It was slightly troubling, Kangai supposed, that he was rapidly becoming accustomed to being in the backs of police cars. Almost all of which were driven by Detective Gurski, he felt compelled to add, glancing at the detective in the driver's seat in front of him.
This time at least they weren't on their way to the police station for hours of interviewing and paperwork, or worse, that stupid 48-hour law... This time it was a lost child report. Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Hade, a popular student and a talented basketball player, had been missing for the past two days. His parents had big connections with the police, and had requested that their top investigation crew be dispatched to find their son.
The top investigation team was busy with some sort of FBI something that had been discussed before Kangai's coffee had kicked in. The point was that the police had opted to send Aki, Naoki, Li Mei, and Kangai instead. And where they went, their handler went.
Which, today, was the forest-dotted Sacades mountaintop. They'd been driving for close to two hours already, taking the only way up – a winding road around and around and around the mountain. It would have been hideously boring if not for the impending fear of toppling off the too-narrow dirt road and tumbling down the mountainside to their dooms.
After two hours of minimal conversation, no coffee, and the same repetitious scenery, Kangai's eyelids were becoming increasingly hard to lift. He leaned his head against the window and let himself fall away into lovely oblivion –
—just as the tire blew, Gurski cursed, and the car began to swerve in jerky, unpredictable hiccups.
As if on cue, Aki and Detective Gurski began shouting at each other. Kangai was about to inform them that now was really not the time, when Li Mei beat him to it.
"We'll need to jump," she said calmly.
The next left turn was approaching rapidly. Unfortunately, if there was no wheel then there was no way to make the turn. And if you didn't make the turn, there was only one way to go – straight into ten thousand feet of empty air and the concrete below.
"JUMP!" Kangai yelled. He unsnapped his seatbelt, shoved the door open, and tumbled out as Aki, Detective Gurski, Naoki, and Li Mei did the same. Li Mei had been sitting in between Kangai and Naoki in the back seat of the police car, so she really had no right to pull off her vault so gracefully, but Kangai had other things to worry about than that; specifically, the stinging cheek and shoulder that he'd inadvertently scraped against the ground on his way out.
He sat up groaning as the car drove straight into the open air. They watched in a sort of horrified awe as it plummeted out of sight. A few moments later there was a crash that sent electricity skipping down Kangai's spine.
Gurski was the first to recover. "Is everyone okay?"
There were a few scrapes and bruises all around (except for Li Mei, of course), but they were all in one piece.
"A-at least we made it nearly to the top," said Naoki, trying at an hopeful grin. "We can easily walk the rest of the way. It was awful timing, but I guess tires blow out sometimes..."
"I don't think so," said Detective Gurski in the sort of voice that always made Kangai want to break down and confess, even though he hadn't actually done anything.
"What do you mean?" said Aki, brushing a long strand of hair out of her eyes, still looking at the detective with distaste.
"I caught a glimpse of the wheel before it ran itself off the cliff. That tire definitely didn't blow by accident. It looked like it had been shot out."
"Shot out?" Naoki said, his voice rising an octave in between the two words. "But that makes it seem like—"
"—like someone very badly wants to get rid of us," Gurski finished, letting his glare rest (as usual) on Kangai in particular.
"Contrary to popular belief," Kangai said loudly,"I am not, in fact, responsible for everything that goes wrong around here."
Gurski's retort was cut off by Aki's "I told you we shouldn't have taken the police car!"
"What does that have to do with it?" the detective said testily, turning his ire on Aki instead.
"Whoever took Jonathan probably saw the police car and assumed we were here to arrest him, making him desperate enough to try and kill us all before we found him out!" Aki crossed her arms across her chest, glaring right back at Gurski."If we had just taken our car, like I said, this never would have happened!"
Li Mei, meanwhile, was gazing expressionlessly at the mangled car beneath them, lost in thought. Naoki was watching helplessly as the bickering between Aki and Gurski escalated into an all-out "this isn't the first time you've messed up like this" match. Nobody but Kangai seemed to notice the strange, cold patch of mist next to the dirt path.
Hmm...
He went to touch it, but it moved farther away. Ah, Kangai thought, feeling both sick from the ache of death in the pit of his stomach and oddly triumphant. He followed the gently pulsing mist deeper into the forest, doing his best to avoid tripping or being smacked in the face by stray branches along the way.
- 0 – 0 – 0 -
He'd hoped to find the body and make his way back to the rest of the group before they noticed he was gone, but that hope become more and more unlikely as he trudged onward. He'd been walking for fifteen minutes already...
Finally they (that is, the mist and he) arrived at a small spot that had been cleared of trees, allowing the sunlight to filter in and bathe the clearing in an unearthly sort of light. It would have been quite beautiful if not for the corpse facedown in the mud. Kangai crossed the clearing, preparing himself for the inevitable.
"Wait," said a quiet voice. Kangai jumped.
"Li Mei!" he half-shouted, recognizing the girl who'd appeared from the trees to his right.
"Let me get the others before we go any farther," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken.
"Li Mei," he faltered, trying to find the words. "Did you... did you see the mist too?"
She looked up at him, a gleam of malice in her otherwise blank eyes. "I saw no mist. I did, however, see you walking alone into a forest in which someone had just been killed."
He laughed nervously. "Right... Didn't think about that..."
She tilted her head, studying him. At last she said, "I will tell the others where the body is. It will not take me long."
"All right. I'll be here."
She nodded, seeming satisfied, and disappeared into the forest as if she'd never been there at all.
Kangai took the opportunity to inspect the body. It looked about a day old (unfortunately he'd had enough experience to be able to tell), and the cause of death seemed pretty obvious – there was a gunshot wound in the back of the boy's head. A quick look at the boy's wrists showed that he hadn't been restrained. This one seemed to be the more straightforward sort of murder. There was just one extra thing to work out...
"I know you're there, Jonathan," said Kangai, not looking up from the body. There wasn't anywhere else to look, really. One of the biggest misconceptions about ghosts was that they looked like transparent versions of their old selves, but the entire point of death was that their souls were no longer attached to their bodies. In other words, ghosts were just souls without form, perceivable to some (i.e. Kangai) only as an unnatural mist and a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Can you see me?" Jonathan—he presumed—asked, sounding surprised. "Can you... hear me?"
"Yeah." Despite himself, Kangai looked around for something else to focus on (not the boy's corpse) as he spoke with the spirit. His eyes landed on a weirdly-shaped tree a few yards away. "What about you?"
"Yeah, I can hear you," Jonathan said. Now his voice was growing excited. "Can everyone hear me?"
"No, just me." He paused, realizing he wasn't acting very sensitively toward someone who had just died. "Sorry," he added.
"How come you can hear me, then?"
"It's... a long story..."
"Are you a medium?" Jonathan asked, not to be deterred.
"Uh, sure. A medium," Kangai agreed, wanting to move on. "We're here to bring your murderer to justice. Can you tell me who did this to you?"
"Nahh," came the sighed response, and Kangai closed his eyes and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It would have been so nice for things to go easily for once... "One minute I was alive and next thing I knew – bam! – I was dead. Not even a whispered 'goodbye, Mister Bond' in a thick Russian accent as I was shot. It was just... silence. And then nothing."
Kangai raised his eyebrows. "Were you really expecting such a melodramatic death?"
The voice paused. "Well, no," he admitted. "But it would have been nice. This is just so dumb, and anticlimactic."
Ghosts could appear for one reason only, and that was if the person had harbored a specific, burning desire to do just one more thing before he died. The key words were that the desire had to be both specific and burning; most people passed away wishing they could just do more in general, or thinking rather idly of a specific thing they'd always wanted to do. But if the person had just one dream that he had never been able to fulfill in his lifetime, that person would most likely find himself anchored to this world by his grief for that dream.
In this case, though, Kangai couldn't identify any specific, nor any burning, desire on the ghost's part that would keep him anchored to the world, apart from his disappointment at his lackluster death. What, then, was keeping him here?
"Can you think of anyone who'd want you dead?" he asked, as a start.
"Me? Do I come off to you as the sort of person who'd have deadly enemies?" Jonathan said dubiously.
"That certainly seems to be the case, Mister Bond," Kangai replied.
The ghost laughed. "Well, my mother's always hated me. I wouldn't be surprised if she did it."
"Uh... okay," said Kangai, not knowing quite what to say to that. "Anyone else?"
"My brothers?" said Jonathan speculatively.
The detective decided to switch tacks. "It's very likely that your murderer made some noise as they came up behind you. There are twigs all over the ground, it would be impossible not to step on at least one of them. Do you remember how loud the noises were? That would be helpful in figuring out if your attacker was a man or a woman, at least..."
"I don't remember," said Jonathan. "I was kind of... distracted..."
"Great," he muttered. Kangai kneeled on the wet forest floor next to the body. "I don't know if this is going to affect you, but...maybe brace yourself just in case."
"Brace myself for what?"
But Kangai's hand was already on Jonathan's body's cold wrist, and his head was starting to spin...
- 0 – 0 – 0 -
Jonathan watched the strange boy slump next to his own body, unconscious. That couldn't possibly be right...
"Hey," he called, rather awkwardly, realizing that he didn't even know the other kid's name. "Um, heyyyyy...!"
He didn't have a body anymore, but the mist that was his consciousness began to gather in a concentrated, pulsing cloud around the kid. He wished he had a hand, or something, so he could feel his pulse or shake him awake.
As this thought occurred to him, he thought he could feel some sort of dragging sensation, pulling him down and making his vision blur...