After a few seconds of trying to melt Jak with those very eyes, Alesha turned her attention to me. "Brought your little sidekick, huh?"
"And hello to you, too, Detective Stintson," Jak said.
"This isn't a daycare. It's a potential crime scene."
"Give me a break," Jak said.
Alesha continued to stare at me, but I wasn't going to give her any kind of reaction. I didn't want to deal with any of this crap right now. She must have read as much on my face, because she shrugged and gestured for us to enter the apartment. In terms of physical size, the truth was she wasn't much bigger than Jak, a little taller, maybe, but she was also more slim and bony—athletic, yes, but also petite where Jak was full of curves. The way she moved, though, she gave off the impression of someone much bigger, filling up the space, commanding the room.
Right away, I saw the blood spatter on the wall behind the card table in the kitchen nook. I saw a handgun on the table, what looked like an S&W Shield, a small piece popular among the concealed carry crowd. The table was roped off with yellow crime scene tape. I didn't see a body.
"Somebody shot him?" I asked.
"Or he shot himself," Alesha replied. "He was alive when we got here. Barely. Died on the way to the hospital."
"A suicide? No way. Was there any kind of note?"
"Nope."
There were three other cops in the room. One was a tech with a big Nikon camera, a young woman who was analyzing her pictures on the tiny digital screen. The other two were just coming out of the back room, and one of them was a familiar face—Tim O'Dell, Alesha's former partner. He'd put on maybe ten pounds since I'd last seen him, but that still wasn't saying much; the guy was so thin that he'd probably win most games of hide and seek just by turning sideways. Otherwise, he looked much the same: curly red hair, boyish face, and a sheepish, slightly embarrassed manner about him that made him come off like a ten-year-old boy who'd woken one morning to find his body had sprouted.
"Myron!" he exclaimed, rushing forward to greet me. He pumped my hand with the enthusiasm of a Mormon missionary on his first day. "So good to see you! It's been forever."
"Hi, Tim," I said. "This is Jak, by the way. I don't believe you've met."
They exchanged pleasantries. Although he was too polite to do so overtly, I still caught him ogling her breasts, which irritated me, but then, just about every man alive ogled Jak's breasts, so it shouldn't have surprised me that even Boy Scout Tim was not immune. Alesha caught it, too, and I saw that she was readying some kind of crack. I glared at her until she smiled and shrugged.
The other cop was actually taller than Tim, and just about as lean, but it was not a good lean. It was the gaunt lean of a man who was sick or at least still recovering from being sick. There wasn't much left of his silver hair, a high widow's peak, and what remained was ragged and uneven; it would have been better if he'd shaved it off. His cheekbones were so sharp it looked like at any moment they'd cut through his taut skin—a skin that had a slightly reddish hue, as if he'd been out in the sun too long. Cancer, I guessed.
I almost stuck out my hand and introduced myself, but was glad I didn't. Tim motioned to him.
"You know Bud, right, Myron?"
The physical transformation was so complete that I hadn't thought for even a moment the man was Bud, even though I remembered Alesha telling me that Bud Leopold was Tim's new partner. The Bud I knew had been a robust and hale fifty-year-old, a wide-shouldered physical specimen who gave you the impression he could stop a train in its tracks by simply putting his back into it. This was a frail old man.
"Sure!" I said. "Good old Bud! How's Tricia these days? She still teaching piano lessons?"
"Hey, Myron," Bud said. "No, I'm afraid she had to give that up."
He didn't say why, but I saw it in his eyes, the implication that she'd had to give it up to take care of him. As if in a hurry to get past the uncomfortable personal history, he filled in the rest of the details of John Ray's death. The neighbor next door, hearing the gunshot, had called it in about five in the morning. Police found John slumped on the chair next to the card table, bullet wound to the temple, his hand on the table gripping the gun. Paramedics were called but he died on the way to the hospital.
"It was probably a good thing," Alesha said. "If he would have lived, he would have been a vegetable."
Tim said, "Bud and I are here because of Olivia. Still nothing to go on yet. How about you, Myron?"
"Nothing worth talking about," I said, which was mostly true. I wasn't about to tell them about my encounters with the dead girl next door, a forgetful real estate broker, or my friend, the deceased and quixotic Elvis. "I've only been on the case a day, though. Damn, I just can't believe this. Was that piece registered to him?"
"Nope," Alesha said.
"I didn't think so. Was a gun ever registered to him?"
"Nope."
"Uh huh. No way this was a suicide."
"I agree," Jak said.
"Oh, you agree, do you?" Alesha said. "I'm so glad to hear that. I don't know what we would do if you didn't agree."
"Alesha—" I began.
"No, no," Alesha said, "I want to hear Detective Jak's thoughts on this. By all means, give us your read on the situation."
"Well," Jak said, "like Myron said, there's no note. There's no obvious motive either. If anything, this is a guy who would want to be here in case his daughter came back."
"Obvious stuff," Alesha scoffed.
"And he shot himself in the temple," Jak said. "Just about everybody should know that's a bad way to do it. Often leaves the person alive. Going up from the under the chin is much more likely to get the job done."
"Everybody doesn't know that," Alesha said. "People trying to commit suicide make that mistake all the time."
"But the big reason is the gun," Jak said. "First, this isn't the kind of guy that would probably pick up a weapon on the black market. And the type of person who does get a gun like that, they're not thinking of killing themselves."
"Oh, pray tell," Alesha said. Her eyes were still fierce, but I heard the slight change in tone, the awareness that Jak had come to the same conclusion that Alesha and I had. "Please enlighten us with your extensive knowledge of firearms. Why would he choose this piece?"
"Its size," Jak said. "This is the kind of thing somebody gets who has a concealed carry permit, or at least who wants to have it on them and not be noticeable. And somebody who wants to have a piece that's easy to have on them and easy to hide is doing it because they want protection, not because they're thinking about suicide."
Alesha nodded. There was no way she was going to give Jak a compliment, but silence and a nod was about the closest she'd ever come. Tim, however, felt no such compunction to withhold his admiration.
"Wow!" he exclaimed. "You'd make a great detective."
"Thanks," Jak said.
Alesha rolled her eyes. Jak looked at me, beaming, and I couldn't help but smile back at her. There was a reason I was able to get past the age difference between us, and it wasn't her looks. She was sharp beyond her years. Not just book smarts, either. She was worldly in a way she shouldn't be for someone so young. In many ways, she was the oldest person in the room.
"So if it's not suicide," Bud said, "it's murder meant to look like a suicide."
"A pretty sloppy job of it, too," I said. "They left a gun, but that's about the only thing they did. This was a rush job. Maybe something done on impulse. I didn't see any signs of forced entry when I came in, though."
"No," Alesha said, "door was unlocked."
"Which, unfortunately, doesn't mean anything," I said. "He could have just left the door unlocked. Probably did, hoping his daughter would walk through it. Mind if I look around?"
Alesha made a gesture as if to say be my guest. I wandered around the little apartment, searching for any clues of what had happened, but didn't see anything different from what I'd seen yesterday. Where was Laura? For that matter, where was
John's ghost? The recently deceased were often confused, so he may have just been out wandering the streets of Portland, but I suspected his absence was probably for the same reason as Laura's. Something else was going on here.
I ended up in the bedroom, staring out the window at the house Grace occupied. It was dark. This time, she didn't appear. Had she seen something? It might be worth a second visit, but not now, not with all the cops around.
"Ideas?" Jak whispered.
She stood so close I felt her breath on my neck. She touched me lightly on the waist. Her physical proximity wasn't overtly sexual, but it was the intimacy afforded two lovers, and I was mildly irritated at her doing it now, in a crime scene. I knew why, too. She was sending a signal to anyone watching—one person in particular—that I was hers.
"Not really," I said.
"Don't beat yourself up too much. This isn't your fault."
"I never said it was my fault."
"I can hear it in your tone. You're blaming yourself. You had no way of knowing this was going to happen."
"I should have seen the danger. I should have … taken steps."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Something."
"Do you really think you could have prevented this?"
I shrugged. There was no way to know now. In the end, though, John Ray was dead. His ghost and the ghost of his dead wife were missing. A little girl had been kidnapped, and she'd now lost both her parents. John Ray had been waiting for her to come home, but now there was no home. Maybe there were relatives who would take her in, but as of now she was totally alone.
The snow fell so heavily I could barely see the houses any more, especially when my breath misted the glass. I had the sudden desire to go out there and sit in the snow and roll around in it until I was cold all over, as cold as I already felt inside. When Alesha had given me the news over the phone about John's death, I'd felt something change inside me, a void opening up, a cratering of heart or soul or whatever it was that powered the ghost that powered the machine that let us walk around on this Earth and inflict harm on one another. Wasn't that the end result, no matter how much some of us tried to do good? We hurt one another. My wife hurt me. I hurt Jak. I wanted to be kind to both. Even if you managed to walk the path without leaving a lot of emotional carnage in your wake, if you were the purest good, if you loved someone as truly as John Ray had loved his wife and his daughter, you still ended up in pain. Or dead. That was the world for you.
"When you two love birds are done having your private moment," Alesha said behind me, "maybe you could join the rest of us."
Irritated at her callousness, I turned to snap at her. Who knew what I would have said, undoubtedly something I would have regretted, but my annoyance vanished when I saw the look in her eyes. Pain. It was only there a second, a flicker before the gruff facade slid back into place, but it was a sharp reminder that Jak wasn't the only one in the room I managed to hurt on a regular basis.
"I was just thinking," I said.
"Brooding is a better word," Alesha said. "You done blaming yourself or you just getting started?"
"Just getting started," I said.
"Oh, goodie. While you're wallowing in guilt, you think up any leads for us?"
"Nothing worth talking about."
"Uh huh. See, I know you too well. The way you say that, I get the feeling you're holding out on me."
"I'm not holding out, Alesha. I really have no idea what to do next."
She looked at me like she didn't believe me, but I wasn't in the mood to try to convince her otherwise. Bud and Tim joined us in the bedroom.
"Well," Bud said, "seems you don't have a client anymore, Myron. You going to keep working the case anyway?"
Everybody looked at him. Except for Bud, the room was full of people who knew me well. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but nothing had to be said aloud. Their expressions said it all.
"Oh," Bud said.
* * *
We agreed to divvy up the work.
For Bud and Tim, the disappearance of Olivia Ray suddenly became a higher priority. It was already high priority, but the recent turn of events swept everything else off their plates. Chief Branson had already told them he wanted it that way, since this was going to be all over the news. They said they were going to canvass the neighborhood to see if they could turn up anything else that might shed some light on the disappearance, or the murder. That still wasn't their main purpose, the disappearance was, but we all agreed that everything was intersecting now.
Alesha vowed to do even more digging into the past lives of the whole Ray family, as well as make sure a full crime scene analysis was done. That would probably tip off the press that this wasn't a suicide, but it wouldn't matter; even if it was a suicide, it was such a strange one that it would get all kinds of attention anyway. As for me? I played it a bit circumspect, telling them I was going to touch bases with all my contacts to see if I could turn up anything, even the tiniest clue, which would give us something to go on. They didn't need to know that most of my contacts were dead.
Some reporters were already showing up, and we all made a beeline for our cars while refusing to answer any of the questions barked in our faces. I got the sense that Alesha hoped I'd tag along with her, like old times, but that would just make what I needed to do more complicated.
Once inside the Prius, I pushed the start button and we glided soundlessly over the snow-covered street, heading for Providence Medical Center, going slowly enough that the gas-powered engine never kicked into gear. The first thing to do was to see if I could find John. I still had hopes he was just out there confused and wandering, in the first stage of grappling with his new life.
Jak blew into her hands to warm them. "This whole thing doesn't make sense. Why not kill him before?"
"Whoever's behind this panicked," I said.
"If it's this woman, the one Grace saw, you think she's on to you?"
"Maybe."
"But why not come after you, then?"
I patted the side holster underneath my jacket where my Glock was loaded and ready for action. "The thought has crossed my mind. I'm going to keep my piece on me just in case. But maybe she knows about me, about what I can do. I've always been told there are people who'd really like to take me out but they're afraid of what might happen when I was dead. That I might be able to do things I can't do because I'm alive."
Jak was silent for a moment. "I don't like to think of you dying."
"Well, that's good. I don't like to the think of me dying either."
"No, really. You need to be careful."
The tone of her voice had changed; she sounded smaller, younger. I glanced at her and saw that her face had gone flat, her eyes recessed and glassy. I'd seen this look before and knew where it might lead.
"Jak?"
"I'm okay," she said.
I felt relieved that she was still capable of talking. When she had a really bad episode, she went away someplace in her mind where even shouting couldn't reach her. I felt a swelling of guilt. This wasn't like my usual cases; we both knew that. No little old ladies needing help finding a long-lost pen pal. No helping husbands and wives reunite after they died. This case was much more like the one that had shaken Jak so badly. "I can take you home," I said softly.
"No, no, I'm fine." She blinked a few times, like a computer rebooting. "Just a little tired. I was out late, you know."
"It's a good article. Maybe you should keep working on it."
"Myron, come on."
"What?"
"I want to help. Stop trying to get rid of me. Are you looking for John? You need to focus on that and stop looking at me."
I let it go for now, but I still wasn't sure this was a good idea. It wasn't that hard to scan the streets for any sign of John—or Laura, for that matter—even including the occasional glance in Jak's direction. In a world of white, almost every person stood out in stark contrast. It was mostly children, some pulling sle
ds, others building snowmen. There weren't many cars on the road, and those that were crept along at under ten miles an hour, forcing us to do the same. This gave me ample time to search for our missing ghosts.
We didn't find either of them, not on the way to the hospital, and not on the way back on Burnside to John's apartment, or rather the old house behind his apartment, where I was determined to talk to Grace again to see if she'd seen anything unusual last night. I turned north a few blocks early, coming around to Grace's house from a different direction just in case there were still reporters or police around who might spot me.
I parked a few houses down. A group of teenage boys and girls in snowshoes and heavy winter clothes tromped along the sidewalk, laughing and occasionally throwing snowballs at one another. I waited for them to pass.
"What are you waiting for?" Jak said.
"Oh," I said. "You don't see them?"
"See who?"
The snow was really coming down heavily. I watched the teenagers disappear into a veil of white, wondering how they'd died. A church ski trip maybe, heading up Mt. Hood only to slide off the road? A sudden snowstorm in the middle of a back-country hike? I didn't know their story, but I was sure it was a sad one. At least they were finding a few moments of joy now.
When the street was clear, we ducked behind Grace's house, using the same basement door to gain entry. Snowflakes stuck to my eyelids. The doorknob felt so cold it burned. Inside, the thermostat had been set low, but it was practically a sauna compared to the frigid world outside, even in the basement. I called Grace's name. No reply. Jak followed close behind me as we headed upstairs, too close, really, constantly touching my back with her hand.
I scolded myself silently for even bringing her in the house. What if Grace tried to do something to scare her? How much of that could Jak's fragile psyche take?
Not much to do about it now. In the kitchen, every creaky footstep and every rustle of clothes sent my heart racing. We continued to call for Grace, but there was no answer. I felt a cold prickle along my spine that something dreadful had happened, and I pulled out the Glock. Behind me, I heard Jak's breathing coming fast and shallow.
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Page 8
