It was his turn to sigh. "All right. What do you think these cases have in common?”
"Well." I paused to put my thoughts into sanitized order, restraining an urge to say things I knew he would write off. "I've been looking at these people and at the situation Tuckman's created and I think he's either pulled in or precipitated a psycho. I think what happened to Mark Lupoldi was caused by something and someone in Tuckman's project. It appears that the incidents Tuckman considered sabotage are just other symptoms of this individual at work. He deliberately picked a group of people with slightly unstable personalities and lots of problems, bound to develop tension in an environment where he encouraged them to believe they could do some pretty strange things and get away with it. Psychology's not my field but I imagine that in that kind of environment, if you've got an individual who's on the edge of psychopathic or psychotic behavior, they might find the last step all too easy to take.”
Solis looked down at his own cup and nodded slowly. "That may be true, but my concern is still only the discovery of the killer.”
"Do you have a suspect? I have a few.”
He grunted. "Evidence makes a case, not suspicion. I'd like to find those keys or the method… I agree Dr. Tuckman's project is involved and I've looked very hard at his subjects and assistants. Tell me who you suspect.”
I told him and he raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He refused to give me any response in kind. So much for sharing information.
Returning to my office was a walk through the Grey without even trying. As I crossed Pioneer Square, ignoring phantom traffic and the tipped layers of time, something winged into the side of my head, brushing my temple and yanking out a strand of my hair.
I whirled, looking for the culprit, and spotted a dilapidated man in greasy, filthy clothes sitting on a bench nearby. He held his hands open, a crooked cigarette fallen to the wet ground in front of him, and stared at me with wide eyes. I bent, looked around, and spotted a cigarette lighter—a Zippo-type with a metal case—lying against the building beside me. As I crouched to pick it up, I glanced through the deeper Grey at the lighter. A thin filament of yellow energy was fast fading from it, drawing back like the tail of a snake vanishing into a bolt-hole.
I glanced around, catching sight of a fleeting yellow haze, glittering with flecks of red and slices of silvery time. I picked up the lighter and flicked it into flame. The bit of Celia peregrinated around the square as if it had no interest in me at all. And maybe it didn't this time, but its presence near me was worrisome. I'd spent too much of the previous night dodging books and household objects. They'd all had a small yellow thread of Grey energy reeling from them. Given the violence of Wednesday and the previous night, I was surprised at this minor display.
I took the lighter back to the bum on the bench.
"This yours?”
He stuttered and fumbled, fearful and uncertain how to answer. Then he blurted, "I dint trow it etcha! Hones'! It jus' kina. .”
I nodded with a rueful smile. "I know. It just got away from you. They do that." I looked down at the crumpled cigarette in the gutter between us and shot another quick look for Celia, but the thing had moved away. "That yours, too?”
He looked down and his face fell to the verge of tears as he saw the mud-soaked cigarette. "Yeah," he moaned.
I dug into my pocket for the change from my coffee and handed it to him with his lighter. "Take care of this. Don't lose it, OK?”
His eyes glowed and he offered me a snaggle-toothed grin on a raft of fetid breath. "I will. I will! Tank you, Miss. God bless you!”
I backed away, starting for my office again with a shrug and a mumbled "thanks." Sliding on the mucky cobbles, I hurried on through the October thickness of ghosts.
I was going up the stairs when my cell phone jiggled on my hip. I snatched it and answered.
"You have to do something.”
"What? Excuse me, Dr. Tuckman, but we closed this case last night," I answered, shoving the phone under my jaw as I unlocked my office door.
"Yes, I know. But something must be done. You seem to be the one who understands this thing—”
"No, Tuckman. You understand it. You just don't want responsibility for it.”
"Ms. Blaine!”
I reminded myself that his check hadn't cleared yet and heaved a sigh. "What's the problem?"
"Celia is bedeviling the subjects.”
' 'Bedeviling'? Just how badly are they being pestered?" Maybe the relative calm around me now was the reflection of Celia's action elsewhere. I threw my things on the floor behind the desk and sat down.
Without his villain act to bolster the impact, he just sounded peevish and unpleasant. "Considering the range of injuries they've all sustained recently, it takes very little 'pestering' to make someone miserable. They've all called—every one—with one story or another of the poltergeist doing unpleasant things.”
"Great. Look, Tuckman, as I understand it, the poltergeist is a collective phenomenon, yes?”
"Yes," he snapped at me, impatient and annoyed.
"Well then, if it exists because they believe it exists, the obvious thing to do is get them to stop believing in it.”
"And do you think that's likely when they are being pummeled and assaulted by this make-believe ghost?”
I laughed. "You put it there, Tuckman. I can't do anything to help you on that score. You taught them to believe, you'll have to teach them to be skeptical again. Why don't you tell them it was a hoax? That you had the room rigged and almost nothing that they experienced was real? That should shake a few of them up. If you can get them to stop giving it credence, maybe it will stop harassing them." I didn't say a damned thing about its harassing me, too. The entity had gone off on its own with its master and I doubted that the rest of the group could do much more than weaken it by any lack of faith, but I wouldn't say it wasn't worth a try.
Tuckman remained silent, brooding.
"Dr. Tuckman. Seriously. You need to convince them to stop giving it their support. You have to. It's taken on a life of its own, but if you can break down their belief, you may weaken it enough to stop its doing anything worse. Be brutal. You have to.”
"You've been no help at all," he spat.
"Then I won't charge you. Good luck, Dr. Tuckman. Remember that this is no longer a game. Your ghost killed one of your assistants. This thing has to cease and it's up to you to break it. Not me.”
I could almost hear the slow boil of his vexation. Then he hung up on me. I didn't mind. If I was lucky, I'd never hear from Gartner Tuckman again.
I worked for a while, periodically fending off the random attacks of random objects. At one o'clock, I went to catch Phoebe at her parents' restaurant. Hugh had told me she'd be there, and I needed Amanda's address. I could have just called, but that wouldn't help me mend any fences—Phoebe might take it as another attempt to dodge my rightful dose of her wrath and that wouldn't be good in the long run. Besides, I loved the Masons and needed some kind of break from the grinding horror of this case.
The lunch rush had thinned to a trickle by the time I arrived and the family was, once again, revving up for Friday night. I seemed to be spending all day in restaurants, but this I wouldn't mind. I loved the company of the Masons. Even when they were in their weekly uproar, they were a warm and welcoming crowd. They laughed at full volume and smiled with infectious ease.
As the patriarch, Phoebe's father had taken his usual seat at the family table in back, his arthritic hand clutching a glass of tepid water, which he used more for emphasis than hydration. «Poppy» was gnarled and weathered, as brown as hand-rubbed walnut, and still ran the whole family merrily ragged without lifting anything but the glass and his voice. The clan fluttered around the table, flying in and out the kitchen doors like giddy fruit bats, somehow managing not to careen into one another while acceding to Poppy's every command. He spotted me as I came in and waved me to his table.