The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold Read online

  "It was bad," John said. "I didn't wake up until I was in the hospital. Laura … she was already gone. Olivia was in a coma. Skull fracture, lots of swelling. They didn't—they didn't know if she was going to make it either. Jesus. I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be so hard, talking about this. It's been long enough, I thought…" He shrugged.

  "Why me?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "There are other private investigators in Portland. Why did you choose me?"

  "Oh. Well, I don't—I don't know, really."

  "I told him to," Laura said.

  "It was just a feeling, I guess," John said. "I did a Google search and a bunch of names came up. I saw your website."

  "I have a website?" I said. Then I realized that my technologically sophisticated girlfriend probably set it up for me without my knowledge. "Was it a nice-looking website?"

  "Um…"

  "Never mind. So you had a feeling."

  "Yeah," he said.

  Laura added, "I whispered your name over and over again into his ear when he was online. Sometimes it works."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Excuse me?" John said. "Why did I have a feeling?"

  "No," I said. "I'm sorry, I meant—um, why do you think your daughter was taken?"

  "I'll explain later," Laura said quickly. "I'll explain when we're alone."

  "Oh," John said. "I don't know. Why is any girl taken? Oh God."

  "Keep it together, man," I said. "I know this is hard, but it's going to be a lot harder if you're always breaking down on me. The best thing you can do for Olivia is to keep your cool."

  "Okay," he said. "Okay, I'll try."

  "You don't have any enemies that you know of?"

  "Enemies? No! I'm a freelance graphic designer, for God's sake. Why would I have any enemies?"

  I glanced at Laura, and she shook her head.

  "He's right," she said. "We don't have enemies. But there is a reason she was taken. At least, one possible reason."

  "All right," I said to John. "I'm just trying to see what I have to work with here."

  "So you're taking the case?" John asked.

  I looked at him across the desk, this wasted thing of a man whose bones were held together by little more than habit, and saw something of a reflection of myself from six years earlier. I'd also woken in a hospital room to find my world turned upside down.

  Did I want to take the case? It felt like the whole city of Portland was bearing down on my skull. I was dead broke, and this guy didn't sound like he was going to change that fact. I could spend the next couple weeks curled up on the couch with Jak, drinking eggnog and making fun of bad Hallmark movies. We'd make love. We'd open gifts. We'd get drunk and sing "Jingle Bells" and maybe throw a snowball or two until the rain inevitably washed all the white away.

  I sat there looking at him, feeling sad as this future receded from me. Then I felt the rage take hold, the good kind of rage, the rage I always felt when confronting cruelty and injustice, especially the kind inflicted on the most innocent or defenseless among us. The truth was, I knew what I was going to do the moment he'd told me that his daughter had been taken. I had no choice, really. I just liked to pretend I did.

  "Do you have a picture of her?" I asked.

  Chapter 2

  He told me he had a picture of Olivia in his wallet, but it was almost two years out of date—from before the accident. There had been a more recent one, a school picture from a few months earlier, but he'd given that one to the police. He castigated himself for not bringing one with him, mumbling that he wasn't himself, that he couldn't even think straight. I sensed the wheels starting to come off again when Laura leaned over to him.

  "Your phone, John," she said. "The pictures on your phone."

  "Oh," he said, perking up. "I do have some pictures on my phone. I can show you those. I could—I can even email them to you."

  "That would be good," I said. "I'd still like a print, but you can give me one of those later."

  He pulled out a white iPhone, one with a crack on the corner of the screen. He flipped through some pictures. "It's good I still have this," he said. "I can't really afford it, but it's my only Internet when I'm at home, and I need it for business. There's only so much I can force Olivia to hang out at Starbucks with me for the free Wi-Fi."

  That comment caused him to tear up again. He abruptly handed me the phone. It was a picture of her at the zoo, standing in front of a polar bear who peered at her through a thick glass partition. The polar bear was so fixated on her it was a little unnerving, though there was no menace in his eyes, just curiosity. The little girl in the photo looked closer to twelve than nine, tall, mature for her age, a perfect amalgam of father and mother. She had his lean build and thin face, but her curly brown hair. She also shared Laura's most powerful feature.

  "She has her mother's eyes," I said.

  "Huh? How would you—"

  "I mean, I'm asking … does she?"

  "Oh. Yeah. Very much so."

  Laura said, "That picture actually doesn't do them justice. Flip through to some of the others, the close-ups. Her eyes are much prettier than mine."

  I flipped through some of the other pictures, most of them showing Olivia looking at various animals and those animals looking back. A bald eagle. Two penguins. A baboon. I came to one of her eating at a picnic table, the closest shot yet of her eyes, and I saw that Laura was right. There was something different about them, something even more striking than her mother's. I couldn't put my finger on it. "Pretty is not the right word," I said.

  "What's that?" John said. "You're saying my daughter's not pretty?"

  "No, no, no," I said, silently cursing my throbbing skull. Usually I did a much better job at handling conversations like this one, with both ghosts and the living, but the pain was making it tough to even think straight. "I'm talking about her eyes. Of course they're pretty. It's more than that. That's all I'm saying. There's something very … unique about them."

  "Oh. Yeah. People always say that."

  I handed him the phone, told him my email address, and asked him to email me the last couple, especially the one of her at the picnic table. He did so, but it took him a while, typing the email incorrectly twice, his fingers fumbling along.

  "She has a way with animals," he said. "They always like her. Even at the zoo, they come up to her. It really helped, you know. Being around animals."

  "Helped in what way?"

  "Oh. Just being herself, you know. Most of the time, she's pretty quiet. Since the accident, anyway. She doesn't talk much." He lapsed into silence for a moment, staring at the picture, one showing her nearly eye to eye with a zebra. "I want to get her a cat, maybe even a dog, too, but our apartment doesn't allow it. I told her … told her eventually we'd move…"

  Laura said, "Focusing on animals helps her not think about the nightmares."

  A comment like that begged for a follow-up, but this time I was able to restrain myself. It did occur to me, though, that there wasn't much point in continuing to talk to John until I'd had a one-on-one conversation with Laura. There was obviously a lot more going on with his daughter that he either didn't know or wasn't willing to talk about. Maybe there was more going on with him, too, and Laura would be the one to tell me.

  I pulled out my own smart phone and arranged for an Uber to pick him up at the curb, even though I couldn't really afford it. "Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to get you a ride home, and I'll be along in an hour or two."

  "No, no," he protested, "you don't have to—"

  "Don't sweat it. It will all be billed to you later on my expense account, and this way you don't have to pay for it right now. I'll be along in an hour or two. I just need to … take care of a few things first."

  "You're coming tonight?"

  "Of course. We don't have time to waste. I only wish you would have come right after it happened instead of two days later." When he started to respond, I held up my hand. "Doesn't matter
now. We just need to focus on the present."

  "Okay," he said. "Thank you, Mr. Vale. Thank—"

  "Don't. I haven't done anything yet. You can thank me when we find Olivia."

  We shook hands. His skin felt like papier-mâché, scratchy and dry, the grip so weak I feared that if I applied too much pressure I'd crush his hand. He gave me his address, and, not surprisingly, he lived in an apartment in one of the poorest and most downtrodden areas of Portland, the Glenfair neighborhood over in the east part of city. I knew from my days as a cop that many nights the East Precinct responded to more calls than the rest of the city combined.

  I watched him shuffle out the door, then, turning my attention to Laura, waited until I heard his footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs.

  "Thin walls," I explained to her.

  "Oh," she said.

  She swallowed and fidgeted with the brim of her hat. With him gone, her whole demeanor changed. It was as sudden as the afternoon snow. One moment she was a calm and collected woman, amazing considering the circumstances; the next she was hunched and twitchy, refusing to make eye contact.

  "You're nervous around me," I said.

  "Aren't all ghosts?"

  "You weren't nervous before."

  "That was because of John. I have to be strong for John."

  "Why didn't you come before now?"

  "I … I didn't know about you. I know this is strange, but you probably know more about ghosts than me. Since the accident, since I … Well, I've really just stayed around John and Olivia. They need me to look after them."

  "Well, you found out about me somehow."

  "Yes. This is going to sound weird, but it was … it was this, um, hot dog vendor. He was outside the police station yesterday when we went down there. He told me about you. You're probably not going to believe this, but he looks … he looks like—"

  "Elvis," I said.

  "Right! So you know him?"

  I nodded. Of course I knew him. Funny, irreverent, enigmatic, all the things you'd expect from Elvis or a very good Elvis impersonator, he usually camped out with his hot dog cart on Burnside, mostly around my building, and he'd been a big help to me in the past. So he'd gone out of his way to make sure Laura Ray knew about me. I'd need to have a conversation with him, too.

  "Did he say he'd put the word out about Olivia?" I asked.

  "Yes. He also told me—told me what you can do. How you can see us. Even talking about you, some of the ghosts passing us on the street looked scared."

  She bit down on her lower lip. She was holding it together pretty well, but she made me think of an egg that looked fine from a distance but when examined up close revealed hundreds of tiny cracks. I was trying to think of something to put her at ease when there was a scratching behind me on the window. I swiveled around in the chair and saw my feline friend, Patch, sitting on the ledge. Snowflakes coated his dark gray fur, a nice match for the white starburst over his left eye. He was lean and muscular, like a miniature panther. I opened the window and he hopped onto my desk, glaring at Laura.

  "The cat can see me," she marveled.

  Frigid air blew into the room, stirring the stack of overdue notices on my desk. I glanced outside, saw John stepping into a maroon Jeep Cherokee, and, satisfied, closed the window. When I turned around, Patch was still staring at Laura.

  "Yes," I replied, "he's gifted that way."

  "Kind of like you?"

  "I would hardly call what I have a gift. More like a curse." I massaged my temples, trying, desperately, to make the pain subside. If anything, it had gotten worse. "I want to know what's really going on here. Why was your daughter taken?"

  "I don't know," she said.

  "Do you know who?"

  "No."

  "But you said you had an idea."

  "Yes. Not who. Just why. It might be because of what she can do."

  "This has to do with the animal thing?"

  "Oh no. I mean, yes, I guess, a little. That's just one of the things that Olivia can do. Because my daughter is gifted, Mr. Vale. Very gifted. She can do things that no other person can do. No ghost, either. I don't think she even knows everything she can do yet. She keeps getting stronger. I think—I think some people might have found out about her abilities. That's why they took her."

  "You saw them?"

  "Two men in black ski masks and dark sunglasses. I was … with John. I only saw them climbing into a green van. I didn't—I didn't even have time to get a license."

  "What abilities are we talking about? Can she see ghosts, like me?"

  She laughed softly. "No, that's the one thing she can't do. I wished so many times she could. Then she could see me. That would be something, at least."

  "Then what can she do?"

  "Lots of things. Once in a while she can remember someone else's dreams. Sometimes she can get someone to change their mind about something without saying a word. It's like she's slowly getting better at these things, like she's just starting to figure it all out. Sometimes she can even tell when things are going to happen before they do. She calls them hunches, but it's more than that. That's the newest one, just in the past few weeks. That's also when all the nightmares started."

  I leaned back in my chair, mulling it over. The old me, the me from before the shooting, would have been immediately skeptical of such claims, and I was still something of a cynic by nature, but I'd seen too much that I used to think of as impossible to be too doubtful. "Did she see something in particular? Her visions of the future, I mean?"

  "I don't know. It's not like she could tell me. She just … woke up crying. John didn't even know. She never went to him."

  "So your husband doesn't know about any of this?"

  "No. Maybe. I can't believe he hasn't noticed some of these things, they've been so obvious, but he's never said anything to her. Or to anyone. I think he's in denial about it. "

  "Did this all start for her after the car accident?"

  "Yes. She was just … a normal girl before."

  "Don't start crying on me. I need you to be strong, too."

  "I know. I know."

  "You said she can get people to change their minds. If that's true, then why couldn't she just change the minds of the people who took her?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. She can't always do these things, just sometimes. Maybe she has to see their eyes? That seems to be how it works when it has to do with people—or animals. She looks them in the eyes and she has this … connection. But she is getting stronger at all of these things. Mr. Vale—"

  "Myron. Call me Myron."

  "Myron, I think that's why someone took her. I think they know about these things she can do."

  "But who?"

  "I don't know!"

  "And you're being straight with me?"

  "Yes! Why would I lie?"

  "I don't know, but I've been lied to a lot over the years. I've learned to expect it."

  "Well, not me! I just want my little girl back."

  "All right, all right. I'm going to help you. I'm just trying to figure out where to begin. Is there anything else about these men who took her you can tell me that might help? About the van? What did they look like?"

  "The van was green," she said. "I don't know anything else. It was just green. Newer. I'm not very good with cars. Sorry. The men—like I said, they wore ski masks and tinted sunglasses. They were kind of big, like body builders. They didn't speak at all. Or if they did, I didn't hear them. They were … they were in and out so fast. I really just saw them climbing into the van with her. And before I could get to them, they were driving away."

  "Okay. I imagine the police have already tried all the security cameras in the area?"

  "Yes. Nothing so far. I can't even tell them about the van, so they don't even know what to look for. They're still trying, but it's very frustrating."

  "Of course they're still trying. There are good people working there. I used to be one of them."

  "Wait," Laura s
aid, sitting up straighter in her chair. "Wait, I just remembered something. I don't know if it has anything to do with this or not, but maybe … Olivia said it when she woke up from a nightmare a couple days ago. She said, 'Make merry with merry riddles.' I didn't think anything of it at the time, because she was always waking up mumbling things like that. But it was her last nightmare before—before she was taken."

  "Merry riddles?"

  "Yeah. I know. It didn't make any sense to me either."

  "Make merry … Be happy? Have a party with happy riddles? Get drunk making riddles?"

  "It's strange, isn't it? Maybe it's nothing."

  "Maybe," I said, nodding. "Or maybe it's everything. Who knows. Okay, I need to make a few calls, handle a few other things. It won't be too long, then we can head over to your husband's apartment. Maybe we can learn something there. You okay waiting a bit?"

  She stared at me, teary-eyed and fragile. Those big brown eyes of hers, they showed all the depth of her pain the way a deep, clear mountain pool showed all the jagged rocks far below. She only held my gaze for a moment, then she dropped her chin, crestfallen. What, she thought somehow I'd magically solve this problem from one conversation?

  "I think I'll walk home," she said.

  "I won't be long, really. I'll probably get there before you."

  "I can walk fast."

  "It's cold outside—"

  "Really? You're saying that to me?"

  "Oh, right."

  She stood, straightening her jacket. "I might not be able to do much, but I still have eyes. I can still see things. I just … I need to do something. I can't just sit around and wait. Maybe—maybe I'll even see her on the way home. Or see something. You never know. It could happen, right?"

  "It could happen," I said.

  I tried to sound convincing. With a last nod, as if she was trying to steel herself for the cold, she walked right through the closed door. Patch watched her go, then turned his attention to me, staring at me with a level of disappointment that was far beyond what any normal cat should have been capable of displaying.

  "What?" I said. "Maybe she'll stumble upon Olivia. You never know, she could get lucky."

  But she didn't.