A Question of Ghosts (2 page)

They moved on toward the north end of the avenue, and Khadijah rested her hand on Becca’s shoulder as they walked. Touch came to Khadijah as naturally as breathing, and Becca appreciated her familiar support. Her stomach was beginning to tighten again. She shouldn’t have had the flautas for dinner. Given her anxiety level, she would probably spend her meeting with this crazy scientist constantly trying to suppress some real insistent flatulence.

“I’m still not sure why we’re doing this.” Becca knew very well why they were doing this, but she needed to hear it again.

“Okay, no prob. One more time.” Marty tweaked a folded newspaper article out of the hip pocket of her frayed shorts and flapped it open. She handed it to Becca and tapped one photo on the creased page. “That’s Joanne Call. She’s the leading national expert in ghost voices. Leading national expert, Becca, says so right there. In our own little Seattle. Who knew.”

“And her office is just about two blocks yonder,” Khadijah added. “We’re doing this so you can talk to Joanne Call about the voice you heard on your birthday when you were sixteen. The one you heard again on your birthday, two nights ago.”

Becca frowned down at the face she had memorized from previous viewings. This woman scientist looked pretty buggy. Her eyes were too big, too piercing. “But come on, you guys, being a national expert in ghost voices. Isn’t that like being queen of a tribe of lentils, or something? And who says what I heard on my birthday was the voice of a ghost?”

“You know it was.” Khadijah slid her arm through Becca’s and her tone gentled. “And you know
who
it was. This has you seriously spooked, Rebecca Healy. We’re spooked for you. We need to learn more about this.”

Becca sighed. Marty chucked her gently on the chin with one callused knuckle, her comfort, as always, gruffer and briefer than Khadijah’s. Marty folded the article and they moved on. They were coming up on the Quest, a mystical fruit salad of a bookshop owned by the local branch of the Theosophical Society. All of Becca’s friends loved the place, but of course she had never been inside.

“Damn.” Khadijah’s hold on Becca’s arm tightened. “Window.”

“All eyes ahead.” Marty moved closer to Becca.

“Thank you, Ebony and Ivory,” Becca muttered. She trudged on, the center of this protective sandwich. “I know not to look in the Quest’s window, for heaven’s sake. I’ve got a passing familiarity with Capitol Hill. I know what windows to avoid.”

“True, but you’ve been really sensitive the last few days, Bec.” Khadijah peered at her through her small spectacles. “It’s never been this rough on you before, not in my long memory. I’m afraid just a glimpse might set you off.”

“Thanks, but I have no intention of
glimpsing
. And I don’t really ‘go off,’ Khadijah. No one but you two would even notice if I was triggered.”

Becca had to chastise herself for her flautas-induced crabbiness. The loyalty of her friends was appreciated. Looking out for her was automatic now, for Khadijah and Marty, after years of practice. But all this warm solicitation was starting to feel distinctly maternal, and Becca had never needed mothering.

She pulled herself out of her sulk. Khadijah was right. She was more shaken over that eerie voice now than the first time she heard it, the day she turned sixteen.

Marty pulled them to a stop a few doors down from the Quest. “This is it. At least the queen of the lentil tribe set up shop in a nice funky neighborhood.”

Becca stared up at the barred entrance of the tall building. As with all the structures on the north end of the street, this one was tasteful and neatly landscaped, but it gave no indication at all of its purpose. The heavy door behind the bars featured no sign indicating a public space, only a small plaque bearing the street number. Marty waited a courteous ten seconds for Becca to act before stepping forward and pressing the doorbell herself.

Becca was about to try the bell a second time when the door opened. A tall woman with dark hair regarded them silently. The barred gate separating them cast striped shadows across her impassive face. Becca had a distinct impression of a dangerous captive gazing down from a prison cell. She put her hand on her waist and tried to quell the more lurid offerings of her imagination.

The woman studied them from her elevated position. “Something?” Her voice was low and terse.

“Something,” Becca repeated inanely. Khadijah scratched a small circle on her back. “You’re Joanne Call. Right? I’m Becca? I’m Becca. I left the message on your voice mail, about tonight.”

“I’m Dr. Call. And yes, you did. You didn’t mention there would be three of you.” The woman stepped down the two stairs and unlatched the gate. “My space is quite limited. Your friends will have to wait out here.”

Becca felt Marty and Khadijah lock eyes over her head. She slid her arms around their waists before she could think too much. “It’s okay. I’m fine. Get a booth at Charlie’s and order me a hot fudge sundae. The big one.”

Marty frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely the big one.”

“But are you sure you—”

“The girl’s good.” Khadijah slid out of Becca’s arm and patted Marty’s face. “We’ll be right up the street, Bec.”

Marty let Khadijah take her hand and tug her away. “We’ve got our cells,” she called back, ostensibly to Becca, but she was glaring at Joanne Call.

Dr. Call swung open the barred door, and Becca had to banish an image of a sexier, female version of Virgil opening the gates of hell for Dante. She hesitated a beat too long before walking up the two steps and following Dr. Call into the darkness of her inner sanctum.

The small entry opened onto a compact, high-ceilinged space. A polished wooden floor and cream-white walls helped soften the starkness of the room. Joanne Call’s work area was scrupulously clean, which Becca could have predicted, but she wouldn’t have guessed such an eminent scientist’s lab would so closely resemble a discount store.

Shelf after shelf was neatly stocked with old radios, small televisions, tape recorders—reel-to-reel and cassette—even two eight-track players that probably came out a decade before Becca was born. She lingered at one wall, fascinated by a series of compact, alien devices preserved within a locked glass case. There was something clinically pristine in the precise, symmetrical placement of each object.

“We’re back here.” Dr. Call slid into an expensive ergonomic chair before a large oak desk in one corner. “You can put your purse beneath your seat.”

“Okay.” It’s not a
purse
. Becca sat obediently in the markedly less comfortable armchair and dropped her bag under it.

“I started your file when I got your message. We’ll start with some background information.” Dr. Call slipped a laptop from some recessed space and tapped rapidly at the keyboard. “It’s Rebecca Hawkins, correct?”

Becca hesitated. Lying didn’t come naturally to her. “That’s right.”

“Occupation?”

“I’m a social worker with the state. I work with kids in foster care.”

“Then you have graduate-level education?”

“Yes, I have an MSW.”

“Your age?”

“I’m thirty-nine.”

The blunt fingernail hit two keys. “And where have you lived, in your life?”

“I’ve always lived in Seattle. I have an apartment off Lake City Way now, but I grew up on Capitol Hill. I’ve read a little about your work, Dr.—”

“Do you have any chronic health conditions?”

“I’m allergic to peanuts.” Another lie, but Becca was getting annoyed.

“Do you have a religious affiliation?”

“No, I forgot to affiliate. Can you tell me—ˮ

“Are you currently partnered?”

“Look, the story is that my mother killed herself when I was five years old. Two nights ago, my mother told me, through a radio, for the second time since she died, that the story isn’t true. That’s why I’m here.”

Dr. Call’s fingers slowed on the keyboard, then stopped. She pulled her drill bit gaze from the monitor and focused on Becca fully. An awkward few seconds passed. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hawkins. Sometimes I forget that manners are a part of this work, if I’m to deal with the public. I tend to move too fast.”

Becca, the public, was startled by this confession. “Okay,” she said. “No harm done.”

Dr. Call rested her hands in her lap and sat still for a moment. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“I’m sure I have some chips or something upstairs, if you’re hungry.”

“I’m really fine.”

Dr. Call nodded, as if relieved to have successfully negotiated some kind of social checklist. She relaxed in her chair. “All right. How much do you know about Electronic Voice Phenomenon?”

“Not a lot.” Becca must be growing accustomed to dissembling. She might be skeptical, but she’d read a great deal about EVP in the last few days. “Just that some people believe the voices of the dead can be heard in the static of old electronic devices.”

“That’s correct.” Dr. Call lifted a pen and turned it in her fingers. “A major portion of my work involves studying EVP. Recording voices, tracking sources of messages.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “You should know that this phenomenon is not considered particularly credible by the science community at large.”

“Yes, I can imagine.” Becca might share that wariness, were it not for the periodic talkativeness of her decades-dead mother. Her notion of the afterlife was vague in the extreme; more a wistful hope than a belief grounded in faith.

Dr. Call was observing her as if she were a specimen in a Petri dish. “Do you believe the voice you heard two days ago was the voice of your mother?”

“It sounded very much like her…but I was so little when she…” Becca studied her hands, clenched in her lap. “Yes. I believe it was my mother.”

“And you said that this is the second time she spoke to you.”

“That’s right. I heard her for the first time on my sixteenth birthday. It was my birthday two days ago, too.”

Dr. Call’s fingers drummed softly on the desk, as if itching for the keyboard. “And the message was the same?”

“Both times, yes. She said my name. And the words ‘not true.’” To her astonishment and dismay, Becca felt tears fill her eyes. She stared at the wall, praying this unexpected display of emotion would pass without comment.

“I see.” Dr. Call seemed as disconcerted as Becca. The silence grew, and Becca feared she might be offered chips again. To her relief, Dr. Call resumed her clipped and professional tone. “Does this message have meaning for you?”

Becca’s shoulder twitched, a parody of a casual shrug. “I guess a lot of things about my mother could turn out not to be true.”
Maybe she did love my father. Maybe she did love me too much to leave me.
“I’ve never believed she killed herself.”

“And she died when you were five years old.” Dr. Call cleared her throat. “Can I ask how it happened?”

She handed me a doll. Then she went into the kitchen.
“She shot herself in the head in the kitchen of our house.”

“You were present at the time?”

“I was in the living room. I didn’t see it happen.” The detached tone this interview had taken was helping. Becca was able to relate these distant horrors without dredging them too painfully from the past.

“Explain your doubts about your mother’s suicide.” Dr. Call winced. “Please,” she added.

“I’m not sure I can.” Becca released a long breath. Her belief that Madelyn Healy had not deliberately put a gun to her head was like her faith in any god, fleeting and sporadic. She had no memory of the night itself, beyond her father’s voice, her mother’s delicate hands placing the doll in her arms. But police reports and years of therapy hadn’t banished the small, ambivalent doubt that the world was wrong about her mother’s death. Becca shrugged, defeated. “Just a little kid’s insistence that her mom wouldn’t do such a thing, I guess.”

“Perhaps an insistence your mother endorses. ‘Not true.’”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you have any theories, any alternate explanations for her death? Accident? Homicide?”

“No, I have no idea.” Becca shifted in her seat. The woman should really conduct her interviews wearing perma-dark sunglasses. She could cut glass etchings with those eyes. “So. Where do we go from here?”

“That’s up to you, actually. I can simply note the specifics of this report and close the file. Or I have time in my schedule for a more thorough investigation, if you wish.”

“An investigation. What would that entail?”

“I would invade your life, basically.” Dr. Call dipped her head, as if acknowledging what a pleasant prospect that must be. “I’d want to examine the radio that transmitted this message. If possible, to see the room in which you heard it, to run sound tests. And together we would try to establish the conditions most receptive to a third transmission.”

“You’d try to get her to speak again.” Becca stared at this strange woman. First she was queen of the lentils, then Virgil, now she was Merlin. “Is that really possible?”

“Frankly, it’s unlikely. In the research, authentic messages are capricious and unpredictable at best. We’ve had very little success evoking new information from a single credible voice. Either the given message is repeated, or the voice falls silent. But I feel there are enough anecdotal successes, enough promising attempts, to make the effort worthwhile.”

“Uh huh.” Becca’s flautas were coming back on her with a vengeance. She didn’t know what she’d expected from this meeting—a one-stop cure, a fast and soothing interpretation. She hadn’t planned to bare her life to this odd duck, though, and that would be inevitable if she continued.

Her mother’s voice had held such grief, both times she’d spoken. Not outrage or anger, as would be natural from a woman protesting a lie. Sadness. A faint note of pleading, as if she were begging Becca to believe her.

“All right,” Becca said. “I want to do this.”

“Fine.” Dr. Call swiveled back to her laptop and began typing, a jarring transition that pulled Becca out of her pensive thoughts.

“Wait…I’d better be sure I can pay for this.”

“I don’t charge subjects for my studies.” Dr. Call didn’t turn from the monitor. “My work is privately funded. I’d like to meet you tomorrow at two o’clock, at the site of the transmission. Address?”