Lost Souls (Cainsville 3.6)

So a false charity had preyed on all three suicides, along with two others. Olivia had already raised the near-certainty that there were other victims. People like Angela Vogler, who hadn't reported their "phantom hitchhiker" encounters. He suspected, then, that the two other obituaries listing Greater Chicago Suicide Prevention as their charity marked two

more of Christina Moore's victims.

But what did that mean? A con suggested a human con artist. There was no doubt that the victims had encountered a supernatural being. People didn't disappear in the blink of an eye, and if they seemed to, then you were sitting in the audience of an illusionist, watching a well-rehearsed stunt on a well-designed stage.

Could it instead be hypnosis? Or some other form of mind control? They had experienced that already, but it had used a sprinkling of "fairy dust."

And where would that conclusion lead? Why would someone be randomly targeting people and trying to induce them to kill themselves, only to achieve a success rate of approximately twenty percent? To win a few thousand dollars in donations?

There were easier ways to make money. Far easier and far more profitable for a con artist of this caliber.

So what was the answer?

Gabriel had no idea, but he knew where to start looking.

NINETEEN

PATRICK

"All right," Liv said as Patrick climbed into her car. "I have everything you told me to bring. We are ready for a seance."

"A seance in style, I see," he said. "I've heard rumor of the Maserati, but I haven't seen it. Spyder?"

"1961."

He whistled. "Yet you insist on driving that old Jetta? I'm disappointed."

"This is my dad's." She paused. "Was my dad's." Another pause. "My adoptive father."

"And I'm guessing he didn't leave it to you?"

"No, he did. A garage full of classic sports cars bequeathed to his speed-demon daughter."

"So the reason you drive the Jetta?"

Her hands tightened on the wheel. "Ready to go ghostbusting?"

"You need to segue topics more smoothly, Liv."

"No, that was just a polite way of saying it's none of your business. There's a list of the seance ingredients right there. Can you check and make sure I brought everything?"

He scanned the list. "You forgot the proton packs."

"The what?"

"You're the one who made a Ghostbusters joke. Please tell me you've seen the movie."

"When I was, like, five. I remember a giant Marshmallow Man. I wasn't supposed to bring marshmallows, right?"

He sighed.

"Well, they'd probably be as useful as the rest of this stuff," Liv said, "considering you couldn't get any actual information on actual ghosts from your supposedly actual contacts. We're relying on folklore here. Which is like solving a mystery using techniques from a detective novel written by a twelve-year-old."

"Maybe, but the twelve-year-old has to have gotten those techniques from somewhere."

Liv turned the corner. "We call it 'imagination.'"

"Not entirely. Even a child cannot create literature in a vacuum. It's influenced by her experience of the world. Her detective story would include nuggets of true detective work, from shows she'd seen, books she'd read..."