Vollmer called me at 8:30 the next morning. “My daughter almost died last night.”
Oh hell. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“She fell into the street. She almost got hit by a car! Something pushed her, she said, except there was no one there. Someone caught her before . . .” He was gasping, coughing, until he finally got his breathing under control again. “Someone saved her. But we’ve got to stop this! Is there anything you can do?”
I wished I had an answer. “Carrie Ransom is apparently dead. She developed cancer and went to Mexico for treatment, and she died there. I met with a woman named Catherine Randel who says she’s Carrie’s sister—”
“Carrie never mentioned a sister. I thought she was an only child. What does she have to do with this?”
This was getting complicated. “Look, I have a theory, but it’s going to take me a while to check it out. Can you give me that?”
He heaved a sigh. “All right. I’ll wait. Call me as soon as you have anything.”
We hung up.
I wanted to talk to Rachel, but she was still in the shower. I like talking to her in the shower, of course, but then I’d get distracted. I just hoped Carrie wouldn’t strike again right away.
So while I was waiting for Rachel, I made a phone call. Rachel came in as I finished up. “We need more Froot Loops. I put it on the list.”
“Good morning too.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She punched my shoulder, but affectionately. “Anything developing?”
I told her about Vollmer’s daughter. She frowned. Then I told her my theory. She frowned some more.
“I’ll try.” Rachel crossed her arms. “I mean, no guarantees or anything, but—”
“That’s all I want.”
She rolled her eyes. “This was going to be my lazy day.” She stretched her arms over her head.
“Sorry. Maybe tomorrow?”
“I have to go back to the clinic and meet the people there tomorrow. Group interview.” She shuddered.
“You’ll do fine.”
“Oh, shut up.” She kissed me. “Just let me know what you need me to do.”
I stood up and put my phone in my pocket. “Get your coat. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“I love it when you get all, ‘Let’s roll, Kato.’” Rachel followed me to the door.
At the front desk we asked for Catherine Randel’s room number. The attendant stared at us cautiously, the lifted her phone. “Your names?”
I gave her a card. “She’s expecting us.”
She held it up, squinting, then punched in a few numbers. “Ms. Randle? Yes, I have a Tom Jurgen here to see you? And . . .” She glanced at Rachel. “A friend. Yes. All right, thank you.” She hung up. “Room 214.”
“Hope she didn’t call her son after I talked to her,” I said as we made our way down the hall.
“I got the feeling she wanted to talk more without him,” Rachel said, following me. “We should be fine.”
I knocked on room 214. “Come,” a voice called.
Catherine Randel sat in a reclining armchair. It tilted her forward as we entered. The room was bigger than I expected, with a separate bedroom and a kitchen. The curtains were a cheerful yellow.
She turned the TV off. “Yes?”
“Thanks for seeing us again.”
“I was surprised when you called.” She set her cane across her lap. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to see your sister’s remains. Actually, I’d like Rachel to look at them.” I nodded to her. “She’s my associate. She’s psychic.”
Catherine’s eyebrows rose. “Psychic.”
Rachel shrugged. “Among other things.”
“May we?” I asked.
Catherine sighed and led us into the bedroom, shaking only slightly as she walked with her cane. Two bedside tables sat on either side of a queen-sized bed. She sank into a flowered bedspread and pointed toward a closet door. “Upper shelf.”
I slid the door open to confront a row of dresses and blouses hanging from the rod. I reached up, shuffled some boxes around, and found a ceramic urn. I pulled it off carefully and carried it to the nearest table.
No markings. The urn was a dusty red, sealed at the top. I turned to Rachel.
“Can I touch it?” she asked.
Catherine shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
Rachel nudged me back, leaned down, and planted her hands on the urn. After a moment she slid her hands around the surface, as if searching for something. She placed one hand on the lid. Then she dropped her arms, stepped back. And looked at me, puzzled. “Nothing.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this wasn’t it. “What does that mean? Nothing supernatural?”
“Nothing anywhere.” She crossed her arms, annoyed. “Look, I don’t go around touching dead bodies or cremated ashes, but I do go to funerals, and I’ve been around, you know, dead people. I can almost feel something, a shadow, a whisper, a teardrop—something left over.” She turned to Catherine. “Is there anything in this?”
She smiled. “Sand. From the hills outside the city in Mexico.”
“So where is Carrie?” I asked.
Catherine tapped her chest. “Inside me.”
“You mean you—” I looked at the urn.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She rammed her cane into the floor. “No, I didn’t eat her ashes. I scattered them in the wind. After Carrie’s body died. After she joined me.”
Rachel stepped toward her. “May I?”
Catherine sighed, then held her hand out. “Just for a moment.”
Rachel took the hand and closed her eyes. She stood in front of Catherine, head cocked, then drew a sharp breath and released her, backing away quickly.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes, then looked into Catherine’s face. “It’s you, isn’t it? Both of you.”
Catherine nodded. “Yeah. Me and Carrie.”
“She didn’t go to a clinic.” Catherine was in the back seat of our Prius, and she had to raise her voice as I drove. She’d come willingly, almost eagerly, but she seemed irritated at having to explain while we were on the highway. “She found a bruja—a witch. She couldn’t save Carrie’s life, but she could—preserve her soul. If I’d help.”
I’d called Vollmer to let him know we were on our way. I didn’t tell him I was bringing the soul of his dead girlfriend. I just hoped he’d be able to deal with it once we were there. Would they be able to talk? Could it bring some sort of closure? I didn’t know. But I had to try something.
“What was it like?” Rachel asked, next to me. “The ritual.”
She paused for almost a full minute, as if digging up the memory. “We were outside Mexico City. The house was cold, but there was a fireplace. Carrie was on a sofa. She could hardly breathe. I held her hand, and the bruja—there were three women, but one was in charge—burned incense and oil and chanted endlessly. For hours. I almost couldn’t take it.” Pause. “I mean, it was my sister, but I didn’t really believe—but I did it because she wanted me to, whatever happened.” She blew her nose. “But it was hard. I got stiff, and my back hurt because I was just sitting there on the floor next to her, watching her breathe, until—until—she stopped breathing.” She took a long deep breath. “Then I passed out.”
I checked her in the mirror quickly to be sure she was still with us. Finally her head rose. “When I woke up, she was—inside. It wasn’t like—she couldn’t control me or anything, I could just feel her. Hear her, like a whisper. Sometimes I can feel her watching things with me, looking around.”
“Is that when you started painting? And making boxes?”
“I was always painting. Just not like Carrie. But afterward—well, I guess that was her. I just caught the urge to try something different, outside the pretty pictures that Carrie always made fun of.” She laughed. “In some ways it isn’t that different.”
“What about—” I wanted to ask her about Vollmer, but our exit from the highway was coming up. I pressed the brake as I swerved toward the ramp.
Nothing happened.
I pressed my foot harder. Without the accelerator the car’s speed dipped a little, but we were still heading toward the ramp way too fast.
“Uh, Tom?” Rachel patted my arm. “Are you—”
It was too late to veer away. We were going into the ramp whether I liked it or not. I bit my lip and gripped the wheel. Maybe I could get through the curve without crashing and killing us. Maybe we could—
Then a split-second realization reared in my head. Carrie. “Catherine! Make her stop! She’s going to kill us! And you! Make Carrie stop!”
I pushed my foot down on the useless brake as I tried to navigate the curve. The car fishtailed, but I got control and made it around the curve without hitting any barriers. But now we were heading for the intersection. If I couldn’t make the stop I’d smash into at least two cars coming toward it from opposite directions. “Catherine!”
“I’m trying, I’m—ahh!” She screamed in pain, clutching her head. I fumbled for the emergency brake. Would that do anything? A prayer flashed through my head—and I’m not very religious. Come on, come on—
Then the brake caught. Our seatbelts caught us as we lurched forward in our seats. I twisted the wheel, trying to burn our speed as the car skidded. I managed to slide over onto the shoulder as a car behind us blared its horn while passing.
I hit the emergency flashers and tried to catch my breath. “You okay?” I asked Rachel.
She nodded, swallowing, and reached for a water bottle without speaking. I turned in my seat. “Catherine?”
Catherine lay across the back seat, breathing slowly, her eyes closed. “Catherine?” I repeated.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Wh—what happened?” She rubbed her forehead.
“Carrie tried to kill us.” I faced forward again, shifted, and pulled toward the intersection. “Try to keep her under control until we reach Vollmer’s house, okay?”
“I’ll—I’ll try. I don’t really know . . .” Her voice faded. I glanced back. Catherine was unconscious again.
“Can you check her?” I asked Rachel.
She swallowed some more water. “I’m beginning to question some of my life choices.” Then she reached back with one hand. After a moment she grunted. “She’s okay for now. But it feels like she’s fighting something. Or something’s fighting her.”
Wrestling with her dead sister? “I hope the right one wins.”
“Until we get to your client’s house?” Rachel finished the bottle. “What’ll she be like when he’s in front of her after all this time?”
I tried not to think about that as I drove.
Catherine was awake again by the time I pulled up in front of Vollmer’s house, but she didn’t speak as we got out and walked to the door, as if keeping Carrie under control took all her concentration. Rachel stayed close to her.
The maid gave us the kind of look you give door-to-door missionaries, but she let us in and opened the doors to the living room, where Myles Vollmer waited.
Flames flickered in the gas fireplace. Vollmer wore a thick sweater buttoned to his neck. Next to him stood a young woman with black hair and bright blue eyes that looked like his. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Sabrina.”
“My daughter.” He reached over to pat her hand. “And this is—?”
“Catherine Randel,” I said as she sank onto a sofa, setting her cane aside. “She’s Carrie’s sister. Carrie tried to kill us as we were getting off the highway just now.”
Vollmer closed his eyes. “I can’t—this is too much.”
Sabrina clutched his shoulder. “It’s all right, dad,” she said in a soft voice. “It’s going to be okay.”
“You had a close call last night,” I said to her.
She nodded. “Yeah. Dad asked me to come up, to keep me safe, after last night.” She shuddered. “He told me what’s been going on. I’m not sure—I know you’re not crazy,” she said to Vollmer. “But this just sounds totally insane.”
“It gets insane-er” I checked to make sure Rachel was close to Catherine. “Carrie died in 2013. But somehow, with the help of a witch in Mexico, Carrie’s soul sort of, uh, migrated into her sister. I’m hoping we can convince her to give up this—campaign of murder, basically.”
Silence filled the room. Only the quiet crackling of the gas fire disturbed the air.
Vollmer blinked. “I never even knew Carrie had a sister.”
Catherine stared back at him. “You didn’t know a lot of things about her.”
“Well, I’m—” He cut himself off. Took a deep breath. “Look, anything I’ve done wrong, whatever I did to her, I’ll take the rap for it. You can do whatever you want with me. I just—please leave my family alone. Please—” Her reached for Sabrina. “Don’t hurt my daughter.”
I was between them, with Rachel behind me. I doubted she was strong enough to attack Vollmer physically, but I didn’t know if I could stop her—or Carrie—from pushing a bookcase over or crashing the ceiling down on him. I swallowed and said, “Catherine, can you stop this? There’s no point in killing anyone else. Especially Vollmer’s daughter. She hasn’t done anything to you. It won’t undo what’s past.”
She shook her head. “It still matters. It still hurts.”
“So what does Carrie want?”
Catherine clutched her cane. For a moment I thought it meant she wanted to lash out with it, at me or Vollmer or the world. Instead she zeroed in on Vollmer. “Tell them what you did. Confess.”
Vollmer’s eyes went wide. “W-what? Confess what? Whatever I did, I’m sorry. What—what did I do?”
Catherine glared. “It was the child.”
Vollmer blinked. “There was no child. There was never any child—”
“You shoved her down the stairs!” She pounded the tip of her cane on the carpet. “Do you even remember that?”
He looked away from her. “I was—we were arguing outside her apartment. She slipped—”
“You pushed her.”
“No, she lost her balance and I—I tried to catch her, and then she fell.”
“What were you arguing about?” I asked.
“Cheating.” Catherine spat the word at Vollmer. “You accused her one time too many. You wanted someone to control. Not that you were faithful to her either. You cheated on her every chance you got, and when you couldn’t make her shut up, you attacked her. You pushed her and left her there in the street.”
“No” He shook his head. “I called an ambulance. She was screaming at me. She told me to go away.”
“And you never saw her again.” Her words were a whisper.
“She told me—she said she never wanted to see me. Never again. I—I did what she asked.” He looked around helplessly. “That’s what she told me to do.”
“And she was pregnant?” Rachel asked.
“Yes.” Catherine closed her eyes for a moment, as if reliving a bad memory. Just not hers. “She found out in the hospital. She lost it before she never she even had him. Or her.” When she opened her eyes again they were burning with anger. “But that’s not all of it. That’s when she found out about the cancer. It was her uterus. Ironic, isn’t it? She lost the baby she didn’t know about, and then her life.”
Sabrina stood next to her father, her face pale. He avoided her eyes as he took it all in, breathing hard. “I didn’t know,” Vollmer murmured. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Now you know. Everything.” She folded her arms, clutching her cane in a fist.
I glanced at Raschel. She nodded. It was the truth—all of it. “Okay,” I said. “But—can this stop now? You don’t have to keep killing people—Carrie doesn’t, I mean. What’s the point after all these years?”
“He’s dying now.” Catherine stared at Vollmer. “There’s no time left. He has to feel it now. Before he can’t feel anything.”
Sabrina flinched and grabbed for her father’s hand. He squeezed, then let go. “Just take me, then.” His voice was quiet. “Sabrina didn’t do anything to you. Take it all out on me—”
“You don’t understand!” Again Cather slammed her cane on the floor. “You don’t know suffering! You don’t know pain! You don’t know what it’s like to have it burning inside you day after day even when your body is gone and all you’re left with is the memory of everything that’s wrong and ugly and hateful and—”
Cather leaned back suddenly. Her lips curled in a smile. “Maybe you’re right. This is the perfect end. You and your daughter, together. You’re helpless. Youi can’t save her.”
What? I took a step between them. “Hang on, Ms. Randel. This doesn’t have to—”
“Shut up!” Catherine screamed.
Then the fireplace exploded.
Behind me—behind all of us—the glass screen shattered. A ball of flame erupted, streaming across the room like a fiery arrow.
Someone screamed as a wave of smoke crashed through the air. I grabbed for Rachel, but she pushed me out of the way and reached down to pull Catherine up from the sofa. Sabrina was behind her father, already choking as she shoved his wheelchair frantically toward the living room door.
Catherine punched Rachel in the shoulder and dropped back, snarling like an angry cat. Rachel leaned down again, but Catherine hit slammed her cane at her knee. Rachel stumbled, cursing and hacking, so I grabbed her arm and yanked. She didn’t fight me as I pulled her, right behind Sabrina and Vollmer to the door.
One of the maids was already in the hall, phone in her hand. “Call 911,” Vollmer barked weakly, gasping for air. “F-fire. God, it’s a fire . . .”
I looked back into the living room, my throat already raw from the smoke. It was an instant battlefield of flame, fire raging in every direction, smoke so thick I couldn’t see the nearest bookcase. I bent down, peering along the floor, and saw Catherine’s cane, shaking as her hand twitched, the skin of her fingers already scorched.
“Get me a blanket or something.” My voice was raspy. I stood in the doorway, crouching. She wasn’t that far away, not more than 10 feet. If I covered my mouth and moved fast, I could wrap her up and drag her back before she suffocated or burned to death. “Come on, get me something!”
Rachel grabbed my collar and yanked me back. Before I could get my balance, she reached in and pulled on one door, then the other, shutting the living room off.
I looked at her, angry, and then I started choking. I sank to the floor and Rachel knelt next to me, still hacking herself, and we held each other, trying to breathe, until the fire department arrived.
Catherine Randel died in the hospital the next day. The firefighters saved Vollmer’s house, but the living room was a wasteland. Sabrina told us that she found the brass frame around Carrie’s portrait, but the canvas was gone. “Good riddance,” she said.
At least the fire department decided that the explosion had been caused by a defect in the fireplace’s gas line. It was preliminary, and there’d be more investigation, but I was glad I wouldn’t have to try explaining the truth.
The paramedics had insisted on taking us to the hospital, but we argued our way free after an hour of breathing pure oxygen and answering questions. Back home, we showered the smoky smell off and I rammed some frozen leftovers in the microwave. We ate dinner mostly in silence, except for the lingering coughing and wheezing.
My phone buzzed as we finished. I groaned. “Hopcroft “
Rachel grunted. I let the call go to voicemail. Then we listened to five minutes of him yelling at me and threatening a lawsuit.
“Asshole,” Rachel said, swigging her beer.
“I suppose can’t blame him.” I texted him my lawyer’s number and deleted the message.
“Not your fault.”
“I know, just . . . I don’t know.”
She reached across the table to grab my arm. “Tell me something.”
“Okay.” I held my breath.
“Were you really going to go back in there and try to save her?”
I thought for a moment. Remembered the heat, the smoke, the desperate desire to get out of the room with Rachel. And I remembered looking back for Catherine. I’d brought her there. I made her talk. Was it all my fault?
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe? I wanted to—do something.”
“Jerk.” She squeezed my hand and dropped it. “You can’t be doing stuff like that. I know, I know, you have to do some stupid stuff, but—you just can’t do that. At least not while I’m around. And I’m around everywhere, you know. All the time.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, coughed, then took another. ”I was going to wait for graduation day, even if we’re not doing the ceremony, but—” I looked into her eyes. “Do you want to get married?”
She stared. “To you?”
I grinned. “That would be my first choice, yeah. Or are you keeping your options open?”
“Shut up.” She picked up her beer, looked me over as drank some if making sure I was serious, then set it down.
She nodded. “Yes.”
My heart jumped a little. “Yes?”
“Yes.” Rachel laughed. “Just don’t ask me to write my own vows. I don’t think they allow swearing in marriage ceremonies.”
“Whatever you want.” We kissed.
“So.” I finished my beer and stood up. “TV?”
“You get the dishes. I’m going to change.” She was in sweats. “Then we’ll see.”
I smiled. “Can’t wait.”
# # #
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