Dying Breath

by Heather Graham

  But now...

  How the bloody hell...

  The Master would be so disappointed! It was fine, just fine, that some of the women had been found alive, but this was really becoming a pattern now!

  It was her, of course. Victoria Preston.

  She was supposed to be involved, yes, of course, but...

  She was annoyingly right on, far more so than they had expected.

  He dialed Under. “Well, not so good. You failed.”

  “I failed? You’re an ass! A jerk. Your clever writing. I didn’t fail. The whole city is going to be in awe—in fact, I should have said screw you and screw this shit and given my find to the city.”

  “And been arrested for trespassing, huh?”

  Under began to swear. “You ass! Quit with the clues that are maps, huh?”

  “We’ll tone it down—until we get something as good,” Taker said. He still needed Under. But when he didn’t...

  He smiled. “Yeah, my clue was too good. Besides, we have an ace in the hole. Because people are stupid. We’ll play that next, and then...”

  “Then?”

  “Maybe we’ll start working on the end game.”

  He hung up and stared at the goings-on at the Pine house, the plethora of cop cars and police techs and whoever else kept coming.

  Uncanny. Absolutely, frigging, unbelievably—uncanny!

  * * *

  Vickie hadn’t been afraid while she was in the Pine house.

  On the contrary—when the first “old” corpse had appeared, she had been dismayed. She’d been so convinced that they would find Fiona West there. And then, of course, the men had kept tearing at the wall, and more and more old corpses had appeared, and then, finally, Fiona West.

  She’d been so concerned for the woman who might still be living that she had barely noticed the dead.

  But before they had left, she had stared at the sight of the corpses, all lined up in their terrible pageantry.

  Bone, and fragments of bone. Dark, rotted, mummified flesh stretched tightly over that bone. How had they come to that stage? When had they been killed—and why?

  And most importantly...

  “How the hell did the kidnapper-slash-killers know about the Pine house? I mean, I’m no expert, but it appears that those bodies were shored up behind the—cheaply made, mind you—false wall of the Pine house. Apparently, no one else knew they were there. If someone had known they were there, they would have been removed ages ago,” Griffin said, thoughtful as he drove through the streets of Boston.

  It was after 2:00 a.m. The good thing was there wasn’t the usual snarl of Boston traffic with which to contend.

  “I don’t know. I can’t even imagine,” Vickie said. She closed her eyes, thinking maybe she could re-create an image and try to get a fix on the remnants of clothing upon the bodies.

  She could far too easily get a mental picture.

  She couldn’t get a fix on clothing. She could only see the disarticulated hanging jaws, the gaping, stygian stare of the empty eye sockets.

  She shouldn’t have felt so unnerved now. So frightened.

  After all, she saw the dead walking around!

  And yet, there had been something so sad, so terrible, about the victims in the wall. Long dead. She needed to be far more afraid of the present—and killers who were still at large.

  “The city will have forensic anthropologists in there tomorrow,” Griffin continued. “We’ll have answers as to how they came to be there...” He paused, shrugging. “Poor Oliver Pine. He might have had a sadistic ancestor who was a serial killer, and he’ll get to discover the truth.”

  “I wonder how the smell didn’t alert someone when those bodies were going in the wall. Then again, it was one of the oldest farmhouses in the area. Maybe the bodies decomposed and mummified before there were a lot of people around to notice the smell of rot, or maybe there were dead animals, or the victims of hangings around to smell, or...”

  “What remains most pertinent to our current situation,” Griffin said, “is knowing how the Undertakers knew about the false wall and how easily it would be to add another body in at the end of the space.”

  “Do you think they might have discovered it by accident?” Vickie asked. “They obviously know the city and this area of Massachusetts and delight in coming up with their one-line clues to send law enforcement into a frenzy.”

  “The police and you,” Griffin murmured.

  They arrived at her apartment. Vickie automatically reached for the door handle to get out of the car. She was moving slowly. Griffin had come around by the time she managed to get halfway out of the car.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m fine—just a little unnerved,” she told him.

  And she was. More so than she had thought. She realized she’d accepted his assistance to get out of the car as if she were grabbing at a lifeline.

  And he was a lifeline. He seemed vibrant, warm, strong...someone great to cling to.

  She tried to breathe. She wasn’t a clinger. She just wasn’t. And yet she realized she wanted to throw herself into his arms and ask him to hold her until she wasn’t afraid anymore. In truth, she really longed for more, she realized.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of her small complex, she pictured herself doing just that—leaning in to him, having his arms around her, letting her own curl around his neck. Maybe have her fingers thread through the rich darkness of his hair. Maybe she’d had a thing for him since she’d first seen him when she’d been seventeen years old. Her imagination began to run really wild as she thought about the places such an action could take them. He was rock solid, probably really beautiful naked.

  She felt herself flush even though she hadn’t done a thing, and whether he saw the dead or not, she sincerely doubted that he could read her mind.

  A car drove up behind them. She saw it was a police car.

  “Officer Manetti will be outside all night,” Griffin told him. “You have my number. I’ll see you to your door—make sure everything is tight.”

  “Sure. Thanks,” she said lightly.

  He held her elbow as they headed down the short walk to the outside door of the complex. She prayed for her fingers to work on the lock; thankfully, they did. She then opened the door to her own apartment, painfully aware of him beside her.

  Rock-hard, trustworthy, vibrant, filled with life and determination and heart and soul...

  And simply sensual and masculine, and though she hated the very concept, yes, at this moment, she wanted to cling!

  She refrained. He came into the apartment with her and immediately went about his inspection. She was in the kitchen when he finished, setting water on for tea.

  “All clear,” he told her, and asked quietly, “Are you okay? Tonight had to be pretty traumatic. We deal with this kind of thing all the time, but even I have rarely seen a sight quite like that row of bodies in the wall.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “And it was a good night, really, right? I mean, the dead people in the walls were beyond help long ago. The woman who could be saved was saved.”

  “Yes.”

  He stayed there, close to her, but distant. She thought she should offer him tea; she thought he should go. They’d spent the day together; they’d spent other time together. There was a strange and undeniable bond between them. That was one thing. He also had an allure; a charisma. He appealed to her in every way possible, and thus the alarming run of her imagination.

  She was just so afraid that he would see her as a victim, as the scared kid he had once saved, as the young woman plagued by the dead and the past and...

  “Well, it’s late. I should get going,” he said.

  “Of course. You’ll keep me up on everyt
hing happening, please?”

  “Actually, I intend to stay close—like this,” he said, smiling and lifting his hand to show her his entwined fingers. Then his smile faded. “Vickie, I’m afraid we’re going to be on top of you until these killers are brought to justice.”

  On top of her...

  Bad, bad, bad. Her mind was moving in the really wrong direction...

  “For some reason, they are using your name—they are taunting you. I am afraid you are involved with this, through nothing you did on your part. I’ll be back tomorrow. You’re working here, right, from your home?”

  Leave it to the FBI. Yes, they even had her schedule. Not that it was any great secret.

  “Yes.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Thank you. Good night.”

  For a moment, they stood awkwardly. If she really let her imagination run, she could wonder if he was thinking the same thing. Forget it all for a minute, take a step forward, take her into his arms, indulge in a kiss, hot and wet and...

  He walked to the door. “Lock up.”

  “Yep.”

  Then he was gone. And she locked the door.

  Vickie brewed her tea and brought it into the bedroom. After a quick shower to get off the plaster and dust and who-knew-what-else from the Pine house, she prepared for bed. She started to turn on the television and then didn’t. Tomorrow would be time for the news.

  She was exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come. She tossed and turned for at least an hour.

  When she slept, it was restlessly. When she started to dream, she was back at the Pine house and the skeletal and mummified bodies were staring at her—then they began to jerk and twitch and...

  Step out of the walls.

  In the garish light and shadow of the Pine house, they began to walk toward her. They gnashed their teeth, something she knew—even in her dream—was quite impossible. Their jaws were barely attached to their heads if they were still attached at all.

  But...

  They were moving. One by one, and as a small army.

  Coming at her...

  They seemed to lumber as they moved. Black goo...rotten blood...appeared to drip from the dark and withered, mummified flesh.

  “Victoria...”

  They whispered her name.

  “Victoria, Victoria, Vickie...”

  It became a chant.

  A skeletal arm reached out for her.

  She awoke with a startled scream.

  It was morning; she hadn’t drawn the drapes and sunlight was pouring in.

  And someone was banging at her door.

  6

  “We’re still doing all kinds of testing,” Dr. Theodore Loeb told Griffin. “But from what I’ve managed to ascertain so far, six of our victims were males, two were females. They have been in that wall for decades. Further testing will hopefully pinpoint a year, but I’m thinking that these murders took place back in the late 1800s.”

  “How were the victims killed?” Griffin asked him.

  “Again, we’re working with some bodies that have left little evidence behind. And, of course, this is speculation right now, but I believe the bodies in better shape were killed in winter and preservation began before they had time to rot.”

  “Dr. Loeb, how were they killed?” Griffin asked.

  “Oh, well, we are still working on that as well. They weren’t shot—no trace of bullets found—and don’t seem to have borne knife wounds of any kind, not discernible by the remains. There is visible trauma on a number of the skulls, but I don’t believe it was enough to have been a killing blow. Soft tissue is scarce, but it will be tested. At the moment, I believe they were either poisoned—a possibility—or they were simply smothered.”

  “In the wall itself, or before they were put in the wall?”

  “I’m not sure how. We’re still working on what was going on.”

  They were at the office of the chief medical examiner on Albany Street. Dr. Loeb and his assistants had been given a special room dedicated to the historic corpses. According to their home office back in Northern Virginia, Dr. Loeb was one of the most respected forensic anthropologists in the world. He was an older man, almost as skeletal as some of their victims. He was dignified and yet energetic; Griffin believed that, if they were out there, Loeb would find the answers.

  “But what a find, what a find. What a mystery!” the man said.

  “An amazing find, yes. Especially since we found a kidnapped victim there,” Griffin said.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Thank God! You found the woman alive. And how extraordinary! How could they have known? Of course, I’ve been reading about this case. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I’m thinking this Undertaker might have lucked upon the situation. You know, he may sit around thinking, just where do I leave my next victim? And once you’re out on the Boston Neck in the South End, you start looking for the right place,” Dr. Loeb said.

  “Maybe,” Griffin told him. “Dr. Loeb, will you please keep me up on any information as you come across it?”

  “Naturally, Special Agent Pryce,” Dr. Loeb told him.

  As Griffin left the office, he received the call he’d been expecting from Jackson Crow.

  “Anything from Dr. Loeb?” Jackson asked.

  “He thinks we’re looking at the late 1800s, victims possibly disabled by conks on the head, and then poisoned or smothered.”

  “Too similar, huh?”

  “Maybe. What have you got?”

  “Fiona West can tell us nothing. She was locking her car—she felt a searing pain in her head. The good thing is that she doesn’t even remember being bundled up and closed into a wall with a bunch of age-old corpses.”

  “That’s good...for her,” Griffin murmured. “Struck getting out of her car. She didn’t see him—or them. Okay, so Angelina Gianni is certain that there are two criminals working together. I believe this is right—I always suspected two. Getting victims buried or into walls or boxes and Dumpsters and coal bins isn’t that easy on your own, and not when you’re trying to make sure you’re not seen. We go back to struck on the head. Here’s what scares me. The victims haven’t been able to tell us anything. I believe that the kidnappers/killers know that their victims thus far were knocked out cold—they have complete confidence that the victims aren’t going to be able to tell us anything. What frightens me is, what happens if they mess up before we find them? If they think that a victim can identify them, does that victim die right away?”

  “We can’t speculate on that—we have to find an answer here somewhere before the Undertakers strike again,” Jackson said.

  “I have an idea.”

  “And what’s that?” Jackson asked.

  “Bertram Aldridge.”

  “He’s in prison—we’ve checked. And I’ve had Angela back at Krewe headquarters going through everything we can find in his prison correspondence and through his visitor list.”

  “Yep. Still say we need to see him,” Griffin said.

  “Well, it sure as hell can’t hurt.”

  Griffin felt Jackson’s hesitation over the line before he spoke again.

  “What about Vickie Preston?” Jackson asked.

  Something in Griffin’s gut clenched. “What about Vickie? What do you mean?”

  “Well, we have a situation here in which these people now seem to be going right for the jugular—her name in the clues. So, it’s possible they are simply fans of Bertram Aldridge, or maybe they’re on a payback mission for him.”

  “Payback—I shot the man,” Griffin said. “Not Vickie.”

  “Yes, you did. You shot him when he should have still been in the house—torturing Vickie Preston and Noah Ballantine. Maybe you’re not an easy target and maybe you are a target—t
hey just haven’t begun plaguing you as yet. They got you here, right? This whole thing might have been studied. But then again, maybe it’s just Vickie they’re after. The one who got away.”

  “So, copycats, of a form, who want revenge for Aldridge. But they’re on a spree here, so it seems. Nothing new sent to the media as of yet, right? No riddles or clues?” Griffin asked.

  “No. A killing spree, so it seems, but...no, we haven’t heard about another victim yet. And right now, they’re probably thinking how clever they are. Somehow, they knew about bodies in the wall from murders a century ago. I’m sure they’re thinking they’re very clever.”

  “It definitely points to killers from this area. I’d say someone who grew up here, who might have heard tales about the old Pine house—or maybe they broke in somewhere along the line and made the discovery themselves. Yeah, they’ve been ahead of us, all right. But they’ll make a mistake.”

  “I believe they will, too. I agree that we need to see Aldridge,” Jackson said.

  “Right.”

  “But,” Jackson added, “I think we need to bring Vickie with us.”

  * * *

  Vickie was groggy getting up, and she couldn’t help but be afraid—who pounded on your door like that if something wasn’t the matter?

  She grabbed a robe to slip over her pajamas and hurried to the door, her heart beating. She had to be all right; she knew that Griffin Pryce would never leave her door unguarded.

  She looked through the peephole. And then she smiled.

  Actually, this was a visitor she should have expected already.

  It was Roxanne Greeley at her door.

  They’d been best friends in high school, and even when they’d gone on to their separate colleges—Vickie in New York City and Roxanne down in Florida—they’d kept in touch constantly and managed to make sure they’d spent time during holidays together. No one had been more thrilled that Vickie had come back to Boston than Roxanne.

  She was a visual artist who also worked with Grown Ups.

  “Hey! Let me in, let me in. Before that cop comes back and decides I’m not an innocent character!” Roxanne called to her through the door.