Ruben stared at her. “Just what else did you see in your visions about Jensen?”
She paused, looking up at me, her gaze a sympathetic, watery gray. “She ran from him in those woods as he chased her that night. A long, horrifying chase. Can you imagine being a regular girl one moment, then living a nightmare the next? It wouldn’t have seemed real, that mask, that ax.”
I looked away, unable to deal. Amanda Lee was a hard-ass, but I couldn’t say she didn’t feel deeply about the people she got to know.
The room went quiet, and she turned a page to another one, where four color photos were posted.
I ghost-gasped at the sight of my friends who’d been in Elfin Forest with me that night: Patrick McNichol, Andy Grant, Brittany Kirkman, and Lisa Levine. Four smiling early-twenties kids in casual pictures taken long before we’d gone traipsing into hell.
I’d invited my best friend from high school, Suze, to our little party, too, but she didn’t like this group I was hanging out with from work. Said they were wastes of life. And Suze, who’d graduated from college a couple of years before and had gotten a decent, upwardly mobile job at a bank, had a point.
Not that I’d listened back then.
Amanda Lee was watching my reaction to the photos, wrinkling her brow, obviously wondering if I was about to crack or something.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Turn the page?”
She did, and what followed were notes on the interviews Ruben had conducted with three out of four of the partygoers. Patrick, at the age of fifty-one, had suffered a fatal heart attack and hadn’t exactly been available. Amanda Lee had said something about this before, after she’d pulled me out of the time loop, but now that we weren’t in the middle of Elizabeth’s case, I wondered again if Patrick was around Boo World.
Amanda Lee asked Ruben, “Now that I’ve got more information about that night, do your investigative instincts make you think that any of the kids at that party were sadistic enough to kill Jensen in the way she died?”
“I didn’t get the creepy-crawlies from any of them, no. You know that, years later, they’d forgotten most of the details of that party, anyway, so it was hard to gauge their reactions when they were being interviewed.”
“A sociopath would be able to hide his or her true nature in an interview.”
“Right. But my instinct is telling me that all of them were just drunk off their asses. It wasn’t even until an hour after Jensen went off on her own that any of them even looked for her. They sobered up pretty quick and spent all night searching.”
Amanda Lee turned another page. “The authorities didn’t do anything right away, either.”
“They thought she’d only gone missing. Jensen’s friends said she was in a funk, and they brought her out to party because they wanted to cheer her up. She was drying out from a bender from the day before, and she decided to be the designated driver, but she was in a good mood at the start of that night. Who knows what she might’ve been feeling as the hours wore on, though?”
I knew what I’d been feeling—like I had to pee. That’s where the trouble had started.
Ruben added, “I’ve seen stranger things happen than a young woman running away from her problems.”
“You have your evidence and I have mine.”
“Tell me about it.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Amanda Lee, can I just get a read on Ruben? See if there’s something going through his mind that might offer a clue that we’re not finding in these notes? He could be thinking a bunch of different thoughts, now that he knows how I died, and could be putting things together that he didn’t put together before.”
She hesitated, then gave me a nod. “Gently,” she whispered so only I could hear. “Just do it gently.”
A swirling blip traveled through me, but I tamped it down. I wouldn’t overload him with my extra energy.
I went to him, being as gentle as possible, giving him the softest of touches on his face. He blinked, his pupils expanding as I encountered a field of zapping welcome.
Then I was inside.
A picture. Long red-blond hair, freckles, green eyes, a summertime smile, a can of Mello Yello in hand, rubber bracelets hugging an arm.
A mass of gray spreading over the picture, blanking out everything.
Sadness. Regret. Sincerity. . . .
I pulled out of Ruben, then went to the sofa, slumping over it, my outline blinkering. He’d been thinking of my picture from the night I’d died: a normal, everyday girl who’d had no idea what was in store for her, just as Amanda Lee had said. He’d wanted to solve my cold case so badly.
Amanda Lee had been telling the truth about Ruben.
I wished I could touch him again, as humans do to make one another feel better, but he was shivering already, and I had the power to only make it worse unless I gave him a peaceful hallucination. I didn’t know if his body could take the higher intensity of that.
All I could do was whisper to him. “Thank you, Ruben. I know you did what you could for me.”
I’d put enough energy into my words so that he could faintly hear me, and his dark eyes were even wider now, his lips parted.
“Cold,” he finally whispered. “Still so cold.”
Amanda Lee came over, bending down and putting an arm around him, warming him up. “It’s not only the temperature in the room, is it?”
“No.”
“There’s no reason to feel that way, Ruben. Jensen Murphy is so grateful. She knows that you’d do anything to help if you could.”
The tough guy below the sick exterior won out, and Ruben smiled, lifting his chin. “Did she tell you that?”
“She told you.”
Ruben froze, then glanced around. I thought about materializing for him—Lord knew I had enough energy for it—but then shot that idea down. He’d already had a mild dose of ghost today. I didn’t want to push it.
“Tell her,” he said, “she’s very welcome.”
Even though he was playing along, I had the suspicion that he still didn’t genuinely believe in ghostus-pocus stuff.
Maybe in time, I thought. Some people needed an opportunity to let it all sink in, and he was a man of fact and evidence who’d stumbled into all this just because he’d been hired by a psychic.
He closed his eyes, resting his head on the recliner. Amanda Lee poured the last of the water from the pitcher into his near-empty glass.
Then he opened his eyes. “Jensen’s best friend,” he said quickly.
I came to attention. Was he talking about Suze?
“What about her?” Amanda Lee asked, putting down the pitcher.
“Suzanne Field. She didn’t go to the party that night. She and Jensen were going through some girl drama. You know what happens when one feels left behind while the other moves on.”
Was he talking about me or Suze?
Amanda Lee said, “It’s true they were moving in different directions in life.”
“Well, now that we’re going over this case again, something she said strikes me. It didn’t mean anything at the time, but she mentioned that a party girl—Brittany or Lisa—was wearing Jensen’s bracelets in memory of her on an anniversary of the disappearance when Suze saw one of them a couple of years ago.”
Embarrassingly, I’d owned some rubber Madonna bracelets. Don’t ask why, since I was more into bands like Sonic Youth. Okay, maybe I admired Madonna’s I Am Woman attitude. There. But it doesn’t excuse the temporary fashion faux pas.
“It’s starting to nag at me,” Ruben said, “maybe because I was thinking of that picture of Jensen, and she was wearing those bracelets in it.”
“Are you thinking of how a killer takes trophies?” Amanda Lee asked.
“I could be.”
She was grim. “In my visions, I felt that Jensen lost those bracelets in the woods that night.”
And Suze was the one who’d told Ruben about seeing them again on Lisa or Brittany. And I had been putting off seeing her f
or a while now.
Clearly, it was time for me to stop avoiding my old best friend and actually interact with her, so I could mine more information.
I was already out the window before Amanda Lee could suggest it.
• • •
Dusk rolled through the sky, leaving me hours away from my dream-digging appointment with Tim Knudson as I traveled to the Gaslamp Quarter, where good cheer was definitely under way. Revelers strolled the downtown streets, eating and drinking on sidewalk patios, music spilling out of every bar. But the best music was coming out of Flaherty’s, an Irish pub on Fourth.
“What Should We Do with the Drunken Sailor” from a Celtic band livened up everything. God, if this had been any other night, I would’ve called for my buddy Randy to join me. It couldn’t get more appropriate than this.
But . . . another time. Because, right now, as I jittered above everyone’s heads while they gathered by the long bar, holding beer mugs high and yelling over the band as they tried to chat, I needed to find Suze.
I didn’t have to look far. She was behind the bar, wrangling drink orders, her long, curly gray-versus-brown hair pulled back into a chunky barrette, a white “Flaherty’s” apron hugging her. She kept yawning, covering her mouth with her hand, shaking off obvious exhaustion.
Maybe she was doing a double shift?
I rose into a pine-wooded corner, just taking her in. Remembering all those years ago when her hair had been a wild, teenaged mess that she’d let go free, when her body had been toned in that take-it-for-granted way only the young have as she’d cheered during football games. I’d been the student council president and homecoming queen, and she’d taken the prom crown. Neither of us had given a shit who would win, just so it was one or the other.
She’d been majorly ambitious back then, so what had happened? Not that being a bartender was a bad job—it just didn’t require a college degree. The old Suze wouldn’t have been slinging ale to yuppies and tourists.
I waited her out, all the while wondering what the hell she knew about those Madonna bracelets and why Brittany or Lisa hadn’t been the ones to let Ruben know about them. I recalled having the jewelry on when that final picture of me had been taken before we’d headed off for the forest—the photo that’d been in all the newspapers and in Ruben’s thoughts. But what did I remember after the picture . . . ? Nada.
Had I blocked out how I’d lost those bracelets right along with the details of my killing? I’d been swigging soda that night, but I’d been sober, so why wasn’t anything registering now?
When Suze was relieved by a cheesy bartender with a raging yellow scarf around one bicep—was it some kind of fashion statement?—she headed for the back of the building.
This was my chance. But I wondered . . .
Well, with everyone else lately, I’d been using empathy, yet that was only because their minds were already on the subjects I needed more information on. How was I gracefully going to get information about those bracelets out of Suze if I couldn’t talk to her?
But those bracelets weren’t the only reason I was here. They were just the best excuse I could come up with to see her again without feeling bad about her.
Chickenshit Jensen.
I sucked up all my energy—and there was still a lot of it, even if empathy with Ruben had taken the edge off. Then I dove down from the corner, zipping through the bar. Gasps followed in my wake, no doubt at the sudden blast of cold air.
After I slipped through a big crack at the bottom of a door, I saw Suze at a table alone in the back room, her head on the surface, cushioned by her arms. Next to her there was a can of soda pop.
Had she fallen asleep before sitting down to take a drink during a break? She’d definitely looked tired enough in the bar to just crash like this.
I wasn’t sure what to do now. I’d never gotten this close to her while I was a ghost before. I’d never seen just how old she looked: over fifty-three, like I would’ve been.
God, this was like some kind of time warp I’d gone through, where one day I was watching John Travolta in leather singing to Olivia Newton-John, and the next Danny Zuko was playing some horrifying bad Martian dude in a big codpiece and dreadlocks that I’d seen in a clip on the Internet. The future had not turned out right or bright.
Just as I was mulling all that over, Suze dazedly turned her head in her arms, and I was suddenly in her line of sight.
When she lifted her head, my essence hummed. It was almost like she saw me, but couldn’t quite make me out.
“H’lo?” she asked.
I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was my excitement. Maybe it was all that energy jumping through me.
I materialized.
At first, Suze groggily got to her feet, so slumber-addled that she knocked over the soda can. It hit the ground with a clunk and let out a sinister fizz.
“J—Jen??”
I couldn’t stop my joy from taking me over, making me glow and lending me more energy. I bzzzted, taking a step closer to her. “Suze!”
“How . . . ? What . . . ?”
And then she fainted.
I sped forward, electrically shaping my essence into a big hand, pressing under her, being careful not to touch skin, and easing her fall to the cement.
Then I drew away, standing over her, looking at the consequences of my idiot move.
“Crap,” I said. “Suze? Suze?”
She was lying in a pool of soda, stray curls and her tank top getting soaked.
I hardened my form again, using a phantom limb to lightly slap her face, avoiding any empathy. “Wake up. Come on.”
It took a few times, but she finally blinked her eyes open. A moment passed. Then she sucked in a breath, like she was about to scream bloody murder.
“Shhhhhh!” I said, expending myself. Then, pulling on more power, I materialized again, but I knew I couldn’t do it for too long since I had to save up for tonight, no matter how much juice I’d banked today. Dream-digging would be a bitch on consumption. “It’s just me, Suze. I know. I know it’s a little weird, but I’m not here to hurt you or anything.”
“Jen?” she asked again, her teeth chattering.
“Yeah.” I tried to smile.
She looked at me like I was an angel, and maybe that’s how I appeared. It’s how Gavin used to remember me.
When she smiled, I buzzed some more. Suze. Best friends forever.
But then she closed her eyes and pressed her palms over them. “I’m dreaming. I fell asleep because I’m dead on my feet from working last night and all day, and I’m dreaming.”
I wanted to hug her, hold her close, remember the days when we’d told everything to each other: how I felt about Dean, how she wished she had someone just like him. We hadn’t been as close after my parents had died, but I’d been the one who’d changed, not Suze.
“I’m sorry to scare you,” I said. “I wish I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, definitely a dream.”
Okay. If that’s what she needed to believe, then I’d go with it. Maybe later we could . . . What—catch up over a brewski?
“I need some questions answered,” I said. “Like . . .” Boy, I couldn’t just hop into the bracelet stuff. “Like how’re you doing, Suze?”
Well, that sure got her. She made a puzzled face, then gestured to herself, all sticky and rumpled on the floor. “How do you think I’m doing?”
“You don’t look so bad to me. For a prom queen.”
Her eyes lit up for a moment, and we were back to being bosom buddies. Then she shook her head, like she was remembering this wasn’t real.
Shoot.
When she peered at me again, I knew she’d been expecting me to disappear.
She gave in, like she couldn’t fight her sleep. “Even if I’m seeing a mirage, I’ve missed you. It’s all I’ve wanted to tell you for years. There’s more than just that, though. I wanted to apologize for not being there that night, because if I had, you wouldn’t have gone off
into the woods alone. You wouldn’t have even gone to that party if I’d asked you not to, but I told you to hang out with your new buddies, have a great time with them, when all the while, I was angry at you for leaving me behind.”
“I never meant to leave you.”
A tear rolled down her face. She cuffed it away. “You’re not a day older than the last time I saw you. God bless dreams, huh?”
“I’m the same because I died that night, and this is how I’m going to be until . . . whenever.” Why lie about it?
Her eyes welled up with a lot of tears now. “Oh, shit. I didn’t want to know that. I always imagined you’d run away to some tropical island, getting your life together.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“How did you . . . die?”
This, I probably shouldn’t go into. “It happened in the forest.” Yeah, I was dodging and weaving. “I don’t even know who did it, but that’s why I’m here, Suze. To see if you can help me.”
She pressed her hands against her eyes again, rubbing them. Outside the door, there was a clatter, and I got ready to disappear if someone else came inside.
Didn’t happen. When I looked at her again, she was slowly lowering her hands, revealing mascara smears. Was she gradually realizing that this was actually happening?
I think so, because her voice shook. “How do you need my help?”
Here it went. “I was wearing bracelets that night. The sucky Madonna rubber ones?”
She nodded quickly.
“Anyway,” I said, handling her with kid gloves, “you told a private investigator that Lisa Levine or Brittany Kirkman has them now, and one of them was wearing the bracelets on the anniversary of my disappearance not long ago.”
She only seemed confused.
This was going nowhere, and my spastastic condition made me reach out to her, touching her face to empathize.
Coppertone-skinned Brittany Kirkman, middle-aged with eighties-era bracelets slinking down her arm. In a booth in the pub. Brunch. A random visit on a day that just happened to be the anniversary of Jen’s disappearance . . .
Last name Stokley . . . a bottle blonde . . . wearing tennis whites . . .
Another One Bites the Dust Page 8
