“And Butler House?”
Josh swirled some tart lemonade around his tongue, then swallowed.
“Fuck Butler House.”
Chicago, IL
Tom
There weren’t any homicides in Tom’s jurisdiction in the last few days—unusual for Chicago—so it gave him time to work on Roy’s disappearance. After arriving at the office and getting his cup of burned coffee, Tom went to his partner’s desk and fired up his computer. While it booted he snooped around, finding nothing of interest.
As expected, Roy didn’t have a computer password. Detectives preferred that, so if anything happened to them in the line of duty, their last actions could be easily traced.
Tom checked Roy’s email, finding a confirmation for a rental car at the Charleston airport dated last week. He dialed the number and pretended to be Roy, reading off the confirmation number.
“What can we help you with, Mr. Lewis?”
An odd thing to say if the car hadn’t been returned.
“Can you email me all the details from my rental, for tax purposes?”
“Certainly.” The woman repeated Roy’s email addy.
“Also, can you remind me when I returned the car?”
“You returned it last Sunday, at 11:35am. Anything else I can help you with?”
Tom declined and disconnected. Next he called the airline Roy used and said he lost his return flight ticket. Did someone else possibly use it?
“No, Mr. Lewis. That ticket hasn’t been used. Would you like us to book a return flight?”
Again Tom declined, and hung up.
Either Roy had returned the car at the airport, and something happened to him to prevent him from boarding his flight. Or something happened to him earlier, and someone returned his rental car for him to tie up a loose end.
Tom got on the Internet and began calling hospitals in the Charleston area, asking if Roy or any African American John Does fitting his description had been admitted. He also checked the morgues, and Charleston PD.
No luck.
Next he checked Roy’s browsing history, and saw he’d been on the same Butler House site Tom had been on. Roy also had been on the Ghost Smashers website. Tom recalled reading that they’d shot an episode of their TV show at Butler House, but it never aired and the host quit TV immediately afterward. Tom went back to Roy’s email, checking the Sent folder.
Roy had several exchanges with Richard Reiser, the host of the show. The last one ended with Roy asking if they could Skype. Skype was a VoiP—a voice over internet protocol. It allowed two people to talk to one another using computer webcams and headsets. Tom accessed Roy’s Skype account, and sure enough Richard Reiser was listed as a contact. Tom found Roy’s headphones in his top drawer and plugged them into a USB port. Then he video called Reiser.
As it rang, Tom accessed the National Crime Information Center and searched for Dr. Emil Forenzi. He didn’t find any info. Apparently Forenzi didn’t have a criminal record.
“You’re not Roy.”
Tom looked at the Skype window. He saw the profile of a man’s head, obscured by shadows. Richard Reiser was Skyping without any lights on.
“I’m Roy’s partner, Detective Tom Mankowski.” Tom raised up his badge, holding it to the webcam embedded in the monitor. “When was the last time you spoke with Roy?”
“Is Roy missing?
“Do you know something about that, Mr. Reiser?”
“Rich. Call me Rich. I told him not to go to the Butler House. But he went, didn’t he?”
Rich’s voice was slurred, and Tom wondered if the man was drunk.
“No one has heard from him in seven days,” Tom said.
“I warned him. I practically begged him not to go.”
“When did you last speak with Roy?”
“Eight days ago. It was Thursday. He said he got some sort of invitation to Butler House.”
“Why did he get in touch with you?”
“He wanted to know what happened on my show, Ghost Smashers. Why I quit show business.”
“Did you tell him?”
Rich paused for a moment before continuing. “The network did a good job of covering it up. They paid me off not to talk about it. I signed some non-disclosure agreements.”
“So you didn’t tell Roy?”
“No. I did. I did so he wouldn’t go. But I guess he went anyway.”
“Can you tell me as well?”
“He didn’t listen to me.”
Tom lowered his voice. “Mr. Reiser, please tell me what you told my partner.”
Another pause, and Tom began to wonder if Rich was going to balk. But then he began.
“It was nearing midnight. I was doing my intro in Butler House’s great room—this huge space in the front of the house when you walk in. Two story roof, curved staircase, weird tapestries on the walls. It looked like the set of a Roger Corman Poe flick from the sixties. We’d gotten there in the daytime, did some establishing shots, set up our equipment. EMF, IR, EVP, full spectrum motion cameras.”
Tom didn’t know what any of those abbreviations were, but he didn’t want to interrupt the story to ask.
“During set-up, one of the camera guys caught an RSPK on tape. That’s recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. Poltergeist activity. A painting fell off the wall, right in front of us. Portrait of that serial killer, Augustus Torble. We checked the nail it was hanging on—a big, thick, six inch nail. Bent right in half. We’d never gotten footage like that before. In hindsight, we should have left right then.”
Rich grabbed something and lifted it to his face. A bottle. Beer? Whiskey? He tilted it and swallowed, and then began to gag and cough. More evidence of being drunk.
“At midnight, I’m set to do my first piece of the night. Explore the basement of Butler House. We were using the dual head cam. Have you seen the show?”
“No.”
“It’s a two way camera, mounted on my head. One lens is pointed ahead of me, where I’m looking. One is pointing at my face, so the viewers can see my reactions. It’s mounted on a helmet, and with the batteries… it’s pretty heavy. So… we had a… a… thick strap around… my chin… to keep the rig steady. Right after I started my segment… the batteries…”
Rich’s voice trailed off.
“What happened to the batteries, Rich?”
He didn’t answer.
“Rich?”
“They… exploded.”
He reached off to the side, and then the lights in his room came on.
Rich’s face looked like it had strips of half-cooked bacon glued to it. Eyebrows burned off. No nostrils, just a gaping hole for his nose. Part of his upper lip missing, showing his teeth, which explained his slurring. He wasn’t drunk. He was Frankenstein’s goddamn monster.
“Lead batteries contain sulfuric acid. So my helmet was both on fire, and leaking acid down my face. And because of the chin strap, I couldn’t… I couldn’t get it off. I couldn’t get it off…”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said. It took everything he had in him to not turn away from the screen.
Rich lifted the bottle—a water bottle—to his face and took a sip, gagging again, some of the water running down his ruined chin.
“The network sued the company that made the camera. But when they took the rig in for testing, no one could find anything wrong with it. No faulty wiring. No bad parts. It’s like it exploded for no reason at all.”