by H. P. Bayne
“How many students were in the club?” Sully asked. “Was it pretty popular?”
“It started off that way, but we had a few dropouts. Lots of people thought the caving stuff sounded cool, but couldn’t handle how physical it was, or they freaked out about the underground, tight spaces stuff. And there were others whose parents wouldn’t sign off on it. Ro was one of those. She liked caving, but her folks wouldn’t go for it. So it was really just me, Carter and two other students. Oh, and once or twice Lars’s girlfriend came along. I don’t remember her name.”
Dez thought about Tessa Montague. “What did this girlfriend look like?”
“I don’t know. Pretty with brown hair. Slim. Used a little too much makeup. I don’t know how else to describe her exactly.”
Sully cut in before Dez could get his next question out. “What kind of hairstyle?”
“I don’t know. Chin-length?”
“Like a bob?”
“Yeah, that’s what it’s called, I think. A bob, all one length around, except the bangs.”
Dez kept his questions to himself about that for now. Grilling Sully would have to wait until they were alone. “How did you find out what happened to Carter?”
“Lars called me from the park. He said he got there and saw Carter’s car, but when he got to the original cave entrance, there was nothing left of it. He said he tried going through the secondary opening we’d found, but he made it as far as the crawl we told him about when he hit a boulder choke. He said he found some of Car’s stuff there, but no sign of him. That’s when Lars backed out and called 9-1-1.” Evan paused, took a breath. “You know, it’s weird. I always had this feeling nothing could go wrong down there. Carter dying, it ripped that away for me. And losing him like that—”
“Rips you open,” Dez said.
Sully stiffened, and Dez suspected the response had more to do with his brother’s guilt than concern Dez might inadvertently give something away. Dez had no intention of revealing Sully’s true identity, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t commiserate with Evan. From where Dez sat, the kid could do with a little empathy.
“I’ve lost people too,” Dez continued. “It kills, especially when it’s sudden like that.”
“Yeah. I keep picturing it, what it must have been like for him. Maybe it was quick. Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone ever will.”
Sully was nothing if not compassionate. “It was quick.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve seen him. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but I see the dead. I can usually communicate with them too.”
“Bullshit.”
Sully simply looked into an empty space over Evan’s shoulder and stretched out a hand.
“Show me,” he said.
Dez heard the shuddering intake of breath that often accompanied Sully’s ghost-induced visions. Dez stood from his chair and closed the distance to the window, putting a few extra feet between himself and the invisible presence Sully was communicating with.
Sully was silent a few seconds, just breathing deeply—a tactic either Marc or Raiya Everton, a practicing witch, had taught him for dealing with the discomfort these visions could cause. Dez waited until his brother came back out on this side before turning around again. He had no idea why, but he always worried all the psychic juice that flowed during those exchanges might somehow allow the ghosts to manifest. That was the last thing Dez wanted to add to his existing mental house of horrors.
“You guys discovered that crawl together,” Sully said. “He went in first.”
“Shut up.” Evan’s words were a whisper uttered under his breath.
“He left his stuff behind, said it wouldn’t fit.”
“I said, shut up.” This time, it was louder, syllables pronounced behind gritted teeth. Dez returned to Sully’s side. His brother was more than capable of handling himself, let alone someone smaller than he was, but in Dez’s experience, his hulking presence typically made it unnecessary.
Sully had been through this before, didn’t bat an eye. “He said something to you before he went in, but I can never hear them. But he also did something. He flipped a coin. And then he ruffled your hair.”
“Stop it. I believe you, okay? Just stop. I can’t think about that. Not anymore.”
Evan pinched the bridge of his nose, eyelids pressing together as he stemmed the onslaught of emotion. Dez and Sully waited him out.
At last, Evan looked back up, eyes glistening but not dripping tears. “Car and I went there a few days before the collapse. He found the crawl first. He always found that stuff first. It’s like he was born underground or something.
“We both always wanted to go first, and our thing was to flip a coin. Car and I tossed for it that day, and he won. He used to ruffle my hair to piss me off. Then he dumped his bag with me since it looked too narrow to make it through. He attached a carabiner and some line to the bag, and the plan was he’d go ahead as far as he could and pull it through if he found a chamber. Only we didn’t even get in there when this rumbling started around us. So we took off out of there.”
Evan looked down at his lap, a flush creeping over his cheeks. “Is he still here?”
“Yeah.”
Evan nodded. “The thing is… the thing is I didn’t really have anything else to do on the day of the collapse. I just didn’t want to go back. I was scared. After what happened a couple days before, I knew it wasn’t safe in there, and the last thing I wanted was to be trapped or crushed to death. Carter, he didn’t care. He figured he was invincible. Funny thing is, I kind of believed it. He was always cooler than I was, bigger, stronger, smarter, more popular. I didn’t mind because he always took me along for the ride. But I guess I really thought he’d be okay, like if anything happened, he’d be able to Superman himself out of there or something.”
He glanced back up at Sully, small smile making him look even sadder. “Stupid, huh?”
“Most young people think they’re going to live forever,” Sully said. “But everyone hits a point in life where they realize it’s not true. Some people, unfortunately, find out sooner than others. I’m sorry about your friend. But he didn’t suffer. It happened fast.”
Evan nodded, but Dez wasn’t convinced the guy felt a whole lot better. Too bad, too, because Dez was about to ask a question that wasn’t going to improve his mood any.
“You and this Roanna girl, you’re dating?”
Evan nodded.
“How long?”
Evan studied Dez a long moment. “You know, don’t you? That she was Carter’s girlfriend first.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“We got together after the cave-in. We were both wrecked. We’d been friends for a while, and I guess losing Carter threw the two of us together. We didn’t hook up right away, but it didn’t take as long as maybe it should have. We just wanted to feel good about something again, and that’s what we did for each other. We’ve been together ever since.”
“Did you have feelings for her before?”
“I wasn’t jealous of Carter, if that’s what you’re asking. I liked Ro, and yeah, she was pretty. But I wasn’t about to go to war over her or anything, especially with him. Carter and I went back a long ways. Our friendship came first with me; we were family more than friends.”
“What about Roanna?” Dez asked. “She feel the same?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“Where can we reach her?”
Evan scratched his cheek. “You’re really going to talk to her?”
“Yeah, we kind of need to,” Dez said. “Why? What’s the problem?”
“She’s just really shy of strangers,” Evan said. “Oliver would have noticed when he met her.”
“We understand,” Sully said. “Believe me, I’m not exactly keen on strangers myself. If it wasn’t for everything I have to do, I’d avoid meeting new people like the plague.”
“If you don’t like
it, why do it?”
“I don’t really have a choice,” Sully said. “The ghosts don’t tend to give me one. Anyway, they need help. If you saw someone trapped and injured, you’d try to help them, right? That’s what it’s like for me. They’re real people, and they have real problems that need sorting out if they’re going to find peace.”
“Okay,” Evan said. “If you think it’ll help, I’ll text Ro and give her your number. What is it?”
Dez was about to provide his cellphone number when Sully beat him to the punch. Just as well. Dez could get called away at any second to go deal with Tessa Montague and her obnoxious husband.
They ended there, letting Evan leave before giving Marc his office back and heading outside, onto campus.
Dez stuffed his hands in his pockets before noticing he’d unconsciously mirrored his brother’s typical body language.
“Hey, Sull? What you said to Evan up there, about young people thinking they’re going to live forever. You ever feel like that?”
“No.”
Dez considered the nightmare his brother had lived through before the Braddocks took him in, and then the continuous ghostly reminders of the very worst death had to offer. Dez thought about his own situation, about the graves holding the remains of two of the people he loved most.
He’d first met Death at age eight when they pulled his little brother Aiden out of the river. There had never been any going back; the road from innocence lay torn up behind him.
“Yeah,” Dez said in reply. “Me neither.”
15
Dez was expecting a text from Evan or a call from Roanna.
What he got instead was the judge from hell.
“She just left work,” Justice Montague told Dez over the phone. “She said she’s going to the gym and then meeting a friend.”
“Did she say which friend?”
“Grab a pen. I’ve got some contact details for her.”
Dez had taken to keeping a notepad and pen in the SUV as he returned to the policing-acquired habit of detailed note-taking. Jotting down the phone number and home and work addresses provided, as well as a description of the woman, Dez happily cut the phone call short.
“Guess we’re going to have to postpone the Devereaux investigation,” he told Sully. “I don’t have time to run you back home. You okay with tagging along?”
“Dez, I’m not stuck in your apartment catching up on my daytime TV. Yeah, I’m okay with tagging along.”
Dez drove to the gym, where he located a spot on the street affording a good view of the door. He’d been far closer to the place than Tessa was, so he knew he was guaranteed to spot her once she arrived.
If she arrived.
After forty minutes passed with no sign of her, nagging suspicions turned into full-blown doubt as to her honesty with her husband about her plans.
Sully had followed his train of thought. “Think we should head over to Lars’s, see if she’s there?”
“Better idea,” Dez said. “Rather than us driving all over Hell’s half-acre looking for her, let’s get her husband to do the work for us. The sneaky bastard has her phone’s GPS programmed into his computer at home so he can watch her every move.”
“So what does he need you for?”
“Convenience, probably, and appearances. I can’t imagine that guy sitting in his Beemer for hours at a time watching her. Anyone caught him at it, he’d be a laughing stock. My impression is he wants to avoid that at all costs. I can pretty easily picture a scenario where he pays her a chunk of hush money on her way out the door to keep her affair quiet.”
Not wanting to hear the judge’s voice again, Dez opted to text. Justice Montague replied immediately, confirming he would look. Two minutes later came a second text, this time with an approximate address.
Dez turned from his screen to Sully. “You won’t believe this. She’s at Winteredge National Park.”
“You talked to Lars about the suspicions regarding Carter’s death, right?”
“Yeah, I wanted to see if he’d bite on anything. He didn’t at the time.”
Sully summed up what they were both thinking. “Maybe he’s biting now.”
It was completely possible the reason Tessa Montague was at the park was because she’d accompanied Lars.
If so, it might be a sign Lars was spooked.
Of course, if the two were together, it could just as easily turn out to be nothing more than Lars returning to his love of caving. He’d already proven he was willing to trespass and breach safety rules to do that. Now Dez knew the caves weren’t so sealed off as he’d thought.
Thanks to Evan, he and Sully knew there was a second entrance. No doubt Lars knew it too.
“Any idea how we’re going to find that entrance?” Dez asked.
“We don’t know for sure that’s where they went,” Sully said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t see them paying admission to the park just to head off on a nature hike or to roast marshmallows over an open fire. It’s mid-week and Tessa’s a married woman with a rich husband she doesn’t want to piss off. They’re not staying there overnight. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t waste ten bucks for a hike I could take for free a few miles east.”
“Yeah, but you’re not rich. Tessa is.”
“Lars isn’t. In fact, he might not have two dimes to rub together once the Devereauxs are finished with him in court.”
“We don’t know he’s there,” Sully reminded him. “All we know for sure is Tessa is. Or her phone, anyway.”
It was a good point, and it had Dez calling Lachlan from the Bluetooth setup in the SUV. Five minutes later, Lachlan called back with the information Dez had been requesting: details on the make, model and licence number of Lars’s vehicle.
“Someone could get in real trouble for sharing that info with him,” Sully pointed out once Dez had ended the call.
“They could get in more trouble for not sharing,” Dez said. “I’d probably rather deal with the risk of job loss than face Lachlan’s wrath. The guy doesn’t look like much, but with the info he’s got in that storage container north of the river, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had enough to ruin the reputations of half the city’s population. He knows where the bodies are buried, and I’m beginning to suspect he holds onto a lot of it so he can call in favours when he needs to.”
“You really think he’d blackmail people? He’s a bit of a jerk, but I don’t get the impression he’s particularly dishonest.”
Dez shrugged. He’d probably, regretfully, have to concede that point. His brother, happier to observe than to talk, had always been better at reading people.
The park was large but relatively quiet today, the approach of fall bringing an end to camping season for many. Dez decided to follow his suspicions, leading them straight to the parking area nearest the caves and several popular walking trails.
He wasn’t disappointed.
“There you are,” he said, nodding his chin toward one of three vehicles parked here. “Black Jeep, plate number CAVRRR. Hard to mistake that for someone else’s.”
Dez would have liked to see if Tessa’s car was parked next to Lars’s apartment building right now, but with no way to do that, he settled for following his nose at their current location.
“Hood up, Sull,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”
Kimotan Rapids and the surrounding communities were built on a foundation of rock.
While the braver or wealthier developers were happy to blast their way through, the area long owned by the federal government for use as a park was a no-go. Here, rock jutted up everywhere, making for a majestically beautiful landscape of cliffs, gullies, streams, waterfalls and caves. An outdoorsman’s playground.
Even playgrounds could be dangerous.
Dez followed as his brother—backpack in tow—led him to what amounted to a cliff of sorts, its crest littered by a nest of fallen trees.
“This is where I met Evan and Roanna,” Sully said.
“They said the cave-in happened near here.”
It looked the part, all right, the top of the cliff having sunk while, below, a huge heap of rock had come to rest.
“So the other entrance can’t be far, right?” Dez scanned the area, but came up with nothing. “Give me a second. I’ll try to reach Montague, see if he can send a screen shot of his GPS readout.”
Unfortunately, this proved to be the one time Montague was unavailable, his phone ringing through to voicemail. Dez left a message with his request, then returned his gaze to the rocky cliff in front of them.
“Maybe we should try to get on top of that. Better vantage point.”
“All right, but be careful,” Sully said. “It doesn’t look very stable, and I can’t carry you if you do something stupid like break a leg.”
Dez grinned. “You wouldn’t carry me? What kind of brother are you?”
“The kind who’d like to continue to have full use of his back. Just watch your step.”
Dez chuckled and elbowed Sully before leading the way toward the rock face.
While much of the cliff remained too far and high to climb, the cave’s collapse had created what looked from here to be a simpler way up—particularly since he and Sully didn’t have any rock climbing gear, nor any idea how to use it. The fallen rock gave them something to scale, as long as they were careful where they stepped.
“Wait until I’m up,” Dez said. “If I slip and you’re under me, you’ll end up with that back problem you’re so worried about.”
He’d only partly been joking, the climb not necessarily the best idea he’d come up with this year. Dez was strong, but he preferred to prove it from a relatively safe location on flat ground. Instead, he was back where he so often ended up with Sully: about to risk broken bones, concussions and psychological disturbance in pursuit of justice for a ghost.
The biggest boulders had naturally come to rest at the bottom, and he found as long as he checked his footing first, he was able to make decent progress for a few minutes. It wasn’t quite so easy after that. Progress slowed at the higher portion, with looser rocks, slightly dampened groundcover, roots and toppled trees. His boot sent small cascades of stone trickling downward as he searched for footing.