Sacred Evil (Krewe of Hunters)

by Heather Graham

  Whitney set the book down. She knew that many murder victims, caught up in the overcrowded tenements, had disappeared or died—their decomposed bodies eventually found—with little or nothing done for them. Police reports had sometimes been written up, but more often their sad lives had simply been forgotten. In the cases where the bodies had been discovered, they had usually wound up in paupers’ graves.

  Whitney marveled that so little had been done to find the mysteriously vanished young woman. Honeywell, the cop, seemed disgusted by the situation as well. But he did excuse the department at the time, writing, “Immigration was massive; half the immigrants were in the country illegally. Handling one of the about-to-be-demolished tenements was like going to war each day.”

  But Annie Doherty hadn’t disappeared from a tenement; she had been living at Blair House. She’d left her clothing and her beloved pet behind.

  She set the book down. “Annie?” she said softly. The owners of Blair House had supposedly been decent people, running a very decent boardinghouse. Could Annie have died here?

  The dog she was seeing had to be Annie’s, which would mean that the woman who appeared with the dog had to be Annie.

  She picked the book back up and rifled through the pages again.

  Annie Doherty had disappeared in April 1891, the same month in which Carrie Brown had been murdered.

  She took a long swallow of her tea, the questions in her mind driving her crazy. Why would these alleged Jack the Ripper victims simply disappear, or be discovered as refuse, decomposed corpses, which the police would not recognize as victims, when he left his London victims so blatantly exposed? Had there been a copycat killer, not getting it quite right, at the House of Spiritualism at the time, and had that person been Jonathan Black?

  Could such a man possibly have been organized and intelligent enough to switch his modus operandi, and dabble in Satanism, or pretend, at least, to be a great leader in the psychic realm to gain power at the House of Spiritualism?

  And, if so, she asked herself wearily, did the past actually have anything to do with the current killer’s blood spree?

  Yes, quite possibly. If it had been some kind of sacred venue for Satanists, with symbols…maybe more, icons there that had been worshipped. Yes, someone knowing all that history could well warp it into a new murder spree.

  At last, despite the frenzy in her mind, the tea and simple exhaustion began to weigh on her and she began to doze.

  That’s when she felt the wet nose on her fingers and heard the dog’s soft whine.

  “Hello,” she said quietly, and sat up. His head rested easily on the bed. He looked at her with huge, mournful brown eyes.

  She stroked his head, and his fur felt soft and real. “What is it, boy? What are you trying to tell me?”

  She looked beyond the dog. Her bedside light was still on, but the corners of the room were in shadow. She searched to see if the woman—Annie Doherty?—had appeared with the dog. But she didn’t see anyone, and she forced herself not to be afraid of the fact that a real dog seemed to be imploring her for help.

  “What is it? Help me—I want to help you,” she told him.

  He ran toward the door, barked softly and wagged his tail.

  “Okay, you want to go out?” Whitney asked.

  The dog ran back to her, and then back to the door again.

  “Okay.”

  She got out of bed, grabbed her terry housecoat and slid her feet into her slippers, and walked to the door. The dog pawed it, continuing to wag his tail.

  Whitney opened the door, and the dog ran out into the hallway, and then down the stairs.

  Jake was seated in front of the computer screens; he started when she ran down the stairs. “What?” he demanded, blinking, jumping up.

  “It’s the dog,” she said.

  “Where? Where’s the dog?”

  “There!”

  She pointed to the door. The dog had now raced to the front door, where he looked back at Whitney and wagged his tail. Then he pawed the door.

  She saw Jake’s frown. He might not see the animal, but he’d heard the sound of the door moving slightly in its frame.

  “He wants to go out. Jake, he’s leading me somewhere.”

  Whitney started to rush for the door. Jake grabbed her arm. “Wait!” he told her.

  He had his cell out and he dialed a number. She could hear Jackson’s sleepy voice come through the phone. “Whitney wants to follow a ghost dog.”

  Jake listened and snapped the phone closed. “He’s coming.”

  Jackson, with Angela behind him, came hurrying down the stairs. Jackson had thrown on jeans and a shirt, and he wore his agency-issued Glock in a shoulder holster. He carried a wide-beam flashlight. Angela had merely thrown on her robe.

  Jackson told them curtly, “Angela will lock behind us. Jake, you and I will go with Whitney. And the—dog,” he said, pausing to frown. Jackson clearly didn’t see the dog. “Angela, keep watch on the screens and warn us if anything shows up.”

  Angela stared at Whitney, nodding.

  “Do you see it?” Whitney asked her.

  “I see…something,” Angela said.

  “He’s there. I swear it!” Whitney told them.

  “Go, go on!” Angela said.

  Whitney was glad that Jake had stopped her; she wasn’t going to take the time to dress or arm herself, but she’d be safe with Jackson and Jake.

  She unlocked the bolts on the front door. The dog raced out. Whitney followed him; the others followed her.

  The dog took them where she knew it would—the construction site.

  The ghostly animal that had felt so real slipped through chain-link fence as if he were mist.

  Jackson opened the padlock and they went in.

  The dog raced to the old foundations, and disappeared down the stairs.

  Whitney ran after him, mindful of the rubble-strewn ground, and came to the great gaping chasm and the stairs that led down to it.

  Jackson arrived with his wide-beam flashlight, and Whitney started down the steps. She came to the central room, where, despite her training, she felt chills snake along her spine and a sense of fear tremble in her limbs.

  Instinct! she thought.

  The dog stood in the middle of the pentagram, looking at her expectantly. He turned and raced around the supporting wall, and disappeared into the dark.

  Whitney ran after him, and, with each step, she felt a greater sense of choking fear. She knew. She knew that beneath the ground and remnants of flooring, they would find the body of Annie Doherty.

  10

  Jude woke as suddenly as if had he been slapped in the face.

  He reached for the Smith & Wesson that he kept on his bedside table at night and jerked to a sitting position, trying to ascertain what had awoken him. There was nothing in his room; there was nothing at all that hinted of an intruder or any kind of danger. He silently walked through his apartment, barefoot and in boxers, but there was nothing amiss.

  He returned to his room and quickly stumbled into his jeans and a pair of loafers, shirt, holster and jacket. Still, there was nothing, no unusual sounds in his apartment, or coming from the streets. It was a quiet time in Hell’s Kitchen, but New York never really slept.

  Dressed, his gun in hand, he walked through the living room, looked in his computer room and carefully and silently opened the door to his dad’s apartment. Andrew was in his room, snoring softly. Nothing seemed to be amiss.

  But Jude was so disturbed that he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep, and despite himself, one word, a name, kept ripping through his mind.

  Whitney.

  Not even sure what he was doing, he headed for the street. A cab had just stopped at the avenue; it would take time to get his car out, so he started to run to the intersection, whistling loudly and waving his hand. The cab waited.

  When he was seated in it, he wondered if he wasn’t a fool, or if the workload was really playing with his mind. He was
heading to Blair House and the construction site in the wee hours of the morning because something in his sleeping mind had made him think that Whitney might be in danger. What the hell. He’d heard of stranger things. He could have called one of the team; should have called one of the team.

  But he was already in the cab. He’d just head down and see what he could see. And if there was nothing—which was likely—he could still talk to Jackson. If they were ghost busters, as the rumor mill seemed inclined to call them, they wouldn’t think that he was that crazy. Or maybe they would. What the hell, he was started on the way now, might as well see it through.

  He realized that the feeling she was in trouble, in danger, was persisting in his mind. Despite getting in a cab in the middle of the night, he was still afraid that he wouldn’t be there in time. He had the cab stop in front of Blair House; the hall lights were on.

  They were always on; someone was always watching the screens.

  As he leaned forward to pay the driver and ask him to hold on, he noted that there seemed to be a spot of brightness that rose above the meager illumination of the streetlights in the area. “Move down the block, please,” he said.

  Yes.

  There was someone in the foundations of the House of Spiritualism.

  “Here—let me off here.”

  The padlock wasn’t unlocked, which should have been reassuring. If Whitney had come here in the middle of the night, as insane as that might be, she would have been with someone else; they had a right to be there, and they would have unlocked the padlock.

  They were trained, he reminded himself.

  Of course the padlock was locked. They wouldn’t have left an easy entry for an intruder.

  If it was indeed the Krewe of Hunters who had come here.

  Jude crawled over the fence, cursing as he did so. The chain link was poor, and the tips were bare. He tried his best to protect his body parts, hoping his insanity wasn’t going to lead to partial dismemberment. He leaped to the ground and hurried across the stretch of rubble to the stairs.

  The light was emanating from below. Drawing his gun, he started quietly down the stairs.

  He gritted his teeth and gave himself a mental shake.

  He was afraid for Whitney.

  There was something wrong with this place; he wasn’t prone to unease, nor was he superstitious, or afraid of the dark.

  But there was something like a miasma here, something that felt heavy in the air, something that seemed to hint of death and decay and even…

  Evil?

  The dog walked to the rear of the room. He sat—almost leaned—against the far wall and began to whine.

  “I hear it,” Jake said softly.

  “He’s there,” Whitney said, pointing toward the wall. “There’s something there he wants us to see, or find. Jake, I was reading Andrew Crosby’s book. A young woman named Annie lived in Blair House at the time of the Carrie Brown murder. I don’t know why, exactly, but I think the dog has something to do with her…and he wants us to find something.”

  “You mean, you want to dig up the ground,” Jackson said.

  “Uh—yeah, I’m sorry, I do. Can we?” Whitney asked.

  Jackson frowned, drawing a finger to his lips. He and Jake drew their weapons and eased against the wall.

  They heard Will’s voice come to them softly over through their radio setup. “You’ve got company—”

  And then they heard, “It’s the police!” The deep, rich voice boomed then echoed in the cavernous space of the foundations.

  “It’s Jude,” Whitney said, though she was sure that Jackson and Jake realized who had come upon them as well.

  “FBI!” Jackson called back. “Jude, it’s us.”

  As Jude came around the structural wall, everyone sheathed their guns.

  He appeared in the glow of Jackson’s light, hair tousled, looking tired and confused.

  “What are you doing down here?” he asked them.

  “It’s what we do—investigate,” Jackson said.

  “In the middle of the night? In a dark hole in the ground?” Jude asked. “Don’t you have cameras going?”

  “We do,” Whitney said, looking at him with her huge golden eyes luminous. “What are you doing here, though? Is there something new, a lead?”

  “No,” Jude replied with the single word. Something passed through his eyes, but so quickly she might have imagined it. And yet, for that moment, she almost felt as if he had reached out and touched her, and the hot arrows that flew through her bloodstream were shocking, alarming—and seductive. But he had already turned to Jackson. “A hunch. Or less. I couldn’t sleep. I just decided to slip down to the area myself, and when I saw an extra glow of light from this place…I came on down. But what did bring you here?”

  Jackson said, “A hunch.”

  Jake stepped in to clarify. “Whitney has been reading that book your dad loaned her. She found a reference to Blair House, and a young woman named Annie who disappeared at the same time as the Carrie Brown murder.”

  “The author believed that she disappeared here because, of course, he hated everything going on at the House of Spiritualism,” Whitney said, staring straight at Jude.

  He nodded, frowning. “I have a forensics team coming out in the morning—a crime scene unit.”

  Jackson cleared his throat. “No new victims tonight, correct?”

  “Not yet,” Jude said. He wasn’t distracted. He kept staring at Whitney.

  “Just what do you want to dig and what do you plan to dig with?” he asked her. He groaned softly before she could answer. “Construction site, and though the work is on hold, I figure under the tarp in that back section we’ll find some pickaxes and shovels.”

  She smiled. “Just this area, right here.”

  “A hunch?” Jude asked her.

  She nodded.

  She thought that he groaned softly again, but she couldn’t be sure. “Well, let’s see what’s here, shall we? I can call in backup, you know. Even at this hour. For once, I can have what I want without question.”

  “Let’s work this alone, and see what we get,” Jackson said.

  “Because, if it’s nothing,” Whitney added, “then…”

  “We’ll just do it,” Jude said.

  He headed farther back into the foundations, where plywood made something of a roof over the gaping pit, and waterproof canvas tarps had been molded over equipment. Jackson arrived with his wide-beam powerful flashlight, and they ripped away one of the tarps. They’d found of cache of tools, including spades, picks, shovels and saws that had all been stowed.

  “I’m surprised the construction workers left these,” Jake said. “They usually value their personal tools.”

  “City of New York,” Jude told him. “Look at the handles—these are city property. That means be careful. They’re probably old and overused.”

  Whitney watched as the three men chose picks; they found a small spade for her. “Be careful of our little site as well,” she said.

  She caught Jude’s hand as Jackson and Jake headed toward the section of floor where the dog had led her. “I know why you didn’t call for backup or help just now,” she said quietly.

  “Oh?”

  “If I’m wrong, you don’t want to appear to have been part of a ghost-hunting expedition,” she said, wishing an edge of bitterness hadn’t risen in her throat.

  He looked at her for what seemed like an eternity. Then he offered her a wry smile. “Well, there is that.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe some things should just be kept tight. I know about your team, and I myself have nothing but suspicion and theory.”

  She looked at him and nodded gravely. “Jude, we have more than that. There was and is a Jonathan Black. I don’t know if the historical one was the real Ripper or not, but he was a murderer who used the House of Spiritualism for his own ends. He might have killed women—Annie Doherty at least—with the excuse of it being a Satanic sac
rifice. I think he killed them in the area of the pentagram, and buried them in the floor in the next room. I don’t know where that will lead, or if it can really help us, but finding the truth can’t hurt us.”

  He nodded. She was surprised and he offered her a small, grim smile and lifted a hand to move a strand of stray hair from her forehead.

  “Let’s dig, shall we?” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  The dog had disappeared; maybe Jude’s arrival had been just too much for him.

  For a few moments, the only sounds down in the foundations were grunts and the sound of the pick hitting hard earth.

  Then, Whitney cried, “Stop!”

  They all stopped and stared at her. “You didn’t hear it—there was something different, something hollow sounding—right where Jude is!”

  He hesitated. He tentatively struck the earth. The sound was different.

  Whitney rushed forward with her spade and began digging more gently at the earth. In a moment, she had her hands in the dirt, dusting away. In areas, brick remained. In other areas, there was just dirt and earth.

  She revealed brick; a pasty-colored, poorly laid area of brick. Jackson grabbed the flashlight from where he had set it on the floor. “Different flooring,” he said.