Eerie

“Then let’s at least do something. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. At least we’ll be trying. Isn’t that the whole point of your video?”
“Fine.”
“So what do you know about this house?”
“Nothing. I moved in two months ago.”
“Well, we need to find out everything we can.”
“You mean like if the prior resident was an insane caretaker who murdered his entire family?”
“Yes, that kind of thing. We’re sort of stranded here, but I have a friend I can call.”
“Who?”
“He’s a private investigator.”
“Grant, I know we need a little outside help, but this isn’t going to come back to bite me in the ass, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t have people digging into my private life.”
“Paige, this guy’s a friend.”
“Still.”
“And more importantly, the last guy in the world to cast a stone.”
“Okay. I trust you.”
“Then let’s make some calls.”
Grant picked up the battery to his phone, reassembled everything, and powered it up.
“I thought they could track you with that.”
“I just need to get those numbers for the PI and the freakshow.”
As he scrolled through contacts, the phone began to vibrate in his hand.
“Damn,” he said.
“Who is it?”
He set the phone on the tile, Sophie’s name burning across the screen.
Paige said, “You got the numbers. Turn it off.”
He shook his head.
“I’m thinking that’s not the right play. Sophie isn’t going to stop. It’s not in her programming.”
“So what are you going to do?”
He picked up the phone.
“I’m going to talk to her.”
Chapter 19
Sophie walked through the entrance gate and up the paved walkway into the garden. She’d made it a habit last summer of coming here on pretty Sundays, but despite the patches of blue sky above, in its present state, the garden felt a far cry from the lushness of July. Winter had muted its color to shades of grey and evergreen, and something inside of her hated seeing it this way—like staring down at her mother in the casket—there but not.
A groundskeeper stood under a leafless Japanese maple, a bulging trash bag at his feet. Sophie opened her wallet as she approached, but the man didn’t bother to examine her credentials.
“Detective Sophie Benington,” she said. “I understand you discovered Mr. Seymour this morning?”
The groundskeeper leaned against the handle of his rake, sweat stains reaching from his armpits down the sides of his uniform.
A tall, skinny kid with ropey dreads and gentle eyes.
“He was sitting on the bench by the pond when I got here.”
“And you’ve never seen him in the garden before?”
“No, we keep this part of the arboretum closed in the winter. We occasionally have to chase out a few homeless and freegans, but mostly this place stays dead.”
Sophie moved on past the groundskeeper toward Officer Silver. He stood fifty yards up the path in his dark blue uniform, and as the sound of Sophie’s Frye boots clicking against the pavement pulled within range, he turned and watched her approach.
The man was tall but he looked about eighteen years old, with the creamy complexion and boring good looks of a high school jock.
“Hey, new guy,” she said.
Silver smirked. He’d actually been with SPD longer than Sophie, but as bad nicknames are wont to do, his had stuck.
“Seymour’s right out there?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Just beyond where they stood, the trees opened up. There was the pond—brown and still—with a little bridge going across the middle. Sophie could just see the back of a head poking up from behind a cluster of bushes.
“What are you gonna do?” Silver asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Something’s off with this guy. Want me to come with?”
“Not yet.”
“He could be dangerous, Sophie.”
“Jeez, he really creeped you out, huh?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Hang back, but stay close.”
Sophie followed the meandering path along the north bank of the pond. The garden was steeped in solitude, and except for the distant murmur of traffic, Sophie’s footfalls were the only noise that violated the serenity of the place.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong to be here with the trees skeletal and devoid of color. Even worse to be here on the job.
She stopped.
Ten yards ahead, past a grove of rhododendron, she spotted a pair of benches.
One was empty.
Benjamin Seymour sat motionless on the other.
He could have been a garden feature, his stillness matched by the Zen landscape. After three days of staring at photographs of him taken in better times, it was strange to see him sitting there in the actual like a statue.
She reached into her jacket and unsnapped her holster, let her palm rest on the stock of her G22. After coming on board with CID, she’d had belt loops sewn into all of her pants since the hip rig dragged them down. Much preferred the way this belted holster rode on her hips.
She hailed the man from a few paces away—better to make her presence known than risk startling him.
“Mr. Seymour?”
He didn’t move.
“I’m Detective Benington with the SPD. Everything okay?”
Seymour casually stretched his arm across the back of the bench but made no response.
“I’m coming over, Mr. Seymour.”
Sophie entered the rhododendron grove.
From a distance, Seymour could have been any park patron stopped for a contemplative moment by the pond. In proximity, the red flags began to wave. His custom-made suit was soaked through, and his hair had long since lost its gelled structure. It would have taken hours for the light Seattle rain to do this level of damage.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Seymour?”
He looked over at her and blinked, a galactic distance in his eyes.
“Where have you been for the past three days?” she asked.
“Here.”
“You’ve been sitting on this bench for over seventy-two hours?”
“The gardens are beautiful in winter.”
“They’re also closed. You’re trespassing.”
“I didn’t realize. I apologize. I’ll leave.”
He started to rise.
“Wait a moment. Just stay where you are. Are you injured?”
He sat down, looked back at the pond. “No.”
“Are you on any drugs right now?”
“No.”
“Are you carrying any weapons I should know about?”
He shook his head.
“People have been looking for you. They’re worried.”
“That’s very kind.”
Sophie ventured a step closer.
The man was shivering imperceptibly.
“What are you doing out here, Mr. Seymour?”
“Thinking. It’s a good place for it.”
“What are you thinking about?”
He didn’t answer.
The wind kicked up.
A scrap of paper in Seymour’s right hand twitched in the breeze. In his other hand, he held a pen.
“What’s that paper, Mr. Seymour?”
No response.
Sophie edged closer.
“Could I take a look?”
When he didn’t respond, she slowly reached down and eased the paper out of his grasp. Sophie took several steps away from the bench and glanced back toward the main path. Silver had moved closer, now standing only twenty yards away, watching intently.
She looked down at the crumpled paper in her hand—a receipt for a twenty-five-dollar pour of Highland Park at a downtown bar called The Whisky.
The time stamp was 5:11 p.m., three days ago.
She looked up at him again.
Seymour stared past her into oblivion.
Sophie flipped the receipt over.
In rain-smeared ink, the visage of an old man stared back at her. What the portrait lacked in artistic flair was counterbalanced by a staggering detail that reminded her of a facial composite. It was an expertly-executed sketch, but as impersonal as a mugshot.