“You think there’s more evidence?”
All of a sudden in the background I hear another voice. A male voice. “Evidence?” he repeats. “Who is that?”
“Serenity,” Jenna says to me, “there’s someone I think you should meet.”
I may have lost my mojo, but that doesn’t keep me from seeing, in a single glance, that Virgil Stanhope is going to be as useful to Jenna as screen doors on a submarine. He is distracted and dissipated, like a former high school football star who’s spent the past twenty years pickling his organs. “Serenity,” Jenna says. “This is Virgil. He was the detective on duty the day my mother disappeared.”
He looks at my hand, extended, and shakes it perfunctorily. “Jenna,” he says, “c’mon. This is a waste of time—”
“No stone left unturned,” she insists.
I plant myself squarely in front of Virgil. “Mr. Stanhope, in my career I’ve been called in to dozens of crime scenes. I’ve been in places where I had to wear booties because there was brain matter on the floor. I’ve gone to homes where kids were abducted and led law enforcement officers to the woods where they were found.”
He raises a brow. “Ever testified in court?”
My cheeks pinken. “No.”
“Big surprise.”
Jenna steps in front of him. “If you two can’t play together, there’s going to be a time-out,” she says, and she turns to me. “So what’s the plan?”
Plan? I don’t have a plan. I am hoping that if I walk around this wasteland long enough, I’ll have a flash of recognition. My first in seven years.
Suddenly a man walks by, holding a cell phone. “Did you see him?” I whisper.
Jenna and Virgil lock eyes and then look at me. “Yes.”
“Oh.” I watch the guy get into his Honda and drive away, still talking on his cell. I’m a little deflated to find out he’s a living person. In a crowded hotel lobby, I used to see maybe fifty people, and half of them would be spirits. They weren’t rattling chains or holding their severed heads but rather talking on their cell phones, or trying to hail a cab, or taking a mint from the jar at the front of the restaurant. Ordinary stuff.
Virgil rolls his eyes, and Jenna elbows him in the gut.
“Are spirits here right now?” she asks.
I glance around, as if I might still see them. “Probably. They can attach themselves to people, places, things. And they can move around, too. Free range.”
“Like chickens,” Virgil says. “Don’t you think it’s weird that with all the homicides I saw as a cop, never once did I see a ghost hanging around a dead body?”
“Not at all,” I say. “Why would they want to reveal themselves to you, when you were fighting so hard not to see them? That would be like going into a gay bar if you’re straight, and hoping to get lucky.”
“What? I’m not gay.”
“I didn’t say—Oh, never mind.”
In spite of the fact that this man is a Neanderthal, Jenna herself seems fascinated. “So let’s say there’s a ghost attached to me. Would it watch me when I shower?”
“I doubt it. They were alive once; they understand privacy.”
“Then what’s the fun in being a ghost?” Virgil says under his breath. We step over the chain at the gate, moving with unspoken agreement into the sanctuary.
“I didn’t say it was fun. Most of the ghosts I’ve met haven’t been too happy. They feel like they’ve left something unfinished. Or they were so busy looking into glory holes in their last life they have to get their act together before they move on to whatever comes next.”
“You’re telling me the Peeping Tom I arrested in the gas station bathroom automatically develops a conscience in the afterlife? Seems a little convenient.”
I look back over my shoulder. “There’s a conflict between body and soul, sometimes. That friction is free will. Your guy probably didn’t come to earth to spy on folks in a gas station bathroom, but somehow ego or narcissism or some other garbage happened to him in his life while he was here. So even though his soul might have been telling him not to look through that hole, his body was saying Tough luck.” I push through some tall grass, untangling a reed that has gotten snared in the fringe of my poncho. “It’s like that for drug addicts, too. Or alcoholics.”
Virgil abruptly turns. “I’m going this way.”
“Actually,” I say, pointing in the opposite direction, “I’m getting the feeling we should go this way.” I am not really getting that feeling at all. It’s just that Virgil seems like such an ass that if he says black I’m determined to say white right now. He’s already judged and hanged me, which leads me to believe he knows exactly who I am and can remember Senator McCoy’s boy. In fact, if I weren’t so completely convinced that there is a reason I have to be with Jenna at this moment, I would bushwhack back to my car and drive the hell home.