A Game of Ghosts

‘I’ve been tasked with looking for your husband. It’s kind of my business to find out as much as I can.’

  ‘Sure, I understand. Jaycob was sad about the end of our marriage. Not angry, just sad.’

  ‘Did he try to change your mind?’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your mind wasn’t for changing.’

  He could almost see her smiling.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is Jaycob still sad?’

  ‘Yes, I believe he is. I wish he’d find someone else, but he hasn’t.’

  ‘Some women would simply have cut off communication under those circumstances.’

  ‘I fell out of love with Jaycob, but I never stopped liking him. Talking with him occasionally, checking that he’s okay, makes me feel better.’

  ‘Less guilty.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Parker didn’t suggest that this situation might be contributing to Eklund’s inability to move on after the divorce. He didn’t want to alienate Budny.

  ‘Does Jaycob ever talk about his work during your conversations?’

  ‘No. But then, he never did. Perhaps that was one of our problems.’

  ‘Any friends with whom he was close?’

  ‘No. Jaycob was always pretty solitary. He stayed in touch with some of his old police buddies, but only in the sense of joining them for drinks once or twice a year. Jaycob doesn’t have any real friends.’

  ‘What about hobbies, or pastimes?’

  ‘Ghosts.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Jaycob has a fascination with the paranormal. He reads books on it, goes to conferences.’

  ‘Is this a long-standing interest?’

  ‘I think it’s grown stronger since the divorce, but it was always present.’

  ‘General, or something specific?’

  ‘I can’t really say. I just know he spends a lot of time and money going places, talking to people. He doesn’t share the details with me. Not that I ask anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It gives me the creeps, and he didn’t seem to welcome my interest.’

  ‘And did Jaycob say why he preferred not to tell you more about what he was doing?’

  This time, it took her a while to answer.

  ‘Only in the last couple of months.’

  ‘And what was his reason?’

  ‘He said it would be safer for me if I didn’t know.’

  ‘Those were his exact words?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Parker thought that might have explained the anxiety in her voice on the message she left, but he had to be sure.

  ‘Mrs. Budny, are you worried about your ex-husband?’

  ‘Mr. Parker, I’ve always been worried about him.’

  Before ending the call, he gave Budny assurances that he would call her if he discovered anything helpful, and she similarly agreed to get in touch with him if Eklund made contact.

  He next called the number Ross had given him, and clarified one or two details from the Eklund file with the agent. That call lasted less than a minute.

  His final call should, he thought, really have been made before he spoke with Milena Budny, but he didn’t think the recipient would have appreciated an early wake-up. His name was Art Currier, and he lived up by Seboomook Lake, on the doorstep of the state’s Great North Woods. Currier was retired, liked a drink, and enjoyed sleeping late. He was also a useful source of information on the area for men like Parker, and was willing to do legwork for twenty bucks an hour, as long as it didn’t get in the way of his sleep.

  Currier answered on the fifth ring, if a yawn could be considered an answer.

  ‘It’s Charlie Parker.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You could sound more pleased.’

  ‘This is me sounding pleased.’

  ‘No wonder you live alone. I have some work for you.’

  ‘Then talk.’

  According to Ross’s file, Eklund owned a cabin near Baker Lake, ten miles or so from Seboomook. Ross hadn’t checked it because the place was remote and didn’t have a phone line, but he obviously assumed that Parker would. It was a hell of a drive to take in winter on the off chance that Eklund might be there, which seemed unlikely given the current weather, but Art Currier owned a snowmobile and knew the whole area better than Parker. Currier agreed to check on Eklund’s ‘camp’, as he termed it in true Maine fashion, and get back to Parker later that day.

  With his calls made, Parker headed for Vermont. The weather was bad, although the storm was easing as it neared the coast. He listened to music on the drive, letting each album play in full, resisting the lure of the shuffle on his iPod. He thought this might be part of the reason for the resurgence in vinyl: at just twenty minutes each side, it wasn’t worth leaving the room to go and do something else. You might as well just sit and listen and, hey, since you’d sat through the first side, what was the point in neglecting the second?

  He let the music wash over him, and thought of Sam. He had not seen his daughter in two weeks, although he had spoken with her over the phone and via Skype, which was increasingly how they communicated. When Rachel first moved out, taking Sam with her, she and Parker had come to an informal agreement about access and visits, and the arrangement had mostly worked. But Sam had been put in jeopardy by her father’s actions on two separate occasions over the past year. It had not been Parker’s intention to place her in harm’s way, and in neither case could he have anticipated or prevented what transpired, but the blame was his to bear. Those two events had altered the balance of his relationship with Rachel. He knew she still cared about him, and understood the depth of his feelings for Sam, but she was no longer as willing as before to entrust their daughter to his care. The negotiations were ongoing, and he was doing his utmost to ensure that they did not become fractious, an approach that seemed to surprise Rachel, as though she had somehow expected him to put up more of a fight.

  But it wasn’t about fighting. Sam was special. She had to be protected.

  And she was, although the precise nature of that protection remained to be understood.

  It was close to three thirty p.m. when Parker finally arrived at Emily Ferguson’s practice on Spear Street, which was based in a house equidistant from the University of Vermont and the adjacent Burlington Country Club. Sam had already gone into Ferguson’s room for her session. Rachel was sitting outside in the waiting room, flicking through the latest edition of Vanity Fair. She greeted him with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and they sat opposite each other with the table between, just in case either one of them needed to pick it up to use as a shield.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. The weather’s terrible, and Emily said she’d prefer to speak with us after Sam’s session anyway.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Still fine.’

  ‘You sound almost disappointed.’

  ‘Don’t start.’

  ‘Sorry.’ And he was.

  She fiddled with the drawstring on her hooded UV sweatshirt.

  ‘It’s not normal,’ she said, not for the first time.

  ‘I guess not.’

  She dropped the drawstring.

  ‘I’ve been offered a contract with the university,’ she said.

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Three years, with the likelihood of an extension if all goes well. I’ll be attached to the Falls Laboratory as part of the biobehavioral subprogram.’

  ‘Will I sound stupid if I confess I don’t know what biobehavioral means?’

  ‘It’s the study of the interaction of behavior and biological processes. That’s the simple answer.’

  ‘Thanks for not overcomplicating it.’

  ‘I’ll be specializing in the neural systems underlying fear.’ She looked at him now. ‘I figure I’ve been dealing with so much of it that I should try to understand it better.’

  ‘And get paid for it.??
?

  She allowed him a smile.

  ‘You’re such an asshole.’

  ‘I know.’

  The smile faded.

  ‘My father thinks I should go to court,’ she said. ‘He believes we need to formalize our arrangements for Sam.’

  ‘Your father wants me to fall off the edge of the world and disappear.’

  Rachel didn’t try to deny it. Parker’s relationship with her father was too far gone for that.

  ‘He cares a lot about Sam. What happened with the abduction – well, it nearly broke him. It nearly broke us all.’

  ‘You don’t have to go to court.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You tell me what works best for you and Sam, and I’ll agree. If Sam is concerned, I’ll talk her round. She’ll understand.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Being reasonable. No, being – God, I don’t know – so neutral about it all.’

  There it was again. Sometimes he thought she might have preferred it if he raged and shouted, or tried to stand up for his rights. If he did, it would probably have made it easier for her. It would have proved that her father was correct, and next thing anyone knew they’d all be knee-deep in lawyers.

  ‘Because I want her to be safe as much as you do. Because I love her.’

  There was no time for further discussion. The door to Parker’s right opened, and Sam emerged. Ferguson stood behind her. She was a round, curvy woman who, for Parker, brought to mind a figure assembled from a selection of soft fruits. Aside from her apparent inability to raise children who were not a threat to the stability of nations, he found her patronizing, and strangely unyielding despite her fleshiness. Smug was the word that sprang most frequently to mind when he thought of her, although he tried to think of her as little as possible. All this he did his best to hide from Sam, as he didn’t want to prejudice his daughter against a woman who, whatever her flaws, was trying to help.

  Sam gave him a hug as he rose, and he ruffled her hair as he hugged her back.

  ‘How you doing, Bear?’ he asked.

  ‘Good, Bear,’ she replied.

  ‘Bear’ had become an occasional thing with her lately. He wasn’t sure why.

  ‘If you’ll just grab a seat, Sam, we won’t be too long,’ said Ferguson.

  Sam took the chair her father had just vacated and removed a book from her bag. She was working her way through the Encyclopedia Brown stories, and only had two or three left to go. Whenever they were in the car together, and someone cut them off or drove like an idiot, she would now order her father to ‘tootle him with vigor.’ It didn’t matter if the driver was male or female: ‘tootle him with vigor’ was the standard response.

  Ferguson greeted Parker, and invited him and Rachel to join her in the consulting room. The space was bright and cheerful, with painted shelves that mixed clinical volumes and children’s books. The pictures on the wall were mostly landscapes, along with some original illustrations from modern YA fiction, although nothing threatening or potentially disturbing.

  The initial discussion with Ferguson went much as Parker had anticipated. Sam, much to the frustration of two-thirds of the people in the room, continued to show no signs of trauma from the events surrounding her abduction. She claimed to have little clear memory of what had occurred beyond being snatched and taken to a motel room. Before she could come to any harm, her captor had started bleeding from multiple sites, and Sam used this opportunity to run away and seek help. This was much the same as what she had told the police, and later Parker himself. When he tried to press her further, both over Skype and in person – although only in Rachel’s absence – Sam responded to his questions with a single gesture: she placed a finger over her lips as an injunction to silence. Parker knew what that meant. He could recall the words she had whispered to him when he first became aware that his daughter was different.

  ‘They’re always listening. We have to be careful, Daddy, because they’ll hear. They’ll hear, and they’ll come …’

  Ferguson was speaking to him, but he’d missed it, so lost was he in his own thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What was that?’

  Rachel glanced at him with barely concealed annoyance. Ferguson, meanwhile, was being even more patronizing than usual, as though Parker were a slow learner who had to be coaxed along the road to greater understanding.

  ‘I was just remarking that I strongly suspect Sam worries about you.’

  ‘Really? I try not to discuss my work with her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s more aware of it than you believe.’

  If only you knew, he thought.

  Something of this must have revealed itself in his face, because Ferguson’s placid expression faltered for the first time since the conversation had begun, briefly revealing a potentially more interesting side to her character; that, or she was simply wondering how anyone could be so dumb and still walk in a straight line without help.

  ‘She watched a man die in your presence,’ Ferguson continued. ‘A man who was about to kill you.’

  ‘I understand that.’ He decided to give her a brief flash of teeth. ‘It wasn’t intentional on my part.’

  ‘Jesus …’ said Rachel.

  ‘I’m not sure you understand the gravity of the situation in relation to your child,’ said Ferguson.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Parker. ‘Stop seeing her? I hardly see enough of her as it is.’

  ‘I—’ Ferguson began, but Parker interrupted her.

  ‘I could find another profession, I suppose. Child psychology might be an option, except my tendency is to try to solve problems, not create them where they don’t exist.’

  Now Ferguson bared her teeth back at him. Good, thought Parker. For the first time he was being willfully difficult in his responses, even obstructive, but he was sick of this. He had enough guilt already without Ferguson trying to add to it. He knew his daughter better than any of them, and even he didn’t really know her at all.

  ‘I’m not sure that attitude is helpful,’ said Ferguson.

  Parker forced himself to relax. Through the window behind Ferguson, he watched a breeze carry flurries of snow from the bare branch of a tree. A robin alighted amid the flakes, its feathers ruffling. Most headed south for winter, but a few always stayed. This one was a mature adult. It was either lucky or tough, because robins were prey for squirrels, snakes, cats, ravens, crows and just about every kind of raptor. Few lived longer than a couple of years.

  ‘Again, what do you want me to do?’ Parker asked, and saw Ferguson exchange a look with Rachel. Go away, that was one answer, but Ferguson and Rachel were both smart enough to recognize it wouldn’t make Sam happy. It wouldn’t even make her safer. He was there to protect her until the time came when she could protect herself, even if she wasn’t as vulnerable as she led others to believe. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a responsibility that he planned to abdicate anytime soon – or ever.

  ‘I think that’s a discussion for you and Rachel to have,’ said Ferguson. She and Rachel exchanged another look, and he knew that whatever Rachel might have to say had been the subject of a prior conversation between them.

  ‘We will,’ said Parker. ‘And thank you for what you’ve tried to do for Sam.’

  He meant it, too. He might not have cared much for Ferguson, but she believed what she was doing was right. Who knew, it might even have helped Sam to have an adult other than her parents or grandparents taking an interest in her.

  But his sincerity was lost on Emily Ferguson. She had relegated him to the position of ‘bad parent’, maybe even ‘dangerous parent’. It made Parker more determined than ever to avoid having anything to do with lawyers and courts when it came to Sam. If Ferguson were required to give expert testimony, it would not be in his favor.

  ‘I think I should continue my sessions with Sam for the time being,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure that will be fi
ne,’ said Rachel.

  Parker didn’t object. He saw no reason to, for now.

  They both stood. Ferguson shook hands with Rachel, and clutched her arm in a gesture of intimacy. Parker got a dead fish in his hand. He was no expert, but he thought that constituted some form of bias. There must have been something in Ferguson’s training advising against it, but she might have been sick on the day they covered it.

  In the waiting room, Sam was immersed in Encyclopedia Brown, who was keeping Idaville safe from criminals.

  ‘Can we go to Al’s?’ she asked.

  Al’s French Frys was nearby, on Williston Road. It had been producing damn fine fries since the 1940s, and a visit to it was part of Sam’s post-session routine.

  Parker looked at Rachel, but she was determined that any anger she might have felt toward him should not be obvious to Sam.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that.’

  Sam turned her gaze to Parker, then back to Rachel. She scrunched up her nose.

  ‘Did you guys just have a fight?’

  II

  Yesterday, upon the stair,

  I met a man who wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t there again today,

  I wish, I wish he’d go away …

  William Hughes Mearns, ‘Antigonish’

  6

  The boy’s name was Alex MacKinnon. His family was of Scottish ancestry on one side, and proclaimed it at every opportunity, although no immediate member had set foot in the old country since the beginning of the previous century.

  Alex was twelve, and had only recently begun cycling to and from school, with his mother’s reluctant permission, although it was a freedom he had been given ample cause to regret over the course of winter. Yet only the worst of the weather forced him to abandon his bicycle. He was not about to let the elements undo, even temporarily, such a hard-won concession.

  His bike had lights on both the front and back. He wore a reflective vest with a blinking red LED on the left sleeve, and another LED on the back of his helmet. He considered himself to be so well lit that a motorist would be more likely to collide with a fully decorated Christmas tree than hit him. On the other hand, the daylight was already fading as he left school, and although it was less than a mile from the school gates to his door, there were dark patches along the road, mostly where the woods lay.