“I don’t know...maybe. Paul comes around now and then,” Casey said.
“Do you know Julian Bennett?”
“Ah, yeah. He comes down from Baton Rouge at least once a month. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with his latest fling.” He shrugged. “None of his girlfriends seem to last long, but then, he flirts when he’s out on a date.”
“Julian has distant cousins,” Fin said. “Cara Holstein, married to a Gary Holstein, and a man named Kenneth Richard.”
“Yeah, he’s come with another guy a few times, maybe the one you mean. Kind of...well, a little pudgy, thinning hair? I never did see him with another couple.”
Fin pulled up a picture of Kenneth Richard on his phone. “Is this the guy?”
“Yeah. He’s been here—not often, but he’s been here. In fact, I think Julian told me once that he had a friend coming in from Texas.”
“You’ve been incredibly helpful,” Fin said.
“I never saw any of them do anything bad or...act weird,” Casey said. “I mean, all I can say is that, yes, they’ve been around here.”
“And have been for years,” Mort said.
He glanced at his watch. The day was getting away from them; he wanted to get out to Christy Island with at least an hour of daylight left. They could return to the Speakeasy another time.
Fin stood, catching Avalon’s hand and drawing her up with him.
“Thank you again,” he said. He released Avalon’s hand to give both men business cards.
“If you think of anything else—”
“We will call you!” Mort vowed, and at his side, Casey nodded grimly.
They headed back up the stairs and into the sunlight.
“Look at that,” Avalon said. “Thick brush by the dock. They didn’t come by a boat, but they didn’t come up to the restaurant, either. Fin, this is horrible! Do you think that this man—or these people—have been doing this a long time?”
“Angela has been searching through cases across the country. If she finds anything else, she’ll let us know. I’m hoping it goes no further back than this.”
“But...”
He paused, turning to look at her. They might get to the island and have just an hour of daylight left; he wasn’t sure it mattered. He didn’t know what they could find that forensic teams hadn’t already.
He still felt that they needed to go.
But now he also felt it only fair to tell her that a tech had pulled up a copy of the blog post that she had seen.
“Between Jodi and the people up at my headquarters, Avalon, they managed to get a copy of that post you read.”
She stared at him, eyes wide, face a little pale.
“You’ve read it.”
“I have. I haven’t had time to go over it, but, yes, I’ve read it.”
“It exists!”
“Tonight...later, I’ll go through it. I’ll get you home—”
“No, you won’t. You’ll do it with me.”
“Avalon, I’m in law enforcement—this has been a life’s decision for me. I don’t need to drag you through all the worst parts.”
She started to laugh and punched him in the arm. “Oh, yeah, great! You have me frightened of all my friends and you’re dragging me around to murder sites. But you want to spare me a letter that I read first? Oh, no. I don’t think so. And I might have more insight than you. I might...well, he isn’t staring at men, he’s staring at women. At a specific woman.”
And it scared the hell out of him that the killer’s real fantasy might be Avalon, and that everything before was nothing but a dress rehearsal.
He didn’t say the words. He turned and started walking to the car.
“Fin!”
He stopped and turned back. “Yes, you have a point,” he told her.
“So...”
“Maybe we’ll stay here.”
“What—here? On the grass in front of the restaurant? Or in the car?”
He shook his head. “In Houma. I’m not leaving you alone right now, and I don’t feel like another night in a chair. Don’t worry—we’ll get two beds.”
She didn’t answer him. She pushed by, heading for the car. She tried to swing open the passenger-side door.
The car was locked.
She stared at him, angry.
“All right, sorry, maybe we could get connecting rooms...and I can keep the door open.”
He clicked the car unlocked and came around to open the door for her. No good. She swung it open and sat. He walked around and took the driver’s seat.
“Look, Avalon, I am concerned for your safety. We will go through the letter together, but I don’t want to do it at the house where everyone is staying.”
She was staring at him. “For a rough, tough FBI guy, you are an idiot.”
“Pardon?”
“Idiot.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m that unappealing?”
“What?”
“Chairs, couches, connecting rooms. Did it ever occur to you that I’d be safest next to you?”
He sat, surprised, and not terribly suave as he said, “But you barely like me.”
“I’m not sure I do like you at all at this moment, but if we’re staying out here...”
She wanted to sleep with him?
Or she just wanted him next to her. Maybe he was an idiot. In truth, he just wasn’t sure!
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I’ll sleep with you.”
“Don’t go out of your way.”
“Hey, anything in the line of duty.”
He caught her hand before she could slap him; it would have hurt.
They stared at one another and he thought that it might turn into a brawl, he might have to take her home, he’d lose...
He didn’t know what he’d lose. She wasn’t an investigator...and yet she seemed all important on this case.
And if he was honest with himself, he’d been attracted to her from the beginning.
There had been so much static at first.
And still. He started to smile. She did, too. And they both laughed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions. I’d be honored to sleep with you. Ecstatic, in truth. Uh...in many ways.”
She lowered her head. “I can’t believe that I’ve just...”
“Been honest?” he asked.
“Hey! I’m still not sure how much I like you!”
“I’m a likable guy. You just decided you weren’t going to like me.”
“You’re eternally suspicious.”
“You’re eternally optimistic...about those you choose to care about.”
She turned away and said softly, “The sun is falling.”
“Yeah.”
He turned the key in the ignition and decided to drive down to the dock where he knew that a police cruiser was being held to get them out to Christy Island.
When they left the car behind and headed toward the dock and the boat, he saw that she hesitated, just briefly.
She just stared out at the island.
He’d been ahead of her. He walked back to her, taking her hand.
“This isn’t fair of me. I can get an officer to take you to a hotel and stand guard. You don’t have to go back to Christy Island.”
She turned to look at him and squeezed his hand with a grim smile.
“Yes, I do,” she told him.
“Avalon, seriously, you don’t have to go back there because of me. I’ve really no right to ask you to do any of this.”
“I’m not going back for you,” she said. “I’m going back for myself. And for Cindy West and Ellen Frampton and Jane Doe. I’m going back because I’ll do anything that just may help i
n any small way to put the sick bastards doing this behind bars, or beneath the ground.”
Twelve
Avalon watched as they approached Christy Island.
It was just like so many barrier islands, surrounded by shallow waters, created with a tangle of earth and vegetation.
Nothing too big could reach the island, in case rudders, propellers or other essential parts become entangled in the wildlife that grew near the shore.
Many such little islands existed as wildlife preserves. Others were privately owned.
None was quite like Christy Island.
And certainly not to her.
When she had come before, she had arrived with friends. They knew that they were free to explore the mansion—she’d just never had a real desire to do so. Boris had arranged for the cleaning of one room. The rest of the house...
No theme park could ever invent a horror house quite so...eerie. Spiderwebs ruled—she knew that much. There was a room, she’d heard, that had belonged to old Nolan Christy’s wife, Sarah, who had departed life over fifty years ago.
He’d never moved anything in that room, never so much as touched it, after she died.
Most of the furniture was close to two hundred years old.
There were rats.
Years of dust.
Of course, none of that could be seen from the water.
Their approach was from the back of the mansion. There were docks in the front—those they had used when working on Boris’s movie—and smaller docks to the rear.
It was ominous coming in this way. The cemetery had begun in the back. Tangled foliage crawled over many of the old graves, which were sprawled out over the south side of the island. The house itself had been built with the entry to the east and the rear to the west.
The police had been using the rear docks over the last few days.
But, in truth, there wasn’t much of a presence left on the island, they learned from their escort. The forensic teams had finished, collecting all that they could. The work had begun but sorting prints from those belonging to cast and crew, caterers and more, had been daunting.
The area by the tomb where Cindy had lain had been gone over and over.
The house had been searched, but the teams had determined that Cindy’s body had arrived by boat from the south, been carried through the tangle of the oldest section of the cemetery and brought out to the tomb where she had been placed—a good distance back from where the filming would take place.
They were on the island, walking the route the killer or killers had taken, when it occurred to Avalon that their placement had been strange.
“This isn’t near where we were filming,” she said to Fin.
He had her hand.
She was glad.
“If Kevin and I hadn’t taken a walk that morning, it might have been another few days before she had been discovered. Unless Boris had caterers or someone else coming out. That’s something I didn’t think to ask him.”
“Did members of the cast or crew walk out in the cemetery often?” Fin asked her.
“Sometimes. I know that Lauren loves these old graveyards. And when she had nothing to do, she’d wander them—she said when she’s in the north, she loves to go to the old graveyards and read all the inscriptions on them. She was okay going alone, but she’s truly a people person, and she’d walk with people from the cast and crew. I guess, if you’re fond of cemeteries, it’s intriguing. It’s so overgrown and...yeah, creepy. That’s why Boris was so thrilled to be filming here.”
They came upon the tomb where Cindy had lain.
There was nothing there. Not a bloodstain, nothing.
It might have been any of the other single-occupant tombs that littered the grounds, except that now, it appeared cleaner. It had been swabbed, tested, maybe wiped down.
Fin was quiet, standing there.
She knew that his mind was always working.
He looked around. He was also waiting.
For the dead—those who had remained here. Avalon closed her eyes, waiting, too. She opened them with a smile.
An attractive woman of fifty or so, lovely in an antebellum gown, stood beside a young man of maybe twenty or twenty-five.
“Hi,” Avalon said.
“Told you!” the woman said to Fin.
She smiled at Avalon. “Forgive me, honey. I knew that you could see me when you smiled that day, and then turned quickly. You were letting me know that you saw me, and asking me not to make a scene.”
“Yes,” Avalon said softly.
“Avalon,” Fin said, “may I present Vanessa Christy? And this young man is Henri Christy.”
“A pleasure,” Avalon said.
“Well, I’m so glad,” Vanessa said. “Henri and I were quite reluctant to make an appearance when you first came to the island. Sometimes I have a sense about these things and we knew that you might see us, but we didn’t want to disturb you. We could see that you were concentrating on your work.”
“I understand the concentration needed for a role,” Henri told her.
“Henri might have been a fine actor,” Vanessa said proudly.
“Stage, of course,” Henri said.
“The stage is wonderful,” Avalon agreed. “I love working on the stage, and I am delighted to meet you.”
“Have you seen or discovered anything new?” Fin asked.
“I beg your forgiveness, sir,” Henri said. “We expected no evil—we weren’t watching for it.”
“No forgiveness needed,” Fin said. “We were just hopeful.”
“I’m quite impressed with the police and the forensic teams,” Vanessa said. “They have been working very hard.”
“Good to hear, and thank you,” Fin said.
“I’m curious,” Avalon said. “What was Nolan Christy like?”
“Mean,” Henri said.
“Henri!” Vanessa protested. “Please, bear in mind, we wore the Christy name, too.”
“Well, the lady asked,” Henri said, defending himself. “And we’ve learned that the kindest people in the world are sometimes related to monsters. Sometimes hatred is taught—sometimes it’s a lesson that won’t be learned. So let me be truthful. Nolan. The man... Well, I’m sorry to claim him and ever so grateful that he didn’t...remain. Here—as we are here. He was mean and strange—he was always here, except perhaps once a month. Then he’d take off by himself in a little motorboat he kept at the south dock.”
“Well, he didn’t see us and didn’t speak to us. That doesn’t mean—” Vanessa began.
“He was mean to animals—to me, that marks a man,” Henri said. “He threw rocks at birds, at anything that ran or scampered across the island. We have nutria here. He loved throwing huge rocks at them. If he caught them, he tortured them. Many people don’t like rodents, but they don’t...torture them!”
Avalon turned to Fin. “I think we need to go to the mansion.”
“All right.” He looked up at the sky. The sun was going down. “Tomorrow morning,” he said.
“You want to wait—”
“I do.”
“Yes, wait until the morning. I daresay that the place has just about gone to rot and ruin. It’s going to be much better if you can see what you’re doing. Mr. Koslov went straight to his room when he came in at night—he didn’t look right or left, just went to his room. And when the people had to wait in the mansion when the police were there...all were on edge! Please, even though there are a few policemen on the island, I will feel better if you wait for morning’s light.”
“All right. We’ll wait for morning and be back. Will you be so kind as to accompany us?” Fin asked.
“We will accompany you, indeed, yes,” Vanessa said gravely.
Fin looked at Avalon; he was ready to go.
She was not.
She was now convinced that Nolan Christy might not have been a sad old man, but rather a cruel one who might have somehow sown the seeds for murder.
But she knew they were right; the electricity at the mansion was sadly lacking.
“All right, thank you,” she said to the ghosts.
Fin set an arm around her shoulder. She didn’t protest; it felt good and it felt right.
Which was good; she’d done something she’d never imagined that she’d do—she’d implied that the man should sleep with her. No, she hadn’t implied...she’d been out and out obvious in every way.
Darkness was just falling.
They headed back toward the south dock, Fin pausing to wave. He thanked the officer who was waiting. In about five minutes, a police cruiser came back for them.
She found out that night that the FBI had a standing reservation with a hotel chain. As they were heading to the reception desk, Fin turned to look at her.
“You can renege if you want,” he told her.
“Why? Do you want me to?” she asked.
She liked his smile then. Really liked it.
“Hell, no,” he said softly.
“Then, um, I think one room would be lovely.”
She couldn’t quite believe what she was saying, what she was doing. But no matter her feelings when she had started out with him, she’d discovered that there was something in his manner, in his look, maybe even in the way he spoke, that made her long to be close to him.
Intimate with him.
Maybe this was just for now; maybe it was what was happening around them, the intensity of trying—through the living and the dead—to discover the truth.
And maybe she just thought that she deserved a night of...something. Not with friends, though she loved her friends.
With someone who excited her, lit something up inside her, made her long to be held and touched, and touch in turn.
“I can ask for two rooms just for appearance’s sake,” he said.
“And waste taxpayer money? Never! Besides, I don’t believe in appearances.”
“You’re an actress.”
“But that’s a known pretense.”
He was smiling, laughing a little, and he made her smile.
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