“Twelve past two.”
I checked my watch. We’d been there nearly two hours with no further visual. “If it’s a repeater, it might be on a certain timeline, and it only pops out at ten in the morning like a cuckoo clock. But we’d better dot our i’s and cross our t’s all the same.”
Combing through an empty apartment isn’t rocket science. We re-checked everything from the shower stall to the coat closet, and still no ghost. In fact, the only sentient thing we encountered was a scrawny tabby cat on the back porch scrutinizing us through the kitchen window. By the time we were done, I was second guessing myself. Light can do some funny things. A couple of trucks passing each other while the sun is at the exact right angle to double-reflect from their mirrors could account for a weird flash that was nearly impossible to replicate.
I turned to Carl and said, “The folks in Records didn’t find a murder here?”
Carl only dignified that with a raised eyebrow.
Of course Records didn’t find a murder here. If they had, Boswell would’ve already been declared a Medium and whisked away in an unmarked car. “Could’ve been an accident,” I said.“Maybe a heart attack. Someone who wasn’t pronounced dead until they loaded them into the ambulance.”
And maybe I had just jumped to the conclusion ofmurderbecause I’d seen so many bodies shot full of holes—and then been forced to listen to the whole play-by-play of how it had happened from the bodies’ former occupants.
We got Laura Kim on the phone to see what she wanted to do next. Once we explained the situation, she said, “Do you have enough supplies with you to take care of the place? Should I send someone over with a bigger kit?”
“Hold on,” I said. “You want me to scrub the ghost? It might be evidence.”
On Laura’s end, a keyboard clacked. “There’s no record of a murder…but I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean one hasn’t occurred. We’ll dig a little deeper here before we get the police involved. But in the meantime, steer clear of the nonphysical entity and let the NPs handle it.”
It took me a second to recalibrate and accept that “getting the police involved” didn’t include me.
I hung up with Laura, but stood there another long moment, hands on hips, scowling at the room. “I know, I know,” I said to Carl. “I’m not a homicide investigator.”
Apparently, though, old habits die hard. Maybe, back in my Camp Hell days, I would have been eager to exorcise the thing and be done with it. But a dozen years as a PsyCop had me loath to destroy any evidence that would stop a perp from walking around scot-free. Especially now that I was a cog in a larger institution, so my psychic testimony wouldn’t be used by a savvy defense attorney to sway the jury.
If only I knew for sure exactly what I’d seen.
“I’m just gonna have one more look.”
To his credit, Carl didn’t roll his eyes or glance at his watch. I tuned him out and planted my feet, and did all the typical things it took to turn the white light up to eleven. In the midst of a panicky situation, the crown chakra activation can leave me lightheaded. But at times like these—“maybe it’s nothing” times—there’s no obvious signal that my talent was working.
Or was there?
I glanced at my watch. Pulse looked normal, which told me nothing, so I pulled out my phone and called up my app…and found an eager goldfish astronaut where my boring spaceship used to be.
I don’t know what was worse. That I’d totally forgotten the app had changed…or that I still hadn’t got past the eighteenth level.
* * *
The ghost-hunting expedition was a bust. There’d been no cold spot, no disembodied voices, no death in the apartment in recorded history. As I headed home, I wondered why I was so dead set on proving I’d seen something, given how often the thing I see out of the corner of my eye turns out to be nothing but a flapping cobweb by an air vent.
Was it because Noah Boswell thought he’d seen something there too? If so, then he should damn well answer my call so I could get some specifics.
I was already irked when I pulled up in front of the cannery…only to have that blossom into annoyance when I noticed aplastic shopping bag tangled in the weeds growing up around our foundation, and then some empty beer cans and a soggy paper plate. Intellectually, I knew that all it took to get so run-down looking was an overturned garbage bin and a stiff wind. But visions of that shitty, possibly-haunted apartment were fresh in my mind.
And, to be honest, it had probably been a good few weeks since either Jacob or I had paid any attention to our sorry little strip of lawn. It was early October, and we were smack in the limbo of leaves only half-fallen. I could have just picked up the litter and called it a day. But I needed somewhere to channel my frustration, and the side yard was as good a place as any.
It was near dark by the time Jacob got home. Yard work was usually his domain, but he was glad enough for me to take initiative. Once he changed out of his suit, he came and joined me. “You shouldn’t have bothered,” I said. “I’m nearly done.”
“I don’t mind.” He’s got a talent for cramming twice as many leaves into those brown bags than I ever manage. I let him enjoy his little victories.
My rake snagged on a newspaper—from freaking July—and I shoved another mass of trash-riddled leaves into the bag. Itwasa lot easier with Jacob holding it open.
“We make a good team,” he said. I’d figured it was a rhetorical statement. “Don’t you think?” he added.
“Sure we do.”
Guess everyone could stand to have their ego stroked now and again.
