The Haunted Bones

by PM Weldon

  "The guy's an ass but a fine doc." Vale put a hand on my shoulder and guided me away from the front of triage. "You have any idea whose diary it was?"

  "Yeah, I do. Anyone dusting behind the mirror?"

  "CSI is there now, going back over it. And don't think I didn't get an earful from the director since they already went over that place nearly two years ago."

  "I think you'll find prints from Birch's wife, Randall Cahan, and Cahan's daughter."

  "Oh?"

  "I think Birch's wife and Cahan's daughter were having an affair and Cahan found out. I think he confronted them and Birch tried to stop him. Check for police reports of domestic violence for the Cahans. I think he killed all three and set up Birch to take the fall."

  "You think this diary proves all this?"

  I smirked. "I think it's a better lead in evidence than ghost pictures."

  Vale actually smiled. "I agree with you. I'll follow all this up and let you know. But no mention of your pictures, okay?"

  I agreed. What else was I going to do?

  "Oh," he added as he put his hand on my shoulder again. "About the wedding—"

  "Oh no. I told Myra no. I mean, Senator Padeaus is going to be there and I think—"

  Vale locked eyes with me. "Padeaus has requested you be there. He's good friends with the Chief Of Dees and since you did help solve his son's murder case, he's asked personally. The COD agreed. So rent a tux and bring a date and your camera." He turned and then stopped again. "Oh, and make sure Brenner gets home."

  "I will." I watched him leave and leaned against the wall. My shoulder hurt and I fingered the slip of paper in my pocket, the prescription for painkillers the doc gave me. Truth was, I had a medicine cabinet full of them. Why add one more bottle?

  Another twenty minutes went by before Jewels emerged from the curtains in a wheelchair. Her arm was in a dark blue sling and her expression was just a little too happy. Obviously they'd given her a painkiller.

  I checked her out and then grabbed my car out of the parking lot. I found out Lt. Theodore Rosenberg, one of the detectives I used to work with, had driven it from The Alley Haunt to the hospital for me. I texted him a thank you text before I piled Jewels in and headed toward her house.

  Once inside—I had a key—I got her to her bedroom where she shut the door in my face so she could undress. It was the same condo she and Jim had shared before he died. She never wanted to leave it and she was only a few blocks from my own home now. I did notice Jim's things were still spread around amidst boxes I'd brought for her. At least she'd tried to pack him away.

  I grabbed a beer out of the fridge to dull the pain and took my bag into the living room. I wasn't going to leave Jewels alone, not yet. At least not until I knew she was okay and not so loopy. With my feet on the coffee table, I pulled out my tablet. It was dead. Luckily Jewels had one just like mine so I hooked mine up to her power cord and shoved it out of the way under the couch.

  Her tablet was fully charged so I logged in under her password and then logged into Pink's new server. I had a few e-mails, so I checked those first. One was from Pink.

  Hey, I heard you got shot! Again! Give me a call. Got new security on the server and I pinpointed that hacker to about a five-hundred-mile radius. Not much, but I do know they are in Atlanta. Ciao!

  How was it Pink always knew what was happening? I made a note to take her out for pizza in Little Five Points soon.

  The next e-mail was from the bank guy, Menivers. I told him I had the pictures but there had been an incident at the location and for him to get in touch with Captain Vale.

  The third email was from some weird address. Suspecting it was spam or a virus, I deleted it. Next I opened the image of the mystery woman. Jewels' tablet didn't have the same software as mine, so all I could do was zoom in and look. I could do a limited amount of hue and saturation adjustment just to bring the woman's features into clarity.

  Once I had it where I could see her face pretty clear, I made a screen cap and saved it. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and scrolled through the contacts.

  "Hello?"

  "Danielle?"

  Pause. "Devan? Oh my god, is this you?"

  I was happy she sounded happy to hear from me. Danielle was an old friend at the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. She worked in finger printing and face recognition. When I worked with Jim, he and I depended on her. "Yeah. How are you?"

  "I'm fine! You know we miss you. When are you coming back to work?"

  And there it was, the question I always tried to avoid. Though it wasn't as hard to answer this time. "Oh, I'm not sure. I'm liking civilian life. But I do I have a favor if you're up for it?"

  "Anything."

  "I have a picture of a woman's face and I need find out if it matches anything in your database for missing persons."

  "You got a jpeg or png?"

  "Yep."

  She gave me the e-mail to send it to, and after a promise of dinner and catching-up time, I disconnected before I mailed it off to her.

  That's just about the moment something crashed through the living room window and exploded on the floor in front of me.

  Twelve

  Instinct drove me up and over the back of the couch seconds after the bomb went off. I forgot about my shoulder in that instant and cried out as I used it to help me land on the floor. The force of the explosion wasn't enough to do much damage, but the hissing afterward, along with the acrid smell and thick black smoke, told me this wasn't a percussive bomb.

  This was a smoke bomb.

  I stayed low to the floor, keeping my nose down so I wouldn't choke on the smoke. Sometimes these things were designed to irritate sinuses as well as blind a person and make them defenseless. If they were blind and coughing, someone wearing a gas mask could tell where the intended victim was by sound and either kidnap them or off them.

  And I sure as shit wasn't letting either of those things happen to me, or to Jewels. I no longer had a gun, but I knew where Jewels kept hers. Getting to it might prove a bit problematic because I couldn't see a thing.

  The front door came down with a loud noise and then I heard someone's shoes on the hard wood. I squinted through the smog and peeked around the edge of the couch. I could make out the intruder's boots as they ran into the dining room, and then came around through the kitchen, past me to the couch. I kept myself flat and as I eased back—and unfortunately caught a bit of the smoke in my lungs—I watched those boots move to the front of the couch, and then over to the desk where Julie's computer was.

  I pressed my face into the back of the couch to cough, then put my nose and mouth under the couch to grab a deep breath before I got on my hands and knees in an attempt to sneak up on the intruder. From what I could see in the smoke, it looked like they were going for Julie's computer.

  Unfortunately, they were wearing a mask and I wasn't. I coughed and he turned in time to ram something long and very hard into my gut. I lost my breath and footing as I stumbled backwards and crashed into the curtain and window. The home invader jumped on me at that point and started hitting at my face with whatever he had in his hand. I kept my hands and arms up, my shoulder screaming at me as I tried to grab whatever it was.

  The smoke did a number on my lungs and I couldn't breathe. When I finally managed to knock him off, I tried crawling away, coughing my guts out. He jumped on my back and bent the arm of my injured shoulder behind me. I yelled out and tried to reach behind me with my other, but he pushed the injured one up higher. "Where's the laptop?"

  The gas mask muddled his voice. I coughed and shook my head.

  He shoved my face into the floor. "Where is the laptop?"

  "Devan!"

  No, Julie! Her voice renewed my desire to protect her. I got my other hand on the floor beside me and used it as leverage to push my ass into the air with enough force to launch my attacker backward over my head. I scrambled away and went head first into the leg of the table. I saw stars for a few seconds a
nd tried to call out to Julie, to warn her. But my lungs filled with the smoke.

  There were more footsteps and shouts. Two gunshots and then nothing.

  I continued coughing as a lay on the floor beside the coffee table.

  A cool hand touched my face. Jewels coughed as she knelt beside me. Something hit the floor to my left but I didn't look as I took her into my arm.

  "I—I tried to shoot him. But I think I missed. He—he ran back out the door."

  The smoke thinned as it was sucked through the busted door. I pulled back from her and looked into her face. Her eyes were red and tears stained her cheeks. "Why are you crying? You're a cop." *Cough* "You're supposed to shoot the bad guy."

  "But I was so afraid I was gonna shoot you!"

  "Brenner! McNally!"

  That was Vale's voice.

  "We're back here, sir," Julie called out.

  The smoke had turned to a soft haze by the time Vale appeared like an avenging cop. He helped Julie up as two paramedics came in with oxygen tanks and slapped masks on both of us. I managed to stand and stagger out the front door along with Vale and Julie. Three black-and-whites with lights flashing parked along the street, another one actually in the front yard of the complex. That was Vale's car.

  Jewels and I sat down on the back bumper of the paramedic truck, blankets over our shoulders, sucking on oxygen tanks. The paramedic took our vitals, gave Vale a report as the captain neared. Vale asked what happened so I gave him my account, punctuated by bouts of coughing.

  Julie took a deep breath, coughed. "I heard noises downstairs. Sounded like someone was breaking the place apart—and when I opened my bedroom door, there was smoke everywhere. I thought the condo was on fire. And then I heard someone yelling but I couldn't understand it. That's when I dialed 911 and said I had a fire and a home invasion. I grabbed my gun and got to the middle of the stairs." She turned and looked up at me before she looked back at Vale. "The smoke was clear enough that I could see someone in a mask beating on Devan. So I distracted him. That's when you guys showed up and he took off."

  "We're combing the area for him. So you didn't get a good look at his face?"

  I shook my head. "No."

  "It looks like he took your computer, Brenner. You have anything else in there? Might want to go back and see, take inventory."

  "He kept asking me where the laptop was," I said.

  "But I don't have a laptop." Jewels handed the medic her tank and mask, and made her way back to condo entrance. I noticed she wasn't wearing her sling.

  "Devan," Vale said in a quiet voice as the medic moved away. "We got a match on the DMV records for the car in the drive-by outside the haunt. We got a match."

  "Oh?"

  "Randall Cahan."

  Thirteen

  "So…whose is this?"

  Mary ignored Auggie as she searched through files. Whoever's computer this was, it wasn't Devan McNally's. She pushed the keyboard forward and sat back. "It's not here."

  He pointed to the computer. "You stole this?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Are you nuts? Turn that off!" He reached around the back and yanked the power cord out. "Don't you realize people put antitheft software on their computers now? You go online with this and it'll flag somewhere."

  "I wasn't online with it." She had intended to go online, but was now happy she hadn't. "It belongs to some girl cop named Brenner."

  Auggie rubbed his face. "Have you gone insane? Who's Brenner?"

  She stood and moved away from the desktop, and pulled the tablet out of her bag. The gas mask she'd used earlier rested on the couch's arm along with the pipe she used to try and bash that bastard's head in. She really hadn't thought it all through, breaking in and grabbing the computers. "She's a cop. The cop this McNally is dating." She sighed. "I followed him to a condo and watched him go in."

  "So you bought military gear and broke in to—what? Grab the computers?" He picked up the mask and then tossed it back down. "You are going to get caught and I am not going down with you, Mary."

  "Yes, you are." She said in a quiet voice. "You helped me poison husband number four, and then you helped me kill husband five." She pointed at him. "Your father. And this military stuff belonged to dear old dad. He's got this whole box full of it in the basement."

  Auggie's complexion bleached white. "My dad…had a box full of Army stuff?"

  "Yeah. That crate by the wine cellar door. I thought it was something he'd shipped in and forgot. Whole box full of masks, guns, pipes like that one." She frowned at him. "Oh, knock it off. You knew he was a paranoid redneck just like everyone else."

  The ugly little fucker sat down on the coffee table. "You broke into a cop's house, but it was the wrong house."

  "Yeah…and I couldn't even get a good swing at him. Those gas masks make it easy to breath, but you still can't see anything."

  "Oh, dear god, Mary." He put his hands over his face. "You have got to get a grip on yourself. You can't go around stealing computers and acting all crazy."

  "You think what Black Angel did today was the smarter thing to do?"

  "I told you: That wasn't him. We don't know who that was, but obviously they know about Angel and they wanted to frame him. Right now, I don't think making Angel mad is such a good idea."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's got you so worried?"

  "I'm afraid you're going to make a mistake, Mary, and then what we've done will get out."

  "Nothing's going to take what we have away. One more month and we're home free."

  Auggie went to the bar and poured himself a drink. "I don't understand why Dad put that limit on the will. I mean, we have to wait one year to inherit?"

  "He could have switched it and left us nothing. We've been good; the executor is satisfied. In twenty-five days we'll be forty million richer." She joined him at the bar with the tablet she'd stolen in her hand. "Then we can sell this house and go to Costa Rica."

  "I wanted to go to England."

  "Why would you want rain and fog when we can own a tropical hut on the beach, eat crab cakes all day, and sun." With a big sigh, she turned the tablet on and started working on the password.

  "You steal that, too?" Auggie downed half his drink.

  "Yeah. And I'm not on the Internet, so no freaking out." After six attempts it locked her out, so she handed it to Auggie. "Here. You're better at this shit."

  She only half watched him as he examined the tablet and then punched a few side buttons. The thing restarted and he waited for the password prompt. "You got a spec sheet on her?"

  "It's on the desk." She was not going to interrupt her own cocktail time to get the girl's life highlights. "But I don't think you need it. Come to think of it," she said as she poured the Dewar's, "she seemed pretty chummy with McNally and he was staying at her house. Even though I thought it was his."

  After a few attempts, Auggie took the tablet to the computer and booted the computer up. "Aren't you afraid of being caught?" she said as she sauntered back to her desk and Auggie.

  "I'm not connected to the internet." He moved through a terminal prompt and typed in a few codes she didn't recognize. " Is she married to McNally?"

  "No."

  He rattled off an address. "Is that where you got this?"

  "Yeah."

  Auggie nearly smacked his head on the monitor. "That's Brenner's address. But she does have McNally's address here in her address book." He scooted back and pointed.

  She peered at it for a second before the anger resurfaced. "Good. Now I know where to go off the bastard."

  "Idiot. You broke into a cop's house. They're going to tear that place apart looking for whoever you are. Don't you think they'll be watching McNally's house now that you've 'effed up?." He clicked a few windows and then laughed. "I figured I'd find this."

  "What is it?"

  "A password list in her notes. And there's the password for her tablet."

  "You're serious?"

  He
picked up the tablet again, entered the password, and the screen came right up on the very photograph she was most terrified of.

  "What the hell is that?"

  She grabbed the tablet from his hand and took it to the bar. After a few seconds, Auggie joined her and stared down at it. "Is that a ghost or just some cool Photoshop effect?"

  "Shut up," she hissed. "Just…shut the fuck up."

  "Do you know who that is?" He stepped back. "Wait a minute. Is this the picture you wanted deleted? A picture of an old bar and a ghost?"

  "You don't want to go there, Auggie. Just walk away." Her hands curled into fists as she stared down at the face. It wasn't a clear image of her mother, but she knew it was her, mocking her, teasing her, haunting her from the grave. And somehow that bastard had resurrected her.

  Auggie did as he was told. In fact, he grabbed his things and headed to the door. "Mary, just stay away from McNally for a while. If you approach him now, they'll be all over you like stink on shit." With that, he left the room.

  She had McNally's address now. And after subjecting him and the cop to theatrics, it was time for a more subtle approach. It was time to do a little more research on Devan McNally and slip in through the front door.

  Fourteen

  I wanted Julie to get a hotel room, check in under an assumed name, and get some rest. But apparently, my want didn't count. And Captain Vale going to argue with her. Who could blame him? Julie could be scary. And now that some nut job broke into her house and stole her stuff?

  Armageddon.

  As per what she wanted, we were at the station for most of the night. I got a lot of strange looks, a few pats on the back and hugs, with questions about me being back on the squad. I avoided all of them, glad most of the old team wasn't on duty.

  Once they brought Randall Cahan in, though, I was front and center. I wasn't in interrogation with him, but Vale did let me watch behind the mirror. Julie stayed by my side, and I had to admit, knowing this was the guy who almost put a hole through me and Julie made me a little twitchy.