Page 16 of Shadow Scorching

To be fair, the steep streets were a serious issue, and the city couldn’t justify a fleet of snowplows that seldom saw use. The topography of the city wasn’t ice-friendly. Losing control on a hill with an eighteen percent grade, well…that was a terrifying prospect. I, like ninety percent of my fellow Seattleites, didn’t own snow tires, and though my car did all right on water-slicked roads, like any other two-ton vehicle, it was a lot of weight to steady when gravity and frozen water collided.

I managed to get to work in one piece, though I passed several fender benders and a couple spinouts on the way. As I headed inside, stomping the snow off my boots, Orik emerged from the building, a bag of salt in hand.

“Isn’t it the building manager’s responsibility to salt the parking lot and sidewalk?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he’s stuck in North Bend and can’t get here. He told me where to find the salt and asked if I’d take care of it. We don’t want anybody falling out here.” Orik ducked his head and forged into the snow flurry. Even with his weight, he managed to steady himself firmly on the ice and snow.

I took the elevator, for once, and as I entered the office, I stripped off my coat. Sophia was at her desk, and she waved a piece of paper at me.

“We finally got Yinny to pay!” She waved the check. “I remotely deposited the check, so here’s hoping it goes through.”

Yinny was a little weasel—literally, he was a weasel shifter—who had stiffed us for the work we did for him. I finally sent Lazenti over to visit him a week or so ago and Yinny had quickly changed his tune.

“Good. Mark his file closed, as soon as the payment clears, and put him on the list of clients we’ll never work with again.” I glanced out the window behind Sophia’s desk. It was coming down hard. “Call Caramite and make certain we’re still on for the day, will you?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“What do you think of the snow?” I asked.

“I’m not much of a fan. My car’s not the best in snow, so Orik picked me up this morning. He’s in the breakroom with Carson and Dante.”

“Oops,” I said. “All right, let’s get moving with the day.”

“So, Carson, can you make certain the equipment we’ll need is in working order?”

“Sure,” he said. “EVP and all of that?”

“Anything to do with ghosts or spirits, yes.” I glanced at my email. Lazenti had left me a message. “Lazenti’s good forthe Lord of the Rings party. Let’s mark it as official on the calendar.”

“Noted,” Sophia said.

“All right, let’s hear what you found out about Michael’s home,” I said, turning to Carson.

“Okay, here goes. Caramite lives at 7259 Lakesmith Drive. The house was built back in 1926, and the first owner, the man who commissioned the house, was Jack Farquar. A stockbroker, he and his family moved into the house in 1927. Jack and his wife, Mary, were wealthy, popular, and members of the upper social elite. They had two sons and a daughter. Everything was wonderful until October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed and everything he'd worked for went down with it. Jack Farquar and his family lost everything they had, and he lost a lot of money for his clients.”

Carson turned his laptop around, showing us a headline from that day.stocks hit lowest levelsglared out from the screen.

“Not only did Farquar’s clients lose their money, but apparently, he had been hedging his bets, speculating without having the funds to back it up, and he lost everything in one day. He went from being one of the richest men in town to being dead broke.”

“That’s scary,” Sophia said. “A lot of men killed themselves during the Great Depression.”

“And that’s what happened. Except that Jack Farquar decided to take his family with him. He went home from the office that night and, according to his sister-in-law, who was there for dinner, he didn’t mention what had happened. She hadn’t heard about the news, and nobody said anything about it. Next morning, he asked his wife to keep the children home from school and he made her promise not to read the news. We knowthis because she wrote it in her diary—she didn’t know why, but figured he’d tell her when he got home.”

“So, he didn’t want his family knowing,” I said.

“Right,” Carson continued. “The morning of October 30th, Jack went into the office as usual. He verified that everything had collapsed, and told a coworker that he was going to lose everything.”

“Uh oh. I sense a bad end here,” Dante said.

“You sense correctly,” Carson said. “After realizing their finances were in ruins, Jack Farquar paid a visit to his doctor, where he asked for a prescription for his wife. Back then, doctors were generous with drugs. Jack went home and pretended like everything was normal. And that night, he laced the soup his wife made for dinner with Brallobarbital, one of the first barbiturates created. He didn’t eat any, and after his family passed out, he carried the children and his wife to their beds, where he shot them in the head. He then sat down beside his wife, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. He left a note, telling the police what he’d done.”

I grimaced. “I just love how others think they can make life and death decisions for their families. At least he left a note,” I said. “Do they…”

“Yes, there’s a copy of it in the archives of the newspaper. The archives were kept on microfiche—which was a surprisingly early invention.” Carson said.

“I take it you went down the research rabbit hole?” Orik said.

“Yep. Microfiche has been around a long time. Anyway, during the thirties, the paper started filming everything on record for the archives. So, they have a record of the note.” He tapped away on the keyboard, then sent us the link.

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