“You’re kidding. What the hell is it? I still can’t figure out why they’d want my DNA.”
“Because a couple strands of hair were stuck to a tiny piece of duct tape left when they cut the guards loose. Since the thieves wore Boston cops uniforms, the police checked the hair against their DNA. Your twin brother’s DNA is a 99.9 percent match. Since twins DNA are so similar, it could be yours.”
“Shit, I never saw that coming. Wait! The second time I went to the museum recently, when I was trying to think of how to tell you about my, um, condition, a toddler pulled out some of my hair.”
“Of course! That’s how Reginald got it. He must have been watching.”
“Goddamn filthy, lying ghost. He framed me for something I didn’t do!” Konrad leaned over, dropped his head in his hands, and groaned. “What now, Roz?”
***
A few days passed before Chad was able to make his way back to the building and talk to Morgaine. When he said Reginald refused to back down, Roz’s hopes for a retraction were dashed. She had conferred with colleagues, and the best they could hope for was that Konrad’s alibi would hold up or the prosecution’s case would fall apart.
Roz decided that to be thorough, she should get ghost hunters to investigate the existence of Reginald; not that she didn’t believe Morgaine, but she knew the woman needed money. Anyone could claim mediumship powers and fake a channeled spirit, right? Konrad refused to believe that Morgaine would do such a thing, so he stayed out of the next part of Roz’s research.
She stood in an Airstream trailer in Hyde Park, the makeshift office of B.A.S.H. (Boston Area Spirit Hunters), talking to the lead investigator, Shawn. She had already explained the basics.
He rose from his chair. “You said over the phone that this is for a court case. Would we be required to testify?”
“Not unless we can prove that the ghost doesn’t exist.”
“It would be easier to prove rather than disprove the existence of a spirit with our infrared equipment.” He pulled out a chair on the client side of his metal desk.
Roz took a seat on the hard folding chair. “What do you mean?”
“If we don’t see anything, it doesn’t prove he isn’t there, because he might be hiding from us. If we capture an image, it couldconfirmhis existence.”
“At least in some minds,” Roz said. “I might luck out and get a jury who disbelieves everything supernatural, but I read studies that claim at least sixty percent of Americans have had firsthand encounters with some sort of spirit activity, so that’s unlikely.”
Shawn scratched his head. “And yet at least ninety percent of the calls we investigate turn up nothing. You said this is a cognizant spirit, right?”
“Yes, if the medium is genuine, and she probably is, then she channeled a ghost named Reginald who died in the 1930s. He seemed quite aware of who was in the room, what we looked like, and what we wanted to know.”
“If you believe the medium is genuine, why do you need us?”
“My natural skepticism demands it.”
Shawn nodded. “I understand, but if you hire us and we confirm his existence, then you might prefer you hadn’t been so thorough.”
Roz paused and considered it. “No,” she said eventually. “I need to know the truth, at least for myself. Is there any way of doing this surreptitiously?”
“You mean without the medium knowing, or without the museum’s knowledge and permission?”
“Both, preferably.”
Shawn leaned back in his chair and looked like he was considering the implications carefully. “It’s not the ideal situation. We generally like to go into places when it’s dark, in order to use our infrared cameras, and we’d need to gain access to off-limits areas. Spirits who want to hide—and that’s most of the harmless, cognizant ones trapped on this plane without an agenda—will avoid the public. We can still use thermal imaging, but it might attract attention.”
“Damn.” She should have thought this over more carefully or asked more questions over the telephone.
“We could always bring in our own sensitive.”
“Your own what?”
“Sensitive. It’s what psychics and mediums like to be called these days. I have a few I trust completely. They’ve worked with us while we’re using our equipment, and usually the sensitive’s contacts validate the electronic findings and vice versa.”
“I see, so I assume you’d charge less for the sensitive only, since you wouldn’t need to use your fancy cameras and thermal equipment.”
“I’m sure we can work something out.”
