The Ghoul Next Door Read online

  Heath got up and took the bloody towels back to the kitchen, where he ran them under the faucet again. Luke’s breathing was beginning to calm a bit and he sniffled and wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands. Using my fingertips, I pressed along his abdomen, chest, and collarbone looking for the source of all that blood. Heath came back and I looked up at him. He seemed to be asking me the silent question, had I found the wound? I could only shake my head. He then handed me a towel and I wiped down Luke’s arm, thinking maybe he’d opened up an artery or something, but upon closer inspection I couldn’t even find a bruise.

  At last Heath and I sat back and exchanged another look. Luke wasn’t hurt anywhere that we could tell. And the minute we stopped probing him, he lay down on his side, curled himself into the fetal position, and began to sob in earnest again.

  Meanwhile, outside there was the screeching of brakes and then a red strobe light pierced the small window to the right of the door and began to bounce against the walls of the entryway. A few seconds later there was a hard knock on the door. Luke shrieked, covered his head, then got to his feet and bolted up the stairs. Heath and I sat stunned on the floor, each of us trying to make sense of it, and in the pit of my stomach I had such a sense of dread.

  “Hey, guys?” Gilley said into my ear. Before I could answer, there was another round of hard knocks on the outside and someone called out from the steps, but it was muffled and I couldn’t quite catch what they said. “I found out why the sirens were in the neighborhood,” Gil continued, his voice shaking with fear or nerves or maybe even alarm. “A woman was found stabbed about a block away from Courtney’s place.”

  Heath’s shoulders sagged as if the news was too heavy to bear. My own eyes misted and I felt dizzy because the truth of all the discordant parts of the evening was suddenly coming together.

  A third round of knocks on the door finally motivated both Heath and me to stand and walk forward, but both of us stopped just short of opening the door. Instead we looked around at the bloody mess on the floor—the soiled towels, the shredded T-shirt, Luke’s bloody footprints—and for a long moment I knew what Heath was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. . . . Maybe we should bolt out the back and book a flight for someplace very far away.

  A pounding on the door brought us to our senses, and Heath reached for the dead bolt, and then the handle. Pulling the door open, he revealed two paramedics and behind them a police officer was just coming up the steps. The paramedics took one look at Heath and me smeared with blood and the mess on the floor, and as one they stepped to the side, allowing the officer to come up through the middle. I knew they wouldn’t enter until the police officer said it was okay.

  The officer also took a long look at us and the floor of the entryway before reaching for his walkie-talkie. “This is unit eighteen,” he said crisply. “We got another situation here at seven-five-seven-five Commonwealth. Over.”

  There was a garbled response and I couldn’t quite understand it, but then the officer clicked his mic again and said, “Either it’s another murder or I just found our suspects.”

  Then he withdrew his gun and pointed it at us. “On the ground, hands behind your heads. Now.”

  Heath and I locked eyes and I heard Gilley squeak nervously in my ear. Heath then sighed, raised his hands, and dropped to his knees. I followed suit and before long I felt the officer’s knee on my back and the air whooshed out of my lungs as he pressed down and quickly put a zip tie around my hands. “Is there anyone else in the house?” the cop asked as I heard footsteps come up the steps from outside.

  Craning my neck, I saw two more police officers step into the foyer, careful to avoid the blood on the floor. “The young man who lives here is upstairs,” I answered without hesitation. I didn’t know what kind of trouble Luke had gotten himself into, but I knew it was bad, and I wanted no part of it.

  “Is he armed?” asked the cop.

  “No,” Heath and I said together.

  “I just texted Steven,” Gilley whispered through the Bluetooth in my ear. “He’s calling me now. Back in a sec.”

  The cop who’d been bending over me stood up and I saw one of the other police officers follow him toward the stairs, while the remaining officer stood by the door to guard us. Heath turned his head to look back at me. He mouthed, “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  Gil came back on the line and said, “Steven and Courtney are on their way there now. Should I call anyone else?”

  “Mack Savage,” I said softly, but not softly enough. I saw the cop’s eyes narrow suspiciously and I knew he’d just detected the little blue light on the earpiece I was wearing.

  “What?” Heath asked me.

  “Mack Savage is a lawyer friend of mine,” I told him. “His family was killed in a house fire when he was still in high school. He was the only one who got out. Over the years I’ve done quite a few readings for him and it’s helped him cope. In return he helps me out whenever I need legal advice.”

  “Like now?” Heath said with the hint of a smile.

  “Yep.”

  “Calling him right now, M.J.,” Gilley said.

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs next to me made me turn my head away from Heath to look up. Luke was sandwiched between the two cops as they marched him down the stairs. His head hung low and he didn’t look up. I still didn’t know what’d happened, but I did try to extend my intuition out to him, just to see if there was any sign of the spook haunting him. Nothing in the ether floated back to me, which was eerie. I felt there should’ve been some sort of presence around him—a parent, a grandparent, or someone from the other side present in his energy—but the space around him was just blank, as if no one wanted anything to do with him. That unsettled me more than I can say.

  “Mack’s going to meet you downtown,” Gilley said into my ear. “I’m on my way too.”

  “Gil?” I whispered as Luke was marched right past me and the other cop reached down to pull me awkwardly to my feet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  • • •

  Heath and I shared a ride downtown in one squad car while Luke rode in the other. We’d been read our rights before being placed in the vehicle, and when Heath asked why we were under arrest, the officer replied, “On suspicion of murder.”

  That sent a cold shiver up my spine, and my mind raced with questions about who’d been killed and if Luke had had anything to do with it. I found it impossible to think that he might not have—the man had shown up covered in enough blood to either be gravely injured or have had contact with someone who was. Something terrible had happened in the time between Luke’s disappearance from his sister’s house and his showing up again. And if he had in fact done something unspeakable—what was going to happen to Heath and me? Would we be held as accomplices? We’d had nothing to do with the crime, but I wasn’t exactly confident that we’d be left out of it.

  As we rode downtown in silence, Heath leaned sideways slightly to touch me shoulder to shoulder, and I was so grateful for his presence. “You okay?” he whispered.

  “Scared,” I mouthed back.

  He nodded. “We’ll be okay,” he insisted, nudging me with his shoulder again. “I promise.”

  But his eyes were hardly confident and that worried me.

  Once we arrived at the police substation, we were escorted inside through a back door and marched upstairs to the third floor, where we came out into a gloomy open office area with both uniformed and plainclothes cops. The three of us were then separated and placed into individual rooms with a two-way mirror and a metal chair tucked under a table with a loop for the handcuffs. Thankfully I was allowed out of my cuffs but then made to wait alone in the room for what felt like several hours. At last the door opened and in walked a tall, gray-haired woman with a lined face and a look that could’ve frozen water. Behind her Mack
also walked in, looking a little haggard but determined. Mack came to stand next to me as the woman—who was also wearing a badge—took up the seat across from me.

  “How you doin’, M.J.?” Mack asked softly.

  I looked up at him gratefully. “I’ve had better nights, Mack. Thanks for coming.”

  Mack squeezed my shoulder as the woman introduced herself. “Miss Holliday, I’m Detective Souter. Your attorney has asked to be present as you give your statement—”

  “Actually,” Mack interrupted. “I’d like a word with my client before we begin, Detective.”

  Souter frowned and added a sigh, but I thought it was mostly for show. “Very well,” she said, getting to her feet again, but before she left, her eyes locked with mine, and I didn’t like what I saw in them. She clearly thought I was guilty of something, and I didn’t think that anything I could say to her when Mack finally let me talk was going to persuade her otherwise. So I held her stare and tried my best to keep my expression neutral.

  After she left, Mack took up her seat and put his legal pad on the table. “What happened?” he asked.

  I told him everything as quickly and efficiently as I could. He nodded and took notes, and I was so grateful that Mack was unaffected by much of what I told him about why Heath and I came to be at Courtney’s house, attempting to rid Luke of some spook he claimed was haunting him.

  When I was finished, Mack set his pen down, sat back in the chair, and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Gilley told me a lot of this while we were waiting to see you,” he said. “He’s also got all the visual and all the audio on tape, thank God.”

  “He recorded it?” I asked. I don’t know why that surprised me, but I was so relieved that Gil had had the foresight to record the events of that evening, so that at least Heath and I had some kind of an alibi.

  Mack nodded. “The timing is a little tricky, because you’re out of view of the cameras until shortly before Luke shows up covered in blood. But Gilley has been able to sync it to the recording of the audio off your Bluetooth, so we know that you weren’t anywhere near the woman when she started screaming.”

  I felt the color drain from my face and a small wave of dizziness came over me. “Screams?”

  Mack crossed his arms and studied me. “How much do you know about the murder?”

  I shook my head. “I know very little other than that, after disappearing on us for a couple of hours, Luke showed up at his sister’s house again covered in blood, and Gilley told us later just as the cops showed up that there’d been a murder down the street.”

  “Did Luke say anything to you?”

  I shook my head again. “Nothing. Well, nothing other than begging us to help him. I think he went into shock, actually, and Heath and I thought something had happened to him.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought maybe he’d been hit by a car, or that somebody had stabbed him. I mean his clothes were covered in blood. . . .” My voice trailed off as I realized that there were traces of that very same blood on my hands from when I’d been searching Luke for a wound. It lined my fingernails and there were smudges of it on my cuffs. My stomach lurched suddenly and it was all I could do not to turn my head and retch.

  “M.J.?” Mack asked.

  I opened my mouth and took several deep breaths. “Gimme a minute, Mack,” I said, swallowing hard several times to try to tamp down the sickly feeling. At last I felt the nausea ebb and was able to focus on Mack again. “Who was she?” I asked.

  Mack didn’t answer right away. He studied me for a few beats, probably wondering if I was well enough to continue, before he said, “A woman with an address in Cambridge. I don’t have a name, just that she was a twenty-nine-year-old woman out alone for some reason. Her car was parked about a block away. She had ID and keys but no cell phone. It’s either missing or she left it at home. The police are trying to figure out what she was doing there at that time of night.”

  “What happened? I mean, there was so much blood, Mack.”

  “Don’t know much about that either, M.J. The news is reporting that she was stabbed multiple times and her throat was cut. Someone inside the brownstone near where she was murdered heard a woman scream, and they called the police. The cops found the girl dead and a blood trail leading in the direction of the house they found you three in.”

  I had to swallow hard again. This was all getting a little too real for me. “What do you want me to say to the detective?”

  Mack smiled crookedly at me. “I want you to tell Souter the truth. But only answer the questions she asks you. Don’t elaborate, but don’t lie. Whatever you do, don’t lie.”

  “Got it.”

  Mack stood. “I’ll call her in,” he said.

  “Mack?” I asked, stopping him.

  “Yeah?”

  “My boyfriend, Heath, is here too. Did Gilley tell you that we both need your help?”

  “It’s covered, M.J. I’ve already signed Heath on as a client and he’s given his statement to Souter in my presence. As long as your stories match, I think we’ll be out of here in an hour or two.”

  “How’s Heath holding up?”

  “He’s fine,” Mack assured me. “He seems like a good fit for you too, if I might add.”

  That got me to smile. “How can you tell?”

  “I’m a good judge of character,” he said.

  His reassuring smile did a whole lot to settle me. Then I asked, “And Luke Decker? Will you help him out too?”

  Mack shook his head. “Your ex, Dr. Sable, called in a lawyer for him. He’s got representation and it’s pricey. My guess is that Luke won’t speak a word to anybody between now and the end of his trial.”

  I gulped. “You think we’ll go to trial?”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it. Gilley’s recordings should provide you with the alibi, but they’ll also point the finger more firmly at Decker. I know the lawyer Sable hired, went to law school with him actually. Name’s Caldwell Fischer, and he’s a son of a bitch who’ll throw anyone he can under the bus to make a play for reasonable doubt. You’ve got to be prepared for Fischer to point the finger at you and Heath, M.J. He’ll try and make it look like you two might’ve set Luke up. That’s why I want you to have nothing to do with Luke from here on out. No contact. Capisce?”

  “Understood,” I said, more nervous than ever to talk to Souter.

  “Good,” Mack said. “Now, let’s get this over with so we can get you out of here, okay?”

  I nodded and Mack went to the door to let Detective Souter in. She surprised both of us by bringing in Gilley’s laptop, which was easily identifiable, given the large sticker of the Ghostbusters ghost on it. “How’d you get that?” Mack barked as the detective set the computer on the table.

  She handed him a piece of paper. “Gillespie surrendered it when I handed him this warrant.”

  Mack snatched the warrant and skimmed it. He scowled hard but didn’t protest more than he already had. The door opened again and another detective appeared with a chair. This he handed off to Mack, who took it and parked it right next to me. Once we were all settled, Souter began. “We’ve had a chance to review the footage of you and Mr. Whitefeather on here,” she said. “Mr. Gillespie has also given us a statement.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mack’s face flush with anger. I had a feeling he hadn’t told Gilley to zip it, and knowing my best friend, he’d done his level best to cooperate with the police in order to help clear us. I wasn’t sure if Gilley had just saved us or sunk us.

  “I’d like to hear your version of events, Miss Holliday,” Souter said.

  I could tell Souter was purposely being broad. I glanced at Mack. He was eyeing the computer moodily. Finally he looked over at me and said, “Start with how you came to meet Luke.”

  Taking a dee
p breath, I recited for the detectives exactly what’d gone on, beginning with the day when Steven had first entered my office. The detectives both took notes and asked me some pointed follow-up questions, and by the end, it felt like I’d been talking forever. At last Souter leaned back and said, “Something still confuses me, Miss Holliday.” When I offered her only a blank stare, she continued. “Yesterday, I got an e-mail from Kendra Knight at channel seven news. She had some pretty interesting questions for me about the Bethany Sullivan murder case. She wanted to verify that Bethany had a cat and on the night of her murder that there’d been a bottle of wine chilling on her kitchen counter. And not just any wine—Zinfandel. Knight said these were facts she couldn’t find in the official report released to the media, but they were given to her by someone claiming to be a psychic whom she’d interviewed earlier in the day. I caught the news story last night, and I made a note to myself to call you sometime later this morning. Kind of a freaky coincidence that I’d be questioning you on a completely separate murder investigation, isn’t it?”

  I squirmed in my seat. I could see the distrust in Souter’s eyes. She was trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together, linking separate events and trying to see the bigger picture, which probably included a scenario where I was somehow guilty of something. “At the time Bethany Sullivan was murdered, I was out of the country. In fact, I’ve been out of the country for much of the past year. You can check my passport, Detective,” I added, feeling confident of that alibi at least.