by L. T. Ryan
“Elsewhere?” Harris asked.
Cassie’s skin pricked.
“My dad inherited a lot of money when my grandfather died. After my parents divorced, my dad went off the deep end. Became a recluse. I don’t know how he lived when I wasn’t talking to him, but it wouldn’t take a doctor to see that something was off about him. It got worse after he had his first couple heart attacks. He started taking flights all around the world, looking for anyone who could cure him.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” David interrupted, “but modern medicine can do wonders these days. Having a heart attack today isn’t like having one fifty years ago.”
“You’re right,” Bradley said. “We have devices that’ll regulate your heartbeat. We can put in stents to help keep arteries open. Hell, we can take a healthy heart out of a person who’s passed on and put it in a different person.”
“But none of that was good enough for your father?” David asked.
“Apparently not. He wanted a cure, not a temporary fix. He kept having heart attacks and doctors kept saving his life. But every time he walked out of the hospital, he’d start ranting and raving about finding a way to live forever.”
“Immortality?” Harris couldn’t hide the disbelief in her voice.
“Look, I know how it sounds.” Bradley ran a hand down his face. “Trust me, I know. He sounds crazy. He is crazy.”
“Why do you think he’s behind these murders?”
“About a year ago, Dad started inviting me out to dinner once a month. I didn’t want to go, but Mom said it would be good for him. Maybe good for me, too. He wouldn’t live forever, despite him saying otherwise and she thought it would be a good idea to bury the hatchet and make peace with him while I could.”
“Your mom sounds like a good person.”
“One of the best,” Bradley said. He smiled, but after a few seconds, it faded. “Dad told me about going to India and finding some shaman or priestess or something that told him how he could fix his heart. How he could cure himself. I don’t pretend to know everything and there’s a lot of ancient forms of medicine that we’re still trying to understand to this day, but I’ve seen the kinds of people he was describing. Some of them are con artists. If you pay them enough money, they’ll tell you a very convincing lie and by the time you figure out you’ve been duped, your pockets are a lot lighter.”
“Did you tell your father this?” Harris asked.
“It didn’t go over well.” He rolled his eyes. “We had another fight, and I didn’t talk to him for another two months. But then he reached out again, said he wanted to go to dinner. I figured he was trying in his own way and I figured I should try, too.”
“Did he talk to you about the shaman again?”
“He didn’t bring it up. Things were normal for a while.”
“Until?”
“Until he started asking about Langford.”
Harris sat up straighter. “How did he know about Langford?”
“I’d talked about him over dinner on more than one occasion. For a while I couldn’t figure out what to talk about, so I talked about work. A lot of weird stuff happens in a hospital, a lot of funny things. I complained about Langford’s arrogance, about how I didn’t think he cared about people. At first my dad’s questions about him were normal. I could tell he was trying to engage, you know? And later, the questions got rather specific.”
“Specific how?”
“He’d ask what I thought about his technique as a surgeon. If he was skilled or not. He’d ask if he’d ever done heart surgery. I thought maybe he was looking for a recommendation for a new doctor, so I answered all his questions.”
“When did you realize that’s not why he was asking?”
“It took me too long.” Bradley’s gaze drifted between them, a thousand-yard stare in a hundred-fifty-square-foot room. “Way too long.”
Harris reached out and put a gentle hand on Bradley’s arm. “Hey, you couldn’t have known, okay? About either one of them. Nobody suspects that of the people in their lives. But you’re doing the right thing about talking to us now.”
“I didn’t put two and two together until a few days ago.” Bradley was angry with himself despite Harris’s words. “Something clicked. I thought back to what he’d said about the shaman. I investigated places he’d gone and did some searching online. There are a lot of articles out there about modern ritualistic sacrifices. Human sacrifices. They believe in this eye for an eye thing. Is your kid sick? Kill another kid and bury them under your house. Your kid will get better. And if he doesn’t, you performed the ritual wrong.”
“Bradley, I believe you—” Harris started.
“But?” he said.
“But we need evidence. I need to be able to issue a search warrant for his arrest.”
“I don’t have anything,” Bradley said. “I wish I did, but—”
“Handwriting,” Cassie spoke for the first time in what felt like hours. “Would you recognize your father’s handwriting?”
“Uh, sure, I think so. Why?”
“On it.” David rushed out of the room. A moment later, he came back with a few different letters and laid them out in front of Bradley. But David didn’t come back alone.
Elizabeth was right behind him.
Cassie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, Elizabeth was standing in the corner of the room as a silent observer. Cassie wanted to tell David that Elizabeth was there, but with Bradley in the room, she didn’t dare.
Cassie looked down at the letters on the table. She didn’t recognize two of them, but Harris gestured to all three.
“Okay, Bradley. We’re going to do this on the fly because we don’t have much time. This is so we can convince a judge to give us a warrant to search your dad’s property.” David pulled three letters from evidence. One of them was written by the blackmailer. “Can you tell me with any certainty, which one—”
“This one.” Bradley pointed to the blackmailer’s letters. “He wrote out a lot of notes when he was being treated. He used to have me read through what all the doctors told him to see if any of them were lying or trying to take advantage of him. It’s this one.”
“That’s good enough for me,” David said.
Harris nodded her head. “Then it’s good enough for me, too.”
Thirty-Eight
The intensity level in the precinct increased a thousandfold. The air, no longer stale, rushed past, carrying the smell of early fall through the building every time someone opened an exterior door.
Harris handed Bradley over to Detective Beauregard, who was instructed to take the man’s statement and not leave anything out, no matter how strange it seemed. Beauregard, for his part, gave a solemn nod and entered the interrogation room with a firm look of determination on his face.
Before Harris could issue any orders, a man in uniform ran up to her. “It’s in the news.”
“What’s in the news?”
“They know we’ve arrested a suspect and they know there’s someone else involved.”
Harris cursed. “Campbell?”
The man shook his head. “Not this time. Langford’s lawyer went to the press himself. He’s trying to paint Langford as the victim. He’s trying to say someone else was pulling the strings.”
“Court of public opinion,” David said. “Son of a bitch. That’ll be good for him.”
“And bad for us,” Harris said. “We gotta get to Baker before he sees the news, or he’ll be in the wind.”
“What should I do?” the cop asked. He looked young. And nervous.
“Get that piece of crap lawyer inside. I don’t care if you have to throw him in a cell. Just stop him from talking. Do what you need to do. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
The cop mumbled a quick “yes, ma’am,” and ran off in the opposite direction.
“David,” Harris said. “I need you to go over to Judge Kominski’s house and convince him we need a searc
h warrant.”
“It’s Saturday. He’s not going to be happy.”
“I don’t care. If you must, say we’ll owe him a favor. We need that warrant.”
“What are you going to do?”
“According to Bradley, his father is wealthy. He’s a flight risk. I’m going to head over to his house and keep an eye on him. Stall if I have to. That’s why you need to hurry.”
“Adelaide—”
“David.” She stared him down. “This is not the time to argue. Get that search warrant. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
David looked like he’d rather tie Harris to her desk than risk putting her in that situation, but he nodded his head, squeezed Cassie's shoulder, and ran down the hall and out of the precinct. By the time he got to the door he had his phone to his ear.
“Go home, Cassie.” Harris made her way over to her desk. “You’ve been a huge help. I’ll call you when it’s over, okay?”
“Home? Detective—”
“You know, I’d get a lot more done if people didn’t try arguing with me every time I told them to do something.” Harris sat down in front of her computer. “William Baker. Come on, you piece of shit. Work faster.”
Cassie looked down the hallway David left through. Elizabeth was standing there, allowing the other cops to pass through her unnoticed. She reached out her hand and tried mouthing something, but Cassie couldn’t hear the words.
“Detective,” Cassie said again.
“What the hell?” Harris leaned closer to her computer screen. “Jesus, Bradley wasn’t kidding. This guy owns four houses in Savannah alone.”
“Detective!”
Harris didn’t bother looking up. “Go home, Cassie. I’ll call you—”
“I know how to find him.”
Harris stopped what she was doing and looked up at Cassie, who was standing at the edge of her desk wringing her hands. “Come again?”
Cassie took a step closer. Her thighs pressed into the edge of the desktop. “Elizabeth is standing at the end of the hallway with her arm outstretched. She’s trying to tell me something. I think that something is where Baker is.”
To her credit, Harris didn’t question that Cassie was seeing the ghost of one of the murder victims. Progress, Cassie figured.
“How would she know that? She wouldn’t have been taken there.”
“Her heart was,” Cassie said. “And her blood. Some spirits are tied to their bodies. And he has a piece of her.”
Harris tapped her pen against her keyboard’s space bar. “I don’t know about this.”
Cassie looked Detective Harris in the eyes. “It’s going to take a lot more time going to each of his houses and hoping we get to him before he sees the news. This is the best chance we have of beating the clock. Trust me, Detective. You’ve got to.”
For a moment, Cassie couldn’t read Harris’s expression. Her eyes were wide, but her mouth was set in a firm line. She looked down at her watch, then at her computer, and then at the other cops standing around them. No one seemed to be paying them much attention.
“We need to go out the back,” Harris said. “We’ll avoid the press. If they see me, they’ll follow us and that’s not a good problem to have.”
Cassie nodded her head and Harris took off toward the back of the precinct. Cassie followed her through the maze of corridors until they were standing in front of an unassuming door leading outside. When Harris pushed it open, they were both momentarily blinded by the Georgia sun cresting over the roofline of the opposite building.
Harris recovered, then strode across the parking lot with purpose. Cassie had to jog to keep up, and by the time she made it to the front seat of Harris’s unmarked sedan, the detective was already pulling out of the parking spot.
“Where to?”
Cassie pulled her seatbelt down over her chest and felt the buckle click in place. When she looked up again, she noticed Elizabeth standing next to the exit sign that led out to the main road. It was harder to see her in the broad daylight, she was translucent, distorted the world behind her a bit. But her dark hair was enough to make her stand out against the environment.
“There.” Cassie pointed toward the road. “Let the record show, I’ve never done this, so I don’t know how this is going to work.”
“Noted.” Harris gunned the car.
Thirty-Nine
Cassie had never thought about what it would be like to try to follow a glitching, blinking apparition from point A to point B. But if she had, she would’ve imagined a scene close to their current reality.
Cassie knew Harris was trying to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy being directed toward an unknown destination when your GPS was literally dead. Harris left her sirens off because she didn’t want to draw attention to their pursuit. They had to fly under the radar which was difficult when they were making last minute turns and short stops, tires squealing hard, leaving swathes of burnt-rubber flavored air.
“Remind me to never let you convince me to do this again.” Harris pulled onto the highway after almost missing the turn.
“You might change your mind if this ends up working out in our favor.” The sharp turn plastered Cassie into the passenger side door.
“Unlikely,” Harris replied. Her eyes never wavered from the road ahead.
Cassie kept her eyes on the road, too, scouting for a ghost. She didn’t know what would happen if she missed one of Elizabeth’s directions. Would she give up and disappear, or would she keep appearing in the middle of the highway until Cassie realized they needed to turn around?
“Anything?” Harris had had the foresight to hop into her personal vehicle so they could roll right up to Baker’s house in an unmarked sedan without looking suspicious. The downside to that was she had to drive near the speed limit so she didn’t risk getting pulled over. Harris would never be issued a ticket, but they could not afford to lose any time.
Both could feel the clock ticking away.
“Not yet.” Cassie’s eyes roamed from side to side. Every time they passed an exit, she would press her face against the glass and make sure she didn’t miss Elizabeth glittering in the sun. “Wait. There. Next exit.”
Cassie had barely spotted her standing just beneath the sign to start heading south.
Harris switched lanes without bothering to use her turn signal. Cassie saw the driver of a red Honda Civic flip them off as they passed, but Harris didn’t care, if she noticed at all. She took the exit easy and hit the gas as soon as she was back on the straightaway.
“Where are we heading?” she asked Cassie.
“Beats me.”
They stayed on I-95 past Richmond Hill and got off on 17. Every step of the way, Cassie would see Elizabeth at the last second and call out instructions to Harris, who would curse and turn the wheel to make their next direction.
“Fleming?” Harris asked.
They passed through the small town and stayed straight until Elizabeth appeared out in front of a church. She pointed down a road opposite her and Cassie called out the directions. A few minutes later they entered the boonies. They were driving along a street with farms on one side and deep woods on the other.
Cassie rubbed her arms. “I think we’re getting close.”
“What makes you say that?” Harris asked.
“I’m freezing.”
Harris leaned forward to check the temperature on her dash. “It’s ninety-seven degrees outside. The AC is on low.”
“That’s what makes me think we’re getting close,” Cassie said.
When she next saw Elizabeth standing at the end of a long driveway, Cassie knew this was it. “Turn here. Go slow.”
Harris followed Cassie’s instructions and let the car roll forward down a gravel driveway. The trees were dense here and the driveway had recently been dug out and filled in. The fill dirt was loose. Plumes of dust kicked up behind them. Cassie hoped to God they weren’t pulling up to a dilapidated house. They’d have to account for every step they t
ook while fearing the place would collapse on them.
But when Harris rounded the driveway’s final bend, a beautiful green Victorian appeared as if someone had dropped it in the middle of the woods.
From the outside, it looked immaculate. There were large rose bushes lining the front of the house, all the color of red wine. A swing blew in the breeze on the front porch and the sun glinted off the windows on the third floor.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Harris asked.
Cassie leaned forward and saw Elizabeth staring at her from the steps leading up to the front door. “Positive.”
“I want you to stay in the car,” Harris said.
A chill ran down Cassie’s spine. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Honest answer?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m kind of shitting myself right now, and I’d rather have you in my sights at all times.”
Harris laughed and smothered it. “You know what, fair enough. Text David. Give him the address. Tell him the second he’s got a warrant he needs to bring half the precinct to this guy’s doorstep.
Cassie did as she was told and looked back at the house. All the windows were closed and there was no car in the driveway. “Do we know if he’s home?”
“Let’s go find out,” Harris popped open her door.
Cassie tucked her phone in her pocket and got out of the car. Another chill went down her spine and a pit hollowed out her stomach. Elizabeth took three steps backwards and disappeared inside the house.
“Great,” Cassie mumbled.
“Did you see something?”
“Elizabeth went inside. I hope that wasn’t a sign that we’re supposed to follow her.” Cassie shook her head, knowing that was precisely what Elizabeth wanted.
“We’ll knock so he doesn’t think we’re trying anything,” Harris ascended the handful of steps to the front porch.
Cassie stayed on the ground and when Harris knocked, Cassie had the urge to look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the activity inside. A breeze blew through the trees, but other than a few birds chirping and chickens off in the distance, it was quiet. Peaceful.