Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (24 page)

“What else are we gonna do while we wait to see the nothing?”

He stared out the window for a long time then gave a one-
shouldered shrug. “I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich.”

“Oh, yeah?” I thought about the grilled cheese sandwiches my dad used to make for us on Sunday afternoons. The days when he was writing poetry in his office and I was doing projects for school on the side of his desk, we’d split a stack of them; just him and me,
him with his fried onions and hot sauce, me with my ketchup blob
for dipping. “With onions and stuff?”

“No, with fancy cheese.”

“Fancy like Swiss?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fancy like Fontina
or
Tallegio on hand-
sliced ciabatta bread.”

I whistled low. “I don’t even know what those are, so they must be fancy.”

“The fanciest,” he said, playing along even though his focus was
a hundred feet down the path where the police floodlight was still set up and a uniformed officer was patrolling, near the end of his
shift.

“You're a cheese connoisseur? That’s a weird thing to be.”

“Means a lot coming from you.”

“What’s the most expensive cheese?

“Pule.”

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s really a gross word.”

“Worse than MUCE?”

“No, MUCE is the worst. Sounds like mucus, and mice, and puce
— the ugliest color of all. It’s bad. It’s a bad acronym. What’s pule?”

“Donkey cheese made in the Balkans. But don’t get any ideas;
you can’t have any.”

I lowered my tea from my mouth. “Why the hell not?”

“Because some tennis pro bought it all.”

“Why would someone do that?”

Schenk shrugged. “Because he can.”

“Well, now I’m just gonna be wishing I could have Balkan donkey cheese. Why'd you tell me that?”

“You asked.”

I faux-scowled at him in the dark. He didn’t seem to mind. I
resolved to stay quiet on our stakeout from this point forward. That lasted all
of two minutes. “I like stake-outing. It’s fun times.
Tell me
something else about you.”

“I don’t like your frog hat. It’s god-awful.”

“Is that the opinion of a man who knits socks, or the opinion of a man who makes grilled sandwiches out of fountain cheese on Chewbacca bread?”

Schenk sputtered a laugh. “Fontina cheese on Ciabata.”

“That’s what I said.” I pointed at my goggle-eyed frog hat. “This hat is awesome. The only hat better than this one is the one thingy wears on Firefly.”

“Jayne Cobb?” He nodded. “That hat
is
epic.”

“Yeah. It is.” We shared a chummy smile. “You know, you
shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Longshanks.”

“I’m hard on myself?”

“Yeah. Like right now, you’re thinking you’re a freakazoid, what with the knitting and the fussy cheeses and the foot fetish.”

“I wasn’t thinking any of that.”

“You should be.” I sucked honey off my thumb. “But you should also know: wherever you are, someone is thinking lovely things about you. It’s not me, though; I think you’re a dillhole.” I showed him a teasing grin. He threw a napkin at me. “Tell me something else. Are you married, single?”

“Divorced.”

“Because you’re a pervert, right?”

“I’m not a pervert.”

“Well, that’s disappointing.” I added more honey to my tea, and sipped. “It’s more fun if you’re a pervert.”

“Sorry to let you down. I’m a gentleman.”

“I’ve got a real problem with gentlemen,” I said.

“I don’t doubt that you do.”

“Divorced just the once?”

Schenk stared into the distance without comment, then shifted in his seat, then used his thumb to drum on the steering wheel, an ersatz pencil to go
taptaptap
.

“Twice? Four times? Six?” I goggled at him, sitting up straighter. “You’ve got
six
ex-wives on a cop’s salary?”

“Whoa, whoa. Slow your roll, there, kid. Only three.”

I patted his arm. “Only three
so far
. You’ve gotta think positively,
constable. That’s what I’m learning. My partner, Elian, is teaching me the power of positive thinking. Like, I’m positive you’ll get married and divorced, and married and divorced again a whole bunch of times.”

“Thanks. That’s helpful.”

“Don't give up, Schenk. There are thousands more women out there waiting to screw you over.”

“Very reassuring,” he said, and gave a tired grunt. He opened the driver’s side door, and frigid air spilled in. “Let’s stretch our legs a bit.”

I left the old-timey picture and my tea in the van for safekeeping
and joined him. We strolled past the uniform, nodding at him,
checking
in and hearing that next to nothing was going on, except he was pretty sure he heard a coyote in the thicket up the hill. He was
hanging
around until the officer who was replacing him for the rest of the night showed up, and he seemed anxious to go. I didn’t think that
had
anything to do with ghosts. The Blue Sense reported that he was
bored,
despite the grisly nature of the scene, and cold to the bone. As
Officer in Charge on this case, Schenk relieved him, told him to go on up and
wait for his replacement in his car where it was out of the bracing
wind and he could turn on the heat.

I relaxed enough to let the Blue Sense swell, stirring like a lazy wind, rising to empathically search the area, specifically my co-
stroller.
Schenk scanned the water with trepidation that he hid well. He was expecting to find something; I knew he was looking for the flickers of light.

He didn’t slow as he approached the dump site, but his focus sharpened on it. I offered, “If Scarrow was right about a killer ghost, I suppose we’d see more overt signs, don’t you?”

“Unless it doesn’t want us.”

I shrugged, but he wasn’t looking at me so he missed it. “Why wouldn’t a killer ghost want us? Personally, I am highly stalkable. Everything wants me dead.”

“You haven’t ticked it off yet.”

“You say that like I’m going to.”

“I
have
met you.” He shot me a look and went back to inspecting the water.

“You’re thinking it wanted Britney Wyatt specifically? That
maybe she ticked a ghost off?”

“If it wanted to kill just everyone, or anyone, then it’s had plenty of opportunities. It hasn’t shown itself. It hasn’t grabbed anyone. We’ve had people here all day and night.”

“Before I use you as ghost bait, I should ask, are you armed?”

“You sic a ghost on me, I’ll shoot you in the face,” he said,
though the Blue Sense reported his teasing far better than his face did. I had to really look for the trace of a smile. The late hour, and the grim scene, had blunted what little humor he usually showed.

The crime scene investigators had set up a tent around the rocky
shore where the body had been found. It was still uncertain how
Britney’s body had appeared seven locks
up
the canal, against the
natural flow of the water from Lake Erie down to Lake Ontario. There were
no streetlights out here. To save on energy, only one of the
floodlights
had been left on, pointing to the cheerless, chilly spot where
Britney's corpse had come to rest.

We passed the tent and the floodlight and continued to a little peninsula made of piled dirt punctuated by chunks of cement, long grasses that had dried in place and then frozen in clumps, and a plague of buckthorn trees snarled with stubborn vines. I tried to venture out on the peninsula and Schenk hooked me back with an arm so he could go first.

I watched him search the frozen cattails along the water’s edge, and the Blue Sense offered up another tidbit of interest about the big guy; here, on the hunt for truth, Patrick Schenk was in his element. He was warily optimistic, determined, and totally in the zone. I did not share his comfort level. He didn’t seem slowed by the weather,
he wasn’t afraid of seeing what needed to be seen, and he wasn’t going to stop until he got to the bottom of this, like a goddamn
harbinger of justice embodied. The Job was Longshank’s life. Furthermore, this was not a new development in Schenk; a pool of integrity this deep did not form overnight. The Job always took priority when there was a question that needed answering. He wasn’t reluctant to be out here; where I’d rather be curled up in bed with a book and a bag of
Oreos, there was nowhere else he'd rather be. I understood
completely
how there were three former Mrs. Schenks, and couldn't find fault
with their decision, though I hope it didn’t doom the big guy to a lifetime married to the badge.

Picking my path carefully behind him, I struck out to the side,
catching a glimmer of something in the water, a flat circle of ice forming like a footprint and then breaking up. Hopeful of
paranormal activity, I took my phone out and removed my glove so I could set the phone to camera mode and take a hundred and ten pictures of the same flat
patch of water. Ghosts were always fascinating, but I was still
unconvinced that one was responsible for taking a human life. The ice did not reform. Disappointed, I put my phone away, stuffed my glove back on, and shuffled closer for a better look, while Schenk circled behind me and to the right at a fair distance, investigating the slush at the waterline.

I was about to comment to Schenk how there was a whole lot of nothing in this pond when the heel of my boot hit a slick patch of
frost on a wobbly rock. I felt the skid, my body tensing for the
inevitable
impact, my breath going out in an indelicate, “Whurp!”in
anticipation of the fall, and prayed I didn’t go into the water. I only got as far as
Dark Lady, don’t let me go in the
—before I landed with a splash.

I flailed over to hands and knees, the icy water coming almost up to my chest as I scrambled to brace my hands in the cold grime at
the bottom. It sloped away from the shore at an angle, slick and slippery, and sucked me deeper, away from the safety of dry, if
frozen, land. Under a thin layer of algae and mud, my knee dug into a hard lump. It was smooth and round, just like my kneecap, and just as bony. My lips pinched together and I let out a breathy
meep
as my imagination offered up all sorts of suggestions for what it might be.

In my panic, I stopped the lunatic flailing and went motionless; I cast aside science, experience, common sense, and professionalism, speaking in a high-pitched, dry-mouthed voice. “Patrick?”

“Yes, Marnie?” Schenk was already picking his way down the churned, slushy rock slide where I’d just tumbled.

“I fell.”

“I see that. Y’okay?”

I shook my head
no
. “Patrick?”

“Mmhmm?”

“I fell in the dead people water.”

“Is that what it is?” he asked carefully.

I nodded rapidly, hating that tears were filling my eyes, but
deeply and truly horrified. “It is. It’s dead people water.”

Schenk said, “Uh huh?” but I suspected it was not so much agreement as it was to keep me talking, distracted while he got closer.

“It’s cold, black, murky water full of corpses,” I said, panting with my need to escape, too afraid to move.

“I’m coming.” He picked his way past the wobbly rock I’d
dislodged, finding better footing.

“Six hundred sixty-three corpses,” I squeaked. “If that’s not dead people water, I don’t know what is. This is the worst tea
ever
.”

He made an unexpectedly soothing noise, shaking his head reassuringly at me to dispel the dread I was projecting. “They’re long gone, Marnie, just dry old bones, they can’t hurt you.”

“They’re not dry bones, they’re wet bones. They’re slimy-wet
bones. They’re
ickygrossslimywet
bones!” I tried to scold myself, to remind myself that I was a scientist, and a trained professional. I had FBI credentials. I’d battled zombies and ghouls and crazy witches bent on revenge. I staked a revenant once and got his dust up my nose.
This was just water, damn it. Water. With skeletons in it. Skeletons
that might or might not be up for a game of Graveyard Grab Ass. I was intimately familiar with far too many kinds of unquiet dead, which,
while it should have been at least somewhat comforting, that
comfort
had shrunk and fled, as if hiding itself from the near-freezing water,
too.

I felt myself starting to tip over into terror mode and forced myself to focus on the giant cop, whose body eclipsed the high-beam floodlight, blocking it for a heart-strafing moment, pitching me into shadow. He was getting closer, now.

“Whoa, there, Big City Psychic.” I heard the smile in his voice even though it was too dark to see it. He moved out of the light and
the beam nearly seared my retinas. “Have you out of there in a
second, just hold on. Come closer to the edge?”

I knee-shuffled experimentally, picking my shin up out of the
sludge, feeling more hard things (
sticks and rocks, Marnie)
shifting
under the mud beneath my knees, jostling with them as I surged toward the shore. Something hooked the shoelace of my right boot and tugged me back. I turned to pull my foot free from whatever (
a stick, just a stick!)
had me hooked.

“Something’s got me,” I peeped, hearing the little-girl alarm in my voice.

“Just a branch,” he said, echoing my wishful thinking. One
massive hand was offered, but he was just out of reach.

I tried to kick away from the (
branch, stick, corpse, it’s a corpse! It’s
Night of the Living Dead!
) thing that had my laces and finally
summoned
the nerve to reach down underwater with one gloved hand and
shove frantically at whatever it was.