Ghost Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

  “I think I can manage that.” She heard his smile.

  “All right, then.”

  “All right. Talk to you later.” And he was gone.

  Lacey stared at her phone again, finally keyed off the dead line. She had no idea what to think. He had to be the tersest, rudest, most infuriating man she’d ever met.

  And she couldn’t wait to work with him again.

  ~~~

  He called again Thursday night.

  “Way more than twenty-four hours ahead,” he noted when she answered her phone.

  “Thank you,” she said. “What time Saturday?”

  “Eleven a.m. Can you drive? My truck’s not the most dependable.”

  Why didn’t that surprise her? “Yes, I’ll drive. Where should I pick you up?” She fumbled for a piece of paper in her pocket—a gas receipt—and wrote down the address. Not the best part of town, but not the worst, either. “Pick you up at what—nine?”

  “Nine is good. Do you want me to wear the recorder thing again? Did that come out?”

  “It did, actually, but there wasn’t much on it. You don’t talk much, you know.”

  “Yeah. I’m not used to having anyone with me.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Would you mind if I videoed the whole thing? You wouldn’t have to wear anything special, and you wouldn’t need to do a running monologue. Although a few words would be nice.”

  He snorted a laugh. “That could work. As long as you don’t get in my way.”

  “Did I last time?”

  “No.” He sounded almost surprised. “You did fine.”

  “Okay, then.” She paused, but he didn’t fill in the gap. “Anything else?”

  “No, I think that covers it. See you then.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  ~~~

  SIX

  Lacey was antsy for the weekend to arrive. She wished she had thought to ask for the address of the house they were going to; she’d have liked to get a jump on the research. But maybe it was better this way, going in cold. No expectations, no self-fulfilling prophecies.

  The Saturday morning paper reported progress on the Stalker case. More bones were found, and the police were confident they would prove to belong to another Stalker victim.

  Esther.

  When it came time for Lacey to go pick up Sam, she went over her gear. Her camcorder still worked, even though she hadn’t used it in years. She’d charged both batteries and now tossed those in her purse with the camcorder. She also threw in the digital recorder, just in case. Her phone and a bottle of water completed her preparations. Good thing she carried a large purse. She hauled it to her car and left for Silver Lake.

  Sam was waiting for her in front of an older apartment building, a row of conjoined single-story apartments just off the parking lot. It might easily have been a motel in a previous life. Not a lot of maintenance there, she thought.

  She pulled up to the curb and Sam climbed in. Faded jeans and a Grateful Dead t-shirt.

  “Hey,” he said. He leaned back and pulled his seat belt across his body.

  “Hey, yourself.” She waited until he’d buckled the seat belt, then pulled away from the curb, heading toward the freeway. “You know how to get where we’re going?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He pulled a folded Google map from his front jeans pocket and spread it out on his lap. “Take the 5 down to San Clemente, get off at the Camino de Estrella exit.”

  “I could plug the address into my GPS,” she offered.

  “Nah. This is good.” He stared out the windshield. “There’s been a study that links GPS-usage to Alzheimer’s, you know. Figuring out where we are and how to get places keeps our brains healthy.”

  Lacey glanced over at him trying to figure out if he was kidding. He wasn’t smiling.

  “You’re serious?” she asked.

  He swung his gaze over to her. “Sure. Our brains are geared for a lot of survival skills that we don’t use anymore. You know the old saying: use it or lose it.”

  “So do you use all your survival skills?” she asked. Paying more attention to her driving, she cut a quick look at him.

  “Eh,” he shrugged. “Not so much here in LA. But when I go home, I do.”

  “And home is…?”

  “Navajo reservation. Arizona.”

  Something clicked in her mind, some little factoid she’d heard somewhere and stored away. “I seem to remember hearing that the Navajo were afraid of ghosts, that they avoided places where people had died.”

  “Traditionally that’s true,” he admitted.

  “So with your… talent and what you do, does that create a conflict for you?”

  “Not really. It’s all about keeping balance and harmony in the world. See, if a person dies and the proper customs are not followed, they might come back and get stuck. Obviously they don’t belong here, and need to move on to the next stage of existence. What I do helps them do that, so although I’m interacting with the dead—which freaks some people out—I’m doing it to restore balance.”

  Wow, Lacey thought. That was the most words he’d ever spoken to her at one time.

  “So have you always been able to sense spirits?”

  A wry smile curved his mouth. “Yeah. That was just normal for me. It was years before I realized that not everyone could do it. It was kind of like being born able to see and not knowing that everyone else was blind.”

  “Huh,” Lacey said. That certainly put a different slant on things.

  “But the Irish have a strong tradition of spirits, too,” he said. “Pixies and leprechauns and such.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I’m a fourth generation American, so not a lot of the old Irish lore has survived in my family. My parents and grandparents are all pretty down to earth. I never heard about pixies or banshees or anything like that.”

  Sam nodded. “More spiritual instincts lost,” he said. He stared out the window.

  Lacey concentrated on her driving as she navigated the tangled spaghetti of freeways, and Sam seemed content to let her drive in silence. She glanced over once and thought how incongruous it was to hear him talking about spirits and instincts while staring out across the concrete maze that was Southern California.

  “Just curious,” she said, “since it sounds like you’re more comfortable in your native land, why do you live here?”

  He didn’t look at her, but she could see the grim smile in his reflection in the side window.

  “My wife’s idea. She grew up in Phoenix, wasn’t crazy about the idea of living in a hogan on the reservation, or even in Flagstaff. She likes having a Starbucks on every corner.”

  So the marriage fell apart and he stayed to be near his kids. Age-old story. Lacey was grateful that she and Derrick never had kids. She was too invested in her job and obviously Derrick was too invested in his extracurricular criminal activities. She could only imagine how much worse those trial months would have been if they’d had kids. Those days were awful enough: the walks into the courthouse, hounded by shouting reporters, sitting in the packed courtroom with dozens of people staring at her, whispering, pointing. If she’d had kids, she certainly wouldn’t have dragged them through that circus, but how easy would it have been to go through that meat grinder of emotions every day, then go home and try to create a calm, stable home environment? Not to mention the fact that kids could be so mean, and no doubt hers would have heard taunts from others. She shivered at the thought. No, better this way.

  She realized with a start that she’d been lost in her own world. She glanced over at Sam. He was watching her, a curious gleam in those obsidian eyes. She wondered briefly if he could read living minds as well as bodiless ones. She hoped not.

  She hunched forward, her hands firm on the steering wheel, and kept driving south.

  ~~~

  Once she steered the car off the freeway onto Camino de Estrella, Sam guided her through upscale residential areas to the house in question. San Cleme
nte was a nice area, nicer than the older, urban neighborhoods around LA. This was more suited to episodes of Desperate Housewives than Ghost Hunters.

  Lacey found the number and pulled up in front of a nice, neat ranch home. The front yard was manicured lawn with flower borders. The paint on the house was a soothing sea foam green with white trim. A silver Lexus was parked in the driveway.

  Sam got out of the car and shoved his folded map into his back jeans pocket. Taking the lead, he walked to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  A woman answered. Her eyes jumped from Sam to Lacey, expectant, unsure. Lacey guessed her to be in her early forties, and as well cared for as the house. Sleek dark hair, hazel eyes, flawless make-up.

  “Mrs. Weiss,” Sam said. “I’m Sam Firecloud. We spoke on the phone. This is my partner, Lacey Fitzpatrick.”

  A tight smile. “Yes, hello. Janet Weiss. Please, come in.” Janet stepped back to allow them in the door.

  Sam immediately made a quick survey of the front room—or a radar check, Lacey guessed. While he was calibrating his inner instruments, Lacey put a hand out.

  “Nice to meet you, Janet,” she said. “We hope we can help.”

  The woman relaxed with the handshake and soothing words. “I hope so, too. If not, I’m afraid we’re going to have to move. I just can’t take this anymore.”

  Lacey nodded. “I understand. We’ll do everything we can to clear the problem.” She pulled her camcorder from her purse and snapped the battery in. “What we normally do is this,” Lacey said, mentally crossing her fingers to atone for stretching the truth. “Sam and I will walk through the house and I will film him as he goes. He won’t touch anything, not walls, doors or objects. He’ll get a feel for whoever is stuck here in the house, and then when we’re all done, we’d like to sit down with you and hear about your own experiences. Will that be all right with you?”

  Janet seemed to consider that for a moment. Like most people, Lacey suspected, she might not have expected letting strangers roam the house unescorted.

  “But don’t you want to know what’s been going on? Where things are happening?”

  “Not yet,” Lacey said. “We need to let Sam get his own impressions first, without any preconceived suggestions. Then we’ll compare his experiences with yours.”

  “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll wait for you here.”

  “Thank you,” Lacey smiled. “It shouldn’t take more than twenty or thirty minutes at the most.”

  As Janet moved to the couch and sat down, Lacey walked up behind Sam. She made sure the camcorder was on, then said quietly, “Anytime you’re ready.”

  After his first brief scan, Sam had stood silently staring down the hall. Now unleashed, he walked that way, but slowly. Lacey could almost sense the invisible feelers he put out all around him.

  At the beginning of the hallway, he paused. He angled his head toward the kitchen, his nostrils flaring. Then he took a step into the hall. His half-closed eyes scanned the walls on both sides. He stopped, held his open palm up to the wall but didn’t touch it. Then he turned to the opposite wall and stared at it.

  “There was blood here,” he said quietly. “Bloody handprints. All down the hall.” He walked on slowly, but stared intently at different places along the way.

  Lacey was extremely grateful that he was talking. She wondered if it might be possible to pull small samples of blood from underneath the paint on the walls. Wondered how good a clean-up job had been done.

  Sam came to a doorway and stopped. Bathroom. He moved on. Bedroom on one side of the hall, furnished as an office. He stared into it. Lacey was reminded of a cat, sniffing for danger. Again he walked on.

  The master bedroom was off to the left. He stood in the doorway. “Lots of fighting,” he said. “Rough sex, angry sex. Power struggle.”

  Lacey thought he might go into the room, but he didn’t. He turned and entered the third bedroom. A single bed, sports pennants on the wall. A dresser almost covered with trophies: baseball, football, soccer. Posters of young bands Lacey had never heard of.

  Sam stood just inside the doorway and slowly swiveled his head from left to right. Then he started back the other way, but paused at the corner of the room nearest the walk-in closet. He walked to the corner and hunkered down. He held his hands out, palms down, and moved them slowly over the carpet, just inches above.

  “Blood here,” he said. “Lots of blood. Anger. Disbelief. Revenge.” He turned his head toward the closet. “Just out of reach.”

  Lacey waited patiently, watching as he seemed to soak up every bit of emotion, almost as if the blood itself were all draining toward him. She couldn’t see it, but she could imagine it.

  Suddenly Sam pushed to his feet, startling her. He whirled and left the room, left her to hurry after him. He strode down the hall, turned and went into the kitchen. He stood before the granite counter, hands before him, and inched sideways. Stopped.

  “Knives,” he said. “One big knife. He never saw it coming. Didn’t believe she’d do it. Laughed at her at first. Laughter. Shock. Anger. Revenge.”

  He stood a moment longer, then dropped his hands to his side. He turned toward Lacey, his eyes shadowed. “That’s all.”

  She turned off the camcorder. As she tucked it into her purse, Sam moved past her to the living room. She followed.

  Janet stood as they joined her. “That’s all?” she asked. “That didn’t take long.”

  “Would you mind if we each had a glass of water?” Lacey set her purse down on the couch as Sam took a seat. She waited expectantly, prepared to help in the kitchen and give him a few moments to settle.

  “Uh, no, not at all.” Janet walked quickly to the kitchen, Lacey following her scented trail of expensive cologne.

  “Your home is lovely,” she said as Janet filled two tall glasses with ice.

  “Thank you.” The woman poured cold water from a pitcher, then added lemon wedges to each glass. “We’ve worked hard to turn it into our dream home, but this—thing—has made it a nightmare.”

  “I can imagine,” Lacey said, taking the glass offered to her. “So how many are in your family?”

  “Just three, my husband and I and our son.” The two women headed back to the living room. “He’s at a prep school in Connecticut, only comes home on breaks, but he’s threatened to not come home at all if we can’t get rid of this ghost.”

  Janet handed Sam his glass and took her seat, while Lacey sat beside him. Once settled, she took out her digital recorder and clicked it on, setting it on the couch next to her.

  “So what kinds of things have you all been experiencing?” she asked. “When did it start?”

  Janet blew out a breath. Her manicured nails tapped on the chair arms.

  “We bought the house three years ago. None of us noticed anything at first. Didn’t notice or maybe just passed it off as imagination. One evening my husband was working late and my son came out of his room looking for him. I said he’s not home yet, and my son said there was a man standing in his room. We both went back there to look, but of course there was nothing.”

  She picked imaginary lint from her sharply creased slacks. “I forgot all about it until a few weeks later. My son woke us up in the middle of the night. He said there was something in his closet, like a rat or something. We went to see and pulled everything out, his shoes, his sports equipment, boxes—everything. But there was nothing there. He said it sounded like something scrabbling around, bumping into things, pushing things aside. It was loud enough to wake him up.”

  “What else?” Lacey prompted.

  Janet looked uncomfortable. “I began to notice a change in my husband. Not all the time, but in the bedroom. In there, he would suddenly become more arrogant. Argumentative. We seldom argue—we’ve been married for twenty-two years—but he seemed to deliberately pick fights with me in there. At first I thought maybe work was getting to him, or just the added pressure to fix the house up the way we wanted it. Durin
g the first year, we had quite a few contractors in here, retiling the bathrooms, putting new countertops in the kitchen. You know how stressful it can be to have workmen around all the time?”

  “Yes, of course,” Lacey said.

  “But if I asked him about it later, if he was under stress or worried about something, he had no idea what I was even talking about. It was as if he couldn’t even remember the argument we’d had just the night before.”

  Lacey remembered Sam’s comments in the bedroom—Rough sex. Angry sex. She doubted the proper Janet would reveal any of those kinds of details—if there were any. Lacey wanted to glance over at Sam, but kept herself from doing so. He remained stubbornly silent.

  “Anything else?” she asked instead.

  “Spencer—my son—spent less and less time in his room. He started doing his homework at the dining room table. He wouldn’t invite friends over. He insisted—insisted—that we remove the doors on his closet. He wouldn’t go in the room if the doors were there, so now we take the doors off whenever he comes home from school, then put them back on when he leaves. He was here just a couple of weeks ago, but even though we’d taken the doors off, he told us when he left that he’d never sleep in that room again.”

  “Did he say why? Was it the noises in the closet again?”

  Janet shook her head. “He won’t say. Just refuses to go in there. He says he can’t sleep. He says there’s someone in there.”

  “Anything in any of the other rooms?” Sam asked.

  Janet looked around absently. “I don’t believe so. Oh, I do detect a smell sometimes. It’s not overpowering, but … disturbing.”

  “What kind of smell?” Lacey asked.

  The woman shook her head. “I’m not sure. Kind of metallic. You know, like when you bite your tongue accidentally?”

  Blood, Lacey thought. “Yes,” she said.

  “Talking about it now, it doesn’t seem like much,” the woman said, “but living here, feeling it—it’s awful. We can’t go on this way. What good is a dream home if our son won’t set foot inside it? Or if my husband and I argue every night?”