GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1)

by Noel Hynd

  “Apparently, I have the wrong address in Oregon,” he said. “I was wondering if you might…”

  “You and me both,” the bishop said, still nodding. He laughed slightly.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to contact him, too,” the bishop said. “When I heard that you were from Nantucket, I was hoping that you might have come with a message. Or that you might be able to help me. Seems I have the wrong address for him.”

  “But George was transferred.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Through your diocese.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then surely you must have the address in Oregon.”

  “Oh, but George never reported,” the bishop said.

  Brooks was stunned for a moment. Then, “But he gave me…” Brooks’ voice trailed off in astonishment. The bishop picked up the silence.

  “George has left the ministry,” the bishop said with evident regret. “It came as an absolute shock to me. I received his letter, oh, just five or six days ago. Postmarked somewhere in Illinois. I’ve been trying to contact him since. We never knew he was even considering a resignation. And needless to say, we would have attempted to change his mind. Or offer him a sabbatical if he desired one. He’s a fine, fine pastor.”

  Brooks, thoroughly confused, still said nothing.

  “I really didn’t understand what was going on with George,” the bishop continued sadly. “He was doing an excellent job in Nantucket. And I heard he was popular. Well liked. Then he wrote to me early in late July requesting an immediate transfer for personal reasons. We spoke a few times. George didn’t choose to share with me his problems, which I can understand, though I wished I’d been able to help.”

  “Wait a minute,” Brooks asked. “You’re telling me that George requested a transfer?”

  “Why, yes. Didn’t you know?”

  “With all due respect, Bishop… You’re certain of that?”

  The bishop chuckled. “I certainly am. Everything goes through my office. I’d know.”

  “I knew George had received a transfer. But he never said he had asked for it,” Brooks said. “In fact, quite the contrary.”

  Now the bishop showed some confusion. He shrugged. “Why else would we have given him one? We don’t move people who are doing a good job unless they have a specific skill that is urgently needed elsewhere. And even then, we would never order a move. The church is not like that today. So there was no reason to relocate a kindly soul such as George.”

  “I’m quite confused by this,” Brooks said.

  “Likewise. “

  “George said that his ‘Spiritual Nantucket’ nights had created some disfavor within the church hierarchy,” Brooks said, trying a new angle.

  “Really?” the bishop frowned. “With whom? Specifically?”

  “Specifically, your office, sir. With you.”

  Bishop Albright frowned. “You must be mistaken. No one here objected to George sitting around spinning a few ghost stories for the summer crowd. Fact is, I thought it was a crackling good idea, myself. Exploration of the human spirit,” he said with enthusiasm. “The levels of God’s love and reach. I adore a good ghost yarn as much as the next man, and I have nothing at all against new ideas or the exploration of the human spirit. I’m sorry I was never able to attend.”

  The bishop studied his visitor.

  “Son,” he finally said, “you look completely baffled.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t be.” He paused. His eyes narrowed. His voice softened to a more confidential tone. “George isn’t in any sort of trouble, is he? With the police or anything? If he is, the diocese would be happy to help the situation in any way.”

  “No, sir. He’s not in any trouble.”

  “Then why are you looking for him?”

  “It’s a matter of personal concern more than anything.”

  “Then you really are here more on personal business than professional?”

  “Yes, sir. As I stated earlier.”

  There was something sly in the bishop’s eyes. And there was an unsaid something upon which he was deciding whether or not to touch.

  “I rather knew this would happen someday. George just disappearing,” the bishop finally began. “I’m just sorry that the day has finally come.”

  He hedged with anything further.

  Brooks nudged him. “Anything you could tell me that would help…” Brooks suggested.

  The bishop sighed. “In terms of George’s comings and goings,” Bishop Albright said, “this isn’t the first time George has presented us with a bit of a mystery.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In confidence? Between us?” The bishop’s gaze traveled to the door, which was closed.

  “Of course,” said Brooks.

  “We never really did know George’s full background,” the bishop said in a hushed voice. “You see, he was always sort of a special case. He came to the divinity school without the normal academic credentials. Oh, he very much had the intellectual qualifications. No question about that. Lightning intellect. Angelic temperament. Well, you know. You knew him. But he hadn’t the years of formal study. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I ever learned where he spent his late teens and early twenties.”

  “I thought he went to some little liberal arts college out in California,” Brooks said.

  Bishop Albright was already shaking his head. “George was from western Massachusetts,” the bishop said. “After he was ordained, for some reason something came up, and his background was reexamined. Turns out that very little that he had told us was true. Liberal arts school. Driving a cab in Montana. Whatever other fictions he was spinning.”

  “A clever mixture of lies and truth?” Brooks offered.

  “Well, yes,” Albright said with no malice whatsoever. “You could describe it exactly as that.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that did offend some people. Certain members of the administration of the church here wished to revoke his ordination. And not without good reason.” He pursed his lips in thought. “I must confess: I was George’s main proponent. His advocate. His chevalier. He was so good, so perfectly suited to the clergy, that I felt very deeply that an extreme exception had to be made for him.”

  He paused.

  “And, of course, one was,” the bishop continued. “Otherwise we would have deprived ourselves of a unique individual.”

  “What are you telling me?” Brooks asked. “That he fabricated much of his background?”

  “Well, yes,” the bishop nodded as if it weren’t unusual. ‘Just about everything,” he said, “except for the fact that he was born George Andrew Osaro in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in nineteen seventy-nine. His mother still lives there.” Bishop Albright paused. “You can take it from there, I suppose.”

  “Pittsfield, huh?”

  “Pittsfield. Other end of the state. Out by the New York border. Lovely scenery this time of year.”

  “Same last name? His mother?”

  The bishop stolidly spelled it out. “0-S-A-R-0,” he said. “A name with a certain geometry. Almost spells the same thing backward as forward, doesn’t it?”

  The bishop smiled.

  “Almost,” Brooks answered.

  “Almost,” Bishop Albright agreed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Brooks said. He rose and made a move toward the door.

  “Oh, Sergeant?” the cleric said with a smile.

  Brooks waited.

  “If you happen to see George,” he said with a strange cast to his voice, “do tell him that any fence can be mended. He can come back whenever he wants.” The bishop winked. “I’m inclined to believe in spirits myself.”

  “I’ll tell him exactly that,” Brooks said.

  “Thank you. Drive safely.”

  Chapter Sixty-five

  The next stop of the day was in the Boston suburb of Framingham.

  It was an address that Brooks had brought with him from the isl
and, having carefully memorized it.

  In that town, he found himself in front of a small, depressingly ordinary tract house in the early afternoon. There were broken toys on the front lawn and two cars in the short driveway. The garage door was up and the interior of the garage seemed to be filled with packing cartons and broken pieces of furniture.

  There were two cars in the driveway, one a rusting green Toyota from the early 1990s. That one carried a Massachusetts registration. Its companion was something from the Ford Motor Company and was both more recent and more muscular. It bore a Texas license plate and, to Brooks’ careful eye, an expired registration sticker.

  Across the street a woman with a scarf around her rollered hair was walking a dog and staring at Brooks.

  Brooks went to the front door and rapped. Someone should give a course in the police academy, Brooks thought idly, on how to go to a front door and rap. He heard some movement from within but there was no response. He knocked a second time. Then the door opened a crack, held firmly by a chain. A small female body—a pale girlish woman in a stained sweatshirt and very short cutoff jeans—stood on the other side.

  “Yes?” she asked. Two cautious but bleary eyes assessed him.

  He recognized her. “Carol Ann?” he asked, kindly and patiently.

  “Who are you?” Her tone was defensive.

  “We met a few times on Nantucket,” Brooks said. “I’m Tim Brooks. Used to play basketball with your husband.”

  The chain didn’t move. Neither did Carol Ann. Nor was there any welcome or flash of recognition.

  “Yeah?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “I wish to speak with you for a moment,” Brooks said pleasantly, “preferably without a door between us. How would you feel about opening up?”

  Her eyes flickered past his shoulder to peer across the lawn, seeking, Brooks reasoned, to establish that he was alone. Then she looked him over a second time and finally arrived at a very unenthusiastic decision.

  “Yeah. I sort of remember you,” she said flatly.

  The door closed again, then opened partway. She kept one hand on it and did not ask him in.

  Four years had passed since he’d last seen George Osaro’s wife. On this day, her face registered at least twice this. Her hair was pulled back and there were gray streaks in it. For a fleeting disturbing moment, Brooks saw himself again as a much younger man in San Jose, working undercover, and presenting himself at a hundred such doorways, each one as hostile and uncooperative as the next or the last.

  “What is it?” she asked without emotion. “George? Is that it? Something happen to him? He die?”

  “I don’t know,” Brooks said. “He told me he set off across the country. I was wondering if you…”

  “I haven’t heard from him. Don’t expect to,” she said. Behind her, a shaggy calico cat sauntered across a tattered carpet. Beyond that, there was a living room. The decor and arrangement of furniture called to mind an explosion in a junk shop.

  “I thought he kept in touch,” Brooks said.

  “Why would he?”

  “He frequently told me he did.”

  “He lied. He lied all the time. About everything. What would he want with me?”

  “You have a son for one thing. I was under the impression he paid child support.”

  “It’s not his child, which he’s well aware of. And he doesn’t support it,” Carol Ann said angrily. “I do. And if you want to know the truth, we were never married, either. Not legally.”

  “I see.” Brooks groped along. She had come a long way since taking up with George and posing as the minister’s wife.

  “Well, would you have any idea…?”

  “Carol…?” a male voice called. “Who you talkin’ to?”

  From behind, from the next room, appeared a tall, barefoot man with a short gray-black beard. He brought with him the attractively blended scents of tobacco, sweat, marijuana and oil paints. He wore dirty jeans and no shirt. Brooks took him to be her Texan, or, as he remembered George labeling him, “her cowboy.”

  Tex stopped short when he saw that they had company. Carol Ann turned and cut him off just as fast. “I got a visitor, Bobby. This gent here’s a policeman. Looking for George Osaro, the jerk.

  Two and a half sentences. Enough to lasso a tight shroud across Texas Bobby’s friendliness.

  Carol Ann turned back to her visitor.

  “I haven’t seen George,” she said. “I won’t see George. I moved out years ago and haven’t heard from him since. He’s out of my life. I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

  “He never came to see you?”

  “Why would he?”

  “I got your address from his files.”

  She shrugged belligerently. “I can’t help what he writes in his address book,” she snarled.

  Philosophically, she had a point.

  “Anything else?” she asked icily. “I got to feed the kid so I don’t have a lot of time.” Her hand was anxious to push the door shut.

  “Nope,” Brooks said. “That’s it. Other than the fact that you ought to get that car registration renewed.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “When Bobby gets the bread together.”

  She closed the door without another word. But by then Brooks had enough, too. So he offered no goodbye either, and slipped back into his Jeep. Across the street, the woman in the scarf turned and resumed walking her mutt.

  Returned to the solace and comfort of his Jeep, Brooks found the route that led him to Interstate 90. He threw his car into its highest gear and drove westward across the state. He stopped for a fast high-carbohydrate lunch at some anonymous take-out joint and wasted as little time in transit as possible. He sensed an inner urgency to all of this, even though rationality suggested that there wasn’t any.

  On the less congested sections of the westbound Massachusetts Turnpike, he frequently found himself doing a steady eighty miles per hour, even though the Wrangler was hardly built for speeds. Once, through the farm country west of Springfield, the needle of his speedometer tickled eighty-five. And in an event that was not unrelated to this number, when he flew past Woronoco in the west central part of the state, he found himself looking at a red flashing light of the Massachusetts State Police in his rearview mirror.

  A state trooper with reflector sunglasses and a Third Reich mentality stepped out of an unmarked car. But Brooks’ identification as a Nantucket town cop and his explanation that he was on what he termed “urgent official business” let him off with a smile and a warning.

  This was not, of course, until after his license and shield number were run through the computers of the state gendarmerie.

  Tim Brooks arrived in Pittsfield at a few minutes before six in the evening and soon found himself rapping on his second front door of the day.

  George Osaro’s mother was a gracious, small-framed woman who answered the door promptly. Trustingly, she invited him inside as soon as Timothy Brooks identified himself. She insisted in fluent but not-quite-perfect English that first he take his shoes off and that second he join her for a cup of tea. Brooks did both.

  As she brewed tea for the two of them, he sat in the neat living room in a modest cottage. He established that he was the only one in the house besides George’s mother. The room was furnished with some modern pieces and some handsome antiques, a curious blend of Americana and Japan.

  Mrs. Osaro returned with a warm smile, never asking Brooks’ reason for the visit. She served tea. Both sipped. “I hope you don’t mind,” Brooks began, “but I came to ask you a few questions about your son.”

  “Which son? There are three.”

  “George Andrew?” he asked.

  A very slight pause. She waited. “Yes? You go ahead, please?”

  “I realize that this might be a bit painful for you, Mrs. Osaro,” Brooks said. “But can you tell me… When did George die?’”

  “That was nineteen ninety-four,” she said. “September seventee
n of that year. Yes.”

  There seemed to be no pain. That, or it had eased over a decade and a half

  “You want to know how he die?” she asked. Her accent was delicate like her son’s.

  “If you care to tell me, Mrs. Osaro,” Brooks said.

  “He was attempting to meet God through the use of mescaline,” she said. “Or peyote. Or are they the same?”

  “They’re similar.”

  “He take an overdose,” she said very routinely. “Met God, all right, didn’t he?”

  “I suppose he did,” Brooks agreed. He had absolutely no idea what nuance she had intended to her response.

  Mrs. Osaro smiled.

  Brooks noticed some pictures on a desk in the comer. He asked if he could take a look and if she would be kind enough to tell him about them. Again, she was more than gracious. Her other two sons were still alive and had families, she said. One was living in Boston, the other in New York. The son in Boston had an American wife, the other had married a pretty Japanese girl.

  Mrs. Osaro was a proud grandmother four times over and revealed portraits of the handsome, affluent families headed by her two living boys.

  She also showed him a photograph of her and her late parents when they were young in Hawaii in the 1940s. And there was also a much more recent portrait of George’s father, a sturdy handsome man who looked much like George, taken in 1999, a year before his death.

  Tim Brooks expected her mood to darken over when the topic inevitably shifted to her deceased son. But it didn’t. She said that from his boyhood he had always been a bit of a mystic, influenced greatly by Eastern writings as well as Christian orthodoxy. She said that it was always his goal to join the American clergy and bring an Eastern sense of the mystical and the spiritual to those badly in need of it. His mission, she said, was always to watch over people, to bring enlightenment and a love of God to new souls. To bring people together. To help his fellow man in matters that defied normal means of assistance and defied tradition.

  Brooks listened to all of this with a feeling that goose bumps should have been crawling up and down his spine. But none were. None were, because this was much as he had suspected, little by little, for several weeks. Suspected, but never quite able to completely believe until this moment.