Lost Souls (Cainsville 3.6)

"That's her. That's the girl I picked up." Lambert flushed. "As a hitchhiker, I mean."

"Understood. Thank you for your time."

Gabriel turned to go. He made it three steps. Then he caught sight of a clock on the wall.

Forty-eight hours.

He thought of Tanya Gross, the first gravestone he'd visited.

He heard Lambert again, frantically trying to book that vacation, the deadline looming.

Gabriel turned back to the architect, who was poised behind his desk, as if they were still mid-conversation.

"Mr. Lambert," he said.

"Yes?"

"In the course of my investigation, I've had contact with your wife. I say this in complete confidence, because I doubt she would want me sharing it, but I believe it's important for you to know."

"Yes?"

"She forgives you. She will not say that immediately, perhaps not for a while, and you must continue to work at repairing the damage, but your eagerness to repair it has been recognized."

Lambert stood there, as if waiting for something Gabriel's words did not quite provide. Which was rather annoying. It seemed clear enough, and to say more made him feel like he was auditioning for a post as Rose's assistant.

Gabriel steeled himself. "You've found the right path. You're back on it." A moment's pause, and then he added, "Stay on it," before leaving.

So they appeared to have a ghost. Which did not bother Gabriel nearly as much as an illogical construct within the expected narrative. Christina Moore died on a lonely stretch of road, hit by a careless driver on a rainy summer night. For fifty years since that night, witnesses had reported picking up a hitchhiking ghost matching Christina's description, all within that general region, all on rainy nights.

To this point, the narrative made logical sense. If ghosts existed, might they not be souls trapped on earth, trying to complete one final task? Endlessly and fruitlessly trying, in Christina's case.

Here was where the logic broke down. For the first forty-odd years, when someone stopped to pick up her ghost, she could not tell them where she wished to go. She would break down in tears...and then disappear.

Then, in the last two years, the narrative had changed, as if Christina suddenly remembered where she needed to be. But then she started giving false directions designed to lead drivers off the road. To get them lost. Whereupon she'd impart a final message before vanishing. And forty-eight hours later, at least two who had picked her up killed themselves.

So what had changed?

Gabriel pondered this question as he sat across from a client in the Cook County Jail. Ostensibly, he was listening to Mr. Pryce, but that required only the occasional nod or murmur. Had Pryce been talking about his own case, he would deserve all Gabriel's focus, but he was simply bemoaning the fact he might spend the next ten years in jail.

Gabriel could point out that he had every hope of getting the sentence down to three years, possibly four, but he had learned that it was not the length of time that clients found daunting. It was the "in jail" part. And while Gabriel knew enough to listen and nod and make those noises that could be interpreted as sympathy, it was all he could do not to give an exasperated, "What did you expect?"

It was truly astounding how the human mind worked. People committed crimes--in this case, hiring a hitman to kill a business partner--and then whined about the punishmen

t once they were caught. Even as a child, Gabriel had known the potential consequences of his youthful criminality. It had begun right with Seanna when she'd made a game of teaching him to pickpocket money from her men. If he won, he shared in the profits, via a candy bar or a trip to the used bookstore. If he was caught, though? That was on him, and Gabriel better not even try implicating Seanna.

When he was eight, his mother sent him on his first break-and-enter. He was to sneak into the home of one of her lovers and fetch back the money the man had allegedly stolen from her--which Gabriel presumed was money she'd paid him for drugs. While he was inside, he was free to take anything else he found, and they'd split the profits, fifty-fifty, in cash. That led to his first mistake--and his first lesson in the perils of greed. He'd been so fixated on the monetary reward that he'd stayed too long, and the man's wife had returned, glimpsing him as he dove out the window.

Seanna said if the police came, she'd turn him over, and he'd be in prison until his twentieth birthday. Even as a child, this struck Gabriel as rather extreme, and so he'd done what he always did when Seanna told him something he suspected was untrue: he looked it up. And there he got his first taste of the law, like the Theban labyrinth with the Minotaur at the center, surrounded by endless traps and hidden escape routes.

That Minotaur? Jail time. It could be avoided, yet once you stepped into the maze--once you committed a crime--you accepted the possibility that prison might be your fate. Or, in the words of the cliche, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Gabriel had always kept that in mind, always known that if he did something and was caught, he'd pay the price. After turning eighteen, he had--largely--given up pickpocketing and burglary and other acts likely to end in a prison cell. But if he did commit them, and he was caught, while he'd try his best to avoid the Minotaur, he would never whine and moan like his clients. Seanna had taught him correctly in that: take responsibility for your actions.

She'd also inadvertently taught him to commit his own crimes and not pay others to do them for you. Which made this client's wailing all the more annoying. Gabriel had to stop accepting clients who hired hitmen. He simply could not work up the proper degree of patience with them.

"You know what's really not fair?" Pryce said.

Life, Gabriel was tempted to answer, which, while true, no one ever wanted to hear. So he made his noise, one that could be mistaken for a "Hmm?" of actual interest.