The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook

building.”
    â€œThey’re not stirring anything up, Mr. Pinch.”
    â€œWhat they here for, then?”
    â€œThey just want to see if I have a ghost.”
    â€œSee? See how?”
    â€œThey have cameras and meters and stuff. Trey is a dowser.”
    â€œA dowser? What’s he dowse for?”
    Trey was close enough to hear us. “Spirits,” he said. “Spiritual residues, energy—dark and light, gates and portals between this world and the hereafter. But y’all ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. That apartment has ugly memories, but there ain’t no spirits, except what this lady brung with her.”
    â€œYou ever dowse for water?” Walter asked.
    Trey nodded. “Water. Lost shit. Whatever you want.”
    â€œI had an uncle used to dowse with a stick.” Despite the differences in their skin color and upbringing and just about everything else, Walter and Trey were kin. They shared the same folk mythologies. “Once he found a mason jar full of silver dollars somebody had buried and forgot. Maybe you can do me a favor,” he said to Trey. He leaned forward and shifted his weight to his feet, then slowly straightened up. “My tenants say the elevator in this building is haunted. Maybe you can check it out.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œI can’t pay you.”
    â€œThat’s OK.” Trey picked up his flute case and took Walter’s arm, and the two of them headed out the front door like old friends. Deiter and I hurried after them, which wasn’t hard to do. Walter’s top speed was a Parkinson’s shuffle. We caught up before they were past the tae kwon do school. The bay between the school and the Laundromat was empty and dark, the windows dusty with a For Rent sign, a female child mannequin leaning its bald head against one window as though trying to see down the street.
    Nobody was in the Laundromat, but one of the dryers was running, tube socks and underwear curling around and falling down like an endless ocean breaker trapped in a magic bottle. Walter led us to the back, into a narrow, L-shaped hall. The elevator was at the end of the long leg of the L, the tenants’ private laundry room was at the end of the short leg, where a bare light bulb hung from a wire over an old coin-operated washer. The elevator had an accordion cage door, lacquered wood, Chinese silk-screened panels and a worn brass lever that made the thing go up and down. It was also claustrophobically tiny and creepy as a coffin. Whoever put it in this building had strange ideas.
    Walter pulled back the elevator’s accordion door and Trey entered with his divining rods. “You need to keep back,” he said to me. “I can already feel the rods trying to pull to you. I can’t get an honest read.”
    *   *   *
    I smoked a cigarette outside by the front door. The rain mixed with sleet and snow was coming down hard just at the edge of the curb, and the cars driving by threw up fans of water from the swollen gutters. The smoke felt good going down, scratching that old itch that never goes away. I thought about Adam, somewhere out there in the city, maybe standing in the same rain, trying to chase down his own ghosts. Sure enough, my phone rang.
    â€œHey Jack,” he said. He sounded like he had just woken up, or maybe not slept at all. Times like these I was glad I was no longer a cop, no matter how poor I might be. I liked being able to sleep regular hours. Regular for me, anyway. He said, “I talked to the director of that Scottish play at the Lou Hale. The vic didn’t make rehearsals Monday.”
    â€œMaybe he had a date with the killer.”
    â€œOr maybe the killer got to him before his date, or after his date. If he even had a date and wasn’t lying to Michi. We’re canvassing the usual places just in case, see if anybody saw him.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œChief Billet got