Laurel did not look at Jackie when Jackie stopped a few feet in front of her. She sat on the hood of the car, feet on the bumper, her elbows propped on her knees. The cigarette between her fingers glowed for a brief moment in agitation before leaving her mouth.
Jackie sighed loudly and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, what gives?”
She finally flicked her gaze upward. “There’s something here.”
Jackie closed her eyes. Great. First a boy drained of blood and now something supernatural. She stepped up and sat down on the hood next to Laurel. “Give me one.” She didn’t really want a cigarette. Six months without and she had kicked the habit yet again, but it was one of those camaraderie things. “So what the hell is it?”
“Hush,” Laurel said, putting a finger to her lips. “He’s close and might hear you.”
Whatever it was, it was dead. Being quiet didn’t much matter for Jackie. Still, Laurel actually looked frightened, and that was enough to be worried about. The spooky stuff rarely did that, so when it did you paid attention. “Sorry. You want some pics of the area?” When she nodded, Jackie waved Denny King over and had him go run off a gigabyte’s worth of photos in the direction Laurel had pointed. While he was doing that, Jackie grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the car.
“Come on. Come get a look at our boy.” It was best to get her mind off whatever it was that had scared her. It was not the first time supernatural shit had hit the fan, and much like the normal shit in life, Jackie knew you had to just wipe it off and keep walking. She prayed to herself that whatever was out there stayed away from the case.
Pernetti had thankfully vacated the scene when they stepped up to Archie. It was difficult to get the deflated-balloon image out of Jackie’s head. Someone had just drained the life right out of him. What sort of person were they dealing with here? The familiar knot of self-righteous anger began to burn in her gut. This was a fucked-up guy they were after. The sort that needed a swift and permanent removal from this world.
“What an awful thing to do to someone, and a child at that,” Laurel said, squatting down next to Jackie beside the body. “They finished with him?”
She nodded. “Yeah, think so. Go ahead.”
Laurel reached out and laid her fingertips on the boy’s hand. A moment later, she jerked back. “Shit. It’s here, too.”
“It?” Jackie stood, half expecting the boy to sit up from the tree. “What it?”
“The… spirit or whatever it was. Its residue is on the boy.” She rocked for a moment on the balls of her feet and then tentatively touched Archie again, lingering longer this time. The firm set of her mouth turned into a frown.
Jackie stared down at her. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Laurel pulled back and gave her an “excuse me” look. “Sorry. I hate when your freaky ghost shit gets involved in a case. So are you saying the thing out there had something to do with Archie’s death?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t even think it’s the same spirit. This one is… bad news, Jackie. Really bad.”
The knot in Jackie’s stomach dissolved into something else. Trepidation. “And the one out there was nice in comparison to this?”
“Different.” She got to her feet, leaning lightly against Jackie’s arm. The effort had obviously drained her. “Whatever this is, it isn’t here anymore. The thing out there…” Laurel dug her fingers into Jackie’s arm for support and perhaps a little courage. “Goddess help me, Jackie. It was so strong. I felt like I’d opened a door to the other side.”
“But you didn’t see anything?”
“No. I barely kept from passing out. This sweetie of a guy noticed and snapped me out of it.”
Jackie stepped back, staring at her partner. “Just happened to notice you were in some psychic trance communing with the dead?”
She gave Jackie a dirty look before glancing over her shoulder. Jackie turned and saw the local sheriff standing behind them.
“Agents,” he said, nodding at them with a curious look. “Have you found anything useful?”
“No, nothing just yet,” Jackie replied with a smile and stepped between him and Laurel. Look at me, Sheriff, not the psychic. “It’s an incredibly clean scene.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what it seems like to me. Like someone just dropped out of the sky and set the kid under the tree and then took off again. Nobody has seen anything that we can tell.”
There was something all right, but ghosts were the last thing Jackie was about to mention. The blood-draining aspect to this case was enough to turn the media sharks into a frenzy. They didn’t need any more help.
The sheriff excused himself, and the agents made their way out from under the tree. Laurel followed in a daze, glancing every few seconds toward the crowd. Jackie needed to take a few minutes to get updates from everyone and make sure the parents had been contacted. Someone was picking them up, and Jackie had a few choice words in mind for them. When Laurel absently bumped into her for the third time, Jackie turned on her.
“Is this as bad as you’re making it look? Because you’re starting to worry me here.”
Laurel’s mouth scrunched up. “Maybe? I don’t know, Jackie. I’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s like discovering an F6 tornado.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. It’s fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Okay?”
Jackie nodded. That made some sense but did not do much to ease the nervousness gnawing at her. Jackie didn’t care for spiritual involvement in her cases. Spirits didn’t follow the usual rules, and dealing with them generally fell outside typical crime-solving procedures. Worse, they were a foe you could not see or hear. Ghosts were annoying like that. “You want to go have another look around? I’m really not liking the fact nobody can tell how the boy was put there. We should check out those pics Denny took, too.”
“Sure. Let’s do that.”
The crowd was nosy and morbid, and the continuing dance of clouds and sunlight was beginning to play hell with Jackie’s head. She pointed a finger at the first reporter who caught sight of her. “Don’t talk to me now. I’ll make a statement when I’m done.”
Laurel chuckled as the reporter stopped in his tracks and let them wander on. “I wish I could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pull up a look of murderous rage at will. It would be handy.”
She shrugged and moved on, steering them around the back side of the crowded parking lot. Laurel knew as well as Jackie where she pulled that feeling from, and Laurel wisely said nothing further. They didn’t speak at all while they made their way around the hundred or so loosely gathered people, casually scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes it was just a look someone would make, a momentary pause when they walked by or looked their way, and suspicion would be roused. But Jackie saw nothing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she kept watch on Laurel, looking for any signs of the weird “ghost trance” she would get into when she communicated with the dead. The maple stood in the center of the field like a green shroud of death. No way was someone going to be carrying a body under there without leaving any signs. A snapped twig, a footprint, there had to be something. Finally, they neared the loosely parked group of FBI vehicles. “Sense anything odd at all?”
“Nope. Sorry, it’s gone now.”
“What about your handy little helper? The cute guy.”
“No. He’s gone, but he wasn’t a ghost, Jackie. He was as real as you and me.”
“Probably. It’s still suspiciously convenient,” she said. “I’m also betting that a ghost didn’t drain the blood out of that boy. Right?”
“They don’t do that, but you’re being paranoid.”
Jackie smiled. “Yep. That’s why I’m in charge. Now I’m going to go have a little chat with the oblivious fuckups known as Archie’s parents and let them know-”
“Jackie,” Laurel said, laying a hand on Jackie’s arm. “Take the reporter. I’ll talk with Archie’s parents.”
“You saying I don’t know how to give them the once-over?”
Laurel gave her a little shove. “That’s exactly the issue. Go beat up on the reporters. We both know problem parents are not your strong suit. We don’t want to be in the papers for the wrong reason.”
Jackie frowned but walked toward the TV reporters anyway. It paid to have a perceptive partner at times.