Lost Bird Read online

  Oscar snorted and John backhanded his shoulder. “Hey,” Oscar protested, “she said ‘and shit’ and it was funny. Because it’s true. Because, you know, you’re a plumber and stuff.”

  John glared at him.

  Sachi wanted to laugh but, more importantly, she wanted to walk a little ways into the woods, and not alone. She snapped her fingers and pointed to the ground in front of her. “Move. Your. Asses. Right now.”

  The men glanced at each other and scrambled to comply.

  She turned before they could spot her pleased smirk.

  With the deepening shadows, she switched on the small LED flashlight she’d brought with her and played it through the trees and brush. Palmettos, pine trees, oak trees, vines and weeds—it was a smorgasbord of vegetation.

  Except…

  She picked her way over to a section of pine needles covering the ground that almost looked like a path. As she studied it, the more she was convinced that’s just what it was.

  “What?” John asked.

  “Follow me.” She ducked under a branch and tried to stay with the path. If they looked back, they couldn’t see the house or yard any longer.

  A shriek split the air. She whirled around to see Oscar doing wild ninja karate moves in midair. As he gathered himself, he scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “Sorry. Spider web.”

  John laughed, long and hard. He looked like he was about to say something to pick on Oscar when Sachi decided to nip that shit right in the bud. She tapped him on his shoulder and pointed down at his jeans. “Looks like a tick on you.”

  “Oh my god, where?” He started doing a jig in place, swatting at his legs as Sachi shook her head and turned back to the suspected trail.

  “Oh, sorry,” she drawled. “My bad.”

  Oscar laughed.

  They will keep me on my toes.

  And she didn’t mind a bit.

  “Very funny,” John muttered from behind her.

  The trail didn’t end as much as it petered out. The thick layer of pine needles and leaves covering what exposed ground there was concealed any tracks there might have been. When she looked back, she could see places where they’d scuffed the pine needles.

  Especially the two places where Oscar and John had done their impromptu insect interpretive dances.

  “Can we please head back before we become the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary on missing persons who vanish without a trace a few feet short of civilization?” John asked.

  A shiver ran up her spine. Julie had died in a house in the middle of a state park. Minutes from armed rangers and the freaking Interstate, for chrissake.

  She switched off the light, allowing the shadows to sink in around them.

  She felt like they were being watched.

  “Okay,” she said. “Beat feet, buddies. Back to the house.”

  “You first,” Oscar said, looking around nervously. “I want you in front of me in case there’s something behind us.”

  “Ditto,” John said, dropping his voice. “You feel it? Creepy. I don’t want you bringing up the rear.”

  She switched the light on again and retraced their steps, relieved when they stepped into the backyard a few minutes later.

  She walked over to the garden shed, which bore a padlock. Fingering it, she looked at John. “Do you have a key?”

  “No. Just Aunt Tammy.” The old wooden building had seen better days, but looked sturdy. Homemade, with a window facing the overgrown acreage on one side that allowed daylight in, it sat about halfway between the house and the rear fence line.

  Sachi found Tammy in the kitchen. “You said stuff was moved in the garden shed. What stuff, exactly?”

  “Oh, a shovel, rake, things like that. Garden tools. And I think some of the twine is gone from a spool of it I have in there, but it’s hard to say for sure. I took new pictures in there, but nothing’s moved since I noticed it several weeks ago. Just the hose outside.”

  Sachi stared out the kitchen window that looked over the backyard, an idea forming in her mind.

  “How’s the equipment wrangling going, Brad?”

  He’d just walked into the kitchen, clipboard in hand. “You all right, Sachi?”

  “Yeah, fine. Well?”

  “Everything’s ready to go.”

  “Good. I need a digital voice recorder, please. And Mandaline.”

  Her friend looked up. “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, you, witchypoo. Come with.”

  Brad dug one out of his pocket and handed it to Sachi. She, with Mandaline in tow, headed back to the garden shed.

  “Mind cluing me in, sweetie?” Mandaline asked.

  “I think I need a power boost.” She switched on the recorder and spoke her name, the time and date, and the location of the investigation. With the recorder in her right hand, she laced fingers with Mandaline with her left hand. They were alone in the backyard with the lights off, cloaked in darkness with the cloudy sky above them obscuring the moon and stars.

  “Goddess Above, Goddess Below. We seek answers, please make it so.” Normally, they didn’t resort to ritual at this point in an investigation, but Sachi wanted to see if she could coax Herbert into reappearing. “We call out to Herbert Evans.”

  She held the recorder up, falling silent, holding perfectly still.

  Nothing.

  Nothing she could hear or see, at least. And nothing on the playback, either.

  She looked at Mandaline, who shrugged.

  She tried again. “Herbert, you asked me to help Tammy. I want to, but I need help from you.”

  Again, nothing.

  Sachi was about to ask one more time when Mandaline’s grip crushed her hand. She clamped her jaw shut to keep from letting out a howl of pain when she realized where Mandaline was pointing with her free hand.

  There, in the darkness on the other side of the fence, a glowing green light briefly appeared.

  Sachi tried to dart after it, but Mandaline suddenly defied gravity and apparently gained a thousand pounds of weight in addition to a bear-trap grip. Either that, or the woman dug her heels into the turf.

  “No!” Mandaline hissed, dragging Sachi back toward the house. Mandaline wouldn’t let go of her until they reached the porch and got the FLIR. By the time they and Brad returned to the fence, the light was nowhere to be seen and there was nothing on the FLIR except a small shape that was likely a squirrel or a rat in a tree.

  “Dammit,” Sachi groused.

  “Where was it?” Brad asked.

  “Hard to say, exactly,” Mandaline said. “We were over by the shed.”

  When they ran the stationary camera footage back, Brad realized the IR camera he’d set up to capture the backyard had apparently shifted after he set it. It only captured video of Mandaline and Sachi by the shed, but its range stopped about five yards before the fence. He readjusted it and they hoped it would catch something this time.

  They split up. Mandaline and Anna worked outside, trying to ambush the mysterious lights again, equipped with a handheld IR and the FLIR camera. Sachi went into the powder room alone and tried to replicate her experience from the previous investigation.

  Nothing.

  By ten o’clock, Sachi was growing frustrated with their lack of progress. She pulled John and Oscar aside. “I’ve got an idea,” she told them, “but I need your help.”

  She detailed how she wanted to go to the back side of the property with an IR camera and the FLIR. Ellis picked that moment to walk into the living room. “Sorry, I overheard you. You’re not going to do that without me.”

  “What?”

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her down the hall, away from the other two men. “Sorry, but Mandaline would have my nuts, and I prefer them attached. I’ll go with you.”

  “Why you?”

  He lifted the hem of his shirt, exposing the handgun tucked into a holster in the front waistband of his shorts. She knew he had a concealed carry permit.

  �
��Ah. Slick.”

  “Got it? They can go, too,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder and indicating Oscar and John, “but I am going.”

  “Okay. Your logic trumps my stubbornness, chief.”

  “Good.”

  A few minutes later, despite Mandaline’s reservations, the four of them were outfitted with red flashlights, the FLIR and a handheld IR camera, and two different voice recorders.

  They took Oscar’s car, Sachi riding shotgun and navigating, the glow from her phone’s map function lighting her face. When the dot matched on the map, she looked up and, sure enough, the small trail appeared in the beam of the headlights.

  “Here. Park here.”

  Oscar shut the car off. When he switched off the headlights, Sachi realized the only light was from her phone. After activating a walking app that would map their exact path, she shut her phone off, letting her eyes adjust.

  No lights were visible anywhere around them outside the car. With the cloudy night, trees and shadows blended together, making it nearly impossible to distinguish the road from anything else.

  “Wow,” Oscar muttered. “That’s dark.”

  “Yeah,” Ellis agreed. “You sure you want to do this tonight, Sachi?”

  “Yeah.” She clicked on her red flashlight before opening the door and stepping out, the men following suit and the dome light inside once again screwing up her night vision. As they all stood there, other than the ticking of the car’s engine, the breeze in the trees, and their own footsteps, there weren’t any other typical nighttime sounds she’d normally associate with the woods. No insects, nothing.

  “My weird-o-meter is pegged,” John said.

  She had the FLIR, while she passed the IR camera to John after showing him how to use it. Oscar got one of the digital voice recorders while she carried the other.

  She didn’t want Ellis to have his hands full.

  Just in case.

  There weren’t any tracks she could see leading from the dirt of the road to the path, but then again, the recent rains could have easily washed them away.

  No other tracks from that day, at least.

  When they reached the path, John pulled Sachi behind him and started leading the way, Oscar right behind him. They made Sachi stay between them and Ellis, not wanting her bringing up the rear, either.

  She made frequent sweeps of the area, including their rear, to make sure there wasn’t anyone behind them.

  Other than a small animal she suspected was a raccoon or an opossum, they were alone.

  “Light,” she whispered, warning the men to close their eyes. They did as she checked her phone. The path, if it continued following the direction she suspected, would lead them directly to the back side of the property.

  She shut it off and closed her eyes for a moment to let them acclimate. “Okay, let’s keep going.”

  “What are you hoping to find?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. All I know is something is causing those lights and everything else Tammy is reporting. And we don’t have any answers yet. This is as good a place as any to look.”

  They kept walking. Still nothing. After thirty minutes, she checked her phone again. “Okay, this should be her property.” The thick covering of pine needles over most of the trail made finding footprints impossible.

  Then, somewhere up ahead, she spotted the greenish light.

  “Quick, move!” she hissed at John and Oscar.

  Before she could get the FLIR up and focused on the area, the light disappeared. The underbrush was too thick for the camera to penetrate very far.

  “Dammit.”

  “I saw it,” John said, a different tone in his voice. “I believe you.”

  “Me, too,” Oscar said.

  Ellis touched her shoulder. “Keep that up and going, Sachi,” he said, his serious tone chilling her. “Don’t stop watching it.”

  “It’ll fuck my night vision.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want any surprises.”

  “Anyone think we should call the cops?” Oscar suggested.

  “And tell them what?” Sachi asked. “Oh, hi, we’re on state land and looking for ghosts, and we think we saw something.”

  John snorted.

  “Oh,” Oscar said.

  She realized how it had come out sounding and gentled her tone. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m just…tense. I don’t mean to be a bitch.”

  Ellis let out a soft snort.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that he had volunteered to go with them, and the fact that she knew he was armed, she would have stomped his foot, Mandaline’s guy or not. Fortunately for him and his toes, Sachi never tolerated horseplay around firearms.

  They came upon another path intersecting the one they were on. It disappeared into Tammy Evans’ property to the south, and deeper into state lands to the north.

  “Wait.” She trained her light to the north, where there were breaks in the pine needle covering, exposing the dirt below. She hurried over, feeling the grin spreading across her face. “Aha.”

  “What?” the three men asked.

  She pointed the beam of light at where she wanted them to look. “Last time I checked, ghosts usually don’t leave deep, fresh sneaker prints in the dirt.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ellis walked over. “Yeah, those look like sneakers to me. And it looks like whoever it was headed south toward Tammy’s property.”

  There were no tracks heading north.

  They all turned to face south, where the path wound its way into the underbrush on Tammy Evans’ land. Silently, they started walking that way, stopping once the trail again petered out the way the one had from the fence line at the house.

  With the FLIR in hand, Sachi swept the area. Still nothing but them.

  “I want to keep going.” She pointed. “We can pick our way through this stuff. It’s not a good path, but it’s manageable.”

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” John said. “There could be snakes or anything around here.”

  “We’re already here,” Oscar said. “We might as well see this through. Tonight or in daylight, what difference does it make?”

  “At least in daylight we can see. I feel like we’re being watched, and definitely feel like I’m at a disadvantage.”

  “Check our location,” Ellis told her.

  “Okay. Light.” Although her night vision, with the FLIR display, was already ruined. She checked their location on her phone. They were definitely on Tammy Evans’ land, but far closer to the northern boundary than she thought they’d be. It looked like the path wound more to the east than she’d guessed.

  “Give Oscar the FLIR,” Ellis said. “You keep your phone going and check our location.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know where we are,” he said. “And I want to know how we can get back to the car in a hurry if we need to.”

  “Roger.”

  With John in the lead, she helped guide them more to the south and west, a heading that should take them right through the center of the property.

  It was after eleven, and Mandaline had been blowing up both Sachi’s and Ellis’ cell phones with worried text messages checking on their progress, when John stopped them.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Sachi’s heart raced. “What? What is it?”

  He lowered the IR camera and pointed. “Right there.”

  She trained her red flashlight where he was pointing. Then, not sure she was believing what she was seeing, she swapped it out for her regular LED flashlight.

  “Light.”

  Ellis nodded as he pulled out his cell phone. “Now we call the cops.”

  There had to be at least thirty marijuana plants in five-gallon buckets scattered throughout the small area. Some of the taller ones were tied up to stakes or sapling trees using twine.

  There were also five five-gallon buckets of water.

  “She’s not crazy,” John said, relief in his tone. �
��Oh, my god. Aunt Tammy’s really not crazy.”

  Ellis gave the dispatcher on the other end of the line the information. When he ended the call, he said, “Sachi, can you mark this location?”

  “Yeah.” She saved it. “Now what?”

  Ellis looked nervous and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I suspect the light we saw is connected to whoever is responsible for this grow operation. Let’s get the fuck out of here and back to the car. The deputies will meet us there. Get us back there as fast as you can.”

  This time, Ellis led the way with Sachi guiding him and them moving a lot faster. They made it back to the car in twenty minutes. Three deputies were parked there and waiting for them. Ellis took Sachi’s phone after she showed him how to use the app. He left her, Oscar, and John at the car with one of the deputies, while he led the other two deputies back into the woods.

  John leaned against the car, arms crossed, staring up at the cloudy sky. He looked serene.

  “You all right?”

  He nodded, smiling. “Great. Thank you.”

  “Huh?”

  He pulled her in for a hug, his breath warm against her scalp. “Thank you for figuring it out.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s just part of the puzzle. It doesn’t explain what I saw in the bathroom.”

  “I don’t care if you saw Thomas freaking Edison in the bathroom, this means Aunt Tammy isn’t losing her mind.”

  Oscar stepped in close. “Can I join this group hug?”

  “Of course,” John said.

  Both their auras had taken on a clearer color, the tension they’d been experiencing during their walk through the woods now completely gone.

  It was almost one in the morning when they returned to Tammy’s house, another deputy with them to take statements from Mandaline and Tammy, since Mandaline had seen the light with Sachi. After he left, Mandaline hugged Sachi.

  “Good work, you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still bummed I didn’t catch the aura or any EVPs.”

  “Hey, we can keep investigating,” Mandaline assured her.

  Tammy looked unsettled. “I’m glad you figured it out, but I almost wish it’d been a ghost doing it. Now I don’t even feel safe. Not that that’s your fault, Sachi,” she quickly added.