The Death Dealer (12 page)

He hesitated. “You know, you had some kind of strange dream last night, too,” he told her.

“I did?”

He nodded.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“That’s good,” he told her, thinking of the way she’d been sitting bolt upright, as if she were looking at something, watching someone.

Great. They should both head straight to therapy.

Except that she didn’t know that there was anything wrong. She didn’t remember what she’d been dreaming. She didn’t know…

That he heard dead people speak.

“Joe, are you sure you’re all right?” she asked, sounding anxious. “I don’t mean to pressure you. I’m awfully glad you’re with me, but—”

“Shh, I’m fine,” he assured her.

“Joe,” she said. “Joe…you kept saying…”

“Saying what?”

“‘No, don’t die. You can’t die.’”

He winced. Which would be worse? Lying and telling her that he had been dreaming about Leslie, or admitting that he was dreaming about someone murdering her?

“I know what you’re thinking, but I wasn’t dreaming about Leslie,” he said softly.

She swallowed, looking at him, her eyes so caring, so concerned.

“Joe, you were saying something else, too.”

“What?”

“‘I don’t talk to the dead. I don’t.’”

“Wow, I’m having some major-league nightmares, huh?” he asked lightly.

“Joe, have you been having these dreams for a long time?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Is it…me?” she asked, sounding a little ill.

“Good Lord, no!” he protested.

“I would never want to hurt you, Joe,” she said.

“It’s exactly the opposite,” he told her. “I would never hurt
you.
I would kill someone before I let them hurt you in any way.”

She touched his face in that special way of hers. He felt as if he were melting.

“Joe,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here with me. I’ve wanted you here for…for a while, I admit.”

“You are a dream, do you understand?” he asked passionately. “You are the best dream, and never a nightmare,” he told her.

She seemed uncertain for a moment. Then she offered him a dry half smile. “I know I have to be careful because of that big head of yours, but…you really are incredible.”

“Aw, shucks, ma’am.”

He ran a hand down the length of her back. Sleek. Arousing. Then he turned toward her. Kissed her.

Made love to her.

They slept again, and he had no more dreams that night.

There was something wrong with Joe. She was sure of it, no matter how hard he tried to deny it.

Over coffee the next morning, Genevieve sat in her den at her desk and mulled over the fact that something was seriously troubling him.

Something?

Oh, yeah. Something.

“I don’t talk to dead people. I don’t.”

She started to pick up the phone, hesitated, then set the receiver down again.

She really was worried.

Joe cared about her, she was certain. He was still protective, of course, but there was more to it than that. He made love to her with undeniable passion. He teased her, and when she teased him back, he responded with heartfelt laughter.

But he was having terrible nightmares. The kind that made him tense up like a coiled rattler in the middle of the night. The kind that seemed to grip him in a brutal vise.

And he hadn’t been having them for long. No, only since he’d been sleeping with her.

That certainly didn’t bode well for a lasting relationship.

She opened a desk drawer that she had closed a long time ago and hadn’t opened since. It contained the newspaper articles from when she had been kidnapped.

And rescued.

There, in one of the pictures, was a man named Adam Harrison. He had come because he had been a friend of Leslie’s. And Leslie had been a psychic. A real psychic.

She remembered Adam and his firm, Harrison Investigations, from that difficult time. Soft-spoken, reassuring and kind, he had never made her feel fragile, as if people had to walk on eggshells and whisper around her. Her mother also knew Adam, but differently. He, too, had been born wealthy, and they had met in the course of their various philanthropies.

She logged on to the Internet and started searching. She found a number of articles about bizarre events that came to an end when Harrison Investigations got involved. There were even hints that the government had called in the company on occasion.

She found the official Web page for Harrison Investigations, but it made no claims for the group’s ability to communicate with the occult. In fact, it made no claims at all.

It was simply a page with a “contact us” form.

She hesitated. Then she began to type in who she was…

And what was happening to Joe in his sleep.

Joe had made a lunch date with Larry Levine. They met at a sandwich shop within sight of St. Paul’s.

“I read your article on the service this morning,” Joe told Larry.

Larry smiled, deeply pleased. “It was good, huh?” he asked.

“Excellent. A fine tribute,” Joe said.

“Have you found anything out? Is there anything I can help you with?” Larry asked him anxiously.

“That day…the day he died, you were working, right?”

“Yeah, I was in the newspaper office all day.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

All of a sudden, Larry didn’t appear to be so eager to help. “Because I’m not rich, and I have to work my ass off to make a living.”

Joe grinned without humor. “You work every day of the week, then?”

“If I need to,” Larry said grimly. “I’m always looking for a hot story. That’s what a reporter does.”

“What about a book? Have you ever wanted to write a book yourself? Like the kind of tribute to Poe and his life that Thorne wrote?”

Larry hesitated, staring at him. He reached for the sugar and stirred some into his coffee. “I was the one who suggested to Thorne that he write the book, using a lot of the information we’d discussed at our meetings. You’ve got to understand. We all have real lives—we’re not totally focused on the memory of a doomed poet. But Poe is an arresting subject. He was brilliant, but also sad. His own worst enemy. And did you know that the first reading of ‘The Raven’ was in Greenwich Village? Anyway…sure, one day I’d like to write a book, maybe about Poe, maybe not. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Thorne wrote a damn good biography of the man. I envied him his talent, sure. But I was at work the entire afternoon he was killed. I was going to attend the same dinner, and that’s why I was at work. I’d screwed around with some friends in from Buffalo on Friday, when I should have been finishing up a few routine articles, so I worked Saturday, instead. And you can check it out.”

Larry certainly sounded sincere.

“What’s your take on the other folks on the board?” Joe asked him.

Larry laughed. “They’re supposed to be my friends, but…you want it honestly?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s see. Lila’s place in society and her inheritance allow her to be a blowhard. On top of that, she’s opinionated, and I think she had a crush on Thorne. Thorne, of course, would never have looked twice at her. With his kind of money, he got pretty young things hanging on him all the time. Lou, well, it’s just not in her nature. Barbara is a mouse, but at least she’s a mouse who loves Poe. Eileen? She’s pure class. Mary Vincenzo was only around because of Thorne and Jared. Jared? Rich kid. Brat. Don Tracy likes to hear himself talk and hangs around with the literati so he can get his name in the papers. Brook Avery wants to be a literary giant, but he’s got a long way to go. Nat Halloway is a money man who wants to hang with a more artistic crowd, and because of his connection with Thorne, he was able to do so. Sam Latham? Good man, and I hope he gets out of the hospital soon.”

“So who killed Thorne, in your opinion?” Joe asked.

“Lila,” Larry assured him knowingly.

When Joe left Larry, he had a notebook filled with the names and numbers of people Larry was convinced could assure Joe that he’d been working all day when Thorne had been murdered. And he had a gut feeling—which admittedly didn’t prove anything—that Larry was telling him the truth, at least about his own whereabouts. He wasn’t convinced that Lila had killed Thorne, though. She was far too vocal about accusing Larry, making far too much of a fuss. Guilty people had a tendency to lie low. Lila was doing anything but.

It was growing late, and Joe found himself wandering the neighborhood. He loved Lower Manhattan, but he hated it, too, for everything he had lost here. Eventually he found himself standing on the sidewalk across the street from one of the area’s prime historic landmarks, Hastings House. Matt had died in an explosion there, and Leslie had almost died at the same time. But she had lived to return to the city, and to Hastings House.

And then she had died after all, saving Genevieve.

He stared at the house. It was open to the public, but the last tour of the day was long over. As he stood there, though, the front door opened. To the best of his knowledge, Leslie had been the last one to stay at the restored colonial manor. The tunnels that had led from the house to the old subway line where Genevieve had been held prisoner had been closed. Blasted shut.

No one should have been there, and in fact, no one was in sight, yet the door had opened.

He instinctively felt for the concealed gun at his hip and walked across the street.

The gate to the front walk opened to his touch, though it should have been locked.

One of the staff could still be there. One of the costumed historians who welcomed tourists could still be working, and the unlocked door could simply have blown open.

He felt responsible for the house, though God knew why. Perhaps he felt he owed it to Leslie, he thought. Her appreciation for the past was something that had stayed with him.

And she had loved this house, even after Matt had died here.

He walked through the gate and headed up the steps.

The only light inside the house was the red glow of the security lights. He stepped through the doorway and paused. “Is anyone here?” he called out. He walked into the parlor and looked up the stairway. Darkness loomed above him.

“Hey, is anyone here?” he said again.

He felt as if something brushed his cheek.

Joe.

It was just a whisper, so faint that he might almost have imagined it.

He was crazy. He
had
imagined it. He was tempted to go running from the house, screaming.

Hardly a macho thing to do.

Did he think of himself as macho?

No, but he’d never thought of himself as an overimaginative coward, either.

“Who the hell is in here?” he called out angrily.

Joe, it’s all right. Just learn to listen.

There was a scurrying sound from the kitchen. He forced himself to walk toward it, though every instinct in him was screaming to get away. “Who the hell are you? Show yourself now,” he demanded.

He heard the sound again.

Great. What the hell was he going to find? A ghostly figure, draped in white, floating above the ground?

He felt a brush of air again. It wasn’t a cold breath but something warm, almost alive. Almost…tender.
Joe, go easy. Please, Joe.

He kept himself under tight control and strode into the kitchen. While the rest of the house was furnished according to the period, the kitchen featured every modern convenience. He heard the scurrying sound again, and his hand tightened on the butt of his gun.

No, Joe…it’s all right,
the voice said.

But the voice and the scurrying weren’t coming from the same place.

Something started to move. A shadow rising.

Joe, it’s just a kid.

Then the shadow itself cried out, it’s voice clearly young. “Don’t hurt me!”

“Show yourself!” Joe demanded.

The shadow stood up by the refrigerator, and in the red security light he saw that it was a teenaged girl. She had tousled blond hair and a face that was pinched with hunger.

“Don’t shoot me! Please don’t shoot me.”

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He’d never been so relieved in his life. She was real. She was flesh and blood.

Except that…

She wasn’t the one who’d been whispering to him.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in here?” he asked her.

He didn’t expect the response he got. The girl burst into tears and came running toward him, then threw herself against him. “I’m so scared!” she told him.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” he said awkwardly. He drew away from her and realized that she must be a runaway.

“What’s your name?”

“Debbie,” she said.

“Debbie what?” he pursued.

“Smith,” she said.

He almost laughed out loud. She was making it up.

“All right, Debbie…Smith, why are you so scared? And what are you doing in this house?” he asked gently.

“I…slipped in before they locked up.”

“And you left the door open,” he told her.

She looked at him, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said firmly.

“All right, hang on,” he said, and pulled out his phone, thinking he should call the police. But he didn’t. He hesitated, and then he called Genevieve, instead.

“Joe?” She sounded relieved to hear from him, but also uneasy. He wondered why, but there wasn’t time now to ask her. “Gen, I, uh, I think I have need of your prowess as a social worker,” he told her.

“Oh?” she said, clearly curious. “Joe, where are you?”

“Hastings House,” he admitted.

“Hastings House?” She sounded worried.

“The door was open,” he explained, leaving out the how of it. “And I found a young…lady named Debbie Smith hiding inside, and now I’m not sure what to do with her.”

“How old is she?” Genevieve asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll come down there right away.”

“No!” He didn’t want her going out alone, especially at night. In fact, he didn’t want her going out alone at all, he realized, an opinion she would not appreciate.

“Fine. Come by and pick me up, then. You can bring her with you. I’ll stand right by the doorman until you get here.”

“Okay,” he said. “Ten minutes.” Then he hung up and looked at the girl, who looked eerie in the strange red light.

“You…you won’t call the police on me, will you?” she begged.

“Not yet. But let’s get out of here and go see a friend of mine. I’ll have to call someone to come lock this place up for the night,” he told her.

He didn’t close the door as they left, but it closed behind him, and he heard a lock slide into place.

“Shit!” the girl said, jumping.

“It must lock automatically,” Joe said, glad not to have to call someone and try to explain what the hell he had been doing there. He led her down the front walk, and when they stepped out onto the sidewalk, the gate closed behind them, as well.

“You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” Debbie asked, panic in her tone.

“No, I told you, we’re going to see a friend of mine. She’ll know what to do,” Joe said.

The traffic was bad once they picked up his car, and Joe chafed at the thought of Genevieve standing out on the street, even with her doorman. He knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t escape his dreams.

Nor the fear that his own sense of insanity seemed to be growing worse.

The girl at his side was silent. He realized that he wasn’t helping matters, but he wasn’t sure what to say. “So, Debbie…where are you from?” he asked at last.

She stared at him as if he had just threatened her with torture. “Here,” she said. Like “Smith,” he knew it was a lie.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “Let me try this one. What’s your favorite food?”

She’d been staring straight ahead, but she looked at him then. “At this moment? Anything not out of a Dumpster,” she told him, and he knew that, at least, was honest.

His nerves felt totally stretched by the time he finally pulled up in front of Genevieve’s apartment, and then he was afraid he would snap like a bowstring from the tremendous sense of relief he felt when he saw her there, chatting with Mac, the doorman. She ran up to the car and hopped into the backseat.

“Hey,” she said cheerfully to Debbie. “I’m Genevieve.”

“Debbie,” the girl said.

“Where should we go?” Joe asked, looking at Genevieve in the rearview mirror.

She shrugged. “O’Malley’s, of course.”

He nodded, and a few minutes later he let the two of them off in front of the pub and went in search of a parking space. Luckily, he found a place in a lot a block or so away. He made his way back as quickly as he could and found that Genevieve and Debbie were playing darts with his two favorite old timers, Angus MacHenry and Paddy O’Leary, and had claimed a nearby booth as their own.

“Joseph Connolly, that took ye long enough,” Paddy told him.

“Hey, I’m not as young as I used to be,” Joe said.

“Well, this young ’un is a pip at darts,” Angus said. “And she’s a Douglas. A nice Scottish lass.”

He looked at Genevieve, who shrugged and gave him a little grin. “A Douglas from Philadelphia,” she said softly.

To his surprise, Debbie walked over to him and gave him a quick hug, then looked at him with embarrassment.

He smiled at her, trying not to look as awkward as he felt. “Philly, hmm?” he said.

She nodded, then threw her next dart.

“Good shot,” Genevieve said encouragingly.

Joe watched as Angus challenged Debbie to a head-to-head match, and she replied with a laugh and a promise to best him.

“Runaway?” he whispered to Genevieve.

“Yes. But we’ve called her parents. They’re on their way.” She turned to him, speaking softly. “She came up here with some older friends, who wound up leaving her on her own a few days ago when they decided to get warm and cuddly with a couple of druggies. There were some toughs on the street, and she got scared, so she ran into Hastings House. Luckily, they weren’t able to follow her.”

“Weren’t able to?” he asked.

Genevieve shrugged. “Strange, huh?” she said, staring at him.

“What’s so strange?” he asked, feeling as if he were choking.

“When she was running, the gate and the door both opened. But as soon as she was inside, they both closed. And locked.”

He frowned, staring at Genevieve. “No. They must have just decided to let her go. When I was on the street, both the gate and the door were open.”

“Right,” Genevieve said, looking into his eyes.

“The security system must be going haywire,” he heard himself say.

“Haywire,” she echoed, but it didn’t really sound as if she were agreeing with him.

“Was everything all right with you today?” he asked her.

She nodded and smiled. “Great. How did it go with Larry Levine?”

He shrugged. “I believe him,” he told her.

“So…we’re not getting anywhere,” she said.

“Gen, you know as well as I do that finding out the truth can take a long time,” he said.

She nodded, biting her lower lip.

“Hamburgers coming up!” Bridget, their waitress of a few nights back, called as she made her way through the crowd milling near the bar. Debbie all but clapped her hands.

“Oh, thank you,” she said fervently.

Angus punched Joe lightly on the arm. “Thank ye kindly, Joe. Gen said you’d be buying tonight.”

“My pleasure,” Joe said, and laughed, then watched as Angus, Paddy and Debbie made themselves comfortable in the booth and started reaching for the ketchup and mustard.

“You did a good thing tonight, Joe,” Gen told him.

“I did?”

“Debbie just got in with a wrong crowd. She’s been here five days. Her parents reported her missing, but…well, you know how that goes. Anyway, if you’d called the police, it might have gotten complicated.”

“Well, then…I’m glad I called you.”

“Me, too. So, do you want a hamburger, too?”

“Sure. I’ll just go with the flow,” he said.

She grinned and started toward the bar to find Bridget and put in his food order. He slid in beside Angus on the banquette.

“Did ye hear about the way the old house welcomed the girl?” Paddy asked him.

“What?”

Debbie looked at him. She was a pretty kid, with warm brown eyes. “That house saved me tonight,” she told him softly. “Well, you did, too, of course. But it was really weird, the way the house just let me in when I needed to get away from those guys.”

“Security system,” he said, but he didn’t even believe that himself.

Because he’d heard
her.

That night, he’d heard Leslie whisper to him, trying to make sure he knew Debbie wasn’t a criminal, that he didn’t shoot her.

But he couldn’t escape the sense that she’d been trying to tell him something else, as well.

He gritted his teeth. Hard. “Security system,” he repeated.

Debbie looked at him. “The house saved me,” she said somberly. “It really did.”

Hastings House, he thought. The place where Matt had died. The entry to the tunnel and the room where Leslie had died, where Genevieve had been kept prisoner.

The place was damned, he decided.

But not, he insisted to himself, haunted.

A moment later Genevieve came back and slipped into the booth next to him.

“Just how old is she?” Joe asked, indicating Debbie, who had finished her burger and gotten up to play darts again.

“Fifteen.”

“Such a kid,” he said.

Genevieve arched a brow at him. “You’ve had to look for enough missing kids. Debbie is lucky, and you know it. Most of the time, a kid of fifteen, she’s already on drugs. Then she’s hooking.”

“Then she’s Candy Cane,” Joe said.

“Yeah.” Genevieve said, studying him. “Have you heard from her yet?”

He shook his head. “I’ll go back over tomorrow,” he told her.

A few hours later, Debbie’s parents walked in. There were a lot of tears as they embraced their daughter, then thanked Joe and Genevieve.

A few minutes later, when it was time to leave, Debbie gave Genevieve a long hug. After that, she walked over to Joe and looked at him solemnly. “Thank you,” she said simply.

“Stick with the folks, huh?” he said. “They seem like nice people.”

“I guess.” She hesitated, then whispered, “He’s not my father. He married my mom. They have a new baby.”

“They still love you.”

She squared her shoulders. “Look, I know I was a jerk. I just thought it would be cool to see New York. And…I know this is gonna sound weird, but I think that house used me to get to you.”

He shook his head. “Debbie, it’s just a house.”

She stared back at him gravely. “No. It’s not just a house. That house…it
breathes.
It’s like it has a heartbeat. Honest. It’s not evil, though. I’m telling you, it saved
me.
But it wanted
you.”

He felt a slight tremor shoot through him. There was a kid in front of him—a kid—telling him that Hastings House was…
alive.

Ridiculous.

She had been scared, traumatized, that was all, and she was seeing things as spooky and chilling, when there was undoubtedly a perfectly logical explanation.

As soon Debbie had left with her parents, Joe decided that he needed a beer.

Later, he drove back to Genevieve’s.

He pretended exhaustion. He couldn’t help it. There was a whisper in his ear, and that whisper was Leslie.

But when he fell asleep, he dreamed again. And in his dream, Genevieve was walking toward him. They were on a beach, or maybe they were in the clouds. She was wearing something light that trailed behind her in the breeze. She was smiling, her expression radiant. Her hair whipped behind her like auburn silk.

And her eyes…

Her eyes were that endless blue.

She smiled, excited, as if she were expecting something…something good.

Then the bruises began to appear on her throat, and her eyes widened and began to bulge as she stared at him, choking, gasping for breath.

He heard her whisper,
Help me. Please, help me,
and he woke with a start, bolting upright in the bed.

He didn’t wake her, though. Genevieve was asleep at his side in a soft yellow tank top and ladies’ boxers, breathing easily. The light filtering in from beyond the drawn curtains played brilliant fire tricks with her hair.

He lay back down, convinced he really was losing his mind, then jerked into a sitting position again.

Debbie had claimed that Hastings House seemed to breathe. That it had a heartbeat. That it had tried to save her.

And the house—or someone in it—had whispered to him.

Dead people whispered to him.

He stared up at the ceiling, teeth clenched. No. He didn’t want to talk to ghosts. He didn’t want to listen to dead people and he damned well didn’t want to believe that a house could be haunted, much less alive.

Suddenly he was afraid, but not for himself. For Genevieve.

Afraid that his dreams meant something, that she was in danger.

He perched on one elbow and watched her sleep, wanting to touch her, not wanting to awaken her.

But her eyelids fluttered suddenly, as if she sensed him, sensed his concern, even in the depths of her sleep.

Her eyes opened, and she caught him studying her.

“What?” she asked, and started to sit up.

“Nothing,” he said softly.

“Then…?”

“I was just watching you,” he said, knowing it was both a lie and the truth.

She reached up and touched his face in that special way of hers. Then her knuckles brushed down over his chest, and the next thing he knew, she was pushing him down against the mattress and straddling him. When he would have touched her in return, she whispered a soft but commanding, “No.”

She bent and quickly brushed her lips against his.

Then she teased his chest with her kiss and the silky caress of her hair.

Finally she moved lower, but not until he was so aroused that he couldn’t stand it did she allow him to reach for her, lift her and bring her back down on his erection. He felt as if the world exploded along with him as he entered her.