Apparently the news of the dead body hadn't reached most people by the next day. The police were trying to keep it under wraps, for obvious reasons. A suspicious death in a small town tended to make people point fingers. And, if Cade was right, they wouldn't want news of yet another serial killer in Elk Springs to get out.

I went downtown just for that reason. I was a bit shaken up from last night, and I wasn't sure who I could tell about what I'd seen. I wanted to know if Cade and I were really the only ones who knew what happened last night.

Though, in town I didn't hear any gossip about the girl who was found in the pink house's backyard. But one elderly couple was talking about a robbery at the Sanders's residence down by Knox Street. That must be how they explained all the police cars last night at the pink house.

I had stopped at the ice cream parlor to get something to eat when I saw Emily. She was sitting alone with a milkshake clutched between her hands in an almost deadly grip. The midday sun was already melting the top of the shake, but it didn't seem like she noticed or cared. It was after I noticed the red bags under her eyes that I made the connection though. Emily Sanders. It was her house where the body had been found. No wonder she looked bad.

I decided if Emily was now my friend, I couldn't ignore her sitting there. Besides, I wanted to know if she could give me any more information about what happened at her house.

"Hey. Emily." I greeted, sitting across from her with my own chocolate waffle cone.

(It was past noon, I was allowed to eat ice cream.)

Emily looked up, startled. "Oh, hey, Raven."

She definitely did not seem like the happy-go-lucky girl I met the other day. She was like a ghost of herself, and I was nothing if not good with ghosts.

"So," I started, "I heard about what happened last night." Her eyes got wide before I added, "The robbery and such."

Emily breathed a sigh of relief, obviously relieved that I was as oblivious as everyone else in town, "Oh, that."

"Are you guys okay and all after last night? I mean, nothing important was stolen?"

Emily shrugged, "It's just . . ." She looked around and leaned in close to me, "Can you keep a secret?"

I nodded, knowing where the conversation was going.

"Well, you see, there really was no robbery last night."

I faked surprise. "Really? Then why were all those police cars over by your house last night?"

"It was . . . well, the police want to keep this on the down low, but they found something huge in my backyard." I nodded along. "I woke up in the middle of the night to get a cup of water when I looked out the window. I saw Fluffy, our dog, chewing on something. I only got a glimpse before I ran back inside, woke up my parents, and called the police."

"What was it?"

Emily hesitated with a horrified look on her face, glancing at the other patrons of the shops around us before deciding to disclose the information. "Raven, it was a dead body."

The image of that girl was still fresh in my mind, so it wasn't hard to grimace at her words. I could still see the mangled body and the blood . . . everywhere. And to think she walked in to a worse seen than I had with a better view.

"Somebody had dumped a dead body in my backyard, and my dog was . . . oh, it was so awful. I'll never be able to get that image out of my head. The pound is keeping Fluffy for now, but it wasn't his fault, so they might let him out soon. But, still. That image . . . it won't be leaving me anytime soon."

Touché.

"Why would someone do something like that?" I questioned, not having to fake revulsion.

Emily shrugged and shivered, "I don't know. I guess some people are just sickos."

"Well, did they find out who the body was?" I asked curiously.

Emily shook her head. "No, and that's the weird part. The police don't think she was from town."

"So someone did a drive by and just found the easiest place to dump it? I mean, why not just drive further up the road and dump it in the woods? At least then it wouldn't have been found." I argued.

"The police were saying last night that it looked like she was posed in front of Fluffy's doghouse. My house might've been the random part, but the killer wanted the body to be found."

That just further supported Cade's theory. Normal killers don't pose their victims. Normal killers didn't write numbers on their hands. Normal killers don't want the body to be found and traced back to them.

"That's just awful."

Emily nodded, clutching her milkshake a bit tighter. "And the worst part is that my overprotective adoptive parents seem to think that I need therapy now. The police do as well. Apparently seeing a dead body in your own backyard, mauled like that, concerns most adults."

I could understand. When I was little, most of the adults in my life seemed to think that my 'seeing ghosts' was just me trying to deal with my mother's disappearance and my grandmother's death. I was sent to so many therapists, who all had a different diagnosis, and who all deemed me crazy. After a while I just had to lie to them. None of them were taking me seriously anyways.

I wasn't taken seriously, and I couldn't blame them.

I wouldn't want to go back to therapy, and I could see Emily's revulsion to it. All a doctor could do was prescribe some pills.

We ended up talking for a while longer (Not about the dead body subject, of course) before Emily invited me back to her house. Her parents were running late shifts at their grocery store, Fluffy was currently up at the pound as the police investigated the crime, and her backyard still had techs and crime scene tape surrounding it. I could see why she wouldn't want to be alone in the house.

When the sun started to go down, Emily suggested a sleepover. Of course, when I called Grace she was overjoyed. I was making friends and spending my summer somewhere else besides my room. It was more than she could've hoped for.

"So, do you have any scary ghost stories?" Emily asked as we cuddled up in a mountain of blankets while the end credits of a horror movie flashed across her screen.

I had more than she knew.

"Well, once on a dark and cold night . . ."

There was a huge bang, interrupting my impromptu ghost telling and quite frankly scaring the shit out of both of us. Curious, Emily and I looked out the window to see two dark figures walking around. Remembering again my though of how killers liked to go back to the scene of their crimes, my mind jumped to the obvious conclusion.

Emily and I shared fearful looks before going down the stairs and into the living room. She picked up a baseball bat by the stairs, while I picked up the umbrella next to it. I may not have been able to defend myself as well as Emily with my weapon, but I sure could try.

We tiptoed out the back door silently, the voices of the trespassers floating over towards us.

"I told you that we needed to be stealthy . . . wake up . . . silent."

The voice was oddly familiar.

"Sorry," came the second voice's reply, also familiar, "It's not my fault that . . . and you can't blame me for being clumsy."

Emily reached over and turned on the porch light, illuminating the two trespassers in black hoodies.

The unlikely couple of Cade and Joey were standing there, looking dumbfounded by the bright light in front of them.

"Um," came Cade's voice, "Sorry, Mrs. Sanders. We're just passing through. We'll be out of your hair. We took the wrong shortcut, we didn't mean to wake you." Cade sounded so sincere that I was almost forced to believe him. He could paint on a plaster of charm so easily, it seemed a wonder why he wasn't more popular with the teenage crowd.

We stepped out of the light so that they could see our faces clearly. I heard Joey swear under his breath as he saw us. We were going to be a bit harder to convince of their ignorance than Emily's parents would've been.

"What are you doing here?" Emily questioned.

Cade never even faltered. "Just passing through. We stumbled across the yard by accident, we didn't mean to wake anybody. Wrong backyard, you understand, right?"

"Bullshit." Emily argued.

I turned to Joey, who wasn't as steady faced as his friend. I figured pretty easily that he was the weaker link. "Joey, what are you two really doing here in the middle of the night dressed in all black?"

He hesitated. We had caught them red-handed.

Cade sighed and turned to Joey, their act was up. "Dude, I thought we were working on your lying skills?"

Joey shrugged. "Raven looks really scary in that lighting, like a ghost. What was I supposed to do?"

Oh, the irony.

"So, you were lying?" Emily worked out.

Cade sighed. "Look, it isn't as suspicious as it seems."

I snorted. "Oh, right. You show up at the scene of a crime for fun? Or are you revisiting your handiwork?"

Cade got what I was talking about immediately. "Not that again." He sighed, "Look, I thought I told you yesterday that I didn't kill that girl."

"You didn't exactly give me proof. Besides, why else would you be visiting the same crime scene twice in 24 hours?" I argued. "I'm not that blind."

He stared me down. "I could say the same about you. I mean, the mysterious new girl stumbles upon at the scene of the crime twice in 24 hours? How am I supposed to know that you aren't the killer? We both have suspicious activity on that front."

He got me there.

"Woah, wait a second." Emily entered the accusation session. "I thought you didn't know about the dead body that was found here yesterday."

"Well, I didn't know it was your house the body was found behind." I defended myself. "Besides, isn't it a little bit weird that these two were found lurking around in the middle of the night behind your house?"

"We weren't lurking." Said Joey.

Emily scoffed. "Then why else are you guys back here?"

I smiled on the inside. Blame was back on Cade and Joey instead of me. I didn't want to lose a friend just because I lied about what I knew about what really went on last night.

Cade sighed again. "Okay, look. The police might've scanned this whole place yesterday looking for evidence, but they probably missed something. They don't have the same perspective that I do. I don't want this killer to go uncaptured because of spotty police work."

"The whole county was here. Any evidence there was is shipped off with them."

"Besides," I added, "who are you to think that you can catch a killer single handedly?"

"I'm the son of one. I think that's qualification enough."

We went silent then.

"Look, I'm just trying to be thorough. What are the chances that two killers attack Elk Springs? I don't want to leave anything to fate. I have skills that the police don't, and I might as well put them to use in a way that could stop more people from dying if this killer wants to strike again. I want to be useful if I can."

"Fine," Emily agreed after a while, "what do you think is here that the police didn't find on their extensive search?"

Joey looked up from the ground. "Well, the police assumed that the killer drove up on Marbury Street, and parked on the side of the road, right? From there he could've easily dragged the body to the backyard and into the doghouse. But, there wasn't any signs of the body being dragged."

"Meaning the killer was probably strong enough to lift the body off of the ground." I concluded, "I've read enough detective novels to know that."

"Or," Cade interjected, "The killer didn't drive up Marbury Street at all."

"How do you mean?" Emily asked.

"What if the killer used the garage?"

"The garage? But you need a code to get in there." Emily argued. "Besides, don't you think one of us would've heard it open last night?"

"Not if you were all already asleep." Cade argued.

"But what about the code?" I asked. "They would've needed to get the code to get inside.

Joey shrugged. "It wouldn't be too hard to hack into it. The killer could've parked in the garage to avoid a passerby seeing a strange car in the driveway and then dragged the body to the doghouse on the pavement with no need to carry it. Then, they could've drove back out of the garage and got away cleanly."

"And," Cade continued, "That's why we're here. The police wouldn't bother to look at the garage because they were too busy checking out the street. Any evidence we find, the police weren't looking for in the first place."

Emily popped her hip and crossed her arms. "You could've at least asked me permission first before you snuck in."

Cade smiled, clearly seeing that he had won the conversation.

"Alright, let's get to looking." I concluded, heading towards Emily's garage.

Cade stopped me with his arm. I noticed that he was still wearing the gloves he always wore. Maybe he was just always dressed for never leaving fingerprints.

"What do you think you're doing?"

I sighed. "Look, you might as well let us help. We aren't going to go back upstairs quietly now that you two are here."

He seemed to consider it for a moment before letting his chest fall. "Fine, but any evidence you think you may have found, don't pick it up until I come over with a plastic bag. We don't want evidence getting contaminated."

Emily and I agreed to his terms and we headed for her garage. Both the car slots were full, so the garage immediately felt smaller. I wasn't necessarily afraid of small spaces, but the situation made me feel too enclosed in the tight room.

I started to look under the cars and around the garage door for anything that might seem out of the ordinary. Mostly all I found where dust bunnies and a couple of very old graham crackers stuffed in the corner.

"Guys," Emily exclaimed, "I think I found something!"

We all turned to see her holding a metal necklace with a sort of pendant on the end. It was broken at the clip, like it had caught on the edge of something as the killer was dragging the body through the garage last night. Just like Cade had said.

"Emily!" Cade scolded. "You should've let me handle that."

She looked down at her hand and then back up at Cade, realizing her mistake. "Oops, sorry?"

He sighed and walked over to her to get a closer look at the necklace, as did Joey and I. The front was a sort of heart with vines covering it, while the back had the inscription, 'To J.F. From T.E.'

"Well, now we know that her initials must be J.F." Joey concluded. "We can get this information to Detective Hearse tomorrow. They'll be that much closer to finding out her identity if they have her initials."

Cade nodded, "Yeah. At least we were able to get that out of this thing."

I felt the air suddenly get colder and I stiffened. If the others felt it, they didn't react to it, which told me all I needed to know. I quickly turned over my shoulder and I saw her. The ghost had just appeared only feet from where we were. If I had to guess, I'd say our messing with the necklace had woken up the spirit from wherever she was lurking before.

It was the victim, the girl whose body had been dumped barely a day ago at this house. I was wondering in the back of my mind if I would ever see her.

And with that haunted look on her face, I knew she knew that she was dead. The way she was longingly staring at us and that necklace proved to it. She was a murder victim who thought no one would be able to hear her scream.

I sighed. While I was still scared to talk to a murder victim, I knew she would be able to tell me more about what had happened to her, so we could have a chance at catching who did this to her. And maybe I could even help her move on.

Yay! Long chapter!

So, what do you think will happen next? And who do you think is the killer? And what information do you think the victim will be able to reveal?

This book will be more of a murder mystery, with Raven's gift only an integral part of her psych. This book revolves a bit more around Cade, with Raven interpreting everything in her own way.

Anyways, I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter and that you'll enjoy more to come!