A Room For The Dead (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 3)

by Noel Hynd

  O'Hara wasn't in love with this line of reasoning, either. It made sense, but its implications were as horrible as the murder itself. It suggested a mistake, and a bad one, by prosecutors and police. He reached to the glass next to him, finished the sour mash, and felt the booze settle within him.

  The Sinatra tape clicked off. “The Chairman of the Board” was gone and O'Hara was alone.

  There was a fourth theory, too, he realized, one that tied back into the first. Dr. Paloheima and his computer were wrong. Jane Doe's wounds and Karen Stoner's wounds were from different hands. O'Hara considered this final notion. He rooted for it.

  O'Hara rose from his bed. He walked to the side window of his bedroom. The night was clear. A bright three-quarter moon. Crisp icy air on hard snow. Moonlight through the bare trees from the surrounding woods.

  O'Hara stared at the darkness and let his thoughts unravel. Once again, he felt the overwhelming urge to go get that bottle of bourbon and really have a go at it. Now that would feel good, particularly under the circumstances.

  He went downstairs and gave in to temptation. But only a little. He poured himself one more shot of Old Crow. He looked for some water to mix with it. Finding none, he didn't bother. Down the hatch, his feet not moving from where he poured his drink. He downed the entire shot.

  He climbed the stairs again, feeling the comfortable glow of the sour mash. There! He felt much, much better now! A real improvement.

  He imagined how much better he'd feel with a fourth shot, just the final measure that he would need to bump him into a state of real relaxation for the evening.

  But he fought off that impulse.

  Instead, he returned to the window and stared at the woods. He enjoyed the grip of that third bourbon and swore that he was finished drinking for the evening.

  His thoughts drifted back to Jane Doe. And Gary. And how seven years ago the case had been pulled away from him on the heels of Carl Reissman's death, pulled away from him before O'Hara could personally convince himself one hundred percent that they had the right man.

  Before he could really put to rest all those unnerving impulses within him that struck a strange echoing chord whenever Gary sounded that familiar theme:

  I'm innocent, man.

  “Hell!” O'Hara muttered. “What if he was?”

  The thought shot a chill through him. The idea gnawed at him, then gripped him much like the bourbon. It had been years since O'Hara had really let the idea come forth from deep in his subconscious.

  Years since he had let it come out where he could really think about it.

  Gary. Innocent.

  “Like hell, Ledbetter was innocent!” he muttered aloud.

  O'Hara knew a killer when he arrested one. Always had, always would. Two decades of police work and he'd never made a mistake. How could he have made such a big one? What about all that evidence? This was crazy to even be thinking about it.

  I'm innocent, man.

  O'Hara exhaled a long tired breath. “Shut up, Gary!” O'Hara snapped. “And get out of my head!”

  Why was he almost fifty years old and still gripped by self-doubt? He was an intelligent professional who had done his job and done it properly.

  Why was he nervous?

  Anxious?

  Scared?

  An alcoholic about to fall back off the wagon?

  “Who? Me?” he asked aloud.

  O'Hara told himself that he would have to talk to Dr. Steinberg again. There was one more cold winter to endure, plus one more big-time murder case. He wanted to graduate from both with his sanity intact, thank you. And he knew he would need Dr. Steinberg's help again.

  Well, hell. That's what she was there for, he told himself. No shame in seeking assistance. The shame was in not seeking help when a man needed it. Just keep up with the visits to Dr. Julie, do what she says and everything will be hunky-dory.

  Right!

  The final shot of booze had now settled comfortably into his blood. Sure as hell, he felt much better. Who said there was anything wrong with two or three shots of liquor to steady a man's nerves?

  Whatever floats your boat, pal!

  There was a foreign voice inside him, one he couldn't control. It was more than his imagination. It was more than his mind wandering. It kept addressing him with slithery suggestions and insinuations. Just like that one. The voice disturbed O'Hara. It had a vaguely mid-southern inflection, he didn't understand its presence, and worst of all, he couldn't shut it off.

  It was one thing, he reasoned, to conjure up an image of Gary and imagine his words. It was quite another to be addressed involuntarily. The voice had a nasty echo of Gary's. O'Hara wished to hell that it would go away.

  Ask yourself, Frank. What is your greatest fear? That you made a big-time boo-boo? That you helped send an innocent man to the electric chair?

  Insane laughter from somewhere.

  Shame, Frank!

  O'Hara remained at the window, trying to ignore the voice, willing it to vanish. He forcibly moved his thoughts in other directions, pondering for example whether to put Sinatra back on or maybe play some Louis Armstrong. Meanwhile, his gaze melted into the darkness beyond his house. He stared at the dark, fingery branches and thin trunks of the naked trees.

  First, he sensed the snow ghosts. Then he saw them. Illusory figures moving stealthily from tree to tree.

  O'Hara grinned ruefully.

  Hello, you miserable snow ghosts, he thought. Welcome back. You bringing out my sorehead, belligerent streak, you know. But tell me, are you having fun out there in the . . .?

  His heart kicked the way a man would kick at an electrocution. A seismic bang inside O'Hara's chest!

  His mouth went dry and his heart roared like a race car.

  This was real! He wasn't imagining what he was now seeing!

  The snow ghosts were suddenly gone. Or all but one! A man-the figure of a man-stepped out of the woods. Out of the darkness.

  O'Hara stared, his mouth suddenly bone-dry.

  Even in the nearly nonexistent light, the pale illumination provided by the moon against the snow, O'Hara could see the features of the intruder.

  He was about five feet ten. Handsome in that rough-hewn white trash way. Shaggy blond hair. Eyes that. . . blues eyes that transfixed O'Hara's attention.

  And what was worse, the man wasn't dressed for the snow. He wore a white shirt and dark slacks. Oblivious of the frigid temperature. The figure stood on the top of the snow and gazed upward at O'Hara. Then a smile crossed the man's face.

  O'Hara felt his palms go wet with terror! He was looking at a dead man! Gary Ledbetter! And Ledbetter, with those calculating cold baby blues, was glaring right back up at him.

  “No, no, no!” O'Hara whispered. “I am not seeing you, Gary! These are D.T.'s! I've had too much to drink! You are not there!”

  Gary's voice. Unmistakably. Coming from nowhere and from everywhere. Inside the house; inside O'Hara's head.

  I'm here, Gary said.

  “You are a dead man. The State of Florida executed you.”

  I am here, anyway, Frank.

  “But why?”

  Maybe I'm here to take you with me.

  “With you where?”

  To the land of the dead, Frank. To the land where you sent me.

  “You sent yourself. You were a murderer.”

  No, no, no. I gone on account of your stupidity. I was innocent.

  O'Hara averted his eyes and shook his head. The liquor made his head swim. The glass in his hand fell to the wooden floor and shattered. O'Hara was barely conscious of it. And he refused to look at the specter lurking outside his home.

  But it called to him.

  Frankie? Frankie? Frankie? Diminutive. Insulting. Taunting.

  O'Hara refused to respond.

  Look at me, Frank. Answer me, my fine detective friend.

  “No!” O'Hara snapped. Very loud. Very firm. His words echoed in the lonely room. “I don't believe in such things!” />
  Asshole!

  O'Hara raised his eyes and stared downward. The specter remained. Gary looked up at him, eyes gleaming. No longer blue. Red like those of a wild animal, frozen in winter headlights. Red like a demon. Hatred, hatred, hatred.

  O'Hara screamed.

  I was innocent, Frank. Surely you must have always suspected. Surely you will soon know if you don't already.

  O'Hara breathed hard and heavily. He had not moved, but he was out of breath. The terror only built. He wondered if he was on the verge of a fatal heart attack and Gary was there to take him . . . take him. . . to Hell!

  Somewhere in his mind, way off in the distance, O'Hara saw himself with the last bout of D.T.'s, the time the red crab crawled down his throat. He saw himself running through his home screaming until he pitched himself down a flight of steps and knocked himself unconscious.

  The whole incident flashed before his mind again, on this night when the late Gary Ledbetter stood outside his window, smiling up at him. O'Hara was on the edge of screaming out loud in much the same way. Only this time it wasn't a crab crawling down his throat. It was a dead man crawling back into the world of the living.

  Frank? Look at me, Frank. Or don't you dare? Ask yourself: What is your greatest fear?

  O'Hara turned from the window, trying to shut out the image.

  A very polite Gary. Southern schoolboy now. The kid who tickled the ivories so nice at the church social:

  May I come into your home, Detective O'Hara? May I sit in your bedroom and maybe put my hands on your neck?

  O'Hara felt a scream in his throat. He bolted from the room and ran down the steps, down to the kitchen utility closet where he knocked over every household tool in his way. He lunged to the object that he kept hidden at the rear of the closet, behind the brooms and the mops.

  His twelve-gauge shotgun. Always loaded.

  O'Hara grabbed it with both hands.

  He whirled, crashed into the closet door, and nearly lost his footing. He ran to the back door of his home and threw on an outside light, one that would illuminate the wooded area where Gary had been standing.

  Then he stopped. The door, the door that stood between him and the outside, was rattling. The doorknob almost seemed to shake.

  Gary? The vision he had seen outside? Something now trying to enter O'Hara's home.

  Yes, Frank. It's me.

  O'Hara stood away from the door and raised his weapon.

  “Who's there?” he bellowed. “Identify yourself?”

  No answer. The door gave a final quiver. Outside the wind howled. Had it been the wind at the door? Or some other force?

  Cautiously, O'Hara unlocked the door. He threw it open, his shotgun ready to blast. Frigid air poured in, but nothing else.

  Mocking. Taunting. Gary again: You're not being very friendly. And it's me who has the right to be angry.

  But no one was visible.

  O'Hara felt his heart kick again for several seconds. Then, in shirt, pants, and shoes, O'Hara was out in the freezing cold, a shotgun at Order-Arms across his chest. The only sound: the wind, plus one step after another-his own-crunching through the thick snow.

  He turned a corner and confronted the strip of land where he had seen Gary.

  Nothing. No one.

  O'Hara's gaze bored into the woods. Even the snow ghosts had fled. The only sound was a sudden rush of wind. The frozen branches clattered against each other, rattling like ancient bones. Winter's icy spirit in the treetops.

  “Come on out!” O'Hara demanded. “Come out here!”

  But again, no Gary. No one.

  O'Hara's adrenaline began to subside. And as it did, he realized that he was cold. Very cold. Freezing. He shivered and looked at his breath as it coned in front of him. He felt his bare hands starting to adhere to the metal trigger of the shotgun.

  He cursed violently to himself. He approached the spot where Gary had stood. His feet broke the surface of the snow and left tracks. When he got to where Gary had been, he looked down.

  No footprints. Nothing. Virgin snow.

  O'Hara cursed again. He could feel the aftertaste of the bourbon on his breath.

  He wondered: Had nothing been there at all? Or had his visitor been so far out of the ordinary that it had stood on top of the snow and made no impression?

  Something supernatural.

  What was any man doing out in the New Hampshire snow without a coat? In that sense, the vision had been an impossibility.

  Maybe he should have been thankful for that, he told himself. A hyperactive imagination, even with some of the blame laid upon the booze, had lesser implications than if he really had seen something.

  Again, O'Hara looked carefully at the untouched snow. Then he turned with his weapon. Sleepily, groggily, angrily, he walked back to the warmth of his home.

  He wasn't going crazy, he told himself. He was perfectly sane.

  He closed the door behind him. He carefully locked it. He replaced the shotgun in the downstairs closet and covered it again with the implements of housekeeping.

  He wasn't drunk, he told himself. And whatever he had seen, he did not wish to see again.

  Chapter Seven

  Julie Steinberg sat across the office from her patient. A single brass lamp was unlit on the corner of her desk, a green glass shade upon it. There was a window but the venetian blinds were drawn.

  Ten in the morning. Bright light from outside-sun upon the snow-turning into a softer light within. A feeling the doctor nurtured.

  Dr. Steinberg was in her thirties, dark and attractive, but nothing fancy about her. Alert brown eyes, a practicing commercial psychologist for thirteen years. Divorced, no children. She had finally revealed this on their last meeting.

  She smiled, putting him at ease. “I hear you've handed in your retirement papers,” she said.

  O'Hara nodded. He sat in a comfortable leather armchair, facing her. “How did you know?”

  “Captain Mallinson and I speak occasionally.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I might have known.”

  “And that went successfully?” she asked. “Your application for retirement?”

  “That went fine. So far. No problems.”

  “Then tell me,” she said, “what's wrong?”

  “I think I need to talk,” O'Hara said hesitantly.

  “Then you were wise to come,” she answered.

  Wise and, he might have added, embarrassed. Why couldn't he handle one more case without psychological support?

  “I only have this one case that I'm working on,” he said. “And it ties into an older case that has resurfaced.” He paused. “You remember the Gary Ledbetter case?”

  “Everyone in New England remembers that one,” she answered. “Ledbetter was just executed, wasn't he?”

  “He was.”

  “Then how could his case come up again?”

  He drew a breath and then explained it to her: the discovery in the cabin and the known parallels between the Stoner murder and this most recent Jane Doe.

  Then O'Hara related how this voice that resembled Gary's came to him from somewhere, putting thoughts in his head. He also told her about the snow ghosts, how he had seen them so vividly as he rode up Mount Monadnock to the murder scene a week earlier. And he told Dr. Steinberg about what he had seen the previous evening: the snow ghosts, then the image of Gary Ledbetter, dressed exactly as he had been the day O'Hara had arrested him, stepping out of the woods to communicate.

  Dr. Steinberg listened intently, a clipboard before her, a pencil in her hand. Her gaze rarely left her patient's eyes. She made notes without looking down.

  O'Hara continued for twenty minutes. When he finished, the psychologist blew out a slight breath.

  “So you think you saw a ghost?” she asked, intrigued and frowning slightly.

  “I don't believe in ghosts,” he said.

  “You don't believe in what you saw?”

  “No.” He drew a breath. “You know I h
ad a bout with the D.T.'s a few years back. Well, I had a few drinks last night. Before I saw this . . .” he searched for the word, “'hallucination.'“

  “How many's a few?”

  “One more than the house limit,” he confessed. “Three.”

  She shook her head. Annoyed.

  “I don't want to see Gary Ledbetter again,” he answered. “I even phoned Florida. Gary's dead and buried. I could not possibly have seen him.”

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Yes. I have a current murder case to close. I want to close it without losing my mind.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I suppose that's a good start,” she said. They exchanged a smile. She waited. “What were you doing when all this began?” she asked. “Last night, I mean.”

  He thought back. “Just listening to some music.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of music? Moody? Suggestive?”

  He laughed. She smiled. “Is that a professional question or a personal one?” he asked.

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  Sinatra, he was thinking to himself. And he felt the eyes upon him of a woman a decade and a half younger.

  “If I tell you,” O'Hara answered, “you'll be convinced that I'm a hopeless old goat.”

  “Jazz? Show tunes?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Not classical?” she asked with a doubtful tone.

  “Nope.”

  “What else is there? Let's see, something current. Alternative grunge?”