Fade (Paxton Locke Book 1) Read online

  Carlos Gallardo is one of the associate investigators for De La Rosa Brothers and just a few years older than I am. We hit it off pretty well, despite the fact that he married young and already has a couple of kids under his belt. His wife, Karen, is Esteban’s niece and serves as the accountant for the agency. Before I met them, Carlos worked with San Diego PD. At my age, he’s not anywhere near retirement age. I’m guessing Karen had something to do with it — policing is an ever-dangerous occupation these days. The danger presented by following wayward husbands and looking for runaway children pales in comparison to his prior occupation.

  Carlos and Karen, along with Kent and Esteban, are the only people who know the full truth of the horrors that happened to me and the abilities that I have as a result. I suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that Kent and Esteban leaned toward psychological trauma when I tried to convince them during the investigation. Considering the fact that they’d had three weeks to build the foundation of the case before I woke from my coma, their chagrin was obvious in that first interview as I slowly and methodically tore down the nascent construction of their case against Mother.

  They couldn’t believe me until they had a more concrete example. By contrast, Carlos and his wife were more immediately accepting.

  Karen considers herself a bruja blanca, a white witch. I’ve never seen her do much more than burn incense and play with cards, but she makes up for any lack of true ‘magic’ with a pretty impressive library. Maybe her attitude is a front, but she still spends most of her free time crawling around used book stores and estate sales. If there’s anything weird out there she hasn’t heard of, she can probably find it, somewhere. I’m not sure how that situation works out with church attendance — the De La Rosas are some of the most faithful people I’ve ever met, Karen included — but it works for her. I guess Father Rosado is a bit more laid back about that sort of thing than Pastor Schmidt was back home. If I had to make my guess, it’s a cultural thing — residual mysticism from a time before the conquistadores brought Catholicism to the Americas with the sword and the gun.

  No judgment here — I’m the one who talks to ghosts, after all. So, while Kent is my intel source in the mundane world, when things get weird, I turn to Karen. More often than not, she gets results. At just after eight A.M. Pacific, I got her on the phone.

  “Edie. That’s all he said?”

  “Yup,” I agreed.

  “What was the context?”

  I thought it over for a second. “He said she was bad, she was looking for him. Oh, and that she killed them.”

  Karen hummed in interest. “So not a ghost, then. And it’s a she?”

  “Right.”

  “You always ask the most interesting questions, dear.” She clucks her tongue. “Give me a couple of days, I’ll dig around and see what I got.”

  I held back a sigh. Call it a hunch, but I was starting to get the distinct sense that my current situation was leaning toward the time-sensitive side of the urgency spectrum. Still, it wasn’t fair to rush Karen, particularly when she was doing the digging as a favor.

  “It’s always faster, faster with you, isn’t it?” She laughed. “You need to come for a visit soon, the little ones miss you. And I’ve been talking you up to one of my girlfriends.”

  “No rush.” I resisted the urge to grit my teeth. “And no comment.”

  Karen laughed again. “All right. Maybe one of these days. I’ll text you if I find anything out.”

  I hesitated, then continued, “Hey, Kent’s looking into it on his end, but just on the off-chance that you guys have better Google-fu than I do, can you have one of the guys dig around and see if they can find anything on a kid named Bobby Gennaro? He may or may not be on a missing person’s report.”

  “How’s that spelled?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I admitted. “I didn’t stop to check his ID.”

  Karen laughed again. “Well, we will try to do our best with the limited amount you have to offer, sweetie.”

  “Fair enough,” I laughed in reply. “And thanks again. I really do appreciate it.”

  When I was a kid, time seemed to move at molasses speed. The biggest change I’ve noticed since becoming at least a marginal adult is that the syrup is much less viscous. The drawback to that is that urgency becomes accelerated. I don’t understand why I feel that way now. Bobby is already dead and Shirley Jackson’s house is no longer haunted. My work is complete. I should feel perfectly happy with chilling where I am, or pulling up stakes and moving on. Florida’s nice this time of year. And the beaches are usually ghost-free. Soaking up some rays and burning off the chill of my meeting with Bobby is just what the doctor ordered.

  But some part of me doesn’t want to give it up.

  She’s bad, mister. She killed us, and then . . .

  Killed us. So somewhere, presumably, ‘us’ awaits discovery. Depending on what Kent digs up for me, maybe someone has already found them. If not, does Bobby have a family frantic with worry? Or did ‘she’ wipe them all out?

  Whatever the case, justice is beyond the scope of the authorities. Something that can so terrify a ghost is unlikely to be within the capabilities of the SWAT team. And if the Vatican has a team of ninja-exorcists available on call, I don’t have their number.

  The little voice in the back of my head popped up and noted that Bobby wasn’t far off from the age that I was when my life went off the rails. I was just lucky enough to survive.

  Sometimes I hated that little guy.

  I’ve planted seeds with my friends that should bear fruit at some point if there’s anything to find. The fact that the Internet was a bust for me may not mean anything. The police, anymore, tend to be close-lipped with the press, particularly if they have yet to catch a suspect. If there’s anything out there about Bobby, Kent will find it for me. Karen’s search is more of a long shot, so if I’m not going to wait for results, that’s the avenue I need to investigate. My other source isn’t quite as friendly as Karen. In some ways, it’s even more of a long shot.

  But.

  Depending on how things go, and what kind of mood Mother is in, there’s a real possibility that it might pay off.

  If I wasn’t going to sit and wait, my next-best option was to visit my mother. As unpalatable as that was for a whole host of reasons, it felt right.

  Time to hit the road.

  Growing up, I always expected prisons to look like imposing, Gothic castles with dark stone turrets and gargoyles. You know — Shawshanky. The nondescript, concrete block construction of Rockville Penitentiary could have been anything from an office park to a warehouse, so long as you ignored the fences and barbed wire. It seemed altogether too bright and cheery of a place to house my mother, but it was what it was. The prosecutors argued for harsher environs, but the law, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t seem to believe that women are desirous of the harshest punishment. Even when the crimes are notoriously heinous, some external force must have driven them to such atrocities.

  During sentencing, I’d gotten a distinct sense that the judge would have been much more lenient had there not been so many cameras in the courtroom. As much as the media has been the bane of my existence these past few years, I have them to thank for that, I suppose. Of course, there were harder prisons than this — and ones closer to home — but by the vagaries of the justice system, she’d ended up here.

  Myself, I’d have argued for the death penalty, or at the very least, a lifetime of solitary confinement, but I’m neither a disinterested party or entirely innocent. In the eyes of the law, I’m not guilty of any crimes. In my own eyes my failures made me just as accountable, and the stain of what I witnessed remains on my soul.

  In the end it’s the kind of stain that I can never erase, no matter how many freebie house cleanings I do for the Shirley Jacksons of the world.

  Esteban’s priest has tried to talk to me about that sentiment more than once. I got the sense that there was more behind his wor
ds than the usual platitudes, but I brushed his entreaties off. Forgiveness doesn’t feel merited. It would be one thing if I could tell myself that I lacked the ability to stop what Mother had been doing, but in point of fact, I had stopped her. My action had simply come too late to make a difference for my father.

  I live my life in the belief that I am irredeemable, regardless of any future actions on my part. Oh, the priest told me about things like Saul and the Damascus Road. Part of me wanted to listen to him. But my more pragmatic side knew that my chance was gone.

  The woman inside of this unimposing concrete fortress saw fit to that.

  The Bible says to honor your mother and father. My father is dead. My mother is to blame. I planned to try my best, but I could make no promises.

  I took a final, deep breath of fresh air and steeled my nerves to walk inside.

  Chapter 5

  My mother is in her early fifties, though she can easily pass for a much younger woman. Her unlined skin and the blond waterfall that brushes her shoulders as she strolls into the meeting room have a lot to do it, but it’s mostly how she moves.

  Even in shapeless khaki prison garb she comes across as radiant. Mother seems to be leading, rather than led by, the guards who flank her on either side. She reaches her seat across from me and sits down. Two rectangular tables pushed together to form a square sit in the exact center of the room. A low plate of clear Lexan bolted into the seam between the two pieces of furniture establishes a visible and palpable border.

  There are few benefits of being the son of a celebrity criminal. One of them is not having to meet with said criminal in the same Plexiglas phone booths as everyone else. The staff explains the consequences of any move to the opposite side of the table in excruciating detail every time I sign into the prison. The only real urge I feel to cross the barrier is my desire to strangle her with my bare hands. There have been several times in the past where that would have been worth the beat down from the guards.

  As the guards stepped away to assume their positions on either side of the door, Mother smiled and says, “Oh, Paxton, my dear boy, how are you?” She lifts a hand, as though to tousle my hair, but a cleared throat from one of the guards and the tug of the waist cuffs remind her that such things are not allowed, no matter how open this meeting room is.

  The prison may not have looked intimidating on the outside, but they were serious about their work. That, if nothing else, gave me some peace of mind that this place would suffice to contain her. But that doesn’t stop me from making periodic checkups.

  Unable to touch me, her eyes glittered with barely-concealed malice. She settled for a verbal assault. “I do wish you’d do something different with your hair, dear. It looks so unflattering.”

  My hair has been bone-white since I woke up from my coma at sixteen years old — yet another thing my mother is responsible for. I prefer it buzzed close to my scalp not out of any sense of vanity, but out of practicality. If I keep it short enough, I can maintain the cut with a beard trimmer and not have to worry about things like combs or hair products. I see enough of the dead to realize that time marches ever onward. The few minutes a day I don’t have to spend on hair is an investment I can make in other pursuits.

  And yes, it’s a haircut that Mother would never have approved of, back in the day. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that rubbing her nose in it, though childish, was one factor.

  The air of sweetness and light that she’s exuded since her imprisonment is markedly different from the mother I remember growing up. There’s a reason for that. I shudder to think what someone as amoral as the monster before me could do in a place like a prison with the push.

  It was a close-run thing in the courtroom, so many years ago. There were limits to how much she could tweak things, given the cameras and court reporter’s transcript, but she tried. My first push had weakened her, for a time, or I imagine she simply would have commanded the personnel at the jail to let her walk free. As the trial drew close to the halfway point, something told me that she was growing closer to recovery.

  In desperation, I drew near to her one day. I summoned up all the anger and sorrow within me and pushed harder than any other time in my life up to that point.

  What would Dad say? I’d whispered in her ear. The words themselves didn’t seem as important as the meaning I put behind them. My father, God rest his soul, was kind, honest, and humble. In retrospect, I can’t see how a man such as he ever saw anything in my mother, but I suppose she was as much a chameleon with him as she was with the rest of the world.

  Pushing Mother to stop in the midst of killing my father had hit me like a ton of bricks and put me into a hospital bed. I guess I had recovered, as well, because my second push just gave me a migraine for three days.

  What had begun as a trial wrought with proclamations and lawyerly machinations became something else entirely as my mother openly and honestly confessed to every crime arrayed before her and more, to an incredulous prosecuting attorney. Her flabbergasted defense attorney protested and objected, to no avail. The judge allowed him to leave the case when it became evident that his client had no desire to defend herself against the charges. After a public defender replaced him the gleeful prosecuting attorney continued his questioning. My mother dug herself a deeper hole with every word.

  I’ve only seen the effects of the push on two living people in my life. My father’s eyes were desperate, pleading, and ultimately relieved as my mother’s work upon him did not deliver the results she sought. My mother’s eyes shone with hate and repressed fury even as she cheerfully described her long train of abuses.

  The look in her eyes today puts the lie to the sugar of her words. The compulsion won’t allow her to say something overtly harmful or bend anyone to her will. That’s so much like the gentle kindness of my father that my heart aches at the memory of him.

  Across the table, I sense rather than see the gentle hum of the push, binding her will tight. Every time I visit, I worry that some aspect of it will begin to unravel, but it seemed as strong as ever.

  Even with the enduring strength of the push, Mother constantly schemes and tests her limits. Reminding me of my hair is her way of slipping a subtle knife into my heart and reminding me of the night that Dad died. I kept my face blank and refused to let her see the effect she had on me. Despite that, she smirked with something not unlike satisfaction. If anyone knows the secrets behind your face, it’s your mother.

  Mother smiled broadly as though reading my thoughts. “So, what’s the occasion, my dear? My commissary account has plenty of money in it, you needn’t trouble yourself for little old me.”

  Another knife. The one drawback of pushing my mother to honesty was the attention the trial drew afterward. A domestic disturbance ending in the death of a spouse is a non-event in the eyes of the press — more so when the female spouse does the killing. A murder trial where the defendant claims she used ritual magic to try to force her child to kill her husband in a blood sacrifice? That’s ratings dynamite. Years later, she still gets fan mail. I’d assume there are money orders as well, given that I’m not financing her.

  One of the message boards dubbed my courtroom appearance as ‘Elfin.’ I buzzed my own shoulder-length hair not long after. Ghosts are bad enough — who wants to deal with a bunch of black witch groupies? Even with the buzz cut, I’m recognized more often than is comfortable.

  I shook off thoughts of hair dye and forced myself back on track.

  “I had some questions for you. I thought maybe we could make a trade.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I see. And what do you think you can offer that I’d like to have, dear boy?”

  I spread my hands and shrugged. “Within reason. If your fan club is keeping you stocked with Twinkies, I suppose that’s off the list.” Two can play at this game — my mother was a health fiend when I was growing up. Other kids tried smoking on the sly; Dad and I would sneak off to the movies and sate ourselves on fat and processed su
gar. It made up for the double-digit servings of kale and arugula we had to choke down each week. I hope prison food is driving her batty.

  She gave me a broad smile. “There are only two things I want. I want my book and I want my push.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m pretty sure I said within reason, psycho.”

  She brought a hand to her mouth and tried to hold back her giggle. “Oh, so earnest. You’re just a bold little paladin spitting in the face of death, aren’t you?” Her laughter finally tinkled forth. “My, my, how things work out in the end.”

  I sighed and made as if to leave. Her face flashed through an unreadable mix of emotions. She said, quickly, “Wait. Wait. Ask your question.”

  “Cooperating freely? That’s not like you.”

  She beamed. “I’m in the process of rehabilitation, my dear. Who knows? Maybe one day parole will be forthcoming and we can be a family again.”

  I resisted the urge to respond to that and simply said, “What’s big and bad enough to put the scare into a ghost?”

  Mother adopted a thoughtful expression and leaned forward. “Interesting. Very interesting. I could refer to my book—” I frowned and shook my head firmly. “Pity. Well, not many things due to the shade’s inherent incorporeal nature. You yourself should know just how difficult they are even to touch. Do you have any other insight?”

  She’s into it now — her Professor Locke voice is in full effect. All she needs is the reading glasses that used to habitually perch on her nose and it would be as though she’d stepped back a decade in time.

  My debate on what else to tell her wasn’t an easy one. Ostensibly, she’s secured. I visit more frequently than I’d like just to assure myself that the push holds and I’ve established that. But all too often, information is power. I’m reluctant to give her much more.

  “It said ‘she’ was after him.” What the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. “It called her Edie.”