Inspector Specter, page 7
That was strange. “Did you lose the battery?” I asked.
“No. You’re missing the point. I was able to generate the power needed to send that text message myself. I sent you a text from a dead cell phone.”
Ignoring the irony of a dead man using a dead phone, I started to see the point he was trying to make. “How is that possible?” I said.
“I have a theory,” Paul said, as Maxie changed into an off-the-shoulder number in cobalt blue. “It has long been observed that it is impossible to destroy energy. The physical body might deteriorate, even disintegrate, but energy is not destructible. Many people believe that the essence of a living being, the soul, is composed of energy.”
“So even though you’re dead, your energy lives on, is that it?”
He pointed at me like a teacher whose student is starting to catch on. “I’ve been working with the proposition that our bodies, those of Maxie and me and other people like us, are actually made of the energy that we carried with us when we were alive. Our physical bodies are gone, but the energy remains in a purer form. So I can send a text message without a battery because I am, essentially, made of energy.”
That was as far as my mind could go; I had to ask, “So what’s that got to do with Detective Ferry and his murder?”
Paul had a confused expression. “Nothing. What made you think it was related?”
“When we’re on a case, you almost never think about anything else,” I noted. “What’s gotten you on this energy stuff all of a sudden, when there’s a crime to be solved?”
Paul frowned. “Until Detective Ferry does or does not materialize in some form, there’s nothing I can do about his case,” he said. “However, the implications of this theory are enormous.”
“How so?”
“Don’t you see? If I can find a way to harness and control my energy, I might be able to evolve past this existence and on to the next level.”
That knocked me for a loop. While I knew that Paul and Maxie were intrigued by the idea of other planes of existence, especially when we’d witnessed some other ghosts presumably advance to . . . whatever comes next, without any of us really understanding what was happening, and I recognized that Paul seemed mildly envious of those other ghosts, I’d thought we’d settled into a comfortable setup in the guesthouse. “You mean you want to leave?” My voice sounded a little squeaky.
Paul looked up from the cell phone and examined my face. “Well, certainly,” he said. “I don’t mean to offend you, Alison, but becoming the next . . . thing is natural. It seems like what we should want, don’t you think?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Maxie chipped in, now back to wearing her more typical ensemble of jeans and a T-shirt, this one currently reading “Restore the Shore.” “Things are good here.” She looked at me. “Which dress did I look best in?”
“The first one. See?” I turned toward Paul. “Things are good here. Why do you want to go?” This was suddenly becoming a very disturbing conversation for me.
Paul’s eyes indicated he was talking to a crazy lady. “I don’t sincerely believe anything is going to happen very soon, Alison. There’s no need to be upset.”
And yet for reasons I couldn’t adequately understand, I was upset. Paul had become such a stable and reliable presence in the house over the two years I’d lived here, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like without him to confer with.
“Is it so bad staying here?” I asked. Yeah, I was being selfish. News of the day: I’m not perfect.
Paul looked at me carefully and curled his lip. “Yeah. It’s a misery,” he said. “I hate every minute of it.”
I was devastated. I couldn’t think. “Really?”
“Of course not!” Paul replied hurriedly. “I was being sarcastic.”
“You’re not from New Jersey, Paul,” I informed him. “You don’t pull off sarcasm successfully.”
Paul, perhaps trying to shift the mood, looked over at Maxie. “What have you found out?” he asked her.
Maxie stared at him blankly. “What are you talking about?” she said. Maxie’s a lot of things—I could give you a list—but clueless isn’t normally one of them.
“You came up here to do research on Detective Ferry,” he reminded her. “Then Alison came up to give you specific areas in which we need questions answered.” His voice betrayed some bewilderment; surely Maxie knew all this already.
I didn’t mention that in my astonishment at finding Maxie acting like she was on Say Yes to the Dress, I had forgotten to pass on the instructions.
“Oh,” Maxie said. “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.” She looked at me. “What was I looking for, again?”
Paul’s eyes, usually on the smallish side, widened to the size of half dollars, or whatever the equivalent currency is in Canada. “You haven’t been researching the case?” he asked incredulously. “What have you been doing up here?”
I decided to talk over him to defuse any situation that might have otherwise arisen. “You know how the ghost Paul talked to earlier said Detective Ferry was a dirty cop working for the local mob?” I said, condensing madly. “We want to see if there’s any evidence—bank records, incriminating e-mails, notes in his personnel file, for example—that can confirm or deny that.”
Maxie immediately had the laptop in her hands, but as she began clacking away and looking industrious, Paul got a very odd look on his face. Suddenly, he seemed to be either horribly surprised or sick to his stomach. I knew the latter wasn’t possible (at least, I was pretty sure it wasn’t), so I guessed it was the former.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Something’s happening,” he said, choking out the words.
A hollow feeling hit my stomach. Was Paul already moving to the next plane of existence? “Paul?” I said.
Maxie looked up, then looked back at the screen.
“I’ll be right back,” Paul said, and started to descend into the floor.
“No!” I yelled on an impulse. “Don’t go! What’s happening?”
He continued to slowly melt into the carpet. “I believe I’m getting a message from Detective Ferry,” he said.
Oh. That.
Nine
“What is that?” Lieutenant Anita McElone asked me.
I looked over at Oliver, who was playing with a set of colored rings that stacked on a plastic post. He didn’t seem to be all that difficult to identify.
“It’s a baby,” I said. “As I recall, you’ve had some yourself.”
I’d called McElone as soon as Paul had reported back from his “conversation” with Ferry, who was still emerging from his stasis and barely cognizant of his new ghostly status. Ferry’s message to Paul was that he was at his apartment and couldn’t leave. That’s not at all unusual, especially when the ghost is just becoming a ghost. Beyond that, Paul said, Ferry “wasn’t especially conversant.”
Happy to have some progress to report, I’d let McElone know, and she’d suggested that we meet at Ferry’s apartment. Personally, I’d have preferred to go see Ferry alone. I didn’t think McElone had taken my news seriously, but she said any chance was better than none, then reiterated that it was imperative I tell no one I was involved in the investigation.
I’d just put Ollie down on the floor of Martin Ferry’s Seaside Heights apartment. The place, no longer classified a crime scene, wasn’t incredibly child friendly, but it wasn’t exactly a danger zone, beyond a lack of covered outlets, something people of my generation had survived well enough.
Mom had offered to watch Ollie while I was at Detective Ferry’s apartment, but I knew she had a beauty-salon appointment, and besides, I saw no reason McElone could object. It was possible I’d miscalculated that one. I did ask Mom to take Liss with her to the salon, which was next door to a bookstore. Liss would browse the aisles while my mother became more gorgeous.
“Yes, and my babies are very nice, polite people now,” McElone answered. “But I still don’t bring them with me to crime scenes.”
“I’m watching Oliver for my friend until Sunday,” I said now. “You want me, you get him.”
McElone didn’t say anything, but she made a face indicating just how unprofessional I was, which didn’t bother me in the least. Professionally, I was an innkeeper. Talking to ghosts for police detectives was just a sideline.
My phone buzzed, so I took it out of my pocket. It was a text from Josh Kaplan, whom I’d been seeing now for long enough that I supposed I ought to call him my boyfriend. The word sounded weird, since we were both adults, but I’d actually known Josh when he was a boy—we’d met at his grandfather’s paint store as tweens, then lost touch until a little less than a year ago.
The text read: “Dinner tonight?” I texted back in the affirmative. This relationship was getting easier, especially since I’d told Josh all about Paul and Maxie and didn’t have to worry about what I could or couldn’t say in front of him anymore. One thing a single mother learns on the dating scene: There aren’t a lot of guys you can tell about your resident ghosts.
Ollie continued to play with the rings, which were in vivid colors. The orange one, I noticed, was most often used as something to chew on. Luckily, it was far too large for Ollie to get it all the way into his mouth.
“Easy, Ollie,” I said, putting the largest ring on the post first, hoping to get him interested in something other than the flavor of the orange ring. “Which ring goes next?” Oliver looked at me with wonder in his eyes.
“Gah,” he said.
“That’s right,” I agreed.
McElone let out a guttural sound. “Okay. Where’s Martin?”
It was a good question; as far as I could tell, the detective’s ghost was nowhere to be seen in this room. But since Oliver and I had just arrived, we hadn’t had a chance to look elsewhere.
This wasn’t a very ghosty area, I’d noticed on the drive here. There were plenty of tourists—Seaside Heights is one of the bigger draws down the Shore—but the ghost population was fairly small. I guessed people didn’t die near amusement piers as frequently as they did in other shore resort towns. And the neighborhood was still in recovery; now, rebuilding after a flood and a fire, Seaside was no doubt anticipating the appearance of locusts.
The apartment wasn’t large. It was a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor, a single man’s undecorated residence, with a front room (where Oliver and I now sat on the floor), a galley kitchen back and to the right, and a corridor leading off the main section, where I could see three doors leading to other rooms.
“Not here,” I told McElone. “Let me take a look.” The lieutenant was already examining the room, which had been cleared of any evidence, no doubt trying to determine if there was something the Seaside Heights detectives had missed.
I stood to pick up Oliver, and he immediately began to protest. He had been happy on the floor playing with the rings; he had no interest in finding a dead detective he wouldn’t be able to see or hear anyway. He squawked loudly.
My options were limited; I looked at McElone. “Do you mind?” I asked.
“Mind what?”
“Watching Ollie while I check out the rest of the apartment. He doesn’t want to give up the game he’s playing.” To cement my case, I put Ollie back down, and he went happily back to what he’d been doing.
McElone rolled her eyes. “You want me to babysit in the middle of a murder investigation.” It wasn’t a question. “I should have my head examined for talking to you about this at all.”
“You won’t say that when we get the straight poop from Detective Ferry,” I reminded her.
“Don’t say ‘poop’ in front of the baby.”
“I’ll be right back.” I walked toward the corridor. “Detective Ferry?” I called. “Are you here in the apartment now?”
I caught a glimpse of McElone shaking her head as I walked away.
There were three doors, plain pine with a light coat of sealer but no stain, the sign of a housing company that offered a roof over your head and not much beyond that. The one at the end of the hallway was clearly the bathroom; the door was open, and cheap porcelain tile was visible.
The second door led to the bedroom, which was empty, or at least devoid of any ghosts. The room held a bed, a dresser and a nightstand. A closet with sliding mirrored doors was half-filled with clothing, mostly cheap suits and some jeans and casual shirts, but no T-shirts. Despite living so close to the beach, Detective Ferry had dressed mostly for work, it seemed.
I went back out into the hallway to the third and last door. I almost knocked, but that seemed silly. I opened the door.
Detective Martin Ferry, or what survived of him, was hovering near a desk on which a laptop computer was sitting, turned off. He was wearing a relatively cheap blue pinstriped suit. Luckily for me, there was no evidence of the gunshot wound that had taken his life. He looked like an average middle-aged, somewhat paunchy man. If not for the being-able-to-see-through-him, you’d never give him a second look.
The room also held a daybed, a stationary bicycle and the desk chair Ferry would have been using if he hadn’t been floating two feet above the floor. He was trying to press keys on the computer keyboard, but his hand kept going through the keyboard and the desk, creating a sort of hacking motion that made it look like Ferry was attempting to beat up the keyboard. His face showed frustration.
“Detective,” I said. He turned and looked at me.
“My hand doesn’t work,” he said.
“The baby is trying to eat the coffee table!” McElone called from the living room.
I looked at Ferry. “Your hand will probably get better over time,” I said. “But in the beginning, that’s the way it is for most people like you.”
He squinted to get a better look at me and hovered over a little closer. “I remember you,” he said. “You were that nut who thought she could see ghosts.”
I nodded. “Alison Kerby.”
“And I’m . . . a ghost?” Ferry said. “I’m a ghost. What’s going on, Kerby?”
“Paul Harrison sent me. Come on into the living room,” I said. “I brought a friend of yours.”
“Paul Harrison,” he said, thinking hard. “I got a . . . there was some question in my head from a guy named Harrison. How does that work?”
Thinking it was best not to get into technical details I didn’t understand, I shrugged, then led Ferry into his living room, where I found McElone holding Oliver on her shoulder and bouncing him a little. He looked amused.
“Anita,” Ferry said. “Anita, what’s going on?”
Of course McElone did not answer.
“She can’t hear you,” I told him.
McElone turned to look at me. “You’re saying Martin’s here now?” she asked, looking up and over my shoulder suspiciously. People who can’t see ghosts always look up, though the ghosts aren’t always up.
McElone put Ollie down, and he crawled to the coffee table, where there was a bowl with some large round glass spheres in it for decoration. I sized them up, decided that he couldn’t get one entirely into his mouth and let him go for it. Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean, Jeannie probably felt a chill up her spine. Ollie pulled himself up to an almost-standing position via the coffee table, from which he could just touch the purple orb but couldn’t move it.
“Anita can’t see me, either?” Ferry asked.
I shook my head, since talking to him directly would probably make McElone uncomfortable. “Yes, he’s here, Lieutenant.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How do I know it’s him?” she asked.
That hurt. “You don’t trust me?” I said. “I’m here doing this favor because you asked me to, and you still think I’m the crazy ghost lady?”
McElone’s mouth flattened out, but she didn’t say anything. Ferry, however, shook his head. “She’s a cop,” he told me. “She doesn’t trust anything she can’t prove herself.”
I thought for a moment. I couldn’t ask Ferry to move something or float it around the room; his physical skills weren’t developed enough yet. “Ask him something only he would know,” I said. “Something I couldn’t possibly figure out on my own.”
But Ferry beat me to it. “Handcuffs,” he said. “Tell her ‘wet handcuffs.’”
McElone was about to speak, but I stopped her. “He says to say ‘wet handcuffs,’” I said.
A laugh like nothing I’d ever heard from McElone came out. Then her eyes widened. “It is Martin,” she said.
I felt like saying, “Yeah, I already told you that,” but I had resolved in the past seven seconds to try responding to things in a more mature manner than Maxie might employ. It was a new strategy, but one worth trying. “Yes, it is,” I said. “Now, what can he tell you that you need to know?”
McElone’s cop face came back on; she looked as serious as Hurricane Sandy, and in my world, that’s serious. “Okay, tell him this exactly the way I say it,” she began.
“I don’t have to say it,” I explained, pointing toward what she saw as empty space. “He can hear you.”
Ferry had, in fact, floated down from his spot, which hadn’t been that high up to begin with, and was looking McElone deep in the eye from maybe six inches away, as if she were a favorite celebrity he’d encountered unexpectedly, or an especially intricate museum exhibit. “Anita,” he said quietly.
McElone, however, was still staring up at a spot her former partner had not inhabited to begin with. “Martin?” she said much more loudly than he had spoken. “Martin, are you there?”
Ferry, shouted out of his reverie, gave me a look. “Yes, he’s there,” I reiterated. “What can he tell you that will help?”
Oliver, I suddenly noticed, had stopped playing with the purple ball, which he hadn’t been able to lift, and was staring up into the room.
