"See, see," she said.
"Lucky bastard."
"Yeah, well, that goes for both of us," she said. "Think how bad you'd feel if he'd managed to really do some damage."
We cleaned up the wound with soap and warm water, and she let loose with more than few choice words, but she took it mostly like a champ. I expected no less. I still thought the cut was deep enough to warrant some stitches, but she told me to wrap it tight with the bandage and she'd deal with that later. No way was she abandoning me. Truthfully, I was glad she was there.
"I saw Gath disappear," she said. "Can all ghosts do that?"
"No."
"But she is a ghost?"
Mulling over her question, I applied some antibiotic cream to the wound, affixed a thick bandage, and stuck it in place with medical tape. After that, I put on the finishing touches by wrapping the whole thing with an elastic wrap bandage. I was no doctor, or even a paramedic, but the little first-aid training I'd received when on the force came in handy sometimes. "I don't know what else she would be," I said. "But then, why didn't the glasses work on her? I tried them out a couple times on the way home and they always seem to work—lots of ghosts disappeared. But all the other ghosts I've met can't just appear and disappear at will."
Alesha pursed her lips, thinking. I'd caught her up on all the details of the case on the way home, so she knew as much as I did now. "Maybe we're going at this all wrong," she said. "We keep asking whether she's a ghost or not, but maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe that's what's stopping us from seeing what she really is."
"You're confusing me, kiddo."
"Well, that's no surprise. You couldn't think your way out of a paper bag without me. I'm just saying, maybe what we're seeing is not a ghost at all. Maybe it's … a projection."
"A what?"
"Astral projection, more specifically. I've read a lot about it. Even tried to do it a few times myself, but … well, never any luck." She glared at me. "Don't start with the jokes. Just because you have a limited mind, doesn't mean all of us do."
"You're saying this to a guy who just admitted he sees ghosts."
"Yeah, well, that doesn't mean you've changed your colors all that much. Anyway, the practice of astral projection goes back a long ways. It means she's still alive somewhere even as she's able to project her essence—ghost, spirit, whatever—out into the world. It might explain why she could vanish like that. She's not a ghost, or at least not only a ghost. Maybe that's why she can make herself seem solid and real to others. That's not normal for astral projection, from what I've read, but, well, she's obviously got a lot of power."
While Alesha, satisfied with the tight bandaging, slipped on her jacket, I tried to fit this possibility into everything I knew so far—and then suddenly what Jak had told me about the victims at Oregon State Hospital took on a whole new meaning. Alesha saw the excitement on my face.
"What?" she said.
"I think I know where Gath is," I said.
"Where?"
"Salem."
"The capital? Why?"
"You think you can get us access to some patients at Oregon State Hospital?"
"Um … yes. Probably. But Myron, why on Earth—"
"I'll explain on the way. Let's go."
* * *
As we left the city in my Prius, the first light of dawn crested the Cascade Range behind us and painted the fringes of the forested hills that bordered Portland's western side in orange light. On another Sunday morning, I might have enjoyed the sunrise, but I was too exhausted from the night's proceedings, and too tired from lack of sleep, to do more than take weary note of how pretty it was. At my comment, Alesha barely grunted. We picked up a couple coffees at a Dutch Brothers, which helped perk us up, and made good time out of the city since our way was still mostly free of the morning traffic that would soon choke the roads.
The air had a flat, frozen quality to it, but the asphalt itself was bare. No ice. I saw a few ghosts in the backs of cars, including one with worms coming out of his eyes, and I put on the glasses. They all vanished. What a relief, having that option. I could get used to it.
To explain to Alesha why we were going to Salem, I told her what Jak had found out when she'd researched people in comas in Oregon—and how that pointed to something strange happening at Oregon State Hospital.
"So you think Gath's actually there?" she asked.
"That's my hunch."
"You think she works there, or do you think she's a patient?"
"If I had to guess, I'd say a patient."
"Why?"
"Well, if she can get out in the world with this astral projection of hers, then what better place to keep her body safe then behind bars? Who would even suspect that someone locked up in an institution could have her kind of abilities? So she gets to walk around in the world, appearing real as long as nobody touches her, while the real her, the one people can hurt, is safe and sound."
Alesha took a sip of her coffee. "Seems crazy enough to be true. But where is Olivia, then? She could be anywhere."
"I'm hoping if we find the real Gath, we can force her to tell us where Olivia is."
"How? She'll erase our memories if we get too close, turn us into vegetables like Felicity. Even if you're right that she's afraid of you, she already showed she'll risk it if she's backed into a corner."
"Not if she thinks we'll shoot her real body. It looks like she has to touch us, at least with her projection, to use her power. I don't think she can outrace a bullet." I pointed at the glasses I was wearing. "We also have these. If we can get these on her body, she won't be able to use her power on us."
Alesha shook her head. "You don't know that for sure."
"Partner, I don't know anything for sure."
She smiled. "Partner. Been a while since you've called me that."
"Yeah."
We exchanged a glance. I thought about the kiss, about that shared moment back in the cemetery.
"Alesha—" I began.
"Let's not talk about that right now," she said.
"I just— I don't—"
"Tell me something. Let's say it all works out and we find Olivia. Get away, escape—everything's peaches. What will stop Gath from coming after her again? Or you?"
"I don't know."
"Yeah, that's the problem. Even if you kill her, how do you know she won't be even more powerful as a ghost? It's the same thing she worries about with you."
"What do you want me to do? I can't just abandon Olivia."
Alesha fell silent for a while, the road humming beneath us, the traffic steadily picking up as we neared Salem. The sprawling, snow-frosted farm fields just outside of Woodburn passed by in a blur.
"If what she can do is really astral projection," she said, "then maybe she won't be able to do it when she's dead. I mean, if she doesn't have a living body to go back to, then how can she leave it in the first place?"
"I hope you're right," I said. "If not, well, she'll erase our memories and we won't remember how wrong we were anyway."
"That's not funny."
"I wasn't trying to be funny," I said.
* * *
We pulled into the visitor parking lot outside the Kirkbride Building at Oregon State Hospital a little after six in the morning. That turned out to be a good thing, because it gave us an hour to talk to the night shift folks before the crew that worked days took over, allowing our questions to span two shifts in a short amount of time. The plan was to zero in on the three coma patients; Jak had emailed me the names. We wouldn't be able to talk to them, of course, but the hope was that by talking to all the people who'd known them—employees, inmates, ghosts who frequented the place—we might find someone or something that linked all three.
I hadn't thought talking to a few ghosts would be a big deal. After all, I did it all the time. But when I took off the glasses, I knew immediately it wouldn't just be a few ghosts. And I didn't know how many of them would be willing to talk at all. A few
, I saw, didn't even have mouths.
Sitting in the Prius, Alesha checking her Glock next to me, I gazed out the fogging windshield to see dozens of people milling around the parking lot, the stately brick building with its white steeple, and the snow-covered grass and shrubs. They lined the rooftops and sat perched on the windowsills. Most of them wore prison uniforms, some orange, some tan, of every cut and style over the decades, but plenty wore regular civilian clothes, and more than few were dressed as doctors and nurses.
The sheer number of them, hundreds, thousands maybe, would have been enough to give me pause. But it wasn't just the number that worried me. I saw ghosts without eyes, ghosts without hands, ghosts so covered in blood that I couldn't even see their clothes—if they had clothes. Quite a few walked naked. Partially severed limbs, hanging by a thread of sinewy muscle. Eyeballs dangling from their sockets. Exposed bones where fingers would usually be. They slumbered and they slouched, they stood completely still or ran in circles. Some flapped wings as if they wanted to fly. Others shouted and gesticulated wildly, as if talking to a crowd.
The Oregon State Hospital, a sprawling campus of tan and brick buildings spanning over a hundred acres in the heart of Salem, had a long and infamous history—decades of demented inhabitants, decades of documented abuse that that the state was still trying to rectify. If I'd thought about that history at all, I should have expected this.
"What's wrong?" Alesha asked.
"It's a crowded parking lot," I explained.
"Huh? There's nobody … Oh."
"Yeah."
"Weird ones?"
"Very weird ones. I guess that's no surprise, considering where we are."
"You could always keep wearing the glasses."
"No. We need what I can do right now. It could help."
"Okay. One question. What happens if one of the people we talk to is Gath?"
"Is your Glock loaded?"
"Of course it is."
"Mine is too. Just be ready."
"That's it? That's your grand plan?"
I looked at her. Over her shoulder, a nurse with what appeared to be human brains dribbling down her bloody uniform peered at me through the passenger-side window. I did my best to keep my attention focused on Alesha. "Not too late to sit this one out," I said.
Alesha glared at me and got out of the car. I slipped the glasses into the inside pocket of my jacket, checked my Glock one last time, and followed her.
The cold air nipped at my bare face. The sky was a dull gunmetal gray, and the traffic on nearby Center Street was only now picking up. All but a few of the ghosts parted in front of us, though a few didn't, and I went right through a couple of them rather than give away that I could see them.
None appeared to recognize me yet, maybe because they were insane, maybe because they didn't care, but it didn't matter—I just wanted to keep it that way as long as possible. I'd have to talk to some of them eventually, but not yet, not until we found some worthy of questioning. We were almost to the visitor entrance, with its brick pillars and big sweeping glass windows, and I thought I was home free, but then a tattooed fellow with only a bloody mess where his jaw should have been suddenly pointed at me and started grunting. Some of the other ghosts stopped and gawked.
I touched Alesha's back, prodding her to move faster across the tiled stone courtyard. She gave me a questioning look, but I just shook my head and nodded toward the glass door before us. A crowd followed. An old woman, her wrinkled torso naked, her lower half wrapped, mummy-like, in bandages, tried to claw at me. More fell in behind.
We jerked open the door. A black man with maggots where his fingers should have been tried to reach through, but he pulled his hand back when the door closed. None of the ghosts followed us inside.
Still prisoners to their earthly habits, thank God.
We checked in at reception, then were buzzed through another door that led to a long, narrow hall with a low ceiling, fluorescent lights casting pale light on the thin gray carpet that decorated the walls. The carpet, which must have been someone's idea of making the passage more welcoming, did soften the squeak of our footsteps, but there was still a sterile drabness to the place—maybe because it smelled like damp concrete, despite how it looked.
Two security guards, a man and a woman, both burly, both dressed in navy-blue uniforms, waited for us behind a glass window. Beyond them, two other male guards worked at a metal detector. An elderly couple made their way through ahead of us, the bulb over the gray metal arch glowing green.
"Detective Alesha Stintson," Alesha said to the man in the window, slipping her badge in the gap beneath the glass.
The man, who had a thin blond mustache I hadn't even noticed until I looked at him closely, inspected the badge for a long time, then slid it to the woman. I heard country music playing faintly inside, got a whiff of coffee. She inspected the badge for an equally long time, then nodded. He studied his computer screen, then slid the badge back to Alesha.
"You'll still need to sign in again," he said. The way he informed us of this fact, it was as if he was asking us to sign in blood. "It's policy."
"No problem," Alesha said.
"And your weapons—you'll have to surrender them to Officers Johnson and Swick."
"Is that really necessary?"
"It's policy."
"But I'm a police officer."
"It's policy."
He crossed his arms, as if daring us to defy him. Alesha looked at me with concern. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: What if we ran into Gath in there, the real Gath? Maybe bullets wouldn't do much good against her astral projection, but if the real Gath was in there, we were putting ourselves in a defenseless position. But what choice did we have?
I nodded. She nodded to the guard. Satisfied, if still a bit too smug, he took out a clipboard and had Alesha sign. I gave him my driver's license and my PI license, and after he inspected both, he had me sign, too. We surrendered our Glocks to the guard standing in front of the metal detector, listened to him run through some song and dance about observing proper protocols inside, and finally both passed through the detector. The second guard, a kid with a mess of pimples around his chin, stared at me with big bug eyes.
"Nice day," I said, trying to put him at ease.
He blinked a few times but said nothing. Both Alesha and the other guard looked at me strangely, which was when I knew the other guard was a ghost.
"I—I know who you are," the kid stammered.
Not wanting to draw more attention from the other guards, I merely smiled and waited for Alesha. When she was by my side, partially blocking the other guard, I muttered to the young ghost guard who'd recognized me: "Follow me. It's important."
He swallowed. There was another set of double doors and he watched us, chewing on his bottom lip, as we passed through them. We entered a lobby of sorts, with a cherry oak reception desk behind another glass window, two sets of stairs on either side of an elevator, and an enormous black-and-white stenciled sign with the room numbers of all the various offices and departments. Alesha started to ask me who I was talking to when the kid passed through the closed double doors, hands clasped behind his back, eyes meekly downcast.
"Sir," he said.
I almost laughed. Sir? Nurses, doctors, guards, and all kinds of other hospital personnel filled the hall, so I gestured for both Alesha and the kid to follow me. There was an empty reception alcove to the side, with cheap office furniture and stacks of wrinkled magazines, and I made sure Alesha was standing in such a way that she blocked the hall from view. The kid stood between us. Most people didn't pay us much attention anyway, but I didn't want to raise suspicion if I could help it—and not just from the living. A female nurse in a uniform thirty years out of style, her blond bun tied up under her a bright white cap, glared at me from down the hall.
"There's a young man here, a guard," I explained to Alesha, keeping my voice low. "What's your name, son?"
"Willy Loman," he
said.
"Willy Loman? Like in Death of a Salesman?"
He nodded. "My parents were huge Arthur Miller fans. And having the last name Loman, well, I guess it wasn't much of a stretch."
"This is so weird," Alesha said. "There's really somebody here?"
"Bear with me," I said to Alesha. "Willy, I'm going to be looking mostly at Detective Stintson while I talk to you, okay?"
"Okay. I just want to help you, sir. I know what you did for—for all of us. You know, with the Ghost Reaper. Whatever you need, I'm there for you."
"We appreciate that. Just relax, okay? You look like you're going to pass out."
"Okay, sir."
"We're looking for three patients here—all of them in comas. We think there's a link between them that can help us with a case. Can you help with that?"
"I'll do my best, sir."
Encouraged, I peppered him with questions. I asked him if he'd heard the name Victoria Gath. He hadn't. I asked him if he knew anything about the three coma patients Jak had given me. He didn't. He apologized, telling me that even when he'd been alive—he'd died two years earlier in a scuba-diving accident—he really hadn't been privy to all the details of what went on inside the hospital, especially the patients, since he'd almost exclusively worked the visitor entrance. But if they were in some sort of coma, they'd be in the Intensive Care Ward. A guy named Rick Holbrandt ran that unit, but the head nurse, Rosita Bello, was probably the one who really knew what was going on up there.
"They both alive?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," Willy said. "Well, a lot of people say Rick is half dead, seeing as how he spends most of his day asleep at his desk, but Nurse Bello—yeah, she's alive all right." He frowned.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Oh, she's … Well, you seen that movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?"
"Seen the movie and read the book, actually. Ken Kesey was an Oregon author, you know."
"Huh. Didn't know that. You sound like my parents. They knew all that book stuff."
"I'll try to take that as a compliment. So what about this Bello?"
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Page 24
