Valerie walked briskly back toward her car, not wanting to stop to see if the man was still following her. She needed to call Brian and let him know she was okay, but she also needed to lose her tail and get back here to find out what Nick was up to. 

She turned down between two large warehouses, manoeuvring around dumpsters and various pieces of machinery that were positioned down the alleyway. 

Just as she went to turn the corner back out into the open a body stepped into her view, forcing her back into the alley. She was about to chastise the person for not watching where they were going when she realized the offender was none other than the man in the blue jacket. 

“Why are you following me?” she immediately demanded to know. 

“I think you know why,” the man replied, then moved the right side of his jacket aside to show her a holstered weapon and a badge.

“I don’t think I do. Whatever happened to police camaraderie?” 

“Well,” the man replied snidely, “As it turns out the bad guys pay better than the good guys do.” 

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Val said, her eyes scanning for an escape route away from the guy with the gun, “What do you need from me?” 

“Oh it’s not me that needs it,” he chuckled, “It’s who I’m working for. They need you.” 

“Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” Valerie smiled, “Take me to your leader!”

The man smiled and pulled something out of his pocket, “You’ll see him soon enough,” he told Valerie before hitting her firmly over the head with the leather black jack he had been concealing in his hand. 

The woman’s body slipped easily to the ground and he didn’t even bother to ensure the coast was clear before pulling her body up and dragging it off to his car. 

~*~

Brian stared at the old man in complete shock, though he knew he shouldn’t really be all that surprised. Here he was, not able to believe the man when he told him that the policewoman was dead yet at the same time he was concerned about the whereabouts of his dead best friend. 

“Sir, when did this happen?” Brian boldly asked, needing to figure some things out before he could leave the old man to his business once again.

“Call me David,” the man told Brian with a wave of his hand, “Just over two years ago Valerie took her own life.”

“Why would she do that?” Brian asked, not truly expecting an answer to the question, “What happened?” 

“She was very broken up over her father’s death, they were very close. He was the whole reason she joined the force, and he was so proud of her when she decided to go the Internal Affairs route because he knew that there was a lot of dirty cops in this city and he wanted his daughter to be part of cleaning things up. When he was killed she blamed herself because it was her information that got him killed but… it was his own stupidity. He’s my son and I loved him but he did the wrong thing in confronting his partner. He thought that he was helping his friend, his partner in defending people from criminals, get help. He was naïve in thinking that the man he trusted was merely in a situation that he couldn’t escape from rather than being there voluntarily. It was Valerie’s father that made the decision, and he ultimately signed his own death certificate because of it. There was no way Valerie could have changed anything that happened, but she was young and relatively new and didn’t realize what could happen. I’m sorry,” the old man paused, wiping at his eyes quickly, “I honestly don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”

“No, thank you,” Brian told him, putting a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder, “I can’t tell you how much it means to me.” 

“It’s strange,” David admitted, “I haven’t really talked about this with anyone but I can’t help but want to tell you everything.” 

“Only tell me what you feel you need to,” Brian said, not wanting him to feel exposed by all that he was revealing. He was a very confused person having learned that the woman they’d been working with was, like Nick, a spirit but Valerie’s corporeal existence was what confused him the most. Why wasn’t she invisible like Nick? What was giving her the power to move about like a living human being? From what he’d seen there were even people who recognized her and spoke to her as if they were friends and coworkers. The possibility that it was all a ruse just seemed unlikely to him. 

David took a deep breath then let his dull brown eyes lock with Brian’s, “After her father died… about a year I’d say, she started acting differently. She was being erratic, and we were beginning to get concerns that she was depressed after just having been through the anniversary of his murder. It just got progressively worse though, people started commenting on the little things like that she was speaking to herself as if having ongoing conversations with someone who wasn’t even there. She wasn’t sleeping at night, and no matter what we did to try and help her she was off in her own little world. She started spending so much time working on these projects she was making up for herself that she was put on probation at work. From there she just went deeper and deeper into her delusions. She tried to tell us at one point that she wasn’t talking to herself, that she was talking to her father… we knew then that she was too far gone, so we had her committed. She rambled on and on about new evidence she had found against her father’s partner saying that he was wanted by the FBI and they were doing some kind of undercover sting operation. There was no way she could have gotten evidence from the hospital; we knew she was making it up. I can’t even tell you what we went through Brian. She literally drove herself insane. When the hospital called and told us that she had killed herself… we weren’t actually all that surprised. It had been something I had felt coming for a long time.”

David’s words spoke volumes to Brian, volumes beyond his wildest imagination. He never thought that with all of the insanity going on around him that things would actually start to make sense. How could this old man telling him about his granddaughter’s suicide suddenly start to give Brian insight into the past couple of weeks? It astounded him. Everything David was telling him about Valerie sounded so much like his own life; the anniversary of the death, talking to herself, coming up with evidence seemingly out of nowhere, and finally needing to stop the voices and all of the lunacy enveloping her by taking her own life. He didn’t believe himself to be stronger person than Val, just in a different situation. She didn’t have anyone there to help her like she’d been able to do for him. It was just her and the spirits. If he had been alone with Nick, knowing that only he could see him he probably would have felt the same as she did. Alone, isolated and completely out of your mind, batshit crazy. He didn’t blame Val for not telling him everything, but now he needed to speak with her more than ever before. Valerie and Nick had died at the same time, both of them taken from their families because of circumstances outside of their control. Valerie may have had a hand in her own end, but he couldn’t deny that there was a whole slew of influencing forces that could have helped her along. The thought that Nick’s murder could be in some way related to (if not only slightly) Valerie’s suicide worried him, because he had no idea now what the two of them were capable of. If only he knew where Nick was, whether Nick knew about Valerie and what they both intended to do. 

“Thank you,” Brian told David honestly, shaking the man’s hand, “I wish I could tell you everything that is going on right now, and some day I will but for now I have to go.”

“You never told me why you thought you saw my granddaughter, and why you were looking for her so long after her death,” David reminded him, still curious to know where this man had come from and why he had been so sure to have been in contact with Valerie. 

“I must have been mistaken,” Brian lied, and the older man saw right through him. 

“Oh,” David nodded then suddenly gave Brian a serious but all knowing stare, “When you find who you’re looking for… tell them I say hello.”

Unsure as to whether or not the man was seriously thinking Brian was going to find this person he’d mistaken for his granddaughter, or whether he had suspicions that Brian was telling the truth the younger man just nodded, his blue eyes shining with an honesty that was unmistakable, “I will,” he told David with another shake of his hand, “I will.”