by H. P. Bayne
He waited until Eva pulled over, stopping behind a police cruiser guarding the front of the house. Then he put his half-empty coffee cup into the holder at the back of the centre console. “Wait here, all right?”
“I don’t think they’re going to want us in there, anyway,” Eva said. “I’m surprised enough they’re going to allow you in there.”
“Is Ed here already?” Mara asked.
As if in answer, a man stepped from the passenger side of the police cruiser. Sully had met the man several times in the past, during occasional visits to the administration offices to visit his dad. Mara climbed out of the car before Sully had finished opening his door. By the time he reached the chief, Mara had already wrapped the man in a warm hug.
“It’s been a long time, Ed,” she said.
He squeezed her back. “Too long. How are you holding up?”
Mara shook her head against his shoulder before pulling away. Answer enough. “Thank you for letting Sully in to have a look. We’re hoping it will help.”
Ed peered over her shoulder, eyes widening as he studied Sully for the first time. “My God. You really are alive. They told me you can….” He trailed off, a sheepish grimace on his face prompting Sully to complete the thought for him.
“Communicate with the dead? Yeah. I can.”
“I’m sorry. I know Lachlan and Dez place a lot of stock in this, but I feel I should tell you, I don’t believe in such things.”
Sully smiled. “You don’t have to believe in them for them to be real.”
Ed stepped a little closer. “I’ve been asked to allow you into an active crime scene. I said I would, but I’d like some reassurance I’m doing the right thing. If you could—”
Sully cut in. “There’s a woman with you. Dressed in clothing and wearing makeup and a hairstyle that suggests she died in the late nineteen-sixties or early seventies. She’s dressed like a hippie: bell bottoms, fringed vest, lacy, white shirt. There are beads around her neck, but they’re dangling there, broken. Her feet are bare and they’re covered in dirt and are scraped up. I think she must have been running before she died. She suffered multiple stab wounds, but there are marks around her throat suggesting she was strangled.” Sully turned his gaze from the woman to Ed, finding the man staring at him slack-jawed. “How old were you when your mother was killed?”
Even through the snow and the semi-darkness, it was clear Ed had gone pale. “What makes you think she’s my mother?”
“The way she’s looking at you. She’s proud of you, you know, of the man you became. You joined the police because of her, didn’t you? You must have been just a kid when she died.”
“I was twelve. We never found out who did it or why. I used to devote hours of off-duty time to the case in my earlier years, trying to figure it out. I never got there.”
“Maybe I can help one day,” Sully said. “But tonight, I need to find my niece. Can you get me in there to find Harry?”
Ed nodded dumbly, then leaned into the car, emerging with a sign-in sheet. Ed scribbled his own name down before passing it over to Sully. “I appreciate you might have some reservations about using your real name, but it’s standard procedure.”
Sully took the clipboard and pen from Ed and signed. “It’s okay. After tonight, it looks like Sullivan Gray’s coming back from the dead.”
Another vehicle pulled up just as Sully finished signing. He wheeled in place, struggling to pick out the features of the woman getting out from behind the wheel.
“Who’s that?” Mara demanded.
“It’s okay,” Ed said. “I called the Ident officer overseeing the crime scene. I want to ensure we don’t inadvertently step where we shouldn’t.”
Ed introduced the officer as Corporal Paula Lamburton, a woman somewhere in her thirties with an affable expression that belied her piercing and studious stare. Sully recognized yet another doubter, and like many police officers he’d met, she had a ghost attached to her. But he wasn’t going to waste time convincing someone else. He needed to get moving.
“I know this is a highly unusual request,” Ed said. “But I’ve been assured Sullivan doesn’t need to go far inside. I’d hoped you could direct us. Is there anywhere on the main floor that’s all right for us to enter?”
“We found traces of apparent blood in places in the kitchen, up high and only visible under blue light. There’s evidence someone cleaned up, so it’s likely unusable save for providing some clue as to where the crime might have played out. There really isn’t much left on the main or upper floors of much use to us. All the same, I’d say front door is best.”
While Mara returned to the car, Sully and Ed allowed Paula to lead the way to the front veranda, ducking beneath the crime scene tape as they went. Paula sliced through the tape sealing the door, then unlocked it with a key in her possession.
“Give us a minute?” Ed asked. “I’ll leave the door open so you can see us.”
“If you put on the light and close the door, I’ll see you just fine through the glass,” she said. Then she grinned. “Anyway, if I can’t trust you, sir, who can I trust?”
Ed returned the smile, then stepped through the door, allowing Sully into the entryway next to him before flicking the light switch next to the door. The front hall lit up, revealing the staircase leading upstairs, the sitting room to the left and, just beyond that, the kitchen where the fatal attack on Thackeray Schuster had begun.
“How does this work, exactly?” Ed asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Sully said.
Then he focused in on the house. He felt them there still, the Schusters. They were aware, could feel him as surely as he felt them. “Harry?” he called out. “Harry, I need to talk to you. I need your help.”
Sully’s head snapped up as he became aware of movement at the top of the stairs. Harry and Betty appeared there, side by side. Thackeray wasn’t with them, and Sully imagined he had remained, as ever, in his old room.
Sully’s peripheral vision revealed the bemused expression on Ed’s face, and Sully did his best to ignore the man, focusing instead on the two spirits before him. “It’s Lowell. We’re close to nailing him, and he knows it. It’s pushed him over the edge. He took my niece, Dez and Eva’s daughter. She’s just seven years old. Harry, I know if you focus on him, you can find him. Please, I need you to tell me where he’s going to be. I need to find him. I need to find Kayleigh. Will you help me?”
One moment Harry was standing at the top of the stairs. The next moment, just one short blink dividing the time, and he stood directly in front of Sully. Sully jumped but stood his ground.
Ed noticed. “What happened?”
But Sully wasn’t in a position to answer. Not now.
Harry was reaching toward him, eyes wide with the promise of an impending vision, one he intended to share.
As the cold, ethereal hand grazed Sully’s cheek, he did his best to prepare himself for whatever he was about to see.
All the preparation in the world wouldn’t have been enough.
One image and one image only flashed into Sully’s mind. It put him on his knees, rent a howl of torment from his throat.
It wasn’t Kayleigh he saw, but Dez.
In the morgue.
Lying lifeless on a cold, metal slab.
It was all it took, his tenuous balance on that tightrope disappearing beneath him. He fell into darkness, into the waiting jaws of the beast.
Mara and Eva had emerged from the car. They stood, watching, wide-eyed as he flew from the house, the confused police chief on his tail.
“Sully?” Eva asked, face the picture of torment. “God, what did you see?”
No time to answer the question. No point. He had a date with destiny to get to, and he neither needed nor wanted chaperones.
The dog was still in the backseat, and he let out a growl as soon as his master wrenched open the driver’s door.
“What’s wrong?” Mara asked. “Sully?”
The
dog jumped the seat and spilled out onto the snow-covered pavement, teeth snapping as he faced his master.
It didn’t matter. Job done. The dog was out. He was in.
He leapt behind the wheel. The keys were still there, still in the ignition. He slammed the door, hit the button working the locks, sealing everyone outside. Just him now. Just him and the path this life had laid out for him.
He turned the keys, and the engine sprang to life. Then he pushed the stick into drive and sped off, snow billowing behind the rear tires as he went.
Lowell Braddock was about to meet his end. Thadeus would see to it.
26
Dez had already checked the locations Lowell was most likely to go. He was trying to decide which of those places to check again when it occurred to him he hadn’t considered Kindra.
All this time, Dez’s focus had been locked on Lowell, so much so he’d lost sight of the fact the man had an accomplice. Lowell and Kindra shared residences, but not workplaces.
The morgue.
It seemed an unlikely place to take a child in the middle of the night, or at all, but Dez had reached the point of no-stone-unturned. Having checked the obvious places, he was content to try the not-so-obvious, if for no other reason than to give his brain something to do besides panic.
The city morgue wasn’t far, only about a ten-minute drive from where he was now.
Dez made it in seven.
He circled the building, its lower floor still lit as it always was. They always had a commissionaire on duty here, someone who could let in police after hours, allowing for late-night drop-offs of those who needing an autopsy or for whom there was no room at the hospital morgues.
The parking lot out back was its usual brand of late-night quiet, just the commissionaire’s run-down half-ton parked next to the loading zone.
Then Dez looked again.
A light had burned out to the right of the door, casting a portion of that side of the parking lot in darkness. A vehicle was parked there, barely noticeable in the shadow.
He turned into the lot, casting his beams across the back of the vehicle.
It was an SUV.
One identical to the one Lowell drove.
“Son of a bitch,” Dez exclaimed, revving across the lot until he’d reached the SUV. He stopped behind it, creating a T along the vehicle’s back end to effectively block it in. If he was right, if this was Lowell, Dez wasn’t about to allow him an easy getaway.
Keying off the ignition, Dez forced his mind into police mode, playing through various scenarios and outcomes. With most perps, it was simple. A guy with a record for carrying and using knives was more likely to stab someone than shoot them. A gunman wasn’t likely to revert to strangulation.
Lowell, though, wasn’t your typical criminal. He didn’t have any specific MO, comfortable with anything so long as it kept him in control. Lowell had shot people, stabbed and beat them, drowned someone, even forced a massive heart failure. He wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He’d set himself up as the perfect killer, one whose murders had nothing in common but the killer himself.
All the scenario training in the world wouldn’t prepare Dez for what he was about to face. All he could say for certain was that he’d fight to the death to protect Kayleigh.
He pocketed his keys and slid from the vehicle, then thought better of the situation and pulled out his cellphone. Lowell had said no police, but he hadn’t said anything about Sully or Lachlan. Dez tried Sully first, but the call rang through to voicemail. When a second attempt fared no better, Dez tried Lachlan.
He answered on the second ring.
“Don’t tell the police yet, but I’m at the city morgue,” Dez said. “Lowell’s vehicle is here.”
“Hang tight. I’ll get someone over to you.”
“No. Don’t. I’m only telling you in case something happens and they manage to get away. It’ll give you somewhere new to start.”
“If they manage to get away, it’ll be over your dead body,” Lachlan said. “Which is kind of the problem. I need to get someone over there, Braddock. McPhee got Dunsmore right into an interview room, and he’s singing like a canary. McPhee’s going to want Lowell, bad. Listen to me. Don’t do anything. I mean it.”
Dez saved his response until he’d ended the call and turned his phone onto silent. “Sorry, Lachlan. I’m not waiting. I can’t.”
Then he dropped his phone into his pocket and started toward the back entrance.
Dez recognized the commissionaire on duty, a weasel-faced guy in his forties named Greg who seemed the sort to enjoy graveyard shifts as a way to avoid dealing with people.
Greg was never happy to see Dez—near as Dez could tell, Greg was never happy to see anyone—but he allowed the former police officer in all the same.
“Didn’t know the whole Braddock clan was showing up tonight,” Greg grumbled.
That sealed it. Dez’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. “Where are they?”
“Don’t know. Somewhere. Maybe the offices. They had a kid with them, so I can’t imagine they went to the morgue rooms.”
No sense asking Greg to check surveillance cameras. The morgue only had three: two above the front and back man doors and one above the drive-in delivery access. No one had bothered installing anything extra inside the building; there didn’t seem to be a point, given the place was crawling by day with police officers, coroners and pathologists. And the bodies weren’t going anywhere.
Dez pulled out a business card onto which he’d scrawled his cellphone number. “If you see them, give me a call, okay?”
“I’m not a messenger service.”
Dez stood over the man and pinned him in his most solid glare—one it didn’t take much work to muster under the circumstances. “Do it anyway.”
Greg gave a tight nod, and Dez turned and jogged down the nearest corridor, the one leading to the pathologists’ main floor offices, the refrigeration rooms and the autopsy suites. He’d try there first, then check Kindra’s upstairs office. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what had brought them here, but he didn’t much care. All he cared about was ensuring they didn’t leave—not with Kayleigh, anyway.
He’d planned on bypassing the refrigeration rooms, thinking Lowell would have no business in there. Dez’s plans changed as a glimpse into a side passage—one that contained a pair of doors to the two long rooms used for body storage—revealed movement.
The door on the right had just closed.
He rushed toward the door, unthinking, blinded by worry for Kayleigh. If those bastards had taken his daughter in there, into a room populated by dead people in refrigerated compartments, there would be even more hell to pay.
He found the door unlocked and pushed through, passing into the long, clinical-white chamber. On the left, a row of steel doors stacked three high concealed whatever bodies were awaiting autopsy or release to funeral homes. But it was the centre of the room that quickly drew his attention—or more specifically, who it was standing there.
Lowell faced him, alone, gun in hand, expression carrying a hint of panic as he faced his nephew. Dez didn’t have long to enjoy his uncle’s discomfort, as Lowell quickly replaced it with the confident smile more natural to him.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Lowell said. “How’d you find us?”
A time for explanation would come—preferably when Lowell was safely stowed in the back seat of a police car. Right now, Dez had just one thing on his mind. “Where’s Kayleigh?”
His question, a dangerous growl, turned down the corners of Lowell’s lips.
“Dez—”
“Where is she?” A shout this time, thunder in an echo chamber. It rattled off the walls, off the steel doors to the left. Rattled Lowell’s nerve, if the further slip of his expression had anything to say about it.
Lowell brought the handgun up a few inches, taking steady aim at Dez’s chest. “Don’t make me use this.”
“You’re going to fire that thin
g in here? Greg will have the police here in less than two minutes.”
“He won’t,” Lowell said. “He knows better.”
“Why? Because you’re the rich and powerful Lowell Braddock?”
“Because he knows no one would believe him.”
“Give me a break. You know damn well police would have to come clear the call. What are you really planning?”
“Nothing. All we intend to do is leave.”
Dez’s focus, fixed entirely on Lowell, couldn’t shift quickly enough as someone rushed through the open door behind him. He barely had time to turn when he felt the jab of a syringe in his neck and the cool flow of liquid crawling beneath his flesh. He finished his turn, eyes locking onto Kindra’s. She, at least, had the decency to appear apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Desmond,” she said. “This isn’t what I wanted. None of this was what I wanted.”
Dez took a step toward her, intending to push past, to search for Kayleigh. If Lowell and Kindra were here, Kayleigh couldn’t be far. Kindra backed away as Dez took one step, then two. It was all he managed before something heavy collided with his head from behind. He dropped to his knees, but what should have been a painful collision between his body and the tile floor was dulled by whatever chemical had been injected into him.
“What’d you give me?” he asked, the words slurring around each other.
He ended up fully on the floor, uncertain how he’d gotten there. On his side, he turned his head enough to catch sight of Lowell leaning over him.
“Just a sedative,” he said. “Same thing I gave Sullivan in my office two years ago. Remember? He was fine afterward. I wish I could say the same for you. I mean that, Dez. I don’t get any pleasure from what I have to do.”
Dez didn’t intend to ask what Lowell meant; he didn’t want to know, nor did he have the luxury of time to consider it. Kayleigh. Kayleigh was all that mattered.
He pushed off the floor, managed to lever his upper body to partial sitting. Lowell reached for him, but Dez shoved him back, his remaining strength still plenty to put the older man onto his ass. He continued to push up, getting one leg under him with one arm positioned to lift him toward standing. But the leg didn’t cooperate. It gave out, the room spinning around him like the world surrounding an amusement park ride.