Natural Reaction (12 page)

“What do you think, Stanley?” Mary asked.

“Well, I reckon it don’t hurt none to talk to the man, I mean the ghost,” he said. “Then we can decide. But, we don’t,
none
of us, need to mention what we’re doing to anyone else.”

“Why Stanley, of course I do,” she said. “My lips are sealed.”

Mary grinned. “Thank you, Rosie,” she said.
“Now, how do you feel about babysitting for a little while this evening?”

Clapping her hands together, Rosie beamed. “That will be just the thing,” she said. “I’ll bring over the ingredients and we can make cinnamon rolls together.”

Mary turned to Ian. “So, professor, you want to go ghost hunting with me tonight?”

He grinned back at her. “Aye, sounds like a rare good time.”

Bradley came back into the kitchen, placing his phone in his pocket. “I just got off the phone with the coroner’s office,” he said to the man sitting at the table next to Jeannine’s parents. “They would like at least a week time to make sure they get good results, they can release Jeannine’s body to you next Friday morning.”

Allen Henderson, the local funeral director, stood and nodded solemnly. “Thank you, I’ll have a hearse there first thing in the morning to transport her back to Sycamore. Is there anything else you need?”

“No, thank you,” Bradley said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“I’d like to think about the wording of her obituary a little longer,” Joyce said. “Can I send it to you later this afternoon?”

“Of course,” Allen said. “And we’ll have it run in the paper on Thursday with the announcement of the memorial service.”

“Do we need to contact the cemetery?” Bill asked.

“I’ll do that,” Allen said. “You’ve already paid for the plot, so we just need to work out the details of having things ready for Saturday.”

He gathered his paperwork and then shook hands with each of them. “I’m so sorry it turned out like this,” he said. “We all hoped…”

Joyce wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “Yes, we did,” she said. “But at least we know what happened and we can finally let her rest.”

Allen nodded. “Well, if there is anything else I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thanks, Allen, we appreciate it,” Bradley said. “See you on Saturday.”

After Allen left, Bradley walked to the front door with Joyce and Bill. “I need to go back to Freeport and take care of some things, but I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

“We’ll meet you at the coroner’s office at noon,” Joyce said. “Will that work?”

Bradley nodded. “That would be great. Thank you.”

“You know, we will always consider you to be our son,” Bill said. “And once you find your daughter, we will be thrilled to spoil her.”

Smiling, Bradley hugged them both. “She couldn’t ask for a better set of grandparents.”

Mike remained silent until Bradley had pulled the cruiser out of the driveway and was headed back towards Freeport. “Those are great people,” he said.

“Yeah, they are,” Bradley agreed.

“So, how are you holding up?” Mike asked.

Staring straight ahead, he tightened his hold on the steering wheel. “I’m holding on,” he said. “I’ve just got to get through these next couple of days and I’ll be good.”

“You’re an idiot,” Mike replied casually.

“What?”

“Is that where Jeannine is going to be buried?” Mike asked, pointing to a large cemetery down the road.

“Yeah, it is,” Bradley said.

“Pull in there.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions, just do it,” Mike said.

Bradley glowered at Mike, but did as he requested. “What, is there a ghost in here we need to help?” he asked, pulling the cruiser to the side of a lane and putting it in park.

“Come on, let’s take a walk,” Mike said.

“A walk?
It’s freezing out there.”

“Yeah, a walk,” he said, slipping through the car door.

A moment later Bradley joined him and they walked across the cemetery until they reached a small stone bench.

“Sit down on the bench and talk to me,” Mike said.

“What the hell?”

“This is one of the only places where a grown man can be seen talking to himself and people won’t think he’s nuts,” Mike explained. “So, talk to me.”

“About what?”

“About Jeannine.
Tell me how you met her. Tell me about your first date. Tell me about the day you found out she was pregnant.”

Bradley sat down on the bench and stared at Mike. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, his voice breaking.

“Tell me,” Mike insisted.

Bradley took a deep breath. “Okay, I first met Jeannine when we were both in high school,” he began. “She was…she was…oh, God…she’s gone. I’m never going to see her again.”

He bent over and placed his head in his hands as the sorrow washed over him. Tears he had been holding back for eight years broke free and poured from his eyes. His body was wracked in shudders of emotion and he was helpless to stop it. He pictured her on their first date, on their wedding day and when she announced she was pregnant. All their plans, all of their happiness, everything was gone and she was never coming back.

After a while, the shuddering eased and he took deep gulping breaths of air.

“Feeling better?” Mike asked.

Wiping his eyes and nose with a handkerchief, he looked up at Mike. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been strong for a long time and you needed to grieve.”

“I had to be strong,” he whispered, “I didn’t want to let my feelings out.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Mike agreed. “You had to be strong for Jeannine, for her parents and for your daughter. You had to be strong until you found her.”

Bradley nodded his head deliberately. “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” he said. “My whole life had been centered on finding her and now…”

“And now you have to figure out who you are without her,” he said.

“How the hell do you know this stuff? You were a fireman.”

Mike shrugged. “I had a youth minister who talked to me about this stuff after my friend died,” he said. “He helped me a lot. Then when I was in college, I thought about getting a degree in psychology, so I took classes. But, really, down deep inside, I was a fireman.”

“So, was it worth it?” Bradley asked.

“Sure it paid off; you can really pick up chicks when you know this stuff.”

Bradley laughed and it felt good. “Thanks Mike.”

“Hey, no problem,” he replied. “Now let’s get back home to Mary.”

“Yeah, I wonder what she’s been up to all day.”

“Are you sure we aren’t going to be arrested for this?” Ian asked as he and Mary cut across the wide lawn of the high school and headed towards the door.

“No, of course not,” she replied quietly, “Especially if we don’t get caught.”

“Oh, well, then, I’m feeling much better about the situation,” he said.

She stopped for a moment and turned to him. “If someone questions us, just tell them you’re from another country and didn’t realize you couldn’t go into a public building in the evening.”

“Mary, I’m from Scotland, we can read English there,” he said. “No one will believe me.”

She shrugged. “Okay, well I guess our only option is to not get caught.”

They pulled open the heavy door and quickly scanned the hallway. There was not a soul in sight. “Come on,” she said. “The staircase is over here.”

They hurried down the hallway and through the double doorway that opened to the stairs. Only the emergency lights glowed in the stairwell, casting shadows all around them.

“It’s pretty creepy in here,” Ian whispered.

Turning to him, Mary rolled her eyes. “What are you afraid of?
Ghosts?”

He chuckled softly. “Good point.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor and peeked out through the doorway into the hall. They could hear voices coming from a well-lit room at one end. “We go this way,” Mary whispered in a bad Vincent Price imitation, motioning in the opposite direction, “Towards the dark end of the hall.”

“Funny, Mary,” Ian whispered back, “Very funny.”

Staying close to the lockers that lined the wall, they were able to stay in the shadows as they made their way to the Chemistry lab. They approached the door and Ian stopped and slapped his forehead. “It’s going to be locked,” he whispered. “The school wouldn’t allow the equipment to be out and about for anyone to take.”

Mary shook her head. “Andy said the ghost unlocks the door because he doesn’t want anyone to get caught in there again,” she whispered. “Come on.”

Sure enough, when Mary turned the knob, the door opened and they let themselves into the large darkened classroom. The window shades were all pulled down and only a few beams of illumination from the street light made their way in. Large dark lab tables flanked the perimeter of the room in two separate rows. Stainless steel shelving held beakers and Bunsen burners. A wall sized large periodic table glimmered in the dark.

The door made a quiet snap when Mary shut it and Ian flinched. Chuckling, Mary came up beside him.
“Jumpy professor?”

Her laughter stopped when she heard another voice, a deeper voice, join hers in amusement. “It’s always the muscular types who are the real wimps.”

“Would you like to put your money where your mouth is?” Ian asked, clearly offended.

Coach Thorne moved away from the back of the room, so the shadows only covered the top half of his body. “You can hear me?” he asked, astonished.

“
Aye,
and you could do with a lesson on manners,” Ian grumbled.

“But…you can hear me,” he said, wonder filling his voice.

Mary nodded. “Yes, and we can see you too, Coach Thorne.”

“You know me? You know my name?”

“A friend of ours, Rosie Meriwether, sent us to you,” Mary explained. “She told us you were a hero.”

“Either a hero or an idiot,” he said. “I guess the jury’s still out.”

“Aye, it is at that, Coach,” Ian added, his arms folded over his chest.

The coach laughed. “Please, call me Charlie. And I admit I deserve that,” he said. “I need to apologize. I was only making fun of you because I didn’t think you could see me.”

Ian’s mouth grew into a small smile. “Well, I suppose I can’t take offense at that,” he said. “I would have probably done the same.”

“I think I saw you at the hospital,” Mary said, “Do you follow Louise around?”

He nodded. “I’ve watched her grow up, she’s quite an amazing woman, don’t you think?”

Mary nodded. “Yes, I agree. Do you remember the fire?”

Charlie stepped forward and Mary gasped. The skin on the right side of his face was melted and hanging off his skull. Where hair remained on the left side of his skull, it stood up in charred patches of black. One of his eyes was melted shut and the other lay in his eye socket, devoid of an eyelid or eyebrow. “Uh, yes, you could say I remember it well.”

“Wow. The heat must have been intense,” Ian said, moving toward the coach.

Charlie nodded. “Yeah, the explosion was intense,” he said. “I’m sure the air was superheated because I don’t remember anything until I woke up a ghost.”

“What happened?” Mary asked.

“Wish I knew,” he said. “We were mixing ammonium nitrate with water to create an endothermic reaction. Nothing like this should have happened.”

“So you weren’t using heat?” Ian asked.

“No, that’s way too dangerous,” Charlie said. “This should have been a safe experiment.”

“Wait, why would you worry about heat?” Mary asked.

“Heating ammonium nitrate can cause a violent explosion,” Ian said. “It can also react with certain kinds of combustible materials because it’s a powerful oxidant.”

Mary looked at Ian in disbelief.

“Ah, well, I was fairly good in Organic Chemistry,” he confessed.

“Impressive,” she replied and then turned to Charlie. “So, could this have just been an accident?”

“You know, I’ve been asking myself that too,” he said. “I poured the ammonium nitrate into those test tubes myself. I kept all of the chemicals under lock and key. I just can’t see how this could happen.”

“Well, there’s a reason you’re still sticking around,” Ian said. “And we’d like to help you figure that out.”

“I know this is going to sound like a bad movie,” Mary said. “But these are some of the things you need to consider. Did anyone have a grudge against you? Was there anyone who wanted you to look bad? It doesn’t have to be murder, sometimes pranks can get out of control.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to implicate anyone and ruin their life. They’re only kids.”

Mary smiled sadly. “Charlie, they’re older than you are,” she explained. “The explosion happened over forty years ago.”