Chapter Twenty
CLEARLY, RECORDS WAS wrong. Or maybe someone named Sarah had been visiting the victim the day Doordash came. Or some other completely logical explanation.
“Nope,” the Records guy said. “Once we had a name, our systems triple referenced it and found some positive hits. Ms. Dombrowski wasn’t on the lease, but she was likely living there during the timeframe you requested.”
“All right. Then she’s the next one I’ll need to interview. Send me her current info.”
“Sure thing. I should have it within three to four working days.”
I was really starting to hate Records. “You have a full name and you can’t tell me where she is before next week?”
“We’d have it sooner if we could. But her paper trail ends with a magazine subscription at your location. Once that lease was over, she kind of fell off the radar.”
I hung up with him and asked Jacob, “You buy that?”
“In this day and age? Not really.”
“And given that F-Pimp’s radar reaches farther than the line at a Taco Bell drive-thru after the bars close, I can’t imagine why they’re not finding her.”
“You didn’t tell them about the blood spatter.”
No. I hadn’t. Because I wasn’t ready to hand this off until I knew exactly what I’d be passing along. “Even so—there’s enough weirdness here that someone should want to dig deeper.”
And if Records wasn’t alarmed about the presence of an unexplained repeater, I knew someone who would be.
I checked in with Laura and let her know what we’d found out about Sarah so far. “And apparently, the trail stops there,” I summed up.
“Hm.” Laura was the master of solving the unsolvable. I silently congratulated myself for appealing to The Fixer’s weakness. “Come back to the office and we’ll figure out a plan.”
It seemed like a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth to me, but it wasn’t as if the repeater was currently cooperating.
We headed back to HQ and went straight to the top—figuratively, not literally.
Laura made her office in a corner of the second floor with an uninspiring view, but absolutely zero history of ghostly presence.
Ever since her possession incident, Laura had been a paragon of caution. Can’t say I blamed her.
We found Laura was frowning over reports of what we’d done so far, and I belatedly kicked myself for not sending Jacob off on a made-up errand.
If he was still stinging from that “satisfactory” performance rating, the last thing he needed was to be associated with the botch job I was making of a simple mediumship verification.
I had to give him credit. For someone whose competence was under the magnifying glass, he carried himself like he owned the room.
Then again, he always did. That’s what pushed all my favorite buttons.
“I’ve read through your findings so far,” Laura said to me. “Your report was supposed to confirm Boswell’s mediumship. Why are we spending more resources on the last tenant than the man we actually assigned you?”
The moment I uttered the M-word—not mediumship, but murder—the haunted apartment would be relegated to the police department.
How to buy time without earning a “satisfactory” mark myself?
“I wouldn’t frame it as switching targets,” I said carefully.
“More like the trail leads back a little further than we expected. We’ll just need to—”
Laura lifted a hand. “Hold that thought.” Her eyes flicked to the monitor on her desk.
A muted buzz sounded from the outer door, and a moment later Evelyn stepped in, hair clip slightly askew, looking like she’d walked straight into a conversation she wished she hadn’t. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were busy.”
She tried to back out, but Laura waved her in. “No, please, join us. Sometimes an empath catches currents the rest of us overlook. But if it would interfere with your testing….”
“It wouldn’t. Bethany and I are through for the day.”
“Great. Unless Agent Bayne has another suggestion?”
No. I was too busy congratulating myself for holding onto the investigation so the cops couldn’t botch it. “Actually,” I said, “Agent Marks was just saying we could use an empath’s perspective.”
“By all means,” Laura said. “Use whatever resources are at your disposal.”
As we trooped out of Laura’s office and down the hall, Evelyn lowered her voice, leaned in, and said, “I hope that doesn’t mean tracking down Mr. Boswell again.
He’s not easy for me to be around. I’m sure he can’t help it, poor guy, but after the last time, I took on enough of his anxiety that I found myself sleeping with one eye open. ”
“Don’t worry, I don’t need to follow up with Boswell just yet. We’re gonna revisit Sledge.”
Jacob said, “But Sarah is alive. Which means it’s not her repeater.”
No, but something in the mailman’s utter smugness had rubbed me wrong.
Records was able to locate Zachary Sledge easily enough.
We only told Evelyn about him in the broadest sense, that he was the prior tenant, so as not to influence her impressions.
We caught up with him in the lobby of an apartment building with the mailbox panel open, tucking a sales flyer into each little cubby.
As we approached and caught sight of him through the glass panel door, I muttered, “He doesn’t even see us coming and he’s already flexing. ”
Jacob cut his eyes to me and hmphed.
So much for being unbiased.
When we all crowded into the lobby, Sledge looked us over with mild amusement. “Must be a slow day for the Apartment Police. What now, you want me to rate the plumbing on a scale of one to ten?”
That guy had something to hide. I might have scored zero on empathy, precognition, or any of the other psychic metrics, but I’d dealt with plenty of guys like Sledge.
Slick, charming, and oh so self-assured.
His type always left me sputtering with annoyance, only to think of the perfect comeback hours later while I was brushing my teeth
Luckily for me, Jacob was no slouch in the confidence department—heck, that was probably what had drawn me to him to begin with.
And he was also no stranger to questioning scumbags.
“Just a routine followup. Shouldn’t take long to make sure the record matches your experience.
” As Jacob spoke, he pulled out his phone and tapped open his notes.
“You moved out four months ago to live with your girlfriend. Her name was…?”
“Why would that matter? We broke up. Nothing worse than a chick getting too high-maintenance.” He held Jacob’s gaze.
Jacob didn’t flinch. I could practically see the wheels turning in Sledge’s mind as he calculated just how far this game of chicken might take him.
He gave us her name with a shrug. “Always knew how to make a guy look good in public, but not worth the drama. She’s ancient history now. ”
Jacob made note of her. “And the two of you got together, when?”
“What are we doing here,” Sledge chuckled. “Speed dating?”
Jacob didn’t return his smile. “Just filling in the blanks.”
Evelyn and I exchanged glances. At this point, any normal person would have demanded to know exactly which agency we represented and what this line of questioning was all about. But Sledge was unperturbed. “I’d have to check my Insta feed to be sure. Sometime last spring.”
“Was that before or after you split up with Sarah Dombrowski?”
“After.” Had Sledge paused before he said that? There might have been a pause—microscopic enough I couldn’t have said for sure. “Guess that kinda chick just digs what I’m putting out.”
“And what kind of ‘chick’ is that?” Jacob asked.
“Smoking-hot…and totally high maintenance.”
Jacob continued to press Sledge for more info.
According to the mailman, there were no other live-in girlfriends.
(We’d just see about that.) Sledge claimed he hadn’t mentioned Sarah because he didn’t think it was important, since he was the only occupant at the end of his tenancy, and Sarah had moved out a couple of months before Sledge’s lease was up.
“Though if you know where I can get hold of her, you might wanna tell her I found her grandma’s wedding ring. ”
“I could pass the ring along for you,” Jacob offered, the epitome of helpfulness.
Sledge smiled, but his eyes were cold. “It’s not as if I carry it around with me.”
“Right.” Jacob didn’t flinch.
But neither did Sledge. He held the eye-lock long enough that I had to lock my knees to keep from fidgeting. Finally, after several excruciating seconds, he said, “Unless there’s anything else…” he grinned and gestured toward the open mail panel. “These slots won’t fill themselves.”
Annoyed at being dismissed, I said, “One more thing—did you get your security deposit back?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I left the place just like I’d found it.”
On our walk back to the car, Evelyn chafed her arms to scrub off the ick Sledge had been emanating. “Sorry you had to endure that,” I told her. “But I could use your take on the guy.”
She paused by the curb and put her hand on a tree as if to siphon off some of the attitude. She took a few centering breaths, then said, “He was enjoying himself.”
Good to know my cop sense was still intact.
“There was a beat,” she said, “when you mentioned his former girlfriend Sarah, that his energy shifted. I wouldn’t exactly call it fear—people like that might not feel fear, not like the rest of us.”
“People like that,” I echoed. “Who are we talking about—psychopaths?”
Evelyn considered her response for a long moment, then said, “No. Sadists.”
I shuddered.
“I’m no psychologist,” she hastened to add.
“But psychopaths feel…different than he did. Sledge had plenty of emotions, they just didn’t match up with what most of us would expect.
He was excited to see you. He relished stringing you along.
And once he got over his surprise that you had information on him that he didn’t anticipate, he was intrigued by the game. ”
“And that thing he said about her grandmother’s wedding ring?” Jacob asked. “What was that?”
“A challenge.”
Jacob nodded as if it confirmed his suspicions. “Because he wanted to see whether we were in contact with Sarah or not?”
“I can’t speak to his motivations,” Evelyn said quickly.
“In fact, one thing I’ve learned, it can be dangerous for an empath to presume too much.
Most people feel pretty much like you’d expect in any given situation: happy, sad, embarrassed, slighted, and so on.
That doesn’t even land on my radar. And also, I don’t think much of it when people force a smile when they’re crying inside.
After all, everyone’s got an inner life, and it’s our prerogative to choose when and how we want to share our feelings.
But I do notice when emotions flare out of proportion to the situation.
Or when they really don’t match up with what I’d expect. ”
“So, that’s what you’re getting from Sledge,” I said. And the mismatch was so apparent that even I could read it.
No wonder I hated the guy on sight.
Evelyn said, “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you can tie him to your etheric entity.
Especially if you’re thinking he’s responsible.
” While she might not be saying “ghost” or “murder,” she didn’t have to.
“The entity doesn’t have a timestamp. It could have occurred well before Mr. Sledge moved in, or anytime after he moved out. ”
“I have a hard time imagining our guy in the rest home as a murderer, but you never know. And Boswell….”
He didn’t seem bloodthirsty to me. But who knew what he might convince himself of on any given day?
“And don’t forget,” Evelyn said, “any workers in the unit would have access between residents.”
True enough. Though I doubted I’d want to nail any of them like I did Sledge.
Since there was no word yet on Sarah’s location, we took Evelyn back to her hotel and headed home.
I dropped my keys on the coffee table and shrugged out of my blazer.
“What’s taking Records so long?” I wondered.
“They tracked Boswell—and his van is literally a moving target. They’ve got access to everything from traffic cams to credit cards to deleted social media.
How hard can it be to find a thirty-something in this day and age? ”
Normally, Jacob would have piped in by now. But as I slipped off my tie, I noticed he was still standing in the entryway door, looking hard at a spot on the scarred wooden floor. Massive spider? Centipede, more likely—though when I scanned the floorboard he’d been scrutinizing, I came up blank.
I said, “Don’t tell me that now we’ve got a habit demon.”
Jacob shook himself out of his fugue. “What?”
“Never mind. I’m just as antsy to nail Sledge as you are.”
Jacob narrowed his eyes. “You’re awfully interested in him.”
“Aren’t you? I thought he was exactly the type of guy you’d go up against, back in the day.”
Jacob’s reply echoed one he’d made earlier when he was interviewing the guy in question. “What type is that?”
“The type that seemed like he’d leave an arc of bloodsplatter on his bedroom wall and dare it to catch up with him, what else?” I crossed my arms and considered my husband. “Why, was there something about him I’m missing?”
“Doubtful…you checked him out thoroughly enough.”
Jacob had said it playfully. But like most jokes, there was a grain of something serious at the heart of it—so serious it was laughable. “You think I’m hot for the guy?” I scoffed. “Jacob—if he was the last man on earth, I’d take a long, cold shower…and stay there till I drowned.”
Jacob grunted and looked somewhat mollified.
My gaze had lingered over Sledge’s bulked-up shoulders and squat-rounded ass, but only to drive home my inherent loathing of everything he stood for.
Unlike most people I’ve known, I never really went in for a gym-honed physique.
Not until I encountered one with an actual personality attached…
one that made me feel like I was the catch.
I grabbed Jacob and turned him to look me square in the eye. “Pay attention, mister. This is what it looks like when I’m checking someone out.”