The Ghost of Truckee River (A Ham McCalister Mystery Book 1)

by Brent Kroetch

  He was an investigator. Private or otherwise, that one fact defined him. Perhaps it also limited him in the larger sense of self realization and exploration of his place in the known and unknown universe, but it was who he is. He’d never yearned for more than that, had been content with his rigid views of right and wrong, truth and consequence, and his small corner of existence. All this talk about a larger world, a greater reality—if one could loosely use that term under these circumstances—could do nothing for him except distract him from his job. If he descended further into this madness, he may as well pull out his gun and do the job on Blake himself. It would be the same result. And as Blake had said, why would he care why? Or who, for that matter. He’d still be dead.

  Of course, if Carson was right he’d be a dead living person. Maybe he could just go on as before, stay with the band, write and record songs, go on tour and not worry about his health or well being. No need to worry about that when you’re dead, right? Maybe that was the truth behind the rumor of Paul McCartney’s death all those years ago, the reason for the hints so obviously dropped by the rest of the band in all those recordings, hints like “The walrus was Paul” and “28 IF” and “turn me on, dead man.” Maybe Paul really did die and just kept on keeping on, much to the rest of The Beatles’ amusement. Maybe the Paul that we know today is really a ghost of the Paul we knew, just like the Carson of today, who keeps on providing security for his charges, even after his death. And while it was true that Paul had several kids after he died, according to Carson ghosts like sex, so that wasn’t proof that he was actually and still is alive?

  No. But it does prove I’ve lost my mind.

  His face flashed crimson when their grins informed him that he must have said that out loud. Well, what the hell, he thought. It’s not like that’s a big secret anymore. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

  “Don’t worry about it, Hamster. It’s all a little much, especially for someone like you, from where you’re coming from.” Turning to Carson, she urged, “Go ahead, show him.”

  Before Carson could acquiesce, Drew barged through the door, panting with the effort as she rushed to join them. “Sorry I’m late,” she told Ham. “Russ kept me up later than I should’ve allowed.” Motioning to the bartender, yelling “Water, drowned in ice,” she admitted, “I’ve got a headache that rivals the worst of our post arrest celebrations. The ones you always instigated, by the way. Me being innocent and all.”

  “That’s all right,” Ham replied. “Nothing much has happened yet, though it’s about to. You know Charlie, of course.”

  “How you doing, honey? Nice to see you again.” Nodding to the ghost, she merely intoned, “Carson.”

  Drew grabbed the water out of the waiter’s hand before he could lay it before her, gulped three aspirin and washed them down with most of the contents. “Another,” she ordered.

  “You going to be okay?” Ham asked, concerned. He’d rarely seen Drew this disorganized and distracted. She’d barely taken the time to comb her hair.

  Drew blew out a sigh, nodded affirmation and finally sat down to face them. “So what’s the story?”

  “The story,” Ham advised, “is that Carson here is about to prove his claim that he’s a ghost.”

  “Trainee.”

  “That he’s dead,” Ham amended. “Have at it, my man.”

  Drew shook her head, pounded her ear and muttered, “Goddamn tequila. Rots the freaking brain is what it does. Should’a stuck to wine.” Turning to Ham, she sighed, “Sorry, I was hallucinating. What did you actually say?”

  “I said that Carson’s about to prove he’s dead. What’s so hard to understand about that?” he grinned.

  “Yeah. Shake the cobwebs out,” Charlie teased, “and get with the program, why don’t you?”

  “That’s the trouble with the non-dead,” Carson asserted. “They’re so easily rattled. But not to worry,” he assured Drew, “you’ll learn equanimity once you’re on my side.”

  Ham watched, amused and absorbed with and by Drew’s consternation as she chugged the remaining water from the ice. She slammed the glass down and spat, “Okay, fine. I get it. I suppose it’s even deserved. Now you’ve punished me for being late, shall we get on with it?”

  “No, it’s truth,” Ham replied, mock serious. “Martina—Blake’s psychic—is a ghost and Carson here is her trainee. He’s about to prove his ghostly virtue to me, an otherwise skeptical audience of one.” Grinning at Carson, he commanded once again, “Do your thing, my good dead friend. Blow Drew and me away.”

  Carson chortled, an ethereal laugh that wafted on what should have been the wind. “Let’s do it. Do you still have those three shells you showed me yesterday? The ones you picked up from the roof top?” At Ham’s nod, he grinned. “Good. Pull them out, hold them in your palm…Okay, now fold your hand over, grasp the shells tightly in your palm, like they’re precious and you don’t want to risk dropping them. Fold your hand over all three shells so they don’t show.”

  Ham did as instructed then waited while Carson mumbled a chant and waved his arms in time to the unintelligible words. “Presto and ta da,” Carson intoned, “open your palm.”

  Ham gaped, along with Drew, at the empty air held loosely in his hand. “Now open your other hand,” Carson ordered. There, as he did, three shells, gleaming and large, sat cradled in his palm. The wrong palm. Even as he watched, they disappeared yet again. In the blink of an eye, they reappeared in his right hand. Then slowly, first one, then two, and finally the third, they vanished, only to settle in the middle of the table.

  “Pretty impressive, don’t you think?” Carson boasted.

  “What the hell is this?” Drew demanded. “This is some kind of trick.”

  “Of course it is,” Carson laughed. “It’s a parlor trick, like bending a spoon with your mind, or making a pen float across the desk. Or hypnosis.” A sly smile spread across Carson’s face as he jibed, “Is that what I did, Drew? Hypnotize you and Ham, plant a suggestion that now, presto mundo, you see no bullets. Then you do, then you don’t, now you do again?”

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” Drew snarled, “what the hell is all this? Fucking parlor games? You want to play games, fine, how about we play a parlor game that’s my favorite, the one where I beat you over the head with a pipe in the kitchen? Huh?” she shouted as she started to reach across the table, “how about we play that game?”

  “Take it easy, Drew. I’m just messing with you. It’s a parlor trick, yes, but it’s not hypnosis. It’s authentic. Any ghost can do it, even a trainee. It’s how we get our feet wet.”

  “Your feet wet.”

  “Sure. It’s like a baby, first you learn to crawl, then you learn to walk, then you get to run. I mean, you can’t do it the other way around, now can you?”

  Drew turned bloodshot eyes on Ham and mumbled, “We should have kept some of those drugs we busted.” With that she turned off the light, simply vanished inside herself.

  Ham gave her the few minutes he knew from long experience she would use to recover her mental equilibrium. Which she did better than anyone he’d ever known. If bouncing back were an Olympic event, Drew would be the champ, hands down.

  Her rapid readjustment exceeded even Ham’s expectations. She bored her eyes into Carson, her ‘nailing a suspect with contempt’ stare, a tactic that had worked wonders on even the most hardened creeps they’d rousted. It was a glare that even Ham was not immune to.

  “Right then,” she snapped, “let me get this straight. Martina’s a ghost as well as a psychic, and you’re her intern.”

  “Trainee.”

  “Whatever. And Russ has faith in your judgment.” Turning to Ham she nodded with apparent understanding and announced, “This can only mean two things. One, I’ve always told you that you’d frustrate me to death one day. This is it, this is the day I’m dying. And two, Russ is an obvious idiot.”

  Charlie and Carson burst into laughter at her verdict of condemnation. “That’s a first,
I’ve never heard anyone describe him as that,” Charlie told her. “Russ is many things, such as hotheaded and impetuous, but he is not now nor has he ever been an idiot. In fact, in the brains department, he’s probably worth two of Popster. And I say that with all due love for Dad, so that should tell you something.”

  Ham had watched Charlie’s eyes dance with amusement during Carson’s little demonstration, though not with surprise. “You’ve seen this kind of stuff before, haven’t you?”

  “Martina likes to amuse me from time to time, yes.”

  Turning to Carson, Ham demanded, “So did you…materialize…those casings on the roof for me to find? Or did you go up there and take a shot yourself?”

  “And then?” Carson replied, “I what? Left two extra shells for the hell of it?” He shook his head in firm denial. “Nor did I ‘materialize’ the shells. Next question.”

  “I have one,” Drew interjected. “What does being a ghost have to do with this mind-fuck you just played? I don’t see how that proves anything other than you should be on a stage in Vegas. Maybe with Penn and Teller. Which brings up another question: why are you wasting your time as a minimum wage security guard when you could pull down a boatload of cash with that shtick in Sin City?”

  “We’re not allowed to make money off of our abilities. It’s against the rules.”

  Drew glanced at Ham, frustrated and flustered. “Are you making any sense of this? How is this going to help with Blake? I mean, even if it were true...” Speaking again to Carson, she demanded, “Unless, being dead and all, you have universal knowledge so you can tell us the future, the how and when and why, so we can do our jobs. Although I don’t know why we should do it, why we should put our own lives on the line when you’re already dead. I mean, really, you could just jump in front of the bullet and walk away, right? What’s the big deal?”

  Ignoring the implied sarcasm—did he ever react to that, Ham wondered—Carson responded with simple dignity. “I have some universal knowledge, but I’m only…”

  “A trainee, yes, I know.” Stunned by her own words, she mumbled as an afterthought, “What the fuck am I saying?”

  “I was going to say ‘but I’m only a ghost.’ I’m not an angel. I have no more inkling of what the future holds for the living world than you do.”

  “Then how can Martina know?” Drew demanded. Looking at Charlie, she asked, “Does she charge Blake for her readings?” Turning back to Carson, she spat, “That would be against the rules, though, right?” Looking back at Ham, she demanded, “And what does he mean by that? Angels know the future and ghosts don’t? Then why the fuck are we wasting our time with a mere hapless ghost? Let’s go find us an angel and be done with it.” Turning her attention yet again to Carson, she decreed, “Idiot.”

  Carson appeared amused, though Charlie looked somewhat less than pleased. To Ham’s great surprise and contrary to his expectation, though, her forthcoming rebuke was rather mild, even by Charlie’s stellar standards. “Let’s dispense with the ‘idiot’ moniker,” she gently suggested. “That’s not particularly helpful.”

  Drew half stood from her chair and bowed courtly toward Charlie. “Oh. Pardon me, my lady, I meant no disrespect to Her Highness.”

  Ham grabbed her by the arm, half carried, half dragged her to the bar, and unceremoniously plopped her down on a rickety stool that groaned its protest. “She’ll have the hair of the dog,” he ordered the bartender. “Tequila. Make it a double.”

  Drew folded her arms across her breasts and stared defiantly at the nothingness across the bar. “Big hero. Rescuing your little tramp from…” She trailed off, leaving the thought unspoken.

  Ham forced her chin toward him, seeking out her eyes. “What the hell does that mean?” he demanded. “That’s the statement of a scorned and jealous lover. What’s gotten into you? You can’t be jealous. Can you? I don’t believe that. Why in the world would you be jealous? What’s there to be jealous of?” As she tried to jerk her head away, he forced it back. “Come on, little sister. Tell big brother what this is all about.”

  Drew’s features partly melted, nearing a smile. “Hell, I don’t know. Hamster. I guess I’m a little hung over is all. Top that off with all this bullshit from Carson and add to that Charlie’s smug assurance of your affections and I guess…well, hell, I don’t know what I guess. Maybe little sis is trying to protect you. The last time some blithering babe scratched her claws in you I had one hell of a time pulling you up from the floor, remember?”

  Of course he remembered. That woman had been a vampire, had sucked every drop of humanity from what had been left of his debilitated supply after his divorce. Had used him, chewed him, spit him out as if he were a piece of cartilage violating a filet mignon. He’d responded with the maturity of the hopelessly immature, seeking solace from a bottle that would not, could not, convey his needed anesthetic. Were it not for Drew, he may have yet been there to this day.

  “It’s not like that, Drew. We’re friends, that’s all. She’s a former client, for Christ’s sake. And I work for her dad. I mean, come on.”

  “Lie to me, Ham, but don’t lie to yourself. I see the way you look at her. You hang on her every word, like she’s spouting gospel, like she’s the fount of all that’s holy. And that is not good, Ham. Not good at all. You can’t let yourself go there again, ever, let alone this soon.” She turned to him with defiant eyes and proclaimed, “You won’t, either, not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Well pshit and pshaw,” Ham muttered. “Knock me over with a feather. How can you say this? She’s just a client.”

  “And I’m just an ex-partner, right?”

  Ham heaved a sigh of resignation. “I don’t want to discuss this, Drew. We’ve got work to do. Can you get a grip on yourself and help me out here? You’re being paid, too, you know. You need to keep that in mind.” He knew he was flailing but the water was deep. Too deep to swim.

  “Don’t tell me how to…” She stopped short, downed the shot, slammed the glass on the counter and nodded. “Fine. You’re right. I’m acting the shrill, aren’t I? And I’m embarrassing myself. Me, a tough, hard ass detective acting out the stereotype of defenseless feminine angst. Let’s forget about it and just move on, shall we?”

  Before Ham could reply, the huge man behind the bar glanced up from his apparently eternal task of wiping grime from glasses and asserted, “Not likely. Her aura’s a dirty reddishness. No way you can rationally discuss anything, not for a while, you know?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Drew demanded.

  “I’m guessing it means you’re mad.” At the grim nod of the bartender’s head, Ham continued, “Which I don’t need to read auras to realize.”

  Drew gaped at him as if he in fact were the mad one, in all its worst implications of the word. “Are you making sense to yourself? Because you’re not to me.”

  Ham laughed, half amused, half bitter. “Welcome to The World of Ham. Anyway, forget it. What we need to do is to get you calmed down a bit. It may all be overwhelmingly weird but we are making progress.”

  “Really,” Drew demanded. “How so? All we got is a guy who thinks he’s dead—or in training to be dead I guess would be more apt—who apparently knows nothing except how to do some half-assed magic tricks.”

  “This is exactly why I want you to calm down,” Ham answered, “you’ve lost focus here. Which is not at all surprising,” he hurried to add. “You, and me right along beside you, have been thrown into the midst of a bunch of occult bullshit. Fine, good, that’s window dressing. Ignore it, look for what’s behind it. Why all the acts, the farces? Think like a detective, like the investigator you are. This is a game of misdirection and confusion, and that’s all it is. This is intentional, beautifully prepared and played, deftly designed to keep your eye on the glitz and off the real. Just like any good magician performing his otherwise inexplicable feats. That’s what’s going on here, that’s what we’re up against.”

  Drew’
s eyebrows flew up in consternation and the shock of realization. Slowly a lopsided grin appeared and she tapped her temple in self mockery. “I may be slow, but I sure am thick. So what do we have? What do we know about the reality of it?”

  “Somebody took a shot at Blake. Whether that shot was designed to hit the mark and missed, or whether it was just another distraction does not matter. It happened.”

  Ham interrupted himself as the bartender moved back within earshot. The last thing he wanted at this point, at this early stage of his reasoning, was to slip a clue to Carson, via his hulking friend, of Ham’s dawning suspicions. Instead, he seized the opportunity to return to the table, retrieve his empty mug and ask for a refill. He watched, silent, as was Drew, while the barkeep poured the steaming liquid.

  His mind raced furiously as he scrutinized the steam bursting over the rim, to all outward appearances fascinated by its escape. Which was an illusion of his own, he silently reveled. In truth, finally he was the man again, he was in charge of the situation and in control of himself. He was once again the seasoned detective on the trail of his quarry, the cagey interpreter of the obscure, incapable of being duped by amateurish deceit. Toss out the flashiness, focus on the essentials. As Charlie had teased him, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

  They—they in the loose term—had set him in a house of mirrors, got him to running in those proverbial circles, a dog chasing his own tail in a futile attempt to connect the ends. And he’d been their willing accomplice. He’d chased that tail with such vigor that he’d ignored the cat in the room, that insidious little enemy who taunted him with its challenge.

  No more. Bring on the tricks, he vowed, the psychodrama. He’d be amused, not flummoxed. Every trick is a clue, he reminded himself. He need only deduce the why of it and the intended layers of obscurity would peel away like an onion.

  A centering calm descended upon him, a tranquility he had not felt since that first shocking moment when he’d realized it truly was The Superstar on the line. He started to chastise himself for having spent so much time and effort playing the fool—before he vigorously stomped that thought into the ground. Self castigation would only serve to once again distract, make him ripe for once again acting the fool he’d cursed himself for being.