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

by Noel Hynd

  I thought a little Sinatra would do you good, Gary said.

  “Don't do me any favors.”

  I'm innocent, man.

  “I'm still not convinced.”

  The statement angered Gary.

  The foul, stale smell of putrefaction and death, plus the odor of an executed man, walloped O'Hara so hard that he thought he had been physically struck. He recoiled from it. Gary banged angrily on the keys to the piano, switching instantly from Sinatra, to something with a violent, threatening crescendo. Then he segued quickly into a low dirge.

  Gary grinned like a gargoyle. He pulled his hands away from the keys and turned to O'Hara. O'Hara shuddered. Gary was showing off. Power. He could do things that living people couldn't: Gary played with his mind. The piano continued to play even without Gary's fingers.

  And then a second stream of goose bumps and a surge of terror came upon O'Hara. Gary could play not just the music from his own youth, but he could play from O'Hara's, as well. He could see into the detective's soul as easily as he could look into his own.

  Gary with his hands at his side. Gary staring at O'Hara while the piano continued: a “Dies Irae.” Gregorian. It wrapped itself around O'Hara like a snake. Over and over that sad musical elegy. O'Hara broke a sweat: The church organ had played that same damned “Dies Irae” at every mick funeral he had ever attended as a boy in Chicago. The tune had haunted him in Vietnam and had seeped into his consciousness whenever he had seen death on a battlefield.

  And Gary had pulled it out of his bag of tricks.

  Better get ready to sit at a wake, Gary said. Big cop shindig. Plenty of beer and bullets. Fucking cops! Funeral 5 a-coming!

  “Whose?”

  Everyone's, eventually.

  “Whose is next?”

  Yours maybe. Gonna come live in my world, Frankie? Gary laughed. Might as well. You can't even keep me out of your home. Can't keep me out of your woman, either.

  O'Hara's fear gave way to rage. He swiped one arm at the solid figure before him. His arm passed through Gary's body. A glacial flash upon his arm, like being blasted with dry ice. So cold that it burned.

  Gary laughed again. He vanished from the piano bench. He materialized across the room. “What do you want?” O'Hara demanded.

  My soul to keep.

  “To keep what?”

  So I can lay me down to sleep.

  Gary laughed, vanished from the hearth, and reappeared directly behind O'Hara. So close and so foul with the smell of death that he backed up O'Hara several paces till the detective had cornered himself against the piano.

  O'Hara had an inkling. “You want your soul to rest? Is that it?”

  Wouldn't you?

  “Who was the man out there on the highway?” O'Hara asked.

  Did you think he was pretty?

  “You led me there on purpose, didn't you?” O'Hara demanded. “You wanted me to see him?”

  Gary faded before his eyes, then misted into a human shape near the window. Smarter than the average dumb policeman, the ghost drawled. Congratulations.

  “And you kept me alive, Gary,” O'Hara said. “That must mean there's something you want me to do here on Earth. Something you need me to do.”

  I want justice, Frankie.

  “What do I get if I get you justice?” O'Hara asked. “I would allow your soul to rest. But what do I get if I close your case again?”

  Gary came nearer, faster than any measurement in time. My eternal gratitude.

  “I want more than that.”

  You'll never see me again.

  “More,” O'Hara insisted.

  You don't dictate the terms this time. I do!

  “I have something you want. You can influence something I want,” O'Hara answered. “So we make a trade.”

  No!

  “Then you can wander the universe forever,” O'Hara said. “Kill me now and your soul will never sleep.”

  Gary thundered in anger. An unseen hand swept the keys of the piano, bass to soprano, then back again. O'Hara jumped at the crashing abruptness of the sound, as well as the proximity of it.

  “And you know what I want,” O'Hara insisted.

  Gary's voice whooped. A shrill, bayou-rebel taunt. Carolyn, Gary said.

  O'Hara waited.

  Gary, taunting again. My soul for hers? Is that the deal?

  “She doesn't want to go back.”

  Back where?

  “I can't even comprehend where,” O'Hara answered. “But I want to know something else. Who was that man out there? In the snow? Who was he?”

  Should have shot him, my sweet one.

  “Tell me who he is. He's alive, isn't he? Did you know him?”

  Gary wailed unpleasantly.

  “Was he your friend?” O'Hara asked.

  Gary screamed at him.

  “I'm right, aren't I, Gary? He was your-?”

  Then Gary did something which O'Hara would never understand. The house vibrated fiercely, as if hit with a tremendous, angry blow from somewhere else in time and space. It was somewhere between a clap of thunder and an earthquake.

  O'Hara's home rocked so violently from the impact that lamps and vases and magazines and books flew from tables.

  The clap knocked O'Hara off his feet. Gary disappeared from his sight.

  O'Hara had no way of knowing how long it took him to recover. But then he found himself on the floor by the piano, blinking open his eyes in fear.

  There was no music in the room as he stood up. No Gary. Not even the eerie light that had dimly illuminated their volatile conversation. But lamps and items from the tables remained on the floor. And the strange sound was still ringing in O'Hara's ears.

  O'Hara reached for one lamp that had fallen and set it upright again. He turned on a second light and studied the room.

  The chamber looked as normal as any that he had ever seen, except that it was a mess. All the material that had fallen on the floor gave it a distinctive look. It appeared as it might have if a drunk had stumbled through, knocking things over.

  Gary was nowhere to be heard. And by O'Hara's feet was the bottle from his final beer of the evening. He didn't even remember carrying it from the kitchen, though he was sure he probably had.

  He glanced at his watch. He was stunned. It was four A.M., and he couldn't figure where the time had gone.

  The next morning in Philadelphia, Kaminski was stuck with the realization that he had been flummoxed.

  The policeman from New Hampshire had piqued his curiosity, but had also raised Adam's defensive instincts. How dare an out-of-state man with a badge come around his office and try to pry information out of him! Not only would Kaminski beat O'Hara to the information, he decided, but he wouldn't turn it over. Not to the police. He would present it to Carolyn. He would warn her that trouble was stalking her. And she would love him for it.

  Kaminski used every real estate source file in the city. Landlords' credit reports. Rental applications, cross-referenced with local employment listings. She had to have been somewhere. If it were anywhere nearby, he would find her.

  Kaminski struck pay dirt in an unlikely spot. Mental health records. But there it was. Carolyn Hart. February 1990. Attempted to rent a small apartment in Bryn Mawr. Application withdrawn when Carolyn was honest about her previous address. 443'7 Germantown Pike in Drexel Hill. Someone at the landlord's address had called to check the reference. 4437 Germantown Pike was the address of the Northeastern Pennsylvania State Pyschiatric Hospital. Carolyn had been a patient there until walking away in February.

  Kaminski didn't wish to proceed any further on the telephone. Instead, on a dreary December morning, he drove up to the hospital to make his further inquiry in person. Eventually, he found himself seated in the office of Dr. Herbert Raymond, Assistant Director of Northeastern Pennsylvania State Psychiatric.

  “Carolyn was here, yes,” Dr. Raymond said. “Been gone for a few years now. I really shouldn't tell you too much more.”

  �
��Was she healthy when she was discharged?” Kaminski asked.

  “She wasn't healthy,” the doctor answered. “I can tell you that categorically.”

  Kaminski waited for more. And he knew it wasn't going to be pleasant. The doctor spoke from memory and off the record.

  “Carolyn suffered a complete psychotic break with reality,” Dr. Raymond said. “Hart was a name she adopted. Her brother was a convicted murderer. Name of Ledbetter. I think his first name was Jerry. Or Gary. Know the case?”

  Kaminski had never heard of it. It wasn't his habit to follow such things.

  “Carolyn couldn't accept her brother's guilt, even though the guilt seemed quite clear to everyone else. She had some wild story about her brother being hooked up with some professional killer. Her brother was eventually sentenced to die for one or more of the murders, if I remember. But no partner ever was arrested. Who knows whether one ever existed? Maybe she made it up. I don't know. I suppose it had some borderline credibility. But believe me, we hear some strange stories in our line of work.”

  “I'm sure,” said Kaminski. “Would she have used such a story as a defense against having to accept her brother's guilt?” The doctor didn't wish to speculate, though his own thoughts were in the same territory.

  “Carolyn said that the partner was up in New England and would continue to kill. So she kept promising to leave Pennsylvania to find this man and settle the scores.” The doctor opened his palms and shrugged. “Not really our department, law enforcement. But it was the opinion here that Carolyn Ledbetter was a pretty sick girl.”

  “So if she was mentally ill, why was she released?” Kaminski asked.

  “She wasn't,” Dr. Raymond said. “She first came to us in February of 1989, I think it was. Walked away a few months later. When she tried to lease an apartment on her own, we found her. Naturally, we brought her back. This is not a maximum security institution, so unfortunately she walked out a second time. “

  “Recently?” Kaminski guessed.

  “No, no. Not at all. In June of that next year. 1990. I assume in her warped sense of things, she probably went off to New England to find this man she was looking for. My guess is that she's institutionalized under another name somewhere. I hope so, because otherwise harm will come to her.”

  “Have you tried to find her?”

  “Budget cuts,” the doctor said unpleasantly. “We don't have money to do searches. And frankly, the politics of the situation in Harrisburg is such that anything that unloads a long-term care patient is looked upon favorably. So there wasn't much we could do. Unless,” he said with a pause, “someone came to us and told us where she was.”

  Kaminski sat perfectly still and attempted to correlate all that the doctor had told him. One line of thought, however, was in the forefront of his mind.

  If Carolyn were returned here, the institution would have to watch her more carefully. And if no one on the outside was interested in her case, he, Adam Kaminski, could easily be her protector. He could visit her and help her back to health. She could be both his lover and his reclamation project. In any case, she would be safe.

  And nearby.

  “Mr. Kaminski?” Dr. Raymond asked. “I've told you what I can. Maybe you can share your knowledge with me. This hospital remains Carolyn Ledbetter's guardian until notified otherwise.”

  Kaminski rallied his courage and prepared to speak.

  “Doctor,” he said, “I think I can be of help to everyone.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  December 12. The twelfth day of the twelfth month. Frank Sinatra's birthday and here was the other Frank, O'Hara, sitting at a booth in a pool hall in the factory town of Tocomset. O'Hara was waiting for his meeting with the local Bund while in his mind Old Blue Eyes sang, “My Way.”

  O'Hara looked out a dirty plate glass window and saw a mill down the street. Tocomset was a hard-edged, white, working-class town. Low-rent Irish, Poles, and French-Canadians. O'Hara guessed that the mill at the end of the block was the one that turned out the Third Reich flags for the local, inbred yahoos.

  Someday, he would have to investigate. Someday, but not this day, because as he entertained that thought he spotted his connection: Pete Lavalliere, who had called him and requested this summit conference in this benighted place.

  Lavalliere thumped into the hall from the outdoors. He held the door to the outside open too long and evoked the wrath of a couple of porky-looking guys who had their bellies hanging over a pool table. But then Lavalliere saw O'Hara. He let the door slam shut and sauntered to the detective's table.

  No handshake. No greeting. He just sat down and started.

  “I been doing some thinking, O'Hara,” Lavalliere began.

  “That's great, Pete. I hope you didn't hurt yourself.”

  “Now that's a hell of a attitude to start with,” LaValliere snapped. “Here I come to try to help you and you give me gas right from the top. What am I supposed to think about that?”

  “You're supposed to remember that I'm in charge, Pete,” O'Hara said. “And you didn't come to help me, you came to cut yourself a deal. And you're damned lucky I'm offering you one. Now I'm already ashamed of myself for even being in this pigsty talking to you, so what do you have?”

  “Secrets,” Lavalliere said, his voice lowered and properly humbled. “Secrets that you want to know. See, I been asking around a bit. Turns out I knew some friends who'd like 'in' on whatever you're giving out. Do we have something, you and me? An agreement?”

  “I'm listening to you, Pete,” O'Hara said.

  “Do we agree to agree?”

  “Just talk, would you? Before I call your parole officer.”

  “It's about the girl who got her head cut off last summer,” Lavalliere said. “You know, I got to thank you. I never would have paid no attention to that case if you hadn't come to me. Now I get to cut myself a whale of a deal.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because I got all the answers for you, Frank O'Hara,” the neo-Nazi said. “Old answers and new answers. I been asking around. And aren't you the acting head of homicide in this state right now?”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “That makes you an acting captain. So you can cut me some slack.”

  “Talk, Pete. I won't screw you. But first I need to hear what you have.”

  Given the nature of such things, Lavalliere took O'Hara at his word.

  He turned and signalled to another table. Two men who had been watching the conversation lurched to their feet and trudged to O’Hara's booth. Two of Lavalliere's Gestapo-wannabe friends sat down without introduction. Leather bike jackets. When they removed their respective caps, both were bald. Shaved head, skinhead bald. One guy smelled like a stale barn and O'Hara couldn't tell which.

  “Who's this?” O'Hara asked. “Boorman and Himmler?”

  “These are my business associates.”

  “From the Sainsbury truck, I assume.”

  “I don't like this, Pete,” the bigger one of the baldies chimed in. But Pete, the ersatz Santa, held up a hand, dirty fingernails and all, to silence him. “I dealt with Frank O'Hara before. He'll shoot straight. Particularly today.” As he voiced his confidence, Pete's walleye spun a loop toward the door.

  And the two leather guys remained unconvinced. O'Hara decided that they needed a nudge.

  “If I like what I hear, and if it's true, the Sainsbury heist is history,” O'Hara said. “How's that?” And with Dreher and Schwine on the case, chasing each other's ass all over Hillsborough County rather than doing anything productive, O'Hara knew he was giving away virtually nothing.

  “That's good,” said one of them. “That's real good.”

  “Maybe Mr. O'Hara will toss us a freebee in the future, too,” said Lavalliere.

  “Don't press your luck, Pete,” O'Hara answered. “You got to remember that I don't like you very much. And I asked you to talk.”

  Lavalliere looked O'Hara squarely in the eye. �
�Mikalski here,” the Frenchman said, motioning to the smaller and uglier of the two baldies. “Mo Mikalski here used to work in a video store in Peterborough. Mo's got something to tell you now that he was never gonna tell you before. “

  O'Hara looked at Lavalliere's accomplice. Mikalski was a wiry man of about five feet eight. Thick mustache. A lot of gray hair in the whiskers and a prematurely aged, lined face. O'Hara guessed he was about thirty-five. Another peewee-intellect, backwoods jerkoff. In the local Bund meetings, sewer water obviously found its own low level. The other guy, the bigger one, was thick-browed and sullen. Didn't have much to say at all, and O'Hara guessed he had an IQ to match the speed limit on the interstate.

  But Mikalski had taken singing lessons from Lavalliere. He placed himself at a video shop in Peterborough seven years earlier, during the unlovely winter of 1986-87. Or, more specifically, at the time when Karen Stoner was murdered and mutilated.

  “I remember it was about a week after the killing,” Mikalski said, “that I knew they were trying to set a guy up for a fall on this murder. We had a couple of big shot cops come up. Inspector level, state pigs. Flashed us a picture of a guy. Ledbetter.”

  A disappointed sigh from O'Hara. “Look, I knew there was a separate inspectors' team that made some inquiries right after the Stoner murder,” he said. “So what?”

  “So you don't know how we answered,” Mikalski replied. “We said, yeah, we'd seen him. Gary rented porno films from us. They told us, no, we hadn't seen him. They stood there and made us remove Gary's account records from the store computer. They were trying to make Gary Ledbetter available to be arrested.”

  “I know they messed around with evidence,” O'Hara said. “You're still not telling me anything new.”