30. SKYE

Kuna, Idaho

Now

The tech said it would take about two hours to run the fingerprint they'd found in his car.

I sort of expected them to be able to pop it into a computer. That we'd know immediately whether or not it was a match. But as I watched the tech carefully prepare and clean up the image she had digitized, I was impressed it was only going to take two hours. The fingerprint card, up close, was a dense maze of ridges, furrows, and channels. And on the other side of that maze was—maybe—the key to an arrest.

The tech was young—not much older than me. Probably just a few years out of college. Her dark hair was tucked into a neat braid, and her brown eyes darted back and forth across the print slide with a focused determination. When someone knocked on the lab door, she ignored it.

She was amazing.

When my mom gently asked about what I might major in, I'd said "maybe science?" But I'd actually given the idea quite a bit of thought. I had loved my chemistry and biology classes. The idea of spending my days in a lab with samples and slides— instead of trying to make sales or manage people or participate in "team-building" activities—appealed to every part of my introverted brain. Maybe, if things had turned out differently, this could have been me.

As I watched the tech work, my mind drifted back to everything Brecia had told me. She'd been living with him for two years.

When the tech was finished digitizing and cleaning the print, she quickly uploaded it to something called AFIS—a fingerprinting database.

She frowned and tucked a piece of hair back into her braid as the algorithm scanned through millions of prints and the little blinking bar at the top of the screen announced its progress.

I expected this part to take a while too; however, once the print was in the system, the progress bar speedily moved from zero to one hundred percent in a matter of minutes. The search was over before I knew it.

There was no match.

The tech made a note of the results and strode out of the room. I knew where she was going. Because there was still a chance it was my fingerprint.

My fingerprints hadn't been on file before I died. And the one's they'd taken from my body had to be cleaned up substantially to account for decomposition.

Another tech was cleaning up my post-mortem fingerprints, accounting for the decay and degradation. If it was my fingerprint on the car, we weren't going to get a perfect match. But we'd get close.

I tried not to hope as I watched the analyst compare the two prints an hour later.

But when she overlaid the images, even I could see that they weren't the same.

The light flickered in the office as the disappointment hit hard.

It wasn't my fingerprint. It could be anybody's fingerprint, since whoever it belonged to wasn't in the system.

I walked down the hall toward Kittleson's office in a numb haze. I'd been there with my mom enough times that I knew the way. I wasn't particularly fond of him as a detective. He made a lot of big promises and reassurances then took a long time to follow through. He should have had my post-mortem prints finished long before now. But even I could tell that he didn't really think he had a case against James Carson. Or anyone else.

So I was pretty sure that this was the dead end that would turn the case truly cold for him. It had never been all that hot.

Brecia was sitting in the office chair, talking to Detective Kittleson when I walked in. He wasn't responding, of course. He was on the phone with my mom, letting her know that the fingerprint wasn't a match to me. He sounded curt and annoyed.

"Watch your tone," Brecia growled as Kittleson sighed loudly then told my mom that he would—like he had already promised—tell her if there were any new developments. The car had already been processed. This had been their best lead. It would be released from impound tomorrow.

I sat down next to Brecia. She clearly already knew about the print results. "He's kind of a prick," she told me, then flashed Kittleson the finger. "What do you want to do now? Are you … are you going to go back to your mom's house?"

She said it like it was a casual question. But there was no way to hide the undercurrent of sadness that accompanied the words. She'd been alone for a long time.

I hadn't been a ghost for nearly as long as Brecia had, but I couldn't imagine walking away from the one person who could see me. The first person in months who could hear me talk—and talk back to me. The one other person who really understood what had happened to me.

No matter how much I loved my mom and wanted to stay near her, she couldn't see me anymore. And that was the loneliest thing I'd ever felt, alive or dead.

"No," I whispered. "Can I stay with you?"

Brecia smiled and nodded, and the current shifted to relief. She pointed at Kittleson, who was scowling at an email he'd just received. "Should we shut it down?" she asked.

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

Her eyes went wide. "Watch." She closed her eyes, and suddenly the air was electric with rage.

Kittleson's computer screen went black. He swore under his breath and rapidly pressed the on/off button.

Brecia smiled, and the angry electricity fizzled. "Cool, right?"

By the time he managed to get the computer booted back up, his face was red with frustration. "Piece of crap," he muttered under his breath.

As the password lock screen finally flickered back to life, the phone on the desk rang.

He glanced between the computer and the phone.

"Answer it!" Brecia instructed, sliding across the desk until she was right in his face. Then burying her face in his ear.

I flinched. I knew he couldn't see her, but it looked awkward as all hell. "Does that really work?"

"Sometimes." Brecia sat back on the desk as Kittleson walked out of the office without answering the phone. Her expression darkened. "Not always."

I scooted in with her, to listen to the message in the empty room.

The blinking red light flashed as a woman's voice responded to the recorded prompt.

"Detective Kittleson? I hear you have James Carson's car impounded. This is Detective Domanska, in Salt Lake City, Utah. I need you to call me back as soon as possible."