Between the Living and the Dead (2 page)

“And a slime blower,” Rhodes said. “Can't forget the slime blower.”

“That's not exactly what I have,” Benton said.

“Next you'll tell us you don't have clients who look like that Sigourney Weaver did thirty years ago,” Hack said.

“You seen her lately?” Lawton asked. “Looks just the same. I think she's some kind of secret servant to Gozer the Gozerian her ownself.”

“If Seepy got hired by somebody looked like that, he'd be in trouble with Deputy Grady, anyway,” Hack said. “Best to stick to clients that look like me and you.”

“Getting back to the equipment,” Benton said.

“Yeah,” Lawton said. “If you ain't got ecto-goggles, what do you have?”

“Well,” Benton said, “to start with I have a couple of really good flashlights.”

“Heck, ever'body has a flashlight,” Hack said. “What else?”

“I have a digital recorder, the thermal scanner, the motion sensor, and the EMF meter.”

“Hold on,” Hack said. “What's that last one again?”

“The EMF meter,” Benton told him. “It detects electromagnetic fields.”

“Ghosts are magnetic?”

“It's not the same thing,” Benton said. “It's complicated, but let's just say that there are electromagnetic fields all around us. The presence of a ghost can disturb the field. The EMF meter I have is a combination meter and thermometer, since ghosts can cause a sudden temperature drop in a room or a building.”

“Kinda like the PKE meter the Ghostbusters had,” Lawton said.

“A little,” Benton said. “If there are ghosts around, they might register on it some way or another.”

Rhodes resisted the temptation to say there was no such thing as ghosts. It seemed obvious to him, but it was equally obvious that Benton was serious about all this.

“We don't want to disturb the customers back in the cellblock,” Rhodes said, “and I really don't want to get that ghost rumor started again. I think we'll take a pass on the ghost hunt.”

“You've always been a killjoy,” Hack said.

Rhodes nodded. “True, but somebody has to be the voice of reason. That's why they pay me the big bucks.”

“You're not a believer, are you,” Benton said.

“He's hardheaded, all right,” Hack said.

“I used to be,” Benton said, “until I started reading Stuart Hameroff. He's a professor at Arizona State, and he uses quantum physics to explain that life after death might be possible.”

“Let me guess,” Rhodes said. “It's complicated.”

“Not really,” Benton said. “The idea is that there are structures called microtubules in our brain cells and that our consciousness—”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said, holding up a hand to stop the flow of words.

“Microtubules?” Lawton said.

“That's right,” Benton said. “You see—”

“Never mind,” Lawton said. “I need to stick to simple stuff, like Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Him, I can understand.”

“Figures,” Hack said. “Him bein' in a comic book and all. That's about your speed.”

“I guess you know all about microtubes and such,” Lawton said.

“Microtubules,” Hack said.

“Whatever. I guess you know all about 'em.”

“More'n some people I could name. Know as much about Casper as you do, too.”

“Bet you can't sing the theme song.”

“How much?”

“Can't bet money.” Lawton indicated Rhodes. “It's illegal, and the sheriff's sittin' right there. Anyway, I'd win.”

“Not a chance,” Hack said, and he launched into an off-key rendition of the theme song from the cartoons. After a couple of bars, Lawton joined in.

Rhodes looked at Benton. “See what you've done?”

Benton stood up. “Time for me to make my exit.”

“Me, too,” Rhodes said. “I could use a good night's sleep.”

“I hope you get it,” Benton said, “and that you don't have that theme song stuck in your head. Like I do, now.”

*   *   *

Rhodes was well into his good night's sleep when the phone beside the bed started to ring.

“Don't answer it,” Rhodes's wife, Ivy, said, her voice thick with sleep.

“I have to,” Rhodes said, turning on the light on the nightstand. “It might be an emergency.”

Ivy rolled over onto her back and put her arm over her eyes. “It's always an emergency.”

Rhodes grinned and answered the phone. It was Hack, calling from the jail.

“Got a little problem,” Hack said. “Deputy Grady can use some backup.”

Ruth Grady was sensible and level-headed. If she said she needed backup, she had a good reason.

“Who else is on duty?” Rhodes asked.

“Don't matter,” Hack said. “They're all too far off. This is on the north side of town, where Ruth was patrollin'.”

Rhodes sighed. “What's the problem?”

“You ain't gonna believe it,” Hack said.

“Just tell me,” Rhodes said.

“You don't put much stock in coincidences.”

“Just tell me,” Rhodes said again.

“Much less the other thing,” Hack said.

“Hack,” Rhodes said. “It's late, and I was asleep. Now tell me what the problem is.”

“Well,” Hack said, “It seems like there's somethin' goin' on at the haunted house.”

 

Chapter 2

Rhodes held the phone away from his ear and looked at it. Ruth Grady was dating Seepy Benton. Rhodes hoped there was no connection between this call and Seepy's new enterprise. He put it back to his ear and said, “Does this have anything to do with Seepy Benton?”

“Not as far as I know,” Hack said, “but then I don't know very far.”

Rhodes sighed and said he'd look into it. He hung up the phone and got dressed as quickly and as quietly as he could, but Yancey, the little Pomeranian, woke up and came into the bathroom to see what was going on. The dog was too sleepy even to make a single yip, and because he wasn't the one who had to go check out a haunted house, he just watched Rhodes for a couple of seconds, then went back into the spare bedroom to get cozy in his doggy bed.

The two cats, Sam and Jerry, were a bit more curious, but not much. Rhodes had thought cats were nocturnal animals, but as far as he could tell, Sam and Jerry enjoyed sleeping just as much at night as they did during the day, and during the day they really enjoyed it. Or appeared to, since that was about all they did.

Sam was solid black, and Jerry was black and white. They purred and rubbed against Rhodes's legs when he went into the kitchen to get himself a drink of water from the refrigerator before leaving. They didn't purr and rub for long, however. They'd lost interest in him and lain back down on the floor by the time Rhodes put his empty water glass on the counter. They were both asleep by the refrigerator, and it was as if he'd never been there.

Rhodes got his Kel-Tec PF-9 and ankle holster out of the gun safe in the room where Yancey was sleeping. Yancey didn't bother to wake up again. The PF-9 was a lightweight pistol with a polymer body that carried seven 9 mm cartridges. Rhodes figured it would provide enough firepower to take down any ghosts he was likely to encounter.

Rhodes left the house by the front door. He didn't want to go through the back and wake up Speedo, who might start barking and arouse the neighbors, who wouldn't be pleased.

The county car was in the driveway. Rhodes got in and backed into the street. Turning north, he saw heavy black clouds banked in the sky, blocking the stars. A late-spring norther was on the way, and he hoped it would bring some rain. It seemed as if it hardly ever rained anymore.

A flash of lightning ran down the clouds, and a few seconds later Rhodes heard a dim rumble of thunder. Just the right kind of weather for investigating strange doings at a haunted house.

Rhodes supposed that nearly every small town had a haunted house. There was one in the nearby town of Obert, and Rhodes had experienced a little trouble there a few years back. Not from ghosts, however, and he wasn't expecting to run into any ghosts tonight, either. Or this morning. The clock on the dashboard said it was a little after midnight.

Clearview's haunted house was only a couple of blocks from the local cemetery, which was probably one reason it was considered to be the home of ghosts. Another reason was that it had been abandoned for forty years or more. It had belonged to a high school teacher named Ralph Moore, who had died one evening of a sudden heart attack. Because he'd died on the weekend and had few friends, his body hadn't been discovered until he failed to show up for school on Monday morning. A good many rumors had circulated afterward, all of them gruesome and all of them untrue, as far as Rhodes knew. One story said that the teacher hadn't had a heart attack but that he'd been killed and mutilated with an ax. Another said that his pet dog had eaten part of his body to avoid starvation.

The stories were magnified in some cases because Moore had died on a Halloween weekend, and trick-or-treaters had horrified each other for years afterward with tales of how they'd stood on Moore's front porch ringing the doorbell while the dog had been munching on his body parts inside the house.

Another thing that added spice to the stories was the fact that Moore was supposedly an unpleasant character. In an era when teachers felt free to deal out corporal punishment, Moore, at least according to rumors, had dealt out more than his share and enjoyed doing it. He'd been known to sit on his porch with a pellet gun and shoot at dogs and cats that wandered into his yard. And even at the occasional youngster who happened by.

There were other stories, but Rhodes didn't remember them. Once, not long after he'd first been elected sheriff, he'd looked into the musty old reports on Moore's death, just out of curiosity. There hadn't been much of an investigation, but the sheriff at the time hadn't thought there needed to be one. As it happened, Moore didn't even have a pet dog. He had a small aquarium with a few fish, but they hadn't escaped to feed on him. He hadn't been mutilated, either. The only marks on the body were a few bruises that had probably resulted from Moore's having fallen when he had the heart attack.

Not that anybody would believe the facts. The rumors were a lot more fun.

As for the stories about his pellet gun and his doling out of spankings at school, no record of those things remained.

Moore's only kin had lived in some other state. Rhodes couldn't remember which one. Colorado, maybe. Or Wyoming. Somewhere out west, anyway. They hadn't wanted the house, but they hadn't wanted to sell it, either. They'd never come to see it or remove any of Moore's things. The half block of property it sat on had little value to them or to anyone, but as far as Rhodes knew someone was still paying the taxes on it to keep it from being sold at auction on the courthouse steps. So the old house had stood there, surrounded by its wrought-iron fence, deserted, while people speculated about it and told stories of strange noises and spectral faces at the windows or lights moving past them.

Over the years the stories had become fewer and less often told, until now the house just crumbled away on a lot that was so overgrown with trees and weeds that most people who drove past it probably didn't give it a glance. Some of them might not even have known the house was there, but every now and then someone would notice something amiss, and the sheriff's office would get a call.

Like the one tonight. Hack hadn't been too clear about what the problem was, and Rhodes wasn't sure whether that was because of Hack's typical behavior or because Ruth Grady hadn't known exactly what it was and hadn't been able to tell him. “Disturbance” was all the information Rhodes had been able to get out of Hack. Rhodes was a little suspicious because of Ruth's involvement with Seepy Benton, and the old Moore house was clearly the kind of place that Benton would like to prowl through in his new capacity as a paranormal investigator. If there was anywhere in Clearview that was likely to have a few ghosts, the Moore house was the place.

Rhodes saw Ruth's county car from several blocks away. It was parked at the curb in front of the Moore house, its light bar flashing. Rhodes pulled to a stop behind it, turned on his own light bar, and got out.

The house sat well back from the street. The lot took up most of the block, so no other houses were very close. Across the street was the city water tower, and it had the entire block to itself. The other houses Rhodes could see down the street were all dark. The people inside were getting a good night's sleep.

Rhodes saw the entrance to the cemetery a couple of blocks away. He'd had an adventure or two there, but he hoped that wouldn't be the case this time.

Although the thick clouds were still some distance away, a few drops of rain hit Rhodes in the face. Ruth Grady got out of her car and met him. She was short and stocky, and she was wearing a hat. This was one of the times Rhodes wished that he didn't look so silly in a hat. It would at least keep the rain out of his face. It would also cover up the spot on the back of his head where his hair had thinned, but that didn't matter so much in the rain.

Ruth held a big tactical LED flashlight in one hand, but she hadn't turned it on.

“What do we have here?” Rhodes asked her.

“I'm not sure,” Ruth said. “Somebody who was driving by called it in to Hack. The number was blocked, so he doesn't know who it was. The caller said there were flashing lights in the house, and some gunshots.”

“Hack said there was a disturbance,” Rhodes told her.

“People get disturbed by gunshots.”

Lightning lit up the sky to the north and gave the clouds a momentary glow.

“People are suggestible, too,” Rhodes said. “Haunted house, thunder, lightning reflecting off the window glass.”