The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (27 page)

But even he knew their plan was a huge gamble. They were assuming that Tiffany Engel was linked to her husband, that they could get Max to cooperate, that they could get Max to the location safely, that they could both sever Tiffany’s connection to Max and create a new paranormal link to a specific, physical environment…

His chest was tight.

“Eddie, are you alright?” Christie said.

“I’m fine.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Eddie, you just grabbed your chest and sat down.”

He realized he had. Stan regarded him skeptically and Christie stood over him.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Christie gave him a look. “Don’t lie to me.”

Eddie was about to do just that but stopped short. He couldn’t lie to her. He liked her, respected her, admired her, and…

His own emotions surprised him. But looking back over the last few days, it was obvious. He’d been attracted to her the moment he laid eyes on her. She was so different than any woman he’d ever been with. Smart, sexy, strong.

He couldn’t lie to her, because he was head over heels.

He felt Stan’s eyes on him. Stan was his best friend and a better friend than Eddie had ever deserved. How much did he owe Stan? No less than everything.

He couldn’t lie to Stan either.

And he looked deep inside himself. It had taken him a long time to admit he had problems that needed fixing, but when he finally did, he was able to beat drugs, beat booze, and get his act together.

But here he was, back to being Old Eddie again. Afraid to admit he had a problem. He realized the only way to get through this was to come at the truth head-on. And who better than the two people in the room to help him?

He couldn’t lie to himself. Not anymore.

“Alright, then. Here it is. Most of the time I’m okay but there are moments when the walls are closing in.”

“Oregon?” they both asked him.

He stood. “Fucking Oregon. I’m okay when I’m
moving
. It’s only when I sit down and start thinking that I get myself into trouble.”

Christie looked like she wanted to hug him. He smiled and nodded, letting her know he understood.

“I’m going to say something very un-Stan now,” Stan said.

Eddie looked over at him, already amused.

Stan pointed at him. “It’s my role to scream about how the sky is falling. And I’m okay with that. But this time? I’m going to tell you what else I’m always thinking.”

“What?”

“You work best when the shit hits the fan, Eddie. You have an extra gear that most don’t have.”

Eddie looked away. He’d never been good at taking compliments and probably never would be.

Stan said, “This plan is in-fucking-sane. But if anybody can pull it off—”

“
We
can,” Eddie said. “We do this together or we don’t do it at all.”

Stan nodded.

Christie stepped forward and touched Eddie on the shoulder. “You’d tell me if you couldn’t, right?”

He held her stare. Those exotic eyes gauged him, and he felt like she was staring into his soul. He wondered if she liked what she saw.

He remembered one of the things he and the shrink had discussed. “I’m a mess. But I’m also a good man in a storm.”

Eddie watched as Christie explained their plan to the chief. Knotts poked some holes in it but eventually agreed it was their best play. He called the mayor to clear it with him. The mayor said it was the craziest idea he’d ever heard. But since there were no other ideas, and the clock was ticking, the mayor agreed to it.

On their way out of the chief’s office, Christie’s phone buzzed. One of the cops keeping tabs on Engel had called in to report his movement. Engel had left his condo and just pulled out of the parking lot.

“Stay with him.” Christie put her hand over the phone and nodded at Eddie and Stan. “Grab your gear, let’s get in my car. We might have to move.”

Eddie and Stan hurried to the conference room. They stuffed their equipment into two backpacks and met Christie in the hallway.

A lot of heads turned as they hustled through the police station. Harney saw them and hurried over to join them.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Eddie said, “Engel is moving. We’re getting ready to intercept him.”

“I’m coming with.”

Eddie didn’t object. Harney had ditched the attitude and he had chased down a lot of leads for Christie. Eddie gave him the nod, surprised at his own feelings. Maybe he’d learned a thing or two from Christie.

Christie still had the cell to her ear. Before they reached the front door, she slowed down. “Okay. If he moves again, you let me know.”

She put the phone in her pocket.

“Where is he?” Eddie asked.

“One guess.”

Eddie had no idea.

Harney chimed in. “St. Patty’s Fair.”

Christie nodded. “He always sets up a booth for his business. Same place, every year.”

Years ago Eddie had treated St. Patrick’s Day like it was New Year’s, his birthday, and Halloween all rolled up into one hard-drinking extravaganza that started early and went late. This year? He’d practically forgotten St. Patrick’s Day was coming up. It made him feel old, nostalgic, wiser, and sad all at once. He recalled the flyers and his earlier conversations with Christie. The Fair was a huge event in Rariville.

Christie said, “We’re talking thousands of people.”

A
crowd
.

Thousands in a small area. No room to maneuver, with a killer or two killers in their midst.

The last time he’d been in a crowd…

“We should hurry,” he said.

Christie made the last right. They were less than a mile from the center of town and Main Street, where the St. Patrick’s Day Fair was. Farther down, the police barricades stood in place to keep vehicular traffic out of a six block rectangle. She hadn’t been in two years and the last time had been with her ex. He wasn’t Irish but he loved beer and…

What was there left to say about him? Answer: nothing. She’d thought everything that could be thought about him. At first: sexy, intelligent, warm, funny. Then: career-oriented, focused, hard-working. Later: absent, aloof, uncaring. Finally she stopped thinking about him at all in present, evolving terms and had wondered what happened to the sexy, intelligent, warm, funny guy she knew. At some point she made the decision to reinvest in the relationship, forcing herself to keep regular hours when the case load permitted. He drifted away from her and it wasn’t until she stopped putting effort in that he came back. They went on like this, never fully committed to the marriage at the same time, until finally it had come down to children. Christie had always wanted them but realized her ex either wouldn’t want them, or would love them fiercely and end up ignoring her. When that epiphany came, she no longer wanted kids with him and not getting any younger, she knew it was time to move on.

Of course nothing was ever that simple when it came to a man and a woman. The minute she’d told him she wanted a divorce, he had fallen on his knees and begged her to stay and promised he would get his priorities straight and put her at the top of the list, like he should have always done, like he used to. Because she had devoted so much of her life to him she figured it made sense to try once more. Another six months went by and the now-familiar cycle repeated. Sparks, renewed passion, waning interest, increasing distance, absence, hollowness.

Finally she had brought up divorce again and instead of challenging her, he’d agreed.

Christie glanced at the man in her passenger seat. Eddie reminded her of her ex in many ways. In other ways he was extremely different. Then again, Eddie was very different than anybody she’d ever met before.

He was the ultimate outlier. He’d beaten long odds to get where he was but the events in Oregon had left him scarred. She liked him. A lot. But coming off an overdue divorce she wasn’t looking to get involved with someone who was damaged.

Eddie was tough. He’d battled addiction and gotten off the ex-convict track. But even the toughest guys crumbled in the face of depression and anxiety. It had happened to one of the older guys in the department. One afternoon he’d been called in to investigate a trespass case. He’d found a homeless man on the abandoned commercial property. Before he could ask the guy to leave, the man had pulled a .22. The homeless guy didn’t even get a shot off and they later discovered the gun wasn’t even loaded. They’d arrested the man and put him into the process.

But over the next week, the old cop came apart at the seams. He’d seen action in the first Gulf War and as a cop had been in some tight spots, including taking fire during a botched bank robbery that ended in a brief shootout before the perps surrendered.

For whatever reason, though, the homeless guy pulling a gun on him had been the man’s breaking point. The incident had opened up some unfixable crack inside the man’s psyche and that was it. It didn’t matter that the gun wasn’t loaded. It
could
have been. And the man couldn’t be a cop anymore. Just couldn’t.

He tendered his resignation the next week.

She wondered if Oregon had opened a crack deep inside Eddie that they couldn’t repair.

They?

Had she really just thought of them as a
couple
?

Without answering her own question, she shuffled the thought to the back of her mind. Time to focus on Engel. She replayed her interview of him, went over every reaction he’d had to her questions. Were they right that the ghost was his wife? She thought so. But there was no way to be sure so this was a huge gamble. She’d asked him point-blank about the ghost and he’d given her differing—

***

Christie grunted. It was an odd sound coming from her.

Eddie said, “Did you just think of something funny?”

“Max Engel confused me when I read him the other day. But what he did actually makes sense.”

“What do you mean?”

Christie pulled over to the side of the road. Eddie could just hear the sounds and music of the fair which was only a few blocks away.

She said, “Micro expressions, you know what they are?”

He nodded.

She said, “When I asked him about the ghost, he made conflicting expressions. The first like he was remembering something, the second like he was making something up.”

“Ah.”

Christie shook her head. “Both were
accurate. He’d made up a story about the ghost before we showed up. So he was remembering a lie.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Her eyes met his.

Eddie said. “So you’re good at reading micro expressions?”

She smirked. “Yes.”

“What am I thinking right now?”

“Aside from the obvious?”

“Sure.”

She sized him up. “You’re interested in a serious relationship. And that scares you.”

Her words not only hit the bulls-eye, they demolished the entire target.

“What about me?” she said.

He laughed. “I have no damned idea. And that’s part of the attraction.”

When she smiled, those darling little laugh lines creased the golden skin around her eyes. “The last thing I want is a serious relationship. So that’s why I’m scared too.”

Eddie chuckled. “Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up.”

Christie looked out the window and he could tell she was thinking about the past. “Even though it was the right thing to do, the divorce wasn’t easy.”

Eddie reached over. “I was going to think of something witty to say, but I got nothing. My last and only real relationship with a woman was ten years ago, and I fucked that up real bad.”

Christie checked the rearview to make sure nobody was walking up to the car. Then she squeezed his hand.

“Not a salesman, are you?”

He shook his head no.

She smiled. “You’re going to be trouble, I’ll bet.”

“A man’s got to be good at something.”

She laughed and squeezed his hand. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

***

Eddie put the cell phone up to his ear and listened while it rang. He was about a block from the fair. A sea of green in front of him. Kids chased each other while adults drank their beers. In the distance, somebody started playing a fiddle and then the clapping followed.

Finally Max Engel answered. “Detective, I’m so sorry I missed your call last night.”

Eddie took a deep breath. Once he started down the path, they were committed. The plan was like a boulder going down a hill. It would pick up speed quickly and it wouldn’t stop till it got all the way down.

Right now Eddie’s number one priority was getting Engel away from the crowd. But before he could do that, he had to hook him.

“Mr. Engel, this is Eddie McCloskey.”

“Oh…hi.”

“Why didn’t you call us back last night?”

Engel hesitated. “What? Hold on, it’s loud here.”

In the earpiece, Eddie heard Christie say, “Stay with Engel, guys.”

Engel said, “My phone is old. The battery must have been dead when you called. I didn’t see it till this morning.”

“Are you at the St. Patty’s Fair?”

They knew exactly where Engel was. Eddie was using this question as a baseline to gauge Engel’s honesty.

“Oh yeah. We always have a booth. Great visibility for business.”

Here we go.

“Max, are you
alone
right now?” Eddie said.

Engel hesitated. “There are hundreds of people out on the street…do you need me to go somewhere private?”

“You know what I’m asking,” Eddie said.

Engel clammed up. For a moment, Eddie feared Engel would disconnect. But in his earpiece, the cops were silent. Which meant Engel was standing still with the phone up to his ear.

Eddie felt a dull ache in his chest. “Do you know what a ghost box is, Max?”

“Ghost
box
?”

He didn’t know, Eddie could tell. Which was good. “They just started making them a couple years ago. They’re the hottest piece of paranormal equipment and have completely revolutionized the business.”

“Oh really?”

Eddie looked over at Christie. He couldn’t get a read on Engel. The man was nervous, but everybody was nervous when they talked to the cops. She nodded encouragingly.

Eddie said, “I have the latest model and have been using it on this investigation. It has helped tremendously. Do you know what it does?”

“No.”

“It reads the energy of an area, senses paranormal activity, and translates that energy into speech.”

Eddie let that sink in.

Engel said nothing.

Eddie said, “I’ve been able to communicate with many spirits about the murders.”

Engel said nothing.

“For example, one entity gave us the lead on the man that was spotted lurking outside of Stahl’s house.”

Engel finally spoke. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. “Another one gave us a description of the spirit that many people have reported seeing.”

Engel said nothing.

“Talking to these ghosts was a huge help. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without the ghost box. It’s amazing how much technology can change our lives, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Like I said, all those ghosts were helpful. But not as helpful as the ghost killing everybody.”

“You’ve
talked
to it?”

Hook.

Line.

And sinker.

“Oh yeah. Had a nice, long chat with her. She told us all kinds of things.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That you killed all these people, Engel.”

For a moment the man was silent. Then all at once he started talking. “No, no, no, no I don’t believe you, that’s—”

Eddie cut him off. “I don’t believe
her
, of course. All ghosts lie.”

“Oh…okay.”

“No. What I think happened was…are you sure you’re alone, Engel?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

Eddie sighed, a bit theatrically. He was no Oscar-caliber actor. “Because I don’t know how well-connected she is to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I mean, if she can hear me right now and I were to tell you how to get rid of her, then that would put you in mortal danger.”

Engel didn’t answer.

“On the other hand, if she’s not always around…then I could speak more freely,” Eddie said.

Engel still didn’t answer.

Eddie said, “I can help you, Max. I think this ghost pushed you to help her. I don’t think you had a choice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was little conviction left in his voice.

Christie made a circle with her thumb and forefinger.
Perfect
. It was time to lay out their cards.

Eddie said, “This all began with the healthcare fraud.”

***

“Stop me if she’s there,” Eddie said. “If she hears any of this, she’ll kill you.”

Engel said, “What do you know about that?”

“Enough. I know your wife worked with Stahl off the books to go through the agency’s records and look for opportunities to upcode your claims. The higher the codes, the more you were reimbursed for doing the same work, right?”

Engel said nothing.

“You had an arrangement with O’Donnell. For every referral he wrote, you kicked back some cash. O’Donnell had to close his practice after the lawsuit and was working the graveyard shift like a dog. Probably making more money than I’ll ever see, but nowhere near what he used to earn. At his age, he should have been retired.”

Eddie thought he heard Engel groan. But it was so soft, he couldn’t be sure.

“But your wife got a little greedy. She started billing for home health visits that never even took place. Maybe that happened with Fellov. She had her second hip replacement recently and couldn’t get out of the house. I assume she treated with your nurses.”

Engel didn’t answer.

Eddie said, “Somebody left the cops an anonymous tip and then Detective Kinz started poking around. He spoke to your patients, your staff, and finally Diane Chong. She shared her concerns with Kinz and that put your wife, the whole
business,
right in the crosshairs. And then Tiffany really went to work.”

Engel was deathly quiet.