Chapter 5

K ate walked into the station, still pissed.

Rodney looked up, frowned, and asked, "What's your problem?"

"Your little girlfriend," she replied in a sarcastic tone.

He stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Amie Mulhouse," she stated, glaring at him. "That little witch was searching her husband's body when Smidge walked in."

Rodney shook his head. "What do you mean by searching ?"

"Yeah, that's the question. Smidge caught sight of her but didn't say anything to us at the time because Amie was there. He went through the security video and confirmed that she removed something from her husband's pockets."

Rodney frowned at her in shock. "Maybe it was just innocent."

"Maybe it was, so I went over there—after finding out that it was definitely murder, with no GSR on our victim's hands, so he did not fire or hold the gun that killed him."

"Ah, shit," Rodney muttered, staring at her.

"So, I went back to speak to Amie, and who opened the door but her boyfriend." Rodney blinked several times as she nodded. "Apparently they were just waiting for the right time to tell her husband. "

Rodney closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck."

"Yeah, fuck is right… literally." He rolled his eyes at that. "And this," she added, as she dropped a little notebook in front of him, "is what she supposedly took out of her husband's pocket."

"Supposedly?"

"I don't believe anything she's said so far, so I'm not sure I believe this now. Plus we have missing pages."

As he flipped through the notebook it fell open right where the pages had been ripped out. "Well, crap. Surely she doesn't think that'll fool us."

"Probably not, but, without being able to see on the videotape what she took, or what she did with those pages, it's a problem." Kate walked over to her desk, sat down at her computer, and quickly brought up the video from Amie's house.

"Do you really think she killed him?" Rodney asked, looking at her. "I swear to God, I thought she was innocent."

"No, your gonads thought she was innocent," Kate clarified absentmindedly, "and believe me that she had an awful lot to say about me being there and not you."

"Yeah, sorry," he said sheepishly. "It just seemed as if you were being really hard on her."

"I was being really hard on her," she confirmed, with a huff.

Lilliana joined them and asked, "What's going on?" Rodney filled her in, leaving nothing out. "Jesus, Rodney."

"I know, but hopefully it's nothing," he muttered. "So now you're making me doubt my own senses."

"Or maybe tell your senses not to make decisions based on your gonads," Kate repeated. When he glared at her, she shrugged. "I'm still stinging from that last little visit with the woman who had been busily rummaging through her dead husband's pockets, while her beloved boyfriend waited in the wings. Her husband wasn't even cold yet when the boyfriend stepped right into her bed, literally the dead guy's bed."

"Jesus," Lilliana muttered, "that's cold."

"Yeah, it really is, and it also says an awful lot about who Amie is, and the new boyfriend didn't like hearing it either."

At that, Rodney turned to her. "I bet he doesn't believe Amie did anything wrong though."

"Of course not, any more than you do." With the security video loaded, she quickly sped up to the time period where Smidge walked in and saw Amie rummaging through the pockets of her dead husband and pulling out the little black book. Amie flipped it open, smiled, then ripped out several pages, tucking both the pages and the notebook into her pocket. Kate called Rodney over and replayed this section.

As soon as he saw it, he swore. "God damn it, that's cold," He stared at the screen for a minute and then looked down.

"Yeah, so now we'll bring her in and find out what happened to those pages."

"She probably burned them," Lilliana guessed. "I would have."

"Maybe," Kate acknowledged, "but, if it were me, I would have taken a picture of them first."

Then Lilliana laughed, a big grin spreading across her face. "That sounds about right… because you're a bitch."

"Damn right I am." Kate picked up her phone and ordered Amie Mulhouse in for questioning the next morning and suggested she bring her attorney with her. She looked over at Rodney as soon as that was done and asked, "So, partner, will you be there?"

He snorted. "Yeah, I'll be there because that shit she pulled, that isn't happening… not on my watch."

" Not on your watch ?" Kate repeated, with a headshake. "How about just not happening at all?"

"Yeah, fine, whatever," he conceded, raising his hand. "So, how did you know?"

She frowned at him. "Smidge told me. Didn't I say that earlier?"

He groaned. "Of course he did."

"It's probably in the report that he just sent out as well. He's still working on the case, but the first thing he did was check for GSR. Apparently he tried that at the house but was out of one of the chemicals he needed and has been raking a tech over the coals for not restocking his medical bag."

"Oh, I'm sure that tech is loving his job right now," Rodney muttered, still staring at her.

"Probably not, but he'll likely never make that mistake again, will he?"

Lilliana studied Kate. "You really do get along with old Smidge, don't you?"

"They're two bloody peas in a pod," Rodney snapped, and Kate glared at him. "Sorry. Yeah, I'm just pissed at myself."

"Go be pissed somewhere else." As Rodney and Lilliana both turned to walk away, Kate stopped them, and they turned to look at her expectantly. "Smidge did ask why the hell we took so long to get there."

Rodney shook his head. "Oh, great, and I'm sure we're in trouble for that with him too."

"I told him about the address mix-up. When I mentioned the wrong address, he got this really weird look in his eye, went back to his computer, and I'll be looking into it more right now," she muttered. "Smidge mentioned a tie to a fairly famous case from years ago at that wrong address."

"What famous case?" Lilliana asked.

"A pretty famous murder of a family."

Rodney stared at her. "Oh, shit."

Kate nodded. "Yeah, oh shit is right." She frowned at Lilliana's glazed look. "The Feldspar house."

Lilliana stared at her, as if everything clicked over in her brain. "What? The Feldspar house?"

"Yes," Kate said. "Apparently we stumbled into something else."

"Yeah, but not just us though," Rodney stated, looking at Kate. "Simon too."

Lilliana looked back and forth between the two of them.

Kate sighed. "I'm not looking forward to going home and sorting that one out." She grabbed her purse, her wallet, and her keys. "Yet I can't wait to see our lovely little actress Amie tomorrow morning."

And, with that, Kate turned and walked out.

*

Simon walked up to the second floor of the Paragon building, carefully checking out the amount of rot on the floorboards as he went. No doubt that most of this building would require a 100 percent tear-down job. The plumbing and electrical were old, but the infrastructure appeared to be solid. He would get one of his engineers to take a look just to confirm. Simon had a good eye but still needed the occasional expert to make serious assessments because not being correct in this estimation period could potentially severely set back Simon, at least regarding his building rehab program.

As he climbed the stairs, an eerie sense of emptiness encompassed Simon, yet the building no longer felt abandoned. Something else was going on here that he just couldn't put his finger on. Moving cautiously, keeping himself on what looked to be solid floorboards, he wondered how the Paragon could have fallen to this level of disrepair without anybody classifying it as unsafe and condemning it for mandatory demolition—unless nobody had come through the property in the last God-only-knew how many years. That surprised him a little because love for this building had been here back in the day. So who had let it fall into such bleak disrepair?

He stopped at the landing at the top of the stairs on the second floor and just stood here, looking around. One of the most incredible things about this place was the view. He walked over to one of the windows, many of which were still solid and still intact on this floor, which surprised him, as he stared down at the city below. It was a pretty stunning sight, and, with that view, he thought he could make profitable apartments here, providing he could get the property at a cheap-enough sale price. He was sure the seller probably felt that the listing price already was cheap enough, but Simon was certain, once he did his cost analysis, the price would have to come down quite a bit more before he would put in a bid.

Even if the Paragon had been one of the properties he had long had his eye on, still a level of trepidation filled him, not wanting to take it on unless it was something he could manage, and, for him, that meant not losing money. It was one thing to take a bit of a loss, but another thing entirely to take a complete dive .

He continued to wander, then moved up another floor and then another. By the time he'd done a complete check on the place, he felt a little better about it. Obviously more inspections were needed to make a clean and whole assessment, but it felt right. It felt good. Honestly, it felt… He smiled at the word ringing in his ears. It felt special , and that was pretty much all he needed.

As he moved back downstairs and used the far set of stairs, he smelled something that made his stomach churn. Not so much death, just decay. Moving cautiously, he headed down to the next floor and, in the stairwell at the bottom, was a crumpled heap of clothing. He stopped, stared, and moved cautiously toward it. When sounds came from the heap, Simon realized somebody was sleeping off something, but he wasn't sure whether they needed help or not. Moving slowly, he carefully nudged the pile of clothing with his boot. "Hey, are you okay?"

A man with bleary eyes lifted his head. "Just sleeping, man. Just sleeping." He yawned, rolled over, and curled up some more.

"You know this building is being sold, right?"

He just waved him off. "It won't happen for a while. I just need to get some sleep."

"Are you sure that's all you need? Shelters are nearby, if you need a place to spend the night."

The homeless man snorted and said, "Take a hike."

Simon just smiled because a guy needed a certain amount of attitude to live that homeless life. He added, "Just don't get into any trouble in here."

"What trouble?" the other guy asked, shifting around.

"I don't want to see anything bad happen to you."

The guy studied him for a long moment. "Been a long time since I heard that from anybody."

Simon nodded. "We're not all assholes."

He snorted. "Yeah, you are." The man shuffled a little farther away, as if more wary of Simon's presence now and clearly not used to anyone being concerned about his welfare.

Simon crouched beside him. "Do you need a meal?"

The other guy shook his head. "No, I'm good."

Simon sighed, then stood. "Okay, but, just so you know, realtors and inspectors will be coming through this place in a while. You might want to find a better place to sleep."

"They're really selling it?" A note of shock filled his tone, and then he added, "What about the ghosts?"

Simon turned to him and asked, "What ghosts?"

"Lots of ghosts are here," he muttered. "Just so you guys know, if you want to buy it, she's haunted. I don't mind the ghosts, but I'm pretty sure lots of people would."

Simon half smiled at that because some wanted ghosts on their property, and some didn't. "Where are the ghosts coming from?"

"Don't know," he muttered, as he yawned. "I really need sleep, man."

"Got it," Simon said. "Just one more question. How often do the ghosts come out?"

He squinted up at him. "Every night. I see them every night."

"You see them?"

"Yeah, and I know what you're thinking. Nobody ever listens to me when I tell them that I can hear ghosts or that I can see them, but they're always around."

"Anyone in particular?" Simon asked.

The homeless man stared at him in surprise. "You believe me?"

"Sure. Why not?"

The guy just groaned at him. "I'm not joking."

"I'm glad to hear that," Simon replied. "So, what kind of ghosts are they?"

"The dead kind," he stated, frowning at Simon as if he were a little more bizarre and abnormal than he'd first thought, and it definitely made the homeless guy nervous.

Simon nodded, then stepped back out of his space a little. "That's fine. If they come around when I'm here, I'll have a talk with them and see if I can get them to move on."

"Yeah, you could try that," the homeless man muttered, with an eye roll. "Like that'll happen."

"Why? You don't think they'll move if I ask?"

"No, I don't think they'll move. Why would they want to move? It's a nice place. It's their place."

Simon smiled. He always checked up on the people living on the streets, just to see if they were hungry or needed a blanket or a shelter for the night or whatever. Yet he had also learned long ago to talk to the local homeless population about the goings-on in the immediate neighborhood before buying a property. They always had some inside scoop that he factored into his decision-making process. "Sure, but the place will go through some major changes, so it won't be comfortable for them any longer." The homeless guy stared up at him, and Simon nodded. "Anyway, have a good sleep." Then he turned and started to walk away.

The other guy called out, "When are all these changes happening?"

"Soon, but you probably have a while yet."

"Damn good thing. I'm not kidding. I need to sleep."

Simon laughed. "Then go back to sleep. You should be just fine for now."

And, with that, he headed back down to the street, a broad smile on his face. The thought of the building being haunted didn't bother him in the least. If anything, he was the one more likely to enjoy the haunting, providing the ghosts weren't causing trouble. He had certainly heard of buildings where the ghosts caused mischief, but, so far, he'd been surprised, given his abilities, that in almost every building with signs of paranormal activities, the ghosts had mostly left, once Simon had moved in with his rehab crew. He figured they were happy to see Simon save each of those buildings.

He would expect that to happen here too. He just didn't know if the ghosts had any particular reason for hanging around the Paragon. And of course had no idea how long they'd been there. In theory it could have nothing to do with the building at all. He used to worry that he would find dead bodies in these empty buildings on his radar, and he had found a couple, usually homeless transients. Older buildings tended to collect homeless people, and sometimes they died from overdoses or just old age. Most of them didn't live to be very old, their lifespans definitely cut short by their lifestyle.

Still, Simon wasn't worried about any ghosts in the Paragon. Maybe he should be. Maybe that would make his decision a lot easier, but honestly, what he'd found and seen with Kate was more than enough to keep his psyche thankful to just deal with the woo-woo stuff that he ran into on a regular basis.

As he walked back out into the sunshine, he stopped and took a deep breath but still felt that weird sense in the background behind him. He turned and saw what seemed to be a flutter of movement to his side. A spirit. He nodded. "I am buying her," he called out, "so you might want to leave sooner rather than later."

And, with that, wearing a big smile, he turned and headed home.