She found Scott standing in the corner of one of the two bedrooms. He pointed to black stuff on the floor and said something that sounded a lot like “camel fax.”
“Camel fax?” Sadie shouted. Obviously translation was lost through his respirator.
Sadie glanced at where Scott pointed and realized he’d probably said “candle wax,” and not “camel fax.” She nodded and took a picture of black wax that had melted, then hardened in the corner of the room. Drips and dribbles of it crossed the short shag carpet and led across the room to a closet. She followed the trail and opened the door.
The closet was tiny and completely bare with the exception of a couple wire hangers that dangled from the bar and a two-foot symbol drawn on the back wall. The crude picture done with a black permanent marker caused Sadie to suck in a gasp of air, and she braced her knees so she didn’t collapse.
Baphomet.
The goat drawn in a downward-pointed pentagram seemed to have eyes that looked right through Sadie. She froze to where she stood. She could feel all the color drain from her face, but Scott didn’t notice her panic behind her face mask; he was excited and just wanted pictures.
“Pifure! Ake a pifure!” he called out through his respirator.
Sadie lifted the camera as if in slow motion and snapped a few shots. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest and Sadie began feeling woozy.
Scott was feeling just fine and, in fact, was on his knees and tracing the outline of the goat-headed figure in the pentagram with his gloved finger. Angrily, Sadie flicked the back of his head with her own gloved hand and when he looked over his shoulder, she nodded to the door.
“Let’s go!” she shouted, and yanked him up by his arm.
Once they were outside the house, Sadie couldn’t wait to strip out of the gear. Her breath came in adrenaline-laced gasps and she concentrated on not passing out or throwing up.
“Fucking A!” Scout shouted after he tore off his respirator. “Did you see that pentagram? Did you see all the black wax? There was a Black Mass here for sure. Isn’t that awesome?” He punched the air with enthusiasm.
“Whoopee.”
He was grinning from ear to ear as he slipped out of the rest of his gear and stashed it in the waste bin where Sadie had instructed him to.
“Isn’t it cool?”
“Cool?” Sadie blinked at him and felt the heat of anger flood her pale cheeks. “Cool is beating your personal best jogging time, or winning an eBay bid, or finding Kate Spade knockoff sandals half price and they fit. Cool is not—I repeat, not—finding a vandalized meth house with a drug addict’s rendition of Baphomet in a closet!”
He grinned, walked over, and draped an arm over her shoulders.
“First, can I just say I find it a tiny bit interesting you know the actual name of what we saw in that closet, and”—he leaned his head to the side until it touched hers—“second, there is no way feet as gorgeous as yours should ever be in knockoffs. Stick with me and I’ll get you the originals.” He turned and planted a wet kiss on her cheek.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “Let’s just go.”
She stomped over to her van and prepared to get in when he stopped her.
“Wait a second, I really want to get the pictures you took.”
“I can’t give them to you,” Sadie said. “You weren’t even supposed to be there, remember?”
“I won’t say the house where the pictures came from. They’re just for my file.” He added hurriedly, “Look, I live less than fifteen minutes away. How about we go to my place? You can use my computer to print off the pictures. Just the ones from inside the closet. I don’t need any of the others. That closet could be anywhere.”
“Am I going to see those pictures on the six o’clock news? Because here’s the thing. The cops have already got their own pictures of this place from when they shut down the lab, so they know about the drawing. If you put your pictures on the air, the cops will know exactly where they were taken. They’ll realize the pictures came from me and my credibility will be shot.”
“Sweets, I’d never do anything to hurt you or your biz,” he said, doing a damn good job of looking offended. “I swear, the pictures are only for my file. For research.”
She frowned and paused, deep in her own thoughts. She wanted more of an opportunity to talk to him about the Witigo Alliance and what power they might have. Especially considering Penny Torrez was willing to burn their symbol into her back and threaten Dawn’s baby.
“I’ll follow you to your place,” Sadie said.
“Babe, I’ve been waiting an eternity to hear you say that.”
“No funny stuff,” she said quickly. “And no kissing, because this is not—I repeat, not—a date.”
He only smiled.
Sadie got behind the wheel of her van and followed Scott’s convertible for a few miles until they were parked in the driveway of a pleasant-looking Cape Cod-style home.
Huh. Well, lookie how Mr. Wild Reporter lives just like Mr. Middle America, she thought.
“I had you pegged for more of a downtown-loft kind of guy,” Sadie told him as she met him at the front door.
“Nope. I like a little bit of space between me and my neighbors,” he said with a wink. “That way they don’t hear the ladies moaning all night long. Well, except for the screamers.” He tilted his head and grinned at her. “I bet you’re a screamer.”
Sadie only rolled her eyes.
Scott opened the front door to more surprises. The rooms were filled with heavy wood furniture, mostly antiques, and had basic off-white walls. Sadie glanced around, feeling disconcerted.
“Are you sure you live here?”
“Yup.” He chuckled. “Got a great view of Lake Sammamish from my bedroom. Want to see?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
With camera in hand, Sadie followed him down the hall to his office. She stopped in the doorway and looked around the room. On the far wall was a massive bulletin board with pins nailing hundreds of notes, articles, and pictures. Next to it was a whiteboard that listed dates and a timeline that looked like a list of deadlines. The other walls had half a dozen framed magazines, including a Playboy that looked like it was from the fifties. Tall bookshelves were jammed with a mixture of music CDs, books, and stacks of newspapers. In the corner was a huge white desk littered with paperwork as high as the computer monitor in its center.
“Now, this is more like it,” Sadie said, stepping inside.
“What do you mean?”
“More you.”
“Sorry, I know it’s a mess.”
Sadie looked over and was surprised when she spied someone standing behind Scott.
“Hey, my bedroom is me too.” He winked at her. “Come on upstairs and I’ll show you.”
“So, this is a fair-sized house—you must share it with someone, or do you live alone?” Sadie did not take her eyes off the elderly woman with wiry curly gray hair and wearing a loud purple housedress who stood smiling in the doorway of the den.
“Yeah, Sweets, the whole place is mine. Nobody to disturb us. We could have sex in every room in the place.”
Sadie sighed because she was tired of Scott’s constant sexual innuendos and because she’d now have to deal with his ghosts on top of everything else.
“Could I get a glass of water?”
“Sure you don’t want something stronger?” Scott asked. “I’ve got beer, wine . . . a fully stocked bar.”
“No thanks. It’s still early and I’ve got work to do. Water is fine. Ice if you’ve got it.”
He nodded and left the room, walking nonchalantly through the old woolly-haired woman, confirming her ghostliness.
“Okay, so who are you? A relative or just a previous owner?” Sadie asked, carefully lowering her voice so Scott wouldn’t hear.
The woman blinked in surprise and looked around to see who Sadie was talking to. Then she carefully approached Sadie before replying.
“You can
see me?”
“Yeah. Lucky me,” Sadie said sarcastically. “So, are you going to answer my question?”
“I’m Scott’s baba,” she replied, nodding her little head.
“His what?”
“It’s Ukrainian for ‘grandmother,’ but my name’s Ruby, so you can call me that.” She looked wistful. “It feels like years since anyone called me by my given name.”
“Okay, Ruby.” Sadie walked to the corner of the room and sat down at Scott’s computer. Her back was to the door, but the old woman followed, shuffling her feet quickly to where Sadie sat.
“So how is it that you can see me, in this god-awful purple dress, but nobody else can?” The woman’s tone had grown loud with excitement. She sat on the edge of the desk and reached as if to hold Sadie’s hands.
“Don’t touch me.” Sadie shrank back. “Sorry, but it creeps me out. I can see the dead. At least, those who haven’t moved on,” Sadie said, making sure to keep her voice a low whisper. “I can help you move on to where you should be.”
And suddenly Sadie was desperate to do so. She hadn’t been able to help Penny Torrez, Bambi, or Jake the Snake. Helping ghosts gave her a rush of pleasure. Not helping them made her feel useless and weak.
“You can help me, huh?” The old woman’s eyes sparked with amusement as she pinched the material of her dress in her fingers and lifted it up a few inches. “Can you help me out of this ugly purple dress Scott made me wear?”
“What do you mean, he made you wear the purple dress?”
“Well, my mind left before my body followed,” Scott’s grandmother said sadly. “In the days near the end, I didn’t have much use for clothes.”
“So you walked around naked?” Sadie smiled a little. Poor Scott.
“Yes. Not a smart thing to do when your doting grandson is living with you and trying to take care of you during the dementia,” the grandmother scolded herself. “Alzheimer’s is evil!” she shouted, waggling a bony finger in Sadie’s face.
Sadie nodded in agreement.
“Anyway, when I had a stroke in the middle of the kitchen wearing nothing but my birthday suit, Scott ran and grabbed this ugly purple nightmare and dressed me in it.” She looked down at the fabric with distaste. “He gave it to me that Christmas and I know he wondered why I’d never worn it. Even though I’d lost my mind, I still had a little taste for fashion left in me.”
“So he gave you the purple dress and he liked it enough to re-dress you when you died?” Sadie said with a smile. “That’s kind of sweet, Ruby. You shouldn’t be annoyed. It’s beautiful that Scott had enough respect and love that he didn’t want them to find you naked in the kitchen.”
“I guess,” she replied. “You’ve always liked purple, haven’t you Scotty-boy?”
The old woman was staring at the entrance to the den. Sadie turned just in time to see Scott drop Sadie’s glass of water with a crash. Splinters of glass spread across the hardwood on a small wave of water, but Scott just stood staring at Sadie with a look of utter astonishment on his face.
“Sorry,” Sadie said hastily. “Guess I was talking to myself.”
“Really? ’Cause I’ve been standing here a while and it sounds an awful lot like you’re talking to my dead grandmother.”
16
“Ha!” Scott’s baba shouted. “And here I always thought he was a little slow.”
Sadie resisted the urge to tell the old biddy to shut up and instead faced Scott.
“Talking to your dead grandmother?” Sadie raised her eyebrows and smirked with amusement. “Are you sure there isn’t a paranormal novelist buried in your journalist heart?”
“You called her Ruby.”
“You’re hearing things.”
“You said I re-dressed her in a purple dress. Nobody knows that except me. And you.” His voice was louder than necessary and vibrated with emotion. “How could you know that? Shit. I never believed the stories about you.”
“What stories?” Sadie said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “If I was mumbling something about a purple dress, it was because I’m debating what to wear to my sister’s baby shower.”
He wasn’t buying her denial.
“I’ve heard things about you.” He pointed a finger in Sadie’s direction, and his eyes were big and the look on his face was just plain mean.
“What kind of things?” Sadie asked sharply.
“Things like how some cops say you whisper at crime scenes when you think nobody else is listening. I heard Detective Malone say that last year when he returned to that shotgun scene in Renton, you were seen chatting away in the garage where the murder happened, and he was pretty sure you were talking to the victim.”
“So what!” Sadie shouted back. “It was an ugly scene and it took me two days to mop up the decomp. I’ve heard the coroner talks to the bodies when he’s doing an autopsy too!” She didn’t know if that was true. She was reaching. “So forgive me if I talk to myself when I’m trying to keep my mind off the fact that I’m scrubbing away someone’s sloughed-off skin! Excuse me if I chat away to keep my mind off the fact that there are maggots having a drunken party in a pool of bodily fluids! I’ve known other trauma cleaners who whistle a happy tune when they’re cleaning a scene.”
Sadie’s tone was huffy with indignation. She needed to convince Scott. The last thing she wanted was a television reporter who knew her deepest, darkest secret.
“It’s why all the cops call you Twisted Sister, isn’t it? It’s why the others want me to—” He stopped himself. “This is too weird.”
Sadie used her most reasonable tone. “Look, they call me Twisted Sister because David Egan from Scour Power gave me that god-awful nickname and it was better than some of the others that were being tossed around, so I didn’t discourage it. Think about it. If I were psychic, I’d use my powers to buy a winning lottery ticket.” She shook her head and started to giggle. Her giggles turned into full-out guffaws until she was doubled over and tears blurred her vision.
He just watched her.
“Now, let’s get back to work,” she said. “I’m giving you these pictures, but I was hoping you’d give me some information on that crazy group you told me about when we met for coffee. What did you call them? Wintergreen or something?”
“Witigo. The Witigo Alliance,” he said quietly as he walked over to join her by the computer. “When I tried to tell you about WA on our coffee date, you had no interest.”
“Yeah, well, I was curious enough to do some of my own research on the Web. They seem like a whacked-out bunch. If, like you say, they were involved in what happened to that baby, and if they’re having Black Masses in Seattle meth labs, I figure I’d better find out more information about them, since I’ll probably be cleaning up their crap.”
The photos Sadie took of the Baphomet and candle wax filled Scott’s monitor, and Sadie shuddered before saving them to a file for Scott before disconnecting her camera.
“So if they’re just a bunch of crazy Satanists, why are they moving into meth labs?” Sadie asked him.
“I don’t know,” Scott said, but he sounded like he did know. He just didn’t want to talk to her about it.
“You know what I think? I think Penny Torrez was both a member of WA and an FF biker chick,” Sadie said.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Scott seemed to really consider that. She was just grateful he was no longer talking about her conversation with his dead grandmother.
“Good job. Looks like you convinced him,” Ruby said with a throaty giggle.
The old woman patted Sadie’s shoulder and Sadie fought back the sudden feeling of nausea from her touch. She bit the inside of her cheek and willed herself to ignore the grandmother, even as the old woman began dancing a jig behind Scott as if taunting him. Sadie focused on sending the photos to the printer.
When Sadie looked up, the grandmother was standing behind Scott and then she vanished. Sadie knew the old woman’s spirit hadn’t gone for good, though, because the
re’d been no shimmer and fading to the apparition that signaled Sadie the spirit had moved on to the next dimension. Nope, Baba would be back and Sadie was hoping to be long gone before that happened.
When she retrieved the pictures from the printer, she handed them over to Scott without looking at them. She’d had enough of Baphomet for one day.
Scott barely glanced at the pictures. Although he hadn’t brought up the Baba incident again, every time he glanced her way, it was with a look of uncertainty. Sadie thought the answer might be to get him drunk.
“You know, I think I’ll take that beer now,” she told him, getting to her feet. “Or something stronger if you’ll join me.”
“Okay.” He nodded sharply.
This time when he left the room, Sadie followed him, stepping over the broken glass and water on the floor. She hoped Baba would stay in the den or remain invisible.
In the old-style country kitchen Scott reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Canadian whiskey.
“Neat?” he asked.
“Water and ice,” she replied.
As she’d hoped, he downed his own glass before he even finished plunking a couple of ice cubes in hers. With any luck he’d wake up in the morning with only the vaguest memory of her mentioning re-dressing his dead grandmother in the infamous purple dress.
“I’m going to go clean up the mess in my office.” He grabbed a roll of paper towels and a broom.
When he left the room, Sadie took the drink he’d handed her to the sink and poured almost all of it down the drain. She sat down at the kitchen table and had the glass, with the remaining booze in it, pressed to her lips. When he came back, she pretended to finish off the rest and handed him her glass.
“Okay, so we’ve got Fierce Force, a biker gang with all the connections and criminal crap of the Hells Angels. And then we’ve got Witigo Alliance”—she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the little she knew of the group—“um, crazy Satanists who like to baptize babies in the carcasses of goats.” She made a face. “Do you think I’m right about Penny Torrez?”
Devil May Ride Page 17