At the second set of stairs, the ones leading up to the big room where I'd found Grace, I stopped and looked at Jak.
"Maybe you should wait down here."
"No," she said.
"I don't know what's—"
"I'll be fine," she said.
I saw fury in her eyes. Wordlessly, we headed upstairs, taking it slow, calling Grace's name. Unlike yesterday, at least we had the daylight—a flat, gray light, but light all the same. Grace wasn't in the empty bedrooms. Shadows of snowflakes flitted through the squares of light along the floor like endless armies of ants. I proceeded to the big room, fearing the worst, expecting her to jump out and do her freakish thing just as she'd done yesterday.
I didn't have to look long. She was in the corner, the same corner as last time, but standing rather than sitting. That wasn't the biggest change. It took me a moment to see it, because of the way the shadows fell, but she was also completely naked. Before, draped in the afghan, she'd seemed quite small, but that thick blanket had actually masked how tiny she really was: a wispy waif, with limbs so thin they could have been sketched with a pencil. Her little bottom sank in on itself. Her rib cage was full of cavernous gaps. Her hair, the pigtails gone, sprouted like wild grass.
And the welts. They weren't just on her neck. They covered her entire body, some as small as fingers, some as big as fists.
"Myron?" Jak whispered.
I heard the rising panic in her voice, and I realized I hadn't been moving. Jak couldn't see Grace, but she could see my reaction. She knew something was wrong. I felt a strange brew of deep sadness and visceral rage, two emotions that were like matter and antimatter and could never coexist for long without something terrible happening.
"She's here," I said.
"In the corner?"
I nodded. I waited for Grace to turn, but she didn't. In the quiet, the wind hissed against the window, and jets of air swirled around us, coming in through all the gaps in the old wood. Grace could have been a mannequin, or at least some artist's twisted version of one. In the pallid light, her skin seemed more gray than black, the bruises like charcoal markings.
"Grace, it's me," I said. "Myron Vale. Remember?"
She didn't answer.
"Did something happen?" I asked.
Nothing. I approached slowly, every muscle tense, still fearing she might explode. Jak clutched my upper arm from behind, staying close. There were three layers of clothes between my skin and her fingernails, but they might have well been made of paper for how sharp the pain was.
"I—I think I see something," Jak said, a quaver in her voice. "There in the corner. I think I see her."
I didn't know what to make of that. Although being a Sensitive—what the Department called living people who had some awareness of the ghost world—was quite rare, it wasn't that rare, at least on a minimal level, but Jak had never shown any propensity for it. A side effect of her close brush with the Goodbye Killer, maybe? Or simply another symptom of a mind in the throes of posttraumatic stress?
No time to deal with that now. I knelt next to Grace. I started to take off my jacket, to give her at least a modicum of modesty, but caught myself. Stupid me, always forgetting. She was totally exposed and there was nothing I could do.
"Grace," I said.
She looked at me. Big dark eyes, empty. So empty.
"Do you remember me?" I asked.
She shook her head. No recognition.
"I came here yesterday," I said. "I talked to you about that woman who was here, the one who came with the woman who shows the house to people. Don't you remember any of that?"
She shook her head. "Did he send you up here? Did he say it was a game?"
"What?"
"Sometimes—sometimes he wants me to play games with others. Are you here to play a game?"
"No."
"He says they make up the rules. I just play. They make up whatever rules they want. What rules you want, mister? I'll play real good. I won't cry or nothin'."
She turned and opened her arms to me, a lover's reach, and the gesture was so practiced and awkward, so inappropriate for someone so young, that I felt whatever remained of my inner wall crumble away, the one I used to keep those pesky emotions from swamping my professional composure. I tried to speak, but my throat grew tight, my face warm. Just when I thought nothing more terrible could happen to someone who'd already suffered so many terrible things, the world presented me with a poignant reminder that there was always another depth of awfulness that human beings were capable of inflicting on one another.
I also realized, with a chill, what had probably happened to make this little girl forget me. It was the same thing that had happened to Natalie Corman. And Elvis. It was also probably why we couldn't find Laura or John. It was so terrible to imagine that I hadn't wanted to fully confront the possibility until now.
To make someone forget a stranger was bad enough. But to make parents forget their child?
Who would do such a thing?
Chapter 8
Over coffee at a downtown Starbucks, sitting side by side at a window counter where we could watch the snow falling on Burnside, I shared my theory with Jak.
"So she steals people's memories?" she asked.
"Keep your voice down," I said.
"Why? This is Portland. I doubt this is the weirdest conversation going on even in this room."
"Still."
She shrugged. She was trying to regain some of the old Jak cockiness, but I heard the shakiness in her voice. When we'd gotten back to the Prius, after I tried for the better part of an hour to see if I could pull any more useful information out of Grace, and failed, Jak had said she'd seen some kind of shadow where Grace had been. Not a person. Not even a shadow, really. Just something different. I didn't know what to make of it, or what to tell her. I just hoped it was a one-time thing.
Even if ours was the weirdest conversation in the room, the crowded coffee shop buzzed with so much chatter that I doubted anyone could hear us. A Portland downtown Starbucks may have been the country's most democratic of institutions. High-powered professionals dressed in dark suits and polished shoes sat shoulder to shoulder next to rainbow-haired counterculture types who wore jewelry everyplace except where the professionals did. Over the din, I could barely hear Mariah Carey singing about what she wanted for Christmas.
Rosy faces. Gloves and scarves discarded on the tables. People warming their fingers by blowing into them. There was an electric energy in the air, more so than usual, maybe because we were all in here while the cold was out there.
"Anyway," Jak said, dropping her voice a bit, "it's an interesting idea. It would explain how people are forgetting. You going to ask your friends in the Department about it?"
"No," I said.
"You sure? They may know who she is."
"They may."
"You don't trust them, do you?"
"Nope."
"How about your pal, the priest? He seems to operate a little independently of them. He's helped you in the past."
Thinking about it, I took a sip of my coffee. Black and strong, just the way I liked it. I used to be a cream and sugar kind of guy, but that was in the old days, before the change. Now I liked the bold shock of it, the bitterness of the beans without anything else to mask the taste. I felt a little strange ordering plain coffee surrounded by people with nonfat lattes and peppermint mochas with extra whipped cream, but I told myself the coffee tasted better when I was paying a small fortune for it. Plus I really liked the cardboard sleeve. Somehow that made it all better, that sleeve. Jak may have had a double-shot espresso with just a touch of cinnamon, but she had the same sleeve. We were all joined by the sleeve.
The priest Jak mentioned—he had never revealed his real name—had been in and out of my life since I'd woken from the coma, part of very shadowy organization within the Department he'd never revealed. It was true he'd offered plenty of assistance over the years, helping me cope with my new abilitie
s and the people, alive and dead, who wanted to use them, but he also had his own motivations that didn't always line up with mine.
"Not going there yet," I said. "Maybe they don't know about this woman. Think about it. If she can erase memories, maybe she's managed to erase theirs too."
"Or maybe they're afraid of her," Jak said. "Just like they were afraid of … of the Goodbye Killer."
There was a hitch in her voice, a hesitation, and I glanced at her. She looked away.
"Could be," I said.
"Here's a question. If this is true, why hasn't she just erased your memory, too?"
"Maybe she can't."
"Or maybe she's afraid to try. Like you said, you've got a reputation. She doesn't know what messing with you will do to her."
I nodded. That might explain things, too. Outside, a woman bundled up in a puffy winter ensemble she'd probably picked up at Nordstrom that morning trudged past, slowed by her bevy of shopping bags. One gift-wrapped box peeked out of a bag from The Gap. I had to admire her spirit. No amount of snow would keep her from her holiday shopping. I also envied the simplicity and purity of her task. If only all I had to worry about today was buying presents for those I loved. Which reminded me: I needed to buy a present for Jak. Time was running short.
"Even if she's not coming after me," I said, "she's definitely trying to erase her tracks. But John's death—that's a big mistake. She's now turned this into a murder investigation. Assuming it was her. We don't know that for sure either."
"Assuming it was, why do you think she panicked?"
"Maybe John figured something out."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"Why not just erase his memory too? Why kill him?"
"I don't know that either."
"Don't know much, do you?"
"Nope."
She took another sip of her espresso and stared out the window, following a man carrying a baby, both of them dressed in thick parkas. The baby wore a Santa hat. Her gaze followed them, her eyes pointing away from me, and it allowed me to admire her profile. With her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, I was afforded a clear view of her jaw line, her cheekbones, and her neck. Everything was so compact, yet so beautiful, no parts missing, everything in its place. Her eyes glimmered brightly. So alive, too.
I admired her a bit too long, because she turned those glimmering eyes in my direction.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing. Just admiring the view."
She smiled. Like diamonds, that smile. That made me realize what I should get her for Christmas. It popped into my head, a crazy thought, so crazy I didn't want to dwell on it. Was it too soon? Was it even right at all? If I let my mind go there, the rational part, the whole idea would fall apart, and this wasn't about being rational. It was about feeling something and going with it. It was about deciding that after everything she'd been through, she deserved some lasting happiness. We both did.
Will you marry me?
Despite trying to force the idea away for now, I heard the question like a shout in my mind. She cocked her head to the side in a curious way, looking at me, picking up on the intensity of my thoughts if not the actual meaning. I could say the words. I could say them right now. Everything would change. But no. I needed to be sure. I also needed to do it properly. It had to be special, not an impromptu thing in a coffee shop with Michael Bublé playing in the background. Did she even like Michael Bublé? I didn't know. It seemed like the sort of thing I should know about the woman I was going to marry.
Marry.
Something clicked. Something fell into place. My heart, already racing from the idea of proposing to Jak, raced even faster.
"Spelling," I said.
"What?"
"The spelling of the word. Two words can sound the same but be spelled differently! What's that called? You're the writer. I'm sure you know."
She scrunched up her forehead. "A homonym?"
"Right! A homonym. I was just thinking of what Laura heard Olivia mumble now and then. Make merry with merry riddles. But what if it's not merry with an E-R-R-Y, but with an A-R-Y? What if it's a name? Mary? At least the second part. Riddles could also be spelled differently. R-I-T-T-L-E-S."
"Make merry with Mary Rittles," Jak said.
"Exactly! Or something like that."
"But what does it mean?"
"I don't know, but at least I have a name now. That's something to go on, right?" I pulled out my smart phone and brought up the Internet. "Maybe she's someone in Portland, someone Olivia met."
"I hope so," Jak said.
There was an odd tone in her voice. Typing in the search box, I glanced up and saw something in her eyes, something mixed in with the excitement I was also feeling. Confusion? Nervousness? I didn't know what it was, but I wondered if she already suspected what had prompted my sudden insight into homonyms.
We spent the next half hour scouring the Internet for any versions of Mary Rittles, starting with Portland, then broadening our search. Jak joined in with her own phone. It turned out that neither spelling of the surname was all that common. There was also Rittels, Ridles, and Reitles. If we stretched the pronunciation just a bit more, there was Ruttles and Rottles. As uncommon as all of those surnames were, if we dropped the S at the end, and used all the variations, our preliminary searching still brought up about a dozen possibilities in Portland, and hundreds beyond.
Jak sighed. "This is going to take a while."
"Let's stick with Portland for now," I said. "Olivia was the one who wanted to come here. Maybe this Mary person was why."
"Right now, I don't see even one Mary with either spelling. There's a MaryBeth Riddle, without the S at the end. She comes up because she's a teacher at an elementary school in Tigard. Beyond that … well, not so good."
"I can also have Alesha check the DMV records for us. Give us some more thorough results."
"Uh huh. How are you going to explain why you're looking for someone with this name?"
"I won't have to. She'll just trust me on it."
Jak said nothing to this, but I caught the slight frown. I called Alesha. As expected, she wanted to know what the connection was and she didn't much like me saying it was just a hunch, but she said she'd call back in ten minutes with whatever names, addresses, and phone numbers she could find. Jak and I spent that time debating about how we were going to go about researching all of these different women. What angle would be best? Just go at it directly, asking if they knew Olivia? Or scope them out and observe them for a time to see if they acted suspicious?
Since the clock was ticking on Olivia, we both decided we didn't have time for the take-it-slow approach.
When Alesha called back, she had six variations of Mary Riddles who lived in the Portland metro area. I wrote all the information on a napkin. The first we already knew: MaryBeth Riddle, who lived in the Pearl District and worked as a publicist for the Portland Winterhawks, the city's minor league ice hockey team. Recently married, twenty-three, no record. The second was Mary Amanda Reitles, a dental hygienist in Tualatin. Thirty-eight, divorced, no kids. She'd been arrested with a DUI ten years back, but otherwise had no record. The third was Marilyn Lee Rittles, but she was only fourteen and a freshman at Lincoln High School. Still, I wrote her information down anyway. The other three were a bit further afield in spelling, a Rottle, a Ruddle, and a Rettle, but they were close enough that I didn't want to rule them out.
"You know," Jak said after I got off the phone with Alesha, "there is another possibility."
"What's that?"
She leaned in a little closer. "She may not be, you know, among the living."
"Yeah. I did think of that, but Olivia didn't show any of that kind of, um, talent." It was so loud in the coffee shop that I doubted anyone could hear us, but I still didn't like talking about ghosts in the open. "I don't think she was talking to people who aren't, you know, paying their taxes."
"But she gave Grace that dream. So there was
some kind of communication there."
"Maybe. It may not be a conscious form of communication, or even two-way, but I can't discount the possibility." I shook my head. "But man, that will certainly expand the possibilities."
"What are we even looking for?"
"I don't know. Some sort of connection to Olivia."
"Such as?"
"We'll know it when we see it."
"Mmm. That's not really helpful."
"Look," I said, "this all just based on a hunch, anyway. I may be wrong about the whole riddle thing, but what else do we have to go on? We'll just come out and ask if they know her. If that doesn't work, we'll dig into their past. Maybe Olivia connected with them in a dream, like she did with Grace. Maybe she just … heard about her somewhere. Who knows. But I can't just sit around doing nothing."
Jak gave me one of those sly, mischievous grins of hers. "God, you're sexy when you're like this."
"Don't joke. This is serious."
"Oh, I know. I'm sorry."
"Whoever did this is not going to get away with it. I don't care how powerful this woman is. I don't care what she can do. I'll work all night and all day. I'll bring in the Department of Souls if I have to. But I won't do nothing. I'm going to find Olivia, and I'm going to bring her home before Christmas."
Jak nodded, her face much soberer now. "And I'm going to help you. But I've got to ask: bring her home to what? Her parents are both dead."
"I know. Believe me, I know. Maybe there are other relatives she can go to. But one problem at a time. "
* * *
It turned out that Olivia Ray had no close relatives that seemed an obvious choice to take her. We found this out within five minutes of getting back to the office—not because we'd made it a priority, but because Alesha called with her first update on the research she'd done into the whole Ray family. Only one grandparent was still alive, on Laura's side, and he'd been something of a deadbeat dad, estranged from the family since walking out on Laura's mother when she had been just a baby. Her mother had died of cervical cancer five years earlier. John's parents had been of the drug-running, spouse-beating, DUI trailer home variety, and they'd died in a murder suicide not long after he'd run away from home at the tender age of fourteen. He was an only child. Laura had a sister, but she was apparently living on a commune in Texas.
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Page 9
