Dying Breath--A Heart-Stopping Novel of Paranormal Romantic Suspense

by Heather Graham

  The name Ballantine was there as well.

  Curious, she highlighted Ballantine.

  Very strange and ironic—a George and Mary Ballantine had lived just down the street from the Pine house from 1870 to 1900, when the house had legally been purchased by their grandson, Andrew Ballantine.

  Andrew had owned the house there until 1932, when he died. His son, Mason, had sold the house to a banking conglomeration. The house had been demolished; a ten-story building had risen, offering office space in the floors above the first and retail opportunities on the ground level.

  “I’m going to have to tell Dylan,” she muttered aloud to herself. “He’s so proud of being a New Yorker. Of course, there might have been another George Ballantine, but...”

  She started digging around in one of the ancestry sites she liked.

  According to the site, a Mason Ballantine, born in Boston, Mass, had taken up residence in New York City in 1933. His son, another George, had been born in 1940, and his son, yet another George, had been born about twenty-five years later, and moved to Boston after his son, Dylan was deceased, then his second son, Noah, had been born.

  She sat back, surprised.

  Of course, George Ballantine and his father had been born and raised in New York. Maybe George Ballantine had never even realized his family stretched back to Massachusetts. If you grew up in a place and your parents grew up in that place, it was the home you know.

  Still, how ironic.

  Bertram Aldridge and George Ballantine were both descendants of families that had lived on Washington Street, the south side of Boston, or the old Boston Neck.

  Near the Pine house, where people had been murdered and hidden in the walls in the late 1800s.

  Did it mean anything?

  Could it possibly mean anything at all—after all this time?

  Motives for murder included jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed...

  But...what vengeance could someone still feel so many, many years later?

  She rose, tired and restless.

  Her apartment seemed really quiet—Dylan hadn’t come around that afternoon, evening or night. She assumed he’d been watching over his family.

  She really did need to fix what was broken with the Ballantines—she wanted to stay friends with Noah—and, really, his parents, too. She couldn’t fault them too much for trying to lash out in any direction; they’d felt the brunt of trauma one time too many.

  She was naturally curious, too. She wanted to know if George Ballantine knew he’d had family that had hailed from Mass!

  For the time, though, she really needed to go to bed.

  It was really late—and no one was going to call her.

  Griffin was not going to call her.

  Music would help her sleep, but her mind was racing too quickly. Once in bed, she played with the channel changer—avoiding the news. She found the old animated version of Pete’s Dragon with Red Buttons, Mickey Rooney, Shelley Winters, Helen Reddy, and noted quickly that it was still charming. Her mind still spun between images of the dead—and far too vivid images of Griffin Pryce. But between that—and staring at the screen—she finally fell asleep.

  She was pretty sure she was sleeping deeply when dreams came again—a very real dream this time.

  She was there, in her bed, barely awake, and there was someone standing next to the bed. The apparition wasn’t a frightening one; it was almost like an angel hovered at her bedside. A female angel in flowing white with a lovely head covered in golden blond tresses. Gentle fingers touched her, but the angel was worried. “Please, please, I need you, I need someone... I’m in the water. I’m in the water, and no one cares, no one knows...please, I need you.”

  The angel disappeared and she slept again. When she woke in the morning, she remembered the dream—and determined that an angel seeking her help was much better than a horde of decayed corpses coming at her.

  Getting out of bed, she was stunned to realize that the bedding by her side was wet. Puzzled, she looked around for a water bottle, but she didn’t remember bringing one in with her. Then she wondered if something had gone wrong with the upstairs plumbing, but there were no signs on the ceiling that anything had dripped through from the floor above.

  “I don’t need a cat, I need a dog. A big one. One who loves me absolutely but has big gnarly teeth and will chew up anyone who darkens my door,” she murmured aloud. Then she added, “And a dog I can talk to—so I don’t just speak aloud to myself!”

  In the kitchen, she made coffee. There was a knock on her door as it brewed. She smoothed down her hair, her heart quickening—it might be Griffin. She wished she slept in something more exotic than an oversize Star Wars T.

  She started for the door, then realized that the sound was softer than a usual knock. She smiled, mocking herself.

  It wasn’t Griffin.

  It was Dylan. But it would be good to see him, too.

  “Come on in,” she called softly. The cops watched her place—they didn’t sleep in the hallways or anything, but she had to be careful—she didn’t want anyone else thinking she was giving them an invitation. Of course, the door was locked. Only Dylan could enter through a locked door.

  He came through, appearing before her solidly at the end of the counter. He had a worried look about him.

  “You okay?” he asked her anxiously.

  “Sure, I’m fine,” she told him. “Why?”

  “I meant to come yesterday, in the afternoon. Or at least by last evening. I wound up hanging around with my parents—they’re so upset. Naturally, they heard about Fiona West—and all the old corpses that were found. My dad paces and talks to people on the phone and seems upset. My mom has done a lot of crying. Noah, of course, is concerned about them both. He is such a cool kid. But I’m sorry—I should have worried about you, too. You’re really okay?”

  “I am fine.”

  “After that many corpses?”

  “Okay, so to be honest? The first night I had a horrible nightmare about them coming to life and coming after me. Last night, I had a dream about an angel.”

  “An angel?” Dylan asked, smiling.

  “Yes, she was lost, or people didn’t care, or they didn’t know where she was...or something like that. I think I might have been a little surprised an angel would ask for my help. And I apparently fell asleep with water somehow, though I can’t find a bottle of water anywhere, or a glass. But hey, an angel! Kind of beautiful—rather than zombie-terrible!”

  Dylan didn’t reply. He was wearing an even more seriously worried expression.

  “Oh, my God. You saw her!” he said.

  “What? I had a dream.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, you saw Darlene. I didn’t think anyone would see her—I mean, not yet. I barely met her. I was going to tell you about her. I just thought I should ease into it.”

  “Ease into...?”

  “Telling you about the situation. About Darlene.”

  “Dylan, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is Darlene?”

  “She’s...not very good at manifesting. I barely saw her myself. I mean, it can take time. You realize you’re still something, but you’re not physical. I guess some people have the strength of will or soul or whatever to appear immediately, you know, right away. Maybe not. Some become really good at appearing and speaking—to those who can see and hear. I know with me, it took a while. I was there...but no one could see me. Until Noah. But then I could play with Noah. I could make him laugh, and that was so wonderful. But appearing...and speaking! It can be very difficult.”

  “Dylan, I still have no idea of what you’re talking about. Who is Darlene?”

  “Well, she’s a dead girl, of course.” He shook his head, as if exasperated that she wasn’t understanding what he was sayin
g. “Sorry, sorry, let me try again. Darlene is dead. And she managed to come to me. To appear to me...in our world, whatever or wherever that is. I mean, we’re here, more or less, right? Anyway! She was the first victim in this spree—I think. They don’t know about her yet. I was trying to reach her...she just disappeared. Even to me. They hit her on the head and put her in a box and threw her into the water. They didn’t realize that the box would sink so quickly—that’s what I think, anyway. But she came to you! You’re going to have to tell them, Vickie. They have to know. They have to find her, get her out of the water...she’s miserable, but she can’t leave, Vickie.”

  “Wait? Another victim, but there was no clue about her! That’s the whole deal—these guys like to send their clever little clues to the newspeople and get the newspeople to get them to the police. It’s part of the whole thing.”

  “I know this, Vickie. I know she’s dead—and I know they killed her. She came to me, and she managed to tell me.”

  And she knew it was true.

  She hadn’t been dreaming the night before. And it hadn’t been an angel who had appeared at her bedside.

  It had been a ghost, somehow trailing with her the waters of her demise.

  * * *

  Barnes called a task force meeting in the morning to reinforce everything that had been said at the press conference and to answer the questions being asked by the many detectives, officers and agents working the case.

  “You really think that this is a man and a woman—a couple!—killing people?” one of the officers asked.

  Barnes looked at Griffin, and Griffin shrugged and stepped forward. “There are many famous cases. In the early 1980s, you had Suzan and James Carson—they went the crazy cult way and began to kill people they thought were witches. They were caught after three kills, but they had a list. President Jimmy Carter was on that list. Fred and Rosemary West of Britain killed at least twelve women, including two of their own children. Recently, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo. The footage the couple took of themselves wasn’t clear at first, but when it was, Karla Homolka proved to be the driving impetus in some of the sexual attacks and killing. No question about it. Yes, couples kill. One is probably the alpha—and not necessarily the male. Or maybe they both believe they’re the driving force. What they’re doing, however, isn’t random—they stalk their victims. They plan the kidnapping—and the method with which they’ll attempt to kill.”

  Another officer raised his hand. “But...weren’t they rapists as well? I mean, a lot of the couple killers. The murders they committed, they were sexual killings, right? There’s been no sign of sexual attacks on the women.”

  “True. But there were also spree killers Starkweather and Fugate back in the 1950s. If I remember right, Starkweather got into a fight with Fugate’s father and killed him and then her mother and a baby sibling. When she came home, she watched television while Fugate cleaned up and they headed on out to kill whoever else was in their way.”

  “But these are so...planned!” someone else said. “They’re sending notes, playing with law enforcement. They...they’re kind of smart, at the very least.”

  “Or controlled,” someone else said thoughtfully.

  “And they may well start to unravel and make mistakes,” Jackson said, “and that’s what we’re watching for. How smart are they? We don’t know. They’re careful not to leave forensic evidence, but what they know they may have learned online or from television. We don’t believe that they are pros—law enforcement of any kind themselves. They’re preying on this area. It’s their comfort zone.”

  “And they still somehow relate to Aldridge,” a young female officer said. “Fans?”

  “Possibly. We just don’t know yet. Again, anything you come up with, make sure you get to Detective Barnes or one of us,” Griffin said.

  “Two—man and a woman!” another exclaimed again. “Two, sure. A couple team? Scary as hell. That means they could walk by someone like a pair of lovers—turn around and bludgeon just about anyone.”

  “Yes, two to playact, plan—and help dispose of bodies. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a survivor who was certain she heard a woman’s voice when she was being carried away to be boxed and buried,” Barnes said. “So, everyone—extreme vigilance is necessary!”

  Speculation continued. At length, Barnes raised his hand. “This is what we know. This is what to watch out for. The papers today bear our suspicions and warnings to the populace. The press conference will be carried on stations throughout the day and for the next few days—when, hopefully, we’ll have caught these killers and brought them to justice. We’re done here, folks. Get out on the streets—and report anything you find that may give us even the slightest clue. Forensic crews are still working hard—our techs are scouring the internet. We will catch a break. Thank you.”

  The meeting broke. Griffin pulled out his phone; he’d waited, but now, he found he had to make sure Vickie was all right. Before he could call her, however, one of the officers who had been running the tip lines and working with the media came up to the front of the room where he was still standing with David Barnes and Jackson Crow.

  “Sir—sirs! We’ve got something, I think. I’m afraid,” she said.

  “What is it?” Griffin asked.

  “Yes, Officer Gordon, please?” Barnes said.

  “Silas Warren—with the paper—discovered what he believes is a correspondence from the killers.”

  “A new one?” Barnes asked.

  “No—one that was missed. He was going back through a pile of what they believed to be junk mail—snail mail, you know—and discovered it. Whoever first received it apparently discarded it, thinking it was some kind of a silly hoax. After the press conference last night, Silas wanted to do a recap and bring everyone up-to-date. He wanted to do a cohesive ‘thus far’ story.”

  “And he believes it is real?” Jackson asked.

  “Oh, yes, he says he’s certain.”

  “How?” Barnes snapped.

  “About an hour after he brought it to his boss’s attention, another letter came in that seems to fit it. They’re sure the second was from the killers.”

  “What do the notes say?” Griffin asked.

  “The one they just received started with that famous quote from George Santayana.” She read from her notepad, “‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. You are fools. You missed the first—sad that there are those who never learn.’”

  “All right, so what was the first clue—the one they thought to be a hoax?” Barnes asked.

  The officer checked her notes. “‘So I shall begin where building began. Where all were young once, born and bred. What was once young is oldest now, to find her, see, the boldest be.’” She looked up. “I can see why whoever opened the letter first just threw it out—I mean, the first one. It wouldn’t have meant anything because there hadn’t been any missing women then...or other notes with clues on finding them.”

  “When was the first received?” Jackson asked.

  “The reporter—Silas Warren—says the post office date puts it at about two weeks ago.”

  “The first...two weeks ago,” Barnes said wearily. “There’s no hope of saving this victim. And still...we have to find her.”

  “The killers know that,” Griffin said. “They want to watch us scramble, knowing that we’re going to find a corpse. May I hear the so-called clues again?”

  “I’ll email the notes so you have them.”

  “Thank you,” Griffin said. She flushed and hurried back to her desk.

  Griffin, Barnes and Jackson pulled out their phones.

  “Oldest...hell. There are dozens of things that are oldest!” Barnes muttered. “This is Boston, Cradle of Liberty, old Puritan stronghold. Oldest church, oldest graveyard, oldest... What?”

 
Officer Gordon came hurrying back over to them. “They just found another in today’s mail,” she said. “Coming to your phones, too.”

  Griffin glanced down at his phone as it beeped with the latest arrival.

  The killers had written, “Are we having fun yet? Sorry, my friends, but this time, you will find the dead. Haha. Fresh dead. Ah, what’s with the world today? No one listens anymore. Undertaker does try to give you a chance. Alas! Get off your asses—and the TV screens—and find the dead.”

  As he stared at it, Griffin’s phone rang.

  Vickie.

  “Yeah, you all right?” he asked her.

  “I’m fine, but...”

  She was anxious. She wanted to speak, he could tell, and yet she hesitated. He glanced around. Officer Gordon was waiting to be dismissed. Barnes and Jackson were studying the words that had been written.

  He stepped back, away from the noise of the other conversations. “What is it?” he asked her.

  “You’re going to find another woman. Only... Griffin, this one is already dead.”

  9

  Vickie showered and dressed quickly. She was waiting impatiently when Griffin arrived, and he got there fast enough.

  Dylan was there, pacing. “I know her name,” he told Griffin. “I know her name, her first name, at least, and it’s Darlene. She managed to tell that much.”

  “She died in the water, Griffin,” Vickie added. “They boxed her up somehow, and threw her in the water. I would imagine they knocked her out first, too, and then threw her in the water. She would have drowned, I think.”

  “Wait, wait, hold up, just a minute,” he said. He wasn’t in the least doubtful; he was as usual, sturdy, strong, calm—and ready to listen to what they had to say.

  “I thought I was dreaming last night—about angels instead of corpses,” Vickie explained.

  “But I saw her, too, briefly. She’s not a very good ghost. I don’t mean she’s a bad ghost,” Dylan explained. “She’s just not experienced. She can’t really make herself be seen or heard well yet, even to me. But she must have seen something of what else has happened; she must have known about Vickie somehow and tried to reach her.”