Sacred Evil

by Heather Graham

Page 32

 

  But Jude was so disturbed that he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep, and despite himself, one word, a name, kept ripping through his mind.

  Whitney.

  Not even sure what he was doing, he headed for the street. A cab had just stopped at the avenue; it would take time to get his car out, so he started to run to the intersection, whistling loudly and waving his hand. The cab waited.

  When he was seated in it, he wondered if he wasn’t a fool, or if the workload was really playing with his mind. He was heading to Blair House and the construction site in the wee hours of the morning because something in his sleeping mind had made him think that Whitney might be in danger. What the hell. He’d heard of stranger things. He could have called one of the team; should have called one of the team.

  But he was already in the cab. He’d just head down and see what he could see. And if there was nothing—which was likely—he could still talk to Jackson. If they were ghost busters, as the rumor mill seemed inclined to call them, they wouldn’t think that he was that crazy. Or maybe they would. What the hell, he was started on the way now, might as well see it through.

  He realized that the feeling she was in trouble, in danger, was persisting in his mind. Despite getting in a cab in the middle of the night, he was still afraid that he wouldn’t be there in time. He had the cab stop in front of Blair House; the hall lights were on.

  They were always on; someone was always watching the screens.

  As he leaned forward to pay the driver and ask him to hold on, he noted that there seemed to be a spot of brightness that rose above the meager illumination of the streetlights in the area. “Move down the block, please,” he said.

  Yes.

  There was someone in the foundations of the House of Spiritualism.

  “Here—let me off here. ”

  The padlock wasn’t unlocked, which should have been reassuring. If Whitney had come here in the middle of the night, as insane as that might be, she would have been with someone else; they had a right to be there, and they would have unlocked the padlock.

  They were trained, he reminded himself.

  Of course the padlock was locked. They wouldn’t have left an easy entry for an intruder.

  If it was indeed the Krewe of Hunters who had come here.

  Jude crawled over the fence, cursing as he did so. The chain link was poor, and the tips were bare. He tried his best to protect his body parts, hoping his insanity wasn’t going to lead to partial dismemberment. He leaped to the ground and hurried across the stretch of rubble to the stairs.

  The light was emanating from below. Drawing his gun, he started quietly down the stairs.

  He gritted his teeth and gave himself a mental shake.

  He was afraid for Whitney.

  There was something wrong with this place; he wasn’t prone to unease, nor was he superstitious, or afraid of the dark.

  But there was something like a miasma here, something that felt heavy in the air, something that seemed to hint of death and decay and even…

  Evil?

  The dog walked to the rear of the room. He sat—almost leaned—against the far wall and began to whine.

  “I hear it,” Jake said softly.

  “He’s there,” Whitney said, pointing toward the wall. “There’s something there he wants us to see, or find. Jake, I was reading Andrew Crosby’s book. A young woman named Annie lived in Blair House at the time of the Carrie Brown murder. I don’t know why, exactly, but I think the dog has something to do with her…and he wants us to find something. ”

  “You mean, you want to dig up the ground,” Jackson said.

  “Uh—yeah, I’m sorry, I do. Can we?” Whitney asked.

  Jackson frowned, drawing a finger to his lips. He and Jake drew their weapons and eased against the wall.

  They heard Will’s voice come to them softly over through their radio setup. “You’ve got company—”

  And then they heard, “It’s the police!” The deep, rich voice boomed then echoed in the cavernous space of the foundations.

  “It’s Jude,” Whitney said, though she was sure that Jackson and Jake realized who had come upon them as well.

  “FBI!” Jackson called back. “Jude, it’s us. ”

  As Jude came around the structural wall, everyone sheathed their guns.

  He appeared in the glow of Jackson’s light, hair tousled, looking tired and confused.

  “What are you doing down here?” he asked them.

  “It’s what we do—investigate,” Jackson said.

  “In the middle of the night? In a dark hole in the ground?” Jude asked. “Don’t you have cameras going?”

  “We do,” Whitney said, looking at him with her huge golden eyes luminous. “What are you doing here, though? Is there something new, a lead?”

  “No,” Jude replied with the single word. Something passed through his eyes, but so quickly she might have imagined it. And yet, for that moment, she almost felt as if he had reached out and touched her, and the hot arrows that flew through her bloodstream were shocking, alarming—and seductive. But he had already turned to Jackson. “A hunch. Or less. I couldn’t sleep. I just decided to slip down to the area myself, and when I saw an extra glow of light from this place…I came on down. But what did bring you here?”

  Jackson said, “A hunch. ”

  Jake stepped in to clarify. “Whitney has been reading that book your dad loaned her. She found a reference to Blair House, and a young woman named Annie who disappeared at the same time as the Carrie Brown murder. ”

  “The author believed that she disappeared here because, of course, he hated everything going on at the House of Spiritualism,” Whitney said, staring straight at Jude.

  He nodded, frowning. “I have a forensics team coming out in the morning—a crime scene unit. ”

  Jackson cleared his throat. “No new victims tonight, correct?”

  “Not yet,” Jude said. He wasn’t distracted. He kept staring at Whitney.

  “Just what do you want to dig and what do you plan to dig with?” he asked her. He groaned softly before she could answer. “Construction site, and though the work is on hold, I figure under the tarp in that back section we’ll find some pickaxes and shovels. ”

  She smiled. “Just this area, right here. ”

  “A hunch?” Jude asked her.

  She nodded.

  She thought that he groaned softly again, but she couldn’t be sure. “Well, let’s see what’s here, shall we? I can call in backup, you know. Even at this hour. For once, I can have what I want without question. ”

  “Let’s work this alone, and see what we get,” Jackson said.

  “Because, if it’s nothing,” Whitney added, “then…”

  “We’ll just do it,” Jude said.

  He headed farther back into the foundations, where plywood made something of a roof over the gaping pit, and waterproof canvas tarps had been molded over equipment. Jackson arrived with his wide-beam powerful flashlight, and they ripped away one of the tarps. They’d found of cache of tools, including spades, picks, shovels and saws that had all been stowed.

  “I’m surprised the construction workers left these,” Jake said. “They usually value their personal tools. ”

  “City of New York,” Jude told him. “Look at the handles—these are city property. That means be careful. They’re probably old and overused. ”

  Whitney watched as the three men chose picks; they found a small spade for her. “Be careful of our little site as well,” she said.

  She caught Jude’s hand as Jackson and Jake headed toward the section of floor where the dog had led her. “I know why you didn’t call for backup or help just now,” she said quietly.

  “Oh?”

  “If I’m wrong, you don’t want to appear to have been part of a ghost-hunting expedition,” she said, wishing an edge of
bitterness hadn’t risen in her throat.

  He looked at her for what seemed like an eternity. Then he offered her a wry smile. “Well, there is that. ”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe some things should just be kept tight. I know about your team, and I myself have nothing but suspicion and theory. ”

  She looked at him and nodded gravely. “Jude, we have more than that. There was and is a Jonathan Black. I don’t know if the historical one was the real Ripper or not, but he was a murderer who used the House of Spiritualism for his own ends. He might have killed women—Annie Doherty at least—with the excuse of it being a Satanic sacrifice. I think he killed them in the area of the pentagram, and buried them in the floor in the next room. I don’t know where that will lead, or if it can really help us, but finding the truth can’t hurt us. ”

  He nodded. She was surprised and he offered her a small, grim smile and lifted a hand to move a strand of stray hair from her forehead.

  “Let’s dig, shall we?” he said.

  “Thanks. ”

  The dog had disappeared; maybe Jude’s arrival had been just too much for him.

  For a few moments, the only sounds down in the foundations were grunts and the sound of the pick hitting hard earth.

  Then, Whitney cried, “Stop!”

  They all stopped and stared at her. “You didn’t hear it—there was something different, something hollow sounding—right where Jude is!”

  He hesitated. He tentatively struck the earth. The sound was different.

  Whitney rushed forward with her spade and began digging more gently at the earth. In a moment, she had her hands in the dirt, dusting away. In areas, brick remained. In other areas, there was just dirt and earth.

  She revealed brick; a pasty-colored, poorly laid area of brick. Jackson grabbed the flashlight from where he had set it on the floor. “Different flooring,” he said.

  Jude fell to his knees and carefully began to lightly chisel with the tip of his pick at the mortar between the homemade bricks. One began to loosen, and Whitney fell to her knees across from him, gingerly prying it away as Jude released it at last. He was able to grab a second brick before it fell, and she reached past him for another.