The Evil Inside (Krewe of Hunters)

by Heather Graham

  Then he’d gotten to see the legal system in action. He was still convinced that this country had what was certainly the best one in the world. And yet, even the best was filled with loopholes, inept cops, inept clerks and justices who were biased even if they were charged to comprehend and follow the law. Then, of course, Congress wasn’t always the best at writing laws, and God knew, a good speaker was a good speaker: attorneys themselves were certainly a major part of justice—and injustice.

  And attorneys could become jaded. Had he let that happen?

  Yes, definitely.

  Maybe it was time to believe again.

  Maybe that was the core of belief: people who had mattered and passed away living on in the hearts or souls of their loved ones. His father was no longer there to see him going to bat, pro bono, for the poor and ill-treated. It was something that would have pleased his parents.

  He turned away from the house, surprised that he didn’t want to be alone.

  I know how to be alone, Malachi Smith had said.

  Sam knew how to be alone, too. He’d been an only child. But he’d grown up surrounded by love, and his parents had welcomed other children into their home. He smiled; his mother had been concerned that he wouldn’t learn how to share if she didn’t make sure he learned that he just didn’t get everything that he wanted.

  He wondered what it had been like to be Malachi, shunned by others. And, yet, the boy seemed to have his own faith. Perhaps pounded into him by his father.

  Perhaps made into something better in the lonely recesses in his mind.

  Whatever demons haunted the human mind, Sam mused that everyone had them. He had his own. And he knew that right then, no matter how good he might be at it, he didn’t want to be alone. And he was surprised to realize that it wasn’t just Jamie he wanted to see.

  It was Jenna. She was a beautiful young woman, but that wasn’t it. He was lucky. His world was filled with beautiful young women. She was different.

  Yeah, right. Adam Harrison’s ghost-buster-Krewe-of-Hunters different. Just what the hell had he gotten himself into?

  He grinned. Whatever it was, he had feeling that she was like the flame that enticed.

  Jenna was surprised to see Sam Hall standing at the door to Jamie’s house.

  “Hi!” she said.

  “Hey,” he returned.

  She realized she was staring blankly at him. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said quickly. “Come on in, Jamie is just hanging at the table going through papers while we’re waiting on dinner.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said quickly, taking a step back. “Sorry, I should have realized that it was around that time.”

  “No, please, come on in—we’ve plenty. It’s a strange kind of international goulash in the Crock-Pot, nothing at all exciting,” she warned him.

  Jenna realized that Jamie was standing behind her when he said, “Come on in, Counselor! Please, we’d love for you to join us.”

  Sam lifted a hand, as if he would back away again in a minute. “Seriously,” he said, and she noted that he could have a wonderful, dimpled and sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was thinking about the case, thought I should take a walk—and found that I’d walked over here.”

  Impulsively, she stepped forward and took his arm. “I insist,” she said and smiled at him. Her mother could be one of the most iron-willed women she had ever met, but she always got her way by adding a grin. She was surprised that she was so insistent with Sam Hall, and she almost released his arm the second she grabbed it, but she had made her point.

  “I’ve just been going over notes, trying to figure out why on earth the other two victims were murdered,” Jamie said. “Come on, I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  Jenna turned and headed back through the hall to the kitchen. It was big, with the old hearth against the far wall. Jamie had built a fire against the autumn chill, and it felt good. Nothing was cooking over it, however; dinner was in the Crock-Pot.

  “Why would anyone kill a grumpy old farmer in Andover?” Jamie asked, shoving a newspaper article toward Sam as both men took a seat at the table.

  “Six months ago,” Sam mused, taking the newspaper article. He read through it thoughtfully. He looked over at Jamie. “Peter Andres. No close relatives, but he had a second cousin living in Boston. Doesn’t seem like the cousin was after money. I know of the guy—plastic surgeon, makes a mint. And it looks like the police did check out his alibi.” He looked over at Jenna and Jamie. “Peter Andres was a substitute teacher. Farmer, and substitute teacher.”

  Jenna set the Crock-Pot on the table and pushed the newspaper back. “Make room for plates, if you don’t mind,” she said. “And don’t suggest that Malachi killed Peter Andres because he didn’t like him as a teacher!”

  “Hey, I’m the defense attorney. But you can guarantee that a prosecutor will make the suggestion,” Sam said.

  “I’ll get drinks,” Jamie said, hopping up. “We’ll have to see if Peter Andres worked as a substitute while Malachi was still in the school system.”

  “I’d bet the big bucks that he did,” Sam said thoughtfully.

  “Now you’re being exasperating,” Jenna said, opening the refrigerator door for the salad she’d tossed and setting it on the table. “It sounds as if we’re trying to prove that Malachi did commit the murders.”

  “No,” Sam argued, looking at her and hiding a smile. If he were ever in trouble, he would definitely want her in his corner. She was determined and passionate in her defense. She sincerely believed in Malachi’s innocence. When he was with Malachi and heard the youth speak, he believed in him, too. When he looked at the facts, he felt that belief waver.

  Jenna wasn’t wavering.

  “What’s going to happen when we make it to trial is this—the state will make every effort to show Malachi in a bad light. They will put forth every reason he would naturally have been the one to commit the crimes. I’m debating whether or not to put Malachi on the stand, because they will try to crucify him. Then again, if he can be as convincing and articulate as he was with us, he’ll be a good witness in his own defense. I don’t know yet—I have to look at this from every possible angle, because that’s what the prosecution is going to do. One of the things I have to create is reasonable doubt, and one of the best ways to do that is to think like our opposition.”

  “Or find the real killer,” Jenna said, sitting opposite him and staring at him. “That’s what you did in your last case. And, now, you have me. And, unofficially, an entire team of investigators.”

  He kept his eyes level with hers and hoped that his years as an attorney had made him a really damned good liar. “That’s wonderful, of course.”

  Jenna gazed at him with cool and disdainful eyes. His acting wasn’t that good. “I work with people who can find the tiniest discrepancies on film, and who can find out about any piece of information possible on a computer. They will contribute legwork, phone work, paperwork—anything you want. So your problem would be…?”

  “I don’t have a problem. I said, that’s wonderful,” Sam reminded her.

  “Jenna, lass, you’ve a starving man down here,” Jamie said cheerfully.

  “Smells wonderful,” Sam said.

  “Irish-Hungarian goulash. The very best!” Jamie said.

  When the food was dished out and Jenna was seated, Sam said, “Quite frankly, it is all a lot like acting. A good attorney can act and speak and write up summations that either prove a point, or leave a wide margin for doubt. And we also start out with the question, where do we want to go? We’re going on the premise that Malachi Smith is innocent of murder, and, while they’re not prosecuting the boy for the other murders, the state will have as their default assumption that the same person or persons murdered the Smiths, Peter Andres and Earnest Covington. Since they were all bloody killings committed by some kind of a sharp blade in a fairly small area, all known to the boy—it seems like a plausible assumption.

&n
bsp; “So, we want to find the person or persons who might have actually committed the murders. That will mean investigating the victims. Of course we’ll be looking at the Smith murders, but if we can also cast doubt on the police’s assumption about the other two, we’ll go a long way to getting them to reconsider Malachi for any of the killings. We’ll question friends and whatever relatives we can find, and we also need to know if they were thought of fondly in town—or if they were thought of at all. The killings might have been random or specific, but I’d bet on specific. That means motive, and we need to find out why someone would have killed these particular people. It might have been convenience, or there might have been a more practical reason.”

  “I need to see the house,” Jenna said.

  “Why?” Sam demanded. “There’s going to be a lot of blood spatter. People were killed there.”

  “The house itself may have clues,” Jenna argued.

  “Are you going to talk to the ghosts?” he asked drily.

  “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Sam, everything you’re saying is exactly right. We do know what happened. But I need to see all the sites—we have to go to Andover and see the barn where Peter Andres was killed, and also get into the neighbor’s house. But we need to start with Lexington House. You know that! You’re going to defend Malachi. You need to know exactly what happened. And you’re friends with Detective John Alden, so…”

  Sam sighed. “All right. Tomorrow morning. We’ll start with the house.”

  Lexington House. Jenna had never actually been in the old colonial building, but she had an idea of what the arrangement of rooms would be like; many such homes had been built in a similar manner. The porch led to a mudroom, and beyond that was an entry hallway. The hall stretched the length of the house, the staircase to one side. The first door to the right would lead to a parlor. Upstairs, there would be four bedrooms, two on either side of the house.

  Detective John Alden led the way, ripping off the crime-scene tape and unlocking the front door for them.

  As she had expected: mudroom. Work jackets hung on hooks in the small vestibule, and work boots were lined up against the wall. There was a long hallway with doors leading off to either side of the house, and a set of stairs against the left wall that led to the rooms above. They followed John Alden to the first door on the left.

  Blood remained on the walls. The spray pattern was terrifying—there was so much blood. Four people, murdered here just two days ago, two of them in this room.

  Two here, in the parlor. Mr. Abraham Smith and his wife.

  Chalk marks on the floor designated the positions where their bodies had lain.

  “You can move into the room about three feet—no farther,” Alden warned.

  “We appreciate your assistance in being here, John,” Sam told him.

  Alden was still for a minute, weighing his answer. “We do have a chief of police,” he said. “And the chief wants every possible effort made on this case so that there aren’t any more historic mysteries floating around out there. The murders are heinous, and they’re not fancy legends—it’s a seventeen-year-old boy who has been accused. I worked hard for this badge, it’s something I’ve always wanted. And I don’t want any surprises when we get to court on this one.”

  “Noted,” Sam said. “And still appreciated.”

  “Just be careful where you’re walking,” Alden said gruffly.

  Jamie took a step in to the left. Sam went to the right.

  Blood. What remained of the carnage.

  A table was knocked over. A pile of bloody clothing lay next to a lamp that had presumably sat upon the table. A quilt—covered in blood—had been ripped from the old sofa.

  The bricks of the fireplace were dotted with stains and spray.

  “Abraham Smith got it right there, in front of the fireplace. You can see where his body lay, right there,” John Alden pointed out. “The missus was over on the floor by the sofa—looks like she dragged the quilt down and knocked over the table. She had hack marks on her arms. I think she stood up to protest, and was axed down right there. She staggered a few feet, and then died. And that pile there—that’s the kid’s clothes. And this room is only the beginning,” he said wearily.

  Jenna could barely hear him. As he spoke, she felt as if he faded away, along with the others in the room. The very color of the air distorted, taking on a gray hue. A crude straw broom appeared by the fireplace. A wire basket of wood was on the brick apron in front of the hearth. There were no lamps. Candles sat on rough wooden tables by hardwood furniture, and sconces were attached to the walls.

  There was a woman in severe, puritanical dress pacing in front of the fireplace. Once she had been pretty. Her face was worn down by weather, toil and worry. Her brow was furrowed. She kept looking toward the door.

  A breeze seemed to strike Jenna from the back.

  She turned. The front door had burst open—two youths, one perhaps ten, another twelve, came running into the room, panicked. They rushed to their mother, hugging her one by one.

  “They’ve declared against Rebecca Nurse,” the older boy practically yelled. “Oh, Mother, it grows so frightening.”

  “Father says that evil must be uprooted, and that Goody Nurse is surely evil. If the girls say that she dances with the devil, she must die!” the younger boy said.

  The breeze seemed to grow very chill, though it appeared that a summer sun blazed outside the gray miasma within the house. Once again, someone entered the room.

  He was in breeches and boots and a white cotton shirt. His long, graying hair was parted cleanly in the middle.

  He carried an ax.

  Eli Lexington! Jenna thought.

  He walked into the room, his hands moving on the ax as if he were testing the weight of it.

  “Eli?” his wife said softly.

  “Evil must die!” he roared. “Let those who dance with the devil go to the devil, and let their spawn rest in hell aside them!”

  Jenna felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Eli Lexington walked across the room, and despite his wife’s scream of protest, he brought the ax down on her shoulders, and then, wielding it again, took it viciously down upon her fallen body. The boys stared, frozen in horror. Jenna tried to close her eyes against the vision, but the image just appeared in her mind, and there was no way to hide from the horror that unfolded before her.

  Eli turned on the oldest boy.

  “Run!” the child yelled to his brother.

  The word was cut off as the ax struck his head.

  The little one had no chance to run. “Though shalt pluck out evil—thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” Eli roared.

  He continued to vigorously hack at his family. The last scream and moan died away. The gray air seemed to fade, and Jenna was aware that her uncle and Sam Hall were looking at her with grave concern.

  She felt weak, faint, as if she would fall. She couldn’t do that.

  “Excuse me. I need some air,” she murmured. She turned and almost stumbled. Jamie, however, was already at her side, grabbing her arm.

  “Ah, lass, the scent in there is a bit overwhelming. Felt me old knees buckling, too,” he said.

  Reaching the porch, she sank down to sit on the step. Jamie sat beside her. While he clearly wanted to be concerned for her welfare, he was also anxious to hear about what she might have experienced.

  “Jenna…Jenna…did you see? Is he innocent?”

  She looked at her uncle sadly. “Uncle Jamie, I saw—but not the present, I’m afraid. I saw Eli Lexington, and he seemed to be really crazy—he believed that his wife was a witch, and that he had to kill her. And he had to kill his sons, because she had already given them to Satan, because they’d wind up in hell.” She realized that she was shaking, her voice tremulous.

  “Wonderful. That’s really going to help us.”

  The deep, mocking voice came from above and behind her. Sam Hall. He’d slipped out onto the porch as well, concerned or curious.


  Jenna figured it was the latter.

  She stood, suddenly feeling perfectly fine. It was as if her spine had stiffened so tightly that she gained a half an inch.

  “You’re going to tell me that the boy was psychologically shattered by the strict deprivation of anything societal caused by his father’s strange religion, and that caused him to see apparitions in the house?” Sam asked. His eyes were as flat as his words.

  “No,” she said equally flatly. “In my mind, Malachi didn’t do it. Excuse me. If John Alden will allow it, I want to see the rest of the house. And, quite frankly, I think we should do this separately.” Of course, Sam was the one who was friends with John Alden—had gone to school with him—not Jamie. And still, Jenna was convinced that if she acted with authority, she would be allowed her exploration. She’d worked against this kind of man before.

  Sam shrugged. “We’re here. What the hell.”

  Yeah, what the hell. He had written her off as a kook who liked to pretend she was a medium of some kind.

  In a way, of course, it was true….

  But she was part of Adam Harrison’s Krewe of Hunters, and they offered so much more than Sam seemed to be able to fathom.

  Well, they dealt with that belief all the time. She had to bite down and ignore his attitude, and do what she knew she could do.

  She stood up and walked back into the house. Part of the stairway was blocked by crime-scene tape; a trail of blood drops ran to the upstairs.

  Jenna walked into the room where Malachi’s great-uncle had been killed. The blood spatter was all over the wall. A pillow was soaked in it and had turned a hardened crimson color. She held still for a minute, but felt nothing, and no images came to her mind.

  She walked across the hall to the grandmother’s room. The old woman had evidently been caught standing; the blood had soared far across the room in little drops, though the majority was on the floor, in the upper portion of the chalked-out figure there.

  Again, she felt nothing. She knew she had to come back. With whatever “gift” she had, history seemed to be coming to her slowly. She’d gotten the seventeenth century today—she’d have to try again later to find out more recent events.