Talking with the Dead Read online

  Wasn’t going to happen though.

  Samuel Watkins wasn’t going to leave this basement alive.

  He was already a little gray in the face, although it was hard to really judge his color well with the ghostly lights flashing around him. As one of the spirits moved closer, it solidified and a girl’s face became visible. Mike recognized her from the missing person’s file. Misty Brighton had disappeared on her tenth birthday. She had been Watkins’ first victim. She’d been dead for eight years.

  She looked toward him. A mean little smile curled her lips and Mike said softly, “It’s time, Misty. You can go on now.”

  Misty shook her head. “Not yet.” Her voice was wispy and insubstantial, but it had an underscore of rage. It burned with a blistering intensity that stung Mike’s skin. She reached out and Mike winced as she stuck a ghostly hand inside Watkins’ chest. The man screamed. It was a high-pitched, terrified sound. It ended abruptly and then Watkins collapsed, falling forward.

  Mike stood there, staring at the man who had raped and murdered six girls. He lay face down in the dirt, still as death.

  Misty lifted her head and Mike waited, apprehension drawing his skin tight. Would she go? Or would the rage bind her here?

  “Your mom is waiting for you,” he said gently.

  Misty’s eyes closed and her form became more and more insubstantial. “I’m scared, Michael.”

  He smiled at her. “I know. But there’s nothing to be afraid of, not now. Not any more.”

  At least, not for her.

  Death did ugly things to a person.

  Tanya had been so pretty. The body on the ground couldn’t possibly be one of Daisy’s friends. It just wasn’t possible. Death had turned her pretty, sweet face into a macabre mask and her toned body had long since gone through rigor, her limbs limp and flaccid.

  Just like the others, she’d been raped, beat, strangled. But she’d bled out. That was what had killed her. There was no pooling of fluids, no mottling. The coroner would find very little, if any, blood left in Tanya’s corpse. So far, Daisy had counted more than twenty shallow little slices. It would have been very, very slow.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Daisy looked over her shoulder at Deputy Wyatt Lock. Lock was staring at Tanya with a mixture of grief, horror and disbelief. “Wyatt?”

  He turned his head and met Daisy’s gaze. His normally mild hazel eyes were burning with fury and his voice throbbed with intensity as he said, “I want ten minutes alone with him, Daisy.”

  Get in line. When she managed to get her hands on the killer, if she didn’t kill him herself, she was going to have her hands full keeping him safe while he awaited trial. The thought of a trial made Daisy get her ass in gear. They had a crime scene to secure and there couldn’t be a single mistake. Everything had to be done perfect and legal, because this bastard wasn’t going to get off due to a lack of evidence or some damned legal loophole.

  He was going to pay for what he was doing and he was going to pay dearly.

  She stepped aside and beckoned for the crime scene photographer to get to work. It was a grim and thankless task and by the time it was over, Daisy was hovering between wanting to scream bloody murder and breaking down into tears. She would have settled for a nice, stiff drink but she wasn’t going to get that either.

  A man was standing at the very edge of the crime scene and only the four volunteer firefighters were keeping him from running up to Tanya’s body. “Hurry it up,” she said in a low voice as she passed Wyatt. “He can’t see her like that.”

  Daisy approached Tom Dourant and said the words that every cop hated.

  It took two more days to finish up the paperwork. By the time he had fulfilled that particular pain in the ass obligation, he was ready to leave Philadelphia behind and never, ever return.

  Whether or not that would happen, Mike had no idea.

  He left a message on Oz’s machine and told her that he’d be out of contact for a while and then he turned off his pager. If she needed him badly enough, she’d find him anyway.

  But he had to get away. Had to clear his head and hopefully get away from the ghosts that chased him. He doubted it would work, but he was going to give it a shot. There were other problems in Philly, but somebody else was going to have to handle them.

  Destin had to stay in the City of Brotherly Love and she had a decent partner in Caleb Durand. Those two could handle the bad vibes that were keeping the agents awake at night, and they could do it without Mike’s help. His grip on sanity often seemed pretty slippery, but never as much as it did now.

  If he didn’t get away and get a break, they might as well lock him up now and throw the keys in the Delaware. He wouldn’t be good for anything else. He didn’t bother checking out of the hotel. The Bureau would handle his tab. They also would have paid for the cab he called, but since he didn’t want them tracking his every step, he paid the driver in cash.

  The driver left him in the drop off zone without a thank you for the five dollar tip. Mike hoped the guy would go and buy some deodorant and an air freshener. The guy reeked to high heaven. He could still smell the oily stink of unwashed body ten minutes later as he waited in line for a rental car.

  It meant using a credit card and ID, but he would have to show ID to get a flight out of the city anyway. Losing one’s self was a lot harder since 9/11. Normally, Mike wouldn’t care. Normally, he was of the mind that there wasn’t enough being done to make the country secure. But this one time, he really, really wished he could just disappear and nobody be able to find him.

  Michael’s appetite for food was dead.

  He’d come in here, starving. After nothing but fast food for the past couple months, a decent home cooked meal sounded like heaven. But five seconds after sitting down, all thoughts of food had fled his mind. He sat staring at the Formica table top while dread, anger and disgust formed a leaden ball in the pit of his belly.

  Am I ever going to get a break? he wondered bleakly. There was no answer and he didn’t really expect one.

  Too tired for this mess, he almost climbed off the chair and walked back to his car. He could put the top down on the powerful little convertible, hit the gas and be miles away before dark. He could put two or three states between himself and this darkness, and just maybe, he could forget about it.

  But even though he was tired and dancing on the edge of depression, he couldn’t make himself leave. The darkness in the air was too thick, and the violence too recent. It sat on the back of his tongue like something gone sour. He lowered his shields and opened himself up to the darkness hovering.

  It was more than just darkness though. It was something bloody. Something evil.

  This small town in Indiana was quiet, damn it. He had found the little bitty dot on the map at the rest area right inside the state’s border and figured it was as good a place as any to get some rest. A good a place as any to get away from the darkness, the death.

  The ghosts.

  As always, Mike had been wrong. In a major way. The ghosts were here, just like they had been everywhere he had gone for the past two decades. They followed him. Why in the hell he’d thought he could get away from them here, now, he’d never know. These ghosts were his only companions in life and for as long as he lived, they’d find him.

  After twenty years, he was even used to it. The company of ghosts was a sight better than being left alone with his thoughts. But he didn’t like the darkness he felt here. Not at all. He didn’t even have to ask around to know that something very, very bad was going on.

  Something bad seemed to be his reason for existing. Like a moth drawn to flame, he was drawn unconsciously to places just like this, places where an evil lived, an evil that he would have to hunt down. He hadn’t felt any inkling of wrong as he drove here. Nothing as he entered the small town. Mike had actually thought, finally, for once, he had gotten away from them at least for a while.

  It wasn’t that he thought he could leave them behind fo
rever, although he sure as hell wouldn’t mind it. But after the last job, he needed some peace. Some silence. Just a little bit of time to pretend that he was normal.

  Mike hadn’t ever been normal, even before he picked up his bizarre little talent. When it first came on him, he had run away from it. Half out of his mind from fear and slowly going insane as he tried to get away from the people that few others saw.

  The counselor who had finally helped him to understand what was going on was gone now. Michael had been close to sixteen before he made sense of the things and voices and sights crowding his mind. Even Lucas had no idea what had been done to him that night when Michael had shared in his brother’s death.

  Elizabeth Ransome had looked at the child lying in the hospital bed and she had understood. She saw a boy who was nearly a man, one who was terrified and tormented, but not insane. More, she helped Michael understand.

  She saw somebody with a gift. A terrible, unpleasant gift, but a gift nonetheless. You can let this gift rule you and drive you crazy, or you can learn to use it. Save others from dying like your brother did, Michael. Let me help you. Then we can help them.

  She had helped him make sense of the people he saw that others couldn’t see, the voices he heard that nobody else could hear.

  Yeah, if Elizabeth hadn’t come along, he would have gone insane. Sooner or later, he’d have even managed to succeed when he attempted suicide.

  He knew that.

  It was getting to him again, though. He was losing his distance, losing his focus. Mike was walking too damned close to the brink again, too much death, too many voices that had been silenced long before their time. Michael had to learn how to block them out again.

  This last case had damned near destroyed him.

  Baby killer.

  That was what Samuel Watkins had been. He hadn’t died a painful enough death. His heart had stopped. The official report was heart attack, but unofficially, he had been scared to death by one of his first victims. Too damned easy—he had taken six young lives. Six sweet, innocent young lives in a way so brutal, so horrifying and perverted that it had taken everything Mike had just to stay on the case.

  Those little faces haunted him at night. Not their ghosts—no, they had passed on once their killer saw justice. Even Misty had finally let go, leaving this earth to go on to what waited beyond.

  But the knowledge that he hadn’t been quick enough to save them filled him with bitter, tired anger. Six lives lost, forever gone. Their leaving had left gaping, raw wounds in the lives of their parents and siblings. And inside of Michael. Although he didn’t know them until after they had died, he felt their absence acutely.

  Too late. He was always too late. This was the story of his life. He came in after the horrors happened and tried to piece things back together again.

  It was destroying him.

  The tiny chiming of a bell over the door intruded on his brooding and he glanced up automatically before returning his attention to the plate in front of him. It held no appeal for him, but he knew if he didn’t eat, he’d never rebuild the strength he had drained tracking down Watkins.

  Energy crackled through the room as a cool breeze from the outdoors came gusting through the door just before it closed. Like static electricity, the energy danced down his skin, shocking him, sizzling under his flesh, bursting through his mind like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  Slowly, he raised his eyes from the unappetizing food and found himself staring at a snug little backside covered in khaki as a woman boosted herself onto a stool at the café counter. Her hair was golden brown, caught in a thick braid that hung more than halfway down her back. As he watched her shrug out of the rather official looking jacket, Michael cursed the blood that was suddenly running hot through his veins.

  This was a distraction that he didn’t want and didn’t need.

  First the dark cloud that had taken hold of his mind and now all he could smell was the faint tropical fragrance that drifted from the woman’s hair and the soft vanilla of her skin.

  And the purpose that filled her entire being. It was like she was walking around wrapped with neon, but only Mike could see it.

  Anger.

  Frustration.

  Rage.

  Bingo. The woman was all but a walking, talking cry for help and Mike just didn’t know if he could take any more on right now. Then he blew out a breath and muttered, “You can handle it. You always do.”

  Rolling his eyes skyward, he thought silently, But it would be so nice to actually be able to have a relaxing vacation.

  A soft, familiar voice echoed in his mind, “Then maybe you should try some remote cabin in Alaska. Might be a few less unsolved murders out in the middle of nowhere.”

  Years of practice had taught him not to flinch, not to jump, not to even look directly at the man speaking to him. Nobody else would see him. He had been dead for twenty years. “How’s the afterlife, Lucas?” he asked dryly, arching a brow as he nonchalantly turned his gaze to stare at his brother.

  “Ever the smart ass, Mikey.” A slow smile tugged up Lucas’ lips in a grin that haunted Michael’s sleep. “You know, you could move into one of those glacier caves. I bet not too many people have been murdered in one of those. You can get some peace there.”

  Lucas’ face was forever young. Some movies painted ghosts as grisly images, but it had been Michael’s experience that a ghost was an echo of what the ghost remembered seeing in life. Lucas looked exactly as he had the last time he’d seen himself, standing in the bathroom, running his hands through his hair. Wavy brown hair, a little too long, blue eyes surrounded by spiky lashes that both of the brothers had inherited—and hated. Thin to the point of being bony, with big hands, big shoulders. Exactly as Michael had looked at that age. Mike had grown into his body—Lucas hadn’t been given the chance.

  Forever young. Forever handsome.

  “You’re becoming pretty damned moody, Mikey.”

  A tiny smile lit his face. Nobody but Lucas had ever called him Mikey. And even though he had most likely passed the age where Mikey was an acceptable name, hearing it from Lucas was oddly comforting. Just like seeing him was comforting. But at the same time, Mike hated seeing him.

  He interacted with ghosts on a regular basis and they only hung around the living for as long as they had. Once their business was finished, they passed on.

  Lucas had been waiting for twenty years to finish his business and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move on now, either.

  “When are you going to move on, Luc?”

  “When I make sure I keep a promise. Promise is a promise, Mike. I told you I’d make sure you were happy. That’s when I’ll move on.”

  With a sigh, Michael shoved a hand through his hair. This was an old conversation, one they’d had a hundred times. “There is something wrong here.”

  Lucas lifted one shoulder in a restless shrug. “I know. I felt it this morning. Young people. A lot of blood. Some old. Some fresh. But something is definitely not right in Smalltown America.”

  Michael suspected the lady sitting on the stool in front of him had answers. He could see it in her weary, bitter eyes and the way she sat. Although she sat tall and straight with her shoulders pulled back, there was an invisible weight bearing down on her.

  He didn’t need to see the shiny brass badge on her jacket to know what he was looking at.

  Cop.

  From under the fringe of his lashes, he sat back and studied her. It was there in the purposefulness of her walk, the way she held herself, in the tense frustration he felt rolling off of her. “Go ask her,” Lucas suggested.

  “Stranger in town, asking if there’s something odd going on in her town. Oh, yes, excellent way to not attract attention.” Michael shot that idea down as he shoved the sandwich on his plate around.

  “If you don’t eat that, you’re going to be sorry later.”

  Michael curled up his lip and slowly lifted the sandwich, trying to tune his
brother out as he bit into the pile of meat, cheese and bread. It had about as much flavor and appeal as a sawdust sandwich would, but he knew he needed it.

  “That’s a good boy,” Lucas teased, reaching out to pat Michael’s head.

  Michael felt the touch like a cool wind on his scalp. It didn’t bother him anymore when the dead touched him. But he still slid Lucas a look and silently said, “Fuck off, man.”

  Lucas might be dead, but he was still Michael’s brother.

  Dasynda Crandall saw the guy sitting at the far end of counter and summed him up with a fairly quick glance as she crossed the café. Built, handsome, and something about the look in his eyes added not to be messed with to her list.

  He made her back itch, but she couldn’t exactly say she felt something off about him. Not that she could really trust her instincts much any more. Her first guess would be that this was a decent guy for the most part, even if he did look a little too big and a little too scary to set the mind at ease.

  But Daisy’s instincts just plain sucked, as far as she was concerned. She had a damned killer in her town and she wasn’t getting so much as an inkling on who it was.

  Her instincts had always served her well, but they had four bodies now, and no clue about the killer. Daisy was frustrated beyond all belief. Why in the hell had murders started after she had taken office?

  This was why she had left the Louisville Metro Police Department. The instincts she had lived her life by seemed to be failing her. Women she had known all her life were being killed and Daisy didn’t even know where to start.