Flow (1)

...

Day 19:

"What?"

"I said you haven't been to see Jon in three days now. You two didn't have a disagreement, did you?"

Cameron dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink and pitched the cup. "No, everything's fine. I just haven't made it back to see him."

Dina blinked. "Okay, because he phoned me a little while ago and asked if you'd said anything about coming out…it sounded like he hadn't spoken with you."

"Dina, will you leave it alone? Jesus." Cameron ran a hand through his hair. "I just need-"

"Hey, am I interrupting? Sorry – I let myself in."

Cameron and Dina turned at Kay's voice. "No," Cameron replied, snagging his jacket off the back of the chair. "Hi, I'm ready to go." He turned back to Dina, ducking his head. "I don't know why I snapped, Dina – I'm so sorry. Maybe I'm tired. Forgive me?"

"Of course, Sweetheart," Dina murmured, eyeing him. She smiled at Kay. "Did you want to come sit, have a coffee?"

Kay shook her head as she moved to join them. "Thanks, but no. We have a case. And I think this one will be interesting."

...

They entered the warehouse, fanned out and moved uniformly down aisles of metal racking piled high with crates. The towering shelves distorted acoustics; even their soft footsteps on the cement floor echoed.

"You know we're not going to find a ghost in here," Kay said quietly. "So don't be disappointed when it turns out to be garden-variety theft or fraud."

Cameron tossed a wry smile in her direction. "I wouldn't dream of it."

They'd moved three-quarters of the way down the aisle when Mike called: "Over here!" Agents converged on his position to find him standing watch by what seemed to be just one more shelf of boxes.

Kay blinked at him, then scanned the floor and saw it – from under the packed bottom shelf there was visible the edge of a dark stain. The air had a distinctive metallic odor, and she noticed Cameron grimace and move back several steps. She crouched to peer underneath the rack. "That's a lot of blood."

"What I was thinking," Mike agreed. "And check out the source." He pointed to the crate directly above, on the lowest shelf. Its base was dark; both the wood and the puddle underneath it looked to still be tacky.

"Get CSU down here," Kay said, rising. "I'd like to get a look inside that."

...

"So the Harbormaster, Harold Cantor, didn't move the stolen goods out of the warehouse," Mike noted. "He was already dead and stuffed into one of the empty crates."

Kay nodded. "Which they were careful to replace on the shelves so that the morning workers wouldn't notice anything out of place. But they left behind their…gadget."

"Which is actually kind of cheap and low-end."

Mike and Kay pivoted to level questioning looks at Cameron, who was studying the small homemade device. The forensics techs had found no prints or DNA on it, nothing to lead them to an individual, and it had been turned over to the magician for further analysis.

"You're not impressed with the trick, Cameron?" Kay leaned closer to examine the device. Cobbled together from found parts, it was like a little mechanical Frankenstein.

Cameron quirked an eyebrow. "It's effective enough," he admitted. "But it's pretty basic. A motion sensor, same as in any security light, picks up movement when someone enters the warehouse. It sends a wireless signal to the receiver." He tapped the second small device they'd retrieved. "The receiver triggers the sound effects, which are just played on a loop into the building's ventilation system. So the rattles and groans that made everyone think poltergeist seem to come from every direction, because they do come from every direction. And the timer shuts it down every morning so the mystery noises are only heard after dark. Presto – you have a haunted warehouse."

"I get all that," Mike put in, "but what's the point? The place comes off as creepy. So what do they gain?"

"Maybe that's it," Kay suggested. "The place is creepy. Nothing too dramatic, nothing anyone is going to feel comfortable reporting to their supervisor, because it's just some unexplained noises. If Cantor hadn't started living so obviously beyond his means that it triggered an investigation, no one would have suspected anything was going on there at night. But security officers are human. They get creeped out or distracted, maybe they spend more time looking over their shoulder, hurrying to get out of the place, and they miss things they otherwise would have caught."

Cameron nodded. "Makes sense to me."

Mike grunted. "We initially thought this was a one-time score – designer labels or electronics that fell off the back of a truck. But this sounds like the set-up for a long-term operation. Maybe they're moving something on a regular schedule."

"Could be," Kay said. "The question is what."

...

Day 20:

He leaned against the wall, back to the guard, listening to the rings and imagining his brother's cheerful ringtone. Something was up with Cam, typically effervescent but lately seeming a bit frayed. The last time they'd spoken, several days back, Cameron had paced restlessly around the little workroom, eyes landing randomly on notes, maps, clues to the Mystery Woman's identity and master plan. He'd been unfocused, unlike himself. But it was only three weeks since that horrifying fiasco in the auction house vault, and barely four weeks since Cam had finally given up hope of reconciling with Lexi. Maybe the bouncy, eternally happy soul had just taken one too many hits and needed time to regroup.

Jonathan sighed as the call went to voicemail. Cam's chirpy greeting and his own rationalizations couldn't quite kill the sense he had that something more was wrong.

...

"Damn."

Kay glanced up from the old police report to see Cameron scowling at his phone. "Something wrong?"

"I forgot to take this off silent today. Missed a call from Johnny." Sighing, he shoved the phone back in his pocket.

"Did you want to take the afternoon?" Kay asked. "Go see him?"

Cameron shook his head. "No, I'll go tomorrow." He leaned on an elbow and rubbed his temple with two fingers.

"Headache?"

Dropping his hand, Cameron rolled his shoulders a couple of times. "Yeah," he replied. "Tension, I guess."

Kay studied the magician for a moment, noticing dark circles under his eyes. He also looked a bit less…polished than usual. He'd returned his attention to the port map, highlighting probable routes of egress from the warehouse, and didn't seem to notice her scrutiny. "Okay," she said finally. "If it gets bad, go home."

A moment passed, stretching itself out, before Cameron pulled his focus from the paper to meet her eyes. "Uh, okay," he said, brow furrowing, and immediately returned to staring at the diagram.

...

"Got something," Mike announced, striding into the bullpen. "Actually, it was mostly Gunter who got it."

Kay raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"This guy." Slapping the open folder down on the desk, he stabbed a finger into the middle of the old photo. "His name's Jacobus Stein, an engineer."

Cameron joined them from the other desk. I've heard of him. He's worked with a lot of magicians, also did years on the carny circuit. Ran the haunted houses."

Mike nodded. "I showed Gunter our little ghost-simulator and he pegged it as Stein's work right off. He likes using recycled objects, probably a habit from his carnival days when he had to make do with whatever he could get his hands on to keep things running."

"So what's this guy doing haunting a warehouse on the docks?" Kay asked. "It seems a bit out of his area."

"Money is everyone's area," Cameron offered.

Kay blinked. "That's a bit cynical."

The magician shrugged wordlessly, eyes on Stein's photo.

...

To be continued

Note: Thanks for reading! More to come, although likely not as quickly as it often did with my last story. I'm still wrestling my way into this one…but I feel things heating up and that's good.

2nd Note: The Save Deception petition (at least the biggest one) has well over 18,000 signatures. People have been emailing not only ABC, but also Amazon (which actually sends personalized responses to feedback – I got one myself!). So that's a sign that someone at least hears the comments. Fingers still crossed!