knew this was so she didn’t think he was butting his cop nose where it didn’t belong. “But I’d just left you in Antonito.” He swung his gaze back to me. “And you can say anything you want to say about what you’re doing in this part of the world, but I know you’re up to something you shouldn’t be up to. So of course I figured the woman who’d been hurt was you. And that voice on the radio…” Jesse shook his head, trying to figure it out. “The man made it sound like it was really important that the local cops get some help. Naturally, I was worried. I turned right around and headed back to Antonito, and weird thing is, when I got to the address he gave—the place where I found you—I was the only one there. And when I called the local guys to ask where the hell they were and why they were dragging their butts, they didn’t know what I was talking about. I got the call. They didn’t. And that’s strange because it came in on a frequency they should have been monitoring. I can’t figure it out.” Another shake of his head. “But I do know that you were in back of that house where no one would have seen you for who knows how long. You would have laid there forever if I didn’t get that freaky call.”

  “Thank you, Goodshot.” I whispered this because, let’s face it, I didn’t want Jesse to think I was any loonier than he already did. While I was at it, I looked around, too, as much as I was able because, let’s face it (again), I fully expected Goodshot to be hovering in some corner of the ambulance, or floating above me, basking in Jesse’s praise and feeling like the hero he was.

  But again, there was no sign of him.

  In spite of the warning look I got from the paramedic and the pressure of Jesse’s hand against mine telling me not to budge, I shifted, suddenly aware that I was feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Or I should say more accurately, I wasn’t feeling something I had felt for a long time.

  That little sizzle was gone.

  The one I hadn’t e
ven realized had been a constant presence in my life since that day at Garden View when I fell and thwacked my head on Gus Scarpetti’s mausoleum and first saw the ghosts.

  * * *

  A few hours later I was lying in bed in my motel room, glad that cooler heads had prevailed and nobody forced me to check into the hospital, grateful the docs hadn’t found anything icky on their x-rays and CT scans of my brain, and—

  Feeling really weird.

  Yeah, that would explain why I couldn’t get comfortable. Why my heart was doing a rat-a-tat inside my ribs. And my blood thrummed in my ears. And my hands were sweaty and my breathing was faster than a speeding bullet, and the quiet and blackness that closed around me felt… I dunno. Quieter and blacker than it had in a really long time.

  Empty.

  Believe me, I knew this had nothing to do with the crack on the head.

  And everything to do with how my world had turned upside down.

  “No ghosts.”

  I said the words out loud, just to try them on for size.

  They felt all wrong.

  Rather than lie there and try to make sense of the notion, I sat up, threw off the blankets, and slipped out of bed to pace my minuscule room. At least when Jesse called at three… (He had insisted, and since getting woken from a sound sleep beat the heck out of spending the night in the hospital, I had said it would be okay. Of course, that was when I thought I might actually be sleeping soundly at three, and before I realized that thinking about what happened to me—or might have happened to me—made me feel all antsy and nervous.) I’d be wide awake and perfectly coherent and could prove to him what I’d told him in the first place and shouldn’t have had to prove: that I wasn’t in desperate need of another ride in an ambulance.

  Just the fact that my brain was ping-ponging like this says a lot about my mental state.

  Was I relieved at my no-ghostly existence?

  Worried?

  Thankful?

  Pissed?

  At that point, I didn’t know. I only knew that I wouldn’t know what to feel, not for sure. Not until I got some answers.

  The thought firmly in mind, I threw on my oh-so-ordinary jeans and a brown-and-black-plaid shirt that had the whole Green Acres vibe going for it, and slipped into the world’s most adorable boots. The fact that the room spun a little when I bent down for the boots told me I needed to take things slow and careful, and slowly and carefully, I left my room.

  It was dark and quiet in Antonito. But then, it was already after two, and even the bars were closed. Alone, I walked down the street, and yes, I did think about breaking into Tom’s Laundromat to see if my jeans were there waiting for me, but I talked myself out of it. Some things, it seems, are even more important than favorite jeans.

  At the cemetery, I took a careful look around.

  I could detect no shimmer in the night-still air. No darker shadows in the shadows behind the headstones. No nothing.

  No ghosts.

  “Goodshot?” I was all by myself, and heck, Norma next door was the closest neighbor, and she was dead, so I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. “Hey, Goodshot! It’s me, Pepper. If you wouldn’t mind just popping in for a minute, we need to talk. I want to thank you for that call to Jesse. And I need a little help!”

  My only answer was the sound of the wind in my ears.

  I considered my options and, because they were obviously limited, tried the same song and dance with Anarosa, Kitty, and Suzanna.

  I got the same answer—nothing.

  No ghosts.

  The enormity of the realization rooted me to the spot. For exactly fifteen seconds. Then I realized that for the first time in years, I was free! No. More. Ghosts. In spite of my headache, my sore shoulders, and the worry at the back of my mind about the hospital bill and how the heck I was ever going to be able to pay it, I smiled.

  No more ghosts meant no more being dragged into cases I didn’t care about. No more cases meant no more getting shot at. Or knifed. Or slammed in the head and ending up in an ER in some no-name place I’d already forgotten the name of.

  In fact, no ghosts and no more cases meant no more no-name places I had to visit in the name of investigating.

  When I headed back to the motel, there was a spring in my step. No small thing considering my head, and my shoulders, and my still-tender ankle. In fact, I just might have been skipping a little. Humming a happy little tune under my breath, I pulled out my suitcase and, one by one, I tossed in my clothes.

  As for those wonderful, just-broken-in, fit-perfectly jeans…

  I sighed.

  And promised myself I’d buy another pair just like them once I got back home to Cleveland.

  The prospect of a shopping trip further brightened my outlook, and when I dragged my suitcase to the door, I was humming just a little bit louder, but not so loud that I didn’t hear my cell ring.

  Jesse. Who else would be conscientious enough to actually mean it when he said he was going to call at three?

  I answered with a perky, “I’m fine. I’m not unconscious. You don’t need to call again. Bye!” and hung up. I didn’t even notice—well, hardly—the little pang that stabbed my heart when I realized I’d never see Jesse again. “Not meant to be,” I told myself. It was some consolation, sort of, and keeping it in mind so I didn’t get mushy, I headed out to the parking lot, suitcase in tow.

  I opened the trunk and plopped my suitcase in and I guess I couldn’t help myself. Thinking about leaving this part of the world made me think about arriving there. And thinking about arriving there made me think about Goodshot. And thinking about Goodshot…

  Just about to slam the trunk shut, I paused.

  Thinking about Goodshot made me think about how all he’d ever wanted was for his bones to be buried on that pueblo of his.

  And thinking about Goodshot’s bones made me think about Dan. And thinking about Dan…

  Well, it was easy to see where things were headed from there.

  Ghosts or no ghosts, I was the only one who could help Dan, because I was the only one who knew he’d been kidnapped and that his kidnapping and Goodshot’s bones… well, it was all connected somehow, only I didn’t know the details yet. Just like I didn’t know what Norma’s murder had to do with the scheme other than that she took the bones and my tote bag along with them. I was also the only one who knew that Brian and his Cleveland Indians fans buddies were probably behind the whole thing. And that it all started because of some silly curse, and a baseball team that couldn’t win.

  What did it all mean?

  That was a no-brainer.

  I was the only one who could investigate, and whether there were ghosts in my life or not, I owed it to both the living and the dead to find out the truth.

  Damn, but I hate it when my better self gets the better of me.

  If I had my way, I’d just cut to the chase and get to the good part, namely, that as it turned out, I was glad I stuck around. The next day, I ended up in bed with Jesse.

  As juicy as that part of the story is, though, I know it isn’t fair to skip over everything that led up to it. I mean, really, that would leave out the second murder and the chasing and the running and the mayhem and, well, it’s really not much of a story without all that, is it? And it’s not like I’m going to divulge details, anyway, not about Jesse and me and what happened that night in that cramped and poorly decorated motel room.

  So I might as well start with the murder and the mayhem, and the murder and the mayhem… well, that really started the morning after I’d been to the cemetery and made the discovery that in the world of private investigating for the dead, I was still investigating, but not for or with the not-so-dearly not-so-departed.

  The first thing I saw (after the Tilt-a-Whirl moment when I dragged myself out of bed) was the note tucked under my motel-room door.

  At least when I bent down to pick it up, the world didn’t wobble as much as it had the night before, and my shoulders, though they st
ill ached, didn’t hurt as much, either. Things were looking up.

  My outlook brightened even more when I unfolded the paper and read the message:

  Thought it was a game and would be fun.

  Thought we’d be heroes for removing the curse.

  Not the way things are turning out.

  Meet me. 8 tonight. Tres Piedras.

  Where your tires were flattened, keep following the

  road up to Wind Mountain.

  This note wasn’t cobbled together from words cut from newspapers. It was handwritten. By one of the kidnappers.

  A kidnapper who sounded like he was ready to toss in the towel.

  Oh yeah, I was jazzed, and in record time, I showered and got dressed and unpacked all the clothes I’d packed the night before. And I did it all with a happy heart.

  With or without ghosts tagging along, I had a lead, but then the fact that I’d been able to do it on my own shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. Except that they can be royal pains, endlessly annoying and day-and-night demanding, ghosts are never really all that helpful when it comes to my investigations, anyway.

  Of course, now that I was completely on my own, the thought of going out to the middle of nowhere was a little creepier than usual. Tres Piedras. The place my tires were flattened. As far as I remembered—and I remembered pretty well—there would be no one within shouting distance if I got in trouble, and no place to run if this meeting turned sour. It wouldn’t be bad to have a little backup, dead or alive.

  I was just tugging a comb through my curls when the thought struck and I froze, realized keeping my arms up that high was making my shoulders cramp, and tossed down the comb. It landed on the dresser next to my cell, and automatically, I thought about the call I’d gotten from Jesse in the wee hours of the morning.

  Dependable.

  In my mind, it was a word that had never attached itself to any man—not my dad, who was doing time in prison for Medicare fraud, or Joel, my former fiancé, who hit the road when our family’s reputation hit the skids, and especially not Quinn, who for all his deliciousness could be as much a pain in the butt as the ghosts in my life.