Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
He hated hospitals. Miserable ghosts wandered the hallways, crouched in corners, and searched endlessly for family, nurses, maybe even themselves. In most cases, perhaps all, they were looking for answers. At the depot and sometimes on the street he ran into the occasional pleasant spirit, like Maude. Here, every ghost was caught in a loop of sheer torment.
Most ignored him, as he and Anna walked to Emily’s room, but a few realized he could see them. They gathered around, they whispered in his ear and a couple of times into his face.
Somehow Anna realized how hard it was for him to be here. She took his hand and held on tight.
In that moment, he did love her.
“Go away,” she whispered into the air as they reached the door to Emily’s room.
Some of the ghosts obeyed.
Emily sat up in bed, her head bandaged, while her aunt straightened the covers and fussed over her the way a good aunt should. Jack was present but he stood back several feet, a guilty expression on his ghostly face.
Jack looked Colt’s way. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”
Colt wouldn’t lie. He nodded his head. He had questions, so many questions, but… not here. Not now.
Jack was connected to his mother, but he had a bit of range to comfortably work with. Colt had spoken to the ghost in his old room while Nina was in the kitchen downstairs, and he’d first seen Jack on the porch. Nina hadn’t been close by then, either.
Anna joined the women at the bed and Colt said, eyes on Jack, “I’m going to wait in the hall.”
Anna nodded her head in his direction. The other women ignored him.
Colt stepped into the hallway. Two seconds later, Jack joined him.
It was late enough at night that not many living people were about. Colt did his best to ignore the spirits, hoping if he didn’t acknowledge them they wouldn’t hang too close. A hospital employee entered a room four doors down; a nurse at a station the same distance in the other direction was playing a game on her phone, or texting. Whatever the night nurse was doing, after a quick glance at Colt she dismissed him. She’d seen him come in; he was not a concern.
Colt whispered, “What happened?”
“He attacked Emily. I think…”
“Not tonight,” Colt interrupted. “Then, five years ago. What did you get into?”
Jack didn’t answer for a while. He faded a little, as if he were trying to escape, as if he intended to disappear. But he came back, appeared solid again as he said, “It was my last job, at least the last one around here. Crystal and I were going to take the money and start over. Miami, maybe, or New York. We made such plans. Where we’d live, if we’d settle down or travel. She even wanted kids. I wasn’t sure about that, but the possibility wasn’t entirely out of the question. Then they killed her and it all went away.” With that, Jack’s form faded and shimmered again. “I liked Crystal. I can’t say I loved her, that I wanted everything she did, but she didn’t deserve that.”
They killed her, not he . Did that mean anything?
“You were there that night, you took pictures.”
It was unspoken… You took pictures instead of trying to save Crystal.
“I knew she was going to meet Walter, but I didn’t think he’d hurt her. He was like another father to us, Sawyer’s Dad. Walter was at baseball games, and read us the riot act when we were acting out. He’d buy us ice cream and candy, like he did all the little kids in town. Walter was also involved with some shady guys from Biloxi and New Orleans. He introduced me to some of them and I… I did what I did.”
“You conned them.”
“I did. They had money, lots of it. I didn’t think they’d care so much if I took a little of it. They had plenty to spare. That night I took pictures in case Walter tried to cause trouble or back out or tell his friends he suspected I wasn’t on the up and up. I went home and printed the photos out on dad’s old printer and then I hid them. Just in case.”
Colt didn’t know what to say. Jack had taken such a wrong path; there was no justification.
Jack faded in and out, glowed green for a moment, then continued. “When I heard that Crystal had disappeared, I realized what had happened. She wouldn’t leave without me. I knew she was dead, and that Walter was with her that night. What was I supposed to do?”
“Go to the police?”
“And tell them one of the men I’d conned probably killed my accomplice? How was that going to end for me?”
Not well.
“She was already dead, I had no doubt. So I let Walter know I had pictures proving he was there that night, I told him he’d never find them. If he didn’t kill Crystal himself he knew who did. He paid me for a while, for a couple of months, then…”
“Did Walter try to kill Emily?”
Jack shook his head.
“Then who?”
Jack ignored the question. “I didn’t want Crystal to die. If I’d known I never would’ve… I would’ve done things differently.”
“Walter killed you because you were blackmailing him, didn’t he?”
“Not Walter,” Jack whispered. “I don’t remember much, but it wasn’t Walter. Colt, I got greedy and it cost me everything.”
“If not Walter then who?” Colt asked.
He finally had the why, now he needed the who. The ghost of his friend hesitated, delaying the inevitable.
“I didn’t remember for a long time,” Jack said, his voice as low as Colt’s had been even though the nurse at the end of the hall wouldn’t hear the ghost even if he screamed. He closed his eyes, seemed to be thinking hard, trying to remember. “It was late, hot as July always is, and I was jogging. Stupid. Trying to be healthy got me killed, though I suspect it would’ve happened sooner or later, anyway.”
Colt let Jack talk instead of pressing for the information he needed. He didn’t want to push too hard and send Jack back to wherever he retreated when he didn’t want to answer hard questions.
“I was staying at that little hotel on the highway,” Jack said. “Dad and I had been fighting, and I just… couldn’t stay at home any longer. I was jogging by the bay, thinking, planning for what might come next. It was late, early morning actually, so no one was around to see the car hit me from behind. I’d heard the car and moved to the side of the road, but not far enough. I should’ve realized…” He shimmered, faded in and out. “I didn’t die right away, but it hurt. It really hurt.”
“Dammit, who did this to you?”
“I saw his face,” Jack whispered. “He grinned as he put me in the trunk of the car that hit me. Getting me into the trunk wasn’t easy. He struggled to get the job done, but he managed. And he smiled.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Colt said. It was the truth. Jack had made his own mess and had died because of it, but that was no way to go.
“He wanted me to tell him where the pictures were, where the money I’d taken was, but I knew no matter what I said he was going to kill me. I told him no one would ever find the pictures. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. I should’ve said they’d go out in the next day’s mail if I disappeared, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I rambled too much, I think. Maybe I told him… duck. Did I tell him about the duck? As for the money…”
Colt didn’t care about the money, but it was obvious Jack did. It was who he was, what drove him to do all he’d done. “What duck?”
Jack ignored the question. “The money is in an account in the Caymans. No one will ever find it, they don’t know where to look, they don’t even know it exists. I’ll give you the number. You and Anna can…”
“Who killed you? We can talk about the money later.”
The ghost whispered a name, one that surprised Colt more than he’d anticipated.
Now he knew, but he needed evidence in order to move forward. How could he prove what Jack had told him? “Where did he put your body?”
“He took my phone and hotel key, all I had on me, then he dumped what was left of me in the same hole they buried Crystal in.”
A bossy nurse kicked everyone but the patient and her aunt out of the hospital room. As she escorted them to the door, the nurse assured them Emily would be released in the morning as long as no complications arose from the head injury. She also assured them complications were unlikely.
Anna took Colt’s hand as they walked through the parking lot. It was nice. More than that, she needed it. A touch. Someone to lean on, figuratively and literally.
She’d been alone for too long.
“Did you find out what happened?”
Colt didn’t immediately answer, but he finally said, “Some.”
“Care to share the details?”
“Not yet. I need to think, I need a plan and right now I don’t have one.”
She wanted to know more; she wanted to know everything! But she trusted Colt. He’d tell her what he’d discovered soon enough.
“I’ve been so angry with Jack,” she said as they reached Colt’s truck. “For running off, for not reaching out, for letting mom wait and hope and cry. And all that time, he was dead. I feel like such a jerk.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Colt said. “It’s your mom that’s holding him here, I’m almost positive. When she knows what happened maybe he can move on.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
Colt hesitated. He opened the passenger door of his truck, held it open even after she’d taken her seat. “She wouldn’t believe me. Your mom is very much rooted in reality. Down to earth, believes in what she can see and not much else.”
He wasn’t wrong. “What can we do?”
Colt closed the door and rounded the truck. He looked almost defeated, a little unsure, but when he sat behind the steering wheel he looked at her and said, “Jack told me where he’s buried.”
Her heart skipped a beat, then sped up. For a moment she held her breath. She knew Jack was dead, but… buried . In the ground . It was all becoming too real. “Are we going to…” A shovel, a late night trek to wherever…
“No. I’ll call Mac in the morning and we’ll have a long talk.”
“Tomorrow? Why not now?”
Colt sighed. “It’s not like anything will happen tonight, and I need to come up with a coherent way to explain how I know what I know to a man I call a friend.”
“You look as if you’re not looking forward to that conversation.”
“I’m not.” Colt cranked the truck and eased his way through the parking lot. He was in no hurry. “But it has to be done, and soon. The man who killed Jack also murdered Nicole, burned down your house, and attacked your cousin. When he went after Emily he thought it was you, and I have no doubt he’ll be back. He thinks you have something he wants. The pictures, the list of names and numbers, maybe both. Could be he believes you know everything that happened five years ago. Then there’s the money Jack collected. He stashed it somewhere.”
“There’s money?”
“Quite a bit, I suspect. As much as I don’t want to tell anyone else what I can do, we can’t wait for a coincidental discovery or take our time planning a neat and tidy way out of this.”
“It would be nice if we knew who we were looking for.”
Colt pulled onto the highway and headed back toward Seawolf Beach. For a moment he looked as if he had something to say, but he pursed his lips and drove on without uttering a word.