DevilMayRide

3
When Sadie pulled the van up to a townhome complex, she ignored the curious gazes of neighbors out tending their small patches of grass frontage. She banked the van at the curb outside an end unit. Jackie spotted her through the window and came to greet Sadie at the door.
“Wow. You’re blond,” Sadie said by way of a greeting. Then because she realized her shock over the brunet-to-platinum dye job possibly made that remark sound rude, she added, “It looks nice.”
“Thanks,” Jackie said with a smile. “I just felt like a change. Zack said he almost didn’t recognize me.”
Sadie bit her tongue.
“I’ll help you finish up,” Sadie offered, nodding toward the townhome.
“I’m finished, but you can help load up the biohazard waste tubs.” She looked past Sadie. “So, Zack didn’t come with you?”
“No, he stayed at the other site. Too bad you’re already finished here. We didn’t accomplish anything at the other place. I was hoping to help you out a little.” Sadie didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
“Nah, you were hoping to look over my shoulder.” She put up a hand and smiled. “That’s okay. First job on my own. I get it. Anyway, the good news is that I can help out with the cookers.”
Jackie absently scratched her arm using her right hand, which was completely missing the ring and baby fingers. Sadie was tempted for the umpteenth time to ask her employee how she lost the digits. However, since the disfigurement didn’t affect Jackie’s work, Sadie was uncomfortable asking the question and Jackie had never volunteered an explanation.
“Would you prefer I do the drop at the storage unit?” Jackie asked.
Sadie tore her gaze away from Jackie’s fingers and just shook her head.
“No. We’ve been pulled off the meth job.”
“Oh yeah? What happened?”
Sadie told her employee all about what had transpired regarding the baby in the shed and the body found in the field. She left out the ghost thing, since Jackie didn’t know about her boss’s unique ability.
“Holy crap! That’s something,” Jackie said, her eyes wide. “What kind of crazy takes a newborn and sticks it next to a gutted goat?”
“The kind of crazy that usually keeps us busy mopping blood,” Sadie grumbled. “But instead the lunatic is costing me a job.”
Inside the cramped town house, Sadie and Jackie worked together to load up the medical waste bins. When Jackie hefted the last red rubber bin, she said, “Go ahead and check.”
“Check what?”
Jackie smirked. “You didn’t come all this way just to tell me about the baby and goat thing. You could’ve told me over the phone. Go ahead and make sure I did a good job.”
Sadie frowned. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re just a control freak,” she laughed mirthlessly, and turned to leave.
Sadie did go into the master bath to check and was surprised to see an elderly man sitting naked in the bathtub. His wrists had deep gaping slits.
Sadie nodded a hello.
“You can see me?” he asked in a warbly old man’s voice. “Ah, damn. It didn’t work, did it?”
“You’re dead, if that’s what you mean.”
“But how can you see me, then?” He frowned and looked confused. “And talk to me. That other gal, the one with the missing fingers—she just cleaned around me like I wasn’t here. Kinda weird having a young blond chick like that seeing me in my birthday suit.”
Sadie tunneled her fingers through her short-cropped highlights and shrugged.
“You’re dead. I can see the dead. Although, truthfully, I can’t see suicides, so I gotta ask, what really happened here? Who killed you?”
“Nobody!”
Sadie sat down on the lid of the toilet and faced him.
“You might as well fess up and tell me who you’re protecting.”
He shifted uneasily and Sadie kept her eyes respectfully on his face instead of his withered, naked body.
“If you can see me, how can I be dead?” he asked, neatly sidestepping her question.
“I just can,” Sadie replied. “Ever since my brother died, I’ve been able to talk to the dead and help them find their way to the other side.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You didn’t kill yourself, did you?”
“Of course I did!” he shouted angrily. “You can’t just waltz in here and accuse me of being a liar!”
“No harm, no foul, if you had help, you know,” Sadie stated matter-of-factly. “But, like I said, I’ve never been able to see the spirits of suicide victims. Not even my own brother, even though I’d give my right arm for that. It might be because suicides already know how to get to the other side, or else they’re just anxious to get there—they don’t pause in the here and now.”
“That’s crazy talk,” he muttered.
“You’re talking to me and you’re dead, so, yeah, it’s crazy talk,” Sadie replied with a half smile.
“I have an inoperable brain tumor. It’s the size of an orange.” He tapped the side of his head. “Damn thing’s been slowly eating me alive.”
“That must’ve been really difficult for you and your wife.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Last month Martha had to put me in diapers. Then she had to start feeding me. Some days my hand couldn’t find my own damn mouth.” He shook his head from side to side and then his tone grew wistful. “We had a good life together, you know? It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but we did all right. We agreed that when the time came, she’d let me choose how to go.”
“So you asked Martha to help you end your suffering?”
He sighed.
“I was supposed to do it myself. We’d put aside enough of my pills to make it easy, but that damn son of mine found my stash and flushed it. He whined about how miracles happen and I should just hang on. As if this were all about him.” He rolled his eyes. “He always was a selfish kid.”
“So Martha had to slice your wrists for you? How did you manage to make it look like a suicide?” Sadie asked curiously. “Usually the first thing the cops check is whether the cuts have hesitation marks, whether they’re left to right and all that.”
“We watched enough crime shows to know what they’d be looking for. We’re not stupid.” His eyes challenged her to say otherwise. “I wrote the note. Then Martha climbed into the tub behind me. I wanted to do it myself. Leave Martha out of it. But my hands shook too much and then, well, I guess I turned chicken. She put her hand over mine. I fought her for a second—”
“You changed your mind, but Martha went ahead?” Sadie asked with an edge.
His eyes flashed angrily.
“She did what she had to do. Even sang ‘Amazing Grace’ as I went out.” His tone softened. “She’s got the voice of an angel. You’re not going to make trouble for Martha, are you? I only had another month in me, tops.”
Sadie rubbed the back of her neck.
“My job is just to help you go on over. You can’t stay here.”
“I thought there’d be a light or something, but . . . nothing.”
“Sometimes you get held back. I’m not sure why,” Sadie said quietly. “Try to take a deep breath and close your eyes. You just have to want it. Let go of what’s here.”
“I’m worried about Martha. I never even showed her how to balance our checkbook.”
“Maybe your worry is what’s keeping you here. Do you want me to talk to your son about that? About making sure Martha’s financial details are worked out.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “That would be good.”
Sadie watched him close his eyes. She could tell he was trying, but although his outer edges shimmered slightly, he didn’t fade.
“Anyone in your family go before you?”
“My brother, Ted, died two years ago,” he said. “His heart went.”
“I bet Ted’s waiting for you. Close your eyes again,” she said softly. “Picture your brother in your mind. Listen to his voice. Feel his touch. His arms are embracing you and—”
She stopped short and watched his essence glimmer, then slowly dematerialize. Within seconds there was nothing to see but a well-scrubbed bathtub.
Sadie turned to leave and was startled to find Jackie standing in the hall eyeing her curiously.
“Talking to yourself again?”
“Guess so,” Sadie replied. She nervously cleared her throat and nudged her way past her employee.
Wordlessly they locked up the house and loaded the remaining bins in the back of the van.
“I’ve noticed you do that a lot on the job,” Jackie commented as she leaned nonchalantly against the side of the van.
“What?” Sadie asked, digging out her keys and pretending she had no idea what Jackie was talking about.
“Talk to yourself. Zack says it’s nothing to be worried about. He says you’re just a little eccentric and that it’s no big deal. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it freaked me out a little.”
Eccentric! Sadie stiffened. It made her sound like an old lady who lived alone and talked to her cats.
“Everybody handles stress differently,” Sadie said curtly, and her eyes cut to Jackie in a way that told her to just drop it.
Jackie nodded, but her brown eyes regarded Sadie warily. She looked like she was about to speak and thought better of it. Sadie wasn’t about to have this conversation with Jackie right now. Hell, maybe not ever.
“Feel like working another job after this slice ’n’ soak?” Sadie asked.
“Sure. Bring it on,” Jackie said confidently. “I want as much work as you can throw my way.”
Sadie reminded herself that this was exactly the kind of enthusiasm that made Jackie a valuable employee. The fact that Jackie flirted with Zack didn’t make her a bad worker. It only made her female.
Just keep telling yourself that, she thought.
“We’ve got release to do a job in Kirkland. A dripper. Zack and I were going to work it alone in a few days, but since the meth job is out of our hands and you’re done here, there’s no reason why we can’t all go,” Sadie remarked.
“Awesome!”
Um. Not for the dead guy.
“I heard about that one. Biker dude shot, then bled out through the boards at their clubhouse before anyone noticed, right?” Jackie asked.
“Bikers?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah. Fierce Force. You must’ve heard of them.”
“Sure. Seattle’s Hells Angels wannabes. How do you know this Kirkland place was their clubhouse?”
“It was on the news,” Jackie said. “Supposedly they held meetings there, but then started using it as a meth house.”
“Meth and bikers. I guess it’s not exactly a stretch,” Sadie remarked. She snagged a pen from her pocket and scribbled out the Kirkland address. “You can take your time. Grab a coffee or a bite to eat. I’m going to drop off the med waste bins at storage first, then go back to the Kenmore house to pick up Zack.”
“I could pick up Zack. I don’t mind.”
I just bet you don’t.
“I’ll do it,” Sadie said. “The cops there may have more questions for me anyway and I’d rather get that over with.”
That was true, but Sadie had no desire to run into the freaky ghost she saw there earlier.
She climbed into the van and drove. She retrieved her voice mail messages, noting two from her mother, both nagging about arranging a baby shower for her sister. She didn’t feel like dealing with that. Instead, she cranked up the radio and sang along while she passed cars on the I-5. Snow Patrol was just singing the last lines of “How to Be Dead” when Sadie steered the van back onto the meth-lab scene, now turned into a murder scene.
Not a lot had changed at the property while she was gone. It was still a hub of activity. She climbed out of the vehicle, leaving behind the AC and stepping into a wall of heat.
“You’ll be happy to know that Baby Doe is doing fine,” Zack reported when he greeted her at the van. “He was a little dehydrated, but they say he’ll leave the hospital in a day or two. If they can’t find any living relatives, he’ll go straight into the loving arms of a foster parent.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Smile. We did a good thing.”
“I’m glad,” Sadie said.
“Oh really? Tell your face that.”
She looked beyond him toward the garden shed.
“What about the baby’s mother?”
“She wasn’t as lucky.” Zack leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Like you said, she was wearing a blue sundress. Long black hair. Lots of blood. Word out here was she had an impromptu C-section.”
Even though the topic was ugly, Zack’s warm breath on her ear tickled and caused her to blush. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt and being in this close proximity to his naked chest made Sadie’s nerves ping. She joked to cover up.
“Guess having you hang around your ol’ pals helps, huh? Look at all the information you picked up.” Sadie smiled. “A couple years off the force hasn’t hurt your connections.” She heard movement behind her and turned. “What the hell?”
A television reporter and his camera crew had arrived on the scene and had a camera focused on Sadie and Zack from just a few feet away.
“Hey, back off,” Zack snarled, his angry stride eating the ground until he was inches away from the reporter.
“Sadie, is it true you discovered a baby inside the body of a dead goat?” the young journalist shouted over Zack’s shoulder.
“What part of back off don’t you understand?” Zack asked heatedly.
“No comment, Scott,” Sadie replied, waving an officer over by shouting, “Hey, we’ve got a couple of vultures who’ve crossed the line.”
Scott Reed stepped closer and grinned wolfishly.
“A vulture? Now, that hurts.”
Zack blocked Scott until a uniformed officer ordered the reporter and his crew back behind the police line.
“Creep,” Zack said.
“He’s just doing his job,” Sadie said with a shrug.
“Yeah. Sure. Like the time he misquoted you, remember that? You came off sounding like a cold, unfeeling bitch about that teen suicide we worked a couple months ago.”
Sadie’s blood heated at the thought.
“Technically he didn’t misquote me. I said every teen thinking about suicide should have to clean one. And I meant it. I just didn’t know Reed and his crew were within earshot and had a camera lens zoomed in for a close-up.”
Zack said something, but Sadie didn’t hear. She was too focused on the shed behind him. Leaning against the outbuilding was the figure of the woman in the blood-soaked sundress. Her stance was casual, but if looks could kill . . .
“Let’s go,” Sadie said to Zack. “Jackie’s meeting us over at the dripper scene in Kirkland.”
“I got someone I want to talk to. I’ll be right with you,” Zack said, walking down the driveway and stopping to talk with a uniformed patrolman from the King County Sheriff’s Department.
Abruptly she turned on her heel to go back to the van. When she reached the door, she glanced to the side and noted that mangled Fido was lying in the shade of the house. His head was on his paws and he looked depressed. Of course he was missing probably a third of his body, so he had every right to be an unhappy puppy. Sadie walked over and crouched down to his level.
“Wish I could help you, boy,” Sadie said, her voice low. “My specialty is helping spirits walk to the light, but I don’t know how to apply that to dogs.”
He leaned in and licked Sadie’s fingers. She shuddered and pulled them away. Then the dog got to his feet and turned to look in the direction of the shed, toward the womanly ghost. A growl started deep in his throat and turned to a snarling bark as Fido suddenly charged. The dog bolted across the field toward the shed, but the lady in the bloody sundress faded before he reached her.
“Dueling ghosts,” Sadie muttered, leaning against the shade of the house. “This just keeps getting better.”
“Hey, Novak, you all right?” Detective Carr’s deep voice asked.
“I’m okay. Just needed a moment out of the sun.”
“Yeah, nothing like working a scene like this in the heat.”
The man stank of grime and sweat. It wasn’t even noon and his antiperspirant had already given up.
“Why would someone cut a baby from a pregnant woman and put it in a shed with a dead goat?”
“Sadie, even if I knew, it’s not like I could talk to you about it. You know that.” He frowned over at a detective in the field who was calling him over. “No sense in you and Zack hanging out here. We know where to find you both if we need to.”
“Okay, we’re headed to that dripper scene in Kirkland next.”
“The biker house, huh? Have fun,” he said sarcastically as he turned and walked away back toward the shed.
Weird ghost lady still wasn’t back. Sadie knew, though, that she wasn’t gone for good. She’d be back and Sadie didn’t want to be around to talk to her. She didn’t feel at ease until they were in the van and driving toward Kirkland. She’d much rather deal with an old-fashioned scene of body decomposition than a freaky ghost with red eyes any day.
When they pulled up to the scene, Jackie was already parked in the driveway. She was sitting in her car blasting heavy metal so loud that her car vibrated.
“You’d think she’d go deaf,” Sadie mumbled as she turned off her vehicle and pocketed the keys.
“I’ve heard you listen to U2 that loud,” Zack countered.
“Not in a customer’s driveway,” Sadie replied. “Besides, U2’s different. It has to be loud.”
Zack chuckled and they climbed out of the van and walked toward Jackie’s car. They watched a minute while Jackie played drums on her steering wheel. Her missing fingers didn’t interfere with her drum solo.
“One of these days I’m going to ask her what happened to her hand,” Sadie said.
“It’s not a secret,” Zack said. “I asked months ago. If you want to know, I’m sure she’ll tell you.”
“I guess since it doesn’t interfere with her work, I’m not comfortable asking.”
“Then I’ll tell you. A few years ago she had a gambling problem. Owed debts to the wrong people. They pinched off a couple fingers with gardening shears to teach her a lesson.”
“Holy crap!” Sadie gasped.
“She doesn’t gamble anymore.”
“Wow.” Sadie shook her head. “That’s what you’d call an extreme twelve-step program.”
Jackie still hadn’t noticed they were standing beside her car, so Sadie walked up to the driver’s side and rapped loudly on the window. Jackie jumped and cursed before she turned off her vehicle and opened her door.
“We ready to go?”
“As long as your ears aren’t still ringing,” Sadie replied snarkily.
“I’m good.” She smiled behind Sadie. “Hi, Zack,” she added, batting her eyelashes.
Oh, give me a break, Sadie thought. She walked away before rolling her eyes.
There was a carport attached to the small Craftsman home and Sadie designated that area as their safe zone, where they would don and doff gear and store supplies. Together they unloaded the van and brought their equipment to the carport area. Since Sadie had already been inside to take pictures for the insurance company and her own records, she filled them in as they went.
“Basic body decomp. Big guy shot in the chest and left to rot in the kitchen.”
“Place has had a few transformations,” Zack said. “Seattle’s reigning biker gang, Fierce Force, rented the house and used it as a meeting place for a couple months. Then they used it to make meth.”
“So are we dealing with both a meth-clean and decomp scene?” Jackie asked.
Sadie shook her head.
“David Egan’s company, Scour Power, got the call to clean up the meth lab. It was pronounced clean, but then a guy got shot here and was left to rot, so now it’s our turn.”
“The body was lying around in this heat?” Jackie let out a low whistle. “They probably had to pop his bloated body just to get him through the doorway. I’ve always been curious about guys who choose to get involved in bike gangs. Seems like such a loser thing to do.”
Sadie was still thinking about Jackie losing a couple fingers for a gambling bet and figured Jackie knew a thing or two about being a loser. She cleared her throat roughly.
“Yeah, well, he was somebody’s son and maybe somebody’s brother,” Sadie said more harshly than she intended. “Let’s just get in and get the job done.”
She didn’t like to talk about the victims before a job. It made closing herself off emotionally a lot more difficult. Jackie, on the other hand, loved to chat and give opinions on the people who passed. It was one of the little things that bugged Sadie about her employee. She watched Jackie bend over in her short-shorts, exposing part of her perfect ass as she slipped her feet into her hazmat suit. That was another thing that bugged Sadie, but she wasn’t quite ready to admit it.
Wordlessly the three suited up in the disposable Tyvek suits, goggles, shoe covers, cotton glove liners under their latex gloves, and full-face respirators with P100 cartridges because it was a body-decomp scene.
Sadie unlocked the house and was first to step inside. She shooed away the flurry of flies that greeted her, and looked around. Zack followed, but Jackie stayed outside the doorway and handed supplies from the safe zone into the house until they had everything they needed.
Even without the stench of decomp the house would never have made the cover of House Beautiful. Instead of the usual window coverings, all the windows were covered with tinfoil. However, the tacky choice in home decor provided them with a working area that was probably fifteen degrees cooler than the ninety degrees outside. Still, it wasn’t long before Sadie, suited up to the gills, felt like her shoes were filled with sweat.
The medical examiner had ruled the cause of death a bullet to the heart. Sadie looked at the man’s ghost and had a hard time believing he hadn’t died of an ink overdose. The burly biker dude’s arms and chest were completely covered in tattoos. He had a gaping hole where the bullet entered, but the rest was pure ink. In the center of his chest, buried in a forest of black, springy chest hair, was a large flaming O surrounding a double F, the emblem for the Fierce Force biker gang.
The ghost sat with his butt perched on the kitchen counter, wearing nothing but an ugly pair of puke green boxer shorts. Sadie would’ve loved to deal with him and send him on his way to the next dimension, but she couldn’t approach him in front of Jackie. Instead, she tried to ignore the man as she worked at scrubbing his sloughed skin and liquefied remains off the faded linoleum.
When it was time for a break, Sadie and Zack were first to step outside and doff their gear.
Sadie quietly told Zack about the resident ghost.
“Ugly, huh?” Zack joked after hearing Sadie’s description. He hadn’t always accepted Sadie’s talent as fact, but he’d come to the point where he couldn’t deny her gift and had stopped looking at her like she was a total loon. At least most of the time.
“Ugly is right,” Sadie whispered as she tossed her gear into the waste bin on top of Zack’s. “He’s covered in tats and is as hairy as a gorilla. The tattoo in the middle of his chest is the Fierce Force emblem you told me about before.”
“The fiery O and two Fs?”
“Yeah.” She blew out a long breath. “I need a break. It’s the heat. And I can’t take the pressure of him staring at me inside that house with you two there and—” She stopped, frowned, and tilted her head as she stared at the back door of the house.
“Who the hell is she talking to?” Sadie demanded.
Before Zack could reply, Jackie opened the door, exiting the house to step into the carport where they waited outside. She had her cell phone pressed to her ear and was just finishing a call.
“Just a few bucks until payday,” Jackie said into her cell phone.
She took one look at Sadie’s lethal glare and came to an abrupt stop in the doorway.
“I’ll call you back,” she told the person on the phone, and clicked her phone off.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sadie demanded. “You were on the phone!”
Jackie shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other under Sadie’s venomous glare.
Sadie pointed to Jackie’s hand. “You just used your cell phone in a contaminated area.”
Jackie looked down at her phone and then up at Sadie.
“It was just a friend and he—”
“I don’t care if it was the pope.” Sadie’s voice rose in anger. She pointed to one of the forty-gallon medical waste bins at her feet. “Dump it.”
“I’ll clean it,” Jackie said, her full lips pinching into a tight line.
“You handled that phone with your gloved hands. Your gloves that were just touching any number of blood-borne pathogens. The body fluids in that house could be swimming with every kind of disease there is: HIV, hepatitis C, E. coli”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“not to mention salmonella, herpes, and tubercle bacillus and a hundred others. Any of those friggin’ diseases could now be on that phone!”
“I said, I’ll clean it.”
“Your cell phone would never survive the kind of cleaning it would need and you know it. This is basic stuff. It’s bio-recovery one-oh-one. Jeez, have you forgotten all of your blood-borne-pathogen training? We shouldn’t need to have this conversation.”
Jackie opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and two-pointed her phone into the red bin. Then she hurriedly stripped down out of the rest of her gear until she was standing in her cutoffs and tight T-shirt. She tossed her gear into the container with her phone.
“I’m starved. There’s a McDonald’s a couple blocks away. We can take my car,” Jackie said, already walking away.
“Sounds good,” Zack replied, but his eyes were on Sadie. “She screwed up. We’ve all done it.”
“Really? You never did. I never did.”
“But we could have.” He slipped out of his hazmat suit to his jeans. Sadie had given him a company Scene- 2-Clean T-shirt to wear, but it was too snug. You could count the ripples on his washboard abs. Sadie made a mental note to suggest he wear the company shirts every day.
“That was a junior mistake.” Sadie realized she was nearly shouting and lowered her voice. “Go with her. Bring me back a burger,” Sadie told him in a softer tone. “I’m going back in to deal with Gorilla Guy.”
“A minute ago you wanted a break. Now you want to keep on working?”
“You’d rather I talk to the dead in front of Jackie? You and I both agreed that I should keep that little skill to myself so she doesn’t walk out on Scene-2-Clean like every other employee in the last six years.”
Not that those others left because of Sadie’s ghost-whispering talents. They mostly couldn’t handle mopping up the dead day after day. Few could.
Sadie took a calming breath and slipped out of her own gear down to an oversized T-shirt and nylon running shorts.
“Take her to McDonald’s. Buy her a burger, then take her to the nearest store and buy her a new cell phone. Get her an upgraded phone and put it on your company credit card.”
He smiled.
“You’re a good boss.”
“I guess we’re all entitled to one screwup.” Sadie looked pointedly at Zack. “This one is hers.”
“I’m sure she gets that.”
“A little reminder from you wouldn’t hurt. She l-i-i-i-kes you,” Sadie said in a childish singsong voice. “I bet she’s hoping you’ll ask her to the prom.”
He rolled his eyes and looked embarrassed.
“See you after lunch.”
Once Jackie’s Prelude had pulled out of the driveway, Sadie made her way to the company van to get a bottle of water. She climbed into the back of the vehicle, reached into the cooler, and dug out the coldest one from the bottom to take with her. When she stepped out of the van, Sadie nearly walked right into a huge black man dressed in camouflage pants and a stained white T-shirt.
“Thuggy!” Sadie gasped. Her hand went to her throat, where she could feel the pounding of her pulse against her fingers. She blew out a breath. “Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.”
“You never called me back,” he said, stepping even closer so she’d have to face him. “You said you’d call when you had another job.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need you on this site. How did you even know where to find me?”
“I helped Egan clean this place before as a meth lab, remember?” Sadie knew that for a big man who looked like he got his clothes out of the bottom of a Dumpster, he could be charming. He blinked at her with eyes that were surprisingly warm and friendly.
“Nice of Egan to tell you about the job, but did he also tell you that I don’t work with drunks?” Sadie asked stiffly.
She stepped around the large man and could feel the anger radiate from him.
“I’m not drunk now. And I wasn’t drunk then. I got into a scuffle and got a beer bottle smashed against me. Got attacked by a crank user on a job.” He pointed to the side of his head. “Got the stitches to prove it. That’s why I smelled like booze when I showed up on the job.”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“Talk to Zack. He’ll vouch for me. The only mistake I made was showing up without changing my clothes.”
“I’ve had enough mistakes today,” Sadie snapped at him over her shoulder.
“Right. I heard about what happened at the other scene. It’s all over the news. A goat, a baby, and some woman, huh?”
“Shit. It’s on the news?” Sadie turned to face him.
He nodded. “Yup, they even showed your faces on a commercial for the six o’clock news.”
“Whose faces?”
“Yours and Zack’s. Oh, and I heard Scene-2-Clean mentioned on the radio on the way over when they were talking about the scene.”
“Great. Just great.” Sadie groaned.
“It’s publicity. It can’t be all bad.” He smiled. “It’s not like you can take up an ad in the Times saying, ‘Need Uncle Joe’s remains mopped up? Call Scene-2-Clean. ’ ”
“True.”
She walked over to the carport area and prepared to suit up. He looked ready to join her.
“Like I said, Thuggy, sober or not, I don’t need you on this job. Zack and Jackie are already working this one, since we got pulled off that scene this morning.”
“I really need the work.”
Sadie heard another voice and glanced over at the door leading from the carport into the kitchen. Gorilla Man was staring out the little window in the door, shouting at the top of his lungs, and waving his fists in the air.
“Crap,” Sadie muttered.
“No, really, I need the work,” Thuggy said sincerely. “Egan said you’d keep me on.”
Thuggy couldn’t hear the ghost freaking out, so he had no idea Sadie wasn’t referring to him.
“Zack and Jackie have just gone for lunch. I don’t need four people working this one scene,” Sadie said, aware she was raising her voice above Gorilla Man’s, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“Okay, okay,” Thuggy said, holding up his hands. “You don’t have to get pissed.”
Sadie blew out an exasperated breath.
“Fine. Call me tomorrow. I’ll see if I can hook you up with something.”
He looked at her strangely, nodded, and turned away.
By the time Sadie was suited back up, he was gone. She flung the door open into the kitchen and shouted loudly through her respirator.
“Shut up!”
Gorilla Man stopped in the middle of the temper tantrum he was having in the kitchen and he turned to face her.
“Are you talking to me?”
Sadie nodded.
“You can see me?”
“Yes. And hear you. No more yelling.” Except she had to yell her reply so he could hear her through her respirator.
“But I thought I was . . .”
He looked down at the floor where his physical body had lain for two weeks in the heat before the cops broke down the door. A younger officer was still being teased mercilessly about the number of times he’d thrown up in the bushes after just glancing inside from the doorway.
“Yes, you’re dead,” Sadie said. “I can talk to the dead.”
One corner of his lip went up in a surly grin.
“Well, ain’t this my lucky fucking day?”
“Right. Mine too. So, Mr. . . . ?”
“Snake.” He nodded as his eyes looked her up and down. “Jake the Snake. It’s kind of hard to hear you with that thing on your face.”
“Sorry, Mr. Snake, but I can’t take the respirator off. I’ve been hired to clean up what remains of your rotting corpse.”
“You sure got the short end of the stick.” He laughed. “What did you do wrong to get that job?”
“It’s what I get paid to do. I run a trauma-cleaning company called Scene-2-Clean. The other thing I do, that’s kind of a bonus for people like you, is that I can help you to move on. Somehow, your spirit has remained here in this place. As pleasant as your home is”—she gazed around at the tinfoiled windows, peeling paint, and faded cabinetry—“it’s time for you to move on.”
“Hey, this ain’t my house. I was just visiting, so to speak. My buds, the FF, had valuables stashed here. I decided it would be helpful to have a little for myself, since I was planning on defecting. The FF don’t take too kindly to one of their own jumping ship. Especially when they help themselves to some loot. But I had my reasons. Not that it mattered when I got caught. Boom! I was toast.”
“Right.”
He folded his arms across his chest and raised his eyebrows at Sadie.
“Damn. So I’m like a ghost or something?”
“Yeah.” A big, hairy, tattooed ghost.
“So if I’m a ghost, how come you can see me?”
“I don’t know the exact answer to that. After my brother ate his gun, I started doing bio-recovery work. I found out the dead could communicate with me.”
“But nobody else can see me? Not even Thuggy?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes. “You know Thuggy?”
“I’m sure he’s the bastard who ratted me out to the FF!” He slammed his fist on the counter, or tried to. He couldn’t connect. “Hey, you know what? You can help me.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Not that ghost stuff. Look, do you really have to be dressed like a spaceman? You know they cleaned up all the meth shit here already, right? So you can lose the suit.”
“Yeah, I know this isn’t a meth lab anymore. I’m dressed like this because I’m a bio-recovery technician and, you know, the blood ’n’ guts cleaning can be a bit . . . risky too.”
“Huh. You think you’re going to catch something from me?” He looked insulted.
“Forget that and let’s focus on how I can help you,” Sadie rushed on. She didn’t want to be dealing with this freak when Zack and Jackie got back from their lunch. “I’ll tell you exactly what to do so you can leave this dimension and go to your rest.”
“Like hell!” he spit. “I’m not going anywhere. The FF is coming back here to get their shit and I’m going to haunt the hell out of them.”
“But you know they won’t be able to see you.”
“Why not? I’ve seen all those scary movies. I’m going to be like the poltergeist from hell, man.”
Oh brother.
“But you can do something for me anyway. I’m going to tell you where I’ve hidden all my stuff, and you’re going to find my old lady and give it to her. Even if I’m not around to enjoy it, there’s no reason why she can’t have it for herself and our baby when he comes. And you should tell her it’s time for our dog, Brutus, to get his shots next month. I don’t want him to get sick.”
Sadie felt a little dizzy as a sudden, potent realization hit her. This house was connected to the other scene. The one with the baby. The goat. The dog. And the dead lady with the red eyes.
“Your girlfriend was pregnant?”
He nodded, puffing out his beer belly with pride, as if it took more than his bodily fluid to create a child.
“She’s big as a house. Going to give me a son any day now.”
“Long dark hair to her waist? Dark green eyes?” Sadie asked, swallowing nervously.
He frowned. “You know Penny?”
“What’s her last name?”
“Penny Torrez. Why?”
Because the cops would like the name of the woman given an impromptu C-section in a field behind a meth lab.
“And your dog, Brutus, is he a big old Rottweiler?”
“Yeah.”
“And did Penny and Brutus hang around the meth cookery over in Kenmore?”
“Sometimes. I told her not to go inside the house. I didn’t want her breathing in that shit with her being pregnant and all. She got together with a bunch of loony tunes and they had their weird meetings in the yard at night.”
Sadie sighed.
“I’ve got some bad news, Snake.” Sadie closed her eyes. “Penny’s body was found in the field behind that house. She’s dead.”
“You’re lying!” he roared.
“I wish I was.”
A thunderous scream exploded from his lips, and in a rage, his hand formed a fist and he drove it at Sadie’s face. His hand coursed straight through her, causing Sadie to shrink with nausea from his touch. He wound up again.
“Stop that!” Sadie shouted. “Your son. Your baby. He was delivered just fine.”
Snake stopped short of throwing another blow.
“My baby boy’s okay?”
“He’s beautiful.” Except that his little body was stuffed beside a dead goat and he may have his own miniature crystal meth addiction. Sadie left all that out. “They’ll give him a checkup and then I’m sure Child Protective Services will make sure he goes to a very good home.”
A heart-wrenching sob broke from the large man’s lips and he sank to his knees.
“We were going to be a family,” he cried. “I told Penny we could make a fresh start. Maybe head down to California. I was getting outta the FF. Her away from those creepy Witigo nuts.”
“Witi who?” Sadie asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” He covered his face with his hands and sobbed. “Nothing matters anymore. It’s all gone to shit.”
“But you can still be together,” Sadie assured him. “Let go of this place. Go to be with Penny. She needs you.”
He looked up at Sadie.
“How can I know that for sure?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “You can’t make that kind of promise. How do I even know she’ll be in the same place that I’m going?”
It was a question Sadie had never been asked. She thought about Penny Torrez’s red glowing eyes and looked at Snake with his freakish tattoos. Somehow she didn’t think Saint Peter was standing at the golden gates waiting for either of them.
“I don’t know,” Sadie admitted. “But I do know you can’t stay here.”
“The hell I can’t,” he said defiantly. His essence was gone then, but his shape didn’t shimmer. No shimmer meant he did not move on to the next dimension. He wasn’t truly gone from this dimension. He was only invisible to Sadie.
Tired of dealing with Snake and grateful to be alone with blood, guts, and gore rather than biker-gorilla ghosts, Sadie got down to work. She was at the point where she knew she had to start taking out the floor-boards in the kitchen when she heard Jackie outside the kitchen door.
Sadie got up and unlocked the door. Jackie was fully suited up again and ready to go back to work.
“I had to drop Zack back at the Kenmore scene. Detective Carr called his cell and asked for him,” Jackie shouted through her respirator.
“How’s he getting back here?” Sadie shouted back.
“Carr said he’d drop him.” She nodded outside. “Your burger’s in my car. By the way, thanks for the new phone.” She paused. “Sorry I screwed up.”
Sadie shrugged it off, then pointed to the cracked linoleum she’d been just about to lift. Jackie nodded, picked up a sharp tool similar to a crowbar. The house was built in the early 1950s and it didn’t look like the faded yellow linoleum had ever been changed. All the cracks and curled corners of the old lino had allowed bodily fluids to seep beneath. The entire subfloor of the room would need to be removed wherever it was contaminated.
Jackie pointed to a baseboard. It was already loose and looked like it would come away easily. Sadie worked the tool into the crack between the trim and the wall, and the board popped off easily. Too easily. It was like it wasn’t properly attached to begin with. Maybe David Egan’s meth-clean company, Scour Power, had removed the board when cleaning the meth lab, but they should’ve done a better job than that.
Careful not to snag her gloves on the nails, Sadie lifted the baseboard free. Behind the eight-inch-wide piece of wood, the drywall had been oddly cut away. Sadie sat back on her haunches and stared at what looked like black plastic trash bags stashed inside the cavity where there should’ve been insulation.
Then she realized this entire part of the wall was newly painted.
“What the hell . . . ?” Sadie murmured.
Jackie came over to kneel beside her.
“Someone hid stuff in the wall,” Jackie commented loudly. She nudged a plastic bundle with her foot. “Open one up,” Jackie encouraged.
Sadie hesitated, then hooked a gloved finger into the plastic wrap and pulled it free. One tightly wrapped square package came away, but there were a whole lot more stashed there.
Jackie’s eyes were bright, as if they’d just found buried treasure. Sadie felt another housecleaning job slipping out of her hands, convinced the walls were lined with drugs, not gold.
Jackie made ripping motions with her gloved hands. She wanted Sadie to tear into the packaging. It was the logical thing to do. Sadie’s stomach was a knot of tension as she tore open the plastic.
When the bag split open, Sadie and Jackie simultaneously gasped in shock.