“Nessa? What’s going on?” Jo asked carefully. “Who are you speaking to?”
“I’m talking to the girl’s ghost,” Nessa told her.
“What?” Jo spun around. “Holy shit. You can see her? Where is she?”
Nessa gestured with her chin. It didn’t seem polite to point. “They’re supposed to leave when you find them, but this girl is hanging around. She wants us to go farther down the path. Should we?” She half hoped one of her friends would say no.
“Of course,” Harriett replied. “She brought us here. We have to find what she wants us to find.”
That was easy for Harriett to say, Nessa thought miserably as the three of them continued down the narrow path toward the ocean. When the branches drew back and daylight appeared, Nessa breathed a sigh of relief. There were no other girls in the thicket. Then she stepped out onto the beach and realized she, Harriett, and Jo were far from alone.
“Please tell me you see them,” Nessa begged her companions.
“Who?” Jo asked, then managed to grab hold of her before Nessa fell to her knees.
There were two more ghosts standing in the water. The waves crashed over and into them, but they stood unmoving, like pillars sunk deep into the sand. One girl was white and wore a black dress. The other girl, who appeared to have Asian ancestry, was clothed in a red hoodie. The only thing all three dead girls shared in common was their youth. None of them looked older than eighteen.
“Where are you?” Nessa called out to the girls. Their bodies had to be somewhere nearby. The girl standing closest had pale, freckled skin and long red hair. She pointed out across the ocean.
“How can I find you?”
To that, neither girl had an answer.
“Nessa? What do you see?” Harriett asked, but Nessa was too overwhelmed to answer.
They were dead, their bodies resting on the ocean floor. How could two young women have died without anyone knowing? Where were their mothers? Why had no one come looking?
“Nessa?” It was Jo. “Tell us.”
“Somebody’s been killing girls,” Nessa said, her knees giving out once again. This time, Jo couldn’t hold her, and Nessa collapsed onto the sand and cried.
“What were you ladies doing out here this morning, anyway?” the police officer demanded. He was new to the area, and Nessa didn’t care for his tone. She’d accomplished more than enough in life to deserve some respect.
“Enjoying the public land that our federal tax dollars maintain,” Harriett said.
“We were heading down to the beach,” Nessa added. “I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped off the trail. That’s when I found her.”
“Was the trash bag closed when you found it?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” Nessa confirmed.
“And you took it upon yourself to open it up?”
“I didn’t know what was inside of it.” Nessa’s hackles were up. “Someone could have cleaned out their freezer and tossed the bag into the thicket. I didn’t want to call 911 to have y’all clean up a bunch of rancid garbage.”
“You contaminated the crime scene.”
“No I did not!” Nessa shot back.
“If she says she didn’t, she didn’t,” said a voice from behind her. “Nessa James is a nurse practitioner with a Ph.D. Her husband was a detective for the NYPD. She knows what she’s talking about.”
Nessa spun around to see a fiftysomething man in a navy suit. He stood just under six feet, though his perfect posture made him appear much taller. He’d thickened a bit since she’d seen him last, but in a way that made him seem sturdy, and the gray in his close-cropped hair added to the gravitas he’d always possessed. He wore glasses now, but the dark eyes dancing behind them were the same.