“Detective Olivera!” I said a little too loudly.
“Mrs. Whitefeather,” she replied. “What happened to your neck?”
I wrapped the infinity scarf around my throat twice and pulled it up a little to cover all of the exposed skin between my chin and my collarbone. “It’s a rash,” I said. “I’m gluten intolerant and I must’ve been served something with gluten in it this morning at the restaurant we ate at for breakfast.”
She cocked her head and squinted at me. “Oh, yeah? I’m gluten intolerant too. I’d hate to go to that same restaurant. Where’d you eat?”
My mind went blank. I couldn’t think of a single restaurant. Not one. “Um . . . ,” I said, fumbling for the name of literally any restaurant. “I . . . it was . . . McDonald’s.”
She cocked one eyebrow. “You’re gluten intolerant and you ate at McDonald’s?”
“I figured the egg and hash brown special would be safe,” I said, fiddling nervously with the scarf.
Her eyebrow remained cocked. “I’ve never seen anybody break out in a rash quite like that,” she said. “Mind if I take a look?”
“Yes, actually,” I said, tucking the scarf more snuggly into the top of my jacket. “Anyway, my rash isn’t important. What is important is that we need to talk to you about the break-in at the museum.”
Olivera studied me suspiciously. “I’m listening.”
“We want your permission to take a look at the crime scene,” Heath said from over my shoulder.
“Why?” she asked, her eyes narrowing even more at him.
“Because what happened shouldn’t have happened,” he said simply. “There’s no way that demon could’ve overcome the electromagnetic field created by all the magnets in that room. Something else was at play there, and if M.J. and I can just take a look at the scene, maybe there’ll be something there that will offer up a clue about the killer’s identity.”
“My CSI team has been all over that room, Mr. Whitefeather. If there was a physical clue there, we would’ve found it.”
“So what’s the harm in having us take a look?” I asked.
She crossed her arms. “I’m not sure yet. But your names keep getting connected to trouble, which is why I’m here.”
A note of alarm went off in my mind. And I knew some other terrible thing had happened, even as Detective Olivera continued. “You mentioned a former detective in San Francisco who could vouch for you. It took me almost two hours, but I finally found a murder case connected to an Inspector MacDonald where the victims were stabbed and the murder weapon—an antique dagger—mysteriously went missing from the evidence room.”
Olivera pulled out a file from the inside of her coat. From that she extracted a photo of the dagger. Of course it was Oruç’s. “The murder weapon was photographed before it came up missing,” she said. “Look familiar, Mr. and Mrs. Whitefeather?”
“Okay,” I said, with a shrug. “So what? Inspector MacDonald entrusted us with the dagger. Yes, that was wrong, but people still went to jail. Justice was still served.”
“I’ll say,” she said. “I talked to an inspector this morning about your old pal. He came up in a police report from last night, as a matter of fact.”
A cold shiver vibrated along my shoulder blades. “What happened?” Heath asked urgently.
“Ayden MacDonald was found in the airport parking garage beaten to a pulp. He’s sustained severe injuries.”
I gasped and put a hand over my mouth. My knees buckled slightly and Heath caught me, steadying me as I absorbed the news. “No!” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“In his pocket,” Olivera continued as if I hadn’t reacted at all, “was a one-way ticket to Logan. I’m assuming he was coming here to meet with you about the missing dagger?”
“He was,” Heath said. “We were expecting him around three this afternoon.”
I took an unsteady breath and tried to hold back the tears that were flowing down my cheeks. Even though I hadn’t had a lot of contact with Ayden since our time in San Francisco, I still considered him a dear friend.
“Yeah,” she said. “I figured.”
My mind was spinning. I couldn’t imagine Ayden dropping his guard enough to let somebody sneak up on him and pummel him nearly to death. He was too much of a seasoned investigator for that. “Do the police have any leads?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said. “His wallet and watch were stolen, so the police initially thought he was mugged. That is, until I told the inspector all about the two of you and the murder at the museum. Said you two could be involved in MacDonald’s attack, and I’m here to inform you that he’s pretty anxious to talk to you.”
I wanted to yell at Olivera. She was being mean on purpose. “Of course we didn’t have anything to do with Ayden’s attack!” I snapped. “We were with you until close to midnight last night, remember? There wouldn’t have been time to catch a plane, fly to California, beat up Ayden, then get back here in time for this stimulating discussion!”
“How much money did you make last year, Mrs. Whitefeather?” she asked nonchalantly.
I shook my head. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Humor me,” she said. “What’d you pull down last year?”
It was my turn to cross my arms. “Well, let’s see, I made a sum total of none of your damn business, Detective. What’d you make last year?”
She smirked. “Funny. I made a whole lot less than that last year, which is my point. You two had to pull down some serious cash for this movie, and that cash can be spent in a lot of ways. If you two did steal back the dagger, and this former inspector got wind of it and wanted to come investigate, you’ve certainly got the means to hire someone out in San Francisco and shut MacDonald down before he even gets on the plane.”
I turned to look at Heath. “Can you believe this bullshit?”
“Em,” he said softly, and laid a hand on my shoulder.
I took a deep breath. He was right. She was pushing my buttons on purpose, trying to see how I’d react. Reining in my temper, I turned back to her. “Detective, we didn’t hire anyone to hurt Ayden. He’s our friend. A close friend actually. Which means one of two things is at play here: One, he was actually mugged, or two, whoever stole the dagger has an accomplice and they’re the ones who made sure that Ayden didn’t get on the plane. Which means this thing is a whole lot more complicated than we originally thought.”
“What does that mean?” she asked me.
“It means that stealing the dagger and unleashing the spooks and demons was only part of the plan. The other part seems to be causing those of us trying to keep it under wraps harm.”
Olivera tapped her finger on the side of her arm. I knew she believed me, but I also knew she didn’t want to. “Okay, Mrs. Whitefeather, who do you think took the dagger and murdered Phil Sullivan?”
I sighed. “I don’t have any suspects in mind, but if you’ll just let us look at the crime scene, maybe there’ll be something there that will stand out to us. And it’ll help us help you.”
“All right,” she said easily, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
It was short-lived.
“I’ll take you to the crime scene, but only after you tell me why it looks like someone”—she paused long enough to look meaningfully at Heath—“choked you hard enough to cover your neck in bruises.”
My hand reflexively went to my throat to make sure the scarf was still in place. With a sigh, I realized she was waiting for exactly that reaction. “It’s not what you think,” I said.
“It never is,” she said drily.
“The problem with the truth, Detective, is that you won’t like or believe it. But the truth is that I was attacked here just half an hour ago. My husband was the one who saved my life.”
Her arms fell away from their crossed position. “Did you call nine-one-one?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as far as I know, your station doesn’t have a demon investigation unit.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Are you really going to make jokes with me right now, Mrs. Whitefeather? Do you get that I could haul your husband down to the station on suspicion of domestic abuse? The bruises alone are enough to send him to a holding cell.”
I took a step toward her. “Have you watched our movie, Detective Olivera? Seen any of the footage we took in Scotland?”
“Nope.”
“Then you’re right. Of course you don’t know that I’m not joking. I’m not joking about any of this. The demon spook we encountered in Scotland is back. She attacked me in my bathroom as I stepped out of the shower. She did this,” I said, pulling down the scarf, “and a couple of years ago, she nearly drowned Heath and put him in the hospital. She’s a killer, and she’s loose, and this dagger is at the center of everything.”
Olivera squinted at me. I held her gaze. “You guys ever see a shrink or spend time in a mental institution?”
I sighed heavily. “We’re not crazy. You need to watch the movie.”
“What’s that going to prove?” she said. “Other than Hollywood is very good at special effects?”
I turned back to Heath and threw my hands up in the air. How do you reason with someone so skeptical?
“We could take her to Mrs. Ashworth’s place,” he said, and I brightened.
Lucy Ashworth was an elderly woman who owned several old apartment buildings all around Boston. Heath and I had been working to clear a couple of spooks from her properties in the weeks leading up to our newfound wealth and success. We’d easily taken care of all of the spooks that’d been causing disturbances in her apartment buildings, save one, and that spook had refused to leave. No amount of cajoling or coaxing could get Mrs. Grady—who’d died in 1999—out of the Ashworth Commons Apartments.
As spooks went, Mrs. Grady wasn’t especially dangerous—just mean. Or, better yet, she was temperamental . . . emphasis on mental. She liked to shove people and throw things. She also liked to shriek in your ear at two a.m., and I can tell you from personal experience that spook was loud.
She began haunting the Commons shortly after she tripped down the stairs of the apartment building and snapped her neck. Initially, she stuck to her former apartment, sending the new tenant screaming in terror on his first night there. Five other tenants had come and gone since then, and Mrs. Ashworth had given up trying to rent out Apartment 4B in 2000. But then, about a decade later, Mrs. Grady figured out that she could travel easily through walls. She started checking out other apartments in the building, found the extra room appealing, and began to terrorize all the other tenants until they left too. One by one every renter moved out until the place was abandoned. Enough one-star reviews on the Internet—all with the notation that the place was haunted—had halted any prospective tenants from even applying.
In desperation, Mrs. Ashworth had called us to tell us about the Commons, but she was also wary of our actual abilities. She tasked us with helping to rid two other apartments she owned of their spectral tenants (far tamer than Mrs. Grady), and based on that test she’d let us have a crack at the Commons.
We’d passed her test with flying colors, of course, and she’d given us a key to the building. We entered that place on the first day, all confidence and bravado. Within a few hours, however, we’d realized this spook was playing for keeps.
Mrs. Grady refused to cross over, and we’d no sooner chased her off the first floor than she’d moved up to the second. Then the third, and finally the fourth. We thought we had her cornered then, but she outsmarted us by heading back down to the first. The Commons had twenty-four apartments. They were large and spacious, with plenty of closet space. Lots of places for a spook to hide. The task quickly proved to be way bigger than we’d ever anticipated.
So, we’d offered Mrs. Ashworth the only solution we could, which was a proposal to haul in several hundred pounds of magnetic spikes and drill them into the walls and floors of every single apartment and each of the central hallways. Our estimate had been nearly ten thousand dollars, and it was no surprise to us when Mrs. Ashworth balked. She’d told us that she’d have to think on it, but it’d been over a month, and she hadn’t gotten back to us, and no new tenants had moved in, so it was a pretty good assumption that Mrs. Grady still had free run of the Commons.
So I considered Heath’s idea. And I liked it. The worst Mrs. Grady had ever physically done to one of us was to shove Heath into a wall, and me to the floor. She was a pushy bitch, that Mrs. Grady.
Meanly, I thought Olivera could do with a little shoving. I’d probably enjoy watching it. “Yeah,” I said with a wide smile. “Seeing is believing, Detective. You don’t believe we’re actually dealing with the supernatural? Well, how’d you like to meet a spook up close and personal?”
Her brow furrowed and I saw her move her hand subtly to the gun in her shoulder harness. “What’s the deal here?” she asked.
“We know of an apartment building where there’s a very active ghost,” Heath said. “She’s basically harmless, but she doesn’t like visitors. We’re thinking that within a few minutes of making her acquaintance, you’ll be convinced we’re not making this stuff up.”
“That sounds a lot like a setup,” she said.
“Not at all,” I said sweetly, turning away for a moment to scribble Mrs. Ashworth’s name and number and the apartment building’s name and address onto a piece of paper. Handing it to Olivera, I said, “Make a few calls, Detective. This is the name of the owner of the apartment building, and that’s her phone number. Check her out. See that she’s legit and then meet us at the Commons in an hour.”
With that, I motioned to Heath and we stepped out into the hallway, shut the door, and left Olivera to stand on the front mat, probably confused and frustrated.
• • •
Once we were in the car, Heath said, “What now?”
“I have to get ahold of Gilley,” I said, tapping my iPhone. “I’ve got to tell him about Ayden and warn him about the portal.”
“He’ll freak out about the portal,” Heath said.
“I know, and I was against telling him about it last night, but now, after the Grim Widow’s attack on me and Ayden’s attack at the airport, we can’t not tell him, sweetie. It’ll leave him too vulnerable.”
“He already knows about Oruç’s dagger,” Heath persisted. “Telling him more of the freak show is coming after him is only going to make him go all squirrelly on us, babe. He’ll pack a bag and get out of town faster than either of us can say ‘cupcake.’ And away from us he’ll really be vulnerable. Especially if Sy the Slayer was one of the spooks who came through the portal with Oruç.”
I sat with that for a second before placing the call to Gilley. Heath was actually right. Keeping Gilley in the dark to a degree wasn’t a bad idea, for him or for those of us who had to deal with him when he got freaked-out and tried to flee. “Okay,” I relented with a sigh. “I’ll make that part subtle. But I’m still telling him about Ayden.”
Heath made a motion for me to go for it and I placed the call. “Go for Gilley,” he said by way of answering his phone. He typically answered like that only when he was with someone he wanted to impress. I wondered where he was.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Hi, me,” he sang playfully. “Listen, I can’t talk right now, I’m with my dear friend Catherine-Cooper-Masters, and we’re just sitting down to some brunch, so, unless it’s an emergency . . .”
“It’s an emergency.”
There was a pause; then I heard Gilley’s muffled voice say, “Catherine, would you excuse me one teensy minute? M.J.’s having some sort of wardrobe crisis.” I didn’t hear her reply, but I did hear Gil say, “Girl, I know you know what I’m dealing with!”
I could guess that Cat had made a mention of her sister’s wardrobe choices too. Abby and I weren’t fashionistas, but we sure as hell weren’t slobs either. I could’ve gotten all snotty with Gil about it, but I decided to pick my battles.
“Okay, what’s up?” he said after a moment during which I assumed he’d removed himself from Cat’s presence. Wise, as I didn’t really want her brought into the drama we were currently dealing with.
“Olivera was just at our condo.”
“That hot detective lady?” Gil said. “What’d she want?”
“Well, honey, I’m going to need you to brace yourself. It turns out that Ayden didn’t make the red-eye last night because he’d been attacked in the parking garage at the airport. He’s hurt pretty bad, from what I understand.”
“Wait, what?” Gil gasped. “Start from the beginning.”
I did, and told him everything that Olivera had said to us about Ayden’s attack. “Ohmigod,” Gil said breathlessly. “Poor Ayden! Has anyone called the hospital?”
“Not yet,” I confessed. “I was hoping you could do that and maybe see if his next of kin has been notified?”
“I’m on it,” he said.
Fearing he was about to hang up on me, I called out to him. “Gil, wait!”
“What?”
“I . . . I just wanted to check and make sure you’re wearing your gear.”
“My gear?”
“Yeah, you know, your vest and boots and stuff.”
“I’m wearing khakis a white shirt and a blue blazer, M.J. What one wears in the springtime for brunch with Catherine-Cooper-Masters.”
With effort, I kept my voice light. “I’ll bet you look gorgeous.” (When in doubt, go with flattery.)
There was a pause during which I imagined Gil looking down at himself. “Well, duh,” he said.
“And I hate to ruin what must be a fantastic look for you, but maybe you could humor me and put a couple of magnets in your pockets.”
“Why?”
“Because Oruç’s dagger is still out there somewhere, and we did have that attack last night.”
“The blanket?”
“Yes.”
There was another pause. “You think Oruç’s demon could come after me?”
“Well,” I said quickly, “it’s not likely. I’m pretty sure he’s still focused on me and Heath, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to be extra, extra cautious, you know?”
Gilley sighed. “Fine. I’ll stop by the office after brunch and pick up some magnets. Is Doc there?”
I did a face palm and said, “Yes. And I forgot to call Teeko. Dammit!”
“Well, reach out to her after you hang up with me, and tell her I’m bringing the bird to her around two o’clock. I’ll call the hospital and get the deets on Ayden right now and text you what I find out.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said with relief. Sometimes Gilley really came through for me, and I had another little pang of sadness thinking that we wouldn’t get to see each other every day.
After clicking off with Gilley, I took a look around and saw that Heath had driven us to one of my favorite Thai restaurants. Realizing again how famished I was, I beamed a smile at him. “You’re the best husband slash father-to-be ever!”
He put a hand on my cheek and leaned in for a kiss. “I’ll always take care of you, babe.”
We grabbed our lunch to go and headed over to Mrs. Ashworth’s apartment building to see if Olivera would make an appearance. “How’re we getting in if she does show up?” I asked in between bites of my red curry dish with tofu. “Do we call Mrs. Ashworth?”
Heath smiled slyly. “I never gave her back the keys,” he said. Reaching over my legs, he opened up the glove box and pulled out a set of keys I recognized. One was to the side entrance; the other was a master to all the apartments.
“Thief.”
“She can have her keys back anytime she remembers to ask for them,” Heath said.
“Why’d you keep them, anyway?”
Heath leaned forward to look up at the four-story apartment building. “I guess it’s always bothered me that we couldn’t convince old Gertrude to move across to the other side. I think I was trying to figure out a way to get through to her.”
“Honey,” I said, “there’s no getting through to full-on crazy. Gertrude Grady was mentally ill in life, and she carries that in death too.”
“Only for as long as she remains stuck here, Em.”
“True,” I agreed. There’s no crazy in heaven, thank God. “But we’d still have to be able to get through to her enough to convince her to go to the light, and we tried and tried that and she wasn’t having any of it.”
“I kinda feel sad for her,” Heath said, his gaze trained on the fourth floor of the apartment building.
“Yeah, I know, you big softie. But if she won’t listen, then I don’t know what we can do to get her to leave.”
“Me neither,” Heath said. “Which is why I kept the keys. If I ever find a new technique or something that might work, I want to come back here and try again.”
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s not tell Olivera, if she makes it over here, that technically, we’ll be trespassing.”
“I won’t if you won’t,” Heath said with a wink. “She probably won’t show anyway. She’s too suspicious of us.”
“And yet, this address is in the middle of a nice part of town, with plenty of foot traffic. She’s got to know that if we wanted to cause her trouble, we sure wouldn’t do it here.”
“Let’s hope she knows that,” Heath said.
We ate silently for a bit and then my cell rang. “Gil,” I said, picking up the call. “What’d you find out?”
“Ayden just went into surgery,” he said, getting straight to the point. “He had a punctured lung and they had to wait to inflate it again before proceeding with the surgery to close the wound from his rib.”
I made a face. That sounded terrible. “So he’s hurt really bad, huh?”
“No, actually. Other than the punctured lung, a concussion, a busted ankle, and several cracked ribs, he’s not doing too bad.”
I made another face. “Yeah, other than a broken body, he’s in great shape.”
“M.J.,” Gil said. “He’s not dying. He’s expected to make a full recovery. It’ll just take time.”
“How’d you find all this out?” I asked.
“I pretended to be his brother. They ask you a few security questions to make sure you’re family, but lucky me, with my mad typing skills, I have access to all of Ayden’s personal information, like his birthday and his address and stuff. The nurse totally bought it. Anyway, the bummer is that, according to her, Ayden didn’t see his attacker. She said the cops were in with him for almost an hour, and he couldn’t give them a description of the guy because the first blow was a crack to the head. He says he blacked out and doesn’t remember getting all the other injuries.”
“That’s a small blessing, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, in a way, but without a description, the cops have nothing to go on.”
“When will we be able to talk to him?” I asked next.
“Hopefully tomorrow. I know you’re worried about him, but his nurse assured me that his surgery was pretty routine and that he should be able to take visitors and phone calls starting tomorrow.”
I relaxed a little. I’d been very worried about Ayden. “Okay, Gil. Keep me posted if you hear anything else.”
“Will do. Now call Teeko and let her know I’m bringing Doc over.”
After hanging up with Gil, I called Teeks, who was on her way out the door for an appointment, but luckily she was more than happy to take my bird for a few days and told me that she’d inform the doorman to let Gilley in with the bird when he came over.
After that, I relayed all the details to Heath, who said, “When are you gonna tell Gil and Teeks that we’re pregnant?”
I offered Heath an odd look. It always sounded weird to me when expectant fathers offered up the “We’re pregnant” thing. Heath wasn’t going to get fat, have swollen ankles and raging hormones, and pop a watermelon out of his vajajay.
“What?” he said as I continued to furrow my brow at him.
“Are we really pregnant, honey?”
Color tinged his cheeks. “I thought that’s what you were supposed to say.”
“I think it’s okay to say that your wife is pregnant, and you’re the supportive, understanding, ice-cream-with-a-side-of-pickles-fetching father-to-be.”
Heath saluted. “Got it.” Then he added, “For the record, it sounded weird coming out of my mouth.”
That made me laugh. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up . . .” And then I sat up in the seat. “Well, would you look at that?”
“What?”
I pointed across the street and down a row of cars. “Olivera just showed up.”
“Huh,” Heath said. “I didn’t think she’d come.”
I reached for the door handle. “She has enough curiosity and skepticism to be a pain in the ass,” I muttered. Like I said, I’ve had to convince a lot of detectives that paranormal doesn’t mean fake—it simply means “other than” or “beyond” normal.
We reached Olivera just as she stopped in front of the apartment building, hands on hips, assessing it from the sidewalk. “Good to see you, Detective,” Heath said cordially.
It could’ve been my imagination, but I swear she jumped a little at the sound of his voice. “I spoke to the owner,” she said. “She said it’d be okay if we checked out the place as long as you two accompany me, which I think is a little weird.”
I snuck a meaningful look at Heath and said, “This way, Detective.”
Leading the way inside, I headed straight for the stairs. The elevator was always iffy, and I’d long wondered if Gertrude had anything to do with that—I suspected she did.
We hoofed it up to the fourth floor, and I paused on the landing, waiting to feel anything out of the ordinary with my intuitive feelers. A moment later Heath placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “I doubt we’re gonna pick up anything with all this armor.”
Looking down at myself, I realized how right he was. There was no way anything was coming out of the woodwork while we were wearing so much protection. “What do we do?” I asked him. “I mean, the point of all this is to show the detective that we’re for real, right? But if we take off our protective gear, then we’ll be vulnerable.”
“Only to Gertrude,” he said with a shrug. “And she’s a crazy bitch, but she’s not gong to kill anyone.”
He began to shrug out of his jacket and peel off his boots, and I started to follow suit when he said, “Why don’t you keep your stuff on. I can escort the detective around the apartments. You can stay here where I know the two of you are safe from harm.”
I chuckled. “Are you going to be this protective my entire pregnancy?”
Heath looked me in the eyes and said, “Count on it.”
“Did I hear you right?” Olivera suddenly asked. “You’re pregnant, Mrs. Whitefeather?”
I turned to her and noticed she was studying me again with those same calculating eyes that hadn’t let up their suspicion for even a minute since we’d met. “I am,” I said. “We just found out this morning.”
She focused her next comment on Heath. “I used to work a beat, and the worst domestic abuse cases were always when the wife or girlfriend was pregnant. There’s something about a pregnancy that seems to put men on edge.”
She’d said that so casually, you might’ve thought she was merely making small talk, but given the bruises on my neck and where she clearly suspected they’d come from, it was very hard not to spit something mean at her in reply. I did my best to keep my voice level when I said, “I understand your concern, and I know your heart is in the right place, but Heath didn’t hurt me, Detective. He’d never hurt me, but you’re right about the bruising on my neck. I was attacked by something that would blow your mind if you knew how very real it was. We’ll save those details for later. Right now, I’d like you to meet Gertrude. She seems most unhappy to meet you.”
With a little smile, I pointed down the hall, and there, silhouetted against the light filtering in from a dirty window at the end of the hall, was an angry-looking woman in a long silk robe, her arms crossed over her chest and a deep scowl on her features.
Oh, and she was also floating two feet above the floor.
“What . . . the . . . fuck?” Olivera gasped when she spotted Gerty. Then she took several steps forward and Heath and I both reached out to grab her before she could get too close to the spook. Gerty’s temper was nothing to trifle with.
“Easy there, Detective,” Heath said. “Whenever we see her, we give her plenty of breathing room.”
Olivera blinked several times and squinted toward the ghost. “It’s a trick,” she said at last, folding her arms over her own chest in a perfect imitation of Mrs. Grady and making a point to look at Heath’s cautionary hold on her shoulder.
I sighed. Why were some people so stubborn? Glancing at Heath, I saw a flash of anger sweep across his features. He’d had enough of the skepticism too. Removing his hand and making a sweeping motion toward the corridor ahead, he said, “After you, then.”
I felt a jolt of alarm but saw that Heath began to walk right behind Olivera, just in case things got tricky, and I relaxed a fraction. Still, I was pretty tense.
And I will give Olivera some credit; she didn’t falter on the way to Gertrude’s ghost. I think she must’ve been pretty convinced we were big fat fibbers. Even when the temperature dropped by a good twenty degrees in the span of about three seconds, Olivera kept on striding down that hallway. I wrapped my arms around myself; there’s nothing that cuts through you like a ghost chill.
When Olivera was about ten feet from Gertrude, things got interesting, and by “interesting” I mean things went the freak-show way they normally do around me and my crew. It began with a wicked smile from Gertrude, and then she disappeared. “Here it comes,” I whispered, but I never could’ve predicted what happened next.
Olivera paused for half a second, then darted forward and looked from side to side. She stood smack-dab between Apartment 4B on one side and 4E on the other. Both doors suddenly opened and a scream so earsplittingly loud that even I covered my ears erupted from both doorways.
Olivera ducked and drew her gun. Heath closed the distance between them and was just about to reach out to the detective when she was jerked in a half circle and then pulled right into 4E by an unseen force.
She screamed—which I couldn’t blame her one bit for—and as Heath reacted by changing direction toward her, the door to 4E abruptly slammed shut.
“Oh, shit!” I swore, launching myself down the hallway. I didn’t really think Gerty would hurt Olivera beyond pushing her around a little, but I wasn’t certain about that. She’d looked pretty mad when Olivera had approached. From beyond the door where Olivera had disappeared, there was another sharp cry, followed by gunshots.
What I did next was instinctual; I dived for the floor. A moment later I felt Heath’s weight hovering over mine protectively. More shots erupted, followed by shouts from Olivera that sounded an awful lot like “Boston PD! Drop your weapon!”
I think Heath and I had the same thought at the same moment. He ducked his chin to look at me, and we both mouthed, Weapon?
Something slammed against the interior wall right next to us and Olivera’s gun measured out several more shots. I wondered when she would run out of bullets.
Heath continued to cover me as the pop-pop-pop from Olivera’s gun went on a few more times. Then all was deathly still.
No gunfire, no screaming, no slamming around of heavy objects . . . nothing at all. It was freaking creepy.
Heath slowly got off me, but as I tried to get up, he pushed me back to the floor. “Stay down!” he whispered. I glared at him but heeded the command. He moved to the door of 4E and put his ear to it. We locked eyes and he shook his head slightly. He couldn’t hear anything. I watched as he tried the handle. It didn’t move. Stepping back from the door, Heath raised a leg to kick it in when all of a sudden it opened on its own, and what stood there . . .
“Heeeeeath!” I screamed, popping up to my feet in an instant. My husband was already backing away from a spook I knew he’d never seen before, the one I’d prayed we wouldn’t encounter. Hatchet Jack stood in the doorway with the evilest, most sadistic grin on his face you’d ever not want to see. He was a bony figure, all sharp lines and angles, with wisps of black greasy hair on a somewhat bald head. His nose was too large for his ugly face, and his eyes were recessed and sinister, but his worst feature by far was his black, rotting teeth, exposed by thin lips pulled back in that menacing smile. Clutched high in one skeletal hand was a hatchet, it’s edge razor-sharp and dripping with blood.
I was light-headed even looking at it. Had he killed Olivera?
Heath took a step back from the nightmare spook. I couldn’t seem to get my legs to move fast enough. My husband wasn’t wearing any kind of protection. No magnets, no spikes, nothing. He was totally exposed. And as I looked at Hatchet Jack, I realized that in the many years since we’d encountered each other, he’d gained some power. It was in his stance, the way he gleefully approached Heath holding his weapon. I had little doubt the spook had gained the ability to kill, and there was that matter of the dripping blood from the blade he wielded.
“Heath!” I cried again. The distance between us was too far; Hatchet Jack was much closer to him than I was.
I prayed for a miracle, but what I got was something on the opposite end of the spectrum. Detective Olivera appeared in the doorway behind Jack, her gun raised and a determined yet frightened look on her face. “Drop your weapon!” she shouted at the spook.
Hatchet Jack paused long enough to turn his head around and stare at her, but the way he twisted his head—one hundred and eighty degrees—was like something right out of The Exorcist.
Olivera’s already pale face whitened even more, and a second before her finger pulled the trigger I shouted, “No! Don’t shoot!”
Jack was, of course, unfazed by the bullet fired from her gun, but Heath’s head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. The scream that came out of my lungs was unlike anything I’d ever uttered—just a raw, agonized, primal cry as the man I loved was gunned down right in front of my eyes.