Beyond (18 page)

While Lexi was finding that stuff, I used Dad’s
computer in his home office to sneak a peek into the Edgewood Police Department’s database. Not the first time I’ve gone snooping. There’s no hacking required because I’ve seen him log in before, so I know his password is programmed into one of the function keys.

Starks’s criminal background check turned up clean. No history of any charges or arrests. Which just means he’s a real pro, knows how to hide what he is.

It’s after midnight and my vision’s going fuzzy from staring at the screen so long. Lexi’s still bright-eyed.

“You gotta see this,” she says.

I get up from the bed, stretching. “Whatcha got?”

“It’s a website for kids, linked up with the National Parks site. Looks like Garrett Starks runs it. He calls himself Ranger G.”

I pull up a chair.

“See where it says you can book field trips to the station?” Lexi points. “That’s a perfect way to shop for fresh victims. He even does school visits.”

“What’s that there?” I point to a video link that says
Come See Ranger G and the Amazing Blackjack
. “Click on it.”

The picture that comes up stops me cold. Starks is in uniform, smiling, his dark eyes shining. A bird is perched on his outstretched hand. A big black crow.

“Is that the bird you saw?” Lexi asks.

“That’s it. Run the video.”

She clicks and they come to life.

“Meet Blackjack the crow,” Starks says, his cheerful voice making me cringe. “His bird brain may be only the size of a grape, but he can do some amazing tricks.”

Starks holds his left hand out with the crow balancing on his index finger. Then he makes his other hand into a pretend gun.

“This is a stickup,” he tells Blackjack. “Get your wings in the air.”

The crow stretches its wings out. Starks points his finger-gun and makes like he’s pulling the trigger.

“Bang!”

Blackjack falls backward with a screaming squawk, still clinging to Starks’s index finger, and ends up hanging from it upside down. “Now you’re dead,” Starks says. Then he makes a flipping motion with his left hand and the crow flaps upright, back on top of the ranger’s hand again. “And now you’re not.”

The image freezes there with Starks and Blackjack staring at each other. A message pops up on the screen:
Click here for more tricks
.

“He uses that bird,” Lexi says, “to lure the kids in. That’s classic abductor strategy. You know, the whole ‘Can you help me find my puppy?’ or ‘You want to pet the bunny?’ kind of thing.”

I feel disgusted, seeing him in action, hearing the sound of his voice. “That makes me nauseous.”

“What do we do now?” she asks. “I mean, you can’t actually tell anyone how you know he’s the killer. Maybe if they search his stuff they’ll find something. These psychos like to keep souvenirs, don’t they?”

“You can’t get a search warrant without a solid reason. Bad dreams and near-death visions don’t count.”

“So what, then?” Lexi says.

“Don’t know.” I shake my head. “But if we could find that trappers’ hut, we might have something. That’s where it all happened, where Leo died. Any luck tracking one of those down?”

“I actually did find a couple of them online, but they don’t look promising.” Lexi clears the image of Starks off the screen and brings up a photo. A sunny shot of a house with horns, looking bright and well kept. “This one was turned into a pioneer tourist place decades ago, with a little gift shop and everything. Not exactly a house of horrors.” A new picture pops up. “Here’s the other hut. Or what’s left of it.” This one’s falling apart, with a collapsed roof and the twin “horn” chimneys tilted over. The hut is overgrown with vegetation; it looks like the forest is reclaiming its turf. “It’s obviously been in ruins for a long, long time.”

I let out a deep sigh. “Maybe we could check with the historical society over at town hall. They keep track of landmarks and old stuff, right?”

“Worth a try.”

After taking a break and raiding the kitchen, we settle in with corn chips and popcorn to watch the movie Lexi made by editing all the bits and pieces of TV coverage together, telling the tragic story of Leo Gage. From home movies of his childhood through his disappearance, the long investigation and the discovery of his remains.

This is how Lexi makes sense of things, by turning them into movies. The same way she’s always editing and reediting all the old home movies her father shot, splicing them together so many different ways, trying to find
where and why everything broke down. She’s still working on the final cut of that.

We come to some footage from a news show that covers cold cases. I nibble popcorn and try to focus, looking for any small hint or clue that might help. But I’m so burned out. Maybe Lexi can go sleepless, but I’m ready to crash.

“Lexi, what do you say we—”

My voice dies, and I go stiff as something snakes up my spine.

“What’s wrong?” Lexi says.

I turn to look behind me. Nothing. But I know this feeling.

“He’s here.”

“You sure?”

I nod, breathing faster now. Lexi grabs my hands.

“Hey, Jane. Look at me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” I focus on her eyes, desperate to believe her. “I’ve got an idea. Come with me.”

She pulls me up and takes me over to my dresser, letting go so she can open the drawers.

“Here, put these on.”

“What?” I stare at the pair of thick socks she’s holding out. “Why?”

“On your hands. Slip them on. Just do it!”

I give up asking why and go with it. The long winter socks reach nearly to my elbows.

“Good,” she says. “Now, do you have any rubber bands, or something?”

“Um, I guess. Check the desk.”

Lexi goes through the top drawer. “Hey, even better.” She pulls out a roll of duct tape.

I can see where she’s headed now. “You gotta be kidding me.”

But she isn’t. I hold out my arms to her.

“Okay. Do it.”

Two minutes later I’m back in the chair, feeling a little calmer. The socks are taped up to my skin, just below the elbows. Can’t hurt myself now. Or take off my ring. Can’t do anything.

“What’s next?” I ask. “A straitjacket?”

She tries to smile. “He still here?”

I nod. His touch is writhing between my shoulder blades.

The movie keeps playing, with the sound on low.

“How about if we watch something else?” she says. “To distract you, maybe.”

I nod, and she reaches over to kill the video.

On the screen, Leo’s mother is being interviewed. Just as she starts talking, a little jolt runs through me, making me gasp.

“You okay?” Lexi asks.

The mother’s voice hits me with a wave of sadness. A deep aching. A hurt that doesn’t belong to me, coming from my ghost. I can sense Leo pulling back from me.

“Wait!” I stop Lexi from ending the movie.

“Why? What’s going on?”

I get an idea. “Turn up the volume.”

She does, and we can hear the mother’s voice clearly, breaking into sobs now as she talks about her lost son.

My trembling melts away.

“He can’t take it. Seeing her. Hearing her.”

As his mother’s crying fills the room, I feel him leaving. Taking the pain with him. The shared emotions fade to nothing.

“He’s gone. That was too much for him.”

“Hang in there,” Lexi says, rubbing my back, and the warmth of her hand wipes away the leftover shivers.

We let the footage run for a while longer, till I’m sure he’ll stay gone.

After that Lexi plays some cartoons, desperately trying to lighten the mood.

Later, when I’m falling off my chair, exhausted, Lexi tells me to go to bed.

“I’m here,” she says. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

So I get under the sheets, dozing off with socks on my hands and Lexi watching over me.

This is my last night. Surgery tomorrow.

Lexi’s taking her bodyguarding seriously, not letting me out of her sight, and ready to step in if my ghost tries to make me hurt myself. I’m wearing my magic ring for extra tracking protection. My hands are unbound and sock-free for now.

Last night while I was sleeping, Lexi was busy reworking the old TV clips of Leo’s mother into a five-minute segment we can use to scare him off if he comes back.

“That’s brilliant,” I told her as she peeled the duct tape off my arms this morning.

“I know. Genius never sleeps.”

We spent my last day out around town. The rain held off, and we went over to Sunset Beach, watching the windsurfers in their wetsuits ride the frigid waves. Seeing Lexi film them gave me an idea.

I asked to borrow her camera and a spare disc.

“So I can record a message for my mom and dad. Just in case something goes wrong. You know, in the surgery.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong, Jane.”

“They’ll be digging in my brain. I could end up a vegetable.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Yeah, and I’m just saying quit it. You’re gonna be fine.”

So I shut up. She’s scared too, and covering it up with denial. She wanted to do the filming for me—Lexi the director—but I said I needed to do it alone.

“It’ll be hard enough without an audience.”

Lexi gave me some space, wandering off down the beach.

I sat down on a log in the sand, with the wind blowing my hair around and the sound of surf in the background.

Making the message was really hard. I thought I could do it in one take, but then I started choking up and tearing up, with my voice breaking and my nose running—a total mess. So I kept having to go back and tape over.

I ended up recording a worst-case-scenario
goodbye
kind of thing for Mom and Dad. That was tough stuff. Hope they never have to see it.

I gave the disc to Lexi for safekeeping. For just in case.

Anyway, right now it’s getting late. We’re back in my room, with the music on and a double feature of our favorite comedies ready to roll on my computer. I’m under orders from Mom and Lexi to rest and relax.

Really, there’s nothing more I can do about Leo and Starks right now. Me and Lexi can figure out our next move when I’m better. When my ghost problem is hopefully put back to sleep.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror on my closet door, I’m checking out how I’m going to look after the operation.

I hate my frizzy hair, which never does what I want. But I’m going to miss it. Tomorrow it’s all coming off. And I just know
bald
ain’t gonna be a good look for me.

Lexi watches as I squeeze my head into one of Mom’s tight swimming caps, tucking my hair out of sight.

“That’s scary,” I say.

“It’s not so bad,” Lexi lies.

With nothing to soften my face, my big eyes look huge. I mean, I already look like somebody just set off a firecracker next to me, but now they’re cartoon big. And my hair usually keeps these satellite-dish ears hidden.

“I’m going to look like an alien.”

“So we’ll go shopping for wigs. Get you a blond Afro, maybe. Or some dreadlocks.”

“I can’t get into the wig thing. I’d feel like there was a furry animal sitting on top of my head.”

“How about a beret, then? Or a cowboy hat?” Lexi says, but I shake my head. “I know, a sombrero?”

I roll my eyes, pulling the cap off to free my mane again.

Lexi grabs another piece of pizza from the box on my desk. Triple cheese. Smells good, but I’m not supposed to eat anything this close to surgery. Not real hungry anyway.

As she stuffs her face, Lexi picks up one of my romance novels.
Stormheart
. The cover shows the pirate queen Felicia on the deck of her ship, with a sword in
her hand and a gleam of lust in her eyes. At the tip of her blade stands her enemy and future lover, Damon.

Lexi flips it open and reads, “ ‘Felicia’s auburn hair cascaded over her dewy bosom.’ ”

I grab it away.

“Dewy,”
Lexi snorts. “Seriously, you should write one of those. You could do better than that.”

I shake my head. “I’ve tried. But me writing about romance is like … like a blind girl describing colors she’s never seen.”

Lexi swallows a mouthful of pizza. “Don’t get all sad and
dewy
-eyed on me. You ready for a movie?”

I put
Stormheart
in my closet love library. “Go ahead and cue one up. I’ll be right back.”

I’m out in the hall when I realize she’s following me.

“I’m just going to the bathroom, Lexi. That’s kind of a solo act.”

“Okay. But let me check it out first. Make sure there’s nothing potentially dangerous.”

I can hear Mom downstairs in the kitchen, so I lower my voice.

“What am I going to do, scrub myself to death?”

“You never know. Your shadow’s pretty sneaky. Right now you really are your own worst enemy.”

Can’t argue with that. “I guess you’re right. After you, then.”

She leads the way and does a quick check of the medicine cabinet and the cupboard under the sink, confiscating scissors and the hair dryer.

“What, am I going to blow-dry my brains out?”

“Electrocution. You could fill up the tub and toss it in. Or stand in the toilet with it plugged in and drop it.”