Ghost of a Chance

A brass vent cover about a foot high and two feet wide lay on the carpet as well. Callahan said that Anne claimed to have gotten into the room by crawling through a vent. A smear of dirt on the wood floor under the glass case revealed the opening. Alex knelt down and looked through the small duct. It ran to the next room, under the glass case, and was about three feet long.

Alex set down his kit, a leather doctor’s valise, and opened it. Inside were his tools for investigation and the various special papers and pens he might need to make runes. Reaching in, he withdrew an egg-shaped, brass lantern with glass lenses on each of its four sides. Three of the lenses were covered with a leather cap, blocking them off.

Alex set down the lantern and withdrew a round oil reservoir with a cotton wick sticking out of the top from his kit. This one had the word Ghostlight stamped into a metal plate on its curved side. Inside was a special mixture of alchemical oils and some ingredients Alex had made magical with runes. He opened the lantern, revealing runes etched into the metal on each side. The burner clipped into a round slot in the bottom of the lamp and Alex fixed it in place.

Reaching into his kit again, Alex took out what looked like an oversized leather eye patch with a short telescope mounted into it. The telescope had several dials, like the focus adjustments on a camera lens, and four colored lenses could be moved into the field of view. Once in place over his eye, the oculus would allow him to see things revealed in the lantern’s light. With the ghostlight burner in place, the lantern would reveal magical residue. If anything magical happened in David Watson’s study, the ghostlight would show it.

Alex took a paper matchbook from his pocket to light the lamp.

“What did she say?” Callahan’s voice interrupted him.

Alex turned to find the lieutenant leaning against the door frame.

“She’s scared,” Alex said, closing up his kit bag.

“I know that,” Callahan said. “What did she say about her husband?”

“I didn’t ask,” Alex replied. Iggy taught him never to question a suspect until he’d first looked at the scene.

People lie, he’d say. Evidence never does.

“You didn’t ask her if she killed him?”

Alex chuckled at that. As if Anne would have admitted it if she had murdered her husband.

“I didn’t need to ask her,” Alex said. “She didn’t do it.”

Callahan laughed at that.

“How do you figure?” he asked. “The husband didn’t have any defensive wounds on his body, just the two stab wounds, one on either side of his chest.”

“You’re saying he knew his attacker,” Alex said. “But that doesn’t mean it was the wife.”

“It damn well makes her a suspect,’ he said. “What makes you think she’s innocent?”

“Did you see the blood on her clothes?”

Callahan nodded.

“Yes, what about it?”

“According to her story she crawled in through there and found her husband already dead,” Alex said, pointing to the open vent.

“She could have killed him first,” Callahan pointed out, “Then gone around and crawled in to make her story look believable.”

“You’re right,” Alex admitted. “She could have done that, but if she did, the blood on her clothes would be under the dirt from the vent. It wasn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Some of the grime scraped off her shirt when she was sitting at the table,” Alex said. “The shirt beneath didn’t have bloodstains.”

Callahan looked as if he wanted to protest, but stopped and nodded.

“If she’d killed him first, she’d have gotten blood somewhere,” he sighed. “Stabbing someone is messy.”

“You seem disappointed,” Alex said. “I was under the impression you didn’t think she did it.”

“I asked her and she said she didn’t kill him,” Callahan said. “I believed her but it’s always nice to have it confirmed.”

“You probably ought to tell Detweiler,” Alex said. “I’ve got work to do here.”

“Right,” the lieutenant said, turning to go. “It’s not like he’ll believe me, but I’ll tell him anyway.”

Alex waited until Callahan’s footsteps faded away, then took a matchbook from his pocket and lit his lamp. A greenish light began to emanate from the uncovered lens, glowing brighter as the wick began to siphon oil from the little reservoir.

Strapping the oculus over his right eye, Alex closed his left and began shining the lantern around the room. Several of the objects in the glass case had magical residue, signs that at one time they had been enchanted. None of them glowed brightly though, so whether they had been made magical by a sorcerer or with a spent rune, none of the magic was recent.

Behind the desk was a small liquor cabinet. Several of the bottles glowed, but they were brands which Alex knew contained alchemical ingredients. Other than that, there wasn’t any magic in the room.

Satisfied that Mr. Watson hadn’t been killed by magic, Alex blew out the ghostlight burner and returned it to his kit, replacing it with one labeled Silverlight.