The van was in a small clearing where the road turned around. Sun beat down on the panel van, but the trees around it looked dark and very uninviting.
Cascade started to run the plates while Eve got out to see what was happening.
As she did, a man came back down a trail out of the trees with a shovel. He had on bib overalls, a dirty white T-shirt under them, and heavy boots. He looked muddy, like he had been digging a while.
She had no idea really where they were at, but she had a hunch digging anything in this area was going to be illegal unless this guy owned the land, and from the looks of him, his greasy black hair and an old panel van, that seemed unlikely.
And as she saw him, every alarm bell she had in her head went off. Something was very wrong with him and it took her a moment to see it.
When in training the last few weeks, she had learned to look at people’s auras. Her aura was extremely bright and full of colors, but she had it contained behind a shield because she was a ghost and even ghosts had enemies, she was told.
Cascade had a very, very bright aura as well, and her aura and his seemed to match in a lot of places. That had pleased her more than she wanted to admit, but so far had never told Cascade.
She had also learned that human auras often told a good story about who the person was.
This man’s aura was black and very small.
He saw the sheriff’s car and she could see him hesitate, clearly trying to calm himself and keep walking toward his van as if nothing was wrong.
“Time to see what you have been up to,” Eve said.
She moved toward him and just let him walk right through her.
Evil.
Pure evil.
No wonder his aura was pure black. He didn’t have a redeeming feature about him.
The guy had just buried a young girl he had killed, had another at his home in a basement, and was thinking about how he was now going to have to bury a cop as well. It didn’t worry him, just annoyed him.
He had no guilt, no sense of anything but that he owned the world and could do what he pleased with other people’s lives.
Eve let the man walk on, then she just bent over and threw up her lunch.
Never, in all her life, had she experienced anything like that. She had no idea that people like this man even existed on the planet.
As she tried to gather herself from the horrid thoughts of that piece of trash, behind her she heard Cascade open his car door and climb out.
Shit!
She had to do something. This guy had a large pistol stuck in his belt and was about to just gun down Cascade without a hesitation.
And Cascade was too far away to warn in any real way.
She turned and in three steps was back inside the blackness that was the guy she called human trash.
He had his hand on the revolver and was turned slightly toward his van to set down the shovel. He planned to set the shovel down, draw the revolver and kill Cascade.
But not on her watch.
Not on her first day.
Not today.
Not any damn day, actually.
She made him freeze like something had encased him in metal.
She could feel his panic start to rise as he tried to move.
“Nope, trash man. No moving for you.”
The guy panicked even more hearing her voice.
Cascade must have seen her throw up, then turn and go back inside the guy. Cascade hadn’t moved more than a step from his patrol car and he had his hand on his service pistol, but hadn’t drawn it yet.
If she hadn’t stopped this trash, Cascade would have never gotten that gun out in time to defend himself.
“Step away from the van!” Cascade shouted at the man.
The dashboard camera on the patrol car was operating, feeding a live stream back to headquarters, so she and Cascade were going to have to be careful how they handled this.
Eve decided she had had enough of the disgust in this guy’s mind and with a simple tweak of a nerve that she had learned how to do in the last two weeks, she put the guy to sleep.
He fell to the ground and, as he did, his hand came out holding the large gun.
Eve stepped aside, trying to use the fresh afternoon air to clear her head. They had to save that girl at the guy’s house. The girl was young and was in a metal box in his cellar. The trash had doubted she would be alive when he got back, since he planned on stopping for lunch along the way.
But the trash didn’t care if the girl lived or died. He actually enjoyed playing with a dead girl’s body at least until they started to smell and stiffen up.
That thought almost made Eve throw up again.
She glanced back at the piece of smelly trash slumped on the ground. He would be out for about ten minutes.
Cascade instantly had his gun out and was approaching the guy as he had been trained, calling for backup as he did.
“He buried a girl up in the trees beside a couple others he killed over the last year,” Eve said.
Cascade nodded slightly, looking stunned.
“We got another girl in an airtight box in his basement,” Eve said. “She isn’t going to last much longer.”
“Shit,” Cascade said, softly.
Cascade got near the guy, kicked the guy over, shoved the gun aside, and then managed to get handcuffs on the guy.
Eve moved over to Cascade and touched him so they could talk inside his head.
“I can go into that trash again, wake him, get him to confess,” she said.
“You can do that?” Cascade asked without speaking.
“Never done it, but been trained how and watched it a couple times,” she said, showing Cascade her training. “If I get the trash to repent and tell us about the girl locked in his basement, we have a reason to get officers there quickly.”
“Where is the trash’s house?” Cascade asked without saying a word.
“Down off of I-5,” she said. “Too far for us to make it in time to save her.”
“Do it,” Cascade said.
She let go of him and moved back to the piece of human garbage on the ground. Then she stepped into him again.
The blackness was intense, more than she had ever imagined it could be.
She got him to wake up and Cascade ordered the man to stay on his knees facing the patrol car and its camera.
Eve got the trash to do as Cascade ordered. Then she made the trash start bawling and sobbing like one of the girls he had killed.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” the trash sobbed.
Then Eve, through the sobs, and loud enough for Cascade’s microphone to pick up, got the trash to tell all about the women buried up the hill and how he wanted to save the girl in his basement.
Eve got the trash to tell Cascade his address and where the girl was exactly.
Then Eve had the guy say, “Hurry. I don’t want another death on my conscience.”
Eve knew this piece of human trash didn’t have a conscience, but what the hell, it sounded good.
At that moment a second patrol car arrived, lights flashing, and another officer about Cascade’s size and build, only with blond hair, scrambled up beside Cascade.
Eve got the trash to repeat what he had just said.
Cascade called it in, getting officers and medical personnel rushing to the man’s house.
Eve decided that this man needed even more punishment.
Jewel, one of the other ghost agents who had been a doctor before she died, had shown her how to change a person’s brain in a way that caused the person extreme pain at times.
Eve had never thought she would use that, so hadn’t paid a lot of attention. But she wanted more than anything to use it now. So she needed help. This guy deserved that kind of punishment.
She tweaked the nerve again and the guy pitched forward flat onto his face in the dirt.
Eve stepped out and shouted into the air, “Jewel, need some help!”
Jewel had s
aid to just call into the air when she needed help. And if Jewel could do what she said was possible, this was going to be fun.
THIRTEEN
CASCADE KNEW WITHOUT reading Eve’s thoughts that she had just saved his life.
That guy would have had that big gun up and firing before Cascade had a chance to even draw or duck for cover.
And the idea that he had come that close to death made him shake a little.
He had known something was wrong when Eve had left the guy and thrown up. He should have reacted differently right then. But that would come with more time together.
This was still only their first day. They needed to learn a lot more about each other.
Then when Eve had shown him what was in the guy’s head and what he had done and about the girl in the basement about to die, Cascade had wanted to throw up as well.
Then Eve did something he couldn’t imagine doing. She offered to go back inside an evil man’s head and make him confess to try to save the girl.
Eve was a lot, lot stronger than even she thought she was. Wow.
She got the guy to wake up and get on his knees, facing the camera on the patrol car and speaking loud enough to be picked up by Cascade’s microphone. Then the guy confessed twice, once to Cascade and a second time as Jimmy, another sheriff’s deputy, arrived on scene.
Cascade got emergency police headed to the guy’s home with an ambulance.
Then, as he was finished, Eve put the guy to sleep again and stepped out of the evil.
Then she did something that Cascade hadn’t expected.
She called for another ghost agent. The one that had trained Eve over the last month or so.
Was something more happening?
What was wrong?
A woman appeared who seemed to be about Eve’s age. The woman, who Cascade assumed was Jewel because that was who Eve had called for, was wearing a thin tan bikini under an open shimmering robe. And she could wear that bikini.
Her hair was pulled back and she had suntan lotion on that smelled slightly of coconut butter.
The woman nodded at Cascade who kept a pose as if he couldn’t see a woman in a skimpy bikini standing near a murderer in the pine trees in Oregon.
“Looks like the problem is pretty well covered here,” Jewel said, taking a glance at the man on the ground. She turned to Eve. “So why the call?”
“Piece of trash there killed a bunch of women,” Eve said, “just buried one up in the trees here, and has another he planned to play with when he got home, dead or alive, locked in a metal box in his basement.”
“Shit,” Jewel said, shaking her head and then looking with disgust at the man sprawled on the ground.
Then she smiled and turned back to Eve. “Now I understand. You think this guy deserves a little more punishment than this fine, handsome policeman can give him?”
“I do,” Eve said, winking at Cascade. “And I know you showed me how, but damned if I trust myself enough on my first day to try it.”
“Come with me,” Jewel said, taking Eve’s hand.
And as Cascade watched, his ghost partner and a woman in a bikini vanished inside the body of an evil killer.
Just vanished.
FOURTEEN
EVE DIDN’T WANT to go back inside the piece of trash, but with Jewel with her, it felt better.
Hand-in-hand, they both went into the evil blackness that was the piece of trash’s mind.
“Oh, one of the worst I have seen,” Jewel said to Eve.
Eve could feel Jewel actually shudder.
“I hope to not see another this bad in a lot of years,” Eve said.
“They are out there, sadly,” Jewel said. “That’s why we have the jobs we do.”
Then, in the back of the man’s brain, Jewel once again took Eve step-by-step through the process of how to make certain thoughts generate extreme pain.
It seems that Jewel had been a medical doctor before being killed and becoming a ghost agent. And that medical training came in handy a lot.
Together, Eve and Jewel set the thoughts that would cause this trash pile of a human being pain. Since he hadn’t cared about the pain of his victims, it seemed like a fair justice to have him now feel some of that pain.
They left the trash, still hand-in-hand, laughing.
Cascade watched them appear, one eyebrow up in question.
Two other cop cars had just arrived.
“We just gave this trash something to think about is all,” Eve said to Cascade.
“I think you’ll find it amusing,” Jewel said to Cascade. “And nice meeting you. Take care of our new recruit.”
He nodded and Jewel vanished.
At that moment, the piece of trash on the ground started to moan and try to struggle back to his knees.
The third cop coming up to the group said, “Great job, Cascade. They got the girl out of the box in this guy’s basement and she’s alive and on her way to the hospital.”
Eve applauded and Cascade smiled.
“Read him his rights,” Eve said, “And I’ll get him to confess again.”
Cascade put his gun away, got out the rights card in his shirt pocket and started reading the trash his rights as if he was a real human being.
Eve went back inside the dark, evil brain one more time and got the guy to cry slightly again.
“Do you understand your rights?” Cascade asked the trash.
“I do,” she got the guy to say.
That was on the dash camera and an officer cam one of the other officers was wearing.
“Would you like to tell us what you were doing up that hill there?” Cascade asked.
She got the trash, through tears and sobs to make it believable, explain how he buried another body up there and where everyone he had killed was buried. And then she got him to confess to kidnapping and putting the girl in the box in his basement with the intent of killing her and having sex with her dead body.
“You are one sick piece of trash,” the blond cop said as Eve left the guy.
The two new cops on the scene moved to pull the guy up from his knees.
“Ask him if he enjoyed making love to the girls,” Eve said to Cascade, smiling.
Cascade did and the piece of trash started to smile. Then the trash got this horrid look and screamed in agony and went to the ground, peeing himself as he did.
“Oh, great,” one of the cops said.
The two cops yanked him back to his feet and started to drag him toward their cars.
The trash just kept screaming.
Eve went over to Cascade and put her hand on his shoulder.
“What did you and that other ghost Jewel do to the human trash?” Cascade asked without saying anything out loud.
“We just rewired his brain a slight bit is all,” Eve said, laughing. “Now when he thinks about sex with anyone, boy or girl, young or old, it will feel like someone has kicked him in the groin really hard.”
“You didn’t?” he thought at her, but she could tell it was everything he could do to not burst out laughing.
“Other ghosts have done this to perverts and killers like this one,” Eve told him. “So many times in fact, the problem is starting to get known in the medical community.”
“I think I love this job,” Cascade said.
“As soon as those guy’s memories fade from my mind,” Eve said, “I will as well.”
FIFTEEN
“MEMORIES ALMOST FADED?” Cascade asked her as the two of them sat in his living room, facing each other, sipping on a wonderful white wine. He had cooked them both a fantastic dinner of stuffed sage hen and steamed vegetables. Best meal she remembered tasting in a long time.
She said she felt bad that she couldn’t cook for him but he could cook for her, since she could eat the ghost part of his meal. That was when she discovered that he loved to cook, had thought of being a chef instead of a cop after the Marines. So the fact that he could cook something for himself and have two people enjoy i
t was wonderful to him.
This handsome superhero really was too good to be true.
“Memories from the trash are gone,” she said, smiling at him. “One of the nice things about being a ghost, the memories of people we brush through or are inside of don’t stick with us for very long.”
He raised his glass. “To a good first day, partner. Thanks for saving my life.”
“I think that’s what partners are for,” she said.
After that they watched a movie and both of them fell asleep on the couch together, her inside him.
It felt wonderful to sleep with him like that.
Natural.
He woke up first and stirred her and she agreed she would see him bright and early in the morning for their second day.
He wanted her to stay and she wanted to stay. But they would have time to talk about that soon enough.
Days of time riding around in a patrol car, actually.
She jumped to her condo, which actually felt empty.
She should be staying with him, making love to him.
Or at least sleeping in his arms as they had done on the couch.
She was a ghost, he was a superhero. Somehow, someone, somewhere, would know what she and Cascade could do to take the relationship to the next level.
They both wanted to.
She took a quick shower, then crawled into her wonderful bed, thinking about him.
He was handsome and he could cook and he liked her.
And today they had saved a life and helped a child be born safely.
Pretty damn fine first day together.
She fell asleep thinking of his wonderful smile.
And she was pretty sure she had a smile on her face as well.
PART THREE
Saving More Lives
SIXTEEN
HOW CAN A ghost make love to a live superhero?
That was the problem that Eve and Cascade had been trying to figure out for their first full month as a team. So far, without success.
Heaven Painted as a Cop Car Page 4
