Heather Graham Krewe of Hunters Series, Volume 4

by Heather Graham

  Mo sat back.

  So that was it. Aidan Mahoney had used his gift—and nearly been arrested for it.

  She studied the picture of the boy Aidan Mahoney had been.

  He’d had a smile and a look of eager anticipation, excitement about the world.

  That boy had changed and become the man he was now.

  * * *

  Walking into the station for the task force meeting, Aidan was impressed with the number of officers who were waiting to be briefed by Lieutenant Purbeck and him. He was also surprised to see that two of his colleagues had arrived, sooner than he’d expected—Jane Everett and Sloan Trent.

  He’d met them in New York, but just briefly. They were officially part of the new office but there’d been no companionable nights out at a local bar yet; no life stories had been spilled. The two were a couple, he knew, but since the female agents in the Krewe tended to retain their maiden names, he wasn’t sure if they were married. Somewhere along the line, he’d ask them. Or Jackson.

  Trent was a big, rugged guy, tall and trim but heavily muscled. He’d come from the West and still looked the part, even in a dark navy suit. The ghost of a cowboy hat seemed to linger on his head.

  Jane was a very pretty woman who seemed to tone down her natural assets for the workplace—her dark hair was swept into a bun and she, too, was dressed in a business suit and wearing flat, serviceable shoes.

  “We tried to reach you to let you know we were here,” Sloan told him. “We got to the hotel at nine, but you’d left and you weren’t answering your cell.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aidan wondered if his introspection and his curiosity about Mo Deauville had distracted him to the point that he’d paid no attention to his phone.

  Their phones were a lifeline for all of them; he had to shake off whatever mood he was in and play his part competently.

  “Jackson said you wanted an artist. The police have done a computer rendering of the Jane Doe, right?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, but no pun intended, there’s no life to it. I showed it around last night. When I asked someone if she recognized the woman in the picture, she said it could have been anyone.”

  “I’ll get on it as soon as we’re done here,” Jane said.

  They were in the back of the room, sipping bad coffee. Purbeck announced that they’d begin.

  He started by giving a report on the case from beginning to end, starting with the disappearance of Richard Highsmith, and bringing them to where they were now.

  An officer raised his hand. “Are we looking at this as a nut on the loose or a possible political assassination?”

  “Both. Either. We don’t know yet. We still have no identity for the woman found with Mr. Highsmith. Hopefully, when we’ve discovered who she was, we’ll learn more.”

  “Well, they’re not officially serial killings, are they? Two dead, found together. At least three need to be dead with a similar M.O. for it to be classified as so, right?” another officer asked.

  Purbeck gestured at Aidan, who set his coffee down and walked to the front of the room. Purbeck introduced him, although he’d met many of the officers already.

  “As Lieutenant Purbeck said, we don’t know what we’re looking for yet and we can’t rule anything out. You’re aware that we categorize killers as organized or disorganized when we’re seeing a potential serial situation. Whoever did this is extremely organized. He or she—most likely a he, since the victims were strangled before they were beheaded and that takes considerable strength—managed to whisk away a well-known political figure from a conference center crawling with security.

  “Perhaps our Jane Doe saw something and was killed to silence her. Perhaps, in an attempt to confuse us, the killer liked the idea of us discovering the head of a man and the body of a woman first. Who knows if he suspected we’d take it further and search the vault? We certainly have enough vaults and mausoleums around here.

  “The thing is, right now, we need to find where the victims were beheaded. We need the tool used for the beheadings. We have to be vigilant regarding everyone and everything we see. Thanks to you and your fellow officers, the convention quarters have been thoroughly searched and anyone with access to the facility or to Mr. Highsmith has been questioned.

  “We’re still sifting through information here and at our main offices in Virginia. We’re also searching records for enemies Mr. Highsmith might have had. When the toxicology reports are in, we’ll know if Mr. Highsmith was drugged before he disappeared.

  “It definitely wasn’t a case of robbery. Highsmith was found with all his belongings, except his cell, and we don’t know yet if that was significant. He was also found with a matchbook from a strip bar called Mystic Magic. The employees I was able to interview are positive that they never saw him in the place. There was a note on the matchbook—Lizzie grave. Does that mean anything to anyone here?”

  Aidan waited. No one spoke. They all glanced around with puzzled expressions.

  “Strange name for a hooker,” one officer said.

  Aidan sighed inwardly. “I don’t believe it’s the name of a hooker. I believe it’s something Richard Highsmith was looking for.”

  “We have a lot of graves around here,” another officer muttered.

  “And hundreds of people named Lizzie have lived and died in the area over the centuries,” said a third.

  “If anyone does think of anything, however wild or improbable your theory might be—please come to Lieutenant Purbeck, Detectives Voorhaven and Van Camp or me. Pooling all available information and suspicions is going to be of the utmost importance,” Aidan told them.

  “Two of my coworkers are there in the back—Jane Everett and Sloan Trent—and you can seek them out, as well. Jane is one of our country’s foremost forensic artists, so if you have a witness who can provide any description of a suspicious person, she’s here,” Aidan advised them. “Thank you for working with us, and thank you for your diligence in so quickly shutting down the convention center the other night, conducting such thorough interviews and simply doing such exceptional police work.”

  “That’s it,” Purbeck said. “Oh, one more thing. We closed our attractions yesterday, and the city, village, town and county offices have asked that we let them reopen. This is going to be a nightmare for us, of course. As we’ve already experienced, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fabricated for Halloween.”

  The meeting broke up. Jane and Sloan joined Aidan and Purbeck at the front, followed by Voorhaven and Van Camp.

  “I’ve done this for years,” Purbeck said. “And I’m not even sure where to go from here.”

  “Jane will head to the morgue now and try to get us a better image. I’m really hoping that will help,” Aidan said.

  “Our computer renderings are pretty good,” Purbeck told him, a bit defensively.

  “They’re excellent,” Jane agreed.

  “Not to be obvious, but they lack a sense of life,” Aidan said. “Hey, let’s try everything we can, okay?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Any murder is obscene, an affront to all of humanity, but the pressure on us in a case like this, when we’re looking at the death of such a high-profile man, is staggering,” Purbeck said. Van Camp nodded. “We’re going back over everything at the convention center.”

  “Good,” Aidan said. “There’s no such thing as a locked-room case. Somehow, a door is always opened. Or a window.”

  “I’ll get Jane to the morgue,” Sloan said. “And where should I go from there?”

  “I think you should visit Mystic Magic. Spend a few hours hanging around, just watching.”

  “All right. I’d also thought about interviewing the employees of the restaurant where you found the head,” Sloan told him.

  “Great idea. But we need
to know more about Mystic Magic.”

  “Keep me posted. I’ll be in the office filtering through reports,” Purbeck said. “So far, we’ve been called out to inspect three pumpkins, a hanging skeleton—and, yes, a cloth rendition of the headless horseman wearing a Jason mask”

  “We’ll keep in touch.” Voorhaven and Van Camp left.

  Jane asked Aidan, “What’s your plan?”

  “I’m going to find Lizzie grave.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Mo wasn’t surprised when she heard a car on the gravel drive outside her house around noon.

  She knew it was a friend, since Rollo gave a happy woof and wagged his lethal tail.

  She salvaged a cup of pens and markers just before he could send it flying to the floor.

  She’d managed to work for a while—with half her mind. Doodling, and letting her subconscious take over, often resulted in some of her best pieces.

  Going to the door, she glanced out the small window; as she’d expected, it was Mahoney returning.

  The day had become bright and beautiful, a fall afternoon when the sun was shining as a golden orb and the colors of the leaves were stunningly beautiful.

  She opened the door and waited for him.

  “May I come in?” he asked when he reached her.

  “In here? You don’t want to go to another graveyard? This is the Hudson Valley. We have plenty of churchyards and cemeteries and even family plots.”

  His look told her that he didn’t appreciate her sarcasm.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Please, come in.”

  He moved past her. She watched the broad contours of his shoulders and the straight line of his back. Just her luck. She’d always thought that real attraction was much more than the physical. That it was easy to admire someone who was beautiful or handsome or striking—but you didn’t necessarily really want that person.

  Well, Mahoney made a lie out of that. He was simply compelling, from his stature to his long fingers and the bronzed breadth of his hands. His blue eyes were direct, searing at times.

  As Grace would say, I’d do him in a heartbeat!

  Mo quelled her thoughts and followed him through her house. He usually looked at her as if she were a root vegetable. It wasn’t too smart to get a crush—even purely physical—on a man like that.

  He paused, surveying what he could see of the house, then he hunkered down to greet Rollo.

  “Great place,” he told her

  “Thank you. I love it. And I love that I’m so close to Sunnyside.”

  “You’re a Washington Irving fan,” he said.

  “I am. I love his stories and I love the stories about him, too. He was a fascinating man, good to others, smart, filled with humor,” Mo said. “But then, you know all that. You’re from here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t come to my house to talk about Washington Irving.”

  “No.”

  He straightened and continued to stand there.

  “Has anything new happened?” she asked at last.

  “A couple of my coworkers are here. One’s a fantastic artist.”

  “Great.” He still hadn’t explained what he wanted. “Can I get you a drink? Soda, water—cup of coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’d love a cup of coffee.”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Black.”

  She walked into the kitchen and poured him coffee, then handed it to him. He leaned against the counter. “It’s good. Nice and strong. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t found a police station yet that brews anything but mud.”

  “Well, I’m happy to offer you coffee anytime you like,” she said. She quickly turned to pour herself another cup and asked, “So, why are you here?”

  “Lizzie’s grave,” he said. “I’m assuming it’s a grave, but I’m trying to figure out who Lizzie might have been, and why her grave was significant to Richard.”

  “Want to come and have a seat?” she asked.

  They went back to her office, where she took the chair behind the desk, allowing him the one across from her.

  He sat, picking up her “witch’s cauldron” Halloween card from the edge of the desk.

  He smiled. “You made this?”

  “The art, the words and the paper engineering,” Mo said as he worked the pop-up angle of the card. “Well?” she couldn’t help asking.

  He put it back down. “I’d buy it,” he told her.

  “Thanks. So, Lizzie’s grave?”

  “I found the words Lizzie grave scribbled on a matchbook Richard had in his pocket. They were also impressed on a notepad in his hotel room. Not the page he actually wrote on—he must have taken that with him, although it wasn’t found on him or among his things.”

  “Did he have a relative who died here?” she asked.

  “I thought about that, but—”

  “You knew his family.”

  He stared at her. “Yes.” She could sense another rise of hostility in him; she felt certain he was wondering, Has this woman been looking me up? Checking out my credentials or my past?

  “You said you were from here,” she said. “Logical assumption.”

  Of course, she had been looking him up.

  She didn’t blink. Liars, she believed from television, moved their eyes downward or to the left or right.

  She kept her eyes on his.

  He nodded.

  “So, you were friends with Richard Highsmith?”

  He looked away for a moment and then met her gaze again. “Yes. We spent a lot of time here together. We used to walk through the woods, making up our own stories. We told ghostly tales in the old cemeteries and graveyards, had campfires...ate pizza and played ball. All the things kids do. Then we grew up and went our separate ways. We became the kind of friends who follow each other’s careers, and call or write once in a while. Still friends, always friends, but leading separate lives.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded again. “I hadn’t seen him for a while. But I gather I would have soon. His campaign manager told me I was going to be invited to a political dinner.”

  They were both silent for a minute.

  “Maybe Lizzie was a long-ago ancestor,” Mo suggested.

  “Yeah, I thought about that, too. I can get people started on tracing his ancestry,” Mahoney said. “But I have a feeling it didn’t have anything to do with his family. What I was hoping is that you might know about some legend or local story that has to do with a Lizzie or a Beth or Elizabeth.” He offered her a wry smile. “Grace was telling me that you know local history and legend like very few others do.”

  Mo shrugged off the compliment, but took a minute to think.

  “We have headless horsemen, women in white, Native American spirits and all kinds of legends,” she began. “You’re probably familiar with them all,” Mo said. “And historically, we have the tragic story of Major Andre, hanged as a spy. He was a spy—against the Americans—but even those who brought about his execution were sickened by it. He was just so charming that everyone loved him. Supposedly—”

  She broke off, and he leaned forward. “Yes?”

  “Well, supposedly, he fell in love with a local girl while he made his way through the area,” Mo said. “His captors liked him so much that while he was imprisoned, they let her in to see him. There’s a copy of a drawing done at his hanging that’s alleged to have his mystery woman in it. Hang on, I’ll find it. She’s usually called Andre’s secret love—he’d fallen for the woman who eventually married Benedict Arnold—but this was later and I think the relationship was more...real. Sometimes she was referred to as his Kat or his Molly—or his Lizzie.”

  She hopped up and went to one
of her bookcases, searching through her historical reference material until she located the book on Andre. Flipping through the pages, she found the picture and passed the book to Mahoney. “This was written in 1820, but it’s not public domain. The author was a man named Caleb Van der Haas. His family has kept up a copyright on it—adding forewords, extra chapters, info on the area with every new edition. My copy actually belonged to my mom and it was her mom’s, printed about 1920. But you’ll notice, Agent Mahoney, that in this rendition of the Andre hanging, the caption says ‘Andre’s Lizzie weeps as her beloved Major Andre swings to the hanged man’s dance.’”

  He studied the picture, then looked up at her. She thought he’d continue with the subject they’d been discussing.

  “Aidan,” he said instead. “Please just call me Aidan.”

  She nodded. For a moment their eyes met, but she glanced away quickly. She wasn’t sure she liked him being so courteous and engaging. She could feel herself blushing, afraid that he could sense the effect he had on her.

  Mo took a step back, leaving the book with him, and nearly tripped over Rollo. The dog seemed to need to be close to both of them.

  “Where do you think this Lizzie—if that was her name—might be buried?” he asked.

  His attention was all on the book. He hadn’t noticed her reaction or her embarrassment, and didn’t, apparently, feel any of that sweet and blazing chemistry himself.

  For a minute she went blank.

  Then she saw that he was staring at her again, waiting for an answer.

  Her tongue didn’t want to work.

  She pretended to weigh the question. “Well, not in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,” she said. “It wasn’t built until 1849. And we’re assuming a lot. She might have died and been buried elsewhere. But if she really did exist, and her name was Lizzie and she did die here, she might be buried at the Old Dutch Church or the old graveyard that belonged to St. Andrew’s.”

  “Where we found the woman’s body leaning against the pillar of the vault—and Richard’s body inside,” he said.