The cemetery seemed to sit in the midst of a haunted atmosphere.
Matt stood by her side. “And now?” he asked.
“I think I have to find Mary Wager,” Meg said.
“Mary Wager. Her stone, you mean?”
“Yes, her stone. There are Wagers all over the cemetery,” Meg began. “I’m sure you know that Robert Harper left no children, but his niece married a Wager, so…through the generations, there were many of them. Lara and I were both crazy about her grave marker. It has the most beautiful poem…but the marker was falling apart and we shored it up with stones.”
She lifted her flashlight higher as she looked around the cemetery. Being here reminded her so much of days gone by, back when she and Lara were young, when they slipped out at night—just as Joey had—to hover on the outskirts of a ghost tour or scamper up the steps to the cemetery. Tonight she barely needed the flashlight; they were on the hilltop and the moon was dazzling.
“Mary Wager.” Matt moved ahead of her.
“It’s more or less in the center,” Meg told him.
He nodded. “I vaguely remember…”
The cemetery was somewhat overgrown with haphazard trails. She was accustomed to it; she knew her way through it and took the lead. She came to a stop when she reached the grave. Matt joined her there, his long strides bringing him close to her in a matter of seconds.
She shone her light on the marker and recited the poem, mostly from memory.
“’Tis better to have loved than lost,
No matter what the cost.
I died for him, and he for me,
The war the game, the end the same.
I waited for love, did not return,
And then the pain, the bitter burn.
So I loved and lost and lingered here,
In death, I know, my love be there.”
“Poetic, and quite sad,” Matt said. “So you two, you and Lara, came here and dreamed about Mary’s great romance?”
Meg shrugged and glanced at him. He didn’t seem to be mocking her.
“There’s no record in the archives that we could find, so we made up a story for her. She was a Southern girl and he was a Southern boy, but he fought for the Union. When he died, she couldn’t even bury him. So she lived on. She was a good Christian, we’d decided, so no thought of suicide. We imagined her watching the years go by, always believing that she’d see him again once she died.”
She realized he was smiling.
“Hey, we were kids.”
“Pretty impressive that you were doing this kind of research—in the archives—when you were that young.”
“We learned from my parents.”
“A teacher and a mom who worked for the park service—makes sense.”
As he spoke, Meg knelt down, holding her flashlight, Killer beside her, and moved her fingers around the old monument. She found the crack and pushed one finger through to the hollowed-out point at the base.
There might be nothing there. This might just be wishful thinking. But…
“You know, you could hit a snake or spider doing that. You want more light?” Matt asked. “Let me hold yours, too.”
He knelt close beside her. She felt the strength and heat of his body, felt whatever it was that made him so alive, so forceful and charismatic.
The scent of his cologne or aftershave wasn’t bad, either.
“Thanks,” she murmured as he trained dual lights on the marker.
The crack that led to the little hollow in the stone was low against the ground, hidden by overgrown tufts of grass and weeds.
“Want me to try?” Matt asked.
“No, no, I’m fine. And my fingers are smaller,” she said.
They were. Of course, they’d been smaller still when she and Lara were young and left notes for each other there.
But her fingers touched paper. She stared at Matt; his face was practically touching hers. She flushed and said softly, “There’s something here!”
A moment later, she pulled it out—a piece of paper rolled in a tube. She gasped as she almost tore it; there’d been rain since the note was left and the paper was fragile.
“Careful. We can get it back and dry it. Might be good to have the lab look at it, too,” Matt said.
He was, she had to admit, always prepared. He’d put down one of the flashlights and had an evidence bag in his hand. As she placed the paper inside the bag, she frowned up at him. “Matt, we have to read it now. What if she’s in danger? What if she’s in hiding? What if she’s alive and she needs us?”
“Let’s get out of the cemetery and off this hill first, huh? At least get to where we can open it carefully? It’s no good if it’s ruined.”
He was right and she knew it.
“Okay, we’ll go back to the B and B,” she said.
Suddenly Killer, who’d been at her feet, quiet and obedient, began to bark.
He stared at the trees, his body rigid and his posture fierce.
“Killer, hey!” Meg whispered.
She saw that Matt had already reached for his Glock. Startled, she did the same.
There was movement in the trees along the massive rock across from them. Meg thought she heard the sound of footsteps receding on the trail down.
Someone had been there, someone who was gone now.
The dog continued to growl.
“Stay as low as you can!” Matt ordered. He crouched down, level with the gravestones, then crept toward the trees. She followed, and they rose to a standing position when they reached the trees, walking furtively through the dark shadows. But they found no one.
“We are being followed,” Matt said slowly. He pointed to a broken branch. “Someone was watching us from these trees.”
“People are up here all day,” Meg said.
“This is a fresh break,” he told her. “See?” It appeared to be; Meg didn’t argue. She’d never considered herself much of a tracker. The situation hadn’t arisen for her before.
He set his hand on her back. “Let’s go to the hotel. I want to read what this note says.”
At his touch, she suddenly felt close to him; maybe it was natural. The two of them against the world as they stood high above the town, surrounded by graves.
“All right.” Killer stayed at her heels as they hurried down. At the top of the steps, Matt paused. He kept very still.
“Whoever it was is gone,” Matt said. He dropped down by the dog. “You know what, Killer? You weren’t such a bad idea, after all. Go figure.”
He started down the stone steps, Meg right behind him. Then they headed back up the hill to the General Fitzhugh Lee.
When they reached it, everything was quiet. Meg used her house key to let them in. Matt followed her to her room.
Killer hopped up on her bed and curled up to sleep. He seemed to believe that his work for the night was done.
Matt took the rolled note out of the evidence bag and set it on the television stand. “You have tweezers?” he asked her. “And a pen or something that’s not sharp?”
She found her tweezers and an eyeliner pencil with a soft end for smudging color.
Matt very cautiously began to use the tools to open the damp paper. Meg watched it unfold.
As she saw Lara’s writing emerge, her heart seemed to beat harder. Then she felt it sink to her stomach as she saw how much the ink had bled and run.
“We’re never going to be able to read it,” she murmured.
“You know her handwriting. See what you can figure out,” Matt said.
He was standing close to her again. They were nearly touching as they both scrutinized the paper. She felt an instinctive and almost overwhelming desire to turn to him, to gaze into his eyes and pretend this let
ter didn’t exist, that her friend wasn’t missing. She wanted him to hold her.
She gritted her teeth, appalled that she could suddenly want a man so much.
Especially this man.
Especially since she was now officially FBI. Officially Krewe…
She blinked and stared hard at the paper. She saw her name at the top.
“‘Meg,’” she read. “‘Silly, huh? You’ll probably never…’ Never what?”
“‘Find this.’ It says, ‘find this.’”
“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Meg said. “‘You’ll probably never find this, but…’”
Matt kept trying to read. “‘But if you do—if I haven’t retrieved it myself—then I’m in trouble. I’m doing this because I don’t know what’s really going on. I don’t want to falsely accuse, but this has something to do with…’”
He stopped reading. “To do with what?” he demanded.
Meg tried to study the paper again. “I can’t tell—I just can’t tell! The ink ran right there.”
Matt said softly, “I can make out the letters b-a-r-d. Does that mean anything to you?”
“The bard. Shakespeare.” Meg shrugged. “I don’t think she’d leave me a note about Shakespeare.”
“Seems unlikely,” he agreed. “Any ideas at all?”
She shook her head. “We used to leave notes when we were bothered by something. One semester she knew about cheating going on at college. She didn’t want to say anything. She felt it wasn’t her place. But it wasn’t right. She left me a note about it.”
“And what happened?” Matt asked.
“Easily solved. The girl doing the cheating dropped out. She was actually a good kid who had some problems. She admitted everything, so Lara never had to do anything. Nor did I.”
“Let’s leave this here,” Matt said. “It’ll be dryer by morning. If we still can’t read anything, we’ll bring it to the lab. I know Gettysburg is on our tour list, but we’re about an hour and half from DC and maybe an hour and a half on to Gettysburg from there.” He gave her a questioning look. “I know you’re really worried and that you won’t be happy until we’ve followed the trail you and Lara used to take, but as you said earlier, the note may tell us something important. It could be too far gone for even our best techs, but I think it’s important to try.”
Meg nodded and sat on the foot of the bed. She didn’t move as Matt walked to the door.
“Hey,” he said, his hand on the knob.
“Yeah?”
“Lock this. Lock it when I go out.”
“Yes, of course.” She stood and met him at the door.
“You’re okay?”
“Of course,” she repeated.
“If I hear that dog barking, I’ll be right back in here.”
“I graduated—”
“Yes, from the academy. If you hear me screaming, I’ll expect you to have my back, too, okay?”
He was smiling, and she nodded, feeling a little foolish. The door closed, and she thought he was gone. Then she heard his voice from the other side. “Lock it now!” he barked.
She did.
Twenty minutes later, she was in a long T-shirt. Her regulation-issue Glock was at her bedside. She didn’t turn the television on; instead, she thought about the night. Matt believed that someone had been watching them at the cemetery. He believed that a black sedan might be following them. He wasn’t certain, but he was willing to consider the possibilities.
She smiled. He wasn’t so bad, after all.
She started to drift off, Killer curled at her feet. She did sleep for a while, but it was a light sleep. Suddenly she found herself wide-awake, hoping it wasn’t time to get up for the day. From the dim light easing through the drapes, she thought it must be very early in the morning. She could rest her eyes a few more minutes. She drifted in comfort, but then began to picture Lara’s note: b-a-r-d.
She jumped out of bed, startling the dog, who gave a worried “Woof!”
“It’s okay, Killer,” she said.
She hurried over to the TV stand and turned on the light, then stared at the note again. She still couldn’t read that part, but the b-a-r-d was the end of a word—the beginning of which had smudged.
She ran to her door, ready to tear over to the next bedroom. But when she opened it, Matt Bosworth was already there. He wore just his trousers, bare chest and hair damp from the shower.
“Bard,” he said. “I know…”
“Me, too. Bard. Hubbard.”
“Yes, Hubbard. Lara’s note to you is about Congressman Hubbard. I’m pretty sure that your friend suspected something about his death wasn’t right.”
“And,” Meg said, “it has to do with Congressman Walker!”
He nodded, then stepped back. She realized that her hair was tangled around her face and she was inappropriately dressed in her giant sleep tee.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “It’s still early. Not quite six.”
“I was awake. I can be ready to go in about ten minutes.”
“Good. Great. I’d like to get that note in, see what our experts can tell us. They have lights that can detect what’s faded, trace the slightest indentation on paper.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s perfect.”
“Perfect,” he echoed.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then he spun around to return to his room.
Killer followed him.
“Hey, you!” Meg called to the dog.
The animal ignored her.
“It’s all right,” Matt said. He disappeared into his room with Killer trotting behind him. She ran into the shower, anxious to be as good as her word.
When she stepped out of her room, he was waiting for her. There was a somber look on his face.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
He nodded. “We have another one,” he said grimly.
“Another…”
“Dead woman.”
Meg’s heart leaped to her throat. “Not—not Lara?” she asked.
CHAPTER 10
Slash was tired as all hell. For once in his life, he wished he didn’t work alone.
He’d spent part of the night trying to determine how to break in on the agents. But they had the damned dog. The stupid creature had barked at him when he’d been quite a distance away, hidden in the trees. What would it do if he tried to get into that ramshackle inn with the agents sleeping? Not only that, Slash knew that agents slept with their firearms by their beds, always within reach.
He’d given up watching the old bed-and-breakfast and headed out in the early-morning hours. He was tired and irritated, but he’d worked out his next moves carefully. First, where to grab someone. Second, where to leave her. This latest killing would change the focus yet again.
It would have every law enforcement agent in the tristate and District area fixated on one thing and only one thing.
The killings. These killings. The dead women. Eventually, he’d know what he needed to know. Eventually, it would work out. This spate of serial killings would end as swiftly as it had begun. As swiftly as it had ended years before. Once again, the killer would disappear into the annals of crime history.
That was too bad. He realized he’d acquired a taste for what he did. Maybe Slash would remain active; the persona of Slash was so alive and so real now. Sometimes he woke up believing he was Slash McNeil. Sometimes it was difficult to pull back, to remember who he really was.
Last night hadn’t been easy. She’d been a fighter and a squirmer. He’d chosen her differently. But in the end, it didn’t matter. And in the end, the river would be his salvation, washing away any trace of what had happened.
None of the women mattered. They wer
e nothing—nothing at all. The end result was everything.
Except of course…
The agents. He wanted them dead. But that would create a disruption that would cause an even more intense kind of manhunt, would change the dynamics, could ruin everything.
Perhaps, though…
He thought about the one he’d been ordered not to kill, at least not yet. Made no sense. A hole in the ground was a hole in the ground.
Maybe she was already dead. Maybe he could find the time to go and watch her beg and plead, let her know exactly who had done this to her, let her see his face before he watched her die. Maybe that would calm his soul, stop this terrible craving to find a way to kill the agents.
But killing a man wouldn’t fit Slash’s profile, he told himself.
Killing her, though…
He ached, longing to kill them, to see them die.
His phone rang. “Hey, up and at ’em—boss wants you!”
Slash silently gritted his teeth.
Some people—who weren’t women—deserved to die, too.
And Slash imagined a different kind of killing as he rose to face the day.
* * *
Meg stood at the autopsy in Dr. Wong’s OCME, trying not to shake. She knew that the victim wasn’t Lara. And yet she’d felt that terrible dread when she first heard the news. It was painful to stand where she was, completely still and listening, as stoically professional as possible.
When they’d driven here that morning, she’d tried to reassure herself that it wasn’t going to be Lara. Lara had been in Harpers Ferry; she’d left the note. She’d known something—about Hubbard, about Walker—and that was why she’d disappeared. Not because she was dead.
“The victim was killed early this morning, probably about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.,” Wong said. “The throat is slashed, the body was ripped from throat to groin and stones were stuffed into the resulting cavity. We’ve rushed tests. She was drugged in exactly the same manner as the previous victims. She was found in the Potomac River. What I believe is different about this woman is that she’ll prove to be a prostitute. She was sexually active previous to her murder, but there’s no sign that it was forced.”
Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 5 Page 17