Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited

by Heather Graham

  He resumed his inspection of the wall, confident that Kat could handle whatever was happening inside.

  The yard was large, at least an acre, and the wall encompassed the whole area. He finished walking around it once. He’d noticed nothing unusual and was frustrated, thinking he must have missed something.

  He started again.

  And then he found it.

  He was about five feet from the corner, to the side of the main entry and the walkway to the front door. A car parked on the side street, he noted, would not be seen from the front, and the street would be dark at night. There were also a number of large oaks along the pathway, and they would have provided shelter and shadows.

  What he’d found told him he was right.

  There was a bit of musty old gauze wrapping on the outside of the wall, caught on a snag. It resembled the mummy wrappings of many an old horror flick.

  It was the same as the one he’d discovered in the corridor at the hotel.

  And near it, something lay shattered by the wall. The statue of Horus.

  Looked like the mummy had done it.

  * * *

  Kat wanted to be alone with the body.

  But they were still in Chicago, they were guests here, and she was fortunate that Dr. Randall was inviting her to perform the autopsy with him.

  She was at the morgue in a white jacket, her hair pinned into a cap, mask covering her nose and mouth. Austin Miller’s body temperature and lack of rigor led her to the conclusion that he’d died two days earlier, sometime between 8:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.—just hours before Brady Laurie had met his end. The stomach contents of the deceased might tell them more if they considered the time of his last meal, along with his known eating habits.

  She had expected more resistance from those working with her; after all, Austin Miller had been elderly and he’d been on heart medications. But it seemed that buzz about the “curse” was circulating and everyone, especially Dr. Cranston Randall, seemed ready to help her. It wasn’t that anyone believed in the curse, but it was titillating to think about.

  To her relief, she hadn’t seen McFarland since she’d come back. Dr. Randall was attending with her, and assistants came and went. Other corpses were due for autopsy as well, despite the late hour.

  So far Austin Miller had been disrobed, bathed and photographed. The call had gone to all the proper authorities, allowing her and Will to take over the investigation. No one seemed disturbed by that—but then no one was convinced that any crimes had been committed.

  “To see for oneself,” Dr. Randall murmured.

  “Autopsy? The word’s from the Greek autopsia and means ‘the act of seeing with one’s own eyes,’” she said. “Is that what you’re referring to?” She was never sure if it was because she was a woman, or because she was small and blonde and fair that people always seemed to doubt her credentials.

  “I wasn’t testing you,” Randall said. “I was just wondering what we might see for ourselves, what truth lies below the surface.”

  They’d just finished the external examination of the body. She paused before going any further. “There’s a bruise rising on his right arm.”

  “So there is,” Randall agreed. He picked up the camera again, taking several shots of the area. “Almost like a defensive wound, as if he lifted that arm to ward someone off.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “But there are no other external marks on the body. Poor fellow, his feet weren’t in great shape, but he wasn’t overweight.”

  Kat had his medical records on her chart so she knew he hadn’t suffered from diabetes. Other than his heart medications, not surprising for a man his age, he’d been in excellent health.

  “He was fit—until he was dead,” Dr. Randall said drily.

  “Shall we open him up now?” Kat asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  She took her own scalpel and began the classic Y incision, beginning at the upper left chest and bringing the angle down to the tip of the sternum, then repeating the action from the right, intersecting at the xiphoid process. Her incision extended downward to the symphysis pubis, just above the genital region, curving around the navel. She was always careful; a cut that went too deep could compromise the organs. Just as carefully, she lifted the flaps of skin and subcutaneous fat.

  “Beautiful incisions,” Randall said.

  Soon, the musculoskeletal structure was visible.

  “No past fractures apparent in any of the ribs,” she noted.

  She went on to make notations regarding the organs. Randall came forward with the rib cutters and freed the sternum and ribs and removed them.

  It was usual procedure for the heart to be the first organ examined, which answered their questions immediately. Kat inspected and cut the pericardium. The damage there was acute.

  “Heart failure,” Randall said.

  She looked across at him and nodded.

  The removal of the heart showed further sudden and massive damage, but not the kind of fluid accumulation that would indicate he’d been shoved in the chest or struck with a blunt object. Kat hadn’t expected anything else, nor did she expect to find injury—other than the wear and tear of age—to any of the other organs. The stomach interested her the most. She and Randall studied the contents together. “Looks like fish and greens, probably consumed about five hours prior to death,” he said.

  “According to his good friend Dirk Manning, he was punctual with his evening meal. He ate at precisely seven every evening, so that puts his death right around midnight,” Kat told him.

  “I agree with you, Dr. Sokolov.” Randall turned to her. “We found what you were expecting. I can finish up for you if you wish, and I promise I’ll be thorough and take every possible sample for analysis.” He smiled. “You look as if you’re going to drop.”

  “That bad?”

  “Ah, my dear, youth is beautiful—you could never look bad. But you do look exhausted.”

  She was exhausted. And she liked Randall’s comfort with his profession, his unassuming competence, his ease with those around him.

  “I’ll take you up on that offer,” she said, adding, “My colleagues may want to see him tomorrow.”

  “No problem.”

  Kat left him, shedding her scrubs and washing up. She’d accompanied the body, and Will Chan had stayed at the house. Some of her own Krewe might have arrived by now, but when she went to Randall’s office to get her purse, she hesitated only a minute before dialing Will Chan’s number.

  “Hey. You done already? I thought an autopsy took longer,” he said.

  “Randall is finishing up. I pretty much found what I was looking for. There were no evident poisons in the stomach, but it’ll take a while to get the labs back. I believe he was frightened to death.”

  “Someone was definitely here,” Will told her.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll show you. You ready for a ride?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he drove by the morgue. “You look like hell,” he said as she slid into the front seat.

  Did people have to keep telling her this?

  “That’s not a pickup line of yours, is it? If so, it’s not a good one.”

  He laughed. “Sorry. Exhausted, is that better?”

  “I am tired. But what did you find?”

  He motioned to the glove compartment. She opened it and drew out a plastic bag, then looked at him with a gasp. “It’s more of the…mummy stuff!”

  “Yep.”

  “Where did you—”

  “On the outside of the stone wall. I believe someone dressed up as a mummy and went after Austin Miller. It had to be someone who knew his habits—where to go and what time. And that he didn’t put on the alarm until he went to bed.”

  “It should actually be easy to figure out who this person is. Someone who dives, knows all about Egyptology, knew Austin Miller and has a boat, or an accomplice with a boat.�
�� She paused. “Of course, we’re still going on our assumptions.”

  He turned the corner to reach their hotel before speaking again. “Educated assumptions. Or theories or guesses, whatever. We need to spend more time in the house. I think we may find clues among Austin Miller’s papers. Thankfully he wasn’t as up-to-date on technology as his good friend Dirk Manning. He didn’t even have a computer that I could see. He did have dozens of ledgers, and pages and pages of notes. Also, one of those bookcases was filled with journals written by his father and grandfather.”

  Something touched Kat’s shoulder. Something furry. She let out a startled scream.

  “Oh! Sorry,” Will said.

  “What the—” As she spoke, the furry thing leaped into her lap. It was Bastet, Austin Miller’s cat.

  She stared at Will.

  He shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? The place is locked up tight and I’ve had them cordon off the whole house, all around the wall, because I don’t want visitors—like whoever did the old fellow in.”

  The cat purred and sat calmly on her lap.

  “What are we going to do with a cat?” she asked.

  “Hey, I brought the litter box.”

  “She’s your responsibility. I’m a dog person. I mean, if I had a pet, it would be a dog,” Kat told him.

  “That’s an Egyptian Mau—an expensive cat, I’ll have you know.”

  The animal was still happily purring.

  “I keep feeling she wants to tell us something,” Will said. He gazed straight ahead. “Did you feel that…Austin Miller might be of any help?”

  “Not tonight.” She hesitated, stroking the cat’s sleek head. “I’ve rarely had anyone speak in the middle of an autopsy. Maybe the soul gets stronger—and stays away from that agony.”

  “I want to get back in that house,” he said. “And I want to go to a meeting of the Egyptian Sand Diggers.”

  “Did Austin Miller remain there?” she asked. “In his house?”

  “I don’t know. There were too many people. Riley is a really good guy. He kept everyone away from the death scene—except, of course, the pathology team that was with you when the body was removed. But there were officers inspecting the alarm system and generally milling around. We can find out tomorrow.”

  “But you want to dive in the morning,” she said.

  “Yes. I think it’s important we be there for the next few days.” He suddenly pulled the car to the curb. They were close to the hotel, and she had no idea why he’d stopped.

  Bastet curled up on her lap, still purring.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “Every time we go down to the ship, you stare at the grand salon. Why?”

  “The ship’s impressive.”

  He smiled. “You don’t lie well, you know.”

  “What do you mean? The ship isn’t impressive?”

  His smile deepened and he leaned back in the seat. “There’s a reason.”

  “It may be nothing.”

  He leaned toward her, touching her hand where it lay on the cat’s soft fur. “In our world, nothing is rarely nothing. Please, tell me.”

  “It just seems kind of…well, ridiculous. And maybe it shouldn’t.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I feel like I’ve always seen the dead—which of course doesn’t mean that I see every dead person. Or that I can pull out a cell phone and dial a ghost. I’m accustomed to seeking them out or having them come to me when we can help them, but I’ve never had precognitive dreams or visions of the past.”

  “But now you did?”

  “At first, none of it connected. At first all I could think of was how horrified I felt. In L.A. we nearly lost a young woman because of a movie made in the forties—about a murderous high priest named Amun Mopat. You’re aware of all this, right? Well, what I didn’t know was that the author of the screenplay had used a real entity. So, all I could think was, Oh, Lord, you have to be kidding me, not the mummy of that creep! But the night before Logan talked to me, I dreamed I was on a ship and people in Victorian dress were dancing and music was playing, and then…a storm came up.”

  “A storm destroyed the Jerry McGuen,” Will said.

  “But in my dream, a couple moved past me, and they were talking about the curse. And when we went down to the wreck, I wasn’t dreaming, and it wasn’t real, but in my mind’s eye, I could almost see the ship as I’d seen it in my dream.”

  “What you see in your subconscious can be important. I know that you’re thinking, Ugh, mummy. Extra ugh, mummy of Amun Mopat. But maybe we should be looking more at the ship. I don’t believe the ship went down because it was cursed or because it carried an Egyptian mummy. I’m not saying that. But maybe there was more to the ship herself. Do you remember anything else about the dream?”

  “Yes, actually,” she said, petting the cat absently. “I dreamed that something massive seemed to be coming out of the night and out of the storm. That it was coming toward the ship. Amun Mopat’s ‘curse,’ maybe, except I don’t believe in curses, either. I’m a big proponent of the free will concept. But I do believe we can fulfill expectations and, for some people, a curse might be an expectation.”

  “Also known as self-fulfilling prophecies,” he murmured. “I’m with you on that. Have you dreamed about this?”

  She laughed. “No, although I did have another dream. A typical The Mummy dream. I was walking or floating somewhere and suddenly an army of mummies was coming at me. I became pathologist Katya Sokolov in the dream, telling myself I was in no danger because a mummy was brittle and would break when I punched it. But Amun Mopat was behind the mummies, and the mummies didn’t break. And then I woke up.”

  He was silent for a minute.

  “I told you—silly dream,” she said.

  “It’s not silly. I think our dreams may be part of how we communicate with ghosts—or souls that still have to depart the earth or this plane or whatever. They talk to us and show us things while we’re in a state of unconsciousness, or a different consciousness if you prefer. If you dream again, write it all down as soon as you wake up.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “I know that in Texas, one of my team members, Kelsey, kept having strange dreams and visions of events that had gone on years before—and they did lead her to the truth. It’s just that dreams like this aren’t…well, conducive to good sleep!”

  He laughed and reached over, ruffling her hair. It began as a friendly gesture, but his hand lingered and his eyes were on hers for a moment. She suddenly remembered how he’d looked in his pajama bottoms and was shocked by the intense urge for closeness that seemed to overwhelm her. She’d recognized him as an intriguing and handsome man the first time she’d set eyes on him; she had, almost without being aware of it, labeled him sexy and sensual when they’d run around the hotel in their nightwear. But she was surrounded by striking men who were made even more so by their ethics, determination and strength. She wasn’t sure why Will Chan suddenly seemed more seductive to her than any other man.

  Maybe he returned that thought. He quickly withdrew his hand, setting it on the steering wheel. “I’m not leaving, you know, until this is over.”

  “I didn’t think you were going to drop me off and head for the airport.”

  “No, I mean when more agents show up. I gather Logan’s already here. But I’ve checked in with Jackson Crow, and I’m staying on this. I guess because I was here when it started and I feel I have to see it through.”

  “I understand that feeling.”

  “I’m just saying that…well, we’re in this together. Don’t keep things from me.”

  “I’ll say ditto to you.”

  “Look, I know you weren’t fond of working with me. I can tell that you think I can be rude and blunt.”

  “I think you can be a total jerk.”

  Grinning, he turned to her. “Okay, I promise I’ll try not to be.”

  “So what annoys you about me?” she asked.

  He was t
houghtful for a minute. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  He put the car back in gear, and they drove the last few blocks to the hotel.

  7

  It was late when they finally returned to the hotel. Will was tired, too—and he hadn’t performed any autopsies.

  When they arrived, the desk clerk told them that five more of their “company” had checked in—Logan Raintree, Kelsey O’Brien, Tyler Montague, Jane Everett and Sean Cameron. He was also quick to assure Will that the cameras in the elevators were now functioning, although, he said apologetically, it would be some time before the hotel had cameras in the hallways. Will thanked him as he and Kat walked to the elevators.

  “I wonder if I should wake my Krewe,” Kat said, “and find out what, if anything, they’ve found out or have planned.”

  “Let’s get Bastet settled first, huh?” Will suggested. Kat was holding the Mau; Will was lugging a litter box, a bag of litter and the cat food he’d bought. Luckily the hotel was pet-friendly.

  “Good idea. And it is late. I’m sure everyone will be up early in the morning,” Kat said.

  Upstairs, while she continued to hold Bastet, he maneuvered his key card while balancing his purchases. But he’d barely opened the door when he heard her name being called.

  Logan Raintree stood in the hallway across from them.

  “Hi, Logan! Just a second,” Kat said.

  “You two went out and bought an Egyptian cat?” Logan asked. “Aren’t you getting carried away with the subject matter?”

  “She’s…she’s an orphan,” Kat said. “Want company in the suite?”

  “Love it. Come on over and bring me up to speed,” Logan told them. “I can show you the printouts of the research we’ve done.”

  “Great!” Will strode into the room, aware that Kat was following him, still carrying a compliant Bastet. He decided the bathroom was the best place to set up a litter box. He’d never had a cat before, but it seemed logical.

  “Hey!” Kat called to him.

  “Yeah?” With the litter bag half-open, he looked out at her.

  “Did you think to buy some dishes?”

  “Dishes,” he said blankly.

  “Pet bowls. For the food. And water. I know a cat can go a while without food, but water’s a necessity.”