In the case of meth labs, those left behind didn’t need sympathy. Nope. They wanted you dead.
3
When Sadie pulled the van up to a townhome complex, she ignored the curious gazes of neighbors out tending their small patches of grass frontage. She banked the van at the curb outside an end unit. Jackie spotted her through the window and came to greet Sadie at the door.
“Wow. You’re blond,” Sadie said by way of a greeting. Then because she realized her shock over the brunet-to-platinum dye job possibly made that remark sound rude, she added, “It looks nice.”
“Thanks,” Jackie said with a smile. “I just felt like a change. Zack said he almost didn’t recognize me.”
Sadie bit her tongue.
“I’ll help you finish up,” Sadie offered, nodding toward the townhome.
“I’m finished, but you can help load up the biohazard waste tubs.” She looked past Sadie. “So, Zack didn’t come with you?”
“No, he stayed at the other site. Too bad you’re already finished here. We didn’t accomplish anything at the other place. I was hoping to help you out a little.” Sadie didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
“Nah, you were hoping to look over my shoulder.” She put up a hand and smiled. “That’s okay. First job on my own. I get it. Anyway, the good news is that I can help out with the cookers.”
Jackie absently scratched her arm using her right hand, which was completely missing the ring and baby fingers. Sadie was tempted for the umpteenth time to ask her employee how she lost the digits. However, since the disfigurement didn’t affect Jackie’s work, Sadie was uncomfortable asking the question and Jackie had never volunteered an explanation.
“Would you prefer I do the drop at the storage unit?” Jackie asked.
Sadie tore her gaze away from Jackie’s fingers and just shook her head.
“No. We’ve been pulled off the meth job.”
“Oh yeah? What happened?”
Sadie told her employee all about what had transpired regarding the baby in the shed and the body found in the field. She left out the ghost thing, since Jackie didn’t know about her boss’s unique ability.
“Holy crap! That’s something,” Jackie said, her eyes wide. “What kind of crazy takes a newborn and sticks it next to a gutted goat?”
“The kind of crazy that usually keeps us busy mopping blood,” Sadie grumbled. “But instead the lunatic is costing me a job.”
Inside the cramped town house, Sadie and Jackie worked together to load up the medical waste bins. When Jackie hefted the last red rubber bin, she said, “Go ahead and check.”
“Check what?”
Jackie smirked. “You didn’t come all this way just to tell me about the baby and goat thing. You could’ve told me over the phone. Go ahead and make sure I did a good job.”
Sadie frowned. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re just a control freak,” she laughed mirthlessly, and turned to leave.
Sadie did go into the master bath to check and was surprised to see an elderly man sitting naked in the bathtub. His wrists had deep gaping slits.
Sadie nodded a hello.
“You can see me?” he asked in a warbly old man’s voice. “Ah, damn. It didn’t work, did it?”
“You’re dead, if that’s what you mean.”
“But how can you see me, then?” He frowned and looked confused. “And talk to me. That other gal, the one with the missing fingers—she just cleaned around me like I wasn’t here. Kinda weird having a young blond chick like that seeing me in my birthday suit.”
Sadie tunneled her fingers through her short-cropped highlights and shrugged.
“You’re dead. I can see the dead. Although, truthfully, I can’t see suicides, so I gotta ask, what really happened here? Who killed you?”
“Nobody!”
Sadie sat down on the lid of the toilet and faced him.
“You might as well fess up and tell me who you’re protecting.”
He shifted uneasily and Sadie kept her eyes respectfully on his face instead of his withered, naked body.
“If you can see me, how can I be dead?” he asked, neatly sidestepping her question.
“I just can,” Sadie replied. “Ever since my brother died, I’ve been able to talk to the dead and help them find their way to the other side.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You didn’t kill yourself, did you?”
“Of course I did!” he shouted angrily. “You can’t just waltz in here and accuse me of being a liar!”
“No harm, no foul, if you had help, you know,” Sadie stated matter-of-factly. “But, like I said, I’ve never been able to see the spirits of suicide victims. Not even my own brother, even though I’d give my right arm for that. It might be because suicides already know how to get to the other side, or else they’re just anxious to get there—they don’t pause in the here and now.”
“That’s crazy talk,” he muttered.
“You’re talking to me and you’re dead, so, yeah, it’s crazy talk,” Sadie replied with a half smile.
“I have an inoperable brain tumor. It’s the size of an orange.” He tapped the side of his head. “Damn thing’s been slowly eating me alive.”
“That must’ve been really difficult for you and your wife.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Last month Martha had to put me in diapers. Then she had to start feeding me. Some days my hand couldn’t find my own damn mouth.” He shook his head from side to side and then his tone grew wistful. “We had a good life together, you know? It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but we did all right. We agreed that when the time came, she’d let me choose how to go.”
“So you asked Martha to help you end your suffering?”
He sighed.
“I was supposed to do it myself. We’d put aside enough of my pills to make it easy, but that damn son of mine found my stash and flushed it. He whined about how miracles happen and I should just hang on. As if this were all about him.” He rolled his eyes. “He always was a selfish kid.”
“So Martha had to slice your wrists for you? How did you manage to make it look like a suicide?” Sadie asked curiously. “Usually the first thing the cops check is whether the cuts have hesitation marks, whether they’re left to right and all that.”
“We watched enough crime shows to know what they’d be looking for. We’re not stupid.” His eyes challenged her to say otherwise. “I wrote the note. Then Martha climbed into the tub behind me. I wanted to do it myself. Leave Martha out of it. But my hands shook too much and then, well, I guess I turned chicken. She put her hand over mine. I fought her for a second—”
“You changed your mind, but Martha went ahead?” Sadie asked with an edge.
His eyes flashed angrily.
“She did what she had to do. Even sang ‘Amazing Grace’ as I went out.” His tone softened. “She’s got the voice of an angel. You’re not going to make trouble for Martha, are you? I only had another month in me, tops.”
Sadie rubbed the back of her neck.
“My job is just to help you go on over. You can’t stay here.”
“I thought there’d be a light or something, but . . . nothing.”
“Sometimes you get held back. I’m not sure why,” Sadie said quietly. “Try to take a deep breath and close your eyes. You just have to want it. Let go of what’s here.”
“I’m worried about Martha. I never even showed her how to balance our checkbook.”
“Maybe your worry is what’s keeping you here. Do you want me to talk to your son about that? About making sure Martha’s financial details are worked out.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That would be good.”
Sadie watched him close his eyes. She could tell he was trying, but although his outer edges shimmered slightly, he didn’t fade.
“Anyone in your family go before you?”
“My brother, Ted, died two years ago,” he said. �
�His heart went.”
“I bet Ted’s waiting for you. Close your eyes again,” she said softly. “Picture your brother in your mind. Listen to his voice. Feel his touch. His arms are embracing you and—”
She stopped short and watched his essence glimmer, then slowly dematerialize. Within seconds there was nothing to see but a well-scrubbed bathtub.
Sadie turned to leave and was startled to find Jackie standing in the hall eyeing her curiously.
“Talking to yourself again?”
“Guess so,” Sadie replied. She nervously cleared her throat and nudged her way past her employee.
Wordlessly they locked up the house and loaded the remaining bins in the back of the van.
“I’ve noticed you do that a lot on the job,” Jackie commented as she leaned nonchalantly against the side of the van.
“What?” Sadie asked, digging out her keys and pretending she had no idea what Jackie was talking about.
“Talk to yourself. Zack says it’s nothing to be worried about. He says you’re just a little eccentric and that it’s no big deal. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it freaked me out a little.”
Eccentric! Sadie stiffened. It made her sound like an old lady who lived alone and talked to her cats.
“Everybody handles stress differently,” Sadie said curtly, and her eyes cut to Jackie in a way that told her to just drop it.
Jackie nodded, but her brown eyes regarded Sadie warily. She looked like she was about to speak and thought better of it. Sadie wasn’t about to have this conversation with Jackie right now. Hell, maybe not ever.
“Feel like working another job after this slice ’n’ soak?” Sadie asked.
“Sure. Bring it on,” Jackie said confidently. “I want as much work as you can throw my way.”
Sadie reminded herself that this was exactly the kind of enthusiasm that made Jackie a valuable employee. The fact that Jackie flirted with Zack didn’t make her a bad worker. It only made her female.
Just keep telling yourself that, she thought.
“We’ve got release to do a job in Kirkland. A dripper. Zack and I were going to work it alone in a few days, but since the meth job is out of our hands and you’re done here, there’s no reason why we can’t all go,” Sadie remarked.
“Awesome!”
Um. Not for the dead guy.
“I heard about that one. Biker dude shot, then bled out through the boards at their clubhouse before anyone noticed, right?” Jackie asked.
“Bikers?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah. Fierce Force. You must’ve heard of them.”
“Sure. Seattle’s Hells Angels wannabes. How do you know this Kirkland place was their clubhouse?”
“It was on the news,” Jackie said. “Supposedly they held meetings there, but then started using it as a meth house.”
“Meth and bikers. I guess it’s not exactly a stretch,” Sadie remarked. She snagged a pen from her pocket and scribbled out the Kirkland address. “You can take your time. Grab a coffee or a bite to eat. I’m going to drop off the med waste bins at storage first, then go back to the Kenmore house to pick up Zack.”
“I could pick up Zack. I don’t mind.”
I just bet you don’t.
“I’ll do it,” Sadie said. “The cops there may have more questions for me anyway and I’d rather get that over with.”
That was true, but Sadie had no desire to run into the freaky ghost she saw there earlier.
She climbed into the van and drove. She retrieved her voice mail messages, noting two from her mother, both nagging about arranging a baby shower for her sister. She didn’t feel like dealing with that. Instead, she cranked up the radio and sang along while she passed cars on the I-5. Snow Patrol was just singing the last lines of “How to Be Dead” when Sadie steered the van back onto the meth-lab scene, now turned into a murder scene.
Not a lot had changed at the property while she was gone. It was still a hub of activity. She climbed out of the vehicle, leaving behind the AC and stepping into a wall of heat.
“You’ll be happy to know that Baby Doe is doing fine,” Zack reported when he greeted her at the van. “He was a little dehydrated, but they say he’ll leave the hospital in a day or two. If they can’t find any living relatives, he’ll go straight into the loving arms of a foster parent.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Smile. We did a good thing.”
“I’m glad,” Sadie said.
“Oh really? Tell your face that.”
She looked beyond him toward the garden shed.
“What about the baby’s mother?”
“She wasn’t as lucky.” Zack leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Like you said, she was wearing a blue sundress. Long black hair. Lots of blood. Word out here was she had an impromptu C-section.”
Even though the topic was ugly, Zack’s warm breath on her ear tickled and caused her to blush. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt and being in this close proximity to his naked chest made Sadie’s nerves ping. She joked to cover up.
“Guess having you hang around your ol’ pals helps, huh? Look at all the information you picked up.” Sadie smiled. “A couple years off the force hasn’t hurt your connections.” She heard movement behind her and turned. “What the hell?”
A television reporter and his camera crew had arrived on the scene and had a camera focused on Sadie and Zack from just a few feet away.
“Hey, back off,” Zack snarled, his angry stride eating the ground until he was inches away from the reporter.
“Sadie, is it true you discovered a baby inside the body of a dead goat?” the young journalist shouted over Zack’s shoulder.
“What part of back off don’t you understand?” Zack asked heatedly.
“No comment, Scott,” Sadie replied, waving an officer over by shouting, “Hey, we’ve got a couple of vultures who’ve crossed the line.”
Scott Reed stepped closer and grinned wolfishly.
“A vulture? Now, that hurts.”
Zack blocked Scott until a uniformed officer ordered the reporter and his crew back behind the police line.
“Creep,” Zack said.
“He’s just doing his job,” Sadie said with a shrug.
“Yeah. Sure. Like the time he misquoted you, remember that? You came off sounding like a cold, unfeeling bitch about that teen suicide we worked a couple months ago.”
Sadie’s blood heated at the thought.
“Technically he didn’t misquote me. I said every teen thinking about suicide should have to clean one. And I meant it. I just didn’t know Reed and his crew were within earshot and had a camera lens zoomed in for a close-up.”
Zack said something, but Sadie didn’t hear. She was too focused on the shed behind him. Leaning against the outbuilding was the figure of the woman in the blood-soaked sundress. Her stance was casual, but if looks could kill . . .
“Let’s go,” Sadie said to Zack. “Jackie’s meeting us over at the dripper scene in Kirkland.”
“I got someone I want to talk to. I’ll be right with you,” Zack said, walking down the driveway and stopping to talk with a uniformed patrolman from the King County Sheriff’s Department.
Abruptly she turned on her heel to go back to the van. When she reached the door, she glanced to the side and noted that mangled Fido was lying in the shade of the house. His head was on his paws and he looked depressed. Of course he was missing probably a third of his body, so he had every right to be an unhappy puppy. Sadie walked over and crouched down to his level.
“Wish I could help you, boy,” Sadie said, her voice low. “My specialty is helping spirits walk to the light, but I don’t know how to apply that to dogs.”
He leaned in and licked Sadie’s fingers. She shuddered and pulled them away. Then the dog got to his feet and turned to look in the direction of the shed, toward the womanly ghost. A growl started deep in his throat and turned to a snarling bark as Fido suddenly charged. The dog bolted across the field toward the shed, but the lady in the blo
ody sundress faded before he reached her.
“Dueling ghosts,” Sadie muttered, leaning against the shade of the house. “This just keeps getting better.”
“Hey, Novak, you all right?” Detective Carr’s deep voice asked.
“I’m okay. Just needed a moment out of the sun.”
“Yeah, nothing like working a scene like this in the heat.”
The man stank of grime and sweat. It wasn’t even noon and his antiperspirant had already given up.
“Why would someone cut a baby from a pregnant woman and put it in a shed with a dead goat?”
“Sadie, even if I knew, it’s not like I could talk to you about it. You know that.” He frowned over at a detective in the field who was calling him over. “No sense in you and Zack hanging out here. We know where to find you both if we need to.”
“Okay, we’re headed to that dripper scene in Kirkland next.”
“The biker house, huh? Have fun,” he said sarcastically as he turned and walked away back toward the shed.
Weird ghost lady still wasn’t back. Sadie knew, though, that she wasn’t gone for good. She’d be back and Sadie didn’t want to be around to talk to her. She didn’t feel at ease until they were in the van and driving toward Kirkland. She’d much rather deal with an old-fashioned scene of body decomposition than a freaky ghost with red eyes any day.
When they pulled up to the scene, Jackie was already parked in the driveway. She was sitting in her car blasting heavy metal so loud that her car vibrated.
“You’d think she’d go deaf,” Sadie mumbled as she turned off her vehicle and pocketed the keys.
“I’ve heard you listen to U2 that loud,” Zack countered.
“Not in a customer’s driveway,” Sadie replied. “Besides, U2’s different. It has to be loud.”
Zack chuckled and they climbed out of the van and walked toward Jackie’s car. They watched a minute while Jackie played drums on her steering wheel. Her missing fingers didn’t interfere with her drum solo.
“One of these days I’m going to ask her what happened to her hand,” Sadie said.
“It’s not a secret,” Zack said. “I asked months ago. If you want to know, I’m sure she’ll tell you.”
Devil May Ride Page 3