by H. P. Bayne
“No. Don’t. Not with this. You’re strong, but unless I’m very much mistaken, it is too. I don’t want to risk it poisoning you. If you go dark-side because of this thing, we’re all lost.”
Sully nodded. He knew what it was to lose himself to darkness. A part of himself—a part of his soul he’d succeeded in locking away—would be only too ready to take over if he wasn’t careful. “Okay, I won’t go there.” He sat back and met Jack’s eye. “Any chance I can practice creating a doorway? I won’t see it, but you will. You can tell me if I’m doing it right.”
Jack eyed Sarah. “I’d suggest not doing it inside your girlfriend’s apartment. When you’re not obsessing over it, I think you do it safely and well. But the last thing you want is to rend a hole in the fabric of the spiritual veil and end up allowing a legion of demons in here.”
Sully grimaced. So practice was out.
“When you’ve got something to send over, the doorway should be a one-way passage, long as you close it right away after,” Jack said. “Most important thing is to have faith in yourself, in your own abilities. You can do this, Sully. But you need to believe it first.”
Sully blew out a breath, easing it out slow and long. Every time he thought he’d figured out every corner of his gift, some new and unpleasant challenge cropped up.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”
“You’ll get this done,” Jack said. “And if you have any trouble, Flynn, Aiden and I will be right outside.”
A wave of relief crashed over Sully. “You’ll be there?”
“Outside. Your clients, I’m told, have invited in a damn television crew. I think you can understand why we’d prefer not to be in the middle of that.”
Sarah chuckled. “I certainly can. If you went to air doing what you showed me, half the world’s population would drop dead of heart failure. You reapers would really have your work cut out for you.”
Jack laughed. Sully wasn’t in a state to feel amused about anything.
“But you’ll come if I need you,” he said.
Jack nodded once, slowly. “We will.” He gave another brief laugh. “Doubt I have it in me to hold back your dad and brother, even if I tried.”
“Your dad and brother?” Sarah asked. “That Flynn and Aiden?”
“I’ll explain in a bit,” Sully promised her. For now, he sighed, leaned over and grasped Jack’s wrist. “Thank you. I appreciate you coming here—even if you turned up in an unfortunate moment.”
“I’m a reaper, Sully,” Jack said. “My entire existence is a series of unfortunate moments.”
13
The following morning, Sully left with Sarah as she headed off to work. She gave him a kiss as they prepared to part ways at the downstairs security door.
“Be safe,” she told him, gently shaking him by the front of his shirt. “I mean it.”
He offered her what he could manage of a reassuring smile. “I will be—as much as I can. And if I start getting in over my head, I’ve got Dez there.”
“Remind me to pay for Dez’s next meal,” she said. “No matter how much the guy packs away.”
Sully laughed, gave her one more kiss—longer this time—then headed for his SUV. He waited until she drove away, car headed in the direction of the downtown core, before starting off himself.
He stopped off at his apartment for a shower and a change of clothes, then made his way to Dez and Eva’s.
Eva and Kayleigh were already gone for the day, but Dez was there, geared up for a jog with Pax.
“If you’re going to crap on me, can it wait until I’ve taken Pax for a run?” Dez asked.
“I’ll do you one better,” Sully said. “Give me a minute to change, and I’ll join you. Just let me keep up.”
Sarah loved to jog, so Sully now kept a bag of workout gear in the hatch of his vehicle. He grabbed the bag and changed in the living room while Dez waited.
“Did Jack find you?” Dez asked.
“Of course, he did. Nearly walked in on something too.”
Dez grimaced. “I tried to get him to wait. Sorry about that.”
“You could have called to warn me.”
“Then it would have been me interrupting. No offence, Sull, but I hate it when people call midway through something like that.”
Sully pulled his T-shirt over his head and eyed Dez. “Hey, D? Next time? Call.”
Dez gave an apologetic smile. “Understood.”
Once Sully had laced up his runners, the two of them headed out with Pax, Dez jogging slower to allow the shorter Sully to keep up. For the first few minutes, Sully filled Dez in on what Jack had told him. After that, they picked up the pace, so full conversation was out.
By the time they got back to Dez’s an hour later, Sully was exhausted and drenched in sweat, and Dez appeared exhilarated.
Sully immediately headed for the downstairs bathroom and took his second shower of the day while Dez went to the upstairs one.
Leaving his hair loose to air dry, he returned to the main floor just as Dez’s phone rang.
“Lachlan,” Dez announced. He met Sully’s eye before answering. “Keep your fingers crossed he’s come through on something.”
Sully hovered nearby as Dez answered the phone.
“Hey, Lachlan.”
“Sully with you by chance?”
“As it happens, yeah. Did you get anywhere?”
“I’ve had feelers out with a few different contacts, but I don’t have a whole lot to help you, unfortunately. You boys have got yourselves a large range of possible suspects here, and I’m not sure there’s a good way to weed through them before you need to go back in there today. I’m sorry. I tried.”
Dez blew a breath through pursed lips. “I hear you. We’ve been having the same problem. It’s a century-old prison. Those kinds of places are ghost factories.”
“You got that right. Between the hangings, the suicides, the murders and the general medical-related fatalities, more deaths occurred there over its lifetime than I can put a finger on. If you’re trying to narrow things down to one inmate, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
Dez frowned. “Guess we couldn’t expect anything more than that, really.”
“I did learn one interesting thing from a friend of mine. She used to be involved in investigating complaints against correctional officers—basically, federal corrections’ version of a professional standards unit. She mentioned several inmates came forward with information implicating a guard there in some nasty stuff. Claims stated he’d take prisoners into one of the rooms in the basement level and torture them for kicks.”
A horrified glance passed between Sully and Dez.
“Jee-zus,” Dez said. “Your friend ever bust the jerk?”
“No. Problem was, all of the complaints came in anonymously via who she suspects were family members of the inmates. The inmates themselves never came forward—probably for obvious reasons. Being labelled a rat in any capacity is a real bad thing in prison. More importantly, they probably wanted to avoid any fallout from other guards seeking retribution should their colleague be sacked over it.”
Sully stared at the phone as if peering into Lachlan’s face. “The other guards wouldn’t have backed him, though, right?”
“This was the seventies, Sully. Times were different. I mean, hell, I recall a few cops I knew using some, shall we say, questionable tactics during arrests and suspect interrogation—the sort of thing you’d be canned over nowadays. Prisons were worse. These were men who were already convicted of an offence. Public sympathy for them was low to nonexistent, and the staff there knew it. The bad apples would have figured they not only had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, but probably also that the guys in there deserved whatever extra punishment they got.
“The death penalty was abolished officially in seventy-two. That didn’t happen without some major argument from the pro-capital punishment crowd. Suddenly, in a prison, you had people who would have
once been staring down a date with a noose who were instead looking at various lengths of lockup. Bet your ass some people in the prison system would been angry about the change.”
Sully asked his question of Lachlan but met Dez’s eye as he did. “But enough to torture prisoners?”
“More than that, I’d venture to say. For a few years, prison officials found themselves with several suspicious deaths. Prisoners were found hanged in their cells, with some indication the deaths might have been more than suicides. In at least two cases, pathologists outright determined them to be homicides. In a couple others, results weren’t conclusive, although the circumstances closely mirrored the others. Keep in mind, this was before the time of security cameras, so no reliable record to review. Back then, as a police officer investigating something like that—whether on the street or in a prison—you relied on witness statements. Well, I headed to my storage container thinking I’d kept some material on this. Turns out I did. Problem is, it didn’t get me anywhere.”
Dez headed for the couch with his phone and sat, so Sully followed and dropped down next to him.
“Let me guess,” Dez said. “No one saw anything.”
“So they claimed. Perfect location and opportunity for a murder. Deaths occurred in the middle of the night with lights out. You’ve got inmates following the code of not ratting, and you’ve got guards sympathetic to the killer or willing to turn a blind eye. No one came forward with useful information. Not one person. To this day, four suspicious deaths from then remain open and unsolved.”
Dez cast a glance at Sully. “Could it be maybe the ghost in Hell’s Gate is a combination of those four?”
“Maybe,” Sully said. “But it could be more than that. All I saw was a shadowy shape. At least one or two were murdered; otherwise, I wouldn’t see it. But it could be there are others mixed up in there too.”
“It’s a theory though, right?”
Sully nodded. “It’s a theory.”
Dez returned to the conversation with Lachlan. “So this guard. Who was he and what happened to him?”
“His name was Peter Coving. Given what a prick he was in life, you’d hope he would have met with an appropriate fate. But he apparently passed away on the job from heart failure. Young for a heart attack at forty-two, but there you go. Staff found him dead in one of the shower stalls.”
Sully had been going through what Lachlan had told him. Now he spun toward Dez, grasping his shirt. “Ed described hearing footsteps before the attack on him, and he said he was lifted as if he was being hanged. It fits.”
“Yeah,” Dez said. “It actually does. What if the ghost we’re dealing with isn’t this mob entity, or whatever? What if it’s this Coving guy?”
“Whichever way you crumble the cookie, you might have a hard slog,” Lachlan warned. “Fact is, whether you’re talking about inmates or Coving, you’re looking at people who have reason to be afraid of what might be facing them on the other side. This isn’t a case of them heading off on their merry way once you get them whatever justice they’re after.”
Sully frowned. “Yeah. I hear you.”
Fact was, Lachlan was right. No matter who or what he was up against inside Pineview, getting the ghosts to cross over wasn’t likely to happen without a battle.
Sully had been hoping to get in an hour or two of sleep prior to their return to Pineview, knowing full well they were probably going to be awake all night with the TV crew. Instead, he and Dez found themselves back at the prison, hoping to sort out a few things beforehand.
Unfortunately, the crew had beat them there.
“Bloody hell,” Dez grumbled as he eyed the vehicles, one of which was an equipment van obnoxiously marked with larger-than-life photos of the hosts. The name of the show was emblazoned beneath in huge letters fashioned to resemble dripping blood.
“Subtle,” Sully muttered.
Dez rolled his eyes at the van and stepped out of the SUV.
They headed slowly into the building, intent on searching for Ed. They heard voices coming from down the hall, probably from the office, and had started toward the sound when Dez stopped.
Sully drew to a halt next to him. “What?”
“Just thinking,” Dez said. “Maybe we could find Pip. He was around in the seventies, right? He probably knew this Peter Coving guy.”
With Sully signed on to the new plan, they changed course, making their way down the other hall, the one leading to the main body of the prison. As soon as they were inside, Sully heard more voices, and he visually swept the area to figure out whose. He spotted bright light on the uppermost tier and saw a man talking to camera. Getting some initial daylight footage, likely.
Sully hightailed it through the prison, Dez next to him, until they reached the back hall leading toward the rear of the building. He was pretty sure they weren’t seen, which was just as well. Only delaying the inevitable, but every moment he spent free of the cameras was a good moment.
He hoped Pip was back in his shop, though it was just as possible he’d been taken by surprise by the crew’s early arrival and had gotten trapped in his rooms in the former administration area. Keeping his fingers figuratively crossed, Sully headed to the shop with Dez.
The main door was locked, so Sully made his way toward the windows to the right which he recalled looked in on the shop. He had to wipe away a little of the dust and grime before he was able to see anything. Peering in, he spotted Pip at work, planing away the rough surfaces of a piece of wood.
Sully rapped on the window and waved. Pip jumped about a foot, then visually homed in on him. Expression sour, Pip stalked over with narrowed eyes. As he drew near, recognition removed the frown. Pip pointed to the side, in the approximate direction of the front door. Sully nudged Dez and headed that way.
They waited there a few seconds until Pip appeared through the glass pane in the top of the door and pushed it open for them.
“Come in, fast,” he said. “Before they notice.”
Sully and Dez scooted inside, and Pip sealed the door shut behind them before leading the way back toward the shop.
“Barely escaped the bastards,” he said. “Van pulled up while I was finishing lunch. They weren’t supposed to be here until four. Luckily, Kevin was already back. He and Ed had gone into the city to get food and drinks for the night. God knows what I would have done if I had to deal with those assholes myself.” He frowned. “Probably leave them outside if I had my way.”
“My way too, Pip,” Dez said. “My way too.”
“Are you planning on staying here all night?” Sully asked.
Pip pointed to a bunched-up sleeping bag and a pillow atop one of the counters. “Damn straight.”
Sully grinned, but the expression faded as he got ready to discuss the guard. “Hey, Pip, we need to ask you about something. Our boss did some checking. He found out about a guard who was apparently under suspicion for doing some horrible stuff in the seventies. We were wondering if—”
“Coving,” Pip cut in.
Sully raised his brows. “Yeah. So you’re familiar with him?”
“We all were. Mind you, I kept my head down, minded my own business. Coving and I never had cause to meet up for one of his talks.” He leaned on the final word, indicating he knew damned well the talks were something else altogether. “I’d heard enough to know you went out of your way to avoid run-ins with him. Plenty of guys didn’t. Lots of attitude in prisons, lots of posturing and trying to come off tougher than the next guy. Coving didn’t appreciate the arrogance. He made it his mission to tune in guys like that, bring them back down to earth when their egos swelled.”
“We heard he was suspected of taking guys into the basement and torturing them,” Dez said.
Pip’s shoulders went back and held there, revealing tension. “Listen, lots of talk went on about Coving back in the day. I stayed out of it as much as I could. Heard things but didn’t get involved. If word got back you were siding in with people against him,
you were marked too. All I wanted was to do my time and get out, not get involved in other people’s wars.” He headed back to the workbench he’d been at earlier and inspected the piece of wood he’d been working with. He ran his fingertips against its surface. Sully had the impression Pip found comfort in the touch, like some might stroking a pet’s fur. “I heard talk of the basement, but I don’t know more than that.”
“What about the hangings?” Sully asked.
Pip’s eyes snapped up from the tabletop to Sully’s face. “What did you hear?”
“Police investigated a series of suspicious deaths involving men found hanged in their cells. Our boss thinks Coving might have been responsible—and so do we. What’s more, I think he’s still here, inside the prison, and that he might be behind what happened to Ed and me.”
Pip ducked his head back down. “Coving always let me be. I got no beef with him.”
“But he probably killed people.”
Pip lifted his head again. This time, a flash of fire was in his eyes. “Let me tell you something about the men who hanged. They were loudmouths and rotten to the core, no loss to anyone inside or outside this prison. What’s more, no one’s got any proof Coving did them. Far as I’m concerned, they topped themselves.”
“Two were declared homicides,” Dez said.
Pip turned on him. “So maybe someone made a mistake. Or maybe someone else did it. Lots of people had beefs with those guys. You got nothing on Coving.”
Dez started to step forward as if to continue the argument, but Sully stopped him with a hand on his arm. Pip wasn’t defending Coving. Not intentionally, anyway.
He was terrified of him.
“You know he’s still here, don’t you?” Sully asked.
Pip met his eye and said nothing. His silence held all the answer Sully needed.
Sully took a step toward Pip. “You’re afraid of him.”
Pip exploded. “I ain’t afraid of no one!”
Sully stopped, waiting for the anger to pass. It did, slowly but surely, leaving in its wake a defeated man. “Pip—”