GHOST_4_Kindle_V2

by Wayne Batson

  That made me wonder if its presence in my room was related to the camera. I couldn’t see how. I had just found the camera. And I picked the hotel and room at random.

  No, the Shade was just a roamer. Still, I’d need to be watchful. Even if it was just a random thing, the Shade might be indignant enough to tell others of its kind. Waking up to a throng of Shades is no fun.

  The eerie chill was gone. It felt like a hotel room again. I switched from Netherview back to Earthveil. After putting the handle back on my suitcase to charge, I opened the curtains as wide as they could go and enjoyed the spectacle of the storm. Fat raindrops pelted the window. Wind whistled and howled. Lightning, sudden and white-hot, crackled above. Thunder had its way with the high rise condos on the Gulf shore in Destin, reverberating from building to building. I wished I could see the Gulf. The storm would color the water a potent slate gray-dark green mix and whip up miles of whitecaps. There’s nothing like a raging storm and a tempestuous sea.

  Divine violence.

  I turned away from the storm, took the camera out of my pocket, and sat on the edge of my bed. I found myself hoping the camera wouldn’t work. Not impossible, considering that the camera floated in saltwater for, who knew how long. Even if the water hadn’t damaged it, the battery might be dead now.

  But no, I knew the camera had come into my possession for a reason. I was certain it would work.

  I pressed the power button. The musical chime was a little louder this time. The screen on the back of the camera came to life. I passed the first photo, the blurry one, and came to the pretty redhead with the guy behind her. She wore a sheer white camisole that spilled down the contours of her body. The material was just a shade lighter than her pale skin. Her lithe arms were tight to her sides, and her hands were folded in her lap.

  I took a deep breath and advanced to the next picture. The knife came into view. A very unusual knife. It was as long as a violin bow, but the double-edged blade was only four inches. The rest of the weapon was six inches of dark wood handle and at least a foot of a narrow brass sheath. Small studs ran down the shaft and three more dotted the handle. There was an odd knob at the bottom of the brass part. It was shaped like a butterfly wing, and I guessed that turning it would cause the blade to retract or extend from the sheath.

  The man held the blade horizontally at the level of her collarbone. The woman smiled on. I blinked and cringed inwardly, knowing what was coming.

  A twitch of my thumb, and the next photo appeared. He’d pressed the knife against her neck, the blade biting deep, and blood already flowing. Still she smiled.

  The fifth photo, the knife had been pulled clean through. Her mouth had dropped open. Her eyes were rolling back. I hated to look, but I couldn’t turn away. If I was going to track down this killer, I’d have to study these pictures. Starting now. Thirteen photos to go.

  Picture number six, he had his hand in her hair and had yanked her head back. The wound was a crimson waterfall down her neck and soaking the cami. The woman’s life’s blood seemed nearly spent. In the seventh picture, he’d let her head fall forward, and her long hair covered the wound like the wispy limbs of a weeping willow.

  The eighth photo was blurred. Not out of focus, but blurred by the captured motion. The man was three quarters turned, his right arm bent and rotated like he’d just hit a tennis forehand. Judging by the angle and rotation of the woman’s head, the man had struck her…hard. I wondered why. At that point, she was already dead.

  Photo nine was a peculiar collage of elements. The woman’s left hand and about six inches of her wrist jutted in from the lower right corner of the shot. A small table had fallen in from the left, spilling its contents on the dark brown carpet: a clutter of silver coins, mostly quarters; a tall fast food soda cup; and a rolled up newspaper. Filling the rest of the photo was the bottom of a darkened doorway and a blur of gray and black. Recognition danced elusively for a few moments.

  Shoes. I was looking at gray slacks below the knee and black shoes. The killer’s. And he was walking away from the camera.

  The tenth photo showed the man’s right shoulder, a bit of a low door frame, and a very peculiar wall. It almost looked as if the photo itself was distorted because the wall seemed concave, curling from the ceiling to the floor. Again, it might have been an aberration from the camera’s lens or a bit of exposure error, but the low couch almost seemed to glisten as if it’d been shrink wrapped. It was disorienting.

  Shot eleven placed the man, still walking, but now in a dimly lit, narrow hallway with a vertical band of light ahead on the right that seemed like it might be a doorway. The man was curiously missing from the twelfth picture and, at first, the perspective was disorienting. The photo seemed to be taken from just inside the doorway of a new area but captured only the upper half of the room. A conical lamp rose up in one corner like a large, electric tulip, its halogen light burning bright, and it too seemed to follow the odd curvature of the wall. A row of unevenly spaced track lights lit the room from above and glimmered like spider’s eyes.

  A theory about the setting had already begun to coalesce in my mind. It was growing stronger, pic by pic. But the next photo scrambled my thoughts and sent a chill creeping across my shoulders. There were doghouses, six of them, side-by-side. It was almost ridiculously clear that that’s what they were. Red, shingled roofs and vertical white siding—even a big red bowl in front of each. These were much larger than the ones you might find in a suburban backyard, and yet someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure these doghouses fit the stereotype—

  I froze.

  There were chains leading into the first five doghouses. Something pale and white reached out from the arched entrance of the center house. It was an arm.

  A human arm.

  Chapter 4

  Blood-red nails adorned the fingertips of the curled hand. Dead or alive? There was no way to tell. The color of her skin could go either way: pale white from lack of sunlight…or exsanguination.

  I knew one thing: I wouldn’t need to look in a mirror to see the color of my skin. I knew it was red, furious red. I had seen the photographic evidence of one woman murdered in cold blood. And now, at least one more woman—a precious human being—housed and chained like a mongrel in a kennel. There needed to be an accounting, and I longed to be the deliverer of that collection.

  I hoped it would be my mission. The way everything had fallen into place, gave me little to doubt. The digital camera could have washed up anywhere, but it had come to me. I released a deep, heated breath…and swallowed, urging the rage down into its proper place. It could smolder until the time came. This was just the beginning, and there were still four pictures left.

  Movement. I wrenched my head around, half expecting to find a throng of Shades gathering at my window. But it was nothing. Just a couple of seagulls grabbing worms from the seams of the rain-drenched sidewalk and then taking flight.

  The final five photos were nearly the same as the first two with the redhead. In each photo, the clean-shaven man with the sharp nose revealed only the bottom half of his face. He stood directly behind a woman. Each of the five women were attractive and smiling with the same lopsided, off-smile worn by the redhead as she was having her throat slit.

  There was a woman with huge, almond-brown eyes and long, gossamer-fine blond hair. A dark-haired beauty with ice blue eyes came next, followed by a young woman whose dark auburn hair covered half of her face. A girl with sandy brown hair, a cute pug nose, and tiny, timid eyes appeared next.

  The knife wasn’t visible in those last five pictures, but the threat was clear. There would be violence to come.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  I sat in the Motel 6 Business center at 12:13 a.m., the very first time I found it empty. Amazing. The last guy was in here for five hours, on a Saturday night. Five hours straight. I figured he must have been a grad student doing research or some such. But the browser history showed he’d been visiting site-after-site,
looking at exotic types of yarn. I kid you not. Yarn.

  I guess some visitors to Destin, Florida lacked imagination.

  I placed my silver case on the floor between my feet and sat down to the computer. After a few clicks, I arrived at the Federal Bureau of Investigation homepage. I clicked the link “Submit a Crime Tip” and waited. A dozen blank fields stared back at me. A cursor blinked in the first field, the place to type my name, like it was mocking me. What are you going to write? John Spector? You think that’s your real name?

  I shrugged. But I had an answer. Glancing back at the door to the hotel lobby, I went to my silver case. I triggered the release. Compressed air hissed out. I checked the door again. If anyone saw the kinds of things I have in this case, I’d have some awkward questions to answer. And some questions I wouldn’t be able to answer.

  There were three perfectly molded indentations in the upper right corner of the lid, side by side like a Roman numeral three. Clicked into each space was a 21-exabyte storage drive about the size of my thumb. I plucked out the one closest to the edge of the case—the Z-drive—glanced at the side of the computer, and then selected a Firewire adapter so I could use the drive.

  The rainbow pinwheel of death showed up on the monitor, but it wasn’t frozen. It was just dealing with the weight of the vast new memory open to it. 21 exabytes. That’s enough memory to store the entire contents of the Library of Congress.

  Seven thousand times.

  Like I said, a lot of memory.

  The pinwheel disappeared. I logged into the drive and selected a program I facetiously called Hal after the space movie computer that went murderously insane. I double clicked the icon, and a droll, little smiley face appeared in a corner of the screen for a moment. It rolled its eyes at me. That Hal, what a kidder.

  Above the Hal smiley, three check boxes appeared. I clicked the one on the far left. I didn’t need the full suite. Hal was an identity generator. If I needed it, one click of a button would send Hal scouring the Internet, hacking every necessary database to secure me a new alias, one that would stand up to just about any level of scrutiny. It would include: birth certificate, school transcripts, medical records, driver’s license, passport—pretty much whatever I needed to be visible and yet stay invisible at the same time.

  But like I said, I didn’t need the full suite this time. Just a real identity that would check out on basic levels. One more click, and every field on the Submit a Crime Tip page filled instantly. According to this, my name was Regis Willoughby from Scottsdale, Arizona. Way to go, Hal. What a stupid name.

  Regis Willoughby, not Scottsdale.

  I went to work typing the details of the crime as much as I could describe them. I told the FBI where I found the camera, its make and model. I zipped a file for all the photos and attached them. I pressed submit. I put my tools in the case and went back to my room for sleep. Depending on the FBI’s response, I’d know what to do next.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  There was no response by 7:54 the next morning. It was an Internet tip, so not sure what I was expecting but still, I was disappointed. Motel 6 was a nice enough place to camp, but I was ready to move out, to take action. Impatience has always been my enemy. And yet I knew I could not take this case until I knew for sure it was for me. And for that, I needed to hear from the FBI.

  I left the business center for the hotel restaurant. I hadn’t eaten since the bagels the day before, and I felt like I could eat. A lot.

  Turns out, the Motel 6 restaurant wasn’t a restaurant at all, at least not for breakfast. Just a dozen or so square tables with two chairs each. I frowned. There was a sign that read: Continental Breakfast! Please enjoy. That was just code for: Go somewhere else to eat.

  So I did.

  And that turned out to be a blessing.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  About two blocks from the motel, around a mountainous thatch of cypress trees, I found a Godsend of a restaurant, especially for someone in search of breakfast. Brick foundation, big windows, yellow siding with black letters spelling out Waffle House. For me, it might as well have spelled HOME. I hope I never become so desperate that I wash away my memory of Waffle Houses.

  “Munchkin-sized cereal boxes,” I muttered. “I don’t think so.”

  I felt a little conspicuous carrying my silver case into the restaurant, but when I stepped through the door, I think each one of the five employees behind the counter greeted me. Friendly bunch.

  I nodded and took a booth in the corner. I didn’t need to look at the menu.

  A waitress in a beige, brown, and orange apron appeared beside me. “What can I get for you, shugah?”

  Her voice sounded light and happy, but her eyes seemed tired, almost vacant. I felt suddenly sad. I looked again, and I thought maybe she had been someone’s sweetheart once. Maybe she had hope, but her knight in shining armor rode off and left her with a child. I thought maybe she had several kids now and worked a lot of double shifts just to make ends meet.

  “You need a minute?”

  I blinked. I hadn’t meant to, but I’d been reading her. It’s something I can do sometimes. I don’t know why it happens when it does. I just get a blurred reading, a kind of visual summary of a person’s situation.

  “No, I’m ready.” I pointed at the picture on the menu. “I’ll have the bacon melt on Texas toast, but can you triple the bacon?” She nodded. “Crispy not chewy?” She nodded again. “And I’ll have the hashbrowns with cheese and onions, but make that a triple order, please.”

  Her eyes widened. “You fixin’ to feed an army?”

  “Something like that.” I smiled amiably. I could almost hear echoes of children crying when she spoke.

  “Well, you look like you could put that away. What’chu, six-four?”

  I nodded.

  “Uhmm, hmph,” she said. “We got us a man in here.” Then, she stepped away from the table, stopped just behind the counter and called out to the cooks at the wide gray stove. “Triple bacon, Texas triple plate, scattered, smothered, and covered!”

  I smiled, deciphering the Waffle House code talk. Scattered on the grill, smothered in onions, and covered in cheddar cheese.

  I smiled even more as I ate. And like the lady said, I put it all away.

  She brought the check and asked if she could get me anything else. I thanked her and said no. She slid away to another table. In spite of the warm satiation in my stomach, I felt heartbroken. I held the little yellow check in my hand and saw her name. Adelade. I looked at the charge for my breakfast. Even with a 30% tip, it wouldn’t be enough to help her. She needed more.

  $525.00 more. I knew.

  I paid the check at the register and went back to the table. I went to the silver case for the extra cash, and left my tip hidden mostly under the plate. She’d see an edge of green and know I hadn’t stiffed her. Then she’d pick it up and find something more. I left the Waffle House wishing I could watch her, but knowing I couldn’t. She would ask questions. Questions I couldn’t answer.

  Then, I saw the Cypress trees and had an idea.

  I’m fast when I need to be. I slipped around the trees and found a spot where I’d be well out of sight, but I could still see. I sighed. Best laid plans. There was a glare on the Waffle House’s windows, so I couldn’t see my booth.

  I was about to head back to the Motel 6 when the Waffle House door swung open. Adelade ran out into the parking lot. She searched left and right and, seeing no one, her shoulders sagged. She looked up at the sky, mouthed ‘thank you’ and put a hand up to her eyes. She wept right there in the parking lot.

  Like I said, the morning turned out to be a blessing.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  At 9:03 a.m., to my utter astonishment, I found the business center empty. I checked the secure email account Hal had set up for my Regis alias. There was one new message. It was from Special Agent John LePoast, FBI.

  Mr. Willoughby, thank you for taking the time to rep
ort a potentially dangerous crime. However, the “Smiling Jack” cases, as they’ve come to be known, are an Internet hoax. The photos first appeared on a social networking site in the fall twelve years back. At that time, the Bureau launched a full scale investigation. We ran photos in all the major newspapers and on network and local news, but no one identified the alleged victims. After a massive nationwide search, involving hundreds of thousands of man-hours, no bodies were found. During the eight year investigation, no missing persons reports revealing the identity of the purported victims came to light; there were no grieving family members searching for these women; there were no bodies ever uncovered, and, besides the photos, which reemerged online in various forms and on a multitude of sites, especially around Halloween, no additional clues were ever revealed. The Bureau has officially closed the case, recognizing “Smiling Jack” as an Internet hoax.

  We recognize the realistic nature of the photos, and we’re sorry for the distress they may have caused you. But you can rest assured that these are Hollywood-quality special effects and digital retouching at work, not a serial killer. If, in the future, you run into anything disturbing like this on the Internet, try running it by Snopes.com. Snopes is an investigative company specializing in Internet myths, rumors, and urban legends. You’d be amazed how many kidnappings, killings, vampires, and UFOs get reported to the FBI each year, wasting the Bureau’s resources that could be utilized for prevention and solution of real criminal activity.

  Sincerely,

  John LePoast

  Special Agent in Charge

  Check with Snopes, huh? I thought. Leave the FBI alone so they can tackle real crime? It sounded to me like Special Agent LePoast had maybe drunk a little too much coffee. Either that or someone took his favorite spot in the Bureau parking lot. It didn’t matter to me really. I got what I needed: clear direction.