“I might, except I know nothing about Facebook. I’ll mention it to his mom, though.”
He turned for the door and Lacey followed. When he pulled the door open and stepped outside, Lacey put her hand on his arm. He turned and looked down at her.
“Thanks,” she said simply.
His black eyes searched her face. “Sure,” he said. “Anytime.” And he sauntered off.
~~~
FOUR
That evening she lounged on her bed and watched a movie, munching on popcorn and, later, a bowl of ice cream. A girlfriend had tried to get her to go clubbing, but—like Sam, she realized—she didn’t want to be around people. She’d made a valiant effort to re-enter the singles scene after she and Derrick broke up—after Derrick got sentenced to ten years in prison—but it was a struggle. Maybe because she’d been so immersed in the serious side of life for so long, she found small talk and inane chatter to be mind-numbing. She was certainly okay with being alone.
She wondered about Sam. Divorced, with this extraordinary—and often misunderstood—talent. She could understand his being guarded. She felt sure he’d probably heard every kind of ridicule about talking to ghosts. Not exactly common ground for most people, so his holding himself apart was understandable. She wondered if that was the problem in his marriage, if he ever let anyone in. And his son—how did Sam relate to Daniel? That brief one-sided conversation sounded pretty normal. She hoped it was a good relationship.
She thought back to his walk today. That digital recorder ended up being pretty useless. She had hoped he would talk more about whatever he felt or heard or saw. She guessed he was more used to doing it alone, with no one else to share in the experience except his client. At least the debrief had given her some good information. Every name he gave her matched up. That made five out of the nine accounted for.
She already knew she would get in touch with the captain on Monday to share the information. He could do with it what he would. She reflected on how good it felt to contribute to the solving of a case, even if it was by unconventional means. Made her feel like a cop again.
Which reminded her… When Mrs. Levinson had expressed surprise that Lacey was not LAPD and she had impulsively identified herself as a private investigator, that had sparked a little flash of an idea. She wondered if she could make it as a P.I., if she could garner enough business to support herself. It would be a little scary, going out on her own without the resources and the support of the force behind her. But it would beat hell out of the mindless security job.
Her mother called early in the evening. Her parents had retired to Tampa Bay a few years earlier, but kept in touch with weekly or bi-weekly phone calls. Ever since the debacle with Derrick, they called more often.
“You’re not going out tonight?” her mother asked pointedly. Lacey knew if she lived anywhere within a fifty-mile radius, her mother would be setting her up with friends’ unmarried sons.
“No, Mom. I’m perfectly happy staying home.”
“We met a new family at church, did I tell you? The Reiners. They have a son who’s a doctor. Divorced, but seems like a lovely man.”
“That’s nice,” Lacey said, not rising to the bait.
“Church is such a nice way to meet people,” her mother said. “I wish you’d start going again.”
“Maybe some time.” Lacey had quit church years ago and had no intention of going back, but found it more expedient to hedge with her mother. In her years with the force, she’d seen too much of bad things happening to good people, especially the young and the vulnerable. No one could convince her any of that was God’s plan.
“Your brother got a promotion,” her mother continued. “He’s a captain now.”
“Oh, nice,” Lacey said. Her brother Sean was with the fire department in Los Gatos, California, just up the coast. He and his wife were continuing the trend of red-haired Fitzpatrick children with three. Lacey knew Sean’s success in the FD was balm to her parents after her own failed career.
“You should go up there some weekend. I know he’d love to see you, and he told me that several of his buddies are single.”
Lacey stifled a snort. Single, yeah—divorced, more like it. Firefighters didn’t have a good batting average in that. Lacey wanted to tell her mother to butt out, that she was only thirty-one and hardly a lost cause, but she knew her mom would feel hurt. The woman only wanted what was best for her.
“All in good time,” she allowed finally. “It’ll happen when it happens.”
She heard her mother’s long-suffering sigh. Lost cause indeed.
“All right, dear. Don’t stay up too late. You need your sleep.”
As if she were a five-year-old.
“Okay, Mom. Give my love to Dad. Bye.”
As Lacey keyed off the phone, she laughed grimly. Wouldn’t her mother blow a gasket if she had told her about her working with a medium? Talking to ghosts? That would be grounds for permanent residency in the land of lost causes, she was sure.
But later, after the movie was over and she was ready for sleep, Lacey couldn’t help but smile over the incredible sense of satisfaction she felt.
~~~
On Monday, Lacey planned to call the captain after the first morning chaos had subsided, usually about nine or ten. So she was shocked to see LAPD on her caller ID when her phone rang at just a few minutes after eight.
“Hello?”
“Lacey, it’s Shirley. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, not at all,” Lacey said. It was like Shirley to remember Lacey’s hours and be mindful of a different sleep schedule.
“Captain Shaw wanted me to call you right away. He’s giving a press conference at nine and would like you to be there.”
Lacey sat bolt upright in her chair. “Nine this morning?” She glanced at her watch. Only 8:10. “There at the station?”
“Yes, in the big conference room. Can you be there?”
“I’m on my way,” she said, wrapping two pieces of toast in a napkin. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.”
There were already many TV station trucks parked along the street. Lacey had to park a block away and jog back to the station. Inside was a calm but expectant crowd of journalists. She hoped none of them recognized her. Her picture had appeared frequently enough during Derrick’s trial, the once-suspect but then disgustingly unaware girlfriend of the criminal officer. She skirted the crowd and managed to make her way to the desk sergeant, another old friend.
“Hey, Dave,” she said quietly.
Dave Kirk looked up. “Hey, Lace,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “What’s up?”
“Shirley called me this morning, said the captain wanted me to be here for the press conference. I just kind of want to keep a low profile.” She tilted her head at the crowd behind her.
“Oh, yeah, right,” he said. “Here, let me give you a visitor’s pass.” He pulled out a laminated card attached to an LAPD lanyard and handed it to her. “Why don’t you go on back? Large conference room.”
“Thanks.” She slipped the lanyard over her head and remembered the days when a simple nod was her admission to the station house. At least she knew exactly where the conference room was, and she scooted up the hall that way.
Several people were already there: Tommy Furness, the IT guy, getting the mic set up, a couple more office assistants setting up more chairs. Lacey touched Shirley on the shoulder.
“Can I help?” she asked as Shirley glanced around.
“Oh, hi, Lacey. No, we’ve pretty much got it. Go ahead, grab a seat.”
Lacey looked around. There was one chair against the back wall, behind where the TV cameras would be set up. She took that one and studiously stared down at her phone. Moments later, the journalists began funneling in. As cameramen crowded the area just in front of her, the reporters claimed chairs as close to the front as they could get. Lacey kept her head down until they were all settled and facing forward.
At exa
ctly nine o’clock, Captain Shaw strode into the room. He stepped to the podium and laid some papers on top, scanning the room. His eyes found Lacey in the back, but did not linger.
He tapped the mic and was rewarded with a magnified thud.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice.” His deep baritone voice boomed across the room. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, we have been conducting a recovery operation in the back yard of a residence in the Fairfax district. Human bones were found, and we have now recovered more than half of a skeleton, along with some remnants of fabric. After careful analysis of all the remains, we can confirm, within a 99% probability, that the bones belong to Isabel Ramirez, an eleven-year-old girl who disappeared on June 28, 1991.”
The room erupted. Questions were shouted, but Captain Shaw motioned for quiet.
“Please, people,” he said. “Let me finish.” He drew in a deep breath and shuffled his papers. “Isabel was the last disappearance to fit the profile of the Fairfax Stalker. She lived just a few blocks away and disappeared one evening while walking home alone from a movie.”
There was murmuring among the press, questions blurted out, but he ignored it all.
“So far we have no evidence to suggest that there are any other bodies buried on the property, but we are checking. We are also looking into property records on the house itself but have not, at this time, identified any suspects. As you can imagine, going back to re-examine the evidence in a twenty-five or thirty-year-old case is difficult.”
He scanned the expectant crowd with a stern face. “That’s all the information I have for you at this time. Thank you.”
Hands popped up and quick pleas of “Captain? Captain?” rang out, but Captain Shaw was already shouldering through the door and out of the room.
Lacey stayed quietly in her chair as the cameramen shut down their gear and the reporters talked among themselves as they shuffled out of the room. She stayed seated for several minutes after the last one left and the door closed behind them. Only then did she creep to the door and look out the small window to the hallway.
Reporters were still clogging the entry, and several remained in the hall, speculating among themselves as they waited for the crowd to thin. Lacey walked to the other door, the one Captain Shaw had used, and looked out. No one lingering there. She watched the last of the journalists shuffle slowly out of the hall. Once they had moved into the front entry area, she scooted out the door and ran down the hall the other way toward the back offices.
Her guest pass fluttering on its lanyard tether, she scurried past open doors and was thankful no one stopped her. She ducked into Shirley’s front office and stood beside her desk as the woman concluded a phone call.
“No, sir, that’s all the information we have right now. Just what’s in the press release.” Shirley glanced up at Lacey and shook her head, rolling her eyes. Lacey smiled grimly.
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” She sighed as she hung up the phone. “I can see I’m not going to get a thing done today,” she said. As soon as she put her phone down, it rang again. She kept her hand on the receiver, but motioned toward the captain’s door. “Five minutes, he said. No more.”
Grinning, Lacey sprinted toward the door. She knocked once and pushed it open.
Captain Shaw was sitting at his desk, his hands steepled under his chin. His phone twinkled with blinking lights.
Lacey sat in one of the guest chairs and pulled it close to the desk.
“Don’t say it,” he said.
“I won’t,” she agreed. “But we know where the other bodies are.”
Captain Shaw studied her face, showing neither surprise nor disdain. “We?” he repeated.
“Sam and I. We went back on Saturday.”
He leaned back in his chair and nodded tiredly. “I know. And…?”
Lacey licked her lips. “Esther is in the back right corner of the back yard. All the others are under the shed.” She leaned forward. “I’m wondering if we could find out when he put that shed in. I’ll bet it was early 1990. He must have buried the first seven there, then put the shed on top of them. Then he couldn’t stop himself from snatching Esther in late 1990, and put her in the back corner. After he killed Isabel, he went back to the shed area again, but of course couldn’t bury her under it.”
Shaw listened patiently. “He?” he asked finally.
“Lester Morehouse.”
The captain nodded. “We’re working on that now.”
Lacey pulled in a breath. “He didn’t die? He moved?”
“From what we have so far, it seems he moved to Oklahoma. We’re working with Tulsa police to see if they have any cases similar to ours.”
“You probably ought to see if you can search his home, too,” Lacey said.
“Because?” The captain arched an eyebrow at her.
“In the basement of Mrs. Levinson’s house, there are two places where there used to be chains bolted into the wall. Sam found the holes.”
“Nobody noticed any holes there,” Shaw said.
“I know, but I saw them. One set is on the wall left of the stairs. The other is on the wall on the right. In the dim light down there, you probably wouldn’t see them without knowing where to look.”
The captain drummed his fingers on the desk. “Anything else?”
Lacey shook her head, then said, “Oh, yeah. I told Mrs. Levinson that she might think about going to visit her kids for a while. I told her the investigation is going to continue on for a bit.” She couldn’t keep a very satisfied smile from her face.
“Get out of here,” the captain growled.
“Yes, sir.” Lacey popped up out of her chair and started for the door.
“Hey,” the captain called.
Lacey stopped and turned toward him, her hand on the doorknob.
“Thanks.”
She grinned. “Anytime, sir. Glad to be of service.” And she fairly skipped out the door.
~~~
FIVE
The newspaper article in the Times on Tuesday morning was heartening. Along with the prepared press release she’d heard yesterday, there was a bit more that resounded like a bell to Lacey, a bell only she could hear.
With the identification of the victim tying the remains to the Fairfax Stalker case of the 1980s and early 90s, police are now widening their investigation, both in the Fairfax area and across the country. The recent discovery has elicited new tips that could lead to solving the decades-old cold case, according to LAPD spokesman Winston Brown.
Late that night as she walked the self storage property, flashlight in hand, her phone rang. She was surprised to see the name on the screen.
“Hello?”
“They believed you.” Sam’s voice was quiet with a calm certainty. She imagined him smiling—sort of.
“Looks like it,” she said. She wondered if her voice reflected the grin on her face.
He chuckled softly. “Not bad for a crazy medium and a disgraced cop.”
Her smile faded. “Uh…”
“Well, okay, not disgraced,” he said, backtracking. “What would you say? Tainted? Tarnished? Exonerated, but not without prejudice.”
“What have you been—”
“Research,” he said. “Two can play that game, you know. So what was the worst of it? Being a suspect? Or finding out the guy you loved was drug-dealing scum?”
Lacey’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “Not much for sugar-coating, are you?”
“I’ve never found it useful,” he admitted.
She hesitated. Part of her wanted to tell him to go to hell, it was none of his business, but part of her wanted to answer his question.
“The worst part,” she said finally, “was coming to the realization that everything I thought I knew was wrong. That I could be that blind. It shook me down to my core.”
Sam was silent for a moment. “That’s some serious shit,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
“I’m sorry.”
Lacey was patently surprised. She’d expected a snappy comeback or a suggestion to ‘get over it,’ something she’d heard more than once. His apology took all the starch out of her.
“Well, it’s over and done,” she said. “Life goes on.”
“It does,” Sam agreed. “But not without a need to rebuild your sense of self, your own credibility. Am I right?”
She frowned. “I’d never thought of it in so many words. Maybe. What do you care?”
“I don’t,” he said lightly, shocking her again with his blunt reply. “But I got a call today, a new client. Haunted house in San Clemente. I wondered if you’d care to work with me on it.”
Now she was seriously doubting her hearing, or her sanity—or both. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it, as if she could see through it to the inner workings of Sam’s unpredictable mind.
“Excuse me?” she said finally into the mouthpiece.
Sam chuckled. That’s twice now, she thought.
“Work with me. I’ll do the walk and you can do the research. I think we make a good team.”
She stared out into the darkness, at the storage units around her. This is just surreal, she thought.
“Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”
She snapped her mouth shut. How did he know?
“There’s no flies out at ten o’clock at night,” she shot back.
Silence. He was waiting for her answer.
Work with him again. On another case. Solve another murder. Maybe. Are all ghosts murdered? She had no idea.
“When?” she asked finally.
“Guess it’ll have to be the weekend, since that’s the only time we’re both free. Saturday?”
But she had so much planned for Saturday. Grocery shopping. Laundry. Flossing her teeth.
“All right. You set it up and let me know?”
“Sure.”
“But,” she said forcefully, “how about you give me a little notice? Like more than twelve hours. At least twenty-four would be nice.”
Ghost Walk Page 5