Unholy Ghosts (21 page)

base
, not that damned Chester Airport. Not World War Two. The Great War. That base—Greenwood, they called it—burned down in 1917.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“We must forgive the Old Government their failings. They understood not the consequences of their actions; they denied the Truth of the spirit world.”

—
A History of the Old Government, Volume II: 1620-1800
,
from the introduction by the Grand Elder

“Shoulda known,” Terrible said, nosing back into traffic. “Heard about Greenwood, aye, but nobody ever agree whereabouts it was. Only a story. Ain’t even can find it in most books.”
“What do you mean?”
“Books on the war. Even them old ones don’t but mention Greenwood. One of the first bases for airmen. Knew they closed it, but none say why. Never even guessed it was around here.”
Chess glanced back over her shoulder as the Dream den disappeared in the mist. Old-timer Earl hadn’t been much use after telling them when Greenwood AFB burned down. Two more hits from his pipe and he’d started dozing, interrupting only to make a feeble pass that she suspected was more about his ego than anything else.
“No, I mean how would you—you have a lot of books about World War One?”
He hesitated. “Aye, well, it’s interesting, innit? Different world, first real air battles, aye? They called them aces, you know. Flying aces. Just ain’t figure out why I never connected it. Them ghosts we saw in that alley—bet that land used to be part of the base.”
The same knowledge that excited him made Chess feel even more lost. What difference did it make, except that she was now dealing with military ghosts, an entire battalion or whatever of them.
“Why would they hide that, though? It was a fire, what was so bad about that?”
“Aye, but not just a fire. All sorts of rumors about it, Chess. You heard about the study the Old Government done back in the when, in Tuskegee? With syphilis, aye? Or when they spray germs in the air, or in World War Two they studied tear gas and shit. Used people for them experiments, most of em ain’t even know.”
“Yeah…they were doing the same at Chester, at Greenwood I mean?”
“Nobody agree what they doing. Some say mustard gas, but I ain’t buy it. Others say more brain shit, dig. Holding them from sleeping, no food, no air, like that. They—”
“Sleep deprivation?”
He glanced at her. “Aye.”
“The Dreamthief.”
“Ain’t knowing for sure. But some say that fire was no accident. I got a book I found long time back, little book like a pamphlet. Says one of them pilots escaped, said by the time they place burned they all crazy from no sleep. Said maybe somebody set that fire. Ain’t believe I don’t think of it, but everybody guess Greenwood down South somewheres, way down, aye? If it even true.”
“I can’t believe—I mean, wow. You know a lot about all this.” Of course he did. Memories clicked into place. He’d known the ghosts they’d seen were pilots. She remembered the rapt look on his face at the airport, when he talked about having planes there again. She thought of the flash of wings she’d seen in the scar on his back. It made sense, didn’t it, that he would see himself as a soldier—after all, he basically
was
—and that this sort of thing would interest him? She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover the entire Chester thing was his idea.
“Passes the time.” He turned left, heading for the highway onramp to take them out of Downside. “Ain’t knowing Earl got so much knowledge on it. Knew he were old, aye, but not that old. Ain’t figure anything could be. You ever heard ought like it?”
She shrugged. “There’s spells you can do, but I don’t think he did. That’s really dark magic, the kind that leaves a mark, you know?”
“Figure he just forget to die, aye? Or too mean. Too high, maybe. He at them pipes every day long as I recall.”
Silence fell. Chess felt his discomfort, wondering if he’d said the wrong thing. Thinking of her own habits, hoping he hadn’t offended her.
“Terrible?”
“Aye?”
“Who taught you how to read?”
He shrugged like he wasn’t going to reply, then glanced at her. “Her name Lisa. Bump’s woman.
Was
Bump’s woman. This back when he took me in, dig. She liked me. Said I needed to know. Used to sit right next to me, wearin some low-cut slippy thing, making me sound out letters and write sentences.”
“Must have been quite encouraging.”
He grinned. “When I did right, she’d lean over and clap her hands, her top would fall open. I learned fast.”
“I bet you did.”
They sat in companionable silence for another minute while he merged into traffic, with the stereo on quiet and the windshield wipers keeping slow time across the glass.
“So there no news in the Church about Greenwood? No way anybody there mighta found out?”
“Not unless they took it from the file. Which I guess is possible, but it would be awfully hard to do it with the library Goodys watching.”
“Like Goody Smith, Goody Jones, them type of Goody?”
“Yeah. One always sits in the library and watches. You’d have to wait until they left for something or turned their backs on the desk—they have security cameras, too.”
“Cameras?”
Chess shook her head. “They don’t record. They send a signal directly to the screens behind the desk, and that’s all.”
“So which Goody’s in the library?”
“There’s…” She shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing, I…For a minute I thought I remembered something. It’s gone now, though.”
Her phone buzzed against her thigh as a call came in. She tilted it just enough to see the little name display on the window. TNL. The code she’d programmed in for Lex, a play on “Tunnel” she figured was subtle enough to keep secret but obvious enough that she’d remember it even if she was so high she could barely think. Damn, why couldn’t he have called earlier? Whatever he wanted would have to wait. She couldn’t talk to him with Terrible sitting right next to her.
They were here, anyway. Terrible pulled into a spot and cut the engine, glancing around as he did so. “What you wanna do first? You wanna ask them people if they know anything, or you wanna go talk to the Elder?”
“I should probably go inside and see Elder Griffin first. He’ll listen to me. You’ll wait here?”
Pause. “How long you’ll be gone?”
“I don’t know. Half hour, maybe? Hour? If you want to go somewhere, I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Naw. Think I’ll stick here, aye? Wait up, keep an eye out.”
She waited until she’d gone through the heavy double doors to call Lex back.
“Hey, tulip, where you hiding?”
“I’m at the Church. What’s up?”
“Thought you was gonna wait and I go with you. Stay there, aye? Lemme come talk.” He said something else, but static drowned it out.
“What? No, Lex, you can’t come here, Terrible’s here, he can’t see you—”
“Ain’t no fear.” Followed by a series of gulped syllables as the signal cut out intermittently.
“Yes, but, please, don’t do this. Not now—Damn it!” The phone went dead. Hands shaking, she tried to redial, but the signal was gone. Stupid rain. Stupid thick iron in the walls and ceiling. It was necessary, of course, but it made satellite signals difficult to get, and she didn’t want to step back outside. Terrible might not ask who she was calling—of course he wouldn’t ask—but the thought made her uncomfortable just the same. She’d just have to try and hurry things up and get out of here before he arrived.
The empty hall enveloped her, but the sense of security she’d always felt on entering the building had disappeared in the terrified haze of the night before. Sadness sunk through her chest into the pit of her stomach. This building and her home had always been safe. Been sanctuaries. Now neither of them felt that way and might never again.
She tapped on Elder Griffin’s door, but he was either not in or not answering, and it was locked when she tried the knob. He might be up with the Grand Elder, or maybe back in one of the other offices. Worth a try. She might as well check with Goody Tremmell, too, and see if anything new had come in on the Mortons. Sometimes the advanced computer background checks took a few days.
Voices murmured somewhere in the warren of rooms, but Goody Tremmell’s chair sat empty. Shit. Chess wasn’t in the mood for more dirty looks, but she had to see that file—had to see it now. Her life quite literally depended on it.
Most files started with a call sheet, on which Goody Tremmell took the initial complaint and ran the name through the computer. Financial, police, and employment records all came up within a few minutes, and were printed and added to the file. Then it was copied, the copies handed to whichever Debunker was next in the rota to start casework, and any information they gathered was added to the master file. All the Debunkers kept were the initial reports. It all worked very smoothly, at least in theory. In practice…not so much. Goody Tremmell famously played favorites—hence Doyle getting the Gray Towers job when it was supposed to be Bree Bryan’s turn.
Of course, that was partly how she’d ended up with the Morton file, wasn’t it? Elder Griffin had given it to her without checking whether or not it was her turn.
Chess licked her lips and pulled her thinnest lockpicks from her bag, glancing around one more time as she did. This was serious, more than stealing the key to the Restricted Room or even snorting speed on the stairs. This was a crime. A big one.
Her shoulders tense, she slid the picks into the lock. Those few seconds were the worst; expecting a heavy hand to fall on her shoulder, expecting an alarm to sound or the lights to dim or—something, anything. Expecting to get busted.
But nothing happened. The lock clicked, the drawer opened, and Chess pulled the Morton master file and started thumbing through it. She hadn’t even had a chance to analyze the photos she’d taken the other night, either before or after she dropped off the copies here.
The thick stack threatened to slip out of the file altogether, so she cleared a space on Goody’s desk and set the stack down. Her hands shook a little as she flipped through them. The living room, the kitchen…all that plasticware.
The stairs, family pictures and genealogy. Chess picked the photo up and held it under the light. Was a picture missing? A pale space showed between one of a chubby toddling Albert and Mr. and Mrs. Morton at some sort of party. A short space, as though a smaller picture had been taken down and the other two moved to hide the empty patch where it had hung.
She set that photo aside and kept going. Albert’s room, now. His porn. Horny little bastard. His science books, his film books, his camera equipment and projecter, the walls, the odd Dream safe behind his bed…
It was an odd bag, wasn’t it? Might be strange for a regular sleep charm, but if it was made to ward off something in particular, a Dreamthief, for example, an entity more powerful than a regular ghost…and thus worth more money…
She pulled her notepad out and flipped through the pages. Black salt, a crow’s talon, pink knotted thread. But in the photo it looked as if something else had been in the bag as well. Two things. A single black hair. And a tiny, almost invisible flake of copper.
It had caught the flash, which was why she noticed it now. As for why she hadn’t when she was there, she didn’t even need to think. By the time she’d photographed the Dream safe she’d been antsy, ready to leave. Only one picture followed it, a confused shot of Albert Morton’s bedside table and the space behind it.
But that piece of copper, copper like the amulet, and that black hair that didn’t match anyone in the Morton family, those were important. Just as important as the realization that the black hair in the Dream safe could have come from Doyle.
Chess tucked the Dream safe photo and the one of the empty space between pictures in the staircase into her bag and closed the file. Just the safe alone might be enough to implicate Doyle, at least enough to make the Grand Elder take her seriously when coupled with the amulet.
She turned to replace the file in the cabinet and almost tripped. Her toe caught on something heavy, something that made an odd chinking noise. Goody Tremmell’s purse, now lying on its side with its contents scattered.
“Damn it.” Chess glanced around. Still no sign of anyone, but it seemed the voices were getting louder. Bad enough to be caught digging around in the file cabinet, but to be caught with items from the Goody’s purse in her hands, whether or not she was trying to put them back in, probably wouldn’t help her case.
She barely looked at the items as she stuffed them into the gaping leatherette bag. Tubes of lipstick, pens, wadded tissues, the general detritus of any woman’s purse. Chess shoved it all back in, heedless of order, because the voices were getting louder and any minute Goody Tremmell and Elder Griffin would be on top of her.
Keys, the ring a block of Lucite inside which was an amusing picture of a cat. Ha, ha, ha. A little golden disk, emblazoned with “The Bankhead Spa” in pale blue enamel—
Wait. The Mortons had been to the Bankhead Spa. Hadn’t they? Quickly she flipped through the photos again.
Yes. The cookbook. The Bankhead Spa. A little chill ran down her spine, a shiver like the first rush of speed.
She shook her head. Goody Tremmell and the Mortons? No, it wasn’t possible…No. It was. The Goody had been away in September, supposedly to have “a minor surgical procedure;” Chess remembered it well, because Elder Waxman had taken over the allocation of cases and had complained loudly about it the whole time.
How the hell would Goody Tremmell have been able to afford the place? Goodys were paid shit, almost as badly as the base rate for Debunkers but without the bonuses. Yes, the spa catered to a lot of high Church officials, but those were people like the Grand Elder and the head of the Black Squad. Not Goodys. Not even regular Elders.
A bead of sweat crawled down the side of her cheek, tingling and itching. She took a deep breath, dropped the keys back in the bag. A key ring was not evidence. Even a key ring and—Doyle made a lot of money from the Gray Towers case. Money he could have shared with the woman who jumped him up in line and gave him the case.
Okay, look for something more. Even with her suspicions of Doyle, even with the key ring, she’d be laughed out of the Grand Elder’s office if she tried to present a conspiracy. That wasn’t evidence, it was a guess.
But there might be evidence. Evidence she could use. Chess ran her fingertips over the carpet beneath the printer tray and pulled out fifty cents and an earring back, then tried again for good measure and caught something else. Paper, it felt like, a paper ball.
This was stupid. Glancing up over the printer to make sure no one had neared the room yet, she shoved the little wastepaper basket aside and pulled the tray out from the wall. This probably wasn’t something from the Goody’s purse, but the way it was uncrumpling in her palm and the fact it hadn’t collected any dust made her curious enough to pull it open.
An invoice for a storage space. Not just any storage space, a storage space in the name of Albert Morton.