5.11
The sun is just barely starting to lower itself in the sky by the time Landis and Otter get to the Sheriff’s department, glaring in through the windows of Landis’s car as he parks it out front. It’s strange, being back here. He sees Grace all the time, but he never comes to visit her at work - the last time he was here was as a fugitive with blood running down his chin.
Otter holds the front doors open for him, letting Landis slip inside. Grace isn’t at the front desk, like she was when Landis kidnapped her years ago, but her and Abbie and Amber aren’t hard to find, either. The office is silent except for the sound of their voices, and Landis finds them farther back in the building, inside a cubicle, huddled around a computer with Amber hovering nervously over them.
“Find anything good?” Mal asks, appearing out of thin air and effectively announcing their presence. Amber looks up sharply in surprise, but her face softens into a grin when she sees him.
“Yeah, actually! Come take a look at this.”
Landis tries to crane his neck and read the computer screen from outside the cubicle, but it’s no use. He slips inside, behind Abbie and Grace, instead, nearly throwing an elbow through Amber’s body as Otter squeezes in next to him. It’s still hard to see. Whatever’s on the screen is just a mess of text, and some blurry crime scene photos of what looks like a car tipped over a guardrail on some mountain road.
“We think this might be our guy,” Amber says by way of explanation. Grace nods, turning to look at Landis, and her eyebrows shoot up when she sees Otter.
“Oh! You’re Austin’s boyfriend, right? Hi! We’ve never met, except for that one time you, uh, you know -”
“Yeah, this is Otter,” Landis says quickly. The more they can avoid talking about the time Otter got possessed and nearly killed two people, the better. “Otter, this is Grace, and that’s Abbie. There’s also - there’s another ghost here, besides Mal. Her name’s Amber.”
“Hi,” Otter says to Abbie and Grace, then looks up into the air, about three feet to Amber’s left. “And, um, hi, I think.”
Amber giggles. “Tell your friend he’s cute.”
“I absolutely will not do that,” Landis says flatly, then turns back to the computer. “So who’s this guy?”
Abbie smiles wolfishly. “Probably our ghost killer. He was suspected of some murders a few towns over, and led the police on a chase when they tried to talk to him. Which is pretty suspicious of an innocent guy, if you ask me.”
“He missed a turn and put his car right over the railing.” Grace taps the computer screen with her nail, pointing at the crime scene photos. “This says he was dead before they could even get him out of the car.”
Austin’s said before that violent deaths cause ghosts…so it is pretty plausible that this guy ended up one. Landis shifts his weight, still trying to get a better look at the screen. “Is there a picture of him on there?”
“Mmhm.” Grace clicks the mouse a few times, scrolling up to the top of the report. There’s a mugshot there, of a skinny, scowling man with a burst-open lip and a black eye. He has red hair cropped short and unevenly around his head, and pasty skin that makes the freckles on his face look like harsh pockmarks. His eyes bore into the camera - almost like he’s seeing through it. Landis cringes a little and fights the urge to look away.
“Seriously creepy, right?” Amber says in a hushed voice.
“You know,” Mal says, “I never thought I’d say this, but he looks even more likely to murder someone than Landis does.”
“His name’s Declan Tam. He was arrested a couple times before, mostly for disturbing the peace, bar fighting, that kind of thing,” Grace explains, scrolling back down, away from the mugshot. “Nothing really serious. Apparently the police got an anonymous tip that he was involved with a string of serial murders, and they were only going to question him, but, well…”
“So you think he did it?” Otter, who’s been mostly quiet this whole time, asks. “I mean, there’s a lot of reasons someone might run from the cops. Just because he led them on a chase doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.”
“He’s the best lead we have,” Abbie argues.
“She’s right,” Grace says. “It can’t hurt to at least look into it. And if it’s not him, we’ll start over, and look for another suspect.”
We’re really going to start over from square one if this doesn’t work? That seems like…a lot of commitment. Landis looks down at the floor, reluctant to voice the thought. But we’ll be keeping the rest of the ghosts in Antlers safe, I guess…
“Well, then what’s the plan?” Otter asks. Landis sneaks a glance up at him. He’s leaning up against the back wall of the cubicle, his arm slung over it, an expression of vague unease on his face. His sunglasses are, improbably, still propped up in his hair.
“How do we catch this guy?” Otter goes on, when no one answers his first question. “I mean, if he’s a ghost, he could be anywhere, right? So how do we find him?”
Abbie snaps her fingers, still grinning. “Actually, I had an idea about that.”
“I don’t -” Grace says haltingly, looking between Abbie and Landis for some reason. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea, but -”
“I was thinking we lure him to the lake house,” Abbie says. “You still own it, right, Landis?”
“No,” Mal cuts in loudly. “Absolutely not. If we’re going back there, it better be to burn the fucking place down, not to have some goddamn mystery solving slumber p-”
“Yeah,” Landis says. “I still own it.”
There’s a hand on his arm, suddenly, and he jolts before realizing that Otter’s reached out to squeeze his shoulder. It’s very reassuring. Landis wonders if it’s something he learned to do with patients at the hospital.
“You don’t have to go back there if you don’t want to, Landis,” he says seriously.
“I told you it was a bad idea,” Grace hisses at Abbie.
“It’s fine,” Landis says, feeling - all things considered - remarkably serene. “I own the place, I might as well do something with it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Mal groans. Landis ignores him and focuses on Abbie, forcing himself to smile a little.
“I hope that’s not the whole plan, though.”
“Oh, no. Of course not.” Abbie smiles back at him. “Grace says you two know plenty more ghosts, so I was thinking that the two of you can gather up a bunch of them, and bring them to the lake house. The more of them we have concentrated in one area, the more attracted our killer will be to the amount of spectral energy there. And I can lay extra magic down to attract spirits, like I do for seances sometimes.”
“And then we catch him,” Grace adds.
“Yep.” Abbie smiles even wider, looking positively exhilarated. “Then we trap the bastard.”
Landis raises an eyebrow. “How?”
“Well,” Grace says, a little sheepish, “we hadn’t really thought too much about that yet. We figured, once everyone was together -”
“I can do it,” Otter says. Grace and Abbie both look his way - Grace frowns, and Landis knows she’s thinking about the mine shaft two years ago, how Otter ripped the demon out of himself with Danton’s help. Abbie just looks like she’s appraising him, trying to figure him out.
“You can’t see ghosts, can you?” Abbie asks.
“I can’t.” Otter shakes his head. “But I can touch them. If you just point me in the right direction, I can take care of this guy. He looks easy enough to hold down until we figure out what to actually do with him.”
Abbie laughs delightedly, clasping her hands in front of her. “Wonderful! You’ll be our secret weapon, then.”
She stands from her chair at the computer, and Grace follows suit, the entire group awkwardly filing out of the cubicle to make more room to breathe. They’re all left staring at each other in the silent hallway, Mal and Amber hanging overhead.
“Landis and I will go round up ghosts, then,” Grace says at last, stepping a little closer to Landis.
“Great,” Abbie enthuses. “I’ll go to the lake house, and start prepping it to attract spirits. It takes a little bit, but if I leave now, I can finish up by the time we’re ready to go.”
“I’ll go with Abbie,” Amber offers.
“I’ll go too,” Mal says. Landis looks up at him in surprise.
“You will?”
“Someone’s got to show her where the lake house is,” Mal says, looking over the frames of his glasses at Landis. “And, having been murdered there, I think I am uniquely qualified to show her the way.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a smirk. “Don’t worry, I won’t get into trouble while you’re out and about.”
“That’s not what I was worried about,” Landis mumbles, though all of this splitting-up nonsense isn’t exactly doing wonders for his anxiety.
“I’ll go with Landis and Grace,” Otter says. “I mean, I can’t really see ghosts, but, uh, the last time I went anywhere with witches didn’t go so great for me. No offense.”
“None taken.” Abbie laughs, waving him off. “Let’s get going, shall we? With any luck, we’ll get to the bottom of this thing before dark.”
“Yeah!” Grace says, pumping a fist in the air.
The group emerges from the Sheriff’s department and splits off into two separate cars - Landis, Grace, and Otter into Landis’s car, Abbie and the ghosts into Abbie’s. Landis watches Abbie speed off into the distance in the direction of the lake house until her car vanishes from sight, then twists his keys in the ignition.
“I hope this works,” he says, as the engine rumbles to life.
“Don’t worry,” Grace says confidently, fiddling with the radio. “We’re going to crack this thing wide open. You’ll see.”