Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files)

by A. J. Aalto

  “I guess we’ll find out when we track Nowland’s last known movements, and where he went in. Find his car, the last people to see him, check the canal videos from late last night.” We watched the forensics guys running around through the blizzard, trying to do their thing while being assaulted by the storm. It seemed no matter which way I turned, the snow was whipping right up my nose.

  I said, “Being in a graveyard always makes me think of my own death. You?”

  “Mortality? The afterlife?” He gave the half a sandwich back to me. I ate it. “Deep, doleful thoughts there, Cinderblock.”

  “I’m more concerned about what they’ll say at my eulogy.”

  “I’m sure your companion already has one prepared.”

  “He does treat me like I’m a minute away from disaster at all times.” I finished the sandwich and dusted the crumbs off the front of my parka. “Speaking of disasters, Father Scarrow wants me to go with him to the tunnel.”

  “The haunted one,” Schenk clarified. “Just you?”

  “Just me.”

  “That might be the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “Not even close. I used to bang a coworker. And this one time, I met a half-possessed, homicidal ex-DaySitter alone in a cheap motel, and she tried to gut me. I had to fake my own death to survive. The stabbing, I mean. I didn't fake dead during sex. I’m not that kinky.”

  The wind snatched at his scarf, sparing both of us any more of my True Confessions babble. He popped his collar and rearranged the scarf up around his ears. “I'm still not sure Father Scarrow isn't involved with these deaths,” Schenk said. “You are absolutely not going anywhere alone with him, sorry.”

  “He won’t go if you’re there. He thinks you’re a problem. Sorry.”

  “I'm a cop. It's my job to be a problem for people doing illegal things. Besides, I’ve already been there.”

  I tilted my head back and stared at him from under the sliding hem of my floppy hat. “To the Blue Ghost tunnel? When?”

  “Took a crew out to check it for evidence after Simon Hiscott mentioned it during his initial questioning.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing out there but a bunch of frozen frogs.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Frogs don’t freeze.”

  “And bats.”

  I felt my brows knit harder. “Bats don’t freeze, either. They either migrate to a more suitable cave or tunnel, or hibernate.” Now I absolutely had to see this tunnel. I had an idea. “What if I bring Harry?”

  “I thought revenants couldn’t be near ghosts because of the Kinship of the Departed. The ghosts could drive revenants insane.”

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “You’ve been doing your research.”

  “Had time to kill on a stakeout where my partner didn't take an impromptu swim, so I read your diary. I’m very thorough.” He cut his eyes down at me. “You said mean things about me.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “It’s true that Kinship of the Departed will cause a deep and instant emotional connection between Harry and any ghosts that may be lingering in that place, but that will be a good way of seeing if there actually are any dangerous manifestations there, and Harry can keep his distance if he starts sensing their presence.” The ghost at North House made Harry uncomfortable, but didn’t drive him batty. More like annoyed that he was a ghost-wuss.

  “Will Harry be willing to participate?” he asked, adding, “Unofficially, of course.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I don’t know. “Sure, he’ll do it.” Maybe. If I beg. I texted Harry about my tunnel date right away. “He won’t get this until he rises at dusk, but we should have his answer then. What next?”

  “Barnaby Nowland’s apartment. I want that missing skull.” He rubbed a gloved hand across his face, wiping snow off his goatee. “If you molest your way around the apartment, will you get vibes or whatever?”

  “Probably lots of whatever, but maybe some vibes, too. And it's not molesting, jeez. You make it sound filthy.”

  “I’m really getting sick of this ghost shit, Cinderblock.”

  That was true, but there was something else, something he wasn’t eager to admit. I politely pulled back on the Blue Sense, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate my prying into his emotions. Instead, I waited, looking way up at him, to see if he was going to continue to share. When he didn’t, I nodded.

  “Me too,” I said. “Can we hit the grocery store before we go to Barnaby’s? There are some things I’m going to need.”

  I liked that he didn’t question it, just started away from me towards his boss, saying, “If you make it quick.”

  I nodded that I understood and headed back to the car ahead of him, kicking snow off my boots as I watched him check in with Malashock before joining me and driving off.

  CHAPTER 20

  “IF THERE’S A skull in this apartment, it probably belongs to a rat,” I said, tiptoeing into an apartment that made Lennie Epp’s place look like a surgical suite. I put my grocery bag full of goodies down on one of the age-stained plastic lawn chairs Nowland used as living room furniture.

  Schenk took it in with the flexibility of a cop who had seen much worse, picking out every dirty detail in a heap of dirty details: empty pizza boxes, crusty socks, desiccated house plants, old food, new food, discarded soft drink containers, glossy magazines for an obviously male “readership”, game controllers for a couple different consoles, and the centerpiece of it all, a massive TV mounted on the wall and tuned into the Discovery Chanel, currently showing a muted episode of Mythbusters; Adam and Jamie appeared to be duct taping a stick of C-4 to a watermelon. I admired their culinary stylings, but Harry insisted on cooking in much more conventional ways.

  “I feel like I should have Scarrow's cadaver dogs with me looking for mummified takeout containers. I really hope Barnaby didn't keep any pets. I ever tell you about the time I zorched a zombie with a tray of completely grotendous kitty litter?” I grimaced. “How the hell are we going to find anything in this disaster zone?”

  “We think like the guy who lived here,” Schenk said, unperturbed.

  “Right. Think like a loud, single, twenty-something man obsessed with bones and boners. No problem,” I said, taking off my gloves. “If I was a twerp, where would I put a human skull?”

  “Anxious to see those powers at work again,” he said, motioning to my bare hands.

  “If you’re expecting me to play psychic bloodhound or follow my fingers around like a dowsing rod, you’re setting yourself up for a disappointment,” I said. “I’m not touching a thing until you point out something relatively clean.”

  A pair of blue latex gloves appeared from Schenk’s jacket pocket like magic, and he handed them to me before donning a pair of his own. I followed suit. When I stuffed my own gloves in my coat pocket I found something bunched up there and pulled it out. One of Harry’s monogrammed handkerchiefs. I could see the outline of Asmodeus' infernal ring inside it. Had Harry put it there? Did he think I’d need it today? I shoved it in the front pocket of my jeans and adjusted the latex gloves.

  “What’s in the grocery bag, eh?” Schenk asked.

  “Sage, caraway, matches, twine, Twizzlers,” I said. “You know, the usual.”

  “Sure,” he said agreeably. “Witchy stuff.”

  “Except for the Twizzlers,” I said, ripping open the bag and pulling out a long, red licorice twist with my teeth. It hung out of the corner of my mouth like a flaccid, ribbed stogie; it bobbed when I talked. “Had a craving. Want one?”

  He passed by showing me his blue palm. “Just putting this out there: don’t mess up any possible evidence I might need, eh?”

  “Evidence like…” I chewed thoughtfully on my Twizzler. “That crusty stuff on the couch that I’m praying is a coconut yogurt stain?”

  “Maybe it's Pule. Fell off a canapé,” Schenk said. “Don’t burn the place down with those matches.”

  “I won’t torch any of Barnaby’s stuff,” I promised. I never
even got a chance to meet the guy, but I was about to learn more about him than I wanted to. I used the tip of my boot to pull the bottom of the coffee table drawer out a little, and peeked inside. “I’m guessing this fellow didn’t have many visitors.”

  “Oh?”

  “Dude keeps rubber vaginas and lube in his living room,” I said, pointing down into the drawer with one blue finger. “I do not envy the people who have to process this apartment.”

  “Like I said, no torching.”

  “I bought a jar of baby food so I could use the glass jar for burning my sage. Is it okay if I rinse the apricot goo down the sink?”

  Schenk made a face like it wasn’t okay, not if he followed procedure. He turned his head slightly to look at the uniformed officer outside the apartment door. The officer was ignoring us, checking something on his smartphone. I suspected it was Facebook, judging by the way he swiped, scanned, and poked.

  “Don’t run the water too much,” Schenk allowed, “and make a note of what you did.”

  “I don’t think forensics needs to know what Barnaby rinsed down his sink this week to help solve this murder, Longshanks, but if it makes you feel better I’ll take copious notes about the kitchen,” I said. I took one step toward the dim little alcove that served as a kitchen in the bachelor apartment. “Which is fucking filthy, by the way. I really wish the FBI had bought me that flamethrower. This place doesn't need a cleaning service, it needs an exorcism, and maybe get rinsed out afterward with a fire hose filled with holy water. In which case I will be waiting politely four miles away. I don't wanna do that 'I'm melting, I'm melting, what a world' thing all over your boots.”

  “Exorcism? Should I have brought Father Scarrow?”

  “He’d swallow his tongue if he saw my witchy stuff,” I said, not that Scarrow had behaved like a run-of-the-mill priest about anything else so far. Still, he might hit me with holy water, and, at best, I’d break out like I'd been pepper sprayed. With lye. “Besides, how do we know he’s not responsible for the poltergeist? Maybe he’s a black witch using the Lesser Key of Solomon and crying foul to throw us off his tracks.”

  Schenk made a doubtful noise. He was rubbing his blue-gloved hands together like Lennie Epp had. “Knitting injury, Tough Guy?” I teased.

  “Do me a favor,” he said, ignoring the dig. His chin jut out in a hands-free gesture I’d seen Batten make a couple times. “Don’t get that herb stuff all over the place until forensics has done their sweep, either. I don’t need them reporting to me about paprika in the carpet.”

  “Paprika? What am I, making deviled eggs? Would anyone even notice?” I asked, pointing at all the multifarious and decidedly funky stuff already embedded in the carpet. Schenk aimed a big, blue finger in my direction and I nodded and tossed him a salute. “Right. Extra careful with the herbs. Gotcha. Hey, tell me something…”

  “Nope,” he said, nodding a back-when-finished-here to the uniformed officer outside the apartment and shutting the door.

  “When did the knitting thing happen to you?” I didn’t think he’d answer, but he did so straightforwardly and without pause, making me wonder if he got asked that a lot.

  “My mum taught my daughters,” he said, sweeping the living room with his searchlight gaze, over open titty magazines and half-empty glasses of moldy juice, bowls with bits of cereal congealed in the bottom, and an elaborate candelabrum sans candles. “I picked it up helping them get good at it.”

  I studied his face for a moment. “And you continued knitting because doing something repetitive with your hands frees up your mind to puzzle stuff out,” I guessed. “What exactly do you make?”

  “The neonatal unit at the hospital can always use knitted caps for premature babies,” he said, now looking at me in a silent challenge. “My youngest was a preemie.”

  “Sorry. I can’t mock any part of that,” I complained.

  “Shit, it’s not like I knit at my desk.”

  “You could. You’re, what, ten feet tall?”

  “Five-foot-twenty.” He smirked.

  “Six-eight,” I said with a low whistle. “Ain’t nobody gonna make fun of you to your face, dude. Pretty sure a guy your size holding two giant needles can knit wherever the fuck he wants.”

  He murmured agreement. “Did I mention that your sister, Carrie, also had your business cards?”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  He gave me an I’m-a-detective, duh look. “She says you haven’t been home in a while.”

  I used a latex-gloved finger to swipe at the kitchen counter to see if the crumbs were stuck to the surface or not. “So?”

  “Why not?”

  “Must bother you,” I said, flicking any loose crumbs on the floor. “A mystery you can’t solve.”

  “They don’t like you, eh?” He made a little hand motion like a bomb exploding and mouthed at me solved.

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Who fuckin’ asked you, Smartypants?”

  “You okay in here while I check the back rooms, Cinderblock?”

  “Of course. I’m a scientist. I’m not scared of maybe-killer ghosts.” Lies, lies! “Besides, I’m bad-ass.”

  “You’re bad-ass,” he said, as if making sure he’d heard me right.

  “If you can’t tell how bad-ass I am, you need bad-ass lessons.”

  He half-smiled. “The meter still running on your swear jar, or do you think I'm not going to sell you out just because you're not cursing in my vehicle?”

  I made a betrayed noise in the back of my throat and faux-pouted at him. He turned to make his way through a maze of boxes in the hall and disappeared from view. For a moment I was certain I’d never see him again, that he’d get ghost-slain in the bedroom and our final conversation would have been stupid. After a moment’s discomfort, I shrugged it off and got back to work.

  The latex gloves would protect me from germs and assorted icky stuff — super science-y term from a super science-y scientist — but they would not shield me in the least from psychometric impressions. Whatever I touched was apt to offer up any number of visions, and, given the run of my thoughts from the purely visual examination of Barnaby's crib, I was so not looking forward to plumbing those particular depths in full Blue Sense Technicolor. The last time I’d been in Canada I had Groped the apartment of Paula McKnight, a missing woman with a disturbing past of abuse and personal trauma. Then I’d had both Harry and Wes to back me up. Here, now, I was on my own, but the visions in this apartment should be relatively benign, except for, you know, those associated with a missing human skull and its slovenly, chauvinistic pilferer. Triple blerg with a half twist; and it sticks the landing because the floor is disgusting. Is that an open tin of SPAM?

  I dug out the jar of baby food from my grocery bag and went into the kitchen, snooping at the same time, and humming Tom Petty’s Running Down a Dream. The clock on the microwave flashed 12:00 over and over. The clock-set button was crusted with something slimy that hadn’t quite solidified. I decided it might be wise to double glove if Schenk had extras. I twisted the cap off the baby food, heard the satisfying schlick-pop, and went to the sink, singing under my breath.

  At first, my brain did not compute what I was seeing. My mouth kept working on Tom Petty, but the lyrics for anything but the chorus were lost to me, as my eyes tried to explain what was in the sink.

  The single-tub sink was full to the chrome edge with jiggling ectoplasm. I looked at the open jar of apricots, and back at the goo. “Dear Diary: Foiled by ghost spooge! Hate when that happens. Love, Marnie.”

  It wasn’t the same as the white, silken sheet we’d seen draped over the corpses of Britney Wyatt and Barnaby Nowland, though; the multi-unified chain ectoplasm had been delicate, a chiffon shroud, grave cloth floating around the bodies in the water. This sink glop was green-tinged and thick, like snot from the deep recesses of a sinus infection.

  “Do regular ghosts make a different type of ectoplasm than
poltergeists?” Maybe you should look in the smart part of your brain, Marnie, I told myself. “I should know the answer to that, but there’s only so much one can retain after a decade, eh?” The sink full of goop was silent on the matter, but I sensed a clear feeling of disappointment in my failings. Slime with attitude. I dug into the corners of my brain like a rat in a dumpster, trying to remember what I’d learned about different types of chain ectoplasm, but the answers eluded me.

  A wind picked up from nowhere and whisked my frog hat off my head. I grabbed at it but my hands were full of jar and lid, and I wasn't quick enough. The hat landed in the sink, where it floated atop the goo briefly before becoming booger-logged and sinking out of sight. I flashed back on a wad of boggle phlegm hitting me in the forehead. What had become of my life? It was a nonstop joyride of glamour and junk-punches lubricated by ghost slime and monster fluids. I didn't sign up for this snot-fest.

  “Fucker. Give that back,” I told the kitchen sternly, a second before realizing that was the worst intention I could have put into the universe at that moment.

  Ectoplasm roiled out of the sink in a spatter of thick droplets as the Cosmos tried to return my hat to me. I made a cry that sounded like glark! and jumped safely back. “Ha! Didn’t get me.” The hat was apparently snagged on something in the basin and only came up high enough for the frog eyes to poke above the surface, like a yarn crocodile regarding me from a particularly viscous swamp.

  I had thrown out my hands to protect me from the potential, gooey projectile, and the Blue Sense rewarded me with the sinking certainty of what the something snagging my hat was. I set the baby food jar on the counter beside the sink and balanced its lid on top.

  Where there is ectoplasm, there had, at some point, been a ghost. More than one, perhaps. They liked, or didn’t like, this sink for a reason. I pulled the latex gloves up around my wrists better, feeling the corner of my upper lip turn up. Ignoring the fact that I was here because of my own cat-snuffing-grade curiosity, I snarled, “I fucking hate this job.”