This is about exerting control.
I’m the weird skinny kid who dared to defy him, who dared to stick up for his prey, and he wants to teach me a lesson before he takes Chelsea back.
Fucker. I get it now.
Know what this means?
Mike will get his wish. I have to do the documentary.
What better stage for David to take on Goliath?
It’s the perfect showdown, and I’m bringing a set of paranormal brass knuckles with me, Boogerface.
***
Another fifteen minutes pass before I hear a short rap on the door and in walk the two detectives, Carson and Jaynes. Carson reminds me of John Madden, all the way down to the wiry eyebrows sprouting from his forehead like a ball of cotton stuck a fork in a light socket. He’s tall, round, and gives off the impression of a jovial grandfather who’s ready to pull a lint-covered piece of candy out of his pants pocket. Don’t let that fool you, though. This guy is sharper than he looks. I picked up on that earlier when they shoved me into this human-sized fishbowl.
Jaynes is short, stout, built like a small refrigerator with close-cropped salt and pepper hair. She didn’t smile or speak once earlier.
I bet she’s fun at parties.
Carson takes the lead and offers Jaynes the lone remaining chair. She silently declines with a raised hand and backs herself into the corner, standing with meaty hands buried in her pockets. Nonchalant. Staring. Or glaring, I should say. There’s a measure of suspicion and anger there.
I pry my eyes from her and turn back to the more welcoming grin of Carson. I’m probably wrong about that, too. I doubt it’s welcoming. More like, ‘I know something you don’t.’
I know what tricks are coming, but I don’t feel like playing games, so I relent and speak first.
“Detective.”
“Mr. Ford.”
“Anybody check on my dog?”
The corners of his mouth dip as he looks down and away.
I feel my heart burning with dread. “Is he okay?” I ask, leaning forward.
Thank God, he nods. Hallelujah. “He’ll be fine in a few days. The vet said he’s a little banged up and scared to death whenever anyone tries to get close to him, but Animal Control has him on sedatives down at the pound. Hate that for you. Got a sweet little poochie myself.”
“Thanks.”
“Damn shame when trauma like that happens to a good animal.”
“Trauma?”
Carson angles his head backward, scrunching up his forehead. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Over his shoulder, he says back to Jaynes, “Goddamn it, Sheila. They did it again, didn’t they? Lazy sons of—never mind.” To me, he adds, “I see you got coffee. Need anything else? Water maybe?”
“I’m fine.”
He intertwines his fingers and props himself up on the table. “Somebody was supposed to come in and brief you. It’s the young kids these days, you feel me? I can’t get nobody to do right by anybody.” He shakes his head in disgust, looking up at the ceiling like he’s reminiscing about the good ol’ days when people actually did what they were asked.
Has that ever been the case?
I don’t know whether this is a legitimate show of consternation, or if he’s simply playing Good Cop and trying to ease me into his news that I’ll be arrested for murder.
Carson clears his throat. It’s long and rattling, like he’s shaking something loose after years of smoking. He says, “Anyway, your dog will be fine eventually. Sorry we left you waiting so long. Had some things to check out before we had a chat, like looking at the condo. Nice place you got there, right up on the ocean like that. You own it?”
“Rental.”
“Ah. Shame. Nice place from the outside, but when we got up to your floor, the door was open, the place was torn all to shit like somebody set off a bomb inside a hoarder’s house, and there was no sign of Ellen Coeburn. Who knows how he did it, but by God, your petrified pup had somehow managed to work himself under the sofa. You see how big I am. I’da smashed him if I’d sat down.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” I mutter, already tired of the banter. Now that I know Ulie is okay, let’s get to the business of proving my innocence. I ask the detective, “Are there security cameras there? Any idea about what happened to her?”
“She’s ninety years old and blind, Mr. Ford. She didn’t get that far.” I almost give him a derisive snort, wanting to tell him about how much he doesn’t know. Instead, I nod in mock acceptance. “But you wanna know the craziest thing? They picked her up knocking on some scared neighbor lady’s door, talking about how she needed inside and was hungry. Miss Lane, that’s the neighbor, she was scared to let her come in on account of how weird her eyes looked. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I lift one shoulder and let it drop. He knows something strange is going on. He knows who I am and what I do—or did—for a living. I think I need to know where I stand before I admit to anything.
He stares at me so long, I become aware of the watch ticking on his wrist. This time, I wait him out. He eventually says, “Those two boys in the bathtub. Horrible. Just horrible. Know anything about them? Who they are? What in the hell happened to them?”
“They were already there. I found them that way.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. And did you notice anything about their eyes?”
“I should probably get a lawyer before I answer much more.”
Carson’s beaming smile comes back. “Naw, no need to do that. We’re just having a conversation.”
“Are you going to arrest me, Detective?”
Carson turns to Jaynes. She dips her chin, indicating her agreement with some unspoken directive.
“In all my years, Mr. Ford, I don’t know if I’ve ever quite seen anything like this. Being who you are, and seeing as how you do what you do, I’d expect some cooperation with such strange matters. You are one lucky so-and-so, you know that?”
“How so?”
“Detective Jaynes and I reviewed your video evidence, and we both agree that it’s enough to show that you acted in self-defense, at least when it comes to Miss Coeburn. Not to mention the fact that we ran some quick tests and found the boys’ DNA underneath her fingernails. The scratches on their arms connect the dots there.”
“So you’re saying she murdered them?”
“We’re not saying anything of the sort,” he says. “Not yet.”
“But you’re not accusing me of anything?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Cooperation.” He flicks a look over his shoulder at the two-way mirror. “Help. Things like that. Seems as if you might hold your future in your hands.”
Shit. No he’s handing me the bitter apple. But I have to eat it. This time, at least.
I ask, “Am I free to ask questions?”
“Be my guest.”
“Are you looking for the boys’ families?”
“Trying. It’ll be a while. You wouldn’t believe how many kids go missing each year.” He leans back in the chair. The flimsy, plastic construction groans in protest. “So the question remains—questions, actually—why did you set that camera up to begin with, what language is she speaking, how did she get up again, and what’s the deal with their eyes? All four of them. They got Ellen down in holding and her eyeballs are blacker than coal. All of the eye. The whole thing. And then the deceased individuals—the two boys and Miss Coeburn, hollowed out sockets. Black liquid crusted around them.”
“Whoa,” I say, sitting straighter. “Did you say she got up again?”
“Yes, sir. After they put you in the car. Apparently you were a couple of blocks away by the time the EMTs were getting ready to zip her into the trash bag. Miss Coeburn popped straight up off the ground and rushed my boys, poker sticking out of her neck. They fired two shots in self-defense, purely reactionary. One bullet centered her forehead and dropped her. We ca
n show you on the video later. Helps your case that we didn’t find that until after the fact. Stress does things to a man, but had we listened to your incoherent babble upon arrival, we might not have that evidence available, except for eyewitness accounts and what not.”
“She got up. Jesus.”
“I’m fairly certain he had nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah, I hear that a lot. And you asked what language was she speaking? What does that mean?”
“The language Miss Coeburn is speaking in your recording.”
“It wasn’t English?”
Carson presses his lips together, flicks a look at Jaynes, then back to me. “You understood her when she was talking?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think so.”
“Mr. Ford, one of the reasons we were delayed is because it took us a while to find a linguistics expert at this hour. Tracked down a professor up at Oregon State and he says he’s never heard it before, but it sounds ancient. Biblical, even. Or probably older. As in, from what he can tell, there are no earthly languages existing today that are a derivative of what she’s speaking.”
“I—uh. Wow. I don’t know.”
“And you say you understood every word of it?”
“I thought I did. It’s possible she had me under—” I almost say ‘hypnotic spell’ but that would sound even more ridiculous that everything we’re discussing. “Under, um, I mean on… on drugs?”
“You’re not exhibiting any signs.”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“What in the hell are we dealing with here, son?”
I take a deep breath and hold it, exhaling. “You really want to know the truth? I need some kind of guarantee. Something in writing, especially without a lawyer here. That’s probably not possible but—”
“Hang on.” Annoyed, Jaynes finally speaks up from her perch in the corner. “We’re not going to arrest you, Mr. Ford. We’re familiar with your history, and we’re familiar with what you’ve been doing with other departments since your unfortunate event with the Hopper child. We’re asking for your help, and when you give it to us, you’ll be free to go.”
I sense an opportunity here. Should I take it? What do I have to lose?
“And I’m asking you for a written guarantee. Whatever you can do that’ll hold up in court, if it comes to that.”
She says, “We’ll see what we can do.”
I start to protest, but Carson interrupts me, saying, “That’ll have to be good enough for now, Mr. Ford. We’re good people. Trustworthy.”
“Fine. So, we’re looking at a little pro bono work in exchange for maybe overlooking some of the gray areas of my involvement?”
“Careful,” Jaynes says, smirking, “verbally confirming that could be construed as an attempt to bribe an officer of the law.”
I hold up my palms, feeling that intense, nervous urge to piss. That backfired.
“But I didn’t hear a word of it,” she adds. “You, Carson?”
“Not a bit, no, but if I had heard something I’d say it sounded like a fair deal.”
“One more question first.”
“Shoot.”
“Lauren’s a celebrity. How’re you gonna approach the news of her, uh, death? Publicly, I mean.”
“It’ll be handled. If this is what you’re asking, your involvement will be…minimal.”
I lift my eyes to the video camera mounted in the corner of the room. “Is this going on record?”
“Maybe not all of it.”
“Okay then.” We shake hands. I feel slightly sleazy for trying to protect myself at the expense of Lauren’s death, but if I’m going to save Chelsea from a Tier One demon, I need the freedom to move about.
Coeburn, I’ll say an extra Hail Mary for you.
Jaynes says, “Tell us a story, Mr. Ford.”
Well, shit. Here we go. Let’s see how open-minded these two can be.
“Have you guys ever heard of the black-eyed children?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mike Long
Hours pass with no action.
This is not what I wanted.
The longer Dakota’s unwelcome visitor hangs back without manifesting, the longer he’s able to store up energy for when he does come through the portal and graces us with his presence.
Jerk.
We move from room to room, checking and rechecking the thermal imager, asking questions, trying to elicit a response. So much uneventful time crawls by that I begin to consider taunting him simply to see if that will create some kind of reaction. With demons, however, taunting is never a good idea, even with an experienced team like Ford and me. Those guys over on “the other channel,” those dudes from Ghost Bros & Company, they found out firsthand what can happen when you taunt a demon with inexperienced members along. I think that poor dude that took the strongest hit might still be hanging out in a padded room, wearing the latest straightjacket designed by Martha Stewart.
Anyway. We’re bored. You can’t make something manifest, so Dakota invites me to the kitchen for a snack, and on the way down the stairs, she asks, after she’s been tortured by this thing for weeks, why isn’t it showing up now when we need it to?
“In the world of paranormal investigations, you take what you can get and be thankful for it. They don’t operate on our schedules or on our planes of existence. That said, I’m starting to think that this is just going to be one of those nights where nothing happens. Ford and I hated that shit with a passion, and it occurred more often that we like to admit.
“There were times when we’d go into an investigation that promised a freakin’ goldmine of evidence based on the strength of a witness’s testimony, and then, zilch. Twelve hour days over a week’s worth of recording to get one shitty, grainy, garbled EVP that may have been a barking dog somewhere else in the neighborhood. Set up, break it down, do it all over again, and you get static and hours of video of a high-backed chair sitting in a bedroom. Whoopee!”
We reach the bottom floor, turn right, and head back into the kitchen. The blinds are open, just as Dakota left them earlier, and the moon provides enough light for her to move about without flipping any switches. She pulls two plates out of a cabinet, asks me if I’d like some coffee, and pulls a couple of mugs down from an upper shelf.
She starts pulling a snack together while I go on blathering about fruitless investigations. “The Paranormal Channel would be out an ungodly amount of money paying for the whole crew to travel to the location, plus the equipment transfer costs, the stipend they paid to the witnesses and all that stuff. Somehow, Ford and I would end up taking the heat for it, no matter how often we tried to explain to the suits writing the checks that we couldn’t make ghosts show up no more than we could ask the sky to turn pink on command.”
Dakota has one of those fancy, single-cup brew devices, and by the time I’m finished with my mini tirade, she’s already handing me a cup of black coffee. I decline sugar and sweetener both.
I take a sip and get back to it.
“Actually, I know why they’d pin the heat on me and Ford. Carla threw us under the bus every chance she got. I’m sure I hate her as much as Ford does, and after we screwed up Chelsea’s life, I swore on my children’s lives that I would never work with her again. And yet, here I am, trying to talk Ford into doing this goddamn documentary, canoodling with that she-demon in Louboutin pumps, because that’s where the money is.” I put a spoon in my coffee and stir it, pointlessly, since it’s free of additives, while I wait on her to tell me it’s okay to sell my soul.
Instead, she jokes, “I’m just surprised you know what Louboutins are.”
“You’re aware of the woman I married, right?”
“Ah, that explains it.” Dakota plops down at the kitchen table with me, sliding a bowl of hummus and some carrots in between us. As I’m contemplating how well that’ll pair with coffee, she licks her index finger and says, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Might be a touchy subject.”
“I doubt you can offend me.”
She sips from her coffee mug, eyes me over the rim. She sputters through a number of false starts, then says, “You do understand that if Toni’s cheating on you, you don’t have to compromise your principles to keep her happy with the new money, right? Just hire a private investigator, get some pics of her and this Armando guy together, and boom. No court is going to deny that. You sail off into the sunset free of the gold-digger with your kids in tow.”
“While that may be true,” I say, mouthing the words around a crunchy carrot, “there’s no money left. At least nothing substantial. Living expenses and some decent royalty checks from syndication. That’s about all. It’s barely enough for her to keep up appearances. And, supposing the courts miraculously decided to side with the mother after evidence of infidelity—no, trust me, she’d probably fight for negligence since I was gone for so many years—the kids won’t have anything. Not what they could, anyway. They’d likely go with her anyway because Dear Old Dad will be the pitiful sap who’s too broke to pay for the Xbox and smartphones. Hell, I don’t even know what ‘tween kids are into nowadays. Anyway, if she wants a divorce, so be it. Let her have it. I hardly have half of anything for her to take, regardless, and the least I can do is spend some time filming this documentary, as long as I can talk Ford into it, and then take whatever I earn to set up a trust fund for my children. I’m sure some of our lawyer fans of Graveyard could figure out how to protect anything I earn from the movie so she can’t get to it. I’m not even betting on that, to be honest. The main goal is to make sure the kids are good.”
Dakota nods, but doesn’t say anything. I think she gets it, yet she seems sad.
“What’s wrong?”
She taps a packet of artificial sweetener into her coffee and stirs it before answering, “Maybe I have no right to be, because really, we’ve only known each other for less than a day, but I’m worried about you.”
The White Night Page 20
