We pulled over where the shoulder was widest and headed into the trees. Jacob paused beside me in our tromp through the woods and planted his hands on his hips. Shoving through undergrowth and stepping over branches was hard work, and he was glistening with sweat, with a tiny cut on his cheekbone (which would hopefully heal up by the wedding). He pulled the satellite picture from his pocket and consulted it again, as if maybe our new perspective from the thick of things would shed some light on the old hospital’s location. The paper was limp and wilted now. And the image was less than helpful.
We didn’t speak—what would we say? But it was far from quiet.
Woods have a sound that’s all their own. Trees creak in the wind, and the tall ones are especially loud. Birds make all kinds of racket. And things rustle in the undergrowth. Probably squirrels. That’s what I was telling myself. I made noise, too—startling cracks and pops as I brushed past twiggy bushes or stomped on old, dried branches. Even when I tried being quiet, I was still loud enough to startle sparrows from the trees as I passed, so eventually I stopped trying. I needed my whole attention for the old hospital…or whatever might be left of it.
We searched for hours—and if it were my problem, my past, I would have given up already. But it wasn’t me, it was Jacob. And even though it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to find anything, doing something, even something totally fruitless, was better than doing nothing.
But even Jacob wasn’t about to comb through the same ten acres of woods forever. We paused again by the creek, soaked through with sweat, with mosquitoes whining in our ears. The satellite printout was soggy now and the ink had bloomed through the back of the page. He jammed it back in his pocket and said, “This is getting us nowhere.”
I didn’t know about that. Maybe we’d learned that whoever hid their traces, they were really damn good at their job. Either that, or I wasn’t the only one who’d had his memory wiped. How fucked up that that was an actual possibility. But it was some consolation that the farmer remembered the hospital too.
“Damn it.” Jacob bent down and picked at his ankle. “Tick.”
It took me a second to wrap my head around the word—I’m a city kid through and through, and my knowledge of ticks comes from TV commercials for flea collars.
Jacob peered at it. “It’s fine. I got the head.”
I threw up a little in my mouth.
He flicked the bug into the creek. “One more pass, and we’ll call it a day.” I must’ve looked a little green, because he added, “Don’t worry, you’re wearing jeans. Next time, we’ll double down on the bug spray.”
Next time. My heart sank. I was about to put on a brave face and soldier on when I realized the insect sound had a slightly different character where we were standing. Not just the whine of mosquitoes, but the distinct buzz of flies. I’m no entomologist, but I’ve chased my share of annoying houseflies around the cannery with a rolled-up newspaper.
This was no single fly.
When I registered that thought, I became aware of the smell: the sweet-decay hint of decomp.
White light.
It thundered down from the heavens so fast I staggered. I’d reacted so quickly to the thought of some rotten old ghost shoving its way into my body like the tick burying its head in Jacob’s ankle, it took my conscious mind half a second to catch up.
My visual field flashed white from the turbocharge. Like lightning, but softer, and with no afterimages.
This is what it would feel like to come into my power. Me, so amped up on white light that I glowed. No psyactives. No Mood Blaster app. No yoga. Just me, in the zone.
Unfortunately, that zone was more of a blip, and no sooner did the white light spike than it ebbed again, followed by a sickening stab of pain somewhere between my eyeballs and my skull.
Jacob massaged the back of his neck. “What is it?” Apparently, I had a look.
“Don’t you smell it?” Thanks to my time in homicide, I must’ve been more finely attuned. “Decomp.”
I could practically see Jacob’s adrenaline spike as much as I did my own. His demeanor shifted from weary defeat to sharp interest. No one likes stumbling across a dead body. But he’d take his answers any way he could get them.
No clue what we’d be walking into. Images of charnel pits churned up from a recent rain flashed past my mind’s eye, and the bag of salt weighing down each pocket suddenly felt way too small. Hell, given how many times we’d fumbled through this stretch of woods, I was lucky I wasn’t possessed already. (I wasn’t, was I? No…if I had enough awareness left to ask that question, I wasn’t. Probably.)
Jacob tilted his head—listening, or feeling?—then picked a direction and gestured for me to follow.
White light. White light. White light.
“What is it, Vic? See something?”
“No. But I just got another whiff of rot.”
If there was a ghost still attached, it wouldn’t necessarily be as decomposed as its physical body. But given the way our day had been going, a rotting ghost was a distinct probability. The buzzing intensified, and I felt the feathery touch of a fly lighting briefly on my cheek. Normally, I’d think it was tracking something from a mound of dog shit across my face. The thought that it had erupted from the soupy abdominal cavity of a corpse was way worse.
I held my forearm to my face to breathe through the filter of my sleeve, which also put my bag of salt at the ready. Funneling white light into the salt while trying not to step in a dead body was like walking and trying to chew some really unpleasant gum, but I managed.
Probably because I let Jacob take the lead.
It wasn’t easy—especially after the incident with the ATM ghost. But while Jacob couldn’t see any potential hauntings, he knew how to navigate the woods a heck of a lot better than I did. Yet, although I knew he was spirit-Teflon, I hated the thought of using him as a human shield…even if that was exactly what he’d been bred for.
I shuddered. And not from the thought of stumbling over a body, either.
The wind shifted, and we lost the scent—and for a moment I thought that maybe we’d go home empty-handed after all. But then a branch cracked beneath Jacob’s foot, and a cloud of flies erupted with a buzz that sent gooseflesh racing up my arms. I squinted my eyes and hunched my shoulders while just ahead of me, Jacob went very still. I figured, like me, he was imagining them laying eggs in his mucous membranes. But then his shoulders sagged, and I realized he’d found something.
I made my way up beside him and looked for myself—and with a mixture of disappointment and relief, discovered it wasn’t a Camp Hellish casualty after all.
But it would be a long time before I purged the stench of decaying deer from my nostrils.
21
“WHERE IN THE heck were you two yesterday?” Mild words, but I could tell by the way her neck tendons were starting to pop, Barbara was seriously pissed.
“We had something to do,” Jacob said vaguely, which only made her blood boil more.
“For Pastor Jill,” I added. “You know. The workbook.”
Barbara was a devout woman who’d never go against her pastor…but she’d been so invested in being angry. She even showed up at their folks’ house to berate us on her way to work on a damp Monday morning, so clearly she meant business. “I don’t remember going through all this with Derrick.”
Jacob said, “I’m sure it just seems that way because our lead time is more condensed.”
“Still, we have a schedule. We have a calendar. And when do you expect to do your manicure now?”
“It’s fine, Barb, we’ll fit everything in.” Jacob was using his confident voice. It was pretty convincing. Even though I knew it was all an act, I still bought into it myself.
Barbara didn’t. “You say that now, but believe you me—even with all the planning in the world, a bunch of stuff is bound to crop up. You’ve gotta leave yourself time to put out all the last-minute fires.”
Jacob said (in his calm
-down-already voice), “It’s a simple ceremony and a small reception. We have the venues, the pastor, the vows and the rings. Even if everything else fell apart—”
“Don’t go tempting fate,” I muttered.
“—we’d be fine. So you don’t need to worry on our account.”
Jacob’s sister pulled the mulish expression I was accustomed to seeing on him—the one that meant it shouldn’t much matter whether or not she was actually right. I was okay with that face of his. It usually preceded a grudging agreement…and Barb’s was no different.
“Well, if you’re not worried, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. Just don’t forget we need to meet with the manager at the supper club after work to sort out all the final details.”
“We’ll be there,” Jacob said with only a minor amount of condescension.
As Barbara stomped off toward her car, I said, “We should probably be paying more attention to the calendar. There’s only so much mileage we can get out of Pastor Jill’s PDF.”
Jacob gave me a look, and I answered with a sigh. Because only a real knucklehead would expect him to prioritize the manicure over digging up dirt on his own past.
Breakfast with his parents would normally have been convivial—despite Shirley getting me to try some appalling flax meal concoction—if not for Kamal’s goddamned notebook. Afterward, I found Jacob in our room, glaring at the satellite photo, which was creased with folds and had blooms of inkjet ink on the back. “How likely is it that the entire tree canopy would regrow over the course of twenty-five years?” he asked.
I suspected that if you knew what you were doing, you could make it happen.
Then again, the same could be said for doctoring a satellite image and putting it online.
“The hospital was there,” he insisted, as if I somehow didn’t believe him.
“I know it was. But we looked all day and found nothing but ticks and a dead deer.” I shuddered. “So maybe there’s nothing to find.”
“You found something at Camp Hell. Not much. But something.”
I had found something. With Jacob right there by my side. “Look, obviously Sacred Heart existed—your sister, your mom, even the random guy on the tractor—everyone remembers the place. But it’s a lot easier to bury something out in the woods than it is in the middle of a city. It was a whole lot of ground to cover, and it all looked pretty much the same. For all we know, whatever we were looking for might’ve been right around the next tree.” I took the paper from him and folded it up. “But we’ll need more to go on than that.”
I could practically hear the gears turning. Jacob stood so fast the sofa bed nearly folded itself up behind him, looked me square in the eye, and said, “The basement.”
Evidently, there was still mileage to be had from Pastor Jill’s PDF after all. Claiming we weren’t done scrapbooking just yet, Jacob and I were able to retreat downstairs and sift through decades of old detritus without his parents thinking anything of it. And while some F-Pimp specialist might be able to Photoshop tree canopy over any incriminating bald patches on a satellite photo, I doubt they’d have as much luck navigating the Markses’ basement.
Unfortunately, the search didn’t turn up much. We found a few more carnival photos in another album and a flyer for a blood drive, but nothing that provided any more landmarks we could use. And while I thought I hit the jackpot with a stack of phone books almost as old as me, it turned out that because the hospital was in a different county, it wasn’t even listed.
I was toying with suggesting to Jacob that we give Sacred Heart a rest—let things simmer in our subconscious until we came up with an actual plan—when I found myself shoving a teetering stack of books upright to keep it from tumbling down on his head. The main culprit was the top book, which was thicker and heavier than the ones beneath it. I pulled it off the top of the pile and brushed off a few cobwebs.
Huh. A library book.
What’s New in Fondue was a weighty, colorful tome picturing a woman whose waist was no bigger than my thigh hovering over a fondue pot, exhibiting a maniacal enthusiasm for melted cheese. Or maybe she was just starving. I opened the cover and found the due date was in 1997. Someone was racking up one hell of a fine.
“Jacob,” I said, as an idea began to take shape, “you know who’d have some pre-digital information on Sacred Heart?”
He looked at the book in my hands and mouthed the word, fondue?
“The library.”
I’d hardly consider myself an old-school investigator, but I did know my way around a microfilm reader. You don’t realize how lucky we have it nowadays with searchable text until you need to go through years of information manually. It’s mind-numbing work flipping through old newspapers and scanning headlines, but it was our best shot.
The library we wanted—the one that was most likely to consider Sacred Heart part of its local history—was two counties over. It was shorts weather…for those of us who’d ever be caught dead in shorts, anyhow. Even so, I noted Jacob wore jeans this time around. Hopefully we weren’t in danger of picking up ticks at the library.
We briefly considered trying to cover our tracks somehow—leave our phones behind, borrow Jerry’s car and navigate by paper maps. Maybe it was paranoia fatigue, or maybe we just figured that if anyone questioned our movements, the couples assignments from Pastor Jill would be a good enough excuse.
The closest library to the old hospital was a dumpy municipal building in an even dumpier small town. When we first pulled up, I thought it was closed. Permanently. Good thing we’d driven all that way, too far to turn around without at least trying the door. Turned out it wasn’t closed. Just totally devoid of customers.
The inside of the building was equally as depressing as the outside, with dingy carpets and dark paneling. Whatever daylight managed to struggle through the windows was instantly sucked away by all the relentless drabness.
It was warm inside, too warm, and the air tasted like dust. Despite the stuffy atmosphere, Jacob chafed his upper arms.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m not a big fan of the decor, myself.”
“This place is depressing.”
“No argument on my part. Let’s get to work so we can get out of here.”
A quick scan showed no signs of a microfilm reader, so I found the empty circulation desk and tapped the bell. It rang disproportionately loudly, and Jacob and I both flinched. But given how quick the staff room door banged open, I’d say it had done its job.
A middle-aged Caucasian woman with graying hair and a sour look on her face strode out to greet us. She clipped an engraved name tag to her blouse that read Helen, Reference Librarian. “Were you interested in a library card?”
Jacob said, “Actually, we were hoping to take a look at some of your local history.”
“Oh. Can’t say I’ve ever had that request from anyone other than school kids doing mandatory projects. I’ll just need to set you up with a library card first.”
I said, “We weren’t planning on checking out any books. We just wanted to see—”
“Doesn’t matter. Library materials are for patrons only.”
Jacob and I both looked around as if to see whether there were other “patrons” around competing for such limited resources. Nope. Just us.
Jacob said, “We’ll be happy to pay whatever fee is associated with—”
“There is no fee,” Helen snapped. “This is a public library.”
“Fine,” I said. “How do I become a patron?”
“I’ll just need a valid I.D. with a current address.”
I almost hesitated, since I’m loathe to leave a paper trail if I can help it. But given that we’d already pulled up a map to the library, it would be no big surprise to anyone who was eyeballing my surveillance. I opted for my driver’s license so as not to freak her out with my F-Pimp I.D…and as soon as the plastic hit the countertop, Helen pulled a face. “You’re from Illinois.”
“Yeah. And?”
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry. Libraries are funded with local taxes. We have a reciprocal agreement with Vernon county. But not Illinois.”
What the hell did she expect us to do? Move? “Look, we were just hoping to—”
“Do you realize how precarious our situation is? Our local population has been in steady decline. Nobody needs a reference librarian’s help anymore, not when it’s easier to just pull up a search engine. What difference does it make that most people can’t tell a legitimate website from a parody? It’s so convenient.”
Clearly, we’d managed to strike a nerve. But if anyone could smooth things over, it was Jacob. Not only is he so handsome that everyone wants to bend over backwards to please him—the guy oozes charm. I turned to him, fully expecting him to say something that would save the day…only to find him itching at the back of his neck and scowling at a chipped spot in the formica countertop.
“We’re staying in Wisconsin through the end of the week,” I offered lamely.
Helen frowned harder, and I found myself feeling nostalgic for the days when the worst you could hope for was a good shooshing. But maybe it was more of a thinking-frown, because instead of showing us the door, she said, “If that’s the case, we can issue a temporary card. But you can only check out one item at a time. No exceptions.”
“No problem,” I said. “Unless you check out microfilm readers.” Helen squinted at me and I added, “That’s a joke.”
“No one ever asks to see the microfilm.”
“Aside from the schoolkids,” I offered.
The librarian squinted harder. Tough audience. She put an application in front of each of us, then stamped a big red “temporary” across the top of each one. “I’ll go open up the archive room while you fill those out. But just remember—I’ll be following up on your information. Thoroughly. If you try to pass off some fake address, I’ll know.”
Once she was out of earshot, I muttered to Jacob, “If a vacancy opens up in Internal Affairs, you know where to start your headhunting.”
Jacob rolled his shoulders and something cracked. I guess the hours of driving were beginning to take a toll. He said, “After all this, I’ll be seriously pissed if we don’t find anything.”
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 14