The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold

by Scott William Carter

  It was going on five o'clock. What little sunlight fought its way through the dense cloud cover was fading, a smattering of streetlamps aglow. The wrought iron gates, laced with snow, were open, and I parked next to a red, barnlike building that was the main office. I'd been to the cemetery several times over the years, especially early on, when I was often overwhelmed by my newfound talent and wanted to go someplace ghosts avoided. Felicity's cousin was definitely right about what a pretty place it was, with a mixture of oaks, cherry blossoms, dogwood trees, and rolling white hills that were even more beautiful when lush and green.

  Since I couldn't risk asking the staff where her grave was, I got out of the car and started walking.

  There were few people about, no burials in progress. I saw an old woman and an old man in black trench coats, putting flowers on a grave. I saw a heavyset middle-aged guy jogging along the main road, bobbing his head in time to the music playing in his earbuds. I saw a young man in an army dress uniform studying a gravestone meant for two people, only one of the names filled in. He stared at me.

  "It's you," he said.

  I stopped and faced him. "You're a ghost," I said.

  He was a tall man, made all the taller because he stood on the rise and I was lower, on the path. "You sound surprised," he said.

  "I am. Ghosts don't usually hang out in places like this."

  "I have my reasons."

  It was then that I noticed that his uniform was slightly out of style—the cut of his green trench coat, the brim of his hat.

  "World War Two?" I asked.

  "Yes, sir. First Sergeant Warren Keffler, 116th Infantry, landed on Omaha Beach. Never got my feet on the sand before the Nazis mowed me down."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  He shrugged. "If it wasn't the machine gun, probably would have drowned because it was too deep where we were trying to land—the whole thing was a colossal fuck-up. Really hard on Jane, though. She never got over it, never married anyone else, even though she was the prettiest nineteen-year-old woman a man ever laid eyes on. Should be along here in a minute. She's come here almost every Saturday the past seventy years."

  "Wow," I said, "that's quite a love story."

  "Love story. Tragedy. Depends on how you see it, I guess. I think she's just waiting until she can join me in the empty spot here. That's the tragedy of it all. I'll be here forever, waiting for her, but she didn't have to spend her living years like this. She should have loved again. Broke my heart to watch her stay single her whole life." His voice cracked, and he looked away, blinking hard until he'd steeled himself. "So you're really the Ghost Detective?"

  I realized what a risk it was, him knowing I was even here, since it meant Gath might be able to plumb his memories later, but there was no denying it now. "I am," I said.

  "Well, law dee daw. You're kind of famous—at least among the, you know, the deceased."

  "I guess. Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a particular grave, and I'm sure you've seen a lot of them."

  "I know most of them by heart at this point. Which one?"

  "Felicity Langford?"

  Keffler rubbed his chin. "Langford, Langford … Yeah, I seem to recall a Langford not far from here. It's a small stone, set in the ground. I think it's over—Well, I'll show you. Easier that way. Come on. You know Virgil Earp is buried over that way? He was with his brother, Wyatt, at the shootout at the O.K. Corral."

  Marching like a soldier on a mission, Keffler led me through a copse of Douglas firs, up a slight hill and over a rise. The wet snow soaked through my shoes. The gravestones, some large and stately, some nothing more than tiny rectangles lost in all the white, gave way to a sparsely populated field. Two Japanese maples, bare of leaves, hunkered together at the back of the lot, and I saw several gravestones between them.

  Muttering a little to himself, Keffler searched the stones. Some of the names were obscured by snow, and he asked me to clear them. I did. It took a few minutes, but eventually there was her name—Felicity Margaret Langford, along with years lived and, appropriately, two tiny ferrets also carved into the granite.

  "Well, law dee daw," Keffler said.

  I stood, my breath misting the air between us, and scanned the area. I didn't see anybody. We were far from most of the graves, and though I heard the occasional whisper of traffic through the maples and the firs, I could not see the road. I pressed my foot into the snow near her gravestone. It felt soft—soft enough, anyway. I looked at Keffler.

  "Can you do one more thing for me?" I asked.

  "Certainly," he said.

  "Don't tell anyone."

  He nodded, considering. "Is it important to the case?"

  "Someone's life may depend on it," I said.

  "All right, then. That's all you need to say. I know all about keeping your word because a life hangs in the balance."

  I believed him.

  * * *

  Back at the house, while taking occasional breaks to sip my beer or have another piece of Canadian bacon pizza I'd picked up on the way home, I laid out all the tools I needed for the night's adventure. It wasn't much. Two sturdy shovels, one for doing the bulk of the work, the other in case the first one broke. A pickaxe I'd bought at a hardware store on the way home in case I encountered hard ground. A mallet for the coffin, if there was some kind of lock on it, and a crowbar just in case time had made the lid hard to open.

  The plan was simple. Somewhere around two in the morning, I'd head back to River View Cemetery, park somewhere along Macadam Avenue where the Prius wouldn't be noticed, then sneak into the cemetery and dig up Felicity's grave. Find the glasses. Head home.

  Simple plan. What could go wrong?

  Everything, of course.

  For being right in the middle of Portland, my little house in Sellwood could be surprisingly quiet after eight o'clock. If I'd just moved in, I might have thought the silence pervading my neighborhood was due to the snow, but I'd lived in the house over a decade and knew it was almost always the same. The occasional rattle of a passing car. A lonely dog barking at the moon. A pair of hushed voices of two people on a nightly walk. Having Jak around the last year had made my house much livelier, so now the loneliness that she'd kept at bay pressed in from all sides.

  I was doing the dishes, hands deep in warm, sudsy water, when she called. I dried my hands with the dishtowel before answering the phone.

  "I emailed you some names," she said. "Most of them seem pretty standard comas. Head injuries, diseases, you know, car injuries and gun accidents."

  "Well, hello, beautiful," I said. I slid my hand into my pocket and felt for the ring. Still there.

  "But get this," she went on, as if she hadn't heard, "there are three cases at Oregon State Hospital that all happened after the patients were there for other reasons. You know OSH? It's the state-run psychiatric facility in Salem, mostly prisoners, but some voluntarily committed too. There was that movie with Jack Nicholson—"

  "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They've also had all kinds of problems with abuse and neglect over the years."

  "Right. Well, these three were all mentally ill prisoners, all women, and they all fell into nonresponsive vegetative states within two years of each other. Jennifer Barnes, Kathy McCormick, and Mia Irving. Myron, the doctors can't explain why."

  "How did you get this info?"

  "Hacked into the hospital's database. Well, not me. I've got a friend who works for Intel who's a genius with this stuff. She owed me a favor."

  "Did you find anything the three had in common? A doctor they shared? Other inmates?"

  "Nothing obvious so far."

  "Maybe Gath was trying to get information," I said. "Maybe she was looking for the gold and had reason to think someone at the hospital knew where it was. Or maybe it had something to do with Olivia. Can you see if the Ray family pops up somehow? Or Felicity Langford?"

  "I will. But what about you? What are you going to be doing?"

  I started to ans
wer, then got a strange feeling that somebody might be listening. It was possible, I realized, that Gath's people had placed some kind of listening device in my house.

  "Myron?" Jak said.

  "Hold on a minute," I said.

  I stepped into the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the faucet. Even then, I made sure to lower my voice as I told her what I planned to do. When I finished, she was quiet so long I thought maybe I'd lost the connection—until she laughed.

  "Man, I love your job," she said.

  "I'm not really looking forward to it."

  "Really? God, I wish I was there. That's something I'd love to check off my bucket list." She laughed again. "Funny. Bucket list. You know, because a cemetery is full of people who kicked the—"

  "I get it. I'm not that dense."

  "Myron Vale, the grave robber."

  "Don't call me that."

  "One thing I don't get. I've been thinking about Felicity telling you the story of the Blind Man's Gold. Why did she? She didn't have to. If it's really those glasses, why would she want to give you any clue at all?"

  "I thought about that, too," I said. "Maybe she knew I'd find out eventually from someone, and she was trying to throw me off, make her seem less suspicious. And I also think that it was never a necklace at all. It was always glasses with gold frames—all the more fitting for a blind man. It was just a bit more misdirection on her part."

  "Yeah, you're probably right. But just be careful, okay? Maybe she's watching her grave, just in case. She might seem nice, like she really cares about finding Olivia, but who knows what she'll do if you try to take away her precious glasses. And there's Victoria Gath. If she wants the glasses, too—"

  "I know."

  "I'd feel better if I was there with you."

  I didn't answer.

  "But you wouldn't," she said.

  "Nope."

  "You know, there is a cab company in Barnacle Bluffs. It wouldn't be that expensive to—"

  "Jak, don't even think about it."

  "Two people can dig a grave faster than—"

  "Jak!"

  "All right, all right, I won't do it."

  "You promise?"

  "Yes, I promise I won't come back to Portland. Satisfied? Geez."

  "Find out what you can about those people in the Oregon State Hospital. That's where I'm headed next, unless you find out something else."

  "I'll call if I turn up anything," she said.

  I started to answer, but she'd already hung up.

  Chapter 19

  Of all the places I thought I would be the last Saturday night before Christmas—or early Sunday morning, to be more precise—River View Cemetery was not one of them. Yet there I was, decked out in black like some common cat burglar, a shovel in one hand, a pickaxe in the other, and my backpack loaded with lots of other things I might need. A collapsible camping shovel, for tighter maneuvering once I got down deeper. A flashlight. A mallet. Garden gloves. Water bottle. Screwdriver. Screwdriver? It seemed like a good idea for some reason. And, of course, the Glock, loaded and ready to go.

  I might not even need the flashlight; the moonlight was bright enough to see without it, shining on the snow as I crested the last rise to Felicity Langford's grave. My old boots, ones I'd had even before I'd met Billie, did little to keep out the moisture; my toes would be numb before I'd broken ground. Tendrils of fog curled around the two Japanese maples and pooled in some of the low-lying areas, but otherwise the air was clear and cold.

  Getting into the cemetery had been easier than expected—the front gate wasn't even locked. Either an employee had forgotten, or grave robbing wasn't the growth industry it used to be. A few lamps around the main building were lit, but the inside was dark, as was the rest of the park. No ghosts. No animals, either. I heard the occasional car pass on the nearby roads, and, not much farther away, the murmur of traffic on I-5. Even at three in the morning, the interstate never rested.

  Maybe I had nothing to worry about. Maybe, for once, I was one step ahead of everyone else.

  Or maybe this was all a waste of time.

  At the gravesite, I set my backpack on the gravestone next to Felicity's, started to take out the flashlight, then changed my mind. The moon was bright enough that I didn't need it, and a flashlight might draw unwanted attention. I picked a spot to start, about where I figured the middle of her coffin was, and hesitated. Was I really going to do this? I hadn't even broken ground and already my heart was pounding and my collar felt damp with sweat. Funny. In the past few years, I'd faced all kinds of crazy stuff that would keep even the most hardened horror fan awake at night, and I was getting nervous digging up a dead body? It was just a body, after all. More than anyone, I knew that for certain.

  Yet there was something so primitive and primal about it, a transgression hardwired right into my DNA, a sort of trespass against nature and common decency, and no amount of conscious thought could convince me that this was anything other than completely wrong. This wasn't about what I knew. It was about what I felt—deep down, in the bones.

  But it wouldn't stop me. Maybe it was all for nothing, but if that was the case, I would at least prove it was all for nothing.

  I placed my heel on the edge of the shovel and put my full weight on it, cutting through both snow and dirt.

  "Myron," someone whispered.

  It was a woman's voice, but I didn't recognize it at first and thought the person might be Gath. I dropped the shovel and fumbled inside my jacket, praying I could get to the Glock in time and only stopping when I saw the person emerge from the shadows of the Japanese maple.

  Alesha.

  "What are you doing here?" I said.

  My voice, fueled by adrenaline and stress, cut through the cold air in a harsher way than I'd intended. She stepped up next to me, dressed in black herself, but not for the occasion. She almost always dressed in black: black trench coat, black pants, charcoal shirt only a shade slightly lighter than black. She was like a black wraith emerging from the night, and her eyes were the blackest of all, a piercing black full of both anger and questions. "What do you think I'm doing here? I followed you."

  "Why?"

  "Why do you think, dumbass? Because I've been worried about you. Because you've been acting weird—weirder than usual, anyway. And looks like I was right to be worried. I mean, Jesus, what are you doing?"

  Leaning against the shovel, I tried to come up with a believable lie, but of course it was impossible. "If I just told you it was for the case, would you leave it alone?"

  "Not this time, buddy."

  She glared at me, and I saw this was it, I'd finally run out of rope with her. If I even tried to bullshit my way out, that would be it for our friendship. I knew this day would be coming, had been sensing it for a while, but I never thought it would be like this. In a cemetery. In the middle of the night. About to dig up a dead body. I'd imagined telling her the truth over a couple of beers, maybe shooting some pool, broaching the subject in a safe environment where I could spin out the truth at my own pace and in my own way. But if you put off the hard stuff too long, life has a way of forcing the issue at the most inopportune times.

  "I'll tell you the truth," I said, "but I have to dig up this grave while I'm talking."

  "Myron, that's insane."

  "It'll make sense eventually, I promise."

  "You're out of your damn mind!"

  "Shh! I probably am out of my mind, but not because of this. I have a perfectly logical reason, but you're going to have to be patient. It'll only take five seconds to give you the big picture, but a lot longer to give you the details. And I've got to get this done before dawn."

  "This is crazy!"

  I picked up the shovel. Raised my eyebrows at her. I wasn't sure she could even see my face in the moonlight, so I said, "Well, what's it going to be?"

  "I could arrest you, you know," she said.

  "Yep."

  "I probably should."

  "I guess you'
ve got a decision to make, then."

  I started to dig. The ground, thankfully, was soft and forgiving due to all the moisture, and the tip of the shovel slid deep. The grass on top would be a bit of work, but at least it wouldn't be impossible—something I'd feared. Alesha cursed at me, mumbled something unintelligible, and started to march away. She stopped abruptly and pulled out her phone. As she studied the tiny screen, I could just barely see her face in the bluish light, but I couldn't read her expression. What was she doing? I pulled out the shovel and aimed it a little to the right, figuring I'd cut out a square at a time until I got the grass cleared.

  Somewhere beyond the trees, a dog barked and both of us jumped. Alesha turned and glared at me. Her short black hair, as smooth and shiny as silk in the moonlight, curled upward along the slope of her jaw.

  "Well?" I said.

  "You're insane," she said.

  "You calling the cops?"

  "No. I was checking the time."

  "The time?"

  "Yeah. I was trying to figure out if we have enough time to get this done."

  "Wait a minute. Did you just say the word we? I think I distinctly heard the word we."

  "Don't be a jackass. You got another shovel or what?"

  "You don't have to do this, Alesha."

  "Shut up before I change my mind. If I'm going to be here, then I might as well help. Either way, I'm your accomplice."

  "I have a camping shovel in the backpack. It's not big, but it's stronger than it looks."

  Muttering something about not believing she was actually doing this, she retrieved the shovel from the bag, locked the handle in place, and set to work not far from me. I was so surprised that I found myself standing there gaping at her until she glared at me—and I launched back into my own work.

  "So," she said.

  "Right," I said. "The truth."

  "That would be nice. For once."

  "Just try to keep an open mind about all this. I know I haven't been fair to you. I hope—I hope you'll understand once I explain everything."