Chapter Three
Halloween Night, six hours earlier
Sk8rgrrl342: bring yr sk8board
Emoghostboi90: ya. cant promise ne thing. 2 sketchy rt now
Sk8rgrrl342: cluck cluck LOL!
Emoghostboi90: STFU ill b there
Sk8rgrrl342: cluck cluck LMFAO!
Emoghostboi90: POS
Sk8rgrrl342: k
And chicks call us dicks. When I said in that private AIM chat room that it was too sketchy to duck out of my house to go to a Halloween party, I wasn’t shitting, dude. I was grounded at the time over that board. I cut Calculus a couple of weeks ago so I could go boarding with my friends at the skateboard park on John LeRoy Drive.
It was wicked easy for Clarissa to accuse me of being chickenshit . It wasn’t her cute little ass she was putting on the line by risking getting grounded until the next Ice Age.
“What’s POS mean?” my Mom asked from behind me. Luckily, I already scrolled up the part in the dialog box where Clarissa asked me to bring my skateboard.
“What are you, reading my chat room messages? C’mon, you ever heard of the fourth amendment?”
“Adam, as long as you’re…”
“Yeah, yeah.” The rest of her sentence would’ve no doubt ended with, “…living under our roof, you have no rights to privacy. You want privacy, move out.” Which wasn’t an option for me. I was still in high school and only 17. “And POS stands for ‘piece of shit.’”
“Why are you talking dirty on the Internet?”
Luckily, I have a typical middle-aged Mom who couldn’t tell the difference between an Apache server and an Apache Indian. God help me if she ever takes a computer class. That’ll cark my whole social life and I’ll have to learn how to type with two hands again. I’m kidding about that, by the way.
But for now she didn’t and couldn’t know that “POS” really stands for “Parent Over Shoulder.” It’s the growing glossary of shorthand that we use to inconspicuously alert those we’re chatting or texting with to STFU.
“There,” my Mom said as she closed my sock drawer. “Now you have some clean socks for a change. You know, Hun, you’re more than old enough to throw a load in the washer once a week.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I droned with barely concealed impatience, waiting for the sound of my door to close so I could continue the chat. When I did, I looked behind me to see if she was really gone. Sometimes, parents sucker you like that and only pretend to leave to see what shit you’ll pull next.
OK, so maybe your parents aren’t that sneaky but mine are. My Mom and Dad rewrote the book on neurotic Jewish parenting. No wonder my older sister Laura already had one foot out the door when she got her high school diploma.
I went back to typing on my Dell laptop, whispering the words as I wrote them. “back. ill go when i can. meet me at the park.” Clarissa instantly responded with “k” and logged off before I did.
I got up and took off my pants and pulled a pair of board shorts off the floor of my closet, sniffed them and put them on. We Emo boys are about fashion and if you’re a skateboarder, you have to be especially trendy. Still, I privately admitted that half my reason for wearing baggy board shorts is to hide my boner when I get within 100 yards of Clarissa Feingold.
I knew even ducking out for a couple of hours was almost a suicide mission but what was I supposed to do while all my friends were at the coolest Halloween party in Braintree? Jerk off to my Danica Patrick poster hanging over my bed? My mother already caught me doing that last summer.
I changed into another tee shirt, the green Tony Hawk one then finger-arranged my hair. Long bangs in the front, sides pushed forwards, short and spiky in the back. I was just about the only blond Emo boy in America and I always felt self-conscious about that. That’s why I dyed some purple streaks into it to break up the boring yellow. But I was having a great hair day and luckily it was carrying over into early evening. Dude, with my great hair and big green eyes, I can’t believe I’m still a virgin. Well, maybe after Clarissa got a couple of beers in her, who knows how sorry she’d feel for me?
And, yeah, I’m kidding about that, too. I’d never take advantage of a drunk chick. My Dad succeeded in drumming that much into my head. “How do you think your big sister Laura came into the world?”
Unfortunately, Dad wasn’t joking about that.
I spritzed a little more styling gel over the back of my hair and fingered it some more. Then I reached for my iPod, put the buds in my ears, set it to “shuffle” and started listening to my play list. I grabbed my skateboard leaning against my closet door and carefully opened my bedroom window. Hello, Mr. Tree Limb. Going down.
Clarissa Feingold’s folks were at some Halloween party in Boston and stupidly told her that they may stay the night at the hotel. At the very least, they wouldn’t be back until long after we all left her house. We all agreed to meet at the skateboard park near Route 37 on John LeRoy Drive before going over there. It was colder than a witch’s tit but who cared? I hadn’t set one toe on my board in days and was starting to get antsy. Chicks as a rule aren’t into skateboarding but Clarissa’s an exception. I love watching her on her skateboard. I especially love it when she does Ollies and her big boobs bounce up and down for like twenty seconds after she lands. Hey, just because I’m on the honor roll doesn’t mean I have to stop being a dude, right?
I rolled toward the park and could already see some of my friends. I looked for Clarissa and finally found her. I entered the park, slapping hands on the way and kicked the front of the board up into my hand. Knowing how to enter a skateboard park is almost as important as knowing how to dress for it and Clarissa, even though she was still a newbie getting the hang of Ollies, appreciated a kewl entrance. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect entrance. So far so good. I could almost hear my cherry popping in the distance.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. I jerked my head up, acting cooler than I really was. I was already halfway to a full-blown woodie.
She wore her best American Eagle clothes and her red bandanna that covered her hair pirate-style was kind of a disappointment since she has wicked gorgeous brown hair. Still, you don’t tell a chick what you don’t like about her looks. They tend to kind of tweak out about that. She walked toward me and put her arms around my neck. I’m 5’ 10” but Clarissa’s just an inch shorter than me. I put my arms around her waist and held her for a little longer than I suspect I should’ve but I didn’t care. So, this is why we dudes wear underwear, huh? She gave me a peck on the lips, maybe out of modesty or maybe just to tease me.
“Looks like we’re all here. Let’s get some moves in before we start the party, ‘kay?”
Some of the other kids were in costume, some weren’t. We all attacked the course and I did some pretty good grind rails and other tricks while riding fakie just to impress her. I deliberately had my cell phone turned off. Tonight was too fucking promising to have it ruined by irate parents.
“And don’t go having sex on my parents’ bed!” I heard Clarissa say over the speakers as she walked downstairs. She was getting all freaked out and shit as the party got more rowdy. I take back everything that I said about her not putting her ass on the line. If anything, she was risking even more than I was.
A few of our friends had taken some of the party and their skateboards outside and were trying to do tre flips and Ollies off the huge boulder to the right of their mansion. One of the kids got their older brother to buy us four cases of beer. Even considering that there were about two dozen of us, we were all 16 or 17, which meant that 96 beers could get us all hammered.
I’d heard older dudes tell horror stories about getting wasted then not being able to perform when Show Time came. I sure as Hell wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I stuck to Jolt Cola and could almost feel the two year-old Trojan in my wallet. I’d been saving it for when I get my cherry popped and the fucking thing had been there for so long my wallet has a terminal case of ring worm. I wasn’t even sure if it would be any good anymore.
Clarissa answered the doorbell to give out some candy to trick or treaters. This was all she was supposed to be doing while her parents were out. Her Dad was our Congressman and appearances had to be kept up. After getting their loot, the kids turned and laughed at something. Clarissa went out to investigate and saw that Ramon, another Emo boy, had landed on his face in a pile of leaves. I guess he tried to do a trick off the rock. Two other kids were standing at the top pointing and laughing at him. One was even taking a picture on his cell phone.
“What’re you guys, fucking idiots? Get in here before someone else sees you!”
The trick or treaters, who weren’t much younger or smaller than us, laughed at Ramon again. “Nice Ollie, asshole.”
“Nice costume,” Ramon shot back, “did your Mommy cut the eyeholes out of that sheet for you?”
The kid was dressed as a ghost and managed to free up his arm to give him the finger. Such dissing of their elders. Blame the parents, I say.
After our friends went back in, Clarissa and I loitered on the front porch. She slowly pivoted her hips this way and that way then smiled like she had a secret. She then took me by the hand and said, “Let’s go over here and talk for a bit.” I suddenly got whacked with a sick feeling that my little Trojan uniform for my little Trojan soldier would remain in its leather footlocker for at least another night.
Clarissa let go of my sweaty left hand long enough to climb the six foot high boulder then extended her arm to help me up. It was getting chilly and we were both wearing our hoods over our heads.
“OK, I get the ‘Emo’ part,” she began as she moved my bangs out of my eyes. “And I’m pretty sure the ‘91’ part is the year you were born, right?” I nodded. “What I don’t get is the middle part of your handle. Where’d ‘Ghost Boi’ come from?”
I was afraid someone would ask me about that. I wasn’t exactly subtle about it. Not only did I have like three dozen friends on my AIM contact list, I even customized my own avatar- Casper the Friendly Ghost with an Emo boy ‘do just like mine.
“No secret. You know how when the park is crowded and I can duck in and out from between people like I’m going through them? That’s all.”
“Umm,” Clarissa hummed while shaking her head and giving me a cynical look. “I don’t think so. Tell me the truth this time.”
I never wanted to tell anyone else I cared about, especially Clarissa.
“OK, promise you won’t laugh?” She solemnly nodded.
“Adam, I’d never laugh at anyone no matter what they confided in me.”
“Cross your heart and hope to…? OK, just cross your heart.” She did.
“You know that I have a sister, right? Well, we may be the only two kids in the family now but there was a third. Back when I was about ten, my Mom got pregnant. She went to full term then they had to induce her. Something was wrong. The baby was stillborn. Fucking cord got wrapped around its neck and nobody knew.”
“Oh my God, sweetie. I didn’t know.” Clarissa put her hand on my leg but I didn’t respond like I usually would.
“That’s not the whole story. About a year or so after my brother’s funeral, we visited his grave. My Dad and I stood around like a couple of idiots and didn’t know what to say while my mother and sister cried and pulled leaves off the marker. They left and I stayed behind for a few extra minutes. I would’ve felt guilty if I didn’t say something, ya know? I figured after everyone was gone something would come to me.
“So I turned around and there’s this baby or fetus standing right on the grave looking right at me. He was blue and his eyes and tongue were bugging out. It was like looking at some fucking ugly lawn statue or something. He didn’t move except for his eyes that kept following me. I was scared shitless. I didn’t know what to do or say. So I ran. I never went back there and never will.”
“Are you sure it couldn’t have been one of the headstones? Sometimes, people have statues made…”
“No, Clarissa, no,” I said, not realizing I was raising my voice. “It was standing on my brother’s grave. I couldn’t read the lettering on his headstone, anymore. I couldn’t see through him. He was fucking solid. Besides, how do you explain the umbilical cord?”
“Oh my God. He still had it around his neck?”
“Fuck yeah. So, that’s where I got the name ‘Ghost Boi.’ Ever since that day, that’s been my biggest fear.”
“Ghosts?”
“No, being one. Being dead and a ghost, being chained to earth, being forced to look at your loved ones and no one being able to see or hear you. That’s why sometimes I act up, act out, why I look the way I do. I figure even negative attention is better than no attention at all.”
“Adam, you shouldn’t get in trouble just to get noticed.”
“Oh, that’s good, coming from someone who called me a chicken for not ignoring my being grounded!”
“Adam? Remember our attempts?”
“Yeah!” I said like other people say “Duh!” “How could I forget that?” It was just over two years ago when Clarissa and I attempted suicide by cutting ourselves within two days of eachother. We met at the psych wing of the hospital and hit it off immediately. I was the one who got her into skateboarding after we got out. She agreed to do my hair after suggesting I go Emo. We’ve never been anything but friends since then but lately I was beginning to think that maybe we could be, like, girlfriend and boyfriend.
I wanted to get off the subject of our attempted suicides and my full body apparition experience. Looking down at what we were sitting on, I patted it with both hands and said,
“Ya know, a lot of stuff that we think of as big is just like a crumb or a pebble in the big-ass scheme of things. Take this boulder:
“When the Laurentide ice sheet started dragging its way down from northeastern Canada 100,000 years ago, it changed the landscape of the whole top half of North America. Fucking thing was like, two miles thick and when it scraped its way down to New England it created all our hills and mountains. And all hills and mountains are, Clarissa, are just wrinkles on the earth.
“This friggin’ boulder we’re sittin’ on may be twice the size of a Volkswagon and huge to us but it’s really just, I dunno, a forgotten pebble or even just a grain of sand kicked aside during this gi-normous geological event.
“Same could apply to any human life. Just when some of us start getting’ too full of ourselves, we should look at everything and put shit in perspective.”
Clarissa looked at me with admiration. “How do you know all this shit?”
“You know, sometimes when I pretend like I’m falling asleep in class, I’m really not. I’m listening even when I don’t want to.” Then I looked back up at her. “I can’t help but listen.”
Unfortunately, this was getting dangerously close to putting us back on the same subject I wanted to avoid: Seeing and hearing things that no living dude should ever have to see or hear and having no say in the matter. Lucky for me, a couple of trick or treaters walked up Clarissa’s walkway.
“You’re on,” I smiled.
“Yeah, I’d better get down there,” she said half sliding, half jumping off the boulder. “Otherwise, knowing those fucking idiots, those kids will get condoms and beer nuts thrown in their pumpkins.”
I stayed on top of the rock and turned my head to the right to see her cut across their path before they had the chance to ring the doorbell. Partly because of the downer of the subject matter and partly because of my own philosophical pep talk, I wasn’t even thinking of the relic of a condom in my wallet, much less whether I’d use it. It was the only time I can remember when I’d actually talked myself out of a hardon.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Bone Bridge: Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Halloween Night, 2009
First of all, a word about phones: I fucking hate the things. As far as I’m concerned, human technology peaked with fire and fulcrums. Everything else rolled downhill with the wheel. I’m sorry to be such a Luddite and a technological hermit but that’s just me. I’m a homicide detective, not an Amish farmer. So I guess I’m supposed to embrace technology. I just have a wild hair across my ass concerning anything and everything that wakes me up in the middle of the night. And that brings us back to my hatred of phones.
When the phone next to my bed rang for the first or maybe the fifteenth time, my hand shot out to answer it and I wound up launching the thing off its charger all the way to the bedroom window. Even in its new and slightly more desirable locale, the damned piece of plastic kept ringing with the insistence of Death itself.
“Hun, answer the phone. It may be the station,” my wife Beatrice mumbled as she pulled a pillow over the side of her head.
“Yeah, yeah.” It wouldn’t be the first time they called me when they shouldn’t have. It goes with the territory along with flat feet, bad coffee and all the other cop stereotypes that we find out, to our horror after we graduate from the academy, are actually true.
I stopped cursing the phone long enough to curse myself for punching the piece of shit to a place where I couldn’t even use it without having to get out of bed. I rolled off as the phone chirped and chirped like a loathsome, jeering electronic bird. I rested my hand against the window sill as I bent down to pick it up. Letting it ring one more time, I noted on the caller ID that it wasn’t the station but Lt. Rodriguez’s cell phone. I thumbed “Talk.”
“Roddy?”
“Ed, what the fuck took you so long to answer?”
“Uh, the Sandman? He sent me a really nice dream. You weren’t in it.” Before I could make another bad joke, I could hear sirens blaring in the background and I moved the phone an inch away from my ear. That last one sounded like it went right by my counterpart on the graveyard shift. “Roddy, what the hell’s going on?”
“Ed, you’d better get here at the Ritz Carlton on Mass Ave. It’s bad. Real bad.”
“Wh… what’re you talking about? What happened?” Another siren wailed in the distance. It sounded like they brought out the whole shooting match.
“Mass suicide, Ed. Look, I gotta go. We need all hands on deck on this one. You’re not gonna fucking believe it. While you’re getting dressed, turn on the TV.”
“What channel?” So this is how my day starts, getting briefed by a roving correspondent who makes twice the money I do with half the brains?
“Any channel.” I took an extra beat to let that register while I reached for yesterday’s wrinkled pants. “Hey, be careful how you pick up that body! Oh, shit… Look, I gotta go. Get your ass over here.” The line went dead.
I fumbled for the remote in the dark and turned on a news channel. Sure enough, there was the Ritz Carlton in the background, with bloody sheets covering presumably bloody bodies that were washed in red, white and blue lights like some horrid display of patriotism.
“Ed, what the hell are you watching? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“In case you’re just tuning in, an enormous tragedy here in the hub of Boston…”
“Time to go to work,” I said after I listened to the breathless news report. I yanked my pants on as if my wife was married to someone else and her husband came home.
The entire perimeter of the five star hotel was a massive crime scene that was wrapped in a nice, cheerful yellow ribbon of “Do Not Cross: Crime Scene” tape. The uniforms had already cordoned off both ends of the block on which the Ritz Carlton rested and even I with my lights and gold shield flashing had a helluva time finding a place to park on account of all the fire engines, fire rescue trucks, cruisers and ambulances that choked the area. Just outside the perimeter there were news vans from what looked like every TV and radio station in New England. A couple of choppers slothfully circled overhead like rotund vultures.
Even the opportunistic jackals that run the TV news were downplaying the story. The sidewalk in front of the lobby was littered with bloody sheets when the Boston City PD ran out of body bags. I didn’t see nearly this many on the channel I’d turned on back home. I had a flashback to September 11th but suppressed that memory as I finally saw Lt. Emilio Rodriguez.
I slapped the gearshift into “park” and left the key in the ignition as my aching knees cursed me for getting out of the car so quickly.
“Roddy, what the fuck is going on? What happened?”
“How do you like your socialites: Over easy or scrambled?”
I wasn’t in any mood for sardonic police standup at crime scenes, a practice intended to chase death and keep it at arm’s length. I could see its time, place and function but Massachusetts Avenue tonight didn’t seem to be either.
“Roddy, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Far as we know, 53 dead and counting. Bunch of socialites were having a Halloween party up in the penthouse. Captains of industry, diplomats, celebrities, politicians past and present, you name it.” He gestured to a body bag awaiting a meat wagon. “Lemme introduce you to Senator Bill Dumont. Or rather, former Senator Dumont.”
“What?!” I thought that 16 years on the force and eight more in the Green Berets would’ve left me hopelessly jaded and incapable of surprise. I was wrong. “Our junior senator? That’s him?”
“Yeah, and that’s only the start of the guest list. 27 people we counted so far who jumped from the penthouse and some of the floors just below. Fire Department says there’s another 26 inside all deader than Adam and Eve.” I was going to ask Rodriguez how we knew there were 26 corpses awaiting us upstairs until I realized that Fire Rescue probably already checked for survivors.
“What’s the BFD doing in there?”
“Precautionary measure. What else can you think of that would make 53 people lose their fucking minds? I can think of three: fire and smoke, a gas leak or Bin Laden’s buddies screaming toward them in a 767. So far, it appears to be none of those. We’re awaiting word…” Then Roddy’s walkie talkie came to life.
“All clear. You can all come up. We found nothing to explain this.”
“Ever see a penthouse suite, Ed?” he asked with a horrid cheer as he tilted his heavily moussed head toward the building and began walking toward it.
I’ve long since gotten used to walking past weeping women at crime scenes but the bystanders at the perimeter and the hotel workers who were kept in the lobby were something else. I’ve never personally seen such horror on human faces before and, considering the carnage, I could fully appreciate them turning on the full waterworks. In order to see this look on anyone else, you would’ve had to have been either at Ground Zero or Oklahoma City because this was shaping up to be just as bad.
“…and when she passes, each one she passes goes… da dee dum…”
In spite of the situation, Roddy and I, as humans have done since the first Otis elevators, completely ignored eachother on the ride up. He’d since gotten the special passkey that allowed one to take the elevator all the way to the penthouse and I had no idea what to expect. Rather than ask him to brief me and maybe get a flippant response, I thought I’d just keep my mind clear and let it all hit me at once.
Ding!
What a ghoulishly cheerful sound, almost as much as the song playing on the speakers: “The Girl From Ipanema.” Add elevators and its music to my growing list of the most loathsome inventions ever conjured in the fevered mind of man. The doors finally opened after the elevator made a tiny last second adjustment. “You’ve seen the scrambled. Now meet the over easy,” said Roddy.
We walked to the door and I noticed right away that it was off one of its hinges. Being a private affair for the hoity toity, it was obviously locked but it was just as obvious that whoever went through it busted the lock. I also spotted a crack down the middle of the heavy wooden door.
The scene was pure Hieronymus Bosch if he’d illustrated the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy. As stated, our people and even the ME’s office ran out of body bags downstairs and were obliged to ask the hotel for bed sheets to cover the bodies. But since we hadn’t had the chance to investigate up here until the scene was clear, we couldn’t even do that. It was the expressions on their faces that almost made me freeze in my tracks. Adding to the surreal element was the fact that every one of the victims was wearing a Halloween costume that ranged from a mere mask to full-blown witches, angels, devils and even, predictably, a ghost.
The last of the firemen were leaving, the first having gone down on other elevators. They were in full hazmat gear only with their helmets off. Handheld carbon monoxide detectors and other testing devices hung unalarmed from their hands. One guy we knew who was also a lieutenant stopped and nodded when he saw Roddy and me and said, “Roddy, Coffey, we tried not to disturb the scene. But we did a full sweep and found nothing. Obviously. Have fun.”
He put his helmet back on visor up as he shook his head.
I mentioned the faces. I know I’m beating around the bush. I’m just trying not to talk or think about it.
We’ve heard stories sometimes of people who were actually frightened to death and had their horrified expressions in their last moments of life frozen on their faces. I always wondered how morticians could smooth out the expressions into something less alarming by the time the relatives and beneficiaries came calling. I was wondering about that now, too.
Some died with their mouths and eyes wide open, some with their hands over their faces. Many of the bodies were equally contorted and I had a hard time recognizing even people I should’ve known. What the hell could make almost 50 people, including a US Senator, jump out of a high rise hotel when there wasn’t a fire or smoke or even a natural gas leak? 16 years on the job can prepare you for a lot but not something like this.
“It’s like fucking Jonestown,” Roddy said as he put on a fresh pair of latex gloves. He offered me a pair in case I didn’t have any. I did but I took them anyway.
“No, not like Jonestown,” I muttered as I pulled on the gloves. “At least with that, we know what killed those people.”
“I’d be willing to bet coronaries.”
“A mass coronary? I’ve heard of mass hysteria but that would be a first,” I said as I bent down to one particularly unfortunate dowager who looked even more horrified or terrified than most. I almost recognized her but couldn’t quite recall her name or place her face. “Plus, we have to ask ourselves what brought this on on such a wide scale.”
The CSI people were just coming in to the penthouse. It wasn’t until one of them remarked that the place felt cold that it registered with me, too. It did seem kind of chilly, as if Death itself was loitering around waiting to doggy-bag all the five star restaurant leftovers while no one was looking. Of course, the cold air could be attributable to it being October and the huge bay window being busted out when the rich, powerful and bored suddenly decided to go bungee jumping without the bungee cords.
The penthouse, as one could expect, was enormous. Fine china plates of food rested on antique furniture that looked more expensive than my house and car combined. More of them were on the floor, the products of years of culinary school and loving tender care strewn all over the floor and ground into the white plush carpet.
Then my eye caught a glint of light on one of the faces of the dead. I recognized this one. It was Senator Dumont’s wife, Grace. I wondered what could make a man jump out of a thirty story window while leaving his wife behind. The more I discovered, the less I knew. I hoped, absurdly, that our Chief of Detectives would authorize the OT that this case would require. Unfortunately, if you were murdered in the Greater Boston area a month before or after this, you’d have to wait until we could find your killer because this had Task Force written all over it.
I bent down for a better look at Mrs. Dumont’s body and found the source of the light that glinted off her face. It was ice crystals. I pivoted on my haunches and called over one of the CSI guys. “Ron, get over here. Take a shot of her face.”
The crime scene technician, a tall African American guy, walked over, squared the digital camera for a second and took a picture. “Let me have a copy. Email an attachment to my email at the station, ‘kay?” He coolly nodded as if this was actually a normal crime scene. Just another day at the office, only a bit more crowded.
I looked back down at Mrs. Dumont’s face. Her residual body heat had just melted the ice on her face and I looked around. The only ice to be had were ice cubes in drinks that were both still in glasses on over priced furniture or spilled on the floor. I guess someone could’ve crushed an ice cube in the panic but on this plush carpet? And, yeah, it was cold but not this cold.
I got up and my knees cursed me with four letter words and pops. I looked at the busted front door. “Roddy, didn’t you say that some people leaped through windows on the floors below us?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, that would kinda strongly suggest that someone or something was chasing them, doncha think?”
We trotted down to the next-to-last floor and walked against the cold draft until we found the broken window. A crime scene tech was already taking pictures of the scene and when he walked away we approached the window and looked out. There were two little lozenge-shaped figures below, one in a body bag, another with a sheet over them. Roddy and I both shook our heads, unable to fathom what could have been possibly going on in this building that would make jumping to your death preferable to staying inside. Some people said the same thing about the jumpers at the World Trade Center but in that case it was understandable. There was fire, smoke, fumes, and structural devastation. There was none of that here. Just some horrified expressions on over two dozen bodies and a few ice crystals that now no longer existed.
Something white and fluttering caught my eye and I noted that it was a feather. Where the hell did that come from? I was about to walk away then decided to bag and tag it just in case.
We heard a commotion going on upstairs so we rushed up the stairwell and back into the penthouse. Ron, the unimpressed CSI guy, was now very impressed with something. He was yelling into his walkie talkie, “I repeat, get EMS back up here. We’ve got a live one!”
Chapter Three.
Halloween Night, 2009
First of all, a word about phones: I fucking hate the things. As far as I’m concerned, human technology peaked with fire and fulcrums. Everything else rolled downhill with the wheel. I’m sorry to be such a Luddite and a technological hermit but that’s just me. I’m a homicide detective, not an Amish farmer. So I guess I’m supposed to embrace technology. I just have a wild hair across my ass concerning anything and everything that wakes me up in the middle of the night. And that brings us back to my hatred of phones.
When the phone next to my bed rang for the first or maybe the fifteenth time, my hand shot out to answer it and I wound up launching the thing off its charger all the way to the bedroom window. Even in its new and slightly more desirable locale, the damned piece of plastic kept ringing with the insistence of Death itself.
“Hun, answer the phone. It may be the station,” my wife Beatrice mumbled as she pulled a pillow over the side of her head.
“Yeah, yeah.” It wouldn’t be the first time they called me when they shouldn’t have. It goes with the territory along with flat feet, bad coffee and all the other cop stereotypes that we find out, to our horror after we graduate from the academy, are actually true.
I stopped cursing the phone long enough to curse myself for punching the piece of shit to a place where I couldn’t even use it without having to get out of bed. I rolled off as the phone chirped and chirped like a loathsome, jeering electronic bird. I rested my hand against the window sill as I bent down to pick it up. Letting it ring one more time, I noted on the caller ID that it wasn’t the station but Lt. Rodriguez’s cell phone. I thumbed “Talk.”
“Roddy?”
“Ed, what the fuck took you so long to answer?”
“Uh, the Sandman? He sent me a really nice dream. You weren’t in it.” Before I could make another bad joke, I could hear sirens blaring in the background and I moved the phone an inch away from my ear. That last one sounded like it went right by my counterpart on the graveyard shift. “Roddy, what the hell’s going on?”
“Ed, you’d better get here at the Ritz Carlton on Mass Ave. It’s bad. Real bad.”
“Wh… what’re you talking about? What happened?” Another siren wailed in the distance. It sounded like they brought out the whole shooting match.
“Mass suicide, Ed. Look, I gotta go. We need all hands on deck on this one. You’re not gonna fucking believe it. While you’re getting dressed, turn on the TV.”
“What channel?” So this is how my day starts, getting briefed by a roving correspondent who makes twice the money I do with half the brains?
“Any channel.” I took an extra beat to let that register while I reached for yesterday’s wrinkled pants. “Hey, be careful how you pick up that body! Oh, shit… Look, I gotta go. Get your ass over here.” The line went dead.
I fumbled for the remote in the dark and turned on a news channel. Sure enough, there was the Ritz Carlton in the background, with bloody sheets covering presumably bloody bodies that were washed in red, white and blue lights like some horrid display of patriotism.
“Ed, what the hell are you watching? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“In case you’re just tuning in, an enormous tragedy here in the hub of Boston…”
“Time to go to work,” I said after I listened to the breathless news report. I yanked my pants on as if my wife was married to someone else and her husband came home.
The entire perimeter of the five star hotel was a massive crime scene that was wrapped in a nice, cheerful yellow ribbon of “Do Not Cross: Crime Scene” tape. The uniforms had already cordoned off both ends of the block on which the Ritz Carlton rested and even I with my lights and gold shield flashing had a helluva time finding a place to park on account of all the fire engines, fire rescue trucks, cruisers and ambulances that choked the area. Just outside the perimeter there were news vans from what looked like every TV and radio station in New England. A couple of choppers slothfully circled overhead like rotund vultures.
Even the opportunistic jackals that run the TV news were downplaying the story. The sidewalk in front of the lobby was littered with bloody sheets when the Boston City PD ran out of body bags. I didn’t see nearly this many on the channel I’d turned on back home. I had a flashback to September 11th but suppressed that memory as I finally saw Lt. Emilio Rodriguez.
I slapped the gearshift into “park” and left the key in the ignition as my aching knees cursed me for getting out of the car so quickly.
“Roddy, what the fuck is going on? What happened?”
“How do you like your socialites: Over easy or scrambled?”
I wasn’t in any mood for sardonic police standup at crime scenes, a practice intended to chase death and keep it at arm’s length. I could see its time, place and function but Massachusetts Avenue tonight didn’t seem to be either.
“Roddy, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Far as we know, 53 dead and counting. Bunch of socialites were having a Halloween party up in the penthouse. Captains of industry, diplomats, celebrities, politicians past and present, you name it.” He gestured to a body bag awaiting a meat wagon. “Lemme introduce you to Senator Bill Dumont. Or rather, former Senator Dumont.”
“What?!” I thought that 16 years on the force and eight more in the Green Berets would’ve left me hopelessly jaded and incapable of surprise. I was wrong. “Our junior senator? That’s him?”
“Yeah, and that’s only the start of the guest list. 27 people we counted so far who jumped from the penthouse and some of the floors just below. Fire Department says there’s another 26 inside all deader than Adam and Eve.” I was going to ask Rodriguez how we knew there were 26 corpses awaiting us upstairs until I realized that Fire Rescue probably already checked for survivors.
“What’s the BFD doing in there?”
“Precautionary measure. What else can you think of that would make 53 people lose their fucking minds? I can think of three: fire and smoke, a gas leak or Bin Laden’s buddies screaming toward them in a 767. So far, it appears to be none of those. We’re awaiting word…” Then Roddy’s walkie talkie came to life.
“All clear. You can all come up. We found nothing to explain this.”
“Ever see a penthouse suite, Ed?” he asked with a horrid cheer as he tilted his heavily moussed head toward the building and began walking toward it.
I’ve long since gotten used to walking past weeping women at crime scenes but the bystanders at the perimeter and the hotel workers who were kept in the lobby were something else. I’ve never personally seen such horror on human faces before and, considering the carnage, I could fully appreciate them turning on the full waterworks. In order to see this look on anyone else, you would’ve had to have been either at Ground Zero or Oklahoma City because this was shaping up to be just as bad.
“…and when she passes, each one she passes goes… da dee dum…”
In spite of the situation, Roddy and I, as humans have done since the first Otis elevators, completely ignored eachother on the ride up. He’d since gotten the special passkey that allowed one to take the elevator all the way to the penthouse and I had no idea what to expect. Rather than ask him to brief me and maybe get a flippant response, I thought I’d just keep my mind clear and let it all hit me at once.
Ding!
What a ghoulishly cheerful sound, almost as much as the song playing on the speakers: “The Girl From Ipanema.” Add elevators and its music to my growing list of the most loathsome inventions ever conjured in the fevered mind of man. The doors finally opened after the elevator made a tiny last second adjustment. “You’ve seen the scrambled. Now meet the over easy,” said Roddy.
We walked to the door and I noticed right away that it was off one of its hinges. Being a private affair for the hoity toity, it was obviously locked but it was just as obvious that whoever went through it busted the lock. I also spotted a crack down the middle of the heavy wooden door.
The scene was pure Hieronymus Bosch if he’d illustrated the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy. As stated, our people and even the ME’s office ran out of body bags downstairs and were obliged to ask the hotel for bed sheets to cover the bodies. But since we hadn’t had the chance to investigate up here until the scene was clear, we couldn’t even do that. It was the expressions on their faces that almost made me freeze in my tracks. Adding to the surreal element was the fact that every one of the victims was wearing a Halloween costume that ranged from a mere mask to full-blown witches, angels, devils and even, predictably, a ghost.
The last of the firemen were leaving, the first having gone down on other elevators. They were in full hazmat gear only with their helmets off. Handheld carbon monoxide detectors and other testing devices hung unalarmed from their hands. One guy we knew who was also a lieutenant stopped and nodded when he saw Roddy and me and said, “Roddy, Coffey, we tried not to disturb the scene. But we did a full sweep and found nothing. Obviously. Have fun.”
He put his helmet back on visor up as he shook his head.
I mentioned the faces. I know I’m beating around the bush. I’m just trying not to talk or think about it.
We’ve heard stories sometimes of people who were actually frightened to death and had their horrified expressions in their last moments of life frozen on their faces. I always wondered how morticians could smooth out the expressions into something less alarming by the time the relatives and beneficiaries came calling. I was wondering about that now, too.
Some died with their mouths and eyes wide open, some with their hands over their faces. Many of the bodies were equally contorted and I had a hard time recognizing even people I should’ve known. What the hell could make almost 50 people, including a US Senator, jump out of a high rise hotel when there wasn’t a fire or smoke or even a natural gas leak? 16 years on the job can prepare you for a lot but not something like this.
“It’s like fucking Jonestown,” Roddy said as he put on a fresh pair of latex gloves. He offered me a pair in case I didn’t have any. I did but I took them anyway.
“No, not like Jonestown,” I muttered as I pulled on the gloves. “At least with that, we know what killed those people.”
“I’d be willing to bet coronaries.”
“A mass coronary? I’ve heard of mass hysteria but that would be a first,” I said as I bent down to one particularly unfortunate dowager who looked even more horrified or terrified than most. I almost recognized her but couldn’t quite recall her name or place her face. “Plus, we have to ask ourselves what brought this on on such a wide scale.”
The CSI people were just coming in to the penthouse. It wasn’t until one of them remarked that the place felt cold that it registered with me, too. It did seem kind of chilly, as if Death itself was loitering around waiting to doggy-bag all the five star restaurant leftovers while no one was looking. Of course, the cold air could be attributable to it being October and the huge bay window being busted out when the rich, powerful and bored suddenly decided to go bungee jumping without the bungee cords.
The penthouse, as one could expect, was enormous. Fine china plates of food rested on antique furniture that looked more expensive than my house and car combined. More of them were on the floor, the products of years of culinary school and loving tender care strewn all over the floor and ground into the white plush carpet.
Then my eye caught a glint of light on one of the faces of the dead. I recognized this one. It was Senator Dumont’s wife, Grace. I wondered what could make a man jump out of a thirty story window while leaving his wife behind. The more I discovered, the less I knew. I hoped, absurdly, that our Chief of Detectives would authorize the OT that this case would require. Unfortunately, if you were murdered in the Greater Boston area a month before or after this, you’d have to wait until we could find your killer because this had Task Force written all over it.
I bent down for a better look at Mrs. Dumont’s body and found the source of the light that glinted off her face. It was ice crystals. I pivoted on my haunches and called over one of the CSI guys. “Ron, get over here. Take a shot of her face.”
The crime scene technician, a tall African American guy, walked over, squared the digital camera for a second and took a picture. “Let me have a copy. Email an attachment to my email at the station, ‘kay?” He coolly nodded as if this was actually a normal crime scene. Just another day at the office, only a bit more crowded.
I looked back down at Mrs. Dumont’s face. Her residual body heat had just melted the ice on her face and I looked around. The only ice to be had were ice cubes in drinks that were both still in glasses on over priced furniture or spilled on the floor. I guess someone could’ve crushed an ice cube in the panic but on this plush carpet? And, yeah, it was cold but not this cold.
I got up and my knees cursed me with four letter words and pops. I looked at the busted front door. “Roddy, didn’t you say that some people leaped through windows on the floors below us?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, that would kinda strongly suggest that someone or something was chasing them, doncha think?”
We trotted down to the next-to-last floor and walked against the cold draft until we found the broken window. A crime scene tech was already taking pictures of the scene and when he walked away we approached the window and looked out. There were two little lozenge-shaped figures below, one in a body bag, another with a sheet over them. Roddy and I both shook our heads, unable to fathom what could have been possibly going on in this building that would make jumping to your death preferable to staying inside. Some people said the same thing about the jumpers at the World Trade Center but in that case it was understandable. There was fire, smoke, fumes, and structural devastation. There was none of that here. Just some horrified expressions on over two dozen bodies and a few ice crystals that now no longer existed.
Something white and fluttering caught my eye and I noted that it was a feather. Where the hell did that come from? I was about to walk away then decided to bag and tag it just in case.
We heard a commotion going on upstairs so we rushed up the stairwell and back into the penthouse. Ron, the unimpressed CSI guy, was now very impressed with something. He was yelling into his walkie talkie, “I repeat, get EMS back up here. We’ve got a live one!”
Chapter Three.
The Bone Bridge: Chapter One
Chapter One
Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad, Iraq
The black semi backed into Hell’s loading dock with loud metronomic beeps. A brief impact then arms of dust reached up and dropped when ten dragons’ snorts engaged hydraulic brake drums. Finally, the diesel engine was killed. Two men emerged from either side of the black cab and collided with the earth.
One was in his late 50’s although even his closest intimates, if he could be said to have any, didn’t know his true age. Although he had ridden shotgun, he was obviously the one in charge. Despite his relatively advanced age, he was stocky in a power lifter type of way, with not much if any of his muscle mass turning to flab.
His platinum white hair almost gleamed under the merciless Iraqi sun like thousands of needles standing at attention. Time seemed to slow around him, he commanded so much notice. Moving with the grace and confidence of a big cat, he gave the armored SUVs and the occupants within them a glacial look and spat in their general direction, creating a moving ring of road silt. He seemed to actually resent the mercenary security detail.
The driver appeared to be roughly half his age and his handsome but dour face suggested military or paramilitary experience spanning his entire life. He immediately went to work rolling up the rear of the trailer and exposing the ton and a half of high tech equipment within. Or rather, they weren’t exposed at all but covered with canvas tarps.
The American Army colonel watching them from the loading dock looked impressed with their military dispatch and seeming contempt for the soldiers of fortune.
Presently, the rest of the team showed up in a pair of equally black Humvees. Three men were in one, a man and a woman in the other. They, too, seemed businesslike to the point of brusqueness and, unlike their leader, completely ignored their mercenary bodyguards. The insurgents and death squads must’ve taken the day off because the trip from the airport was completely free of incident.
While the personnel in the newly-arrived Humvees set to work unstrapping the gear, the men in the semi’s cab hoisted themselves onto the loading dock and shook hands with the colonel.
“Oh, if only these walls could scream,” the old secret policeman thought.
Just walking into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and as a civilian, at that, was no mean feat. But getting access to restricted and classified locales was rarely if ever a problem for Hans Dietrich.
The ramrod-straight American Army liaison colonel who walked down the deserted walkway beside him spoke little but informatively, which he appreciated. While the always reserved German didn’t actually like him (a distinction given to one, perhaps two people), Dietrich began developing respect for this man. Hair buzz-cut to razor-sharp perfection, with a no nonsense demeanor, this military man’s claim was very much at odds with his stubborn pragmatism and skepticism. He had what Dietrich guessed was an Appalachian accent, perhaps Texan.
“As I’m sure you know, Mr. Dietrich, we handed over control of this facility back to the Iraqi government in July of ’06.”
Dietrich smiled to himself and silently asked, “If that’s the case, then why did we have to get permission from the Pentagon for this investigation?”
“But almost from the start we began getting reports from the Iraqi guards and even the detainees. The videotape you’re about to see is the only documented evidence that would seem to support those claims.”
The prison, which the American colonel never referred to as a prison but “this facility”, was cleared of both inmates and guards well in advance of Dietrich’s visit. Arabs in general, Iraqis being no exception, are exceptionally skittish about the paranormal and the story went that they abandoned the prison, vowing not to come back until it was rid of a certain entity.
Their footfalls made hollow echoes as they walked down the aisles. Of course, Dietrich had seen the pictures of prisoners getting tortured and made to form human pyramids at the behest of American idiots who were otherwise themselves powerless in their lives. He tried to imagine the screams and moans of agony, pain and despair and smiled. It would have brought him back to the good old days in East Berlin and Lichtenberg when he was with the East German Stasi. In fact, every time Dietrich and his crew were invited into a prison, he tried to imagine what it was like in its heyday.
Dietrich looked at his technical manager Günter to his left. Since he was in charge of setting up the equipment, it only made sense that he would attend the pre-investigation tour, or what everyone on the team would call recon. The three men arrived at a door that the colonel, whose name plate on his camouflage shirt read “Waterston”, had to unlock with a key.
“Rather than turn on the gas jets, I’ll just play the tape and let you judge for yourselves.” He turned on a light. “I’m what you’d call a die hard skeptic. I need hard, concrete evidence before believing in stuff like this and even after that, I want to see more before I’ll wrap my arms and lips around it. But this takes the fucking cake, pardon my French.”
Dietrich, despite his growing respect for this man, was also developing impatience. He’d uttered more words in the last 60 seconds than he had since meeting Günter and him at the gates a half hour ago. But considering the alleged content on this surveillance tape, perhaps he could be excused for his relative prolixity.
Col. Waterston turned on a TV then a VCR. The security video was on an antiquated VHS tape that promptly disappeared before the officer’s hand.
“It’s been fast-forwarded to just before this guard’s experience. I’m sorry there’s no sound but at least it’s in color and the picture quality’s OK.” Dietrich nodded with hardly concealed impatience and irritation as he and Günter closely regarded the tape.
An Iraqi guard was making his rounds in a hallway at the prison, looking inside each cell as he went by. Almost immediately, a figure in an orange jumpsuit slowly approached him from the left and the guard, understandably, was quite alarmed. When the figure in orange reached out to him, seemingly grabbing him by the throat, the guard took a step back with some difficulty and aimed his rifle at him, briefly pointing the barrel down. He was obviously mistaking him for an escaped prisoner and was telling him to get on the ground. When the orange-clad man, who also appeared to be of Arab descent, didn’t obey, the guard fired a shot at him to no discernible effect.
Instead, the figure turned around and walked into a cell. The most remarkable thing about that was the door was closed. The guard rubbed his throat and followed the figure, having to unlock the door. He entered it only to reemerge moments later, looking both scared out of his wits and perplexed. It was everything the American and Iraqi military said it was. He then ran out of camera range, obviously to tell his colleagues and to ask what the fuck was going on.
“Now, obviously, this hasn’t been tampered with. We have a complete chain of custody documenting who’s even so much as touched this tape. Now, you were briefed in our first encrypted email. The Iraqis ain’t setting foot in this facility again until they get proof that this guy’s gone. And it is extremely important to both us and the Iraqi government that this place is up and running again.”
“So, who’s the figure in orange?” It was the only thing Günter would ever say during the tour, which was typical of him.
“Well,” Col. Waterston said before exhaling and rubbing the back of his neck as he sat on the edge of the desk. “That’s the perplexing thing. We’ve blown up still pictures that we took of the video and we’re pretty sure it’s Mursi al Islamiyah. Very bad man, al Qaeda operative.” He fractionally leaned toward Dietrich and Günter and said almost under his breath even though the prison was supposed to be deserted. “Mursi al Islamiyah died in our custody in late ’03 but you didn’t hear that from me. That tape was shot just last year in ’08. To be honest with you, Islamiyah was probably the only Class of 2001 al Qaeda terrorist we ever had here. But you didn’t hear that from me, either.”
“And the inmates had seen him, too?”
“Yes, sir. At least half a dozen inmates and three, maybe four guards in, I believe, five other separate times.” He slid off the edge of the desk. “Your reputation precedes you, gentlemen. If you sweep this area and get rid of this so-called ghost, then the Iraqi government will believe you and we can get this facility hummin’ again.”
Dietrich had a well-deserved reputation as a paranormal investigator, an actual ghost hunter in every sense of the word. Not some guy with a few high tech instruments who does an 8 hour investigation then does a reveal for the client a couple of days later and going back to his life. Dietrich was someone who actively stalked and captured ghosts. The client never really knew how he did it and certainly not why. But all anyone knew was that if they had a noxious entity living in their house that then suddenly vanished after a Dietrich investigation, all they’d feel was gratitude. No one ever asked what was done with the spirits nor seemed to care.
Sure, there were reveals after an evidence review. EVPs (if any), still photos taken with full spectrum cameras, video footage, any evidence of supernatural activity was dutifully shown to the client along with the usual assurances of having their home, job or whatever rid of its paranormal pestilence. Of course, Hans Dietrich was just a paranormal investigator like Mata Hari was just a dancer.
“You might wanna focus a camera in that holding cell that figure walked into," the colonel concluded. "That’s the very same cell where Islamiyah died in December of ’03.” Dietrich nodded as if to say that he was way ahead of him. Which, of course, he was. It was obvious to all but the colonel that they were waiting for him to leave so they could clear out the truck.
“Just out of curiosity”, Waterston asked, “when you get rid of a ghost, what do you do with it? I mean, it’s like what do morticians do with the blood they drain out of people but no one bothers to ask them. So, what do you do with them critters that you… suck out?”
“I could tell you, Colonel,” Dietrich replied, “but then I’d have to kill you.” The colonel laughed until he realized that Dietrich was returning neither his laugh nor his smile.
“Is that everything?” Dietrich asked Günter on the prison’s loading dock. His equipment manager nodded curtly. Their gear was so voluminous it had to be transported on a semi with virtually every inch at a premium. The semi, in turn, had been transported to Iraq on an Air Force C5A along with a couple of hundred scared shitless troops about to enter their first tour of duty. Obviously, this also required approval from the Pentagon. The Blackwater mercs? Courtesy of the US State Dept., their best employer.
Iraqi sovereignty my Aryan ass.
Dietrich picked up the final laptop case and again regarded the retinue of Blackwater mercs that had escorted the 18 wheeler and were now patrolling the immediate perimeter of the prison. Not only did Dietrich despise mercenaries and their ability to show up and even unseat small governments, these bad-ass American has-beens and wannabes were redundant once they crossed the main gate. Besides if, as Dietrich had hoped, all Hell broke loose during the “investigation”, they’d be twice as worthless. They weren’t exactly trained for shit like this. He turned his head and squinted at the sunset and walked back into the prison.
If there was one comedian on the whole team, it would have to be Breck, the only American. He was professional enough to play it straight during the hunts but he would never fail to come up with at least one irreverent observation either before or after lights out.
“Hey, Dietrich,” he said with a manic gleam in his eyes, “wouldn’t it be cool if we bagged not only this sand nigger but his 72 virgins, too?” Dietrich gave him a withering look but Breck, true to form, didn’t take the hint and chuckled at his own joke as he unspooled coaxial cable.
The largest, most sensitive and expensive equipment would be unloaded only by Dietrich himself and Günter. The most prominent of these was what was colloquially known as “the movable hole.” It was so massive and heavy that a refurbished Humvee was built around it. It was essentially a 6 x 6 black box and to simply look at it no one could possibly divine its true purpose let alone how it worked. It was always the last piece of equipment used during a successful investigation.
It was the last stop for a lot of the ghosts that were captured by Dietrich’s crew. The theory was that paranormal entities such as ghosts or spirits had unique energy signatures just as living people’s fingerprints, retina and DNA distinguishes them. When an entity manifested, the team was able to get a quick fix on not just its location but also its electromagnetic signature.
The sardonically-named “Ghostbusters”, or the handheld devices powered by drain-resistant battery back packs that were actually a reference to dustbuster vacuum cleaners rather than the comical movies starring Bill Murray, would essentially arrest a spirit if they were within the unit’s limited range. Once put into an electromagnetic tractor beam, for want of a better phrase, Günter would then hustle to wherever the capture was made and put the entity on ice.
As well as the usual ghost hunting equipment such as DV and IR cams, high 8’s, audio recorders, K2 meters, EMF detectors and thermal cams, Dietrich’s team went considerably beyond that technological curve. For instance, frustrated with EVPs, disembodied voices not heard by the naked ear until a digital audio playback, Dietrich used a headset connected to a 360° mic that automatically looped back to him what had just been captured on the recording device. The only drawback was that there was a delay of two seconds and in the world of paranormal investigation, that’s all the time in the world for a spirit to disappear.
Understandably, not a lot of the ghosts they’d pursued over the years wanted to be captured. Spirits, as the theory goes, tend to stick close to a certain environment to which they’re emotionally attached. To rip them out of a favored environment is quite a coup in itself and a lot of them had fought like Great Whites.
The reason for this was because Hans Dietrich didn’t go after the nice ones, which was why he’d specialized in prisons and insane asylums. Abu Ghraib was both, the worst of both worlds.
When he was satisfied that all unauthorized personnel were out of the prison and his team and equipment were in position, he bent the walkie talkie’s stalk mic toward his mouth and said over a scrambled frequency, “Kill the lights.”
The capacitor in the night vision goggles whined briefly and Abu Ghraib turned from pitch black to pea soup green. Dietrich panned left and right, alternately switching the experimental all-vision unit from normal night vision to UV, IR and finally to full spectrum mode.
Gert Hesse, the woman beside him and the team’s only psychic, didn’t rely so much on scientific gear although she used it to validate her perceptions. To Dietrich, she looked eerily defined in a full light spectrum in a surreally-bleak type of way reminiscent of the cinematography of 300 or Sin City.
His earpiece relayed a metallic sound. Since playback was in stereo, he as with the whole crew was able to home in on its source. When he got to the end of a corridor, he turned left and saw Breck.
“Sorry, Hans. I hit an open gate with my wand. My bad.” Dietrich looked at the “ghostbuster” wand in his hand then up at him.
Good thing he was wearing night vision goggles, otherwise Dietrich would’ve killed him with the look he gave him. Gert cocked her head at him in annoyance before they moved on.
“Shithead,” she said in German. Dietrich permitted himself a rare smile as he continued his EMF and audio sweep.
One hour passed. Then two, then three. Not a single electromagnetic spike, an unnatural cold spot or a disembodied syllable. Dietrich decided that now would be a good time to step on some invisible toes.
“Time for Plan P,” he said into the two way’s stalk mic, “and I think the comedian should take point on this.”
“You got it, boss,” Breck responded.
Plan P was actually the team’s Plan B, the “P” standing for provocation.
Roughly 75-80% of their investigations would turn up nothing. They weren’t vaudeville performers appearing at regular times. Sometimes, ghosts would take the night off. The help enhance the odds of making contact, some paranormal investigators wouldn’t be above provocation. Deliberately taunting or insulting an entity would at times be efficacious enough to elicit a response.
Since Breck was the self-appointed smartass of the team, it usually fell to him to do the taunting. He was also uniquely suited to doing this tonight because he was the only one who spoke Arabic. And it only made sense to speak the indigenous language when hunting spirits. After all, why should they understand you just because you’re speaking in English or is there a Charles Berlitz course that one must pass before continuing to the afterlife? So it wasn’t unusual to get EVP’s, or electronic voice phenomena, spoken in the language of an investigation’s host country.
Breck cleared his throat, annoying Dietrich and probably the other two team members. He then began speaking in Arabic while the team continued their sweeps, even though no one but Breck knew what he was saying.
“Hey,” he said in Arabic, “I saw a picture of your guy Mohammed on the way over here. He had a fucking bomb for a turban. I’d say that’s about right. Bombing shit is all you assholes know how to do.” Even alluding to a picture of Mohammed, much less actually drawing one, was an offense in the fundamentalist Muslim world that was often punishable by death. Representations of the Prophet were strictly forbidden and Breck obviously knew this.
He continued sweeping the area. Nobody on the team heard anything yet so Breck continued the taunting.
“Gotta hand it to you pricks, though. Pretty clever talking other people into blowing themselves up so you don’t have to. And promising them 72 virgins if they do your bidding? Sheer genius, Islamiyah.”
Then by way of the two second delay, Hans and the team members heard something on the playback. It was a hissing and after listening for a second, he was able to triangulate on its location. It was headed straight for Breck. Instead of warning his man over the two-way, he silently motioned to Gert to get to Breck’s position and for Günter to head for the Humvee just in case.
Hans headed to the same destination albeit from a different approach. The idea was to come up behind Breck while Gert would approach him from the other end of the corridor. The wands had a powerful pull and ghosts trying to escape had a very difficult time doing so if they were surrounded. The various instrumentation they all carried with them, including temp gauges, EMF detectors and so forth, warned them of a severe drop in temperature and a massive buildup of energy. Breck had the same resources and if he was caught unawares, it was his bad.
He continued the taunting while Dietrich got sight of him about 50 yards down the hallway. Breck’s voice was an echo on account of the playback coming two seconds after his live voice, giving the session an unreal quality. That plus the natural echo of the empty hallways multiplied his voice several times over.
“What’s the matter, chicken shit? Cat got your…” Through the night vision goggles, Dietrich could see the American straighten up and his sneering voice was immediately reduced to a gurgle. His wand clattered to the ground as he levitated and it would be up to Hans and the rest of his team to use the EM tractor beam on their own to capture the entity. Hans began running to the scene and called out on his two-way, “We’re in corridor C! Hurry before he gets away!”
Dietrich was anxious to see what his man had trapped so he approached him from an oblique angle. There in the all spectrum mode of the goggles he could see a bright white figure literally holding up Breck above ground with one hand. It was al Islamiyah. The ghost quickly turned to Dietrich and gave him a hateful glare. “Dogs,” was all the ex policeman heard two seconds after seeing his bearded mouth move and he ripped out Breck’s larynx while he was still in midair.
“Get him!” Dietrich yelled as Gert came running down the opposite side of the hall. Both wands went to work at once. “Bring in the hole!” he yelled to his other man in the Humvee and Dietrich could hear the monstrosity rumble to life and speed its way to their location.
It’s a known fact that ghosts, despite having no nervous system, can feel pain much the same way that amputees can still feel pain and other sensations in missing limbs and extremities. Dietrich never ceased to be fascinated by the common reaction that entities had when they were hit by the tractor beams of their wands. He also never ceased to derive enjoyment from observing the looks on their faces and their contortions. He didn’t know why the beam hurt them. It was just enough for him to know they did.
“Günter! Open the portal!” he yelled. A static charge and irritating hum filled the air while the terrorist’s diaphanous form writhed about five feet in midair. The beams, while invisible to the naked eye, emitted a bright green light when viewed in all spectrum mode and Dietrich was always struck by its luminescent muscularity. Eventually he moved beside Gert, looking very much like a man who’d just snagged a blue marlin off the coast of Florida. Some of the more powerful ghosts were actually able to rip free of one tractor beam while caught in the limits of its range. From point blank, there was no way even this monster could escape two.
“Purge setting!” he said and with the flip of a switch on the units they simultaneously catapulted Mursi al Islamiyah into the movable hole. Günter, as always, closed the portal immediately, a feat that always required split second timing.
“That is one pissed off ghost,” Gert said in German. She dispassionately looked down at Breck’s body. By this time, he’d completely bled out and blackish blood spread throughout the hallway.
“Yes,” Dietrich said to the corpse. “Good job, Breck. Sorry you won’t get your bonus for this one,” he said in English.
Chapter Two.
Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad, Iraq
The black semi backed into Hell’s loading dock with loud metronomic beeps. A brief impact then arms of dust reached up and dropped when ten dragons’ snorts engaged hydraulic brake drums. Finally, the diesel engine was killed. Two men emerged from either side of the black cab and collided with the earth.
One was in his late 50’s although even his closest intimates, if he could be said to have any, didn’t know his true age. Although he had ridden shotgun, he was obviously the one in charge. Despite his relatively advanced age, he was stocky in a power lifter type of way, with not much if any of his muscle mass turning to flab.
His platinum white hair almost gleamed under the merciless Iraqi sun like thousands of needles standing at attention. Time seemed to slow around him, he commanded so much notice. Moving with the grace and confidence of a big cat, he gave the armored SUVs and the occupants within them a glacial look and spat in their general direction, creating a moving ring of road silt. He seemed to actually resent the mercenary security detail.
The driver appeared to be roughly half his age and his handsome but dour face suggested military or paramilitary experience spanning his entire life. He immediately went to work rolling up the rear of the trailer and exposing the ton and a half of high tech equipment within. Or rather, they weren’t exposed at all but covered with canvas tarps.
The American Army colonel watching them from the loading dock looked impressed with their military dispatch and seeming contempt for the soldiers of fortune.
Presently, the rest of the team showed up in a pair of equally black Humvees. Three men were in one, a man and a woman in the other. They, too, seemed businesslike to the point of brusqueness and, unlike their leader, completely ignored their mercenary bodyguards. The insurgents and death squads must’ve taken the day off because the trip from the airport was completely free of incident.
While the personnel in the newly-arrived Humvees set to work unstrapping the gear, the men in the semi’s cab hoisted themselves onto the loading dock and shook hands with the colonel.
“Oh, if only these walls could scream,” the old secret policeman thought.
Just walking into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and as a civilian, at that, was no mean feat. But getting access to restricted and classified locales was rarely if ever a problem for Hans Dietrich.
The ramrod-straight American Army liaison colonel who walked down the deserted walkway beside him spoke little but informatively, which he appreciated. While the always reserved German didn’t actually like him (a distinction given to one, perhaps two people), Dietrich began developing respect for this man. Hair buzz-cut to razor-sharp perfection, with a no nonsense demeanor, this military man’s claim was very much at odds with his stubborn pragmatism and skepticism. He had what Dietrich guessed was an Appalachian accent, perhaps Texan.
“As I’m sure you know, Mr. Dietrich, we handed over control of this facility back to the Iraqi government in July of ’06.”
Dietrich smiled to himself and silently asked, “If that’s the case, then why did we have to get permission from the Pentagon for this investigation?”
“But almost from the start we began getting reports from the Iraqi guards and even the detainees. The videotape you’re about to see is the only documented evidence that would seem to support those claims.”
The prison, which the American colonel never referred to as a prison but “this facility”, was cleared of both inmates and guards well in advance of Dietrich’s visit. Arabs in general, Iraqis being no exception, are exceptionally skittish about the paranormal and the story went that they abandoned the prison, vowing not to come back until it was rid of a certain entity.
Their footfalls made hollow echoes as they walked down the aisles. Of course, Dietrich had seen the pictures of prisoners getting tortured and made to form human pyramids at the behest of American idiots who were otherwise themselves powerless in their lives. He tried to imagine the screams and moans of agony, pain and despair and smiled. It would have brought him back to the good old days in East Berlin and Lichtenberg when he was with the East German Stasi. In fact, every time Dietrich and his crew were invited into a prison, he tried to imagine what it was like in its heyday.
Dietrich looked at his technical manager Günter to his left. Since he was in charge of setting up the equipment, it only made sense that he would attend the pre-investigation tour, or what everyone on the team would call recon. The three men arrived at a door that the colonel, whose name plate on his camouflage shirt read “Waterston”, had to unlock with a key.
“Rather than turn on the gas jets, I’ll just play the tape and let you judge for yourselves.” He turned on a light. “I’m what you’d call a die hard skeptic. I need hard, concrete evidence before believing in stuff like this and even after that, I want to see more before I’ll wrap my arms and lips around it. But this takes the fucking cake, pardon my French.”
Dietrich, despite his growing respect for this man, was also developing impatience. He’d uttered more words in the last 60 seconds than he had since meeting Günter and him at the gates a half hour ago. But considering the alleged content on this surveillance tape, perhaps he could be excused for his relative prolixity.
Col. Waterston turned on a TV then a VCR. The security video was on an antiquated VHS tape that promptly disappeared before the officer’s hand.
“It’s been fast-forwarded to just before this guard’s experience. I’m sorry there’s no sound but at least it’s in color and the picture quality’s OK.” Dietrich nodded with hardly concealed impatience and irritation as he and Günter closely regarded the tape.
An Iraqi guard was making his rounds in a hallway at the prison, looking inside each cell as he went by. Almost immediately, a figure in an orange jumpsuit slowly approached him from the left and the guard, understandably, was quite alarmed. When the figure in orange reached out to him, seemingly grabbing him by the throat, the guard took a step back with some difficulty and aimed his rifle at him, briefly pointing the barrel down. He was obviously mistaking him for an escaped prisoner and was telling him to get on the ground. When the orange-clad man, who also appeared to be of Arab descent, didn’t obey, the guard fired a shot at him to no discernible effect.
Instead, the figure turned around and walked into a cell. The most remarkable thing about that was the door was closed. The guard rubbed his throat and followed the figure, having to unlock the door. He entered it only to reemerge moments later, looking both scared out of his wits and perplexed. It was everything the American and Iraqi military said it was. He then ran out of camera range, obviously to tell his colleagues and to ask what the fuck was going on.
“Now, obviously, this hasn’t been tampered with. We have a complete chain of custody documenting who’s even so much as touched this tape. Now, you were briefed in our first encrypted email. The Iraqis ain’t setting foot in this facility again until they get proof that this guy’s gone. And it is extremely important to both us and the Iraqi government that this place is up and running again.”
“So, who’s the figure in orange?” It was the only thing Günter would ever say during the tour, which was typical of him.
“Well,” Col. Waterston said before exhaling and rubbing the back of his neck as he sat on the edge of the desk. “That’s the perplexing thing. We’ve blown up still pictures that we took of the video and we’re pretty sure it’s Mursi al Islamiyah. Very bad man, al Qaeda operative.” He fractionally leaned toward Dietrich and Günter and said almost under his breath even though the prison was supposed to be deserted. “Mursi al Islamiyah died in our custody in late ’03 but you didn’t hear that from me. That tape was shot just last year in ’08. To be honest with you, Islamiyah was probably the only Class of 2001 al Qaeda terrorist we ever had here. But you didn’t hear that from me, either.”
“And the inmates had seen him, too?”
“Yes, sir. At least half a dozen inmates and three, maybe four guards in, I believe, five other separate times.” He slid off the edge of the desk. “Your reputation precedes you, gentlemen. If you sweep this area and get rid of this so-called ghost, then the Iraqi government will believe you and we can get this facility hummin’ again.”
Dietrich had a well-deserved reputation as a paranormal investigator, an actual ghost hunter in every sense of the word. Not some guy with a few high tech instruments who does an 8 hour investigation then does a reveal for the client a couple of days later and going back to his life. Dietrich was someone who actively stalked and captured ghosts. The client never really knew how he did it and certainly not why. But all anyone knew was that if they had a noxious entity living in their house that then suddenly vanished after a Dietrich investigation, all they’d feel was gratitude. No one ever asked what was done with the spirits nor seemed to care.
Sure, there were reveals after an evidence review. EVPs (if any), still photos taken with full spectrum cameras, video footage, any evidence of supernatural activity was dutifully shown to the client along with the usual assurances of having their home, job or whatever rid of its paranormal pestilence. Of course, Hans Dietrich was just a paranormal investigator like Mata Hari was just a dancer.
“You might wanna focus a camera in that holding cell that figure walked into," the colonel concluded. "That’s the very same cell where Islamiyah died in December of ’03.” Dietrich nodded as if to say that he was way ahead of him. Which, of course, he was. It was obvious to all but the colonel that they were waiting for him to leave so they could clear out the truck.
“Just out of curiosity”, Waterston asked, “when you get rid of a ghost, what do you do with it? I mean, it’s like what do morticians do with the blood they drain out of people but no one bothers to ask them. So, what do you do with them critters that you… suck out?”
“I could tell you, Colonel,” Dietrich replied, “but then I’d have to kill you.” The colonel laughed until he realized that Dietrich was returning neither his laugh nor his smile.
“Is that everything?” Dietrich asked Günter on the prison’s loading dock. His equipment manager nodded curtly. Their gear was so voluminous it had to be transported on a semi with virtually every inch at a premium. The semi, in turn, had been transported to Iraq on an Air Force C5A along with a couple of hundred scared shitless troops about to enter their first tour of duty. Obviously, this also required approval from the Pentagon. The Blackwater mercs? Courtesy of the US State Dept., their best employer.
Iraqi sovereignty my Aryan ass.
Dietrich picked up the final laptop case and again regarded the retinue of Blackwater mercs that had escorted the 18 wheeler and were now patrolling the immediate perimeter of the prison. Not only did Dietrich despise mercenaries and their ability to show up and even unseat small governments, these bad-ass American has-beens and wannabes were redundant once they crossed the main gate. Besides if, as Dietrich had hoped, all Hell broke loose during the “investigation”, they’d be twice as worthless. They weren’t exactly trained for shit like this. He turned his head and squinted at the sunset and walked back into the prison.
If there was one comedian on the whole team, it would have to be Breck, the only American. He was professional enough to play it straight during the hunts but he would never fail to come up with at least one irreverent observation either before or after lights out.
“Hey, Dietrich,” he said with a manic gleam in his eyes, “wouldn’t it be cool if we bagged not only this sand nigger but his 72 virgins, too?” Dietrich gave him a withering look but Breck, true to form, didn’t take the hint and chuckled at his own joke as he unspooled coaxial cable.
The largest, most sensitive and expensive equipment would be unloaded only by Dietrich himself and Günter. The most prominent of these was what was colloquially known as “the movable hole.” It was so massive and heavy that a refurbished Humvee was built around it. It was essentially a 6 x 6 black box and to simply look at it no one could possibly divine its true purpose let alone how it worked. It was always the last piece of equipment used during a successful investigation.
It was the last stop for a lot of the ghosts that were captured by Dietrich’s crew. The theory was that paranormal entities such as ghosts or spirits had unique energy signatures just as living people’s fingerprints, retina and DNA distinguishes them. When an entity manifested, the team was able to get a quick fix on not just its location but also its electromagnetic signature.
The sardonically-named “Ghostbusters”, or the handheld devices powered by drain-resistant battery back packs that were actually a reference to dustbuster vacuum cleaners rather than the comical movies starring Bill Murray, would essentially arrest a spirit if they were within the unit’s limited range. Once put into an electromagnetic tractor beam, for want of a better phrase, Günter would then hustle to wherever the capture was made and put the entity on ice.
As well as the usual ghost hunting equipment such as DV and IR cams, high 8’s, audio recorders, K2 meters, EMF detectors and thermal cams, Dietrich’s team went considerably beyond that technological curve. For instance, frustrated with EVPs, disembodied voices not heard by the naked ear until a digital audio playback, Dietrich used a headset connected to a 360° mic that automatically looped back to him what had just been captured on the recording device. The only drawback was that there was a delay of two seconds and in the world of paranormal investigation, that’s all the time in the world for a spirit to disappear.
Understandably, not a lot of the ghosts they’d pursued over the years wanted to be captured. Spirits, as the theory goes, tend to stick close to a certain environment to which they’re emotionally attached. To rip them out of a favored environment is quite a coup in itself and a lot of them had fought like Great Whites.
The reason for this was because Hans Dietrich didn’t go after the nice ones, which was why he’d specialized in prisons and insane asylums. Abu Ghraib was both, the worst of both worlds.
When he was satisfied that all unauthorized personnel were out of the prison and his team and equipment were in position, he bent the walkie talkie’s stalk mic toward his mouth and said over a scrambled frequency, “Kill the lights.”
The capacitor in the night vision goggles whined briefly and Abu Ghraib turned from pitch black to pea soup green. Dietrich panned left and right, alternately switching the experimental all-vision unit from normal night vision to UV, IR and finally to full spectrum mode.
Gert Hesse, the woman beside him and the team’s only psychic, didn’t rely so much on scientific gear although she used it to validate her perceptions. To Dietrich, she looked eerily defined in a full light spectrum in a surreally-bleak type of way reminiscent of the cinematography of 300 or Sin City.
His earpiece relayed a metallic sound. Since playback was in stereo, he as with the whole crew was able to home in on its source. When he got to the end of a corridor, he turned left and saw Breck.
“Sorry, Hans. I hit an open gate with my wand. My bad.” Dietrich looked at the “ghostbuster” wand in his hand then up at him.
Good thing he was wearing night vision goggles, otherwise Dietrich would’ve killed him with the look he gave him. Gert cocked her head at him in annoyance before they moved on.
“Shithead,” she said in German. Dietrich permitted himself a rare smile as he continued his EMF and audio sweep.
One hour passed. Then two, then three. Not a single electromagnetic spike, an unnatural cold spot or a disembodied syllable. Dietrich decided that now would be a good time to step on some invisible toes.
“Time for Plan P,” he said into the two way’s stalk mic, “and I think the comedian should take point on this.”
“You got it, boss,” Breck responded.
Plan P was actually the team’s Plan B, the “P” standing for provocation.
Roughly 75-80% of their investigations would turn up nothing. They weren’t vaudeville performers appearing at regular times. Sometimes, ghosts would take the night off. The help enhance the odds of making contact, some paranormal investigators wouldn’t be above provocation. Deliberately taunting or insulting an entity would at times be efficacious enough to elicit a response.
Since Breck was the self-appointed smartass of the team, it usually fell to him to do the taunting. He was also uniquely suited to doing this tonight because he was the only one who spoke Arabic. And it only made sense to speak the indigenous language when hunting spirits. After all, why should they understand you just because you’re speaking in English or is there a Charles Berlitz course that one must pass before continuing to the afterlife? So it wasn’t unusual to get EVP’s, or electronic voice phenomena, spoken in the language of an investigation’s host country.
Breck cleared his throat, annoying Dietrich and probably the other two team members. He then began speaking in Arabic while the team continued their sweeps, even though no one but Breck knew what he was saying.
“Hey,” he said in Arabic, “I saw a picture of your guy Mohammed on the way over here. He had a fucking bomb for a turban. I’d say that’s about right. Bombing shit is all you assholes know how to do.” Even alluding to a picture of Mohammed, much less actually drawing one, was an offense in the fundamentalist Muslim world that was often punishable by death. Representations of the Prophet were strictly forbidden and Breck obviously knew this.
He continued sweeping the area. Nobody on the team heard anything yet so Breck continued the taunting.
“Gotta hand it to you pricks, though. Pretty clever talking other people into blowing themselves up so you don’t have to. And promising them 72 virgins if they do your bidding? Sheer genius, Islamiyah.”
Then by way of the two second delay, Hans and the team members heard something on the playback. It was a hissing and after listening for a second, he was able to triangulate on its location. It was headed straight for Breck. Instead of warning his man over the two-way, he silently motioned to Gert to get to Breck’s position and for Günter to head for the Humvee just in case.
Hans headed to the same destination albeit from a different approach. The idea was to come up behind Breck while Gert would approach him from the other end of the corridor. The wands had a powerful pull and ghosts trying to escape had a very difficult time doing so if they were surrounded. The various instrumentation they all carried with them, including temp gauges, EMF detectors and so forth, warned them of a severe drop in temperature and a massive buildup of energy. Breck had the same resources and if he was caught unawares, it was his bad.
He continued the taunting while Dietrich got sight of him about 50 yards down the hallway. Breck’s voice was an echo on account of the playback coming two seconds after his live voice, giving the session an unreal quality. That plus the natural echo of the empty hallways multiplied his voice several times over.
“What’s the matter, chicken shit? Cat got your…” Through the night vision goggles, Dietrich could see the American straighten up and his sneering voice was immediately reduced to a gurgle. His wand clattered to the ground as he levitated and it would be up to Hans and the rest of his team to use the EM tractor beam on their own to capture the entity. Hans began running to the scene and called out on his two-way, “We’re in corridor C! Hurry before he gets away!”
Dietrich was anxious to see what his man had trapped so he approached him from an oblique angle. There in the all spectrum mode of the goggles he could see a bright white figure literally holding up Breck above ground with one hand. It was al Islamiyah. The ghost quickly turned to Dietrich and gave him a hateful glare. “Dogs,” was all the ex policeman heard two seconds after seeing his bearded mouth move and he ripped out Breck’s larynx while he was still in midair.
“Get him!” Dietrich yelled as Gert came running down the opposite side of the hall. Both wands went to work at once. “Bring in the hole!” he yelled to his other man in the Humvee and Dietrich could hear the monstrosity rumble to life and speed its way to their location.
It’s a known fact that ghosts, despite having no nervous system, can feel pain much the same way that amputees can still feel pain and other sensations in missing limbs and extremities. Dietrich never ceased to be fascinated by the common reaction that entities had when they were hit by the tractor beams of their wands. He also never ceased to derive enjoyment from observing the looks on their faces and their contortions. He didn’t know why the beam hurt them. It was just enough for him to know they did.
“Günter! Open the portal!” he yelled. A static charge and irritating hum filled the air while the terrorist’s diaphanous form writhed about five feet in midair. The beams, while invisible to the naked eye, emitted a bright green light when viewed in all spectrum mode and Dietrich was always struck by its luminescent muscularity. Eventually he moved beside Gert, looking very much like a man who’d just snagged a blue marlin off the coast of Florida. Some of the more powerful ghosts were actually able to rip free of one tractor beam while caught in the limits of its range. From point blank, there was no way even this monster could escape two.
“Purge setting!” he said and with the flip of a switch on the units they simultaneously catapulted Mursi al Islamiyah into the movable hole. Günter, as always, closed the portal immediately, a feat that always required split second timing.
“That is one pissed off ghost,” Gert said in German. She dispassionately looked down at Breck’s body. By this time, he’d completely bled out and blackish blood spread throughout the hallway.
“Yes,” Dietrich said to the corpse. “Good job, Breck. Sorry you won’t get your bonus for this one,” he said in English.
Chapter Two.
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