The Lingering Dead (7 page)

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Authors: J. N. Duncan

BOOK: The Lingering Dead
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Hon, trust me on this. Nick is going to feel just as awkward about this as you do.
Doubt it.
Jackie finally opened the door and stepped out to pick up her bag. She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. They were starting their first case. This was a new deal, a new lease, a fresh start, and yet she had never felt more frazzled and at loose ends then she did at this moment.
God, I'm so not ready for this, Laur. What the hell am I doing?
You're leading a case, just like you've always done,
Laurel told her.
And you know as well as I that this is
not
like anything I've ever done.
Concept is still the same, hon. Work the case, utilize your resources, and put your coworkers to work. Solve the crime.
If there was even a crime to solve. Who knew what the hell they were getting into? Still, Laurel was right. As fucked up as everything was, it was still a case. She knew how to work with that.
At the hangar door, Jackie stopped. Nick stood in the middle of the hangar by the stairs leading up into a sleek, white Learjet with a thick, purple strip running down the side. Emblazoned in matching elegant purple lettering, “S
PECIAL
I
NVESTIGATIONS,
I
NC.”
ran down the side from wing to tail.
Shelby's laughter echoed throughout the hangar. “Nice touch, babe. I feel so
Criminal Minds
now.”
“Good grief,” Jackie whispered. “This is insane.”
Shush,
Laurel chided.
Just enjoy the ride. Our sheriff can burn his money anyway he wants to.
Jackie shook her head and forced her feet to move forward.
Just nod and get on the plane. No need to say a word.
Nick smiled and nodded at Shelby and Cynthia as they climbed up the stairs into the plane. His smile sagged as Jackie came up to meet him.
“Jackie,” he said quietly and bowed his head in acknowledgment.
She could not look him in the eye or anywhere near his face for that matter. With her hand gripped even tighter on her shoulder bag, Jackie increased her pace and strode passed him. “Hey, Nick,” she muttered and went up the steps two at a time and disappeared into the dark confines of the plane.
The Lear seated sixteen, four groups of paired, leather seats facing each other. A bar and kitchenette separated them further, making it eight in front and eight in the back. Jackie chose the seat farthest away from the door, hoping everyone would just leave her alone on the flight so she could get herself organized in some way or another. Shelby ruined that by plopping down in the seats across from her, stretching her legs across both seats.
Her elbow propped on the armrest, chin in hand, Shelby smiled at her. “Can't ignore him forever, boss.”
“I realize that, Shelby. Thank you.” She made no effort to hide the sarcasm.
“Longer you take, the worse it'll be, trust me,” she replied.
“I know!” Jackie snapped back, trying to keep her voice down. “Can you just leave it alone, please? It isn't any of your goddamn business.”
“It is if you can't effectively communicate with your team,” she said in a harsh whisper, the smile vanishing from her lips. “Flight's about twenty-five minutes. Figure it out, Jack.” Shelby reached over and gave Jackie's knee a firm squeeze and then got back to her feet, moving up front to sit with Nick.
She heard Laurel grumble inside her head.
She's right, hon. Even if she's being a bitch about it.
Jackie slumped against the side of the plane and closed her eyes as the plane rushed down the runway for takeoff.
At least we agree on something.
Chapter 6
The brief squeal of wheels touching down jarred Jackie out of her doze. It seemed she had only just shut her eyes, but now it was time to get busy. The squirming, nagging fear in her gut had to be buried, pushed down into the depths where she could ignore it. Any luck and it would just go away.
Jackie paused by Nick, who stood at the door of the plane as they all stepped off. She let out the breath pent up in her lungs. “Ready to roll on this, Nick?”
He looked down at her in silence for so long, Jackie was afraid he might not bother to answer her. Finally, he nodded. “I am. You?”
“Nope. We'll figure it out as we go,” she said and headed for the steps.
A cold wind swirled around the airfield, little more than a single strip of concrete and one corrugated metal hangar. The ground was damp from an earlier rain. Jackie looked around, half expecting there to be a limo waiting for them.
“Do we have a car?” she asked.
“Should be by the main office,” Nick said, coming up behind her.
“Pretty out here—” Cynthia began.
“Great,” Jackie said. “Let's go.”
They all followed in silence, shoes splashing through the puddles on the tarmac. Once they reached the squat, flat-roofed main office, Jackie walked through the door and made her way toward the front. Outside, she spotted the rental car and walked over to the Ford Explorer to wait for Nick to bring the keys.
You OK, hon?
Laurel wondered.
“I'm fine,” Jackie said quietly. “Just trying to ... shift gears here.”
Just remember, this isn't the FBI anymore.
“No need to remind me of that,” Jackie said. What they were, exactly, remained to be seen. When Nick got to the SUV, Jackie held out her hand. “I want to drive.”
He dangled the keys over her outstretched palm. “You know where we're going?”
She snatched them out of his fingers. “Not really.”
“Oh, let her drive, babe,” Shelby said, and tossed her bag over the backseat into the back. “She needs to be able to control
something
.”
Jackie pointed a finger at her as she opened the driver's side door. “Not helping.” She did not need every last one of her foibles brought to light for them to discuss. It was bad enough that they all knew what they did.
Once out on the highway, Cynthia rode shotgun and informed her, via the GPS, that they were about twenty minutes away from Thatcher's Mill. Jackie took another deep breath. She was getting tired of trying to constantly relieve the tension in her gut.
“So, let's go over what little we know and what we want to do,” she said. “Sound good?” When nobody offered up any other options, she continued. “We have a town with more than its fair share of ghosts, which obviously I'm not sure what that even means.”
Nick cleared his throat. “Town that size, you would be lucky to find three or four at any given time.”
That sounds about right,
Laurel agreed.
“So, let's say for the sake of argument that we're looking at five times that number, fifteen to twenty ghosts. What could that mean?”
“Likely an incident of mass death,” Cynthia replied, “but the little bit of digging I've been able to do hasn't pulled up anything like that.”
“How far back did you go?” Shelby asked.
“Back to the turn of the century,” Cyn said. “Doesn't mean something didn't happen of course, but I didn't see anything that got noted anywhere.”
“Someone or something could be keeping them around,” Nick added. “Sometimes one tormented soul will draw others to it, like a magnet.”
“Misery loves company,” Jackie said.
“Something like that,” he replied.
There was an awkward few seconds of silence, until Shelby broke it. “Laur, baby. Come out of Jackie's head and sit with me.”
Jackie sighed. This was exactly what she signed up for. Laurel hesitated.
Go, for Christ's sake. I'm fine.
She slipped out, sending a cool shiver down Jackie's spine. “What about a killer?” she offered. “Could we have a serial killer on our hands?”
Cynthia shook her head. “No reports of linked murders of any kind in the area. At least nothing that has popped up on anyone's radar.”
They were getting nowhere with this. “So, lots of possibilities but no corroborating information of any kind at this point. Which means, we need to cruise the town and canvas the locals.”
“And see if we can talk to any of the ghosts,” Nick added.
“I'll check that out,” Laurel said. “That's kind of my thing now.”
Shelby snickered at her. “Laurel Carpenter, Ghost Detective.”
“Oh,” Cynthia said. “I'd watch that.”
“If you could see them,” Shelby replied.
The three of them laughed. Jackie frowned in an effort to hide the smile creeping onto her face. Damn them. There was nothing amusing about any of this. In the rearview mirror, Jackie could see the corner of Nick's mouth curl up as he shook his head. It was better than nerve-wracking silence at least.
The two-lane, shoulderless road wound its way through rolling hills and scattered fields, little more than wet dirt and groves of dark, spider-webbed branches collecting water from the low-slung sky. They were in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, with nary a coffee or pastry shop to be seen. Somewhere off to the east, the Mississippi wound its way south through Iowa farmland. It was not difficult to imagine ghosts wandering aimlessly over this landscape.
They finally passed a sign that said THATCHER's MILL, 2 MILES. Jackie had the feeling that a couple of hours in the podunk and they would be on the road back, having wasted a perfectly good Friday that she could have spent curled up on her couch doing a whole lot of nothing.
“You realize this could be a complete waste of time,” she said to no one in particular. “This is a ten-year-old lead we're following up on.”
“So what?” Shelby said. “It's a good way to get our feet wet. We'll figure out what's worth going out on and what's not.”
“I suppose,” Jackie replied.
The Ford crossed a bridge over a shallow creek, where a sign welcomed them to Thatcher's Mill. Up ahead, Jackie could see the main street, lined with old brick, two- and three-story buildings, and not much beyond that, the highway exiting the town and disappearing around a tree-covered hill. The brightly colored sign of the local diner could be seen on a corner up ahead, and Jackie had half a mind to stop there first, just so she could get some coffee in her system.
Then someone stepped out in the path of the SUV, forcing Jackie to swerve and slam on the brakes. She caught some gravel on the side of the road and slid sideways off onto the shoulder.
“Holy shit!” She leaped out of the SUV, scanning the road for a body. There was nothing to be seen.
“She's over there,” Nick said, pointing behind the Explorer, but he made no effort to move.
Jackie spun on her heel and then froze. It was a woman all right, light and wispy as fog. She curled around behind their car and continued to walk toward the edge of town. Now that she was aware of its presence, Jackie could feel the cool whisper of Deadworld, faint but there. Her heartbeat finally began to slow.
“OK, that about caused a heart attack,” she said.
Shelby laughed and laid a hand upon her shoulder. “Takes a while to get used to that. I've almost dumped my bike a couple of times, not realizing until too late what I was about to hit.”
Laurel followed the ghost for a few steps, calling out to her and then stopped. “She's not even aware. Strange.”
“Or doesn't care,” Nick said. He turned back to the car. “Well, that's one. Wonder how many more we'll find?”
On the edge of the road, Laurel stared off into the heart of the town. “There's more,” she said. “I can feel them.”
“How many?” Jackie wondered and climbed back into the driver's seat. “A lot?”
Laurel shrugged and walked through the door and back to her spot. “Can't tell. Let's drive through town and see.”
Once back on the road, Jackie eased them into town at a brisk twenty miles per hour. Cynthia pointed out the next one, lingering on a street corner outside the diner. Laurel spotted another above the feed store behind a window. Another crossed the road, clipping the front corner of the SUV, and Jackie felt the bone-deep twinge of the dead. By the time they reached the far side of Main Street, they had spotted ten. She circled back down a side street, parallel to the highway and then crossed back over to the other side to follow a second street back up.
There were only about eight blocks worth of town in Thatcher's Mill, a few hundred people at the most. Jackie finally pulled into a spot on the street outside the diner. She wanted more than coffee now. Cynthia had been keeping notes.
“How many?” Jackie asked.
“Assuming we didn't duplicate any,” Cyn said, rechecking her tally, “about thirty-five.”
“Goddamn,” Shelby said. “What the fuck is going on in this place?”
Nick sat on the edge of his seat, feet dangling out to the ground. He stared blankly toward the edge of town. “Anyone else notice they were mostly women?”
Cynthia tapped her notepad. “Thirty-one of them were female. That can't be good.”
“Thirty-one?” Jackie leaned over and looked at Cynthia's notes. “Almost ninety percent. You're right, that isn't good.” They all got out without saying a word. “Yeah, that's what I figured.” So much for the quick trip. It was time to call up the Geekroom over at the FBI and get Hauser moving on this.
Nick closed his door and, instead of heading into the diner, walked out into the middle of Main Street. A car slowed and honked at him, swerving around his still figure. His hands were on his hips, head cocked slightly to the side while he made a slow, 360-degree turn.
Shelby leaned against the SUV, arms crossed over her chest. “What is it, babe?”
Jackie walked out to where he stood. This was not a look she had seen on him before. “You see something, Nick? Or sense something?”
His gaze abruptly refocused and he looked down at her, face etched with concern. “I've been here before.”
Jackie pursed her lips. “Why is that making you look so worried?”
“I'm not sure,” he said. “It was a long time ago, 1890s I think.”
“So, something happened here back then?”
“Maybe. I was chasing down Drake at the time.”
Shelby stood up straight. “Drake was here?”
“Passed through, anyway,” Nick replied. “He might've killed someone here.”
Jackie closed her eyes for a moment and then turned back toward the diner. “Great. Nearly die, lose my job, fly hundreds of miles away, and we still run into the fucker.”
Cynthia held the door open to the diner for her. “It was a hundred years ago. Surely it can't be related to what's going on now.”
Jackie marched past her and into the diner. “Don't bet on it.”

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