Who the hell was ever really safe?
She closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the band. They were singing “Danny Boy,” and it was beautiful.
It was also about death.
She swallowed another gulp of straight whiskey. She had to get a grip on herself, and she knew it. She took a deep breath and felt alcohol send pure heat streaming into her blood and bones. “If…if Matt and Leslie are really still in that house—in their spiritual forms, at least—and they know so much, why don’t they just tell us who the killer is?” she challenged, disbelief strong in her voice.
“Because they can only report on what’s out there,” Brent said.
“Now you’ve lost me,” Genevieve told him.
“Ghosts aren’t all-seeing and all-knowing.” He smiled. “They know things because they hear people talking.”
“And they read the newspaper,” Nikki offered.
Genevieve stared at her blankly. “They read the newspaper?” she repeated. “They read the newspaper?”
“The people who work there bring in the papers or a magazine, and then Leslie and Matt read them,” Nikki explained. “Actually, that’s one of the biggest clues that you have a spirit in your house. You come home, and you’d swear you left a magazine by your favorite chair, but you find it on the kitchen counter.”
Genevieve couldn’t help it. She lifted a hand in a casual wave. “Well, of course. How the hell could I have missed that? Of course spirits exist. I believe you now.”
“You do believe, Genevieve. You called me,” Adam reminded her. “You called me about Joe.”
“Yes, and…”
“And about yourself,” he finished for her.
She shook her head. “Not at first, but…”
“But time to ’fess up,” Nikki said. “What’s been going on with you?”
And so she told them. Told them about the nightmare, and then the whispers.
“It has to be Lori,” Nikki said. “Matt was right.”
“Matt was right?” Gen echoed skeptically. “And what was Leslie’s guess? Elvis?”
Brent leaned forward. “I know this all sounds really weird to you, but you have to understand…Matt is better at being a ghost than Leslie. He’s been a ghost longer, and once you die, you have to learn everything all over again. You become pure energy, and you have to learn to do things by focusing that energy.”
“That’s why some places that are haunted have more obvious manifestations than others,” Nikki explained. “The ghosts there have been around a while, and they’ve learned to manifest more strongly and to affect the physical realm, even to leave ‘their’ place and go out into the world. Leslie isn’t able to get out much yet,” she added.
“And Matt hates to leave her,” Brent put in.
“So Matt can go out?” Genevieve asked. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation.
Nikki nodded. “And he spoke to the spirit of Lori Star.”
“Of course,” Genevieve said, feeling her skepticism disappearing in the face of their matter-of-fact belief. “So why doesn’t she tell him who killed her?” she asked.
“She doesn’t know.”
“How the hell can she not know?” Genevieve demanded.
“Because he was disguised.”
“What? Did he dress up like a dragon or a giant turkey or something?”
“No,” Nikki said, laughing.
Genevieve took a deep breath. “But we do know she was killed by a man, at least.”
“She’s almost certain. Because her killer was very strong,” Nikki said.
“She’s almost certain? How can she not know if it was a man or a woman? What was the killer dressed up as?”
Nikki and Brent exchanged a glance. “Edgar Allan Poe,” he finally said.
After he’d walked out on lunch, Joe had pulled out his cell and given Raif a call and asked if the cops had come up with anything, but other than a stack of mostly anonymous and probably mistaken tips that Lori had been seen in various parts of the five boroughs, he had nothing.
“Shit, Joe. You know how it is,” Raif said. “We have to check out every lead. Policework has to be thorough. And being thorough takes time.”
Time.
Joe had a feeling he didn’t have much of it.
Joe thanked Raif and hung up, knowing the detective was right. Legwork took time, and it was frequently tedious.
He went back to his apartment to be alone, to think, and to do some legwork of his own, including calling the Ravens, starting with the women. His plan was not to ask them about the Sunday night when Lori had disappeared but to start casually with the previous night, when what had now been confirmed as an extra dose of morphine had almost finished Sam Latham.
Barbara Hirshorn was first on his list. He tried her at the library where she worked, and after a few minutes the young man who had answered the phone found her.
“Mr. Connolly?” she said curiously.