Unquiet Ghosts

by Glenn Meade

  The stairway led up about a hundred steps to the bridge. A few boats were berthed along the far bank, and I could hear the roar of the lake, the sluice gates open, a thick waterfall gushing into the other side of the dam.

  Jack gestured with the gun. “Move up the steps.”

  It occurred to me that he may have left a boat berthed on the lakeshore, on the other side of the bridge. “Please . . . Jack . . .”

  He pushed me, and I led the way up the stairs. Jack grunted with effort as he climbed the metal steps, and I thought he might collapse, but somehow he managed to summon the strength to keep going, and we reached the top.

  Traffic roared across the bridge as we kept moving. We were halfway across the walkway when we heard the banshee scream of police sirens. Jack froze. A hundred fifty yards away, two sheriff’s cars came speeding down the far side of the bridge, the direction we were headed. More sirens, and another sheriff’s deputy roared up behind us, on the near end of the bridge. The vehicles skidded to a halt, and police uniforms climbed out, waving all bridge traffic to a stop. In the distance, I heard the sound of helicopter blades. Tanner staggered from the rear of the last car, wielding his gun.

  Then I saw Courtney clamber out from the other side of the car. She was armed and pointed her gun toward me as she shouted something to Tanner. Courtney’s buddy Sergeant Stone and Tanner’s sober-faced sidekick joined them.

  We were trapped—no way out. If Jack had a boat berthed on the far side of the lakeshore, he couldn’t reach it now. All the life seemed to go out of him, and his body sagged.

  Every siren died, and then there was only the thunderous sound of the powerful jets of water gushing through the dam’s sluices. Jack lurched against the walkway railing. He seemed in pain. I reached out to help him, but he waved me away with his gun.

  “That was dumb of you, getting the cops involved—real dumb. I didn’t come to harm you.”

  He slumped back against the railing. Blood dripped from his wound.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I came to save you. Save you from what’s about to happen . . .”

  And then his left hand reached up, and he tore off the mask.

  47

  * * *

  I opened my mouth for a scream, but it stuck in my throat.

  The face I saw was disfigured. The left side was covered by a prosthetic made of some kind of flesh-colored latex. His neck was badly scarred. The man had once suffered horrific injuries or burns. He didn’t look like Jack. Or if he was Jack, the injuries made him unrecognizable.

  That’s when I noticed that the leather glove on the man’s left hand was folded down a little at the wrist. I recognized a tattoo—the American eagle in red and black—and I felt totally bewildered.

  “If you and your family want to live, you’d better listen.” His hoarse voice burned with pain. “Don’t, and I guarantee you’re all dead.”

  Farther along the bridge, I glimpsed Tanner grabbing an electric bullhorn as he and the deputies moved toward us. Courtney was right beside him, both hands on her gun.

  I met the intruder’s laser gaze, but then his eyes began to swim, to lose focus.

  I felt a welter of shock and confusion. That was Jack’s tattoo on the back of the man’s hand. He had the same physique, the same cocky walk. He saw me stare at the tattoo.

  “You really thought I was Jack, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jack’s alive, all right. Alive and kicking. You can bet on it.”

  I stared back at him.

  “He and I go back a long ways. Jack’s a born survivor. But you need to do yourself a favor and forget about him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  The disfigured face looked grotesque. I could imagine that hideous wounds lay beneath the prosthetic mask.

  “Let’s just say I’m returning a favor. Know what you’re dealing with here? Powerful, desperate people.”

  He snapped his fingers, a weak gesture that barely made a sound. “Anger them, and they wouldn’t give it a second thought to snuff out your life and the lives of every living person you love. Kill them, just like that.”

  His body swayed, and crimson droplets spattered the ground at his feet. “When I saw the TV news and heard they’d found the pilot’s body and no one else, I figured there was a chance Jack had made it. As sure as snakes crawl, Jack’s going to come out of the woodwork and try to contact you. Once he knows you’re aware that he’s not dead, that’s a certainty.”

  “Why would he contact me?”

  Behind him, I saw Courtney, Tanner, and the armed cops clamber up the metal steps, two of them aiming rifles. I looked over my left shoulder. The other armed cops threaded their way along the far walkway. We were hemmed in on both sides.

  “No time to explain. But do yourself a favor. Keep as far away from Jack as you can. You’re chasing a ghost, even if he did survive.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “And my children?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Why did you break into the cottage?”

  “I didn’t break in. You’ve got the wrong man, lady.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t get any of this.”

  “You don’t have to. Just pay attention to what I say. Your old life with Jack, it’s over, done with. Be happy with what you’ve got.”

  He moved toward the cascading water. We were at least a hundred feet up, and water churned wildly below the dam. If he jumped, he could kill himself. The cops and Courtney aimed their firearms.

  “Why did you come to warn me? Who are you?”

  “You don’t need to know that, either.”

  Tanner’s voice roared on the megaphone, “This is Agent Tanner, FBI. Put down the gun. Put it down now, and no one will get hurt.”

  The man ignored the command and climbed over the metal railing, holding on with one hand. He looked back at me, with a weird kind of resignation. And then—then he actually smiled, holding the gun, his palm up, showing it to me. “I brought this along hoping it would scare you into seeing sense. But now it’s got another purpose. So long, Kath.”

  The pistol came up, and the barrel slipped into his mouth. He squeezed the trigger. His skull jerked back as it exploded, and his body toppled into the deluge of dam water below.

  I screamed.

  48

  * * *

  It took twenty minutes to retrieve the body.

  It disappeared into the churning water, until the cops spotted it floating a hundred yards from the dam. Two of them ran to the marina to commandeer a boat.

  Courtney stayed beside me, holding my hand, trying to calm me down. “Take deep breaths. In and out. That’s it, honey. Get that pulse down.”

  By the time the paramedics and the fire tender arrived, the cops had returned with the body aboard a boat. Courtney and I watched from fifty yards back as they laid it on the shoreline. I saw Tanner kneel and search through the man’s pockets.

  Courtney moved to join him. “Hang in there. I’ll be back, OK?”

  I nodded, still shaking.

  A sheriff’s deputy did another search of the man’s clothes, and then a paramedic placed a brown blanket over the corpse. Tanner and Courtney came back to join me.

  Tanner said, “Dead as old wood. Can’t expect much else when you blow a chunk out of your skull.”

  “What about ID?”

  Courtney shook her head. “He’s carrying none.”

  “You look pretty shaken,” Tanner remarked.

  I stared down at my trembling hands. “Someone shooting himself in the head right in front of you isn’t exactly an everyday event.”

  “Yeah, it freaked me out, too. Think you could tell us what happened, right from the top?”

  Courtney
and Tanner listened, Tanner gazing out at the water as I told them, as if he had difficulty taking it all in. “Weird. And you’re certain you never saw the guy before?”

  “Never. But from the way he spoke, he seemed to know me. I . . .” I looked to Courtney. “I thought he was Jack. That he was going to kill me.”

  Tanner stared back at the blanket-covered body. “Yeah, and instead he killed himself. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But there’s always got to be a reason.”

  “This morning, I got the feeling I was being followed. A dark-­colored SUV and a metallic-gray van tailed my car. The van had what looked like a couple of antennas on top and a satellite dish. It looked like some kind of communications vehicle. It could have been my imagination playing tricks on me, but I thought I was being followed.”

  “Where was this?”

  “On I-75.”

  “How long were you followed?”

  “Hard to tell. Maybe twenty minutes the first time. No more than a few minutes the second time.”

  “What were you doing out on I-75 at the time, ma’am?”

  “Running errands.”

  Tanner gave Courtney a look as they seemed to consider my answers, and then his eyes met mine. “We’d like you to take another look at the man, Ms. Kelly. Or would that be asking too much?”

  * * *

  The paramedics were stashing away their equipment, and Tanner nodded to one of the deputies, who pulled back the blanket.

  The man’s face was grotesquely distorted, the bullet hole drilled out near the top of his skull. The prosthesis was tilted askew, exposing an ugly hollow in the face. Gruesome scarring stretched from the left side of the man’s forehead down to his jaw.

  I put a hand to my mouth. “Oh, my God.”

  I was trying not to gag. There was hardly any blood after he’d been in the water, and the electronic voice box was still strapped to his neck. I saw a spider’s web of thick scarring on the man’s throat.

  Tanner said, “Freaked me out, what happened back at the farm. Couldn’t figure it out at first.”

  He took out his camera phone, tilting his head as he stared down at the guy. “I’m guessing mid- to late forties. Somewhere along the line, he suffered pretty severe wounds to his face and neck, which probably damaged his vocal cords.”

  He leaned forward and clicked off a half dozen or more shots of the man’s face from different angles with his camera phone. Courtney did the same with her own. When she finished, she noticed me staring at the tattoo on the man’s left wrist, the leather glove peeled back. We exchanged looks.

  “What is it?” Tanner said

  “Jack . . . Jack had an eagle tattoo on his left wrist.”

  “Any other noticeable marks?”

  “Some scarring on his right arm below the elbow.”

  Tanner pulled away part of the right glove and the man’s jacket sleeve. I saw severe scarring.

  “I don’t remember Jack having as much scarring. This seems a lot worse.”

  Tanner took more shots of the tattoo and the scars, and then he stood, scratching his jaw. “But you’re pretty sure your husband’s tattoo was exactly the same?”

  “It looks to be.”

  “But he ain’t Jack, for sure?”

  “No.”

  Tanner positioned himself, then snapped a couple of close-ups of the tattoo and several more shots of the man’s face from different angles. “Apart from who he is, the humdinger question is, why’d he show up like he did?”

  Courtney added, “What was his motive? Easy to understand why he covered his face—it would have frightened the bejeepers out of you if he came knocking on your door. But then so would a black mask.”

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m totally lost.”

  Tanner stared into my face. “You’re absolutely sure you never saw him before, Ms. Kelly?”

  “I’ve no reason to lie, Tanner.”

  “Never said you did.” He held out a hand to touch the grass and balanced himself as he rose. “We’ll see what his prints and photos turn up.”

  “Tanner, I think Kath needs to get home,” Courtney said. “She’s pretty shaken.”

  “One other thing, Ms. Kelly. The cottage looked like it was ransacked.”

  “Was it?”

  “You know anything about that?”

  “No. It was broken into years ago. We just left it as it was.”

  “Anything in there that someone might want?”

  “No, nothing. Just clothes and old junk.” I tried to look confused. I felt uncertain whether to tell the truth. What if that had been Jack? So I decided to play dumb.

  Tanner looked at my hands, still trembling. “We can do a prints check, but the intruder was wearing gloves, so that may get us nowhere. That’s if he did ransack the place.”

  “Are we done, Agent Tanner?”

  “Not quite. We can take a statement on the way. And we need to talk about your husband’s secret life.”

  “Secret life?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got an air crash he disappears from with your kids. Next thing, out of nowhere, a stranger shows up at your home and ends up killing himself with a bullet to the head. But first he warns you that your life is in danger if your husband shows up. That you need to back off and forget you ever had a husband and kids. Kinda weird, don’t you think?”

  I put my fingers to my lips, felt them quiver with shock.

  Tanner stared at me. “Then there are the contents of the aluminum case.” He waited, his eyes searching my face, as if he was half expecting me to know what the case contained.

  “What was in it?”

  Tanner gave Courtney a look, then focused back on me. “We’ll get to that. It’s kind of bizarre, to say the least.”

  His mouth pursed, and his bottom lip curled, exposing the shiny flesh. “Ms. Kelly, I’ve been in law enforcement in some form or another for almost two decades. If all that ain’t telling me the guy you married had a hidden life, I don’t know what would.”

  His stare never left my face. “You ask me, your husband’s been keeping some big secrets from you for years.”

  49

  * * *

  I saw five sheriff’s cars parked at the curb when we reached my street.

  As we passed the entrance to a lakeside walkway that ran by my dad’s property, I noticed a black Explorer was about to be raised onto a tow truck, supervised by a couple of deputies.

  The woods around the house were being searched by more deputies. Neighbors’ kids rode by on their bikes, craning to look at all the activity. A scattering of reporters hung around, and two news vans plus a bunch of other cars were parked on the street.

  Courtney sat beside me, and Tanner was in the front passenger seat.

  Baby-faced Sergeant Stone and the serious Agent Breedon were in a car behind us.

  As we approached, Tanner said, “Sit back and keep your head down, Ms. Kelly. We’ll stop briefly while I find out what’s been happening, and then we’ll take the private back road to your place.”

  We pulled up near the tow truck, and Tanner climbed out. “Let me go check things out.”

  Courtney patted my hand. “I’d better go join him. Try to keep it together, honey. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Thanks, Courtney.”

  “You bet.”

  She hugged me and climbed out after Tanner. They walked close together, Courtney’s head leaning in, as if they were whispering.

  I sank lower in the seat so no one could see me, but then I realized the Dodge had rear tinted windows and there was probably no need. Yellow police tape kept the media way back. Tanner went over to the sheriff’s deputies and walked around the black Explorer. He peered inside and into the cargo area before they lifted the vehicle onto the tow truck.

  I sat there waiting,
the media too far away to spot me. What I couldn’t help thinking about—all that kept rattling around in my head—were Tanner’s words: “You ask me, your husband’s been keeping some big secrets from you for years.”

  I was convinced Tanner was right.

  But what secrets?

  I looked at my watch. Jack was due to call at two p.m. It was 1:36.

  Twenty-four minutes. Would Courtney and Tanner be gone by then? I had to make sure. I couldn’t risk them even suspecting that I was talking with Jack. Tanner and Courtney strolled back together and climbed into the Dodge.

  “Did they find any clues in the Explorer?”

  Courtney shook her head. “Nothing that jumps out, but forensics is still working it.”

  Tanner tapped the sheriff’s deputy in the driver’s seat. “Take the next turn right.”

  As we drove, Tanner said, “We’re having the pilot, Felipe Hernandez, checked out. His parents are dead, but he’s got a half brother living in Boca Raton, Florida. He’ll give us a blood sample for a DNA comparison.”

  “Could his brother help in any way?”

  “He claims they hadn’t seen much of each other in the years before the crash but they still kept in touch. He said Felipe was just a normal guy, loved flying, and loved working on the corporate aircraft. It was his dream job after he left the military. Hernandez had no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. He was a reputable, upstanding guy.”

  Courtney said, “We’re going over Hernandez’s file from the last investigation after the flight disappeared, in case there’s anything we missed. And we’ll talk again with his half brother.”

  The front door of the farmhouse was open, and a white van was parked in the driveway. A guy in a white forensics suit and wearing surgical gloves was taking something out to the van.