Sacred Evil (Krewe of Hunters)

by Heather Graham

  The house itself was Greek Revival—several steps led up to a porch with fine Ionic columns. The front door was double-wide with etched-glass porticoes.

  The off-white paint was peeling. The columns obviously needed help as well.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  She turned, startled. She had been giving the house so much attention that she hadn’t noticed the tall man who had walked up to her on the sidewalk.

  He was actually hard not to notice; he was a good six foot three and built like a linebacker.

  “I wasn’t thinking that it was bad,” she told him. “I was just thinking that it’s beautiful, and I’m glad they’re not tearing it down.” She offered him a hand. “Special Agent Whitney Tremont, Detective Crosby. Thank you for being here.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sure. The situation is bad. Whatever it takes. Need a hand with your bag?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine. We can just head on in.”

  He hadn’t exactly been warm and cuddly, but he wasn’t being rude, and he seemed to be sincere. Other agencies sometimes resented FBI involvement in a case—they weren’t always fond of the fact that someone over them had invited the feds in.

  She’d never exactly intended to work for the federal government, but she didn’t mind. As long as they were left to work alone, it just didn’t matter. And since the head of their unit, Jackson Crow, had established himself as an agent with an exemplary record before he’d been given his current team, she was more than willing to accept the occasional snickers that came their way. Jackson could stare down any man and silence him within a matter of seconds.

  “I believe they had a cleaning crew come in already—a good thing, since I don’t imagine that you and your team would want a lot of people around.” Jude Crosby told her. “Also, if I know my superiors, they had staples brought in, so you should have essentials.”

  “Thanks.”

  He studied her for a minute; his face gave nothing away. “Well, I guess we should get you settled.” He actually grinned. “You know it’s a haunted house, right?”

  “What self-respecting house this old isn’t haunted?” she asked.

  He was still sizing her up, of course, given the team’s reputation. She smiled, not saying anything. They were all welcome to wonder. Detective Crosby would meet Jackson Crow soon enough. Jackson had a tenet he lived by, and the team followed its simple sentiment—use logic, and then feelings.

  “The rest of your team isn’t arriving until tomorrow?” he asked her. “That’s right.”

  “So you’re staying here alone tonight?”

  “Yes, and I’ll be fine. Let me take a quick look around, drop my bag and we can go to the autopsy.”

  He pointed to the area next door. “That’s where they were filming the movie and that’s where the victim came from when she was leaving. I’m surprised that they sent you in alone.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I went through a lot of sessions at the shooting range. I passed,” Whitney told him.

  “Can you shoot a ghost?” he asked. The question seemed pleasant enough, but she realized she was being mocked. She wondered if he was more concerned that she was a ghost-hunting special agent, or that she was a small woman.

  “I’m quite competent, thank you,” she assured him.

  “All right, your call… Just remember, please, it’s an NYC case with NYC police heading the investigation. I’m impressed that a unit was asked in immediately. Somebody thinks that your ghost hunting—that your team—is top-notch. Thing is, there’s nothing really around you at night, unless you want to count the dead in Trinity’s and St. Paul’s graveyards. Last night, that crew working this area so late was unusual. But that’s film for you.”

  He didn’t wait for her reply; he started up the walk.

  Whitney stepped into the main hallway, which was long and extremely broad. A slim curving staircase against the western wall led to the floor above, and she could see down the hallway to the door that opened to the back. She wanted to stop, to try to sense the place, but she didn’t; not with Jude Crosby watching.

  “They say the foundations of this old place date back to the last decades of the eighteenth century. There were lots of fires back then, though, and not a lot of control. I think the current structure is from 1810. I have to say, I’m glad they’re preserving it, too. Wonder what it was like back in the day. I mean, New York moves like a bullet. I love the city.”

  “It’s a great city,” Whitney murmured.

  Whitney noted that the hallway had probably been the grand meeting room of the house; parties had probably been held right there with indentured servants or slaves walking the room at times with silver trays. A grand piano sat against the wall at the rear; she wondered just how old it might be.

  But she’d have to explore later.

  Whatever happened with the New York City police, she wanted to make sure that she was there from the get-go, and that her prep work had been done. They were there to assist the police, not to take over an investigation, no matter how much pull they might have with different power structures. She’d spent the trip reading email on the current murder—preliminary notes only—and, since the cry was out that the murder seemed to be mimicking that of a long-ago Ripper victim, she had spent most of the time during her flight on her iPad, downloading the best books she could find on the elusive killer from the past.

  “I’ve only been in this house a few times,” Jude told her. “When I was a kid on school tours, before it was closed down for renovations. I’m going to suggest you snag the first room up the stairs on your left. The last owners—who gave it to the government about twenty years ago—had a nice bathroom installed up there.”

  “Thanks,” she told him.

  “Go on, take a peek. I’ll carry your bag on up, and then I’ll get you down to the morgue.”

  “Thanks,” she told him again.

  He was an imposing presence. His features were as rugged as his muscled form—handsome, masculine, strong, with the right amount of rough around the edges.

  Not a good thought, she told herself. She had to be blunt and strong herself; in fact, she was going to have to make sure that she remained smoothly professional in every way. They needed his respect. In her case, at five-three, she was fighting physical odds right from the start.

  “I can really carry my own bag—”

  “Simple courtesy, Agent Tremont. We’re not without it,” he said.

  The bedroom was nice. She glanced in the doorway as Jude Crosby set her travel bag on the footrest at the end of the bed. She took a minute to dig into her overnight bag for her better camera to be added to the shoulder bag.

  “You’re a photographer?”

  “Film is the best record of what we see, isn’t it?” she asked.

  The room smelled sweetly and lightly of lavender cleaning solution. It was a beautiful room, and she was convinced that it did have a feel for the past, just as venerated old churches and other historic buildings often seemed to have.

  Would it be more than just the sacred feel of history? she wondered.

  “Great,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Jude arched a brow. “That’s it? You don’t want to look around longer? Settle in?”

  “Nope.” She was grateful that she’d been able to come so quickly; they’d received the call almost immediately after they saw on the news that a gruesome murder had taken place in New York. While Jackson had calmly spoken about travel arrangements and equipment, explaining the circumstances in which they’d be working, she’d been online and discovered that if she left within the next ten minutes, she could be on a plane to LaGuardia that was scheduled for departure at ten, and would have her on the ground in New York by one. She’d jumped at the chance, although not without a few minutes of stern warnings from her associates. They mostly consisted of: Be careful. We’ll be right behind you. You know not to take chances. Remember that we work best when we can earn the cooper
ation of the local police.

  “Okay,” Jude said. “You need anything else?”

  She tapped her shoulder bag, a big soft leather sling she hadn’t released since she’d gone through the security lines at the airport.

  “I’m good. I have everything I need for the moment.”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “You travel light for a woman.”

  She felt her own smile tighten just a bit. Was he mocking her? She was fairly small and slim, she knew. Her appearance and gender often worked in her favor. She wasn’t threatening in size and, sometimes, that was good.

  Get along with the locals, she reminded herself.

  “Don’t think of me as a woman, Detective. Think of me as an agent,” she said. “And I won’t think of you as a boy or a man—I’ll think of you as a top-notch NYPD detective.”

  He laughed. Apparently, he did have a sense of humor. And he could laugh at himself.

  As they left Blair House, Whitney found herself pausing to look at the large construction site next door.

  “I’m assuming whatever was there wasn’t protected by any historical society,” she said.

  “No, there had been an ugly building there from the 1920s, or something like that,” Jude said. “Before that, it had been some kind of society building—not like high society. I mean…I don’t know. Some people claimed that it was a spiritualist house, or a place for Satanists, or something like that. Odd, though. Construction there has had to halt several times. A few workers were injured. I think one was killed. And then, of course, last night happened. The film company had acquired permits to use the area. They bought mega-insurance for the shoot, but I don’t think it helps, because the murder was off-site.”

  “And the woman who was murdered had been working there,” Whitney said.

  “Yep, playing a gaslight prostitute, I believe. Honestly, it’s really no wonder that folks are crying ‘Jack’s back.’ Poor girl. There’s been some insinuation in early news reports that our victim didn’t always get along with the other actresses. But maybe that’s not a fair assessment—we haven’t even really begun the investigation. From what I’ve learned, the old Jack the Ripper found victims who were used up, missing teeth, old and ugly, but I guess none of his victims had a reputation for not being nice. Now, that’s an interesting question. Does being nice or not nice have much to do with being a victim?”

  Whitney glanced at him. He was thoughtful, really thoughtful. She decided that he might have made a decent behaviorial scientist himself. “That is an interesting question,” Whitney said, still looking at the cheap mesh fencing and the occasional ugly green plastic sheets that surrounded the construction site. It appeared that the majority of the old structure had been demolished; there were planks over what looked like foundations that were still in the process of being dug out and cleared. There were also piles of new timber lying about—remnants, she presumed—of the sets that had been hastily constructed for the on-location shooting that had been done the day before.

  She thought the site was empty and then she realized that there was a gate around the other side, and by the gate there was a small section with a tented roof. Sitting beneath it, watching the entrance and reading a magazine, was a guard.

  “One guard watching the area,” Whitney murmured.

  Jude pointed to a row of trailers on the other side of the street. “Yesterday, throughout the day, there was tons of security. That’s the tail end of the movie crew. There was no shooting today, and the producer announced, after the report of Miss Rockford’s murder, that they were done with the location.” He glanced her way. “I spent most of the day down here off and on, trying to get a real feel for what was going on, and what the situation was last night.”

  “What is your feeling about it now?”

  He glanced her way and actually smiled. “I have a feeling—ye olde cop gut feeling—that it does have something to do with the movie and the movie crew.”

  Whitney mulled over his words as he drove her down to the morgue. She listened to the constant honking that was as natural as conversation in this city. She watched the rush of pedestrians along the busy streets. People flocking through the intersections, the occasional dog walker pausing along the sidewalk with a Baggie.

  She’d been a film student herself in the city, and she knew the area. But now, she felt as if she was seeing it all through different eyes. She thought about the age and the history of the city; the city buildings forming a concrete tomb over the iniquity and depredation of what had been the Five Points region. Wall Street—once where the old wall built to protect the tip of the island had been. Few places rivaled New York City as a place where the sheer velocity of life trampled the pivotal spaces of history.

  It all seemed new to her now: the slash of Broadway, the one-way streets, the parks, the people, the old and the new.

  Well, her eyes were different now; she was different. And all because, once upon a time, she had determined to hold her own ground.

  Life was different.

  As was death.

  As they headed for the morgue, Jude tried to forget the woman at his side.

  Whitney Tremont. Special agent. Very special agent.

  But, she did know how to be quiet. She was distracting, but that wasn’t her fault. His. He set his mind back to the situation, and tried not to think that she was definitely an interesting and arresting individual.

  Captain Tyler. Now, there was a dash of cold water. He wanted to find him—and he would. Rush hour—that time when citizens took their lives in their hands just to step into the subway—would most probably bring Captain Tyler back to his home haunts; the subway station where those who knew him would be kind enough to drop spare change or a dollar his way. The autopsy would be finished by that point.

  He had spoken with many people who talked about how strange downtown could be at night. By day, the world itself hummed because of all the activity that occurred at the New York Stock Exchange. By night, restaurants closed. The gates to the churches were locked. Office workers were gone, and the major hotels were by Battery Park and the South Street Seaport. Nearby Tribeca and Soho entertained nightlife and housed hundreds of thousands of people. But here, at this end with the financial district and the government buildings, the night brought on a haunting quiet, as if the little area needed time to recoup from the madness of the light.

  His only hope was in finding Captain Tyler, he thought. Or someone else who was like a ghost, left to eke out an existence from those who passed hurriedly by day, and forget them once darkness fell.

  Jude parked his car, still lost in the case as he did so, and hoping against hope that it might be one that was solved quickly. Though he had his task force questioning the hundreds of people who had been involved in the film shoot, and he knew that they’d be eliminating those with airtight alibis, they’d also be making lists of those he needed to interview himself, or who needed to be investigated further. He almost forgot Whitney Tremont; in fact, he might have if she didn’t give off a soft, underlying perfume, and if he didn’t just feel the warmth of the body beside his own.

  She was out of the car door, though, before he could walk around to open it for her. She was pure motion and energy.

  “Keep your thoughts going and don’t worry about me, Detective,” she said. “I’m right behind you.”

  He grinned. So she was.

  Jude Crosby was known at the morgue; he had no difficulty navigating the structure of the building, Whitney Tremont following closely behind him.

  “OCME,” or the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, was housed on First Avenue. New York City held many firsts in the investigation of death; the Office of the Medical Examiner was established in 1918, the first of its kind in the country. OCME established the first toxicology laboratory and the first serology laboratory as well, at Bellevue Hospital, rather than the six-story headquarters where the executive offices, mortuary, autopsy, X-ray, photography and many labs were housed now.
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  Attending a victim’s autopsy was always paramount to him; no matter how great a medical examiner might be at a report, there was always something to be gained by attending. Many medical examiners did consider the autopsy to be the victim’s last chance to speak, and Jude believed them. You never knew just what a victim might “say.”

  He knew that time had made him jaded; he’d seen the dead so often. He noticed the odor of decaying flesh, and the stronger odors of the chemicals that were used to mask the smell. He noticed them, but he barely thought about them. He thought of the place as sterile. He wondered if his religious teachings as a child kicked in when he saw the dead; the spirit didn’t reside in the flesh. The dead were far from feeling pain. They had gone to a better place.

  He wasn’t sure if he completely believed that. He did believe that they suffered no more in the fragile shell of the flesh.

  There was a saying on the wall outside the autopsy room, there for all to see, a Latin motto: Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights in helping the living.

  He hoped that Virginia Rockford could help point them toward her killer.

  There were eight steel tables in the room, and three of them had occupants. Thousands passed through the doors of the morgue yearly, but not all were murder victims. Suicides came here, along with those who died in accidents, and those who died while in apparent good health. There were those who had died “by violence,” and those who had died unattended. There were many reasons to come to the morgue. It was a big city; people died in strange ways.

  Two assistants were working with Fullbright when they suited up to join the procedure. The body had been stripped and cleaned by the assistants, and somehow, that made the injuries done to Ginger Rockford all the more macabre. He could clearly see the gashes in her throat, and the hideous slashes that had been made in the lower abdomen.

  He was aware of everyone around him, and especially, Whitney.

  Whitney worked with her camera; he wanted to stop her. He had to remind himself that she was an agent, and not a gawker. Whatever photos and digital film she took would be for the purposes of the investigation.