by Thomas Kies
It was a man’s face. Mouth, chin, mustache, open eyes staring at us.
Then gone.
It vanished when the wave broke over the side of the boat, washing over our shoes and the deck.
“Save the equipment,” Stella screamed.
A ferocious wind hurled a gray curtain of stinging rain sideways into the boat. People shrieked in surprise.
The captain accelerated at the same time another brutal gust of wind twisted the boat around. I lost my footing and fell back onto a bench.
The captain shouted, “Lance, Drew, pass out the life jackets.”
The two boys pulled the seats of unoccupied benches up and hauled out bright orange safety vests, staggering about the deck, handing them to the ghost hunters.
“Save the equipment,” Stella screeched, putting on her vest, kneeling down on the deck, awash with brackish water, securing a motion detector.
Others were trying to do the same.
The captain shouted one more time, “Sit your asses down on a bench until we’re safe.”
The ferry bounced over peaks of the waves and dove headfirst into the moving valleys they left behind. Sprays of foam and water splashed back from the bow, adding to the discomfort of the driving rain.
It was long, wet ride home.
***
The rain had let up by the time we tied to dock. While the ghost hunters inspected what was left of their equipment, I had a chance to talk to the captain.
“So what the hell was that?” I was referring to the mysterious light.
We both watched the Elroy boys finish securing the boat while flashes of lightning danced high above our heads.
His voice that was low and dirt rough. “Plankton, most likely. If you disturb it, it shines phosphorescent. Got a real spooky glow to it. It’s not that unusual, Miss Chase.”
It sounded like a reasonable response.
Picking up my bag, I slung it onto my shoulder and started down the dock. Then I turned around. “You really think that’s what it was?”
He grinned, showing me teeth yellowed by years of cigarette smoke. “Don’t know,” he shrugged. “Could’ve even been a jellyfish. Some of them are bioluminescent, you know, like fireflies.”
I thanked him and started to carry my bag down the dock when I heard the captain holler and chuckle, “But since you asked, I’m inclined to think was the ghoulie of Bartholomew Gault.”
***
I got to my car and checked my watch. A little before eleven, an hour ahead of schedule. I was in the process of digging the cell phone out of my bag to see if Kevin wanted to join me for a drink at my place and then maybe a little hanky panky, when I dropped my keys.
Fatigue? More like exhaustion.
I was so bone tired that when I leaned over to pick them up I thought for a second I might tip over and crumple in a heap onto the parking lot. But I kept my balance and as I scooped up my key ring, I noticed the license plate of the car parked next to me.
It was a Nissan 370Z, steel gray, convertible.
The car suddenly chirped as the doors were remotely unlocked and Lance and Drew walked up behind me.
“It was nice to meet you, Miss Chase.” Lance got into the driver’s seat, sporting a thousand-watt smile. “Sorry we didn’t get to see more of the ghost. That would have really been cool.”
Drew didn’t say anything, but nodded morosely and slid into the passenger’s side.
I watched as they carefully backed the sports car out of their spot and slowly growled out of the parking lot and onto the street.
What had drawn my attention to their car?
While I was picking up my keys, I saw ragged pieces of duct tape and tiny, torn shreds of black plastic attached to the edge of their license plate. Coincidence? On a night with lightning flashing and ghosts about, who knows?
Chapter Twenty-nine
The universe put on a spectacular light show for Kevin and me as we sat on the porch. With each flash of lightning, a burst of white and pink neon illuminated the inside of the clouds, accompanied by a low, rumbling tremor, like the warning growl of a rabid Rottweiler.
A second band of storms was moving in. The first drops of rain had yet to fall but the air was filled with anticipatory ozone. It was only a matter of time before electricity would split the air and spear the Earth with a bone-rattling, nerve-racking crackle of thunder joined by the generous applause of pouring rain.
Kevin and I waited for the deluge. We each had our choice of poison—vodka for me, Dewar’s for him. As we tasted our respective cocktails, I looked out over the freshly trimmed grass and manicured hedges freshly painted silver and gray by the streetlight. It amused me to see the rented BMW sports car, top up, sitting quietly in the apartment house’s parking area off the driveway. I hoped all my nosy neighbors were both curious and jealous.
“So you don’t know if you saw a ghost.” Kevin sipped his drink. “Or a just a school of radioactive, single-celled shrimp.”
I frowned. “Duh, of course it was a ghost. Before we got off the ferry boat, Stella Barry announced it was the spirit of Bartholomew Gault. She was quite adamant that I quote her correctly.”
“No kidding.” He feigned a serious demeanor.
“She said that Gault is out there looking for his family.”
“Really? Who told her that?
“Marie, only the best intuitive on the boat,” I stated in a lofty manner, as if he should have already known.
“Ah.” He stared at his tumbler of scotch. “I’m thinking the only spirits that I really know about are swirling around in our glasses tonight.”
We sat in wicker chairs, our feet resting on the table in front of us, our bare toes touching and occasionally playing tag with each other. I held his hand. “Do you believe in heaven?”
He took another sip of his drink before he answered with another question. “You mean do I believe in an afterlife?”
“Okay.”
“I want to. I didn’t, up until Joanna died.” His voice became low and serious. “I’d always thought that before you were born you were nothing. And when you died, you went back to being nothing.”
“Ashes to ashes.”
“But then someone you really love passes away. I just never wanted to believe that she was completely gone. I guess that I hope, believe, pray that she’s gone someplace and that she’s happy.” When he said all of that, Kevin’s eyes looked so sad.
I had a question I needed to ask, but hated to because it was just so damned trite. “Do you think you’ll ever see her again?”
Am I really asking, so are you going to hook up with your dead wife when you get to heaven?
I squeezed my hand while he mulled over his answer. “I loved her for a lot of years. I still love her. I put her through hell and she stuck with me. But you have to know that I love you. Are you really asking if you and I will be together after we both die?”
Well, yeah, that was what I was asking. But then I realized how unfair the question was.
Dropping my feet off the table and leaning forward, I put both my hands on his face and then kissed him. When I took my lips off his, I looked into his eyes and said, “Let’s not worry about that. How about we just enjoy each other now? We’re getting married, you know?”
He reached up and touched my face. “I’ll always love you. Don’t ever doubt that.”
Thunder rumbled in the heavens above us while we stared into each other’s eyes.
He whispered, “Do you believe in heaven?”
“I believe that there’s something after we die. I’m not sure it’s green fields and angels, but I think Stella had it right when she said that energy is never lost. It may change forms, but it goes on forever.”
“How about reincarnation?” he asked.
“I love reincarnation,” I answere
d. “How about we go with that?”
He nodded and appeared thoughtful. “If we come back in another life, how will we know each other? After all, we won’t look like we do now, will we?”
“How about if we have a word, a word almost nobody uses. Like a password.”
“I’ve got one.” He leaned in close. “Sidereal.”
“Sidereal,” I said, feeling the word in my mouth. I didn’t know the definition but I like how it almost rhymed with ethereal. “I’m not a hundred percent sure I know what it means.”
“If I remember right, it’s got something to do with stars, constellations, and time.”
“Sidereal. I like it. There’s something eternal about it.
***
When the storm started for real, the wind swirled up hard and a gray spray of rain drove onto the porch, stinging us like an angry cloud of wet bees. We quickly drained our glasses and headed for the dry safety of my apartment.
I was only mildly surprised to see that, because lightning had knocked out a transformer along the power grid, my electricity was gone. Except for the stuttering lightning strikes outside, the place was dark and unnaturally silent.
I lit a candle and looked into Kevin’s eyes.
He was so beautiful.
Without a word, we carried the candle into my bedroom, took off each other’s wet clothes, pulled back the sheets and made love.
It started with slow, warm caresses but became breathlessly passionate and furious. We were as driven as the storm that beat relentlessly against my window.
It wasn’t just sex, it was our love and bodies chasing away the furies.
When we were finished, we lay for a long time listening to the rain and the sound of our own breathing. I had my face on his chest and with each rise and fall, I could hear his heart beating.
I don’t know how long we stayed that way, it might have been minutes.
It might have been days.
Kevin broke the spell when he whispered, “Genie?”
“Yeah?”
He didn’t answer.
I lifted my head from his chest and asked, “What?”
“I’m scared,” he whispered.
I didn’t know what to say. Kevin was my hero. He wasn’t supposed to be afraid.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly.
“What if there isn’t anything after we die?”
“There is.”
He sighed and I could tell from the tension in his body that he didn’t believe me. “Promise me you’ll take care of Caroline.”
“You know I will,” I answered. “But nothing’s going to happen.”
We were silent again for a few heartbeats before Kevin whispered, “It is, you know. Something is going to happen. We both have to face that.”
My throat tightened up again. I didn’t want to cry. “Let’s not talk about this.”
He sighed. ‘Whatever happens, whatever treatment, protocol, experiment, I can’t afford it. By the time it’s over there won’t be anything left to leave Caroline, no money, no house.”
“You have insurance.”
“You know how far that’ll go,” he growled.
“Please let’s not talk about this. We’ll do what we have to do.”
He didn’t say anything more and for a few minutes I thought he might have drifted off to sleep. But then he whispered, “Do you think that people die for a reason?”
Please, oh please, I don’t want to talk about this now.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s like when lightning struck my Uncle Jack. I wondered about that for years,” he whispered. “But then I stopped wondering, until Joanna passed away.”
I just lay there and listened to him while the storm raged outside.
He gently stroked my shoulder. “I wondered how God could let someone so young die, and in so much pain.”
“I don’t know,” I repeated.
“I do. If she hadn’t gotten sick, I’d still be a hopeless drunk. It’s what made me get straight.”
Neither one of us said anything for a minute.
“It’s just so damned stupid. My business was good. I had a dozen people working for me. I had a beautiful wife and daughter. Everything was going my way. I thought I could do anything. I was invulnerable. The rules didn’t apply. It was all just one long party.”
We both stayed silent again.
He’s thinking he’s being punished for putting his wife through hell.
“And what’s worse,” he said, “is the pain I’ll be putting Caroline through again. She watched her mother die. Toward the end, it didn’t matter how many painkillers Joanna took, she suffered horribly. And Caroline saw it all. She’s such a good kid. I can’t stand the thought of her going through that again.”
When he sighed it was a sigh of the damned.
It reminded me of the first time I’d seen him in the schoolyard, beaten and bloody. He’d sighed that same way. Back in the schoolyard, even after the beating, Kevin had a look of defiance on his face. He’d been beaten but not knocked down.
He stood up to it.
He hadn’t won.
But he hadn’t lost.
Now, right now, I wish I could see that defiance again.
Chapter Thirty
I woke up before Kevin. A light rain tapped against the roof as the rust-colored morning light stole through the gaps in the curtains. My bedroom was filled with long, brown shadows.
Illuminated blue zeros on my digital alarm clock blinked annoyingly on and off. The electricity had returned sometime during the night and now all the electronic timepieces needed to be reset. I looked at my watch and saw that it was nine-twenty. I lay there and listened to the steady rain and to Kevin’s heavy breathing. Feeling his warm body next to mine made me feel comfortable and safe and I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life.
But I sighed and slowly, quietly, swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. I had it in my head that I was going to make us breakfast. Honestly, I’m not much of a cook. I don’t enjoy it. But I can scramble eggs and make toast and that was the plan.
I showered, made myself presentable, threw on a pair of shorts and a sleeveless top, and carrying my umbrella, took Tucker out for a short walk. Then I got out the frying pan, plates, and whole wheat bread so that it all would be ready when Kevin crawled out of bed.
I disconnected my cell phone from the charger and noticed that I’d gotten a text from Mike Dillon. Time-stamped at seven-thirty-seven this morning, it simply said, “Call me.”
Recognizing my number, he answered on the second ring, “Morning, Genie.”
“Hey, Mike, what’s up?” keeping my voice artificially low so I wouldn’t wake Kevin in the next room.
“First off, let me say I’m sorry about yesterday afternoon. I shouldn’t have come on to you like that. That was way out of line.”
I smiled to myself. “It’s not your fault I’m so damned irresistible.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to screw up our friendship,” he said. “That’s what we are, right…friends?”
I closed my eyes. Men and women that are on the bad end of a break-up have the pitiful need to feel wanted. That’s human nature. It always makes me sad, especially since I’ve been there. “Of course we are.”
“I’m going to make it up to you.”
“No need,” I answered, although I eagerly listened for what he had to offer.
“Late last night, we got a warrant to go out to Greenwich and search the home of Henry Morris Fitzgerald.”
“Jimmy’s dad. Bet the old man and his lawyers loved that.”
Then Mike said, “We were looking for drug evidence but found something else. In the old man’s library, newly mounted on the wall over the stone fireplace, we found an antique samurai sword.”
If there is still any sleep fogging this old mind, that simple statement completely blows it away.
“Is it from Connor’s Landing?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ve compared it to a manifest that George Chadwick kept and it looks like it matches but we’re waiting for the FBI to check it for any traces of residual blood or tissue.”
It was far too early in the morning for my heart to be pumping this hard. Was it really possible that Jimmy Fitzgerald was there at Connor’s Landing the night those people were killed?
“How soon are you going to know?”
“It could be sometime this afternoon. We asked the old man where he got the weapon and he told us that it was a gift from his son. He said it was a show of gratitude for everything he’s done for the boy.”
I got a genuine chill that ran up my spine.
Mike continued, “We asked Jimmy how he came by the blade.”
“What did he say?”
“He says he found it out near Fisher’s Island this past weekend while he was out casting for blues. He claims that while he was cruising by at low tide, he saw something underwater reflecting the sunlight. When he anchored and took a look, low and behold, it was an antique Japanese fighting sword.”
“I guess it’s possible,” I said doubtfully. “One of the killers throws it into the water and it washes up near the island.”
“Sure, it’s like winning the lottery, happens all the time. Even so, we’re going to sweat Jimmy a little. One thing the kid has going for him is his shoe size doesn’t fit any of the footprints. But who knows? We could get lucky and Jimmy turns on some of his friends.”
“You wouldn’t cut a deal with that piece of crap, would you, Mike? He’s already beaten one rap for killing somebody.”
“Hell, Genie. We’ll get the names and, trust me on this, Jimmy will do time.”
“But not the time he deserves.”
“Don’t be a pessimist. Let’s see what forensics has to say about the blade. Would you like to be the only reporter here when we get the answer?”
“You’re the best, Mike Dillon. Give me a call when you know,” I kept my voice down, trying hard not to wake Kevin.