“Nothing. It’s just that your description sounds like the description of the man we found,” Agent Cody said.
She felt as if she’d been bathed in a bucket of ice. “You mean the man whose body parts we found?” Her voice sounded odd and stilted.
“Lots of people look like other people,” Diego said, turning to Brett. “Hey, I’m half Cuban. I can look like a conquistador. Hell, that description could match Anthony Barillo or a dozen of the men working for him.”
Agent Cody’s voice sounded thick when he spoke. “Yeah, I’ve been afraid that it might have been Barillo or one of his men, frankly.”
“That description fits half the older Hispanic men in the city,” Diego said. “There is one guy I’ve seen, though, does a lot of Barillo’s dirty work. I can’t think of his name, though. But I kid you not, that description fits hundreds of people.”
His explanation made sense, but Lara found that she barely heard him, because Brett Cody was staring at her as if he’d just discovered something important about her.
And he had.
“Washington, DC,” he said. “You were a media assistant to Congressman Walker. Your real name is Lara Mayhew.”
She stared back at him for a long moment before nodding. She supposed it had been just a matter of time before someone figured it out. The killer’s rampage and her own rescue had been national news after all. And these men were FBI.
“Yes, my last name is Mayhew,” she said. “I’ve been using my mother’s maiden name.”
“What the fu—” Diego quickly cut himself off.
Lara barely noticed him. She felt as if she’d locked eyes with Brett Cody. She couldn’t turn away. And yet the look he gave her didn’t make her want to shrink away or hide; he wasn’t looking at her with pity, anger or suspicion. He seemed to have an empathy for her that was somehow reassuring.
“You’re a survivor,” he said quietly.
“I survived—but I wouldn’t have made it without Meg and Matt.”
He nodded at that. “Few of us survive alone.”
“Agent Cody,” Lara began.
“Brett. You call him Diego. So call me Brett. I don’t really have a stick up my ass, and I’m sorry if I’ve acted as if I do. This case is kind of a personal one for me. Diego says I’m obsessed. I guess I am. I feel guilty. We haven’t released the information yet, but the body parts we found belonged to a man named Miguel Gomez. Miguel came to me for help. He’d been pressured for years and forced to help a drug cartel down here run by the Barillo family. I turned him over to the agents—all of them top-notch—who had been working the case for years. We’d thought that he died in a fire, but we were wrong. According to the witness, he showed up and may have killed his wife—before someone killed him and we found his body parts.”
“Brett...” Diego murmured.
Lara realized that Brett had just told her more than the authorities were telling anyone. She was surprised and pleased—more so than she wanted to be, in fact—to realize that he seemed to trust her implicitly.
She turned to Diego. “I was in politics for years,” she said drily. “I’m a pro at keeping my mouth shut.”
“I have to ask this, so please don’t be offended,” Brett said. “Is it possible that you might be a little bit paranoid—perfectly natural, after everything you’ve been through—or are sure you saw that man twice? I mean, maybe the first time you saw him, he was just a lost guest. But couldn’t you have imagined him the second time?”
Lara nodded, smiling drily. “I can understand why you might suspect that I’m losing it, but I’m not. I saw the man. I saw him as clearly as I saw you. He was in the doorway of my office, and later he was in my yard. Staring in at me through the sliding glass door.”
“Did you suspect at any time that he meant to harm you?” Brett asked.
She puzzled over that for a minute. “I don’t—I don’t think so. He just kept staring at me.”
“It sure as hell sounds like the ghost of Miguel Gomez,” Diego said, causing both Lara and Brett to turn and stare at him.
Was he seriously talking about a real ghost?
Lara didn’t mean to, but she shivered visibly as Diego’s words echoed her own thoughts. “A ghost?” She lowered her head for a second, thinking about Meg, who definitely saw the dead. Could she be seeing them, too?
“I was just thinking about your Krewe friends. Don’t worry. We’ll find out what’s going on here,” Diego said. “Tomorrow we dig up poor Mr. Nicholson, prove he’s in his coffin and start searching the city for look-alikes.”
“Is there a computer we can use?” Brett asked Lara.
“Of course. There’s a house computer just over there,” she said, pointing toward a comfortably arranged grouping of wicker furniture.
“Would you mind logging me on?” Brett asked.
Once he was online, he pulled up a newspaper article featuring a close-up of a man.
Lara stiffened, as cold as Arctic ice as she read the clipping. It was Miguel Gomez’s obituary. And the face looking out at her from the computer screen was the exact same face she had seen earlier that day.
Twice.
Brett Cody turned to look at her. “Is that the man?” he asked.
She stared at Brett. And she didn’t know how he knew—or even how she did—but they both knew there was no doppelganger running around the city.
She’d seen the ghost of Miguel Gomez.
“That was him,” she said at last.
“Obviously the man has a twin who’s trying to reach you. Maybe he’s afraid to go to the authorities, maybe he thinks you can help him somehow, since you were the one who found his brother’s remains,” Diego said.
“Even if Miguel had a twin—which I’ll bet you cash money he doesn’t—how would he know that when we haven’t released an ID on our dead man?” Brett asked.
“I don’t know, but what other explanation could there be? A real ghost? I won’t discount the idea, though...” Diego let his words trail off and he shrugged. “Or maybe Lara is loco? Sorry, Lara. I’m just trying to cover every possibility. But, I mean, it has to be another man.”
“I’m not crazy,” Lara assured him. “I swear to you, despite all the therapy I probably still need, I’m not crazy. I saw a man—who looked just like this man—here today, and then later in my backyard.”
Brett looked at Lara and nodded slowly. “I promise you,” he said softly, “we will find out exactly what’s going on.” She was surprised by the crooked smile that twisted his mouth as he spoke. “I swear,” he added softly.
7
Randy Nicholson had been buried in one of Miami’s older cemeteries on Southwest 8th Street near 37th Avenue. It was a large cemetery, stretching for many city blocks, and one of the most beautiful in the city, in Brett’s opinion. While the City of Miami Cemetery was the oldest and housed many of the city’s original rich and famous, along with some Confederates and Yankees who had survived the Civil War, he’d always preferred this one, which traced its origins back to 1913. There were beautiful angels and cherubs, and impressive mausoleums throughout, along with trails and trees that created a parklike yet still solemn atmosphere. It was perfectly manicured, not at all forlorn and overgrown, as so many older cemeteries were.
The exhumation was carried out smoothly; there was only one funeral happening that Wednesday morning, and it was taking place in a section far away from them.
Nicholson’s headstone was courtesy of the United States Marine Corps; it was the headstone he had requested, according to his son. Henry Nicholson seemed like a decent guy, and he’d done everything they’d asked to help the process proceed. But no matter how respectful people tried to be, there was just something inherently disquieting in digging up a human grave. At last the cement sarcophagus that was a cemetery re
quirement was removed and the coffin was set on a gurney for its journey to the morgue.
One of the workers came over to speak with Brett and Diego. “You get used to how coffins feel,” he told them. “This one—it don’t feel right.”
Brett wasn’t sure why, but he had a sinking feeling that the man was right.
When they reached the morgue, Phil Kinny was waiting with his assistants. Brett and Diego were in the autopsy room where the coffin was opened, while Henry Nicholson, who had asked to accompany them and hear their findings, waited outside.
There was no body in the coffin, only a sack of sand. The only indications that a person had once lain there were a few strands of hair and a couple of fiber strands, and the satin lining still bore the impression of a body.
But the coffin held no occupant.
When Henry Nicholson heard the news he lost his cool completely. “No! No!” he shouted. When he ran toward the autopsy room, determined to see for himself, Diego and Brett had to scramble to catch him. The man moaned incoherently, tears dampening his eyes as he sank to the ground.
“My father is not a zombie!” he screamed. “My father is not a zombie!”
In the end, though unaccustomed to dealing with the living, the ME gave him a sedative.
Henry sat quietly after that, only speaking again when the agents dropped him off at his house. Before he got out of the car he stared straight at Brett. “My father is not a killer,” he insisted softly.
And Brett could only tell him, “There’s something else going on here, because I don’t believe that your father is a killer, either.”
* * *
Brett Cody and Matt Bosworth had obviously gotten on well during their past acquaintance, Lara reflected as she watched them laughing over old times. And seeing Brett joking around that way, he suddenly seemed more human to her. Though if she were being honest, she had to admit that the process had begun even before Meg and Matt had arrived just after one in the morning.
Brett and Diego had suggested that she get some sleep, but she had known there was no way in hell she could sleep, not to mention if she wasn’t there to let Meg and Matt through the gate, they would have to wake Grady, and that didn’t seem fair.
And so they had sat in the lounge area, and she had done her best to explain why she’d ended up in Florida after what had happened to her when she had quit her job with Congressman Walker and the ordeal she’d been through before heading south. In turn, they had told her more about the Greater Miami area, the violent drug wars that had gone on during the eighties, and how they were doing their best to prevent anything like that happening again.
“Things have changed over the years,” Brett explained to her. “Our offices across the country have hundreds of agents working on cyber crime, things like identity theft that take place without violence on the internet. But there are also always going to be those who are still into real-world criminal enterprises like drug smuggling and—especially here—stealing everything a refugee has, promising to get him to these shores. Some of them even make good on their promises, but others have no intention of risking being caught with illegal human cargo. They leave their trusting victims at sea.”
“And then there are crimes like this,” Diego said. “Senseless crimes—like the murder of Maria Gomez, who never killed anything bigger than a palmetto bug in her whole life.”
“Even Miguel only got caught up in it because he was afraid not to,” Brett added.
“And now there’s Arnold Wilhelm, a retired war vet, harming no one,” Diego added.
It was right around then that Meg had called; the room had gone oddly silent for a minute, and Lara had jumped when her phone rang. Now she realized that Matt and Brett knew each other better than she’d expected, and all four agents shared an easy camaraderie that she found herself envying. Between them, Brett and Diego quickly brought Matt and Meg up to speed.
As they spoke, Brett checked his emails and informed them that there would be a task force meeting including key state, county and city officers the next day. By then the exhumation would be complete, and hopefully Phil Kinny would be ready to tell them more about Miguel Gomez’s death. Matt told him that they had been assigned to the case through the director’s office and told to follow Brett’s lead as agent in charge.
Brett smiled and shrugged at that. “Your unit does as it chooses, I guess.”
“We aren’t here to step on toes,” Matt said.
“You would be welcome to stomp all over my entire body if it got us some answers,” Brett assured him.
It was nearly 2:00 a.m. when they finished talking. With Matt and Meg staying at the facility, it was overcrowded as far as sleeping arrangements went. Since Brett and Diego had an early appointment at the cemetery, Matt and Lara escorted them to the gate, and she made sure to lock up and set the alarm once they were gone.
As they headed back in, Matt paused on the walkway, looking around. “Interesting,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“This place has great security as far as it goes, what with the gates and alarms, but that’s a big bay out there. What’s to stop someone from coming here by boat?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” Lara said. “But our whole purpose is to study and protect marine life. Have you ever heard of anyone trying to steal a dolphin? Honestly, Matt, I don’t think anyone is after Sea Life. I think it was pure accident that Miguel Gomez’s... body parts wound up here.”
“This whole case... I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Back inside, they discovered that Grady had woken up, and come down and met Meg, and the two of them had enjoyed extolling Adam Harrison’s virtues. Rick and Adrianna came down then as well, and despite the hour they had more coffee before finally determining that they all really needed to go to bed. Though Rick and Adrianna offered to give up their spot, Matt quickly said that he’d slept on the plane, so he was happy to catch a few z’s on the sofa, and Meg would bunk in with Lara.
It was morning before Lara had a chance to speak with Meg and Matt alone, taking them for a tour of the facility and introducing them to the other members of the staff. Finally, the three of them sat on the platform by Cocoa’s enclosure and fed her fish.
“This place is wonderful,” Meg said.
It was really good to have the two of them there, Lara thought. Meg was a lithe, fit five foot ten, with raven-dark hair and deep, penetrating blue eyes that somehow communicated both confidence and cordiality. Matt was a bruiser—smart, fit and built like a tank. More than that, she knew they’d both had enough training to tackle almost any situation.
“It was wonderful,” Lara said. “I mean, it still is, really. I love what I’m doing. I love Cocoa, and the other dolphins and the sea lions—and even the cats and birds, the lizards and the squirrels. But Cocoa just had to give me that finger. And then...the rest.”
“You can’t let what’s really good in life be ruined just because there are evil people in the world,” Meg said.
Lara looked at her friend and smiled. Meg had known her whole life what she wanted to do. As a child, she’d lost a member of her own family to a murderer, and even then, Meg had played a role in seeing that the man was caught.
Because she saw the dead.
“I saw him,” Lara told her in a rush. “The man whose body parts we found in the bay, I saw him—after he was dead. They haven’t released this yet, but his name was Miguel Gomez, and Brett Cody wasn’t surprised that I’d seen him—it was almost as if he expected it. Diego was talking about doppelgangers and twins, but Brett was staring straight at me and I knew—I just knew—that he believed me.”
“Maybe he sees the dead, too,” Matt said.
“All of a sudden?” Lara demanded. “You knew him before—did he see ghosts? Can you go your whole life delightfully oblivious and then suddenly
start seeing ghosts of the dead?”
Meg smiled at that. “You’ve seen the dead before. You saw the Confederate officer who helped us save your life,” she said softly.
“You described him so clearly that I believed he was there.”
Meg shook her head. “No, you saw him. Maybe you’ve always had the ability. Maybe there just wasn’t a ghost out there who needed to reach you. Until now.”
Lara groaned inwardly. Once she’d been so passionate. So determined to create a world where good people wound up in power, where candidates were elected on merit, not because their campaign contributions were large enough to feed entire countries.
She still dreamed of seeing good men and women in power; she still meant to write the speeches and white papers that could help put them there. But she was also in love with dolphins and sea life in general, and she’d become passionate about ecology, and that was all part of the bigger picture. Politicians owed a decent world to those who would come after them.
“I’m going to suggest you open yourself up to this ghost and find out what he has to say,” Matt told her, then added softly, “I came into all this paranormal stuff kicking and screaming. Most of us do—unless we grow up with it and consider the dead as friends. After all, most of them are just as good in death as they were in life.”
“What about evil?” Lara asked, feeling a little silly. “There are evil people, too, so there must be evil ghosts, right?”
“I’ve heard about a few from some of our fellow Krewe members,” Meg said. “But the good is there to outweigh the evil.”
“If only,” Lara said.
“If only?” Matt asked her.
“If only good outweighed evil in life the way you say it does in death,” Lara said.
“Then, we just have to make sure it does, right?” Meg asked her. “And,” she added, staring out at the sparkling water, where Cocoa, determined to get their attention, was doing a backflip, making the water spray and dance like diamonds beneath the blue sky and dazzling sun, “we have to take every minute we can to appreciate everything that’s so amazing about this world.”
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