Laying Ghosts (Dolly Games)

by Derek Murphy

  Julie held up the slacks with the waistband inside out to display the label affixed to it.

  “Carl. It was a woman.”

  Grunting, Carl moved to the plastic storage box and pushed the lid side, rummaging in the rags, towels and plastic sheeting stuffed inside it. His lip wrinkled in distaste as he found something lying amid them.

  “Yeah. She also managed to get a condom on Webster when he had his ‘wet-dream’ experience. What kind of twisted mind could conceive of torturing his wife to the point of her suicide; if that’s what it was, and then drugging him so she could have sex with him?”

  At the bottom of the box, he found a pill bottle that still held a few pills in it. He moved the bottle around with the tip of one finger until he could see the pills fairly clearly. Beside them was an opened and nearly empty bottle of single-malt whiskey.

  “Rohypnol. And something else. I’ll bet she spiked his whiskey with them.”

  He removed his cell phone from his pocket and squinted in the bad light at the display.

  “No cell signal down here. We need to get back upstairs so we can call Michaelson and Thomas.”

  Dropping the slacks, Julie said, “There’s got to be a way in and out of here besides the tunnel. We still haven’t found the way into the house.”

  They moved away from the tables, going in opposite directions, their lights and eyes on the walls, floor and ceiling of the place. In one corner, hidden by a slight projection of the wall, Carl found a narrow doorway with a simple latch on it. The door scraped on the floor as he opened it, drawing Julie to stand behind him.

  Behind the door, still another tunnel, this one high enough to admit passage without crawling, led toward an exterior wall. He followed it with Julie a few feet back. She was loathe to stay inside the room they had found without someone with her.

  The passage ran level until the last few feet and then suddenly ended with a short, steep ramp to a small, metal door at the top of another ladder built into the wall at the end of the tunnel. Carl climbed the ladder, stopping at the top to fumble with the latch until he pushed the small door open and crawled out onto the patio behind the house. As he turned on the patio, he looked at the door and saw that it was set into the side of the huge, combination brick barbecue grill, fireplace and oven that sat at one side of the patio. The door was supposed to be used for ash removal for the oven while the fireplace had its own door. The oven showed no sign of having ever been used and he knew why; it was a cleverly designed dummy. Who, in this part of the country, would use an outdoor oven when the weather would make such an undertaking uncomfortable and impractical?

  The sun was down and a slow, steady mist and fog shrouded the estate, leaving only the few lights they had left on in the house to appear as dull, smudges of light in the night. He held his phone up again and smiled grimly as he saw the three bars on the display. Scrolling through his phone book, he dialed Michaelson’s number as Julie emerged from the tunnel.

  After three rings, he heard the police detective’s voice-mail message and waited for the beep. “Harry, this is Tanner. Can you and Steve get over to Martin Webster’s house asap? Better bring a forensics team, too. We’ve found something. You’ll find us behind the house on the patio.”

  Straightening, Julie asked, “Shouldn’t one of us meet them at the front?”

  She was relieved when he answered, “No. If whoever this is comes back to the house, I don’t want either of us to be alone with her. We know what she did to Sophie Webster and she didn’t have any trouble drugging Webster. We know what she’s capable of and I’m not taking any chances.”

  Reluctant to bring up old memories that might hurt him, she refrained from asking if he thought this might be another psycho like Dolly Dagger. Instead, she stepped closer to him and looked around the darkened patio as if she could see through the thickening fog.

  She asked, “Are you still smoking?”

  Nodding, he said, “Yeah, I can’t seem to quit. Stuff about Marta keeps coming up and ruins my peace of mind. I quit but go right back to them whenever I think of her or hear anything regarding her. Why?”

  Looking up into his face, she said, “I was hoping you might loan me one.”

  Surprised, he said, “I never knew you smoked. When did you pick that crap up?”

  As he shook one out of his pack, she accepted it and let him light it for her. Blowing smoke into the mist and fog, she said, “I’ve never bought any. Instead, I borrow one from others and that way, I don’t have access to them when I feel that I want one.”

  He raised his eyebrows, marveling at the simplicity of it.

  “So, the habit never gets a chance to really develop. Neat trick, that.”

  The wail of sirens, sounding deceptively far away in the fog, came to them and grew louder as they approached. When they sounded as though they were right in front of the house, it was less than a minute until two uniformed officers came blundering through the darkened mist.

  An Hispanic officer strode forward, his big flashlight shining a beam ahead of him, and said, “Sergeant Cruz. This is Officer Hindle. We were dispatched to secure a crime scene. What seems to be the situation?”

  After explaining as little of it as he could, reluctant to have the officers tramping through the small room under the house, Carl suggested, “Perhaps you and Officer Hindle should secure the front entrance until the forensics team arrives?”

  The sergeant didn’t seem happy about Carl’s suggestion, but realized the importance of a full and uncompromised forensic exam of the room under the house. As the two officers made their way back to the front of the house to direct the team when they arrived, another set of lights could be seen wheeling into the drive in front; the beams shining off to the side of the house. In less than a minute, Detectives Michaelson and Thomas walked around the corner and approached the two.

  Thomas said, “You two are making the whole department look bad, y’know. First, you cracked the Dolly Dagger case and now you find a tunnel and room that our forensics guys completely overlooked. Keep doing stuff like that and I won’t sell you tickets to the Policeman’s Ball this year!”

  His grin belied his words, giving Carl to understand that he appreciated their help. Michaelson, with a barely civil word of greeting to Julie faced Carl.

  “A tunnel with an outside entrance? Now we know how he got into the house.”

  Carl said, “More than that, Harry. I’m also pretty sure that Mrs. Webster was raped by a woman or a man who is unable to perform sexually. Or, there could be two people involved.”

  Michaelson’s eyes squinted for just a moment before he asked, “What makes you think that?”

  After explaining what they had found, Michaelson and Thomas, bolstered by two uniformed officers, entered the tunnel behind Carl and Julie, emerging in the room under the house just as two members of the forensics team climbed down the ladder from the tunnel under the breakfast nook.

  Thomas’ eyes narrowed as he took in the contents of the sample case and without turning his head, he addressed one of the forensics techs.

  “Get DNA samples from Miss Shepherd and Mr. Tanner so we can exclude them as suspects. Then get started cataloging all this stuff.”

  He moved to the other table and bent to inspect the nightgown as Carl and Julie followed him to the table.

  “You think Mrs. Webster wore this?”

  Carl said, “No. That’s what brought us here again today.”

  He related Webster’s story of the night before to Thomas and Michaelson and Thomas turned to the other forensics tech.

  “Bag this. I want the DNA on it analyzed ASAP and the report on my desk before morning.”

  As the tech began to tell him the report couldn’t be produced that quickly, Thomas said, “I know it takes longer to process DNA than the TV shows make it look, but get it done, Mark. This is too important. This might shed some light on what the hell’s going on in this house.”

  The first tech moved to stand besi
de Carl and Julie, using swabs to get cheek samples from them before turning back to the sample case and its array of sickening implements.

  Michaelson stood back from the second table, his brow knit in thought.

  “What the hell did Webster do to somebody that was bad enough to be singled out like this? I mean, his wife driven to suicide and then they try to make him think he’s being haunted. What the hell did he do?”

  His partner said, “It doesn’t matter except to give us a direction for the investigation. Let’s get that white-collar crime unit the Chief is so proud of involved and see if some action he took with his company led to this.”

  Carl said, “It’s not, strictly speaking, his company. He’s the CEO and serves at the pleasure of the stockholders and the Board of Directors.”

  Waving away the technicality, Thomas said, “We’ll let the pencil-necks determine what’s going on there.”

  Distractedly, he looked up at Carl and said, “You’ll suggest to Webster that one of you needs to stay with him as a bodyguard?”

  At Carl’s nod, he added, “Good, that’ll give you something to do to earn the rest of your fee from him. The house is now an active crime scene again and we’ll be taking the investigation from here. You’ve done a good job, Carl.”

  His eyes shot to Julie and he added, “You, too, Julie.”

  Summarily dismissed, Carl and Julie turned toward the ladder to exit the hidden room and saw another pair of techs laboriously climbing down it, burdened with their cases of equipment and evidence containers. Seeing their way blocked, they turned back to the tunnel leading to the patio and made their way outside. By the time they were rising to their feet, Julie was seething.

  As Carl brushed the dust and dirt from the knees of his slacks, she said, “I like that! We bust the case wide open for them and get shown the door! Who do they think they are?”

  With a quirk of an eyebrow, Carl replied, “Cops. If it’s credit for breaking the case that you’re worried about, Thomas will make sure we get a favorable mention in the press release.”

  Still angry and perplexed at Carl’s lack of outrage, she said, “I don’t see how you can be so calm about this, Carl. There are still a ton of things we could be doing!”

  “Sure there are. But we’re down two operatives. DeeDee can’t do anything at all, and Ike is hampered by taking care of her and the babies for the next few days. We still need to stand watch over Webster and try to get some work done on the backlog of cases we’ve got. Webster won’t pay us until the case is finished and we’ve still got bills to pay. I don’t want to dip into the ‘rainy-day fund’ unless we have to.”

  As he started to walk toward the corner of the house, she followed along, frowning.

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “You get to Webster before Michaelson and Thomas get there and prepare him for what they have to tell him. Make sure he knows that we found that room and all the stuff inside it. I trust Thomas, but they might forget to tell Webster about our involvement. I’m going to get back to work on the Nelson case. With any luck, I can wrap that up in a couple of days and get started on another one.”

  The two parted when they reached their cars and Carl stopped to stare back toward Webster’s house as she pulled away. What could anyone have against Webster that they would do such things? Had he done something they didn’t know about to deserve something like this? In Carl’s experience, there was always something that people didn’t want bruited about. Maybe he was getting jaded in this job. Maybe he had just seen too many such things. When your job is to find things out about people that they don’t want anyone to know about, it was only natural that he might become cynical and bitter about people. But of all the cases he and Ike had worked over the past few years in their own agency, only the Dolly Dagger case had offered any violence. Now, Ike had been attacked, there was an ongoing effort to drive their client crazy and after seeing that hidden room, Carl was about ready to jump out of his skin. People could talk about Indians being stoic all they wanted; he could tell them that Indians got just as excited and nervous as anybody else.

  He shook his head and got into his truck, pulling out and driving back to the office. Maybe he could lose himself in the Nelson file. He was still willing to bet that Nelson just went to the yacht to watch porn. Then he remembered what the crewmember had said about Mrs. Nelson spending so much time there as well. He knew that women liked porn as much as men did, but spent much less time watching it; they preferred romance novels. The content wasn’t so very much different, it was just wrapped up in prettier paper and bows.

  * * *

  The eyes that watched the police as they carried boxes and bags of evidence out to the police van were slitted, glittering with hate and calculation. The hidden room had been a good staging space for the watcher’s activities, but it wasn’t completely necessary. The police had set up floodlights in the yard as though they were afraid of the dark and the watcher grinned mirthlessly.

  Those meddling private detectives. The watcher had hoped that they would have been too busy investigating Chip Nelson to pay Webster’s case the attention it deserved, but that had been a wrong assumption. Perhaps something else needed to happen. Something drastic. Something that would either scare them away, or take so much of their attention that they couldn’t afford to divide their time with more than one case. The birth of the other detectives’ babies had been a stroke of luck, but hadn’t been enough.

  The watcher moved back into the trees and brush at the edge of the Webster property and unerringly found the narrow game trail that had been there for years. The watcher stopped and looked up at the moon and the light scud of clouds that began to cover it. The weather forecast had claimed that an arctic front was on its way, giving them a chance of a very early autumn storm with sleet and snow mixed in with the rain. The watcher welcomed it and turned burning eyes back on the dim trail through the woods. Nimble feet almost danced through the oak mast and forest detritus that lay under the trees as they made their way home.

  * * *

  Still burning with shame at what had happened to her, Julie slammed the door of her apartment as she hurried in to change her clothes. The dust and dirt she had dragged them through at Webster’s house had rendered them unsuitable to meet with the man. She stopped at the door of the bathroom and surveyed the mess she had left there. A shower would have to wait. If she attempted to take one, she would get sidetracked by cleaning the bathroom and be too late to talk to Webster before Michaelson and Thomas got there.

  Grabbing a washcloth from the linen closet, she hurried back to the kitchen, disrobing as she went. Her jacket, top, shoes and slacks were strewn along her path and once in the kitchen, she gave herself a quick sponge bath and darted back into her bedroom. After a hasty change of clothing, she found herself back at the door with her car keys in hand and her purse slung over her shoulder.

  In her haste, she fumbled her keys, nearly dropping them as she stepped through the door. With her eyes downcast, trying to keep from dropping the keys, she didn’t see the dark form in front of her in the darkened hall. The light in the hall had gone out again. She had complained about it several times to the super, to no avail.

  She felt something pressed into her ribs and then felt as though she was being electrocuted as her muscles seized up on her and she lost all conscious volition of movement. Shuddering and shaking, she fell in a heap, her mind threatening to blank out on her and she vaguely felt a hand on her jaw and chin, forcing her face away from the dark form so that she couldn’t see who knelt above her.

  A whispering voice hissed, “Get away from Webster! Drop the case or you’ll get worse than this!”

  Julie’s mind fuzzily knew that she had been the victim of a stun gun, or a taser and she felt the thing pressed into her ribs again and then felt as though her entire body was being torn apart. When the stun gun was removed from her ribs again, her bladder emptied itself and her sphincter cut loose, fouling her clean s
lacks, but she was too far gone to be aware of any of that. As she lay there, the watcher rose and planted several kicks in her ribs, breaking one and leaving great bruises.

  The watcher turned away and stopped at the light fixture to twist the bulb back in. The resultant light flooded the hallway again and the watcher continued on down the corridor to the stairwell. Maybe dealing with Tanner would be as easy. Somehow, the watcher doubted it, but there was always the chance that things could work out as well with him.

  * * *

  As he booted up the computer, he sat and waited for it to do its thing. In a hurry, he decided it was taking too long and got up to make a pot of coffee. The trip into the little kitchenette only took a minute and as he poured the water into the coffeemaker, his eyes found the ‘snooper’ on his desk. Yes, that was the place to start now. The Nelson case wouldn’t wait any longer. He had to get it out of the way. Sure that the ‘snooper’ would only reveal that Chip Nelson had been watching internet porn, Carl was almost positive that he would be able to close the case this evening and get a check in the bank tomorrow. A feeling of financial security would go a long way toward helping him to feel as though he could help a bit more with the Webster case. Detective Thomas may have waved them off the case but Carl didn’t propose to leave his client high and dry.

  As the coffeemaker began heating the water, he returned to his desk and sat down. A glance at the monitor showed that the ‘housekeeping’ programs were at work and that he should be able to begin downloading the material from the ‘snooper’. As he reached into a drawer of his desk for a USB cable, the bell on the outer door rang and he looked toward the open door of his office. There was a sound of a woman’s high heels tap-tap-tapping on the tile floor of the outer office, making their way toward his door and he put the ‘snooper’ aside, rising to greet whoever it was.