“Stop! Police!” ordered Annette, to no effect. They tore out the basement door, and one or two jumped through an open window.
One young woman, with hair dyed a sooty black, was shoved to the floor by one of her less-than-gentlemanly companions in his quest for escape. Before she could get back up, I put my boot-clad foot, gently but firmly, right between her shoulder blades. Meanwhile, Annette ran outside after the little miscreants.
“I hate it when my criminal cronies leave me behind for the police while they run away, don’t you?” I asked my prisoner.
The young woman under my boot wriggled and swore a blue streak. I was unfazed. When it came to grumpy teens, like cantankerous old men, I wasn’t easily moved.
Simone and Hugh lingered in the doorway, eyes wide and mouths agape. Annette came back a few moments later, winded and empty-handed.
“I caught one,” I said proudly. “She’s a wriggler.”
Annette locked eyes with me, apparently questioning my methods of prisoner detainment. I shrugged and lifted my foot.
The girl stood, dusting dirt from her black lace top and ripped black skirt. Black boots and leather cuffs completed the look. I couldn’t see the point in making sure the black was dust free, though; given the overall gestalt of the outfit, I thought the dirt fit in rather well. I told her so.
Her response was “Screw you.”
“What is all this?” I asked. “What were you kids doing here? Don’t you know breaking and entering is against the law?”
“I thought I would be the one to ask the questions,” Annette interrupted, though her tone was decidedly amused. “What with me having the police badge and all.”
“Be my guest.” I stood back and made a sweeping gesture, like I was being gracious, allowing her to ask the questions of the nonghosts.
“Name,” demanded Annette.
“Raven.”
Of course, I thought.
“Real name.”
The girl was cowed by Annette’s laser cop eyes.
“Rhonda. Rhonda Andersen.”
“ID?”
She shook her head.
“Address.”
The girl gave her an address not far from there.
“What do you know about this place?”
“Some guy murdered his family here a long time ago.”
I glanced over at Hugh, but his expression was as flat as always.
“And?”
“And, like, the anniversary’s totally coming up and . . . they say the ghosts will be here, and we could, like, make contact with them.”
“And did you?”
The girl looked at Annette, clearly stunned that this cop wasn’t challenging the idea of talking to ghosts.
“Um . . . no.”
“You’re sure?”
I wondered about mixing the Ouija board with adolescent hormones. Olivier had once told me it was a recipe for poltergeist activity. But what I’d seen earlier was no poltergeist.
“Have you been here before?”
She shrugged. “A coupla times. We don’t really hurt anything . . .”
Except for leaving trash, and the knowledge that people were conducting creepy séances in your basement, I thought. Then again, I was considering holding a creepy séance that Friday.
“The owners might have a thing or two to say about that.” I looked back, but Hugh and Simone were nowhere to be seen.
“It’s abandoned,” said Raven. “There are no owners. Just the . . . ghosts.”
“Have you ever seen this person?”
Annette brought out a photo of Linda Lawrence, clearly taken in better days.
Rhonda-Raven nodded. “She was here a few days ago.”
“She was? Did you talk with her?”
“She chased us out, just like you. She was kind of, like, weird.”
“In what way?”
“It was sort of, like, at first we thought she was a ghost, but then we realized that she couldn’t even like, walk through walls? But then she started throwing things at us and telling us that her family had died here and that it was a shrine, not, like, a trailer park.” I heard a gasp from Hugh from behind us, but we all ignored it.
Raven continued. “I’m not sure where the trailer park thing came in. Was she calling us trailer trash?”
Annette shrugged. “Then what happened?”
“Nothing, really. We all ran away, just like tonight. Except that time, no one totally stood on me.” She cast a glare in my direction.
“If I had stood on you, you wouldn’t be breathing right now.” I had at least fifty pounds on the girl. “I showed a great deal of restraint.”
Raven twisted her mouth and shrugged.
“So that was it?” Annette clarified. “You didn’t see anyone else, and Linda didn’t say anything else?”