Next Time

By William L. Bowman, Jr

Alisha (Al) Ferdinand, the youngest cop to ever make the grade of lieutenant and her unlikely duo of helpers, Reporter Rob Paulpry and a spooky little cat, are on the trail again. This time, they are searching for a serial killer with a supernatural MO, a ghost who may hold the key to the murders, and a fake(?) psychic medium. As they work to solve the murders, they have to deal with not only the mundane issues of their daily lives and careers, but also with their own old and newly discovered otherworldly abilities. This book is a sequel to Caine's Time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William L. Bowman, Jr
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215702017

William L. Bowman, Jr

I have been writing since I was a child, and have had poetry, magazine articles in Dragon, Martial Arts Training and The linking Ring. I have also had original magic effects I created published in magic journals, and have had three plays published. Besides writing, I am a professional magician, have studied and taught martial arts, and have been working in the healthcare field for 35 years. There are 2 people to whom I owe the bulk of my success. The first is my father, who stopped writing when he received his first rejection, but never stopped being a writer and was always there to give me help, suggestions and advice. The second, and by far the most important, is my wife, Sally Sharp. Besides being the most supportive, loving wife anyone could hope for, she is my in house editor and, when needed, an honest critic. Every writer needs one of those.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Mary Alice Lansford Murder Room was always the most popular stop on the ghost tour, which is why it was the last stop. It was above the Hard Line Bar, in a building, which, according to local legend, had been a notorious brothel around the turn of the twentieth century. Situated on the edge of the ill reputed neighborhood known locally as The End, the bar catered mostly to workers from the nearby pencil factory. The pencil factory was the last of the manufacturing industries from before this part of the city had begun its decline. Hardline Number Two Pencils, the management boasted, have marked more ovals on standardized tests than any other pencil. No one knew if this was true, but the claim had stood in the company's advertisements for decades.

The tour skirted the edges of The End. Originally built as a luxury living neighborhood, The End had eventually fallen on whatever ranked several notches below hard times. For decades, it had been a cesspool filled with the lowest dregs of humanity. Drug addicts and their suppliers, prostitutes, and every form of degenerate, imaginable and unimaginable, scuttled within and among the decaying, abandoned buildings during the day and prowled the alleys and streets after dark, plying their unwholesome trades. They preyed on whoever might be foolish enough to venture within their domain. When no one was so foolish, they turned on one another.

Ginnie thought the real stories of The End were far worse than anything Evelyn Jenson had managed to concoct to fool the gullible patrons of her tours. Even though, since the incident last year when some religious nut had managed to cause a riot and burned to death in his own mockery of a church, the area had been undergoing an intensive gentrification. Ginnie was glad she did not have to venture too deeply into The End. The bus did drive by the burned out church and the guides gave the patrons Evelyn's version of the events of last year, but the guests were not allowed off at that stop.

Ginnie Talbot knew that Evelyn Jenson, Ms. Jenson to all of her employees, the owner of Spooktacular Ghost Tours, Incorporated, made up most of the stories she told on the tour, at least in part. There was always just enough fact mixed in with Ms. Jenson's narratives to give at least the hint of plausibility. Ginnie also nearly gagged every time she had to say the name of the company. Like all of the other guides, she was a student at the local institute of higher learning, Pine Ridge College. She was working on her Theater degree with a minor in marketing, and was not about to let a bad script or ridiculous branding get in her way. Therefore, she dutifully recounted the probably bogus story of the demise of Mary Alice Lansford. It was a little easier tonight, Ginnie had the first tour after Easter break, so she felt fresh and a little less bored than she usually was by the script.

Now, for the final stop on the Spooktacular Ghost Tour, the infamous Mary Alice Lansford Murder Room. The space has been carefully restored to match the eyewitness descriptions and the police reports. Minus the body of course. The last line was an ad-lib, but always got a chuckle. Ginnie knew that she would probably get into trouble over it one of these days, as Ms. Jenson occasionally sent spies out on the tours to make sure everyone stuck strictly to the script. She didn't really care, however. She was in her last semester before transferring to the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.

The next part was her favorite. She was very good at choosing just the right person for it. She attributed that particular skill to her experience working for a magician at a theme park. It had been a great gig until Marko the Magnificent had gotten a little too handsy backstage. Tonight, it would be the mousy middle-aged woman who had said that she was traveling alone, taking in as many ghost tours as she could find. "Mary Alice Lansford was the oldest prostitute in the brothel. Legend has it that on the night of her death, she had refused one of the regular customers, known for his brutality toward the ladies, and had paid the ultimate price. Tied to the chair in the room we are about to enter and gagged, she was punished for hours by Darius Filer, owner and enforcer of the brothel. Mary Alice was nearly past her prime and only the skills she had perfected over many years of pleasing the men...and the occasional woman (this always elicited a few giggles and disapproving looks), who frequented the establishment had kept her employed beyond the normal ideal age for a woman in her profession. However, the client she had slighted had taken out his anger in the parlour downstairs where the pool tables are located today. One of the younger girls had been too slow fleeing. The customer was reportedly a very large man by the name of Eric Frueh. He was the owner of the local sawmill, his muscles built up and hardened by years of wrestling logs into the saw. He had been married at one time, but his wife, he claimed, had taken up with a traveling tool salesman and left him. Many years later, long after the death of the vicious sawmill operator, the mill was being demolished and the remains of his wife and the tool salesman were found in a shallow grave in the basement. Their bones showed the evidence of their brutal deaths.

"The young girl lay dying in her room, and Darius was in a rage at the loss of income and of one of his best customers. The police had hauled Frueh off after his beating of the young girl had spilled out into the street. Darius had the chief of police in his pocket, of course, but there had been too many witnesses to sweep this incident under the rug.

"Darius would, he knew, have to cease operations for a while and pay some exorbitant bribes on top of his regular graft. So, Mary Alice Lansford, the Matriarch to all the girls and the longest serving prostitute in the history of the state, had paid the ultimate price.

"The coroner said it had taken many hours for Mary Alice to die. It seems that Darius had developed his own set of skills over the years and kept his keenly sharp straight razor with him at all times. He employed both with great gusto that night.

The crime scene photos showed the room painted in the unfortunate woman's blood. If one looks closely enough, the stains can still be seen through the many layers of paint applied over the years since that fateful night and in the red hue of the chair, the very one to which Mary Alice Lansford's lifeless body was found tied with the complicated knots Filer had learned in his time as a sailor. The group had fallen completely silent, even John from Kansas, whose wife dragged him along with her tonight and who had scoffed at every stop along the way. He knew that all ghost sightings and supernatural phenomena were bunk and bullshit, as he put it. There was at least one doubter on every tour, but that never bothered Ginnie or any of the other experienced guides. Occasionally one of the newer hires (all young, attractive female college students by design) would get into an argument with one of them, or try to bring them in; privately admitting that it was all a scripted event to entertain. That would usually be her last tour. Ms. Jenson had a strict code of conduct for her guides and arguing with a customer or admitting the harmless fraud of the tour were absolute no-no's. Even though all of the advertising copy for the tour stated, For entertainment purposes only.

Darius fled the area after the murder. The legend says that grief overcame him as he had been in love with Mary Alice and was haunted, whether figuratively or actually we shall never know, until his suicide. The subject of Darius Filer's supposed haunting has long been a bone of contention between the psychologists and the parapsychologists. I will let you make up your own minds. Filer's suicide was a rather gruesome affair also involving a straight razor, perhaps the same one he had used on the unfortunate Mary Alice. She let the silence stretch out dramatically, allowing the guests to picture the events, their minds filling in the gory details. Her Intro to Acting teacher had said a pause should be as long as possible as long as you could keep the meaning flowing through. Ginnie knew just how long to pause.

It has been reported by not only many of the patrons of the Hard Line, but also its owner, Sugar Jones, that the figure of Mary Alice Lansford frequently returns to the room in which she met her end. Perhaps looking for Darius Filer to exact her revenge, or, maybe just looking for one more customer for a night of debauchery... A pause and a raised eyebrow punctuated that last line, perfectly.

Now, it was time for the pitch. Ginnie was very good at selling, which would be handy as her plan was to use her marketing training to support herself as she launched her acting career. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, before we open the door to the most infamous room on the tour, I would like to draw your attention to the books in the case to my right. They are autographed copies of The Ghosts of The End by Evelyn Jenson, owner of Spooktacular Ghost Tours. Ms. Jenson has carefully researched ('and/or made up/ embellished,' Ginnie thought) the tales and history of all of the stops on tonight's tour and many others as well. Like the story of the Basilica of St. Jude, which burned last year, shrouded in mystery. They will be on sale after the tour for only $29.95. Now, Mitzi, she said, gesturing toward the woman she had chosen earlier, if you would be so kind. Ginnie gestured toward the door with its ornate cut glass knob cleverly tinted red. Ginnie noted that Ms. Jensen had apparently been doing some touch ups and the knob looked even more than usually bloodstained. Mitzi giggled nervously as she stepped forward and took ahold of the knob. It's sticky," the mousy woman said as she took ahold. It was, by design hard to turn and the hinges groaned and resisted the effort to push the door open. Ms. Jenson paid very close attention to every detail, frequently tweaking the special effects.

As usual, the guests, as Ms. Jenson insisted they call the people on the tour, (Ginnie would have said marks, but...) crowded the doorway to see into the small room. Mitzi stood frozen and there was the usual round of photo snapping, oohs, and awes, waiting a beat, Ginnie stepped up behind the group to finish them off. The unusual coppery smell had struck her first. It must be something drifting in from outside, she thought, or one of Ms. Jenson's hokey special effects. Then, Ginnie looked into the room and when she started screaming, she thought she would never stop.

********************

Lieutenant Alisha Al Ferdinand of the Fourteenth Precinct hated the ghost tours, almost as much as she hated Evelyn Jenson, the impresario of the ridiculous affairs. Al and Evelyn had a checkered history, which started just after the events in the Basilica of St. Jude the previous year. Ever since coming to town, days after the riot and fire, the Jenson woman had been a thorn in Al's side. Somehow, the annoying wannabe medium who dressed like a magazine from the fifties had heard about Al's involvement and started pestering her about it from day one. Worse, she had either heard rumors, guessed, or intuited Al's gift and would not let it go, even hinting about it in the self-published work of fiction Al had seen in the case outside the door. But that was not why Al loathed the stupid tours. She saw nothing entertaining in the faked spook show. She had had enough weird stuff in her real life.

Not the least of her weird stuff had been the dreams she had been having since the age of twelve. Dreams that came true. Dreams which featured a figure she called The Bad Man. Then, The Bad Man had shown up in the waking world. Nothing, she thought, could ever freak her out again. And to think, some girls want to meet the man of their dreams! Suffice it to say she was done with weird. Now, this.

The murderer had tied young woman's body to the wooden chair with heavy hemp rope using very intricate knots. The bindings themselves were tight enough to have caused peri-mortem damage to her tissues, biting deeply enough into her flesh to cause bleeding. The rest of the damage to the poor girl's body appeared to have been inflicted with the old-fashioned straight razor lying on the floor next to the chair's front leg. The killer had apparently taken his time. Al couldn't begin to count the lacerations on the victim's limbs, torso, and face. Most of them were fairly shallow, intended to cause pain and suffering rather than death. Something had been stuffed into her mouth and a piece of rope held the gag in place and bound her head to the tall back of the wooden chair. Many of the lacerations were seemingly random. Others appeared to be symbols or designs. On her forehead was what looked like a Roman numeral 2 in a circle. Al wondered if this meant that there had been another victim prior to this one.

The crime scene techs were busy about their scientific business and Al had uniforms interviewing witnesses, of which there had been plenty thanks to the tour, so she had nothing to do except prowl around the crime scene trying to stay out of the way. She needed to get a feel for what had happened here, and why. Al knew that nothing the witnesses could say would actually help the investigation, but it was protocol. She had heard one mousy looking woman declaring that she had seen the ghost of Darius Filer lurking behind the dead woman, smiling. It was going to be a long night.

As Al walked around the scene, careful to avoid disturbing any evidence, she tried to reach out with all of her senses. That included what she had always called her gut, but, given the events of the year before, she now knew to be something else. A true sixth sense. This was something that had always been there, but that she had been unable or unwilling to admit existed. This sense gave her insight into people on a plane most others did not even realize was there.

Her regular senses catalogued every visual, auditory, and olfactory (Al had been blessed, or cursed, depending on the day, with a very acute sense of smell) input with their usual perceptiveness and attention to detail. She would later be able to recall all of these details, another skill that had allowed her to be the first, and only, female detective to reach the rank of Lieutenant in the few short years it had taken her.

Her deeper sense, however, was quite confused. It was as though there were too many layers, too much information coming at her all at once. She couldn't sort through it all and sift out the individual pieces. Some of the layers were thin and hazy like very old photographs, faded with time and exposure to sunlight; others were sharp, fresh, and violent. It was too much, she felt dizzy, lost, and disoriented.

Lieutenant Ferdinand? the voice of the young uniform brought her back to the solid Now. She was suddenly and mercifully disconnected from the disturbing swell of images and feelings inside her head (or wherever the something resided). She was back in the real world and the relatively familiar, if far from mundane, surroundings of a particularly grisly murder scene. She recovered her psychic equilibrium and turned to look at the rookie who had startled her out of her reverie. Yes...Dooley? she asked, glancing at the newbies' nametag. After the mess at the Fourteenth last year, including two murders right in the precinct, there had been a lot of turnover in the force. Al was still working to learn the names of all of the new recruits.

The young officer hesitated, looking at Al. She was used to his reaction, Al was not imposingly tall or large, standing just 5'3" and weighing in at a muscular 130 with just the right curves. She had long, dark brown hair, kept tied back in a ponytail when she was working and green eyes that were frequently described as luminous.

She stared at the rookie until he recovered his senses and his ability to speak. There's a reporter...

There are a lot of reporters, rookie, be more specific. Al's temper got short when she found herself faced with incompetence, frustration, or reporters. There was only one reporter she had ever been able to tolerate for any length of time. Of course, he had saved her life.

"Rob Paulpry, with the Times Republican," said an all too familiar voice from just outside the door to the room.

The word, unassuming was probably coined with Rob Paulpry in mind. Looking at him, the first word that came to mind would be average. Early forties with medium brown hair with a few streaks of grey starting to show, 5'8", 165 pounds, nothing striking, unless you looked closely at his eyes. Rob Paulpry had dark golden eyes with some indefinable something behind them. Rob had always considered himself average in most ways. Yes, he was a very good reporter, but that, he told himself was something he had worked at and cultivated, not an intrinsic part of him. Last year, his perspective had changed. It was during the episode in The End with Al. A Creature of Light had shown him he had abilities he had never suspected.

Rob had always shied away from any hint of any sense beyond the normal five within himself. This denial had started shortly after his mother's suicide. Her downward spiral and eventual death had been brought about by the fact that she had foreseen the horrible death of his sister, Marie, in a fire and had been unable to do anything about it. From that day forward, Rob believed that only bad things happened to those with any such abilities. The worst part of it had been that Rob had always felt guilty. He had been the only one in the family who knew where Marie was living. If his mother had only confided in him when she had the vision, he had always felt he could have prevented the dual tragedies. His guilt stemmed not from not stopping his sister's death, which resulted eventually in his mother's demise. Rather, he felt he should have been a better son, so that his mother would have felt she could have trusted him with her foreknowledge.

This did not mean that Rob disbelieved in such things; he had seen too much to deny them. It was, in fact, his belief that had caused his temporary fall from grace at the newspaper. He had been duped by a medium who had later, after he had written an article extolling her abilities, been proven to be a swindler. Rob still believed she possessed some measure of ability, augmented by trickery. She had defrauded a number of wealthy, gullible people of a great deal of money before a reporter on a rival newspaper had exposed her. It had taken what could almost be called a miracle to give Rob back some measure of status. Of course, that miracle had nearly cost him his life, or perhaps his soul, in the process.

Al suppressed the feeling of dread that came over her at the sound of the reporter's voice. It brought back a flood of horrible memories and feelings from that day in the church in The End. Paulpry had been a major part of that episode which Al sincerely wanted to forget. He had saved her life, however, and in the process, they had formed a weird sort of almost psychic bond, so... Let him through, she told the squirming rookie, and get back out there where you belong. And the next time you come into one of my crime scenes without booties, you are going to wish you were pushing papers in the bowels of City Hall! She had to admit she got a secret pleasure in seeing the young cop scurrying away. Wait 'til he took off his shoes and realized what was on the soles.

Mean as ever, said the reporter from right behind her.

Tough love, she replied. Newbies have to learn somehow. Al turned to look at Rob, glancing down at his feet pointedly and smirking to find them covered in the little blue paper booties that theoretically kept the crime scene clear of outside contamination.

I would ask what you have here, but I think I got it, Rob stated. Care to make a comment for your adoring public?

Absolutely, Al replied. But you couldn't print it.

C'mon, Al, you gotta give me something...

That's Lieutenant Ferdinand, Paulpry, she replied. Rob knew that this was for the benefit of the other cops milling about the grisly crime scene. C'mon, Paulpry, you know it's too early for a statement. Besides, I just got here, we have nothing.

Except for one dead girl tied to a chair, the reporter pointed out, most unhelpfully and with an infuriating smirk on his face.

Fixing him with a glare she usually reserved for bumbling rookies or a squirming perp in her interrogation room, Al said, Not helping, Rob.

Rob knew that the use of his first name meant that Al was acknowledging his presence and even that he might actually be of some help. Rob looked around the disturbing scene. He looked with all of his senses as he asked, Any witnesses?

Just fifteen gullible fools on the ghost tour.

Rob shook his head. He had very much the same opinion as Al of the tours as well as the woman who ran them. Evelyn Jenson had tried to interview both of them after the incident last year in The End for her overly sensationalized book. Neither he nor Al had granted her an audience, so she had spun a wild yarn from whole cloth. She had been careful not to use their names or claim she had any direct information from the cop and reporter who were at the center of the events. Rob was familiar with the technique. On many occasions, he had written something that he had learned in a less than direct manner, leaving out the source. If done properly, it came across as completely believable and limited the reporter's liability.

At first, he noticed nothing unusual. That is, if he discounted the horribly disfigured body of a young woman being zipped into a body bag. He was, after all, at the scene of a particularly gruesome murder. It was not his first. He suddenly flashed back to the alley where his sometimes source, Lennie Friedman, AKA Spike, had been killed by the being who had called himself Caine. His dreams were still haunted by that one. No doubt because he still felt a significant degree of responsibility for the death of the little weasel. Suddenly, he glimpsed an older woman standing off in a corner by what appeared to be a closet door. She was looking dour and shaking her head. Looking up, she locked eyes with Rob and he got a sense of anger from her. Turning to Al, he asked, Is the old gal in the corner a witness or set dressing?

The cop turned to him with a puzzled look on her face. Who are you talking about? she asked. Turning back to indicate the woman, Rob saw nothing in the corner except a wrought iron Victorian floor lamp.

When he turned back to Al, the lieutenant was staring at him with a deeply meaningful glare. Must've been a trick of the light, or maybe the curtain moved. I gotta go, deadline to meet. Rob tried to sound calm; however, he felt anything but and wanted nothing more than to get out of that room as quickly as possible.

Al started to stop the reporter and ask him more about the old lady. However, when she saw the beads of perspiration on his forehead, and the near panicked look in his eyes, she just said, Yeah, deadline, and let him go. She watched the nervous man walk briskly out of the room and yank off the blue booties just beyond the crime scene tape. She had a sick, churning feeling in her own gut. Without realizing at first what she was doing, Al turned in a full circle, scanning the room for the old lady. Not again, she whispered.

Rob sat in his car, shaking and sweating. He had a swirling sensation in the back of his mind, like when he was a kid and spun in the yard until he became so dizzy he fell down, laughing with his sister, Marie. Unknowingly echoing Al's anguished whisper, he said, Not again.

Chapter Two

Rob had stopped briefly on his way up to the crime scene to talk to the bartender of the Hard Line, Sugar Jones. Rob had developed a pretty good relationship with Jones over the years. Enough so, that he was one of the few people who knew that, despite years of theorizing