As soon as the car stopped, she opened the passenger door and got in, relieved that Charley did not follow.
Jake’s expression was grim, beyond cop face. He appeared to be made of stone.
“Tell me.” Her words came out in a whisper...not because she was trying to be quiet but because that was the most she could muster.
He opened his laptop in the console between them. A picture of Charley and Amanda together, smiling, appeared on the screen.
It was not what she’d expected. “An old picture of Charley and me? Where did you get it? And why?”
“I wish Kimball hadn’t killed you,” the computer said.
Her voice.
Her words.
Text scrolled across the bottom of the screen. I miss my husband, Charley Randolph, so much.
The computer spoke again. “Wherever I go, whatever I do, Charley Randolph will be right beside me. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”
The words were familiar.
“Oh, Charley, how can I not listen to you? You’re always here. Jake came in at a very bad time.”
She had spoken those words. Two nights ago. In her apartment, alone with Charley. How could a disjointed version of her conversation with Charley be coming from Jake’s computer?
I want to be with Charley, not Jake, scrolled across the screen as the picture faded to black.
Dense silence filled the car.
“I...” Amanda choked, swallowed and tried again. “I don’t understand.”
“This sounds like your voice.”
Amanda shook her head slowly.
“It’s not your voice?” Jake asked.
Her head continued to move back and forth. She should probably make it stop doing that but then she’d have to say something. She had no idea what that something would be.
Jake replayed the horrible montage of printed text and her words. “That’s not your voice?” he asked again.
Amanda cleared her throat. “It’s...it’s my voice.”
Jake’s dark eyes narrowed. “That’s you on this video? Those are your words?”
“Yes. No! I mean, they’re my words, but that’s not what I said.”
Jake didn’t blink, kept his gaze trained on her. “They’re your words, but that’s not what you said?”
Amanda closed her eyes to get away from his penetrating stare. Even so, she could feel it through her eyelids, through her skull, inside her head. “The words are not in the right order. It’s not the way it sounds.” In order to explain this, she would have to tell Jake about Charley. “There’s something I have to tell you, something I should have told you already.”
“You should have told me what...that you’re still in love with your dead husband? Yeah, you should have.”
“What? No! Of course not! I was divorcing him when he died. If I’d been in love with him, I wouldn’t have kicked him out and filed for divorce.”
“You said you miss him. You said you wish he hadn’t been killed.”
“No.” Amanda tried to remember her exact words. “I said I wished Kimball hadn’t killed him, but I didn’t say I miss him. I don’t.”
“But you wish Kimball hadn’t killed him.”
“So I could be the one to kill him.” Amanda cringed. “Okay, that didn’t come out right. I wouldn’t have literally killed him. It’s just something people say when they’re having a fight.”
“Were you having a fight with someone?”
Amanda clasped her hands together. She wanted to wring them but wasn’t certain how to do that. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Where did you get that...that mess?” Someone had recorded her conversation with Charley. Recorded it and distorted it.
“I got an email this morning giving me the URL so I could find it easily.”
“An email? From who?”
“From you.”
For one insane moment Amanda wondered if she had done this, all of it. Was there no imposter, no woman running around in a red wig, no evil twin? Was it all her?
“No. I didn’t post that. I didn’t email you. It’s not me.”
Sunlight coming through the windows felt warm on her face, but Jake’s solemn stare chilled her to the bone.
“I did notice that the email came from an address one letter different from yours. It utilized your middle initial. But the email and the video originated from your IP address.”
“My...what?”
“It came from your computer network, from your IP address here.”
Amanda’s brain spun in jagged circles. Was she having a crazy dream? But dreams never seemed crazy at the time.
“Who has the password to your network?” Jake asked.
“Dawson.” She swallowed. “Me.”
“Could somebody have hacked your system? Is your password strong?”
“Yeah. Dawson set it up. It’s motorcycle.”
“Motorcycle? That’s not a strong password.”
“In Japanese.”
“Okay, that’s probably secure.”
“Converted to hexadecimal.”
Jake nodded...once then twice. “I’d say that rules out the possibility of anybody hacking into your network.”
“Yes,” Amanda agreed. “It’s a long, nonsensical string of letters and numbers.” The significance of Jake’s statement hit her. “Oh.” She swallowed. “Only Dawson or I could have posted something from our network.”
“You said you didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t. Dawson didn’t. He wouldn’t.” But he had warned her that Jake wasn’t good for her, that he would hurt her. Would he try to sabotage their relationship in a misguided effort to protect her?
He had the technical knowledge. He could have recorded her conversation with Charley, moved the words around, created the text banners to make it sound as if she was saying things she wasn’t. And posted it to the Internet.
That would mean Dawson knew about Charley. She’d started to tell him a couple of times but hadn’t followed through. Dawson was smart, knowledgeable, logical. When she’d asked him a few months ago if he believed in ghosts, he’d replied that he thought ghosting a computer system on a regular basis was a good idea. He’d think she was nuts if she tried to explain about Charley’s ghost.
But if he’d been listening to her conversations with Charley, he’d know.
Jake didn’t speak, didn’t move, just watched her.
He was a cop, and she was a suspect.
He was waiting for her confession.
She had done nothing wrong. She had nothing to confess.
“If Dawson did this, are you going to arrest him?” she asked.
“This video doesn’t break any laws.” He paused. “But it does raise some questions.”
“Yes.” What did Dawson know about Charley? What did he hope to achieve by posting this awful video? Where had he hidden the microphone to record her conversation? What else did he hear?
“You admit you said these things?”
“Yes, but not like that.”
“Then tell me...like what? Why were you talking to your dead husband?”
Teresa and Ross had both advised her to tell Jake the truth. She knew she would have to eventually. She just hadn’t thought eventually would come so soon.
She drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I was...” The words stuck halfway up her throat. She swallowed and tried again. “I was talking to his ghost.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jake blinked. The corners of his mouth twitched upward as if he were going to smile, but they didn’t quite make it, turned downward instead. “You talk to your dead husband? What does that mean? You try to keep the ghost of his memory alive? That kind of sounds like you still care about him.”
“No. I don’t. It’s not the ghost of his memory. It’s literally his ghost. I don’t want to keep his memory or his ghost around, but I don’t have a choice. He won’t leave. He can’t leave.”
Jake moved away from her. A few millimeters. He probably didn’t realize he’d done it. But she noticed. “I see,” he said.
“I don’t think you do.” She’d started this. She had no choice but to finish. “You know how Teresa sees spirits?”
“I know she believes she does.” Guarded tone.
“She believes she does? After the spirit of Ross’ brother helped find his killer, you still doubt her ability?”
“You’re saying you have the ability to see spirits too?” He spoke cautiously, as if he were speaking to someone with limited intelligence.
She shook her head. “Not spirits. Just one. Just Charley.”
“You see the spirit of the man you were married to?”
“Yes.”
“Often or only on special occasions? Anniversary, birthday, full moon?”
Amanda did not care for his tone. She bit back a sarcastic retort, reminded herself that she had a difficult time accepting Charley’s presence. “Often. Most of the time.”
“You see him now?”
“No. He doesn’t like you, so he didn’t come inside the car with me.”
“He doesn’t like me?”
“He doesn’t like you and me being involved. He...” Telling her lover that Charley thought she was still married to him didn’t seem like a good idea. Give him time to get used to the idea of Charley before she shared all the details.
“Your dead husband has an opinion about our relationship?”
“He has opinions about all sorts of things, most of them wrong.” This was going badly, and she had no idea how to make it better. “Look, I know how this sounds. I know it’s hard to believe. It was hard for me to believe. Do you remember when Charley was killed? You were investigating his murder, and you came to my apartment. I told you he wasn’t dead.”
Jake looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded. “I remember. Denial. That happens a lot when a family member is killed.”
“It wasn’t denial, damn it! It was because his ghost was there, and I thought it was him.” She spread her hands, palms upward. “I thought he was alive because...who believes in ghosts?”
Jake said nothing.
Her question had been rhetorical. Even so, she had expected some kind of response. She had known this wouldn’t be easy, but he was shutting her out, refusing to accept anything she said, to even give her a chance.
“A lot of people believe in ghosts,” she said. “Teresa, Ross, and I believe in ghosts. Plenty of famous people too. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Theresa Caputo. And...and lots more. They have television shows with ghost hunters finding evidence on their sophisticated technical equipment.”
“But we’re not talking about somebody who sees the ghost of Elvis or Abraham Lincoln.”
“No, we’re not. We’re talking about people who actually see the spirits of ordinary people. Teresa saw the ghost of Ross’ brother, and he led her to his body. You were there.”
He said nothing for a blink...two blinks. “I admit, that was an interesting experience. If we accept that Ross’ brother came to Teresa, it was for a reason, to show her where his body was hidden.”
“Yes.”
“Why did the ghost of your husband come to you?”
Amanda clenched her fists. Bad enough Charley insisted he was her husband. Jake didn’t need to get on that band wagon too. “My ex-husband!”
“All right, why did the ghost of your estranged husband come to you?”
Amanda threw up her hands. “I don’t know! He doesn’t know. Teresa tried to cross him over, but he won’t go. Or he can’t go. I. Don’t. Know.”
“So the words on that video came from you when you were talking to Charley?” An accusation.
“Yes, but not in that order. And I was talking to Charley’s ghost, not to Charley.”
“I see.”
He did not see, and Amanda was fresh out of ways to convince him otherwise.
“William 231.”
Amanda jumped at the strange voice that came from nowhere. Another ghost?
Jake picked up his mike and hit the key. “William 231. Go ahead.”
“William 231, 10-19 the main station,” his car radio responded.
Jake hit the key again. “William 231, 10-4, enroute.” He returned the microphone to the dash and looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to go.”
She reached for the door handle.
Jake laid his arm over her shoulder and turned her to face him. “Something’s going on. Let’s set aside the question of who you were talking to. The issue is that somebody put your words on YouTube. This person heard you, recorded you, knows your network password, has a picture of you and Charley.”
Only one other person had their network password. “It’s not Dawson.” She had intended to speak firmly, but the words came out as a whisper.
“I know you trust him. I’m a cop. I see this a lot, people betrayed by somebody they trust.”
“Dawson would never hurt me. He’s just trying to...” She closed her mouth, stopped talking. She didn’t know for certain that Dawson had done this horrible thing. Until she did, she wasn’t going to tell Jake that Dawson was trying to protect her from him.
“He’s just trying to...what?” Jake asked.
Amanda shook her head. “Nothing.”
“I’ll send you the email that purported to be from you, the one containing the URL. You can decide what you want to do with it.”
“Okay.”
“We’re having the neighborhood kids come to the station this afternoon for trick-or-treating in a safe environment, so I’ll be getting off late. Can I come by then so we can finish this talk?”
“Okay.” Amanda was in no hurry to finish that talk.
She got out of the car and watched as Jake drove away.
“That didn’t go so well, did it?” Charley said.
She spun to face him. “Were you eavesdropping?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“You could have helped overhearing if you’d gone far enough away.”
“How am I going to help you if I don’t know what’s happening?”
Amanda sighed in frustration at Charley for being there and eavesdropping, at Jake for not understanding, and at herself for not being able to explain Charley so Jake could understand. “How are you going to help me even if you do know what’s happening?”
Charley stood straight and proud. “I’m going to help you find that recorder Dawson hid in your apartment because I’m good with electronic stuff.”
“There’s no recorder in my apartment.”
“Then how did our conversation get posted to the Internet?”
“I don’t know.” She headed toward the door of her shop.
Charley moved in front of her. “You going to confront Dawson about planting a recorder in your bedroom and stealing that picture of you and me?”
“He didn’t do it.”
“It’s kind of romantic you still had that picture of us.”
“If I still had that picture, it was an accident. You took all the pictures of us and probably sold the frames at garage sale. Anybody could have found that one.” Amanda reached through him and grasped the doorknob.
“Want me to let you know when I find the recorder? Then you’ll have the evidence to show Dawson.”
“There is no recorder.” Then how did my words in my voice get copied to the Internet?
Charley floated straight up to her apartment, bypassing the stairs.
Amanda would not allow Charley to search her apartment when she wasn’t there.
Like somebody else had already searched her apartment, planted a recorder and found that picture?
A shiver darted down her spine.
Had a stranger been in her apartment, invaded her home, touched her things...lifted the sofa cushions to peer underneath, touched the switch to the floor lamp to turn it on, left DNA on her clothes while searching through her closet? That had to be where
the intruder found that picture of her and Charley, stuck in one of the boxes in the back.
Amanda did not have Charley’s ability to fly. She had to take the conventional route up to her apartment.
She could find no damage to her front door.
Anyone going inside must have used a key.
She kept a spare key in the office.
She went in, locked the door behind her then went through the living room, straight to the bedroom where the infamous conversation had taken place.
Charley was already there, darting around and through the walls.
Where would someone hide a recorder?
She peered under the bed. The antique iron bedframe sat a foot above the floor. All she saw was a sock she’d lost last winter and a few dust bunnies.
She retrieved the sock and shook off the dust.
“What are we looking for?” she asked. “Don’t people use their cell phones to record?”
Charley paused half in and half out of the wall beside the window. “I don’t think we’re looking for a cell phone.”
“This is ridiculous. Dawson did not hide a recording device in my apartment and spy on me then put up that ridiculous video.”
“If not him, who did?”
“I don’t know.” Amanda looked behind the dresser mirror. A few cobwebs. “Nobody.”
“Somebody.”
“Dawson wouldn’t do something like this. He’s open and honest. He’s not sneaky.”
“Oh, really? He lied to you when he first came here. You didn’t even know he had a little brother until the kid got kidnapped and he had to tell you. He fooled you for months. I call that sneaky.”
“He had his reasons for doing that.” She opened the top dresser drawer and rifled through the contents. Nothing but socks.
“He had reasons to do this,” Charley said. “He’s trying to save you from yourself. It worked. He created problems between you and that damned detective.”
The video had been uploaded from her Internet network, a network to which only she and Dawson had access. An email notifying Jake of where to find the video had been sent from here. The evidence was pretty damning.
Dawson was like family to her. She trusted him completely. More than she trusted some of her actual family.
She couldn’t believe he would betray her, lie to her, snoop in her apartment. If he...someone...had found that picture of Charley and her in one of the boxes in her closet, he...or she...would have had to search for a long time.
The Ex Who Hid a Deadly Past Page 11