The Haunted Bones (4 page)

It also prevented me from wearing a blue
sock with a brown sock.

I finished up, tossed the towel on the
counter, then immediately went back and folded it. Yeah. I had
issues. "Neither could I," I said as I joined her with a bottle of
water. I liked wine, but I had work to do and I liked having a
clear head. Or as clear as my head could get.

"Did you ever ask her straight out?"

I nodded. "She smiled. Said I was still
recovering. That I didn't remember anything that night. She insists
to this day she never saw me, but she heard us. She heard me and
Jimmy trying to talk Ferrell out of killing any more people." I
took a mouthful of water and swallowed.

"If she heard you, why didn't you hear
her?"

"She was gagged."

"I don't remember reading that in the
report."

I fixed her with a long
look, even though I wasn't really seeing her. I was thinking of the
same report she referenced. In the hospital, when I could form
coherent sentences, the Captain handed me the report once I told
what I could remember, which was damn little.
Nothing…
nothing
fit
what the report said.

Jimmy and I were found lying a few feet
apart. He was on his front, I was on my back. And Ferrell was
across the room on his back. Ms. Wallace was locked in a room.

The last memory
I
had was finding Jimmy
dead just inside the warehouse door. I knelt over him, tears in my
eyes as I looked for a pulse, my gun in my hand. Jim Herndon and I
went through the academy together. We were partners in uniform, and
then as detectives. He was getting married in two weeks to
Julie—

"Devan!"

Jewels had her hands on the sides of my
face. I blinked several times to focus on her face. Her expression
alarmed me. "What?"

"You spaced on me—with your eyes open this
time." She had moved from the couch and positioned herself on the
coffee table, facing me, her knees between mine. I was still
sitting forward, but my water bottle was now on the table. "You've
never done that with your eyes open, have you?"

I watched her, but I was seeing the memory
that just replayed so viscerally in my head. "The report's wrong,
Julie. Jim was already dead when I got there. There's no way she
heard me and Jimmy arguing with Ferrell. I never saw Ferrell."

She put her hands in mine and squeezed. "Are
you finally remembering?"

"I don't know. I just…I started thinking
about it and suddenly I was there."

Julie jumped up, pulling her phone out of
her pocket. "I need to call the Captain."

"No." I reached up and snatched her phone
out of her hand. "We're not calling anybody. Do you realize how
late it is?"

"But you have to tell him. You have to tell
him what you remember."

"And what good is it going to do?" I looked
up at her standing over me. "Jewels, it was two years ago. The case
was closed with Ms. Wallace's statement. And don't forget I was
shot in the head and survived. The moment I actually say 'I was
shot in the head,' I drop IQ points to anyone I talk to."

"Dev—"

"It won't help me or anyone else, Jewels.
Anyone who still remembers it will just think I'm making shit up so
I can get back to a—" I lifted my hands and made air quotes "—real
job." When I lowered them, I put my hands palms-down on my
knees.

She sat back down on the coffee table.
Jewels had that look in her eyes. The kind Jimmy used to run in
terror from. "Then we'll figure this out together. You tell me
exactly what you saw, and then write it down in your notebook."

To humor her, and to get her out of my house
so I could get work done, I fetched the book while she went to the
bathroom.

Sitting at my desk, I wrote everything down,
every color, every word, every thing I could remember. A small part
of me feared the memory could be taken away from me at any minute.
Jewels returned and pushed me to the side so she could share the
seat with me. After a few seconds of boredom as I did my Hemingway
with the notebook, she moved the mouse. She knew my password so it
was easy for her to log in.

The picture of the wall with the ghost image
was up on my desktop. I stared at it. I hadn't downloaded that yet
so why was it open on my desktop?

"Hey…someone's moving your mouse and it's
not me."

I watched for about a second before I
realized someone had remote access to my computer. Shit! Logically
I should pull the internet plug on the computer—but I also wanted
to see if I could catch this mother fucker. I grabbed my phone from
my back pocket as I watched the mouse try repeatedly to put the
image in the trash.

That's when I saw six missed calls from
Pink, my Internet wunderkind. I hit the redial and pushed Julie out
of the way. "Pink—"

"What the fuck is going on?" She was all of
eighteen and my niece, with a mouth as bad as my own. If my sister
ever heard her talk like that, I was the one who was gonna pay.
"Someone's in my system."

"I'm looking at it right now. How is this
possible?"

"I don't know. I've been monitoring them
since they broke in."

"You know when they hacked it?"

"Hell yeah—and if you'd
answer your phone, you'd know, too." She paused. "They're not
trying to actually access the important stuff—
my
stuff—but they are trying to trash
a folder you uploaded earlier today. What's TAH?"

I froze, the phone to my ear. "What?"

"It's in your picture folders, for your
company? It's says TAH and whoever this is has been trying to
delete it for the past half hour."

"Oh that stands for
The Alley Haunt
. It's
where I took pictures today. I've uploaded to it but I haven't
downloaded. You've got it protected somehow?" I grabbed my mouse
and moved it. That action took the mouse out of the control of
whoever was remotely hacked in. I let it go and it started moving
again, trying to delete the photo.

"Yeah. Once you upload to my server, it's
all password protected. Whoever got in used your password, but they
can't get access to anything. But damn if they're not trying."

"Can you find out who it is?"

"Already tried and still trying. They've
actually rerouted their connection off fifty spoofed IPs."

She lost me somewhere in the middle, but
that was okay. I had no ego in this shit. "What do you want me to
do? They're actually accessing my desktop as we speak."

"What are they doing?"

"Trying to delete a file. The file's open
but I didn't open it. It's like…whoever it is opened it to check it
and is trying to get rid of it."

"Shut your machine down and disconnect your
Wi-Fi router."

"Won't that make it hard for you to track
them?"

"Right now, I just want them out. And don't
worry—I plan on finding out who they are."

I shut the machine off, unplugged it, then
reached up on the book shelf to the left of the desk and pulled the
Ethernet from the modem to the router. "Okay. It's all off."

"Yeah, I bounced them. Looks like they
changed your password, too. I'm changing it back and adding a bit
more security. Give me about a half hour before you try logging in
again. I'll text you the info."

We disconnected. Julie was looking at me.
"You okay?"

"I just got hacked."

"I saw that. Was that Pink on the
phone?"

"Yeah…" I ran a hand through my hair. "They
were trying to get rid of the pictures I took earlier today."

"Of what?"

"This corner building—used
to be a bar called
The Alley
Haunt
."

"I remember that bar. Over in Buckhead. Or
sort of off-Buckhead. The way off-Broadway is…" She let the
metaphor die. "Why would anyone want to delete those pictures?"

I sat back down in the chair as she sat on
the edge of the table. "I don't know. It's not any kind of special
place. I mean…it feels all wrong in places, especially upstairs.
But the bank just wanted pictures for a potential buyer. And not
just that store, the whole building. Three units."

"You get paid good money for that kind of
job?"

"Five grand."

"
Yowzah
." She pulled her leg up on the
desk and rested her heel on the desk's edge as she wrapped her arms
around her shin. "Did anyone else know you took pictures there
today besides the insurance company?"

"Oh, they didn't know I was going to be
there today—" I suddenly remembered picking up the key. "Actually,
that's a lie. I went by the bank this morning to grab a key to the
place. But the only one there was Mr. Menivers."

"He interested in the building?"

I shook my head. "There was one lady who
showed up. Nice looking, a bit older than me. She was dressed nice.
Said her name was Mary Smith and used to come to the bar before her
husband died."

"You think she was legit?"

"I guess so. She didn't give me any reason
to think otherwise. She just wanted to come by and see it, and
found it was closed up."

"You show her that picture?"

"Yeah. And she saw the same weird thing I
did. But I doubt she has anything to do with hacking my account."
It was a far-fetched idea. And I'd only given her my basics. Name,
e-mail account, business name. From that, there wasn't much else to
gather. "Maybe it was whoever wants to buy it? They were trying to
see the interior?"

"Straws, babe." She stood and stretched.
"Soon as you can, I want to see that picture, though. I swear I saw
a ghost in it."

"So did I." I walked her to the door and
leaned against the frame. She stood outside. The rain had stopped
and the air was cold. "Thanks for stopping by. You always seem to
know when I need a cheer."

"Nah. I just come for the food." She leaned
up and kissed my cheek. "Get sleep, Devan. Please. Don't stay up
too late. And take care of that hacker."

I watched her go to her car, parked across
the way in the MARTA parking lot. Once I saw it drive off, I
stepped back inside and locked the door.

Five

Mary slammed her hands down on the keyboard
and let lose a stream of words her mother would have beat her for.
One of the key caps popped off the board. That just made her
madder. She lifted the keyboard and threw it across the room. It
struck the edge of her black marble bar and more caps flew off.

How? How was it possible for her to hack
into that bastard's computer and not be able to delete the files?
Finding more about him on the web had been easy. Devan McNally,
former detective, shot in the head two years ago by the kid who
murdered that senator's son.

She had to admit he looked good for someone
with a bullet in their brain. And that just set her off again as
she stood and kicked anything that got in her way as she continued
her tantrum.

So close…. She'd seen the picture and it
creeped her out. It was as if her mother were pointing at her from
her tomb, taunting her. And some skinny-assed guy with a camera was
going to be the one to dig her up.

The fact he shut the computer off and then
she was kicked out of whatever server he was using told her she'd
been discovered. So hacking back in was now out of the question.
And that picture—possibly more of them—were out there.

She heard the door open and turned a hateful
stare at her stepson. Augustus Smith. Auggie to his friends and
buyers. The kid was barely twenty-two but he already made a small
fortune pushing drugs in local middle schools. The smaller kids
were where he felt he had the most to gain. Get them hooked early,
and you had a customer for life. Or at least, as long as their
lives would last once the coke got hold of them.

He had two bags in his arms and a smug look
on his ugly face. "Wow, Mary. You look…pissed off." Auggie noticed
the bits and pieces of the keyboard. He groaned and set the bags on
the bar surface. "Dammit, I just bought that keyboard."

"Do you know how, or do you know anyone who
can get me information off of a server and delete it
permanently?"

He arched an eyebrow at her. "What, you got
some nudie pics out there you don't want anyone to see?"

She wanted to slap him, and then run one of
the knives in the kitchen over his throat. Slit it side to side.
"Just answer the damn question."

"Well, if it's something you really don't
want anyone to know about, deleting it won't solve the problem.
You'll still have to deal with who else saw it. And you have to
know if they made a copy."

"How much?"

Auggie winced. "Eh?"

"How much do you want?"

"For the keyboard? It was about
seventy-nine."

God, he was such a dipshit. "How much would
it cost me to have the information and anyone involved with it,
deleted?"

His eyes brightened at the prospect of a
job. "Well, that'll depend on how many stiffs. You got an
idea?"

"Just one that I know of. I don't know if
he's shared it with anyone else."

"Torture usually works. So who's the
intended?"

She pointed at the computer and stepped up
to the bar to fix a drink.

Auggie sat down and moved the mouse. He
pushed back and held up his hands. "Nope. Sorry. No can do."

"What?" She slammed the highball glass on
the bar. "What do you mean, no can do?"

"That is a very well-known cop, in case you
didn't read, which you usually don't. And he's decorated."

"He's a photographer."

"Now he is, but he took a bullet when they
caught that kid who killed Padeaus's son. The mayor gave him an
award."

She drowned the inside of her glass with a
good portion of Dewar's before she looked up at her stepson. "I met
him. He didn't strike me as very heroic." The precision he threw
the rock with did come to mind, though.