The Ghoul Next Door (17 page)

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit,” he said. “Walker’s been tame for years, and plenty of people have come here to ask him about that night. What’d you say to him?”

I shook my head, sticking to my story.

The guard glowered down at me, but he stepped aside and pointed to the door leading out. “Go!”

We didn’t wait for him to change his mind, dashing out as it buzzed. The angry guard escorted us all the way back to where we’d come in and we collected our personal items as quickly as we could.

I shook the whole time, and just wanted to get out of there. Around us we could hear bits of excited conversation from the other guards. “. . . almost bit Gary’s nose off!”

“. . . four guys to pull him off!”

“. . . Tased him three times and he
still
got up!”

Heath grabbed my hand after I’d gotten all my things and he held tight until we had walked all the way back to the car. Once we were inside, Heath started the motor and turned on the heat even though the temp inside the car wasn’t that far off from comfortable. I continued to shake for a bit, and he rubbed my back. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

“What the hell
was
that?” I said in reply.

“One of the creepiest spooks we’ve ever seen,” Heath said. “Which is saying a lot, considering what we’ve encountered in just the last nine months.”

I looked up at the prison nervously. It was as if I could feel the malice of that awful, evil energy wafting out of the walls; like some horrible odor it seeped through the cement blocks toward us. “We should go,” I said. “Now.”

Heath put the car into drive and backed up out of the space. We didn’t say another word until we were back on the freeway. “You okay?” Heath asked again, fiddling with the heat once more to turn it down.

“Yeah,” I said. But that was a lie. I’d never seen anything like the change that’d happened when Walker had lunged at me. He’d looked like a zombie, all teeth and nails directed at me. It’d been terrifying.

“I think we should believe Luke,” Heath said. “At least the part about a spook haunting him.”

I nodded but my thoughts were someplace else. I kept replaying the whole interview with Walker over and over in my mind. Something was bothering me about it—beyond just the freak show aspect of it. There’d been something in the switch between Walker and the spook possessing him that was niggling away at me, but what it was I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“Where’s your camera?” I asked suddenly.

“Uh . . . in the backseat. Why?”

I didn’t answer. Instead I unclipped the seat belt and turned around to look for the camera. Finding it on the passenger side of the car, I hauled it forward and replayed the video from the interview, praying that the spook’s presence hadn’t drained the battery or otherwise distorted the image, which often happened with video.

Luckily the video was clear, but the battery was low. I was only able to view the first minute or two before the camera died. Frustrated, I closed my eyes and thought about what I’d seen. There was something. . . .

“Did the camera record?” Heath asked.

The sound of his voice made me jump. “Yeah. But the battery died. We’ll have to wait to get home to view it.”

Heath and I drove in silence for the next half hour or so before he said, “Kendra said that she only found three murderers connected to that house.”

“Which means, in addition to Luke, there’re at least three other killers,” I said, knowing exactly where he was going with that comment.

“Do you think they’ve all been caught?”

“God, I hope so. I’d hate to think that only three out of six are behind bars.”

“That’s assuming that Luke really did murder Brook Astor.”

I sighed and turned to stare out the window. I’d really wanted him to be innocent, but if that spook had gotten inside his head, then of course he could’ve been responsible for Brook’s murder. Still, something about the tape was bugging me. Something that didn’t fit, and I was anxious to get home and download it to Gil’s computer so that I could figure out what it was.

It took us another hour, but eventually we made it back to the condo. We came through the door to find Gilley on the phone to his sweetheart. He all but ignored us when we came in.

“Hey, baby!” Doc sang from his perch by the window. “What you doin’?”

I went straight to him and lifted him off his perch. I needed some feathered love. Doc gave me a sweet kiss and made smoochy noises. When I held him close in a gentle hug, he said, “Love you,” in my ear, and that put a smile on my face.

“No, I miss you more,” Gil said. “I do! I miss the sound of your voice. I miss the brown of your eyes. I miss the feel of your lips. And I definitely miss your—”

“Gil!” I said quickly, knowing he was about to get inappropriate for mixed company.

“Sorry, Michel. Gotta go. The prude police have arrived and are probably waiting to put me to work.”

Right on cue Heath handed Gil the camera. Gil rolled his eyes but took the camera and got off the phone with Michel. “Did you break it?”

“No, the battery’s dead. And M.J. really wants to watch the video.”

Gil set down his phone and moved over to his laptop. Taking up a plug, he got the camera hooked up and juiced it enough to download the video. “Anything good on the tape?”

Heath smirked. “Good wouldn’t be how I’d describe it. More like useful. Probably.”

I gave Doc one more kiss on the beak and set him back on his perch. He whistled at me as I turned away, and thought that as soon as we resolved this case, I was gonna take a few days off from chasing ghosts and hang out with my bird for a spell.

Gilley got the video powered up and we all sat on the couch to watch it. I expected that watching the video would make the experience of meeting Walker less creepy. I was wrong. As we reviewed the video, right around the time when I began to talk to Walker about the spook, a dark shadow appeared against the wall directly behind him. What was even freakier was that neither Heath nor I remembered seeing a shadow in the room with Walker and the guard. But it was clearly there on film, lurking against the wall. And when Guy’s head hit the table, the shadow disappeared, and immediately following that, when Walker lifted his chin, we could all see the shift in him clear as day.

“That is freaking creepy!” Gil said, his eyes wide as he stared at the screen.

“It gets worse,” I said, studying the footage.

Even with my warning, Gil still managed to shriek when Walker leaped forward at the glass, his teeth bared and his hands trying to grab at me through the Plexiglas. The video jumped around a lot after that as the guard became Walker’s next victim and Heath grabbed me around the waist to take me out of there.

I paused the playback and turned to the two of them. “Did you two catch that little bit with the heart?”

“The one he drew of your heart with a knife going through it?” Gil asked, hugging my throw pillow.

“Yeah,” I said, my mind going back to it. There was something around that that was bugging me. “Gil, can you rewind to that part again?”

Gil made a distasteful sound but did as I asked. “What is it, Em?” Heath asked.

“Don’t know,” I said, focusing again on the footage. “But there’s something I’m missing and I’m waiting to figure it out.”

We watched in silence as Walker leaned forward to fog the glass, his black eyes watching me through the Plexiglas the whole time. “Yeah, he’s a freak,” Heath said when we reached the end of that sequence again.

“Gil?”

“Yeah?”

“Rewind a little more, would you? I want to start from the beginning again.”

Gil hit the rewind button and began to play the footage again. I watched Walker come in, stare at us with little interest, and pull out the chair to take his seat. “Ohmigod!” I gasped, pointing urgently to the screen. “There!”

“Where?” Gil said.

I leaned forward and hit the pause button; then I rewound it to the moment when Walker reached for the chair. “See that?” I asked. “He pulled the chair out with his right hand!”

“So?” Gil and Heath said together.

I pressed the
FORWARD
button and wound the footage forward to where Walker was drawing on the Plexiglas. “And now he’s left-handed. See? He’s drawing with his left index finger.”

“So?” Gil said again, but Heath seemed to know where I was going. “The spook is left-handed?”

I nodded. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

I rewound the tape again all the way to the beginning and pointed out every instance when Walker gestured or used his right hand as the dominant hand. “There!” I said, pointing when Walker scratched the stubble on his chin. “He’s using his right hand. I’m telling you, Guy Walker is right-handed.”

“And Luke is left-handed, right?” Heath said. I could tell he was putting it together too.

“Yep. But whoever killed Brook Astor was right-handed.”

“I’m lost,” Gil complained.

I got up to pace the room while I worked it out for myself. “If this spook really is getting inside the minds of these men and taking over in order to murder women, then why would Luke—who’s already left-handed—kill with his right hand when the spook is left-handed?”

“Makes no sense,” Gil said, but more to me than to the line of my argument.

“I’m leaning toward the theory that Luke didn’t murder Brook Astor. I think he may have been headed home after doing God-knows-what with that spook inside his mind, and he stumbled on Brook, who was either already dead or dying when Luke found her. He may have stopped to try to help her, and that’s how he got blood on his hands.”

“But why wasn’t he the one to call the police?” Gil asked. “I mean, he finds a bloody woman on the stairs a few doors down from his house and he doesn’t call nine-one-one?”

“Honey,” I said, “you saw him get right out of bed and head out the door that night and leave his cell on the nightstand. He had nothing to call them with.”

“There’s another possibility,” Heath said.

“What?” I asked.

“Luke could’ve been possessed by that thing and completely unaware of anything until he was finally released by the spook. And that could’ve been right at the moment when he found Brook’s body.”

My brow rose. “Yes,” I said, nodding. “That makes sense! That’s why Luke isn’t talking to anyone. He thinks he might’ve actually killed Brook while he was possessed by the spook!”

“It’d be good to get that confirmed by Luke himself,” Gilley said.

I sat back down in a chair across from the boys. “I know, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.”

“There’s one fly in the ointment still,” Heath said.

I smiled crookedly at him. “Only one?”

“Maybe a few more than one, but the one that’s still jumping out at me is, why is Luke’s name in that closet?”

“Lethal Luke,” Gil mused. “Wait till the cops get a load of that.”

“We can’t tell them anything about it,” I warned him. “We can’t tell
anyone
about it. If they get wind of that, Luke’s sunk.”

“They’re bound to find out, M.J.,” Gil pointed out. “I mean, I got a look at the police report that went alongside the coroner’s report, and the murder weapon is missing. The police can’t find it, and I’ll bet they’re tearing the city apart looking for it.”

That shocked me. “The murder weapon’s missing?”

Gil nodded. “And you know what else is weird? In the murders of both Bethany Sullivan and Amy Montgomery, the knife used to kill them was also never found.”

“Whoa,” I said. Then I had another thought. “Does anyone think it might’ve been the same weapon?”

“That’d be a little bit of a leap,” Heath said, but I could tell the idea had intrigued him.

“The more pressing thing is that at some point the police are gonna search out Luke’s former residence, looking for it. The minute they open up that closet door, Luke will be toast.”

“He’s already toast,” I grumbled. But then something else occurred to me. “Still, when they do open up that closet, they’ll find five other names. Names that could all cast doubt on Luke’s guilt.”

“Six other names,” Gil said, swiveling the screen of his computer around to show us the paused image of Walker talking to me with those sinister eyes. “Walker gave you a total of seven possible killers.”

“Wait . . . what?” I asked, getting out of the chair to go sit by Gilley again.

We listened to the tape again and Gil turned up the sound while he counted off the names on his fingers. “I’m Gut-you-Guy and Killer Ken. I’m Butcher Bill and Murdering Mike. I’m Deadly Dan, Mary, and Lethal Luke. But always, I’m Sly Sy the Slayer,” Guy Walker said, or rather the spook controlling Guy said.

“That last line,” I said. “‘But always, I’m Sly Sy the Slayer,’ could that actually be part of the name of our spook?”

Gil jotted some notes on a pad by his computer. “I’ll plug a few searches into the Interwebs and see what comes up for Sly Sy the Slayer. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“And what about these other names?” I asked. “Killer Ken, Butcher Bill, Murdering Mike. Who could they be?”

Gil added a few more notes. “We know this spook likes to kill women,” he said. “I’ll look into it.”

“And see if there’s any correlation between these names and maybe a left-handed killer, Gilley. Also, maybe we should look into Brook Astor’s history a little bit too.”

“Anything else you want to add to my list?” Gil said, and I could detect a note of irritation in his voice. I might’ve been pushing him a little hard with all this searching.

“You’re right, honey. Sorry. Listen, while you’re working to find out more about these other men, Heath and I can look into the house on Stoughton. It seems to be the key here. Something about that house connects all of these men.”

“I already traced the owner,” Gil said. “It’s a dead end.”

“Ray?”

“No. Ray seems to be just the manager. The house is in a trust called the LSRLA Trust. What that stands for or who the members of it are is the real mystery.”

“Is there any way to find that out?” I asked.

Gil shrugged. “Not one I can come up with online. You’ll need the help of an investigator with a little more know-how about these things.”