“I don’t want to sound insensitive, Robbo, really I don’t—I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I mean, shit, while I’ve been through hell, you’ve been there and back—twice.”
Robert didn’t think that his friend's observation deserved an answer, so he remained silent. Besides, he had a feeling that something more was coming, something that would incite a response.
“But…but you gotta let go, man,” Cal was speaking quickly now, giving Robert no chance to interject. “Let go of Amy—it’s been, what? A year? Two? And now that Shelly’s pregnant, and your fucking brother and some of his homo psychos are out to get us, don’t you think it’s about time to let go?”
Robert swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions in check as he mulled over his friend’s words. The preamble to this whole diatribe long forgotten, he struggled not to lose control.
Calm, be calm.
This time he didn’t know if the thought was his or Helen’s.
He closed his eyes, but the fire still burned bright behind his lids.
“She’s my daughter, Cal—and she’s there, with him,” was his only reply. In a strange way, he was proud of himself for not flying off the handle.
Cal nodded, and he kicked a smoldering piece of something or other back toward the main fire.
“Then I guess we need to get that book back,” the man said simply.
This response, much like his own, surprised Robert, and he looked over at his friend, whose cheeks were glistening with tears. He wanted so much to go to the man, to hold him tight in his arms, but something kept him at bay.
“Cal, I wanted to th—”
But a voice from behind him caused him to freeze.
“I can help you find the book, Robert. I can help.”
Chapter 5
“Just give me the ticket, then, because I’m not picking up the scat.”
Ed laughed. He couldn’t help it. The woman truly was clueless.
Really? A detective giving her a ticket for not picking up her dog’s shit?
“Listen lady, I don’t care about the dog shit, okay?” The curse word had the desired effect; the woman’s lips pressed together tightly.
“Then what is that you want?”
“I just—”
The woman held up the hand not wrapped around the dog that was nuzzled into her arm like a running back cradling a football.
“No, you know what? I’m not answering any questions without my lawyer present.” As if to reinforce the point, the lady shook her head defiantly.
Ed rolled his eyes, which, in retrospect, was the absolutely wrong thing to do. The woman’s eyes darted down at Ed’s hand, which was still lightly holding her forearm.
He yanked it back as if it were scalded. Something brushed up against his shoulder, and he snapped his head around.
It was Hugh, and he was smiling, of all things.
“What’s—” wrong with you, he intended to say, but the man cut him off.
“Ed, please, let me speak to the nice lady.” His smile grew, revealing perfectly white teeth. “Please.”
Ed squinted, shrugged, and then stepped aside.
There was no way that this woman was going to talk to him anyway, so why not let Hugh take the brunt of her disgust for the lower-middle class?
And how dare a vermin such as Detective Edward Gray touch her Gucci coat?
“Firstly, ma’am—or missus, do you prefer missus?”
Ed raised an eyebrow at his partner.
Missus?
“Ma’am is fine.”
“Yes, okay, ma’am. So, first of all, I want to apologize for our behavior earlier. We’ve just been a little jumpy lately, is all.”
The woman’s pursed face remained, but some of the creases around her mouth seemed to transition from crevices to ravines.
‘Bout time for another collagen injection, ma’am.
“What is this about, Mr.…?”
Hugh’s smile grew, and he brushed a lock of blond hair off his forehead.
“Hugh, Detective Hugh Freeman. And this is about just a question or two—”
Her eyes clouded again.
What the hell is with this woman?
Hugh held up his hands defensively.
“No, no need to be alarmed. All me and my partner want to know is if you saw someone here a couple of weeks ago. That’s it. It has nothing at all to do with you, and you are in no way in trouble. In fact, you can walk away right now, if you want, and you won’t ever see us again. I promise.”
The woman looked suspicious, but to Ed’s utmost surprise, she didn’t take Hugh up on the offer to leave.
“Here? If I saw someone in this park?”
“Yep. This park. It would have been about two weeks ago. Now I know how memory can—”
“My memory is sharp, young man. And I come here, through this park, every single day around this time.”
Now Ed smirked. He was impressed by the young man’s approach; it was calm, collected, calculated. Hugh was impatient as hell, but at least he had this going for him. Ed tried to remember if he had ever been this smooth.
Doubtful.
But then again, he had never looked like a surfer in a bespoke suit, either—so it wasn’t exactly his fault.
“Well then maybe you can remember two Tuesdays ago—” He glanced at Ed. “My partner and I aren’t sure, but there might have been a man here, a man in a suit—Wall Street types, you know the kind.”
The woman frowned and adjusted her grip on the dog in the crook of her elbow.
“The ‘type’? My grandson is one of the top traders in—”
“Good-looking?”
“Yes.”
Hugh slipped a finger down the lapel of his suit jacket.
“Dresses well?”
“Yes.”
“Good manners?”
“Of course.”
Hugh smiled again.
“That’s the type I meant. You must be very proud of your grandson.”
“I am.”
“So…did you see anyone by that description here? Two weeks ago?”
The women seemed to ponder this.
“No, I didn’t see anyone like my grandson.”
Hugh shrugged.
“So that’s that, then. Thank you very much for your—”
The woman held up a finger.
“Wait, wait. There was a man in a suit, but his tie was all messy, and his hair? That was a mess, too. My grandson would never allow himself to be seen like that this close to the offices.”
Ed’s ears perked up. Things had suddenly gotten significantly more interesting.
“Had you ever seen this man before? I mean, on all your—” Ed started, but Hugh held up his hand, silencing him.
“Ma’am, can you tell me how or why you might remember something like that?”
“Well, first of all, there is usually no one here at this park at lunch, or barely ever, anyway. But it was the other two that were with him—” She shuddered before continuing, “I normally come right here, let Tootsie do her business, then head back to my penthouse. But this time, I got one look at them and turned right around. Got out of here as fast as I could. This is New York, you know; you can’t be too careful.”
Ed grunted.
You don’t know the half of it.
“Wait, there were two other men with him? Can you…can you remember something about them? Anything?”
“Oh, yeah, I can. Like I said, my memory is just fine, and those two…those two left an impression.”
She paused, her head tilting slightly upward and to the left.
“The first, he was this fat, balding thing, wearing a Disney shirt of some kind, and he had these tiny, beady eyes, you know? That was a bad man, I could tell that from the second I saw him. And I’m not talking snatch an old lady’s purse bad.” She made a face, and this time she definitely shuddered. “But the other one…the other one was worse.”
“Please,” Hugh said, reac
hing out and touching her arm gently. “Anything you can tell us will be very helpful.”
“Yes…the other man was thin, gaunt, looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Deep, dark circles around his eyes, you know?”
Hugh nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“And he was…I, I don’t know—he was smiling a lot, but only with his mouth. His eyes definitely weren’t smiling. No, I don’t think that man has really smiled in a long, long time.”
Hugh looked over at Ed and gave him a wink. A wink, of all things.
Cocky bastard.
But inside, Ed was smiling too. They were getting somewhere.
Chapter 6
When Robert recognized the voice, he immediately threw his hands in the air.
“Don’t shoot!”
Cal, his face a mask of confusion, whipped around.
“Don’t shoot? Don’t shoot? Who the fuck—?”
But he must have seen something that took his breath away.
“You!” he said, his voice dropping from a shout to a whisper.
“I’m not…I’m not here to hurt you,” Aiden replied.
Something brushed against his arm, and Robert jumped.
“Robbo, turn the fuck around.”
Robert, realizing that it was just Cal who had grabbed him, did as his friend instructed.
It was difficult to make out much, what with their bodies blocking the glow from the fire behind them, but the man that stood before them was most definitely Aiden, complete with a wad of chaw tucked in his lower lip. But there was something different about him, something that he couldn’t quite place.
But Robert didn’t have time to give this much thought; he was more concerned with what appeared to be a sniper rifle slung over the man’s shoulder.
“You shot Jonah,” Robert said softly. Images of the hideous troll on top of Shelly came flooding back to him, and he felt a pang deep down in his stomach. “Thank you; thank you for that.”
The man said nothing; he simply spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground between them.
“No, really. I can’t—”
“The man told me to keep an eye on you, so I did.”
Cal appeared less grateful than Robert.
“Yeah, and what about the other fucker? The freak who ate part of Robert’s finger? How about him, huh? What happened there? And Carson? The bitch with the knife? What about them? Did ‘the man’ tell you to stop giving a shit after taking out the fat one?”
“Easy, Cal,” Robert said, his eyes still locked on Aiden. There was something about the way that the little light that reached him seemed strange, like a trompe-l’oeil.
He glanced over to Cal and noticed that the light bounced off him with a sort of iridescent quality. But with Aiden, it seemed to dull.
“No, don’t ‘easy’ me. This guy was supposed to protect us, and he fucking failed.”
Cal’s words didn’t phase Aiden; in fact, he didn’t seem to even acknowledge the man’s anger.
“He didn’t fail us,” Robert said softly. He felt a stirring in his mind, and a flash of orange.
Helen was back, but Robert pushed her down again.
I know.
Cal turned to him now, and Robert was reminded of the way he had stormed off before Seaforth. Cal was a much angrier man than he’d ever remembered. His best friend had always been a little off, eager to latch on to conspiracy theories, but he was never angry, at least not like this.
“Calm down, Cal, please.”
“Nope, not gonna do it. This fucker failed us. You hear that, big shot? All your—”
Robert reached out and squeezed his friend’s arm, hard. Cal’s anger was clearly misplaced; it wasn’t as if they had hired this man, or had even known that he was outside the Harlop Estate when everything had gone down.
“What the fuck, Robbo?”
“Cal, be quiet.”
The man’s face went dark.
“Don’t—”
Robert didn’t give him a chance.
“He didn’t fail us, you idiot. He failed himself, protecting us.”
Cal recoiled.
“What? What the hell are you—?”
“He’s dead,” Robert said flatly. “Aiden’s dead.”
***
“They snuck up on me. I let my guard down for one minute, maybe less, and they snuck up on me. I knew that he was there, of course, but I didn’t plan for the girl. And my god, she was fast.”
Aiden seemed almost apathetic, although Robert wasn’t certain how one was supposed to feel or sound or even look when talking about their own death. In fact, aside from Helen in his head and maybe Dr. Mansfield, Aiden was the only normal dead person that he had ever spoken to.
“I’m sorry, Aiden. And—” Robert gestured to Cal and Shelly, who were sitting on the couch opposite the gray man. “—and we want to thank you for helping us.”
Shelly, who looked nearly as monochrome as the quiddity across from them despite having showered and gotten dressed, swallowed hard. Robert could tell that she wanted to reach out and grab Aiden, to thank the man for getting Jonah off her, but that, of course, was out of the question.
Robert nodded to her, then turned back to Aiden.
“Why…why…why do you know what happened to you? I mean, you were there at Seaforth with all the others—they had no idea that they were dead.”
Aiden opened his mouth to answer, but to Robert’s surprise it wasn’t his words that he heard, but Helen’s in his mind, telling her own story.
It was a confusing mess. I knew that there was something wrong, that something wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t place it. Like a word that you mean to say, that you want to say, but just can’t get it out. And then, when that thing—the Goat—spoke to me, I had no choice but to listen. I don’t know how—
Robert tried to soothe her with calm thoughts.
Helen was right, of course; it was confusing.
Confusing and overwhelming.
He glanced over at Shelly, and seeing his own bewilderment mirrored on her pretty, round face, Robert knew that he had to be the one to be strong. Not Cal, not Shelly, not even Allan, wherever he was.
But him.
Robert Thomas Black.
“I don’t know,” Aiden said with a shrug. “I don’t know.”
“And why…how did you come back so fast? With the others…”
Aiden shrugged again and continued to stare straight ahead.
Robert took a moment, trying not to upset the man. Yet, looking at him and his flat expression, he wasn’t sure that Aiden was capable of such an emotion.
Most men, Robert presumed, would have been angry after what had happened to Aiden, furious even. But not him.
Cal interlaced his fingers, tapped his foot, and leaned forward on the couch. His tone had softened considerably since their encounter outside, and Robert thought that Cal had nearly returned to his old self.
“We can send you back,” he whispered so softly that Robert barely picked up the words. “Robert can do it.”
Aiden’s eyes, previously clear if a little gray, suddenly flashed with darkness, like ink spilled into a glass of spring water.
“No, I don’t want to go back—not just yet. I have something I have to do.”
Maybe he is capable of anger after all, Helen thought. But he’s a good man, one that we should be glad to have on our side.
Robert couldn’t agree more.
He just needed to figure out how best to use him to find the book.
Chapter 7
“You believe in ghosts, Hugh?”
“In what? Ghosts? Hell no.”
“God?”
It was heavy talk for fifteen minutes postprandial, but Ed was so impressed with the way that Hugh had dealt with the woman in the park that he felt the need to get to know the man better.
And when Hugh had used the word ‘partner,’ as presumptuous as it had been, something had clicked inside Ed. He wasn’t sure he was up for
another one so soon given what had happened to his last one, but it was definitely something on the horizon. He could see a good yin and yang situation with the man, a complementary piece that might just fit.
A friend, maybe, although it had been so long since Ed had had one of those, he wasn’t quite sure what it felt like anymore.
“No,” Hugh replied. “No, I don’t believe in God.”
Ed continued to drive, moving farther away from the city and toward the suburbs. Twice Hugh had asked where the hell they were going, but his reply had been the same: watch and listen.
And answer questions, of course.
No matter how personal.
“Why not?”
Hugh shrugged and then unexpectedly opened up. Ed had thought the man’s generation more guarded, what with ‘safe places’ and people getting offended at even the thought of a fart in public, but clearly Hugh was different.
And that was good, because Ed was different, too.
“I guess I can’t believe in something that has never been proven, you know? I mean, we all believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and other fairy tales when we are young, but as time goes on we outgrow these myths. For whatever reason, however, this one myth, the myth of a Heaven and a Hell, of God and Satan, those persist. Rooted in our evolution, I suppose, but just a myth nonetheless.”
Ed knew that over the past few years it had become a bit of a fad to call oneself an atheist or agnostic, but Hugh’s response suggested a deeper layer of thought than just following a trend. Ed quickly glanced over at the man and tried to take him in, to understand his essence. Twelve years as an NYC detective, and nine more as a beat cop before that, had taught him much of the human condition. And with this knowledge came the ability to tease out the real, underlying individual beneath the skin they presented to the world.
And Hugh appeared to be more than just a pretty face and a fancy suit. There was something to him, some substance.
“You know, we look back at the Greek and Roman gods and immediately throw shade. ‘Ah, those were stupid, how can someone believe a horse and carriage drag the sun up every morning?’ My response is always that they had more conviction at the time; they believed so wholly that it was real that they would sacrifice children to these deities. Sacrifice them. And yet for some reason, only the religions of today are the ones that are quote-unquote real. Gimme a break. It’s Santa Claus wearing long robes and preferring young boys to elves in green suits.”
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 3
