The Haunted Bones (5 page)

"Sorry, Mary, but you're gonna have to find
someone else to off him. Now, I might be able to get to this
information and annihilate it, for a nice price."

"But what about him? If he tells anyone,
what difference does it make?"

Auggie pointed to his head. "Guy has a
bullet in his brain. Take it from there."

She considered her position while finishing
her drink. If Auggie managed to delete the photos, then there
wouldn't be any evidence of what Mr. McNally saw. The fact the guy
took a bullet to the head could also be used in open court or even
the media to argue that he wasn't completely sane, that he was
seeing things.

Then there wouldn't be any bodies.

"He saw me."

"Then you're going to have to do that part
on your own." Auggie leaned against the back of one of the three
couches in the sprawling apartment. "You could see if Black Angel
would take the case."

Black Angel. A well-known
gun-for-hire. In certain circles the name carried with it a power
no one wanted to be the victim of. "This is small potatoes for
Black Angel. I don't see
him taking the
hit."

"I don't know." He strolled to the bar and
grabbed an empty glass. After dropping a few ice cubes into it, he
poured a glass of rum. "Remember why Angel went on hiatus?"

"Something to do with a potential target's
maturity. Which made no damn sense to me."

"Shouldn't. You're not a doer." He held up
his glass before he took a mouthful and swallowed it with a hiss.
"Two years ago, Chad Padeaus was killed with a bullet to the back
of his head. He wasn't alone."

She put her glass down. "The son of the
senator this McNally guy was involved with? I don't remember
reading about that. What I do remember was he was found alone in
Piedmont Park with his pants down. That's why they thought it was
some sexual encounter gone wrong. And once they found out the aide
was gay—"

"Wasn't him. It was staged by the real
killer. And that killer knew Chad hadn't been alone. He was with a
guy in a hoodie and red Converse. They were kissing."

"So Chad
was
gay."

"Doesn't matter. The killer didn't see the
other guy 'til it was too late. Shot Chad in the head; the guy in
the hoodie took off running. The shooter planted the evidence to
frame Ferrell."

This time her jaw dropped. "Wait…you're
saying the kid's death was a hit and Mason Ferrell really was
innocent?"

He held up his glass again. "As a newborn
babe."

"So did this shooter find
out who the—" She stopped as she stared at her stepson, the pieces
falling into place. "Maturity. That's Black Angel's shtick. He
never kills minors. So Black Angel was the killer and he
discovered the mystery guy's identity and
apparently he was under age." Mary chuckled. "So Padaeus's kid was
gay and a child molester."

"Don't really know. Black Angel wouldn't
give the guy's name out. Always says that is between him and the
client."

A slow smile spread across her face. "Two
for the price of one—just to save his ass?"

Augustus shrugged. "You know
how Black Angel works. He
won't move to the
next job until this one's complete. It doesn't matter if this kid
never saw the shooter or not. They were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. So my guess is Angel's biding time 'til the kid's old
enough to be killed."

"All these years and Angel still won't kill
kids?"

"Nope." He finished off his drink. "That's
Black Angel's one rule. No kids. And no mothers. Although I do know
he's broken that one twice."

"Then I think Black Angel is definitely a
woman."

"A lot of people do. And a lot believe Black
Angel is a man. Me…I think it's a title. Like Dread Pirate Roberts
or something." He shrugged. "Could be anyone."

"How is it you know so much about Black
Angel? And about this particular shooting?"

"Because I'm Auggie. I get things done. I
find things out and if I say something's going to happen, it
happens. Take my old man for instance. I said he'd be gone soon."
He smiled at her. "And he was. Thanks to you."

"Don't ever say that out
loud, Auggie. Walls have ears." Mary flashed back to the image on
McNally's picture and suppressed a shiver.
And ghosts
, she thought.

"Don't sweat it. But seeing as how Black
Angel had a direct impact on the case that involves your target,
you might get Black Angel to add in another body. Technically the
same case."

"Maybe. But how do I get in contact with
her…or him?"

"You don't." He poured himself another glass
of rum. "But for ten grand, I do."

Six

The moment the doorbell rang, I knew it was
Jewels. I jumped out of the chair, which promptly fell over and
made a god-awful noise, and ran to open the door. She stood outside
with a horrified look on her face. "Dev—your eyes are red."

"That's because I've been staring at a
computer all day. Come here." I pulled her in and slammed the door.
She locked it as I rushed back to my living room slash work space.
I pulled up a chair to my desk then I righted the one I knocked
over. "I've got some things to show you."

"Yeah?" She sat down in the chair and
scooted forward. "I've got a few things to show you, too."

"Mine first." I had been agonizing all day
whether to show anyone what I found because I was afraid no one
would believe me. But I knew Jewels would. "Okay, remember the
picture that was open on my desktop with the ghost? The one the
mystery hacker was trying to delete?"

"Yeah?"

"I opened every picture I took yesterday and
spread them across the screen. Then I took each one and examined it
and look what I found." I moved the mouse so the computer would
come out of screen-saver mode.

Plastered over the screen were seven
pictures of the bathroom upstairs, three of the back room where the
staircase was, and two of the staircase itself. And on each of them
were distinguishable, ghostly images of what looked like some kind
of confrontation. "See here? This is where I think it starts." I
mentally reviewed what to say with each picture. Hell, I'd been
practicing all day for the moment I could show someone. "It started
here, in the back room. This guy hits this woman here, and then
another man comes in here and grabs the attacker guy."

Jewels leaned in and stared at the pictures.
"It's…it's like looking at cels in a movie, only the actors are all
gray and white and see-through."

"Exactly. Now here it goes to the staircase.
You see him dragging this girl—a different girl—up the stairs, and
if you look in the corner, you can see shoes. I think they're men's
shoes."

She nodded.

I shifted the pictures around with my
fingers on the touch screen, not bothering with the mouse. Once I
had the last seven in order, I pointed to them. "It looks to me
like he drags two women into this bathroom. He kills the younger
one here, then he kills the older woman out of the frame." I turned
my unbelievably geeky grin to her. "Can you believe this? All I did
was take pictures yesterday, and this came out on them."

Jewels stared at the pictures. Her hand
shook as she reached up and moved them around.

"Jewels?"

She licked her lips. "Dev…I decided to do a
little digging into that bar." She pulled her satchel to her feet
and pulled out a case file. I knew what it was on sight—I'd created
and worked in plenty of them. This file would contain all the
notes, pictures of evidence, crime scene photos, and the comments
of every detective that worked on the case.

The name scrawled on the top of the file was
Justin Birch. "What is this?"

"Just…open it and look inside."

I noticed the strange look on her face.
"What's wrong?"

"Just look."

The folder had a smell to it. I recognized
it as the dusty, stored smell case files got when they were shoved
into cardboard boxes and put into storage. That meant Jewels had to
go down to the basement. Hell, I was afraid of that place on a
sunny day. She'd been down there in the thunder and rain.

Julie was my hero.

And I thought even more-so as I laid the
file out over the keyboard. There were stacks of notes, all
fastened with a two-prong wire at the top of both sides. A pocket
held a plastic bag of pictures, so I pulled those out and spread
them on the desk.

That's when I nearly fell out of the
chair.

They were crime scene shots. Victims, their
positions marked and unmarked. Some were pretty gruesome and the
blood on the walls and floor was still red. But that wasn't what
made me shake.

It was the position of those bodies. It was
familiar. When I looked up at the ghostly images on the screen, I
realized why they were familiar. "This…this can't be right."

"It is. I'm seeing it, too, Devan. If you
look through these…." She leaned over my shoulder and pushed them
around, pulling five-by-ten shots out and laying them all over my
desk and then pointing to the images on the screen. The whole thing
just took a dive off of the absurd side of life. "What you took are
ghostly representations of what happened to these people."

I was ripped in half at that moment—torn
between my detective's curiosity and my victim's sensitivity to
violence. I must have said something or moved funny because I was
turning the chair around and Jewels was yelling at me to wait.

What little I'd had to eat for lunch came
rushing up. Jewels shoved a small trash can in front of me. When
the convulsions stopped, she handed me a wet paper towel and I
wiped my mouth and forehead. She took the towel and the trash can
and set them aside. "Take a deep breath, Devan. It's normal to have
that kind of reaction after what you've been through."

"I just…" I wanted to shove my head under a
rock. I just puked in front of Julie Brenner, my high school crush
and my best friend's wife.

Widow. It was hard to be married when your
husband gets murdered.

And there you have it: the source of my
continual guilt. The fact that I lived and Jimmy died. Jimmy, who'd
had a new life ahead of him and a beautiful, caring woman. If there
was a Jessie's Girl out there, Julie was it for me.

But being a good guy, I never said a word
and kept my thoughts to myself. She was a damn good friend and I
doubted I could live without her. Evidence of that was right there
on my desk. She'd gone out of her way to help me on this.

I looked at her and she brushed a thumb over
my cheek. "You need sleep."

"I need…I need to look at these more
closely. And don't worry—I think that was all I had in there.
Luckily it wasn't the spaghetti from last night."

She made a face. "I'll keep the trash can
close by." She stood. "I'm going to make you some dinner, you're
going to eat it, and then you're going to bed." When Jewels got
like that, there was no arguing with her.

After brushing my teeth and ignoring the
lanky ghost in the mirror, I got back to the computer and started
on my own research. It was easy to fall back into investigative
habits; after all, I'd been a cop a lot longer than a
photographer.

I turned the printer on and started matching
up my ghostly photos with the crime scene shots. Once I had one or
two that fit, I printed them out and clipped them to their
corresponding photo. When I got to the image of the woman standing
in front of the wall shelf—in essence, the first picture I noticed
weirdness in—I couldn't find anything it matched, so I set it
aside. I printed it and added it to a small pile with no
matches.

Jewels made chicken soup and cheese
sandwiches. I ate half a sandwich as I made my piles and then sat
back with my glass of sweet tea to look at the shorter pile. Jewels
set her plate aside and pulled her chair close to look at the
pictures with me.

"What has your attention?"

I pointed to two of the shots and set the
others aside. "This guy. Who is he?"

She took the pictures and looked closer at
them. I reached to the desk and pulled out a magnifying glass to
help. After looking at them through that, she sat back. "There was
another man there. That is, if we say these are legit. Why is he
all black and the others are all white and ghostly?"

"I don't know. I mean, I noticed it, but I
have no idea why."

"Well, the theory was that Justin killed his
wife and the daughter of the guy next door. And here and here you
can see the women. There's the wife and there's the daughter and
there's Justin Birch way over on this side of the room. But this
black shadow is with the women."

I narrowed my eyes at the prints of my
photos. "You know, he looks familiar."

"He does look familiar. And if we were to
say—just hypothetically—that these pictures are somehow…I don't
know…images of past events captured on film and the ghostly white
ones are the dead people and the dark one is living…" She grinned
and winked. "Then I think this guy killed them, not Justin Birch,
because he looks like he's already dead." Jewels leaned in closer.
"Hey, hand me that other stack of photos."

I did as she asked and watched her as she
thumbed through them. I was as amazed as she was when she found a
five-by-seven of a man who looked just like the guy in the photos.
"Wow, this guy's a dead ringer for Mister Shadow. Who is he?"

She pursed her lips. "That's Randall Cahan.
The father of the girl that was killed. Neighbors next door." She
looked at me. "The man who said he wasn't home that day."

Seven

If there is one thing about going freelance
that I enjoyed more, it was not having to get up until I wanted to.
Which of course means I'm up with the sun.