Steele (5 page)

“I guess that means they won’t be coming back for me.” It hurt her that they were dead. All her life she had expected them to come for her, more so as a child and less and less the older she got. Now, in one single conversation, she’d lost them both.

“Steele is a good man. Confused but a good man.” Kari moved to another headstone without answering. She’d heard it before, several times now. First from Ray and then Izzy, and just this morning from Izzy’s husband, Jake. “He’s had a very hard life.”

She snorted. Who the hell hadn’t? As she read the headstone, she realized that this was the grave of his sister. She’d only been seventeen when she’d been killed. It wasn’t until that moment that she knew how young the poor girl had been.

“The people that she tried to help, the Colmans, they said that she’d been talking to their little girl before she took that final step. They had seen the entire thing and said that it would never be erased from their memory.” Mitch said something to her, but she was reading what someone, more than likely Steele, had put at the bottom of her marker.

“Loving sister and best friend. My heart will never be the same without my other half.” Kari turned to Mitch. “They were twins?”

“Yes. Few know that. And those that do…well, their mother is in no shape to have anyone believe her. The woman went a little over the edge when she found out her husband had committed suicide.” She waited for him to continued, knowing that he would. “She loved her husband more than she ever did her children. Their grandmother, Connie, lived with them until her death. She said that they only brought their children out when there was company, and then only for a few minutes. It was as if they were ashamed to have them. And Steele wasn’t at all what they wanted. He was rebellious and strong willed. But he had nothing on his sister. Aster was…from all accounts, Aster was a force to be reckoned with.”

The last headstone she looked at was for a man by the name of William J. Pike. There was no birthday and no date of death to accompany his name, just a small rose that had been etched into the stone at some point. When she asked about him, Mitch said that he had no idea and Connie never wanted to talk about him.

“I suppose he was here when they arrived and simply let him join the family anyway.” Mitch laughed, and she moved to the opening at the other end of the little plot. “I’m going to take a walk. Do you know what time it is?”

He pulled out his cell phone and told her it was just after one. Nodding to him, she turned to go when he said her name. She was afraid that he was going to tell her not to go out alone, but all he asked her was if she had a phone.

“Things could happen to you out there alone. I know that you’re not human, but you could still be hurt.” She nodded, not able to talk around the lump in her throat. He was the first person to think of her welfare in a long time. “Will you take my phone in case you need it?”

“No, but I thank you. I wouldn’t know who to call that would care if I fell into a bottomless pit anyway.” She turned to leave then, and hurried her step. She was not going to have him feel sorry for her, and she felt stupid for saying that to him. As soon as the woods closed up around her, she pulled her clothes off and shifted. Her panther would make sure she was safe.

The run felt good. She was on her third travel around the property when she finally had to sit down. She was exhausted and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

The breaking twig had her opening her eyes but not moving. The deer standing there looked right at her but didn’t run. Kari watched as three more doe came close to where she was, as well as a little fawn. The buck, a big guy with a rack on his head that looked heavy, kept an eye on her but never warned the others away. They were beautiful.

When one of the females lifted her head, she knew that someone or something else had come to where she was. Not moving or making a sound when they all suddenly took off, she saw Steele come into view. He wasn’t happy, if his stomping was any indication.

The second time he shouted her name, she had a feeling that if she came out now he’d be even more pissed, so she stayed where she was. As he moved by her, taking off in the opposite direction, Kari heard his phone ring. It was loud in the deep woods.

“I don’t know where the hell she is. Damn it all to hell, what the hell is wrong with her? Does she want to piss me off?” She thought that even if she didn’t want to, she’d done a bang-up job of it. “No, I don’t want to. Just let her come home on her own. She’s going to have to learn that she can’t just take off when she’s pissed off.”

Kari stood up. Her panther snarled loudly and had Steele turning toward her. When he started toward her, she growled low and hunkered down on the ground to attack if he tried anything. She was surprised when he stopped.

“I’ve been looking for you. Mitch said you left him over three hours ago.” News to her. That meant she’d been out here a lot longer than she’d thought. It was after five, she supposed. “Are you going to shift so we can have an intelligent conversation?”

Kari had bitten him, tasted his blood, so she could have spoken to him anyway. But she only sat down and licked her paw, waiting for his next move. When he started cursing, she decided that she was the predator here, not him, and when she snarled at him again, he backed up.

“I have to leave. I wanted to let you know that I’ll be gone on a mission for a while.” Nodding, she didn’t move. “You can understand me, I take it.”

She nodded again and sat down. When he started pacing, she watched him. For a man his size, he moved very well. She waited for him to tell her to get her ass back to the house, but all he did was pace and mumble to himself. A sudden stop by him had her fur along her back stand up.

“I’m going to get you a cell phone. I expect you to carry it with you at all times. Mitch said you declined his and thought I should provide you with one.” She didn’t care what he provided her with. She wasn’t going to take it. “I have also set up some interviews for you. You said you wanted a job, and there are a couple of people who owe me favors.”

She’d not go to those either. Kari was quite capable of getting her own job. A shitty one, but a job. His phone went off again, but he ignored it in favor of pacing again. When he stopped this time, he looked at her.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you in the bedroom. It won’t happen again. Not the sex part—that’s…I could take you again right now if I had the time—but the pissing you off part.” She felt her body heat up with the thought of him taking her out here. “You tend to make me say things I don’t mean.”

So much for letting him take her out here. Every time the man opened his mouth it was as if he wanted to make her mad at him. Kari couldn’t wait to get out of the place and put as much distance between the two of them as she could.

“Will you be here when I get back?” She nodded at him. Where the hell would she go? It wasn’t as if she had any sort of transportation or even enough money to get herself a place to stay. She’d looked at apartments too when she’d been searching for a job. Nodding back to her, he moved back in the direction he’d come from. But he stopped again before he spoke. “When we get back, I’d like to sit down and work out a plan with you. I can’t…having you here is making me want you all the time. I think if you…if you moved to a place of your own, I wouldn’t be so crazy with need all the time.”

He moved on then, and she lay down. Kari wondered if in a few weeks anyone would care that she’d been a living, breathing person if she were to die right here. Standing up, she moved to where she’d left her clothes and shifted. She pulled them on and moved toward the house again, and hoped that he’d be gone by now. Luck was with her. Not only was he gone, but so were the rest of the men.

Kari didn’t bother asking what he was doing or where he was. Izzy put a plate of food in front of her, and she made an attempt to eat it. But when she finally stood up from the table, she noticed that she’d eaten very little of anything, and even that weighed heavily on her belly. Going to her room, she noticed the envelope on the dresser and the money. Laying down and ignoring them both, Kari cried herself to sleep.

Chapter 4

Ray watched his men. He knew that Mitch was having a difficult time right now. Not what about, but that he was hurting from something. He’d found the young man more often than not out by the old cemetery, and wondered which one of the people there he was pouring his heart out to.

Drew moved like a man on a mission through the building they were in. A report of a ghost, several of them actually, had brought them out in full force. And Drew was determined to find every last one of them before the building was set for demolition in a few days. The man was hard working and extremely lonely.

Ray moved to the next room to check on Nick and found him staring at the floor where the first sighting had been recorded. It had turned out to be a fake sighting, yet there was enough going on that his friend had called him in. The blood on the floor had startled more than a few of the cops that had been here before.

They’d already determined that it was goat’s blood and that the movements around this room were done with wires and mirrors. But Nick stared at the spot where the blood was like it was going to give it all to him.

“She said that we should go deeper.” Ray looked around the room and didn’t see anyone but him and Nick. “I can hear her. She said that we need to go deeper. I was just thinking that Steele should talk to her. He has the most luck with shy people.”

“Okay.” Ray yelled for Steele but didn’t leave Nick. There were times, and he was sure this was one of them, that Nick would sink into a specter enough that he’d lose himself for a week or so. He told Steele what was going on when he came into the room with them.

Steele knelt down to the floor and put his hand over the stain. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but both he and Nick waited. If there was a reason to go deeper, whatever that meant to this woman, then Steele would find it. When he stood up, he looked grim.

“There are bodies in there. Seven that I can feel.” Ray started to go for the police when Steele stopped him. “They aren’t ready yet.”

“Aren’t ready? Aren’t ready for what? Or do I want to know?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure what you mean, Steele. I don’t want to know, or you don’t know. Not ready to be taken from this place? Do they know it’s set to be torn down?”

“They do.” He looked at Nick. “The woman you’ve been talking to, she said she has something to show you. She seems to think that you can find it, but she wants me to help you talk to her. Is that all right?”

Nick nodded, and Steele touched his hand to Nick’s. The contact had them both moaning, and Nick dropped to the floor. Ray started to help him up and give Steele a piece of his mind when Nick said he was fine. When he stood up, Ray took two steps back.

“Christ love a joke.” The woman was there. Her body, though it was transparent for the most part, was veiled over Nick’s. And when she moved so did Nick, or vice versa. When she smiled, Ray had a feeling she knew she was making him feel a little off, but she wanted to reassure him. As the Nick/Woman person moved out of the room, they all followed.

The stairs they were going up were not that safe. They’d been warned, several times as a matter of fact, to confine themselves to this floor and no other. That rule had been shot all to hell the moment Nick/Woman started up them. Ray was right behind him and the rest, with Steele on the end, were right behind them.

She led them to a room in the very back of the building. Ray tried to figure out just where they were, but all he could think was that they were right over the boiler room about fifty feet below. Nick, with the woman in tow, took them to the wall that faced the back and right out over the parking lot. She pointed to the wall and then stepped back.

“What now?” Ray thought the same thing and looked at Landon when he continued. “Do you break the window? Take down the wall? Is there something below this floor board?”

Steele moved to the wall, then walked into the closet that was just to the left of where they were. He came out, then back in twice before he seemed to come to a conclusion.

“It’s a fake wall.” Each of them entered the smallish room only to come out and compare it as Steele had done. It wasn’t that big of a difference from the wall in the closet, about two feet, but enough, he supposed, to do something terrible with. As they pulled out their pick-axes and sledge hammers, Ray stepped back. He was no longer able to help with this part due to a bad ticker.

The wall came down quickly under their combined strength. When Nick collapsed, no one moved to touch him. The woman had left him. Ray supposed that she went back to the other floor, but looked around all the same. When the dust cleared up, Nick stood up and walked to the wall. His cursing had them all going to look.

There were two bodies that they could see, and they were both wrapped in clear plastic. Neither of them appeared to have been there long, but with a body in a dark place, it was hard to tell. Alongside of them was a trunk about the size of a bread box. No one moved to get the police involved as they pulled the trunk free. Mitch reached down and opened it.

Ray had no idea what he had expected. Money was his first thought, but then he dismissed that. Money was not something that was left with the dead. He thought of clothing, like the trunk had been used as a sort of suitcase to hide some evidence or something. But that wasn’t what it was either. Ray felt his belly turn up when it finally occurred to him what it was.

“Christ, are those what I think they are?” No one touched the stuff with their bare fingers but did move a few with a pen. There were hundreds of plastic Baggies filled with hair. And each of them had a name and a date on them. “Mother cock sucker, this is someone’s souvenirs, isn’t it?”

“It looks like it.” Hugh looked at the hole in the wall then back at the trunk before continuing. “Do you suppose those are the killers or the last victims?”

“They’re the killers.” Everyone looked at Nick. “She told me. Her and the others, they’re the last of them, and they…they took over a body to come in and take care of the killers like this. They didn’t want to be brought out until this was found. She said that there are too many woman and men here that need to be taken home. She wants their families to know where they are.”

Ray had seen this before. A box of jewelry had been found and the victims, most of them anyway, had wanted their things to be buried because their bodies were long gone. Ray hoped that this would bring peace to the people represented in this box, and to the families that had lost them. But there were so many, he had a feeling that some of them, a great deal of them, would find little to no peace in this.

The police were called in and they were as pissed as he’d thought they’d be when he led them up to the next floor. But as soon as they saw what they’d uncovered, they changed their tunes pretty fast. After a bit, Ray called the Feds. His buddies down at the house would be better equipped at taking care of this than these men appeared to be able to. Within the hour, the police had been asked to stand down, and Ray and his men were taken to a remote place to be spoken to.

Hugh was taken in first, and Ray had a moment of pure pleasure when he heard the man shouting. That man could make a grown soldier sob for his mommy. Hugh was a good man, kindhearted and fun, but he hated what he called suits…and stupid suits more. He was in and out in less than five minutes.

Landon was next, a more laid back man than anyone he’d ever met. He rarely got his feathers ruffled, never argued much, and dated women like it was his mission in life to see them all. Landon could also be unforgiving, hard, and could argue you until you simply gave up rather than continue on with it. He was a wonder all himself. His stay in the little room was slightly longer than Hugh’s.

Steele went in next. Ray worried about the boy. He wasn’t enjoying his new mate like he thought he should, and wondered if the two of them would be able to come to some sort of understanding. He’d heard them arguing the other morning and had been surprised at the way Steele had treated her, much like he had figured his own parents had treated him. He’d not spoken to him about it as yet, but would if this kept up. The girl deserved more than this. Steele was in the room for a little over an hour and came out smiling. The boy had learned to play people well. Not as well as his father had, but he was young yet.

He was nothing like the bastard other than his ability to read people. While Dr. Bennett had been robust and slightly overweight, his son was tall, handsome, and reserved. Bennett senior had ruled with an iron fist and a hard will. Steele would let a person try things their own way for a while before he would
suggest
how to do it differently. And his way was one-hundred percent right every time. But Steele, like his father before him, had a secret. And Ray, even after all these years, had never figured it out.

As soon as Mitch was finished with his turn, Ray was asked to come in. As they readied their questions for him, he thought of the young man who had just left. Mitch Riley was a great deal like Steele’s mate. His parents had left him at a neighbor’s house to go to the store, and after three days the neighbors had finally called the police to have them come and get him. Mitch spent the first fifteen years of his life being assigned to one bad household after the next until, at the age of sixteen, he ran off. It was another two years before Ray found him living in a large freezer box with nothing more than a blanket and a few cans of food. He’d also been beaten to shit.

Mitch rarely talked to the rest of them and less to him. But he did talk for long whiles with the senior Miss Aster. And it seemed that he’d had a long talk with Kari yesterday as well. He wondered if either of them was aware of how much they needed each other.

“When you were told not to go to that floor, did you go out of spite or did someone tell you to go?” He looked at Thomas Stile and smiled. “I have to ask you. The police are claiming that you put that shit up there to make them look bad.”

“I think they did that all on their own.” Both men with Thomas laughed. “We were led up there, or Nick was. She said she didn’t want to leave just yet and we helped her along.”

Ray had quit the force right after Steele had been left alone. He’d had him in his own home for a time, but Steele had kept going back to the big house, and Ray asked if he could stay there too. Ray had often wondered if his sister was pulling him back, but when he’d finally asked him, Steele said his sister was gone, that he’d not seen her since she’d told him she was dead.

As their group grew, Steele had quietly moved them all in with them and never said a word about it. They had their fights, a great many of them, but after a time each of them had settled in and became a part of his group…his group of “Dreamers,” he called them.

“Nope. We were ready to leave when she came to us.” Thomas nodded. He wasn’t a Dreamer, of course, but he believed them when they talked about their job. Ray thought it was because they’d helped them so much over the years. “This woman, she said the guys in the wall were the killers. Do you think that’s possible?”

Thomas nodded but didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. His look told him a great deal more than any words would. When the file slid across the desk at him, he noticed at first how thick it was. Then he saw what was printed on the front. “Unsolved” was a police officer’s, as well as a Federal agent’s, worst kind of file.

“How many?” He told him there were two hundred and fifty-six in there. “Are the trophies a match to any of them?”

“We were hoping you and your men could help us.” Ray nodded and reached for the file. “The trunk had over five hundred baggies in it. Much more than we have here.”

“They moved around.” Thomas nodded. “Do you think we can have some dinner sent in? Some beers even? My men have been on duty for a long time before this, and only came here because the building was being torn down.”

“I can get you that. I’ll have them set you up a place now.” Thomas stood up. “If you can match even half those names to the trunk mysteries, I’ll be indebted to you.”

“We’ll try our best.” Thomas led him down a long hall and when the door was opened, Ray noticed that all the men were there. He told them what they were going to do, and each of them took a stack of the names as well as a handful of the little Baggies. It was going to be a long night.

~~~

Steele wanted to throw his phone across the room but only just managed to end the call and set it down on the table he’d been at for over five hours. The inconsiderableness of Kari was driving him insane. He finally called the house and asked Izzy where the hell Kari was.

“First off, you’ll not talk to me like I’m some woman you met in a pool house. I’m your housekeeper, not your barking post. And Miss Kari has been job hunting all day. I’ve only just heard her come into the house.” He asked her if she’d left the phone he’d gotten her. “None came for her that I saw. And I get the post when it arrives. If it came, then I never saw it.”

Steele had been leaving her messages all evening and none of them were very nice. “Could you see if it’s there now? I was kind of ticked off at her because I thought she was ignoring me. I’d really hate for her to hear them now.” Izzy huffed at him, but she could hear her moving through the house. Then he heard Kari speaking, and every part of his body got hard and needy.

“She said to tell you to go to hell. I’d have thought of someplace where you cannot be found, but there you have it. She’s listening to the messages now.” He closed his eyes and tried to think how he could get himself out of this. He’d been an asshole again. Maybe someday he’d learn to think first and talk later when it came to Kari. Not that it mattered much. In a few weeks, less if he could do it, she’d be out of his life and he’d be moving on with his. Hopefully.