She leaned forward, her eyes clouded. “Used to be a vacant lot by the river. A lot of kids played over there. One of the neighborhood boys claimed he saw Clayton and the other kid back up in the woods one day. Clayton had strung up an old mangy dog and he tried to get the other boy to kill it. When the little one refused, Clayton bound their wrists together and forced the knife into the kid’s hand. Forced him to plunge the blade into that poor dog’s heart.” She leaned back, hand clasped to her throat. “Can you even imagine such a thing? You know what I call somebody like that? A natural-born killer, is what.”
I was afraid she might be right. “What was the other boy’s name?”
“I don’t think I ever knew. He and his mama kept mostly to themselves. I did hear rumors that she was from a well-to-do family and they’d disowned her years ago.” Tula paused with a pensive frown. “They said she was a Delacourt. But you know how people love to talk.”
As I drove away from Tula Mackey’s house, my first instinct was to call Devlin. I’d made an important discovery, but revealing it could be tricky. How could I explain that Clayton Masterson’s ghost—and that letterman’s jacket—had led me to him?
I’d have to give the matter careful consideration, and in the meantime, I decided to go see Tom Gerrity. He was the one who had sent me to Ethan Shaw in the first place, and it was apparent to me now that he’d known all along what I would find there.
I used my phone to look up the address of Gerrity Investigations. The office was located north of Calhoun not far from where I found myself now. The area had once been residential, but most of the original houses had long since been converted into apartments and offices or torn down to make room for ugly brick commercial buildings that housed a variety of businesses.
Pulling to the curb, I scoped out the immediate vicinity. Gerrity’s was in one of the shabbier buildings on the block, an old Charlestonian-style clapboard with drooping porches and peeling paint. No gardens here, only a tangle of scrubby brush and weeds that hadn’t seen a mower in months.
As I headed up the cracked sidewalk, I took another look around. Since my conversation with Tula Mackey, I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding—that no matter what I did or where I went, my destiny was on a collision course with a killer.
The outer door was unlocked, and I stepped through into what had once been an elegant foyer. Now the grungy space and its threadbare accoutrements—gold velvet armchair, moth-eaten rug and sagging Venetian blinds—served as a lobby for a handful of shady endeavors. After checking the row of mailboxes for a name and number, I climbed the creaky stairs to the second floor and found Gerrity Investigations all the way at the end of a long, dim hallway.
The door stood open, but the office looked deserted. I paused on the threshold to glance around. Like the rest of the building, the space had seen better days. An old metal desk faced the doorway. The only other furniture was an equally battered filing cabinet and a couple of plastic chairs.
There were no other doors. The one room apparently comprised the whole of Gerrity Investigations.
Bending backward to glance down the hallway, I walked over to the desk and glanced at the items littered across the surface. Pens, broken pencils, yellow legal pad, stapler, paper clips—nothing out of the ordinary.
I heard the squeak of footsteps outside and hurried back over to the door. A man strode down the hallway, but he wasn’t Gerrity. They were probably around the same age, but the newcomer was white, a few inches shorter and a few pounds heavier than Gerrity.
Darting back to the desk, I resumed my inventory. The only personal item in the whole space was a framed photograph of police cadets on graduation day. As I scanned the faces, a thrill of discovery raced through me. I recognized Tom Gerrity and Devlin. And too late…the man I’d seen in the hallway.
Sensing his presence, I turned to find him in the doorway, one hand beneath his khaki jacket as if reaching for a weapon. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.
Quickly, I set the frame back on the desk and backed away with my hands in front of me in a manner I hoped was non-threatening. “I’m looking for Tom Gerrity. I have some information for him.”
His brows rose at that. “And what information would that be?”
I was pretty nervous by that point, but if anyone knew how to conceal fear, it was me. “Are you a colleague of his?”
“You might say that.” He let his arm drop to his side as he walked slowly into the office.
Now that he’d apparently decided not to pull a gun on me, I breathed a little easier. “Do you happen to know where I can find Mr. Gerrity?”
“You’re looking right at him.”
I stared at him in bewilderment. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for
“I’m Tom Gerrity. Leastways, last time I looked.”
I didn’t see the slightest resemblance between this man and the Tom Gerrity I knew. Could there be two private investigators in Charleston with the same name?
Then I glanced back at the photograph and felt a strange sense of destiny again.
“Were you hired by Hannah Fischer’s mother to find her?” I asked slowly.
“That’s privileged information,” he said. “Unless you want to tell me why you’re really here, I think we’re done.”
“I’ve been working with John Devlin on Hannah’s case.” My gaze dropped briefly to the photograph. “I assume you know him.”
His contemptuous smirk made my skin crawl. “Oh, I know him all right. What’s he to you?”
I didn’t like the way he looked at me. Nor the way he spoke about Devlin, but I was careful to keep my disgust concealed. I didn’t want to upset him. Not yet at least.
“I told you, Detective Devlin and I have been working together.”
“You’re not a cop.”
“No. I’m a consultant.”
His gaze flicked over me in a manner that told me just what he thought of that revelation. “So what is this information you have for me?”
“I’m afraid there’s been a miscommunication. This is the man I’m looking for.” I picked up the photograph and pointed to the man who’d been masquerading as Gerrity.
His eyes flared and he took a menacing step toward me. “What is this…some kind of sick joke?”
I held my ground. “No, not at all. As I said, there appears to be some sort of miscommunication—”
He grabbed the picture from my hand and lay it facedown on the desk, as if my having seen it, let alone touched it, was some kind of affront to him. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re after, but you tell Devlin the next time he sends someone to snoop around in my office, he’d better watch his back. I won’t bother filing a complaint. I’ll handle the problem myself. And as for you…” His eyes narrowed menacingly. “You want to find Robert Fremont? Then I suggest you try Bridge Creek Cemetery in Berkeley County.”
“Robert Fremont?” Where had I heard that name? Then I remembered. Robert Fremont was the name of the cop killed in the line of duty. The one whose grave I had promised Gerrity—rather, the man pretending to be Gerrity—I would pay special attention to.
Cold fingers curled around my spine.
How could I not have known? It seemed so obvious to me now.
Fremont was dead and I was his conduit…between this world and the next.
Forty
I sat in my car for the longest time before I dared start the engine and drive off. My hands shook so badly I didn’t trust myself behind the wheel.
How could I not have known he was a ghost?
How could I not have felt the cold breath of death down my collar? The chill of his otherworldly presence?
A ghost masquerading as a man had entered my world and I had no rules to deal with such an entity.
