Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  “You’ve seen the paperwork. They didn’t need alibis. The coroner’s office couldn’t find the least sign of a struggle,” Andy said. “Regina Holloway was dead and buried when Senator Holloway started raising his questions. And he didn’t bring in the police again. He called someone he knew up in Washington, you all came in, and the chief asked me to make sure you were given full cooperation. Maybe Senator Holloway will be able to accept his wife’s death if someone will just say that a ghost caused her to die.”

  “Thanks, Andy. I think.”

  “Do you want me to go after their alibis now?” Andy asked him.

  Jackson said, “I’ll get my guys on it in a subtle manner first. If we hit any stone walls, I’ll call you.”

  “If you get anything on the Church of Christ Arisen, I’ll be anxious to get a call, too.”

  Jackson thanked him and headed back to the house.

  It was just after nine.

  * * *

  Angela hadn’t been certain just how she was going to feel about the night when she woke up in the morning. She hadn’t slept with another man since Griffin had died; she had never fallen into an intimate relationship easily. It was too…intimate.

  And there was the fact that they were working together. She’d never considered sleeping with a colleague before. But this had seemed…right. It had been what she had wanted.

  And waking up, it seemed like something she wanted all the more. She wasn’t sure where it would lead. And she wasn’t even sure that their team would prove to be something that was viable and useful. That it would be continued after this assignment.

  She lay awake for a while, aware that Jackson was gone. What next? She had become obsessed with law enforcement after Griffin had died; she couldn’t fight disease, but it was possible to fight criminals. Sadly, though, talking with ghosts wasn’t as easy.

  But now…

  That seemed all right. Taking the logical path and hoping that illogic would hop in to help was the right way to go.

  She closed her eyes. The children in the room made sense.

  Who the hell was the girl in the mirror?

  She rose and headed back to her own bathroom. She showered there, creating whirls of steam, but the girl did not reappear in the mirror.

  Had she imagined her? Maybe she was susceptible to imagination, too, just the same as anyone else.

  Jackson had suggested she start reading the book on Madden C. Newton again.

  Showered and changed, she headed back downstairs. She’d left the book in one of the kitchen drawers.

  Will was in the kitchen cooking breakfast with help from Jenna, who was slicing and dicing for him, while Jake set out glasses on the table. Just as Angela reached the kitchen, they heard a screech from the grand ballroom entry.

  “Whitney! What the hell?” Jake said, hurrying out. Angela followed him, while Jenna and Will came running after her.

  “What? What?” Jake demanded.

  Whitney had just brought out a cushioned rocking chair to set before her bank of screens. She pointed to one of them. “It’s in the basement again. It’s in the basement!”

  They all stared at the screen. Something large and dark that filled the basement like a giant wave reaching over had appeared. It undulated and writhed, and seemed to darken.

  “Let’s all get down there,” Jenna suggested.

  “Yep, great, let the big bad black thing eat us all up together!” Jake said.

  “We have to find out what it is,” Whitney told him.

  As she spoke, they all spun around, hearing the key twist in the lock. Jackson was back.

  “Look!” Whitney told him.

  Jackson walked over to the screen. They turned back to it.

  The black cresting shadow-wave was gone.

  “It was there! We all saw it,” Whitney said, irritated.

  “What?” Jackson asked.

  “My old shadowy friend from before,” said Angela.

  “All right, Jake, come with me. Jenna, stay with Whitney on the screens…” He paused. Then said, “What the hell is that burning smell? Handle that, Will. And Angela…”

  His eyes touched hers, and she saw that he was hesitant about her.

  Sleeping with the boss maybe wasn’t such a great idea.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  “Angela, I’m not sure we should bring you. If there is something—”

  “Then I need to be with you,” she said. “I’ll hold your hand.”

  He looked at her a moment then, and despite the fact that not a flicker of emotion registered on his features at her quip, she almost smiled. He was weighing his feelings for her against the fact that it was important that they do what they had come to do. Yes, she was most vulnerable and susceptible. And, yes, that was both good and bad. He’d been a good field commander, always, she thought. But he’d also seen his coworkers dead in the field, and one way or another, the decisions he made were going to be hard.

  But she was right this time, and he knew.

  “Okay, young lady, give me your hand when we head down,” he replied lightly.

  None of it meant anything then. She, Jackson and Jake went down to the basement. But nothing seemed to be there, and though they waited, walking the perimeter, exploring various objects that had been stashed there, nothing happened. Calls to the crew at the screens to ask if there was anything on them brought disappointed and negative replies, and eventually they came back up.

  Despite Will’s lament that his breakfast had been ruined, everything he had cooked tasted delicious, and when they complimented him, Jenna wanted them all to know that it had been her swift chopping and dicing at his commands that had made the omelets what they were.

  “So, what’s the agenda?” Jake asked Jackson.

  “Gambling,” Jackson said.

  “Cool. On Uncle Sam’s dime?” Whitney asked, pleased.

  “No. On your own,” Jackson said, laughing.

  “I’ll last about two minutes,” Will said.

  “Three of us will go. We need to chat up a few of the waitresses—and the croupiers. I need to know if Grable Haines was really gambling all day when Regina died.”

  “I’m good at talking to the crowd at a craps table,” Jake said.

  “I knew you would be,” Jackson said.

  Jake laughed. “Is that a compliment?”

  “Talking to people is a strong point. I meant what I said. Actually, though, I’m going to take Jenna and Will to the casino. Jake, you’re going to head back to the Church of Christ Arisen and appear to be really interested. Angela and Whitney, go back to the museum on Royal Street, and go through the new exhibit. It will have opened. See what else you can find out about the house and anything else that we don’t know already about Madden C. Newton’s reign of terror here.” He hesitated, and then said, “Angela, study all the pictures you see of any of the characters involved in Newton’s day, all right? Oh, and no one comes home alone—we’ll meet at Café du Monde at, say, 3:00 p.m.”

  “We’re all on it,” Angela told him. “Whitney, make sure that your cameras are set for while we’re gone. I’ll get everything cleaned up and we’ll be out of here.”

  She didn’t really have to handle it alone; they all hopped up to put the salt and pepper, hot sauce, ketchup, butter and jelly away. The dishes arrived scraped at the sink, and Angela quickly rinsed them for the dishwasher and scrubbed the few pans Will had used.

  She didn’t need to see Jackson to know that he was near. He slipped an arm around her. “Are you good?”

  She turned; they were alone in the kitchen. She had to grin.

  “I’m imagining that should be for you to judge.”

  “I’ll hold all I have to say on just how good for later. I mean…”

  “No regrets,” she assured him.

  “But besides that,” he asked, dark blue eyes intently on her then, “last night…whatever you saw in the mirror…anything else?”

  She shook her
head. “No, and I actually tried this morning. I’m sure you would have told me if there had been any kind of problem, but Gabby and her family are fine, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I went and talked to Andy at the station this morning,” he told her.

  “I’m still worried.”

  “So am I. But I’m going to trust Andy Devereaux and the police to keep an eye on her. There’s not much else I can do at this moment.”

  “Have the bastard arrested.”

  “On what charges?”

  “There has to be something.”

  “Probably. When we dig deep enough. But if murder is going to be among those charges, we have to play it all by the book.”

  * * *

  The casino wasn’t rampantly busy, but even at noon, the play for the day was heating up.

  Jackson left Will and Jenna to walk around together and headed straight for the craps tables; Will would get into a poker game in the next few minutes, while Jenna would sit in for a few rounds of roulette and peruse the slots.

  He found that there were three active craps tables, and he decided to play each of them. At the first, he struck up a conversation with one of the croupiers, and he talked about how much he loved the game, but remained a conservative player. He mentioned that he knew people who had gotten into trouble at craps. One of his was a local friend, who bet with bookies, but sure loved casinos as well. He described Grable Haines. He played that table for a while, hoping for a response, but none was forthcoming.

  He bought a hot dog, and tried to engage the vendor in conversation to see if he knew anything, but the man behind the machine just looked at him blankly when he mentioned the senator’s and Grable’s names.

  Before going to the second table, he worked a few slots and struck up conversations with a few of the cocktail waitresses. He tipped well, and they were happily chatty, and he finally found a girl who knew Grable, liked him a lot and was pretty sure she remembered the day that Regina Holloway had died; it had instantly been on the news.

  “Yeah, I think Grable was here. You might check at the craps table over there,” the girl told him.

  He started at the second table by playing it wild. Luckily, his ridiculous bets on playing the eleven all came in, so he was flush enough to keep up his chatter. And at that table, he struck gold again.

  Though the croupiers were working, and certainly knew that their pit boss was near, they were fine with casual conversation. Necessary to keep up the camaraderie that kept folks gambling.

  “Grable?” the croupier to his left said at his inquiry. “Yeah, hope he’s doing okay. I haven’t seen him in here since the day Senator Holloway’s wife died. Nice guy, Grable. He was in here that day, all day, which I think really disturbed him.”

  “You mean later, because he was playing and having a good time while the senator’s wife was dying?” Jackson asked.

  “Yeah, poor fellow. He had been winning, too, I think,” another one of the dealers added.

  “Sad day, sad thing,” Jackson agreed.

  It was Jackson’s turn for the dice; he played out a winning streak, and left the table. He saw Will sitting at a poker table, and nodded to him. Will finished out his game.

  “So Grable’s game is craps?” Will asked.

  “Yes, and he was here just like he told us.”

  “So, you think he’s clean?” Will asked.

  “I do. Someone had to have had the time to get into the house and out of it. Regina died right at dusk.”

  “According to the coroner’s report,” Will said. “Right?”

  “Right,” Jackson agreed.

  “Probably no more than thirty minutes before Senator Holloway found her body.”

  “Or…” Jackson said thoughtfully.

  “Or?”

  “Senator Holloway didn’t find her body. He knew exactly where it was because he caused it to be there.”

  * * *

  Angela was glad that she and Whitney had been chosen to go back and view the new exhibit at the museum—not that they’d had a chance to see any of the old exhibits, yet, really. It was an easy walk through the Vieux Carré, and they window-shopped as they strolled to it, stopping at Community Coffee for a pecan-flavored roast of the day, and admiring some of the clothing and hats in boutiques, and the Blue Dog art by Rodrique as they passed the studio shop.

  She had always loved walking in the city; the air of fading and decaying elegance was poignant and beautiful, and still a part of day-to-day life. Someone was always repairing something, and someone else was planting something beautiful to flow over a railing, flowering vines or other such visual treats.

  They reached the museum and paid their entry. The silver-haired woman was there, and she was delighted to see Angela back. Angela and Whitney exchanged a few casual words with her while she extolled the virtues of the excellent if small museum.

  “Didn’t you see most of the museum already?” Whitney asked her.

  “No—it was like being in a film that was sped up ridiculously. Mostly, Jackson stared at the sign that said the new exhibit would open tomorrow.”

  “Okay, then we’ll be real tourists,” Whitney said.

  The first part of the exhibit was a display on the city when the French first arrived, and brought them through the great fire that raged through the city and brought down a huge percentage of the original architecture, a second fire that had been another kiss of death, and into the Spanish period, when most of the buildings still standing had been built. Crime had been high on the busy waterfront, with beggars, murderers and thieves haranguing those on ships as well as the wealthy landowners. The exhibit touched on the cruelties of the slave trade. One area focused on the legend of Madame and Dr. Lalaurie, who, according to oral tradition, had brutally operated on and tortured slaves, detaching and reattaching limbs, and leaving behind slaves incarcerated in a basement, whose screams for help created ghost legends. Those poor souls were only discovered after death. The exhibit had a disclaimer, reminding everyone that the story was oral legend.

  Sex and scandal were not overlooked, even before they reached the new exhibit.

  Models had been made of Gallatin Street, and Storyville. Long before the days of Storyville, Gallatin Street provided base, cheap pleasures for river men, sailors, and whoever dared wander there. But in 1897, Sidney Story, councilman and respected individual, became horrified by the amount of prostitution in the French Quarter and introduced a Control Measure. It didn’t actually make a decent thing of prostitution, but it sent one of the world’s oldest professions down to one section of the city. Prostitutes were banished to an area that was bordered by Basin, Iberville, St. Louis, and North Robertson streets. There, a new era of raunchy entertainment began. Small houses, or “cribs,” allowed for even cheaper entertainment. Larger houses and mansions allowed for a higher class of debauchery, and there, music began to play. The bordellos contributed to the development of Dixieland jazz.

  Poor Sidney Story must have been mortified when it became known as Storyville, which reigned supreme in sexual entertainment for twenty years, until the federal government decided that it was far too well-known—and that it corrupted the soldiers and sailors based there. Storyville was closed, and now existed no more.

  Moving on, Angela discovered that Abraham Lincoln, as a young man, had seen the slave markets in New Orleans, and some of what he had seen had cemented his determination that slaves must be freed.

  “You know, he’s known as our most psychic president,” Whitney said. “He believed in destiny, and foretold his own death in a dream.”

  “Do we ever really foretell anything?” Angela asked her. “Or do we create our world ourselves with the way we view it?”

  “I don’t think he created John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre!” Whitney said.

  “Good point,” Angela told her.

  They entered the new exhibit, and the very first display there was on the Madde
n C. Newton house. They walked straight to the model of the home, as it had been when Madden C. Newton had carried out his reign of terror.

  “Look—the one ell is still divided here,” Whitney said. “When the house was built, that was actually a separate building.”

  “One of the reasons all those people are shown marching on the house is that he didn’t get rid of a corpse fast enough—people smelled it, they figured out that he was responsible for the disappearances, and the police burst in on him,” Angela said.

  “Oh, Lord. It is amazing, how very, very bad human beings can be.”

  Angela walked over to read the page on the exhibit. There were drawings, and one photograph of Madden C. Newton in court. She had seen him in her dreams; of course, there had been a picture of him in the book she owned, so she might have sent the image to her imagination.

  “He looks like any man,” Whitney said.

  “Not really. Look at his eyes. The bastard was demented,” Angela said.

  They both fell silent, reading, and then wandered apart in slightly different directions.

  “Hey! Come over here,” Whitney said after a minute.

  Angela walked over to her. The man’s death warrant was on display, along with a newspaper sketch of his public execution—a hanging.

  “Ugh,” Whitney said. “The body was left to hang there for three days. No one knows exactly when he was cut down. There had been orders for the disposal in ‘an unmarked grave purchased by the city,’ but no one seems to have recorded the plot number.”

  “Interesting,” Angela agreed, walking over to read along with Whitney. “You would have thought that they might have burned the bastard alive and thrown his ashes to the wind.”

  “Too medieval!” Whitney said, laughing.

  Angela walked back over to look at the model of the house, noting the difference in the architecture now, with the entire structure pulled together as one.

  She went through the entire exhibit again, but it didn’t give her anything new on Madden C. Newton. She saw pictures of many of his victims—Matthew Brady and other photographers at work during the Civil War had made portraits common and possible by then. She was most touched by one certain portrait; it was that of a family, husband, wife, son and daughter.