A Question of Ghosts (3 page)

Yes, tomorrow works for me too, thanks.
Becca recited the address of the house on Fifteenth Avenue.

Dr. Call frowned, which didn’t change her usual expression all that much. “I recall your saying you live off Lake City? This is a Capitol Hill address, five blocks from here.”

“I didn’t hear the voice in my apartment. I heard it in the house I lived in as a child, where my mother died.”

“I see.” This time Becca rather enjoyed the doctor’s discomfort. “Meet me here tomorrow, then, and we’ll walk there together.”

“At two o’clock.” Becca waited, but Dr. Call just stared at her. It seemed Becca’s audience was concluded. She pushed back her chair.

Dr. Call stood quickly and extended her hand across the desk. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Hawkins. Good night.”

Becca accepted the formal clasp with a small flare of sympathy for this woman’s social clumsiness, her studied but stilted attempts at human interaction. Asperger’s, perhaps? Doubtful. People with Asperger’s were usually uncomfortable with eye contact, and that was not this chica’s problem.

Dr. Call escorted her out of her shadowed office and into the darkening street. She closed the barred gate behind Becca promptly, without further comment.

Which Becca would not have waited to hear anyway. She filled her lungs with fresh air and shook off the intensity of the last thirty minutes with every step she took away from the spooky scientist’s lair. Walking faster, toward Charlie’s and her friends, Becca pictured the immense hot fudge sundae awaiting her, and she homed in on it like a bat on a convention of grasshoppers.

*

Jo turned the bolt of the heavy inner door. She watched out the beveled glass pane as the blond woman hurried up the street. The bars between them were a tangible and welcome shield. Shivering with relief, she turned back to the solitude of her refuge.

She’d seen the pity in Becca Hawkins’s eyes as they shook hands. With long and hard study, Jo had learned to read facial expressions as well or better than anyone. Often, the emotions that prompted them still mystified her, but pity was never hard to grasp.

She moved silently across the dim room. The glass case containing her prized collection of Spiricoms reflected her image in the meager light. Jo recognized a muted excitement lingering in her features. The intellectual thrill of this new study intrigued her. The chronology was unusual—the birthdays. This mother died on her daughter’s fifth birthday, then spoke to her on her sixteenth, then again on her thirty-ninth. This implied a meaningful pattern of contact, a consistent sequence that was generally absent in EVP.

Jo lived for it, the wonder of these voices. That a soul could be so connected to the world they were able to reach through death to speak to the living. To be so bonded to humanity, they were compelled to break the ancient command of silence after death. Human connection was Jo’s alien frontier, her life’s mystery.

The familiar contours of her chair and the burnished wood of her desk comforted her. She smoothed her hands lightly over the keyboard of her notebook. The Hawkins woman presented a more mundane puzzle.

She tapped up one of her programs on microexpressions, checking her conclusion with expert results. Jo would never be a great font of insight into human behavior, but the woman’s minute, fleeting facial expressions during this initial interview all told the same story.

Becca Hawkins was lying.

Chapter Two

Bran muffins. Joanne Call was a bran woman; Becca was sure of it. If she wasn’t, she desperately needed to be. Becca bit deeply into her huge chocolate cupcake as she walked, juggling the extra muffin and two cups of coffee.

Broadway was relatively quiet this afternoon, bright and hot. Becca wended around the parking kiosks, missing Khadijah’s friendly hand on her shoulder. Marty had offered to hide in the closet of Becca’s old house as backup today, should things get too bizarre. Becca nearly took her up on it. She wasn’t looking forward to entering the house again. Before her birthday two days ago, she hadn’t set foot in the place in more than thirty years.

Had not the illustrious Dr. Call gruffly cleared her throat, Becca would have walked straight into her. She came to an abrupt halt and blinked up into twin reflections of her own face. Dr. Call wore aviator sunglasses that mirrored Becca’s startled eyes while completely concealing her own. She tried to say something civil, but her mouth was still full of chocolate cupcake. She strived for a dignified expression, chewed furiously, and swallowed hard.

“Breakfast, Ms. Hawkins?” The aviator sunglasses nodded at the burdens Becca carried. “You sleep in rather late.”

Ignoring this insinuation of sloth, Becca handed over one cup of coffee and the muffin. “I thought we were meeting at your office.”

“We’re standing in front of my office.”

Becca glanced at the barred gate, three feet to her left. Ach. So they were.

Dr. Call examined the bran muffin, which was the size of a cannonball. A curious transformation came over the part of her face that Becca could see, a slight softening around the mouth. A dimple actually appeared in her cheek.

“Was I that rough on you last night?”

Becca liked her getting the joke. “Eh, I’m not the easiest interview. I guess we both did all right.”

Dr. Call nodded, turned, and walked up the street. Becca sighed and appealed to the heavens. All right, there were signs of humor and humility in the lentil queen, but small talk was not her forte. She trotted to catch up.

*

Jo walked the shaded avenues of Capitol Hill often, but always at dawn, before Broadway fully awoke. There were few other pedestrians blocking the sidewalks now, which suited her. Her mind had charted an efficient path to the address Hawkins had provided and they could be there in ten minutes. The muffin was actually quite tasty, and the coffee an excellent chaser. She tried to remember if she had thanked Hawkins for them.

“Hey,
Batman.
You’re giving me bunions.”

Jo turned, surprised. Hawkins was far behind her, limping. She waited. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hawkins. I didn’t mean to race.”

“You have very long legs and I have very cheap Target sneakers.” Becca braced herself on a splintered wooden pole, which was stapled with a hundred flyers advertising local bands, and adjusted her laces. She pointed at the small satchel Jo carried over her shoulder. “Can I ask what’s in there?”

“Oh. I’ve brought some instruments to measure the acoustics of your house. Some recording devices. Is it occupied right now?”

“No.” A shadow passed over Becca’s features. “It’s not my house. My uncle owns it. A family friend shows it to prospective renters for him. She’s going to meet us there. It’s between tenants.”

Jo wondered at the shadow, then wondered why a family would hold on to a house with such painful memories for so many years. She clasped her hands behind her and walked on, shortening her stride so Hawkins could keep up.

She noted an attractive flush coloring Hawkins’s high cheeks. Her propensities for chocolate, sleeping in, and bad sneakers aside, Becca Hawkins seemed healthy enough, even vigorous. She couldn’t be called trim, but her full curves were aesthetically pleasing. She was dressed in a light blue T-shirt and cotton shorts, and Jo looked down at her own pristine white shirt and black slacks. She envied this woman’s easy informality.

“How did you get into this work, Dr. Call? You can call me Becca, by the way.”

Damn.
Jo considered simply walking faster to evade that most onerous of social conventions, the personal conversation. Why did people always begin with that insipid question? As if she could explain her belief system in a sound bite. She summoned the stock answer she used in interviews. “My doctorates are in organic chemistry and transpersonal psychology. The latter involves the self-transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience. I suppose exploring EVP was a natural offshoot of my earlier studies.”

“Okay. A little Wikipedish, but fascinating.” There was no mockery in Becca’s eyes, just a benevolent teasing. “Transpersonal psych. That has to be the coolest degree on the books. Does it still excite you, exploring these ghostly realms?”

Usually a brief summation of Jo’s career satisfied the casual inquiry. If it didn’t, she was asked about the technical aspects of her research, not her feelings for it. Becca’s expression was friendly and open, and to her surprise, Jo found herself answering in kind. “Yes, it does still excite me. Every single day.”

“I can tell. When you talk about your work, your face changes. Something in you lights up.”

“I see.” Jo was unaware of ever lighting up, but she didn’t particularly mind this perception. She realized she was walking alone again, and turned back. “Ms. Hawkins?”

Becca was looking into a store window. She seemed only momentarily distracted; one inexpensive sneaker was lifted to take the next step. But her foot was frozen in midair, and an odd, rigid stillness held her body. She looked like a photograph, flat and lifeless. Jo walked back.

She followed Becca’s gaze into the large window of a new vintage clothing store, one of several such trendy triflings dotting Capitol Hill. This shop was not of the classier variety. Lifelike mannequins wore glittered, spaghetti-strapped halter tops, net shawls, and artfully tattered denim skirts. Not to Jo’s taste, but she claimed no real discernment when it came to fashion. She looked at Becca’s still face, at her eyes.

They were rolled back, exposing only the whites.

“Ms. Hawkins!” Jo took her arms and turned her from the window. She spoke her name again, with no reaction. Becca’s features were slack and shining with sweat, and her breath came in swift, shallow pants. Seizure? A severe allergic reaction. She was allergic to peanuts. Had there been nuts in her cupcake? “Becca, talk to me.”

Becca’s eyes fluttered, and Jo glimpsed slivers of green irises. She stood stiffly in Jo’s grip, apparently dazed, and then turned back toward the window.

Becca punched Jo in the chest, hard, knocking her aside, and bolted past her. Air woofed out of Jo’s lungs. She clutched her sternum in one hand and gaped for only a moment before taking off in pursuit.

“Becca! Ms. Hawkins!” Jo pounded down the sidewalk, ducking under the low-hanging eaves shading it. Becca was running full-out, but at least she had the presence of mind to weave through the few pedestrians she encountered rather than plow them down.

Jo was intensely aware of the spectacle they were creating on a public street. To her relief, Becca’s cheap Target sneakers proved, literally, her downfall. She scuffed a toe over a raised edge of asphalt and went airborne, sailing, thankfully, onto a wide patch of grass bordering the walk. She landed with a frightening crash and sprawled gracelessly on her belly.

*

Becca scrambled mindlessly to her feet, still driven by the horror of the corpses.

“Hey! Hold on!”

It was Joanne Call. For a moment, Becca’s disorientation was so extreme she couldn’t remember where she was or why Dr. Call was with her, clenching her arms so fiercely. Saliva flooded her dry mouth, and she swallowed convulsively. It had never been this bad before.

“Becca, you look terrible. What’s the matter with you?”

Becca wanted to offer a coherent reply, but she looked up into those mirrored sunglasses and saw the distorted reflections of her own face, inches away. She felt the strength drain out of her legs in a rush and her head filled with static. She had a fleeting impression of Dr. Call lunging to catch her as her knees buckled.

Becca had never fainted in her life, so she didn’t realize she had until she came to. She was lying in the grass, cradled in a pair of strong arms, one supporting her back, the other clasped across her waist. She could see the lower legs of a few people standing around them. She heard a voice ask if they should call 911.

She rested her head on Dr. Call’s crisp white sleeve. Dr. Call had removed her sunglasses, and Becca stared up into those blazing dark eyes.

“I think,” Dr. Call said, “you should call me Jo.”

“Okay,” Becca said. She turned her head and threw up.

*

“It’s called pediophobia.” Becca pulled deeply on the straw immersed in her thick milkshake.

Jo watched her in amazement. A half-hour after regurgitation, Becca’s yearning for chocolate was fully restored. The woman required regular chocolate infusions like others needed water to live. “Pediophobia? A fear of children?”

“No. Pedi
a
phobia is a fear of children. Pedi
o
phobia is a fear of dolls.” Becca looked at her watch. She sighed and slipped a cell phone out of the pocket of her shorts. “Excuse me just a minute.”

Jo sipped her green tea and suppressed a flood of questions as Becca clicked keys. They were sitting in wrought iron chairs before a very small wrought iron table, typical of the never-quite-comfortable outdoor furnishings fronting Capitol Hill cafes. But the fresh air seemed to be helping Becca. Her face was losing that unnerving, distant cast, and she was no longer as pale.

“Hi. We’re not coming. I’m so sorry I made you drive over for nothing.” Becca kept her voice low, cupping her hand over her cell. Her tone was warm. “A hard trigger, a bad one. I’ll fill you in later.”

Becca smiled at the table as she listened. “Yes, I’m okay now. No, I’m not alone. I’ll be fine.” She darted a shy glance at Jo. “I’ll call you tonight, I promise. Love you, too.” She folded her phone and returned it to her pocket. “That was Rachel, the friend with keys to my uncle’s house. She’s been waiting there for us.” She touched the table. “I’m sorry, Jo. I just can’t go there today. I don’t think my nerves could take it.”

Jo was mightily tempted to offer Becca a box of Hershey bars if she’d change her mind. She was chafing to get inside that house. She managed to mask her disappointment. “We can go another time. A fear of dolls?”

Becca stirred her milkshake, her eyes downcast. “Yeah. It’s more common than you might think. It’s not just dolls. Pediophobia is a fear of any false representation of a human being. Anything that looks like it should be human, alive, but isn’t.” She smiled wryly. “Which covers a lot of territory. I can’t go into the Quest Bookstore because they have these little lifelike figures in the window, carvings of various gods. I can’t go into toy stores, of course, or clothing stores, because of the—ˮ