Soul Scent: A Zackie Story (The Zackie Stories Book 2) Read online

  SOUL SCENT

  A Zackie Novel

  Reyna Favis

  Copyright © 2017 by Reyna Favis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher,

  except where permitted by law.

  All human characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1974580965

  ISBN-10: 1974580962

  Visit the author’s website at www.reynafavis.com.

  Dedicated to my husband, Rich Kliman, who makes sure I keep writing instead of making creepy collages.

  Also by Reyna Favis:

  SOUL SEARCH

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Author contact information

  CHAPTER 1

  A lot can happen in a day. You could be born in a day and you could fall in love in a day. If Maggie Pierceson had waited just one more day, maybe she would not have taken her own life. Her remains lay face down on a thick layer of decaying leaves in Worthington State Forest. Next to the body was a Sharpie, dropped after she had finished scrawling a final message to loved ones on her arm.

  “Excuse me, Fia.” Officer Jill Creighton pushed passed me and ducked under the crime scene tape. Kneeling near Maggie’s body, Jill slipped on latex gloves and then gently eased the dead hands into plastic bags, cinching them closed at the wrists with zip ties. Maggie was reduced to being evidence maintained in a chain of custody until she reached the crime lab where they would test her hands for gunpowder residue. Her fingers curled inward as if grasping for something.

  I flexed my own fingers in the stiff, leather gloves, unconsciously imitating the rigor mortis contracting Maggie’s hands. This small action did little to alleviate the discomfort in my fingers from the cold of the early morning. I had been warm enough while I tramped around the deep woods all night, but being forced to stand and wait had allowed the drying sweat to chill me. At irregular intervals, my leg muscles contracted in little spasms and I had a crick in my neck from carrying the backpack. The worst thing after an all-night search was having to struggle to put two simple thoughts together. I stood among a crowd of other searchers who were gathered outside of the crime scene tape. We were a sea of high visibility orange, ready to surge forward once law enforcement had finished processing the scene. It would fall to search and rescue to bring the body out of the woods and the mood among the searchers was somber. The search was considered a success because the subject had been found. But the fact that it was too late was heartbreaking to everyone who had worked all night to find Maggie.

  The police had found the expended round embedded in the trunk of a tree near the body, but the gun itself was still missing. The force of the recoil would have sent it flying from her hand after the shot was fired. The gun was probably not very far from the body, but the fallen leaves and forest undergrowth made it difficult to recover the weapon. The officers worked methodically to narrow the search field by mapping the trajectory of the bullet. After being called out to so many searches for the missing, there were many familiar faces among the officers who scoured the area for the gun.

  I sidled closer to Cam and waited with my question as he was gripped by a jaw-cracking yawn. Cam was my mentor and partner in crime. He had taught me everything I knew about surviving the unseen world. The rising sun highlighted the dark shadows beneath his eyes and he hunched his tall frame against the early morning chill. Warm in her glossy red coat, Zackie lay at his feet, mimicking the appearance of a well-trained search dog. In reality, she was neither well-trained, nor a true dog, but to the uninitiated, she appeared to be a Plott Hound, sleekly muscled and ready for the hunt.

  “Did you or Zackie see her yet?” I kept my voice low, so only Cam and Zackie could hear. Still, I made sure my words were vague. With so many people around, there was no way that I could openly ask Cam if Maggie’s spirit had made an appearance.

  At the sound of her name, Zackie’s ears twitched and she briefly pointed her muzzle at me, but then her gaze drifted away. She displayed her level of concern for the proceedings by yawning in sympathy with Cam, her mouth gaping and her long canines exposed. Zackie’s only real interest was the dead. It was her duty as a psychopomp to escort the dead to the next life and she made no secret of the fact that the living bored her. After witnessing how humans played out the same little dramas century after century, we had long ceased to be amusing to her. Because Cam and I were devoted to helping her cause, Zackie would sometimes make exceptions for us, but mostly, she made it pretty clear that we were on our own and we were not to involve her in our shenanigans.

  Cam shook his head. “No, neither of us has seen anything, Fia.” His crisp British accent was slurred with fatigue. Cam rubbed his face in an effort to wake up and then ran a hand absently through his mop of gray curls. Staring at the body, he frowned. “You know, it’s unusual for a woman to choose suicide by gun. Most of the time, women overdose. I wonder what brought her to this.”

  My brow furrowed and stray locks of sweaty, auburn hair crept into my eyes, irritating me. I shoved the bangs under my baseball cap and turned my gaze to the body, trying to understand. “Do you think she was making some sort of statement by her choice of death?”

  “Don’t know. Pills leave the body intact, but using a handgun makes the violence of death plain to see. Maybe she felt that she had to show she suffered.”

  “Dying isn’t penance enough?” I shook my head, unable to process what may have motivated Maggie to end things like this. Pain, depression and being ostracized by society are things I understood, but wanting to take your own life because of these factors had never once occurred to me. At the lowest points in my life, I thought I had firsthand knowledge of what waited on the other side, and the idea of becoming one of the earthbound dead was revolting. Aside from appearing as bottomless pits of pathetic need, these revenants also revealed the most horrifying aspect of life after death - being damned to constantly relive the brutality of the perimortem state. I wanted no part of either of these conditions. Instead, I endured the humiliation of being thought mad by the rest of the world because I could see the suffering dead. I had tried living separately from society, but came close to falling apart during my solitary struggle. If it had not been for Cam and Zackie, I would never have learned that the dead can move on from the earthbound state. The true afterlife was still a mystery to me, but in my mind, anything beat clinging to a half life on earth.

  My navel gazing was interrupted when a low murmur erupted among the searchers. The police officers had found the gun. After another few minutes of taking photographs of the gun in situ and carefully packaging the weapon in an evidence container, law enforcement signaled the searchers that the body could at last be removed.

  I noticed Peyton among the searchers entering the crime scene area and touched her arm in silent commiseration as she walked past me. She and K9 Simber had found the body a few hours before dawn. The light glinted off her glasses as Peyton nodded her head in acknowledgment and I saw a few small twigs caught in her flaming red hair. Simber must have taken her through the scenic route to find Maggie. Dropping her eyes and sighing, Peyton ran her fingers lightly over Simber’s ears and the silver-gray fur o
f her flanks. Peyton was strongly built and her hands were larger than those of most men I knew, but each fingernail was painted a delicate pink and flaunted a perfect French manicure. Sensing her distress, Simber leaned into Peyton, and then began making the signature gargling, mewling sound for which Huskies were famous. Simber was a Husky-German Shepherd mix, but her vocalizations tended to favor the Husky in her, and under other circumstances, these spellbinding ululations made for high entertainment. The final task facing the searchers dampened any feelings of amusement, so there were no smiles at Simber’s antics.

  In the end, the carryout was accomplished with a minimum of fuss. After Maggie was packaged into the stokes basket, the searchers alternated between carrying the litter and clearing the way of brush. A carryout was exhausting work and by the time we reached the trail, my arms ached and trembled with the effort. After covering a half mile through wilderness, the waiting crossover utility vehicle was a glorious sight. We secured the stokes basket to the back of the vehicle and left it to the driver to take the litter the rest of the way to the parking area. A waiting ambulance would travel the final leg and transport Maggie’s remains to the morgue.

  Cam groaned as he held a bent arm over his head and tugged on the elbow to stretch out his triceps. “I’m done for. Time to go home and get some sleep.”

  “Love to, but I have to go and break down the trailer first.” I nodded to him and then turned to walk away.

  Cam called after me. “You’re young. You’ll manage. I’m leaving.”

  Because the missing person was in my team’s backyard, we were responsible for running the show for this search. Cam’s team had been called in for additional support, but all they had to do was show up and search. My team ran incident command and there were laptops and printers to take down, a generator to be shut down and a radio antenna to be dismantled, among other things. Everything needed to be squared away and made ready for the next search before the trailer could be towed to Peyton’s property to await the next callout.

  The rest of the team was hard at work by the time I arrived at the trailer. Between all of us, we had the trailer re-packed and ready for the next callout in under twenty minutes. The last thing I did was to put the wheel chucks near the threshold for ready access. Peyton shut the door and secured the lock with her key. Satisfied that everything was locked and loaded, we began walking to our vehicles, bidding each other a belated goodnight. I had taken no more than three steps when the trailer reverberated with a loud bang and crash.

  Stopping in her tracks, Peyton reversed direction and grabbed her key again. “What the… Did the wall anchors fail?” She yanked the door open to verify and I looked over her shoulder to see if there was any damage. Everything was in place, just as we left it.

  I scratched my head. “Huh. It almost sounded like we accidentally locked someone inside.”

  “Okay, whatever. It all looks all right. I’m locking this up again and driving home.” Peyton turned the key one more time and then stepped quickly away before anything more could happen to delay her departure.

  # # #

  Back at home, I stripped off my search gear, starting with the gloves that protected my hands from the briars and other nasty, sharp things in the woods. I looked at my bad right hand, flexing the fingers slightly and getting creeped out yet again by the discolored, putrescent skin and blackened nails. The hand belonged to a corpse and had no business being attached to me. The dead hand was like a cancer, something that used to be part of me, but was now a clump of mutated cells, a parasite that would act in its own best interest. But this was my souvenir from reaching into Zackie’s domain. It was no place for the living and I had found that out the hard way. Sighing, I admitted to myself that there were times I was an idiot and in need of a refresher course in self-preservation.

  I piled the rest of my clothes into a heap of dirty laundry in the middle of the floor and then located the heavy neoprene diver’s glove, pulling it over the dead hand before hitting the shower. I hated the idea of that hand touching me, so I went through this ritual of protection every time I showered. Even though it was late in the season, I did a careful inspection for ticks and came up empty. Good for me. Breakfast was a sad affair, since I desperately needed to go shopping. I assembled a small plate of cheese and crackers and vowed to go to the grocery store after I got some sleep. Before consuming anything, I put a light cotton glove on the dead hand, so I didn’t have to look at it while I ate. I couldn’t bring myself to chow down if that thing touched my food. While I could control the hand and go about doing my normal activities using it, the hand was definitely non-self. There were occasions when it acted independently of me.

  As I munched on the poor excuse for breakfast, I checked my phone for messages. My heart beat a little faster when I discovered a missed call from Lucas. His voicemail implied that he had a job for Cam and me. Lucas’s producers must have decided he had spent enough time grieving the death of his wife and that he needed to get back to work. After Hannah died, Lucas’s ghost hunting show had gone on hiatus, broadcasting re-runs to hold on to viewers. The audience must have grown hungry for something new and the producers realized that to satisfy their voracious appetite for novelty, they might not care if the new thing was a fresh episode of Lucas’s show or another, similar program on a different network. I wondered if the producers would be coldblooded enough to suggest that Lucas try to raise the ghost of his own wife for ratings.

  I put the phone down and chewed on a stale cracker as I stared off into the middle distance. The order of the day would be sleep, shop and then call Lucas back. Because I knew that hearing his voice would bring on a hormonal tsunami, I did not trust myself to have any kind of conversation with him while I was sleep-deprived. Lucas continued to be off limits to me and I didn’t want to make either of us uncomfortable by accidentally saying something unwise. He was newly bereaved and I would not take advantage of his emotionally vulnerable state. In addition to my commitment to act honorably where Lucas was concerned, an additional incentive was that his wife’s spirit lingered near him and she would very likely kick my ass if I made any kind of move.

  # # #

  Jarred awake by the sound of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood, I bolted upright and grabbed my phone to make it stop. Ordinarily, I found the tune upbeat and happy, but Peyton was calling and I didn’t feel like I had nearly enough sleep to deal with whatever it was she wanted. I paused for a beat thinking that I might let her leave a voicemail and go back to sleep. When I considered the consequences of making her wait, answering the call seemed to be the better choice. Peyton was not known for her patience and she might call repeatedly until I picked up. If I shut off my phone, I was sure she’d make the trip to my place and pound on the door until she got what she wanted. Peyton Bell was one of these high-drive humans. She was ex-military, competed in the local Highland Games, throwing everything from telephone poles to small boulders, and was training to be a master stonemason.

  I began the conversation with a whine and a whimper. “What, Peyton? It’s too soon to be calling me.”

  “Fia? Can you get in touch with Cam for me? I need him to bring Zackie here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I think there’s a raccoon trapped in the trailer. I need her to flush it out.”

  “Can’t Simber take care of it?”

  Peyton exhaled a long, dramatic sigh. “I’ve tried that. She’s showing no interest and meantime, the crashing and banging won’t stop. I need a coonhound. Zackie’s a coonhound, right?”

  “No, not really. She’s a Plott Hound. They’re bred to hunt big game – bear and boar, mostly.”

  “But some people use them to hunt raccoons, right?”

  Rolling my eyes, I said the next bit imitating an Appalachian twang, so I would say it the way I had first heard it. “It’s a damned waste of the breed, Peyton.”

  “Did I start this conversation with the words, ‘If it pleases your majesty’?” She paused to let this
sink in and then reiterated her demands. “I have a problem that might end up damaging equipment. Cam has a solution. Get him over here.” As an afterthought, she added “please” and then “thank you” before hanging up.

  I stared at my phone and blinked my eyes a few times before sending a text to Cam, asking him to call Peyton about a raccoon in the team trailer and providing her contact information. I filed this away in the big pile of things that were not my problem and tried to go back to sleep. It had been maybe twenty minutes and I was close to falling asleep when my phone went off again. This time it was the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Why hadn’t I turned the phone off after sending the text? Did I have such a huge fear of missing out that I would sacrifice sleep for the dubious honor of being included in other people’s nonsense?

  Fumbling with the phone, I poked the screen to accept the call. “Ugh… what, Cam?” I flopped back in the bed and wrapped one arm over my eyes to block the light, while I held the phone to my ear with the other hand.

  “Did it ever occur to you that the banging about might be Maggie?” As usual, there was no greeting from Cam. He just started right in with whatever was on his mind.

  I rubbed my face, still groggy and not really thinking clearly yet. “Maggie? What would she be doing in the trailer? Wouldn’t she have stayed in the woods where she died?”

  “Not necessarily. Because Peyton found the body, Maggie might have obsessed on her and followed her home.”

  “For real? How are we supposed to release her with Peyton watching our every move?”

  “Well, obviously I can’t do it on my own. You’ll need to distract Peyton, while Zackie and I work on Maggie.”

  “Aw, crap…” I had thought I could sleep just a little during the day and we would go back to the woods that night to help Maggie. But because she’d made an appearance and was no doubt in deep distress, we needed to act immediately. I admitted defeat and got out of bed.