“It seemed like the right time.”
Gus put his sandwich down. “That’s a lie.” His gaze traveled my face, and then he sighed. “I spent the first few years of my career in Albany. I got married, started a family. I came to Fell because I thought a small town was safer. It seemed like it would be easy.” He smiled, which made the creases on his face deepen. He was handsome in his way. “I wanted quiet, and I suppose I got it. No one shot at me. But I ended up with different nightmares than I’d had in Albany.” He took the newspaper, folded it back so the article about Cathy Caldwell was face up. “This here,” he said. “I saw you reading this. I worked this case. I worked the others, too.”
“What others?” I asked, though I wasn’t surprised. Some deep, dark part of me knew there would be others.
“Murders,” Gus said. “Disappearances. Suicides. Fell has more than its share. In the last few years before I retired, someone killed a schoolteacher and left her on the construction site where the Sun Down stands now. Victoria Lee’s boyfriend killed her while she was jogging and left her in the bushes. And there was Cathy Caldwell, who left a three-year-old son behind. We might have investigatedbetter, except that we also had the disappearance of the motel night clerk on our hands, as well as everything else.”
“Everything else?” I asked.
Gus was relishing this in a grim way. “Cases that should add up, but don’t. Things that shouldn’t have happened, but did. My first year here, we found bones in one of the graveyards that didn’t belong there. They weren’t part of any grave or in any of the burial records. Someone had buried them—badly, because they eventually came up out of the ground—without permission. When we had the bones examined, they were a hundred years old.” He shook his head. “Did someone take a hundred-year-old body from wherever it was hidden and then bury it? Why? We never solved it. The next year, a girl at the college disappeared while she was studying in her dorm. Her book was open on the desk, the lamp on, a cup of tea sitting there. The tea was full, as if she hadn’t had the chance to sip it. Her shoes were neatly side by side in the hallway outside the door, which was open. The shoes just sitting there, as if she’d lined them up. No one saw her leave. No one ever saw her again.”
Vail would have his theories about that one. Most people thought his alien abduction cases were nuts. I reserved judgment, because I was too busy seeing the dead and getting locked up in mental hospitals to form a serious opinion.
“And then there was your brother,” Gus continued. “Are you telling me that you and your siblings came back to Fell after all this time at random? Do you expect me to believe it? You think I’ll just swallow that story like a dummy who hasn’t lived in this town?”
“My brother’s ghost has been sighted on the grounds of the house,” I said. “There. Are you happy?”
Gus nodded. “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
I’d underestimated him. He was good—not good enough to find Ben, but good. “He wanted us to come home, so we came.” I scoopedup a forkful of eggs and ate them. I was more relaxed now that I’d told the truth.
Gus blinked, and when sadness crossed his expression, I knew what he was thinking—that Ben appearing as he did meant that he was definitely dead, that he’d died the day he disappeared or shortly after. It was the extinguishing of the faint hope that he’d somehow turned out okay. I knew the feeling. “You think his body is on the grounds, then?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Don’t ghosts usually appear where their body is left?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
No. Ghosts, in fact, had no particular ties to where their physical remains resided. There was no winning pattern I’d seen in the dead over the years, no unbreakable rule. I’d seen the dead in their homes while I emptied out their belongings, but I’d also seen them in other places. The woman in the Long Island house had appeared to me as young—probably her favorite memory of herself—instead of the old woman she’d physically been when she died, and she’d died in a hospital. Ghosts gave no comprehensive answers, only inscrutable messages accompanied by more questions.
ExceptCome home.That message had been very clear.
“Well, I could ask around. Try to organize a search,” Gus said.
“You searched the day he disappeared. You all did.”
“We must not have looked in the right places.” He had eaten half of the sandwich. The other half, neatly sliced, still sat on his plate. He had eaten only a single french fry, but he picked up a napkin and wiped his hands as if he was finished. His tone was all business. “It wouldn’t be official, but I could call a few of the guys I know, ask them to lend a hand.”
“No.” The thought of cops in the house again—all those feet—was sickening. “The house is ours.” After a beat of silence, I lamely added, “Er, I appreciate the offer.”
Gus shrugged. “So what, then? What did you bring me here for?”
“How about the case file on my brother’s disappearance? I want to start with that.”
For the first time, Gus looked startled. He hadn’t looked like this when I mentioned ghosts. “You don’t want to read that.”
“In fact, I do want to read it.”
He shook his head and cast his gaze over my shoulder, avoiding my eyes. “There’s nothing in it that will help you. You were there that day, weren’t you? You called, we showed up and looked. We found nothing. We failed. End of story.”
“I don’t remember all of the details,” I said. “It was a weird day. I can’t ask my parents, because they’re dead. So I’d like to read it.”
“It’s a file on an open case. You can’t read it. There are rules.”
As if the two of us sitting here, discussing this, wasn’t skirting the rules. “I’m going to get access to that file, Gus. With or without your help.” I’d pay off Bag Eyes at the front desk, whatever he wanted. It would be good use of the money my parents left. Hell, I’d sleep with Bag Eyes if I had to. I wouldn’t even make him buy me dinner first if it meant finding Ben.
Gus still looked perturbed, but he was thinking it over. He scratched the side of his nose. Behind me, I heard the door to the diner swing open and closed, and the bell chimed as someone came in.
“Okay,” Gus said finally. “Here’s the thing. That’s an old case, a cold one. No one’s working it anymore. The Fell PD only has so much storage room.”
