Page 48 of Ghost Town Boogie

“If not Walter then who?” Colt asked.

He finally had the why, now he needed the who. The ghost of his friend hesitated, delaying the inevitable.

“I didn’t remember for a long time,” Jack said, his voice as low as Colt’s had been even though the nurse at the end of the hall wouldn’t hear the ghost even if he screamed. He closed his eyes, seemed to be thinking hard, trying to remember. “It was late, hot as July always is, and I was jogging. Stupid. Trying to be healthy got me killed, though I suspect it would’ve happened sooner or later, anyway.”

Colt let Jack talk instead of pressing for the information he needed. He didn’t want to push too hard and send Jack back to wherever he retreated when he didn’t want to answer hard questions.

“I was staying at that little hotel on the highway,” Jack said. “Dad and I had been fighting, and I just… couldn’t stay at home any longer. I was jogging by the bay, thinking, planning for what might come next. It was late, early morning actually, so no one was around to see the car hit me from behind. I’d heard the car and moved to the side of the road, but not far enough. I should’ve realized…” He shimmered, faded in and out. “I didn’t die right away, but it hurt. It really hurt.”

“Dammit, who did this to you?”

“I saw his face,” Jack whispered. “He grinned as he put me in the trunk of the car that hit me. Getting me into the trunk wasn’t easy. He struggled to get the job done, but he managed. And he smiled.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Colt said. It was the truth. Jack had made his own mess and had died because of it, but that was no way to go.

“He wanted me to tell him where the pictures were, where the money I’d taken was, but I knew no matter what I said he was going to kill me. I told him no one would ever find the pictures. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. I should’ve said they’d go out in the next day’s mail if I disappeared, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I rambled too much, I think. Maybe I told him… duck. Did I tell him about the duck? As for the money…”

Colt didn’t care about the money, but it was obvious Jack did. It was who he was, what drove him to do all he’d done. “What duck?”

Jack ignored the question. “The money is in an account in the Caymans. No one will ever find it, they don’t know where to look, they don’t even know it exists. I’ll give you the number. You and Anna can…”

“Who killed you? We can talk about the money later.”

The ghost whispered a name, one that surprised Colt more than he’d anticipated.

Now he knew, but he needed evidence in order to move forward. How could he prove what Jack had told him? “Where did he put your body?”

“He took my phone and hotel key, all I had on me, then he dumped what was left of me in the same hole they buried Crystal in.”

A bossy nurse kicked everyone but the patient and her aunt out of the hospital room. As she escorted them to the door, the nurse assured them Emily would be released in the morning as long as no complications arose from the head injury. She also assured them complications were unlikely.

Anna took Colt’s hand as they walked through the parking lot. It was nice. More than that, she needed it. A touch. Someone to lean on, figuratively and literally.

She’d been alone for too long.

“Did you find out what happened?”

Colt didn’t immediately answer, but he finally said, “Some.”

“Care to share the details?”

“Not yet. I need to think, I need a plan and right now I don’t have one.”

She wanted to know more; she wanted to know everything! But she trusted Colt. He’d tell her what he’d discovered soon enough.

“I’ve been so angry with Jack,” she said as they reached Colt’s truck. “For running off, for not reaching out, for letting mom wait and hope and cry. And all that time, he was dead. I feel like such a jerk.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Colt said. “It’s your mom that’s holding him here, I’m almost positive. When she knows what happened maybe he can move on.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

Colt hesitated. He opened the passenger door of his truck, held it open even after she’d taken her seat. “She wouldn’t believe me. Your mom is very much rooted in reality. Down to earth, believes in what she can see and not much else.”

He wasn’t wrong. “What can we do?”

Colt closed the door and rounded the truck. He looked almost defeated, a little unsure, but when he sat behind the steering wheel he looked at her and said, “Jack told me where he’s buried.”

Her heart skipped a beat, then sped up. For a moment she held her breath. She knew Jack was dead, but… buried. In the ground. It was all becoming too real. “Are we going to…” A shovel, a late night trek to wherever…