by H. P. Bayne
Halfway up, he heard the unmistakable sound of muffled conversation from somewhere overhead. Two men. That much he could tell from this distance.
He continued climbing until he found himself in another hall, this one stretching the length of the small building. From here, Sully could make out three office doors—all closed—and a unisex bathroom. As he reached the farthest office—one that would be a corner office—the voices grew easier to hear, sufficient to tell him which room the men were inside. He stopped outside the door and listened while deciding whether he should knock now or wait until someone came out. If it was an important business conversation, he hated to interrupt. Carson—at least, one of the voices certainly sounded like his—wouldn’t be as amenable to talking if Sully messed something up for him.
Mind made up to wait, Sully leaned against the wall across from the office. The conversation continued, but the doors appeared to be of the best quality; anything said inside remained muffled and incomprehensible to anyone outside.
But that no longer held true as the voices rose. Sully went poker straight as the sounds of an argument began. And every bit of his attention zoned in on the office door at the shout of one clear, unmistakable word.
Whitebear.
They were fighting about Tim Whitebear.
Throwing caution to the wind, Sully stepped forward and pressed his ear to the door, straining to hear better. Even then, he caught only snippets, none of them from Carson: “because of you,” “lost everything,” “should pay.”
The voice sounded familiar, and it took mere seconds before he recalled who it belonged to.
Norm Phelan, the conductor who had lost his job over Tim Whitebear’s death.
Sully needed to talk to Dez and Lachlan.
Satisfied there was no way out of the second floor save the single staircase, he made his way down. He retreated to the rear entryway and tapped on Dez’s number in his contacts. His brother answered right away.
“Need a lift back?”
Sully cast his eyes toward the hall leading to the stairs. He kept his voice low as he responded. “Is Lachlan with you?”
“Yeah,” Dez said, dragging out the word. He clearly recognized something was up. “You okay?”
“Put your phone on speaker.”
A little movement and Lachlan’s voice sounded. “What’s going on?”
“I’m at the east rail yards, inside the reception office. Back door was unlocked so I came in, hoping to find Carson. He’s upstairs, having an argument with someone.”
“Who?” Lachlan asked.
“I’m ninety-five per cent sure it’s Norm Phelan.”
“The drunk conductor?” Lachlan said. “What the hell? What are they arguing about?”
“I can’t make out most of what they’re saying. Door is too thick. But I did make out a few words here and there. It’s Tim Whitebear. That’s what they’re fighting about.”
“It might not be anything suspicious,” Lachlan said. “You no doubt stirred up some crap for Phelan by confronting him over his role in Whitebear’s death. Could be he got pissed and went over there to have it out with his old boss.”
“We just talked to Therrien, Sully,” Dez added. “We both think there’s a solid chance he’s good for the Whitebear murder.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Sully said. “I’ve got a bad feeling here.”
“Shit,” Dez grumbled. “I hate it when you have one of your bad feelings. Listen, we’re on our way right now. Get out of there and find somewhere to hole up until we come pick you up.”
Sully had no problem with that instruction. His hand was on the door, pushing the handle down to open it, when movement in his peripheral vision had him spinning in place. He ducked with the turn, expecting to find something heavy arcing toward his head. What he got instead was the battered image of Tim Whitebear.
“I’ll call you back,” Sully muttered into his phone.
“No,” Dez snapped. “Stay on the line.”
“Tim’s here. I need to focus.”
“So put the phone in your pocket and pretend we’re not there. Just don’t hang up.”
Sully did as instructed, allowing him to focus fully on Tim, all the while knowing Dez and Lachlan were monitoring the situation from Sully’s front pocket.
“Hey,” Sully whispered by way of greeting. He watched Tim a moment, tried to get a read on him. When Sully allowed his walls to drop around spirits, he could almost always feel what they felt, as if their thoughts and emotions were water flowing over him. Sully sensed the change immediately. The Tim he’d encountered on the tracks had been confused, terrified, grieving over his lost life and family. The Tim standing before him now was no less afraid, but the confusion had lessened.
He’d remembered something.
“Outside,” Sully hissed. “I need to get out of here.”
He started again to open the door. Started and failed.
It was jammed.
Sully held in a curse as he struggled to jiggle the handle. A moment ago, it had depressed easily in his grip. Now it wouldn’t budge.
He turned back to pin Tim in an accusing glare. “If you’re holding the door shut, quit it. I need to get out of here. Now.”
But Tim had other ideas. He shot from his current position to the right, the opposite direction from the stairs. With no way to get out the way he’d come in—and recognizing himself as a sitting duck in his current position—Sully reluctantly followed.
A blink and Tim was at the turn in the hall. Another blink and he’d disappeared entirely.
Sully rounded the corner to find Tim standing next to a doorway, one Sully was pretty sure led to the lunch room, if memory served. Determined to get whatever this was done quickly so he could leave, Sully closed the distance to Tim.
“Okay,” he said. “What?”
Tim vanished and reappeared inside the lunch room. Sully took one glance at the hall down which he’d come—still no sign of Carson or Norm—and followed.
As Sully entered the lunch room, he sensed something else from the ghost, an electrical feeling like a summer storm building behind a bank of heavy, black cloud. Excitement. The thrill of discovery.
Tim lifted his good arm. His index finger extended.
Sully had taken a quick look in here earlier, only long enough to identify it as a lunch room based on the presence of a table and chairs, a fridge and a microwave. A one-second glance. Now Sully looked closer.
On a wall painted the colour of a robin’s egg was the image of a loon.
Sully’s heart thudded as he thought back to the flash of images Tim had showed him at the tracks: taillights, a blue wall and a loon.
“It happened here,” Sully said. “This is where they forced the liquor into you.”
The sound of his name on Dez’s lips emerged from his pocket. Sully didn’t have to ask to know Dez had been listening. He also didn’t have to ask to know his brother wasn’t happy about the way the situation was unfolding.
Neither, for that matter, was Sully. Upstairs, just a ceiling and a floor away, were two men Sully was rapidly coming to suspect as murderers.
Or, at least, that’s where they had been.
“What are you doing here?”
Sully whirled at the voice coming from behind him. Norm stood in the doorway, eyebrows lowered over booze-reddened eyes.
“I came to talk to Mr. O’Keefe,” Sully said.
“How’d you get in?”
“Back door was unlocked.”
Norm shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. We checked the doors before we went upstairs. Business hours are over. Everything was locked tight.”
Or not so tight, Sully thought. He resisted the urge to look back at Tim. No question now he was responsible for ensuring Sully was able to get inside. Sometimes a ghost, sensing much-needed answers, got excited or emotional enough to impact the physical world. Unfortunately, they often impacted Sully as well, and not always for the better.
&
nbsp; As Sully peered into the anxious, angry face of Norm Phelan, he knew this was one of those not-so-good times.
“I don’t know how the door was unlocked,” Sully said. “It just was. If Carson’s busy, I can come back later.”
Sully’s eyes drifted to Norm’s hands. The knuckles were raw and bleeding, and a few flecks of what appeared to be fresh blood spatter were evident on the sleeve of his dirty white coat.
Sully looked away immediately, hoping Norm hadn’t noticed he’d seen. But anxiety on the other man’s face had turned to suspicion. A moment later, to hardened resolve.
Sully was in big trouble.
17
Norm’s face twisted with a mixture of dread and rage as he blocked the room’s sole exit.
“You heard something, didn’t you?” he demanded.
Sully tried for the dumbest expression he could muster and coupled it with an equally dumb reply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Norm took a sharp step forward. “Don’t bullshit me, kid. What did you hear?”
He’d gone from quiet speech to a shout so suddenly, Sully jumped. “Look, man, I really didn’t hear anything. I didn’t even know you were here. I’m just trying to leave, all right?”
“Well, you’re not leaving. Not until I know what you heard.” Norm took another step. The closer distance meant Sully caught his first whiff of the man. Alcohol. No question. Not as strong as it had been the other day, but enough to suggest Norm had sought to bolster his nerve before coming here today. Now clearly intoxicated, he could prove to be a difficult man to reason with—particularly if he’d already done something to his former boss.
Sully’s escape path from the room was barricaded. As an experienced drinker, Norm wouldn’t be affected by his alcohol intake. He was also a large man with a muscular build. Sully resolved himself to the fact he’d have to fight his way out of here—and the fight wouldn’t be an easy one.
A month or so ago, Sully had a violent poltergeist ready to do his bidding. He’d since released “Ned,” a decision he now regretted.
He was reminded of the fact Dez and Lachlan were still on the line; he could make out the muffled sounds of Dez’s frantic chatter from inside his pocket, as if he was holding a hand over the mouthpiece of his phone as he talked to Lachlan. If Sully could manage to wrest a confession from Norm about any darker role he’d played in Tim’s death, it wouldn’t only help their case, it would also buy time for either Dez or the police to arrive.
“Why’d you come down here?” Sully asked.
Norm moved closer. Sully took a step back. His thigh collided with a chair, but he managed to keep his feet and circle around behind it. A quick glance revealed the seat and back were plastic, but the legs and supports were solid metal. If it came to it, the chair would make for a decent weapon. Sully wasn’t bad in a fight—he’d worked several years at a bar in a rough neighbourhood—but he had no way of knowing Norm’s skill. Fights always went one of two ways, and he wasn’t exactly keen on finding out which end of the stick he’d draw.
Sully gripped the back of the chair in one hand and tried to keep up the conversation. As upset and irrational as Norm seemed, little hope remained for negotiation. Sully decided on a direct approach, hoping to get what answers he could before this came to blows.
“What did you do to Carson?” he asked.
“Nothing. He’s fine.”
“Doesn’t look like that’s all your own blood on your hands.”
Norm took another step forward. Sully took one back, placing himself behind a second, identical chair.
“We had a fight. That’s all.”
“Over Tim.”
Norm grimaced. “You don’t know jack-shit about any of it! Don’t you fucking judge me!”
Sully held up his free hand, the one he wasn’t using to grip the chair back. “I’m not judging. I’m asking. What really happened to him?”
“I didn’t do anything except operate the damn train, all right?”
“Doesn’t answer my question.”
Norm paused next to the table. He placed a hand atop its surface as if seeking balance—physical, psychological or both. “It was Carson. Carson wanted him dead.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t tell me. Said Tim was going to blackmail him over something.”
“He doesn’t seem like the blackmail sort,” Sully said.
Norm’s eyes, previously focused on the area around Sully’s feet, snapped to his face. “How would you know?”
Sully caught himself. “I don’t, I guess. Just the impression I got from people.”
Norm nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer, before dropping his eyes to their previous position. “Carson had a plan how to deal with it, but needed my help. He was going to get Tim to the line. My job was to keep driving. Nothing more. Just drive. Don’t stop.”
“But you couldn’t have stopped even if you’d tried,” Sully said. “Where Tim was placed—”
“I know that now,” Norm said. “And for the record, I did try to stop. But there was no way.”
“So why bother recruiting you? Why wouldn’t he drop Tim on the line and let physics do the rest?”
Norm’s eyes clamped back onto Sully’s. “The bastard hasn’t driven a train a day in his life. He didn’t get how long it would take me to stop, that I couldn’t even if I wanted to back out.”
Sully thought back to the engineer, Pete Davenport. “Pete was stuck in the bathroom. You lock him in?”
“I knew the approximate area Carson was going to put Tim but not the exact point. I thought maybe he’d be farther up the line. The bathroom door needed replaced. It had a habit of flying open, so we had MacGyvered up a little something to keep it shut when not in use. I hooked it up while Pete was in there. Didn’t want him knowing what I was involved in. As it happened, I chickened out anyway. Just didn’t have the time.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Sully asked. “At the start, I mean, before getting on the train? You didn’t have to go through with it at all. They could have been there, could have arrested Carson and saved Tim right at the scene.”
“You think that didn’t cross my mind?” Norm snarled. “I know that, all right? But it wasn’t that easy.”
“Why not?”
“O’Keefe knew about my drinking. Hell, everyone knew about my drinking. He put a recording device into the train on one of my runs. Caught me drunk during a run. Grounds for immediate job loss right there. I didn’t want to lose my job. I couldn’t. I had a young family back in those days.”
Norm’s face slumped, and he fell silent. Sully didn’t have to ask to guess Norm’s family must have left him in the aftermath of Tim’s death. Whether because his wife had enough of his out-of-control drinking or because she knew something about his role in the incident, Sully didn’t know. It didn’t much matter now anyway.
Just one other question mattered. “If you were worried about your job, why drink on the night of the incident?”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Norm said. “But I’d gone through the scenario in my brain over and over, what was going to happen. It was driving me mad. I meant to have one or two, enough to give me the nerve to go through with it. But as usual, things got out of control pretty damn fast.”
“And Pete?”
“Couldn’t get him to drink with me, so I got him to guzzle a bunch of pop instead right before we left. I know my own bladder, and if I have something to drink before leaving, I usually have to take a leak before the Edge Creek point. Figured on Pete being the same, and I was right.”
The phone in Sully’s pocket had gone silent. He hoped it was because Dez and Lachlan were listening and not because it had gone dead. Tim was still hovering there, just feet away, and in Sully’s experience, ghosts had a habit of draining batteries.
Sully could think of nothing more to ask of Norm, save one thing. “You need to say all of this to the police.”
Norm stared at Sull
y. Then his eyes narrowed. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because Tim deserves justice. His family deserves justice.”
“If I come forward, I’ll go to jail.”
“You’ve basically been living in one of your own making, anyway,” Sully said. “You’ve been living with the weight of this all these years. Telling the truth, doing something good for Tim and his family, that would be like a weight off.”
“Bullshit. You really believe things would be better for them if they knew what happened?”
“Yeah, I do. Right now, they think he died by suicide. At least they’d know he didn’t make the choice to leave them.”
“Suicide’s not a choice. Not really. Trust me, I’ve come close more than once.”
“You know what I mean. Anyway, maybe you could cut a deal with the prosecutor’s office. Maybe they’d let you walk if you testify against Carson.”
Norm didn’t have a chance to answer before a sound at the door drew their attention. Norm spun, and Sully looked to see Carson standing there, gun in hand. He was bleeding from the mouth and his left eye was swollen, but there was nothing weak in the grip he had on the weapon he now trained on Norm.
“I thought you knew what was on the line, Norm,” Carson said. “Now you’ve left me no choice but to clean up the mess.”
A shot rang out without further warning. Something wet splattered against the side of Sully’s face. His eyes went to Norm in time to see the man crumple to the ground. The side of his head had opened, and blood and other bodily matter seeped out of the wound onto the lunchroom’s white floor.
Norm was dead, no question. The injury said plenty all on its own, but Sully had the added evidence in the form of two Norms—one lying there and the other standing, staring not at his own body but at Tim.
Sully watched the two men hovering there, staring at one another, before he was reminded he had some serious problems of his own. One of the reminders came from his own pocket, where he could just make out, around the ringing in his ears from the gunshot, the sound of his own name being shouted by Dez.
Sully’s returned his attention to Carson. He hadn’t moved, save to redirect his aim at Sully. His expression was wild—eyes wide and manic, teeth bared between lips pulled back in a grimace.
