The Ghost of Mistletoe Mary

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “I understand. But tell me, why do you think that guy thought the woman with Mary was looking for drugs?”

  “Hey, man, you know how hard it is for us down here to make a buck for food or whatever else we need.” When Jeremiah nodded, Sloan looked around, making sure no one heard him. “Well, some of them sell the stuff for pushers out of the area. I never did,” he was quick to add. “Possession’s one thing, dealing’s another. But a lot of guys sold here and there to make enough for their own habit or to pay for a room. Some, the smarter ones, actually made enough to get the hell out of here, moving up in organizations. You know what I’m saying?”

  Again, Jeremiah nodded. Selling drugs was often a way out of poverty for those who impressed their bosses. Not a way out of violence or crime, but a way off the streets.

  “I think,” Sloan continued, “that the guy thought maybe the woman with Mary was slumming to get drugs. But that Mary skank seems too far gone to me to be of any use to anyone.”

  “But he heard this woman call Mary ‘Mom’?”

  “That’s what he said, so he backed off.” Sloan shuffled his feet, then added after making a quick decision, “He said he was going to roll Mary for her drugs, then realized he had it all wrong.” Sloan flicked ash onto the street.

  Mary Dowling, in her weakened mental and physical condition, had become easy prey for someone. Jeremiah wondered if it had been the woman claiming to be her daughter, or one of the other street people thinking she had drugs, like the guy who talked to Sloan.

  “Did he say what alley he saw them in or around?”

  “He didn’t say, but I asked. It’s one that runs behind the buildings on San Pedro Street. The south side, I think. Just up from 5th Street.”

  That would be behind the string of buildings that contained the laundromat. Jeremiah had checked alleys along that street, but none of those ran behind the boarded-up building. That building had to have a service alley access from another street, either from 5th Street or Crocker.

  “Again,” Jeremiah said, “good work. I don’t know how long I’m going to be. Maybe an hour or more. Hard to say. You cool with that?” He locked his helmet in the Tour-Pak and pulled out a flashlight, slipping it into his jacket pocket. He kept his gloves on.

  “Like I said this morning,” Sloan said as he tossed his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with a beat-up athletic shoe, “I got no place to go.”

  Chapter 9

  Jeremiah glanced through the window of the Angels office. On Sunday they only saw clients in the morning. The rest of the day they mostly caught up on paperwork. He could see Red sitting on the edge of a desk talking to a guy in dreadlocks whom Jeremiah recognized as one of the volunteers. He didn’t go in, but passed it, crossing at the street corner, and headed back to San Pedro Street a few blocks away.

  When he reached Bucket’s area, he studied the boarded-up building again, then decided to approach it from 5th Street. He went down 5th and didn’t see any alley, but knew there had to be one. Most of these buildings were serviced from the rear for trash removal. He continued down 5th on foot, passing closed business with their steel barricades down and locked, and an open one that didn’t appear to be busy. He made his way past dozens of homeless people, men and women, milling about in small groups or sprawled on the sidewalk next to their makeshift shelters. When he reached Crocker, he went right. If he turned left he would reach the Hi-Life Diner in about two blocks. A chilly breeze had picked up and Jeremiah turned up the collar on his jacket.

  There were fewer people on Crocker as he turned away from 5th. He found an alley on his right and turned up it. It was long, running behind the buildings that faced 5th. The alley was filled with trash and a few Dumpsters of various vintages, some old, some fairly new. It smelled of urine, feces, and rotten garbage. The walls of the alley were covered with graffiti. Next to a Dumpster about halfway up the alley, a man was rolled up in a plaid jacket like a discarded burrito, sleeping off something with loud snores and snorts. Jeremiah’s boot steps on the gravel made no difference to him.

  The alley was dim and partially in shadows, the afternoon sunlight barred by the buildings surrounding it. The alley dead-ended at the backside of another row of buildings. These had to be the abandoned buildings just behind Bucket’s area. Jeremiah’s suspicions were confirmed when he read what was left of the businesses’ names in faded peeling paint.

  Under a sign that indicated it once was an establishment called Soap ’n Suds, he found a beat-up gray double-wide door with a bar across it secured by a padlock. The bar and lock didn’t look like they had been disturbed in years. Jeremiah looked around for another entry. An old battered Dumpster was pushed against the wall. Pulling out the flashlight, he trained it inside the bin. It was empty, except for a few small pieces of cardboard and long-petrified garbage clinging to its inside walls, indicating it was long out of use. He moved the small beam of light along the ground until it caught on something. Jeremiah crouched down and examined the wheels of the Dumpster and curving ruts made in the broken asphalt. The Dumpster had been moved recently and from the depth of the tracks, it looked as if it had been moved often, like a door on a hinge, deepening the tracks with each swing. He slipped the flashlight back into his pocket and tried to move the Dumpster. In spite of its decrepit appearance, it moved away from the wall easily and the wheels made no sound. Jeremiah bent down and touched one of the wheels. It had been recently oiled.

  Behind the Dumpster was another door of a standard size and shape, covered with scarred gray paint like the larger door. This one had no bar or padlock. The door handle was old and of the lever type. Above it was a rusty dead bolt. Both needed keys he didn’t have. He grabbed the handle and pushed down, expecting resistance, but getting none. It moved downward easily and the door released. Not even the dead bolt had been engaged.

  Then he caught it. The smell of rotting flesh spilled out of the open door and greeted him, along with the smell of human feces. Granny had been right. After just a short glance back down the alley, Jeremiah pulled his flashlight back out and slipped inside.

  With the large front windows boarded, the inside was as dark as tar and thick with decay. He moved the flashlight in an arc at first to get his bearings, then focused it, moving slower to get details. It wasn’t a large establishment. There was a line of washers running along the wall to his right and large dryers set into the wall to his left. Like baby birds waiting to be fed, the lids of some washers were open. Others were missing, a few closed. Some of the dryer doors were missing, too, but the few that remained were closed. All the appliances were scarred and rusty. Down the middle of the room ran a narrow counter for folding clothes. A few metal laundry baskets were shoved into one corner and in the corner nearest him on the floor was a pile what looked like old blankets, some clothes, and a few cans of food, along with bottles of water. Granny had said she thought someone had been living there and Jeremiah came to the same conclusion, but wondered how anyone could live with a decaying body in the room.

  The smell was as heavy as a hard rain and his eyes began to water, but he moved forward in search of the body. He moved toward the bundle of blankets on the floor and tapped it with the toe of his boot. It was just ragged blankets. He moved the light to the other corner and spotted a closed door. He moved to it and slowly turned the knob and opened it. A horrible stench pushed him back a few feet, but it wasn’t the smell of rotting flesh. He opened the door wider. It was a small and very dirty customer restroom, not much more than a closet with a tiny sink and commode with a small cracked mirror over the sink. The smell was coming from the toilet, which was full of human waste. The water was probably shut off in the building, not allowing any way for whoever lived here to flush, but it didn’t stop them from using it. Jeremiah backed out and closed the door.

  He moved slowly, going deeper into the narrow room, playing his flashlight back and forth along the floor and under the fol
ding table until he reached the blocked front door. He neither saw, nor stumbled over a corpse along the way.

  “Did you find it yet?” asked Granny, popping up next to Jeremiah.

  “Don’t do that, Granny,” he scolded, holding his free hand over his heart, “or I’ll be the stiff in here.”

  “Yeah,” the ghost said, with a mischievous giggle, “Emma hates that, too.”

  “I’m a lot older than Emma, girl.” He moved the flashlight over the bank of dryers, specifically the couple that were closed. “And, no, I haven’t found it yet, but I have a good idea where it is. It’s the only place I haven’t checked.” He turned to Granny. “I haven’t seen Mary either. Have you?”

  “She comes and goes with Bucket,” Granny reported, “but she won’t talk to me. I keep telling her we’re here to help and she just makes Bucket scream and yell. I don’t think she was right in the head when she died and she’s no better in death.”

  “Could be,” Jeremiah agreed. “She’d done a lot of damage to herself with booze and drugs over the years.”

  His feet followed the beam of light to the dryers. The smell was stronger. He pulled on the handle of the first one. It groaned in protest, but finally gave and opened. Nothing. The next two dryer doors were missing. He pulled on the latch of the next closed dryer but it was stuck. He pulled it again, leaning back with his weight and it popped open, flooding the room with a stench far worse than the bathroom.

  “Bingo,” Jeremiah said. He covered his mouth and nose with a gloved hand and trained the light on the body inside the dryer. It was a woman, dressed in a short skirt and blouse, curled in a fetal position inside the metal womb. He pulled out his phone and snapped a photo.

  “Is it her?” Granny asked.

  “I don’t know, Granny, but it’s some poor woman.” He trained his light once again on the corpse, looking for the telltale tattoo, but couldn’t see the woman’s chest in her death coil. He closed the dryer, and then opened the only other closed one, but it was empty.

  He hit a speed-dial number on his phone. Emma Whitecastle answered. “Emma, Granny was right. She did find the body.” He started working his way toward the back door.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “I’m going to call Aaron Espinoza. I’ll figure out something to tell him besides a ghost showed me where it was.”

  “Sure you don’t need us?” she asked.

  “Positive. The cops can take it from here. I don’t know for sure if this is Mary, but if it is, maybe now that her body has been found she’ll leave Bucket alone.”

  Outside again, Jeremiah pointed his head upward toward the sky as he took big gulps of fresh air, but the fine hairs inside his nose were determined to cling to the scent of death with sticky fingers. “My clothes probably stink, too,” he said to Granny, who’d floated out with him.

  “You gonna call the cops now?” she asked.

  In answer, he held his cell phone up and started to call Aaron Espinoza. It hadn’t even rung yet when Granny shouted, “Look out, Jeremiah!”

  He never saw or heard the bullet that hit him, but he felt the hot sear as it tore through his leather jacket and grazed his left shoulder. He’d just turned to see what Granny was yelling about. Had he not, the bullet might have hit him in the back.

  He dove behind the Dumpster, wedging himself between it and the building, just as a second bullet whizzed by. He drew his gun, but saw nothing. He also didn’t hear any retreating footsteps, so wasn’t sure if the shooter was still there or not. Then he remembered his secret weapon. “Hey, Granny,” he called in a whisper, “do you see them?”

  When he received no answer, he thought maybe Granny had taken off. “Granny,” he called again, working hard to keep his voice low while his heart pounded like a jackhammer. His shoulder stung but that was nothing to a vet and former cop who’d been shot worse. He poked his head out to take a look and was rewarded with another bullet. This one hit the wall of the building behind him, sending splinters of concrete into the air. The shooter was using a silencer.

  “Right here,” came a disembodied voice. “I went to check out the fool who’s shooting at us. It’s some guy just on the other side of that Dumpster.”

  Jeremiah remembered seeing a man sleeping when he’d first come down the alley, but the homeless usually didn’t tote guns, especially with silencers. “Was it a homeless-looking guy?” he asked anyway.

  Granny shook her head. “No, just some guy in a bulky jacket, army jacket from the looks of it. I couldn’t see much because he was wearing a knit cap pulled down close to his face, almost over his eyes.”

  “Short or tall?”

  Granny pinched her face in thought. “Neither. About average, I’d say.”

  Another bullet came their way, this one passing through Granny to join its friend in the wall.

  “Boy, I hate that,” groused the ghost, and disappeared.

  This time Jeremiah returned fire, aiming for the Dumpster he’d passed earlier. The other shooter volleyed back. He might have had a silencer but Jeremiah didn’t. Someone had to be hearing the shots, but the last thing Jeremiah needed was some curious bystander checking out the noise. He held his fire and looked for his phone, which he’d dropped after the first bullet hit him. It was on the ground by one of the front wheels of the Dumpster. Stretching a leg out, he snagged it with his foot. Another bullet came his way, this one hitting the ground by the phone. Jeremiah yanked his leg back but the phone didn’t come with it.

  “Help’s on the way,” he called out to the shooter. “In seconds, the police will be here.”

  His assailant said nothing. Silence filled the alley, and for a moment Jeremiah wondered if the gunman had decided to give up and skulk off before the cops came, if they came.

  “Granny,” Jeremiah whispered loudly. “Where in the hell are you?” He needed the ghost to make sure the coast was clear before he poked his head out and possibly got it shot off.

  A noise caught his attention. The Dumpster down the alley began moving. It moved slowly, in fits and starts, like an old man bent with arthritis, complaining about each inch he walked. Its rusty wheels caught on the broken asphalt, forcing it to a halt. Jeremiah heard several grunts as the trash container was urged forward. It was heading his way. The shooter was using it like a movable shield to get closer.

  Jeremiah looked down at the wheels of his own Dumpster. They were freshly oiled. He gave his bin a tentative push and it moved freely. He pushed it forward several inches, keeping one eye on the other container and one eye on his phone on the ground. Maneuvering it, he used it as cover until he was able to reach his phone. His movement attracted another bullet. It hit the edge of the container, too close to his head for comfort. The shooter had skills and as his bin moved forward, Jeremiah was becoming trapped in the dead-end alley.

  Jeremiah pushed his bin forward more, deciding to match offense with offense, and fired at his attacker. The two Dumpsters moved toward each other like two very slow-moving steeds in a Medieval jousting tournament. Jeremiah fired again as he hit redial on his phone with his free hand. His last outgoing call had been to Aaron Espinoza. Aaron answered on the second ring and Jeremiah put it on speaker.

  “Aaron, send help,” Jeremiah yelled into the phone. “Alley off of Crocker and 5th. Shots being fired.” Just then another shot was fired. “Shit!” Jeremiah, yelled as the bullet came close again. He shot back. “I’m pinned,” he yelled into the phone.

  “Units are already on their way and so am I,” Aaron called through the phone. “We got a call from Emma Whitecastle.”

  Without glancing down at the phone, Jeremiah asked, “How in the hell did she know?”

  “I told her,” said Granny as she materialized.

  Jeremiah could have kissed the ghost, but another well-aimed bullet came his way. He ducked and stopped pushing his own bin, deciding to wait it o
ut.

  “Sit tight,” Aaron called out.

  Jeremiah moved his hand to cover the microphone on the phone. “Granny,” he said in a hushed whisper. “Stay close to the shooter. Find out everything you can about him. If he runs, follow him? Got it? We need to know who it is.”

  The ghost saluted. “Got it, Chief.”

  He moved his hand away from the speaker. “I got a corpse too, Aaron.”

  “Just make sure it’s not yours.”

  “I’m doing my best.” The other bin moved forward and another well-aimed bullet hurled his way. “But hurry!”

  Before the words were out of Jeremiah’s mouth, the scream of approaching sirens split the late-afternoon air. The other Dumpster stopped moving and Jeremiah heard footsteps echoing in the alley, moving away from him. He prayed Granny wouldn’t lose the shooter.

  Chapter 10

  “I have a hunch that’s Mary Dowling in the dryer,” Jeremiah said to Aaron who’d arrived on the scene shortly after the patrol cars. An EMT was working on Jeremiah’s shoulder, cleaning and bandaging it while he sat on the edge of the back of the ambulance.

  “Any idea who was shooting at you?” Aaron asked.

  Jeremiah shook his head and repeated what Granny had told him. “Just that it was a guy in a field jacket with a knit cap.” Then he remembered something else, something Granny didn’t hear or know.

  “What else?” asked Aaron. “You look like you just remembered something important.”

  “It could have been a woman,” Jeremiah suggested. “At one point that other container got stuck and I heard grunts when the shooter pushed it loose. Thinking back, the sound didn’t seem low enough for a man.” The EMT finished with the bandaging and Jeremiah slipped back into his shirt and jacket. “There was also a homeless guy sleeping off a drunk when I first came down the alley. Maybe he saw something.”