Chapter 18

Try as I might, I wasn’t able to force myself to stay awake long enough to give Jacob the reassurance he deserved. I was running on a sleep deficit of gigantic proportions. And when it was time to head off for our next round at the FPMP, not only was he the first out of bed, but he got the coffee brewing while I was still knuckling sleep out of my eyes. I’d like to think that meant I was approaching my workday well-rested, but frankly, I wasn’t much fresher than when I’d gone to bed.

For once, I beat Carl and Darla to the office. But since I was still unclear on my password, I couldn’t fire up my computer. And that big touchscreen? I didn’t even know how to turn it on. Still, I had to do something, and the big stack of textbooks Carl had been digitizing was the only thing I could figure out how to access. I thumbed through one after another, looking for what, I didn’t know. One eventually caught my eye: a brown, cloth-bound book stamped with the title Case Studies.

Boring? Only on the surface. Maybe it was like the aversion-whammy on the FPMP parking lot entrance—something to deflect the attention of the casual observer—or maybe it was just a poor choice of titles. Once I got into it, though, I was fascinated.

Woman in Jacksonville burns her own house down, claims she had to get rid of the old busybody who died there twenty years before.

Top probate attorney admits finding directions to wills and insurance policies and all kinds of secret stashes scrawled on his desk blotter when he wakes up from his frequent benders.

Owner of a cadaver dog admits the animal’s as dumb as a box of rocks, and reveals he’s the one who’s been leading authorities to the bodies.

My officemates arrived sometime while my nose was in the book. I was thoroughly engrossed when a subtle electronic tone sounded and brought me back to present-day reality. I figured it was the inscrutable device in my pocket, but Carl pulled out his cell and went to take the call outside before I did anything embarrassing, like trying to answer a phone that wasn’t even ringing. Darla wouldn’t have noticed anyway. She was hard at work graphing the movements of the mediums in the haunted office and paying no attention to either of us.

I looked back at the book in my hand and realized…maybe we were barking up the wrong tree. All the mediums in the narrative had one thing in common: they were dealing with sentient ghosts, not repeaters. The office we were using as our obstacle course wasn’t really haunted. Yes, there was some residue there. But what if it was too subtle to be sensed by lower level mediums? Maybe it would take an actual ghost to sort everyone out.

“What was the first sentient ghost you encountered?” I said, breaking the silence in the room.

Darla turned and leveled me a look of cool assessment. “Why?”

“Just working on a theory.”

“I don’t actually have a memory of it. I was just a baby.”

“Fine. If you don’t remember—”

I thought she resented the intrusion, so it surprised me when she went on. “I was a vocal toddler. My parents always figured I liked to babble. And then one day a kung fu movie was playing in the background, and I was having the time of my life chatting with the ninjas. In Cantonese. Turned out our house was built on a Nineteenth Century railroad camp, and I hadn’t been talking to myself all that time after all.”

“Wow. Do you still…?”

“Not really. A word here or there. What about you? What was your first?”

The thing that got me committed my senior year of high school was the hideous pile-up with the bloody, wailing victims, but it seemed like my ghost cherry had been popped well before then. The clown in the movie theater? That was the earliest one I could think of. And yet there was something nagging at the edge of my awareness that insisted the clown ghost wasn’t my very first, either. But to say my memory was shoddy was being generous; whole portions of my life are buried deeper than the denizens of Graceland.

I was on the edge of grasping some elusive memory when everything lit up, from the multiline phones on both Carl’s desk and mine, to the giant touchscreen on the wall—which filled itself with the face of Laura Kim, looking down at us as if she was talking into her watch. “Vic, are you there?”

“I am.”

“I need you in the South Stairwell, first floor, right now.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “South Stairwell, so that’s, um,…”

Darla said, “I know where it is.”

“And hurry,” Laura told us.

“Quickest way is through the annex hall,” Darla said. I half-expected her to add a dig about how it wasn’t very surprising I had no idea where I was since I apparently knew nothing about anything—but whatever was going down, it was big enough to swing the focus off my ineptitude, at least for the time being. We hurried over to the South Stairwell, but when we reached the door, we discovered a line of very grim-looking agents blocking our way. No doubt they were all regular people, if you encountered them in their regular lives. They might enjoy baseball, for instance, or kung fu movies. Here, though, in this capacity, they formed an impenetrable wall of highly trained muscle.

But then one of them noticed me and said, “Agent Bayne?” And I saw the smallest glint of awe in his eyes. Or maybe fear. Whichever it was, I suppose the important part was that they let us through.

I wasn’t shocked to find a body at the bottom of the stairwell, though I was somewhat surprised to realize I knew her. “That’s one of Andy Parsons’ co-workers,” I said.

“Colleen Frank.” I thought it was Darla speaking, initially. Then I realized Darla was standing in front of me. And I hadn’t seen her lips move.

I turned and saw Colleen’s ghost standing on the stairs between the first and second floor, hands on railing, with a blob of blood and hair, and probably brain matter, clinging to the rail between her hands. “I was hoping you’d get here before I had to go.” 

“You don’t have to take off right away.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s like gravity. It’s like sleeping. It’s like eating another cookie when you swore you’d stop at two. Maybe you can try forcing yourself to stay put, but eventually, you’ll get sucked in.”

I realized, once she said that, if I really thought about it, I could feel the hint of a tug. And when I opened myself to the white light, it was a definite pull. I did my best to get centered so I didn’t drift toward the pull myself. “So what can you tell me?”

“I was pushed.”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. “Any idea who?”

“No, they were behind me. But it was deliberate. I know that for sure.”

“Think,” I said. “Hard. Any unusual gait? Any cologne, any shadows cast?”

“No, nothing.”

“Any detail might turn out to be important, even something you don’t think is significant. If there’s anything at all you can remember, you really need to tell me.”

She rolled her ghostly eyes. “If there were any way to ID them, don’t you think I would have mentioned it? I’m a federal agent, not an IHOP waitress. Swear to God, so sick of men treating me like I’m oblivious. So if you’re done mansplaining what I should have looked at as I was hurtling to my death—”

Murder victims aren’t much use when they’re defensive. Which would make the next question even harder. “Any reason someone would have for killing you?”

“Again…if I knew, don’t you think I would tell you?” She made a wrap-it-up type gesture. “Let’s get this show on the road. I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Are you so sure there’s no motive? Like Andy Parsons?”

“What about Andy?

“Maybe he told you something he shouldn’t have—maybe one of your colleagues was worried you’d talk.”

“About what? The only thing Andy ever told me was how he planned to stack the team in his fantasy baseball league.”

“Nothing about a conspiracy?”

“Hello—I think I’d remember if he said something I actually found interesting.”

“So you know nothing about an incriminating document. One that came from your printer.”

She held up her hands. “I’ve been on assignment since November at the public library. The only printers I deal with are the ones in the computer lab—the one where all the winos go to sleep and watch porn.”

“If that document wasn’t yours, then whose was it? Only four of you shared that device, and one’s already dead.”

“I have no idea. Whoever it belonged to, they didn’t confide in me. Sorry, guy. Guess you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

And with that, she was gone.

When her presence dissipated, and along with it the seductive pull of the veil, I became aware that the spreading pool of blood was now touching my shoe. And that Darla was staring at me, hard.

I exhaled.

Quietly, she said, “I always thought you were faking.”

I let out a mirthless laugh. She looked away and crossed her arms. I said, “I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to fake the shit I see.”

“I know, right?”

Imagine that, me and Dead Darla, having a moment over the cooling corpse of a fellow agent. But before I could figure out how to awkwardly extricate myself without ruining our fragile truce, Darla’s phone buzzed. She answered, rolled her eyes, then put it in my hand. Laura Kim. “Update me, Vic. What’s going on?”

“She didn’t know anything.”

“Her spirit is there? Okay, what do you need? Salt, Florida Water?”

“None of that. She’s moved along.”

“You saw her spirit. You need to clean up that stairwell before it becomes permanent.” She held her hand over the receiver and called, “Patrick? Arrange to have the stairwell locks deactivated. Actually, call a mason, we’ll brick it off.”

“Laura, take a breath,” I said. “It’s not haunted.”

“You’re sure about that? Positive?”

“Totally. And Agent Davis will back me up on that, too.” I looked to Darla and she nodded. “Call in your CSI team. Maybe there’s some kind of evidence in here. But don’t lose any sleep over her ghost. It’s gone and it’s not coming back.”