Yes, only I could do that. I thought of her terrible death. She deserved peace and justice.
And yet …
My gut said there was more here. Given the choice between following my head and following my gut, there’s never any contest.
I motioned for Frank to roll the camera. “I’ve made contact with the ghost of a young woman.” I described Polly. “She says she was murdered. I’ve been unable to get details of her killer, which isn’t surprising, given that she probably can’t remember those final traumatic moments. What I’m doing now is trying to take her back—”
“You haven’t told them my name,” she cut in.
I turned to her. I said nothing, just turned and looked.
Her face tightened with anger. “I’m Polly Watson. You know that. Tell them that.”
“What is your connection to this house?” I asked.
“I came to live with my aunt and uncle the summer I was seventeen.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why did you come to live with them? What happened?”
“I had a fight—”
“About what?”
She floundered, mouth opening and closing as she glared at me. “A boy,” she snapped finally. “It was about a boy.”
“Did your aunt and uncle have any pets?”
“What?” Her face screwed up. “Are you interrogating me?” Frank flicked off the camera again. “What’s going on here, Jaime?”
“She’s making sure the spook is who she says she is,” Rory said. “Like asking for ID. Nothing wrong with that.”
Cameron nodded. “I looked up Polly Watson last night, after the show. Ask her—”
“Get out!” a man’s voice boomed through the room.
The door behind Ricardo flew open with a bang.
“Get out now!”
Ricardo scrambled up and raced through the door. It slammed shut behind him. Everyone else was still sitting in the circle. Rory and I got to our feet. Cameron followed. We ran to the door. It was locked.
FOURTEEN
“Ricardo!” I said, banging on the door. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“¡No!” Ricardo shouted. “¡Alto!”
“He’s saying stop,” Cameron said. “Something’s happening in there.”
Cameron tried to body-slam the door while Sal ran to the other one, shouting at the top of his lungs, “We need help! Hey! Help!”
“Fire!” Rory screamed. “Fire!”
That worked. I heard the distant sound of footsteps on the attic stairs. In the next room, Ricardo was still babbling for his attacker to stop.
“Serves him right,” Polly muttered. “Serves you all right.”
I turned to see the ghost standing there, her arms crossed.
“He’s going to kill him,” she said, smirking. “And it’ll be all your fault for not believing me.”
Ricardo screamed. Mid-scream, he was cut short, with an oomph. Then, “Who the hell are you?” and, “Hey! Put me down!”
Rory and Cameron both turned from the door to look at me.
“Is that … Ricardo?” Rory said.
I could hear someone working on the attic door now, yelling for tools. Then there was a sharp crack at the door Ricardo had run through. It flew open. Jeremy stood there, holding Ricardo aloft by the back of his hoodie.
Cameron looked from Jeremy to the broken door. “How’d you get that open?”
“I work out.”
“That’s … your boyfriend,” Rory said, turning to me. “What’s going on here?”
“Make him put me down!” Ricardo yelled—in perfect English. “He’s assaulting me.”
“No.” Jeremy kicked a switchblade through the open door. “I saved you from an assault. Self-inflicted.” Jeremy walked through, still holding Ricardo. “I found him screaming and getting ready to cut himself with that.”
“He’s possessed!” Frank said. “Quick! Pin him down before he attacks someone.”
I gave Frank a withering look. Jeremy lowered Ricardo to the floor but kept a grip on his hoodie. Rory slipped behind Jeremy and retrieved something from the next room.
“Ricardo’s cell phone.” She looked at him. “It seems to be voice-recording. Do you want me to stop it?”
Ricardo scowled at her.
She checked out the phone. “Oh, look. E-mails. From your editor. About the exposé you’re running here.” She turned to me. “We’ve got ourselves an undercover reporter.”
“He stabbed himself?” Cameron said. “Seriously? That’s fucked up, dude.”
“I suspect he did more than that,” Jeremy said. “There’s sound equipment back there, too, which I’ll wager explains the voice I heard when I was coming through into the attic.”
“I had nothing to do with that. It was—” Ricardo’s gaze shot toward us then away. He squared his shoulders. “I’m still going to expose this fraud. I know the truth. There were no ‘letters.’ There are no dead girls.”
“Sure there are,” Cameron said. “I found them online.”
“Missing girls. Not dead ones. That was all faked to see if you’d fall for it.” He gestured at me.
“But she didn’t,” Jeremy said. “I heard her. Jaime never said she saw the missing girls. No matter how strongly she was urged to do so.”
I slowly turned toward the guy who’d been urging me so strongly. Frank edged backward. Rory strode past me.
“Hey!” he said as she reached into his pockets. “You can’t—”
She pulled out a remote. When she hit a button, a voice boomed, “Get out!”
She looked up at him. “Okay, you can say it now.”
“Wh-what?”
She glanced over at Ricardo. “You, too. Repeat after me. I would have gotten away with it, too …”
Cameron grinned. “If it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”
We’d been scammed. It seemed, though, that our enterprising young journalist hadn’t orchestrated the scheme. Frank had discovered what Ricardo was doing and offered him a real scoop, in return for a little extra role-play.
The house had been rigged by Frank before we arrived. He’d put in a sound system with the “ghosts” heard by everyone. He’d added remote-activated locks to mechanically operate doors. He’d even gotten a special effects buddy to set up the blood-sweating wall.
Yet there were things Frank couldn’t have done. Namely, the ghosts.
Even more importantly, Frank lacked something else. A motive. He hadn’t been hired by Ricardo. Even if he was lying about that, rigging this house took some serious cash. No journalist would have that kind of expense account—and no newspaper or magazine would knowingly pay for a false exposé.
So who masterminded this? I had an idea. As for motive, well, that wasn’t quite so clear. But as soon as we got out of that room, I had Jeremy slip off to call Savannah with a few questions for Paige’s database.
I let the kids handle the fallout … I mean, take credit for unmasking the villains. I figured it was a reasonable trade-off. I trusted they wouldn’t make me look like an idiot, and I’d get my share of the limelight later. For now, I had to find the real man behind the mask.
As one might expect, the aftermath was chaotic. It was easy enough for me to tear Gregor away from the questions and the cameras.
With Jeremy accompanying us, I led Gregor to a second-level bedroom.