Meeting of Minds, Part Two

A security guard in Reynolds Hall demanded to see out student IDs. When he realized we weren’t students, he made us sign in and let us head toward the elevators.

            I checked the time. 7:45. Garn’s seminar started at 6:30. He’d be there. On the fourth floor Rachel and I walked up and down the hall.

A bored college student stood behind a drink cart, tapping his phone. “Hey!” I held up a hand. “Where’s Professor Garn’s seminar?”

He waved a hand without looking up. “Room 422. Or 424. Maybe.”

Kids these days. I checked the door numbers.

Inside 422 an Asian woman glanced up from her lecture, irritated. “May I help you?”

The students looked properly bored. I shrugged an apology. “Sorry.”

I turned the handle to 424 very slowly, opening it just enough to listen for Garn’s voice.

I heard many voices, though, talking softly. I looked at Rachel.

She staggered back, her feet wobbling. I caught her arm and helped her lean against the opposite wall. “What is it?”

Rachel shook her head. “Something—really strange. Voices from far away. I don’t know.”

“Stay here.” I stepped to the door.

“I’m fine.” She joined me, her face sweating but steady on her legs. “Let’s do this.”

I opened the door.

Ten or 12 students sat in desks arranged in a scattered half circle, the other desks pushed against the classroom walls.

The students looked dazed, some heads drooping, others animated and energized. They talked to each other or to themselves, and all of them wore the same kind of moon-shaped necklace I‘d seen on Ashley Moore.

Garn and another middle-aged woman—presumably his wife. Marjorie Shutter—had pulled chairs to two of them, holding up recording devices as if conducting interviews.

“And then they were comin’ down the hill.” That was a whisper from a young African American woman, leaning toward Garn. “Shootin’ all over the place. I was shootin’ back until my pistol ran out, and then I ran toward the river. Jumped in and stuck my head under the water for as long as I could hold my breath, and then I came up for a second and went down again. Did that for as long as I could. Ten or twenty times, I guess. Then—”

            Marjorie Shutter was listening to a balding man rambling about his wife. “Then the priest told me to love her and cherish her, but he told me not to trust her. Our first son didn’t look like me, but I tried to remember what he told me until . . .” He rubbed his bare scalp.

            I checked Rachel. She rubbed her eyes, then ran a hand over her forehead. “I’m okay.”

            Marjorie Shutter glared at us. “Excuse me.” She stood up. “This is a private class.”

            Fiftyish, like her husband, Shutter had silvery hair and a pinched nose. She glanced at Garn, who nodded impatiently as he kept recording the young woman’s story.

            “You’re interrupting our class.” Her voice was low. “You’ll have to leave or I’ll call security.”

            I looked around the room at all the students babbling to themselves, some half-comatose, others rocking back and forth, a few weeping, some red in the face with anger as if they wanted to hit something.

            I crossed my arms. “Do you really want security guards busting in here right now?”

            I’m not really fearless, but I can be stubborn. It’s gotten me into some trouble. But I remembered the sound of Mrs. Moore’s tears when I told her I’d found Ashley. I really didn’t want to tell her I’d lost her daughter again.

            Shutter looked like she wanted to clock me across the face. “Who are you?”

            “Tom Jurgen.” I held out a card. “Your husband already has one of these. I want to talk about Ashley Moore.”

Garn looked up from the woman he was listening to. “Get them out of here!”

            Shutter looked down at her recorder. “I’m in the middle of an interview—”

            “I can do it.” Rachel held out a hand. “How do you work this?”

            “She’s good with electronics.” I patted her shoulder.

            A minute later Rachel was talking to the balding guy as Shutter led me out into the hall. “Who are you and what do you want?”

            I sighed. “Ashley’s mother hired me to find her after she disappeared Tuesday night. Right after your class. I found her, but now she’s gone again. She’s wearing a necklace like everyone else in there.” I didn’t want to mention the handgun. “And there’s someone inside her head—just like I’m guessing there are different people inside all of your students in there.”

            Shutter tried to wave me off. “You don’t understand. This is a study—”

            “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t understand.” I kept my voice low. “Vampires. Demons. Monsters and dragons. This isn’t even in my top fifty. But I need to find Ashley. I need you to tell me what happened to her.”

            “She was fine!” Shutter clenched her hands. “There was nothing wrong when she left. Except she kept the necklace, which isn’t allowed . . .” She peered over my shoulder at the door. “I should be in there.”

            “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

            Just then doors started opening up and down the hall, and students poured out. Some checked their phones, others chatted, but most made their way toward the bank of elevators where a snack cart waited.

            Shutter grabbed my arm. “Come with me.”

We sat on an old couch in a quiet corner of the lounge on the second floor. I wondered what Rachel was up to.

            Shutter swirled a teabag in a paper cup. “You say you’re—familiar with the supernatural.”

            More than I’d like to be. “Yeah.”

            “Last year a colleague in Egypt sent us sixteen of those necklaces you saw. He found them in an antiques shop. He warned us to be careful.” She blew across her cup. “Before we could talk to him again, he died.”

            Uh-oh. “What do the necklaces do?”

            She shook her head. “It was a heart attack. Nothing to do with the necklaces. When they’re connected—they have two segments—when they’re connected . . .” She looked at the ceiling, avoiding my eyes. “They bring back the dead.”

            “Okay.” I’d heard stranger stories. “What does that mean, exactly?”

            She blinked, confused that I believed her. “Well, wearing the necklaces, with both pieces in place . . . people who have died can speak. They can talk about their lives. They can tell us so much!”

Shutter sat forward, suddenly excited. “Don’t you see what an opportunity that is? People from all across history, sharing the day-to-day details of their lives. Men, women, soldiers, farmers, teachers, slaves—it’s completely random, but everyone has a story to tell. And Harry and I, we can record them, sort them, add so much to our knowledge of the past—”

            “Wait.” I held up a hand. “So everyone up there is being possessed by someone from the past?”

            “Not possessed.” Shutter snorted. “Harry—Horace, but he hates that name—did it first. I talked to a woman from 13^th century France. Somehow she could speak English, using his brain. She talked for two hours, but I only got about half of it because I didn’t have any recording equipment—I had to figure out how to use my phone.” She laughed. “Anyway, at the end of it, she just fell asleep, and Horace didn’t remember anything. Then I—”

            I didn’t have time for a long dissertation. “Do they know they’re dead?”

            She shook her head. “They don’t seem to notice where they are. They only want to talk. They answer questions, but mostly they just . . . remember.”

            I thought about Ashley. “Do they ever fight going back?”

            “N-no.” Her fingers twitched. “Some take longer than others, and one man was sobbing for his son, but . . .”

            “What about Ashley Moore? What happened to her?” I leaned forward. “Who was inside her?”

            “I don’t—Harry talked to her. But when she left, she was in a hurry. We always take the necklaces back and lock them up—detached, in two separate boxes. But she took the necklace with her. I was talking to a farmer from ancient Greece—”

            I stood up. “Come on. I need to hear what she said.”

            “What’s going on? You can’t just—”

            “She’s been missing since your last ‘seminar.’” God help me, I used sarcastic air quotes. “We found her tonight, but she’s gone again. Whoever was inside her is still there, and I have to find her.” Again, I didn’t want to talk about the pistol and panic her. “Because I already told her mother that she was okay.”

Garn was annoyed. “We’re still in the middle of this! I’m getting some great memories from a bit actor in 1920s Hollywood—”

            Rachel stood next to me, her arms crossed menacingly. Her interview with the guy talking to his priest about his wife was apparently finished. “You must have them backed up and archived somewhere, right? Just show me.”

            “Let me.” Shutter seemed concerned now, as if I’d scared her. She led us to the desk in the front of the classroom, past a man murmuring what might have been an ancient Gregorian chant and a young woman rocking back and forth reciting nursery rhymes.

            “Why don’t you just have one or two students at a time?” I asked Shutter as she sat down and keyed her password into a laptop. “You could be missing the answer to what happened to Amelia Earhart, or the lost plays of Sophocles. Or what Curly really thought about Moe.”

            “Sophocles?” Rachel stared at me.

            “What?” I spread my hands. “I took Lit like everyone else. Oedipus Rex was the original detective story.”

            “Huh.” She grinned. “I learn something interesting about you all the time lately.”

            “We needed classroom space. It was a tradeoff with the administration. The more students we could attract, the more information we could gather. But, yes . . .” She gave a sigh. “It’s hard to manage. But it seemed worth it.”

            I looked at the students assembled around the room. Worth it? I’m not an academic. I could identify with the desire to learn secrets no one else knew—as long as they weren’t kept secret. And as long as nobody got hurt.

            This felt more like a lab experiment with human beings instead of hamsters.

            “Okay, here.” Shutter shoved a pair of earbuds into a port and tapped a file named “A.MOORE,” with Tuesday’s date. She stood up. “Don’t look at anything else.” Then she grabbed a recorder and headed to a student near to her husband.

            I planted one earbud and let Rachel sit in the chair, handing the other one to her. We had to huddle close, me on my knees close to her leg. It was kind of nice, except I wasn’t sure how long my knees would hold out.

            “—just don’t know what happened. Maybe . . . I don’t know.” It was Ashley’s voice, but low and hoarse, the way she’d sounded right before she ran. “Luke was with me. I was with him in high school. He was on my first job. Then I joined another crew. Okay, wait—Sue was—I met her in high school. She got pregnant and we got married, and that’s why I went on that first job. We busted up a gas station, the guy wasn’t paying, and we got everything in the register—almost $200, plus  fifty bucks more from Otto. But after that I went with Rod, he had three or four guys, and we ran together for a couple of years—”

            Rachel hit a key. “Okay, I think I’m having Sopranos flashbacks.”

            “Yeah. How long is this recording? Can you tell?”

            “Probably . . .” She hit some keys. “Close to two hours.”

            “Skip to the end.”

            She moved an arrow forward toward the end. “. . . and Nick Rasco was there. I didn’t expect him to be there. But Luke gave me a beer and everything seemed all right. And then—Nick had a gun. And Luke had a big gun. Luke Weaver, I knew him since we were kids. ‘What is this?’ And Nick said they knew about the money, and I told him about my kid being sick all the time and how much the medicine and the doctors cost, and they just listened and they didn’t say anything.”

            A deep breath. “So I got up. I was going to leave. And Luke shot me. Twice. I could feel the bullets. I thought about Sue. And my son. And Luke. Not Nick. I didn’t care about him. Luke. Son of a bitch. Luke.”

            The recording ended. Rachel and I looked at each other.

Hell. “He—she—could be going after Luke.”

            She nodded. “Like I said, the person inside her is—angry.”

“So we’ve got two names.” Luke Weaver and Nick Rasco. But not the person inside of Ashley. “That might be enough.”

            “We don’t know who he is or how long ago he got murdered. This could be from the 1930s.” Rachel grimaced. “We’re going to have to listen to this whole thing.”

            “Maybe there’s a transcript.” I stood up, my knees stiff, and went over to Marjorie Shutter.

Back at my apartment Rachel plugged the flash drive Shutter had given us into her laptop while I used mine to search for “Luke Weaver” and “Nick Rasco.”

            Rachel skimmed the transcript while I searched. “His name is David Wilton,” she said after a minute. “There’s an address on Taylor Street where he grew up. Greenwood High School. His favorite TV show was wrestling. Wait—and Miami Vice.”

            “So, the 80s.” I started typing more names into the search engine. “That was my favorite show too. And Alf.”

            “Alf?” She wrinkled her nose. “You almost had me when you talked about Sophocles.”

            “I was a kid, okay?” I plugged in the name.

            Twenty-nine obituaries for “David Wilton” in the Chicago area, but I found the one I was looking for on the third page: David Angelo Wilton, shot dead, body found in an alley. June 21, 2003. He was 29.

            The news story was sparse, and didn’t mention any mob ties. The obituary said he was survived by his wife, Susan Anne Renitti Wilton, and his son, David Jr. Also his mother.

            Luke Weaver was tougher to find. Not Nick Rasco. He’d died in 2009 of cancer.

            “Do you really think she’s—he . . .” Rachel shook her head. “Whatever. Going after this Luke guy?”

            “That’s my guess.” Luke’s name was the last word David Wilton—Ashley—had spoken on the recording. “I suppose he could be looking for his wife. You look for her online while I work on Luke.”

            There were too many questions. Why had Wilton managed to stay awake inside Ashley’s head? What had Ashley been doing for two days? If she was trying to find Luke, how was she looking for him?

            Wilton might not know about Google. The internet was still fairly new when he’d been killed, and he probably wasn’t the kind of guy who’d spent a lot of time reading about technology. I was stereotyping, of course. Maybe gangsters in the early 2000s were all over the internet, setting up websites for gambling or scams or porn and prostitution.

            He had Ashley’s cash and credit cards. And a handgun. But he probably couldn’t figure out her smartphone to call an Uber.

            “Uh-oh.” Rachel looked up from her laptop. “I think I found Sue.”

            “Why ‘uh-oh’?”

            She spun her computer around. “Her last name is Weaver.”

            Oh hell. Rachel had found a marriage notice for Susan and Luca Anthony Weaver, Jan. 2, 2004. “That was fast. Her husband dies, and—”

            Rachel punched me. Hard. “She was a single mom with a sick kid. She probably didn’t have a lot of options. Or know that he killed her first husband.”

            Excellent points. I rubbed my arm. “At least we only have one place to look now. You go forward, starting with his childhood. I’ll go back, starting with his murder. Maybe we’ll meet in the middle.”

            There was only so much we could find on the internet, but we needed someplace to start in the real world. “Sounds like a plan.” Rachel started tapping. “I need a beer. Want a Coke?”

            We sipped our beverages as we searched. I have access to police files because I help the CPD deal with vampires. I’m not supposed to use them for other work, but the cops who knew me—well, they didn’t exactly trust me, but they wouldn’t ask me too many questions. Aside from vampires, they don’t want to know too much about supernatural doings in the city.

            So I got Wilton’s police record. A dozen arrests for crimes from trespassing up to misdemeanor assault, but no jail time. I found the location where his body had been found, and tried crosschecking with anything I could find on Nick Rasco and Luke Weaver. I figured they wouldn’t have transported him too far. But nothing came up, and the neighborhood had changed enough in almost 15 years that it probably wouldn’t have given me much to go on anyway.

            I looked up Weaver. He had a similar arrest record, shorter, but no jail time, and nothing since his marriage to Sue. Maybe he’d gone straight?

            I couldn’t find a current address for him. It’s not that unusual, even with the specialized search engines I use as a P.I. Privacy is a thing, even on the internet.

            I looked up at Rachel. “Anything?”

            “His high school is gone, and most of his old neighborhood has been gentrified. I’ve been skimming the transcript for clues—is that what you detectives call them?” She winked at me. “Names, places, but I’m getting nowhere.”

            I groaned. “Same here. Maybe we’re looking at this wrong.” I pushed my laptop away. “Look, you’ve just come back from the dead. The last thing you remember is being murdered. Where do you go first?”

            “The cemetery?” Rachel shook her head. “No. He doesn’t know where he’s buried. Probably the last place he remembered—where he was murdered.”

            “So he goes there, but he can’t find it. And the neighborhood’s different.”

            She nodded. “Home. Wherever I lived when I was alive.”

            I had an address for Wilton from one of his arrests. They probably would have moved when Sue married Weaver, but I found a number. It was worth a shot.

            “Hello? It’s late.”

            She was right. It was close to 9:30. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m trying to get hold of Susan Weaver? It’s important.”

            “Oh, she doesn’t live here anymore.” The woman sounded friendly enough. “I’m her sister. What’s it about?”

            What to tell her? “Is there any way you could give me her number? It’s about her husband.”

            “Is Luke okay?” She sounded alarmed. “Was he in an accident?”

            “He’s fine.” Both of them. For now, at least as far as I knew. “It’s important that I talk to them as soon as possible. I’m a private detective.”

            “Oh.” Now she was suspicious. “Well—why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll have them call you?”

            Better luck than I’d hoped for. I gave her my name and number, then set my phone on the table to wait.

            Rachel grinned. “’It’s about your husband’? Pretty smooth.”

            I shrugged. “Sometimes my mouth is good on its feet.”

            She snorted. “Riiight.”

           

Ten minutes later my phone buzzed. Unknown number. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”

            “Hello?” The voice was male, raspy. “My wife’s sister says you called her about me. What’s this all about?”

            I’d tried to figure out a story. Unfortunately, everything I’d come up with sounded more unbelievable that the truth. “It’s about David Wilton.”

            A long moment passed. “He’s dead.”

            “I know.” I hesitated. “Look, it’s possible that a young woman named Ashley will show up at your house thinking that you’re responsible for his death. She’s armed. I’m trying to stop her before anyone gets hurt.”

            I waited for him to hang up. One second . . . two . . .

“This is crazy.” Weaver’s voice was tense.

            “I know. But it’s true. Can we meet?”

            “You want to come to my house?” Weaver growled. “Fine. I’m not leaving."

            “That’s fine. Uh, where are you?”