Chasing the Ghost

by Bob Mayer

  Chase closed his eyes. He could understand some of what she was saying, but he couldn't do anything about it.

  Chase heard Sylvie move and opened his eyes. She came over and sat on the edge of the footlocker, pulling Chase down next to her. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't look so sad, Chase. It didn't cost you too much to figure this one out. Not sixteen—well, twenty if you count West Point—years. You still have a lot of time left."

  Chase put his arms around her waist and hugged her. "Can we start over?"

  "I don't think so. Not right now. Because we both have a problem. I think you finally understand what I've been saying, but it hasn't truly sunk in yet." She tapped Chase on the head, then his chest, as she said: "You understand with your brain, Chase, but it takes time to get to your heart, if it ever does. Until it does, we'd just be pretending."

  Chase sensed Sylvie was right, but that didn't make it feel any better. This was the third serious choice of his life. He was just beginning to realize that somehow he had managed to screw them all up.

  Sylvie headed for the door.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  Sylvie held up her hand. “No. I’ll walk.”

  “It’s dark and--”

  “I’ll walk.” The back door slid shut behind her. Then the back gate shut with a thud.

  Chase waited half a minute, long enough for her to make it to the corner of the alley, then edged his way out the door. He followed Sylvie without her knowing he was there. It felt good to be moving in the dark-- the only good feeling he’d had all day.

  Chase waited down the street from her building as she went in. When the light in her apartment went on, he headed home deep in thought. He cut due north, passing Pine until he hit the alley between it and Mapleton, then he turned west toward the mountains and his house. He liked walking along the Farmer’s Canal. With the Spring thaw, it was bubbling with water.

  Less than fifty feet from his back gate, Chase paused. Only his eyeballs moved in small arcs trying to pick up whatever it was that had alerted him. When he’d come on active duty, the last of the Vietnam veterans still populated the senior officer and enlisted ranks of Special Forces. One of them, his first team sergeant, Dave Riley, had taught Chase a very important lesson about sixth sense. He’d told Chase to trust any feeling of danger or misgiving he ever had, regardless if he could find a source for it. Right now, the hairs on the back of Chase’s neck were standing straight out, but he couldn’t see anything unusual in the dark shadows in the alley. All he could hear was the water in the Canal going by. A slight breeze picked up now and then, lightly flowing over his exposed skin.

  He still didn’t move. Then he finally noticed something. The light on the back porch was out. Chase was sure it had been on when he left. The bulb could have burnt out. While he was trailing Sylvie home. Right.

  Someone was out there in the darkness. Chase could sense the presence, a blacker hole in the shadows.

  Another thing his senses had noticed but his mind had been slow on finally registered-- Astral hadn’t made a noise.

  Chase finally moved, sliding his left hand inside his jacket and retrieving the Glock 10mm. He felt exposed and vulnerable, but if whoever was out there had wanted to shoot him at a distance, the final curtain would have been pulled minutes ago.

  Chase very slowly knelt down, weapon ready. Then he lay down, feeling the dirt under him. There was the slightest noise-- cloth rustling about forty-five feet down the alley, slightly past the back gate. Chase aimed in that direction and waited. A tiny glint, the distant streetlight reflecting off metal. Chase’s finger curled around the trigger. It could have been a garbage can or debris. It also could have been a gun or knife.

  The seconds ticked into minutes. Chase didn’t move and was faced with the uncertainty of whether whoever was out there was moving. Either coming toward Chase, which would be bad, or moving away, which wasn’t good but not as bad.

  Or being still just like he was, waiting for Chase to screw up and move first.

  Or maybe there was no one out there. The cloth could have been the breeze on a rag. The metal a piece of garbage. The light bulb could have actually burnt out. Light bulbs did burn out every so often. The presence he’d thought he felt might have been just that-- a fabrication of his severely over-taxed and tired mind.

  A car rolled up eighth. Chase shut his eyes to avoid having what night vision he did have from being damaged by even the periphery of the car’s headlights as it passed the end of the alley.

  It was chilly, the warmth of the sun long gone, the cold air blowing in from the Rockies. Chase had dressed for the swinger’s club, not a standoff in an alley. He was dead tired, not having had more than a handful of hours of sleep in the past week. His fun meter was definitely pegged out.

  Chase didn’t move.

  He estimated he had been lying down for over thirty minutes. He blinked, trying to clear the haze that exhaustion was scrolling across his eyes. He scanned the dark in short arcs, concentrating off-center of his focus, where the night vision was slightly better. There was a bush next to the gate. Two trees opposite the gate, overhanging the Canal.

  Another car went by.

  Forty-five minutes. He was cold through and through, his skin, his muscles, his bones all telling his mind that he needed to go inside and get warm. Only fifty feet away was a hot shower.

  Chase blinked his eyes open. Scrunched his face to stay awake. He’d seen men on winter warfare training curl up into little balls in the snow and fall asleep, willing to freeze to death than face the difficulties of staying awake when exhausted. He’d eaten instant coffee straight from the small pouch in field rations to stay awake. Whatever it took.

  An hour at least, although he didn’t dare move to check his watch. The gun felt heavy in his left hand. It had to be close to freezing.

  There was no one out there.

  Chase wasn’t even sure he could move. As he began to flex the muscles in his legs, someone stood up from behind the bush. A man, slinking back down the alley toward eighth.

  Chase brought the Glock up to aim.

  His answer was a muzzle flash. The subsonic round from the man’s silenced gun hit just above Chase and to the left, a solid thunk into the plank of the wood fence. Chase rolled right as the muzzle flashed again. He didn’t know where that round went or how many more times the man fired as Chase rolled over the edge of the dirt road, onto the ledge of stones on the edge of the canal and into the freezing water.

  He surfaced, muzzle of the Glock leading the way but there was nothing there. Chase sprinted down the Canal through the waist high water, not caring about stealth any more until he reached where it went under Ninth Street.

  Whoever had shot at him was gone.

  Chase climbed up onto the alley road and slowly walked back home. He opened the back gate and froze.

  Astral’s severed head was on the ground just inside the gate. The small hand ax Chase used to split firewood for Louise lay next to her. Her long collie ears dangled over the torn flesh of her neck. Chase sank to his knees; wet, tired, and dirty, cradling the head in his lap.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chase could tell that Porter picked up on his mood as soon as he slumped down at his desk. His partner had been sitting there sipping on coffee and trying to appear inconspicuous.

  "I'm afraid to ask what happened last night at that club, especially considering the way you look."

  Chase didn't want to talk about the swingers club or his personal life. He didn’t want to talk about anything. He had about an hour of sleep under his belt.

  He’d checked the alley for shell casings and found nothing. That meant the intruder had used a silenced revolver. He knew he should have gone to Louise and told her about Astral. He should have called in the duty lieutenant and reported what happened. But he didn’t give a shit about should-have any more.

  Chase had found the rest of Astral’s body under a bush near the fence. He buried it and the hea
d in the yard, on the edge of his garden. The light bulb above the porch had been unscrewed. He didn’t think the house had been broken into. The head might have been a message and he’d just come down the alley before the intruder could get away. Or whoever it was had been waiting for Chase to get closer to insure the job was done right. A silenced revolver with sub-sonic rounds was inaccurate above twenty feet or so.

  “Chase?” Porter had his hand on Chase’s shoulder.

  Chase shook his head. He’d knelt for a while holding Astral’s head, the water dripping off his clothes making mud in the dirt under his knees, then slowly freezing. When he’d finally staggered to his feet, he’d broken the ice that had frozen his pants to the ground. He was tired, but simmering underneath was anger. He held on to that feeling.

  Chase tried to think of something to say. "Nothing much at the old swingers club other than seeing Linda Watkins there."

  "Linda Watkins of tennis court fame?"

  "None other."

  "Well, that's certainly interesting." Porter didn’t seem very interested in it. He was still staring at Chase hard.

  Chase sat down at his desk. He let go of the coffee mug and pressed his fingers together in front of his face while he spoke to Porter. The pressure helped him focus. "Yes and no. Yes, because now we know where Rachel Stevens spent her last evening and why the coroner found four different DNA types on the sperm inside her. No, because I don't have any leads out of the club to CU or the park where we found the body. There's no immediate connection to her death."

  Chase slowly went through the events of the previous evening with his partner. It reminded him of the debriefing after they brought him out of the induced coma in the hospital in Germany. When he was done, Porter just sat and looked at Chase for a while. Then he surprised Chase. "What happened between you and Sylvie?"

  "What?"

  Porter leaned forward and lowered his voice so it wouldn't be heard at any of the other desks in the office. "Something's wrong, Chase, and it just isn’t this case. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but even I can figure out that if it isn't the case then it must be something else. Now, I know it isn't my business to get involved in your personal life, but I think you need to talk to someone."

  Chase wouldn’t have known where to begin. Getting shot at last night? Burying Astral’s severed head and body? Fortin threatening him? Two unknown thugs threatening him? His wife divorcing him? His mother dying while he was deployed and her strange letter?

  "Sylvie and I broke up." To Chase that sounded real stupid. Like he was in high school, she was the head cheerleader, and he was the star quarterback. They were a long way from those days.

  "She didn't like going there with you?"

  "No. That wasn't it." So Chase took twenty minutes of the taxpayers' time to explain his personal problem to my partner.

  When he was done, Porter got up, went over to the machine, got them both fresh coffees and came back. Chase took that as a sign that his partner was really concerned. Porter handed him a coffee. "It's what I said to you the other night, Chase. You got to figure out where you're at and who you are and be satisfied with it."

  "Yeah. I know."

  Porter leaned forward. "How come you never brought Sylvie over to meet Mary and the kids?"

  "I know you've invited us, but I really didn't think Mary would want to meet her."

  Porter got angry then which surprised Chase. "Don't give me this shit, Chase. You're the one with the problem with Sylvie. Not Mary and not me."

  "I don't have a problem with her. I'm the one dating her." Was, Chase thought as soon as the words left his mouth.

  "You're not dating her, Chase. You don't ever take her anywhere. She's part of your life like a six-pack of beer and a bag of chips." Porter shook his head and went back over to the coffee machine.

  Chase realized that even Porter saw it. No matter what arguments Chase used, it came back to the point Sylvie had made last night. He did think less of her because of what she did for a living, same as he had his mother. The problem was that he felt less about himself by affiliation and that was wrong.

  Chase didn't think he could talk about this with Porter. Basically, he didn't want to admit how attracted and repelled he was about her stripping. Not the physical aspect, but the strength it had taken for her to do it when she'd hit her own bottom. That took more guts than he'd displayed. And it was his problem now, not hers.

  Plus there was the aspect of his childhood and his mother and the father he’d never met, but who had loomed over his entire life. A lot of Freudian shit even Porter wouldn’t want to touch. Porter had politely left Chase to his thoughts, and he must have figured he’d pushed as hard as he could, because he changed the subject completely. "So, you didn't get any tie in with Hatcher last night at that club?"

  Chase snapped back to attention. It was time to focus on Rachel. He wanted very much to find her killer. A person shouldn't get killed just because they wanted more and went about it in the wrong way. Or in what society said was the wrong way.

  Also, Chase didn’t want to deal with whoever had killed his neighbor’s dog quite yet. He figured it had to be one of two groups-- Fortin or Baldie and Muscles, and he was still trying to track the latter down.

  "No. I don't think Hatcher was ever there. What did surveillance get last night on him?"

  Porter poked at a single piece of paper on his desk. "Nothing. Left work. Stopped at a Minute Mart, a video store and went home. Didn't leave all night. I need to get over to CU soon to relieve Jameson. What are you going to do?"

  Chase grabbed the Book of Rachel. "I'm going to start over."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm going to go through everything I've got in the book. Now that I know who Rachel Stevens was and what she was doing that night, I need to put everything I have in perspective."

  Porter shrugged. He preferred the street. Chase preferred his file folders. "All right. Have a good time. You know where I'll be."

  Before Chase did anything else, though, he picked up the phone. He dialed Louise’s number.

  “Visions,” she answered the name of her psychic group.

  “Louise, its Chase.”

  There was a moment of silence. “You’ve seen Astral haven’t you?” Her voice was sharp, not the usual flighty discourse he was used to from her.

  “Yes, she--”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I’m sorry, Louise.”

  “I told you to be careful, Chase.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to catch who did it?”

  Chase wondered how much she knew. He decided to start being honest. “I don’t know, Louise. I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

  “Chase, you have to open your eyes and see all that surrounds you.”

  “I will,” Chase promised.

  “The universe is a strange place. There are connections, forces beyond what is apparent.”

  “I know.”

  “And Chase?” Her voice changed once more. Now it was quivering and sad, as if she was going to start crying at any second.

  “Yes?”

  “Did she suffer?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not good at lying even though you think you are. We’ll mourn, and then we’ll go to the pound. You and I. You need a dog too. I have a friend who works there. She’ll find us someone special.”

  Chase apologized once more and hung up. He left his desk and went to the briefing room, shutting the noise of the office out. He pulled all the folders out and laid them on the table. Then he went to the blackboard and started diagramming, like he used to in Isolation before going on a mission.

  In the center, he put Rachel Stevens. Around her, he put all the people who had a role in her life and all the places. Under each, he summarized what that person had said about her. Under each place, he put the way she had acted. Then under her name, he put the way he thought she truly had been.

  Then
he sat at the table and stared at it for a long time. There were several common threads. The two places that stood out were CU and the North Denver Social Club. The two people who had known her best at each place were Gavin and Linda Watkins.

  They'd both agreed on one thing: Rachel Stevens had been smart and determined. Now Chase could add in the factor that she'd wanted more out of life.

  Chase stared at the line between the two places for a long time. Something was wrong there. That was a contradiction. No. Not a contradiction, but an anomaly. One took away from the other. By going to the swingers club, Rachel had cut class. Yet Linda Watkins, and her professors, had said Rachel was going to get A's in both her courses. How does a person get an A when they missed one third of their classes? Was there more going on between Rachel and Gavin than appeared on the surface?

  It was a long shot. Chase grabbed the phone and called Gavin’s office. The professor was out. Chase ended up talking to some graduate student. He got to the point quickly.

  "How many A's does Professor Gavin give out in his classes?"

  There was a choking noise, which Chase guessed might have been a laugh. "Few and far between. He's one of the hardest graders in the department."

  "What do you think the chances are of someone who misses a third of his classes getting an A?"

  The student laughed again. "Impossible. Gavin doesn't even use the text. Everything on his tests comes from his class lectures. If you don't have good notes, you're sunk."

  Chase thanked the student and hung up. He left the briefing room and went down to the evidence holding area. The clerk got Chase the box with Rachel's stuff. He pulled out her notebook, signed for it, and took it back upstairs.

  Chase flipped it open. Rachel's handwriting was very neat and precise. The contents were a model of efficiency. She had everything blocked out with headings highlighted and key points starred. Chase continued turning the pages until he got to the first date she had missed class that semester: the 29th of January.