The Lost

by Vicki Pettersson

  “I know,” Grif managed this time.

  “Well, finally. Something you know.” Evie’s skull tilted like it might fall from her neck, yet her grip tightened. “Come on, lover. Let’s go die so you can get on with your new life.”

  And she pushed him hard, shoving him through the bungalow door, back into the trajectory of the past where a man waited with a knife destined for Grif’s gut. Back where another held a vase meant to shatter his skull. And back to where a Centurion would soon arrive to wheel him through the cold, unyielding Universe to his lonely post in the Everlast.

  And knowing all of this, as he hadn’t the first time, Grif cried out for Kit.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kit had fallen asleep in her favorite spot, the warm, welcoming niche where Grif’s shoulder met his side, nestling in so tightly against him the spattering of hair on his chest moved against her cheek like whispers. Then he tensed beside her. Not again, she thought, immediately awake. But he cried out his dead wife’s name, and it entered their bedchamber like a thief.

  “No, Evie!”

  This time Kit hesitated in reaching for him.

  Lost is just the opposite of Chosen. And who has ever really chosen you, Katherine?

  Scratch had known exactly where to strike, she thought. She couldn’t let the fallen angel’s words alter her actions. “Grif, baby. Wake up!”

  And so it went, as before. Grif was consumed with guilt, over the past and what he was putting Kit through, too. She tried to reassure him, and thought she’d done a good job, but when he settled again, his back was to her, and he was curled up, as if afraid he might injure her more.

  Kit didn’t sleep. Instead, she watched Grif, and tried to bring back the image of his brow cleared of worry—because of her. She reimagined his breath, deep and strong. She comforted herself that even rousing from his nightmares, it was Kit he’d search out upon waking. She gave him release and contentment. Not like those furry-winged angels . . . those so-called Pures.

  And not some dead woman whose ghost just wouldn’t let go.

  That’s not fair, Kit chided herself, brushing back the hair from his forehead. It wasn’t Evelyn Shaw’s fault that she’d been murdered back in 1960. Kit could feel no less horror at that than she did at Jeap Yang’s death, or Jeannie’s and Tim’s, or that of anyone who was taken before their time.

  Yet Grif had escorted many souls to the Everlast, and had never chased down their murderers . . . not the way he was doggedly chasing Evie’s. That was the difference, and though it shouldn’t matter, she couldn’t help but wonder what he’d choose if given the chance. This lifetime with her?

  Or forever with his first wife, Evelyn Shaw?

  “How the hell do I compete with a woman who is fifty years dead?” she whispered, before unconsciousness finally claimed her again.

  In daylight, she shored herself up again by perfecting her pin curls and coloring her lips so red they screamed. Grif appeared fine. Neither of them mentioned his nocturnal visitor. They made small talk over breakfast, then left the house—partners in every way.

  For now, the investigation involving dead junkies, the Russian mafia, and Cuban street thugs was Dennis’s domain. Kit had called him upon waking, and told him about Grif’s meeting with Yulyia Kolyadenko, though she left out the part where the woman had propositioned Grif. Truth was, Kit was trying so hard not to envision the gorgeous, powerful woman keying in on her man that she almost forgot to tell Dennis about the woman who did need mention. The one hooking the tweekers on the krokodil in the first place.

  “She goes by the name of Bella,” she told Dennis, as she pulled her car into the scarred lot of Vegas’s oldest park.

  “How do you know that?” Dennis asked. Kit waved away Grif’s impatient growl as she tucked the phone beneath her ear and shoulder, and locked her car.

  “Jeannie Holmes’s mother,” Kit lied, finally lifting the phone with one hand and taking Grif’s hand with the other. It was in the high nineties, hot and dry, but not as brutal as it would be by summer’s end, so Kit counted it as cool. “It’s close to the name Trey Brunk was trying to recall.”

  “Her memory is undoubtedly better than his, too,” Dennis said, and sighed. “I’ll follow up with her later today.”

  Kit said nothing. The last thing she needed was for Dennis to catch her out in a lie, so she made a mental note to contact Jann first. She needed to offer her condolences over Jeannie’s death anyway. She only wished there was a way to assure her that her daughter was in a better place.

  “Hey,” she asked Dennis, “have you checked the pharmacies and hospitals to see if any bulk amount of codeine went MIA?”

  “First thing,” Dennis said, and Kit deflated a bit. “I’m thinking it’d be too much for a pharmacy heist. Plus, all hospital drugs are logged, computerized, and locked tight. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’d be hard to make off with an entire cache of codeine without raising some notice.”

  “What if you were a doctor?”

  “Tough, even if you were the hospital director,” Dennis returned. “My hunch is the drugs were procured over time, in smaller increments.”

  “Well, I have an idea,” Kit said, “but I don’t have the resources to follow it.”

  “Something you can’t do?” Dennis huffed over the line. “Please, tell me.”

  “Check with the gang unit. Just see if any of the old Mariel families have someone working in the hospitals or pharmacies. Particularly Marco Baptista’s gang.”

  Alarm popped in his voice. “Have you been researching Baptista?”

  Kit winced. She still hadn’t mentioned to him the run-in in Little Havana. “I’d start with records and administration,” she said, trying to deflect. “Maybe H.R.”

  “Stay away from him, Kit.” The alarm was gone, this was pure warning from Dennis the cop, not her friend. Halting beneath an overgrown pine, Kit tracked a couple of ducks that’d strayed from the pond, but she didn’t really see them. She was remembering Baptista’s cold stare, and shivered despite the heat of the day.

  “Shoulda told me that earlier, Dennis.”

  A hissed curse came over the line, followed by a deep sigh. “I shoulda known better when you were popping off about the Marielitos at the burlesque show.”

  “Just be careful,” she told him.

  “Follow your own advice,” he shot back, and the line went dead.

  Kit sighed as she put the phone away. “He’s mad.”

  “He should be,” Grif said as they crossed a vast expanse of turf frying under the full Vegas sun. “You’re a damned nosy reporter, and he’s taken a liking to you.”

  Kit looked away. Like a hound, could he sniff out the other man’s interest now that he considered her his marked property? She hoped not. Evie’s ghost shadowing their relationship was already problematic enough.

  “You don’t think the Russians are distributing the krokodil,” Grif said, having overheard the conversation.

  “I think it’s someone who wants to make it look like the Russians,” she said, as they crossed the sprawling park. But she couldn’t prove it. She certainly couldn’t go to the police and paper—or even say to Grif—that her biggest hunch that the Cubans were setting the Russians up was based on a pair of earrings. “And Bella is a much more common name in the Hispanic community.”

  They made their way from shady tree to shady tree until the large pond came into view. “I don’t know, Kit. The old-school Marielitos are toughs, no doubt, but I was thinking on this, too, and I just can’t see them releasing this drug into their own community. Do you really think they’d allow their own kids to rot and die just to see the Kolyadenkos go down?”

  Kit shook her head. “They weren’t their own kids. Jeannie Holmes and Tim Kovacs were as white-bread as they come. Even Jeap was considered an outsider. And, yes, I think they’d see the lives of a few junkie kids as a small price to pay to own the bulk of the drug activity in this city.”

  Grif mulle
d it over as they headed toward the man-made pond. The park had been built before water restrictions were placed on the valley, and the recreation department was possessively hanging on to every blade of grass—no matter how brown and matted it might be. Grif—already sweating and less sanguine about the heat—angled her toward the shade of a tree that had been growing there for at least as long as he’d been dead.

  “Look,” Kit said, pointing at a woman walking on the other side of the pond. The woman’s back was to them as she made her way toward a shaded concrete bench, but Kit was still sure. They’d followed the woman from the home that was Mary Margaret’s last known address.

  “That don’t look like Mary Margaret,” Grif grumbled, pushing from the tree to join her side.

  “She was twelve when you last saw her,” Kit reminded him.

  “This isn’t ever going to work,” Grif said, trailing her. “It’s nutso.”

  “I’m walking next to an angelic human,” Kit returned wryly. “My definition of crazy is more expansive than it once was.”

  “I’m not talking about you,” Grif said. “I’m talking about little Mary Margaret.”

  “And Mary Margaret isn’t little anymore,” Kit pointed out, walking faster as they rounded the pond. “She’s a sixty-two-year-old, rather mentally disturbed woman.”

  Grif wrinkled his nose. “She’d have to be, to believe in . . . what was it?”

  “Hypnosis. And it doesn’t matter what you think of it,” she went on before he could speak. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “And you do?”

  “Of course not.” Kit’s sidelong glance was askew. “But Mary Margaret doesn’t know that. Plus, she’s on medication, which she mixes with alcohol, and she’s also had psychotic breakdowns in the past.”

  “So we’re messing with the mind of a severely compromised mental patient.”

  “No, we’re just easing her into a new reality,” Kit reasoned. “Besides, you want to see a real mental breakdown, show up on her doorstep looking exactly as you did when she last saw you fifty years ago. An attempt at hypnotism—even if I don’t know the first thing about it—will be far easier for her to grasp than your fallen angel act.”

  And, finally, he had nothing to say to that.

  Despite the heat, and the sweat already popping on her forehead, Kit linked her arm through Grif’s as they rounded the pond’s west end. “Look, she’s already haunted, Grif. The drugs, the alcohol, the institutional stays prove that. Maybe being visited by a literal blast from her past will be just the thing she needs to help her move on.”

  They paused next to a palm tree with shedding fronds, and Kit squinted at the place she’d last seen the retreating woman. There was no one else out, given the strength of the midday sun, but yes, there she was. Sitting on the shaded bench, feeding the squabbling ducks from a bread bag.

  “Stay here. Make sure she doesn’t see you.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Grif called after her, but Kit was already on her way.

  No, Kit thought as she trudged toward the woman, donning vintage shades against the onslaught of the sun. There was nothing at all to like about this situation, but it wasn’t as though they had a lot of options. Mary Margaret was the only person who might remember the lives and deaths of Griffin and Evie Shaw.

  The thought made Kit’s heart pick up speed. It was the first time she had met someone from Grif’s first life. What if all Mary Margaret recalled was how perfect he and Evie were together? How much he’d loved his wife? Grif didn’t need the reminder, and Kit didn’t want it, but she’d risk it if it meant he could finally move on.

  Trying to look casual, Kit crossed directly in front of the woman, and drew her own loaf of bread from her raffia handbag. She felt the woman’s gaze on her as she unwound the twist tie, and dipped inside. Some of the ducks branched off from the gaggle surrounding Mary Margaret’s bench to see if what Kit was proffering was any better. It was merely different, but they were ducks. They didn’t care.

  A voice finally said, “Why are you dressed that way?”

  Kit glanced over to find the woman frowning at her. She was wearing either short capris or long shorts, with a sleeveless blouse that showed pale, freckled arms. The gray in her undyed hair frizzed around her face, lying damp on her neck, and deep lines fanned at the corner of squinting dark eyes. Kit smiled, despite the censure in the woman’s voice. It was definitely Mary Margaret. “What way?”

  “Like that,” Mary Margaret said, jerking her head at Kit’s swooping skirt. “Like the women used to dress in the fifties. I haven’t seen a dress like that since I was a little girl.”

  “The good ones are practically impossible to find. I made this one myself from an old Butterick pattern. I’ve always wanted one in cream,” Kit said, as though they were best girlfriends, then shrugged. “But I’m rockabilly. That’s what we do, how we live.”

  Mary Margaret wrinkled her nose. “What do you mean, ‘rockabilly’? Like . . . Elvis Presley?”

  Nodding, Kit tore up another slice of the bread she’d just bought. “It’s a subculture. It originally grew out of love for the music, but we also celebrate the fashion and the cars and the homes . . . the whole lifestyle, really, of the mid-twentieth century.”

  Now Mary Margaret was looking at Kit like she was crazy. “Why?”

  Kit was equally puzzled why someone would wear a pair of shoes as ugly as Crocs in public, but she was also used to people questioning her fashion choices. “Because it’s fun to live nostalgically.”

  Mary Margaret’s frown deepened as she held out a piece of bread to the duck closest to her feet. “I don’t think it’s fun,” she said, as the duck tore at the bread and backed away. “I think the past is full of pain.”

  Kit dipped into her bag again. “I guess I just like to dream about how it used to be back when the world didn’t move so fast. Before there were computers and cell phones and fast food on every corner. The world was a simpler place then. Kinda like this place.” She squinted up into the vast baby-blue sky. “Peaceful.”

  Mary Margaret scoffed. “You’re dreaming, girl. It wasn’t simpler. It was as hot and hard and mean as any time since.”

  Kit said nothing for a while, just let the chasm between her worldview and Mary Margaret’s widen in the silence. She waited until the woman had balled up the empty plastic bag, slipped it back in her purse, and was readying to stand.

  “You’re probably right,” Kit said, sighing. “But I’m also a hypnotist, so it helps to be a dreamer. It’s easier to get people to let go and travel in their minds if I remain flexible in mine.”

  She nodded to herself as she tossed a sliver of bread as far as she could, watching the two largest ducks race for the prize. “I’ve been told that it’s easier for people to let go of their inhibitions and fears with me than any other hypnotherapist they’ve visited. I take them back in time and help them see what happened with new eyes. Some of my patients go back so deeply that I can almost see what they’re talking about, exactly as they do—what used to be, what was supposed to be, and . . . well, now I’m bragging. Sorry.”

  “No,” Mary Margaret said, sitting again. “Go on.”

  Kit flipped her hair back over her shoulder, and said, “Well, I just think that there’s real value in reflecting on the past. Honor what came before, and you’re better able to face what comes next. Or so I’ve seen in my work.”

  The skepticism returned. “And how much does it cost to get hypnotized?”

  “It varies.” Kit emptied the crumbs from her bread bag onto the bank, then gave Mary Margaret a full smile as she joined her on the bench. The woman stiffened, but slid over after another moment. “I only charge full price for those with insurance. Otherwise I meet people where they’re at. So I’ll do a session in a person’s home, if they want, and let them pay what they can. In the end, we’re each better off for the experience. Sometimes I even do it for free.”

  “Nobody does anything for free,
” Mary Margaret said, her voice so hollow that Kit felt a skein of guilt weave its way through her chest. But the real harm had already been done in Mary Margaret’s life. Kit and Grif might be mining it, but they weren’t adding to it.

  Shrugging, Kit stood. “It’s an honor to be able to help others.”

  Waving her farewell, she began walking back the way she’d come, counting down from ten. She’d only reached six before Mary Margaret called out. “Would you work with me?”

  Kit turned, bit her lip, and walked back a few paces. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I’m not like one of those psychics with a neon red palm-reading sign in their window. I don’t regress people for fun. I only work with those who have serious trauma to work through.”

  She turned to leave.

  “I have demons.” The words tumbled out, pitched and hurried. Mary Margaret was standing now, too, and when Kit turned, she was close. “I have things that haunt me when I shut my eyes, and talk to me in my sleep. I know I need to let them go, because my therapist—not one like you, but a real one—she says that’s the only way to truly be free of the past. That otherwise I’m only here part-time, but . . . I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?” Kit asked, drawing closer.

  Mary Margaret tilted her head, and the strong sun reached down to dapple her cheek. “Why does so much of life have to be about letting go?”

  It was a good question. Not just for Mary Margaret or Grif, or anyone haunted by events in their past, but for Kit as well. What was worth hanging on to? What was worth fighting for? What to release? When?

  Kit thought of her father, of Grif and Evie, and then Mary Margaret as well.

  “Will you work with me?” the woman asked again, heat and shade fracturing the pleading expression on her face.

  Kit smiled. She might not yet know what’d happened to her father, and Grif’s feelings for Evie were ultimately out of her control, but maybe she could help this woman see that the past—and letting it go—didn’t have to hurt so damned much.