The Truth of Yesterday

Josh Aterovis is the author of Bleeding Hearts (ISBN: 1930928688) and the upcoming Reap the Whirlwind (Coming in 2003), published by Renaissance Alliance Publishing Inc. (http://www.rapbooks.biz) The Truth of Yesterday is the fourth book in the Killian Kendall series.

Visit "Black Sheep Productions" for more information. Official Site of the Killian Kendall Mystery Series http://www.steliko.com/bleedinghearts

The Truth of Yesterday

Chapter 26

I stayed hidden, crouching behind a bright red Firebird, until I saw Micah's car come around the corner. It was a tense wait, as I expected the security guards to return with reinforcements at any moment. I tried to remember if they carried guns or not. As soon as Micah appeared, I ran to the passenger side, yanked the door open, and leaped in.

"Go," I shouted before the door was even pulled shut.

"Go where? What's going on?" Micah demanded.

"Just drive. I'll tell you when we get away from here."

I slumped down in the seat as he finally drove off. He was silent until we were well away from the hotel, then, "Killian, what the hell is going on?"

"I may have messed things up a bit," I said carefully.

"Messed them up how? You said you were in trouble, what kind of trouble?"

"Ok, well, Jake saw us at the Ball, and apparently he's seen me following him a few times. Apparently, I'm not as good at this whole detective thing as I thought."

"So he saw you? How did that get you into trouble? Did he confront you?"

"Yeah, you could say that, in the hall that runs behind the ballroom. We had a huge argument. He ripped into me, told me I'd been a lousy friend and that I had no right to care about him now when I didn't care about him before."

"Ouch."

"Yeah, and the worst part is, he's right."

"Killian..."

"No, he is. I wasn't there for him as much as I should have been. I even knew he'd been having a hard time back in California. We talked a couple times right after he got back. I knew that and I wasn't there for him. I was too caught up in my own problems. I was a lousy friend."

"Ok, so maybe you could have been a better friend. What's done is done. How did that get you in trouble?"

"Well, it seems Jake is dating Fenton Black, or at least he's Black's kept boy."

"Oh. Oh! So that's where all his money is coming from. And the gifts and clothes. How did he get tangled up with Fenton Black?"

"That I don't know. But while we were arguing, Black came looking for Jake."

"Shit!"

"My thoughts exactly. I didn't know what to do but Jake told me to run so I did. Black called security and they chased me, but I managed to get away from them in the parking lot. Not that they tried that hard once they were out of Black's sight."

"So Black now knows that you know who he is, and he knows that you know Jake, or at least that you were talking with him. To him, that will probably imply that you're investigating him, which makes you a very real threat."

"Like I said, I'm in trouble."

"Trouble? Killian, trouble doesn't begin to cover it. You're in danger, serious danger."

"Yeah, I know. I just need to figure out what to do next. Should I go to the police?"

"Are you listening to me? You're in big-time serious danger!"

"Yeah, I got that, Micah. I don't really need you to tell me."

"Then act like you understand what that means."

"And how is that? How am I supposed to act, scared? Well I am, but I can't let that interfere with the investigation. I feel like I'm right on the edge of figuring this whole thing out."

"You should be scared. This is a very dangerous man. He's killed before and I seriously doubt he'll hesitate to have you killed."

"Then we have to stop him before he gets a chance."

"How are we supposed to do that? You're not superman."

"I never said I was. Do you think I should go to the police?"

"And tell them what? That Fenton Black is a bad, bad man? I'm sure they'll jump right on that."

"I can tell them he runs a prostitution ring."

"Why should they believe you? Just because you say so?"

"I have contacts in the police department." At least I hoped I did. Hank Kaplan had helped out a lot in Caleb Cohen case as few months ago.

"Even then, they'd have to investigate on their own. You could be dead long before they found out anything concrete. This guy is smart. He knows how to hide his tracks. He's gotten away with worse than this in the past."

"So I'll have to think of something else. Just stop yelling at me."

We fell into a heavy, tension filled silence. I could tell Micah was terrified for me. I could feel the fear rolling off of him like a physical wave. I tried to force my mind to go over everything I had learned tonight, from Micah and from Jake. I knew there was something in there I was missing and that it was important.

"Where are we going?" Micah asked after a few minutes of driving.

I thought about it for a minute. "The bed and breakfast. I'd be safest there, I think. I don't want to go home. It would take him less than five minutes to find out where I live. And I can't go back with you, Jake knows we're dating and he might tell Black. It would take him longer to find out that Steve is Adam's partner and that he owns a B&B, and even if he found out, he wouldn't know what room I was in and he couldn't very well just bust in and start breaking into rooms."

"I don't know if I'd put anything past him, but you're probably right, the bed and breakfast would be the safest place for tonight."

"You should stay there too. You wouldn't be safe at your apartment."

"I think I'll sleep at the office tonight, if I sleep at all. I want to get back to work on this story. It occurred to me earlier tonight that Black quite possibly could be involved with the whole county council scandal. It would be right up his alley and, as I said, he already has most of the officials in his pocket. At the very least, he would have had to know about it, even if he wasn't directly involved."

Several things fell into place in my mind. I fell quiet again as I began to drop the puzzle pieces into place in my head. After a few minutes, I began to talk out my thoughts. "You said that Neal, who we now know is really Fenton Black, never met any of his escorts, but what if he did."

"What do you mean?"

"What if he did meet with one of them, or maybe that person just found out his identity by mistake."

"What's your point?"

"What if that someone was Paul?"

It didn't take him long to make the same connection I was making. "And what if he somehow found out about the illegal activity and that was who he was writing the letters to."

"Then Paul would have ended up dead."

"Only one problem."

"What's that?"

"This wasn't a professional hit. It wasn't Black's style at all. Paul was strangled and the apartment was trashed. Whoever killed Paul did it in a fit of anger or panic and then systematically tore the place apart looking for something."

"Or that's what they wanted you to think."

"You think it was just a cover?"

"Maybe. I need to talk to the detective in charge of the investigation."

I dug out my cell phone, looked up and number, and quickly dialed it.

"Who are you calling?" Micah asked.

"Chris."

The phone was answered by a young sounding boy. I tried to remember Chris' little brother's name.

"Kevin," I said as it came to me. "This is Killian Kendall. Is Chris there?"

"Yeah, hang on."

He set the phone down with a clunk and I heard him yell, "Chris, it's your boyfriend."

A few seconds later, Chris was on the line. "Hello?"

"Chris, it's Killian."

"Hey, what's up?"

"A lot, but I'll have to fill you in later. Were you able to get me an appointment with the detective in charge of Paul's murder investigation?"

"Well, yes and no. I talked to him. His name is Owen Evans. My dad says he's a good cop. He said he would be willing to talk to you, but that he was really busy right now with another case."

"Can you call him back in the morning and tell him it's urgent that I speak to him immediately? I may know something that could solve this case for him."

"I doubt he could resist that. What's going on? What did you find out?"

"I can't really go into it now. I'd rather tell you in person."

"Ok, but you're killing me here."

"Poor choice of words. Look, try your best to get me in with him tomorrow afternoon. I'll drive up there in the morning."

"You're pretty confident you'll get in to see him, aren't you?"

"Just determined."

"Ok, then I'll see you tomorrow. And I expect a full briefing."

"I promise."

We hung up and Micah looked over at me. "I wish I could go with you to DC, but I know you'll be safer there than here."

"It's ok. You have your job to do and I have mine."

"I just..." He took a shaky breath. "I couldn't bear to lose you."

I reached over and took his hand. "I'll be ok, Micah. I'm not going anywhere."

"I wish I knew that for sure." He bit down on his lip and stared straight ahead. A few minutes later, we pulled into the circular drive in front of Amalie's House. Micah walked me in and waited while I called Adam and Kane at home and told them I thought it would be better if they came and stayed at the B&B. Of course, Adam demanded to know why. I told him I couldn't go into details, but it was possible they could be in danger at the house because of one of my cases. That sent Steve and Adam in almost identical panic attacks. By the time Adam and Kane arrived, and I got everyone calmed down enough to go to bed-Adam and Steve armed with a small pistol that I didn't even know Steve owned-it was almost 1 AM.

I tossed and turned fitfully in my room. My mind refused to shut off. I was still full of energy, even though I was dead tired. I turned the case over and over in my mind, looking at it from every possible angle I could think of. Once that bone was gnawed on as much as I could gnaw, I moved on to what Jake had said. Once again, I was filled with guilt for the way I had neglected him. And the worse part was he wasn't the only friend I had been neglecting. I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked to Will.

After what seemed like an eternity, but my clock said was only about an hour, I finally fell into an uneasy sleep filled with strange, foreboding dreams about which, upon awakening a short time later, I found I couldn't remember anything. They just left me with a very unsettled feeling.

I was lying awake in the dark when I suddenly felt another presence in the room. I sat up with a jolt to find Seth standing at the foot of my bed.

"My God, you scared the hell out of me," I snapped.

"You're in grave danger," he said with an intensity I'd never heard before in his voice.

"Tell me something I don't know."

"You have to be careful, Killian. I helped once before; I won't be allowed to help again. You're on your own this time."

"Do you know what's going to happen?"

"No, I've told you before, I'm not omniscient. All I know is that you've set certain events into motion; and by doing so, you've put yourself in danger. There are many ways this could go. More than one of those ways ends with you being either hurt or killed. The choices you make from here on out will be crucial to the outcome."

"Isn't that true of everything? Every choice we make has an effect, like a stone being dropped into a pond. No matter how tiny the pebble or how huge the boulder, there is some effect."

"I don't have time to get existential with you. Just be very careful."

"I will. I promise."

"Good. I...I don't want to lose you."

A shiver went down my spine at his words that so eerily echoed Micah's from earlier. "I don't understand."

"You don't understand what?"

"How can you lose me? Won't I be with you no matter what?"

"Oh, Killian. You can't understand and I can't explain. I gave up so much to be able to come back...and all for you."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't explain it. It's against the rules."

"Fuck the rules! What do you mean?"

"I can't, Killian. I can't."

"I don't understand."

"I love you," he said and vanished, leaving his final words echoing behind him.

"Great. Just what I needed," I hissed into the empty room. "One more thing to worry over."

I flopped back onto the bed and tried to will myself back to sleep. That never works. Once again, I gave my mind full reign and allowed it to wander where it wanted. I thought about Seth and our brief friendship while he was still alive. I'd known him longer as a ghost then I had ever known him as a living, breathing person. I'd never really thought about what it meant that he could come speak to me whenever he wanted. He'd talked about the rules before, but always in vague terms, never anything concrete. I knew so little about what made it possible to see and talk to him. I'm sure it must have been made easier by my Gifts. Thinking about my Gifts made me think about Judy's promise to find me a teacher. While I wasn't necessarily eager to deal with all that, in some ways I was looking forward to finally understanding it all a little better. I wondered who my teacher would be.

Eventually, my mind wore itself out and I began to drift back to sleep. I was just at the threshold of slumber when I once again felt that tingly awareness that told me there was another presence in the room.

"Seth," I mumbled with a sigh and a pushed myself into a sitting position. "Aren't you going to let me get any sleep tonight?" But it wasn't Seth this time. Amalie now stood in the exact same spot where I'd last seen him. I felt my mouth drop open as the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

I'd never been able to understand why seeing Seth was so much easier for me that seeing Amalie. Every time I came face to face with her, I felt terror wash over me like ice water. There was just a very different quality about her, a different aura, one of despair and pain.

She looked exactly the same as she had the first time I saw her, all in black, her hair pulled back, with an undeniable air of sadness about her. She stood there staring at me with a pleading expression on her incorporeal face.

"What?" I rasped, responding to her expression. "What do you want?"

For a moment, she seemed almost surprised that I had spoken to her. Then she turned and took a few quick steps towards the door. I noticed there was no sound of footsteps; they weren't needed at the moment. She paused and turned back, motioning me to follow her. Without hesitating, I slid from the bed a followed her. She turned once again and walked through the door...without opening it. Being at something of a disadvantage, with being solid and all, I had to open it to exit the room. She was standing in the hall, waiting expectantly.

As soon as she saw me, she moved silently down the hall to the stairs. I hurried to keep up. On the first floor, she went directly to the cellar door, where she'd led me the last time I'd followed her.

"We've been down there before," I said, coming to a stop. I wasn't keen on going down there alone. It was dark, dirty and spooky, not to mention cold, and I was only wearing the boxers that I sleep in. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that Seth's warning could have applied to anything except my case involving Fenton Black. Suddenly, I wondered if it was possible that he could have been warning me about Amalie instead. He'd warned me about her once before, telling me to be careful because she wasn't like him.

When she realized I was no longer following her, she stopped and turned back to me. She motioned me to follow her again, this time, more emphatically.

I sighed. I'd made a promise to find out what was going on and if that meant going down into the cellar in the middle of the night alone with a ghost, so be it. I'd have to take that risk. I started forward and Amalie melted through the door.

I unlatched the safety lock and opened the door to reveal the pitch black stairwell stretching out before me like the throat of some giant monster waiting to swallow me whole. At least up here there had been enough reflected moonlight as well as a few nightlights that Steve left burning all night that I could see where I was going quite clearly. Down there, there were no windows and no nightlights. There was a light at the bottom of the stairs, but it was the kind with the chain that hangs down and you have to pull it to turn it on. Steve had been intending to change it for some time, but it just wasn't high on his list of priorities. Hardly anyone ever came down here anymore.

I gritted my teeth and started down the wooden steps, carefully feeling my way along and hoping with all my heart that Amalie stayed well ahead of me. I'd never come into contact with her and I was quite sure I didn't want to start now. My progress could best be described as snail's pace. At last, my bare feet felt cold, slightly slimy dirt under them instead of the rough planks of the stairs. I began waving my hands around in the dark, trying to find the chain that turned the light on. I must have looked quite a sight, flailing my arms around like a blind man in a cave full of bats. I was glad it was dark so Amalie couldn't see me, although why I thought she couldn't see perfectly well in the dark or, more importantly, why I cared if she saw me is beyond me.

I found the chain and gave it a tug. I gasped as light flooded the cellar. The bulb was very dim, barely enough to light the small room, but it was enough to temporarily blind me. When I'd blinked away the sunspots, Amalie stood waiting for me over by one of the walls. The cellar was of the old-fashioned root cellar variety. It had a plain dirt floor and brick walls covered with moss and mildew. It stunk of musty rot. Along one wall was a wooden bench-like structure that had once held vegetables and other perishables in the days before refrigeration. Overhead, pipes and wires ran between the rough-hewn beams that supported the floor of the house above.

As soon as she was certain she had my attention, Amalie turned and walked directly into and through the wall.

"Now what am I supposed to do?" I asked no one in particular. Somehow, I knew Amalie was gone. The feeling of her presence left as soon as she went through the wall. "You know," I said to her anyway, "there's no door in that wall. I can't follow you. I'm not a ghost."

Maybe I should have enlisted Seth, I thought. He could have walked through walls if he wanted.

I waited a few minutes, but it soon became obvious that she wasn't returning. Whatever she'd wanted me to see, she'd shown me. I decided it was time to wake Steve up-and put on some more clothes. I realized I was freezing in just my underwear. I slipped back up the stairs, leaving the light on at the bottom, and up to my room where I pulled on some clothes. Then I went and tapped softly on Steve and Adam's bedroom door. They must have been sleeping as lightly as I had been, because the door opened almost immediately.

"What's wrong?" Adam asked in a tight voice.

"I need to talk to Steve," I whispered.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, appearing over Adam's shoulder.

"Amalie came back," I said.

"Should we call Judy?" Adam asked. Once upon a time, he'd been a skeptic when it came to Amalie and things supernatural, but he was a believer these days. Anyone who'd anything to do with Amalie was now a believer.

"It's after three o'clock on the morning," Steve said.

"I think we should call her," I voted. "If we don't, she'll be very unhappy in the morning."

Adam picked up the phone and dialed her number.

"What happened?" Steve asked me while Adam talked to Judy.

"I'll tell everyone at once when Judy gets here," I told him.

Adam hung up. "She's on her way. I don't think I even woke her up. Maybe she knew something was going to happen tonight."

That was possible, or maybe Jake just hadn't come home tonight.

Judy must have broken land speed records driving to the B&B. She was there before Adam and Steve had barely had time to get dressed and meet me downstairs in the lobby. We let her inside and I quickly filled them in on Amalie's appearance and my subsequent adventure in the cellar.

"You went down there alone?" Adam asked in horror.

"I didn't see where I had much of a choice, and besides, she was pretty insistent."

"I'm really proud of you, Killian," Judy said in a soft voice. It was obvious that she was really only half here with us.

"Proud of him for risking him life?"

"How did he risk his life?" Steve asked. "Amalie's never had a history of hurting anyone."

"There's a first time for everything."

"Why don't I show you where she went through the wall," I offered, in an attempt to head off any hysterics. We all went down the stairs to the cellar and I pointed to the wall through which Amalie had made her dramatic exit.

"Why would she walk through a wall?" Steve puzzled. "What could she be trying to tell us?"

"Maybe there wasn't a wall there when she was alive," Judy said, and we all turned to stare at her in surprise.

She walked over to the wall and scraped at the moss growing on the bricks.

"What do you mean there wasn't a wall there?" Steve asked.

"Just what I said. If she walked through this wall, she did it for a reason. There's something on the other side of it that she wants us to know about. Maybe the baby was never the reason for leading us down here in the first place, or at least not the only reason."

"But why would that make you think there wasn't a wall there when she was alive?"

"Just a hunch. Aha! See?"

"See what?" Steve and I asked in unison.

"The outline of a door," Adam answered for her.

"So you see it too?" Judy asked.

"Yes, it was bricked up some time after the wall was built. You can see the brick pattern is different inside the outline than the rest of the wall."

As he said this, I felt something shift inside me, for a moment I felt disoriented, as if the floor had vanished from underneath me, but before I had time to even stumble, everything stabilized. Only, instead of seeing the cellar as it had looked only seconds before I was seeing it as it must have looked in the 1850's. The wall we had all been studying was suddenly partially covered by floor to ceiling shelves, full of preserved vegetables in glass jars. Without being told, I somehow knew that the shelves were a cleverly disguised door and there was an opening behind them. I blinked and the shelves were gone, replaced with the blank brick wall once more.

"It was part of the underground railroad," I said.

It was my turn to have everyone turn and stare at me in surprise. "Did you see that?" Judy asked with a quiet intensity.

I nodded. "Just now."

"See what? How?" Adam demanded.

"It's his Gifts," Judy explained. "Sometimes he can see things from the past."

"There were shelves there," I said. "Almost like a big bookcase. There were canned foods on the shelves, not like we have today, in jars like they used to can food at home."

"I still do it that way," Judy said with a slightly amused smile on her face.

"I don't know how I knew it," I went on, "but I just knew that it was really a door and that behind it was a secret room or something."

"My house?" Steve said almost reverentially. "Part of the underground railroad?"

"It still doesn't tell us why it was bricked up," I pointed out, "Or why Amalie wanted us to know it was there."

Steve walked over and ran his hand over the bricks. "We'll have to open it up."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Adam asked.

"It's a historic landmark," Steve said with a frown.

"Who knows what we'll find in there."

"Amalie knows," Judy pointed out. "And she wants us to know too."

Adam pursed his lips. "Well, we're not going to find out tonight. I say we all go back to bed and try to get some sleep."

Steve nodded. "Adam's right. We can't do anything about this now and a little sleep sounds like a good idea."

I had to agree that sleep would be awful nice right about now. I'd gotten precious little that night. Judy nodded her agreement and we all climbed up the stairs, Steve coming last after he'd turned the light off.

"I need to speak to Killian for a moment," Judy said, once Steve had latched the door. I thought I knew what it was she needed to speak to me about. I agreed to let Judy out and Adam and Steve went upstairs to bed.

As soon as they were gone, Judy turned to me with a concerned expression. "I barely know where to start," she said.

"Let me guess, I'm in danger?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Yes."

"You're only the third person to tell me that tonight, and I knew it already on my own."

"Don't be flippant about this, Killian," she warned.

"I'm not, really. Trust me; I have a healthy amount of fear about all this. I'm just trying to not let it paralyze me."

"It has something to do with your investigations, including the one I asked you to do on Jake." It was a statement, not a question, but I nodded anyway. "Jake is in danger too," she continued. "I can feel it. It terrifies me because there isn't anything I can do about it. He didn't come home tonight."

I held a silent debate in my head about whether or not to tell her what I had discovered that night. I finally decided to just give her a capsulated version. "I saw Jake tonight at the Ball. He was with Fenton Black. Do you know who he is?"

"I've heard of him," she said in a monotone voice. From the look on her face, I thought it safe to assume what she'd heard wasn't good.

"Apparently, Jake's been, for lack of a better word, dating Black." Judy cringed. "It gets worse. He saw me at the Ball and dragged me into a hallway, where he proceeded to tear me limb from limb for investigating him behind his back. It seems I left a trail wide enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through. He figured out that it was you who hired me. He was furious."

She sighed heavily. "I was afraid it was something like that."

"I'm sorry I messed things up so bad."

She patted my cheek. "You didn't mess anything up. I'm the one who hired you. And who knows, maybe something good will come out of this yet." She didn't sound very convincing. She gave me a hug and turned to leave, but then stopped, her back still to me.

"You know," she said slowly, in a tired, worn voice, "there are times when I wish I wasn't Gifted, when I think it would be better to not know certain things. It would be nice to just live my life as ignorantly as everyone else for a change." She turned deliberately and looked me in the eye. "There's death in the air, Killian. I don't know who, but someone is going to die, and soon." With that, she was gone, leaving me alone with the chill that raced through my body at her words.