Real, honest-to-God shrunken heads.
And they call me a monster.
I moved through another room, and entered the Mayan exhibit, complete with a stone sarcophagus and beautifully adorned stelae covered in hieroglyphs. The room was particularly alive with zigzagging light...and much bigger balls of light. I knew now what these bigger balls of light were.
Spirits.
The balls seemed to orient on me. Sometimes they grew bigger and sometimes smaller. Sometimes they hovered just above the floor or shot up to the far corners of the room. One or two of them followed behind me.
They were silent, almost curious.
But they could see me. I felt it. I sensed it. Eyes were on me. Unseen eyes. And it wasn't Eddie ogling me from the Command Center.
And if the ghosts could see me, what else could they see?
Perhaps a crime?
I thought about that as I found the back door. I swiped the security card and entered the cryptic "0000" code and found myself in a spacious room. Spacious and dark.
I was about to flip on a light switch when one of the balls of light that had been following me slipped under the closed door and hovered before me.
I was standing off to the side of the door, partially facing a vast room with shelves and storage everywhere. I knew that most museums only displayed a small fraction of their exhibits, and that most pieces were in special storage within the museum, usually in basements. The Wharton, it appeared, didn't have a basement, and allotted this vast room for storage.
The room was pitch black, but that didn't stop me from seeing deep within it, and what I could see were various glass-walled bays that were probably temperature controlled. The bays contained what appeared to be rolling racks of paintings. No doubt very expensive paintings.
The ball of light crackled with energy. Yes, I could almost hear it now, a steady hum, too low for most people to hear. The hair on my arms was standing on end and I realized that the the ball of light was trying to draw energy from me.
So how much energy did an ice-cold vampire have?
I didn't know, but the ball of light began taking on shape and as it did so, my mouth dropped open. And the more it took on shape, the more my mouth dropped open.
It seemed to pull in the surrounding particles of light, gathering them together the way cotton candy collects around a twirling stick.
The particles of light blended with the ball of light, which began to take on shape. A human shape. And when my mouth had dropped fully open, the vague figure of a tall, thin man stood fully before me.
And, if I wasn't mistaken, he bowed slightly.
Chapter Thirty-four
I almost bowed back, but stopped myself.
The hair along my arms was standing on end, and I saw why. A part of his crackling, frenetic, human-like essence had reached out to me. It reminded me of a white blood cell attacking a virus. I wasn't sure what was happening, until it hit me: he was drawing energy from me.
Amazing.
He wasn't a composed whole. A few times some of the light energy that composed his body seemed to disperse and scatter like frightened fish, only to reform again into the tall, thin man standing before me.
The entity tilted his head slightly to one side, and as he did so, a brief image flashed into my thoughts. The image was of a kindly old man and his wife. They were standing in front of a small building, smiling happily. I had, of course, seen pictures of this same building, especially during the past few days. It was the original 7,000 square foot site of the Wharton Museum. In the picture, was the same old couple, smiling happily.
The Whartons.
Next, a single word appeared in my thoughts. Honestly, I didn't know if I thought it or heard it. Either way, it appeared just inside my eardrum:
"Come."
* * *
With that, the entity that I now thought of as Mr. Wharton drifted away. As he drifted away, he lost some of his shape and looked, more than anything, like a floating, glowing amoeba.
He wanted me to follow him. That much I was certain of.
I obliged, following the amorphous ball of energy deeper into the back room, past rows and shelves of Native American art, African art and Chinese art. In fact, dozens and dozens of rows. The majority of the shelves were filled with wooden and clay sculptures, weapons that still looked like they could seriously do some harm, and what had to be priceless jewelry. The jewelry was behind glass cases, as were some of the more delicate pieces. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wharton seemed to know his way.
We past the small shipping and receiving room, which was lined with metal tables and boxes of all shapes and sizes. Some looked like they were going, and no doubt some still needed to be received. What were in those boxes was anyone's guess.
He led me deeper. Or, rather, the glowing ball of light led me deeper, as it had now lost all human shape. It was dimmer back here, and there was only a single security camera a few rows down. Eddie would have a hard time seeing me. No doubt he was wondering what the hell I was doing back here. I was wondering, too.
Mr. Wharton hung a left. And by hanging a left, I mean the ball of light that was the ghostly imprint of Mr. Wharton, went through some shelves and entered a side corridor. I hung the left the old-fashioned way.
He continued on, and so did I.
The camera, I saw, did not reach down this side corridor, which meant that Mr. Wharton and I were alone. And at the far end of the corridor was a massive storage freezer that looked vaguely like a coffin.
I wasn't sure what the museum would need such a storage freezer for, until I remembered the shrunken heads outside. No doubt the museum kept anything biological in cold storage. At least, that's what I would do if I had a collection of shrunken heads.
Crackling and spitting energy and doing his best impression of a human torch, Mr. Wharton materialized again. He stood next to the freezer.
As I approached, Mr. Wharton actually stepped aside to give me access.
Ghostly etiquette. Nice.
I reached down and slowly opened the lid. Cool air rushed out, and the stench of frozen meat. And when the swirling mist had subsided, a very dead face was looking up at me from the depths of the freezer. Wearing a museum guard uniform. I think I had just found Thad, the missing guard.
Two dead bodies in two days.
I was on a roll.
Chapter Thirty-five
It was late, and I was sitting in Kingsley's spacious living room. I had spent the last few hours talking to various Santa Ana homicide detectives. When they were done asking questions and satisfied with my answers, I texted Kingsley and he invited me over.
Franklin, Kingsley's butler, was noisily preparing our drinks in the kitchen. The kitchen was down the hall and around a corner and through a swinging door. Something banged loudly, or possibly even broke.