Good Tidings (19 page)

He chuckled and pulled her close again. “That’s my girl,” he whispered into her hair.

*****

”
After you give your statement, I want you and Bradley out of town,” Sean said. “No argument.”

Mary sat forward in the regulation-issued chairs in Sean’s office and got ready to fight. “No Sean,” she said. “I’m not running away from this. I told Maria I would find her body and I’m not going to just let that drop.”

“
Listen, the guy probably carved her up and dropped her in the middle of the lake for all we know,” he argued. “We may never find her.”

“
Well, you sure as hell won’t find her without me,” she said. “You can’t see dead people.”

“
All you’ve got on Kevin is assault and attempted rape,” Bradley said. “And he could argue that he misinterpreted her actions. He already has a number of witnesses in that restaurant who said that he and Mary were looking cozy.”

“
We got him on drugs,” Sean added.

“
Yeah, using might get him stripped from the force, but it’s not going to put him away for very long,” Mary said. “We need to get him on murder and we don’t have enough yet.”

Sean stood up quickly, knocking his chair to the floor. “Dammit, don’t you get it,” he said. “I don’t want your help. I don’t want you to investigate. I want you to go the hell home!”

He turned away from her. “Mary, I don’t want you to die again.”

She stood, walked up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his back. “I love you, big brother,” she said, “and I don’t plan on dying. Besides, Kevin is in custody, all I’ll be doing is following up with Maria.”

“
Face it, Sean,” Bradley added. “She’s right, your investigation is weak without the information she can get you. And I, for one, don’t want this guy back on the streets.”

Sean sighed. “Damn,” he said his voice softer. “Why don’t I ever get to win arguments with you?”

Mary chuckled. “Simple, because I’m always right.”

Bradley snorted.

Sean turned around and hugged Mary, then held her away from him. “No danger,” he said, “Just interrogation. You just talk to the ghosts. Any real people show up, you pull out.”

“
Deal,” she said.

Sean looked over her head to Bradley. “You’re lead on this,” he said. “If she gives you a hard time, fling her over your good shoulder and carry her back to Freeport.”

Bradley grinned. “You’ve got a deal.”

“
Hey, wait,” Mary began.

“
Mary…shut up,” Bradley and Sean said simultaneously and they all laughed.

It was nearly midnight when they arrived at Navy Pier. They pulled into the parking lot and walked over to the front entrance. The ground was covered with several inches of snow, but a narrow path had been shoveled out. The wind whipped across the pier from the lake. Mary pulled her coat tighter and Bradley placed his arm around her.

“
How are you doing?” she asked. “Is the cold going to bother you?”

“
This is nothing,” he said, “Unless we decide we need to take a swim, I’ll be fine.”

Mary looked over to her right. She could hear the lake lapping up against the side of the pier, but the water and the night sky melded into inky darkness.

They moved into the main portion of the park. Bright holiday lights encircled tree limbs and light poles, reflecting off the snow in a twinkling winter wonderland. It was like an island of light in the midst of the gloom. They walked toward the amusement park that featured the 150-foot high Ferris wheel.

Moving past the park, they walked alongside the empty exhibit buildings. The lights from the park cast eerie shadows on the snow. The tops of the pilings barely peeked through the drifts of snow piled to the side. “Careful here,” Mary said. “If we slip on the ice, we could end up getting wet.”

Mary saw Maria standing near the exhibit buildings. She was wearing a mini-skirt, a t-shirt and sandals.
She must be freezing
, was her first thought.
No, she must have died when it was still warm outside,
was her second thought.

Maria moved forward. “You came back,” she said.

“
I told you I’d help you,” Mary said.

The ghost looked beyond Mary. “Who’s that?”

“
Hi, I’m Bradley,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“
Maria,” she said, smiling at him, “Maria Hernandez. You looking for a good time?”

“
Maria, how old are you?” Mary asked.

Maria scowled at Mary. “Twenty-one,” she said.

“
The truth,” Mary replied, “The real truth.”

Maria pouted. “I’ll be sixteen in August.”

“
Maria, what day is it today?” Bradley asked.

“
Hey, I’m not your personal calendar,” she said.

He smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I just wanted to know how many days until your birthday,” he said.

She smiled. “Oh, okay, that’s better,” she purred, moving next to Bradley. “It’s three weeks until my birthday. Do you want me to save that day for you?”

“
Maria, we need to talk with you,” Mary interrupted.

Maria ignored Mary. “We could go out to eat and maybe go dancing,” she said, “Then we could go to your place and party.”

“
Maria, you need to listen to Mary,” he said, “She’s helps people like you. She’s really good at it.”

Maria tossed her head. “What? Is she a nun or something?”

“
No,” Bradley shook his head. “She helps people who are lost find their way home.”

“
I ain’t lost,” she said. “I know where I am.”

She looked around. “I’m…” she paused, “I was just on my way…”

She looked up at Mary and Bradley with tears in her eyes. “What happened to me?” she cried.

“
That’s what we want to find out,” Mary said softly. “Do you remember talking with me at the restaurant today?”

Maria paused. “You were there with Officer Brady,” she said. “You told me I could have him. But they took him away.”

“
You told me that you were buried in the water,” Mary said. “I promised you I would help find your body.”

Maria stared out into the night sky for a moment. “He told me he loved me,” she sobbed. “He told me he was going to fix everything. He loved me.”

“
Can you remember anything from the last time you saw him?” Mary asked.

“
We were supposed to party,” she said. “He told me he had some really good stuff and he was going to share.”

“
Then what happened,” Bradley asked. “Try to remember.”

“
We went to his place,” she said. She lowered her head in concentration.

“
He gave me something to drink,” she said, “then we had sex. He was mean to me, he hurt me.”

Tears flowed down her young face. Bradley’s hands balled into fists, remembering Mary’s statement about what Kevin tried to do to her. He could only imagine what Kevin would have done to the defenseless teenager.

“
Okay, sweetheart,” he said, softly. “Can you tell us anymore?”

“
He gave me some stuff,” she said. “He told me it would really give me a trip. It was too wild. I didn’t like it. I lost all control.”

She stopped for a moment and gagged. “He stuffed things down my mouth,” she said. “I kept wanting to gag, but I couldn’t. He had his hands down my throat pushing the stuff into me. I couldn’t breathe. I was crying.”

“
What did it look like?” Mary asked.

“
It was bags, like plastic bags,” she said. “He stuffed a lot of them down my throat.”

Bradley felt sick. “Then what did he do?” he asked.

She looked up at them in shock. “He put me in the water,” she said slowly. “It was so cold. I couldn’t feel anything. I can’t remember after that…”

“
He killed you,” Bradley said.

She shook her head and cried, “But I don’t want to be dead. I want to go back home.”

Mary felt the tears behind her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Maria,” she said, her voice tight. “I can only help you move on.”

“
Move on?”

“
Yes, go to heaven,” Mary explained.

“
God don’t want no one like me,” she said. “I’m one of those bad girls. That’s probably why he let me get killed.”

“
God wants you,” Mary said. “He wouldn’t have sent me to help you if He hadn’t.”

Maria sniffled and turned to Bradley. “Is that true?”

Bradley nodded. “Yeah, she gets her orders from God,” he said. “And He sent her out tonight, just to find you.”

Maria smiled. “Yeah? Really?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah.”

“
Are you gonna help the other girls?” Maria asked.

“
Other girls?” Bradley asked.

Maria pointed to the end of the pier. Mary walked away from Bradley until she could see the individual forms take shape. At least a dozen women walked toward her, all different ages and colors, but Mary could tell each had definitely been a prostitute.

“
She can help us,” Maria called to the others.

Mary turned to Bradley. “He killed them all,” she said. “No wonder…”

“
He wanted me dead,” Bradley finished.

*****

The Special Victims Unit offices were teeming with dead prostitutes waiting their turn to make a statement to Mary or Bradley. Because it was three in the morning, the rest of the office was empty.

“
This place feels creepy,” Sean said. “Like someone is watching you.”

Mary looked at the blonde woman who’d been following Sean around the office, trying to get his attention. “Well, someone is,” she said, “You just can’t see her.”

Sean shivered. “Thanks, Mary.”

He went to his office and shut the door. The woman glided through the door after him. A minute later he came out. “How long is this going to take?” he asked.

Mary smiled. “Well, since we’ve decided to take these reports long-hand and not put them into the system, it’s taking longer than usual.”

“
Yeah, well if you can tell me how to explain the reports to my superiors, you can use the computers,” he replied.

“
Good point,” she answered. “We’ll be as quick as we can.”

In order for both of them to interact with the dead prostitutes, Mary and Bradley sat across from each other at a narrow table, their left hands clasped together, their right hands holding pens and filling out forms. They were able to take the information about each of the women they met at the pier. Each woman told a similar story and each story ended the same way - they remember being placed in cold water.

Once the statement was given, each ghost would fade away. Mary was pretty sure they were heading back to the pier, the place they had spent the last days of their lives. She hoped if the police couldn’t locate their physical remains, the capture of their killer would be enough to allow them to move on.

After the last form was filled out, Bradley sat back in the stiff wooden chair, stretched and yawned. He turned bleary eyes to Mary. “How are you doing?” he asked.

She yawned back and smiled. “I could use a nap,” she said.

“
Yeah, for a month,” he agreed, “But food would be good too.”

She nodded. “Eggs, bacon…”

Bradley smiled. “Waffles, pancakes…”

They looked at each other, grinned and said, “Diet soda.”

Sean peeked his head out of his office, “Are they gone.”

“
Yeah, except for the one who wants to haunt you for life,” Mary said.

Sean turned quickly. “What?”

“
Just kidding.”

Sean sat down at the table with them and picked up all of the reports. “So, what do we have here?”

“
Mules,” Bradley said. “These women were forced fed drugs and then, later on, the drugs were removed.”

“
Surgically removed,” Mary added. “They were all sliced open.”

Sean shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “These women were in Chicago, not Mexico, why would they need mules here?”

“
Another odd fact,” Bradley said. “I don’t think they were dead when the drugs were removed.”

“
Why would you say that?” Mary asked.

Bradley sat back in his chair. “The ghosts we’ve seen today resemble what they looked like when death occurred, right?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah, we see them in the condition they are in when their spirit leaves their body.”

“
So, why are we seeing sliced stomachs if that happened after death?”

“
But they remembered dying,” Sean said.

“
Or they thought they were dying,” Bradley said. “They remember being put in cold water. Hypothermia can produce a slowing of your system and induce a coma-like state. I’m a recent expert on that.”