Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (135 page)

“What’s the area code?” Frazier said.

“Four five eight.”

“That’s local. Can you get the address, Morales? Also, give Cooper himself a call. If he picks up, go into your cable company routine and see if you can keep him talking long enough to get a location. We’ll be over in five to pick you up. Meet us out front. Here’s his number.”

Frazier pointed at the sheet and I called out the number.

“I’m all over it, E,” Morales said.

When we pulled up in front of the police station, Morales wasn’t there. Frazier tapped on the steering wheel.

“Come on,” he said under his breath. He looked over at me. “Abby, you probably shouldn’t come with us. Cooper could be hiding out at his mother’s place. It could be too dangerous. I’ll give you a call with updates.”

“You might need me. I’d like to go with you.”

His phone rang and he held up his hand. He got out of the car and went over to the trees, standing in the shade.

I watched Frazier pace back and forth across a short section of lawn. Life had bloodied and broken huge chunks of him, but somehow deep down he was still unbowed. Other men would have stared at the darkness and blinked, and at some point walked away. Not Frazier. He was still staring.

I closed my eyes and hoped that the case was finally cracking open. I hoped that William Cooper was the one we were looking for and that we would find him. Soon.

When I opened my eyes, Frazier was still on the phone.

A moment later my breath caught in my throat.

She was standing there again, right behind him as he talked. She didn’t look over at me. Her attention was on Frazier, peering at him with those dark, mournful eyes.

And that’s when I realized I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

CHAPTER 56

My hands shaking, I took out my phone and did a quick online search. There was no denying it.

A moment later Frazier came over and put his head through the open window on the driver’s side.

“I better go see what’s keeping Morales,” he said. “We need to get going.”

“Wait,” I said, opening my door and getting out.

“What is it, Abby?”

I think he could tell from my expression that something was wrong.

“Did—” I began but his phone cut me off.

“Hold on. Where are you, Morales? Okay. You’ve got three minutes to get down here. We’ve wasted enough time. Okay. Okay.”

He put his phone away and turned toward me.

“What is it?”

I didn’t want to add to his suffering, but I had to tell him. He had to know.

“Why did that first case remind you of this one?” I asked. “Was it because the two girls looked alike?”

“Yes,” he said after a long moment. “Despite the difference in their ages, there were a lot of physical similarities. Their faces, their hair. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that Emily is an older version of the girl in Baltimore.”

“Listen, I’ve been wrong about something,” I said and took a deep breath. “It’s not Emily’s ghost. The one I’ve seen. It’s Mary’s. Mary Anderson is the ghost that’s following you around, not Emily.”

His energy went dark. He looked away, not saying anything.

But it was all coming together. Pieces of the puzzle slipping into place. The reason Emily’s ghost hadn’t talked to me wasn’t because she was hiding or because she didn’t want to help with the investigation. It was because she wasn’t Emily. It was the ghost of another girl, dead for more than 40 years, staying near the police officer who had unknowingly sealed her fate.

Frazier looked over at me, his eyes bloodshot and haunted.

“My God,” he whispered. “Are you sure, Abby?”

“I’m sure. I just looked up her picture. It’s her.”

I felt awful. I had become the thing I hated. One of those phony psychics who claimed to see ghosts and ended up doing more harm than good.

Frazier had every right to be angry. But he wasn’t. In fact, when I looked his way again, there was a glimmer in his eyes.

“That means Emily could still be alive,” he said.

CHAPTER 57

When I saw Morales running toward us, I stepped out of the car and moved to the back.

“Where to?” Frazier said, pulling out onto the street.

“She lives in Noti, about 20 miles west. It’s a straight shot on the 126. It shouldn’t take us too long, but then again it is six o’clock on a Friday in August. Cooper’s not in the system. He comes up clean, not even so much as a parking ticket.”

“You gave him a call?” Frazier said.

“No luck. It went straight to voice mail.”

“What kind of name is Noti?” Frazier said after a while.

I saw Morales get on the computer.

“Give me a second,” he said as he read. “Well, it seems that unlike a lot of town names, this one’s actually got a story behind it. Supposedly a Native American got upset with a white man back in the day because he didn’t tie up a horse. So he said, ‘No tie.’ And that became the name of the town.”

“Sounds crazy enough to be true,” Frazier said. “Either that, or someone’s blowing smoke.”

He hit his siren and lights from time to time, but it didn’t do much good. People were slow to respond and move out of the way. Rush hour traffic was heavy all the way out of town.

As we slowly made our way west, the surroundings turned into farmland and ranches, with grasses and livestock dotting the fields. We passed a large shallow lake on the right. Traffic finally thinned and Frazier hit the gas hard.

Morales got back on the onboard computer.

“He’s got a white 1997 Ford minivan registered in his name,” he said a minute later.

“Of course he does,” Frazier said. “Vehicle of choice for these types.”

It was nearly seven when we reached April Cooper’s small house just off the highway.

“It’s that battleship gray number coming up on the right,” Morales said.

Frazier slowed down but didn’t stop. He kept driving.

“See a van?” he said.

“Nothing out front or in the driveway,” Morales said. “Could be in the garage.”

Frazier turned the car around and parked across the road.

“You hang back a little in case something unexpected goes down,” he said. “I’ll see if anyone’s home. And, Abby, you stay here.”

“I’ll be right here,” I said. “Oh, ask her if he uses a coconut-scented shampoo or deodorant. Or sunscreen, maybe.”

Morales gave me a quizzical look. Frazier nodded.

A minute later he rang the doorbell and I thought I saw the curtains move behind one of the windows.

Frazier appeared to see it too.

He reached for his weapon.

My heart skipped a beat.

CHAPTER 58

Morales was over by the detached garage, looking through a small window. He held his hands to the side of his face to block out the reflection. Then he looked back at Frazier and shook his head.

The door opened and Frazier held out his badge. I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Morales joined him and the two men soon went inside.

As I sat in the car my mind replayed the events of the last two days. Everything had happened so fast. The grave. The dog. Emily’s scarf. Jerzy MacTavish. The Invisible Man. After months and months without a shred of progress, it all seemed to be coming together.

About 10 minutes later, I saw Frazier and Morales walking back up the road.

Frazier burned rubber, April Cooper’s house a blur on my left.

“The mother said she hasn’t seen or heard from him in a while,” Frazier said, looking at me in the rearview. “She told us he spends a lot of time out near Blue River. That’s where we’re headed now.”

He began filling me in on what else they had learned.

“The mother owns a 40-acre piece of property in the forest out there. Used to belong to the grandfather. The house was destroyed in a fire almost 30 years ago.”

“Apparently, our boy has been rebuilding it,” Morales said and then turned to his partner. “How do you want to handle this?”

“Let’s call for backup and have them meet us. Look it up on the map and see what’s out there.”

Morales got back online.

“There’s a high school, McKenzie High, just at the west end of town.”

“That will do,” Frazier said. “Have them meet us in the parking lot. Call Lieutenant Franks and tell him what we need.”

Morales began to get on the radio, but Frazier stopped him.

“Wait,” he said. “That’s not going to work. Franks is strictly by the book. We’re out of our jurisdiction out there. He’s going to want us to go through the Sheriff’s Department. By the time we do that, it might be tomorrow.”

“So we’re going rogue?”

“Look, Franklin. I can drop you off back at the station. It’s on the way. This could blow back on us, big time. I don’t want your career to end before it’s even started. I don’t need that on my conscience.”

“Drive the car, E,” Morales said. “Where you go, I go.”

They were quiet for a while and then Frazier went back to telling me about William Cooper.

William Cooper was three years old when he was badly burned in his grandfather’s house fire. The little boy nearly died and was in the hospital for several months. He eventually pulled through, but his face was damaged beyond repair. Several plastic surgeries did little to hide the horrors that the fire left behind.

Morales pulled a photo out of his pocket.

“The mother said this was taken two or three years ago. Jesus, what a mess.”

He handed it to me. I shuddered.

William Cooper’s face was covered in blisters, scars, and thick welts. He had no nose to speak of, just a hideous, dark hole above his curled upper lip. I turned away but it was too late. Something in my stomach shot up my throat. It burned as I swallowed it back down.

Frazier changed lanes, moving to the far left and hitting the accelerator as we drove through Springfield.

“By the way, Abby, in answer to your question about the coconut scent, Mrs. Cooper said he uses a special type of lip balm because of his burns,” he said. “She said it smells like coconuts.”

I nodded.

“It’s Cooper in my dream, then,” I said.

The two men were quiet. I wondered if Morales thought it was all mumbo-jumbo.

“According to the mother, his life has been a living hell,” Frazier said as we passed Walterville. “And not just from the pain. She said the hardest part has always been dealing with people’s reactions. She said it got so bad in school that he dropped out in the eighth grade. The other children were cruel. Hateful was her word.”

“A lot of people have a difficult childhood,” Morales said.

I looked at the photo again. It may have been wrong to think it, but William Cooper really did look like a monster.

And as I ran my finger over his face and felt a cold chill shoot through me, I was pretty sure that he had become one as well.

CHAPTER 59

“We’ll stop here,” Frazier said, pulling into a gas station in the small town of Vida. “We can get some coffee and go over our plan.”

“Thank God,” Morales said. “I’ve had to take a leak since last Thursday.”

Then he seemed to remember that I was in the back seat.

“I mean, use the little boy’s room.”

“No problem,” I said. “I can relate.”

“The usual?” Frazier said to me as we passed the coffee dispensers.

“Yes, thanks.”

After Morales and I took care of business we headed back to the car.

Morales put down his coffee and went to work on the computer.

“The house is here by these trees, at the edge of a meadow,” he said, pointing at the screen.

“Got any feelings, Abby?” Frazier said.

I studied the aerial photo. There didn’t seem to be any other houses for miles. It seemed perfect for what Cooper must have had in mind. But Frazier didn’t need me to tell him that.

“No,” I said after a long pause.

“All right,” he said. “The way I see it, it’s pretty straight forward. We park across the way and go in.”

Morales nodded.

Frazier turned his head and looked back at me.

“Abby, you’ll wait behind the wheel. If anything goes wrong, if you hear gun fire, anything, I want you to drive out of there like the Devil with his tail on fire. I’ll hook you up with a radio so you can hear what’s going on.”

The two detectives went to the trunk and came back a few minutes later with shotguns and radios. It looked like they had bullet-proof vests under their jackets.

“With some luck we’ll find them both out there tonight,” Frazier said. “And if not, well, we might still find some evidence or clues to their whereabouts.”

My stomach tightened as his words echoed through my head.

I prayed that luck was on our side. That it was on Emily’s side too. Even though I had a sinking feeling that luck had abandoned her a long, long time ago.

CHAPTER 60

Night closed in thick as we neared the small town of Blue River, the summer light a memory. Soon there were only the headlights of oncoming cars.

We turned off the highway, crossing over a bridge and slowly driving through the tiny town. It was dead quiet on Main Street, like midnight had come and gone and gone again. We passed a café, an old gas station, and a general store. All closed. The only signs of life came from a scary-looking tavern with a few old pickup trucks parked in front and a neon sign blinking “Coors” against the black night.

“Make a right up here,” Morales said a mile later.

Frazier turned onto a dirt road and headed deeper into the forest.

After a few hundred feet, Morales pointed to the GPS and nodded. Frazier cut the lights and dropped his speed.

Around the next bend a meadow, bathed in bright moonlight, came into view.

“Remember, Abby. You stay here, behind the wheel. Lock the doors. The radio’s on. You’ll be able to hear us. Press this button here if you need to talk to us for some reason. At the first sign of anything, and I mean anything, you take off back down that road.”