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

by Noel Hynd

  As a cop he was trained to look for evidence. Or events out of the ordinary.

  There was the way Gary kept appearing to him, after all.

  And there was the way Gary's words, his phantom whispers, kept sneaking in and out of O'Hara's thoughts. . . .

  “I'm alive and Gary's dead,” he told himself. “That much I know. That much I cling to.”

  O'Hara leaned back in his chair, deeply troubled. What in hell else did he believe?

  He knew he was an anomaly as a policeman. Most cops were Sunday morning religious.

  “When you're out there with only a badge and a pistol, you don't like to feel that you're alone,” one fellow officer had remarked to him years earlier. O'Hara had always wanted to believe in the Almighty the way all the grunt-and-grind harness bulls did. But even as a fourteen-year-old he had fallen away from the Catholicism in which he had been raised.

  Atheism was his religion, if he had one at all. And the only thing good about it was that it gave him an extra free morning each week.

  For most of his adult life, dating back to the time he was a soldier in Southeast Asia, O'Hara had believed that death was the end. Or at the very least, since there was this troubling ten percent of agnosticism mixed in with his beliefs, death was the end of one's earthly existence.

  He had stood over mortally wounded soldiers on battlefields as life slipped away, men he had loved like brothers. Never once had he heard or sensed anything from them again after their passing. Nor, in two cases when men died in his arms, had he ever felt the rush of a soul from a body to . . . to . . .wherever souls might go.

  Not that he expected a shocking postcard from San Diego or anything. But might not one of these lost loved ones have somehow contacted him, if there were a way to communicate from the other side of life? Might not one of these departed souls have sensed O'Hara's lack of belief and sought to ease his life by reassuring him?

  But none ever had. So O'Hara was unable to be a believer in the Judeo-Christian sense. And if there were an afterlife, it was not something that he felt he needed to worry about, and it was not something that could in any way intersect with his job as a policeman or his life here on Earth.

  Until now.

  Now, when there was starting to be a faint skein of logic within the supernatural interpretation of things.

  Now, when . . . well . . . O'Hara seemed to be haunted.

  The detective grimaced. Way back in his days at the police academy, when O'Hara had taken all the usual courses in crime detection, there had been a much overused instruction: Get inside the criminal's head. Get inside his mind.

  O'Hara winced at the irony. In this case, had the criminal seeped into O'Hara's mind. If so, he wondered with a shudder, how long before Gary took him over completely?

  And where was Gary in the meantime?

  “Spending some time in Hell?” O'Hara asked aloud. “Or just kind of drifting through time and space?”

  I'm nearby. I'm very close.

  O'Hara cringed. Sheesh! Maybe he was going nuts! That voice sounded so near, so close, so real, that he broke a sweat. He looked around again, then pretended he hadn't. He made a valiant effort to convince himself that he hadn't heard the voice.

  Moments later, O'Hara shook his head, as if coming out of a trance. He was unaware of how long he had been sitting in his office staring straight ahead, occasionally whispering to-and being answered by-an audience that remained unseen.

  He looked at his watch. Time to go home. He had been sitting there apparently for almost forty minutes, mulling things over at too great a length, searching for answers and clues where none were forthcoming.

  He drove home, but the situation did not much improve. What he couldn't shake was an overall impression that something was wrong with the case. Off-kilter. Off-kilter in the same way that Gary had been handsome.

  He had dinner. He watched television: hockey from Boston. But he couldn't concentrate on the game.

  Late in the evening, a glass of mineral water in his hand, he moved to a window of his home and gazed out. His eye travelled to the thickness of the woods behind his house, the stalwart clumps of trees that stood like soldiers in the winter darkness.

  He let his eye grow accustomed to the night. He let his vision dart in and out from between those trees.

  “Come on, snow ghosts,” he whispered. “Or 'forest ghosts.' Whoever you are. Where are you? Hiding from me tonight? Come on out. Don't you understand? I want to see you now.”

  For a moment he thought he saw something. The movement of something between some shadows. Or maybe it was just some shadows themselves, the product of the fingery overhead branches clattering in the icy wind.

  “Come on out,” he said again. “I dare you.”

  But there was nothing there. No movement. No ghosts. No spirits.

  No stuff of Indian legend and, above all, no Gary. The cruelest part of it all was that in his mind there was a link forming. It seemed to him, he reasoned, that the only time he ever saw those things were when he had helped things along by going on a binge with the bottle.

  He simmered at the notion. He only saw such things when he was drunk. Was that it?

  He held that thought for several seconds.

  And yet, he hadn't been drinking the day that he had ridden up to Mount Monadnock in Reynolds's truck, he reminded himself. Not a drop of booze that day and he thought he had seen the snow ghosts then.

  He sighed.

  No booze, no ghosts. What kind of deal was that? The legends of the Indians were not there this evening. And neither was Gary.

  A philosophical point overtook him. Were they gone? Or had they never been there? If they were gone, where had they gone to? And if they had never been there, why had he seen them?

  He thought back. . . .

  The night that he reached out his arm and plunged it through Gary Ledbetter's ghost. The sight of it, the touch of it, the very barbecued-flesh smell of it had been as real as a cut across the cheek with a straight razor.

  Nothing artificial about it at all. Nothing imaginary. Nothing illusory.

  God damn it! He was stone-cold sober and he knew that he had seen something that night which was there!

  What did he have to do? Get drunk again, do another waltz with the red crab that liked to crawl down his throat, in order to ring up Gary on the spiritual walkie-talkie?

  “Screw it, Gary!” he roared. “Get out here! We need to talk!”

  He waited.

  But the only answer was the echo of his own voice in the house. For a moment, he thought he heard a creak, but then decided he hadn't.

  So he turned away from the window and sighed again, a middle-aged cop fighting off insanity, shouting at unseen presences in an empty house.

  For a moment his eye caught something outside as he was turning. His heart jumped and he looked back. But the movement was only that of some fresh snow beginning to fall. A nice, gentle coating on top of everything that was already down.

  Just what he needed: another image of winter and death.

  He turned away from the window.

  With tremendous effort, he attempted to guide his thoughts in another direction.

  First, his mind went to Rose Horvath, former doyenne of the official records at headquarters in Nashua. O'Hara pondered her collection of books on the occult and supernatural. He wondered if Rose's library contained any answers. Or were all of her volumes pulp for those who wanted to believe?

  And second, and more immediately, O'Hara thought of the file that had been in Captain Mallinson's office that morning, the one on a couple of bald guys ripping off a liquor truck over the weekend. A couple of things there were starting to fall into place. Maybe.

  As he further pondered the point, a few thoughts came together. It occurred to him that if he spent an hour driving the next morning, and played a hunch properly, a botched stickup in Hillsboro might shed some light upon a hacker of ladies and a killer who seemed to drift across the state with a
ll the characteristics of a phantom.

  Another spacey thought: Funny how things sometimes connect.

  Chapter Fifteen

  T he overnight snowfall was less than an inch. By late the following morning the state highways were in good condition.

  O'Hara took a two-hour drive northwest from Nashua. The sky finally cleared while O'Hara drove, and the sun raised the temperature to the high twenties for the first time in days. A mini heat wave. The wind, however, remained sharp.

  O'Hara's destination was a residence on Route 12-A in Alstead Center, up a hill and not far from a crumbling Grange hall. In the summer, this particular house was a depressing freestanding, one-story structure. Two twin chimney pipes from wood-burning stoves poked through its roof. It had a front yard littered with broken axles, car parts, drive shafts, and cinderblocks. At one point there had also been a dead washing machine and the undercarriage of a pickup truck. But the washer and the undercarriage had disappeared the previous summer when the price for scrap metal hit eight cents a pound. And around back, behind the house, right near a smoldering outside incinerator, sat a ten-foot satellite dish, pointed at the northwest horizon. Two large stumps marked the spot where the aerial path to the horizon had been cleared.

  But with the snowfall, the resident-whose name of P. Lavalliere was proclaimed on a dented red mailbox in front became a fan of Christmas.

  A huge fan.

  Twinkly multicolored lights were now strung across every conceivable nook, branch, cinder block, and upright axle in the yard. With the mantle of snow, the car parts lay buried, and string after string of Christmas lights, strung with no attempt at order, twinkled nonstop, giving the place the look of an ersatz fairyland.

  Here was a winter wonderland, a shrine to St. Nick. Whether the old fat guy wanted it or not.

  The official lighting for this year had come on November 14, so O'Hara, when he saw the place as he came up onto the crest of the hill of Route 12-A, was seeing the annual show shortly after its official opening.

  O'Hara grimaced when confronted by the day-and-night light show. And when he pulled closer, he could also see the plastic Santa with four fake reindeer, up on the roof like a gang of burglars. Ho ho ho. A Styrofoam Frosty the Snowman, the jolly, happy soul himself, stood sentry on the front lawn, and a couple of plaster elves were conspicuously hiding near a snow covered tire rim, like a couple of diminutive car thieves waiting to pounce.

  O'Hara pulled into the plowed driveway and stopped. He stared at the decorations for several seconds. Then he tapped the Pontiac's horn, a little courtesy to the Santa Claus fan. He scanned for any unfamiliar vehicles, anything not belonging to the resident. He saw nothing, which was good because it suggested that P. Lavalliere might be home alone.

  Somewhere, as O'Hara slowly stepped out of his car, a dog inside the house went nuts. It sounded like a big, major-league mutt, and in fact, as O'Hara remembered, it was. O'Hara pinned his badge to his overcoat. Then he walked to the front door.

  No path had been shoveled. O'Hara's pants cuffs and ankles were immersed in shin-high snow, the kind that seeped into the socks and shoes. The detective found the front doorbell and leaned on it, gloved thumb to a brown button.

  Two rings. A rasping, grinding bell. It sounded distantly like a couple of short blasts from a dentist's drill.

  The dog went nuttier inside the house, and O'Hara, despite a heavy front door, could hear the Santa junkie cursing violently. Next he next heard the dog yelp in pain and fall silent.

  O'Hara drew a breath. He knew that the dog had just been the unlucky recipient of a kick in ribs or the haunches and was now being locked into the kitchen. O'Hara had his timing down perfectly, measuring the seconds it would take for LaValliere to ramble from the kitchen to the front door.

  Then a very gangly, very tall man-six foot five had been recorded on his most recent arrest sheet-answered the door in a flannel shirt and bib overalls.

  Peter Lavalliere, the master of the domain, glared at his visitor. Lavalliere had a bald head-not natural, shaved-and a short black beard so neat and precise that it looked like it had been shaped with a T square. Also, thick glasses with heavy black rims.

  Bad eyes behind the specs. One eye, the right one, was particularly awful. It was akin to something out of a bad-taste Halloween kit. A wild waller with no focus. It floated mercilessly while the left eye fought to settle on the visitor.

  Then, recognizing O'Hara, the man with all the holiday cheer spoke.

  “What do you want?” Lavalliere asked.

  “Some answers, Pete,” O'Hara said, casting a sidelong glance at the twinkly, sparkly lights. “It's only November, you're not even a Puerto Rican, and still you do this crap with the Christmas lights every year. Classy!”

  “Eat me, O'Hara, you mick bastard. I got me some holiday spirit even if you don't.”

  “Yeah, right. And probably eight cases of hot whiskey out of the Sainsbury truck to help you celebrate the season.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Don't lie to me.”

  For several seconds, Lavalliere did nothing but breathe heavily through his mouth. Some sort of sausage was on his breath and he blocked the doorway. He looked as if some internal fuse were burning down.

  O'Hara didn't give him an inch.

  “You're here to arrest me?” Lavalliere finally asked.

  “I'm here for some talk, Pete. Are you going to invite me in or do I get a warrant and invite myself, in which case I would want to make an arrest just to cover my trouble for having to make two trips to this technicolor rat hole.”

  Lavalliere kept silent. An ominous sign. He was thinking it over, or trying to, meaning there might have been something to consider.

  “Or would you like a few minutes to put away any embarrassing products that might be scattered around the house?” O'Hara suggested. It was a peace offering: “I can go back to the car, and drive around for ten minutes. How's that sound?”

  Lavalliere's one good peeper peered over O'Hara's right shoulder, quickly ascertaining that the cop was alone. The other eye, or at least its line of vision, slammed harmlessly into the door frame.

  “I am fucking freezing out here, Lavalliere,” O'Hara said. “Would you make your decision before evening?”

  “Sure. Invite yourself in if you like,” Lavalliere finally grumbled. “You're going to come in anyway.”

  “You got that part right, Pete.”

  Lavalliere stepped away from the door, and allowed O'Hara to enter. He closed the door with a thud, chopping off the cold.

  The dog in the kitchen started barking again, then went berserk, sounding like he was tearing up the place. Lavalliere excused himself for a moment to disappear through the kitchen door. O'Hara heard only the sound of a strap repeatedly hitting dog hide, a quick series of plaintive squeals from the animal mixed with a half-snarl, and then a cowering, heavy silence. The big mutt had been flailed into submission.

  The house was overheated; two wood stoves were burning, one at each end of a raggedly furnished living room. O'Hara took the opportunity to reach under his overcoat and place a cautious hand on his weapon, in case Lavalliere was planning to return with a sawed-off or some other monster piece.

  As he waited, O'Hara kept his eyes tight on the kitchen door.

  O'Hara knew Lavalliere. He knew his arrest record and had used him as a stool pigeon in the past. O'Hara even knew the big guy's mutt, a snarly, barrel-chested, heavy-jowled enforcer that Lavalliere always kept hungry. The dog had solid Teutonic lineage: It was half Shepherd, half Doberman, and was named Rudolph after Hess, not the fancy pants reindeer with the incarnadine snout.

  Lavalliere also knew O'Hara. Their interests had intersected on two previous occasions, meaning the former had been arrested twice by the latter. The Frenchman also knew that O'Hara had once used the business end of his thirty-eight to sing sayonara to a Rottweiler at a Midnight Auto establishment in High Bridge. So he kept his puppy quie
t in the kitchen, a prudent and healthy decision for everyone, doggie included.

  Lavalliere reappeared. Alone, with his hands visible and empty. The gesture of cooperation allowed O'Hara to relax slightly.

  The detective pulled his grip off his weapon and moved his own gaze around the living room. Real House and Garden horrible. Dead meat male decorating in white trash decrepit-modern: a badly worn carpet, vintage 1970 Woolworth. The rug should have been thrown away by someone ten years ago and probably had been. A spindly pair of tables and a couple of metal chairs looked like they had been swiped from a high school gym or a place that puts on wrestling exhibitions. The type of chairs used to hit other guys over the head when a race riot follows a roundball game.

  The “Elegant Life-style” centerpieces: a frayed, overstuffed sofa and a mismatching chair that made the room look like the employees' lounge at a Billy Carter gas station, complete with soil marks on the misshaped arms of both the sofa and the chair. In front of the sofa was a new Sony TV-probably stolen, O'Hara guessed-with a sparkling thirty-five-inch screen, the only thing in the room less than five years old. The antenna wires were exposed, coiled and running out of the room toward the satellite dish behind the house. And by the side of the sofa was Lavalliere's “girlfriend,” who must have taken over when there was nothing good on the tube: a stack of badly thumbed hetero skin mags, the crude, Sally Fivefingers, bottom-of-the-line ones sold at bad convenience stores.

  Then, as if this wasn't enough, something in the adjacent dining room caught O'Hara's eye. It was big and flat and on the wall. Red and white like a Coca-Cola billboard or a Santa Claus outfit, but O'Hara knew it was neither. Removing his overcoat, O'Hara walked over to give it a glance. Lavalliere followed him closely, standing about six inches taller than his visitor.

  O'Hara stopped in the doorway. Tacked to the dining-room wall was five feet by seven feet of solid working-class hatred. Red background, white field, and big pitch-black swastika smack in the center. Seig Heil: a flag of the Third Reich, a recent product of an industrious local mill. O'Hara didn't see many of these but he saw more than a few, and one was more than enough. He wondered: a little early wave of post-immigration Twenty-first Century America? A little suggestion of the world of tomorrow?