Poltergeist g-2

by Kat Richardson

  "Then why are you still here?"

  "Because I now owe PNU for my graduate program. So I took this job and—naturally—they put me in the Psych Department, where I have to see Mr. Ego every day except Friday. I'm trying to get a different job, but there isn't anything available midterm. Unless someone dies."

  "You know, Tuck thinks someone is sabotaging his project…"

  She giggled and drained the coffee mug. "Well, it's not me. I'm trying to make sure no one gets hurt if I can help it. That's why I volunteer to clean up the room for him—so I can see if he's changed anything. I wouldn't put it past him to electrify the chairs or something like that if he thought it would get him a novel reaction or push his subjects just a bit further. So I check for stuff every time I do the room. So far, so good. Although, you know, I heard he's got a theft problem."

  "Really?"

  "Yup. His poltergeist is a magpie. Likes shiny things. Steals people's keys and loots the women's purses. Always has, from day one. I was kind of surprised he just let you have those keys since he'd be in six feet of deep-fried trouble if they got lost."

  "How much trouble would he be in if he lost an assistant?"

  "Depends on how he lost him," she chortled. "You mean, like, quit—no problem. You mean, like, dead—not so good."

  She didn't know. "Do you read the paper or watch the news?"

  "As infrequently as possible—I don't need any more nightmares than I got out of Tuck the past few years. Why?"

  "Did you know Mark Lupoldi?"

  "Tuck's special effects guy? Sure."

  "He was killed last Wednesday. He didn't make it to the session."

  Frankie's jaw dropped open. "You're kidding. Right?"

  "No. The cops are looking into it."

  "Holy… shrimp basket. For real?"

  "Real as it gets."

  Frankie gaped and started shaking her head. Then she stopped and stared into her coffee cup. She didn't look up when someone entered the office, but I did. A lanky gray-haired man in a sweater stood in the doorway holding a coffee mug almost as large as hers.

  "Oh. Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt. I was bringing Madam Frankie coffee. Before she decides to have my head boiled in it. Is she in here? I thought I heard her…"

  I pointed over the counter. "She's a little upset."

  He gave me a cockeyed smile. "She can't be too upset—she's not swearing." He looked over the counter. "Oh. Oh, no. That looks bad."

  "A friend of hers died."

  "Oh." He went behind the counter and crouched down next to Frankie, pouring the coffee into her mug with care. "Brought you coffee, Frankie. Hello. Earth to Frankie. Time for verbal abuse—it's Starbucks."

  "You brought me Starbucks…?" she muttered.

  "I know how you love to complain. So. I hear you're feeling like crap…"

  "I don't feel like crap. I feel like the lowest trilobite fossil ever ground up and dumped on a roadbed in Tumwater under half a ton of tar."

  "That good, huh?" He glanced up at me. "I've got her. She'll be all right."

  Frankie exploded in tears and crammed her face against the man's shoulder. He looked startled, but waved me away.

  I felt strange about leaving. It was my fault she was upset. But she wouldn't have felt any better about it tomorrow when it came from Solis. At least tomorrow she would see it coming.

  I found a dry place to stop and make a phone call to the Danzigers. I wanted to double-check Frankie's story about Tuckman's exit from UW with Ben. As amusing as her version was, she had an axe to grind and that tends to color people's statements. But the Danzigers didn't answer their phones and I had to leave messages.

  I didn't like the odd sensation in my gut. Maybe I was starting to get premonitions or something, though that seemed unlikely. Still, what I knew about Greywalking I'd come by largely through the worst kind of bumbling firsthand experience, so I might be wrong. I hoped not.

  I had an appointment to talk to Wayne Hopke at one thirty and plenty to keep busy with until then.

  Wayne Hopke lived on an old forty-foot powerboat that smelled of cigarettes, beer, and citrus-based organic cleaner. The boat was moored on the canal near the Ballard locks and Hopke had come out to greet me on arrival with a big grin on his face and a brew in his hand. He was, as Cara had said, a likable old sot who felt the loneliness of retirement and chased it off with conversation and cold ones as often as possible. Though he'd been fully retired from the army for a while and was approaching seventy, he was still sinewy and wore his white hair in a military buzz cut. The rest of his appearance had gone civilian—blue jeans, deck shoes, and a loose sweatshirt.

  He launched into his background and his reason for joining the project with gusto—he'd been bored—and rambled on for quite a while about life in and after the army, draining several beers as he did. But the alcohol didn't seem to dull his wits any. He knew to the exact minute when he'd joined the project, what he thought of it all, and who'd done what when. He was the least judgmental and the most relaxed of the whole group. He seemed to have no discomforts or rancor with anyone and he believed in the project wholeheartedly.

  He didn't quaver or qualify anything and he liked it all just fine, thank you.

  Whenever he finished off a beer, he crushed the can flat and tossed it toward a box of empties before opening the fridge for a fresh one. A minuscule yellow thread seemed to unreel from him behind each flung can and tangle in a pale haze over the box.

  One of the crushed cans made an abrupt veer and flew toward me. I ducked and knocked it aside.

  Hopke glanced up. "I am so sorry. That's been happening more and more lately."

  I waved it off, though I tried to keep an eye on the thin haze of Grey energy that floated peripatetically about the cabin, sending tiny tendrils toward us like test probes. "I'm getting used to it."

  The boat heeled and pulled at the mooring lines with a creak. The sudden motion and the smell in the cabin forced me to swallow hard and dig my feet into the floor. Several books from the built-in shelves arced lazily into the air, defying gravity, and tumbled past my head.

  Hopke scrambled to pick them up and stack them on a table. "Damn. Celia's getting frisky lately."

  "Is this unusual?"

  "Not entirely, but it's more frequent since last week or so. Celia's always been a bit of a troublemaker. I think she took my keys this morning—it's a good thing I'm not planning to go anywhere, because I haven't found them yet. I hope she didn't toss them overboard."

  "That would be inconvenient."

  "It surely would."

  "All right," I said, resettling myself. "As long as we're on the subject, let's go back to yesterday, OK?"

  "Sure."

  "Why was yesterday's session so much different than the others?"

  "Well, it's Mark."

  "Excuse me," I said, putting up a hand to forestall him. "Are you saying that you think Mark's death is related to the events of yesterday?"

  "Yes, I am. I think Mark's with us. Or at least the energy came from Mark in some way. Maybe because we were thinking of him or something like that, but whatever it is, you can't deny that yesterday's session was different and the only thing that had changed was that Mark was dead."

  "How do you explain the rise in phenomena before Mark's death, then?"

  "Natural progression. We've been working on it, getting better at it. Putting in all our effort."

  "The change was very sudden, though. Do you think you're all contributing equally to the phenomena or is there something else going on?"

  "If you mean fakery, I'd have to say no. We're all on the level. But I suppose it's possible that one or two people might be just better at it than others, or working just a touch harder. All teams have their workhorses—someone who leads the way or pulls a little harder to encourage others."

  "Who would that be, in your estimation?"

  Hopke laughed. "Oh, that I don't know. Celia's mighty fond of Ken, but that doesn't mean he's got a
nything special to do with it. She used to have a bit of a soft spot for Cara, too. I must say, I was surprised Cara got hurt. She's a bit chilly at first, but she's not a bad gal. I suppose it was just an accident because we were all upset—Mark was a good guy and we all liked him, and if he's with Celia, he wouldn't hurt Cara deliberately."

  He paused to think, then went on, frowning. "All our sessions have been very pleasant up till now. But I know there's some hard feelings here and there—Dale's a jealous one and Patty's easily upset—so maybe we did it to ourselves…? Huh. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

  "Yeah, it does. Aside from Dale and Patricia, are there other… hard feelings in the group?"

  "Well, the kids are kind of funny. I'm sure they don't think an old fart like me knows what they're up to—your average twenty-year-olds think they invented sex themselves—but I've seen that sort of thing before. It's been the cause of more sorrow and stupidity than drinking and driving."

  "What about Mark?"

  "I'm not following you."

  "Did any of the group have a problem with Mark or a reason to hurt him? You suggested Mark might be 'with' Celia. Would he have reason to be resentful or angry?" I was pretty sure it wasn't the ghost of Mark Lupoldi who'd thrown the brooch, but Hopke's ideas might point in an interesting direction.

  "Mark was the easiest guy you ever saw. If he had a problem with you, he'd say something, maybe make a joke about it, but he wasn't the resentful type or mean. If anyone had a problem with Mark, why would they take it out on Cara? Unless you think Celia killed Mark, which is ridiculous."

  "Is it?"

  "Celia's made up of a bit of all of us, and since none of us would hurt Mark, why would Celia?"

  Another can lofted and smacked into my skull.

  "You OK there?" Hopke asked, leaning toward me.

  I rubbed my head. "Yeah. It wasn't much."

  "Good thing the can was empty."

  I nodded and wanted to wrap this interview up and get out before Celia got any more "frisky."

  "I've just got one more question. You said you wanted something to do, but why choose this particular project?"

  "Well, I've lost plenty of friends over the years and I still wonder if there's more to all of this than just struggling in the mud and the blood and the—the poop. You should pardon my language."

  "I've heard worse."

  Hopke nodded and went on. "See, I just want to know what's out there after this, if there is anything at all."

  "You're a braver man than I," I commented in all truth.

  "I doubt that. You seem like a pretty gutsy gal."

  "Maybe, but I'm not sure I want to know what happens after this."

  He finished another beer. "You may change your mind when you're my age."

  I doubted it, but, then, Hopke didn't know what I knew.

  "Are you satisfied with what you've learned so far?" I asked.

  "So far, I guess I am. I still want to know more, but I feel a little better having some idea that we're not entirely powerless in this world and maybe not in the next."

  I stood up. "Thank you, Mr. Hopke. You've answered all my questions."

  "Already?" he asked, standing himself. "That hardly took any time at all." He gave me a hopeful smile. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay for a beer?"

  I shook my head, smiling back. "I can't. Thank you for the offer, though."

  He walked with me to the edge of the boat and handed me over the side. As I started to turn, something shiny whizzed past my head and plopped into the water. Its passage made my head throb again.

  "Oh, damn," Hopke groaned. "Those were my keys. Well, I guess I'll be fishing for them."

  I stared down into the murky green water of the marina. "How deep is it? Can you get them back?"

  "Probably. The canal's shallow right here, 'cause this bit used to be the bay." He looked back into the water and picked up another can of beer from a cooler on the aft deck. "Well, better get started with the fishing. And you know how beer and fishing go together."

  I wished him good luck with the key-fishing and left him trolling a heavy magnet for the steel key ring and sipping beer. I kind of liked Wayne Hopke and I thought it was too bad that he probably wouldn't learn much about life after death from this experience. He'd have to pick it up when he got there, and I hoped that wouldn't be soon.

  CHAPTER 18

  Most people lie. They lie in little ways all the time—to themselves, to others, to the government, to their bosses and spouses and kids. Tuckman's project members had lied to me—it pretty well went with the territory and with their peculiar glib willingness to answer the questions of a stranger. What mattered was not the existence or the blackness of those lies, but the relevance. So I spent the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday checking and double-checking biographies and backgrounds, looking for lies that mattered, for the cracks in the stories that might point to someone who could have moved the power line, boosted the poltergeists input, or skewed it in a murderous direction. Tuckman was wrong about a mechanical saboteur and I wasn't convinced he'd been straight with me about why he wanted me on the case. The pieces didn't make a picture; they just made another puzzle and I had a bad feeling about it. Besides, running backgrounds would keep me out of the way of Solis, who would be starting to interview the same people I'd just finished with as well as Tuckman himself.

  Tuesday morning I hiked up the hill to the county records office and requested files. I made phone calls. I stared at microfiche cards and paid for photocopies. I listened to people grouse and gave them money, and I looked through every scrap of paper Tuckman had supplied and everything I'd picked up since I'd started. The pile of oddities was smaller than I'd expected, though it was interesting.

  Quite a few of the group turned out to have skeletons in their closets. Patricia had been under a doctors care for depression and other psychological problems off and on since the birth of her last child—what kind of problems weren't given. She'd also filed for divorce once, but withdrawn the paperwork a few days later with no explanation.

  Ken and Ian both had short arrest records with the SPD. Ian's SPD record was juvenile and therefore sealed now—except for a sexual harassment complaint lodged with PNU by one of the women in the dorms. That was being handled internally, and no one at the school would discuss it. The charge didn't surprise me, now that I had Ana's perspective on him. There was a rather odd note from the Humane Society in his file—a letter about a cruelty to animals complaint which seemed to have no follow-up. His project profile showed that his family had moved around a lot when he was a child—that might explain the lack of follow-up on the cruelty note—and I'd had no luck finding anyone who'd known him before college. His parents had moved to Idaho. When I tracked them down on the phone, they seemed vague and uncomfortable, rambling about their dog and the squirrel population and how they'd had to have the poor dog put to sleep when it ate a poisoned squirrel and how horribly the creatures had suffered. Their only comment on Ian was that they didn't get along with their son and they didn't seem to miss him. They would not discuss his juvenile record or the harassment charge with me. His mother seemed a little hysterical about it all and slammed the phone down at that point.

  Ken's record was a little worse: minor possession, minor violence, lots of stupidity, an assault charge that had been dismissed, and note of a sealed psychiatric evaluation that didn't seem to be related to anything—I was guessing some more serious charge had been expunged from his sheet. I couldn't find a record of whatever it had been, even in our notoriously nosy newspapers, though it had been embarrassing enough to someone to rate a cleanup. His family also had no comment, though they waved it away, saying it was in the past and best forgotten.

  Dale and Cara Stahlqvist both got rave reviews as backstabbing hard-asses, though most of their associates found Dale the sneakier of the two and referred to Cara as «honest» in her ambitions and intentions—they preferred to know who had the knives and where they meant
to stick them. But Cara had not been honest in her application to the Rainier Club. She'd made her claim of relation to Bertha Landes—one of their earliest female members—but the membership secretary had discovered a flaw in her story. Cara's application to the venerable business club had been refused. As amusing as I found it, the fact led me nowhere relevant. Neither Stahlqvist seemed to have any history of paranormal contact or abnormal behavior, however.

  Wayne Hopke yielded no surprises. An occasional overindulgence in drink since his retirement seemed to be the worst of his sins. Nothing strange or uncanny had ever been noted on his records.

  Ana Choi was also not shaping up as paranormal femme fatale material. She was finishing her degree in graphics and working both freelance and part-time in the field as well as helping her parents. She didn't have time or energy for skullduggery—I doubted she slept more than five hours a night and generally not that much. What free time she had was spent with friends from work or school and a procession of manipulative boyfriends. She'd given the previous one the boot in Harborview ER after he'd broken her wrist—she sure couldn't pick 'em.

  Which left Terry Dornier and Denise Francisco, both of whom seemed to have no Grey connection to the poltergeist at all.

  The glaring blank in Ken's record reminded me of his weird isolation in the Grey. I didn't know if it was relevant, but I wanted that hole filled in, especially if it would shed any light on why he had those shifting Grey walls around him. That phenomenon might make him less likely to have access to power in the Grey, but I couldn't be sure and it was the only real lead I seemed to have.

  Sitting at my desk, playing with a pencil and pushing paper around on the blotter, I decided I'd have to bite the bullet. I called Solis.

  He sounded wary and tired. I was still feeling a bit worn-down myself, but I knew he wouldn't appreciate sympathy or offer any. I came straight to my request.