Good Lord, Deliver Us (10 page)

The lamp clear of the box, Miss
Stewart got up to place the fixture on the mattress, bulb
up.

Back to the cardboard box, coming out
next was something that looked like a box of salt, the kind with a
metal, pullout pouring spout near the top -- the box going on the
floor beside the mattress.

After that, she took a fat, wide roll
of masking tape from a smaller carton; put the tape on the
floor.

Another container
contributed look-alike, electronic devices -- microphones and
foot-square speakers. Three sets of them. Equipment that
definitely
deserved the
mattress.

Still squatted down, the ghost hunter
swivelled to look up at Z, knees rotating in Z's direction. "Want
to help?"

"OK."

"Here's what we'll do first." She
pivoted away from Z again to point to the electronics. "These are
nursery monitors. Battery-powered. In normal use, you put the mike
in the baby's room and the speaker in the mother's room. When the
baby makes a sound, it registers on the mother's speaker." The girl
pointed again at the mike-speaker gear. "I want to put the
transmitters in three places. Two, up here. One in the
basement.

"OK."

"The corresponding speakers go in
here."

"Yeah."

"I'll want to know which
speaker is coming from which microphone, of course. So we do them
one at a time, labeling the speakers as we go. We can use a piece
of tape. After we get the mike set, write its location on the tape,
then stick the tape to the proper speaker." She pointed to the roll
of masking tape at her feet. "The point is that, if there's a noise
anywhere in the house, I want to hear it on one of the
speakers,
which
speaker telling me the room the noise comes from." She paused
to think, dragging the fingers of one hand through her hair
standing up at last. "Let's say, for now, that we set them up in
the living room, back bedroom, and basement.

"It's also a good idea to put the
mikes somewhere out of the way where they won't be noticed." She
hesitated once more. "And that may take some doing, given the lack
of furniture." She looked at Z, frowning prettily. "I could use
another one or two of these units, but they cost fifty bucks
apiece." She frowned even more, her blue eyes cloudy; then,
relaxed. "Though three should do it in a house this
small."

It took half an hour to place the
microphones and speakers. (They tucked the basement mike into a
split on the last riser of the stairs, and to hell with
it!)

Simple to do if you didn't mind
breaking your back.

Not that Miss Stewart didn't do her
part. She did -- in a way.

As it turned out, the girl's
contribution was to bounce back and forth between the latest
microphone placement and the bedroom where she listened to the
speaker as Z made a variety of soft sounds: breathing, walking,
humming. She would then return to order Z to move the mike to
another spot where she hoped it would do a better job.

"This is really helpful, having you
along," she enthused as the "project" continued. "Alone, I have to
arrange for something to make a noise. I've got a kitchen, wind-up
timer with me for that purpose, but having you make just the right
sound is great!"

"Great," Z said, back aching but
trying to fake a matching enthusiasm

"The next installation's a little
tricky," Miss Stewart said on their last trip to the bedroom, the
three mikes in place to her satisfaction, the corresponding
receivers labeled and placed at intervals along the inside bedroom
wall. "I wish I had a camera for each room. But I don't. Being --
what did you call it, a ghost hunter? -- doesn't pay all that much.
Neither does teaching in a girl's school, believe me." Again, the
adorable pout. Though Z hadn't liked her much as a man, she was so
cute as a girl she was practically irresistible.

About her pay, Z believed her.
Everyone seemed upset that teacher's salaries were so low.
(Unfortunately, no one was at all concerned about a detective's
wages. To Z's knowledge, no politician had ever made a promise to
raise a P.I.s. hourly rate.)

Kicking empty boxes out of the way,
the girl crouched over a square, wood container, taking out parcels
wrapped in bubble-wrap, laying the protected items carefully on the
mattress.

Sitting down once more --
the young woman's double-jointed knees allowing her to sit on both,
back-bent calves -- Miss Stewart unwrapped each package, taking out
what looked like a couple of collapsed tripods and two small
cameras. That is, the
cameras
were small. What was considerably larger was a
device attached to each camera. A piece of equipment that seemed
familiar.

Lumpy.

Electronic.

"Motion sensor," she explained,
tapping the add-on electronics of one camera. "These come apart to
form a 'shooter' and a 'target.' Once I rig one of these, any
substantial movement in front of the lens trips an infrared signal
being sent out, setting off a quick-release electric motor that, in
turn, trips the camera's flash. The result: a photo of what
disturbed the beam in front of the camera."

Z knew all about infrared systems like
that. As a security installer, he'd put in similar devices when
burglar-proofing homes. In his case, the beam was generally hooked
to an automatic dialer that summoned the police.

"These are so sensitive," she added,
"I've had them go off, only to find that the camera took a picture
of a fly buzzing past." Z knew they could be set up that way,
though in the security business, you didn't need that kind of
discrimination. Adjust them too fine and something harmless like
blowing dust could trip them off, giving you a false
alarm.

So -- Z helped her place the cameras.
One, so it scanned practically the entire living room. The other at
the back of the large bedroom, covering that room. "If what we've
got is a ghost whose sins have chained him to the kitchen or
basement, we're out of luck," the girl said, her face
expressionless.

Not entirely sure the girl was
kidding, Z tried an all-purpose smile.

"Still, most of the house is covered.
Enough to pick up whoever's haunting the place."

"The ghost?"

"Hardly. It always turns out to be a
homeless person who's found a way of getting in. Or maybe a
relative of the lady who used to live here." The young lady gave an
I've-seen-it-all-before kind of nod. "Could be a friend of the
former occupant, someone who doesn't want to be caught
snooping."

"Child?"

"Maybe. But I doubt it. This house is
at least five blocks from the nearest home -- not counting the one
next door, Ashlock saying that house had only old people in it. And
you don't find children wandering that far. Particularly at night.
No. I'd bet the store it's an adult, walking in from some distance
so he won't be noticed doing whatever he's doing inside the
house."

"That's why
I'm
here." Z had always
felt he was at his best protecting pretty girls. That was how he'd
met Susan, after all, defending her from her ex-husband, the
maniac.

"Someone
harmless
, I would
think," the girl continued, still downplaying Z's role. "No sign
this is a drug house. Nobody wrecking the place. Just somebody with
a pathetic delusion, would be my guess. A person who thinks he has
a reason to get in at night. No broken windows. The front lock's
not been jimmied. So it's probably someone with a key."

So,
she
had checked the lock, too. ...
Impressive. For a girl.

"Our cars?" Z said, having a thought
he should have had earlier.

"Cars?"

"Out front. A tipoff?"

"If so," the girl said,
grinning, "nobody shows. And I certify the house to be
un
haunted."

Which, Z knew, was the
idea.

"And now for the final 'ghost
trap.'"

Thinking he'd already "done the deed,"
Z groaned inwardly.

"You'll need the masking tape again. I
want lines taped on the floor down all the halls, about a foot and
a half in front of both sides. Another, approximately two feet back
of the front door. And finally, a path marked out, starting at the
front door line, coming through the hall. About two feet wide but
taking a zigzag course from the front door through the arch. What I
want is to mark off 'safe' places for us to walk. Since the tape is
close to the color of these old wood floors, you'd have to be
looking for it to notice it at all, giving us the advantage. Once
the tape's down, I'm going to sprinkle fluorescing powder on either
side of the lines." She pointed at the "soap" box. "It's invisible
to the naked eye in the amount I'm going to use. Looks just like
the rest of the dust that's everywhere in the place. But under
black light," -- she indicated the blue-bulb light fixture --
"it'll glow like the mouth of hell."

"A lot of taping," Z found
himself saying, regretting immediately such a wimpy complaint.
Could only comfort himself with the thought that a similar comment
might slip out of
any
man who'd done a week's worth of peon labor in a single
night.

"I can help," she said,
looking over at him. "We just stretch out the tape, each of us
sticking down an end. We can
walk
on the middle of the tape to make it
stick."

So that was what they did.

After lining out the masking tape,
they returned to the bedroom when Jamie unplugged the lamp and
patched the gooseneck, black light into the batteries, the girl
holding the light and box, Z wheeling the battery pack down the
hall, the girl sprinkled fluorescing powder on the inside of the
taped lines, the light making the powder glow ... "like the mouth
of hell."

No doubt about it. Not knowing the
powder was there -- unable to see it except when a black light had
turned the powder a flaming blue -- anyone walking around in the
house would get the fluorescing dust on his feet and track it all
over.

"Done," the young woman said at last,
arriving at the front door, snapping the metal spout into the
narrow side of the box, the thin steel pouring "lip" flush with the
cardboard end of the box to seal in the "ghostly" granules. "Now
all we've got to do is keep from wandering into the powder
ourselves. Keep close to the walls. That, plus remembering to keep
out of the way of the cameras. As for picking up a noise, since
we'll be in the bedroom, the only sounds coming through the
speakers will be made by someone else."

Her preparations blessedly
complete, Miss Stewart led Z back to the little bedroom for the
final time, the two of them stopping just inside to close the door,
Z tipping the dolly forward, the black light still on,
making
them
the
house's ghostly presence.

Accepting the light from the girl, Z
set the goose neck lamp on the top battery of the dolly. "Ah ...
how long do we have to ...?"

The girl pivoted to face Z. Was again
close enough for him to smell her dark perfume. Close enough for
him to look into her black light eyes. "All night for at least a
week," she answered, correctly guessing his question. Though it had
to be an illusion, her voice seemed hushed by the flickery, violet
glow. "Maybe longer. From what the Vice Chancellor said, the ghost
lights have been seen on something like one-week intervals for the
last couple of months."

"All ... night?"

"Yes. There's no pattern about when
the light appears, except late at night." Z wondered if the girl
knew about the other phenomena the Devaux woman had
reported.

"Do you know about the
noises?"

"Noises? No."

Ha! Something
Z
knew that she
didn't
! "This afternoon,
I checked with the old woman next door. The one who reported the
light. And she also heard noises. A small truck engine."

"That's interesting. Did she see a
truck?"

"No."

"Just lights. ....... And a
motor."

Once more, the girl produced her
black-light grin. "By the way, good work, talking to the
woman."

Z felt ashamed. Here he was, so proud
of having gone her one better when Miss Stewart felt nothing but
satisfaction in his achievement. "My job," Z muttered, unworthy of
her praise.

"Oh?"

"Detective work."

All the girl did was smile: teeth,
shark-white in the phantom light. If it was news to her that Z was
a P.I., she didn't show it.

"But now, it's about time for bed,
don't you think?" Shifting her weight to one foot, the girl
scissored her other leg across until she was standing with her feet
on the reverse sides of her body, her flexible legs crossed into an
impossible, but totally fascinating X. "Want some coffee first?" Z
shook his head. "Something to eat? Something fixed on the hot
plate, maybe?" Z shook his head. "Well, then ...?"