by Anton Strout
“You’re right,” I said, finally conceding. “I hear you. I just wish I didn’t have this damn ghost’s emotional baggage sitting so deep in me. I can’t shake it.”
“Shake what?” Jane’s voice came out of the blue from behind me. I jumped in my seat.
“God,” I said, trying to check my nerves as best as I could. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Jane looked at me with a curious smile. “O… kay,” she said. “Sorry. So, what can’t you shake?”
I really didn’t want to reveal what Connor and I had just been talking about. There was stuff you said to your male friends that should never come to the ears of your significant other. Even I knew that.
Connor laughed and spoke instead. “The kid was just saying he couldn’t shake this sense of dread from all the new paperwork coming our way.”
Jane nodded and relaxed. “Tell me about it,” she said. “When I went over to Greater and Lesser Arcana, I thought they took away my desk and turned my area into a storage room, but apparently that’s just all the work piling up for me.”
I spread my hand out over our office space. “Welcome to the club,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said. She looked around, and then lowered her voice. “Do you think this Professor Redfield thing is going to take long? I don’t mind helping out the Inspectre, but I’m not part of your Other Division and Wesker will be all over me if I don’t get back to all my Arcana stuff soon.”
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” Connor said. “I guess some of it depends on you. Did you bring back any good news after questioning all of the professor’s neighbors?”
Jane’s face turned sour. “Remind me to thank Davidson for that later. I’ve got a nice cantrip I’ve been dying to try out and he’s earned a nice Pinocchio nose for a few days, if you ask me.”
“Hell hath no fury…” Connor said, trailing off and shaking his finger at me. “Remember that kid.”
I nodded but didn’t respond. If Connor was making a crack related to our previous conversation about the cuckolded tattooist, I wasn’t sure, and now was not the time to ask him. Instead, I looked up at Jane. “What did you find?”
Jane leaned back against the wall of our sectioned-off area. “Well, for starters,” Jane said. “The neighbors are saying that the place is haunted.”
“The whole high-rise?” I asked.
“No, just the area by Professor Redfield’s apartment.”
Connor gave a dismissive laugh. “Sorry to burst your investigative bubble, but I seriously doubt the place is haunted,” he said. “I didn’t sense a Casper in sight. That building is practically new. It hasn’t had enough time or tenants to get haunted.”
Jane threw her notebook down on my desk and let out a deep sigh. “Look,” she said. “It’s bad enough that I got relegated to patrolling the halls of that high-rise. Between the ogling from the male tenants and the general reluctance of most of them to give up anything useful, it was a real blast, let me tell you. But! Please don’t belittle the messenger, okay? I questioned all of them separately and didn’t lead the conversations. Everyone gave up variations of the same story. Gorgeous lady in a blue-green dress, long dark hair past her shoulders. When they approached, she would vanish. Happy?”
Jane turned in a huff and headed out of our space and back up the aisle toward the main bull pen. Connor got up from his desk first, grabbed his still-wet trench coat off our makeshift coatrack, and ran after her. I took longer, grabbing my own coat and gathering up my umbrella and retractable bat before heading after them. I caught up with them when I entered the café area of our cover operation and found them over by the condiment station by the curtained-off door to the theater.
Connor held up his hands. “Sorry, Jane,” he said. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just saying that I didn’t catch a hint of anything ghostly when we were there.”
“Maybe we need to go over the place again,” I offered. “Not that I’m looking to head back out in this weather.”
A dark look crossed Connor’s face. “Dammit,” he said. “We can’t let it wait. The longer we put it off, the exponentially colder the trail will get. Whatever’s going on, we have to attend to it sooner than later.”
I looked toward the front windows of the Lovecraft Café. The storm was still pouring down sheets of rain outside. “You don’t need Jane and me for that, do you? I mean, I was kinda hoping for a little bit of warmth indoors tonight.”
“Sorry, kid,” Connor said. “Like it or not, the two of you both qualify as investigators on this case. Everybody gets to return to the scene of the crime.”
“Great,” Jane said. “I still have to write up all the paperwork on my going door to door, but I guess that will have to wait.” She looked at me, tired. “Next time, remind me to come back with less investigation-stirring data, will you?”
“Let’s get going, then,” Connor said. “The sooner we wrap this up for the Inspectre, the sooner we all get back to our regular office drudgery.”
Jane gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Awesome,” she said. “Let me go tell Director Wesker I’m heading back out and grab my coat. My boss won’t be too pleased, but then again, when is he ever?”
She gave us a quick smile before I could even agree with her, and then ran off through the black curtains that led back into the theater and our offices.
“Making us work as a couple,” I mused. “Do I get time and a half for that or something?”
Connor shook his head. “Not in this economy,” he said, pulling his coat on.
“Then it sucks to be working in this economy,” I said. “And in this weather.”
“Can’t control either,” Connor said, “but don’t sweat it, kid. You need to worry about the things you can control.”
“Thanks for covering for me back at our desks,” I said. “When she asked about what I couldn’t shake.”
Connor smiled. “No problem,” he said. “Don’t worry about that, either. The older you get, the more practiced you get at lying on the fly. You go through enough relationships and it just gets easier.”
“Such a romantic,” I said. “Well, I’ve got that to look forward to, I suppose.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the future too much,” he said, turning away from me and walking off.
“Oh, no?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, heading for the coffee counter. “Probably won’t live long enough.”
6
Professor Mason Redfield’s apartment was the way we had left it hours earlier—minus the professor’s body from the middle of his living room, of course.
“Nice to see the regular cops can still act as a cleanup crew,” Connor said.
“I prefer to think of them as our janitors,” I said, leaving the spot where the body had lain and heading off to a set of bookcases on my right.
“Tsk-tsk,” Jane said. “Now, boys, be nice. They were perfectly fine when I was roaming the halls here.”
“Of course they were,” I said, starting to look through the volumes of theater and film books stacked neatly along them. “You’ve got girly bits and all the stuff that guys want to be nice to.”
Jane shrugged and fixed me with a wicked grin from across the room. “I wonder if one of them would let me have more storage space in their apartment,” she said.
My face flushed as a jealousy far more potent than my own would have been gurgled up. “Maybe,” I said, a little tweaked that she was bringing it up in front of Connor. “You want to try your luck with one of them? Go for it.”
Connor stepped between us and spoke before Jane had a chance to respond. “Can we please focus on the casework here?” he asked. “This is a murder scene, not The Dating Game. Show some respect for the departed professor and the Inspectre. Now focus. Do you think he’d entrust this particular investigation to just anybody?”
“You’re right,” Jane said. “Sorry.”
“Me, too,” I said, willing myself to
calm down. The flare subsided.
The three of us set about exploring the apartment. Despite nothing triggering my power earlier, I pressed my power into a few of the books on the shelves, bringing up nothing but a variety of images of the still-living Professor Redfield lecturing students down at New York University.
“Anything?” Connor asked. “We need some kind of motivation for this murder.”
“Maybe he failed the wrong film student,” I suggested.
Connor shook his head. “Still wouldn’t explain this ghost woman in green Jane was told about,” he said.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Then maybe they’re building this place on an Indian burial ground… ?”
Jane gave me a weak smile, one side of her mouth curling up all cute-like. “Let’s not get all Poltergeist now.”
I looked back to Connor.
He shrugged and scanned the apartment. “What she said. I wouldn’t go with Poltergeist. I’m still not picking up any displaced spirits here.”
I went back to scanning the bookshelves. “Just throwing out suggestions in the face of nothing here,” I said. “Trying to keep my thinking outside of the box.”
“Could you try to keep it in a nearby box at least?” Connor said, agitated.
“Hey,” I said, spinning around, his agitation causing my tattooist’s anger to spike. “I’m trying here.”
“Guys,” Jane said, but the two of us were too busy sniping at each other to give her our attention.
“Try harder, then,” Connor said.
“Guys,” Jane whispered, with urgency this time. Connor and I turned to look at her. She was staring past us at the wall of windows behind us. I turned back to it with caution. Beyond the glass, a lone female figure stood in the darkness and pouring rain on the patio out by the swimming pool. Long black hair rolled in loose curls over her shoulders and a green drape of a gown that covered her body. She stood there motionless, staring.
Jane whispered, “What do we do?”
“We establish contact,” Connor said, creeping toward the glass doors. He reached into the outer pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a corked vial. “Or trap her and make her talk.”
“Lead on, ghost whisperer,” I said and fell in step behind him. When he got to the glass doors, he slid one of them open and the three of us stepped out onto the patio. The rain came down hard, making countless circular ripples along the surface of the pool as it fell. Connor stepped out into the rain. The woman’s eyes followed him, yet she remained poised and stock-still.
Connor thumbed the stopper off the vial in his hand. Its contents rose up into the air in a twist of brown smoke and drifted off toward her, but the tendrils failed to wind their way around her, instead dissipating. Connor looked back over his shoulder at us. “Not a ghost,” he said and slipped the empty vial back into his coat pocket. “Never trust neighbors to classify something right.”
I stepped forward. “Excuse me,” I shouted out to her. “You want to tell us what you’re doing out here?”
The woman shifted her focus over to me. She was striking, with high cheekbones, but when her eyes met mine, a chill cut into my soul.
“Hey!” Connor said, snapping his fingers to get her attention once more. “The kid asked you a question. Did you know the professor… and how did you get out here?”
“She’s not talking,” Jane said.
“I noticed that,” Connor said.
“We can take care of that downtown,” I said. I pulled out my bat and extended it even though the woman definitely wasn’t hiding anything on her—not in that dress, anyway.
Her eyes went to my hands. I walked toward her through the downfall of rain, but for every step I took, the woman backed away one.
“Easy, now,” I said. “We’re going to get answers from you, one way or the other.”
I kept advancing as she retreated until her back was pressed up against the railing between two of the gargoyles at the far edge of the patio. I paused as I gave the stone statues the once-over. If they came to life or anything like that, I was not going to be happy.
The farther away from the building I stepped, the worse the storm got, wind whipping all around us. Behind the woman, I could see the East River and the skyline of Queens off in the distance, giving me a bout of vertigo from the perspective.
After a moment of inspecting the gargoyles, I decided they looked inanimate enough and started closing with the woman once more. I stepped around the pool to avoid it and kept moving with caution toward the woman, fishing a pair of handcuffs out of my coat’s inside pocket. It was exciting to have someone cuffable for a change. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said. “We’re authorized by the Department of Extraordinary Affairs to take you into custody for the possible murder of Professor Mason Redfield.”
The woman locked her eyes with mine and stepped toward me. She placed her hands out in front of her as if prepared to be arrested, and I tucked my bat under my arm as I closed the distance to cuff her, but then I realized her arms kept moving. The woman brought them straight out in front of her, then spread them out to her sides like she was about to be crucified. When she bent her knees a second later, I realized what she was about to do.
“Jumper!” I shouted. Connor ran around the other side of the pool toward her, but I was closer. Falling rain stung my eyes as I stumbled forward, and it took all I had not to slip into the pool as I lunged to grab the woman, but I was too late.
With very little effort, the woman leapt up into the air and fell back over the railing in a graceful arc, sliding out through the pouring rain like she was doing a back handspring. She disappeared out of sight like a shot as I slammed into the spot along the railing where she had stood just seconds ago.
“No!” I shouted. Connor and Jane arrived next to me a second later and the three of us watched in horror as the woman fell through the open air. Like an Olympic diver, her form was spot-on—arms high over her head and legs pulled tightly together in perfect form. I waited for the gruesome result of it all as she plummeted to the roof way down below, but my eyes caught something promising there—another pool. The woman hit the water with professional diving precision, but despite the beauty of it, a large plume of spray rose up as she entered the water.
I took my satchel from over my shoulder and threw it toward Jane. I pulled off my jacket and tossed it to Connor, the rain immediately soaking through the black T-shirt I had on underneath it.
“Kid…” Connor started, but I didn’t give him a chance to say much more.
I threw my legs over the railing and judged the distance out from the side of the building to the pool down below. “Can’t let her get away,” I said. “For the Inspectre.”
“Simon,” Jane called out as she grabbed for me. “Don’t.”
It was too late. I caught the last of her words seconds after I let go and pushed off the ledge of the building. The rain whipped at me as I fell and I squeezed my eyes shut, leaving them open just enough to calculate if I had aimed for the pool correctly or if I should prepare to have my feet driven all the way up into my skull. I balled myself up, tucking my legs to my chest in cannonball position as best I could. My already soaked-through jeans made it difficult to do, but I didn’t want to survive the fall only to break my legs on the pool bottom or by landing on the woman I was chasing.
I hit the water hard, the shock of its coldness driving the air from my lungs. My ass hit the bottom of the pool, my tailbone slamming into it. I struggled to get my legs underneath me. The fire in my chest from lack of oxygen burned. I pushed off the bottom of the pool, the weight of my clothes making my struggle sluggish. When I couldn’t hold my breath anymore, I gasped in, praying I was near the surface. My initial intake, however, was water, which set me in a deeper panic, but thankfully I broke the surface and my next breath was sweet, delicious air. I gagged, fighting to keep my head above water, and gasped for my next breath. My elbow came down hard against the edge of the pool as I flailed for something to
grab onto, adding a new pain to the one already burning in my lungs. I slid down, but my left hand caught the edge of the pool and I dug my fingertips in. With my other arm, I hoisted myself above the water to shoulder level and turned to scan the pool for the woman as I cleared my lungs in a fit of hacking coughs.
Between the pouring rain and the waves from my impact, I couldn’t make out anyone in the pool with me above or below the surface. I searched the murky darkness as I waited for the water to calm, but I didn’t see anything until a female form pulled itself out of the shadowy water across the pool.
“Crazy bitch,” I muttered to myself, my heart still pounding from the fall. “I’ll see your crazy and raise you.”
In my soaked clothes, I felt like I weighed a million pounds, but there was no time to waste. My suspect was already turning, and once she noticed me there, the chase would be on again. Keeping my eyes on her, I pressed the palms of both hands onto the pool’s edge and hoisted myself up and out of the water.
Or tried to, at any rate.
Before I could get all the way out, a wave of water rose up in front of the woman and rolled across the top of the pool, washing over my legs. Pressure wrapped around my calves, becoming solid as if it were hands pulling at my lower half. It tugged at me and I fell onto the expensive-looking tile work along the pool’s edge. My ribs screamed in pain from the impact, but I didn’t have time to concern myself with it—I was being dragged back into the pool against my will.
I fought whatever strange riptide had me as something about the feel of the water changed. The pressure of it was increasing, making it more and more difficult to breathe. I made for the shallow end, but it was like trying to swim through molasses. As spots of light started to fill my vision from lack of oxygen, I caught sight of the woman once again. One of her arms was extended out from her, taut and muscular. She closed her fist slowly and the pressure increased. I would have loved to marvel with Other Division curiosity at how she was controlling the water, but right now all I could think about was how nice it would be to not die this way.
