Poltergeist (22 page)

"No. I won't do it. This won't happen again—it can't.”

"It will! It will get worse as it's kept on getting worse. It started with petty theft and pinches and throwing things. Now you have broken windows and people in the hospital. Can't you see where this is headed? Are you going to wait until one of them is a red smear on the damned observation—”

"That's enough!" He stood up and stared down at me. He was breathing too fast, swaying, white-faced, and the people at the table outside the dining room turned to look at us. I got up and stood still in front of him, as still and quiet as I could manage, letting my face go neutral and my voice slide back to normal.

"It's a flawed experiment, Dr. Tuckman. It was a mistake. A miscalculation. If you shut it down now and clear off the paperwork that makes me and my contractor look like thieves, you can return some of the grant money and no one will look too hard at what you've done. So long as no one gives them a reason to.”

He turned a hopeful frown on me, licking his dry lips. He sank back into the chair and I sat down beside him again. It gave me the chills to do it, but I put my hand on his nearest forearm. Glutinous chill oozed up my arm and I stifled a shudder.

"I won't give them a reason to look if you shut this down now. If you do what I'm telling you, I won't have to defend myself from charges of theft and I won't need to give these reports to the police or your department chair. Just shut it down. Say there was a flaw in the protocol—write one in if you have to. Say it was a mistake. I know it'll be embarrassing, but a little pride isn't worth someone's life. It's just a mistake.”

I saw him swallow it. His posture straightened and the glaze of fear left his eyes. "It's flawed. I'll shut it down. I'll take care of it—the papers, the team. I'll call them and tell them we're done.”

I took my first decent breath in hours. Nodding, I said, "Good." I stood up one more time and put the envelope of reports in his hand.

"These are your reports—they're confidential and no one else has seen them. Just write a check for my fee and we can call this done.”

He looked at the bill, then glanced up, frowning as if he were confused. "I'm not going to pay this. You didn't do the job I hired you for.”

My mouth fell open in sheer surprise. "You have the biggest brass ones.…Tuckman—do you understand any of what I just told you? You're a thief and a liar and I can prove it. Do you think that's the only copy of my report? We have a contract for the investigation of a possible saboteur. I've proved there is no saboteur but you. Contract satisfied. If I need to call my lawyer, I'll have to tell her the whole truth about this—that's covered in the contract, too. You want to hear that in court?" I jerked my head back toward the dining room. "You want them to hear it?”

He glared. Old villain eyes again.

I sighed. "Don't even try, Tuckman. I have the cards. You don't. Shut it down,
now.”

He dropped his gaze and pulled his checkbook from his pocket.

I left with his check in my purse. Tuckman was still looking at the reports. "A flaw. An oversight… ," he muttered, trying to convince himself it really was just a mistake.

Maybe it somehow knew I was working for its destruction, or maybe it was just in a bad mood, but I spent much of Thursday night under attack by the poltergeist. Small objects in the Rover pinged against my head and face as I drove home. Flinching almost put me into the rail on the viaduct and I got a moment's vertiginous view of the waterfront below before I corrected my path back into the lane.

At home, I had never regretted my collection of books and funky objects until now. A dining room chair rushed at me like an angry dog as soon as I walked into the condo. A pair of bronze bookends soared off the shelf and came for my head. I yanked a bit of the Grey around myself and dodged, taking most of the impact on my shoulders.

Chaos ran back and forth in her cage, agitated by the activity. As I moved toward her, a hardbound book winged past me and crashed into the wall nearby. She's a tough little creature, but I doubted she'd have much of a chance against flying books. I snatched her from her cage and shielded her with my body as I ran for the bedroom. The phenomena followed me from room to room.

I put Chaos in the bathtub and rushed back into the bedroom. I dodged missiles while I dragged every heavy, pointy, or hard object out of my bedroom. I piled most of them in the hall closet and closed it, wedging the door shut. The objects rattled against the door until I moved away. I hauled the most dangerous objects out of the living room and stuck them in my mostly empty kitchen cupboards, tying the doors closed before I returned Chaos to her cage. It appeared she’d be safe enough if I wasn't near her. Celia only had a connection to me, not my pet, but I still stacked pillows and cushions all around her cage before I ran back to my bedroom and closed the door. I slept in fits, roused by small objects throughout the night, but the ferret was fine in the morning and the poltergeist seemed to have wound down a little.

I called Solis first thing in the morning, and he insisted I meet him at Le Crepe—a business diner on Second—rather than discuss Tuckman's project over the phone. So, of course, once we were seated at the same table, he was silent and inscrutable. His narrowed eyes and blank expression might have been caused by exhaustion and insomnia as much as thoughts or judgments reserved to his own mind, but I couldn't tell. I was nursing coffee after my bad night and feeling no more sociable than he.

I glanced past his shoulder to the midmorning lull on the street outside. "How's the investigation going?" I asked.

"Still open. Tell me what happened on Wednesday.”

"I can't tell much—I don't understand it myself—but Tuckman's shutting the project down.”

"Why?”

"The protocols were flawed—that's why things went awry. People have been hurt and it's just too risky. The details don't make a lot of sense, but the end result is that Tuckman is shutting it down. I still have a little follow-up to do with the participants, though. I thought I'd better let you know I'm not quite out of your hair yet, but I'm on my way.”

"I'd prefer that you left this to me.”

I sighed and lied. "Solis, I'd love to, but I have a job to do, too. Whatever's wrong with Tuckman's project is probably a common thread between our investigations, but I'm not going to just assume that and put the baby in your lap. I've been cooperative with your investigation—a little more than I had to be—so you'll just have to bear with my presence in your view a little longer. Unless you have grounds to lock me up.”

It was his turn to sigh. "All right. What do you think these cases have in common?”

"Well." I paused to put my thoughts into sanitized order, restraining an urge to say things I knew he would write off. "I've been looking at these people and at the situation Tuckman's created and I think he's either pulled in or precipitated a psycho. I think what happened to Mark Lupoldi was caused by something and someone in Tuckman's project. It appears that the incidents Tuckman considered sabotage are just other symptoms of this individual at work. He deliberately picked a group of people with slightly unstable personalities and lots of problems, bound to develop tension in an environment where he encouraged them to believe they could do some pretty strange things and get away with it. Psychology's not my field but I imagine that in that kind of environment, if you've got an individual who's on the edge of psychopathic or psychotic behavior, they might find the last step all too easy to take.”

Solis looked down at his own cup and nodded slowly. "That may be true, but my concern is still only the discovery of the killer.”

"Do you have a suspect? I have a few.”

He grunted. "Evidence makes a case, not suspicion. I'd like to find those keys or the method…I agree Dr. Tuckman's project is involved and I've looked very hard at his subjects and assistants. Tell me who you suspect.”

I told him and he raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He refused to give me any response in kind. So much for sharing information.

Returning to my office was a walk through the Grey without even trying. As I crossed Pioneer Square, ignoring phantom traffic and the tipped layers of time, something winged into the side of my head, brushing my temple and yanking out a strand of my hair.

I whirled, looking for the culprit, and spotted a dilapidated man in greasy, filthy clothes sitting on a bench nearby. He held his hands open, a crooked cigarette fallen to the wet ground in front of him, and stared at me with wide eyes. I bent, looked around, and spotted a cigarette lighter—a Zippo-type with a metal case—lying against the building beside me. As I crouched to pick it up, I glanced through the deeper Grey at the lighter. A thin filament of yellow energy was fast fading from it, drawing back like the tail of a snake vanishing into a bolt-hole.

I glanced around, catching sight of a fleeting yellow haze, glittering with flecks of red and slices of silvery time. I picked up the lighter and flicked it into flame. The bit of Celia peregrinated around the square as if it had no interest in me at all. And maybe it didn't this time, but its presence near me was worrisome. I'd spent too much of the previous night dodging books and household objects. They'd all had a small yellow thread of Grey energy reeling from them. Given the violence of Wednesday and the previous night, I was surprised at this minor display.

I took the lighter back to the bum on the bench.

"This yours?”

He stuttered and fumbled, fearful and uncertain how to answer. Then he blurted, "I dint trow it etcha! Hones'! It jus' kina…”

I nodded with a rueful smile. "I know. It just got away from you. They do that." I looked down at the crumpled cigarette in the gutter between us and shot another quick look for Celia, but the thing had moved away. "That yours, too?”

He looked down and his face fell to the verge of tears as he saw the mud-soaked cigarette. "Yeah," he moaned.

I dug into my pocket for the change from my coffee and handed it to him with his lighter. "Take care of this. Don't lose it, OK?”

His eyes glowed and he offered me a snaggle-toothed grin on a raft of fetid breath. "I will. I will! Tank you, Miss. God bless you!”

I backed away, starting for my office again with a shrug and a mumbled "thanks." Sliding on the mucky cobbles, I hurried on through the October thickness of ghosts.

I was going up the stairs when my cell phone jiggled on my hip. I snatched it and answered.

"You have to do something.”

"What? Excuse me, Dr. Tuckman, but we closed this case last night," I answered, shoving the phone under my jaw as I unlocked my office door.

"Yes, I know. But something must be done. You seem to be the one who understands this thing—”

"No, Tuckman. You understand it. You just don't want responsibility for it.”

"Ms. Blaine!”

I reminded myself that his check hadn't cleared yet and heaved a sigh. "What's the problem?"

"Celia is bedeviling the subjects.”

' 'Bedeviling'? Just how badly are they being pestered?" Maybe the relative calm around me now was the reflection of Celia's action elsewhere. I threw my things on the floor behind the desk and sat down.

Without his villain act to bolster the impact, he just sounded peevish and unpleasant. "Considering the range of injuries they've all sustained recently, it takes very little 'pestering' to make someone miserable. They've all called—every one—with one story or another of the poltergeist doing unpleasant things.”

"Great. Look, Tuckman, as I understand it, the poltergeist is a collective phenomenon, yes?”

"Yes," he snapped at me, impatient and annoyed.

"Well then, if it exists because they believe it exists, the obvious thing to do is get them to stop believing in it.”

"And do you think that's likely when they are being pummeled and assaulted by this make-believe ghost?”

I laughed. "You put it there, Tuckman. I can't do anything to help you on that score. You taught them to believe, you'll have to teach them to be skeptical again. Why don't you tell them it was a hoax? That you had the room rigged and almost nothing that they experienced was real? That should shake a few of them up. If you can get them to stop giving it credence, maybe it will stop harassing them." I didn't say a damned thing about its harassing me, too. The entity had gone off on its own with its master and I doubted that the rest of the group could do much more than weaken it by any lack of faith, but I wouldn't say it wasn't worth a try.

Tuckman remained silent, brooding.

"Dr. Tuckman. Seriously. You need to convince them to stop giving it their support. You have to. It's taken on a life of its own, but if you can break down their belief, you may weaken it enough to stop its doing anything worse. Be brutal. You have to.”

"You've been no help at all," he spat.

"Then I won't charge you. Good luck, Dr. Tuckman. Remember that this is no longer a game. Your ghost killed one of your assistants. This thing has to cease and it's up to you to break it. Not me.”

I could almost hear the slow boil of his vexation. Then he hung up on me. I didn't mind. If I was lucky, I'd never hear from Gartner Tuckman again.

I worked for a while, periodically fending off the random attacks of random objects. At one o'clock, I went to catch Phoebe at her parents' restaurant. Hugh had told me she'd be there, and I needed Amanda's address. I could have just called, but that wouldn't help me mend any fences—Phoebe might take it as another attempt to dodge my rightful dose of her wrath and that wouldn't be good in the long run. Besides, I loved the Masons and needed some kind of break from the grinding horror of this case.

The lunch rush had thinned to a trickle by the time I arrived and the family was, once again, revving up for Friday night. I seemed to be spending all day in restaurants, but this I wouldn't mind. I loved the company of the Masons. Even when they were in their weekly uproar, they were a warm and welcoming crowd. They laughed at full volume and smiled with infectious ease.

As the patriarch, Phoebe's father had taken his usual seat at the family table in back, his arthritic hand clutching a glass of tepid water, which he used more for emphasis than hydration. "Poppy" was gnarled and weathered, as brown as hand-rubbed walnut, and still ran the whole family merrily ragged without lifting anything but the glass and his voice. The clan fluttered around the table, flying in and out the kitchen doors like giddy fruit bats, somehow managing not to careen into one another while acceding to Poppy's every command. He spotted me as I came in and waved me to his table.

"Harper! Come on back here, girl. Where you been? I thought maybe you finally gone wasted away t'nothin' and blew off on the wind." His accent was still as thick as breadfruit—full of "de" and "dem" and soft Rs, lilting and bouncing like reggae—though he'd now lived thirty years in Seattle.

I wound through the crowd of family and sat down next to him against the kitchen wall, which was deliciously warm after the exterior chill. "No, Poppy. I still stick to the ground most of the time.”

He uncurled his index finger from the glass and poked me in the shoulder, scoffing. "Barely. I suppose them foolish white boys you date don' know better. Too bad t'see a nice girl like you goin' t'waste.”

I made a mock sad face. "Well, I just have to make do—Hugh is taken.”

His body shook as he roared laughter. He was loud for a little old man in his seventies. He wound down after a minute, chuckling, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Girl, I knew you could.”

That confused me. "Could what, Poppy?" I asked.

"Unfreeze yourself.”

I gaped at him. "What?" I squeaked.

"Harper, ever since you come out the hospital, you been hard and chilly like steel in the freezer—I'm surprised you got a man a' all. You built up some icy walls like you spect someone goin' t'hurt you some more, but when you ain't lettin' nothin' in to hurt, you ain't lettin' nothing in to love you, neither. Then you be stayin' away from here, like you don't need your family no more—'cause you family, even if you are thin like an of broom.”

I stared at him for a while, this old man with sharp black eyes. I hesitated to ask. "You…can see some kind of wall around me?" If I had erected such a thing, surely I had good reason to keep the world at a distance. And maybe it was the same for Ken—even tough guys can't take it forever.

Poppy laughed and poked me again. "That's a metaphor, little girl! But spiritual walls be just as hard and cold as the real thing. Why you go look so sad now?”