Lost Souls (Cainsville 3.6)

"Vengeance is a theme with some of the ghosts on Rose's list. Particularly the sort of vengeance we saw with Lambert. They target men who are unfaithful to their wives, luring them away and then killing them."

"Forever wreaking blind vengeance on the men who betrayed them." Olivia wrinkled her nose. "Male ghosts seek vengeance on whoever wronged them, whether in business, in battle, or in their personal lives. With the women, though? It's all country song, he-done-me-wrong."

"Not in Ms. Vogler's case. I'm presuming that the breakup was precipitated by infidelity on her part. She was either unfaithful or considering it."

Olivia shook her head. "Sorry, counselor. That would be an incorrect interpretation of the facts. She said something happened to her, and refusing to acknowledge it was sending her life into a tailspin. That's not her doing something--it's something being done to her. Physical abuse. Sexual harassment. Assault. Either happening at the time or something she'd recently remembered."

"Like an incident of childhood sexual abuse."

"Right. The memory returns. She tries to deny it. Life goes haywire, culminating in Angela breaking up with her boyfriend for some unrelated reason--fallout from the stress. That would make Angela a victim, not a perpetrator. So Christina is not a vengeance demon."

Gabriel tapped the "Not a Demon" in her notebook. That made her laugh.

"Yep, that covers it. Doesn't explain what we have, though. Why would a ghost target people who need to fix their lives, even if it's not their fault? In the case of Lambert, I'm not even sure there was something wrong in his life. He just wasn't appreciating what he had."

"True."

"But that could apply to people in so many areas of their lives. Maybe the ghost doesn't know what's wrong with these people. Maybe she doesn't even sense that there is something wrong. It's like omens and superstitions. Walk under a ladder, and later that day, stub your toe and, hey, it must have been the ladder."

"In other words, the ghost plants a thought, and her victims determine what it means."

"That's what they are, isn't it? Victims." She tapped her pen against the notebook. "Christina has become a predator. And the best way to catch a predator? Set a trap."

Two minutes of silence passed.

"That doesn't help, does it?" she said. "Not unless our 'trap' is waiting for a rainy night and driving every back road outside of Chicago in hopes she'll appear."

"Hmm."

"Which means you don't have any more plausible ideas."

"It means that I admire your resolve and your determination, but yes, trapping the ghost isn't feasible."

"So we've hit a dead end?"

"Possibly."

"Damn."

Olivia had dropped the case. There was no disagreement precipitating that decision. Gabriel wished there had been. He could fight that, leveraging her obvious interest to lure her back in. But no, the case had simply fizzled out.

There was no place left to go, and normally, she would never let that stop her. Quitting was surrender. But this case was different. The trail had grown cold, and there was no reason to push on. The client had withdrawn his support. There wasn't even a victim to save. Future victims, possibly, but as Olivia said, "We aren't ghostbusters." Which meant partly that they had no skills for stopping a ghost and partly too that they were not movie heroes, fighting injustice simply because it was the right thing to do.

Olivia needed actual motivation. At the very least, she needed a mystery. Yet they'd solved that. Christina Moore had died and, as Olivia put it, she'd rechanneled her phantom energies into a new career in extreme life coaching. Mystery solved. Mostly. The question of why remained, but Gabriel would be the first to argue that motivation rarely mattered in a criminal case. In this instance, they knew she was guilty...and could do nothing to stop her.

Which made for a very unsatisfying conclusion.

The next day being Saturday, Gabriel was free to try to reopen this particular investigation. Search for the tidbit that would pique Olivia's interest again.

He was not, of course, completely free. He didn't base his schedule on a five-day forty-hour workweek. To him, evenings and weekends simply meant that his time was his own, untethered to meetings and interviews and appointments. He spent the morning working on legal cases, and in the afternoon dove back into their ghostly one.

Olivia had uncovered a possible third suicide, the connection to the ghost more deeply buried than the others. Gabriel dug deeper into all three cases. It was dull work, as such research often was. Rather like having pieces of a jigsaw dumped onto your desk and being told to make something of it, without even being certain all the pieces comprised a coherent whole.

He spent hours moving the pieces of data around, trying to find where they might connect. And by the time he found something, there was no thrill of victory, but rather the gut-level awareness that he really was, as Olivia put it, grasping at straws.

All three obituaries of the deceased victims listed "Greater Chicago Suicide Prevention" as one charity to which mourners could make donations in the name of the deceased. The fact that all three used the same foundation wasn't outwardly odd--no more than three cancer victims using the American Cancer Society. But if one is going to grasp at straws, one ought not to do so halfheartedly. So Gabriel researched the charity. What came back was the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: Greater Chicago/Illinois Chapter. Quite a lengthy name when one might be restricted by an obituary word count. "Greater Chicago Suicide Prevention" must be the accepted short form. Except it wasn't--he found only two other obituaries using it...and both in the last two years.

He made a note of the names. Then he searched specifically on "Greater Chicago Suicide Prevention" and found only the website linked to it in the online obituaries. It was a very professional design, but only a single page, with a commitment statement and a donation form. The commitment statement was what you might expect. Suicide was terrible. Losing someone to suicide was terrible, too. Let's all work together to help suicidal people find better solutions. Nothing connected that website to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.