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

by Heather Graham

  They all looked at each other. “Everyone’s in period costume. The movie is called O’Leary’s and it is about the destitution and dire situations in Lower Manhattan and how it was cleaned up at the end of the nineteenth century,” Bobby said. “But no one had any kind of medical bag, I don’t think,” he said, looking at Angus Avery.

  Avery sighed. “Detective, I just don’t think you understand the scope of what went on that day. Sets went up, and sets came down—that meant hundreds of crew members. We had gangs fighting in the streets. That meant more than a hundred extras. You must know all this—the police have lists of every single person hired that day.”

  “And a number of the extras would have worn that kind of cloak and hat,” Jude said.

  “But I don’t remember that the costumer gave anyone a medical bag—or that anyone in Wardrobe handed any of the extras any kind of medical bag,” Bobby said.

  “I’ve told you, though, that I wished I’d never chosen that location,” Angus said, shaking his head.

  “Why did you choose the location, Mr. Avery?” Whitney asked. “Feeling the way you do about it—I mean, you were the one to tell us about the structure that had been there before the recently demolished building.”

  Avery lifted both his hands and rubbed his fingers together toward the ceiling. “Money! Everything in film is money. We could set up easily, and break down easily, and the city was willing to rent it for a song. If I could only go back…”

  “But the woman found this morning wasn’t on the set and wasn’t in the movie,” Sherry said. “So, Angus, for you to be upset with yourself over the location isn’t at all necessary. You’re not to blame. The killer was out there.” She walked over to the director, and gave him a consoling hug.

  Jude knew that he wasn’t getting anywhere that evening. He stood and told them gravely, “Thank you all for meeting here and speaking with us. The station number and my cell is on my card. Please, if you think of anything that can help us, call. Day or night.”

  “Of course!” Avery said, standing. It almost seemed as if he was shaking Sherry Blanco off as he did so.

  Avery looked around the room. “We’re done here,” he said, wanting the extras, his two stars and Sammy Vintner out—leaving him alone.

  There was an awkward pause as everyone stared at Jude in silence. He nodded, looked at Whitney and turned to head out of the room and to the elevators.

  “Avery wants them all out,” Whitney said.

  “Yes, I got that feeling,” Jude told her.

  “But it seems they all want to talk to one another.”

  “So, we’ll wait and watch them,” Jude said.

  “Where will that get us?”

  “I’m not sure, but let’s see who leaves first.”

  Downstairs, they went to Jude’s car parked on the street. He slid into the driver’s seat and she walked around to the passenger’s side.

  They had barely closed the doors when Samuel Vintner came out and strode in the direction of the subway.

  Not sixty seconds later, Missy and Jane came out together.

  Next, Bobby Walden. Jude picked up his cell phone and pressed a single digit. “Sayer, you’re near the hotel?”

  “Yes, in back of you about a block,” Sayer told him.

  “Bobby Walden is out.”

  “All right. I’m tailing him.”

  Whitney sat quietly at his side. “Bobby Walden?”

  He looked over at her. “His alibi had him home alone. He said his driver picked him up and brought him home, and when the task force queried the car company, the driver verified that he’d brought him straight home. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t go back out. He’s a principal in the film, and the girls said that Virginia Rockford thought she had a hot date with him. I’d just like to make sure that he does go home and stays home tonight.”

  She was quiet. They were both hoping that the killer didn’t strike again that night. They waited.

  “So, Sherry Blanco is sleeping with the director, and not her costar,” Jude commented.

  Whitney laughed softly. “And see, you didn’t even have to major in film to figure that one out, Detective!”

  “But he didn’t seem to want her clinging to him,” Jude commented.

  “Maybe she got him to change his mind,” Whitney said lightly.

  “Well, I do imagine she could be persuasive,” he said.

  “Oh?” Whitney queried, a teasing note in her voice.

  He turned and looked at her, and smiled suddenly. The tension of the past two days had seemed monumental. Though his job meant much more than just something to do for a living, sometimes he had to remember that he was still kicking and breathing himself.

  “Not my type at all,” he assured her. “That girl has a streak of ambition sharper than a blade and she’s… I don’t know. I imagine her walking around her own house in little heels that click on the floor with some kind of a froufrou yappy dog in her arms, making sure at all times that everyone around her knows that she’s a movie star. I don’t think that she’s stupid—she just doesn’t care about the rest of the world.”

  “Interesting! And harsh,” Whitney said.

  “And how would you describe Miss Blanco?” he asked.

  “She might keep a cat instead of a froufrou dog,” Whitney said. “A Persian, perhaps. Or a designer cat.”

  “Designer cats exist?” he asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  He leaned back, still smiling.

  “I do believe that Sherry Blanco was having a thing with the director, but I’m willing to bet that the ‘thing’ is no more,” Whitney said. “She is scared, and I think she’s trying to be honest. And it’s better that she’s honest than act as if she’s lost her best friend.”

  “She’s still too ambitious for me.” He laughed. “What do I know? I have some friends who have worked Broadway, and they’re all really nice. Sherry Blanco doesn’t seem to be nice.”

  “Some actors and actresses are nicer than others. And some cops are nicer than others,” Whitney pointed out.

  “Touché!”

  Whitney turned to him. “What difference does it make if Sherry Blanco was sleeping with Angus Avery? The fact that he can act like a lecher wouldn’t make him a murderer.”

  Jude said quietly, “No.”

  “Then?”

  “It might show where alliances lie. She was ready to throw Bobby Walden to the wolves tonight. We were supposed to believe that he had planned to meet Virginia Rockford.”

  “You’ve spoken about an accomplice,” Whitney said. “Do you believe that Sherry Blanco could be that person?”

  “No. But I believe that if Angus Avery needed an alibi, Sherry Blanco would lie through her teeth for him, smiling and fawning all the while,” Jude said.

  “Ah, but when you’re an actress, you need to know the directors, not so your fellow actors,” Whitney said.

  “Right. Directors cast movies, not actors.”

  A few minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was Ellis Sayer.

  “A limo picked Bobby Walden up at the cross street and drove him straight to his place up by the park. I saw him get out and go into the building.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll have a patrol car sit on him,” Sayer told him.

  “Yeah, let’s keep an eye on him tonight,” Jude agreed.

  “Done,” Sayer said.

  He hung up. Whitney was frowning in thought.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “Old Shakespeare,” she said.

  “What?”

  She looked at him. “Carrie Brown, the American victim who was killed in like manner to the Ripper victims… What I was thinking was that they called her Old Shakespeare because she was always quoting Shakespeare, and she either performed in the theater at some time, or, at the very least, had experience with plays in one way or another. She seemed to have been well educated, even if she had become an alcoholic and a prostitute before she d
ied. Maybe the killer isn’t targeting prostitutes, but actresses—or would-be actresses!”

  9

  Whitney debated mentioning the fact that they hadn’t eaten; it was late.

  She was tired and hungry, and she was curious about anything that the team might have found in the foundations of the House of Spiritualism, but she also felt as if she had been saturated with the sadness and horror of the murders. Bobby Walden had been taken home that night; Angus Avery had spoken at a dinner. That didn’t mean that one of them hadn’t driven back downtown. She needed a break to clear her head and step back, and wonder just what it might all have to do with the past.

  What they had to do was pray that they could find a piece of evidence that truly pointed them in the direction of the killer—before he struck again.

  She wasn’t known for being shy, and yet, she felt somewhat awkward around Jude. Her first impression of him had been that he was just a hard, cold, macho cop, and that she had to stoically and quietly hold her ground. But the more she was with him, the more she liked him, and the more she accepted that fact, the more she accepted that she was physically attracted to him. She also had to accept that he was extremely attractive in all the right ways; many women probably felt the same—simple biology, he was rock solid, tall and strong, the kind of man whose survival instincts would have made him most appealing once upon a time—and that he appeared totally indifferent to his effect on those around him. He was confident, but not cocky, and could be aggressive, but also careful in his treatment of people, as in the case of Captain Tyler. If he had something to go on, she was certain he could be harsh but fair in an interrogation room as well.

  “Food,” she said.

  “Pardon?” he asked. Apparently, he’d been deep in thought.

  He looked at her and she smiled. “Don’t you feel the need to stop—refuel?”

  “Oh, yeah, food,” he said. He smiled in return, and shook his head. “You know, it’s true, the first forty-eight hours in any case usually points to whether or not you will solve a crime, but even then, and in the midst of some pretty bad cases in New York, I usually have a sense of self-preservation. You can’t turn off the thinking about a case, but you still remember to live and breathe. With this—” He broke off, shaking his head. “We have dozens of capable men and women out there working around the clock in one way or another, but I still feel as if it’s all on me. Food, yes. Food would be good. There’s an all-night diner on Avenue A that’s pretty decent. Are you good with your team?”

  “They can reach me anytime they want,” Whitney said. “And if they haven’t gotten hold of me yet, they’re doing fine without me.”

  He nodded, looking toward the road again, and he was back in thought. But when they reached the restaurant, and they’d chosen a booth and ordered food, he looked at her with a polite grin. “Miss Whitney Tremont, FBI agent with a special investigative unit. Tell me more about yourself.”

  “Ah! An interrogation,” she said, nodding gravely.

  “No bright lights, no fists thumping on the table, no mirrored room,” Jude said. “Just the facts, missy, just the facts.”

  “Hmm. Well, I did major in film at NYU, but I’m from New Orleans, born at Tulane Medical Center.” Her smile deepened. “And my great-grandmother is one of the most respected voodoo priestesses in New Orleans—she doesn’t raise the dead or sell love potions or stick pins in dolls or anything like that—the dolls are for tourists to buy. She is a brilliant and fascinating woman. My mother was a teacher, my father was a philosophy professor, and his background was French. I was raised attending Mass at the cathedral in Jackson Square every Sunday morning, but I also really respect my great-grandmother’s beliefs. Her life is all about balance, and she has tremendous faith. She’s a wonderful woman—you would really like her. It’s pretty obvious that I come from a complete ethnic olio, and I believe my mom’s father was a Cherokee, though Dad’s folks arrived off a boat from Marseilles. Voodoo has a lot in common with Catholicism, and the two worked well enough together in my family.”

  “I don’t have a problem with any faith—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, you name it,” Jude said. “Not when it’s a faith that brings people through life respecting life and his fellow humans, believe me. All New Yorkers don’t think that a voodoo priestess has to be a quack.” He grinned. “I watch the Discovery Channel!”

  Whitney laughed. “Maybe I do get defensive sometimes. Far too often, people do mock each other’s beliefs.”

  “Face it—wars are fought over minor differences in belief,” he said. He drummed his fingers on the table. “Film to the FBI. And you’re not in the audiovisual department. How did the career segue come about?” he asked her.

  She hesitated again, and then shrugged. He knew they set up cameras everywhere; he knew they looked into the past. He’d surely read up on Adam Harrison, and knew that many people considered them to be quacks. He’d known from the beginning about the cameras—he’d already asked her if she filmed ghosts.

  “I was working on a project for one of the educational channels, but, of course, they, like everyone—so it seems these days—have to bring in the advertising dollars, and so you have to have shows that lure in an audience. You may not want to believe this, but while we’re often looked on as imaginative or quacks, the majority of American people do believe that the paranormal exists in one form or another, so ghost shows are immensely popular. Anyway, I filmed some truly strange phenomena, and the producers were convinced that I’d rigged the film, and I hadn’t done so. I refused to unrig what wasn’t rigged. They’d been planning on doing more of a storyboard, with ghosts appearing and disappearing, and they were dismayed that what I caught was something, but not a woman in white fluttering across the screen. I was young—”

  “Was?” he asked her with a teasing note in his voice.

  She laughed, giving him the point. “I’m not just out of high school,” she told him. “I’m short and look younger than I am. I’m twenty-eight.”

  “A vast age,” he said gravely.

  “Age is irrelevant—it depends on where you’ve been and what you’ve done in your time on earth, my friend,” she told him.

  “Then I think I’m feeling about a hundred and eight right now,” Jude said.

  Whitney grinned. “Well, you’re well preserved.”

  Their food arrived; they’d both opted for omelets, which seemed a fitting meal since it had gotten so late that dinner and breakfast might be combined.

  “Anyway,” she told him, “I resigned from the project. I was lucky, because I had a book on the market about the philosophy of world religions, and although it was never on any bestseller lists, it has steady sales, and those sales saved me from poverty while I mulled over my next move. I’d pretty much decided to go into filming my own documentaries when I was called by Adam Harrison and asked to join the team. Jake Mallory had been an agent for almost fifteen years, but the rest of us were drawn from other walks of life. I think our first case was an experiment on Adam’s part, but the six of us worked well together. They sent us through training and we all became agents officially.” She grimaced. “I admit, I’ve never worked with any other agents, and even in the bureau, we are unusual.”

  “Ghost busters?” Jude asked.

  She couldn’t really read the tone of his voice. “We have an amazing success rate on the cases with which we’ve been involved. Ordinarily, it’s not just profiling a killer or his victims, but a situation. That’s often done by discovering what went on in the past.”

  That brought Jude back around to the case. “All right, then, let’s take our situation. A tough one. You may be right, that actresses, not prostitutes, are being singled out. Which brings us back to the film. Except, of course, we could all still be wrong on this—Jane Doe dry might have died because she was randomly attacked, and Sarah Larson might have met with your usual run-of-the-mill heinous killer. We had nothing to go on, nothing at all. The thing is, when we discover
ed Virginia Rockford’s body, she was so mutilated, and she had been left so blatantly in the open, that it does seem like the killer is demanding attention—Ripper-style attention.”

  “Ripper-style—but if there is one killer and the victims were all his, he’s really starting to escalate on the rate of the murders,” Whitney said to him.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Very scary thought. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced that the women were all killed by the same man until it began to appear that there was a pattern between the victims—they were all women who wanted something. They wanted the dream. They wound up doing what they needed to do, in their own minds, at least, to get by. But they wanted to be entertainers—stars. Each of those women might have been easily seduced by someone who was promising them a role in a movie. What someone could do that better than the director?”

  “The producer,” Whitney told him dryly. “In this case, as in many, there are half a dozen producers, but not one of the real money people is in New York, from what I’ve read about the shoot. So, yes, the director. And, as far as extras go, they’re often brought in by a casting agency. But…”

  “But Angus Avery would certainly have the power,” Jude said.

  “Yes. But, remember, you pointed out that we don’t really have to work with facts—perception would work just as well. Anyone involved with the shoot could probably convince a woman who was dying to break into films that he had the power to get them a small role.”

  “True,” Jude agreed.

  They’d finished their omelets; the check came. Whitney reached for her wallet. “Hey, please, it’s my pleasure to take you to dinner,” he told her politely. “Contrary to popular belief, NYPD cops are paid enough to eat,” he said lightly.

  She laughed. “Agents, too. But I doubt either of us is going to get rich in this.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed.

  She didn’t fight for the check. She thanked him, and they walked back out to his car. The night was clear and beautiful.

  And quiet.