The Gemini Bridge (The York Street Series Book 1)

by Shea Meadows

  Ricky shook her head and vacillated between grief and anger. Is this from him? She asked Moon in her thoughts.

  “Most likely not directly, but some artist is being pushed into this by a ghost. I imagine the ghost gave the orders for this gift. Only one way to find out.”

  “You want me to touch the thing? Connect with the sickie who sent it? I don’t know if I can do it Moon. This is a guy who’s part of your murder.”

  “Unless you move past your repulsion, he’ll be part of your murder too. It would be fun to see you in a higher reality, but I think there’s a whole bunch of people that would be upset about that.”

  Ricky cleared her throat. “Um, fellas, Moon just told me I have to touch this monstrosity so we can track its history. Is that possible or would I be breaking the law?”

  David and Max looked at each other and turned off the video camera as they discussed the suggestion in hushed tones. Ricky could feel Moon’s hand on her shoulder, a charge of energy and courage flowing to her from her sister. The moment seemed to go on forever. If she could just turn around and hug Moon, body to body. But not now, not in this life.

  The men turned back to her. “Are you sure you want to do this? There’s no reason that you can’t and knowing what you can do, it might give us valuable information,” David said.

  Max shrugged his shoulders. “It’s your package after all. It’s in your house. Considering the attempt on your life yesterday, I see this as evidence in an ongoing investigation. But if I hadn’t been here when it arrived, you’d have opened it yourself. Why would I stop you now? Would you mind if he taped you as you tell us the impressions? We’ll do our best to keep it from going public.”

  Ricky laughed. “I imagine it will leak to the press sooner or later. Given my new occupation it shouldn’t hurt my reputation. I’m not planning to run for mayor or anything. If it contributes to the solution of this mystery, it will get us a few steps closer to finding out what the new normal is.”

  All of them went upstairs Max holding the box with the note and doll, still wearing the latex gloves and looking acutely uncomfortable. “I’ll tell ya, this isn’t protocol but I’m willing to go along with it. Consider telling me what’s going on, will ya?”

  Ricky smiled. “I’ll talk to Moon about that, Max. She’s the boss when it comes to sharing this. ”

  Max shrugged. “Just saying. Wouldn’t hurt to have the MPD helping. Looks like you’ve got some pretty crazy enemies.”

  Ricky continued up to the meditation room on second floor. “Moon thinks it will be safer to do this in the mediation room….calmer energy there.” Max had never been past the first floor before and looked around with a look of pure panic when they entered the room and all its new age tools. Ricky almost laughed at the expression on his face, remembering that she had felt the same a week before.

  Ricky could feel Moon sitting down beside her near the meditation cushion and putting her hand on Ricky’s shoulder, a sense of serenity enveloping both of them even as they prepared to delve into the twisted mind that created the tortured doll.

  David set up the camcorder, Ricky pulled on latex gloves and Max handed her the open box. Okay, Moon, how do I do this? Ricky asked her sister/mentor.

  Use the traveling stones. They’ll keep us safe. Ask the guides to assist us, came Moon’s answer. How can I hold them in place? Ricky questioned in return. Improvise, was the one word response.

  “So guides. I am to use the traveling stones, show me how?” Ricky queried. She was just as surprised as the men when the diamond stayed firmly on the top of her head, the amethyst secured itself to her forehead as if by crazy glue, the blue sapphire nestled in the indentation on her throat and the emerald was drawn to a space over her heart. The topaz, garnet and ruby completed the picture by situating themselves on the solar plexus, the lower abdomen and between her legs as she sat cross-legged on the pillow. How is this happening? Flashed across her mind but she let it float by, just as easily as the stones had found their places.

  David’s voice, just barely loud enough to register on the audio, introduced what they were doing: “We are in the meditation room at Moon Angel’s home in Minneapolis on June 26, 2002 at 2:30 pm. Rachelle Banner is about to attempt to connect with the contents of the package delivered here about forty-five minutes ago.”

  Ricky pictured the place where she met the guides, silently asking for assistance from any and all that could be part of this investigation. She reached in the box and took the injured doll in her hands, and instantly found herself moving through time and space, landing in the last place she’d ever want to be: the hospital morgue. She described aloud what she was seeing and the men listened silently.

  Ricky watched as a young man in hospital whites moved quietly into the deserted, cold- room with a flash light in his hand. He had long blond hair, tied in a ponytail, and a pocked face that had endured countless rounds of teenage acne. He was about five foot six inches tall, and slightly overweight, and his hands shook causing the beam from the flashlight to dance around on the floor in front of him.

  He moved slowly across the tiled floor, scanning the area until he arrived at a gurney that held a body covered by a sheet. The young man reached over with trembling fingers and flipped back the cover to reveal a woman of about ninety, with twisted limbs and a swollen face. He shuddered and pulled the sheet back in place. Would he have to look at the corpses in the pull out drawers to find her? His sources had told him she was still on a gurney, awaiting transport to the county morgue. He continued to unveil another person, and then on the third try came to the body that was the object of his search: the empty form of Moon Angel.

  Ricky saw her sister through his eyes. Injured head, swollen, clouded eyes, blue tinge to the skin, scars from procedures done to try to save her. Beside her body sat a small cooler with vials of blood in it and a zip lock bag with some of her hair that had been removed in the emergency room.

  She could hear the orderly’s thought process: Why the hair? To establish DNA beyond a shadow of a doubt? He laughed a short, chocked-sounding laugh, thankful that he didn’t have to dig through medical waste to find hair samples. He shuddered as he gingerly picked up one of the vials, pouring some of the thick blood into another vial he had in his pants pocket. He took half of the hair and carefully salvaged it for his own plastic bag, avoiding touching the still form on the gurney as he did so.

  His shaking had decreased as these acts of theft were finished. It was like the staff had played into his hands. Did the creep who hired me have a few others on his payroll?

  Silently, he closed the door behind him, and followed the twists and turns to get to the doors behind the building that lead to the employee parking lot. He propped open the nearest door and slipped out into the cool spring air.

  The lot was deserted. Before there had been crowds of people, praying and chanting, trying to save the person whose body he’d just scavenged. He took out a cig and lit it, waiting for someone to show. The man had told him three a.m. on the dot and he had done his best to comply. He was maybe five minutes late.

  A shadowy figure moved toward the orderly, guided by the glow from his smoke. “Put that damn thing out,” a hoarse voice said, “don’t want the hair to smell like an ashtray.”

  “Oh sorry,” the orderly said, hands shaking again as he tossed the cigarette to the ground and ground it into the pavement. “I have everything you asked for. I guarantee that it’s all from her. Strangest thing. It was in a cooler by her body. Did you have something to do with that?”

  The shadowed man’s voice responded with a guttural laugh. “Ya, I have my ways. So let me have it.”

  “Money first,” the orderly responded, his hands and voice shaking again, fear surging up inside, knowing he had no way to protect himself if this character drew a weapon, but the money was worth the risk.

  The shadowy man dipped his hand into his pocket and drew out a roll of money. “Here it is; $5,000, as promised.” The orderly tur
ned on the flash light to see the cash, a roll of bills that appeared to be in units of a hundred each. The two completed their exchange, and the orderly ducked back into the building. The voice of the man followed him as he left. “Don’t say a word about this to anyone, see? I’ll find you if you do.”

  Ricky found that she was now attached to the shadowy man who seemed familiar. The walk, the voice, how he muttered to himself. Chester! Moon’s oldest student walked out to his 1999 Ford Escort carrying Moon’s blood and hair. It was the same Chester who would declare his loyalty to her sister and be deeply hurt that Moon hadn’t given the organization to him just hours after meeting with the orderly. Already it seemed that Azer was in charge.

  Ricky watched as Chester drove back to an extended stay apartment complex about ten miles from the hospital. Quietly he turned the key in the lock, walked into the kitchen and stored the blood and hair inside an empty pizza carton in the refrigerator. He glanced over to the couch where a round, bald headed man wearing a stained sweatshirt and sweat pants was deep in slumber. The man didn’t stir. Chester took off his own black jogging outfit and hooded jacket and retreated to the bathroom and then to bed.

  The scene shifted and Chester was driving his house guest to the airport. “I’m telling you Chester,” the man in the front seat said, “it’ll all fall apart now. What kind of a psychic was Moon if she couldn’t protect herself from energetic attack? I’m building my network in Athens, and you know most of the people I have in key roles. Come back to Georgia with me. Bring the stuff you learned. They will be so screwed up now they’ll never get it up and running.”

  Chester’s face was a road map up of twitches and tics as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. His hair was sticking up in all the wrong places and his clothes were the same ones he’d had on the day before at the hospital. “I’m tempted, Sam. She only talked to me once in the hospital and made me her errand boy. After that, not a word. I think she’s wandering around in my dreams though. Strange stuff going on. Big chunks of time that I can’t account for. I’m ready to get on the plane with you, maybe look over your setup. I’d have to come back and clear out my stuff, see, but I think this is the end for me and Moon.”

  At the airport, Chester stood in line to buy a ticket to Atlanta and mumbled under his breath, talking to Moon. He moved from the line, and went over to Sam Reading who was waiting for him. “Can’t go today Sam. I have some unfinished business. Moon just talked to me. But hold a place. If the will isn’t fabulous I’ll be down in a week or so.”

  The scene shifted again, changing its place and time. Now it is a month before Moon’s death. Chester was arguing with a tall blond with a long face, bright blue eyes and big teeth. She was moving to New York and told him to have his things packed in three days because the lease would be up the end of May. He grumbled at her, telling her it was unreasonable for her to think he was at her beck and call. She’d just have to do her own relocating. It didn’t fit into his plans to move to New York. Her angry reply was that he was one of the big reasons she took the job in New York, she had no intention of asking him to come along.

  He was then alone in the apartment and most of his stuff had been packed. He had an apartment reserved in an extended stay complex downtown. All that was left in the apartment was the rented furniture that would be picked up by the company they leased it from.

  Chester looked around the apartment one last time and reached for the door knob, then stopped, a look of horror on his face. He’d almost forgotten it! He charged back to the bedroom and opened the wood chest at the end of the bed. Inside was a box which held an item he had commissioned from an artist in Chicago when he was there working with his teacher. He couldn’t remember why it had seemed important to have it made at the time, something to do with what his teacher explained to him, but the details were fuzzy.

  He flipped open the box and the Moon doll stared up at him with that look of anguish on her face. Chester shook his head with a bemused smile, not really remembering why he’d spent the money. Was it to be a gift for Moon? A joke? A curse? It was a pretty thing with a ceramic head and a small black wig. If the face was serene he was sure she’d enjoy it. Confused, he closed the box and put it in his duffle bag.

  Time was fluid in this vision. It moved forward again to a point just after the reading of the will. Chester was sitting at a table in his apartment, a blank stare on his face his hands seemed to be working on their own as he gazed out a window. The vial of Moon’s blood sat on the table, near the bag of her hair. Chester’s fingers added some of Moon’s hair to the wig, blending it in with the synthetic hair already in place and gluing it firmly. Still, without looking at his project, Chester opened the vial and his fingers smeared blood on the dolls head, its hands, feet and side. Chester sighed, still looking out the window at a bird that was flying by. His hands laid the doll on the table and picked up a piece of paper and a marker and wrote, not paying the least bit of attention to the content of the message. Moving like a robotic construct, he nestled the doll and the note in the box and wrapped it in brown wrapping paper, taping the package closed and addressing it.

  The object now complete, Chester walked into the bedroom, sat the package in the closet, and climbed into bed, sleeping until the following morning.

  Ricky watched as he arose, looking groggy and confused. He stumbled into the bathroom, his hands and face smeared with Moon’s blood, not suspecting a thing was out of order until he looked in the mirror. He frantically searched his hands and body, looking for what might be bleeding and found nothing. After cleaning up all trace of blood, he dressed in fresh clothes and went out into the kitchenette. Nothing remained on the table except a smear of blood that Chester quickly rubbed away, his hands shaking.

  His face reflected his confusion. He looked around the living room, trying to find some hint of the source of the blood but found nothing. There was a tape dispenser sitting on the counter near a pair of scissors and black marker. His brows crinkled in frustration. It was obvious he had no memory of what he’d done.

  The vision moved forward again to earlier in the day that they were experiencing now. Chester in his Ford Escort, the package on the front passenger’s set. He calmly drove through stop signs and traffic lights, ignoring the shouts of other drivers and narrowly missing collisions, no police cars in sight. He parked across the street from Moon’s house and grabbed the box, quietly delivering it on the front porch and returning to the car.

  As he started up, he seemed to return to himself. He shook with a start, as if he was returning to consciousness and seemed confused to find himself in the driver’s seat of his car. His hand shock as it gripped the wheel and he pulled the car over to the curb, breathing hard, sweating. He mumbled softly. “Where the shit have I been? This has got to stop.”

  The vision faded and Ricky came back into the room. “That’s everything, it was Chester for sure that sent it, but it was obviously something he did in an altered state.”

  Max shook his head. “I’m confused. Wasn’t Chester one of Moon’s top teachers? Why would he turn on her like that?”

  Ricky looked at David, who already knew what was going on. “What do you think David?”

  David shrugged. “The MPD has resources that could be helpful. They can take the doll into forensics to verify that the blood and some of the hair really came from Moon’s body. We can hire private labs to do it, but it’s costly and may take longer. It seems like this is escalating. Chester seems like he’s already been invaded. We may need him put on a psychiatric hold which is something they can order if the lab agrees with your assessment. Ask Moon what she thinks.”

  So should we get the MPD involved in this? Fill Max in on what we know about Chester?

  Moon’s answer came with a sigh that rattled the blinds.

  I’d wanted Chester out on the streets so you and David could track him, hoping he’d lead us to the teacher he’s mentioned in Chicago. He’s never even thought the guy’s name. He thinks of h
im as “Teacher” or “Master”. I think it’s a shield that the Stealer put up to block my connection. The guides get glimpses but nothing solid.

  She sighed again. It’s looking like he’s a bigger danger than we thought. The guides are even surprised at how strong Azer’s persona has become, and it takes a lot to surprise them. Max is trustworthy so fill him in. He’ll believe you because you just showed him how connected we are. But make the stipulation that you and David have to be part of the investigation and only he and people that I’ve worked with before at MPD can be involved.

  “Moon agrees I can tell you, but she has some provisos.” Ricky explained what Moon had just told her and then she and David went over what they knew about Chester, the Soul Stealer and the ghost attached to Charles Fell, the almost-assassin.

  Max asked a few questions, took notes, and looked bewildered some of the time, but at the end his questions became more to the point of the problem rather than about how any of this could be true.

  “If I hadn’t worked with Moon for all those years and seen how she’s helping you, Ricky, I would be asking for a psychiatric evaluation for the both of you,” Max said from his seat on one of Moon’s mediation pillows.

  “It will be a bit tricky to keep this under wraps but I think I can do it. Moon’s death has been ruled an accident by David’s agency, so we can’t really reopen that unless we have some provable evidence that links someone to it.

  “But you’re attempted murder and this threat brings it into the jurisdiction of MPD. If we use the clues that Ricky just discovered and find the orderly and finger Chester for paying him to steal hospital property, we can arrest him and show how he’s a danger to himself and others. That will at least get him off the street. Who knows if it will stop him?”

  Ricky nodded. “We are part of it, Max. Just remember that. We won’t hold anything back that we come across but don’t try to restrict us. We might even leave Minneapolis to track leads. I have a whole pile of ledgers that Moon started about the Soul Stealer. David and I will be using that information.”