The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (15 page)

She had a good point. “Maybe
place
is this town.”

They got in the car.

She said, “You tell me. Is that a possibility?”

Eddie gave it some thought. On his last big job in Pennsylvania, his client had claimed the entire town was haunted. Naturally he’d been skeptical, as there was little evidence of that ever happening in the historical record. And on that job, he’d uncovered a conspiracy, revealing the hauntings to be part of an orchestrated hoax.

“There are only a few reportings of town-wide hauntings,” Eddie said. “And all of them allegedly occurred more than thirty years ago.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He smiled. “I’m trying to stick to facts, Christie. Cold, hard, verifiable facts. Data.”

“The medical examiner has been here a long time. He’s fantastic at his job. Methodical, detail-oriented, thorough, and never wrong. He makes a great expert witness at trial. We cops have a bad habit of always asking for his opinion right at the crime scene. He’s usually been there no more than a minute before we’re asking him questions. He grumbles and refuses to answer, always saying the autopsy will provide a clear picture. He gets so angry, but we all know it’s an act and we press him for answers anyway. So he gives us his preliminary thoughts with the caveat that the autopsy will have the final say.”

Eddie knew where she was going with this.

Christie said, “Do you know how often his preliminary opinion is wrong?”

“Never.”

“Almost never.”

Eddie looked at her. “You want my preliminary opinion.”

“I
need
it.”

“And
I don’t know
isn’t good enough.”

“No.”

Eddie couldn’t untangle his thoughts and form a theory. There were just too many possibilities and factual conflicts.

He said, “Ghosts don’t always act intentionally, but there’s always a reason behind the things they do.”

“Explain that.”

“If a ghost haunts a house, it’s because something happened there. If a ghost haunts a person, it’s because something happened between them.”

“So where does that lead us?”

He looked out the window. He felt a little tightness in his chest. But why now? He wasn’t in a crowded area and there were no threats. When he realized he was beginning to get anxious, his heart kicked up a beat in response. The shrink had explained it was a cycle of escalation, his mind and body acted in concert to rev him up.

“Eddie, are you okay?” she said.

“Yeah, fine.” She’d picked up on his anxiety. “Look, Christie, I don’t know. This thing goes in a million directions. We need to whiteboard this tonight at the station.”

She nodded, seemed to accept his inability to give her an opinion. “That’s a good idea.”

Eddie took deep breaths. That tightness in his chest subsided.

Christie said, “Let’s talk about what’s giving you so much trouble.”

He looked at her, panicked, until he realized she was talking about the case and not his anxiety.

“There’s no reliable evidence or data of a ghost haunting an entire town,” he said. “That’s why I think this ghost is linked to a person and traveling with them. But the problem with that theory is, so far, all the hauntings appear unconnected. Why is the ghost haunting these people? More importantly, why is the traveler enabling the ghost to haunt these people?”

“Maybe the traveler isn’t enabling them. Maybe they don’t realize the ghost is haunting these people. How about a repairman, somebody who goes to a lot of different places over the course of his work week?”

He loved the way her mind worked. “That’s a good idea.”

“Easy enough to check.”

“But either way,” Eddie said, “there has to be a connection between these people. Like I said, ghosts haunt people or places for a reason.”

“I agree.”

“Glad you do.” He chuckled.

“I have to,” she said. “If there’s no connection, there’s no way for us to figure out what’s going on.”

He nodded. “Time for another dose of reality.”

“Okay.” She started the engine.

“Even if we figure this out, there might be nothing we can do about the ghost.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. But let’s focus on solving the mystery first, then we’ll worry about how to stop it.”

He nodded. She was right, of course. He was stacking again, exactly what the shrink had told him not to do. One problem at a time. He shook his head.

“Eddie, are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m good. I think this ghost is traveling with a person, the more we talk about it.”

She gave him a hard, appraising look, waiting to see if he equivocated. But he didn’t. Something told him the ghost was a traveler. They just needed to find the thread connecting everything.

“So there were no visitors to the building on Tuesday night,” Christie said. “Jug was a good cop. He would have recorded it if he’d seen anyone.”

There
. Some thought tapped him on the shoulder. But when he turned around to look, it was gone.

“What?” Christie said.

“I don’t know, I thought I had something.”

“Something about this building, no visitors, Jug being a great cop.”

He played back what she’d said, but whatever he’d had briefly was gone.

Christie took out her phone. “Let’s see Sandy. Anything from Daria yet?”

Eddie took his phone out. She’d sent him a text.

Call me ASAP.

“Wow, you’re Eddie McCloskey,” the boy said.

“And you must be Devlin.” He smiled. “How about a high five?”

Devlin smacked his palm. “Was there a ghost in Mr. Stahl’s house?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

Devlin stared at Eddie for a full ten seconds before going back to playing with his action figure, a cross between a dinosaur and a werewolf.

Christie came into the living room with Devlin’s parents, Shelly and Vaughn. They looked about Eddie’s age. He guessed Devlin was nine or ten.

Devlin sat between his parents on the couch and Christie sat in a reading chair to their left.

The detective said, “Devlin, I want to thank you so much for coming forward with this information. Now I’ve just talked to your parents and they said it was okay if I asked you a few questions about the man you saw.”

Devlin looked to his mother and father to get their approval.

Vaughn rubbed his son’s shoulder. “Everything is okay, son. You go ahead and answer the nice lady’s questions.”

Devlin absently moved the arms of his were-dinosaur. “He was here that night.”

Eddie quietly excused himself. Christie could handle the questions about the man. He wanted to touch base with Daria and take a look for himself inside Stahl’s house. Heading to the front door, he nodded at Harney as he passed the man in the foyer.

Harney followed him outside.

“Did you get anything yet?” Harney asked after they’d closed Devlin’s front door.

Eddie knew Harney was out to discredit him as a way to screw Christie. He also knew they had to provide the chief a status update soon. In that meeting, Harney would do his best to demolish the case Christie and Eddie were building. If Eddie gave him information now, it would give Harney more time to prepare for that meeting with the chief.

“We have a lot and we’re pulling it together for the chief later,” Eddie said.

Eddie turned to leave, but Harney grabbed his arm.

“Don’t you fucking stonewall me,” Harney said. “I’m a detective and you’re an ex-con. Holding back on me is obstruction of justice.”

Eddie shrugged out of the cop’s grip. “You’re the obstruction of justice on this case.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed.

But Eddie wasn’t one to be pushed around, especially not by a cop who seemed more concerned with getting one-up on his partner than closing the case.

“I’m here to help,” Eddie said. “And I answer to Christie and the chief, last I checked.”

Eddie pushed on. He went to the sidewalk and made a left, headed for Stahl’s place. It was just beginning to get dark and the temperature had dipped into the thirties. A cruiser was parked in front of Stahl’s house, its interior lights on. A uniformed cop sat behind the wheel.

Harney came up behind him, fast. Eddie didn’t trust the cop and wanted to spin around to face him. But that would have been a sign of weakness, a sign that Eddie was deferring to the cop. So he kept walking.

Harney caught up to him. “Let’s get one thing clear, jerkoff.”

Eddie kept walking.

“Look at me.”

“Quit wasting my time,” Eddie said.

Harney looked ready to explode. “I’m going to solve this case through real police work. No fucking ghost killed these people.”

“Five people have now reported hauntings. For the most part, their stories add up.”

Harney laughed. “Bullshit. We don’t know what Stahl or Fellov actually saw. Engel’s ghost was clearly a man, while Felicity and Alicia saw something different.”

Eddie couldn’t argue those points.

Harney saw his advantage and pressed on. “And now we’ve got a mystery man at Stahl’s house on the night of the death. A ghost didn’t kill Stahl. This guy, whoever he is, must have done it.”

Eddie kept walking. “How?”

Harney said nothing.

Eddie said, “How did this man kill Stahl? Through fear? Because so far the ME hasn’t found anything else.”

They lapsed into silence and kept walking. As Eddie got closer to Stahl’s place, he saw Daria waiting by the front door. She was drinking what looked like a coffee.

Daria saw them approaching and met them in the driveway.

Eddie said, “Nice work this afternoon with Devlin.”

She shrugged. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

Eddie said, “Get any hits so far?”

“I’ve had several conversations over the ghost box.”

Eddie hid what he really thought about ghost boxes from Harney. He didn’t want to give the detective any ammunition.

“Anything new, or different?”

“Oh-my-God yes.” She looked over at the detective. “They told me the man that was here knew Mr. Stahl.”

Eddie didn’t give much credence to any information coming through a ghost box, but it made sense. Statistically-speaking, killers and victims usually knew each other.

Harney turned to Eddie, ignoring Daria. “If you get anything worthwhile, Christie needs to let me know immediately.”

Harney left.

Eddie waited till he was out of earshot. “How did the man know Stahl?”

“They worked together.”

Eddie went over in his mind what little he knew about Stahl. The guy had worked at a hospital but Eddie didn’t know where else. They had asked Engel if he was familiar with Stahl, and Engel had said no. It was unlikely Engel would lie about something that was so easily verifiable through an employment history. All the same they needed to run that down. Having worked a few big investigations now, either with or essentially against the police, Eddie understood this was how they spent most of their time: asking questions, fact-checking, and then confirming through other people the information they’d gotten.

Christie and Harney had already checked Engel’s employment history, before Eddie had even set foot in Rariville. So far, they hadn’t come up with anyone that hated Stahl at his current or previous places of employment, let alone want him dead.

“What else did they say?”

“Oh-my-God, a lot.”

“About the connection between the man and Stahl?”

“Oh. Money.”

“Money?”

“That was all they said. Money. I assumed they meant because they’d worked together.”

Eddie nodded. He looked up the street. Harney was headed back to Devlin’s house. The uniformed cop was still sitting in the cruiser on the other side of the road. Nobody else was around, so he and Daria had enough privacy.

She hadn’t sent him the email yet, which meant she was having second thoughts about sharing the details of her vision with him.

“Based on what Devlin told you, do you think the man is a cop?” Eddie asked, point-blank.

Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak. Like somebody had hit her PAUSE button.

“Daria, I’m on the outside looking in. I’ve got no love for this police department. I just want to solve the problem.”

“I don’t know for sure who I saw.”

“It will stay between us,” he said.

“I…can’t. I’m sorry.”

***

Christie and Eddie walked into the police station together. They’d grabbed a quick bite to eat after Christie finished up with Devlin. Eddie had asked Daria to stick with Stahl’s house for as long as she could. She readily agreed to stay all night, if he needed. He was grateful for her help and a little embarrassed. He knew she was doing this to impress him. He didn’t want to think he was using her. But there were so many other leads for them to follow and he couldn’t be in two places at once. So again he thanked Daria for her help and told her he’d get the town to compensate her for her time. Of course, she’d refused any money.

Now that the crime techs were done with Fellov’s house, Eddie could gain access. He planned on swinging by later to go dark. Daria had asked to go with him, but he didn’t want her influencing the environment, truth be told. He had to see the place through his own eyes without interference.

They wanted to talk to Sandy, Star’s friend. But Sandy was a waitress working on a busy night of the week, so even if her boss let her take a break, at most she could peel away for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before her co-workers were in the weeds. Christie figured they might need more time with Sandy, depending on what she knew, so she’d asked Sandy to meet at the end of her shift, 10:00PM. Sandy had hemmed and hawed about meeting, making up all kinds of excuses, until Christie put her foot down.

In that typical, ultra-calm, Christie way.

That gave them a few hours to do two things. First, bring the chief up to speed. Hopefully the chief’s fresh eyes would bring them a new perspective on things. After that they could brainstorm and whiteboard what they’d learned today to see if a larger pattern finally emerged.

They’d been on the go for ten hours. Eddie was used to working long, off hours, and Christie showed no signs of letting up. No doubt her schedule was even crazier than Eddie’s.

Christie pulled Eddie aside before they went into the chief’s office.

“Let me handle Harney,” she said. “I don’t want you fighting my fights.”

“I’m happy to help.” He winked.

“You can help by not helping. The chief will think I’ve brought you in to prop me up. I need to show him I’ve got this under control.”

Made sense. “Fair enough. But if the guy challenges me, I’m not backing down.”

“You can’t ever let somebody else be in control, can you?” she said.

A little frustration had crept into her voice. The words struck Eddie. Maybe because she’d just given him a rare glimpse into herself. And maybe because they were true.

“It’s because I wasn’t in control for most of my life.” He sounded like the shrink. “So now I feel compelled to keep two hands on the reins at all times.”

“Why?”

“Fear of letting go and falling back into that hole.”

“You don’t trust anybody but yourself.”

“That’s not true.” He smiled. “There’s one other guy I trust.”

He’d meant it as a joke but it reminded him of his tiff with Stan. Eddie hadn’t called him back yet to apologize. He’d meant to do it at lunch, then again during one of their rides, but the day had gotten away from him. True they were running full-steam but he could have squeezed in a call somewhere. He just wasn’t good at that. Especially not when he was working a case. Eddie shut the rest of the world out and got into the zone, where he thought about nothing else. It was the right attitude to have and made him good at the job, but it also robbed him of the ability to see the bigger picture.

***

“Well?” the chief said.

Christie took the cue. It was how the chief began every meeting, his signal for the officer-in-charge to open. Harney watched her from the corner of the office. More and more he was getting under her skin. He smiled at her, like they enjoyed a good partnership. But really he was just waiting for his opportunity to strike.

Not that she feared him. He was a good detective but she was better.

Christie said, “Five people have now reported paranormal activity. Stahl, three nights ago. Felicity and Alicia, two nights ago. Fellov, last night. And also Engel, who says he’s been visited several times over the last month or so.

“We didn’t get too many details from Stahl or Fellov, except that they thought the ghost was a woman. Felicity and Alicia are conflicted over the gender of the ghost. The spirit that has been to see Engel is a man, he’s certain.

“The biggest development came this afternoon. A boy that lives next door to Stahl couldn’t fall asleep and spotted a man lurking outside of Stahl’s house. The boy didn’t see the man’s face. He just saw him moving in the darkness, dressed completely in black. The man wasn’t there long and slipped around the far side of the house, and that’s when the boy lost sight of him.”

“Did the boy see any cars?” the chief interrupted.

“He didn’t. From where he was he wouldn’t see the street. He says the man was peering into the windows of the house, going from one to the next.”

“That’s our guy,” Harney said.

“I agree he’s suspect number one. But remember, there were no signs of forced entry,” Christie said. “And the doors were all locked when we arrived with EMT.”

“He had a key. He got inside, somehow killed Stahl, then locked the doors on his way out,” Harney said.

The chief turned in his chair. “He killed Stahl by scaring him to death?”

Harney didn’t have an answer for that. The chief turned back to Christie.

“What else has the ME said?”

“That’s just it. Nothing else. Stahl suffered from heart failure, presumably brought on by massive amounts of adrenaline coursing through his body.”

The chief frowned. “No, that’s not good enough. I want a better answer.”

Christie nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk to them.”

The chief kept frowning. “This guy happens to show up at Stahl’s house the same night that Stahl reports a ghost? That can’t be coincidence.”