“Thank God for that,” Sage muttered.
Chapter 2
At that moment the doorbell rang. Sage went to answer, figuring it had to be Mike, which it was. He took him into the living room, introducing him to Gene and Van before telling him the armchair opposite the sofa was free. Then, although he was certain that Van and Gene had already figured it out, he explained that he would repeat anything they had to say to Mike.
“So who is where?” Mike asked.
“Brody and Jon are there.” Sage pointed to two chairs they’d brought into the living room while he’d been answering the door. “Van’s to your left on the sofa, Gene is to your right.”
Mike nodded to them. “Shall we start with the obvious question? Do you know who shot you?”
“Like we told them,” Van replied, “we have no idea. We don’t have any enemies. Okay, other than maybe a few trolls on book sites who don’t like what we write. I don’t think they’d come gunning for us.”
While Sage relayed his reply, Jon said, “You’re authors? I don’t think I’ve heard of you.”
“Oh, the pain,” Van said, clutching his chest. Then he laughed. “We write under the pen name V.G. Ackton.”
“That’s you? Wow. I’ve read some of your mysteries. They’re pretty good.”
“Thanks.”
Again, Sage let Mike know what was being said. Mike replied, “I doubt any of your readers would decide you needed to die, but what about someone you spotlighted as a possible suspect in your Who Killed…? books?”
Van glanced at Gene before replying, “I suppose it’s a possibility, although we don’t say outright we think so-and-so is the killer. We merely lay out the events and the people involved in each of the cases. It’s up to the readers to draw their own conclusions.”
“But you do your best to point your finger at specific individuals?” Sage asked before telling Mike what Van had said.
“These are cold cases,” Gene replied. “Some of them as much as forty or fifty years old. We do our research, meet with those people who are willing to talk with us, as well as the police officers involved, and do more research to try to verify everything we’ve been told. Then we lay out the reasons one or more persons might have had a good reason to eliminate the victim, based on what we’ve learned. In a way it’s like a chess game. Move the right piece to the right square and you could reach mate or checkmate—or not if some piece of information is missing and you can only deduce what it is from what you’ve learned.”
“As I said, we don’t name names.” Van smiled dryly. “We’re not into getting our asses sued for defamation of character.” He blew out a long breath. “We weren’t, anyway. Now, it’s a moot point since there won’t be another book.”
Sage had relayed the conversation as Gene and Van talked. When he’d finished, Mike asked, “Were you in the process of writing a third book before you were killed?”
“Yes,” Van replied. “We had two cases we had just begun researching.”
“Who were the victims?” Sage asked.
“One was an eighteen-year-old woman named Irene Gibbs, who seemed to be fleeing her killer in her car when she was shot dead after she crashed it into a tree. The other was a young man who was attacked in the parking lot of his apartment building by person or persons unknown. He died on the scene and so far the police haven’t found any leads to who killed him or why.”
Jon hissed in a breath. “Who was he?”
“Jonathan Calvin Watts. He was a waiter…” Van stopped, looking at Jon’s stricken expression. “Jon as in Jonathan Watts?”
Jon nodded. “You never would have found out who killed me. God only knows Mike and Brody did their best but…but there’s no proof who it was.”
“But you have some ideas?” Gene asked. “We’d only begun digging, so all we had was the very basic details on how you died and where you’d been in the few days before it happened.”
“May I see what you have?” Mike asked once Sage told him what was being said.
“It’s all on our laptops,” Van replied before saying, “This isn’t getting us anywhere on who shot me and Gene.”
Sage relayed Van’s words, getting a nod from Mike.
“It’s early on,” Mike said. “Right now, I’m looking for any information you might be able to give me, starting with exactly what happened in the moments before you were killed. All indications are it was a drive-by. What kind of car were they driving? Did you see the gun? Where was the shooter? In the front or back seat?”
“There was only one man.” Van replied, fielding the questions while Sage told Mike what he was saying. For a moment Van closed his eyes, then he said, “I…we heard car brakes. I thought it was a near-miss accident. Then a car hauled ass around the corner. It was dark. The car, I mean. Maybe blue or black.” He shrugged. “It’s a one-way street so the car could pull up right next to where we were standing. The driver’s side window was down. I saw a gun. I think it had to be a semi-automatic because of the number of bullets. Then, hell, we were dead, I guess. Okay, I know we were.” He shuddered and Gene slid closer to put an arm around him.
“Turn about,” Gene whispered. “You tried to calm me down. Now it’s my turn.”
“That’s all you remember?” Mike asked.
“What do you want? That I took pictures with my phone while it was happening?” Van replied angrily.
“Easy,” Sage said. “He has to ask.”
“I take it he’s pissed off,” Mike said. “Sorry, but Sage is right. I have to ask. You didn’t see the person’s face?”
“No.” Van shook his head. “I’m the one who should apologize. I know you’re just doing your job.”
“I am,” Mike replied when Sage told him what Van had said.
“If he slammed to a stop, to shoot, did the car leave any skid marks?” Brody asked, smiling slightly when Sage relayed his question. “Maybe we should be using our phones to text him? It would save the feeling we’re in an echo chamber, Sage.”
Sage chuckled. “I’m not sure it would work, Brody, since Van and Gene can’t hold anything, yet.”
“Yeah. Good point.”
“Yes, there were skid marks,” Mike said in reply to Brody’s question. “I’m not sure they’ll do us any good. The CSI team will let me know.”
“I take it there weren’t any witnesses,” Sage said.
“Not that have come forward so far. It’s not a busy street and all the shops were closed by the time it happened,” Mike told them. “The buildings are all for businesses above the ground floors. It’s possible there were janitors in some of them. I have a couple of men canvassing the area, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Gene snapped his fingers, or tried to. It didn’t make any sound which was frustrating, but Van saw it and asked, “What?”
“I barely registered the car, but it could have been blue. Right?”
“Yeah, and? Oh.”
“Oh, what?” Mike asked when Sage told him what they were saying.
“The one case we’re…we were researching,” Van said. “The one with Irene Gibbs, the murdered girl? Witnesses saw two blue cars right as she crashed. A witness said both slowed down and she heard a loud bang, which could have been a shot. One sped away, the other one stopped and a man got out, went over to her car, then got back in his car and took off. Another witness swore a man was walking by and that he’s the one who shot her. The problem was, she didn’t see him clearly enough to be able to give a good description.”
Mike frowned when Sage finished repeating what Van had told him. “How long ago did this happen? You said some of the stories you write about come from cold cases.”
“The Blue Car Case, that’s how we labeled it, happened in 2008.”
“So, eleven years ago,” Sage said, cuing Mike in on Van’s reply.
“Yeah. There were three possible suspects. We were going to interview them if we could, along with the witnesses, and see if what they told us varied in any subst
antial degree from what they told the cops at the time. That’s what we do, if the case is recent enough,” Gene said.
“We’d already set it up with two of the suspects and one of the witnesses,” Van added. He smiled sourly. “I’d say that’s a no-go at this point. They’ll probably be relieved we’re can’t interview them.”
“Perhaps one of them more than the others,” Mike replied once he knew what the two ghosts had said. “I vaguely remember the case, so I’ll pull the files and go from there. Do you mind if I look at what you’ve found out so far?”
“Nope.” Van gave Sage the passwords for what Mike needed, saying he was welcome to download it all to his email if he wished. “The laptops are in our office.”
Mike nodded when Sage relayed Van’s reply, including which room was their office.
“Do you think he can find our killer?” Gene asked when Mike was gone.
“He’s damned good at what he does,” Brody replied. “He found out who murdered the two men who are living with us.” He grinned. “With our help, of course.”
Jon had been silent since the revelation that Van and Gene were planning on writing about his case. Now he asked, “Did you find anything about my murder?”
Van shook his head. “Like we told Mike, all we’d learned, so far, was what’s public knowledge. How you died and what you were doing in the days before it happened.”
“Which was nothing except working,” Jon replied dourly.
“And going to a club,” Gene said. “Far Horizons, if I remember correctly.”
“You do,” Brody replied. He turned to Jon, saying softly, “Don’t get your hopes up. If we couldn’t prove who killed you, I doubt they can.”
Van obviously overheard because he said, “You never know. We’d be…okay; we were coming at it from a fresh point of view. If we knew everything you do about it, we might spot something you missed. True, most of what we come up with when we’re writing about a murder is pure speculation based on what we’ve found out. I suppose you could call it a fun game that sells our books. There was one case however, in our first book, where we nailed it and the killer was arrested. It kind of made all the work we put into researching the stories worth it.”
“Still, if we told you everything we know…” Jon looked hopefully at Van and Gene.
“There’s not much we could do about it,” Gene replied. “We can’t use our laptops for more research, we can’t go around questioning witnesses, we can’t…” His mouth tightened angrily. “We can’t do a damned thing!”
“It’ll happen, in time,” Brody said. “Okay, not doing interviews. That’s out of the question now, at least in person. There’s always email, but even that’s not going to happen for a while.”
“How the hell do we even take care of this?” Van swept his hand around to encompass the house. “How do we pay the mortgage, or the bills, or turn lights on and off so someone knows we’re here?” His voice grew louder as he talked, until Gene hushed him with a finger over his lips.
“He has a point, though,” Gene said when Van shut up. “Only in reverse, I guess. Everyone knows we’re dead by now or soon will. The house, the contents, hell, everything we own has been willed to our families. We can’t stay here but we can’t take anything with us when we leave.”
“What would you want to take?” Sage asked. “You don’t need clothes. What you have on is what you’ll be wearing from now on.”
“Be glad you were fully dressed,” Brody said. “Kurt, who’s living with us, was murdered while he was skinny dipping.”
“Damn. So he’s wandering around in the raw?” Van said.
“No. I guess whoever it is who runs this whole dead and a ghost thing took pity on him. With my help he put on a pair of jeans, and they stayed.”
“There are mementos,” Gene said, getting back to Sage’s question. “And our laptops, and books, and, I suppose that’s it, but what good would it do us? We can hardly move somewhere else unless we can find a vacant building that won’t be demolished around us. Is that what you guys are doing?” He looked at Brody and Jon.
Brody waggled his hand. “Sort of. We found a deserted barn, well out of the city, and made it home. So far, no one’s bothered us. Probably because from the outside it looks like it’ll fall down if you tried to open any of the doors—which don’t open anyway except one on the side, and it’s barricaded from the inside to keep out the nosy parkers.”
“I sent the ‘Blue Car’ file to my email,” Mike said, coming into the room. “I also took the liberty of copying what you had on Jon’s case, which wasn’t much. And, being me and a detective, I checked your emails.” He chuckled. “You get more spam than I do. There was one from your publisher, wondering when you’d send him the manuscript for your next book.”
“Never,” Van replied sourly.
Mike nodded when Sage told him what Van had said. “Just so you know, I’m going to make this an official visit since you are murder victims. Do you have a safe, or anywhere else where you keep important papers, like your wills?”
“They’re all in the file cabinets in the office,” Gene said, and Sage relayed. “You’re welcome to take a look.”
“Thanks. I’m also going to take your laptops and your cell phones so our people can go through them. It’s standard procedure.”
When Gene shot a look at Van, he nodded. Then Gene said to Sage, “Ask him if there’s any way he can sort of lose them when they’re finished, so we can have them.”
Sage did.
“Who gets them in your wills?” Mike asked.
“Family, since both of us are dead,” Van said. “Chances are they’ll sell the contents of the house, before putting it on the market. All our family members are spread out across the country.”
Gene nodded, grimacing. “As far as my family is concerned, all they’d want is the money, to add to their bank accounts. They won’t want what they’d consider junk.”
“Rich?” Sage asked.
“Way too rich, and not too happy with my lifestyle or career choice, even though we did make a minor name for ourselves with the books.”
When Sage repeated the conversation, Mike said, “I’ll figure out some way to ‘lose’ your electronics once we’re done with them.”
“Say there was a program on them then wiped them clean and destroyed the hard drive when your people tried to access them, so they’re basically trash,” Jon said. “I read that in some mystery. I bet their families would believe it.”
Mike laughed when Sage told him what Jon had said. “I’m not sure that’s possible but you’re right, their families might believe me, since I’m a cop. I’ll be back once I’ve gone through the file cabinets. I’ll get their—” he looked toward where Sage had told him Van and Gene were sitting, “—your phones when I go to the morgue.”
“If there’s nothing else you need us for, Jon and I are leaving,” Brody said, and Sage repeated.
“Not that I can think of. Thanks for your help,” Mike replied before going back to the office.
“Van, Gene, we’ll keep in touch,” Brody said. “I might have a solution for your housing problem, but I have to talk it over with the other guys, first.”
“Thank you for being here,” Van replied. “It helped.”
“Knowing you aren’t the first, or the last, to stick around once you’re dead?”
“Yeah. With any sort of luck, Mike will figure out who killed us and we can move on to…wherever.”
“He has to be able to prove it, too, as far as we can figure out,” Jon said. “Kurt knew who killed him as soon as it happened, but he was still stuck here until Mike could get what he needed to arrest the man.”
Van cocked his head in question. “From what you’ve said, this Kurt is still here.”
“He’s like me,” Brody replied. “We have reasons to stick around.” That said, he put his arm around Jon and they vanished.
“How do they get from here to the barn they talked about?” Gene
asked. “It must be a long walk.”
Sage laughed. “It would be, if they walked, but they don’t. They fly. It’s a ghost thing and something you’ll be able to do, in time.”
“Everything is ‘in time’ to hear you guys tell it,” Van said tightly.
“Van, you’ve only been dead for a few hours. Get some sleep. Things will look; okay, maybe better isn’t the right word, but at least not so bad come morning.”
“Says you,” Van muttered.
“He’s right,” Mike said, coming into the room with a file in one hand. “Presuming you’re talking about trying to cope with being dead. I found your will. I’m going to have my people come by in the morning to get all the files on the cases you wrote about in your books. If whoever shot you isn’t someone connected to the ‘Blue Car’ murder, it could be someone who holds a grudge because you pointed a finger at them for one of the other murders.”
“Possible, I guess,” Gene replied through Sage. “Though I’m not holding my breath on that.”
Sage chuckled as he got up. “Since you don’t breathe, now, I don’t think that’s possible.”
“I’ll keep in touch, through Sage,” Mike said. “If you think of anything I should know…Okay, you can’t contact me so I’ll have Sage or Brody come by on and off for the next couple of days.”
“Thanks.” Gene started to hold out his hand before realizing Mike couldn’t see him do that, or shake it if he could. “Tell him thank you,” he said to Sage.
Sage did, and then he and Mike left.
“Now what?” Van asked morosely.
“Now we do what Sage said and get some sleep, I guess. We may not be able to have sex, now, but at least we can do this.” Gene leaned in to kiss Van. “And hold each other.”
“Which is better than nothing. I shouldn’t say I’m glad we died together, but I am. I’d go crazy on my own.”
“Go crazy?” Gene grinned. “I think you’ve been half crazy since the day we met, hooking up with me.”
“The best decision I ever made,” Van replied with a smile. Getting up, he held out his hand. “So let’s cuddle until we fall asleep.”
A Haunting of Ghosts Page 2