Ghost Hunter Page 10

  “When I was in the hospital, I had a dream about Darcy coming to see me,” she said softly. “I kept telling her how sorry I was and that it was my fault for letting that bastard into the apartment, and she told me the same thing you did, that I shouldn’t blame myself. At the time, I thought it was a dream or an hallucination brought on by the painkillers they gave me, but now I wonder if it could have been her ghost.” Cassidy looked at him. “Do you think it was?”

  “It’s possible. Hospitals are a hotbed of paranormal activity.”

  “I hope it was.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “It would make me feel better knowing she forgives me. Trouble is, I’m not sure I can forgive myself.”

  “You will,” Trace said. “In time, you will.”

  Something told Cassidy he was speaking from experience, but before she could ask about it, he spoke again.

  “What else can you tell me about Del Vecchio? Did your roommate talk about him much or did he ever hang out at your apartment while you were there?”

  Cassidy shook her head. “Darcy knew I wasn’t crazy about him, so she didn’t talk about him and when they got together, they usually went out.”

  Trace nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry I’m not much help.”

  The corner of his mouth edged up in a smile. “You’re doing fine. Finish your pizza. I’m going to do some research.”

  After the conversation they’d had, Cassidy didn’t have much of an appetite left, but she obediently picked up the slice of pizza still sitting on her plate and took bite as Trace walked over to the bookcase. He grabbed an old leather-bound book from the top shelf, then walked back over to sit down on the couch again. Curious, she glanced at the title and saw it was a book on ghosts. Definitely not the kind of book everyone had on the shelf.

  Wondering what other kinds of books Trace had, she uncurled herself from the couch and walked over to check out the bookcase. There were a lot of other books on ghosts, but there were also books on vampires, ghouls, zombies and werewolves, as well as quite a few other creatures she’d never heard of. If she’d seen the same collection of books a few days ago, she would probably have labeled Trace as a whacko, but after the ghost encounter up in Delhi and her recent run-in with Del Vecchio, she was beginning to suspect there might be a lot more things that went bump in the night out there than she’d thought.

  The idea made Cassidy shiver and she walked back over to the couch to sit beside Trace.

  “What are you looking for in there?” she asked.

  “I’m hoping I can find something that can explain why Del Vecchio’s ghost is able to do what he does.”

  She nodded and waited impatiently while he read some more before she prompted, “Any luck?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, but this isn’t an exact science. It might take me a while to find something this unusual. Like I was telling you last night, normally a ghost is tied to a location because it had some deep significance for him or her in life. It could be a childhood home, the scene of a murder, the place where a loved one lived. But this thing seems to be able to go wherever it wants.”

  She frowned as she remembered the conversation from the diner the night before. “What about the ghost you and Wes mentioned, the one who followed the antique mirror around?”

  “That ghost didn’t follow the mirror. It was tied to the mirror. It showed up any place the mirror went. Del Vecchio’s ghost is showing up in places he’s never even been. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  Trace got up to get another book, then sat back down to compare the information in it to the first one as he ate another slice of pizza. Cassidy sipped her drink as she read over his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about snooping around your office the other day.” She should probably be quiet and let him do his research, but she felt like talking.

  Trace stopped reading to look at her. “It’s okay. Actually, I should be the one apologizing to you. I kind of overreacted a little.”

  Her lips curved. A little? Yeah, she supposed he could say that. “I saw in the photos that you used to be a cop.”

  Something flickered in his eyes at that and for a moment, Cassidy thought it might be pain, but he looked away before she could be sure. “Yeah, I was one of New York City’s finest.”

  “Why did you quit?”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed. “I didn’t. I was medically retired.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Were you injured?”

  He hesitated, the muscle in his jaw flexing again. “No. I made the mistake of telling the brass I saw some creature that wasn’t human. They thought I was nuts, so they put me out to pasture.”

  Cassidy gave him a small smile. “You don’t seem nuts to me.”

  Trace snorted and tossed what was left of the pizza crust back in the box. “Thanks. I’m having a good week.”

  “What happened? Did you see a ghost?”

  He picked up his beer and took a swallow. “Something like that.”

  She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. While she was curious about what had happened, she didn’t want to push him. She knew better than anyone what it was like to not want to talk about something. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me about it.”

  He didn’t answer, but stared down at the books opened on the table in front of him. After a long time, he spoke. “My partner Tom and I were chasing a perp near the docks beside the East River one night. The guy was a pawnbroker who’d been fencing some stolen jewelry and we tracked him to the warehouse where he hid the stuff. He spotted us, though, and took off. We chased him along the docks and followed him into an old brick building. We didn’t know which way he’d gone, so Tom and I split up. That was probably my first mistake.”

  Trace paused and Cassidy could tell from the faraway look in his eyes he was reliving that night. The anguish was plain on his face.

  “The place was a maze and I was moving down yet another long hallway when I heard a noise. I thought it was the perp, so I headed in that direction. I ended up outside, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Unfortunately, the door I came out locked behind me and I had to hoof it all the way around the side of the place to find another way in. I’d just gotten back inside when I heard a shout. It was the most gut-wrenching sound I’ve ever heard, as if someone was being torn apart. Then I heard gunshots. A lot of them.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I took off running and when I came out into the main part of the building, Tom was in the center of the room, reloading his weapon. He was standing over what was left of the guy we’d been chasing. I never saw him look so scared before. I started to run over to him, but he told me to stay where I was, that there was something else in the building with us. Not someone, but something. I was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about when this thing jumped down from the rafters. It was all wings and claws and teeth, and so damn fast that Tom didn’t even have a chance to get off a shot at it before it knocked him to the floor. I aimed my weapon at the bastard, but I couldn’t shoot at it without hitting Tom. All I could do was stand there and watch as the thing tore him to pieces.” He swallowed hard. “It was over in seconds and when the thing was done with him, it took off into the rafters again like some big-ass bat. I managed to get off a few rounds at it, but I couldn’t tell if I hit the thing. It was fast and at the time I was more concerned for my partner.”

  “Was he…?” Cassidy hesitated.

  Trace shook his head. “No, he was alive. He was a mess after what that thing had done to him, but he was still alive. I was shouting into my radio for an ambulance, trying to figure out the freaking address of the building when Tom grabbed my hand and told me to go get that thing before it got away. I tried to tell him there was no way in hell I was going to leave him, but he begged me to go after it. He didn’t want it doing to someone else what it had done to him.”

  “Did you go after it?” she asked softly.

  He n
odded. “Yeah. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I knew Tom wasn’t going to last another five minutes, but I left him anyway. I left my partner there to die by himself and went after that damn thing.”

  “It’s what he wanted you to do,” Cassidy said gently. “He was a cop. He didn’t want that thing getting anyone else.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t make what I did any easier.”

  The pain and regret on his face tugged at her heart and she had to resist the urge to reach out and take his hand in hers. “What happened after that?”

  “I made sure dispatch had Tom’s location, then I told them I was going after the attacker.” He picked up his bottle of beer, but didn’t drink it. “I ran up to the second floor and went out the same way the creature had. The exit led to a fire escape, so I went up, figuring something that could fly like that thing would want to get as high as it could. I didn’t think I’d catch up to it, of course, not the way that thing could move. But when I got to the roof of the next building, the damn creature was still up there, as if it knew I would follow and was waiting for me. I popped off another round at the thing and it took off across the roof. It leaped off the edge and sailed to the top of the next warehouse. I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time otherwise I probably wouldn’t have kept chasing it, but I threw myself across the open space and somehow made it to the far side. The creature was crouched there as if it didn’t expect me to make it across. It looked shocked when I did.”

  He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long drink before continuing. “I got off a clean shot at the creature while it was sitting there staring at me, so I knew I hit it, but it didn’t even flinch. It was as if the bullet had bounced off. I fired a few more times before it ran across the roof and took off again, gliding to the next building. I followed it again, though I’m not sure what the hell I thought I was going to do when I caught up with it since shooting at it didn’t seem to do a damn thing. The next roof was a lot further away than I thought, though, and that time, I didn’t make it. I would have bought it for sure, if it hadn’t been for an exterior maintenance ladder that was attached to the wall of the other building. I slammed into it and was lucky enough to get my arms tangled up in the rungs. I hung there for a few seconds, trying to get my breath back, but it was enough time for the creature to get away. When I got to the rooftop, it was gone.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I dragged my ass back to where I’d left Tom. Backup had arrived by then, along with an ambulance, but it was too late. Tom was gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Cassidy knew from her own experience with Darcy how much losing his partner must have hurt. “What did you tell them happened to him?”

  Trace gave her a wry smile. “I told them the worst possible thing. I told them the truth. That my partner and the crooked pawnbroker we’d been chasing had been killed by a bat-like creature with long, sharp claws that was impervious to bullets.”

  “I take it that explanation didn’t sit well with your superiors?”

  He snorted. “That’s an understatement. Regardless of the fact that the crime scene forensics fit exactly with what I had told them, they weren’t ready to deal with something like that. I was off the scene and in the psych ward at Bellevue before they’d even taken Tom’s body away. I should have been the one to tell his wife what had happened to him, but instead I was stuck in a padded room. I didn’t even make it to the funeral because they kept me there for two fucking weeks. The only way I got out was to agree to a medical discharge for acute post-traumatic stress. According to the official story, Tom and the pawnbroker had been killed by a gang of jewel thieves. Apparently the trauma of seeing my partner butchered scrambled my egg, leaving me unable to remember any coherent details. It was all very tidy, except that no one believed it. Some of the guys on the force thought I’d screwed up and gotten Tom killed and that the brass was covering it up.”

  She’d always thought cops had one another’s back. “Some of the guys? What about the others? What did they think happened?”

  “The day after I got out of the hospital, I was sitting around my apartment trying to figure out if maybe the shrinks had been right and I was crazy when I got a visit from a couple of old veteran cops I’d worked with. At first, I thought they were there to check up on me or call me out for getting my partner killed, but they weren’t. They told me that they’d seen a lot of strange stuff on the job, too. Stuff they couldn’t explain. They described creatures that shouldn’t exist, creatures I now know are very real. Ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, zombies, witches, goblins. They’d seen it all. The brass had hushed up every one of them, threatening them with the loss of their jobs and their pensions if they said anything. But they wanted me to know some of my fellow cops believed me.”

  “Did what they told you help?”

  He nodded. “Enough to get me through the next few days at least.”

  “What got you through after that?”

  “Revenge. I remembered what Tom had told me about not letting that creature get away and I went after it.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “I researched it first. Some of the friends I still had left on the force got me access to old police reports so I could see if there were any similarities between other murders down near the docks and what happened to Tom. Then I talked to the night workers, homeless people and security guards in the area. After a few weeks, I finally pieced together enough information to track down where the creature liked to roam. At the same time, I surfed the web, hoping to find out what the thing was and how to go about killing it. That’s when I discovered there were other people out there like me, looking for things that shouldn’t exist.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and tipped it back, draining the last of his beer. “That’s how I came across Wes. He was a ghost hunter down south who had heard about a bat-like creature that tended to live and hunt near the water. He sent me some info on half a dozen attacks that occurred in Savannah a few years earlier. We compared notes and came to the conclusion it was the same creature. After doing some more research, we realized it had been moving up and down the east coast for more than a hundred years, killing homeless people and migrant dock workers.”

  Cassidy blinked. “Wow.”

  “Tell me about,” Trace muttered. “It appeared that the only person who had ever put a hurting on this thing was a sailor back in the nineteen-twenties. The old whaler had put a harpoon through it. Wes thought maybe wood could do some damage where bullets couldn’t. It was a long shot, but I figured it might work. I talked a cop friend of mine into playing the part of the bait. He dressed up as a homeless guy and set up house down by the docks. It took a few nights for the creature to show and when it finally did, I put a homemade oak harpoon right through its chest. The bastard wasn’t so tough after that.”

  “Did you ever find out what it was?”

  “I don’t know if there was ever a name for it, but I talked to a few other ghost hunters over the years and they thought it might have been descended from a harpy, maybe even one that had mated with a man.”

  Cassidy was incredulous. “Harpies are real?”

  “Probably not as mythology describes them, but it’s likely they’re based on some real creature. I was unlucky enough to run into a modern day version of it.”

  “Did you ever show it to the authorities as proof that you weren’t nuts?”

  He shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Even if they did believe what they were seeing, they couldn’t let something like that get out to the world. They would have put me so deep in the loony bin I’d never have gotten out.”

  Cassidy had to agree Trace was probably right. There would be widespread panic if the public thought there were actual monsters lurking in the shadows. “Is that when you decided to go into the ghost hunting business full time?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I met up with Wes a little while after killing the creature to thank him for the info he’d given me. One thing led t
o another and before I knew it, I was hunting monsters full time. The money’s lousy and I barely make it on the retirement pay the city gives me, but the people I help usually find some way to help me out in return.” He gestured to the room. “One of them gave me this place. Another came in to do the wiring and plumbing. I’m not flush by any means, but I do okay.”

  “Have you and Wes worked together the whole time?”

  “Pretty much. He helped get me set up and taught me the tools of the trade, but then he took off for a while to do some work on his own. He’s been hanging around more lately, but that’s because there’s been a lot more work lately.”

  “How about Robert and Bella? When did they join Paranormal Investigations Unlimited.”

  Trace’s mouth edged up. “Before Robert came on the scene, there wasn’t any Paranormal Investigations Unlimited. Wes and I just got work by word of mouth. But then we helped Robert out and in return, he helped us get into the twenty-first century, as he likes to put it. He’s the one who talked us into setting up the Paranormal Investigations Unlimited deal. He even handled the twenty-four hour emergency number for a while until Wes and I convinced him it would be easier if we cut out the middleman and took the calls ourselves.”

  Cassidy smiled. “Robert means well, I’m sure.”

  Trace chuckled. “Yeah, he does. I shouldn’t complain. We’ve made a lot more money since he came on board.”

  “How about Bella?”

  “Bella’s only been helping us out for a few months. I wasn’t crazy about the idea because the job can sometimes get dangerous, but she insisted if we wouldn’t take her money, then she was going to pay us back for helping her by working with us.”

  “What did you and Wes do for Robert and Bella to make them so loyal?”

  Trace gave her a small smile. “Those would be two very long stories and I think I’ve talked enough for one night. You’re going to think I’m a windbag.” He picked up his empty beer bottle and gestured to her glass as he got to his feet. “I’m going to get a refill. You want another soda?”