by JL Bryan
I sat down to read. The paperwork was full of alluring headings like DUE DILIGENCE PROCEDURES and OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT. The slick brochure featured four people, two men and two women, in black coveralls, the first coveralls I’ve ever seen with built-in turtlenecks. Their uniforms featured the letters PSI in bold red, along with the triangle-plus-Saturn-ring logo, and they each wielded a piece of gear: a parabolic microphone, an ionometer, a tactical flashlight, a sleek silver video camera whose shape suggested a gun. They were young, beautiful, smiling, happy, and probably models and not actual paranormal investigators. Their suntans alone gave that away.
“So that was crazy,” I said when Calvin returned to the office. “When were you going to tell us about it?”
“They only just made contact,” he said. “I was curious what they had to say.”
“You wouldn’t do that, though, would you?” I asked. “Sell the company to those strangers?”
He didn’t say anything, just quietly looked at the papers on his desk, like they were the keys to some prison where he was trapped. Which made me his jailer, I guess. Trying to keep him here.
“What is going on with you?” I asked. As withdrawn as he’d been, talking about officially retiring from work, I knew something major was on his mind. I could think of a hundred terrible things that could be happening, several of them involving major terminal illnesses, all kinds of nightmare scenarios. I would have preferred to deal with just one, the real one.
“I know about their company,” he said. “There’s training I can’t provide you, Ellie. They have corporate retreats with classes and workshops. Hey, it’s a free trip to Saratoga Springs.”
“Did you really just say ‘corporate retreats’ and expect me to take it as a positive?” I asked. I held up the brochure. “Would I have to wear coveralls? Really? Because I’m saving up for a new leather jacket, and if you’re going to make me wear coveralls, I’d rather spend it on a new microwave.”
“You’d probably make more money, too,” he said. “Heaven knows you deserve it. And, unlike me, they know how to turn a profit.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” I opened the brochure and showed it to him. “Identification and removal of spirits, poltergeists, presences, and other dark entities.”
“The same thing we do,” Calvin said.
“Spirit communication,” I continued. “Séances – individual or small group. Guided ghost-hunting expeditions. Courses in metaphysics and paranormal investigation. Psychic testing and training. Meditation, yoga, and tantra to enhance psychic sensitivity. Calvin. Calvin! I am not teaching yoga classes.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have to do that,” he said. “They don’t offer it at every location.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I haven’t done anything. They haven’t made an offer. They may not, especially now that we’ve established my lead investigator is hostile to them. So there goes my retirement money, if there was any.”
“I’m...really sorry. You shouldn’t retire, though. I want to work for you, not Cruella De Vil and Jude Law over there. Holding séances and encouraging people to contact the dead? It’s like they’re trying to stir up dangerous ghosts. Or they’re complete frauds.”
“They aren’t fraudulent,” he said. “Just distasteful.”
“Then why sell to them?”
He sighed. “All I’ve done was listen to them. We can discuss it later after I’ve actually had time to think.”
“If it’s about the money--” I pointed toward the basement and the safe full of cash.
“It’s not about the money. Leave it alone.”
“Then why--”
“I said leave it.” Calvin’s jaw clenched slightly, which is the equivalent of a major show of fury from him.
“You’ve got it pretty good right now,” I said. “Stacey and I do most of the fieldwork, you can sit here and watch Matlock with Hunter, just make an occasional phone call or do some research...by the way, did you get a chance—”
“James McCoyle robbed a train in California in 1883,” Calvin said. “Gold. Six months later, he was apprehended by an investigator from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, but gave him the slip while on a train to Chicago. That Pinkerton detective was fired over the incident. His name was Angus Kroeller.”
“So, wait.” I was caught off-guard by the sudden change of subject. Maybe he thought he could distract me with juicy details about the current case. For the moment, he was right. “How big of a coincidence would it be for Kroeller and McCoyle to run into each other in 1902, about twenty years later, during another train robbery thousands of miles away?”
“Very big,” Calvin said. “At that time, McCoyle hadn’t committed a robbery in ten years. He was retired. Something brought him out of retirement.”
“You think McCoyle wanted revenge against Kroeller?” I asked.
“Why would he want revenge against the detective who was incompetent enough to let him escape? Seems like he’d want to buy the man a drink, if anything.”
“Then Kroeller, the railroad cop, wanted revenge against James McCoyle,” I said. “But how did he lure McCoyle into doing it?”
“A beautiful young redhead might be an effective lure for a middle-aged man,” Calvin said. “That and the promise of a big, easy score. Maggie Fannon must have been a double agent, secretly working for Kroeller. She would have approached McCoyle, gained his trust, and proposed the robbery to him.”
“It seems pretty elaborate for a revenge killing,” I said.
“This way, Kroeller gets to kill McCoyle in the line of duty, which is more easily explained than, say, shooting him in the back outside a tavern some night,” Calvin said. “And he gains a share of the stolen money, or all of it if he intended to double-cross Maggie.”
“So he tracked her down, killed her, took her half of the money...and then what did he do with it? Did the railroad ever investigate him as a possible robbery suspect? His job was to protect the crew, the passengers, and the money, and he failed at all three.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they suspended or fired him,” Calvin said. “I haven’t tracked down that information, if it’s out there to be found. The Lower Atlantic Railway has been absorbed by multiple acquisitions since then. I wouldn’t be surprised if their records were entirely lost by now. They didn’t have much time to investigate him, anyway. I did eventually track down a death notice for him. He died three weeks after the robbery, one week after Maggie’s death in New Orleans.”
“No. So there’s a sixth person involved in the robbery? What happened to that half of the money?”
“I don’t know about the money—it would again be useful to locate some of the old rail company records. You forgot to ask how he died.”
“How did he die?”
“Infections and complications arising from a gunshot wound to the leg,” he said. “At the home of a doctor in Kansas City.”
“But he went to a hospital in Savannah right after the shooting.”
“Let’s imagine the situation. He has just robbed his employer. He might already be suspended, fired, or under investigation himself. His accomplice has disappeared with all the money.”
“So he doesn’t convalesce until he heals,” I said. “He leaves the hospital as soon as he can manage—maybe sneaks out at night, if he’s under suspicion—and sets out to track down Maggie. It takes him two weeks to catch up with her in New Orleans. He might have put a lot of strain on the wound. But ultimately he died from...” I stood up so fast that the office chair rolled away behind me. Light bulbs were popping on all over my brain. “That’s what we need to do.”
“Die of lead poisoning and gangrene?” Calvin asked.
“Not part of my plan, but we need to get to work. I’m going to call Stacey and make some coffee.”
“I might be of more help if you shared any details of this sudden fantastic idea of yours,” Calvin said.
“We can start by seeing how many working f
loodlights we have in the storeroom,” I said. My phone was already dialing Stacey.
“What?” she answered drowsily, and her voice immediately made me picture her with droopy eyes, her short blond hair sticking up around her.
“Get up,” I said. “We have a train to catch.”
“Huh? When?”
“In about ten hours.”
“So I can sleep for seven or eight more--”
“We have to get to work now,” I said. “Come over to the office.”
“You’re an awful boss,” Stacey said with a yawn, then she hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I called Michael while I waited for Stacey to arrive. He was at work, but he seemed relaxed and free to talk, so I guess he had no urgent fires to put out, real or metaphorical.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You finally have a night off and you want to head to Tybee Island for plantains and salsa and a walk on the beach. That works for me, too.”
“Long walks on the beach, huh?”
“And snuggling quietly by the fire. Have you not even read my online dating profile?”
“No fires,” I said, a little too quickly. Pyrophobia is not a form of insanity if you ask me. It’s totally rational. “I want to ask you a favor, but it’s not a big deal if you’re busy.”
“You want to eat at Gerald’s Pig and Shrimp instead of North Beach? Okay, but there’s no deck on the ocean there.”
“As tempting as that sounds, I have to round up a posse of ghosts tonight.”
“Your date ideas are always more exciting than mine. Next time I’ll invite you to a monster truck show, with one of those big robot dinosaurs that crush cars.”
“If it works, I really will have a few nights off. But we’re doing the long walk on the beach and not the monster truck thing.”
“Maybe we’ll do both.”
“What I need you to do sounds pretty simple, but it’s also the most dangerous job.” That wasn’t strictly true, but if he knew my whole plan, he might not be so willing to wait half a mile away and might try to stop me altogether. “It’s as easy as jump-starting a car, but then you have to get out of the way, and I mean far out of the way, really fast.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Um...splat,” I said. “But you’ll be fine.”
“Unless I’m splat.”
“Exactly. Want to back out? I can probably find someone else.”
“Will I get to see the ghost train you were talking about?” he asked.
“That’s what you’ll be dodging.”
“I’m there.”
After loading the van, Stacey and I stopped by a theatrical supply outlet before driving over to the Town Village community. We pulled a little bit of a Smokey and the Bandit routine, with me driving ahead in my Camaro and scoping the streets for Cecil Nobson and his patrolling golf car. We didn’t want any questions or interference from the man with the local police department on speed dial. We planned our routes to avoid his hidden spy cameras, since Stacey had determined where each one was located.
We parked at the dead end at the back of the neighborhood, where the high scrub pines along the undeveloped road conveniently helped conceal us from view as we unloaded the van and hiked back to the old rail tracks.
Stacey looked at me like I was crazy when I described what I wanted her to do, but she went to work with the lights and wires. We’d brought two generators, one for each side of the track, so that no wires would lie directly in the path of the ghost train. This set-up was one reason we’d had to get to work early. Well, early afternoon, which is early for us.
We made our preparations throughout the afternoon, testing as we went.
By nightfall, I was ready to get things rolling. We had to return to the McCoyle gang’s hideout house, but we had to park on another street and make our way over by foot to avoid the spycams of Captain Neighborhood Watch.
Reaching the fence, we stopped and looked up at the house, as forbidding as a block of black ice, radiating coolness into the warm night. The Weather Channel predicted rain later, but I hoped to be done with our work before then.
“So this is definitely our plan?” Stacey asked, frowning up at the house with worry obvious on her face. “I didn’t, like, misunderstand it or anything?”
“This is it,” I said.
I took a deep breath and led the way through the wooden gate, which let out its usual rusty squeal.
My sense of foreboding grew as we approached the back door, and I hoped I wasn’t about to get us killed.
I had to pick the lock all over again. Then we pushed into the cold, heavy air of the dark living room.
I clicked on my flashlight since it was the only way to see, but kept it pointed at the floor to avoid threatening the ghosts with it. Stacey had her light drawn and ready in case she needed it.
Footsteps creaked ahead, maybe the ghosts responding to our entrance. I saw nothing there.
From my jacket pocket, I drew out a thick stack of faded green cash. I shook it gently as we walked, dropping a bill here, a bill there, like Hansel and Gretel, if Gretel had used twenty-dollar notes from the National Exchange Bank of Augusta instead of breadcrumbs.
Stacey and I ascended the stairs, both of us trying to look tough and stoic when the house around us inspired nothing but fear. I would have felt safer if Michael or Jacob were with us, but I didn’t want to put them in danger. Besides, a smaller team can make a faster exit if things get hairy.
We passed through the loft and down the hall, avoiding the huge drop on the side. You didn’t have to be psychic to feel the heavy, dark presence in the house, and the epicenter of it lay dead ahead, in the master bedroom.
I kept dropping money as we went.
The master suite was pitch black, despite its pair of giant windows. They’d gone completely opaque—even shining my light directly at the glass panes revealed nothing of the world outside.
It was freezing and growing difficult to breathe, just as it had the previous night. I heard a low male voice murmuring in one corner, near the walk-in closet where I’d received my bashing. Turning my light toward it revealed nothing but wood and dust.
The feeling in the room was tense, and I knew they would attack if we didn’t move fast. Even then, they still might attack, and we would have to do our best to avoid getting killed.
I had some hope that things might go the other way, though.
Standing in the middle of the room, I loosened my grip on the banknotes and shook them faster, spreading them around in a way that reminded me of the times I’d helped my dad shake fresh pine straw over the tree islands in the yard, back when I had a yard and a dad.
The bills drifted slowly to the floor, landing all over the place, with a soft patting sound like falling snow.
Then I dropped several gold coins, and they let out a heavy ringing tone as they struck the floorboards. I couldn’t help wincing as some of them rolled out of sight. Four or five hundred bucks each, Jacob had said. And I’d just scattered ten or twenty thousand dollars’ worth of antique currency all over the floor.
If this failed to get their attention, I’d be very annoyed.
Beside me, Stacey poured a pint of cheapo whiskey into a wooden bowl. The bandit ghosts often smelled of whiskey, so I thought a nice libation of it couldn’t hurt. Maybe it would help establish a somewhat friendlier tone than our previous encounter, or at least keep them curious enough to wait and see what we did next.
“James McCoyle,” I said. “Sean O’Reilly, Liam O’Reilly. I have something to tell you.” I felt weirdly like Maggie Fannon must have more than a century ago, trying to recruit these rough men into a plot. “The railroad detective Angus Kroeller drew all of you into a trap. He killed all three of you. He planned it that way.”
At the mention of Kroeller’s name, the room grew even colder. A dark mass formed in front of me, the outline of a man in a hat, possibly the same one I’d seen the night before.
“Mc
Coyle,” I said, and the apparition became a little clearer. Ghost-cloth still covered his face, and his skin still looked old and decayed, but at least his colorless eyes were present so I wasn’t in the unnerving position of staring into his skull-sockets again. “You may not know it, but you killed Kroeller, too. When you plugged him in the leg, he ended up dying from it. That gives you power over him.
“There’s only one train out of here,” I said, speaking louder, a little more confident now that they didn’t seem intent on my immediate death. Throwing money at people can go a long way toward improving their opinion of you. “Kroeller controls the train, doesn’t he? And as long as he does, everybody’s trapped. You and the passengers. But we can take it back from him. We can do it together. And there’s more of this cash when you’re done. What do you say? Money? Revenge? Do these things move you?”
McCoyle’s apparition grew sharper, though still dark, most of his body hidden in shadows my flashlight couldn’t penetrate.
He spoke a word. His voice was a rough, inhuman whisper that made me think of a match head rubbing coarsely against a rough striking strip.
The word was “Maggie.”
“Maggie, sure,” I said, and didn’t really know where to go from there. Did he know Maggie had been conspiring against him? I didn’t want to complicate things with too much information. Ghosts are intensely backward-looking, so it can be difficult or impossible for them to learn new things. I figured, if nothing else, McCoyle knew Kroeller had killed him and might be interested in revenge.
The intense glow of hate in his pale eyes indicated I might be right. Either that, or all that hate was just for me, intruding on his territory and getting all up in his business.
“Maggie walks by the tracks,” I said. “Are you looking for her?”
He continued staring at me.
“Will you help me get the drop on Kroeller?” I asked.
After a long pause, three more words came, at the very low end of my range of hearing.
