Desires of t he Dead (The Body Finder 2)

Violet got out of her car and approached the closed entrance. Crystalline puffs of steam were visible from her mouth as she zipped up her coat and stuffed her hands deep inside her pockets. It was still so dark, too dark, and Violet scanned the area for any sign of life.

Yesterday there had been only a few people milling about, but this morning there was no one. The silence was nearly complete, except for one thing: the tremulous vibrations of the harp.

It only added to the mysterious calm that drifted like fog through the vacant grounds.

Her heart pounded recklessly as she reached the gated opening. Part of her hoped it was locked, had probably been hoping for that the entire drive. And now, that desire nearly overshadowed the nightmare that had drawn her here in the first place.

The coward in her thought about leaving, about just turning around and heading back. But she knew she couldn’t. This wasn’t something that would just go away on its own. She knew that much for certain.

Getting through the gate turned out to be simple. There wasn’t a lock, at least not like the padlock she’d seen on the shipping container. She reached out to touch the seemingly simple, garden-variety U-shaped fence latch. Her fingers clasped it and she lifted. It opened easily.

She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but there was no one in sight.

Every fiber in her body was on alert as she held her breath and shoved the gate.

It inched open. It was tall, and heavier than it looked, and Violet had to lean into it a second time, using her shoulder to push it far enough so she could squeeze through.

The resonance of the harp eclipsed the noises around her, the waking city at her back, and the ocean in front of her. It was vaporously surreal. Ominous. It was like the sound track from a horror film.

But this was no movie, Violet reminded herself; she was here to find a body.

She crept as quietly as she could around the containers, despite the fact that she seemed to be all alone, following the ghostly echo of the harp that drew her. When she saw the container in front of her, looking exactly as it had the day before, she was assaulted by that same sense of alarm, the sudden grip of panic, that she’d felt during her dream. The terror, she recognized, of being trapped within the solid steel walls.

She was shaking all over, her body mimicking the vibrations that quivered through her like electrical currents. She wanted to get closer, but her feet felt heavy and she struggled with the weight of them.

When she reached the container, the musical echo that just yesterday seemed eerily harmonic now felt menacing. It tore through her senses like an out-of-control chain saw, ravaging her.

She tentatively reached out to touch the steel walls, afraid that they might scald her. But just like yesterday, her fingertips brushed the icy-cold metal unscathed. From her nightmare, she knew exactly what it would feel like from the inside, and that memory stayed with her as she stroked the exterior.

The vibrations were jarring; the harp’s echo was invasive and painful.

He, or she, was in there. And even though it was too late to save the person, the body still wanted to be found.

Violet shivered against the cold as she tried to withdraw into the warmth of her thick coat. But nothing could warm her now; the chill was bone deep.

She wondered why she’d dreamed about this individual. Her ability had never led to that before. What was it about this body that made it infiltrate her dreams?

Violet wasn’t sure what to do now. Who should she call? Who could she tell?

Not her uncle Stephen. Even setting aside the fact that Seattle was way outside his jurisdiction as a cop, he was still her uncle, and that meant, without a doubt, he would feel obligated to tell her parents that she’d come out here—alone and practically in the middle of the night—in search of a dead body. They would never let her out of the house again.

And, for almost the same reasons, she couldn’t tell Jay either.

But she had to do something. She would never sleep again if she didn’t help whoever was in there.

She fingered the cell phone inside her pocket.

She could call the local authorities . . . anonymously. She could make up some excuse for them to come out here and look for the body and then leave without giving them her name.

But even she knew she couldn’t use her cell phone; it would be too easy to trace the call, to track it right back to her. And then they’d want to know how she knew where to find the body. A question she did not want to answer.

What she needed was to get out of here. To find a pay phone.

She moved quickly now, backtracking through the shipyard. She stole through the opening at the entrance and raced toward the sidewalk, scanning up and down the road for a pay phone.

It didn’t take long to find one; there were two, in fact, that she could see from where she stood. One was just at the edge of the shipyard’s parking lot.

She jogged across the short space and picked up the receiver. The handset was cold and dirty, but Violet barely noticed. She surveyed the silver face of the phone for dialing instructions. She didn’t have any change, so she hoped this would work.

She dialed quickly, her fingers trembling.

There was a soft click, and then . . .

A woman’s cool voice spoke from the other end. “911, what’s your emergency?”

Violet paused. This is a mistake, she thought; I should hang up. Her thumb hovered over the large lever on the phone.

“911 operator, please state the nature of your emergency.”

She hesitated, but she had to do something.

“Hello?” she said flatly, her mind spinning in a thousand different directions, grappling for a coherent explanation.