Ghost of a Chance

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Alex watched the rune and the compass needle spin in lazy circles without managing to latch onto the location of the lock that went with the keys.

“Maybe there are too many keys,” Iggy suggested.

Alex picked up the ring and took off all but one.

“I hope this is the right one,” he said, tearing out another rune and resetting the key ring on top of it.

This time when he lit the flash paper, the ring flew further as a result of having less weight, but that was the only substantive difference. The rune and the compass behaved exactly as before.

“Wherever this goes to must be shielded,” Iggy said.

Alex looked at him with disbelieving eyes.

“Everything seems to be shielded these days,” he said. “Or maybe they’re underground, or under water.”

“I doubt very much that the lock that these keys open is underwater,” Iggy said, rolling his eyes. “But you’re right about something blocking the rune.”

“What am I going to tell Hannah?”

“Tell her you’re still working on it,” Iggy said.

“What if I don’t find him in time?” Alex didn’t want to admit it, but this fear had been growing in him every day since he promised Hannah that he’d find Leroy. Her husband couldn’t last forever; sooner or later whoever took him would be done with whatever they were doing, and when that happened, Leroy Cunningham was a dead man.

Iggy took the black book with the strange runes out of his jacket pocket.

“Let’s go home,” he said. “You need some sleep and I need time to study this. With any luck, things will be clearer in the morning.”

Alex sighed. So far the only luck he’d had on this case was bad luck and it didn’t look like that was going to change. The thought of sleep, however, made him instantly tired. And, if he was honest with himself, he really had no idea what to do next.

14 The List

It was almost nine when Alex managed to drag himself out of bed the next morning. He usually had trouble waking up, but today it felt like his eyelids had been glued shut and he had that same cotton feeling in his mouth as last night. A suspicious man would have suspected that the good Doctor had put something other than medicine in that urine-colored cocktail.

Alex was a very suspicious man.

He hoped Iggy had the coffee pot still on the stove but was disappointed when he finally managed to get dressed and down to the kitchen. The only thing waiting for him was a handwritten note from his mentor saying that he was going out to the museum to get a line on the strange pictogram runes.

The Lunch Box didn’t open till noon, so Alex rode the crawler all the way to his office before stopping by the lunch counter of the five and dime across the street. Four cups of black coffee later, he climbed the stairs up to his office.

“There you are,” Leslie said, looking exasperated. “I’ve been calling your place for half an hour.”

Alex looked her up and down for any sign of something amiss, but found none.

“Having a lodger seems to disagree with you,” he observed.

“Hannah was a delight,” Leslie said, giving him a stern look. “This, however,” she said, picking up her copy of the morning paper and dropping it on her desk so Alex could see the front page. “This is a problem.”

So Called Ghost Killer Claims Another Victim, the headline screamed. Alex perused the article but there were precious few details, other than the victim’s name, Paul Lundstrom.

“I take it Mr. Lundstrom is on your list?” Alex asked, putting the paper back on the desk.

Leslie nodded and handed Alex a folded piece of paper. He opened it and found a neatly-written list of about thirty names. Four had been crossed off — the names of the ghost’s previous victims. As Alex read down the list, he found the name Paul Lundstrom.

“This is it,” he said, slapping the paper with the back of his hand. “This is the connection the Police have been looking for.”

Leslie grinned at him.

“And we found it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “Or at least it won’t matter to the cops. I’ll be lucky if they don’t throw me in the cooler, but he’s got to see this.”

Leslie looked shocked.

“They wouldn’t arrest you after we did all the work for them?”

“Oh, wouldn’t they,” Alex laughed. “I bet Detweiler would arrest me if I brought in the ghost himself, wearing handcuffs with a signed confession.”

“I’m thinking you should give this to Callahan,” Leslie said. “Oh, and if you’re going to get thrown in the slammer, I’m going to need bail money.”

Alex pulled the money Barton had given him out of his pocket and handed it over. He was tempted to keep back the twenty that Anne Watson had paid him, but with a sigh he passed that over as well. He had no idea how much the train had cost Leslie to the Hamptons, though he was relatively sure he didn’t need to reimburse her for dinner.

“Wow,” Leslie said as he piled bills in her hand. “I need to go out of town more often. That’s quite a haul.”