The Haunted Bones

by PM Weldon

  But they still happened. The only explanation the doctors could give me was the bullet. That somehow it interfered sometimes. High emotions, stress, it was never the same trigger. One minute I would be working.

  The next I'd go down on my ass.

  Jewels had suggested a companion for a while, thinking I shouldn't live alone. What if I went out while walking down the stairs?

  And don't think that thought didn't scare the shit out of me. Because it did.

  After counting to fifty, she helped me to a sitting position. I was shaking and she handed me a glass of water. I drank all of it and then grabbed the fridge to help pull myself up.

  Now I was really hungry.

  I didn't protest as Jewels helped me back to the chair, then grabbed the cheese. We ate in silence. We were good enough friends that we didn't need anything else.

  But then, "Senator Padeaus will be there."

  I slurped a few noodles in and licked my lips. "Good. Then I can shoot him proper."

  Four

  Before I was shot, I shared everything with Jewels.

  Back when I was investigating the senator's son's death, I told her my suspicions and apparently she was the only one who agreed with me—before the warehouse fiasco. We didn't connect for a long while after my recovery and subsequent self-imposed banishment from the squad.

  But when she did show up at my new house, after the doctor released me, the first thing she asked was if I remembered what she and I talked about the night before Jimmy died. Jewels was the only person who believed as I did: that Ferrell did not kill Chad Padeaus, no matter what Llse said. And that he didn't shoot Jimmy, or me.

  "You know, I never could figure out why she lied." Jewels sat back on the well-worn corduroy couch of my childhood. She had her socked feet on the coffee table, the same table I'd carved my initials in when I was eight. She held her third glass of wine in her hand.

  I was in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes. Apparently before I got a bullet in my brain I'd been a slob; now I was a neat freak. I don't think it was the need for things being neat, but having had to stammer my way through so many rounds of questions, eventually I wanted to be prepared. And having things in order was a way I could take control and be prepared.

  It also prevented me from wearing a blue sock with a brown sock.

  I finished up, tossed the towel on the counter, then immediately went back and folded it. Yeah. I had issues. "Neither could I," I said as I joined her with a bottle of water. I liked wine, but I had work to do and I liked having a clear head. Or as clear as my head could get.

  "Did you ever ask her straight out?"

  I nodded. "She smiled. Said I was still recovering. That I didn't remember anything that night. She insists to this day she never saw me, but she heard us. She heard me and Jimmy trying to talk Ferrell out of killing any more people." I took a mouthful of water and swallowed.

  "If she heard you, why didn't you hear her?"

  "She was gagged."

  "I don't remember reading that in the report."

  I fixed her with a long look, even though I wasn't really seeing her. I was thinking of the same report she referenced. In the hospital, when I could form coherent sentences, the Captain handed me the report once I told what I could remember, which was damn little. Nothing…nothing fit what the report said.

  Jimmy and I were found lying a few feet apart. He was on his front, I was on my back. And Ferrell was across the room on his back. Ms. Wallace was locked in a room.

  The last memory I had was finding Jimmy dead just inside the warehouse door. I knelt over him, tears in my eyes as I looked for a pulse, my gun in my hand. Jim Herndon and I went through the academy together. We were partners in uniform, and then as detectives. He was getting married in two weeks to Julie—

  "Devan!"

  Jewels had her hands on the sides of my face. I blinked several times to focus on her face. Her expression alarmed me. "What?"

  "You spaced on me—with your eyes open this time." She had moved from the couch and positioned herself on the coffee table, facing me, her knees between mine. I was still sitting forward, but my water bottle was now on the table. "You've never done that with your eyes open, have you?"

  I watched her, but I was seeing the memory that just replayed so viscerally in my head. "The report's wrong, Julie. Jim was already dead when I got there. There's no way she heard me and Jimmy arguing with Ferrell. I never saw Ferrell."

  She put her hands in mine and squeezed. "Are you finally remembering?"

  "I don't know. I just…I started thinking about it and suddenly I was there."

  Julie jumped up, pulling her phone out of her pocket. "I need to call the Captain."

  "No." I reached up and snatched her phone out of her hand. "We're not calling anybody. Do you realize how late it is?"

  "But you have to tell him. You have to tell him what you remember."

  "And what good is it going to do?" I looked up at her standing over me. "Jewels, it was two years ago. The case was closed with Ms. Wallace's statement. And don't forget I was shot in the head and survived. The moment I actually say 'I was shot in the head,' I drop IQ points to anyone I talk to."

  "Dev—"

  "It won't help me or anyone else, Jewels. Anyone who still remembers it will just think I'm making shit up so I can get back to a—" I lifted my hands and made air quotes "—real job." When I lowered them, I put my hands palms-down on my knees.

  She sat back down on the coffee table. Jewels had that look in her eyes. The kind Jimmy used to run in terror from. "Then we'll figure this out together. You tell me exactly what you saw, and then write it down in your notebook."

  To humor her, and to get her out of my house so I could get work done, I fetched the book while she went to the bathroom.

  Sitting at my desk, I wrote everything down, every color, every word, every thing I could remember. A small part of me feared the memory could be taken away from me at any minute. Jewels returned and pushed me to the side so she could share the seat with me. After a few seconds of boredom as I did my Hemingway with the notebook, she moved the mouse. She knew my password so it was easy for her to log in.

  The picture of the wall with the ghost image was up on my desktop. I stared at it. I hadn't downloaded that yet so why was it open on my desktop?

  "Hey…someone's moving your mouse and it's not me."

  I watched for about a second before I realized someone had remote access to my computer. Shit! Logically I should pull the internet plug on the computer—but I also wanted to see if I could catch this mother fucker. I grabbed my phone from my back pocket as I watched the mouse try repeatedly to put the image in the trash.

  That's when I saw six missed calls from Pink, my Internet wunderkind. I hit the redial and pushed Julie out of the way. "Pink—"

  "What the fuck is going on?" She was all of eighteen and my niece, with a mouth as bad as my own. If my sister ever heard her talk like that, I was the one who was gonna pay. "Someone's in my system."

  "I'm looking at it right now. How is this possible?"

  "I don't know. I've been monitoring them since they broke in."

  "You know when they hacked it?"

  "Hell yeah—and if you'd answer your phone, you'd know, too." She paused. "They're not trying to actually access the important stuff—my stuff—but they are trying to trash a folder you uploaded earlier today. What's TAH?"

  I froze, the phone to my ear. "What?"

  "It's in your picture folders, for your company? It's says TAH and whoever this is has been trying to delete it for the past half hour."

  "Oh that stands for The Alley Haunt. It's where I took pictures today. I've uploaded to it but I haven't downloaded. You've got it protected somehow?" I grabbed my mouse and moved it. That action took the mouse out of the control of whoever was remotely hacked in. I let it go and it started moving again, trying to delete the photo.

  "Yeah. Once you upload to my server, it's all password protected.
Whoever got in used your password, but they can't get access to anything. But damn if they're not trying."

  "Can you find out who it is?"

  "Already tried and still trying. They've actually rerouted their connection off fifty spoofed IPs."

  She lost me somewhere in the middle, but that was okay. I had no ego in this shit. "What do you want me to do? They're actually accessing my desktop as we speak."

  "What are they doing?"

  "Trying to delete a file. The file's open but I didn't open it. It's like…whoever it is opened it to check it and is trying to get rid of it."

  "Shut your machine down and disconnect your Wi-Fi router."

  "Won't that make it hard for you to track them?"

  "Right now, I just want them out. And don't worry—I plan on finding out who they are."

  I shut the machine off, unplugged it, then reached up on the book shelf to the left of the desk and pulled the Ethernet from the modem to the router. "Okay. It's all off."

  "Yeah, I bounced them. Looks like they changed your password, too. I'm changing it back and adding a bit more security. Give me about a half hour before you try logging in again. I'll text you the info."

  We disconnected. Julie was looking at me. "You okay?"

  "I just got hacked."

  "I saw that. Was that Pink on the phone?"

  "Yeah…" I ran a hand through my hair. "They were trying to get rid of the pictures I took earlier today."

  "Of what?"

  "This corner building—used to be a bar called The Alley Haunt."

  "I remember that bar. Over in Buckhead. Or sort of off-Buckhead. The way off-Broadway is…" She let the metaphor die. "Why would anyone want to delete those pictures?"

  I sat back down in the chair as she sat on the edge of the table. "I don't know. It's not any kind of special place. I mean…it feels all wrong in places, especially upstairs. But the bank just wanted pictures for a potential buyer. And not just that store, the whole building. Three units."

  "You get paid good money for that kind of job?"

  "Five grand."

  "Yowzah." She pulled her leg up on the desk and rested her heel on the desk's edge as she wrapped her arms around her shin. "Did anyone else know you took pictures there today besides the insurance company?"

  "Oh, they didn't know I was going to be there today—" I suddenly remembered picking up the key. "Actually, that's a lie. I went by the bank this morning to grab a key to the place. But the only one there was Mr. Menivers."

  "He interested in the building?"

  I shook my head. "There was one lady who showed up. Nice looking, a bit older than me. She was dressed nice. Said her name was Mary Smith and used to come to the bar before her husband died."

  "You think she was legit?"

  "I guess so. She didn't give me any reason to think otherwise. She just wanted to come by and see it, and found it was closed up."

  "You show her that picture?"

  "Yeah. And she saw the same weird thing I did. But I doubt she has anything to do with hacking my account." It was a far-fetched idea. And I'd only given her my basics. Name, e-mail account, business name. From that, there wasn't much else to gather. "Maybe it was whoever wants to buy it? They were trying to see the interior?"

  "Straws, babe." She stood and stretched. "Soon as you can, I want to see that picture, though. I swear I saw a ghost in it."

  "So did I." I walked her to the door and leaned against the frame. She stood outside. The rain had stopped and the air was cold. "Thanks for stopping by. You always seem to know when I need a cheer."

  "Nah. I just come for the food." She leaned up and kissed my cheek. "Get sleep, Devan. Please. Don't stay up too late. And take care of that hacker."

  I watched her go to her car, parked across the way in the MARTA parking lot. Once I saw it drive off, I stepped back inside and locked the door.

  Five

  Mary slammed her hands down on the keyboard and let lose a stream of words her mother would have beat her for. One of the key caps popped off the board. That just made her madder. She lifted the keyboard and threw it across the room. It struck the edge of her black marble bar and more caps flew off.

  How? How was it possible for her to hack into that bastard's computer and not be able to delete the files? Finding more about him on the web had been easy. Devan McNally, former detective, shot in the head two years ago by the kid who murdered that senator's son.

  She had to admit he looked good for someone with a bullet in their brain. And that just set her off again as she stood and kicked anything that got in her way as she continued her tantrum.

  So close…. She'd seen the picture and it creeped her out. It was as if her mother were pointing at her from her tomb, taunting her. And some skinny-assed guy with a camera was going to be the one to dig her up.

  The fact he shut the computer off and then she was kicked out of whatever server he was using told her she'd been discovered. So hacking back in was now out of the question. And that picture—possibly more of them—were out there.

  She heard the door open and turned a hateful stare at her stepson. Augustus Smith. Auggie to his friends and buyers. The kid was barely twenty-two but he already made a small fortune pushing drugs in local middle schools. The smaller kids were where he felt he had the most to gain. Get them hooked early, and you had a customer for life. Or at least, as long as their lives would last once the coke got hold of them.

  He had two bags in his arms and a smug look on his ugly face. "Wow, Mary. You look…pissed off." Auggie noticed the bits and pieces of the keyboard. He groaned and set the bags on the bar surface. "Dammit, I just bought that keyboard."

  "Do you know how, or do you know anyone who can get me information off of a server and delete it permanently?"

  He arched an eyebrow at her. "What, you got some nudie pics out there you don't want anyone to see?"

  She wanted to slap him, and then run one of the knives in the kitchen over his throat. Slit it side to side. "Just answer the damn question."

  "Well, if it's something you really don't want anyone to know about, deleting it won't solve the problem. You'll still have to deal with who else saw it. And you have to know if they made a copy."

  "How much?"

  Auggie winced. "Eh?"

  "How much do you want?"

  "For the keyboard? It was about seventy-nine."

  God, he was such a dipshit. "How much would it cost me to have the information and anyone involved with it, deleted?"

  His eyes brightened at the prospect of a job. "Well, that'll depend on how many stiffs. You got an idea?"

  "Just one that I know of. I don't know if he's shared it with anyone else."

  "Torture usually works. So who's the intended?"

  She pointed at the computer and stepped up to the bar to fix a drink.

  Auggie sat down and moved the mouse. He pushed back and held up his hands. "Nope. Sorry. No can do."

  "What?" She slammed the highball glass on the bar. "What do you mean, no can do?"

  "That is a very well-known cop, in case you didn't read, which you usually don't. And he's decorated."

  "He's a photographer."

  "Now he is, but he took a bullet when they caught that kid who killed Padeaus's son. The mayor gave him an award."

  She drowned the inside of her glass with a good portion of Dewar's before she looked up at her stepson. "I met him. He didn't strike me as very heroic." The precision he threw the rock with did come to mind, though.

  "Sorry, Mary, but you're gonna have to find someone else to off him. Now, I might be able to get to this information and annihilate it, for a nice price."

  "But what about him? If he tells anyone, what difference does it make?"

  Auggie pointed to his head. "Guy has a bullet in his brain. Take it from there."

  She considered her position while finishing her drink. If Auggie managed to delete the photos, then there wouldn't be any evidence of what Mr. McNally saw. The
fact the guy took a bullet to the head could also be used in open court or even the media to argue that he wasn't completely sane, that he was seeing things.

  Then there wouldn't be any bodies.

  "He saw me."

  "Then you're going to have to do that part on your own." Auggie leaned against the back of one of the three couches in the sprawling apartment. "You could see if Black Angel would take the case."

  Black Angel. A well-known gun-for-hire. In certain circles the name carried with it a power no one wanted to be the victim of. "This is small potatoes for Black Angel. I don't see him taking the hit."

  "I don't know." He strolled to the bar and grabbed an empty glass. After dropping a few ice cubes into it, he poured a glass of rum. "Remember why Angel went on hiatus?"

  "Something to do with a potential target's maturity. Which made no damn sense to me."

  "Shouldn't. You're not a doer." He held up his glass before he took a mouthful and swallowed it with a hiss. "Two years ago, Chad Padeaus was killed with a bullet to the back of his head. He wasn't alone."

  She put her glass down. "The son of the senator this McNally guy was involved with? I don't remember reading about that. What I do remember was he was found alone in Piedmont Park with his pants down. That's why they thought it was some sexual encounter gone wrong. And once they found out the aide was gay—"

  "Wasn't him. It was staged by the real killer. And that killer knew Chad hadn't been alone. He was with a guy in a hoodie and red Converse. They were kissing."

  "So Chad was gay."

  "Doesn't matter. The killer didn't see the other guy 'til it was too late. Shot Chad in the head; the guy in the hoodie took off running. The shooter planted the evidence to frame Ferrell."

  This time her jaw dropped. "Wait…you're saying the kid's death was a hit and Mason Ferrell really was innocent?"

  He held up his glass again. "As a newborn babe."

  "So did this shooter find out who the—" She stopped as she stared at her stepson, the pieces falling into place. "Maturity. That's Black Angel's shtick. He never kills minors. So Black Angel was the killer and he discovered the mystery guy's identity and apparently he was under age." Mary chuckled. "So Padaeus's kid was gay and a child molester."