Chapter Nine
The moment they arrived back at his apartment, Patrick started shedding his clothes. He dumped his vest and shirt inside his bedroom door and shut it behind him before discarding what remained.
"We should've taken his gun," Teresa mumbled from the other side of his door. She'd already expressed the same regret when they'd first gotten in the cab home.
"He'd just get another one, and you know it." Patrick was inclined to believe that DeAngelo's men rotated through guns as quickly as DeAngelo did through men.
Once out of his soiled clothes, Patrick retrieved his ring from his vest pocket, and headed for the bathroom. He had mystery goo in his hair and smeared all over his face a neck. For some reason he found it concerning that the malodorous matter was slightly sweet in its stench. That was all kinds of wrong.
"No, I know. You're right," she said. What she'd really wanted to do was arrest the man, but while she'd been able to land that punch, making an arrest as a ghost was an entirely different matter.
"I have to take a shower," he yelled out to her. "I'll be a minute." He stopped at the vanity above his sink, opening it. The cool metal of his ring, felt so familiar against his skin, but it'd been defiled by DeAngelo. He set it on one of the shelves and decided to polish it when this was all over.
"Take your time," Teresa said. "You were almost shot tonight. I think you deserve a long shower."
He smiled, then thought of the irony of that statement. She'd been shot, she was dead, and she'd just saved him from a similar fate. Turning on the hot water, he stepped under its spray and let it run over his head and down his back.
Patrick had known that DeAngelo was dangerous, had known that since he'd started playing there, and he hadn't cared. He'd almost lost his life tonight because he'd let his guard down. For months he'd been playing this guy, rattling him to the point that he saw Patrick's ring as trophy enough to kill him over. His old self would never have gone that far. Not to say he wouldn't have pushed some buttons—that was just him. But he didn't have a death wish. Did he?
A cold shiver ran over him canceling out the hot water entirely for one brief yet intense moment. He didn't feel that way now. If anything, he felt… exhilarated. He hadn't seen his life flash before his eyes, but it was true what they said about near-death experiences. New lease on life, and yada yada yada.
Scrubbing the gunk out of his hair and off his body with a frenzied speed, he found himself needing company, wanting to be with someone even if that person was a ghost. And possibly especially this person despite the fact that she was a ghost.
Within minutes he was in blue flannel bottoms and t-shirt and out in his living room. Teresa sat on the end of his couch furthest from the pile of take out boxes with her eyes closed and her hand resting on the armrest. He didn't think she was sleeping. Did ghosts sleep?
He glanced around as an uncomfortable heat surrounded him. Aside from his couch, bed, and T.V., he had nothing else but trash in the apartment. This wasn't living. Had he really gotten so low that he'd reduced himself to this? His gaze strayed to Teresa again with her eyes shut and lips turned up slightly in the corners if you looked close enough.
He went straight into the kitchen and grabbed his bin, then came out and loaded the trash in.
"Feeling like a new man?" Teresa watched as he worked.
"You could say that." He threw in the last container and sat down on the couch facing her. "I know I haven't been overly enthusiastic about helping you. For whatever reason you're here… with me… I don't know, but I'll help you. I'm sorry I've been making this entire ordeal more difficult than it needs to be."
"Honestly, I can't blame you. It's got to be terrifying to have a ghost following you around and equally irritating having her demand that you help or else she'll never leave."
He returned her small smile with one of his own. "First thing tomorrow, we'll go find your brothers. I promise."
Not only did he want to find them, but needed to. He'd been wasting so much of his time, wasting it on unimportant and frivolous things. It was why he'd become a consultant with the FBI, he'd wanted to help, and his friend, Virgil Minnelli, had gone out of his way to get him on board. After Patrick signed all the paperwork, he'd suddenly felt it was tedious and exhausting. For a while he'd helped, but in the last little while, he found he just couldn't do it anymore.
His behavior was shameful.
All he wanted now was to do something good. To do something for someone other than himself.
#
Without a body, Teresa found it difficult to describe what with a body she would've called physical reactions. For instance, there had been times in her life where she'd literally worried herself sick. If she had a body, that's what she'd say now, but nausea wasn't quite the right word for how she felt. How could it be? She didn't even have a stomach. But as she listened to Patrick talk on speaker phone to his FBI contact, Virgil Minnelli, the word nausea was the one that came to mind.
Their taxi driver changed the channel on his radio from soft to classic rock. "Stairway to Heaven" came on and he started humming along. Teresa wanted to rip the radio from the dash. Stairway to Heaven? Seriously?
"What did you find?" Patrick asked.
Virgil Minnelli sounded like an older gentleman, maybe in his fifties or so, and he sounded kind. "At some point, you're going to have to explain to me what this is about, Patrick."
"Sure thing," Patrick said, but to Teresa's ears it sounded dismissive. And by the deep sigh from the other end of the phone, she figured this Minnelli fellow heard the same thing she was.
"I'll hold my breath, shall I?" Minnelli asked.
"I wouldn't," Patrick returned. "So…?"
"I haven't been able to dig up a lot on Detective Lisbon—her record is closed. The only thing I've been able to find on her is what was in the news. I called her precinct earlier today and left a message with her supervisor. If I hear back, I'll let you know."
Patrick glanced at her, but she didn't look back. "That's not as helpful as I was hoping for."
"It wasn't meant to be," Minnelli said.
"Meaning?" Patrick shifted in his seat.
"Every article on her said the exact same thing, word for word, except for what the newspapers found to embellish the articles," Minnelli cleared his throat. "The media was fed the story."
Teresa sat back and thought for a second, her gaze landing on the fraying gray back seat. "They must still be investigating my death." That wasn't encouraging. She hated to think that the person who'd done this to her was still out there. She'd have to pray they caught him; there was nothing more she could do.
Minnelli spoke then, confirming her thought. "If I had to guess, they've set up a sting to find the people responsible for her death."
"How do we find out for sure?" Patrick asked.
"You can try talking to her boss, but I wouldn't hold my breath that you'll get anything out him. Unless of course I'm wrong and they're not running an operation," Minnelli said. "If that's the case, he should be willing to talk to you."
"Thanks Virgil. I'll call you later." Patrick hung up.
Reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose, the spot where pressure generally built when she was stressed or tired, Teresa wondered at the pain she felt there. It wasn't the same as having a headache, but it was still uncomfortable. How much of pain is a spiritual thing and how much of it is attached to our bodies?
This entire situation was like a horrible nightmare, one that she just couldn't wake up from. And to make it worse, she couldn't find her brothers. Anywhere. They'd spent the last four hours combing the city of all their usual haunts to no avail.
Patrick turned to her. "Are you all right?"
She peeked over at the blond man beside her and revised her last thought. Not all of it was a nightmare. In fact, since last night, Patrick had become bearable—more than bearable in fact. He'd been a downright saint.
"Yes, thank you," the cabbie said, glancing in his rear-view mirror. "How are you?"
They looked at the cabbie.
"I'm… good," Patrick said.
She chuckled, then felt a twist in her stomach, or that general area since she no longer had a stomach. "I don't understand what's going on. Why can't we find my brothers?"
Patrick had gotten up at the crack of dawn today, had gotten dressed, finished straightening what little there was to straighten in his apartment, and then he'd run to the grocery store and had purchased eggs, cheese, milk and hot chocolate. After making himself an omelet, and savoring his expensive tea, with a brand name she couldn't pronounce, they'd headed out to find her brothers and take care of her unfinished business.
They hadn't. And she was conflicted. She wanted to know where they were, but finding them meant passing on, which she wanted and didn't.
While she'd decided awhile ago that it wasn't important, she suddenly couldn't stop wondering about what'd happened to her—not knowing worried her even more now because she couldn't find her brothers.
Now, in the back of the cab, panic was all she could feel. "This is a nightmare."
Patrick reached for her, his hand stopping inches from her shoulder and hovering before he pulled it back. "It's going to be okay, we're going to find them."
Had whoever shot her, gone after them? Where her baby brothers lying dead in some ditch somewhere because she'd pissed some criminal off—at least enough to kill her? "I think I'm going to be sick."
Patrick took a deep breath. "You're not going to project slime on me, are you?"
She glared at him. She was definitely not going to do that. The sickness she was feeling was not the same as when she'd had a body. There was no desire to vomit. What she felt was deeper, all encompassing, a dread that filled every inch of her. "This isn't Ghostbusters and you're not Bill Murray."
The cabbie wiggled in his seat and turned the volume down. "Sir?"
Patrick grinned at her and waved him off the cabbie. "No, it's nothing. Are we almost there?"
"Yes, another five minutes."
"Thank you." Patrick turned from him, paused, then leaned forward. "And don't mind me talking to myself back here. I'm running lines for a play."
The cabbie smiled wide exposing crooked teeth. "Really, which play?"
"Shakespeare." Patrick leaned back.
"A comedy or tragedy?" The cabbie asked.
Patrick furrowed his brow. "That's yet to be seen," he said under his breath, then to the cabbie, "Midsummer's Night Dream."
"I love that one."
Patrick blinked at him.
The dread Teresa felt momentarily fled at the ridiculousness of what just happened.
Patrick tilted his head. "A Shakespeare literate cabbie. That's… unexpected."
Teresa smiled and signaled with her hand for him to proceed. "Well, go ahead then."
He sat tall and waggled his brows as he thought for a second. "'Or if there was sympathy in…' luck," Patrick grinned, his gaze darting from her to the cabbie and back, "'war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it… let us teach our trial patience. It stands as an edict in destiny.'"
Teresa chuckled at his mangled Shakespeare. To be fair, she was pretty impressed. James's high school had put this play on last year, and he'd gotten a part in it, so she knew the story pretty well, having had to run lines with her baby brother. If it'd been any other of Shakespeare's plays, she would've been clueless.
Sure, Patrick had taken lines from two different characters and he'd changed a word or two, but his point was made, and made in a way that had made her smile. If he'd said to her "we've had some bad luck, but be patient, that's par for the course in these kinds of things," she would've been ticked. It would've sounded too much like "Calm down, it'll be fine." She hated being told to calm down. But what he'd just done had been funny and clever.
He winked at her.
"I don't think that's how the lines go," the cabbie said.
Teresa laughed out loud.
"Everyone's a critic," Patrick said.
A moment later her laughter subsided. She hadn't realized it until now how stressed she'd actually been. Since she'd awoken as a spirit, she'd been in work mode: figure out what's going on and fix it. She'd kept her emotions all bottled up, and until a moment ago, she realized she'd been on the verge of bawling her eyes out. And that was the last thing she wanted to do, especially in front of Patrick. The last thing he needed was an over-emotional spirit on his hands. Having a spirit on his hands was more than enough.
She wiped at her tearless eyes as her mirth subsided. "Now what?"
"We talk to your boss and see what we can find out." He tapped his pointer finger against his lips and hummed lightly as he thought.
"What is it?" she asked.
He shook his head a little. "Nothing."
She didn't believe that for one second. She'd only known the man for a few days but in that time she'd discovered that his mind worked in mysterious ways. He'd absolutely thought of something, but she wouldn't push, not for now. Somehow, after he'd almost been shot last night, they'd formed a comfortable alliance. The last thing she wanted to do was upset that. She needed his help. More than she'd initially thought she did.
If her brothers really were missing, then crossing over was the least of her worries. Those boys were her first priority in life and death. In fact, she refused to cross over until she knew where they were and that they were safe. If she didn't look out for them, then who would?
