CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

SOMETHING TOLD PRESLEY he was speaking from experience, but before she could ask about it, he spoke again.

“What else can you tell me about Del Vecchio? Did your roommate talk about him much or did he ever hang out at your apartment while you were there?”

Presley shook her head. “Darla knew I wasn’t crazy about him, so she didn’t talk about him much. When they got together, they usually went out.”

Logan nodded, but didn’t say anything.

She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry I’m not much help.”

The corner of his mouth edged up in another smile. “You’re doing fine. Finish your pizza. I’m going to do some research.”

After the conversation they’d had, Presley didn’t have much of an appetite left, but she picked up the slice of pizza still sitting on her plate and took a bite as Logan walked over to the bookcase. He grabbed an old leather-bound book from the top shelf, then walked back over to sit down on the couch again. Curious, she glanced at the title and saw it was a book on ghosts. Definitely not the kind of book everyone had on the shelf.

Wondering what other kinds of books Logan had, she uncurled herself from the couch and walked over to check out the bookcase. There were a lot of other books on ghosts, but there were also ones on vampires, ghouls, zombies and werewolves, as well as quite a few other creatures she’d never heard of. If she’d seen the same collection of books a few days ago, she would probably have labeled Logan a whacko. But after the ghost encounter up in Delhi and her recent run-in with Del Vecchio, she was beginning to suspect there might be a lot more things that went bump in the night out there than she’d thought.

The idea made Presley shiver and she walked back over to the couch to sit beside Logan.

“What are you looking for in there?” she asked.

“I’m hoping I can find something that can explain why Del Vecchio’s ghost is able to do what he does.”

She sipped her soda and waited impatiently while he read some more before she prompted, “Any luck?”

He shook his head. “Not yet, but this isn’t an exact science. It might take me a while to find something this unusual. Like I was telling you last night, normally a ghost is tied to a location because it had some deep significance for him or her in life. It could be a childhood home, the scene of a murder, the place where a loved one lived. But this thing seems to be able to go wherever it wants.”

She frowned as she remembered the conversation from the diner the night before. “What about the ghost you and Mav mentioned, the one who followed the antique mirror around?”

“That ghost didn’t follow the mirror. It was tied to the mirror. It showed up any place the mirror went. Del Vecchio’s ghost is showing up in places he’s never even been. That shouldn’t be possible.”

Logan got up to get a second book, then sat back down to compare the information in it to the first one as he ate another slice of pizza. Presley sipped her drink again as she read over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry about snooping around your office the other day.”

She should probably be quiet and let him do his research, but she felt like talking.

Logan stopped reading to look at her. “It’s okay. Actually, I should be the one apologizing to you. I kind of overreacted a little.”

Her lips curved. A little? Yeah, she supposed he could say that. “I saw in the photos that you used to be a cop.”

Something flickered in his eyes at that and for a moment, Presley thought it might be pain, but he looked away before she could be sure. “Yeah, I was one of New York City’s finest.”

“Why did you quit?”

The muscle in his jaw flexed. “I didn’t. I was medically retired.”

Her brow furrowed. “Were you injured?”

He hesitated, the muscle in his jaw flexing again. “No. I made the mistake of telling the brass I saw some creature that wasn’t human. They thought I was nuts, so they put me out to pasture.”

Presley gave him a small smile. “You don’t seem nuts to me.”

Logan snorted and tossed what was left of the pizza crust back in the box. “Thanks. I’m having a good week.”

“What happened? Did you see a ghost?”

He picked up his beer and took a swallow. “Something like that.”

She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. While she was curious about what happened, she didn’t want to push him. She knew better than anyone what it was like to not want to talk about something. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me about it.”

He didn’t answer but instead stared down at the books opened on the table in front of him. After a long time, he spoke. “My partner Tom and I were chasing a suspect near the docks beside the East River one night. The guy was a pawnbroker who’d been fencing some stolen jewelry and we tracked him to the warehouse where he hid the stuff. He spotted us and took off, so we chased him along the docks and followed him into an old brick building. We didn’t know which way he went, so Tom and I split up. That was probably my first mistake.”

Logan paused and Presley could tell from the faraway look in his eyes he was reliving that night. The anguish was plain on his face.

“The place was a maze and I was moving down a long hallway when I heard a noise. I thought it was the suspect, so I headed in that direction and ended up following who I thought was our guy outside. The damn door locked behind me and I had to run all the way around the side of the building to find another way in. By the time I got inside, my partner was in deep shit.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Tom was standing over what was left of the guy we’d been chasing, reloading his weapon. I never saw him look so scared before. When I started to run over to him, he told me to stay where I was, that there was something else in the building with us. Not someone, but something. I was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about when this thing jumped down from the rafters. It was all wings and claws and teeth, and so damn fast Tom didn’t even have a chance to get off a shot at it before it knocked him to the floor. I aimed my weapon at the bastard, but I couldn’t shoot at it without hitting Tom. All I could do was stand there and watch as the thing tore him to pieces.” He swallowed hard. “It was over in seconds and when the thing was done with him, it took off into the rafters again like some big-ass bat. I managed to get off a few rounds at it, but I couldn’t tell if I hit the thing. It was fast and at the time I was more concerned for my partner.”

“Was he…?” Presley hesitated.

Logan shook his head. “No, he was alive. He was a mess after what that thing did to him, but he was still alive. I was shouting into my radio for an ambulance, trying to figure out the freaking address of the building when Tom grabbed my hand and told me to go get that thing before it got away. I tried to tell him there was no way in hell I was going to leave him, but he begged me to go after it. He didn’t want it doing to someone else what it had done to him.”

“Did you go after it?” she asked softly.

He nodded. “Yeah. To this day, I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I knew Tom wasn’t going to last another five minutes, but I left him anyway. I left my partner there to die by himself and went after that damn thing.”

“It’s what he wanted you to do,” Presley said gently. “He was a cop. He didn’t want that thing hurting anyone else.”

“I know. But that doesn’t make what I did any easier.”

The pain and regret on his face tugged at her heart and she had to resist the urge to reach out and take his hand. “What happened after that?”

“I made sure dispatch had Tom’s location, then I told them I was going after the attacker.” He picked up his bottle of beer but didn’t drink it. “I ran up to the second floor and went out the same way the creature had. The exit led to a fire escape, so I raced up it, figuring something that could fly like that thing would want to get as high as it could. I didn’t think I’d catch up to it. Not the way that thing could move. But when I got to the roof of the next building, the damn creature was still up there, like it knew I would follow and was waiting for me. I popped off another round at the thing and it took off across the roof. It leaped off the edge and sailed to the top of the next warehouse. I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time otherwise I probably wouldn’t have kept chasing it, but I threw myself across the open space and somehow made it to the far side. The creature was crouched there like it didn’t expect me to make it across. It looked shocked when I did.”

He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long drink before continuing. “I got off a clean shot at the creature while it was sitting there staring at me, so I knew I hit it, but it didn’t even flinch. It was like the bullet had bounced off. I fired a few more times before it ran across the roof and took off again, gliding to the next building. I followed it again, though I’m not sure what the hell I thought I was going to do when I caught up with it since shooting at it didn’t seem to do a damn thing. The next roof was a lot further away than I thought, though, and that time, I didn’t make it. I would have bought it for sure, if it hadn’t been for an exterior maintenance ladder that was attached to the wall of the other building. I slammed into it and was lucky enough to get my arms tangled up in the rungs. I hung there for a few seconds, trying to get my breath back, but it was enough time for the creature to get away. When I finally got to the rooftop, it was gone.”

“What did you do?”

“I dragged my ass back to where I’d left Tom. Backup arrived by then, along with an ambulance, but it was too late. Tom was gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Presley knew from her own experience with Darla how much losing his partner must have hurt. “What did you tell them happened to him?”

Logan gave her a wry smile. “I told them the worst possible thing. I told them the truth. That my partner and the crooked pawnbroker we’d been chasing had been killed by a bat-like creature with long, sharp claws that was impervious to bullets.”

“I take it that explanation didn’t sit well with your superiors?”

He snorted. “Understatement. Regardless of the fact that the crime scene forensics fit exactly with what I had told them, they weren’t ready to deal with something like that. I was off the scene and in the psych ward at Bellevue before they’d even taken Tom’s body away. I should have been the one to tell his wife what had happened to him, but instead I was stuck in a padded room. I didn’t even make it to the funeral because they kept me there for two effing weeks. The only way I got out was to agree to a medical discharge for acute post-traumatic stress. According to the official story, Tom and the pawnbroker had been killed by a gang of jewel thieves. Apparently, the trauma of seeing my partner butchered scrambled my egg, leaving me unable to remember any coherent details. It was all very tidy, except that no one believed it. Some of the guys on the force thought I’d screwed up and gotten Tom killed and that the brass was covering it up.”

She’d always thought cops had one another’s back. “Some of the guys? What about the others? What did they think happened?”

“The day after I got out of the hospital, I was sitting around my apartment trying to figure out if maybe the shrinks had been right and that I was crazy when I got a visit from a couple of old veteran cops I’d worked with. At first, I thought they were there to check up on me or call me out for getting my partner killed, but instead, they told me they’d seen a lot of strange stuff on the job, too. Stuff they couldn’t explain. They described creatures that shouldn’t exist, creatures I now know are very real. Ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, zombies, witches, goblins. They’d seen it all. The brass had hushed up every one of them, threatening them with the loss of their jobs and their pensions if they said anything. But they wanted me to know some of my fellow cops believed me.”

“Did what they told you help?”

He nodded. “Enough to get me through the next few days at least.”

“What got you through after that?”

“Revenge. I remembered what Tom had told me about not letting that creature get away and I went after it.”

“How did you find it?”

“I researched it first. Some of the friends I still had left on the force got me access to old police reports so I could see if there were any similarities between other murders down near the docks and what happened to Tom. Then I talked to the night workers, homeless people, and security guards in the area. After a few weeks, I finally pieced together enough information to track down where the creature liked to roam. At the same time, I surfed the web, hoping to find out what the thing was and how to go about killing it. That’s when I discovered there were other people out there like me, looking for things that shouldn’t exist.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and tipped it back, draining the last of his beer. “That’s how I met Mav. He was a hunter from down south who heard about a bat-like creature that tended to live and hunt near the water. He sent me some info on half a dozen attacks that occurred in Savannah a few years earlier. We compared notes and concluded it was the same creature. After doing some more research, we realized it had been moving up and down the east coast for more than a hundred years, killing homeless people and migrant dock workers.”

Presley blinked. “Wow.”

“Tell me about,” Logan muttered. “From what we could figure out, the only person who had ever put a hurting on this thing was a sailor back in the nineteen-twenties. The old whaler put a damn harpoon through it. Mav thought maybe wood could do some damage where bullets couldn’t. It was a long shot, but I figured it might work. I talked a cop friend of mine into playing the part of the bait. He dressed up as a homeless guy and set up house down by the docks. It took a few nights for the creature to show and when it finally did, I put a homemade oak harpoon right through its chest. The asshole wasn’t so tough after that.”

“Did you ever find out what it was?”

“I don’t know if there was ever a name for it, but I talked to a few other ghost hunters over the years and they thought it might have been descended from a harpy, maybe even one that had mated with a man.”

Presley was incredulous. “Harpies are real?”

“Probably not as mythology describes them, but they’re probably based on some real creature. I was unlucky enough to run into a modern-day version of it.”

“Did you ever show it to the authorities as proof that you weren’t crazy?”

He shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Even if they did believe what they were seeing, they couldn’t let something like that get out to the world. They would have put me so deep in the loony bin I’d never have gotten out.”

Presley had to agree Logan was probably right. There would be widespread panic if the public thought there were actual monsters lurking in the shadows. “Is that when you decided to go into the ghost hunting business full time?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I met up with Mav a little while after killing the creature to thank him for the info he’d given me. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was hunting monsters full time. The money’s lousy and I barely make it on the retirement pay the city gives me, but the people I help usually find some way to help me out in return.” He gestured to the room. “One of them gave me this place. Another came in to do the wiring and plumbing. I’m not flush by any means, but I get by.”

“Have you and Mav worked together the whole time?”

“Pretty much. He helped get me set up and taught me the tools of the trade, but then he took off for a while to do some work on his own. He’s been hanging around more lately, but that’s because there’s been a lot more work lately.”

“How about Robert and Brielle? When did they join Paranormal Investigations Unlimited?”

Logan’s mouth edged up. “Before Robert came on the scene, there wasn’t any Paranormal Investigations Unlimited. Mav and I got work by word of mouth. But then we helped Robert out and in return, he helped us get into the twenty-first century, as he likes to put it. He’s the one who talked us into setting up the Paranormal Investigations Unlimited deal. He even handled the twenty-four-hour emergency number for a while until Mav and I convinced him it would be easier if we cut out the middleman and took the calls ourselves.”

Presley smiled. “Robert means well, I’m sure.”

Logan chuckled. “Yeah, he does. I shouldn’t complain. We’ve made a lot more money since he came on board.”

“How about Brielle?”

“Brielle’s only been helping us out for a few months. I wasn’t crazy about the idea because the job can sometimes get dangerous, but she insisted if we wouldn’t take her money, then she was going to pay us back for helping her by working with us.”

“What did you and Mav do for Robert and Brielle to make them so loyal?”

Logan gave her a small smile. “Those would be two very long stories and I think I’ve talked enough for one night.” He picked up his empty beer bottle and gestured to her glass as he got to his feet. “I’m going to get a refill. You want another soda?”

Presley looked down and realized both the pizza and her drink were long gone. She glanced at her watch and was surprised to see it was almost midnight. She stifled a yawn as she stood up. Earlier, she hadn’t thought she’d be able to sleep, but now she realized she was kind of tired. Not surprising since all the adrenaline was out of her body.

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to go to bed.”

“There are clean towels in the bathroom and if you’re cold, there’s an extra blanket in the closet.” He paused, then added, “I’m going to stay up and keep doing some research, so let me know if you need anything.”

Presley thanked him and headed toward the bedroom. At the door, however, she stopped to look at him. “You know, Brielle was wrong about you, Logan. You aren’t a jerk.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, but simply gave him a smile before going into the bedroom. Maybe with Logan in the next room, she might actually be able to get some sleep.