Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

Locals said it was the gold and crystals lining the hills that kept the ghosts so busy. An Indian shaman had explained in the paper that gold was the highest vibrating substance on earth, activating things, concentrating energy. Anywhere there was a large quantity of gold and crystals, he said, you had the perfect recipe for spirits.

Rita accepted that explanation at face value. Her house was nearly one hundred and fifty years old and had sheltered five generations of her family. Of course it was haunted.

As to why her mother would want to spend eternity cooking in the kitchen…well, Rita figured that she’d get to find out for herself soon enough.

She had her eggs done. Her wheat toast. Her Earl Grey tea. She set everything down on the small wooden table, one by one. Then, after a last glance to ensure that Joseph had left her chair alone, she took a seat.

Sun had spread out over the glorious expanse of the Blue Ridge Mountains, staining everything it touched a bright rosy pink. She thought it was a beautiful morning.

Meaning it was time to do what must be done. She got up, shuffled her way to the back door. It took her two or three hard yanks to get it to budge. When it was finally open, she stuck her head out and said firmly, in a voice that thirty foster children had learned never to argue with: “Son, you can come out now.”

Nothing.

“I know you’re there, child. No need to be afraid. If you want to talk, just be polite about it and say hello.”

After all these years of living with ghosts, Rita was nearly as surprised as anyone when a flesh-and-blood child materialized on her back porch. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, scrawny shoulders hunched against the morning frost, sandy head down, expression clearly uncertain. Two weeks ago, he’d started appearing in her backyard. Every time she’d made eye contact, however, he’d bolted. This time, at least, he stayed put.

“Hello,” he whispered.

“Heavens, child, you’re gonna catch your death of cold. Come on in. Shut the door. I’m not paying to heat the world.”

He hesitated again, but then his gaze went to her breakfast and she saw his hunger like a spasm across his face. He stepped inside, carefully shutting the door behind him. The motion showed off shoulder blades sharp as razor blades.

“What’s your name, child?”

“I don’t-”

“What’s your name, child?”

“They call me Scott.”

“Well, Scott, this is your lucky morning. My name’s Rita, and I was just fixin’ to make more eggs.”

He didn’t argue, but took a seat in the nice warm kitchen that smelled of scrambled eggs and fresh toasted bread.

Rita cooked. She fed. She cooked some more. Finally, when his stomach was a tight, round drum beneath the faded expanse of his yellow-striped shirt, he pushed his empty plate away.

“Rita,” he said at last. “What do you think of spiders?”

SPECIAL AGENT SAL MARTIGNETTI WAS WAITING FOR Kimberly outside the station. Minute she exited, he flashed his lights. She glanced at his unmarked car, then pointedly looked at her watch. She was tired, hungry, and not in the mood.

In the end, however, she crossed over. Mostly because he’d taken Mac’s advice and was holding up vanilla pudding.

He had the heat blasting, a welcome change from the early morning chill that stung, even in Atlanta. She took the six-pack of pudding, the offered bottle of water, and a plastic spoon. After an internal debate, she grudgingly offered him one pudding back, but he waved her off.

“No, no, all for you. The least I can do.”

He’d been listening to the radio. Some conservative talk-show host ranting about how the ACLU was ruining the world. As Kimberly settled in, however, Sal snapped it off.

“Been waiting long?” she asked, digging into the first pudding. She knew Sal only in passing. Had bumped into him at a barbecue, some police function somewhere. Both the GBI and the FBI were large organizations, meaning more of the agents were names she’d heard rather than faces she knew, and Sal was no exception.

Small, dark, and wiry, he possessed the sinewy build of someone who grew up hard, probably not far from the streets he now patrolled. He wore a light gray suit this morning, but still managed to look more like an up-and-coming hoodlum than a state investigator.

“Been here twenty minutes,” he commented, held up a greasy fast-food bag. “Had my breakfast.”

“More comfortable inside the station,” Kimberly said.

“Not sure what I think of ’em yet,” Sal stated, jerking his head toward the Sandy Springs PD, which was an icebreaker of sorts coming from a GBI special agent.

Kimberly finished the first pudding, opened a second. Something about this felt all wrong. A GBI agent’s insistent middle-of-the-night phone call that she needed to talk to some pinched prostitute. Then the same special agent waiting for her afterward. Kimberly tried working the angles in her mind, but came up empty.

“Sal,” she said at last, “much as I appreciate the pudding, I’m not giving away the keys to the kingdom for snack packs. So if you want something, start talking. I have another appointment in thirty minutes.”

Sal laughed. It brought a spark to his eyes, eased the tightness around his jaw. He should laugh more. Then again, so should she.

“Okay, here’s the deal: You know I’m on VICMO?”

Kimberly nodded.

“One of the whole points of VICMO being to bring law enforcement agents together from all across the state to look for larger patterns of crime.”

“I’m an FBI agent, Sal. I know my acronyms. We’re tested every Friday.”

“Really?”

“No.”

He laughed again, dark eyes flashing bright. “Okay, well, I have a theory on a larger pattern of crime: I believe someone’s picking off prostitutes.”

Kimberly frowned, dug into her pudding. “What do you mean you have a theory? The girls are declared missing or they’re not. Missing stats go up, or they don’t.”

“Not these girls. Runaways, hookers, addicts. Who cares enough to file a claim? They disappear and no one’s the wiser.”

“They’re also transient,” Kimberly countered. “If they go missing, maybe it’s because they hopped on a bus.”

“Absolutely. You’re not talking about one of the population groups most likely to fill out the U.S. Census Bureau questionnaire. On the other hand, get a lot of officers in a room, and they each have a story of some girl or addict or whomever, who was pinched lately, and first question she asked them is have you seen so-and-so? She’s looking for a lost friend, roommate, partner in crime. ’Course, no one knows what she’s talking about, so end of story. You’re right, these girls don’t file missing persons reports. But one by one, they’re raising the exact same question: Where have all the hookers gone?”

“Very poetic of you, Sal.”

“I play an open mic night, every Thursday at the Wildcat…”

Kimberly stared at him.

“Oh, you weren’t serious.”

“I’m going to eat another pudding,” Kimberly said, and opened a third, not because she was hungry, but because she needed something to do.

“I don’t get it,” she said at last. “So girls are whispering about missing girls. Okay, but where have the missing hookers gone? If someone is ‘picking them off ’ as you say, where’s the evidence? Shouldn’t missing Girl A, last seen here, correlate with unidentified Body B, now found there?”