Chasing the Ghost

by Bob Mayer

  "Nothing I could find."

  Chase filled Porter in on the rest of his conversation with Linda Watkins. By the time he was done, it was Porter's turn to buy.

  He paid and then was silent for a little while. Chase figured his partner was mulling over the case. It turned out he was thinking something over, but it had nothing to do with Rachel Stevens.

  Porter fiddled with his mug and then looked at Chase. "How have you been doing, Chase?"

  "What? What do you mean how have I been doing? I'm doing fine."

  Porter seemed nervous. "I'm a little worried about you."

  This Chase didn't need, but he didn't say anything because Porter was his partner and he’d heard that was important to cops. "Yeah. About what?"

  Porter spread his hands. “Where to start? The job. Your divorce. Your mother. Wyoming. Sylvie.”

  Chase gritted his teeth and Porter saw it, but plunged on. "I don't know, Chase. You've been ragged lately. I don't mean to get into your personal stuff, but you seem a little out of it. I understand getting served a divorce and your mother dying while you were overseas was hard. I don't know what your relationship with your mother was, but you carry the letter around everywhere and you talked one time about that house she left you in South Carolina. Then you got wounded in Afghanistan after all that crap. I probably shouldn't be saying anything at all. And I don't understand what happened. So I’ll butt out on that, OK?”

  Chase couldn't explain himself to Porter because he didn't know what was wrong. He wanted to tell Porter that he couldn't understand. He'd never been to war. Chase had. Three times. Twice to Afghanistan and once to Iraq in between. Porter had never held men dying in his arms. Watched bodies blown apart. Been so close to someone you kill that you could smell their breath, see their teeth, feel their last gasp on your skin. Chase just couldn’t come back here to the normal world and sort it all out like it was some TV show to be discussed at the water-cooler. He just knew there were bad things in his head and for Chase the effect was cumulative. He didn't say that though because Porter was possibly a friend, and Chase didn't have enough of those to just let one go.

  "I'm doing OK,” Chase said. “I admit I've felt better about life in general, but I'm holding up." He tried redirecting things. "Don't you ever miss it? Making it big in the music business and all? Don't you ever feel like you were trapped or in the wrong place?"

  Porter answered Chase’s question. "Yeah, I did miss it, until I realized there wasn't a hell of a lot to miss. I wasn't that good, Chase. I was better than a lot, but I just didn't have that special thing that makes it all possible. Took me a while to accept, but I finally did.

  "My life now is good and I'm happy because I've accepted it. I know my limits so you might say I've fulfilled all my expectations. To me the worst thing in the world is to go after something that's not in your cards. I understand now that I probably wouldn't have been happy making it big as you put it because that's not the key to being happy. That's an outside thing, Chase." Porter stuck a finger in his own chest. "Happy's in here."

  Chase wasn't sure he agreed. It seemed that he was lowering his own expectations every day, but it wasn't getting him anywhere. It appeared to him the less he wanted, the less he was getting, and he certainly wasn't very happy no matter where it was located. "Things will get back to normal pretty soon."

  “I don’t think you have any idea what normal is,” Porter said. He held up a hand. “And I don’t mean that in a bad way, Chase. You’ve had a hard road.”

  To that, Chase had no reply, the words bouncing around in his brain like so many broken marbles, scratching and irritating, but real.

  Porter leaned forward. “Hey. I want to be a cop. I want to catch the bad guys. Some guys like carrying the badge and gun, makes up for something they’re missing. I don’t see it that way for me. I was lost, playing in all the dives here and in Denver when I met Mary. No clue what I wanted, but I didn’t want the music bad enough. Then Mary told me—“ Porter glanced around, making sure no one was listening. “She told me she’d been assaulted while she was at CU as an undergrad and that the cops blew it off when she reported it, saying they got calls like that all the time from girls at the university.”

  Porter’s nodded. “It just clicked with me. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be someone who didn’t blow something like that off. Who went after the bad guys. I’ve never looked back on that decision and questioned it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chase said.

  “It was a bad thing,” Porter said, “but we’ve moved on. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t remember or we don’t talk about it once in a while, but we deal with it. We were talking the other night and we’re worried about you. You don’t talk to anyone, it looks like, not even Sylvie.”

  Chase shifted uneasily. “I’m not into talking.”

  “Apparently.” Porter leaned back. "Mary and I miss having you around. The kids are wondering what happened to you. Sylvie seems to be important to you and we'd like to get to know her."

  Chase was beginning to regret Porter's invitation for a drink. "Like I said, Sylvie works a lot, and odd hours too, so she's usually sleeping around the time you're pulling the burgers off the grill. Plus you told me early on you didn’t like me going to that club and she’s part of it."

  Porter’s face tightened. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Sylvie stripping. But Tai’s shady.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been a cop for a while.” Porter shook his head. “Forget about that. You really like Sylvie, don't you?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "How long you two been going together now? Two, three months?"

  "About that. Ever since the Peterson case. The kid with the busted jaw outside the club."

  "You two have any plans?" Porter continued.

  Chase looked at Porter over the rim of his mug. "Plans for what?"

  "I don't know." He shrugged. "I just can't figure this out. You've seemed happy and unhappy at the same time over the past couple months and I've been trying to figure out why."

  "Sylvie's a good person. We have a good thing."

  "Thing? What's a good thing, Chase?"

  "We enjoy being together, yet we don't have all the crap that most people try to put on a relationship. No commitments. No plans. We just treat each other good."

  Porter frowned. "That doesn't work, Chase."

  "It seems to be working for me."

  "How about for Sylvie?"

  "She hasn't complained. She seems happy." Chase was tired of being interrogated by his partner. "What about Mary? Is she happy?"

  Porter smiled, as if he had expected Chase’s turn-around. "Yes. She's happy. It's not perfect for her, but we talk about it when either of us get out of whack. Sometimes we scream and yell about it and get it out of our system, but we always make up."

  “You’ve had time—“ Chase began, but just then a burly, short man stomped up to the table.

  “You’re the Fed,” he said, glaring at Chase with blood-shot eyes.

  Porter leaned forward between them. “Detective Chase, meet Deputy Squires, Larimer County.”

  Chase nodded. “Nice to meet you, Deputy Squires. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Fuck you,” Squires snapped. “I’ve heard all about you. Badass, fucking Green Beret, Delta Force, counter-terrorist man but your high-speed team let those assholes who murdered my friend get away. Some say you could have nailed the cocksucker cop-killer who did it. Everyone around here thinks you walk on water cause you were in the ‘Stan and Iraq. But I was in Iraq. Other guys here too with their reserve units. You aren’t so fucking special, Chase.”

  “I don’t think I am. How about that drink?” Chase noted the tattoo on Squires arm. “Semper Fi. The guys I saw in the Corps were the best—“

  “Don’t fucking Semper Fi me, asshole.”

  Porter stood and put a hand on Squires’ arm. “Listen. Maybe—“ Squires slapped Porter’s hand off.

  “Do
n’t touch me.”

  Chase could see everyone in the bar was watching. He also could see that Squires was drunk and angry past the point of no return. Chase stood and faced Squires, looking down into the angry man’s face. Squires’ nostril’s flared liked an angry bulldog, the veins and muscles in his neck standing out, the bulging biceps in his arms pulsing down through his forearms to his clenched fists as he squared up. Steroids and alcohol. A big mix.

  Chase smiled as he leaned closer toward Squires and lowered his voice so only the Larimer County Deputy could hear. “I did have a shot. You wanted me to kill four men in cold blood? Would you do that?”

  Squires blinked.

  Before he could respond, Chase reached out and put his left hand on Squire’s right shoulder, pinching the nerve, and freezing that arm, stepped in tight, and jabbed with his left hand into the sheriff’s gut, just below his sternum. The instant result was a projectile vomit of alcohol and Squire’s last meal all over Chase’s chest.

  There was a collective groan in the bar, not at all, what they had expected and hoped to see. Chase put his arm around the deputy’s shoulder. Porter went to the other side and together they escorted him out of the bar.

  “Over here,” Chase said, seeing an old ice cooler. He sat on it, the groaning deputy still leaning on him.

  Porter backed off. “You ok?” he asked Chase, Squires head lolling on his shoulder.

  “I’m fine. You need to get home. We'll get together some other time."

  Porter leaned in close, ignoring the stench. “Hey Chase. I know you don’t have many buddies on the force. You need anything; you can count on me. Sorry if I stepped out of line tonight.”

  Chase had had a team sergeant like Porter in Afghanistan. Chase felt a hand clutching his guts inside as he remembered Jimmy Keegan. He could only nod at Porter and murmur “Thanks.”

  Porter looked at the deputy. “You sure you’ll be all right?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Porter disappeared into the darkness.

  Chase turned toward the drunken and sick deputy. “Who’d you lose over there, Marine?”

  * * * * *

  Astral began barking as soon as Chase opened the back gate. He ignored the little dog and meandered over to his garden.

  Nothing showing as far as he could tell in the starlight.

  Chase was headed for the basement door when the upstairs deck light went on. He paused as Louise appeared at the railing.

  “Horace?”

  “It’s me.” He could just make out her silhouette against the light. “Sorry to have woken you up.”

  “I was awake. Focusing.”

  “On?” Chase moved toward his door.

  “You.”

  Chase paused, peering up. He was tired, covered in vomit and not too thrilled after listening to Squires for over an hour. “Am I in focus?”

  Louise came down the stairs and Astral scampered over to her. “You look terrible, Horace.”

  “Rough night,” he acknowledged.

  Despite his condition, Louise put her hands on his shoulders and peered into his eyes. “You’re opening up.”

  “I am?”

  Louise smiled. “Yes.

  If this is what it meant to be open, Chase wasn’t too sure, he liked it.

  Louise removed her hands and stepped back. “Why are you growing a garden?”

  Chase stared at her. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you always grow a garden wherever you live?”

  Chase shook his head. “I’ve never lived anywhere long enough to grow one. The army always kept me on the go.”

  “But as a child—“

  Chase half-turned for his door. “Never lived long enough in one place to grow one then either. My mother’s—job—kept us on the move.”

  “That must have been hard,” Louise said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I was just wondering since you check it very time you come in the yard. I hope you don’t mind, but I put some fertilizer down earlier today.”

  “Thanks.” Chase paused. “I had a lot of library cards,” he said, surprised that one thing came to the forefront of his brain. “First thing we’d do when we hit a new town was find the library and both get cards. That’s how I learned. By the time I went off to the Academy I probably had over two hundred library cards.”

  Louise stepped closer and put her hand back on his shoulder. “Oh, Horace.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Horace said. “Thanks for helping with the garden.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chase was hot, thirsty, hung-over, tired and hungry by the time he got to Chautauqua Park the next day. He was wishing Sylvie had agreed to meet at her place. Sylvie was sitting on the steps of the concert hall reading a paperback when Chase walked up. She was wearing a short black dress and sandals. She looked great.

  The park was located at the base of the Flatirons, which were Boulder's most notable landmark. A series of rock faces angled up at about seventy degrees, the Flatirons were named for the long-ago device used to iron pants. The park was a mixture of grasslands and forested slopes below the rock walls. Wildflowers were sprouting and Chase wondered why his garden hadn’t yet shown any green.

  Sylvie put the book down and smiled when she saw him. "How'd last night go?"

  "All right.”

  “The Wagon Wheel,” she said. “A step up from the Silver Satyr.”

  “Not really. Might be a step down. Met Porter there.”

  “How’d that go?”

  Chase hesitated.

  “He’s worried about you,” Sylvie pushed.

  Chase nodded.

  “Hell, Horace, I’m worried about you too.”

  Chase closed his eyes. This weekend was going rapidly downhill. First Porter last night at the Wagon Wheel, Louise in the yard, and now Sylvie. And she was calling him by his first name, which she had never done before. He couldn’t even remember telling her it. He sighed and leaned back against the wood stairs.

  Sylvie's hand was on his thigh and she squeezed. "Chase, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself."

  He opened his eyes. Sylvie was smiling.

  "What do you want to do?" Chase asked.

  Sylvie stood. "Let's walk over to the rock garden."

  Chase would have preferred going to her apartment. His second choice was food. The rock garden didn't rate at all. But he meandered over there with her and sat on a bench close to a bunch of rocks arranged in what he assumed was supposed to an artistic pattern.

  "So what's new with you, Chase?"

  He figured they’d beat the Wagon Wheel to death. Wyoming was off limits. He scanned the files in his brain for something she might find interesting. "I went to the Boulder Country Club yesterday." It seemed like forever since he’d sat next to the tennis courts and talked to Linda Watkins.

  Sylvie raised her eyebrows. "Moving up in society?"

  "No. I had to do an interview."

  "The case you got this week? Rachel Stevens?"

  "Yeah."

  "How'd you end up at the country club?"

  "It was the only time this woman could find to see me."

  "What woman?"

  "I was told she was Rachel's best friend."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Her husband."

  "I wonder what a husband considers a best friend."

  Chase shrugged. "Beats me. This woman acted like she hardly knew Rachel. But she did have an interesting view on life."

  Sylvie perked up. "So what does a woman at the Boulder Country Club think about life?"

  "I got the feeling she equated marriage with the stock market.”

  "What do you mean the stock market?"

  "You know. The sort who thinks love should be a lucrative endeavor."

  "What's wrong with that, Chase? Sounds like she's kind of smart to me."

  Chase stared at her. "What do you mean smart?"

  "Most women barter their body for security. Some women just have more to bargain with. At least sh
e's not a hypocrite, Chase."

  Chase blinked. "I'm not a hypocrite."

  "Oh, aren't we a bit defensive today?" Sylvie stood. "I didn't say you were. I said at least this woman you saw yesterday wasn't a hypocrite."

  Chase stood too. "Is that what you're doing? Bartering your body for security?"

  "Sometimes, Chase, you are so obtuse."

  That was up there with enigma in Chase’s vocabulary of irritating words.

  He followed as she walked out of the rock garden. He caught up with her and they headed toward his Jeep. He was trying to think of something to say when she took the initiative. "I said most women, Chase. Not all. I like to think that I'm one of the lucky ones that finally figured this all out."

  "Finally figured all what out? What are you talking about?"

  "The big trap. Marriage."

  "Wait a second, Sylvie. Where do you get off saying marriage is a trap for women? The woman I talked to yesterday didn't look too miserable."

  They'd reached Chase’s Jeep. Sylvie looked over the roll bar at him. "Let's go to the New York Deli for lunch."

  They got in. As Chase pulled out, Sylvie put her sunglasses back on. "So what did this woman say about Rachel?"

  Chase snorted. "Same as everyone else. Wonderful person. Good student. Fine upstanding citizen. I get the feeling no one knew her."

  "Maybe she didn't want anyone to know her."

  “Porter says we'll have to go back to her husband. We caught him at a bad time last visit."

  "What makes you think he's going to know anything more than anyone else?"

  "I see your point. He didn't know who her best friend was. He didn't even know where she was every third Wednesday."

  "What do you mean every third Wednesday?"

  "She was absent from class every third Wednesday all semester. Sounds like she was up to something. Maybe Porter has something there with his theory about her having an affair." It was the only thing that fit. Chase had mulled it over, anything to avoid fixating on Wyoming.

  "I don't know, Chase. I've been thinking about it a bit since yesterday. An affair by its nature is usually sort of random. People are acting off of emotions, not logic. Very hard to plan like that and stick to it."