He laughed again. “I’ve got the gun. Ghosts don’t get guns, I don’t think.”
“You’d be surprised at how powerful they can be,” Angela said.
“Make her shut up, Grable,” Lisa said.
He ignored Lisa.
Angela shook her head. “The senator is an amazing actor. I believed he was horrified by the images the projector put out. But he ordered the projector,” she said.
“Right. Well, Lisa ordered the projector. But, yes, the sainted Senator Holloway knew. He wanted his wife to think that she was meeting her son. He thought that she would die happily that way. He never saw the images we created,” Grable said.
“Everyone in this was a liar,” Angela said. “And you should know this—I think the senator actually brought us in, knowing what would finally come out and planning on getting rid of DuPre and all of you, through us.”
“Oh, no,” Grable said. “You don’t understand politics. The senator will come out of all this just fine—after you’re dead, of course. And we’ll be just fine as well.”
“Shut up, she doesn’t need to know any of this!” Lisa said. “Everything will fall on Martin DuPre, and they’ll think street thugs got hold of Blake and that cop. And everything went just perfectly, so let’s just finish it.”
“The senator will get you—just as he got DuPre,” Angela said.
“We know what we’re doing,” Lisa insisted. “Oh, yes, we’ll be just fine.”
“No, you won’t. Don’t you see—the senator really has to clean house. And speaking of which, that leads to one more question—you obviously slept with everyone,” Angela said to Lisa. “Which one are you really trying to be with?”
“Obviously, I’m going to be the next Mrs. Holloway,” Lisa said with disgust. She didn’t seem to mind explaining things to Angela, as long as she was the one doing the talking. “And once you’re dead, taken by the ghosts, it will be clean and clear. Martin DuPre went insane. He was responsible for everything. And Blake is dead now, too. So we’ve survived, horrified and grieving.”
“Why are you back here to kill us? That makes no sense,” Angela said.
Lisa smiled. “I’m not a dumb blonde. I know all about Jackson Crow—and the members of his last team! They died. And now, he’s lost so many people on this new team. His word will be worthless. Nothing he says against the senator will mean anything—because DuPre was the killer.”
“They’ll know we died after DuPre,” Angela said.
Lisa shook her head. “Time of death is never that specific.”
“Yes, it can be,” Angela said.
“Get up!” Grable said. “The ghosts will be blamed for anything that doesn’t fall on DuPre.”
“Oh, please! You can’t believe that! This may be New Orleans, and people love their stories and their legends, but they’ll never blame it all on ghosts!”
“Don’t kid yourself—when men can’t find an explanation, they look to legend all the time, and to superstition!” Grable said. “You’re just trying to waste time. And you’re not going to do it anymore.”
“You really are an idiot. Don’t you see—you just told me. Holloway did want his wife dead. You carried it out for him. If he’s really cleaning house now, he’s going to have to get rid of the both of you, too. Lisa, you are never going to be Mrs. Holloway.”
“You don’t know anything!” Lisa told her. “Men love me. He loves me.”
“Like he loved his wife,” Angela said.
“Get up!” Grable ordered again.
Angela staggered to her feet. She could see that Whitney and Will were alive, thank God, but they weren’t going to help her. They were still unconscious. Maybe it was best that way.
Standing was painful. Time. She had to play for more time, get them arguing, explaining again and again. Lisa liked to prove she was smart. She didn’t want to be a dumb blonde. “You’re crazy. You really are. Did Martin DuPre really kill the missing girls? Or did you? Was DuPre being set up and framed for everything? I’d say you could have done it, easily. Maybe DuPre was really the one being set up.”
“Set up? The little bastard was going to ruin everything. He wanted to be the real messiah. He thought he was God.”
“But did he kill the girls?”
“Get out on the balcony,” Grable said.
“Wait. I’m going to die. I want the truth.”
“All right,” Lisa said, pushing past him. “You want it all? Regina Holloway went nuts with grief. The senator was desperate. First, Martin got him a girl, pretending in the dark that David Holloway was the ‘bishop.’ Then Martin took her himself. And then…well, Martin was the one who killed the girl. He got the bright idea to bring her here, and she started screaming, and he could hear that Regina Holloway was coming in the house—home early from some function or the other. He killed the girl to shut her up, stuffed the body down in the basement for the night, but then had to come back to actually get rid of the corpse. It wasn’t so hard. In his mind, he’d become like a god, so he didn’t owe anything to Holloway or anyone. He did it a second time—got carried away with one of the girls—when the little bitch got bitchy. Holloway needed to get rid of his wife anyway. So I talked him into a bit of a scheme that would just rid him of her. He ordered the projector, but he said that the house was creepy.”
“Where did Blake fall into it all?” Angela demanded.
“Oh, well, he was the fool, you see. He fell for Lisa, and he believed everything that she said to him. He was set up to kill Martin DuPre,” Haines explained.
“And both the girls are buried in the wall, right?” Angela asked.
“Weirdest damn thing,” Grable said, grinning. “It was like someone showed me where to bury those bodies! But, you know, someone did show me.” He started to laugh. “There’s some old bones back there, so…hey, this is a murder house. Has been, always will be.”
“You’re crazy. Do you think that Jackson Crow is going to come back and let all this rest? Do you think that he won’t tear apart the whole damn place? He’ll find the bodies—and you’ll be all who’s left!”
“DuPre will be blamed.”
She shook her head. “The projector,” she said.
Grable’s fingers twitched at the trigger of the gun. “Get out,” he told her. “Get out.”
“Sure.”
“You go first,” Lisa said, laughing. “Your ghost can wait for your little friends!”
“Stop it!” Grable said, angry. “Wait! The projector? What are you talking about?”
“We traced it,” Angela told him. “The police will know that Senator Holloway—or someone in his office—bought the projector. You see, actually, I’m thinking that the senator didn’t really know about it. Sure, his wife was making his life hell. But he didn’t want anything like what happened to her happening. Let’s think—I bet he also had ordered Martin DuPre bring women from the Church of Christ Arisen to meet with him, and that might have been why the first one had to die. And why the senator had to pay blackmail. Not his loan to you, Grable. But blackmail. Blackmail, because you figured out that DuPre was getting him a young girl. But what does that really matter now?”
“Oh, you are an ass! The senator knew about the projector. He knew,” Lisa said, pushing forward. “He knew! He had to get rid of his wife, for his polecat future. Come on, think about it, Angela. He was a desperate man. But what he wanted was me. At the beginning, it was just an affair. And, at the beginning, he did just want the organizations infiltrated. The church was a group that splintered off from the Aryans. The Aryans didn’t care enough about God—they were all about color and race! Holloway just wanted to find something that would bring them down at first, but he was always a dog. He loved listening to DuPre talk about what was going on. He loved women. But his wife was a worthless, sopping pile of tears all the time. I wasn’t the first woman with whom he had an affair, but now, I’ll keep him happy.”
“But he used the women Martin DuPre cajoled into his sect. He slept with
them. He pretended to be a bishop. He doesn’t love you, and I just don’t believe that the two of you can’t see that he’s going to have to kill you, too.” She turned from Lisa to stare at Grable.
“Grable—you were seen at the casino the day that Regina Holloway died.” She turned back to look at Lisa. “So, you were the one who ran the projector and killed Regina Holloway. She didn’t just plummet over the balcony with fear—so you pushed her.”
“Yes, I did. I was very, very good,” Lisa assured her.
“You didn’t answer me. Grable—what did you get out of it?”
He grinned. “Gambling money. And I’ll just take your friend’s computer.”
“Please, Grable. You can’t be that much of an idiot. We’ll just look it all up again.”
Grable looked at Lisa, uncertain. “We’ll have to get to the senator. We’ll have to finish him. And quickly.”
“No! I’m going to be the senator’s wife!”
“No, come on, Lisa! She’s right. Don’t you see—she’s right! David Holloway did use Martin DuPre’s association with the church—I don’t care how it all started out! DuPre used the women, and the senator used them, too. God knows, maybe the senator killed them, and not DuPre—we only know what he told us. We know about the bodies, but…what if we have been duped? What if the senator brought these people in on purpose—to expose all of us and get everything blamed on DuPre, and then us. He’d find a way to kill us, too. He got us to kill Blake…he can get someone to kill us. He manipulated everyone!”
“He’s a politician,” Angela said dryly, watching the pair.
“He loves me!” Lisa said. She was almost pathetic.
“I can help you,” Angela told them softly. “I can help you get this all straightened out. Grable, you didn’t kill anyone. Lisa killed Regina Holloway, and DuPre killed the young women. At least he killed the one—the girl he had here when he heard Regina Holloway coming home. Grable, you can make it out of all this.”
“Grable knew the women, too!” Lisa protested. “Don’t you understand—they were all involved. The people who weren’t getting enough out of the Aryans formed the church, and there’s always been the association! Grable knew the women. He helped get them around—he helped hide their bodies.”
“I’d go to prison,” Grable said dully.
“But you wouldn’t get the needle,” Angela said softly.
“Yes, yes you will, you’ll die right along with me!” Lisa said. “You conspired! Conspired is the same thing—she’s just trying to trick you!”
“And the senator has been tricking us both!” Grable said.
Tears suddenly trickled down Lisa’s face. She believed.
“We have to kill the senator, too,” Grable said. “And get far, far away from here!”
“That means we have to finish here!” Lisa said. “Get her out on the balcony, now, Grable!”
“Shoot me,” Angela said. “I won’t jump, and they’ll trace the bullets. Go ahead. Shoot me.”
“Damn you!” Lisa ran at her. Angela’s head was still killing her; she wasn’t prepared and she fell back, but when the woman pounced on her, she fought back. She managed to throw Lisa off, but she was weak, and Grable reached down for her, jerking her to her feet and landing a hard, bone-jarring blow to her chin.
“Get out on the balcony!” he roared.
She walked toward the balcony, praying one of them would come close enough.
If she was going over, one of them was coming.
She edged out just ahead of Grable.
But then she saw them. The ghosts. The two children flanked Susanne Crimshaw.
And the woman found a voice.
“Grable. Grable Haines.”
He suddenly stood still, and turned around. A scream ripped from his throat.
He grasped hold of Angela’s arm. “No, no, no!” he gasped.
“What?” Lisa cried hurrying after them. “What?”
She didn’t see the ghosts, but the ghosts saw her. Little Percy raced toward her, ramming her. She was thrown against the balcony railing. She staggered for balance.
“Help me, Grable!” she screamed.
But he couldn’t move; he was mesmerized. He shouted again; he started shooting wildly at the ghost.
He shot Lisa Drummond.
And Lisa went catapulting over the railing.
Grable started to shoot wildly again, but the door to the bedroom was thrown open and Jackson came rushing in. His gun was in his hand, and he shouted, but Grable didn’t hear him. He started to turn the gun on Angela.
And Jackson shot him. Dead on, in the chest.
Grable grabbed at Angela again. They started to fall, together.
She felt herself tip over the railing.
She imagined the hard brick below her.
Then she felt Jackson’s hard grasp, catching her arm. She looked up, terrified that her fingers would slip.
He held on hard. She felt other hands. Ethereal hands.
And slowly, slowly, she was dragged back up and over the railing, and into his arms.
* * *
Whitney and Will were kept in the hospital for observation the next day; Angela insisted that she was not suffering any ill effects from concussion. She wanted to be with Jackson. They all gave their statements, which took hours.
The senator was arrested that night; they could only imagine the sensation there would be when he finally went to trial and his reign of complete corruption was uncovered. Angela had supplied the police with everything she knew after her exchange with Grable and Lisa, and Andy was working on getting Holloway to unweave the tangle he had created with all those around him.
He had thought that he could really be the puppet master; he had forgotten that he was working with people and personalities, and someone was bound to come apart.
Jackson was with Andy when they carried out their first interrogation with the man. He still thought he could pull strings, and talked without a lawyer.
It was almost morning when Jackson joined the other three.
So far, according to Andy and Jackson, Holloway was still trying to proclaim his innocence; he hadn’t killed the girls— DuPre had done it—and Lisa had ordered the projector that had created the images that she’d intended to use to kill his wife. Jackson said it was probably the truth—Holloway was a man who liked sex with adoring women, but he didn’t like dirty work himself. He wanted others to do the actual killing.
They weren’t finished with the business of the house, though.
“We should sleep,” Jenna said.
“Oh, right. While the questions still remain,” Jake said.
They looked at one another. “Back to the house then,” Jackson said. “I’ll get Andy to send over a few of his men since we’re pretty damned sure of what we’ll find.”
They were right.
They discovered the bodies of the two dead girls from the Church of Christ Arisen, and another skeleton. A very old skeleton—that of Madden C. Newton. After his hanging, someone had brought him back to the house to inter him in the wall. Maybe they had thought that his body would be some kind of an offering to the victims he’d killed in the house. It was a historical mystery they were unlikely to solve.
But when they found his bones, a groan seemed to echo from the walls; a groan, and something like a cry of rage.
“These old places do settle and shake,” Jake said.
They were all still for a moment then, because it seemed that the sound came again, and then, shadow filled the crevice in the wall despite the lanterns there, and a darkening shadow, huge and hideous, came for that shadow.
As the greater darkness enveloped the first, the horrible groan and cry of rage increased so that the whole house shuddered, and then, in a blink, it was gone, and all was silent.
“Maybe the real evil was Madden C. Newton after all,” Angela said. “He’s been the evil in the house all along, tormenting some people—and tapping into the evil to be found in
others. Maybe he’s been able to keep the essence of his cruelty alive, and to make it seep into the minds of some who come here. But no more. I think that whatever lurks in hell finally came for him. He managed to exert his influence over others, but we finally fought him on his level. He’s been beaten.”
They were all silent for a moment, wondering what they really saw, what was in the mind, and still, knowing somehow that it had been Madden C. Newton, and he was gone. Only the crumbling bones of the man remained.
“I’m going to call Devereaux and get him over here, no matter how tired he might be,” one of the officers said.
Andy came back with crime scene techs and a medical examiner from the coroner’s office, and the day was spent again with the police. That night, exhausted, the team slept over at the beautiful Hotel Monteleone, where they would stay until it was time to leave the city.
But the next day, Angela wanted to go back to the house—with everyone. Will and Whitney had been released from the hospital, and they were all together again.
She urged Jackson that they go.
“Why?” he asked.
It was Whitney who answered him. “My great-grandmother is coming over, and we’re going to try to see that the children meet their parents.”
The house was still officially under criminal investigation, and yellow tape covered the entire end of the block.
But Andy Devereaux gave them permission. The six members of the team sat with Mama Matisse while she prayed to saints and gods, and incense burned in the air.
The children appeared, still holding hands with the specter of Susanne Crimshaw.
And then, they all saw the light. It was stunning, and it might have been a mass hallucination, except, in their hearts, they all knew that wasn’t so.
There was the light, a shaft, a ray, a hallway. A woman came walking toward them. She was sad, but she smiled when she saw the children. She was dressed in Victorian attire, and she moved slowly at first, and then she ran, and she fell to her knees, taking the children into her arms. She stood then, and hugged Susanne.
Then, other images appeared. Instead of walking toward the light, they were walking from the light.
They remained at a distance; but Angela clearly saw a woman and a little boy. She knew the woman—she recognized her from the pictures she had seen. It was Regina Holloway, and Angela knew then that she had surmised the situation correctly. Regina had never haunted them because she had gone on. She had gone on to be with her son. But she was grateful to them, and she had come there, for just a shimmering instant, to say thank you. She mouthed the words; she smiled, and then she turned away, her son’s hand held tightly in her own.
Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside Page 30