Shadows of Old Ghosts

by Stephanie Zayatz

  The eerie silence they’d felt outside descended over them again, and for a long time neither of them could move. Jirel felt rooted to the spot as he stood in the doorway, trying to keep calm as the sight of all the blood dredged up an uncomfortable memory, one that was already forefront in his mind from the recent nightmares. He fought off a strong urge to be sick and forced himself to move closer.

  Aviira blinked lethargically and ran a hand across her face. “Son of a bitch.”

  Jirel scanned the room. “The front door was locked,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did someone come in here and do this and leave with the door still locked?”

  She shook her head. “I think you’re avoiding the obvious here.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “What, Aiden killed her and then bailed?”

  “Seems the most logical thing at this point.”

  There were few signs of struggle in the room itself, which meant the attacker had been unsuspected—logical if Aiden had attacked while she slept. The table under the window was knocked on its side, but other than that, there was nothing that suggested the woman had known her killer was coming.

  “I thought Aiden was supposedly the one in danger from her,” Jirel said.

  She held her hands out wide. “I got nothing. Maybe this is a different woman. New girlfriend or something. Other one got pissed and came to take care of her.”

  “Animal, maybe?”

  The marks on the woman’s chest did look similar to that of a clawed animal, but it felt like a stretch to Aviira. “Only if there’s another way out of here. Open window somewhere or something.”

  “We’ll have to call an ambulance to get her out of here, which means the police will come too.”

  “Fine,” Aviira said. She wiped away a swath of blood off the inside of woman’s forearm to check for Ancient veins. Bright white. “They can transfer her to us once they get her out of here.”

  “You should—get away from her, Aviira, you’re covered in blood,” Jirel said uneasily. He held out a hand for her, but she ignored him. He reached for his phone. “I’m going to call.”

  Aviira sighed and stood up as Jirel left the room to make the phone call. She gave a cursory glance around the room, but kept finding herself going back to the area near the woman’s left hand. The woman had made it so clear, even dying, that there was something over there that needed to be seen. Aviira stood near that side of the bed and scanned the area, but aside from the toppled bedside table, nothing seemed amiss.

  She pulled the sheet from the other side of the bed and draped it over the body, and thought she heard Jirel step back into the room behind her.

  “I thought you were going to—”

  The room was still empty, though she’d gotten the distinct feeling that someone had come in with her. It was so strong that it made her nervous to realize that she was still alone. She fought the rising of the hairs on the back of her neck and left the room. After closing the bedroom door gently behind her, she did a quick, wary pass through the rest of the cabin, but all the windows were shut. She stepped out onto the porch, expecting Jirel, but he was not there. She took a quick glance over the porch for anything that might have stuck out to her, but everything looked totally normal, as normal as homicide scenes go.

  Everything looked completely normal when nothing should have.

  ***

  The cell signal was spotty near the cabin, so Jirel had been forced to walk toward the end of the driveway to place his emergency call. When he returned to the cabin, Aviira was nowhere to be seen. He called out for her and did another check of the perimeter for her, but she seemed to have disappeared. He decided to wait on the porch rather than inside with the dead body, mostly—so he justified to himself—so that he could wave down the police when they arrived.

  The first cars pulled up not long after, but they beat Aviira to it. She was still absent when the first officer stepped out of the first vehicle and waved to Jirel.

  “Society?”

  Jirel flashed his badge as he came closer. “Jirel Turmaine. My partner is...” he glanced around and then shook his head. “Somewhere around here.”

  “Rick Farnsworth.” He shook Jirel’s hand. He wore Captain’s bars. Slow day, Jirel mused. “I understand you have a DOA. You working a case up here?”

  “We came up here to talk to the folks staying at the cabin and happened to see the situation from the window.”

  “Dead?”

  “No, but it did not take long.”

  “No suspect, I’m guessing.”

  “No.”

  Captain Farnsworth frowned. He turned to an officer. “Get this area roped off. We’ll need some rangers and a bus up here.” The officer nodded and went to delegate the tasks. “The woman, was she your case?”

  Jirel made a point of never disclosing more than he absolutely had to when he was dealing with the police. He knew more often than not they meant well, but it just got things too tangled up. He only said that she was.

  “Do you suspect foul play? Boyfriend, maybe?”

  He wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t about to say that. “Looks like some pretty weird coincidence at this point.”

  Farnsworth nodded. “Mind if I go in with you for a look?”

  They stepped into the cabin and Jirel led Farnsworth to the back room. Aviira was nowhere to be found.

  Farnsworth whistled as he stepped into the room. It was bad enough even with the body covered by the sheet. “Yikes.”

  “Animal, you think?” Jirel asked.

  The Captain made an uncertain face. “Maybe. Bear don’t typically break into houses and immediately go for a human kill. I’ve lived in this area fifteen years and I’ve never seen a mountain lion this far down, but with the beetle kill burning up the woods the rangers are warning they might be coming down, looking for food, that sort of thing. So I wouldn’t discredit it as a possibility, though we’ll wait till we get verification from the rangers. The rest of the scene looks pretty clean for an animal though.”

  An officer stepped into the house and called for the Captain.

  “Sir, we’ve got a civilian out there. Says he was staying in this cabin.”

  Farnsworth looked at Jirel.

  “That’ll be the boyfriend.” He took a glance around the cabin again as they went to the door. Where the fuck was Aviira?

  As he stepped out onto the porch, he saw Aiden Dannels being held back by a few of the police officers. He was arguing with them about letting him in and there was clear panic laced across his face. Aiden was still relatively young, barely into his late thirties, and had been sitting very high up the Alliance ladder for many years. He was starting to gray, stress of the position no doubt, but he still looked youthful. It was hard to imagine, though Jirel tried to force the thought from his head, that he had ever been attracted to Loretta.

  “All yours,” Farnsworth said.

  Jirel went to the yellow police tape. As Aiden turned to look at him, Jirel could see the process on his face. Dim recognition was followed by confusion and then by a dawning sense of horror.

  “Jirel?”

  “Aiden.”

  “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “Let him under,” Jirel instructed the officers. One held up the tape for Aiden. He was gray in the face as he approached Jirel. “Aiden, I’m sorry—”

  “Where’s Hazel? I went to get groceries for breakfast, I left her sleeping...I was just here an hour ago. And why they hell are you here?”

  “Aiden, there was some...break-in, or—”

  “What do you mean?” Aiden looked around the scene. Jirel could sense his panic elevating. “Is she okay? Was she hurt?”

  Jirel licked his lips. “She’s dead, Aiden.”

  Aiden stared. After a second his head started to wag back and forth. “What?”

  “I’m sorry...there was nothing we could do. By the time we got here it was too late.”

  “What do you me
an by the time you got here? Why are you here? What’s—” He trailed off and his knees buckled. He slumped forward into Jirel, who caught him and lowered him to his knees gently. One of the police officers approached with concern, but Jirel waved him off.

  “Okay,” he said quietly to Aiden as he leaned down over him. “It’s okay.”

  “Oh God,” Aiden mumbled. “I want to see her, I need to see her, I need to…”

  Jirel lifted him back to his feet. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Come on. Aiden.” The man’s eyes had slid completely out of focus and he was staring absently back at the cabin. Jirel snapped his fingers a couple times. “Aiden, look at me. Is that your car?” He nodded about ten yards down the drive at a white Subaru.

  Aiden looked, though he seemed to be in a fog. He nodded weakly.

  “Come on, let’s go sit down.”

  “Shouldn’t I—don’t I have to identify her, or…I’m not a suspect, am I?”

  God I hope not, Jirel thought.

  “No,” he said as he started to steer him back to the car. “Aiden, we were looking for you. Loretta told us you were here.”

  Aiden’s face crinkled with confusion. “Loretta?”

  A disconcerting sense of unease slid into Jirel’s stomach. “Loretta, your—your wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” Aiden said. When Jirel stared at him with raised eyebrows, he added, “Well, almost ex. We’ve been separated for almost a year.”

  Jirel brought in a slow breath while he worked that through. “Okay.” He opened the hatch on the back of Aiden’s car and sat him on the edge. “I’m sorry to do this right now but I have to find my partner, and we have to talk. I wish I didn’t have to do this right now.”

  “Did you see her?” Aiden asked suddenly, grabbing Jirel’s forearm. “Was it—was it bad?”

  “It was pretty bad,” Jirel said gently. He licked his lips. “But she wasn’t alone when she died.”

  Aiden swallowed and nodded his head slowly, released Jirel’s arm. The idea seemed to bring him a little comfort.

  “Are you okay if I leave you for a minute? I have to figure out where my partner went and then we can explain.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll be fine.”

  Unsure what else to say, Jirel squeezed Aiden’s shoulder and turned back to the scene. When he slipped under the yellow police tape, he noticed a few people gathered with sincere curiosity along the borders of the scene, which was never a good situation and one of the other reasons Jirel preferred not to involve the police if he could help it. Captain Farnsworth was talking to a few other officers as he approached.

  “Captain, I don’t imagine you’ve seen a tall redhead on the scene in the last few minutes?”

  “She just went inside with one of the park rangers.”

  Jirel fought the urge to roll his eyes. “And I’d appreciate it if we made sure the media doesn’t get in here,” he said quietly, glancing back at the people who had gathered at the edge of the scene. “This is probably going to be a sensitive matter for the Alliance.”

  Farnsworth nodded and shouted an order at another officer. Jirel slipped away and ducked back into the cabin.

  Aviira was standing back in the bedroom with a plain-clothed police officer and a park ranger, who was looking rattled as he stood in the corner of the room and tried to take in the scene. Aviira glanced back at Jirel as he came in. She had her camera in her hands.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  She stared for an uncomfortable moment. “Trying to find some exit tracks,” she said finally, in a tone that indicated it should have been obvious. “Where have you been?”

  “Trying to keep Aiden Dannels from having a nervous breakdown, that’s where. A little communication would be nice.”

  She gave him that testy stare again. “The ranger thinks it could have been a mountain lion,” she said.

  “Maybe,” the ranger said. He cleared his throat. “Mountain lion are not very active in this area, they stay at the higher elevations usually. They don’t just attack out of the blue. Something had to have provoked this animal. Plus, they don’t usually attack from the front like...like that.” He waved at the corpse uneasily before his hand went back to his mouth in an uneasy motion; Aviira wondered if he was having difficulty keeping his breakfast down. She wouldn’t blame him, this kind of thing was difficult even for people who were used to it. “They’re stalkers, they attack from behind. This is pretty out of the norm.”

  “What if there was food or something?” Aviira asked.

  The ranger shrugged. His skin had taken on an unpleasant sheen. He took off his hat and wiped at his forehead, put it back on again. “It’s not like it isn’t a possibility...but usually when this sort of thing happens, there’s also a sighting that goes along with it. No one’s seen a lion recently, but I’ll get some people on it. We have some game cameras in the area, maybe one caught it on its way back up the hill.”

  “Plus, you’re missing somewhere where a wild animal could have gotten into the place,” the cop said.

  “Yeah, well, we’re missing a location for anybody to have gotten into the place,” Aviira said. “The place was locked from the inside and I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing you don’t see many crime scenes as clean as this.”

  “We don’t see crime scenes like this up here,” he said.

  The ranger said, “Excuse me,” and darted past Jirel quickly. He watched the young man go and wondered how long he’d be considering putting in his two weeks.

  Aviira gave the cop a flat look, ignoring the ranger’s quick exit. “I’m just looking for something that might explain.”

  “We’ll get her transferred down the mountain to your people. Your forensics can take a look,” the cop said.

  Aviira did not appear to be completely satisfied by this assessment.

  “We need to go talk to Aiden,” Jirel said quietly as he leaned in to Aviira. “Something is not adding up.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.”

  As they moved through the cabin, Jirel grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and tossed it at Aviira. “For the blood.”

  She wiped off as much as she could from her hands and forearms, though it still stuck in obvious ways in the webbing of her fingers and under her nails. She watched Jirel while she did it; he was standing with his hands on his hips, avoiding looking at her.

  “You pissed at me?”

  “No, just wish you’d communicate with me a little more before you go running off to inspect something.”

  Aviira threw the towel into the sink with a little more effort than was necessary. “Fine.”

  “Did you find anything?” Jirel asked as they crossed the scene outside. His tone made it clear he was trying to keep things neutral. The park ranger was on the other end of the porch, leaning over it and puking into a bush. “Any tracks?”

  “No,” she replied. “All rocks. I got nothing.”

  Jirel held up the police tape for her and followed her under. “He’s a little shaken, naturally. Try not to be too aggressive.”

  She snorted. “I am not aggressive.”

  Jirel gave an abrupt laugh, but there was no humor behind the sound. She shot him a glare. “Just be nice is all I’m asking. The man’s…mistress, whatever, was just murdered.”

  “I’m perfectly nice,” Aviira said.

  “Right,” Jirel said under his breath. She heard him, and fumed silently.

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to Aiden’s Subaru. He was sitting on the back hatch staring at the ground like it might give him some answers. He looked up as the two of them approached.

  “Aiden, this is my partner, Aviira,” Jirel said to him. “She was the one who found Hazel…through the window, she saw her.”

  Aiden turned his eyes to Aviira. His expression was one that craved any information she had to give, and his eyes landed on the blood on her hands. She tried to put them in her back pockets casually.

  “Did it—did
it take very long?”

  “No,” she said quietly. Aiden closed his eyes briefly, and she glanced at Jirel with an expression that said, Satisfied? His jaw tightened just a little.

  Aiden’s eyes went to the ground again. “I must have just left...I was only gone an hour. Does it look like there was a break-in?”

  Aviira watched him for signs of cracking. It didn’t take long for most liars to give themselves up when directly interrogated. Unless he was an exceptionally good actor, he wasn’t giving anything but true disbelief and horror.

  Jirel shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Well…that’s the thing, Aiden…we aren’t sure exactly how this happened. The door was locked when we got here and there were no signs of struggle from the inside.”

  His face got very pale as those implications hit him. “Dear God, you don’t—do you think I did this? Oh, God, I would never—I—”

  “No,” Jirel said. He shot a quick look at Aviira. “I don’t. I mean…do you have an alibi? We can clear that one up immediately.”

  “I was at the grocery store.”

  “Any way to prove that?”

  He stared for a moment. “I—yes, here. The receipt should have the time on it…” He dug in his wallet for the receipt and handed it to Jirel, who inspected it and gave it to Aviira with a nod. The time stamp on the sale was over a half hour before they arrived. “I could—I could call the store and ask them to look at the security cameras to prove…”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Jirel said quietly. “The rangers are looking into the possibility of an animal attack.”

  “Jesus,” Aiden said, running his hand through his hair. “We never even thought for a second…I mean they told us about the bears, not to leave out our trash or anything, but they never said anything about…”

  Jirel said, “Aiden. I need to talk to you about why we’re here in the first place. I’m sorry, but we have to clear some things up.”

  Aiden nodded. “You said something about Loretta...”

  “Well, it’s more about the house you own. The rental property.”

  “I don’t own it anymore. We sold it to a friend last summer.”

  “Yes, we know. But we needed to get in touch with you because we found some bodies on the property.”