A Specter of Justice by Mark de Castrique

this killing could go further. And if anyone is missing, call me immediately.” He reached in his pocket and handed his card to each of them. “I need Sam and Nakayla to give me more information on the other ghost tour locations.”
    As Hewitt walked past me, he whispered, “My office.”
    Newly led us to the front porch. Nakayla and I sat on a slatted swing and the detective pulled a wicker chair closer to us. He rested his note pad on his knee and clicked his ballpoint. “Okay, run through the tour and what roles were played at each site.”
    â€œNot every site had an actor,” Nakayla said. “Some were only covered by the tour guide’s commentary.”
    â€œBetter give them all to me.”
    Nakayla set the swing in motion and let the rhythm guide the pace of her story. “The walking tour started at the registration booth at the Splashville end of Pack Square.”
    Splashville was the name of the fountains located at the far side of the square from our office. The streams of water opened and closed in a variety of combinations and were designed to soak kids and adventuresome adults who played in their spray.
    â€œThe first stop was City Hall and the story of the financial manager’s suicide. We didn’t have an actor. Just a chalk outline where we imagined his body struck the sidewalk.”
    In 1929, the stock market crash took the value of Asheville’s investments from over one hundred eighty-seven million dollars to eighty-eight million. The nearly hundred million-dollar loss plunged the city into debt, and the financial manager threw himself off the eight-story, magnificent Art Deco building in one of the more spectacular suicides of the era. Splashville indeed.
    â€œSo, your tour guides told that story,” Newly said.
    â€œYes. We’d stay there about five minutes and talked about how the manager’s ghost had been seen multiple times in the lobby or office hallways.”
    A faint smile broke Newly’s serious expression. “The manager’s ghost allegedly seen. I’m after a flesh and blood culprit.”
    â€œWe conveyed the sightings as fact to enhance the mood. And then we added a little bit about the building’s architecture.”
    â€œDid everyone start at City Hall?”
    â€œNo,” Nakayla said. “We had a shotgun start. Groups headed to different locations but then followed a planned order. I got the busload of Japanese and our first stop was Helen’s Bridge.”
    Newly jotted a note on his pad. “All right. What was after City Hall?”
    â€œThe tour headed toward Marjorie Street and the area where town hangings occurred. No actors were involved. We mainly got people clear of that end of the square to loop around and come up Spruce Street to the Jackson Building.”
    â€œMore jumpers?” Newly asked.
    â€œYes. But in addition to chalk outlines we had actors positioned in the two windows. You know the tales. The woman on the fifth floor would yell ‘Taxi!’ out her window for each new group.”
    Detective Newland nodded. He probably knew the stories from his childhood. I’d only learned them from Nakayla after the Jackson Building, Asheville’s first skyscraper, had been chosen as one of our tour stops.
    The fifteen-story Spanish Renaissance building was an architectural jewel. Built in 1924 on the site of the monument shop of Thomas Wolfe’s father, the Jackson Building was capped with an ornate tower that was used in the 1939 film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame . Leopard gargoyles leaped from each top corner, and when it first opened, the tower held a four-hundred-times telescope and a powerful searchlight.
    In 1929, a businessman on the twelfth floor lost all his assets in the crash. Like the city manager, he jumped to his death rather than face the shame of bankruptcy. In 1942, a young woman leaned too far out of her fifth floor office window and fell to the