Chapter 19 #6
“If that’s the case, I’m on my way,” Camden stated. “I don’t have a clue what, if anything, this guy can help with, but it’s worth a shot. Did you have a reason for calling me?”
“Of course. You got some information out of this session with your latest interview. I can feel the twinge pulling on me. Something he told you is important. I just don’t know what. So I’m waiting for you to disseminate what you got.”
“I’m not sure how much of it’s important, but I can tell you one interesting thing.
The son who survived tried to live in the house at some point after the attack, likely because he had no place else to go.
He didn’t stay that long and was pretty convinced it was haunted.
According to the detective I spoke to just now, Junior didn’t want to tell anybody, but he saw not full ghosts but little bits and pieces of them.
He felt it was the pieces of his family stuck in time. ”
“Ah,” Stefan muttered, “now that is starting to make sense. That’s perfect, thank you,” he muttered to himself, leaving Camden to question him.
“Hang on. What’s perfect?” Camden asked Stefan. “What are you talking about?”
“Just let me sit with this one, before we plod forward.”
“Okay,” Camden muttered, as he now turned around, “but shouldn’t I interview this first cop on the scene before he passes away?
Plus it would help if I had a little more information to go on from you.
” All the while, he knew how Stefan’s mind worked, and, if he wasn’t willing to share his views, there was always a good reason for his doing that.
So, it was easy for Camden to let that go—for now.
“No,” Stefan replied, “it probably wouldn’t help if you had more information—even from the cop who found the bodies or from me. Give me some time,” he said. “Then call me when you get home.” And, with that, Stefan ended the call.
Camden stared down at his phone, wondering when any of this would ever start to make sense. Damned if there didn’t come a voice in his head that whispered, Soon, very soon.
And he swore to God it was Stefan.
*
Camden walked into the office, sat down, and started bringing up every bit of information he could about the case.
When his partner walked in a little later, he asked him, “What are you so busy working on?”
“Apparently the house beside me is a cold case.”
Joey stared at him. “What cold case?”
“Apparently six members of the family who lived there were all murdered quite a few years ago, but it was never solved.”
“The house that you live in?”
“No, the house beside me.”
“That explains why it’s always unoccupied.”
“Yeah, but now it’s been sold to a young woman with twins. She’s having some, let’s say, unsettling experiences in the place.”
His partner rolled his eyes and muttered, “That would figure, wouldn’t it? I mean, if people have died there, then their ghosts are hanging around.” He gave a mock shiver. “Not that I believe in ghosts or anything.”
“No, you might not,” Camden replied, “but I’m not so foolish as to dismiss it.”
He shook his head. “But then you’re the one who works those woo-woo cases.”
“Yeah, well, in this case, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing, but I did pull up the file, and it’s a little disconcerting.”
“How is it that we didn’t know about it?”
“It was a long time ago, fifty years.”
“Oh, so it’s in the cold case files.” Joey shrugged. “You know how that goes around here. We have so many current cases that nobody ever gets a chance to look at the cold ones.”
Camden nodded. That was very true. Yet it didn’t make this any easier. He continued to pore over the information, trying to capture the details, but it was pretty sparse. And it was, indeed, a cold case, and he wouldn’t get official permission to work on that anytime soon.
The whole thing just pissed him off because this was information they could have used when all this weirdness started at Devon’s house. By the time he sent Stefan a text message, summarizing the highlights, Camden then got buried in some follow-up work on a couple of his current cases.
When Stefan called him a couple hours later, he announced, “I remember that case.”
“I’m glad you do,” Camden muttered, getting up to walk out the back door where a lot of people went to smoke, just so he could have a few private minutes to speak with Stefan.
“I just don’t know if this has anything to do with the energy hanging around her place, but I thought it was important to look at it. ”
“It is important,” Stefan stated. “I just don’t understand how it fits in.”
“Yeah, neither do I,” Camden said, with a sigh, “because it’s just more unanswered questions. Plus, since it’s a cold case, I won’t get formal access to working it, not unless I can really tie it into something. And I don’t have a thing.”
“Right, I understand,” Stefan replied. “Cold cases are cold because they couldn’t find anything at the time. And then we’re all left trying to answer things later, when there’s no longer any urgency or answers to be found. I’ll get back to you later today.” And, with that, Stefan was gone.
Camden shook his head, staring at his phone.
When he got off that afternoon, he headed home and checked to see if Devon was home. When he saw her out in her backyard, staring at everything going on out there, he hopped over the fence, making sure that she heard him first.
As she watched him approach her, she muttered, “I gather I won’t like this.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if you will or not. I just thought you would prefer the truth.”
“Absolutely,” she declared. When he told her what he’d learned about the family that was dismembered by a supposedly big cleaver on the property, she just stared at him in horror.
He nodded. “The entire family was apparently chopped up,” he confirmed, “but it was well over fifty years ago. It’s in the cold case files, which is why I didn’t know about it because we never get time to work on those.
I guess the house just moved on into present days.
Whoever owned it back then probably tried to rent it, but nobody wanted to live there, so it sat empty for a long while.
And the latest owners must have passed away, so, as you were told, whoever inherited just wanted to sell it. ”
“Of course they did,” she muttered, staring at him. “Why wouldn’t they? It’s got a hell of a bad name.”
“Who knows? They may not even have known about it,” he suggested. “I’ve lived next door all this time, and I didn’t have a clue.”
She gave him a mock smile as she turned around and pointed. “So, are these the remnants of that family?”
He stared around at the mass of energies gathered back here and winced. “A lot of them are here. A hell of a lot more than six murdered people.”
Devon asked, “Yeah, but do you know how many pieces they were cut into? Because these are literally little bits and pieces gathered here. They’re not six-foot-tall energy balls.
There’s an awful lot of them, and I’m not saying I know why or how.
I just wondered if this has any connection to the dismembered family members. ”
“And, if I say no, that would be foolish because the answer truly is, I don’t know. I’m supposed to call Stefan later tonight, who will hopefully have some answers.”
“That’s good,” she said, with a shrug. “Actual answers would be good.”
“How are the kids?” He studied her while she gathered her response.
Frowning, she stared down at her toes. “Honestly? … Suspiciously quiet. After the problems I’ve had with Toby recently, he’s suddenly not doing or saying anything that might get him into trouble.”
“And you don’t like that.”
“I just feel it’s … suspicious. And that makes me feel even worse because I shouldn’t be seeing him in that light, but it’s pretty damn hard not to,” she stated. “It’s all very bizarre.”
He didn’t say much to that. As he studied the area, his phone rang.
He told her, “It’s Stefan.” He answered, “Hi, Stefan. I’m over here at Devon’s, and we had a thought.
I don’t know anything about whether this is even possible,” he began, “but considering we have remnants here, is there any chance that these are bits and pieces of the six people butchered here a long time ago?”
Dead silence came from the other end of the phone.
Finally Stefan spoke. “I have never seen anything like that before, but unfortunately, every time we get one of these cases, it’s always something new and different.
So, my knee-jerk reaction says, Absolutely no way.
There is no reason for the spirits of these deceased persons to be in pieces, even while their physical bodies had suffered through that.
Yet we have remnants there in the first place, which is a new one for me,” he added.
“So, let’s just go with a very tentative maybe. ”