Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  “You asked.”

  I faux-scowled at him in the dark. He didn’t seem to mind. I resolved to stay quiet on our stakeout from this point forward. That lasted all of two minutes. “I like stake-outing. It’s fun times. Tell me something else about you.”

  “I don’t like your frog hat. It’s god-awful.”

  “Is that the opinion of a man who knits socks, or the opinion of a man who makes grilled sandwiches out of fountain cheese on Chewbacca bread?”

  Schenk sputtered a laugh. “Fontina cheese on Ciabata.”

  “That’s what I said.” I pointed at my goggle-eyed frog hat. “This hat is awesome. The only hat better than this one is the one thingy wears on Firefly.”

  “Jayne Cobb?” He nodded. “That hat is epic.”

  “Yeah. It is.” We shared a chummy smile. “You know, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Longshanks.”

  “I’m hard on myself?”

  “Yeah. Like right now, you’re thinking you’re a freakazoid, what with the knitting and the fussy cheeses and the foot fetish.”

  “I wasn’t thinking any of that.”

  “You should be.” I sucked honey off my thumb. “But you should also know: wherever you are, someone is thinking lovely things about you. It’s not me, though; I think you’re a dillhole.” I showed him a teasing grin. He threw a napkin at me. “Tell me something else. Are you married, single?”

  “Divorced.”

  “Because you’re a pervert, right?”

  “I’m not a pervert.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing.” I added more honey to my tea, and sipped. “It’s more fun if you’re a pervert.”

  “Sorry to let you down. I’m a gentleman.”

  “I’ve got a real problem with gentlemen,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt that you do.”

  “Divorced just the once?”

  Schenk stared into the distance without comment, then shifted in his seat, then used his thumb to drum on the steering wheel, an ersatz pencil to go taptaptap.

  “Twice? Four times? Six?” I goggled at him, sitting up straighter. “You’ve got six ex-wives on a cop’s salary?”

  “Whoa, whoa. Slow your roll, there, kid. Only three.”

  I patted his arm. “Only three so far. You’ve gotta think positively, constable. That’s what I’m learning. My partner, Elian, is teaching me the power of positive thinking. Like, I’m positive you’ll get married and divorced, and married and divorced again a whole bunch of times.”

  “Thanks. That’s helpful.”

  “Don't give up, Schenk. There are thousands more women out there waiting to screw you over.”

  “Very reassuring,” he said, and gave a tired grunt. He opened the driver’s side door, and frigid air spilled in. “Let’s stretch our legs a bit.”

  I left the old-timey picture and my tea in the van for safekeeping and joined him. We strolled past the uniform, nodding at him, checking in and hearing that next to nothing was going on, except he was pretty sure he heard a coyote in the thicket up the hill. He was hanging around until the officer who was replacing him for the rest of the night showed up, and he seemed anxious to go. I didn’t think that had anything to do with ghosts. The Blue Sense reported that he was bored, despite the grisly nature of the scene, and cold to the bone. As Officer in Charge on this case, Schenk relieved him, told him to go on up and wait for his replacement in his car where it was out of the bracing wind and he could turn on the heat.

  I relaxed enough to let the Blue Sense swell, stirring like a lazy wind, rising to empathically search the area, specifically my co-stroller. Schenk scanned the water with trepidation that he hid well. He was expecting to find something; I knew he was looking for the flickers of light.

  He didn’t slow as he approached the dump site, but his focus sharpened on it. I offered, “If Scarrow was right about a killer ghost, I suppose we’d see more overt signs, don’t you?”

  “Unless it doesn’t want us.”

  I shrugged, but he wasn’t looking at me so he missed it. “Why wouldn’t a killer ghost want us? Personally, I am highly stalkable. Everything wants me dead.”

  “You haven’t ticked it off yet.”

  “You say that like I’m going to.”

  “I have met you.” He shot me a look and went back to inspecting the water.

  “You’re thinking it wanted Britney Wyatt specifically? That maybe she ticked a ghost off?”

  “If it wanted to kill just everyone, or anyone, then it’s had plenty of opportunities. It hasn’t shown itself. It hasn’t grabbed anyone. We’ve had people here all day and night.”

  “Before I use you as ghost bait, I should ask, are you armed?”

  “You sic a ghost on me, I’ll shoot you in the face,” he said, though the Blue Sense reported his teasing far better than his face did. I had to really look for the trace of a smile. The late hour, and the grim scene, had blunted what little humor he usually showed.

  The crime scene investigators had set up a tent around the rocky shore where the body had been found. It was still uncertain how Britney’s body had appeared seven locks up the canal, against the natural flow of the water from Lake Erie down to Lake Ontario. There were no streetlights out here. To save on energy, only one of the floodlights had been left on, pointing to the cheerless, chilly spot where Britney's corpse had come to rest.

  We passed the tent and the floodlight and continued to a little peninsula made of piled dirt punctuated by chunks of cement, long grasses that had dried in place and then frozen in clumps, and a plague of buckthorn trees snarled with stubborn vines. I tried to venture out on the peninsula and Schenk hooked me back with an arm so he could go first.

  I watched him search the frozen cattails along the water’s edge, and the Blue Sense offered up another tidbit of interest about the big guy; here, on the hunt for truth, Patrick Schenk was in his element. He was warily optimistic, determined, and totally in the zone. I did not share his comfort level. He didn’t seem slowed by the weather, he wasn’t afraid of seeing what needed to be seen, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got to the bottom of this, like a goddamn harbinger of justice embodied. The Job was Longshank’s life. Furthermore, this was not a new development in Schenk; a pool of integrity this deep did not form overnight. The Job always took priority when there was a question that needed answering. He wasn’t reluctant to be out here; where I’d rather be curled up in bed with a book and a bag of Oreos, there was nowhere else he'd rather be. I understood completely how there were three former Mrs. Schenks, and couldn't find fault with their decision, though I hope it didn’t doom the big guy to a lifetime married to the badge.

  Picking my path carefully behind him, I struck out to the side, catching a glimmer of something in the water, a flat circle of ice forming like a footprint and then breaking up. Hopeful of paranormal activity, I took my phone out and removed my glove so I could set the phone to camera mode and take a hundred and ten pictures of the same flat patch of water. Ghosts were always fascinating, but I was still unconvinced that one was responsible for taking a human life. The ice did not reform. Disappointed, I put my phone away, stuffed my glove back on, and shuffled closer for a better look, while Schenk circled behind me and to the right at a fair distance, investigating the slush at the waterline.

  I was about to comment to Schenk how there was a whole lot of nothing in this pond when the heel of my boot hit a slick patch of frost on a wobbly rock. I felt the skid, my body tensing for the inevitable impact, my breath going out in an indelicate, “Whurp!”in anticipation of the fall, and prayed I didn’t go into the water. I only got as far as Dark Lady, don’t let me go in the—before I landed with a splash.

  I flailed over to hands and knees, the icy water coming almost up to my chest as I scrambled to brace my hands in the cold grime at the bottom. It sloped away from the shore at an angle, slick and slippery, and sucked me deeper, away from the safety of dry, if frozen, land. Under a thin layer of algae and mud,
my knee dug into a hard lump. It was smooth and round, just like my kneecap, and just as bony. My lips pinched together and I let out a breathy meep as my imagination offered up all sorts of suggestions for what it might be.

  In my panic, I stopped the lunatic flailing and went motionless; I cast aside science, experience, common sense, and professionalism, speaking in a high-pitched, dry-mouthed voice. “Patrick?”

  “Yes, Marnie?” Schenk was already picking his way down the churned, slushy rock slide where I’d just tumbled.

  “I fell.”

  “I see that. Y’okay?”

  I shook my head no. “Patrick?”

  “Mmhmm?”

  “I fell in the dead people water.”

  “Is that what it is?” he asked carefully.

  I nodded rapidly, hating that tears were filling my eyes, but deeply and truly horrified. “It is. It’s dead people water.”

  Schenk said, “Uh huh?” but I suspected it was not so much agreement as it was to keep me talking, distracted while he got closer.

  “It’s cold, black, murky water full of corpses,” I said, panting with my need to escape, too afraid to move.

  “I’m coming.” He picked his way past the wobbly rock I’d dislodged, finding better footing.

  “Six hundred sixty-three corpses,” I squeaked. “If that’s not dead people water, I don’t know what is. This is the worst tea ever.”

  He made an unexpectedly soothing noise, shaking his head reassuringly at me to dispel the dread I was projecting. “They’re long gone, Marnie, just dry old bones, they can’t hurt you.”

  “They’re not dry bones, they’re wet bones. They’re slimy-wet bones. They’re ickygrossslimywet bones!” I tried to scold myself, to remind myself that I was a scientist, and a trained professional. I had FBI credentials. I’d battled zombies and ghouls and crazy witches bent on revenge. I staked a revenant once and got his dust up my nose. This was just water, damn it. Water. With skeletons in it. Skeletons that might or might not be up for a game of Graveyard Grab Ass. I was intimately familiar with far too many kinds of unquiet dead, which, while it should have been at least somewhat comforting, that comfort had shrunk and fled, as if hiding itself from the near-freezing water, too.

  I felt myself starting to tip over into terror mode and forced myself to focus on the giant cop, whose body eclipsed the high-beam floodlight, blocking it for a heart-strafing moment, pitching me into shadow. He was getting closer, now.

  “Whoa, there, Big City Psychic.” I heard the smile in his voice even though it was too dark to see it. He moved out of the light and the beam nearly seared my retinas. “Have you out of there in a second, just hold on. Come closer to the edge?”

  I knee-shuffled experimentally, picking my shin up out of the sludge, feeling more hard things (sticks and rocks, Marnie) shifting under the mud beneath my knees, jostling with them as I surged toward the shore. Something hooked the shoelace of my right boot and tugged me back. I turned to pull my foot free from whatever (a stick, just a stick!) had me hooked.

  “Something’s got me,” I peeped, hearing the little-girl alarm in my voice.

  “Just a branch,” he said, echoing my wishful thinking. One massive hand was offered, but he was just out of reach.

  I tried to kick away from the (branch, stick, corpse, it’s a corpse! It’s Night of the Living Dead!) thing that had my laces and finally summoned the nerve to reach down underwater with one gloved hand and shove frantically at whatever it was.

  Freed of its decayed wrist joint and the tangle of my shoelace, a brown, skeletal hand bobbed to the surface.

  I’ve seen bodies in all stages of decay, so I probably shouldn’t howl when I see one. I definitely shouldn’t have spazzed out at an active crime scene, or made a sound like a wounded cow. I absolutely shouldn’t have thrashed so hard in the dead people water that I soaked the cop, either, because I’m positive I scored no points with that smooth move. Dripping and sputtering, Schenk took one big step into the water, hooked me under the armpits and hauled me out kicking and braying.

  “That was a hand,” I said.

  “It was?”

  “It was a skeleton hand. It was a grabby-grabby skeleton hand!”

  “It was a branch. Look again.”

  I looked again. He was right; my eyes had betrayed me into seeing the shape I was afraid of, instead of what was really there. A clump of tangled, browned vegetation, a nest of old, dried vine that had become waterlogged, bobbed in my wake.

  “Well, it was really cold,” I breathed up at him, hearing the defensive tone of my own voice.

  “I bet,” he said, nodding. He hurried me up away from the edge, probably afraid I’d pitch us back into the water together. Avoiding the sharp, reaching branches of the buckthorn trees, he got us back to the path without further injury and we started back to the van at a fast clip.

  “Patrick?”

  “Yes, Marnie?”

  “The killer ghost didn’t show.”

  “No,” he said, “it didn’t, did it?”

  “Patrick?”

  “Yes, Marnie?”

  “Don’t tell anyone I fell in the dead people water, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “Never happened.”

  “And if it did, I absolutely did not make that wounded cow noise.”

  “Nope,” he agreed, throwing his coat over my wet parka.

  “Because I’m a scientist. A notfreakoutologist.”

  He agreed with a nod. “You’re tough like a cinderblock.”

  “When I get home,” I predicted, “I’m going to need to swear. A lot.”

  “You’ll owe Mr. Merritt a million dollars,” he said, hurrying me faster as the van came into view. The new patrol officer had arrived, a K9 unit, and dog and man were sharing a snack preparing for their first out-of-car sweep. Schenk raised a hand at the new guy, who recognized him and waved back.

  “Mr. Merritt won’t make me pay it,” I said, teeth chattering. “He’s a gentleman. Then again, I have a problem with gentlemen.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “They don’t like me because I’m not a nice lady.” My whole body was shuddering hard, constantly, and though Schenk had me by the shoulders and was propelling me into the van at breakneck speed, I felt like I was still wading through the purl of icy water. “Even bad boys don’t like me, much. Certainly not as much as I like them. Agent Batten calls me Doom Chasm.”

  That was the last straw for Schenk, whose ability to keep a straight face faltered. He belted a laugh from the belly, standing at the open passenger door to help me with my seatbelt, while I just blinked in disbelief at him, numb and stunned, feeling like a child. The Blue Sense flared hot against my side to report that laughter was rare for Schenk, a serious man who seldom let his defenses fall. For a second, the taciturn mask slipped, and his protective side took a softer approach. He helped me take my wet gloves off, wrung the moisture out of them on the icy ground, laid them across the hot air vent on the dash, and put my still-warm thermos in my hands.

  No small amount of shame pinked my cheeks. “You didn’t panic. Of course you didn’t panic. You would never panic.” I looked up at the side of his face uncertainly. “I panicked.”

  “Just a little,” he allowed.

  “Promise you won’t tell?”

  “I probably won’t tell,” he teased. “Let’s get you home and into dry clothes, eh? That’s enough ‘stake-outing’ for you.” He took a blanket out of the back, and took me home, shivering in shame, revulsion, and probably hypothermia, wrapped up like the world's lamest leftover burrito.

  CHAPTER 15

  NORTH HOUSE FELT empty, and Mr. Merritt’s silent, ghostly-pale appearance did nothing to dispel that sensation. I had really been hoping for Harry’s company, but he was gone, and Combat Butler was being annoyingly tight-lipped as to his whereabouts, deflecting my queries with fussily solicitous offers of a hot drink, dry clothes, and a pipin
g-hot bath, all of which were awesome and necessary, but I was still chilled inside and out and didn't appreciate being treated like a wayward six year old. It was all I could do not to stick out my lip and pout, which probably wouldn't have helped my argument anyway.

  I’d stripped out of most of my wet clothes immediately upon arriving home and thrown on one of Harry's long coats over my underthings like some half-drowned but classy flasher. Mr. Merritt had taken one horrified look at his sopping-wet charge and gone to work in the kitchen fetching warm things with which to nurture and coddle me, while I tromped upstairs to hang my wet clothes in the shared bathroom off the upstairs hall. I exchanged Harry's tweed cloak for a fairly decadent, fluffy, vanilla-beige bathrobe. Ellie would approve; Ellie loved beige. I was more of a black and blue girl, myself.

  Even though my normal sanctuary of a nose-deep soak in a steaming bathtub topped with mounds of bubbles had been somewhat tainted by visions of diaphanous, grabby hands and questing, skeletal fingers, I thought a hot soak might be just what the doctor ordered.

  Mr. Merritt's polite knock at the open bedroom door preceded his entry with the tea trolley, complete with silver tea service and a posy of yellow roses and orange Asiatic lilies. I thought that I might be too tired to eat or drink until he took the napkin off a golden scone and produced a demitasse cup.

  “It’s terribly late.”

  “I fell in dead people water,” I confessed, pulling on my back-up gloves; beige, suede, but most importantly, dry. “It’s officially too late for everything.”

  “Shall I turn down your bed, madam?”

  “Like in a swanky hotel, huh?” I asked. When I saw he was quite serious, I hid a smile. “Sure, knock yourself out. It’s after midnight.” I left that hanging and favored Mr. Merritt with a conspicuously pathetic that's your cue, dude look that I honestly didn't expect him to acknowledge any more now than he'd done downstairs. Apparently, seeing that his charge was now ensconed and no longer dripping, he could favor me with a straight answer.

  “Lord Dreppenstedt went to Virgil, madam. He is due to return soon and asked me to tell you…” He cleared his throat.