Varner gave him a suspicious look. “That’s not just a guess, is it?”

“Hey, not bad for a cop,” the ghost said. “Think he can spell his own name too?”

Good one, Ray said.

Gryphon sighed, and Varner looked over his shoulder, following his gaze, trying to see what he saw. He couldn’t, of course. “No. there’s another victim here, Anna Alvarez. She doesn’t think much of our investigational skills.”

“Hey, you’re okay,” Anna said. “It’s the fucking cops that should have found this place three victims ago. What the fuck do we pay taxes for?” She paused briefly. “Okay, not me personally, but other people.”

Varner scanned the darkness, like Anna wasn’t standing a mere three feet from him, the blood in the hole in her forehead glimmering like sunlight on the surface of a stagnant pond. But she wasn’t there, not as far as Varner was concerned. After a moment, he turned back to him, and asked, “What can she tell us about him?”

Gryphon didn’t even ask, just looked at Anna and waited. The ghost shrugged and threw her hands in the air. “Fuck if I know, I was totally wasted when he did me.”

“Can I see?” he asked, knowing he’d regret it.

Kid, no, Hugh insisted. We can find him some other way. She was shot in the head – there’s probably no memories worth anything anyways.

She looked at him like he was insane. “What d’ya mean can you see? What the fuck is that? You gonna crack open my head and look in?”

“It’s just a process,” Gryphon told her. He noticed Varner staring at him out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t interrupt. “I don’t know how it works -”

And as if talking about it was the trigger, he suddenly got it – it flooded into his mind in a series of jagged images as sharp as glass and sensations that were so disorienting that he felt like he was suddenly on the deck of a sinking ship in a raging sea. Reality slid sideways and suddenly everything was too bright and too loud, images smeared across his retinas like the landscape flying by too fast for the eye to settle on anything, fragments of things that didn’t quite make sense. A slice of white – the van? – the beige/pink/tan of a Caucasian face, darkness, a bright flash like the light of a muzzle. A sharp pain augured through his brain like a drill bit, and nausea washed over him, dragging him back to a reality that was dark and somehow less vivid than the drug addled, damaged memories. He had a taste in his mouth of vomit, blood, and something like old pennies.

“Holy shit, are you okay?” Varner asked from somewhere over his head. Gryphon retched for a moment before realizing arms were across his chest, and slowly it dawned on him that Varner was holding him up. When had he collapsed?

When the disruption in his mind had settled and he felt the confines of his body around him again – and he got the urge to barf under control – he said, “’M fine, okay? Jus’ – fuck, I hate memories where I get shot in the head.”

“What?”

Gryphon tried to stand on his own power, failed, and then tried again, Varner still holding him the whole time. The second time he succeeded, but the cop seemed reluctant to let go. “I’m okay, I’ll be okay, I just … can someone help me sort through those images?”

“Huh?”

“I’m talking to my passengers.”

I saw shit, Ray said. What the fuck was that?

He offered her twenty five dollars for a blow job, and she figured she needed the money for a fix, Julie, of all people, said. While she was doing that in his van, he pulled out a gun and shot her, although she didn’t know he had a gun until the barrel was against her forehead.

Gryphon was honestly shocked on two fronts. Julie actually speaking, which was so rare he was always surprised she was still with him. But then there was the shocking fact that she actually saw a coherent narrative in all that mess. “You saw all that?”

It goes by fast, but it was there, she said. I don’t know why I could see it. Maybe because of how I died.

How would being beaten to death by a hammer allow her to see it better than the rest of them? Maybe it was the head injury connection, or perhaps the shocking amount of betrayal and needless brutality in the violence. “I’m okay, Jason, really,” Gryphon said, standing on his own. He wavered a moment, but he managed to stay vertical. “Holy fuck, I think we need a sketch artist. Julie, did you catch his face?”

I think so. She must have thought about it, because suddenly an image popped into his head, of a shadowy man who was so nondescript it was almost painful. Except for the look in his eye – it was remarkably cold, disdainful, and dead. It was the type of look that, if you saw it on an armed person, would make you wet your pants. You’d know you were doomed.

Varner was looking at him quizzically. “Is there another ghost here?”

“Julie’s one of my passengers. And yeah, I know what this fucker looks like. I need a sketch artist.”

His eyebrows raised slightly, concern etching lines into his otherwise smooth face. Suddenly he looked a bit closer to his genuine age. “Are you sure you don’t need a hospital? That was a quite an episode you had.”

“It wasn’t an episode,” he replied scornfully. But what the hell was it? It wasn’t like he could remember. “It was just somebody else’s memory.”

“Of getting shot in the head.”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “That’s some gift you’ve got.”

He wanted to point out that it was no gift at all, but he obviously knew that.

Varner wanted to get a search warrant for the Packer’s building anyways, so Gryphon rode along with him back to the station, where the cops on duty who recognized him seemed genuinely surprised to see him. As police station’s went this one was pretty modern, echoing the usual rectangular shape but with a lot more glass and exposed steel than he was used to seeing in a cop shop, the interior bright white and full of utilitarian furniture, the air heavily conditioned and redolent of coffee and copier toner. It could have been an office, only with employees wearing polyester uniforms and carrying guns. Which was a scary sounding office, come to think of it.

Varner went right on back to his office – and you knew you were important if you had your own office – but on the way there they were intercepted by the biggest damn cop Gryphon had ever seen. He was maybe six foot six and well over two hundred pounds, although actually quite lean, athletically built. He was a fairly young light skinned black man with a rather severe buzz cut, like maybe two months ago he shaved his own head and thought better of it, and it was very slowly growing back. “Jase, something up?” he asked, giving Gryphon a suspicious look.

“Yeah, I need to get a search warrant, and someone with an identikit. Is Rochelle still here?”

The cop – who seemed to be named Glass – glanced towards the back, but it may just have been something to do while he was trying to remember. “I’m not sure. I’ll go check.”

“If she’s not, just tell Dihn he’s doing it.”

He followed Varner into his tiny office, which seemed to echo the interior of the rest of the place. Only there was a very old filing cabinet tucked into the far corner, and listing piles of papers beside an older model Dell desktop, which made it seem if not exactly homey at least a bit less cold. He sat in a stiff plastic chair as Varner sat in his more cushioned office chair and picked up the phone, calling the judge – or whoever; it was a judge, right? – for a warrant.

Gryphon quietly offered to let Julie take over and describe their guy, but she didn’t want to; she was content to let him be her voice. Which was typical really – Julie preferred other people speaking for her, perhaps because if there was a beating meted out for it, it’d be that person who suffered and not her. He couldn’t blame her really.

Rochelle must not have been here, as the person who came in with the identikit was a somewhat grumpy Vietnamese cop who complained that this wasn’t really part of his job, but Varner ignored him like he was used to this kind of thing. Eventually the picture they put together was of an oval faced man with thinning light brown hair that made his forehead look broader, and a Roman nose with a bump in the bridge, suggesting it had been broken eons ago. His eyes weren’t small more than they simply lacked a certain expressiveness that made them look like they were sinking into the wide expanse of his face. He wasn’t ugly nor good looking, striking or awful – he was just ordinary. He was the poster boy for the guy you saw twenty times every day and never really noticed. As soon as they were done, Dihn clicked his tongue, and said, “This guy is gonna be impossible to single out.”

“Not necessarily,” Varner said, glancing at him in a rather knowing way. Gryphon knew he meant he could find him simply by following the ghosts.

The story Varner told was that he (Gryphon) had seen this guy in the area after hearing a noise that sounded like a gunshot – it was sort of true, and yet mostly not. Gryphon was kind of amazed that a cop was lying his ass off to other cops right in front of him, but Hugh said, They’re people like everyone else. They lie. We firefighters do that too. Everybody lies. Sometimes professionally.

I was wondering when somebody was going to bring politicians into this, Mr. Aronofsky said.

Varner got his search warrant within two hours, and as they left the police station, he told Gryphon he wanted him to be on the scene, but clearly he couldn’t be inside while they were going over the place. He asked him to remain outside and let him know if any other ghosts popped up or relayed any helpful information.

Fuck him! Ray exclaimed. We’re doin’ his work for him! Demand some scratch before you tell him one more fuckin’ thing.

But what ended up happening was Gryphon dozed in the backseat of a patrol car while the cops and the forensic teams went over the store. From the sudden flurry of activity, the uniformed people boiling out of the broken open door like ants from a disturbed hill, the killer hadn’t cleaned up as well as he thought he had. Gryphon didn’t think he’d actually sleep, but he dosed for a while, woken up once to find someone sitting in the back seat with him. It was Anna, the hole in her forehead still glistening wetly, dark blood dripping down her chin and hitting the seat with a soft plop. “You know why it took so long for anyone to notice? ‘Cause you can kill all the whores you like and no one cares.”

“They weren’t all whores,” he replied sleepily, rubbing his eyes, wondering when talking to people with grotesque head injuries had become normal.

“Naw, I guess not. Some of ‘em were just junkies, or stupid little girls who didn’t take to heart advice about taking rides with strangers. Either way, it was kinda amazing how he picked ones that he knew wouldn’t be missed very much. They were mainly white girls! Don’t missing white girls get all the media attention?”

“Being rich or at least fairly well off helps a lot. I don’t think anyone thinks much about the poor ones. If you’re poor, shit happens to you. It’s just not supposed to happen to the better off.” Wow, when had he gotten so cynical? Oh, right, when talking to dead people with head injuries became normal.

“Yeah, prob’ly.” She turned and looked out the passenger window at all the cop cars and some kind of forensics van, where the bulk of the activity was happening. “I wonder if they found my finger.”

“He chopped off your fingers?”

“No. But he was experimenting with a new chopping technique to make shorter work of the dismembering process, and he partially severed one of my fingers. While he was working on the rest of the body, a rat came along and chewed off the rest. He hates rats and he killed it, but he never noticed the missing finger.”

This may well be the most disgusting story I’ve ever heard, Sylvio said.

“Do you wanna kill him?”

Anna looked back at him, pondering her options. “I dunno. I want him to suffer. Can we nail him to a wall so it takes him three days to die?”

“That might be difficult. We’d need a really secluded place.”

Don’t even joke, Mr. Aronofsky scolded.

She sat back against the seat, and he could see a bit of the exit wound in the back of her skull. She had bloody clots of brain matter like raw meat in her blood stiffened hair, little white bits of skull sprinkled about like casually tossed confetti. “What do ya think they’ll do to him in prison?” she wondered.

Gryphon shrugged, as Ray said, I think serial killers are in one of two categories: if prisoners think they’re just mad dog crazy or bad ass, they avoid ‘em. Otherwise, they’re priority targets. Hurting or killing a serial killer will give you instant rep. That‘s why a lot of them are held in special custody.

“I’ll probably have to ask Varner, but I don’t know if he’d tell me.”

“He likes you. The cop.”

Gryphon shrugged. “I think he wishes he could see you and talk to you. It’d make his job infinitely easier.”

He looked out the windows at some of the cops talking, too far away for him to decently hear, while Anna shifted in her seat, a wet noise thanks to all the blood, and asked, “Why I haven’t I joined your crew? What’s that about?”

“I think you only wanted to impart a message. Or something. Really, I have no idea how this fucking thing works, what tips a ghost over into my realm. I’m a dumbass, I’m afraid. This gig couldn’t have gone to a worse person.”

“Maybe not. Maybe if someone knew what they were doin’, it would get … I dunno … all fucked up.”

Or you’d be a power crazed fuck like Louis Stanhope, Ruby said.

“But that works out best for all of you, not necessarily me.”

Well, there’s other benefits, right? Hugh ventured gamely. The psychokinesis is pretty neat.

“But that’s yours too. I’m always sick, always half dead.”

“At least you didn’t go all the way,” Anna said, pointing at the bullet hole in her forehead. That shut him up. It seemed petty to complain when he was still technically alive.

He looked out the window at the spinning lights of cherry and sapphire, casting lurching shadows on the scarred pavement, and suddenly felt a certain odd coldness on his leg. He looked down to see that Anna was patting his knee in a comforting manner. “What are you gonna do to him? You gonna chop him up like a deer too?”

He glanced at her sharply. “Like a deer?” It took him a moment, but he got there. “Holy shit, he’s a hunter? That makes sense. Only now he’s changed game.”

She shrugged. “’Spose so, but there’s no sport in shooting someone point blank in the head.”

“No, there’s not. But it’s probably the kill that gets his rocks off, not the hunt.”

Man where do all these warped fuckers come from? Ruby wondered irritably. Is there a place in Texas just churning these shit suckers out?

Anna quirked an eyebrow at him, a tacit prompt. “So what’re you gonna do? Turn him over to the cops? Kill him?”

He shook his head and shrugged, not sure how to answer her. “I don’t know.” And he didn’t. He hadn’t decided yet how to proceed. He just assumed that he or his passengers would know when the time came, as they always seemed to. It was as mysterious as the process that allowed people to join him and left others out.

After a minute she nodded, as if that had been a fair answer. “Be careful. This fucker’s crazy.”

Undoubtedly, but he liked to think he was crazy too, so he knew the terrain. He gave her a faint smile, sorry she was dead, as she seemed like she had probably been a cool – albeit troubled – person when she was alive. “Don’t worry. All apologies to zombie films, but you can’t kill what’s already dead.”

The first one he identified was Sheila, Shelia Colleen Maitland, who was one of the mug shot ones. She was younger, her hair was different, but it was her. Then he identified poor Rita, Margarita Helene Schillenger, caught at someone’s birthday party. The photo was a little overexposed, a little too close, but she was smiling and happy. It was heartbreaking. But then again, Sheila’s hard faced mug shot photo was heartbreaking too, simply because they were alive when these photos were taken, and now they weren’t. He also managed to identify Jessica, Jessica Lee Pothier, from a mug shot where she looked so wasted he had no idea how she was standing for the camera.

Clay had come into the kitchen to check on them at one point, and then offered them drinks, but Varner declined. Gryphon did too, but only because he thought his kidneys were about to burst from the sheer amount of tea he had in him.

As soon as he pulled out Rita’s file and handed it to Varner, he told him, “I’m not sure she’s like the other river victims. Her last recollection is driving alone in her car and being punched in the head.”

Varner raised a pale eyebrow at that. They were so perfectly arched, you’d think he had them plucked. “Punched while driving alone?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but sometimes victims get … scrambled. They’re not sure how they died, usually if it’s sudden or involves a head injury.”

“She’s sure there was no one in the car?”

“As she could be. She didn’t think she crashed either.”

Varner frowned and pondered that as he glanced at their files. As soon as he added Jessica to the pile – and she was the last one; he’d only identified the three of them – Varner said, “I came up from California. I used to work East L.A., and people who got shot but didn’t realize it – which was baffling to me as a rookie, but now I know better – sometimes described that they felt like they were punched or shoved. Could Rita Schillenger have been shot?”

East L.A.? Ray snorted. He don’t look like no chollo to me.

Gryphon hated to admit it, but as soon as he said that, he realized that felt right. After all, he’d been shot several times – well, okay, former passengers of his had been – and he knew how it felt. Sometimes it was a pain beyond describing, sometimes it was a numbness followed by odd type of paralysis or refusal of parts of your body to move, and sometimes it was more like a blunt pain, a punch or a kick.

Hey, I was shot in the fucking face! Ray exclaimed. I don’t remember nothin’! One second I was talkin’ to that fucker, and then – blammo! It was light, and then nada.

And sometimes it was absolutely nothing.

“Yes, I think that’s it,” he told the deputy chief. “I think she was shot in the head while driving. That would explain why she can’t remember a damn thing.” But as he shoved over the files of the women he didn’t identify, he added, “But that doesn’t fit the M.O. of the river killer. I mean, he did shoot them, but never from a distance. He shot them up close, where he could watch and control the environment.”

Varner’s hands froze on the file folders as he gathered them up. Gryphon noticed he was wearing a gold band with a small ruby on it, but it wasn’t a wedding ring, as he wasn’t wearing it on the right finger. He looked up to find Varner staring at him in a strange way. “Why do you say that, Gryphon? What do you mean he shoots them?”

“Because he does. He shoots them, and then he carves up their bodies in an abandoned store.”

That hollow eyed stare kept up for several more seconds, then he slumped in his chair with a sigh, like he was deflating. He quickly sat up straight again, though. “How much do you know? You need to tell me all of it, and you need to tell me now.”

So Gryphon told him of his “memory” (well, it wasn’t exactly a dream), of the white van and the gunshot, the shell casing rolling down the parking lot, the abandoned store where he had set up tarps to catch the blood. “He’s not a butcher – well, not right now, at any rate – but he knows how to cut up bodies. He knows what he’s doing.”

“But you don’t know what he looks like?” Varner prompted.

“Not yet. But I’d know him if I saw him. Hell, he probably has several ghosts with him that he doesn’t even know about – they’d point him out.”

Varner went into his messenger bag again, and pulled out a piece of paper. He showed it to him. “It isn’t him, is it?”

He looked at the two side by side mug shots of a rather non-descript middle aged man with a significant bald spot, his eyes looking at the viewer as though from the bottom of a well. Gryphon shook his head. “No, not him.”

“I thought not,” Varner admitted, putting the picture back in the bag. He added the files as well.

“Who is it?”

“Clifford Wax.”

“Ah, O’Leary’s obsession.” He paused a moment, and then felt like an idiot, as it all fell together in his head. “You told him about me, didn’t you? O’Leary.”

Varner grimaced as he zipped up the bag, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah, well … sorry about that. I didn’t think he’d actually seek you out.”

“So you are friends?”

“Fuck no. I mean, he’s a decent cop, an okay guy, we just don’t get along so well. Basically, he’s an old fashioned cop, and he thinks I’m too much of a new fashioned one.”

Old fashioned cop? Sylvio repeated skeptically. Is that some kind of euphemism for a cop who beats up on black guys whenever he gets the chance?

I think new fashioned cop is code for fag, Ray said.

“He doesn’t know you’re here.”

Varner snickered. “Why would he? He’s retired; we don’t work together anymore.”

“Why did he retire?”

Varner sighed explosively before he stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “You should probably ask him.”

“I’d rather hear it from someone who won’t lie to me.”

That made the cop pause, hand on the back of his chair. Gryphon watched a muscle in Varner’s jaw twitch as his eyes roamed the sparse kitchen, looking for an escape. Finally, he said, “I think he was burned out. It happens a lot.”

“It had nothing to do with Jeff McCandless?”

Varner stiffened as if he’d just received a cattle prod to the ass, and he looked at him like he had done it, more surprised than wounded. “How do you – did he tell you about that?”

“Not really. He told me a story that wasn’t completely true. Jeff told me not to trust him.”

He seemed nonplussed. “You’ve talked to Jeff?”

“He appears periodically beside O’Leary. He doesn’t know, but I have a sense he wants Cal to admit something; he wants me to get him to confess.”

“To what?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. But my guess is Cal’s lying about how he died.”

Varner swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing almost spasmodically in his throat. “I … there were some questions about that raid that have never been resolved.”

“Do you think he was lying about what happened?”

For a moment, Varner avoided his gaze completely. But finally his dark eyes met his, and he nodded faintly. “I think the entire strike team was lying. They fucked up royal, but they held together so no one took a fall for it. The blue code. The inquest was a waste of time and money, but that’s okay, no one cared. A bunch of junkies get shot up – who gives a fuck? Dead cops happen.”

Bitter much? Hugh noted.

“Once I get the truth, I’ll let you know.”

He nodded, but didn’t seem completely mollified. Maybe because the truth didn’t matter anymore – there was nothing to be done. No one much cared anymore, besides the dead.

Gryphon stood, feeling like the kitchen chair had made his ass permanently numb, and asked, “Do you know of any abandoned stores around here?”

He snorted somewhat derisively. “Are you kidding? Ever since Wal-Mart moved into the state, there’s been a ton of them. Shut down, boarded up, burned down for insurance money.”

“Would you have time to take me out to some of them tonight?”

Kid, what are you doing? Ruby asked.

Varner looked just as surprised as most of his passengers felt. “Sure, yeah. Are you up for that? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine, just tired. I just need to hit the head, then I’ll be ready to go.”

“Sure. I’ll be in my car.”

Gryphon went up to his bathroom – he could have used Clay’s downstairs one, but he felt funny about it – and after he drained his poor, taxed bladder, Hugh asked, What the fuck do you think you’re doing? And don’t you dare tell me washing your hands.

Gryphon looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. It seemed to him like his own eyes were sinking deep into the back of his head, but that could have simply been his imagination. “This guy is still out there killing. If I can find the spot where he cuts up the bodies, there might be enough forensic evidence there for the cops to find this guy and close the case. Women will stop dying, and I’ll be happy. Maybe I won’t dream of creepy things like that anymore.”

You already put an angry ghost kid to bed today, Hugh said. Not to mention found yourself in a car accident. Take a break. If you’re itching to get out of here, just call Lilly.

He dried his hands on the first towel he grabbed from the rack, and wondered if he should wash them sometime. Clay seemed to do all the laundry around here, and that was unfair. “Who’s Lilly?”

The paramedic. You know, we got her number?

Gryphon wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite. He searched his coat pocket and found some caffeinated gum, a piece of which he popped into his mouth. Eventually the taste of peppermint would give way to the bitter, disgusting taste of caffeine, but he could use the jolt. “You got her number, Hugh. It never would have occurred to me to hit on a woman while she was doing her job.”

She was cute, Hugh said, as if that explained everything.

The Asian girls are usually cute, Ray said.

Shut up, you fucking pig, Ruby snapped.

It was probably a good thing for Ray that his passengers couldn’t vote fellow passengers out of him, or Ray would have been booted out of him a long time ago.

He told Clay he was going out with Varner to look at some abandoned stores, and Clay was giving him that look, that look that seemed to suggest he was a crazy person with a loaded semi-automatic handgun and a ticking time bomb. He told him he’d be fine, that he felt he had to do this, but he didn’t know if Clay actually believed him or not.

He went out and got into the passenger seat of Varner’s car, secretly hoping that he was a better driver than O’Leary, even though the accident really hadn’t been his fault. The car interior was neat, with almond colored leather interior and a fruit scented Yankee Candle air freshener making things smell like a farmer’s market. At least it was better than those damn pine trees; the smell of those made him sick.

Varner was happy to be silent, so Gryphon just closed his eyes and leaned back in the soft seat, resting his eyes, until they came to the first location. It was a closed down drugstore, with plywood over the windows, but it was absolutely not what he had seen.

The same was true of the next two locations, although one was a grocery store that almost looked promising in its general shape, but the parking lot was wrong. It was starting to get late, late enough that Varner had to stifle a yawn, and Gryphon was going to tell him it was okay, this could wait, until he saw the hulking shadow of a building on a run down street.

There was the dive bar, the one he’d been sitting in front of when he heard the shooting in the van. It too was shut down, but that didn’t really matter.

“This is it,” Gryphon said, pointing towards the silhouette of the store. There were streetlights in the parking lot, but all but one of them had been broken out, and the one that was working flickered constantly, like it had a short.

Varner swung the car into the cracked, sloping lot, and drove very carefully, as there was a lot of trash and various detritus scattered about the lot. Broken glass glittered like diamonds, and char marks from fireworks and impromptu bonfires made the asphalt look diseased. “This is the old Packer’s,” he said. “It’s been closed down since the parent company went bankrupt three years ago. I was always kinda surprised it didn’t get accidentally burned down.”

“They can’t sell the land?”

He grunted in a smothered, sarcastic laugh. “They can’t sell shit down here besides eight balls and ass. Everything from West 224th to Aspen Boulevard has been bled pretty much dry. It’s not so much a depressed area as a bludgeoned one.”

“So there wouldn’t be any witnesses willing to report anything suspicious,” Gryphon said, thinking aloud.

“Oh sure, the guy buying a vial of crack is gonna report a gunshot,” Varner agreed bleakly. He reached across to the glove compartment, where he took out a heavy LED flashlight, and a smaller MagLite, which he offered to him. Gryphon initially shook his head, but Varner continued holding it out, so he reluctantly took it. As soon as he got out of the car, he spit out his gum on the blacktop, because it was starting to taste disgusting and it wasn’t going to dirty up the parking lot much more than it already was.

Varner turned on his flashlight and started to sweep the surprisingly bright blue-white beam along the ground. “You said in your vision you saw a shell casing roll down?”

“It wasn’t a vision,” he argued, but in all honesty he had no idea what the fuck it had been; vision was as good a word for it as any. “But yeah.”

He joined Varner at the bottom of the sloped parking lot, where litter had gathered in rather large amounts. There were lots of fast food detritus, mostly from McDonalds, and roaches scurried as they kicked the trash and shone lights on it. There were the shattered remains of beer bottles and crushed cans, giving the trash a yeasty scent, shattered crack vials and pipes, used condoms, used syringes tinged with blood, even the remains of an exploded sports drink bottle. But after a minute, Varner muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

Gryphon joined him as he crouched down and pulled a pen out of his pocket, sifting through litter until Gryphon saw the glint of metal. Using the pen, Varner expertly picked up a hollow shell casing. They exchanged a look of surprise, as Gryphon didn’t honestly think the casing would still be at the scene. Of course it could be a different casing entirely, but that would be for the cops to figure out.

Varner gently put the casing back down and once he stood up, kicked a Big Mac wrapper over it to hide it. “You definitely need to work for us,” he said, turning towards the store.

“Somehow I don’t see any police department wanting to justify the expense of me,” Gryphon replied, following him up the lot towards the abandoned store.

“Yeah, well, maybe I can find a way to sneak you on the payroll. I honestly think you’ve just broken this case, Gryph.”

“Don’t count your eggs yet, or whatever the fuck that expression is. That could be anybody’s shell casing.”

“But this is the store, right?”

‘Yes, it is.” Even the bloated letters from the gang tag graffiti on the plywood nailed over the broken main window was precisely the same as he saw it in his “vision“. They approached a front entrance that was not only chained with heavy cables but boarded up, and Gryphon surprised himself by blurting out, “He goes in a back way, so nobody driving by on the street can see him.” Since when did he know that?

But Varner just nodded and started around the side, Gryphon following him like an obedient dog. Somewhere in the middle distance, a car alarm was whooping and hollering into an indifferent night, and Gryphon couldn’t quite shake the scent of stale beer out of his nose.

The back lit up in trails, caused by Varner’s super bright flashlight beam. It struck him that he would have known he was a cop simply by that flashlight – cops always wanted to see what was going on, and it was a weapon as much as it was a tool of illumination. He could blind someone with the light, or simply clip them on the head with the butt end, but either way it gave him an immediate advantage.

There was a loading access door, wide enough to unload palettes of goods into, but because it was a metal door it wasn’t boarded up; there was simply a very heavy industrial padlock and chain on the door. But oddly enough, the chain and lock looked newer than anything else here.

Varner grabbed the chain and tested it by pulling, but it was solid. “Think he picks the lock?”

“He has a key,” a woman’s voice said, and Gryphon turned to see a young Hispanic woman standing on the loading riser with them. She was wearing a half shirt and miniskirt, inappropriate for this time of night, but then Gryphon noticed the neat hole in the middle of her forehead and the blood trickling down to bifurcate her face. Her ink black eyes settled on him, and told him crossly, “It was about time you pendejos got here.”

Of course the room was an illusion. In the real world it was as old and desolate as the rest of the house, but as he crossed the threshold, he crossed into someone else’s world. Miraculously, sunlight was pouring through the window, revealing a tidy room with a small, narrow bed in a black metal frame, the covers pulled so tightly across the mattress they looked stapled on. The walls were covered with oatmeal colored wallpaper with a tiny pattern that turned out to be dainty sprigs of violets between thin, pale ribbons that looked like faded stripes from a few feet back. There was a cedar chest at the foot of the bed with several metal toy soldiers lined up across the top, as shiny and clean as if they were new, and a small desk and shelf combination on the far side of the room that also looked new, but whose style betrayed it as astonishingly old. Gryphon got a sense that his target was here, but still hiding from him.

“I don’t want to fight with you, I’m here to help you,” he said, looking around. Under the bed? No, it was too easy to see. There was a wardrobe on the other side of the door, and he figured they were hiding in there.

Please don’t open the closet door, Ray said. That’s when the killer jumps out and puts an axe through your forehead.

There ain’t no killer I can’t kill first, Ruby snapped.

“There’s no killer,” Gryphon replied, exasperated. “Just an angry poltergeist. What the fuck do you think you guys are?”

I wasn’t angry, Mr. Aronofsky protested.

Gryphon opened the door to the wardrobe, which was full of coats and suits, all old yet new, and remarkably small. He was pretty sure he saw someone hiding in the far corner. “Please come out so we can talk like civilized people.”

“This is my house,” a small, angry voice said. “Get out.”

It’s a kid?! Ray exclaimed. How can a fucking kid do so much damage?

I take it you’ve never had children, Mr. Aronofsky noted wryly.

“Son, it’s not your house anymore,” Gryphon told him, not unkindly. “It hasn’t been your house for a very long time. Please come out and I’ll explain it to you.”

“You’re a liar! It is my house! Mummy and Daddy will be back soon!”

“No they won’t. They’re dead – just like you.”

Finally the boy climbed out of the wardrobe. He was wearing long sleeved pajamas, so pale blue they were technically white. He had short brown hair and a round, wan face, with small blue eyes radiating nothing but the type of unbridled fury that kids actually were very good at. “They are not dead! You’re a liar! I’m not dead, I’m here! Where’s Mummy?!”

Gryphon crouched down to be more at eye level with the ghost. How old was it when he died, eight? He knew just by looking at him that his name was Phillip Chapman, and his death was due to prolonged illness, which might explain why his pajamas looked so baggy and he seemed so ashen. Ghosts weren’t really white, not unless their deaths involved it somehow (illness, wasting, blood loss). “Phillip, what’s the last thing you remember? When your Mummy and Daddy were here? Think hard.”

He pouted, his bottom lip jutting out, but he did comply with his request. His brow scrunched in thought, and he looked away, at his neatly lined up toy soldiers. “I was sick. I couldn’t get up and play.”

“And then what happened?”

His scowled deepened. “I … I woke up and I was … fine. But I was alone.”

“You woke up dead.”

His look was both evil and confused. “You can’t wake up dead. When you’re dead you can’t wake up at all.”

“Normally, yes. But sometimes, for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom, people who honestly can’t conceive of their own death remain here. Do you wonder why your parents are gone? Do you wonder why there’s strangers constantly coming in and out of your home? It’s because time has moved on even though you haven’t. Your parents are gone and they’re not coming back, because they can’t. It’s time for you to go too, Phillip.”

Phillip squinted his eyes angrily, but they were starting to water. “You’re lying!”

He sighed. “Why do you think I can see you and talk to you? Why do you think others couldn’t?”

He bit his lower lip and looked around the room as if appealing for help. “You’re saying you’re dead?”

“No, not quite, but all my friends are.” He reached out to touch Phillip on an impulse, belatedly remembering he was dead and he couldn’t, but as he touched his shoulder he did feel … something. Not quite a physical body, but something cold and semi-solid that didn’t give at slight pressure, but felt like it would if he pressed. “I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t stay here anymore.”

Gryphon had no idea why Phillip believed him, but he did, and tears started streaming down his cheeks. It was that weird kind of understanding that existed between two things that equally shouldn’t have existed but did anyways. Somehow they lived in the world with others but still lived apart – they were monsters who hid in plain sight, mainly because no one wanted to see them. But they could still make their presence known; they could destroy and disrupt and turn their little pocket of reality upside down.

“Where will I go?” he sobbed, his voice breaking.

“I don’t know.”

“Will my parents be there?”

“I don’t know.”

He found the time to be pissed off in spite of still crying, and Gryphon felt that was fair enough. “What do you know?”

“You won’t be lonely anymore.” It was really the only thing he could offer him. He could have made up stories about heaven or even reincarnation, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know anything. Heaven just felt wrong, and while reincarnation made more sense – energy not being destroyed and whatnot, and what were ghosts but energy, as his interruptions of electronic equipment proved – it didn’t feel any more right. The only thing that felt right was an ending, a peacefulness where you simply stopped. Stopping wasn’t so bad, especially if you’d gone on too long.

“How do we go?”

Gryphon slid his hand down the boy’s tiny, semi-corporeal arm. “Just take my hand, and we’ll walk out the door.”

The boy seemed doubtful, but Gryphon could sense his exhaustion. He’d been haunting this place for what, seventy years? More? And with such constant rage. Probably only the young could keep up with that kind of energy output.

Phillip took his hand, though, a semi-solid, cold feeling, but there was no need to even make an attempt to walk out the door, as quite suddenly Phillip disappeared and Gryphon felt something like a cold wind pass through him, making him drop to all fours on the floor. It wasn’t like one of his passengers leaving him, but he felt a minor variation of it, a sense of leaving.

He wasn’t in the daylight room anymore, with its toy soldiers and fancy wallpaper, but a bare, dusty room with black specks of mouse droppings scattered about like fallen commas. He was alone in the house, and the window let in only early evening gloom. That went much easier than I thought, Hugh said.

“He’s a kid who must have seen nearly a century of disjointed weirdness pass him by. No matter how much he denied it, I think he suspected he was dead. He just needed someone to tell him.” He stood up, feeling momentarily woozy, and then left the bedroom, sneezing the inhaled dust.

By the time he was downstairs, Clay and Shane were in the front doorway, just shutting down their ghost hunting equipment. “Who was it?” Shane asked first.

“An eight year old boy named Phillip Chapman. He died of either flu or maybe tuberculosis, some illness that made him malinger, sapped his strength and made it progressively harder to breathe. I have a feeling he died approximately around 1935 – ish.”

They both just stared at him in that mock deadpan way they always did when he surprised them. They’d been at this long enough that they had all developed visual cues. Clay and Shane exchanged a look, then Clay admitted, “He wasn’t on our shortlist. Or long list. He wasn’t on the list at all.”

He shrugged as he reached the bottom of the stairs, almost knocking over the bell jar on the last step. “I wasn’t expecting a kid either. But we never do.”

“It didn’t take you too long,” Shane prompted, clearly wanting to hear a gory story.

Gryphon couldn’t indulge him, even if he wanted to. “He was ready to go. He just didn’t know how.”

They headed back out to the van, Shane and Clay discussing the buttload of money they’d get for “cleaning” this place up, and to celebrate they all stopped at this Vietnamese restaurant they all liked for dinner. Gryphon was starving, probably because he’d used – well, his passengers used – a lot of psychokinesis today, and while Clay and Shane were happy he was eating (they both thought he was too skinny), even they looked at him funny when he ordered a second dish of green curry and a third bubble tea.

By the time Shane drove him and Clay back home, it was full on night, stars in the sky fighting to be seen through an uneven layer of wispy clouds, but as they drove up, they saw a red sedan parked in the driveway. “Someone you know?” Shane asked, as a man got of the car and gave them a friendly wave.

“No,” Clay replied, sounding confused. “Gryph, you know this guy?”

Gryphon looked over the back of the seat, and saw the guy wasn’t very tall – five eight, tops – and fairly lean, with a boyish face and a neatly trimmed head of dirty blond hair. He was wearing dark jeans, a Henley style olive green top, and a brown J. Crew jacket, average clothes, but Ruby said, Oink oink, I smell bacon.

I swear to god you say that about every other guy, Ray complained.

I do not – I only say it about the cops. And this guy’s one.

“No, I can’t say I do,” Gryphon told them, as Shane brought the van to a stop. Clay got out, and asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, you surely can,” the man said, in a friendly, laid back drawl. “I’m Deputy Police Chief Jason Varner, and I’m looking for Gryphon Ashmore.”

“Oh shit,” Gryphon muttered, crawling to the van’s back door.

Told ya, Ruby said.

How the hell do you develop a sixth sense about cops? Sylvio asked.

Be a hooker long enough, and you can tell just by the way they carry themselves, she replied.

“What for?” Clay asked defensively.

“It’s about the bodies he found near the river.”

Gryphon peered around the back of the van. “You a friend of O’Leary’s?”

The cop grimaced in a way that suggested he was trying to hide an eviler expression. “We’re acquaintances.” Only now did Gryphon see that the black shadow on the hood of his car was a soft sided messenger bag.

“Should we call our lawyer?” Clay asked, continuing to be vaguely hostile.

Varner shook his head, and gestured at his wardrobe. “I’m here unofficially. Gryphon is not in trouble. I just want to talk.”

Both Shane and Clay looked at him, awaiting either confirmation or the order to send him away. In the odd dynamic of their business relationship, both of the guys were very protective of him. Maybe because he was the cornerstone of their entire business, or maybe because he was younger than the both of them and possibly unstable, maybe all of the above. I can fuck this guy up. Ruby said.

He’s kinda cute, Hugh said.

Oh for fuck’s sake, you’d find a hole in the wall cute! Taneesha snapped.

“Fine, we can talk,” Gryphon finally said. “Clay, can we use your kitchen?”

Clay gave him a look that clearly communicated his displeasure with all of this, but after a frown he said, “Yeah, sure.”

Varner gave them a tight, professional smile, and grabbed the messenger bag off his car. Gryphon led the way inside, followed by the Deputy Chief, who looked no older up close, and had a faint whiff of cologne about him. It wasn’t obnoxious, though, which was a point in his favor. “Aren’t you a bit young to be the Deputy Chief of anything?”

He smirked painfully. “You know how many times I’ve been asked that? Even by other cops. It’s sad.”

They took seats at the small kitchen table, and Varner zipped open his messenger bag. “I know you’re dying to know why I’m here, so I’ll just get right to it, shall I? I know O’Leary said you spotted body parts by the river, but I also know that’s complete bullshit. Those teeth that were initially turned up were only found by a dog; they weren’t visually apparent to anyone. They were buried in mud.”

“I thought you weren’t here to arrest me.”

“I’m not. I’m here to ask for your help.” He pulled a thick sheaf of files out of the bag and plopped them on the table.

What the fuck is this? Ruby asked.

“I don’t understand.”

He sighed wearily, sorting through the files. “I know about you, Gryphon. May I call you Gryphon? I’ve read up on the Stanhope incident, and I know there’s more than you simply trashing an interrogation room without lifting a finger. You identified a cause of death for all of the children with more accuracy and detail than the coroner was able to, since the bodies were so badly decomposed. You even knew the family had a black cat, which Louis Stanhope also killed. There’s no way you could have known any of these things.”

“I was too young to have killed the family myself.”

He gazed at him wearily. He had dark brown eyes the color of mud. “I know. Louis Stanhope is the only suspect in the slaughter. Quizzing O’Leary, he told me you claimed to know the names of the victims whose parts we‘ve been pulling out of the river, that you saw them and talked to them. True?”

Gryphon scowled at him. “Of course it’s true. Sheila, Rita, Amber, Jessica, Vanessa.”

He rifled through the files with his thumb. “There might be women with those names in here, I’m not sure. “ He shoved them towards him.

Gryphon looked down at them, confused, but didn’t touch them. “What are these?”

“Missing persons reports from Portland and the general vicinity over the last ten years, involving Caucasian women running the gamut from seventeen to thirty five. That is essentially the victims profiles, yes?

“Um, yeah … you’re saying you believe me?”

He met his eyes fearlessly, and nodded. “Yes, I do. I realize this has earned me the nickname “Mulder”, but I honestly believe that there are some odd things in the world. I mean, I know most psychics are con artists or delusional people seeking publicity or better medication, but every now and then there’s a person with a genuine gift. I think you’re the most genuinely gifted person we’ve ever encountered.”

Gryphon studied him for a minute, then glanced around the kitchen. “I’ve passed out, haven’t I? I’m asleep in the back of the van.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve checked up on the work you’re doing with these ghost hunter guys, and everyone seems to be of the opinion that you guys are the real deal. The Oregon Historical Society was really pleased with your work.”

This was all incredibly weird, and he felt that he wasn’t quite up to this today. “I’m not a psychic, you know that, right?”

“Yes. You talk to dead people, right?”

“No, they talk to me. Some, not all. I’m … I’m like a bridge, in a way. I’m half in the world of the dead and half in the world of the living. I don’t know the mechanics of it, I can’t explain it in a way that sounds remotely sane, but it’s not really in my control. I don’t want to do this – if I could make it go away, I would. It’s not a gift; it’s a nightmare.”

Gee, thanks, Hugh said sarcastically.

“Not for the families of the missing it isn’t.”

Is this some weird variation of good cop/bad cop? Ray wondered.

Gryphon dry washed his face, and decided to give this another shot. “Let me get this straight. You want me to look through these and see if I can identify the river victims?”

“Yes.”

“What if they’re not all here?”

“I’ll find them,” he said simply. “Give me all the information you have on them. I’ll bring in a sketch artist.”

“And you don’t think your boss is gonna find this odd?”

He settled back in his chair, slumping slightly. He looked tired. “He might, but if I bring you in as a special consultant, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“A special consultant? Are you saying you want to hire me?”

“If you’re the real deal, you’d be worth the money. And I think you are.”

Holy shit, kid, Hugh said. He wants you to go legit.