I was going to hack into the system the police use. I was sure there was someone dead or alive that would be willing to help me. But that was a tomorrow problem, right then all I needed was sleep and a bath.

I went into the bathroom and started filling the large soaker tub while I undressed, every once in a while pouring a bit of soap into the tub and watching the bubbles multiply. I soon slipped in, my slim, pale body disappearing into the milky water. I let the heat seep into my muscles and bring a calming feeling to my mind. The peace helped me think, so my mind turned to Kaylyn's case.

Maybe that officer could get me into their system. He seemed very willing to help us find this murderer, and this was the only good way I could think of to do it. There had to be a pattern, something seemingly inconsequential that would make or break this case. All I had to do was find that pattern. This one case wasn't enough to find anything, at least, anything that would help me find a dead person.

I started humming, the same tune every ghost in half a mile of my home had whistled to me. When I reached the end I sang it again, dipping my head under the water and letting the sound penetrate into my mind, vibrating through the water as bubbles slowly bled from my nose. When it vibrated like that it made me feel like I was dreaming for no reason in particular. The pulsing of the sound brought a sleeplike feeling that I fought off with simple ease. I let my head break the surface of the water again and I wiped the soapy water from my eyes.

The ripped open stomach. Was anything missing? Other than her soul of course. Did the ghost need a specific body part as well, so they found a way to rip it out? That might make sense. It could have something to do with how her soul was gone. Maybe the ghost found a way to tie her soul to a body part that he then took to some other place. We would have to start looking for places that ghost or even people don't go to often that the ghost might have hidden any body parts of his victims. Even if they do somehow end up in the spirit world, he would still have to store them somewhere and I was quite possibly the only person who could find them. I had resources that no one living or dead did that I could find somewhere to store such trophies.

I hummed, dipping back under the water to feel that dreamlike sound that penetrated my brain and prompted sleep. I didn't sleep, but I felt the sound all across my body. My eyes were squeezed shut and I could almost see the sound filling out the tub, resounding within the water without penetrating the surface. A sound that both resounded but refused to be heard, that was insistent but relenting in the face of the thinnest of barriers. As the song faded I let my head bob back to the surface to wipe the air from my face and the water from my eyes.

The charred eyes. Did they have to be blind for the ghost to take your soul? Was he jealous of her eyes like some people seem to think? Was it just a side effect? It seemed so deliberate, just the eyes and the skin around the eyes. No burns anywhere else, at least that I could see. I was working off of what officer Bailey had described and what I had seen before I fainted. Her eyes burned and hollow. It mattered, I was sure, but I couldn't piece together why. Why burn out the eyes? Such a specific thing to do for seemingly no reason.

I took a deep breath, dropping below the surface of the water once more and letting the spiteful melody resonate within the bathwater. The water spread the resonance about me, continuing to burn with familiarity the longer and louder I hummed the tune. I've heard this song before, I thought for the thousandth time that day. The song was spiteful, but it still reminded me of sleep. For some reason, of all things, that sad, angry song felt like dreams. My head broke the surface of the water again and I breathed for a long moment.

"It doesn't add up," I said aloud. "And that's still assuming they can interact with the living world without any idea how or what the limitations are. There's just too much missing."

The water was warm against my flesh, the echoing crash from that morning playing again and again in my mind as I hummed that spiteful tune until I drifted off to anxious sleep.

I woke to a sweet smell, my skin vaguely cold and felt like an albino raisin. "Note to self, don't fall asleep in the bathtub," I muttered as I pulled myself out, sore from the awkward position my body had deemed suitable for sleep. I pulled the plug on the tub and let the water make an annoying slurping sound as I toweled myself off and got dressed, another t-shirt and basketball shorts combo revealing itself from my suitcase. I checked the time as I put my watch on, barely four in the morning.

I hoped Jack had gotten some sleep, he was running himself ragged. Of course it wasn't the first time in our relationship he had done something similar, although this time it was playing with lives, so I wouldn't be surprised if he let himself die of exhaustion while he was trying to research some inconsequential detail.

I went out to the common area where we had set up camp. We had split up from here with this as the common point to meet. It was annoying that we couldn't both have a key to leave here and come back at any point. I looked around the room for a moment, the space had quickly become a rats nest of some forty something year old conspiracy theorist with no job and insurmountable credit card debt.

"I'm gonna go look for another key," I stated to the empty room. Of course it said nothing in response, so I walked out, making sure I had my key card in my pocket before pressing the buttons to go down to the lobby. The lights were off all throughout the building, but the elevator lights turned on automatically when I pressed the button, so the light cut through the shadows like god himself had revealed himself to me and me alone, which didn't seem far from the case when considering my life.

The lobby was just as dark as any of the hallways in the large building, although there was one ghost who shed a pale silvery light across the world. She had long dark hair with vines woven through it and she sat in a large wedding dress, the veil blowing in an unseen wind. Her dark complexion contrasted brightly with the stark white of her dress, even from behind. She was a stunning figure and she looked like she was perhaps praying, her arms folded across her chest.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Hello, how are you doing tonight?" I said loudly so the ghost would hear. Of course she didn't respond, they almost never do, but after a moment she looked at me, her eyes seeming like pits that pulled mist into their bottomless depths. She gave one healthy glare to me before swiftly walking out, hands still folded across her chest. It wasn't an odd interaction, many ghosts didn't like people and knowing that one could talk to them pissed a number of them off. Although, that was more common in the west, people got very angry after they died back home. A lot of times you could find them at the gypsy camps living in the empty homes so no one would bother them.

"Whatever," I said as I stepped behind the desk in the lobby. "Now where to find more key cards. . ."

I pulled on several drawers to find a number of them locked. One was open though. It was filled with paper and a few pens with the hotel logo on it, proudly designed by Jack himself. "This is probably illegal," I said while pulling out my phone and opening YouTube to find a video on how to pick the lock. I could learn from a ghost at some other point after I bought some lockpicks, because I had a feeling I'd be doing this more in the future, but this would do for now.

Step one was to grab a paper clip and turn it into an L shape for the tension wrench. I paused the video and scrambled for a few moments, finding a small jar in another unlocked drawer. I unpaused the video as I pulled the paperclip into the right shape in my fingers. The next step was to find another paperclip and bend that one completely straight with a slight upturn on one end. I followed the instructions, watching the video progress with terrifying amount of instruction on something that cannot be legal. The next step was to put the L one in on the bottom on something called the shear line? Yeah, that's what the video called it. Then they just said to put the other one in on top and jiggle it while applying slight pressure to the L shaped one on the bottom.

"There is no way in hell this is that easy," I muttered to myself as I quickly jiggled the paperclip back and forth. I heard a faint click as the lock turned fully and the drawer pulled open. "Holy shit it is that easy." This drawer did hold key cards, but the small label on he inside of the drawer said just for the first ten floors, and I was all the way at the top. I moved down the drawers, assuming that they made sense and closed the other drawer I had successfully picked. I wasn't sure if it would stay locked but I let it be, they wouldn't care as long as nothing was missing.

I repeated the picking process on the other drawer, taking just a few minutes to jiggle open the new lock. I was lucky this wasn't any sort of fancy lock or I would never had gotten in like this, I was sure. This one did have my floor on it, so I looked around to find the card with the same number on it. "bingo," I said, taking the card and sliding the drawer closed and pulling out my paperclips. I slid them and a few more into my pockets, it couldn't hurt to keep a few on hand just in case.

I stole back up to my room, leaving both key cards on the table so Jack would see them when next he came in. I had only spent about thirty minutes doing that, but the stress of doing a probably illegal act made it feel like it had been hours. I didn't want to buy anything online just yet, not while the police were still at my apartment, and definitely not something even slightly incriminating like a set of lockpicks. I didn't know how long they would be in there, though I supposed I would take as long as I needed in here if I had to, and I was sure Jack would join me.

"Fuck it, it just seems to practical. Ghosts can go through walls, the least I could do to try and catch up was go through locked doors," I reasoned. I searched the web to find that lockpicks are expensive. The pouch I wanted which included pretty much everything I would need to pick locks plus a beginner lock mechanism for practice was almost eighty bucks. "Shit. We're all making sacrifices to catch this guy," I said as I cringed lightly, pushing the add to cart button and making sure that the address was set to the hotel.

"It's done." I could feel my gut falling at the expense. The good news is, if I ever got locked out I wouldn't need to call a locksmith or something, I guessed. "Fuck, okay. I have better things to worry about," I said, turning back to the board with a hand on my chin and no new insights. I'd have to talk to officer Bailey to see what he thought about getting into the police database to access the information we needed, but I couldn't tell Jack about my plan.

While picking a lock at a place you were staying may have been slightly illegal, stealing information from a government department was for sure very illegal. I stared at all the information we had. It's just not enough, we just don't know enough, I thought on loop for almost an hour when Jack knocked heavily on the door as was his fashion.

I walked over to the door and let him in wordlessly, motioning with one hand to the couch where I had made no progress. "Did you figure out how you were going to find a pattern in the killings?" he asked.

"I did."

"Well? What's the plan?"

"I can't tell you," I said, looking down to avoid his eyes as I pulled an energy drink from the fridge. Watermelon sherbet, nice.

"Come on man, we're in this together, if you go down I'm going down with you," he pleaded. "No secrets between us, that's how we have to do things."

"Look, it might be illegal. All you need to know is the information, not where we got it from. Plus, if I get caught you're the only person who can continue this investigation with full knowledge of the situation. Don't try to stop me, but don't try to get involved, alright?"

I made him promise. "I swear that I will not get myself involved in illegal activities unless you explicitly tell me too lest I die the most terrible death known to man, are you happy?"

"No, but I'm glad you'll have plausible deniability. Did you find anything?" I asked.

"No, I did everything I could, even finding websites where you record yourself humming or singing a song and it finds it for you and I got nothing. It must be an original or it's just so obscure they didn't code it into their systems," Jack explained. "I was up through most of the night trying to find it but I got nothing. I didn't think of any new connections with what we have either."

"Alright, let's go do some questioning. I'll load up the food, you go get the car started. We just need a bit more information. Hopefully officer Bailey will have something for us. If not then it's all up to the ghosts along the street who may have seen something."

"Alright, I'll see you down there." Jack walked out the door, but I stopped him before it closed all the way.

"Jack! I found another key card. Take one in case you need to get in here without me," I yelled.

He nodded and stepped back in, grabbing one of the key cards and stepping out.

"Just the beginning of one more long day," I said as I pushed the last few items into the compact bag and threw it over my shoulder, turning the lights in the room off before going down to meet Jack at his car. "I sure as hell hope I don't get caught doing this shit," I muttered to myself as I slid my way into the passenger seat off to meet with a dead policeman about hacking police systems.