Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2)

by D. W. Moneypenny

  Once she had completed feeding the canvas bag through the sewing machine, it occurred to her that she had rendered the bag unusable. Grabbing a pair of scissors, she wedged one blade under the thread and snipped, reopening the mouth of the bag.

  The bell above the front door of the shop jangled, and Mara looked up.

  A man in a green uniform was backing through the door pulling a dolly loaded with a tall narrow box behind him. Once he cleared the door, he let it close and swiveled around, revealing a grandfather clock that stood six feet tall.

  “Hi, are you Mara?” the man said. She nodded, and he unhooked a clipboard dangling from his belt. “Then this here is for you.” He nodded at the clock.

  “Wow. I wasn’t expecting a delivery. Who is—”

  From the back of the shop, Bruce yelled, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. My grandfather called and said that Mr. Mickleson was sending over his clock for you to work on.”

  “Got it,” Mara yelled back and turned to the deliveryman. “I guess I was expecting it. Could we roll it over here to the end of the counter?”

  “You bet.” He tipped it up on the dolly’s wheels and rolled it where asked, sitting it next to the shelf where the Philco 90 radio sat. Mara signed his clipboard. He tipped his head and gave a small salute as he rolled the dolly back out the front door. As the door was about to close, Mara heard the deliveryman say, “Oops, almost gotcha, young lady.” The door swung back open, and Abby stepped inside.

  “Almost ran me down,” she said, taking off her jacket and tossing it at the coat tree in the corner where it landed in a heap at its base. “What you fixing today? Granny’s electric butter churn?” She snorted.

  “I’ll have you know I have repaired an electric butter churn before.”

  “You’re making that up. There’s no such thing.”

  “Yes, there is. It’s sort of like an electric ice cream maker with a motor mounted at the top of a big jar that churns the butter. Of course you don’t need to set it in a bucket of ice.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “What a geek. Butter churn. Next you’ll be setting up a still for a bunch of moonshiners.”

  “It would be fun to work on a still, but that sounds more like something you’d see in the Appalachians than the Cascades, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever you say, gadget dork.”

  “Why aren’t you in school? Still majoring in truancy?”

  “I am out today arranging an internship for my next semester. I’ve been told I can work part-time and get credit, if I write a paper or some nonsense like that.”

  “I did that my last semester. Right here at Mr. Mason’s shop.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  Mara turned pale. “Huh?”

  “I’m here to sign up. I want to intern.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah, why not? You did.”

  “You’re pulling my leg. You don’t know how to hold a screwdriver much less fix a broken gadget.”

  “The point is to learn, isn’t it?”

  “What are you up to? Spill it.”

  “I’m not up to anything. I want to do an internship, and I think I could contribute a lot around here. It’s a business, isn’t it? I don’t have to fix things to help out. I bet I could modernize your back-office operations. I’m great with a spreadsheet and numbers, and I’m very organized. I also can take orders, do pick-ups and deliveries, and run errands. And, not to be too critical, but this place could use some dusting and mopping. I can do that.”

  “You want a janitorial internship?”

  “Look, it’s a chance to get some practical experience, and it would be great for us to work together, right?”

  “I’m not buying it. Besides, your counselor isn’t going to let you do an internship reporting to me. I only finished high school a few months ago myself, and Mr. Mason doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to come back to work.”

  “I’ll work out the details. Ask Mr. Mason. He’ll do it if you ask.”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “So what is the issue?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a little high octane and high maintenance for a place like this. I think you will go nuts around here.”

  “Let me worry about that. It’s only for a few weeks anyway. Besides, with all the weirdness you’ve got going on at home, don’t you think it would be nice to have a friend around?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your mother just brought home a thirteen-year-old brother you didn’t know about. I’d call that pretty weird.”

  “He’s fourteen.”

  Abby smirked.

  “So you think you’re going to make my life less weird by hanging out here at the shop? I’m not seeing it.”

  Abby slouched across the counter. “Look, think about it for a day or two. If you are still uptight, I’ll go do something else. But I do think it would be fun to spend some more time together. I’ve missed hanging out since you finished school.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Where is tall, dark and Bruce?”

  Mara swung a thumb toward the back of the shop. “He’s in his bike garage. Why don’t you go say hi.”

  Abby smiled, wiggled her eyebrows and sauntered off to the bike shop. Mara returned to the sewing machine, turning it on its side to examine what it would take to remove the bottom of the platform when the phone rang.

  “Thanks for—”

  “Hi, Mara. It’s Ping. Sam told me that you wanted to talk. I can’t seem to get away right now. Can it wait until I close up this evening? It’s a little busy over here.”

  “Actually that will work out best. Bohannon is coming by, and I might need some backup while explaining things to him.”

  “Bohannon?”

  “The detective who was with me at the office park when Suter first attacked, remember?”

  “Oh, yes, I recall.”

  “He’s going to be here at six. Can you make it then?”

  “Yes, I’ll be there. We might want to be circumspect about what we tell him.”

  “He saw Suter turn into a fire-breathing monster, saw all the passengers’ bodies in that temporary morgue at the airport and saw me do my metaphysical thing a couple times already. What is it that we need to keep from him?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.”

  “Okay,” Mara said, glancing at the entrance to the back of the shop. She lowered her voice. “So how are you holding up? I hear you’ve been having some control issues with your own little passenger.”

  “My what? Oh! Sam told you about this morning.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. No more incidents. We can discuss it this evening.”

  “Call if you need anything. Bye,” Mara said.

  Before she could replace the handset in the cradle of the old black rotary telephone, she heard static and lifted it back up. “Hello?” The static continued, but it wasn’t coming from the phone. She hung it up and swiveled her head, trying to locate the sound. She glanced toward the grandfather clock at the end of the counter. The sound came from that direction. As she took a step, the static stopped. Mara remained still for a second, cocked an ear toward the clock. Nothing.

  She continued to where the grandfather clock stood and put her left ear next to its side. After a moment, the static resumed. Yet Mara heard the sound from her right ear. It wasn’t the clock. She glanced up to the nearby shelf. The static emitted from the Philco 90 radio—the one that was a casing with no mechanism inside. The static rose and fell, as if it were trying to tune into a station. Then almost imperceptibly—so woven into the background noise that Mara wasn’t sure if she had imagined it—she heard a voice, high-pitched, like a child’s. It sounded like “Mar-ree, Mar-ree.”

  Mara grabbed the radio casing and slid it around so it faced away from her. She quickly removed the backing and looked into the empty wooden frame. No radio inside. Yet the static continued, and, inter
mixed within the noise, a little voice called, “Mar-ree, Mar-ree. I’m coming!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Detective Daniel Bohannon had enough trouble navigating his broad frame through the cluttered maze of desks that made up the detective division of the Portland Police Bureau without a cast and crutches. Instead of taking the longer, clearer path along the walls of the room, he had tried to cut through the center and ended up knocking over a stack of files. He was having trouble picking them up while holding his crutches and maintaining balance.

  “Bo! What are you doing out there?” Lieutenant Mike Simmons yelled from his glass-enclosed office twenty feet away. “Get in here.”

  “Coming,” Bohannon said, dropping a pile of papers on the desk, half of which slipped back to the floor when he turned to hobble over to the lieutenant’s office.

  “Shut the door,” Simmons said, pointing to a chair. “Thanks for coming in on your time off.”

  “No problem, sir. I’m kind of antsy to get back to work.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come in to work, at least not officially. We’re only having a little conversation, a couple coworkers catching up. You understand?”

  “I think so. What do you want to converse about, sir?”

  “First, when you get back, we are assigning you to the burglary detail—on the surface, that is.”

  Bohannon’s shoulders slumped, and he looked crestfallen.

  “What did you expect? Homicide outta the gate? Grow up, man. Anyway what I really need you to do is help out with some of these cases related to the passengers of Flight 559. Publicly we are not connecting these cases together, because we don’t have any real evidence that they are related. As far as we can tell, it’s just a coincidence that all these strange things are happening to this relatively small group of people.”

  “Have more of them disappeared? You know, like the Kathy Harrington case Suter and I looked into?” Bohannon asked.

  “We’ve had a couple more that seem similar. There are also other reports of strange behavior, but I’ll get to that in a minute.” The lieutenant swiveled his computer monitor so it faced Bohannon. “You ever watch YouTube, Bo?”

  “Occasionally I guess. Why?”

  “I want you to look at this video that’s getting a lot of attention online this week.” He clicked the mouse a couple times, and a stilled video filled the screen. It appeared to be a picture of an orchestra, at least the woodwind section of one, with the frame centered on a tall, thin African American man holding an oboe in front of him. The lieutenant clicked again, and the video played. The man at the center lifted the oboe to his lips and exploded into a flash of light. Smoke and dust blotted out the screen, but the audio continued with screams and the crash of equipment. An occasional arm or face could be made out in the billowy haze, and the sounds of panic continued for several minutes until the smoke cleared, revealing a clear blast pattern on the carpet of the auditorium surrounded by overturned chairs, a charred clarinet and a shoe. A woman continued to whimper offscreen.

  The video suddenly ended, replaced by the frozen first frame of the man holding the oboe.

  “Lord, have mercy,” Bohannon said. “Did that happen in Portland?”

  “No, at a community orchestra practice in Little Rock a few days ago. The man with the oboe was Marcus Gentry. He completely vanished. There is no sign that he was ever there. No body parts, no blood, no DNA. He disappeared in that flash of light.”

  “Was anybody else hurt?”

  “Not seriously. It knocked over a bunch of people, broke a few instruments and burned a hole in the carpet.”

  “There was a blast mark like that at the Harringtons’ house too. You think there’s a connection?”

  “Gentry was a passenger on Flight 559. I talked to the police in Little Rock. They were willing to share facts, but they refused to conjecture about what happened. They’ve been deluged with calls from tabloid papers and television shows from all over the world.”

  “You tell them about Gentry being on the flight?”

  “Hell no. They’re probably already getting calls from psychics and UFO buffs. They don’t want to hear what we have to say. They’d dismiss it as more crackpot nonsense, like we would if we were in their place. I bet they are hoping someone will start spreading word that the video was a hoax.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Bohannon asked.

  “There’s not a whole lot we can do about it, so let’s keep the focus on Portland for now. Agreed?” He rubbed his face and turned the computer monitor back around.

  Bohannon nodded and asked, “What can I do to help?”

  “Well, you being off the books, as it were, for the next week or so, I thought you could look into a few things, unofficially, to see if there are any dots that can be connected. Talk to a few people. See what’s going on. I can’t order you to do this, but it might be the best way to see what’s up without having to worry about politics or looking crazy. No paperwork, no reports. Take a look-see. Can you get around with that thing on your leg?” He pointed to the cast on the detective’s left leg.

  “Yeah, since they lowered the cast to below the knee, I can fit behind the wheel of my truck. Couldn’t do it in a car though.”

  “Okay, drive your truck. Turn in your mileage to me, and I’ll figure out how to get the reimbursement through without drawing any attention. Remember, you are officially still on sick leave, so no shooting, no arresting. Talk to folks, and let me know what you hear. Hopefully it won’t amount to a hill of beans.”

  “Who do you want me to talk to?”

  “Start with this guy, Denton Proctor. He and his wife, Melanie, were passengers on the flight that went into the river. Before that, they were schoolteachers out in Beaverton.” Lt. Simmons reached across the desk and handed a blue sheet of paper to Bohannon.

  It was a flyer. Across the top, big bold type screamed Come be HEALED! Below that sat a blurry photocopy of a blurry photograph of a man and woman. And below that a caption:

  Denton and Melanie Proctor have been blessed with the power to restore both your body and soul. Come to Pioneer Courthouse Square, Thursday, at 3:00 p.m., and experience the miracle of their remarkable abilities. As seen on Channel 2 News.

  A footnote at the bottom, in smaller type, but in all capital letters read DONATE WHAT YOU CAN, IF YOU CAN, SO WE CAN CONTINUE THE WORK.

  Bohannon looked up, wide-eyed. “You’re not saying they are healing people, are you?”

  “Actually it’s Proctor, the husband, who has the healing hands. The Channel 2 report didn’t come right out and say he was a healer, but they interviewed several people who swore Proctor had cured them. One guy had gout, and a woman said he cured her deafness. They had video of him curing the woman. That could have been faked, but, if it was, that woman was quite an actress. I mean, she spoke like a woman who was deaf, and her emotional reaction to the healing was award-winning.”

  “Reminds me of tent revivals back in Georgia. My dad was a preacher, but he didn’t do healings like that.”

  “The wife claims to be able to read souls, whatever that means. She grabs a person by the side of the head, her eyes flutter, and then she counsels them about what will make them happy. She told the Channel 2 reporter to leave her husband and take up pottery.”

  “You think it’s a scam?”

  “Of course I think it’s a scam. See the fine print at the bottom of the flyer?”

  “So I should contact them? See what is going on?”

  “Go to the gig down on the square and see what’s up. Talk to them if you can get close enough. Eavesdrop a little. See if they mention the airplane accident or any of the other passengers. Real subtlelike. Consider it a little intelligence gathering. You might get lucky and learn something that could help.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Don’t go looking like a cop. Try to blend in.”

  “Don’t look like a cop?”

  “Look like you belong there.”

>   “Well, I do have a broken leg.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Maybe I’ll get Proctor to fix my leg while I’m there.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Mara snapped out of the static-induced trance brought on by the voice from the radio and reached for the telephone on the counter. She stared down at the face of the rotary dial and paused for a second. Placing a call on this thing drove her crazy. She glanced around the counter for her cell phone and didn’t see it. It was probably across the room in her jacket pocket. Too flustered and frustrated to get it, she stuck a finger into the dial and tried to remember Ping’s number. She pulled her finger in a semicircle and released the dial. Clickity-clickity-click. The dial spun back up so the finger holes lined up with the numbers on its face. Mara groaned. One number down, only nine more to dial. How did people live like this? She poked another number and dragged the dial down. Clickity-clickity-click.

  Behind her the static from the radio continued. The little voice called out in a whisper, “Mar-ree, Mar-ree!” With a trembling hand, Mara fingered another number and pulled the dial downward. Before she had fully rotated the dial to the finger guard at the bottom, her finger slipped, thus entering the wrong number. She slammed down the receiver with a loud clang. At least hanging up these old phones is more satisfying. She ran for her jacket and grabbed her smartphone from the pocket. Holding it up, she tapped the surface and held it to her ear.

  “Ping! Thank God! Listen to this,” she said, tapped the Speakerphone icon and held the phone out toward the Philco 90 radio on the shelf behind the counter.

  There was silence.

  “Mara? What am I listening to? I don’t hear anything,” Ping said, his voice broadcasting from the phone in Mara’s trembling hand.