Ghost Detective

by Scott William Carter

  “I’m gifted that way. Get out.”

  “I was just … I’ve never driven in one of these. I thought—”

  “This isn’t a Toyota dealership,” I said, “and I’m not doing any free test drives.”

  With a shrug, he stepped out of the car, right through the side. He wore a long ceremonial sword. It wasn’t until he was out in the open air, when a slight breeze ruffled his hair, that I saw the bullet hole on his right temple, a tiny charred oval with only a trace of blood around it.

  “There’s something familiar about you,” I said.

  “I hear that frequently,” he said.

  The clothes. The face. Even the manner of his death. It came back to me in a flash. “Meriwether Lewis,” I guessed.

  He bowed his head.

  “No William Clark?” I said.

  “I’m afraid the captain and I had a bit of a falling out. A bit of a disagreement on whether the war in Iraq was worth fighting after 9/11.”

  “I see. That’s a very modern debate.”

  “Once a man of the military, always a man of the military.”

  “Right. So what are you doing up here?”

  “Exploring,” he said.

  “Still? Hasn’t it all been pretty much explored by now?”

  “Not by me,” he said.

  “Right. Can I show you something?” When he nodded, I took out Tony’s picture, the one I’d gotten from Karen’s apartment. “Have you seen this man around here?”

  “I don’t believe so, though I have just come from the north.”

  Disappointed, I put the picture away. “Well, thanks anyway. Say, did you really commit suicide?”

  “That’s a rather personal question, don’t you think?”

  “Sorry. You still want a ride?”

  His face brightened. “Yes, of course. I’m fascinated by the hybrid technology.”

  “You traveled eight-thousand miles, most of it on foot, and you’re impressed by a Prius?”

  “Actually, I’m most impressed by the Segway scooters, but the Prius is certainly intriguing. I do try to keep up on all the modern modes of transportation.”

  I gave Lewis a ride back down the gravel road, answering his questions on the way. He was most curious about when the gas motor kicked in versus the electric one. If I hadn’t been so bothered by my conversation with Beth, I would have asked him some questions about his adventures with the Corps of Discovery, but the troubling thing gnawing at me kept crowding out other thoughts.

  Just before we reached Government Camp, I pulled to the shoulder and let him out. He tapped the hood.

  “A good vehicle,” he said. “They’ve progressed much since the first horseless carriage.”

  “What will you do now?” I asked.

  “Oh, make camp for the night. I prefer sleeping outdoors. A man really doesn’t need anything more than a few trees to block the wind and the stars overhead to be happy.”

  I wished him well and he marched off into the woods. He’d just vanished into the trees when I finally realized what was bothering me—and I had Lewis’s comment partly to thank.

  The garbage.

  The cabin hadn’t smelled like garbage.

  Stopped on the side of the road, with my Prius’s electric engine as silent as a sleeping baby, my mind raced over what this meant. If Beth had only just removed the garbage from the house, as smelly as that bag had been, there should have been some trace of the stench when we’d gone inside. More importantly, she’d only arrived the previous night, so she hadn’t even had time to create that much trash. Those two things meant not only that somebody else had produced the garbage but that this person also wasn’t staying in the cabin.

  This person was most likely staying in the woods nearby.

  Like Lewis, Tony Neuman was probably camping under the stars. Unlike Lewis, Tony was using the cabin as his base and Beth as his contact with the world. The problem was, I had no idea where he would be hiding in the miles and miles of national forest that surrounded us. My best bet would be to watch the cabin and hope that Tony showed up at some point, or that Beth went out to meet him.

  There was no time to waste, because she could have been on her way to see him already.

  I couldn’t just drive up there, though, or she’d see me coming long before I got there—not to mention Tony, who might be monitoring the road himself. I’d have to walk, and preferably in the forest. The good news was that the cabin was probably only a half a mile up the road from Government Camp. Even through the forest, I could get to the cabin in minutes if I hustled.

  Just off to the left, there was a 7-Eleven, and I parked at the back of the lot, trying to use the building to hide the car. A man dressed in a black parka, cracked ski goggles on his head, was sitting by the door and weeping into his hands. A young couple went inside without even glancing his way. I started to get out of the car, then remembered who I was dealing with and decided I should at least tell somebody where I was.

  The cell phone had two bars, but the call went through and Alesha picked up on the first ring. I heard ringing phones and laughter in the background, the familiar sounds of our police bureau.

  “Yes, Kimosabe?” she said.

  “I think I found him,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Government Camp. He’s hiding in the woods behind Beth Thorne’s cabin. Here’s the address.”

  I gave it to her, and I heard the scratch of her pen on the other end.

  “And you know this how?” she asked.

  “No time to explain. I don’t know exactly where he is yet, but there’s a good chance I’ll find out in a moment. Cell phone’s iffy up here, so I just wanted you to know where I was if you don’t hear from me soon.”

  “Myron, wait, you’re not going to—”

  “No time. One last thing. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who shot me.”

  “What? Myron—”

  I hung up.

  Chapter 24

  The meeting ran long, and the gray, overcast afternoon was sliding into an early dusk by the time I pulled into our driveway. The light was so poor that the street lamps lining the street were already aglow, casting their pallid light on the oak leaves, which had just begun their autumn shift to yellow and crimson. When I saw how dark our house was, I felt a pinch of guilt.

  Once inside, I heard the whisk-whisk of a paintbrush coming from down the hall. Walking through the shadows, I found her in her studio working on the same painting she’d been working on for the better part of a week. She always worked with her easel near the window and turned toward the light, but even so, it was so dark in the room I don’t know how she could work. I could barely see her face. I could barely see her body either, and I wished I could, since she appeared to be working in the black lingerie she’d worn last night. The glimpses of white flesh and sloping curves tantalized me.

  There were moments, as fleeting and as wonderful as they were, when I forgot that my wife was a ghost. This morning I’d had one of those moments. I’d blown her a kiss and was out the door with a smile on my face, forgetting how helpless she was in the house without me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I should have turned on more lights before I left. Didn’t know I’d be this long.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, “you’ve had a lot on your mind lately.”

  “Do you want me to turn on the overhead light?”

  “No. I’m used to it. What did Frank want?”

  “What else? My help.”

  “He’s got a case for you?”

  “It’s not a case,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t call it a case. I’m just doing him a favor. Somebody stole some inheritance money, leaving the widow broke. The deceased husband wants to make sure she gets her money back. I’m just putting some missing pieces together for them.”

  “Sounds like a case,” she said.

  “It’s not,” I insisted.

  “If you say so.”

/>   “It’s really not.”

  I couldn’t see her face, but I could imagine how smug her smile was. She dabbed at some yellow paint on the palette she was holding, a palette I realized would be way too heavy for her to use her limited ability to levitate to keep in the air like that. I hadn’t realized this until today.

  “You’re not using a real brush, are you?” I asked.

  “It’s real,” she said.

  “I mean, nobody will be able to see it but you and me.”

  “And other ghosts.”

  “And other ghosts, right. Can I see it yet?”

  “Nope. I told you, it’s a surprise. But I can tell you where we’re going to hang it—now that you’re starting your fourth case.”

  “It’s not a case. None of them were cases.”

  Saying nothing, she applied a little more paint. I sighed.

  “Where are we going to hang it?” I asked.

  “In your office,” she said.

  “I don’t have an office.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You don’t mean an office in the house, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  I watched her paint a little while, marveling at the enigma that was my wife. She’d always been an enigma to me, never knowable directly but always obliquely, like having to guess at what a painting looked like by watching the person painting it instead of seeing it yourself. For some strange reason, it was why I loved her.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re painting a picture to hang in an office that I don’t have yet, for a job that I don’t want?”

  “No, I’m painting a picture for an office that you’re going to rent for a job you haven’t figured out you already have.”

  “Uh-huh. And it will look just like a blank canvas to every other living person but me. Only the ghosts will be able to see what it is.”

  She looked at me, and I could just make out a hint of her smile, the shine of her teeth floating suspended in the darkness like the Cheshire cat’s.

  “That’s exactly the point,” she said. “They’ll know right away they’ve got the right detective.”

  Chapter 25

  As a boy, some of my fondest memories took place in the woods. After baseball, hiking had been my father’s true love, and even before I could walk, he was packing me along the Pacific Northwest’s many trails in a harness on his back. I’d breathed the rarified air of Mount Rainier and looked down upon the sapphire waters of Crater Lake before I could even speak my own name. Most of these treks had been day trips, since my mother did not share his abiding love of the outdoors, but I cherish those brief jaunts with Dad far more than the longer, more expensive vacations Mom dragged us on to Disneyland or Hawaii or the Caribbean, where the tension that existed between my parents only seemed to grow with each passing day.

  Taciturn by nature, not given to public displays of emotion of any sort, my father changed somehow in the woods. Something about the fresh forest air and the treetop call of the birds and the pliant earth beneath his feet unlocked some part of my father’s personality that would not reveal itself anywhere else. He talked to me. He told me things. He opened up in ways he never did elsewhere.

  It was in the woods I learned how much he still missed his brother, someone he never talked about anywhere else, or with anyone else. It was in the woods I learned about the dyslexia he’d battled as a child and why it still made him reluctant to read aloud in front of anyone. It was in the woods I’d learned his greatest fear—not that he would die in the line of duty but that he would live long enough to become a burden to those he loved.

  I wondered, sometimes, if he would be restored to his former self when he died. I hoped he would be, though there was no way to know. I hoped he would be so that we could walk in the forest together, and I might have my father back again.

  So it was with both excitement and trepidation that I veered away from the gravel road and into the forest near Beth Thorne’s cabin. Many ghosts awaited me, and quite a few were in my own mind.

  It was not yet four o’clock, but the light was already failing. Fir trees loomed large and foreboding, the tall trunks nearly lost to shadow, the few bits of colorless sky I could spot through the dense canopy graying into blackness. An owl hooted a warning. Now and then I spotted house lights through the forest, which I tried to use as my compass, never getting too close for fear of being seen. The ground was a soft carpet of fir needles and moss and mud spots that mucked against my tennis shoes.

  My breath fogged the air, and blown back by a faint wind, warmed my own cheeks. I checked the Glock, made sure it was loaded. My fingers already felt numb, hard to move.

  I glimpsed a few ghosts at first—a black boy climbing a tree, a woman in a tent of a dress berating her much thinner husband—and then, the farther I got from the highway, many more. I saw an old man playing golf with a toddler, helping him with his swing. I saw a pair of bearded lumberjacks sawing away at one of the tallest of the firs, but of course making no progress. I saw a group of young men in mountain-climbing gear sitting in a circle and drinking beer. I saw, flitting in and out of shadow, darting from one tree to another, the hazy forms of the primitive people, bent and shuffling, communicating with each other through grunts and hisses.

  Sometimes the ghosts walked beside me. Sometimes they spoke to me, asking my name, asking if I could see them, asking for help or favors or even just a smile. Sometimes their numbers grew to a crowd, enough that I was afraid something terrible might happen if I acknowledged them—which I never did, not even in the slightest way.

  Once I even thought I saw the priest, standing on the other side of a ravine and watching me. Even for him, I didn’t stop.

  I was on a mission now. I was going to find the man who’d shot me, the man who’d cursed me with my strange affliction. I would not let the unpredictability of ghosts or my own fears stand in the way.

  Occasionally, I heard voices and laughter from the distant cabins, but I could never be sure if they were from the living. I hustled as fast as I could, legs burning, shirt sticking to my back, though it still seemed to take a lifetime to reach Beth’s cabin. I passed it once and doubled back too far before finally coming upon it again. I was struck again by how her place resembled a fairy-tale cottage, the light in the windows beating back the encroaching darkness, the witch inside with Hansel and Gretel.

  The underbrush was spare enough that I was afraid of getting too close, but the light was so poor that if I didn’t get closer, I didn’t know if I’d even see anyone coming or going. Tree by tree, I darted nearer, until I found the biggest fir with the widest trunk, crouching behind it.

  Then I waited. Although it was hard to tell from my distance, I did not see movement in the windows. I wondered if I was too late and felt depressed at my own slowness—out of shape, rusty from too much time sitting in a chair, distracted by demons no one else could see. I waited some more. Hours must have passed. I checked my cell phone and was surprised to find it had only been forty-five minutes from when I’d called Alesha.

  There was movement just off to my right, a man’s shape, and I grabbed the Glock and pointed it at him. It was a muscular man in a white toga. He loped on without acknowledging me. I kept the Glock out, just to be safe. Tony Neuman was out here. He could have been watching me, even now. I heard raucous laughter somewhere in the distance. A woman screamed even farther away.

  Could that have been Beth? Or was it merely another ghost?

  Crouching there in the cold, the moisture in the dirt seeping into my shoes, I felt the old despair setting over me. A good detective relies on sharp senses, keen intelligence, and a fair amount of instinct. When one or more of these is compromised, what good is he?

  The curtain of night fell slowly upon the forest, the tops of the trees losing their distinctiveness to the sky. I wished I’d brought a flashlight. The whisper of the breeze was a voice mocking me for my foolishness. The windows of Beth’s cabin cast their light farther and fart
her, the shadows of the panes even reaching to the tree where I crouched. I began to shiver. I was beginning to lose hope when finally I saw a shape pass the window.

  I tightened my grip on the Glock. The movement had been too fast and too far away to make out who it was, but within seconds the door creaked open and Beth emerged. As she locked the door behind her, I saw her distinctly in the porch light; she was dressed in a gray wool knit hat pulled low over her ears, a bulky black parka, and dark jeans. She had a heavy black duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Thankfully, despite her perfect camouflage, she’d made the odd choice to also wear her bright white tennis shoes, which acted like a lighthouse beacon in the dark sea of the forest.

  She stood on the porch for a long time, watching, scanning the trees, and I remained absolutely still. It was so quiet, except for the faint breeze, that even a single snap of a twig might alert her to my presence. I didn’t even hear any ghosts. I wondered if they were watching, too, as if this was all just an interesting spectacle to them. Finally, Beth marched north into the trees, toward the mountain, in a steady, monotonous gait that I could have picked out in a crowd. The crunch of her footsteps sounded as if they were coming right next to me.

  I watched the white of her shoes, flitting in and out of the trees. I couldn’t lose the shoes. When she’d gone as far as I dared, when the sound of her own footsteps was lost to me, I began to follow. I concentrated on the path, navigating toward spots on the ground, dry dirt and soft beds of needles, that muffled my footsteps.

  We walked for a long time, and now and then I lost her briefly only to pick her up again. I was careful not to gain on her. More than once the white sneakers stopped, and I could sense her studying the forest, listening. I stopped along with her, heart thudding away in my ears, the sweat on my back freezing immediately to my skin. It was during one of these stops that my head began to pound.

  It couldn’t have come at a worse time—my old friend, starting slow and gaining steam, that throbbing at the front of my skull where the .38 had made its home. All the symptoms reared their ugly heads: the nausea, the whoosh of wooziness, the bleariness in the eyes. I blinked and tried to follow her, lurching from one trunk to another. For a while I even managed to keep the fuzzy whiteness of her shoes in sight. Then it was gone.