The Love-Haight Case Files (6 page)

She’d been holding the grief largely at bay since she’d arrived on the scene, looking at the whole thing with forced detachment, maybe a big part of her not wanting to admit he was gone and thinking this was all some wretched nightmare. “California Dreamin’” started playing in her head. But some of the numbness was wearing off, a little bit with each turnover of the numbers on the clock. Her shoulders shook and she gave in, letting the tears gush and sobbing so loud she feared the police upstairs would hear.

“What the hell am I going to do?”

She should call Gretchen, shouldn’t she? She opened her cell phone and punched in the numbers, hating to wake the secretary but not wanting her to hear it on the morning news. Next, she dug through the Rolodex she’d taken from downstairs and called Holder.

“Mr. Holder—” Evelyn stopped herself from saying “sorry to wake you.” A ghoul, Holder didn’t sleep. “Thomas is dead. Murdered. I thought you should know. Your case?” She rubbed at her chin.

The voice that came back was gravely. “I’m sorry, Evelyn. Dying is not pleasant. But murder? I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.”

There was a pause, and Evelyn thought she ought to say something else, but Holder continued.

“I hate to sound selfish at a time like this, Ms. Love, but what about my case? What will this do to my case?”

“There are options,” she came back quickly. “I’ll go through Thomas’s papers and call you later. He has an attorney of record.” She was surprised she didn’t have to explain that to the ghoul.

“So my case will move forward, but Monday will be too soon for a new attorney.” There was a rasping noise, which Evelyn thought sounded like an asthmatic struggling for breath. Holder didn’t breathe, maybe he was crying. “I really am sorry about Mr. Brock. I liked him. But I’m worried about my kids. I want to see my kids. I hope this new attorney is good.”

“Thomas would not have listed an attorney of record unless he was confident in her.”

“Good.” There was another pause. “What about Mr. Brock’s body?”

Evelyn swore she could feel her toes start to curl.

“What do you think the police will do with Mr. Brock’s body? Do you think—”

Evelyn wasn’t going to let Holder finish the question. “No, I don’t think they’ll release it to the food bank. His father will want a funeral and to bury him.” She ended the call and held her stomach at the grisly thought Holder had posed.

Then she sat and watched the clock until the hour number read 2, the minutes at 31. She didn’t hear any footsteps overhead. The police had probably left Thomas’s apartment. Maybe they were still downstairs. She hadn’t taken off her clothes yet, just her running shoes. Hopefully she could catch one of them downstairs, and maybe they’d finally cave and tell her a little something before she found it out on the news. If not … she’d talk to Val. The ghost was a great built-in security system … when it wasn’t on the fritz.

She padded in her stocking feet down the side stairway, making her way along the sidewalk and to the front of the building, careful not to step on bits of glass from a broken bottle and discarded greasy-looking food wrappers. She should have put her shoes on, as the concrete was chilly and rough.

There was scant traffic, a few cars passing, slowing because there was yellow police tape stretched across the front of the law office and the drivers were curious. The police cars were gone, as were the gawkers who’d plastered themselves behind the barricades, which had been removed. The street was quiet. Had it been a Friday or Saturday night, that wouldn’t have been the case—some people in the neighborhood stayed up deep into the morning hours despite the bars closing at two. Across the street, on the floor above the deli a light burned, and Evelyn saw a man’s face pressed against the window. She’d recognized him from the crowd, one of the particularly nosey lookiloos.

I’ll give him something to watch,
she thought, as she ducked under the police CRIME SCENE tape and fumbled with the key in the lock. The police were gone, the place dark, she’d be able to talk to Valentino Trinadad.

Likely he would have appeared to her out on the street corner if she would have called him. He’d died on the corner, about fifty years back, and his soul had glued him to within a few dozen yards of the spot. Not all ghosts were so anchored, but there must have been something especially traumatic about Val’s death that held him here.

He was inside; Evelyn felt the customary chill that accompanied Val.

She turned on the light at Gretchen’s desk. It was a brass banker’s lamp with a green glass shade, looking classy but costing only twenty bucks mail order on Amazon. It cast light downward, and not far. Evelyn didn’t want to see the blood, bad enough that she could smell it. She hadn’t worn a watch, and so could only guess at the time … a tad before three. There was a clock on the back wall, but she wasn’t going to turn on more lights and look.

“Val—” She repeated it louder.

“Shhhhh! Heard you the firsht time.” The spirit’s voice was thick; the words slurred like he was on a significant bender. Evelyn knew the ghost couldn’t eat or drink anything, but still managed to get inebriated or high off of unknowing hosts. “Sho shorry ’bout Tom. Really. A fab dude, Tommy-boy.”

Evelyn faced the street, not wanting to look into the recesses of the office, fearful that she might see the blood again. She didn’t need to see it; she could picture the pool so clearly in her mind—couldn’t get it out of her mind, actually. “Val, can you come over here where I can see you?”

“Shure.”

“Did you see what happened, Val? Who did it?”

There was no answer, but the chill persisted.

“Val—”

The spirit rose through the desk, head above the blotter, tendrils of hair extending out in all directions like smoke curling away from an ashtray. Evelyn could make out some of his features, he’d coalesced just enough. The ghost’s eyes were set wide and looked hollow, like walnut shells that had the meat dug out. There were creases across his brow, and sunken-looking cheeks, the nose overlong for the face, almost like a cartoon caricature.

“Sherioushly, Evey, I’m shorry.”

Evelyn felt tears at the corners of her eyes. Did she have anything left inside to cry?

“I think he really dug you, shweetie, the only chick he had eyes for.”

“Did you see it? The fey that killed Thomas? The one that—”

“—the one that the pigs hauled out of here? That shtinking fey?” The ghost rose a little higher. In front of the banker’s lamp he looked ephemeral. “Yeah, I shaw … saw … the fey.” Val grinned, revealing uneven and broken ghost-teeth. “Dude was trippin’. So sheriously gone on something. Didn’t see him come in because I was across the shtreet. I felt him, though.”

Evelyn knew that meant Val was hanging out in front of the bars, trying to catch the alcohol buzz from the patrons leaving. The ghost got high or drunk when passing through the bodies of others under the influence and always seemed to be on the hunt for the ultimate trip. She wondered if that was what caused his demise, drugs and alcohol. He’d never told her, and she’d never asked. Maybe he’d confided that to Thomas. He was most definitely under the influence of something now. She’d love to grab his shoulders and shake more clarity into him, but she knew her fingers would only pass through.

“But you did see him, the fey?”

The ghost nodded, tendril-hair moving like serpents. “See him? Shure. Not at firsth. I felt him firsht … first, but I told you that. From clear across the street, I felt him.”

She opened her mouth to ask for an explanation, and then decided to wait for it. A siren wailed and the sound grew and moments later a police car cruised past.

“Can’t stand gumball machines.”

Evelyn raised her eyebrows.

“Cop cars. Pigs. Hacks me off, you know. But they sure do haul assh … ass … down this street, don’t they?” He twisted his head as if he was trying to clear his senses. The more he talked the less slurred his words were, as if he was sobering up. “A wild buzz, Evey.”

“The fey?” Evelyn prompted.

“He was on shomething … something … serious. I felt it. A mix most likely from the vibe, had to have some LSD in it, I was thinking at the time. It was the same feeling I got from being on Kesey’s bus, you know. But this was stronger and I had to have me some of that.” The grin grew wider and a shiver raced down Evelyn’s back. “Maybe heroin, ketamine. Whoot! I figured the fey was heading for a funeral, his own. But you know OTs, things work different for them. The drugs had him trippin’, but I could tell they weren’t gonna ice his ass.”

Evelyn frowned.

“Sorry for the language.” The ghost gave her a sheepish grin and sunk lower into the desk, chin on the blotter. She had to glance down to meet his gaze.

“So the fey was high?”

“Obvious-o-mundo. Except it wasn’t LSD or anything else I could put a name to. Never quite felt anything like it. It was scary good and scary bad at the same time. I passed through him once and couldn’t think straight or crooked for a little while.”

“He came in here looking for money, maybe, so he could buy more drugs.”

Val shrugged, the hair whirling and thinning.

“And Thomas wouldn’t give him the money on general principals so the fey killed him,” Evelyn continued to surmise.

“Ripped him to pieces, actually. I’d passed through the fey dude a second time to score another hit, then I couldn’t keep myself together, the trip out of control. But I watched. The checkerboard—”

“Checkerboard?”

“The fey was black and red, scales like a checkerboard. He started ripping away on Tommy-boy and I couldn’t do anything about it. I can’t touch anything, you know. I shouted ‘booo!’ but the checkerboard either didn’t hear me or wasn’t about to be distracted. Can’t imagine that something like that would be afraid of a ghost anyway, you know. We’re all pretty harmless.”

“You don’t know what it was about? Money?”

“Like I said, I missed the first bit. I came in on it just before the shredding. Man, poor Tommy-boy. That had to have hurt like hell and—”

“Val!”

The ghost disappeared into the desk, reemerging a few moments later. “Sorry. I’m still feeling the buzz off the checkerboard. Probably will still feel it to next Tuesday.”

Another siren cut through the night, muted because it was farther away, a second siren with a different sound and then a third, fire trucks sandwiching an ambulance. The noise dissipated.

“No,” Val said. His visage had taken on a thoughtful cast. Evelyn knew he couldn’t manipulate his features to appear as a different individual, other than to disappear and reappear and take on various thicknesses, but he could show expressions. “No, I don’t know what it was about, sweetie. But I’d never ever seen that fey around here before, so he wasn’t a disgruntled client or something. Tommy-boy had some OT run-ins when he was in law school that he’d told me about. Maybe the checkerboard was from law school days.”

Evelyn looked surprised that Thomas had talked about law school with Val; he hadn’t with her, other than to discuss elective courses he’d taken and recommended to her. The only thing she knew beyond that about his college life was his competitive diving … and that he missed making the Olympic dive team. Would his sister want the college diving trophy? Would she mend it? Thomas had a sister, and Evelyn had met her a month back. She ran a restaurant along Fisherman’s Wharf, and Thomas had taken Evelyn there for Sunday brunch. Evelyn couldn’t recall his sister’s name.

Would she be coming here? To go through Thomas’s things? Maybe his father would come by.

How long would Evelyn have to pack up her stuff and find a new place to live? At least until the end of the month, she’d already paid the rent.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Evelyn said it to herself.

“You’ll soldier on,” Val said. “You’ll finish law school, take the bar, and keep this office going.”

Evelyn laughed. “Val, I don’t have a law degree yet. The bar’s not until February. I can’t practice on my own. The office is going to close.”

“Bummer.” The ghost’s face seemed to grow longer. “You’re not shittin’ me, are you?”

“No, I’m not shitting you.” Evelyn sagged deeper into the chair. “Tell me one more time, Val, everything you remember.”

The ghost did, in vivid gory details that Evelyn figured would stick in her brain for eternity. She’d have to relate this, somehow, to the detective tomorrow … later today. She knew better than to ask Val to make a report. Either the police wouldn’t believe him because he was a spirit—an OT—or he wouldn’t utter one word to begin with.

“I know what you’re thinking, Evey. I don’t talk to pigs.”

“Yeah, Val, I know.”

“Sorry.”

He started to fade and she waved him back. “Wait, Val.”

He rose higher and impatiently and soundlessly thrummed his insubstantial fingers across Gretchen’s desk blotter.

“I think there was someone with the fey.” Evelyn should have realized that when the detective dropped the hint. She hadn’t caught it then.

“I was mostly paying attention to the checkerboard. The fey was awesomely high.”

“But you said that you didn’t get here right away.”

“No. Just basically in time for the shredding.”

Evelyn gritted her teeth. “The detective asked me if I noticed anything missing.”

“Guts are missing from the computer, looks like.”

“They’re called circuit boards.”

The ghost looked disinterested.

“Val, Detective Reese asked if I noticed anything missing.”

The ghost cocked his insubstantial head. “You’re pulling a Gretchen, repeating yourself.”

“Don’t you get it? They took the fey into custody. I saw him in the back of a police car.”

“Yeah.” A gauzy finger reached up and twirled into the beard.

“So they’d
know
if the fey had taken anything, ’cause they carted off the fey from right inside the office. They would’ve grabbed whatever he had on him … like money from the cashbox, the backup hard drive. They wouldn’t have asked me what was missing, would they? And the detective said he didn’t have money on him. She let that slip.”