Ghost Killer (16 page)

ZACH JERKED HIS
chin at the waiter. “By him or everyone else?”

“Yes. No one told us Caden acted.”

“Mrs. Flinton might not know, or it didn’t mean anything to her. Think about the video
we first saw and that child. Did it look like he was acting?”

A pause while Clare stabbed into her salad, chewed crispy vegetables.

“No,” she said. “Except maybe a little today, woebegone behind that schoolyard fence.”

“He wanted Enzo to stay with him. I believe a ghost seer boy would think a ghost dog
companion was really cool.”

“Yes.”

“And this can explain why people don’t believe him as much.”

Clare’s frown remained when she looked at him straight again. “People don’t believe
he sees ghosts because it is not rational that people see ghosts.”

“Still struggling with the disrespect thing,” Zach murmured.

She ate some more before answering. “It will take time for me to accept people don’t
believe me, don’t respect what I do, what I can do.”

“You’ll always be considered a fake or a con by most people upon first meeting you,
before they
know
what you can do.”

“That’s right. And it will take time to become accustomed to that.” She appeared to
consider the matter while she ate more of her salad and Zach crunched through a great
tasting taco.

“It’s been three weeks and two days since I saw my first ghost.” A lost note in her
voice had Zach reaching for her hand again. Lost. Her former life, her former self.

She swallowed, didn’t look at him. From the way she held her face he thought she might
be beating back tears. Her voice was thick when she said, “I think I’m allowed to
mourn a career of a decade, a career I’d planned and studied for, for at least . . .
two months?”

The words flicked like a whip on his own raw spot, reminding him of the dark, dark
days when he’d awakened in the hospital knowing his foot would never work right again.
Knowing his own career as a field law enforcement officer was kaput. And he’d mourned
that for a lot longer than Clare had.

It had taken meeting her, learning of her similar shadows, and some harsh words for
him to yank himself into a new reality.

Better that he changed the subject. Making his tone as light as possible under the
circumstances, he said, “You’ve gotta hand it to the kid.”

She looked up at him with tears filmed over her pretty hazel eyes, and a distant look
in them.

“Caden, you’ve got to hand it to Caden. Going the artistic route, the actor route.”
Zach managed not to wince. He didn’t know actors. They were probably okay guys. Zach
coughed. “Anyway, if Caden is an actor, maybe folks will cut him a break when he’s
found ‘talking to himself.’”

“Talking to ghosts,” Clare said.

Zach nodded. “Easier to explain. People expect stuff like that from actors and other
folks in the arts.” He smiled, squeezed her fingers, then withdrew his hand. Eating
the tacos was a two-handed activity. “Though I suppose, as an accountant, you could
be considered to be mumbling numbers.”

She bristled as he’d hoped. “A good accountant
doesn’t
have to mutter figures aloud.”

He grinned. “Of course not.”

Clare sighed, then went back to her salad. “Yes, for Caden, it
could
mask his gift.”

She said gift as if she meant curse, and Zach didn’t blame her. He didn’t like his
own “gift.” Which reminded him that there was an outstanding Counting-Crows-Rhyme-prediction
of another death, and that ruined the taste of his food.

“Yes.” Clare nodded. “That scenario would work in a small town where everyone knew
everyone and found you talking to yourself. It would be harder to pull off in a big
city like Denver, I think, if you didn’t stick to your own neighborhood for shopping,
for instance.”

“Uh-huh,” Zach said, and wondered if that had happened to her. He’d been gone a little
while after she’d come into her psychic power—between her first and second cases.

“In any event. I shall just have to become accustomed to my new . . . vocation.”

And those were words he’d heard before and knew she said nearly as a mantra.

Her phone beeped and he smiled.

“What?” she asked.

“That first day we met. At lunch. We both got calls.”

Her face softened. “Yes.”

He waved a hand. “Go ahead, take it.”

She took it from the special pocket on her purse. “It’s a text. The best time to meet
anyone at the archives is tomorrow afternoon.”

“So it goes,” Zach said, but his optimism began to wane. “At least we have a good
lead, the motive of the perp.”

“Perp.”

“Perpetrator. So much easier to say than damned big and evil ghost.”

“Yes. About that woman who just stormed out of here. What do you know?”

“What do I guess? We’ll talk about it . . . somewhere else. After lunch.”

“All right.” She paused, licked some salad dressing from her lower lip that had Zach
thinking about bed and sex again. Something that happened with amazing frequency with
Clare. He remained glad she’d come along and proved his ankle might be bad but his
dick worked just fine.

Meeting his eyes, her lips firmed, then she said, “I’d like to go up the canyon, all
the way around Bachelor Loop, and see the mines.”

Unlike their previous talk, people would have heard words like that from everyone
who passed through.

“Is that where the perp lurks?” Zach asked.

“I think I need to get a feeling for the atmosphere,” she said.

“Examine the scene.”

“Yes.”

“Sure. We’ll head up there after lunch.”

*   *   *

“This is more than scenic,” Clare said. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Yeah, mountains of golden aspen look good, especially against the evergreens. Colorado
autumn putting on a show.” Zach nodded. “It’s real nice. Something wrong?” he asked.
She had the shadows in the eyes look again. “The mines are interesting, too. From
a distance.” He’d be iffy climbing rocks and messing around in mines. Hardly anything
more dangerous than abandoned mines.

“It’s . . . it’s a little different. More . . . sterile.”

Looked the same to Zach as trips into the mountains as a kid. Mostly his mother managed
to nag the General into putting in for leave so they could have a fall Colorado vacation.

“Huh.” Zach scanned the area, and saw no crows, so he didn’t have to try and figure
out his own gift. But something in the silence or whatever reminded him of when he’d
looked at the shadowy street early that morning and thought that he’d seen layers
set down by the ghost.

He glanced at Clare. She’d take what he’d say seriously. Well, she usually took what
people said seriously, but her mind had sure gotten blown open to “irrationality”
in the last three weeks and two days, so she’d
listen
.

“Um,” he said.

She looked at him instead of out the window, focusing that sharp attention. Yeah,
he liked that.

“Maybe because all the ghosts are missing, it doesn’t seem right to you. Maybe you
sensed ghosts all your life, even if you didn’t see them.”

“You’ve said something like that before.”

“Yeah, a lot of options.” And what he’d say next was way out there. “Or if it isn’t
just you, maybe the world is used to a . . . coating of human spirits and it’s missing.”

“Huh,” she said, looking more thoughtful than tense. An improvement. “That’s an interesting
notion, in a whole different direction, a more philosophical or spiritual or theological
direction.”

“I’m not just a pretty face,” Zach joked.

“No, you’re an interesting, compelling, virile man,” she said, almost in an absent
tone.

Zach’s mouth fell open and he turned to look at her . . . again, no traffic this weekday
afternoon of uncertain weather, but he should still have kept his eyes on the road.
Never knew when a rock splinter might be coming your way.

He wrenched his gaze away from her, and back to the road. “Thanks, I think. That’s
a lot for a man to live up to.”

She sent him a sweet smile. “You make it easy.”

Okay, he was tripping right off the path over the cliff into the fall of love. No.
Yes. Maybe. Close the door on that until it could be addressed later!

A hawk screamed and they both flinched—him at the sound of a bird, Clare at the sound
of a shriek, he supposed.

“Is it near?” he snapped. “I’m ready to turn around and take you right out of here.
Not sure what this truck can do on these roads, but we can find out.”

“No . . . I think maybe we hurt it last night and it’s still sulking, or brooding.
It can’t be accustomed to being hurt—or being seen or being fought, even.”

“Good,” he said with satisfaction. “The more we can scare it, the more hesitant it
will become and the easier to defeat.”

“I suppose so. And we’ll continue to focus its attention on us and not on Caden, which
is all to the good,” she said. She looked out at the cliff face next to her window,
at the winding road ahead of them, past him to the green and gold hill outside his
window. “We’re all alone. Time to tell me what you deduced.”

“Like I said, Pais the elder and I saw Linda at the county building. He acted cool
and disapproving and warned me off asking her questions or asking him about her.”

“He did?”

“Basic guy body language, Clare. But he wasn’t interested in her as a woman. He saw
her as a problem.”

“You’d know guy and peace officer body language.” Clare nodded, accepting that point.

“And he’d told us that he’d spoken with the LuCettes, and that might mean he heard
from Caden all about the nasty, scary spot at the confluence of the Willow creeks
where the murder-suicide happened and how that nasty, scary spot isn’t there anymore
but a big, evil ghost is traveling up and down the canyons and into the town, scaring
the bejesus out of Caden.”

Zach picked up a sports bottle and squeezed a stream of water into his mouth. The
road was dirt, and though he drove slowly, dust rose around them.

“Since I’m a suspicious kind of guy myself, my mind immediately went to the motive
any cop would assign to a murder-suicide. Had already traveled that pathway and back
a few times.”

“Hmm,” Clare said.

“Think about it, Clare. I know you’re the kind to like to believe in the best of people,
but—”

“A love triangle,” Clare said.

“Yeah. Jerk sleeping with his wife’s sister.”

Clare sighed. “I don’t understand why people take wedding vows and break them. Either
don’t take them, or do your absolute best to stick with them, or if you can’t, get
out of the marriage.”

“I can tell you that I’ve seen the results of plenty of ‘love’ triangles and a lot
of it is simple power politics, relationship game playing.”

“Ick,” Clare said.

Yeah, he could love this girl. Not a girl, a woman. He could love this woman. Talk
about scary.

“This time it was sister vis-à-vis sister and wife vis-à-vis husband, I think. And,
man, when I saw her, guessed who she might be, it was like that—” He snapped his fingers.
“Love triangle, and Linda survived. Jealousy, resentment, betrayal. Those are the
emotions stirred up by a sex trio that ends in killing. And one of those is
the
motive of our ghost. Why it kills who it kills, why it is
allowed
to kill who it can kill, maybe, if we go back to some sort of universal balance of
good and evil and our philosophical bent.”

“Betrayal.” Clare whispered the word. Flinched. Said in a higher, less steady voice,
“I think we should turn around now and head back to town.”

Zach whipped the truck around and pressed on the accelerator. The ride got a whole
lot bumpier. Clare held on to the door brace. “That word.” She raised her voice. “That
caught its attention.”

“Ah. Wondered about that. We can hash this out when we get back.”

They reached the hotel without the specter following them. Clare checked before they
got out of the truck, though she’d kept her mind’s eye on the wraith, ready to tell
Zach to keep going if it felt like the monster followed them. They could at least
keep it busy and lead it away from town.

Wonderful that Zach had figured out this new lead, but the more she considered the
entire situation, the more she realized that she had to blood the knife soon to be
able to defend Caden and Creede and the whole valley.

Do the job quick enough that the ghost wouldn’t come upon her while she bled, and
mess up the process . . . or worse.

As soon as they walked in, she went to her bag, zipped it open, zipped the lining
open, and took out the tube containing the knife. She held it, the feel of silk and
bone against her palm and fingers, the zing of
rightness
. Her fingers went to the knot.

Zach frowned as he watched. “What are you doing?”

Clare frowned. “I’m going to have to blood it sooner or later. Sooner would be better.”
She met his eyes. “You had an idea how to do that when we first heard, didn’t you?”