by K. J. Emrick
Jacob slowed it back to regular speed.
The door caught on the security bar as the housekeeper tried to open it.
“They run a tight ship here at this hotel,” Jacob told Jon and Darcy. “You should have seen them all gathering around downstairs just now when I told them I was coming up here. This is probably the most interesting thing that’s happened here in a very long time.”
Darcy found that mildly surprising. “Really? They let us up here without even a word.”
“Well, that would probably because you two are dressed like people, and I’m dressed like a cop. Police get noticed more when something exciting’s going on. When there’s trouble, however, nobody wants to even look you in the eye for fear they’ll get called into court.”
“Yup,” Jon agreed. “I’ve seen that before. Cops are either the center of attention, or they’re invisible.”
With another tap of Jacob’s finger, the image went forward at its faster speed again. A man came up to the door, a hotel manager based on the way he was dressed. Not the one from downstairs that Darcy had seen but a different one. A dayshift manager, probably. He knocked on the door just like the housekeeper had and got the same answer, which was to say no answer. The man left. The counter sped forward about ten minutes and then Darcy saw four police officers at the door, knocking and calling out for someone to answer them. One of the four was Jacob Mallette. On the video he motioned everyone back, braced himself, and kicked the door with one heavy boot. When it didn’t budge, he kicked it again.
“Not one of my finer moments,” Mallette muttered. “But it worked.”
The door cracked open on the second kick and the four officers went in. A short time later they all came out again, motioning for everyone to stay back. This was now a murder investigation.
Officer Mallette shrugged and took his phone back. “It goes on for about another ten minutes before the manager pulled the recording for me. That’s all there was. Nobody in, and nobody out but us cops, and yet Mister Fred Harris is dead in that room from a gunshot. No weapon, no suspects, no earthly idea how we’re going to solve this one. Don’t think anyone would blame you, Jon, if you packed it up and left this case to be our headache.”
Darcy knew that most other people would have done exactly that. Although this could be an impressive feather in someone’s cap, it could also be a black mark on Jon’s career if it remained unsolved. Darcy knew her man, though, and knew he wouldn’t let that stop him.
“I’m happy to help,” Jon said with a wave of his hand. “You guys have given our small-town department enough assistance over the years. Now it’s time for me to return the favor.”
“Appreciate that, Chief.” Jacob shrugged helplessly. “We’ve got three times the number of people you do but sometimes it isn’t about numbers. I may not know everyone I work with personally, but I know who I can count on and who I can’t, and I don’t mind saying this one is out of our league.”
“Well, we’re here now.” Jon sighed and looked at his watch again. “Let’s take a quick look inside and see if anything jogs our collective intellect.”
“No, wait,” Darcy said abruptly, pointing to Jacob’s phone. “Show me that again. Just the end. The last part. When everyone arrives. Play it from there.”
“Darcy?” Jon asked. “What did you see?”
She smiled as the phone played through the recording again. There it was. The answer to the hardest part of this mystery.
Now she knew how the killer got out.
Chapter 9
When they got back to the hospital Jon parked in the row nearest to the patient entrance, but he didn’t turn the car off. He sat there with Darcy while the wipers slapped the rain away from the windshield. For a long moment, they sat in silence as they thought about everything that had happened since they left the hotel.
“You trust Officer Mallette to take care of everything?” Darcy asked after another moment.
“I do,” Jon said absently. “I’d hire him in Misty Hollow in a heartbeat. When their chief comes back, I’m going to make sure he’s considered for promotion if it hasn’t crossed someone’s mind already.”
The clock on the dash told her that it was getting close to five o’clock. Had they really been gone that long? She was glad to have helped Jon with his murder mystery, but now it was time for them to get back to Colby. Jacob had his instructions from Jon, and what he needed to do to solve the case now was going to take them the rest of the morning. Maybe longer. Her baby girl needed her right now.
She’d already messaged with Grace to fill her in. Colby’s condition, the murder case, all of it. Grace had let her know that Zane was still asleep. Darcy had warned her sister that wouldn’t last. Soon enough her boy would be up and looking for breakfast, attention, and playtime. Grace would have her hands full then.
She thanked her sister and promised to make this up to her in spades, and then set the phone aside.
The rain drummed on the roof of the car and tried to lull Darcy to sleep. She was so, so tired. Once she got Colby back home, she was going to sleep for a week. With luck that would happen soon.
Or maybe not.
She remembered touching Colby’s forehead and feeling that shock and knowing that it was something strange but not knowing what. Then there was the coincidence of the room numbers. Colby’s room number at the hospital, and the room number where the murder had taken place at the hotel. Both the same.
Smudge’s warning that he was worried about her. I’m afraid for her, he’d said.
So was she.
Colby wasn’t a normal girl. The family gift was strong in her and that made her special in ways that nobody fully understood except Darcy, and maybe not even her. The list of things that most girls Colby’s age had to worry about was only the beginning in her case. Sure, boys and puberty and good grades and too much sun were all important, but Colby also needed to worry about ghosts following her home, and all the ways a spirit communication could go wrong, and… and…
Hold on, now.
What if this ailment of hers wasn’t physical, or at least not completely? What if it had its roots in her gift and that was why the doctors couldn’t see anything wrong with their tests. What if it was some kind of metaphysical ailment?
That thought scared her, sending icy fingers up and down her spine. In Great Aunt Millie’s journals there were warnings about losing yourself in a spirit communication and not being able to get back. There was one speculative entry about whether a ghost could ever have a disease that was contagious to people. It scared Darcy to even think about but when you were a family of ghost whisperers like they were, these were the things you had to worry about.
Why hadn’t she seen it before?
“I need to see Colby,” she said, not waiting to explain her sudden rush as she got out and made for the entrance through the driving rain. She heard his door close before she was halfway across the lot, and then he was there with her holding her hand, and then they were inside, heading to the stairs.
The desk clerk waved to them, obviously remembering them from earlier, with that same concerned expression on her face. Darcy tried not to let it bother her, because part of the woman’s job was to show concern to the patients and their families. She just kept walking. There were more people around now that it was getting closer to daybreak. Doctors and nurses. Cleaning staff. People coming and going to see their loved ones or keep medical appointments.
A man in a green windbreaker came walking down the hall from the other direction, head down and shoulders hunched. Darcy noticed him only a moment before he bumped into her.
“Excuse you,” she started to protest, because the hallways weren’t that crowded and there was no excuse for him not to move out of the way or at the very least apologize—
His hands grabbed her arms at her elbows, and she was pulled to the side and nearly off her feet, through a door into a cramped room.
A motion-activated light came on overhead.
Darcy’s mind reeled. This man looked familiar, with his thin mustache and his angry brown eyes. Who was he? What did he want from her?
Quick on the heels of that thought came the realization that she didn’t care. She couldn’t care less who this man was and why he was asking her questions in such a threatening manner. Not right now. The only thing that mattered to her was the fact that she was alone with him here, in this cramped closet. He was obviously upset, and Darcy was the target of his rage.
Even though Jon was just on the other side of that door along with a dozen or so other people, by the time they could react and get to her something very bad might have happened.
Very bad things were absolutely the worst kinds of things in Darcy’s mind.
Only a matter of seconds had passed while her mind worked itself to that conclusion. Not that she needed any prompting from her brain to tell her when she was in danger. She’d had plenty of practice with that.
She heard the doorknob rattle, and then someone was pounding on the door and Jon was calling out her name. In no time at all, he would be breaking the door down to get to her.
The man in the closet with her crowded closer, forcing Darcy back. Her hands flew out as her shoulders struck the hard edge of a metal shelf. It was an entire rack of shelves, she realized, as she felt and heard cleaning supplies and paint cans and God alone knew what else rattling against each other behind her.
There was something in the man’s hand.
“Tell me what you were doing there!” the man demanded again.
Something slammed against the closet door as Jon tried to get to her.
“Tell me!”
Darcy narrowed her eyes.
Her left hand had closed around something hard and tall and cylindrical. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t dare look down to find out, but it fit nicely in her grip and had a nice heft to it as she brought it up in a tight arc and slammed it against the side of the man’s head.
The indicator needle on the fire extinguisher read empty, and Darcy couldn’t put a lot of force behind the blow in the confined space, but it made a lovely bong! sound as it struck his face.
He sort of tipped to his side, and his eyes fluttered closed, and then he dropped to the floor beside a mop bucket.
At the same time, the doorframe cracked, and the door flew open and Jon was there, his entire body tensed and ready to spring. His eyes found her, and then the man on the floor, and then the fire extinguisher in her hand.
“Uh,” he said uncertainly, “I’m here to rescue you.”
Darcy let the extinguisher drop to the floor. The sound of it hitting was duller than when it had struck the man.
“I,” she said to Jon, “am nobody’s damsel in distress.”
He laughed as he came over to her, stepping over the man’s legs, folding her close into his arms. “No, you are not. You’re Darcy Sweet.”
“Don’t you forget it,” she said with a decisive nod against his shoulder.
Behind them, other people were poking their heads through the door, shocked at what they had seen. Jon told them they had a man with a head wound here and they needed a doctor. One or two of them hurried off while the rest of the small crowd remained behind. Darcy wanted to shoo them all away so she and her husband could have a private moment together, but she supposed that wasn’t going to happen. This was a hospital closet, after all, not her bedroom.
So. Back to the question at hand.
“Jon? Who is this guy?”
He didn’t let go of her as he turned to look down on the unconscious would-be attacker. “Well, if I had to guess, I’d say this is our killer.”
“Sure, I figured that. I haven’t made anyone that mad in a while so who else could it be, but… who is he?”
Jon gave her another quick squeeze before letting go to kneel down and search through the man’s pockets. There was still something familiar about him to Darcy but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what. Jon found the man’s wallet, and from the wallet he produced a driver’s license. He held it up to see better in the dim light. “Huh. You’re not going to believe this.”
“I was just attacked in a janitor’s closet,” she reminded him. “I think we’ve already reached my threshold of disbelief for today. Who is he?”
“This is the night manager at Rest Easy Suites hotel. He was there earlier.”
Darcy snapped her fingers. “Of course! He was the manager in the back office. I only saw him for a split second but now it makes sense. He said he saw me there. He wanted to know why I was there.”
Jon looked up at her, confusion settling into the creases on his forehead. “He wanted to know why you were there, but not me? I’m the police officer.”
“Well, sure, but he wouldn’t know that, right? Like Jacob Mallette said, we were wearing civilian clothes, so nobody thought to stop us. Besides, you’re the chief of police in Misty Hollow. Nobody really knows you over here.”
“Hmm. That’s true.” He stood up and put the driver’s license in his pocket for safekeeping. “Here I’m just a temp. Outside of the Meadowood officers, there’s not too many people over here who would recognize me. For that matter, I don’t recognize all of the people on their police department either. It’s too big for my liking. So, this guy saw us both there, with Officer Mallette in his uniform, and figures we have something to do with the case. He probably thought he would scare us into telling him what the police knew about the murder. Interesting.”
“That’s one word for it,” she quipped, starting to relax again now that she wasn’t in any imminent danger of being attacked. “We took our time getting here, after setting everything else up with Jacob. He must have heard one of us mentioning Colby was in the hospital, and then come here to wait for us.”
“And,” Jon added, “I’m sure he thought you would be the easier target of the two of us. He probably planned on getting you to talk and then rushing past me to get away. Boy, did he have the wrong idea about you.”
She smiled at the compliment in his words. It made her feel good to know he recognized her strong, independent side. “Oh, that reminds me. He had something in his hands. I couldn’t see what it was, but it might be a gun or a knife. I figured it was better to hit him first and ask questions about it later.”
“Good thinking.”
Jon knelt down again, checking around the floor. He stopped, and picked something up, and held it out for her to see. A cellphone in a black case. “Just this,” he told her. “Not that you would have had time to notice. Better safe than sorry.”
Darcy sighed. “I absolutely, positively hate this hospital.”
“Why’s that?” he asked, getting back up and tucking the phone away with the man’s ID.
“Because,” she said. “It’s like every time we come here, we get into some kind of trouble.”
He gave her a wink. “I thought trouble was just part of life for Darcy Sweet, no matter where she was?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny. Are you okay if I leave you here and go up to check on Colby? We’ve been away from her a lot longer than I expected.”
She didn’t tell him what she was thinking about Colby’s sickness. She wasn’t sure herself, and it was going to take far too long to explain.
Jon didn’t hesitate. “Sure. Go on up. Let me know what’s going on as soon as you know, okay?” He took her hand and held it in his. “I’ll call Officer Mallette and get him over here. I’ll let Grace know what’s going on, too, and let her know we’ll be a little later than we figured. Well. A lot later, I guess.”
Two gloved nurses arrived, and then a doctor, and then someone pushing a wheeled stretcher, telling the crowd of onlookers to get back as they squeezed into the closet to attend to the man Darcy had taken down with a fire extinguisher. She slipped out a
fter a quick kiss from Jon. Her daughter needed her more than this man who had tried to attack her.
This man who was probably the murderer in their locked door mystery.
But how did he do it? The room was locked from the inside. How had he gotten in, and then out again? Darcy was sure she knew. She just had to prove it. That’s what Officer Mallette was working on for them while they returned here to see Colby.
That’s where she was going now, and no force on Earth or in the afterlife was going to get in her way again.
At the second-floor stairway landing, she made sure to look up and down the hallway before stepping out. Determination was all well and good, but there was no substitute for making sure a bad guy wasn’t lurking in the shadows. When she didn’t see any more unpleasant surprises waiting or her, she went straight up the hall, and past the nurses’ station.
In room 203, the surprise that was waiting for her was a pleasant one.
Colby was sitting there in the bed with the top half raised up high, flipping through channels on the television with the remote. She turned her head to face the door as Darcy came in, and she smiled a tired smile.
“Hey, Mom.”
Darcy was too overwhelmed to speak. Her daughter looked like she was back to herself again. The IV drip had been removed from her arm and taken away. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes looked as tired as she sounded but there was no hint of pain in them. Darcy reached around the bedrails to hug her daughter close. If she had her way, she’d never let her go. Not ever.
“Mom,” Colby croaked dramatically. “I need to breathe.”
They both laughed, and Darcy let go, but she didn’t move from the side of the bed. “Your dad’s here, too. He’s downstairs, um, taking care of something.”
Her daughter sighed and laid back against the thin mattress. “I know.”
“You know? What do you mean, you know?”
Colby shrugged. “I mean, not the specifics or anything but I knew you and dad would get into trouble if we came here on Saturday. That’s why I wanted to do Doctor Malik’s tests on Tuesday. Saturday was a bad day to be here, and I knew it. I was just so out of it when Dad brought me here. I couldn’t tell him not to come. Are you okay?”