K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 13 - Ghost Story (8 page)

“That’s why you’ve got the salt laid out across your doorstep?”  Grace looked over at the living room windows to see the salt lines there, too.  She knew enough about Darcy’s gift to know what that meant.  “You know, I nearly stepped in that.  You could warn a person.”

“So when do we do this ritual?” Aaron asked.  “If we have a way to stop this thing, then let’s do it.”

“We will,” Darcy assured him.  “But we need to do it at the Town Hall.  And we’ll need to do it when no one else is around.  So, we’ll have to wait until tonight.”

“Great,” Grace muttered, pretty much summing up what all of them were thinking.

“Why the Town Hall?” Aaron asked.  “You can’t just do it from here?  Aren’t we protected from that…ghost, as long as we’re in this house?”

Darcy wished it were that simple.  “We are, but the thing is we need to do the ritual where the ghost has taken up residence.  He’s floating around town freely right now—”

“And hitching rides in people,” Jon said bitterly.

“Right.  That too.  But his manifestation is centered in the Town Hall.  I’ve felt him there any number of times.  I think Helen has felt it, too.  She’s been spending a lot of time there lately, and she’s been acting strange.  I’ve heard her talking to people in her office and when I go in there’s no one there.  She kept saying it was a phone call, and I believed her because I wanted to.  I didn’t put it together until now but I think the Pilgrim Ghost has been talking to her.  Influencing her somehow.”

“Possessing her,” Jon summarized.  “We saw her at lunch yesterday.  The ghost was in her just like it was in you.”

“Darcy…” Grace started to say, then stopped.

It was easy for Darcy to read her sister’s thoughts whether she spoke them out loud or not.  They were written all over her face.  “It’s all right, Grace.  Yes, I know what that means.  Helen and I both have been possessed by Nathaniel Williams.  Either of us could be the actual killer.  I don’t like how that adds up, but there it is.”

“No,” Jon said emphatically.  “There’s no way you did that.  The preliminary autopsy showed that each knife stroke was made with a lot of force.  Not only do I not believe you’re capable of killing anyone, possessed or not, but I’m not sure you’d have the strength to do this.”

Her smile was bittersweet.  “I’m stronger than I look, you know.  Plus, a person who is possessed can have unnatural strength, augmented by the ghost’s presence.  So.  Don’t count me out.”

He reached across to her with his hand, and she took it, grateful for his faithful trust.  It didn’t change the facts, but just knowing he would stand by her no matter what made her feel better.

“Where is Helen, anyway?” Grace said.  “I figured her and Andrew would have been camped out on your door step, Darcy.  Another murder in her town, and on her front lawn, no less.”

Darcy knew this must be hard on Helen as the town’s mayor.  The first leader of the town had been cursed by Nathaniel Williams.  Now Helen had been used by him to deliver a deadly message, one that had come true right in front of her own house.

Hmm.  Maybe that was the other connection.  Darcy would have to ask Helen as soon as she—

“There they are,” Jon said, craning his neck to look out the window.  “I can see Andrew driving, too.  Good.  We should all be together for this.  Right now, we’re the only ones who know what’s really happening.  I want to keep it that way.  We need a good plan, a strong plan, and we need to stick to it.”

Grace tapped her hand against Darcy’s shoulder.  “Don’t you just love it when he gets like this?”

Letting some heat into her voice, Darcy lowered her eyelashes.  “Oh, yeah I do.  It was one of the first things that attracted me to him.”

“Sure it was,” Jon snorted.  “Why don’t you guys stay here and I’ll go let them in.”

“Hold on,” Darcy said, handing baby Addison back to her mom.  “I’ll come with you.”

Helen was already at the front door, knocking once to be courteous and then coming on in.  She looked even more tired than Aaron did and Darcy could easily imagine that she had been up all night pacing back and forth while Andrew tried to convince her to get some sleep.  Helen was very dedicated to this town.  Darcy had seen her sacrifice herself over and over for the people who lived here.

Hopefully, she would be able to continue doing just exactly that.

“Hi Darcy,” she greeted them with a warm smile that did nothing to ease the dark circles under her eyes.  “Hi Jon.  I see Grace and Aaron are already here?  Andrew’s right behind me.  So.  Let’s get started, shall we?”

“Actually, we’ve already started.”  Darcy took Helen’s dark knee-length tweed jacket with the big blue buttons and hung it up next to the door.  Even Helen’s clothes looked tired, a rumpled white blouse and black slacks that could have been described as slept in if Darcy hadn’t already decided her friend had gotten no sleep at all.  “Why don’t you come on into the living room and we’ll fill you in on what we know before we have something to eat.”

“Oh, I don’t think I have much of an appetite,” Helen assured her.  “Just thinking that one of us could have killed that poor girl.  That it could have been me!”

She looked down at her shaking hands, then wiped them on the front of her slacks as if she could wipe away traces of imaginary blood.  Not that she should be, but Darcy could see Helen wasn’t taking this well at all.

Imaginary blood.  That was one of the things Darcy planned on doing tonight, was performing the ritual to check each of them for guilt.  Blood on their hands.  If nothing else, it would rule out intentional murder.

“What’s this?” Helen was asking.  She was looking down at the floor in front of the door.

“Oh, that’s salt,” Darcy said matter-of-factly.  “If you put it in place the right way then it keeps spirits from entering your home.  It’s like a no trespassing sign.”

“Oh,” was Helen’s response.  “Well, so long as it keeps that thing away from us.”

“Actually, there’s been some developments in that,” Darcy said, hating that she would have to start this story all over again.  It might make Helen feel better to know someone else had gone through what she had, but Darcy was not proud of herself for allowing Williams to possess her. 

Andrew came up on the porch then, smiling at Jon and Darcy and reaching out for Helen.  “You need to sit down, dear,” he said to her, “before you drop.”

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart,” Helen said to him, although she smiled wider when she did, and maybe stood a little straighter.

Andrew’s smile slipped, and he let his hand drop to his side, standing there on the porch, not quite inside yet.  “Uh, I’m sorry.  I forgot something in the car.  Go on in, Helen.  I won’t be long.”

“Okay,” she said, although he had already turned away and down the steps.  “But hurry!”

Jon took Helen into the living room while Darcy went into the kitchen to make tea and coffee.  She couldn’t remember which Aaron liked but Jon and Grace were both coffee drinkers.  Wasn’t Helen?  What about Andrew?  She couldn’t remember.  She’d have to ask.  While she set the kettle to boil she went over in her mind everything she would need to do tonight during the exorcism ritual.  Everything she would need was already here.  Her candles.  Her ring, showing her the way to follow while pushing Nathaniel Williams out of this realm, salt and powdered rue and basil leaf in her baking cabinet…

Oops.  For Pete’s sake, she was out of salt.  She’d used everything she had to guard her house against Nathaniel Williams.  Well, that was one of the great things about living in a town like Misty Hollow.  She could always go up to any of her neighbors’ houses and ask for a cup of salt. 

She just wouldn’t tell them what she needed it for.  Not unless she wanted them to call the hospital and have a room reserved for her in the mental ward.

A thought came to her.  It started out small, then grew until it was demanding her attention.  A bad, dark thought that she pushed away more than once.  It refused to be banished no matter how hard she tried.

The salt.  The line of salt across the floor.

Her heart froze.  Ghosts wouldn’t cross the lines she had laid out.  Not across a hearth.  A living space like a home always accumulated energies, over time, from the people who lived there.  That energy, in turn, created a sort of power that someone with Darcy’s gifts could tap into.  Salt itself was just salt.  Salt fueled by the power of a living space, when put down properly, created a barrier no ghost could ever cross.

Andrew had kept himself from crossing over the threshold of the front door just now.

What if…oh, dear God, what if the Pilgrim Ghost had found a new host in Andrew?

She rushed to the door even as the teakettle started to whistle and threw it wide open, ready for anything.

Andrew stood there, his hand held out for the doorknob, a surprised look on his face.  “Oh.  Uh, thanks for getting the door Darcy.  Helen in the living room?”

And then he walked past her, into the house, across the salt line.

Darcy let out a breath and slumped back against the wall. Taking a few deep breaths to steady herself she pushed off the wall and headed back into the kitchen. She had been thinking the worst.  It hadn’t been true, but she was still on edge.  Anyone could be in danger of the Pilgrim Ghost taking them over, using them to do who knew what, and none of them would ever know until bad things were already happening.  Like with the book on exorcisms.  Or worse, the murder at Helen’s.

A soft rapping on the doorway between the living room and the kitchen snapped her attention away from her spiraling thoughts.  Helen stood there, an apologetic look on her face, tears in her eyes.  “Oh, Darcy.  I had no idea what had happened to you.  I’m so, so sorry.
”

In the livingroom Jon’s cell phone rang.

Darcy took her friend by the hands and brought her over to the kitchen table to sit down.  “Helen, it’s hardly your fault.  You couldn’t have known what was going on, let alone stop it.”

Helen shook her head.  “I can’t help thinking if I’d been stronger, then maybe that girl would still be alive.”  She looked up at Darcy, her lower lip starting to tremble.  “It wasn’t any ghost who killed her.  It was a human hand.  Whether I believe this whole possession thing or not, and I’m not saying I do, there was still a murder committed.  One of us six did it.  It’s starting to look like it was either you, or me.  We’re the ones who have been through…you know.  Being used like that.  So which one of us do you think it was?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?  Was there any way to prove it conclusively, either way?  Regressive hypnosis, maybe.  Maybe calling on the ghost of the dead girl, if Darcy could get close enough to the corpse.  Jon had already told her that there wasn’t any trace evidence on the body.  No hairs, no fibers, nothing that pointed to anyone in particular.  The prevailing theory at the station was that Bonnie Verhault was killed by someone who didn’t want the sale of the land to go through, possibly a rival company, and the body dumped on the mayor’s lawn as a warning.

Well.  They were closer to the truth than they realized.

“Helen,” she started, letting out a long breath.  “I think…”

Jon burst into the kitchen, going for his shoes.  “Darcy, something’s happened downtown.  I need to go into the station.  You need to come with me.”

Helen and Darcy were both on their feet.  “What happened?” Darcy asked him.

He hesitated for just a second before answering, carefully not looking at Helen.  “That was Chief Daleson.  He wants me down at the station now.  With you, Darcy.”

“What?  Why?”

“He wouldn’t say.  That’s what worries me.”

There was no doubt in Darcy’s mind that this wasn’t a coincidence.  This was the ghost trying to distract them.

Trying to draw them out.

“We need to go,” Jon told her, offering his hand to help her out of the chair.  “I have the feeling if we don’t go now he’ll send someone to get us.”

“Fine.  Helen, stay here with everyone.  You’ll be safe here in the house.  We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

The question of who the killer was, the physical killer whose hand had swung the knife, would have to wait.

Unless the police had found something after all.

That thought didn’t make her feel any better.

The police station interview room had never seemed so cold, or so scary.  With its gray walls and poured concrete floor it had never been an inviting space, but now that Darcy was experiencing what it felt like firsthand, she hoped to never come in here again.  Ever.  She and Jon sat at the metal table in the room’s center, side by side.  The chair on the other side was empty.  No one had come in to speak to them in nearly twenty minutes.

Staring down at the stainless steel rings set in the table’s surface, meant for handcuffing suspects to, Darcy clenched and unclenched her fists and tried to remain calm.  “I thought you said the Chief told you this was urgent?”

“He did,” Jon promised.  “I don’t like this.  This is how I treat a suspect.  Leave them to sweat a little, then come in with some unexpected information to gauge their reaction.”

Darcy had seen him do it, too.  She knew he was right.  “Maybe we should go?  I mean, we’re not under arrest are we?”

He took her hand in his on top of the table.  “Not a good idea.  Let’s just wait and see what he wants from us.”

Leaving still seemed like a good idea to her.  She was about to tell him so when the door to the interview room opened and Chief Joe Daleson came in with a distracted smile.

“Sorry to make you two wait,” he told them.  “I wanted to check this information myself before I discussed it with you.”

He was carrying a manila folder, full of papers, and he set it down on the table in front of them without opening it.  The sleeves of his white button up shirt were rolled up to his elbows.  His red tie had been badly knotted and hung unevenly.  His expression was stony and hard to read.  In short, he looked like a man who would rather be anywhere but where he was right now.

Scratching at his balding scalp, he looked directly at Jon.  “I’m not happy about this.  I want you to know that up front.”

Darcy tensed.  That was not a promising opening line.  She couldn’t help but notice how the folder was marked with the dead girl’s name.  If he had called them down to talk about this, and if he was opening with an apology, then what was coming had to be bad news.

Jon held her hand tighter, but kept his voice even.  “What’s up, Chief?  Did you get a break in the case?”

“Sort of, yes,” he said, with a skeptical glance at Jon.  “This doesn’t look good, let me tell you.”

“Chief, can I just say—”  Darcy sucked in a sharp breath to keep from yelping as Jon just about broke her knuckles squeezing her hand.

“Darcy, let’s listen to what the Chief has to say.  I know you’re in a rush to get back home, but I’m sure that can wait.”

“Yes,” she said, knowing what Jon was telling her.  She needed to be quiet and see what Joe had to tell them first.  She could confess or lie or ask for a lawyer after that.  Trusting Jon was the best thing she could do right now.

The Chief tapped his finger against the folder a few times, considering what he had just seen pass between Darcy and Jon.  “Right.  Well.  Here’s why I asked you two to come in.  I went back out to the scene today at Helen’s house with Wilson and a few others.  It didn’t make sense to me that we hadn’t found the murder weapon yet.  Couple of other things not sitting right with me on this one, either.”

That was an understatement, Darcy thought.

From the folder, he slid an eight-by-ten sized photograph.  He must have had it placed so that he could take it out without looking.  His eyes never left Darcy and Jon as he removed it and placed it on the table between them.

“This is what I found,” he said.

The photo showed one of the officers holding back the bushes at Helen’s property.  On the ground, half buried in the dirt, was a knife with blood on the handle, and on the blade, and even in the photograph it was easy to see that there were fingerprints dried into the red splotches.

“Don’t know why we didn’t find it yesterday.”  He turned the photograph so that it was facing him, and pointed at the handle.  “See this right here?  You know what that is?”

“It’s a fingerprint, Chief,” Jon said, his tone flat. 

Darcy nodded, not trusting her voice.  There it was.  Proof that one of them was the killer.  Helen, or her, or maybe even one of the others although that was less likely.  She could feel perspiration beading at the back of her neck.

“Yes, fingerprints,” the Chief said with a smile.  “We’ll know who did this for sure soon enough.  For right now, I’ve got my suspicions.”

He looked at Darcy as he said it, and she very nearly blurted out a confession right there, whether she was certain of her guilt or not.  Instead, she followed Jon’s subtle advice and stayed quiet.

“Thing is,” Joe continued, “it takes time for the hotshots at the state crime lab to get any kind of match on fingerprints.  A whole day, maybe more.  So I went looking for other evidence.  That’s what good cops do.  Right, Detective Tinker?”

This time his eyes levelled themselves at Jon.  Darcy was proud of the way Jon didn’t buckle under that steely gaze.

“I agree with you, Chief.  I’m sorry I haven’t been around much for this one.  Darcy hasn’t been feeling well.”

“So you told me,” was the non-committal response.  “Tell me, Jon, when you discovered the body at the scene did you check the contents of her purse?”

Darcy turned to Jon.  She hadn’t heard anything about there being a purse at the scene.  Jon ignored her, but she could tell that he noticed her looking at him.

“No,” he told the Chief.  “I didn’t want to disturb the scene.  I know how it looked.  All of us were there while the body was being dumped.  If I was investigating this one then I’d suspect one of us.  I wasn’t going to go rummaging around the scene and make it look like I was tampering with evidence.”

That seemed to make Joe relax, if just a little.  “That makes sense.  I hadn’t looked at it like that, Jon.  Just couldn’t help but wonder why you missed this.”

He took out another photograph in the same way, slipping it easily out of the folder and setting it on top of the picture of the murder weapon.  This one was a close up of a cell phone lying on a table.  It was an iPhone, but not one of the newer models.

“That the victim’s phone?” Jon asked.

“Yes, it is.”  Joe took out another piece of paper from the folder.  This time it was a report of some sort with numbers listed in neat rows all down the page.  “It wasn’t locked.  Don’t know why people do that, just leave their phones open that way for anyone to get in.  Glad she did, though.  This is a partial list of phone calls made from her phone.  We tracked down each of the numbers, and we found one that she was calling repeatedly.  Over and over.”

Darcy caught herself blinking, her mouth falling open.  Phone calls?  Darcy hadn’t gotten any phone calls from Bonnie Verhault.  That meant Joe didn’t suspect her.  So if not her, then he must suspect…

Helen.

“See this number right here?” he asked Jon.  “Turns out that’s the number to the Town Hall.  The mayor’s office, to be precise.”

He waited a moment for that to sink in. 

“Chief,” Jon said, “you can’t really suspect the mayor herself?”

“I’m sorry, both of you.  I know Helen is a good friend but I have to go where the evidence leads me.  This knife here,” he said, shuffling the photos to put the bloody knife back on top, “appears to come from Helen’s house.  We found a matching set in her kitchen.”

“It could be a common type,” Jon pointed out.  “Maybe it’s sold everywhere from WalMart to K-Mart to the dollar stores.  There’s no way of knowing it came from Helen’s drawers, I’m guessing?”

Chief Daleson put a finger up and began shaking it for emphasis.  “See, that’s why I asked you to come down for this, Jon.  You always think of the hard angles.  Like that.  Now, that was a good point.  We don’t know for sure where the knife came from.”  He scratched his scalp again.  “But if you add together the other evidence, it does not look good for Helen.  The phone calls to her office, for instance.”

“It doesn’t mean she ever spoke to our victim,” Jon argued.  “One of the secretaries could have fielded those calls.”

“Not likely,” Joe said with a shake of his head.  “Not that many of them.”

“Okay, true, it’s unlikely, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened that way.”

Drumming his fingers, Joe nodded.  “You’re right, of course.  That’s all circumstantial.  Nothing that we could convict on.  We’ll have to wait for that fingerprint report to come back before we can be sure of a conviction.  We do have enough to make an arrest right now, and that’s what I wanted your opinion on, Jon.  This is the mayor we’re talking about.  The mayor of the entire town of Misty Hollow.  No good can come of arresting the mayor, especially after we had to arrest her husband, who was mayor at the time himself.  The people of this town have had enough of scandal and murder to last them a lifetime and I don’t want to add more to that.  Not without good, solid evidence to back it up.”

“So,” Jon said, slowly, “you’re asking my opinion?”

“That’s why I brought you down here.”  The Chief spread his hands wide like the point should have been obvious, and then leaned back in his chair.

Darcy heard the long sigh of breath Jon let escape through his nose.  Joe probably missed it, but Darcy knew Jon well enough to sense the waves of relief rolling off him.  He and Darcy hadn’t been called down here for one of them to be arrested.  Not only that, but Jon had the chance to keep any charges from being brought against Helen.

At least for now.

“Chief, I don’t think we have enough yet.  We should get the fingerprint evidence, and maybe even bring Helen in for an official written statement.”

“That might raise a few eyebrows,” Joe said.  “I’m trying to avoid that.”

“All right.  Let me do it, then.  I can be quiet about it and nobody will have to see her being brought down here to the station.”

Joe considered the idea, shook his head slightly. After a few moments of silence where he seemed to have an internal argument with himself he turned to Darcy.  “I asked you to come down, too, because I know Helen is a good friend of yours.  You’ve helped us out more times than I can count, Darcy, and I trust your opinion.” He paused to take a deep breath.  “If I went to Helen myself, just to talk, what do you think she’d do?”

Darcy had to untie the knots in her tongue before she could speak.  “You mean, do I think she’ll try to run away?  No.  Of course not.  She’d welcome the chance to speak to you if it means clearing her name.”

The frown that stole over Joe’s face was telling.  “I’m glad to hear that, Darcy, but I really think it’s only a matter of time before I end up arresting her for this.  I’m just delaying the inevitable.  Lining up all my ducks in a row before I do anything.”

“I think that’s smart, Chief,” Jon said quickly.  “You don’t want to look like you’re going after an innocent woman.”

Subtle, Darcy thought.  Still, it did the trick.  Chief Daleson nodded along to the thoughts in his head until he came to his conclusion.  “Thanks.  Both of you.  I’ll try to put a rush on the fingerprinting guys, and in the meantime I’ll call and arrange a meeting with Helen.  Either of you know where she is?”

“I’m not sure,” Darcy lied. 

“All right.  I’ll get ahold of her by phone.  I don’t suppose I have to tell the two of you not to mention anything about this to Helen, right?”

“Of course not,” Jon told him.  Darcy recognized the lie in his voice.  “We’ll keep this to ourselves.  Anything else we can do to help?”

“Actually, there might be,” Joe told him.  He collected the photos back into the folder, making all the pages nice and neat and square before closing it up again.  “Can I get both of you to stay here for just a bit longer?  There’s one other thing I’d like you to see.”

Darcy tried to check her My Little Pony watch without being obvious about it.  The interview rooms didn’t have clocks in them on purpose, but she was very aware of how late it was getting.  She needed to get to the Town Hall and perform the ritual.  It had already been getting dark when they drove into town, and Jon’s headlights had reflected off wispy tendrils of fog crawling out of the shadows and dark places.  The mists, rolling heavy and thick, feeding off the trouble that had come to town.

The trouble her aunt had warned her about.

“We had someplace to be, Chief,” Jon said carefully, “and you’ve had us here for over an hour as it is.”

Joe held up a hand in an apologetic way.  “Sorry.  I know I’m taking up a lot of your time.  I could really use your help, though.  This is a big one for our town.  One more in a long string of big ones, I suppose.  Sort of makes a man think about retirement.”

He looked at Jon as he said it, and Darcy had the feeling that there was more to his words than just idle conversation.

“Anyway.  Jon, Darcy, I think you’ll be able to help me with this other thing.  Give me one more minute?”

Jon didn’t look at Darcy, but she felt him hesitate, trying to figure some way to get her out of here so she could go and perform the exorcism and put an end to this whole mess.  There really wasn’t much they could do without looking suspicious.  Asking the Chief to excuse them for a moment while they went and cleansed the Town Hall of a psychopathic ghost probably wouldn’t go over very well.