Poltergeist

CHAPTER 5

I drove over to Lupoldi’s apartment in the Fremont district. Autumn twilight was already falling with a scent of impending rain. I knew the address was near the troll under the Aurora Bridge—a cement sculpture of a life-sized monster crawling from beneath the structure to snatch an ancient VW. Along with the amusement rocket mounted to a building and the heroic bronze of Lenin that stood in the patio of a fast-food restaurant, it was typical of the neighborhood the locals had dubbed the Center of the Universe and others called the Haight-Ashbury of Seattle, in spite of a recent spate of yuppification. Parking is always bad in that funky little neighborhood and worse so close to quitting time, so I didn't even try to get close. I left my old Land Rover in a pay lot near the supermarket on Fremont Boulevard and started hiking up the hill.

The street was choked with cop cars. An unpleasant cold trickled down my spine at the sight. I paused outside the building and looked it over; a grim black and yellow haze wrapped it. I narrowed my eyes, searching the Grey shroud for anything that might be lurking, but all I spotted were confused or fragmented shapes and shadows.

My study was interrupted by a voice near my ear. "You have business in this building, Ms. Blaine?”

I shook myself and refocused my vision on the man in front of me. Detective Rey Sous: a wiry, dark-haired Colombian émigré with a face like the surface of Mars. I hadn't seen him since wed both been looking for the same hit-and-run witness over a year ago. His sloe-eyed calm was as impenetrable as ever but the uncharacteristic red-orange gleam around him made me wary. This aura thing might be useful once I figured it out, but that particular color didn't reassure me.

"I thought I did," 1 replied.

"Now not so much?”

I tried to shrug, but it didn't come off so well. "Don't know. What about you?”

"Homicide.”

I felt sick. Solis watched me. He glanced at the building, then back to me.

"I wanted to talk to the tenant of apartment seven on business.”

"Client?”

"No, just information-gathering for a case.”

Solis made a tiny tilt of his head. "Come up.”

I followed him into the old brick building and up to the second floor. The dim hallway smelled of musty carpet and resonated with conversations and TV noises from the open doorways of curious neighbors. The closer we got to apartment seven, the colder and queasier I felt.

The door was open, bright light flooding out, and the crime lab crew was still crawling over everything. The photographer was done and heading out the door as we stopped just outside. Solis stood with his back to the room. Looking at him, I could also study the room beyond without entering the crime scene.

It was a small no-bedroom apartment with a Murphy bed folded up into the hallway wall and a long counter that served as a kitchenette to the left of the door. A bicycle with a U-shaped lock leaned against the far wall under the window. The closet and bathroom shared the wall on the tight with a blood-spattered dent about the size and shape of a man. The room was hazy with layers of memory and Grey shapes left by past occupants and, to my eyes, thick with a swirling miasma of red and black. The reek of the fumed cyanoacrylate used to pick up fingerprints carried an uncanny undertone of gunsmoke and iodine that made me shiver and cough on a sudden sour taste in my mouth and a tightness in my chest.

Solis noticed my gagging shudder. "We don't have a positive ID yet, but I'm assuming the victim was the tenant. Can you identify him?”

I shook my head. "I never met him. He was supposed to show up for a lab demonstration at PNU, but he didn't. I came to find out why.”

The coroner's crew was preparing to bag the body, which lay crumpled and facedown on the ragged carpet by the dented wall. As they rolled it into the bag, the weirdly limp form flopped and the misshapen head lolled, turning its staring face my way for an instant.

The silent force of an unreleased scream crashed into me. I jolted backward a step, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my hand over my own mouth. The shock of the blow drained away. Solis put his hand on my shoulder and I shook him off. "What did that?" I demanded. I thought, if he'd been dead a few hours, shouldn't the body be stiffer?

Solis thought a moment, casting his gaze over me and around the hall as if there were an answer there somewhere. He watched the men carry the corpse away. Then he motioned me to follow him back outside.

We watched them load the black bag into a discreet blue van and drive off. We both took a few deep breaths of the cool, moist air and didn't look at each other. A small crowd had gathered at the end of the street, but they kept their distance and we were left alone.

At last, Solis spoke up. "Not sure yet. Looks like he was thrown against the wall. Maybe an accident." He didn't sound convinced. "We're working on it. You have any ideas? Anything like that demo he missed?”

"When did this happen?" I asked, dismissing momentary visions of dancing tables.

"A couple of hours ago, possibly three. I'll know more when the autopsy is done. What do you know?”

I stared at Sous, my mind racing. Lupoldi had died before the séance started, while I'd been eating lunch with Quinton. The scene gave me an unsettled feeling. What I'd witnessed at St. John Hall stuck in my mind and, though I'd been thinking Tuckman was wrong about it, I suddenly didn't like the thought that a poltergeist—real or artificial—could have the energy to do something like this. It was ludicrous, but I knew better than to assume Solis wouldn't be interested in at least some of the possible connections; someone who could fake PK phenomena might be able to fling a man across a room as well as a table. Fake ghost he wouldn't buy, but killer acquaintance he might.

Reluctantly, I started. "The demo is part of a psychological study at PNU. The researcher hired me to find out who in his group might be sabotaging his results, and today's demo went a bit wild. I came to see why Lupoldi—Mark Lupoldi is the name I was given with this address—why he hadn't shown up and if he knew anything about the demo going bad.”

Solis regarded me in silence.

"And I do recognize him," I conceded.

He blinked slowly and gave half a nod. "From where?”

"He worked in the used bookstore a couple of blocks from here— Old Possum's. I only knew him as Mark, and I didn't make the connection until I saw his face." I shivered again, harder and nothing to do with the sharp tingle of tiny raindrops that had begun falling. Now Lupoldi wasn't just a name on a list, just someone who was horribly dead; he was someone I knew, however fleetingly, who was horribly dead. The situation didn't feel like an accident to me any more than it did to Sous.

He must have seen the speculation on my face. "Ms. Blaine, I don't need to warn you against obstructing an active felony investigation.”

"The two cases might not be related," I suggested. "But I won't get in your way. I can't just drop my investigation on the chance that it might parallel yours, but I'll share any information I get that might be relevant. OK?”

"What if it's your client who did this?”

"Then he probably won't pay me and I won't feel too bad about ratting on him," I answered.

Solis almost smiled. "OK.”

I started to go, then stopped and looked back. "I'm going to head down to Old Possum's—I know the owner and I can ask her some background questions on Lupoldi. Do you want me to break the news or leave that to you and your partner?”

"I'll do it. I want to talk to the staff later.”

I nodded and walked back down the hill. I hadn't put Mark's death out of my mind, or the possibility of some paranormal involvement in it—the look and feel of the Grey in Mark's apartment was too abnormal to ignore. The idea of a killer thought-entity didn't sit well with me, but I wasn't sure which way Occam's razor would cut this time: person or poltergeist?