Talking with the Dead

by Shiloh Walker

  “Says you’re from Tennessee. It’s been my experience that most Southerners are a little more talkative than you,” the sheriff said, still holding his ID in her hand as she studied him with very cynical eyes. “Don’t suppose there is somebody I can call to verify this information?”

  Behind him, he heard Lucas snickering. “I can verify,” his brother said. “Lot of help that will be though.”

  “Will you just shut up?” Michael thought sourly. Lucas just continued to grin at him. His brother had always had a weird sense of humor. Being dead twenty years had only made it more so.

  Michael ran a hand through his hair and muttered, “Oz is going to kill me.”

  “Oz?”

  Okay, so she was expecting either a drugged out rock and roll singer, or an actor with a quirky smile that just liked to shape shift into a werewolf. I watch too much TV. The low, smooth contralto on the other end of the line was definitely not what Daisy had expected when Michael scrawled out the number and agreed to ride with her into town.

  “Yes,” Elise Oswald said levelly. “O’Rourke is one of my men. I’m kind of curious as why you are calling me. My people generally are rather closed mouthed.”

  “Oh, he’s closed mouthed, all right. But he happened into a town in Indiana where we’ve been having some kind of serious problems,” Daisy said. As she spoke, she tapped her pen on a pad of paper, then circled the woman’s name, the phone number, drawing a line under it. She doodled a little more, adding a triangle under the name, then jotting the sexy agent’s name down as well.

  “Indiana.” Oswald repeated it slowly, like she was speaking a foreign language. Then she made a little humming noise and murmured, “So that’s where he disappeared to.”

  “You been looking for him?” Daisy asked, giving him a wary glance. She shifted in her seat a little, making sure she could grab her weapon if she needed it. He watched her the entire time, with that little half smile on his mouth.

  “Not exactly. O’Rourke made it clear he wasn’t interested in being found any time soon. Please let him know that he is officially on a leave of absence for the next month, so if he would turn his pager back on, I’d be most appreciative.”

  “Riiigggghhhttt…” Daisy drawled. “Why don’t you tell me a little more about him, Ms. Oswald.”

  On the other end of the phone, Elise laughed. “Call me Elise or Oz. I rarely respond to Ms.” She made that little humming sound again and murmured, “Now let me see. About O’Rourke. There’s not too much that I can share, but O’Rourke has a habit of happening into places where all sorts of trouble is going on. That’s one of the reasons he’s with me.” She sounded just a little amused as she said it.

  “You like troublemakers?” Daisy asked curiously.

  With a laugh, Oswald said, “Hardly. What I like is the fact that he always ends up where he is needed. There’s a problem, he finds it, solves it, moves on to another.”

  Dryly, Daisy said, “How nice for you. But I don’t need a problem solver. I just need you to verify he was in Philadelphia…like for last week?”

  “I can verify that.”

  Eyeing the silent stranger in front of her, Daisy scowled. “Can you expand on that a little? Some more detail?”

  “No, Sheriff. I can’t. You asked for verification, not detail.”

  Elise Oswald spoke with a cool amusement that only added to Daisy’s irritation. Patience and professionalism took a quick leap out the window. “Look, lady,” she snapped. “I’ve got four dead bodies and I just found your boy standing in a very remote area where the latest one was found. That’s a little strange, don’t you think?”

  Elise Oswald’s evasiveness sure as hell wasn’t helping Daisy’s mindset either. Oddly, though, the lack of answers didn’t matter. Michael O’Rourke wasn’t a killer. She knew it with a certainty that went clear down to her bones.

  Oswald started to laugh. “Not if you know O’Rourke. You have absolutely no idea how many strange places with all sorts of bad things that he just happens to walk into. And if you have O’Rourke there, you should know, he’s not a boy, mine or otherwise.”

  Daisy fell silent, staring at the ID in front of her. Instincts, long since fallen silent, started to scream at her and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “Exactly what does that mean?”

  On the other end of the line, Oswald simply said, “Could mean a lot of things—could mean he just has a habit of ending up in weird places. Could be something else. But like I said, he was here, on assignment, last week. And every week before for the past several months.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Now that…I can’t answer.” And the line went dead.

  Slowly, Daisy hung up the phone and sat back in the chair. Looking up, she stared at Michael O’Rourke. She did have to agree with Oswald on one thing—Michael O’Rourke was no boy.

  Dark, broody looks, lean powerful body and a mouth that looked like it had been made for kissing. Sleepy looking blue eyes, that deep slow voice with its faint Southern accent—the man was a walking, talking dream. Sure as hell nothing boy-like about him.

  He sat in the chair across from her desk, his hands resting on his thighs. His bag was sitting at the desk out front where he’d surrendered it without protest. He didn’t fidget, didn’t do anything that portrayed any kind of nerves, guilt or a need to intimidate.

  There was nothing he had done that shouted threat.

  Yet, everything about him made Daisy aware of just that. He wasn’t a man to be tangled with.

  Meeting those dark blue eyes, she pushed his wallet back across the desk. With a polite, professional smile, Daisy said, “You’re clear. But you might not want to hang around town, Agent O’Rourke. People are getting antsy. Having a stranger around isn’t going to help any.”

  She arched a brow at him, angled her head to door. “You can go.”

  Without comment, he stood and tucked away his wallet. He turned to the door but instead of leaving, he just stood there. When he turned back around to look at her, his eyes were hooded. “Curious. What’s going on around here? People are edgy. Even for uptight Yankees,” he said with a twist of his lips.

  “None of your concern, Agent O’Rourke. Especially if you were just in the field for the scenery,” she said, tongue in cheek.

  “Don’t, man.”

  Michael ignored Lucas’ intense voice as he picked up the heavy rock that sat on Sheriff Dasynda Crandall’s desk. It was an amethyst. The purple spikes that stood out from the inside caught the light as he shifted it back and forth.

  “Don’t do this, Mike. If she doesn’t believe you, you’re going to find your ass thrown in jail.”

  Focusing his mind toward Lucas, he replied, “And if I don’t, somebody else dies. I can’t let that happen. That woman in the field asked for help—I can’t walk away.”

  Mike blocked his brother from his thoughts and concentrated on the crystal in his hands as he started to speak. “A woman was found in that field,” he said softly. The images rolled in his mind like a silent movie, her body being dragged out of the trunk, thrown on the ground…a wood cabin, a hand closing around her throat, the silver flash as a knife lifted and descended, over and over. The slow trickle of blood. The eventual weakness.

  “But she wasn’t killed there.”

  Daisy sat up and he watched as the flat, blank look entered her eyes. Cop look. He knew one, had practiced and perfected his own, even though he wasn’t exactly a cop. At least, Mike didn’t think of himself as one.

  “Okay. Care to tell me how you know any of that?” she asked tightly.

  “There was a cabin,” he said distantly, hardly even aware of her question. He continued to stare down at the amethyst but instead of the pretty purple spikes, he saw wooden plank floors and wooden walls, a narrow bed, rusty bloodstains on the floor. “He killed her there. She knew him.”

  Daisy stood up so quick her chair toppled over. Her eyes flashed with fury, the professional cop gone in the he
at of anger. “All right, slick, I don’t give a damn if you do have an alibi, if you don’t tell me how you know that, you can look forward to spending some time behind bars,” she snapped.

  The jagged points of the amethyst pressed into his palm as he murmured, “Your dad gave you this. He was a cop, too, wasn’t he? Died in the line of duty—drug deal. You almost left your badge behind when that happened.”

  Blood roared in his ears as he felt the surge of emotions rolling from her. Confusion, the first wink of understanding, smashed out by her disbelief. They never wanted to believe. Lifting his head, he stared into her wide, angry eyes.

  “How in the hell do you know that?” she demanded.

  The smile that curved his lips now was a real one, cynical, just a slight twist of his lips, as he shrugged. “I think you already know.”

  Daisy felt the knowledge slam into her like an uppercut, shock and disbelief warring in her mind for supremacy. This wasn’t possible. Not possible.

  “He has another.”

  Slowly, she leaned forward and planted her hands on the table. “What?”

  “A girl.”

  “Not possible. If a girl was missing in Mitchell, especially with this going on, her family would have already called,” Daisy said flatly. One of the nice things about small towns.

  “She isn’t from here. A girl. Walking down the highway,” Michael O’Rourke said, staring into her eyes. “Long blonde hair—not her real color. She’s…she’s not well. Bad heart.”

  She watched him with disbelief as his lashes lowered, hiding his eyes for a minute. When he looked back at her, she felt the power of that gaze like a punch in the solar plexus. That mild blue gaze was no longer quite so mild.

  His eyes seemed to glow.

  Daisy blew out a shaky breath and turned away from him for a minute while she tried to calm her rattled emotions. The deep breath didn’t help and neither did staring out the plate glass window that took up most of the back wall of her little office. She was too aware of him. She could feel his eyes boring into her back, waiting to see what she did. How she reacted.

  But Daisy wasn’t sure how to react to this. Suddenly, this case had become a whole different ball game.

  Whoever the killer was knew small town life, knew when to play his cards and when to hold his hand. He also knew how to hide his tracks. How to blend in. He lived here. She knew it in her gut.

  It was somebody that she knew, probably somebody she’d grown up with. Most serial killers were men, usually under the age of forty, which put him right in her age bracket.

  Son of a bitch.

  Lowering her eyes, she looked at the gruesome pictures one last time and silently promised yet again, I will find you.

  “How many?” Michael asked quietly.

  Cutting the man at her side a narrow look, she said sarcastically, “Don’t you know?”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” he said, lifting one shoulder.

  “How does it work?” she asked, crossing her arms over her stomach.

  “Ever seen The Sixth Sense?”

  Her nose wrinkled. Images of animated corpses walking around filled her head. “Ewww…” Then she looked back at the pictures of the dead victims. “Dead people?”

  “My gift. They don’t look like that—they look however they last see themselves. They usually know they are dead and if they don’t, they figure it out pretty quick. That doesn’t always help though,” Michael said. His voice was expressionless, his blue eyes blank, and just blue now, no longer glowing. “They talk to me. The woman who was in the field…” His gaze drifted over her shoulder and she shivered. He was looking at somebody. “She sees the girl. But she’s confused. Still doesn’t understand what happened. She knows somebody killed her, and she’s scared. Hurt.”

  “Sees what girl?” Daisy asked warily. This all felt surreal. But not for a moment did she think he was lying. She hadn’t ever met a person she believed more.

  “The one he has now. She’s blonde, young…pale,” Michael murmured. “I can see her through your friend’s eyes…Tanya…yes, Tanya. I can see her through Tanya’s eyes.”

  A shiver raced down Daisy’s back as he lifted his head, turning it to stare to Daisy’s right, at a point by the window. His eyes seemed to lock with something, but the room was empty, save for them.

  “Are you…talking to Tanya now?”

  A smile edged up the corners of his mouth and he shook his head. “No. She can’t come here. She’s trapped there, in the field. And in the cabin where he killed her.”

  “I need to know more about this cabin.”

  Michael’s eyes closed and she watched as he sighed, his shoulders slumping just a little. “I can’t tell you more…she only saw the inside of it. She never saw a clock, never saw the sun shining through the window. Pine…she could smell pine trees. She’s blocked out his face.”

  “What do you mean blocked it out?” Daisy asked, scowling.

  “Blocked it. She’s too afraid of him, what he did—she won’t think about it. And I can’t make her do it until she’s ready.” His voice trailed off. Then he shook his head and looked at her, his eyes blank and empty. “I can’t tell you anything that could help. Not right now, not yet. When she’s ready, she’ll help us. But right now’s too afraid.”

  Tears burned her eyes. God…Tanya…

  A hand came up, squeezing her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Shrugging away from him, she closed her eyes. “I thought once a person died, they were beyond that,” she said, forcing the words past the knot in her throat. God, she prayed, she hoped.

  God, how she could face any of these families knowing that the poor victims might be stuck here…

  “A lot of the time, they can move on. Sometimes they can’t.” Michael’s gaze flickered back to the window and she frowned, looking at the window then at him.

  “What stops them?”

  “Life. Sometimes they see or feel right before they die—” his voice broke off.

  “And what’s keeping Tanya here?” she demanded. “Damn it, you don’t have any idea what he did to her!”

  He lifted haunted eyes to her face. “Yes, I do. You don’t. You saw her body. You didn’t feel it. She can’t talk to you. You can’t feel her fear. You aren’t trapped inside that cabin. She is. And she’s terrified she won’t be able to keep him from hurting the girl that’s there now.”

  Chapter Three

  Daisy tried to dismiss it.

  Tried very hard.

  But she couldn’t even find it in her to doubt him, much less totally dismiss him. Over the next hour, she flipped through the flyers, studying them, looking for a young, pale blonde.

  There were a number of them. Had he taken one of them?

  She sifted out the five blondes who had disappeared recently, tossing the rest into a basket on her desk, rubbing her temple as she read the names. Should be easy. Bad heart. Hair wasn’t the natural color.

  A breeze blew through the room and she absently rubbed her arms, not noticing as one of the flyers in the basket drifted to the floor.

  A young girl, teenaged, pale skinned, her brunette hair waving around her narrow face, stared up from the grainy photo. The words urgent right below her picture would have caught Daisy’s eye if she had seen it.

  When somebody called into her office fifteen minutes later, she pushed the flyers aside, scowling as Deputy Jake Morris grinned at her from the doorway. “This is the third time Myrtle has called the office. She’ll only talk to you, Daisy,” he said, laughter dancing in his eyes.

  “I can’t help that some stray dogs are shitting in her petunias,” Daisy muttered, smoothing a hand across her hair, tucking a stray lock behind her ear.

  “Roses. It’s her rose bushes this time,” he said helpfully. “You going to talk to her?”

  Sourly, Daisy muttered, “Why in the hell should I? She’ll just keep calling until I go out there.”

  “Should I tell her that you’re on your way?�
�

  “Yes.” Lifting her eyes skyward, she murmured, “Give me patience.”

  *

  Twenty minutes later, Daisy repeated, for the fifth time, “Mrs. Morrow, please, if you will tell me what the dog looked like, maybe we can figure out if it has an owner. But unless you see the dog, there’s not much I can do.”

  Daisy covered her nose as Myrtle Morrow waved a blue plastic grocery bag in front of her, the stench of the dog poop inside the bag drifting out to flood her nose. “You’re telling me you won’t help me?” Mrs. Morrow demanded in strident tones.

  “I’m saying I can’t—not unless you can at least tell me what the dog looks like,” Daisy said, trying not to grit her teeth. She didn’t know if she had succeeded though.

  “It’s a dog!”

  Daisy rubbed her temple and said, “Listen. We have more than three hundred and thirty three dogs in the town limits. I checked. And more strays than I care to think about. So unless you have an idea to figure out which of those three hundred plus pooches crapped in the rose bushes, I don’t know what I can do.”

  A chill ran down her spine, making her shiver. The skin on the back of her neck prickled, and the feeling of being watched settled within her. Blinking, she forced herself to focus on Myrtle, taking her arm and guiding her back to her porch. She made the appropriate sympathetic noises as the old woman brandished the poop bag and gestured wildly toward her roses.

  “I’ll find the dog. I’ll stay up night and day if I have to,” Myrtle muttered, staring at the bag and sulking.

  “And as soon as you can tell me what it looks like, I’ll do what I can,” Daisy promised.

  Which wouldn’t be much, because Myrtle would most likely describe a dog that matched the description of half the strays and registered pets in town. But at least Daisy was able to walk away from her house. Sliding into her car, she checked the rearview mirror. Nobody around that she could see. But somebody was watching her. She could feel it.

  It felt like somebody was trying to puzzle her out.