“Professor Gabriel Kennedy,” she finished.
If Lindemann was shocked by the question, he covered it up well, only raising his right eyebrow.
“He’s a crackpot. Of all the people in the world, you should know that. You and Lieutenant Jackson were the ones who placed that label squarely on his forehead. You two would have done well in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.”
The limo pulled through the gate. Reporters smashed their faces against the tinted windows to view the long black car’s interior. They slapped at the glass and shouted questions that were muffled and unidentifiable.
“Score one for you. I assume you’ve been thinking about that the whole way here.” Julie closed her eyes and then opened them. “I don’t care what you’ve heard or what you believe.” She removed a notepad from her bag, just as the limo stopped under the massive portico’s overhang. “I just want to know about the cleanup after that night in 2003.”
Wallace Lindemann was taken aback by the question. Julie could see it.
“Cleanup?”
“Yes. You obviously had to hire someone to repair the physical damage to the house. It’s described in the official police report.” She made a pretense of looking at her notes, though she knew the details by heart. “Plaster was damaged in the second floor hallway, several heavy doors had to be re-hung—the police confirmed those parts of Kennedy’s story.” She looked up from her notes and fixed him with her penetrating eyes. “So, what was the damage and what did your contractors have to say?”
“They came and fixed several items. I don’t exactly recall—”
“Why didn’t you use local contractors? You hired a company out of Altoona—almost two hundred miles away.”
Lindemann looked away as the chauffer opened his door. He stepped out quickly. “I’ll have to check my records. I don’t remember what was done exactly.”
“Who said you could bring in a reporter?” a booming voice called from the top of the steps.
Julie looked up and saw the large figure of Damian Jackson, replete with his tan raincoat, standing with his right hand in his pocket and looking down on them—his favorite position in life. Probably sexual in nature, Julie thought.
“Nice to see you again, Lieutenant,” Julie said as she climbed out of the backseat. “I see you’re still trying to convince the world that you’re Colombo and Superfly all rolled into one.”
Jackson didn’t respond, he just watched as Lindemann and Julie climbed the steps. He eyed Wallace as he passed.
“I’ll be in the bar,” Lindemann said. He slithered by the detective.
“This crime scene is off limits to the press for the time being. Your network may have enough on Lindemann to get him to sneak you in here, but they have nothing on me.”
Julie eased up to Jackson and leaned closer to his large frame. He didn’t look down at her, but stared straight ahead.
“Let me clue you into something, Damian. You and I are linked to this place, and this case.” She continued past him, up the stone steps. “After all, many people think that it was you and I who railroaded an innocent man. And now here we are all over again. Only this time there’s not just Kennedy, but a whole network team of Emmy winners saying something’s wrong with this place. And that, Detective, has bite.”
Jackson took a deep breath, waiting until the front doors had opened and closed before he turned around. The moment he had first heard about the network broadcast test, he had known that the past would be coming back to bite him right in the ass. Now the first piranha had arrived to start the feeding.
When Jackson entered the barroom, he saw Lindemann at his usual barstool and Julie helping herself to a cup of coffee.
“Look, before you start with your crap, I can bring anyone in my house that I want to,” Wallace said like a petulant child. He stared into his glass of whiskey.
“So, what is the state of your investigation?” Julie asked, removing her coat and leaning against the bar.
“What, no note taking?” Damian advanced into the large ballroom.
“No, this is more of a personal interview. After all, Lieutenant, I think both of our career advancement opportunities are on the line.”
“Yours maybe, but I see my career advancement as still viable. After all, I based my report on facts, unlike you. As I see it, you have to prove Kennedy guilty all over again, while I only have to prove another party guilty of the same crime. A fresh start, you might say.”
“Still smug as hell, aren’t you?” Julie asked, studying Jackson.
“Not smug, just right. I know this house didn’t take those people. There are no ghosts and there’s no such a thing as a bad house, just bad and very stupid people who prey on the gullible.”
“Look, I’m here to call a truce with both you and Lindemann. I’m going to report the same facts that I did before. I need to prove that people are the real evil here, just as you say. If I don’t, and if Kelly Delaphoy proves that there’s an otherworldly problem here, then our careers are both finished.” She took a sip of the hot coffee. “Public opinion is a strange thing, Damian. Its power has even been known to stop unpopular wars.”
Jackson knew Julie was right. His harshness with Gabriel Kennedy in 2003 was on record. Jackson removed his hat and tossed it on the bar next to Lindemann. His bald head gleamed in the overhead lights. “You’re willing to go against your network and actually say this Halloween special is a put-on job?”
“I’m going to do far more than that,” Julie said. “I’m going to be here for all eight hours, and I intend to prove that this haunted house crap is just that. And there is one more thing, Lieutenant...” Julie locked her green eyes onto Jackson’s.
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for the piranha to take its last bite.
“The network is trying to get Gabriel Kennedy to host the special.”
Lindemann and Jackson both stared at Julie. The big detective glanced around the ballroom, a curious look on his face.
“What is it?” Julie asked, placing her coffee down.
“Didn’t you hear that?” Jackson said, looking at the two of them with eyes wide.
“What?” Lindemann asked standing from his stool, spilling his drink on his hand in his haste.
“Why, the house, of course.”
“What….what do you m-m-mean?” Lindemann looked around.
Julie hid her grin at Wallace’s obvious discomfort.
“It’s laughing its shingles off—Kennedy is coming home.”
Every door on the second and third floors suddenly slammed closed, making all three of them jump.
Julie swallowed and looked at Jackson. “Draft must have closed all the doors up there.”
“How in hell would a draft close doors that were already closed and locked?” Lindemann emptied his glass and slammed it down.
Damian Jackson smiled as Lindemann stormed past him. He looked at Julie, who had also lost her brief sense of humor.
“Maybe the house isn’t happy that Kennedy is coming back.”
Jackson looked at her, then looked around him at the ostentatious ballroom.
“Maybe not.” He smiled again. “But I surely am.”
seven
Lamar University
Beaumont, Texas
The sun had set and the heat of the day had finally drained from the air in the classroom. It was now cool enough that the windows could be opened and Kennedy could catch some of the breeze that found its way between the old buildings.
He watched the silent campus through one of those windows and wondered if he was the only faculty member still there. He turned and walked with purpose to his desk, producing his set of keys as he went. There were only four keys on his key ring—one to his studio apartment, one to his classroom, one to his mailbox, and the last and smallest opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He sat heavily into his chair and took a deep breath.
The drawer and its contents had eaten at him all day. He stayed after everyone had left,
finally deciding to breach the vault that held the combination to that night in Pennsylvania. He inserted the key and opened the lock, and then he pulled open the largest drawer. He pursed his lips and scratched his beard. Before he could lose his nerve, close the damn thing and once more hide the truth, he reached in and removed the five journals and ten file folders. He slammed them on his desktop as he kicked the large drawer closed with his foot.
Gabriel sat back in his chair and looked at what the last twenty years of his life had become. The story of how he came upon Summer Place and the research behind it. Since that fateful night, he had lacked the courage to delve back into the historical research of the house and the family Lindemann. But now there had been more disappearances at the mansion. The house, he knew, wasn’t done with him. Or, perhaps, he wasn’t finished with it. He had realized it even before the newspapers had started reporting on it again.
The journals chronicled the experiment he had been conducting that night, long ago. He wasn’t interested in rehashing what happened to him and his students; he was concerned with the research that had led him originally to Summer Place. The interviews, the research on the property, the numerous face-to-face talks with what living Lindemann relatives were left. The answer, the very key to what the house was about, was here in his research files—somewhere.
He was responsible for that night. He knew that and never denied it, not even to himself. Before that night, he had been a skeptic himself. Never a believer in the paranormal world, his only faith was in the science of the mind; his fascination had been with how static objects could instill such inherent fear into ones psyche. How the influences of rumor and innuendo had the power to change the reality of perception, thus creating the human ability to literally scare oneself into a state of unrest. A person could end up with a broken mind merely because the mind had believed in the impossible, and thus made it real to them.
Kennedy had to smile at the memory of the theory. He pulled on his beard. Yeah, scare yourself into a state of unrest and broken mind—that was what I surely did.
He spread the journals and folders out onto the desk and found the file he wanted. Absentmindedly removing his corduroy jacket, he began reading about the history of the Lindemanns one more time.
Eighteen hundred miles to the north, Summer Place waited. Kennedy suspected that whatever was in that house knew its history was being studied once more.
The following day, Gabriel Kennedy entered his classroom and placed his briefcase on the desk. The Summer Place materials he had removed from the desk drawer were still sitting out. He rubbed his face. He had shaved his beard off for the first time in years. Now he didn’t recognize the man who faced him in the mirror. His blue eyes were better served without the growth of beard, though, and he had even garnered the gracious looks of several students as he briskly strolled across campus.
He gathered up the journals and files and placed them back into his drawer, then locked it. Not for fear that he would be tempted to revisit that damnable house as before, but because he wished to protect what he knew now were some of the most valuable writings in the field of paranormal study. He had realized their importance only after worrying all night at his apartment about having left them unsecured on his desk.
He looked up at the clock behind his desk and decided he would move the damn thing back to the opposite wall, the first chance he got. Time, he suspected, was no longer an enemy.
The door at the topmost tier of the classroom opened, admitting Harrison Lumley. His friend stood there looking down at him, amazed. “Well, the ice-man cometh,” he said as he started down the aisle. “Why the sudden change in personal imagery?”
“What change? You mean being early? Well, the simple answer in our field is always best: I never went to sleep.”
“Although that’s a nice breach of your recent habits, I do mean the beard.”
“Oh, you noticed?”
“Yes. I must say it takes ten years off of your face—and, apparently, your demeanor.”
Kennedy gave Harrison the briefest of smiles.
“I want to discuss something with you, if you have a moment.”
Gabriel pulled up the cuff of his blue shirt and looked at his watch. “It’s your dime for the next eight minutes.”
“What would you say to tenure here at Lamar?”
Kennedy had turned to pull his weekly lesson plan out of his briefcase. He stopped and looked at his old friend, and smiled. “The beard was that much of a hindrance to my career potential?”
Lumley laughed. “No...you know these things take time.”
“I know that I’ve only been here for four years. It should take considerably longer.” He closed the briefcase with a loud pop. “Especially with my, let’s say, sordid past.”
“Well, having the chairman of your department as a friend can be beneficial.”
Kennedy pursed his lips and then smiled. He walked to his blackboard to erase the lesson from the day before, but stopped and turned to Lumley.
“The one benefit of being a clinical psychologist, Harrison, as I’m sure you know, is the ability to smell a rat.” His smile didn’t reaching his blue eyes. “Have anything to say to that, Mickey?”
“I should have known you would smell me out,” Lumley said, slapping the desktop lightly. “There is a catch. And Mickey Mouse was…well, a mouse, not a rat.”
“A rodent is a rodent is a rodent. Who said that, Tennyson? Anyway, I digress. Continue, I’m listening,” Gabriel turned back and resumed erasing his blackboard. His humor was limited when he was being led around the proverbial mulberry bush.
“What would you say if you were responsible for the psychology department receiving a one and half million dollar grant?”
“I’d say I gave you too much. I want at least one million, four hundred thousand of it back.”
“You have actually changed, and overnight. Did you meet a woman, or something?”
“Stay the course, Doctor Lumley, and explain your fantastic statement.” He picked out a piece of chalk and started to write the day’s lecture topic on the blackboard.
“I received two visitors to my home late last night.”
Gabriel tossed the chalk back into the tray and slapped his hands together. A soft cloud of dust rose from his fingers. “You know, most universities have dry erase boards. Maybe with the department’s newfound windfall, you can get me one.” He paused. “Who offered you the money, Harrison?”
Lumley took a few steps back from Gabriel’s desk and gestured toward the door at the top of the classroom. Two figures stepped in and looked down.
Gabriel Kennedy recognized the woman from a few days before, the young producer from UBC. With her was a face he had never wanted to see again. Julie Reilly still had an arrogance about her that only seemed to have intensified over the years, and its aura travelled from above to inflict itself upon Gabriel.
“Ladies, will you join us please?” Lumley called out. “Gabe, listen, they have an offer for you to consider. I wouldn’t ask if it was only for the grant, you know that. I’m asking it of you because you’re a friend, and this is your one chance to redeem your credibility.”
Kennedy looked from the two women walking slowly down the steps to Lumley.
“I’m sure Judas had something similar to say—that he only did it because he was a friend, and it was all for the best. That makes your betrayal justified in your mind?”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
“No—but this may be.” He pulled out his keys and opened the bottom desk drawer. Out came all his research on Summer Place. He closed his briefcase and, with everything under his arms, walked past Lumley.
“What are you doing?” Lumley asked.
“Harrison, you can kiss my ass, and shove your tenure up your own.” He brushed past Kelly Delaphoy and Julie Reilly.
“What about your class? What about my offer?”
“I already told you what to do with your offer. The lesso
n plan is by the blackboard.”
With that, Gabriel Kennedy left his classroom for the last time.
“I’ll give him at least that much credit,” Julie Reilly said. “He does have his standards. Which is far more than I can say for you,” she added to Kelly, “or the Professor, here.” Frowning, she started back up the risers and left the classroom.
“Fucking great!” Kelly said, glaring at Lumley.
Gabriel Kennedy chose not to return to the studio-sized prison he called home. Instead, he found the nearest sports bar. There were a few that stayed open round the clock, catering to the students who found themselves wanting diversion at any hour.
The server didn’t even flinch when he ordered a bourbon and water. Her reaction, or non-reaction, was what was nice about college towns across the nation; no one gave a damn what you did with your personal time.
“Can I join you for a minute?”
Gabriel looked up and could not believe the woman had actually followed him. It wasn’t everyday that you could look into the beautiful face that had ruined, or helped to ruin, your professional life—twice. For him, that face was Julie Reilly’s. He had hoped never to see it in person again.
“Once wasn’t enough for you? You had to track me down to zap me one more time?” He snatched his drink from the server’s tray. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand on ceremony.” He took half the glass down in one swallow.
“I’ll have the same as the Professor,” Julie said. She removed her bag and squeezed in beside Gabriel. She unceremoniously bumped him over and settled in. “And bring my friend another.”
Kennedy shook his head and raised the glass to finish off his drink, but instead reined in his temper and eased the glass down to the booth’s tabletop.
“Friend...Is that what they call victims nowadays?” he asked.
“That’s what they call someone who’s in the same boat, which we are.”
“I don’t follow, Ms. Reilly,” he said, stringing her name out.
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