A Perfect Obsession--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Heather Graham

  Craig caught up with him in front of a Chinese Laundromat, catching him by the shoulder and turning him.

  Kevin let out a sigh. “Yeah, okay, you’re following me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ah, come on, Craig. Danny is going to kill me.”

  “Danny should have been told that you were at the FBI building.”

  “Now, that’s the truth,” Kevin said, sighing again and shaking his head. “Anyway, I’ve really got to go.”

  “We’ve got to go. Where?” Craig said.

  Kevin shook his head again and turned and started walking, aware that Craig was dogging his footsteps.

  “They’re not far...but...”

  “But what?” Craig demanded.

  “They were trespassing.”

  “Trespassing?”

  “Private property. An old family cemetery at a historic property. Absentee landowner, so Danny said. We’re supposed to be getting Kieran out and off the property before anyone knows.”

  “Out of what?”

  Kevin kept walking as he answered. “A hole in the ground,” he said. “If you’re coming, we’ve got to hurry. No car. It’s close enough that it’s faster on foot—just about a block or so from Finnegan’s and Le Club Vampyre.” He looked at Craig at last. “Sounds to me like she’s fallen into a crypt—you know, into some kind of a vault or mausoleum. You know, for the dead.”

  * * *

  Kieran wasn’t hurt; she was startled and the breath had been knocked out of her.

  She knew that quickly. She’d really made more of a slide than a fall, and, groping about to try to stop herself, she knew that her arms and legs were functioning.

  She was simply down in a hole in the dirt, covered with dirt. But she didn’t land on dirt, but rather, something hard.

  “Kieran!” Danny called to her desperately.

  “I’m all right!” she called back. “Hey, you don’t happen to have a flashlight on you, do you?” she called up to him.

  “A flashlight? We need a damned ladder!” Danny called back. “But, here, take this! Watch out below, coming down. It’s a laser light on my key chain. I’m going to find something to get you out. Or maybe there’s stairs somewhere. You must be in a tomb of some kind.”

  Kieran shivered fiercely. It was cold down here. She heard the clink as Danny’s key chain hit the ground near her, which smelled musky and earthy.

  Something moved nearby. A chittering sound came to her.

  Rats.

  Well, rats were the least of it. She had to get out of here.

  She reached around the cold ground for Danny’s key chain and found it at last. Switching on the light, she saw that she was in a narrow shaft. Cobwebs seemed to be everywhere; rats indeed had found a home. One skittered away from the little ray of laser light.

  She got to her feet and realized that she was in something like a small catacomb. At least here, the dead had been entombed behind what seemed to be marble slabs.

  Danny had suggested stairs. Yes, if it was an underground burial chamber for the family, there had to be stairs down to it.

  Time might have made more of the roof collapse, but maybe not. She started to turn and realized that there were a few sarcophagus-like tombs on the floor here, as well. The one she stood by had the Masonic symbol at the top. Running the laser over the tomb, she saw that it read, “Reginald Vincent Huntington III, departed this life September 5, year of our Lord, 1827.”

  She called up to Danny. “Yeah, it’s a crypt! You find a ladder?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He’d gone away from the hole, hopefully seeking a way to get her out.

  Kieran began to move around, Danny’s tiny laser affording decent light. To her right, the crypt seemed to come to an abrupt end. There were marble slabs with names and dates, but they were the end of the line. She turned to go in the other direction, figuring that there were forty to fifty interments in the place, along the walls, and in the line of sarcophagi that was similar to that beneath the old Saint Augustine’s.

  Except that Saint Augustine’s was much bigger.

  The next sarcophagus belonged to Reginald Vincent Huntington II, who had died in 1818.

  The marble tombs were simple and beautiful.

  She kept heading out carefully. The floor seemed to have been clear enough, enjoyed only by the rats and insects until she’d caused the cave-in. There had to be other breaks in either the wall or the roof, though, to provide for the abundance of rodents and spiderwebs and insects. Maybe there were stairs down here, and maybe someone had even come down in the last decade or so.

  She moved forward; there was another sarcophagus ahead of her, and it seemed to have some kind of a marble effigy on its top.

  Kieran moved closer, the little laser light held high in her hand.

  She was almost upon it before she stopped, an eerie sensation of ice-cold horror spearing down her spine.

  It wasn’t an effigy.

  And it wasn’t marble.

  It was human.

  Or had been human.

  A woman lay there, down to mummified skin and bone. The skeletal face had all but lost the jaw, and she appeared to be screaming in silence.

  She’d been dressed in white, a white now turning beige with time and decay and the stain of the body as it both rotted and became partially mummified.

  Her hands were folded on her chest. A dead flower was grasped within them.

  The laser light and key chain fell from Kieran’s fingers. Onto the corpse. The hideous contortion of the stretched-skin face was caught and highlighted in that glow, creating a macabre sense that the corpse itself might rise.

  For a moment, Kieran was frozen. And then she backed away.

  And she began to scream. And scream.

  She turned, blindly racing toward the end of the tomb. To her amazement, she crashed into another body.

  Maddened, she began to shake, longing to beat her fists against something.

  The killer! The killer was here. The killer had been here. Because that body had not been on that marble slab since the 1800s. It had lain there a year perhaps, no more.

  “Kieran! Kieran!”

  Somehow, the sound of her name finally penetrated through the wall of raw panic that surrounded her. She stood still. She looked through the shadows cast by the laser light, and she realized that it was Craig.

  Impossibly, it was Craig. And his hands were on her shoulders. She knew the scent of him and the feel of him, and her screams caught in her throat as she stared at him, feeling the terror in her heart slowly subside.

  To her amazement, she was able to speak. It was a hushed whisper, but she managed to speak.

  “The Jersey victim...she might have been first, but I think he followed up more quickly with another kill than we had thought. Craig...there’s another. There...there, behind me, in the light!”

  “We’ll get you out of here,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  But she had no problem following him.

  There were stairs. And they led up to a tiny metal hatch door just ten feet from the carriage entry to the house.

  She didn’t let go of his arm, afraid that she would fall when she first saw the daylight again, grateful as never before as the sun fell down upon her.

  * * *

  Craig wanted Kieran to go to the hospital for a checkup; she’d fallen a good ten to twelve feet into the crypt. It was hard to tell if she was injured, of course, because she was covered in dirt and spiderwebs.

  She insisted that she was not hurt, nor would she go to the hospital to be checked out. She was fine. The day was warm enough, but she did sit at the end of the rescue vehicle, a blanket around her shoulders, hot coffee in her hands,
and she spoke clearly and evenly, only shivering now and then.

  “I didn’t think... I wasn’t expecting to find a new corpse. Well, she isn’t new, but she isn’t old. As in eighteenth-century old,” she told Craig, Egan and McBride. The other two men had made it quickly to the site. “I don’t really know what I was thinking, except that we know this man has killed before.”

  “We all knew he’d killed before, and you weren’t expecting a corpse?” McBride asked. “What the hell were you doing here? This is private property!”

  “I was thinking about old cemeteries. This man likes old cemeteries. And, the thing is, you can reach old cemeteries more easily than you might think,” Kieran said.

  “If you’re a descendant of a person down in the Marble Cemetery, you can still be interred there,” Danny offered. “Or at Trinity, or other old cemeteries in the city.”

  “I’m trying to get inside the killer’s mind,” Kieran said. “I just wanted to get a feel for more of the cemeteries and crypts and... I didn’t think I’d fall through a hole. I just meant to get a look and get back out and maybe see a few more places...”

  Her voice faded.

  “How long has she been dead?” she asked in a whisper. “That’s not—I mean, it can’t be Sadie Miller, right?”

  “No, it’s not Sadie Miller,” Craig said. He looked over at Kevin and Danny. “You two! You let her do this. Danny, you were with her.”

  “Have you ever tried to stop Kieran?” Danny asked him. “And you should be grateful! She stumbled upon another murder. This girl Kieran found... Her family might have wondered for years and years and now, at the least, they’ll know. I mean, who the hell else would have ever come here and made this discovery?”

  Danny had a point, and he knew it.

  McBride said sternly, “There’s still a matter of this being private property and the two of you trespassing.”

  It was really a moot point. They all knew by now that the place was owned by a Brit, an absentee landowner, who was—from a distance—involved in a legal haggle with the city’s historic boards and code department.

  “How many do you think there are?” Kieran whispered softly. “And how long dead, and is there any kind of a prayer for Sadie Miller?”

  “We don’t know about Sadie, Kieran,” Craig told her. “But we are looking for her. McBride has men out, and he’s spoken with his counterparts everywhere nearby. Yes, there’s hope. There’s always hope.”

  Egan walked off to meet with Dr. Anthony Andrews, the ME, who was just coming up out of the crypt. Egan had specifically asked for Andrews; he believed that having one ME on these remains was crucial to determining if this was the work of a serial killer, what methods he used, and how and if he was evolving.

  “Excuse me,” Craig murmured, turning to join them. He paused, looking back at Kieran and her brothers. “And don’t you move!” he warned.

  They all stared back at him in grim silence.

  “Well?” Egan asked.

  Andrews nodded an acknowledgment to Craig. “I wish I could tell you that I could give you something exact when I get her on the table. The conditions underground caused a certain amount of preservation, but, as you saw...I’d say she’s been down here at least a couple of years.”

  “Are we looking at the same killer?” Craig asked.

  “Same method of death. Hard for me to say right now, but I didn’t find any indication of defensive wounds,” Andrews said. “Who knows? The forensic teams might find something on this, though I’m willing to bet that this killer wears gloves. Maybe we’ll get something, who knows? Anyway, I will be able to get it down to a month or so once we’ve had the autopsy.” Andrews hesitated, looking at Craig. “This city is filled with the dead. Yeah, bodies have been moved, but there are little places like this, church graveyards and crypts... Who knows how long he’s been at it?”

  Statistically, about thirteen thousand people were reported missing in New York each year, Craig knew. Some were found; some were runaways. Some were the very old suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, some suffered from other diseases and many were children.

  Many were young women, as well.

  He wondered how many young women might have met this fate.

  Andrews looked at Craig. “Anything on Sadie Miller?” he asked.

  Craig shook his head. “Finding out exactly what was happening with our other victims is difficult,” Craig said. “This young woman...we don’t even know who she is, yet. But with Jeannette Gilbert, we do have a timeline. Do you think that there’s a chance Sadie Miller is still alive?”

  Andrews hesitated. “I really can’t pinpoint exact time of death,” he said. “Might she be alive? Yes. But, if so, I doubt that she’ll be alive for long. I just sent you a report, by the way. I’m guessing that you’ve been too busy right now to get to your email. Jeannette Gilbert did have a sedative in her body. Lorazepam. It’s usually for anxiety, for people who can’t sleep. It can help with those who have seizures and it can also cause pretty acute short-term memory loss if it’s taken in high doses. Combined with that, she had Rohypnol in her blood.”

  Roofie. The date rape drug.

  “So she was drugged before she was killed,” Craig said.

  “Yes, but there were no signs of sexual assault. Rohypnol also inhibits memory. You’re still looking for someone Jeannette trusted. He had to get close enough to her to get the drugs into her. I believe that it was swallowed—put into a drink or perhaps into food. Anyway, if it had been forced into her, there would have been a needle mark somewhere, and Jeannette Gilbert would have shown bruising. I couldn’t find anything on the body that suggested she’d fought anyone in any way.”

  “Thank you,” Craig told him. “I think that means that the killer did keep her alive for a day or so at least. That means there may be hope for Sadie Miller.”

  “Then I pray you find her fast,” the ME said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, they’re going to bring this victim up, and I’m going to head into autopsy as soon as possible.”

  Craig nodded.

  He’d heard the doctor’s words and took them to heart. He knew the work of law enforcement wasn’t only to find justice for the victims of crime.

  Their work was to save the living.

  “Press conference—now,” Egan said. “We’ll do it in front of our office. We’ll have you and McBride do the speaking. There will be no mention of Kevin and Jeannette Gilbert—not until we’ve had a discussion with Mr. Westwood again.” He already had his phone out to make arrangements with the media.

  Craig nodded his understanding and headed to the back of the ambulance.

  For once, Kieran had listened to him. She remained at the back of the rescue vehicle, flanked on either side by one of her brothers.

  “You should go to the hospital,” he said.

  “But I’m really all right. And hospitals need room for people who are not all right. I’ll go to the pub, Craig. We’ll all be there. Danny canceled his tours for today. Kevin is finished with his choral commitment and his appointment with you. We’ll be there, all three of us. And Declan. And you know that the pub is always filled with off-duty police.”

  “Go on, then,” he told her. “McBride has your statements, right?” he asked, looking at Danny.

  He nodded. “Yes. And if anyone is prosecuted, it was all my fault.”

  “Danny, you weren’t at fault at all!” Kieran said.

  “I’m a tour guide, Kieran. Your job needs you to be squeaky clean and—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, both of you,” Craig said. “There isn’t going to be a prosecution. Go to the pub. I’ll see you there later.”

  “Wait,” Kieran called to him.

  He turned back.

  “I have to go home, please! I’ve got to shower,” Kieran said.

>   “You two—you’re with her, right?” Craig asked.

  Kevin and Danny nodded solemnly.

  “Why am I even asking that?” he muttered. “It’s like the blind leading the blind!”

  “Straight to Kieran’s, then straight to the pub,” Danny said.

  “No more graveyards and no more trespassing!”

  “You have our solemn vow,” Kevin told him.

  He left them at last.

  The good thing was, he knew, for that day at least the three of them would do exactly as he had said.

  They might have their faults, as did all living, breathing souls.

  But a solemn vow from a Finnegan was as good as solid gold.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  THERE WAS ACTUALLY an evening rush at the pub, and Kieran could tell that Declan was glad to have all three of his siblings on the floor helping out, or running below to the cellar when backup supplies were needed.

  Since, in the last year or so, Kevin, Danny and Kieran had spent fewer and fewer hours at the pub, Declan’s fiancée, Mary Kathleen, had taken over as floor manager.

  That worked for everyone.

  Mary Kathleen was, in Kieran’s opinion, the very best of all things that tended to make up an Irish personality. She was a little beauty with bright green eyes and hair that was naturally deep red. She was a bundle of energy; she spoke her mind in no uncertain terms, but her mood tended toward the positive and cheerful, and patrons loved her. Many of the old-timers spoke about how, in the future, the pub would be like it had been in the past when Kieran’s parents had worked it together, as had many couples before them, all the way back before the Civil War.

  Declan and Mary Kathleen would surely carry on that tradition. It was a good thing. Such a good thing in a world that was ever changing, and most certainly not very often for the better.

  Kieran got along beautifully with the young woman who would one day be her sister-in-law. Mary Kathleen was great with responsibility and easily gave directions to the staff.