Born on the 4th of July

by Heather Graham Pozzessere

  But he was damned well going to test the tombs.

  “Adam, you want to take the right and I’ll take the left?” Jackson asked. “Corby, help Adam?”

  “You bet. I know there are tunnels under here!” Corby said.

  Dearborn stood, hands behind his back, watching as they started out tapping at the sealed in slots where members of the Rosser family lay.

  Jackson paused. “You don’t have to stay here, you know.”

  “I’m sorry; I’m responsible to the Rosser family,” Dearborn said.

  Jackson shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Adam’s phone rang and he answered it. He listened and gave a few brief replies.

  Then he ended the call and looked from Jackson to Charlie Dearborn. “Sir, we have a search warrant for the premises, asking for the video footage from the entrances and exits, as well. Jackson, Jon has arranged for radar equipment to test the ground. If the women did disappear into tunnels, we’ll find them.”

  “Thank God!”

  The ghost of Cameron Adair had been so silent Jackson had almost forgotten he was there. Josh set a spectral hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find them!” he promised.

  Jackson refrained from reacting.

  Dearborn let out a sound of exasperation. “All right; I’ll go and see about the footage you want.”

  He headed out of the tomb.

  Jackson watched him go.

  “What’s the matter?” Adam asked.

  “Adam, follow him, please,” Jackson said.

  “I don’t think he’ll get the video for me until I hand him a warrant,” Adam said.

  Jackson shook his head. “I don’t like him.”

  “I don’t like him either,” Adam said. “He’s hindering an investigation.”

  “Because he’s guilty in this, I believe, Adam. Please, go after him. The women are still here, somewhere, I’m certain. But he can’t get away with them.”

  “Ah. Corby, Josh,” Adam said.

  Corby looked uncertain.

  “Go with Adam and Josh,” Jackson told his son.

  “Okay, but—”

  “He doesn’t want my dad alone,” Josh said. “Of course, he’s not alone, but we all learn that one man can be taken by surprise. And you’re one of the smartest kids I’ve ever seen, so . . .”

  “You’re armed, right?” Jackson said to Adam.

  “Yes. I didn’t think I needed to be on a visit to the cemetery, but . . .”

  “Go. Jon Dickson should be here soon with other agents. I still think there’s an entrance from in here.”

  “Has to be!” Cameron Adair’s ghost said. “I know the crow-like figure disappeared with my daughter right around here. There has to be an entrance to the tunnels.”

  “Dad—” Corby said.

  “Your dad will be all right,” Cameron assured him. “I’m going to be the eyes behind his back, and no offense to Mr. Harrison, but Jackson is a younger man.”

  “Right. And a trained law enforcement officer while I’m . . . an eccentric rich guy who had the right friends to see to it the Krewe got put together,” Adam said. “Kids, let’s mush, okay?”

  They left.

  Jackson tapped on the seals and markers on the walls of the mausoleum. He could hear nothing hollow, nothing that would suggest anything beyond what he could see.

  “I’m an idiot!” he suddenly spat out.

  “What?” Cameron asked him.

  “The floor—it has to be through the floor somehow!”

  He strode to the pew, wrenching it aside, and fell to the ground, tapping around the place where it had stood.

  He looked at Cameron Adair.

  “Corby is right; the tunnels are down here. Listen . . .”

  He tapped again. There was a hollow sound.

  And yet, it appeared to be that the poured cement of the structure was solid.

  He stood and looked at the altar.

  “Has to be!” he said.

  And he strode to it.

  At first, it was immovable. It was marble, a beautiful piece. But heavy. And still . . .

  He couldn’t push it; there had to be a lever, something . . .

  Cameron stood behind him; Jackson knew the ghost had no lungs and it still seemed he was breathing down his neck.

  “Hey, I’ll find it!” he said.

  And he fell to the floor, testing the ground where the altar sat, pushing on the earth.

  Nothing.

  He knelt and studied the altar itself—certain there had to be a way to move it—and he would find an entrance to the tunnels beneath.

  Chapter 4

  Jennie had been moving ahead of Angela, showing her the way. She stopped suddenly, listening.

  “We’ll never get there!” she said.

  “What?”

  “I mean, in time! Someone is coming. From the office—it’s a bit of a walk, but someone is coming from that direction. I know because there are turns in the tunnels . . . the Rosser family wanted to help; they built a tunnel. But there’s another tunnel that comes from the office.”

  “The back of the office,” Angela murmured. “That’s it—they dragged me through the office; I know that. I remember . . .”

  She remembered . . . something. Something she’d done when she’d been held by the man who had blocked her from exiting the office.

  “Angela!”

  Her new ghost friend was looking at her with anguish. “We’re not going to make it! You—you are cumbersome and moving too slow and still, some of the path is narrow and to rush—”

  She broke off.

  She didn’t want Angela risking her baby—anymore than moving laboriously through a dark tunnel might be doing already.

  “All right—”

  “She’s coming from the office and she’ll take a turn into this main tunnel, but not before we’re past the turn. She’s coming fast!”

  Angela’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. The little pinpricks of light allowed for her to make out shapes.

  The tunnels had been built for the living; now, they housed the dead. The slabs—like the one she had lain on—had not been enclosed with any kind of sealant.

  Corpses had lain on them for maybe a hundred-and-fifty years.

  Bones, for the most part, were covered with decaying shrouds.

  She closed he eyes for a split second. Everything inside her cried out.

  But something stronger cried out as well. Not just her instinct for survival, but the instinct to protect her unborn child at all costs.

  “Help me the best you can!” she said.

  She quickly slid onto one of the closest slabs, choosing one with the shroud that remained in the best shape.

  “Forgive me!” she whispered, pushing bones with bits of mummified skin to the side and crawling beneath the shroud.

  “That’s Papa Jim; he wouldn’t mind in the least,” Jennie assured her.

  She was barely in the slab—worried her extended belly would be a give-away—when she heard footsteps.

  A light step, she thought. A woman, not a man.

  Hatfield! Merissa Hatfield was the witch who had doused her!

  She really hoped Papa Jim didn’t mind. She felt one of the disarticulated bones at her side; a femur. She curled her fingers around it.

  Forgive me! She said, in silence this time.

  And she waited. The footsteps were coming closer.

  And closer.

  *

  “It’s locked,” Corby said, frowning and staring at the door to the office. “His car is out there—but the door is locked.”

  Adam stood next to him. He pounded on the door.

  Charlie Dearborn’s car was, indeed, parked right in front close to the door. The man had to have reached the office.

  There was no answer to Adam’s banging.

  “He’s got to be in there!” Josh Harrison’s ghost murmured. “Maybe I could will myself through the wall, but . . . I can’t open doors. I couldn’t l
et you in. I could tell you—"

  Corby banged on the door himself.

  “Where could he have gone? Is he trying to ignore us now?” Corby demanded.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Adam murmured. “I have the legal backing; he’d be a fool to try and suppress the video—or try to alter it in any way.”

  “Dad knew he was up to something,” Corby said. He banged on the door himself.

  “Up to something?” Josh murmured. “He was a jerk. And he was stunned Corby knew what he knew about the place. Guess he’s not much with the Internet!”

  “We don’t know,” Adam murmured.

  Adam was a wonderful man; kind, giving, and caring. He had become a grandfather to Corby, and it was wonderful. He’d never had a grandfather before.

  But Jackson was smart as a whip, and when it didn’t come to “education,” his dad had instincts like few other people.

  And yet . . .

  Maybe it was obvious. Charlie Dearborn was in charge of the grounds at the cemetery. He had to have known about the tunnels. He’d gone back to the office—to help them.

  But he had locked the door. And he wasn’t here.

  And neither was the lady who had been there before.

  Or if they were here, they weren’t answering!

  “Adam, something is wrong,” Corby said. “It’s obvious. He’s not opening the door—and that lady isn’t there, either. And it’s clearly still office hours!”

  “You’re right and your father was right,” Adam said. “He’s up to something. Stupid—because he knew we’d be here for the video surveillance and that we know who he is.”

  “Maybe,” Corby murmured.

  Adam looked at him. “Maybe. False name?”

  Corby shrugged.

  Adam pulled out his phone. He was calling Jon Dickson, Corby thought, because Jon was due to be out there soon.

  “How close are you?” Adam asked.

  Corby didn’t hear Jon’s answer, but it satisfied Adam. He thanked Jon and ended the call and looked at Corby.

  “I wish I had shoulders like a linebacker,” he said. “I don’t. When Jon gets here—he said he was five to ten minutes away, and I don’t think I can get a local cop out any faster—we’ll break the door down.”

  Corby nodded, but even five minutes was a long time to him.

  “I’m going to look around,” he said.

  “Corby—”

  “Just walking around the house.”

  “These people are dangerous—”

  “I’m not a woman and I’m not pregnant,” Corby reminded him.

  “I’ll follow him,” Corby heard Josh’s ghost mutter.

  Of course. Josh was safe and wise and probably had been when he’d been ten. He’d died when he’d been a teenager, and now he was a great friend, an older brother, to Corby.

  He was grateful to have living friends now, too.

  But even as a ghost, Josh was a great friend.

  The house had been a rectory—a home for the priests. It was still white-washed, small, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and as pleasant as the rest of the cemetery.

  Ascetic.

  Corby knew Adam would be worried, but he was also anxious to walk around to the back, though it would look like the back to any house.

  But that meant a back door, one that would probably be locked, too. Still he had to try.

  The back of the office or old rectory was a small grass lane, surrounded by more flowering shrubs that edged the stone roadway or car path around the cemetery.

  Once, it would have accommodated carriages and horses, Corby thought, and he could imagine them, just as he could imagine the old chapel and rectory when they had first been built and the graveyard when the first dead had been buried.

  He had looked it all up. He had seen maps of the place through the years.

  He hurried up the stone path to the backdoor and tried the old handle. To his amazement, it gave way for him.

  Someone had thought only to lock the front door.

  “It’s open!” Corby said.

  They had forgotten the back.

  “Don’t go in! Get my dad!” Josh said.

  “Adam!” Corby shouted, starting to run back around. But Adam was already coming his way and he nearly knocked him over in his haste to reach him.

  “What? What? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine; I’m fine. Adam! The back door is open!”

  Adam stepped around Corby, glancing at Josh who nodded. Then he drew his gun from a holster beneath his jacket and headed up the path.

  “Dad!” Josh said nervously.

  Adam wasn’t, nor had he ever been, a field agent.

  Corby ran after him.

  Adam turned the door handle and stood for a minute. “Dearborn! Are you in there? We’re coming in!”

  There was no answer. He stepped in. The back had been—and still was—a small kitchen. A wall separated it from the main office area, sharing a small hearth with it.

  There was no one in the kitchen.

  Corby streaked past Adam to head out to the office area. The desk was there; the room was just as it had been, except . . .

  It was empty.

  There was a door to the side. Corby ran to it.

  “Corby!” Adam chastised, coming quickly to his side, and then pushing Corby behind him.

  Adam did know how to hold a gun, and Corby had heard his father tell his mother Adam was, in truth, a damned fine shot.

  Adam pushed the door open.

  The room had been, Corby knew, a bedroom for the resident priest. Now, it was full of boxes, some containing, he noted, tissues, other cleaning supplies, and still others, coffee and tea.

  There was a small closet in the room and Adam walked to it, threw open the door, and looked in.

  No one.

  “He came here; we know that he came here. The car is right outside,” Josh noted.

  “Well, he’s not here now. As soon as Jon gets here, we’ll head back to the mausoleum. Jon will have equipment that will help us. He’ll find the tunnels—and he’ll seek out any heat, if there is anyone down in those tunnels.”

  Adam started back out, looking grim and angry. Josh followed his father and Corby followed Josh.

  But he hesitated when they came to the back. Looking at the floor, he saw something.

  He stooped down and as he did so, he noted something that he hadn’t seen before.

  There was another door; it didn’t have a knob. It was barely visible, painted the same opaque color as the walls, decorated with some of the same brick that ran around an artistic ledge that otherwise held kitchenware.

  “Adam!” he shouted.

  Adam joined him again, Josh looking over his shoulder.

  “A door,” Corby said.

  “Door—oh!”

  Adam, his gun at the ready, opened the door.

  Darkness greeted them.

  The door led down to a basement.

  And to the tunnels beyond?

  Corby closed his eyes, remembering he maps. And the stories about the kindly priest who had believed all men should be free and who had used his home as a stop for the Underground Railroad—and way across the cemetery and graveyard all way to the farmhouse far beyond.

  “Yes!” he cried. “Adam, I’m an idiot! We must get down there!”

  “It’s a basement,” Josh said, puzzled.

  “A basement that leads to tunnels!” Corby said.

  “You’re sure?” Adam asked.

  “Absolutely,” Corby said. He sighed; Josh and Adam were staring at him. “Everyone said to think like my mother. I did. I looked all this up while you were making phone calls, Adam. The priest here at the time was really . . . well, a Christian! He wanted to help. He was the one who got the Rosser family to be part of the tunnel escape, too. There is an entrance from that tomb, but I know we’ll find an entrance down in this basement!”

  “All right; let’s go,” Josh said.

  “We n
eed light,” Adam murmured. He took out his phone for light and found the steps that led downward.

  “Flashlights, you could make torches, something,” Josh murmured.

  “I have a phone, too—” Corby said.

  But as he spoke, the darkness was suddenly flooded with light.

  Adam looked at them both dryly. “A switch—and electricity,” he said.

  “But the tunnels—” Josh murmured.

  “We have decent flashlights in the phones these days; we’ll be fine,” Adam assured him.

  “Well, I know I’ll be fine!” Josh said. “I’m already dead.”

  “Josh!” Adam said.

  “Sorry, sorry—I just don’t want you this way, too!” Josh said.

  “We’ll be fine,” Corby said with determination. “Let’s go—”

  “A car!” Josh interrupted. “There’s a car out front,” he said.

  Adam came back up the few stairs he’d travelled down and headed out of the house and around to the front.

  Corby ran after him.

  It was a truck with machinery in the back. And the man who emerged from the driver’s side of the cab was Jon Dickson.

  “Now, there we have a pair of shoulders if we need them,” Adam said. “Jon!”

  “I have what you asked me to get—” Jon began.

  “Nope—just need you now,” Adam said. “We’re going on a walk.”

  “A long, creepy walk through a bunch of dead people,” Corby said cheerfully. “C’mon, please! Let’s go. My mom is down there somewhere, and another lady, and please!”

  He turned and started hurrying back, pulling out his phone for his flashlight, and to call his father to let Jackson know he’d found a way down.

  Luckily, Jon Dickson was a Krewe agent.

  He didn’t need explanations.

  He just followed along with Adam and Josh.

  Once in the basement, it didn’t take much to find the entrance to the tunnels. A large wooden bookcase covered the entrance, but Jon’s shoulders came in handy.

  He moved it easily.

  They started into the tunnels.

  Corby remembered to call Jackson . . .

  Jackson didn’t answer. He realized the call wasn’t going through.

  Darn! No, they were in a tunnel now!

  He should go back, but . . .

  No. They’d meet up with Jackson. Maybe he was already in the tunnels, too, and maybe that was why the call didn’t go through.