by H. P. Bayne
“I am.”
“He was a good man.” The way she said it suggested Dez would have to prove the apple had landed near the tree.
“The best,” Dez said in response.
She eyed him another long moment, a size-up if Dez had ever seen one. At last, she turned back to her screen. “Sit down. You’re giving me neck strain.”
One additional chair—all the room had space for—was wedged up against the wall, and Dez had to sit sideways to fit properly.
“I’m investigating a missing person case, and I wondered whether you might be able to answer some questions for me.”
“Investigating in what capacity?” she asked.
“I’m a private investigator.”
Lilian’s focus snapped back to her computer. “Goodbye.”
“Come on.”
“I don’t help P.I.s, Mr. Braddock. Goodbye.”
“Even when they’re ex-cops?”
She raised an eyebrow as she once again met his eye. “Who’s ‘they’?”
Dez braced himself. Throwing out his boss’s name would have one of two outcomes. Lachlan Fields was something of a legend around the KRPD, a man with an uncanny ability to find answers and crack cases that had stumped everyone else. He could also be an A-class jerk. Police investigators old enough to have worked with him either idolized or loathed him. Dez wasn’t convinced Lilian was a woman who had it in her to like, let alone idolize, anyone
He winced as he provided the answer, as if anticipating a physical blow. “Lachlan Fields?”
She didn’t react immediately, her eyes still fixed on him as if searching for something he’d so far left unsaid. At last, she broke the silence. “Prove it.”
Dez fished inside his pocket and produced one of his business cards: Desmond Braddock, Investigator, Fields Investigations.
She studied the card a long moment, flipping it over as if the backside might contain evidence of trickery. “The office number on here. Does that ring through to him?”
“If he’s at the office. If he isn’t, I can provide a cellphone number for him.”
“Don’t need it.” She inclined her chin toward the bullpen. “Get out there and close the door behind you. I want to confirm your story with Lachlan.”
Given this was as close as he was likely to get to cooperation from Lilian without his boss’s assistance, Dez did as told.
He sat at one of the desks, certain now each of the unit’s investigators ensured all interviews and other work were conducted in the field or elsewhere in the building. Anything not to be around their commanding officer.
He tried to avoid peering through the window at Lilian as she talked to Lachlan, certain she’d take it as a type of eavesdropping. But he couldn’t help it when he heard what sounded like a chortle coming from the office. His head snapped up. Yep, sure enough, she was laughing and speaking through a wide grin as she held her desk phone’s handset. Dez raised a brow. The expression lifted a decade from her features, rendering her almost human.
Hopefully, she’d reserve a little of her newfound humanity for him.
While she was on the phone, Dez’s went off in his pocket. The number was unrecognizable, but the voice on the other end wasn’t.
“Do you have any information for me about where Gabe is?” Liz asked.
“Sorry, Liz. But I’m working on it, okay? I’m waiting to talk to an officer with the Missing Persons unit right now. Still didn’t hear from him, huh?”
“No. I don’t get it. Do you think there’s someone else maybe?”
Good lord, there was a minefield for him to trip into. “If that’s the case, he’s crazy and not worth your effort. Okay? I’ll call if I get something.”
He disconnected but Lilian had yet to. She remained on the phone a few more minutes, chuckling nearly the entire time like someone getting reacquainted with an old friend. When she at last hung up and beckoned Dez forward with a wave, the lines between her brows had diminished as much as they were ever likely to.
He settled back into his previous seat with some uncertainty. “So?”
She sat forward. “Lachlan was my FTO when I started policing. When I moved over to plainclothes units, he and I worked together a few times. Not often enough for my liking.”
Dez tried to imagine anyone having Lachlan as a field training officer and enjoying it enough to want to keep working with him. His first few months in Lachlan’s employ had been riddled with sarcastic slights and comments about his ability to do the job. It had taken that long to learn to appreciate Lachlan’s sense of humour—and Dez wasn’t sure he’d quite gotten all the way there yet, or ever would.
But then, it stood to reason a hard-assed, no-nonsense investigator like Lilian Danvers would prove to be Lachlan’s cup of tea.
“Let’s start again, shall we?” she said. “What are you looking for from me exactly?”
“There’s a high school kid named—”
“Gabriel Pembroke. Yeah, got that part from Lachlan. He said you’d fill me in on the rest.”
“Did you ever investigate any of his disappearances?”
Lilian inclined her head toward her computer. “I ran the name while I was talking to Lachlan. I was asked on one occasion to take over a file in relation to him. As part of it, I pulled previous calls for service pertaining to him. He’s a runner, has been since childhood. Most of the time, he came back on his own without police needing to do a whole lot of searching. Even in my case, I was barely into the investigation when he turned up again.”
“Why did you get involved the once but not the other instances?”
“Simply put, time. I get handed files of cases likely to be long-term or more complicated. In the instance in question, Pembroke had been gone about two weeks, it was mid-winter, and he was thirteen years of age. There were significant concerns for his safety.”
“Did you have any idea where he’d been?”
“None. And he refused to say. He returned unharmed, well-fed and well-rested. No sign of exposure to the elements. Wherever he’d gone, someone had taken good care of him.”
“I’m assuming you asked around to try to find out who that person might have been.”
Lilian fixed him in a hard stare. “Of course I did. I tried his extended family, I tried friends’ parents, teachers even. No one knew anything about it. I even tracked down his father’s family.”
Dez cocked his head. “Wouldn’t they count as the extended family you mentioned?”
“Not exactly the same thing. They weren’t a part of his life in any capacity.”
“Why not?” Dez asked. “I mean I’ve met the guy. He’s a bit of a jerk, but—”
Lilian cut in “You didn’t meet Gabriel’s father.”
“Yeah, I did. He was there when my brother and I went to talk to the parents about Gabe.”
“His birth father, I mean.”
“Will Pembroke’s not the birth father?”
Lilian shook her head. “When he married Shelby, Gabriel wasn’t even one yet, so Will’s been the only father he’s ever known.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Gabriel’s birth father died by suicide shortly after his son was born.”
6
The last time Sully had visited the library, he had been on a different ghost hunt. So he was grateful when, upon entering and approaching the counter, the librarian he’d dealt with previously wasn’t there.
He was familiar with an expression about people who said stupid things: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. In Sully’s experience, the same could be said about unusual gifts like his. It was one thing to live with it privately, but he’d never grown comfortable with the idea of opening himself up to the judgment of outsiders.
Developing a reputation at the library as the weird guy who researches ghosts was the first step down a slippery slope.
He waited until the librarian finished with her previous client, then approached her with his friendliest smile.
“Hi. I’m interested in looking into something historical. Last time I came here, they let me use the History Room.”
The librarian was an older lady, likely well past the usual retirement age. Her eyes lit up, and a smile broke upon her face, so that Sully suspected she might be a volunteer rather than a paid staffer. Library budget cuts in recent years meant fewer smiley librarians, in Sully’s experience.
“Certainly,” the woman said. She turned to her colleague who was helping a young mother check out a whopping stack of books for a pair of young children at her side. “Kelly, I’m going to take this young man over to the History Room. I’ll be back shortly.”
Kelly smiled and nodded before returning to her work, and the woman helping Sully came around the desk. He walked next to her as she took him toward the hallway he’d been down the last time. She stopped at one of the doors on the left and unlocked it, then snapped on the light to illuminate a mid-sized room lined with area history books and boxes full of microfiche. Three microfilm machines stood in the centre, and Sully’s heart sank as he recalled the motion sickness he’d experienced the last time he’d worked with the machines.
“You said you used the room before?” the woman asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. I know how to use the machines and everything.”
“Is there something I can help you find?”
Sully sensed this was why this lady had wanted to work at a library. She didn’t seem in a mood to leave, and recalling his last visit, he knew he could use the help.
“It’s kind of weird,” he warned. “I’m hoping to research the Edge Creek Light.”
“Oh!” The woman rubbed her hands together, a gleeful movement if Sully had ever seen one. “Wonderful. A fascinating tale, isn’t it? I love ghost stories. Nothing like sitting with a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea with a ghost story on your lap now, is there?”
Sully forced a smile and tried to imagine what the idea of ghosts would be like if he hadn’t spent his life inundated with them. “Yeah,” he said, because he knew he had to say something. “They are fascinating. Have you ever seen the Edge Creek Light?”
“Me? Oh, goodness, no. I’d be far too frightened if something actually appeared.” She’d been headed toward the shelf with the history books but paused now and turned. “Have you seen it?”
The answer to that one was far more complicated than she realized, so Sully settled on a shrug. “I don’t know what I saw exactly.”
“But you saw a light?”
Yes, he had. And a whole lot more. “Yeah. Like a train headlight. An old one.”
“Wonderful!” The librarian returned to her task, heading to the shelf and running her fingertips along the spines of the books until her “Aha” told Sully she’d found what she’d been searching for. She pulled one of the local history books from the shelf and handed it to Sully. He scanned the front, noting the old book was about the community of Edge Creek.
“I’ve never personally come to look up anything about the light, but it seems to me some town history might be a good place to start,” she said.
“How about train-related incidents? Would they be in here?”
“Maybe. Many local history books document local disasters like droughts, fires and the like, so it’s possible a tragedy involving a train might be included. If it isn’t, your next best bet would be the newspapers we have on microfiche. The problem will be figuring out where to start. My recollection about the Edge Creek Light is that it involves something said to have happened around the turn of the century. It could mean going through between ten- and twenty-years’ worth of papers. A monumental task, I’m afraid.”
Sully knew it. He’d been through it when he came here last time, trying to dig into the history behind another area ghost legend. He’d left with a headache. He sensed another one wasn’t far away.
“I’d imagine you don’t have anything by way of old railway records,” he said.
She shook her head and offered an apologetic smile. “No, sorry. You’d have to go directly to the rail company for that.”
He nodded, having guessed as much even before she’d provided the answer.
She checked her watch and offered him a sad smile upon looking back up. He guessed the expression meant she had to return to desk duty. “If you’re sure you’re sorted here, I guess I should get back.”
He returned the smile. “I’m sorted. Thanks.”
Sully waited until she’d left the room and closed the door behind herself. Then he sat at a long table opposite the microfilm machines and began to thumb through the book about Edge Creek.
The book’s copyright dated back to the 1970s, so Sully could only imagine how much had changed. The community was already long gone by then, and no doubt many of the former residents featured in here were long gone too. A couple of them had taken it upon themselves to assemble family histories, business profiles and photos of the town and surrounding area. Sully made a note of the editors’ names—Emily Adams and James Castain—in case he decided he’d need to track them down for additional information. Sometimes, he knew, things didn’t end up in local history books, whether because they were too controversial or too painful. Some of those who put these sorts of books together angled for a nostalgia of the rose-coloured sort. Tragic deaths on a rail line resulting in a long-term haunting didn’t generally fit the bill.
He went through the book twice, ignoring most of the family histories so he could focus on the town itself. The librarian had been right: There was a writeup about the drought in the 1930s, a tornado from 1916 that ripped apart three houses and a livery stable, and a large piece about the fire that destroyed the community in 1938.
A number of people had met tragic ends in the town during both the tornado and the fire, but Sully discounted them as the threat he’d encountered last night. While some of those souls might be the ones he couldn’t see on the train, they didn’t account for everyone he’d seen.
And the more he flipped through the book’s pages, the more he was forced to concede he wasn’t going to find his answers here. Nowhere could he find mention of a murder near the town’s railway station that might account for the start of the light’s legend.
What he did find was reference to the legend itself. Just a small section in the thick hardcover book, the story quoted no one and merely provided much the same story Sully had already heard. No dates, no names, no references. Just another campfire tale about a local legend.
Sully closed the book and grudgingly peered at the shelves containing the library’s microfiche collection. The very idea made his stomach queasy, so he took what felt like the easy way out: He plugged one of the book’s editors’ names into his phone’s internet function and searched for a number. The first entry for James Castain was an obit, unfortunately. But Emily Adams was apparently alive—and he was glad the librarian had left him alone. His choice words after he scraped his jaw off the floor would not have been appreciated. He stared at the name on his phone. She wasn’t just alive, she lived across the hall from him.
Only, he knew her as Emily Crichton, not Adams.
Relieved a friendly and knowledgeable voice would be on the other end, Sully located her number in his contacts list and tapped on it. She picked up after the third ring.
“Hi, Emily, it’s Sully,” he said.
“Oh, hello,” she said, voice crackling with pleasure. “I saw you and your brother moving things into the apartment. I hoped maybe it meant someone was coming back to stay there. Are you?”
He smiled at the hope he heard in her voice. “I am. Dez is staying at his house with Eva and Kayleigh, but I’m moving back into the apartment.”
“Oh, how wonderful! But you’re getting along all right?”
“Yeah, we’re getting along fine. Me moving somewhere of my own ensures it stays that way.”
Emily chuckled. “I can appreciate what you mean. And Pax? Is he coming too?”
“It’s a no-pets building, as you’ve reminded us a
few times.”
“True,” she said. “But I do love Pax, and he’s a good dog. So far, the building owner hasn’t clued in, and I can’t imagine he’s likely to.”
“Still a no-pets building,” Sully said. “The way my luck runs, he’d come in to check the fire detectors the first day I had Pax there. Anyway, he and Kayleigh have adopted each other. I’d feel bad taking him from her.”
“Kids and dogs,” Emily said, as if that explained everything. “So when are you coming back?”
“Soon,” he said. “Probably this evening, depending how the day goes. I’m working with Dez at the private investigation firm he’s with, and we’re in the middle of a missing person job. I was hoping you could help me with something.”
“Oh, of course!” she said. The excitement was obvious. “What can I do?”
“It’s kind of turned into what Dez calls a ghost hunt. Not that the guy we’re looking for is dead, but we’re considering a possible connection with the Edge Creek Light. I came to the library and I found a book on the town. One of the editors was—”
“Emily Adams,” she finished. “Yes, I helped put the book together.”
“Did you use a pen name?”
“No, my married name.”
Sully’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t know you were married.”
She chuckled. “Once, and just for a few years. Turned out to be a philandering devil. I threw him out and haven’t spoken of him since.”
“You never told me that.”
“What’s to tell?” she said, her tone a shrug. “It was a short chapter in a life that’s lasted more than eight decades. I confess I barely think of him now. Anyway, beside the point. What did you want to know about the light?”
“How long were you in Edge Creek?”
“Not long, as you can imagine. Honestly, I have no independent recollection of it. I was barely out of my mother’s womb when the town burned. But as my parents spoke so fondly of their years in Edge Creek, I grew up with a fascination for the place and all of its quirks. It’s why I decided to co-edit the book, so I could delve more deeply into all the stories about it.”