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Phantom Evil
Heather Graham


A secret government unit is formed under Adam Harrison, famed paranormal investigator. The six members he's gathered have a psychic talent of their own.Jackson Crow heads the group. Haunted by his experience with an ancestral ghost, and the murders of two teammates, Jackson can't tell if he's been demoted or given an extraordinary opportunity. He's aware that the living commit the most heinous crimes, while spiritualist charlatans fool the unwary. To balance Jackson's skepticism, Adam's paired him with Angela Hawkins, a woman who learned the painful lesson of loss at an early age.The case: In a historic New Orleans mansion, a senator's wife falls to her death. Most think she jumped, distraught over the loss of her son. Some say she was pushed. Others believe she was beckoned by the spirits of the house—once the site of a serial killer's work.Whether supernatural or human, crimes of passion and greed will cast them into danger of losing their lives…and their souls.










Also by HEATHER GRAHAM

NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES

THE KEEPERS

GHOST MOON

GHOST NIGHT

GHOST SHADOW

THE KILLING EDGE

NIGHT OF THE WOLVES

HOME IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

UNHALLOWED GROUND

DUST TO DUST

NIGHTWALKER

DEADLY GIFT

DEADLY HARVEST

DEADLY NIGHT

THE DEATH DEALER

THE LAST NOEL

THE SÉANCE

BLOOD RED

THE DEAD ROOM

KISS OF DARKNESS

THE VISION

THE ISLAND

GHOST WALK

KILLING KELLY

THE PRESENCE

DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

PICTURE ME DEAD

HAUNTED

HURRICANE BAY

A SEASON OF MIRACLES

NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

EYES OF FIRE

SLOW BURN

NIGHT HEAT


PHANTOM EVIL

HEATHER GRAHAM






www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Dedicated to the Hotel Monteleone,

and the wonderful staff there,

and to everyone who has helped me all these years

to keep Writers for New Orleans up and about—

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Lawrence Williams, Keith Donatto, Marvin Andrade,

Grace Bocklud, Bryan Isbell (Royal AV)

Chef Randy Buck (Executive Chef), Chef Jose Munguia (Sous Chef),

Chef Ming Duong (Pastry Chef), Fred Connerly, Jorge Melara,

Renee Penny, Hilda Henderson, Thomas Joseph

At Fifi Mahoney’s—the world’s most amazing wig shop

Brian Peterson, Marcy Hesseling, Nikki McCoy, Jamie Gandy,

Bobby Munroe, Megan Lunz

And at Harrah’s

Jordan Smith, K. Brandt

And…very especially, Sheila Vincent,

who has gone above and beyond for us, so very many times!

writersforneworleans.com

theoriginalheathergraham.com

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PROLOGUE


The house on Dauphine

“Mommy.”

She had dozed, Regina Holloway thought. Sheer exhaustion from the work she engaged in at the house on Dauphine Street. Sheer exhaustion had finally allowed her to drift off to sleep. The word, the whisper, was something she had conjured in her mind; she had been so desperate to hear it spoken again.

Waking, not opening her eyes, she listened to what was real. The sound of musicians down the street, and the spattering of applause that followed their jazz numbers. The deep, sad heartbeat of the saxophone. The distant noise of the mule-driven carriages that took tourists around the historic French Quarter. Sometimes, the sound of laughter.

She breathed in the smell of pine cleaner, which they had been using on the house. Beneath it—drifting in from the open French doors that led to the courtyard of the beautiful home—was the sweet scent of the magnolia trees that grew against the rear wall. They’d finally gotten their home in the French Quarter, with its subtle and underlying hint of strange days gone by.

Some said that it was haunted by those days, by that history, certainly not always so pleasant. This house had been, after all, owned by Madden C. Newton, the killer who had terrorized many a victim in the years following the Civil War. The tour group carriages rolled by with tales of ghosts and ghastly visions seen by previous owners. But neither she nor David believed in ghosts, and the house had been a steal. Now, of course, she longed with her whole heart to believe in ghosts. If they existed, she might see her Jacob again.

But ghosts were not real.

The house was a house. Brick, wood, mortar, lath, plaster and paint. She and David had both grown up on the “other” side of town; they had dreamed of owning such a house. They had, however, never dreamed that they would live in it alone.

Yes, she knew what was real, and what wasn’t. She was learning to live without the painkillers that had gotten her through the first months after Jacob had been lost. The painkillers had given her several strange visions, but none of them ghostly.

“Mommy.”

But she heard the word, and she heard it clearly. She opened her eyes, and a scream froze in her throat.

A little boy stood there. A little boy just about Jacob’s age, seven. He was dressed in Victorian-era breeches, a little vest and frock coat, knickers and boots.

And an ax blade cut into his skull, the shaft protruding from it. A trail of blood seeped down the sides of his face.

“Mommy, it hurts. It hurts so badly. Help me, Mommy,” he said, looking at her with wide, blue, trusting eyes.

She so desperately wanted to scream. She had seen her son in dreams, but this wasn’t her son. She knew the stories about the house, knew about the murders that had taken place here just after the Civil War….

Yes, she knew, but at the worst of times, she hadn’t had such strange and horrible visions.

He wasn’t real.

Sounds emitted from her at last. Not screams. Just sounds. Sounds of terror, like the nonsense chatter of an infant. She wanted to scream.

“Mommy, please. Mommy, I need you.”

It wasn’t Jacob, and it wasn’t Jacob’s voice. And Jacob had been killed in a car accident six months ago; a drunk driver had nearly killed them all, veering over three lanes on I-10 late at night.

Jacob had died at the hospital, in her arms. He had been buried at Lafayette Cemetery, dressed in his baseball uniform, which he had loved so dearly. She wasn’t hearing her son’s voice.

Just his words.

Mommy, it hurts. It hurts so badly. Help me, Mommy.

Jacob’s words, those he had spoken when she had held him at the hospital, just seconds before the internal bleeding had taken his sweet, young life.

This was not Jacob.

No.

She closed her eyes, unable to scream. She prayed that David would come home, Senator David Holloway. Her husband, handsome, even, lucid, rational, wonderful, ever there for her in their shared grief. David could hold her, and she would find strength. He was due home. Dusk had come. Dusk, and yet, there had still been pink-and-yellow streaks remaining in the sky, casting light upon the dust motes that had danced in the room. Dust motes that became the image of a murdered child.

He would go away. He wasn’t real. He was the result of the local lore about the house, that was all.

“Mommy, please, I need you. Please, just hold my hand.”

She opened her eyes. He hadn’t gone away. He was standing there, anguished eyes on her, reproach and confusion in them. The boy was wondering how she could ignore him, stare at him with such horror in her own expression.

“Mommy?”

“You’re not…not there,” she whispered.

“Mommy, don’t leave me! I’m scared. I’m so scared. Take my hand, hold it, please, I’m so scared!”he said.

And then, the little boy reached out. She recoiled inwardly, sheets of icy fear sweeping through her with the rage of a storm. And then…

She felt the little hand. That little hand, reaching for hers. It was warm, it was vital, and it seemed so alive.

The fingers squeezed hers. She squeezed back.

“I need you, Mommy,”he said.

She didn’t scream. She managed words. “It’s all right,” she said.

Suddenly the twilight became infused with dust motes that sailed on pink-and-yellow ribbons of light, a palette fueled by the dying of the day. Soon, the harsh neon lights of night would take over on Bourbon Street, and the rock bands would reign over the plaintive drumbeat of jazz. Soon, David would come home, and she would hear some psychobabble about her imagining the ghost of a long-dead child to take the place of Jacob.

No one could take her son’s place.

But suddenly she wasn’t frightened. She needed to reassure a child.

“It’s all right,” she said again.

“It’s going to be dark. See, outside, in the courtyard, it’s going to be dark,”the little boy said.

“There are lights everywhere. In the courtyard, on the gates,” Regina said. “I’ll turn on the room light. I won’t leave you in darkness.”

She sat up, still feeling the cling of that little hand. She walked to the French doors; it was spring, and the air was so fresh and beautiful, as if newly washed, and the scent of flowers was in the air. The inhabitants of the Quarter loved to twine vines and set flowers out on their patios and balconies. For a moment, Regina inhaled deeply.

Yes, she was desperate. In so much pain. They would say that she was seeking a companion to make up for Jacob, not replace him. That sounded insane. She would never make up a little child with an ax sticking out of his head.

“I love the courtyard, Mommy,”he said, leading her.

“Yes, it’s so pretty,” she said. Hysteria started to rise in her again. She was thirty-five years old, and now she had an imaginary friend.

He looked at her again, leaning against the railing. Suddenly, it seemed that the light hit the child’s great blue eyes strangely. There was a look of cunning in those eyes.

She thought she heard something behind her. She turned and frowned with confusion.

And then shock.

She was dimly aware of being pushed.

She was fully aware of falling.

Her scream tore from her lips at last, until it was cut off abruptly.

Skull shattered, neck broken, Regina lay dead with her eyes wide open.




CHAPTER ONE


Jackson Crow sat staring at the pile of dossiers before him. This was his first meeting with the man on the other side of the desk: Adam Harrison, white haired, dignified, slim and a taste for designer suits. The office was modest, nicely appointed, but far from opulent. Plate-glass windows looked over row houses in Alexandria, Virginia, and other companies with shared space in the building had names such as Brickell and Sons, Attorneys-at-Law, Chase Real Estate and B. K. Blake, Criminal Investigation.

Adam had just handed him the folders. “Jackson, do you have any idea of why you’re here?”

He’d returned to his old Behavioral Sciences Unit in D.C. to discover that he was being given a new assignment. His leave of absence, it seemed, was somehow permanent.

His last assignment, despite the excellent work done by him and his colleagues, had ended with three of them being dead. Yet if it hadn’t been for his intuition, two other fellow agents might have died as well. Local police had not responded to the call sent out, and there was no way to blame himself.

Naturally, he did.

Maybe the empathy of his superiors had caused them to give him a new assignment, in a different place—behind a desk.

He’d heard things about Adam Harrison. He’d worked solo over the years—and for the government where the government could not act officially. Adam went in where others did not.

It wasn’t because of extreme danger. Rather, it might be considered that he went in because of extreme weirdness.

“No,” he said simply.

“First, let me assure you, you are not being let go. You will still be working for Uncle Sam,” Adam told him. “The assignments will come from me, but you’ll be heading up the team. A new team.”

A cushy job somewhere behind a desk that didn’t involve serial killers, kidnapping or bodies discovered beneath concrete.

Jackson wasn’t sure how he felt; numb, perhaps.

“Take a look at this.”

He hadn’t had a chance to look at the files yet, but Adam now handed him a month-old New Orleans newspaper bearing the headline Wife of Senator David Holloway Dies from Fall into Courtyard.

He looked up at Adam.

“Read the full article,” Adam suggested.

He read silently.

Regina Holloway, the wife of beloved state Senator David Holloway, died yesterday in a fall from a balcony at their recently purchased French Quarter mansion on Dauphine Street. Six months ago, the Holloways lost their only son, Jacob, in an accident on I-10. While there is speculation that Regina cast herself over the balcony, David Holloway has strenuously denied such a possibility; his wife was doing well and coming to terms with their loss; they were planning on building a family again.

The police and the coroner’s office have yet to issue an official cause of death. The house, one of the grand old Spanish homes in the Quarter, was once the killing ground of the infamous Madden C. Newton, the “carpetbagger” responsible for the torture slayings of at least twenty people. Less than ten years ago, a teenager who had broken into the then–empty house also perished in a fall; the coroner’s office ruled his death accidental. The alleged drug dealer had raced into the vacant house to elude police.

An uneasy feeling swept over Jackson, but he calmly set the newspaper back on the desk and looked at Adam Harrison.

“That’s a tragic story,” he said. “It sounds likely that the poor woman did commit suicide, and the senator is in denial. I’m afraid I’ve seen other instances in which a woman could not accept the loss of her child.”

“Many people are insistent that the house is haunted,” Adam said.

“And that a ghost committed this murder?” Jackson asked. He leaned forward in his chair. “I’m not at all sure I believe in ghosts, Adam. And if they did exist, wouldn’t they be things of mist and imagination? Hardly capable of tossing a woman over a balcony.”

“The senator has friends in high places, though he’s still only a state senator. He absolutely insists that his wife did not commit suicide,” Adam said.

“Does he suspect murder?” Jackson asked.

“The house was locked, no lower windows were open, and the gate to the courtyard was locked as well.”

“Someone could have crawled over the wall or gotten through the gate,” Jackson suggested.

Adam nodded. “That’s possible, of course. But no witnesses have come forward in the past month to suggest that such a thing might have happened. The death was determined to be a suicide fairly quickly. Are you familiar with the city of New Orleans, the French Quarter or Vieux Carré, specifically?”

An ironic smile curled Jackson’s features. “Land of vampires, ghosts, voodoo and fantasy. But some of the world’s best cooking, and some truly great music, too.”

“All right then. You work in behavioral science. Don’t you agree that people’s beliefs can create actions and reactions?”

“Yes, of course. Son of Sam…Berkowitz believed that howling dogs were demons commanding him to kill. Or, it was a damn good defense.”

“Always a skeptic,” Adam said. “And yet you’re not really, are you?” Now, Adam smiled.

“I am a skeptic, yes. Am I open to possibility? Yes,” Jackson said carefully.

“You know, both of your parents were amazing believers,” Adam reminded him.

Jackson hesitated.

Yes, they had been believers, both of them, always believing in a higher power, and it didn’t matter what path someone took to that power. Jeremiah Crow had been born a member of the Cheyenne Nation, although his ancestry had been so mixed God alone knew exactly what it was. He had loved the spiritualism of his People, and his mother had loved it as well. Nominally Anglican, his mother had once told him that religion wasn’t bad; it was meant to be very good. Men corrupted religion; and a man’s religious choice didn’t matter in the least if it was his path to decency and remembering his fellow man.

But his maternal grandmother had come from the Highlands of Scotland, and her tales of witches and pixies and ghosts had filled his childhood. Maybe that’s why it had been while he was in the Highlands, and not on his Native American dream quest, that he had found himself in a position to question life and death and eternity, and all that fell in between.

“You’re here because you are the perfect man for this team, Jackson,” Adam said. “You’re not going to refuse to investigate what seems like the impossible, but you’re also not going to assume a ghost is the culprit.”

“All right. So you want me to go to New Orleans and find out exactly why this woman died? You do realize there’s a good chance that, no matter what the husband wants to believe, she committed suicide.”

“Here’s the thing, Jackson, most people will believe that she committed suicide. It is the most obvious answer. But I want the truth. Senator Holloway has given his passion to many critical committees in our country. He has made things happen often when the rest of the country sits around twiddling its collective thumbs. He is a man who can weigh the economy and the environment, and come up with solutions. He wants the truth. He’s young in politics, barely forty, and if he doesn’t bury himself in grief, he will continue to serve the American people with something our politicians have lacked heavily in the past fifty years—complete integrity. People in Washington need him, and I’m asking that you lead the group.”

“If it’s my assignment, I’ll take it on,” Jackson paused. “But…do I really need a unit?”

“I believe so. I’m giving you a group to dispel or perhaps prove the existence of ghosts in the house. They all have their expertise as investigators as well.”

He was quiet, and Adam continued, “When several members of your last unit were killed, you got to the ranch house quickly enough to save Lawson and Donatello. No one knew where the Pick–Man was killing his victims. No one knew that he had arranged for your agents to be at the ranch house.”

Jackson felt his jaw lock, and despite the time he had taken for leave, he swallowed hard. They’d lost good agents. Among them Sally Jennings, forty–five, experienced, and yet vulnerable no matter how many years of service she had seen.

He’d felt that he’d seen Sally; dreamed that he’d seen her, standing there at the house.

And it had been that dream that had brought him to the ranch house, and there he had discovered that she had been the first to die.

“I shot the Pick–Man,” he said. “He’s dead.”

“That was the only chance Lawson and Donatello had, since, had he seen you before you warned him and fired to kill, he’d have put that pick through Donatello’s chest,” Adam said. “Trust me, I’ve watched you for years, Jackson. I actually knew your parents.”

That was surprising.

Adam might well have known about the event when Jackson had been riding near Stirling, Scotland, and been thrown. His friends had gone on, thinking that he had left them; that he’d won the race and the bet. He’d encountered a stranger after, one who had saved his life. And then….

It had been long ago.

And yet, hell. He’d spent his life debunking ghost stories and dreams like the one he’d had. Finding the truth behind them. Proving that the plantation in Virginia was “haunted” by a cousin of the owner who wanted him out of the estate. Proving that there were no ghosts prowling the Rocky Mountains, that a human being named Andy Sitwell was the Pick–Man, even if he supposedly believed that the ghost of an old gold–seeking mountaineer was causing him to commit murder.

Six months had passed since he had shot and killed the Pick–Man. Six months in which he had tried to mourn the loss of his coworkers. He’d been back to Scotland to visit his mother’s family, and he’d spent a month with his father’s family—helping them organize their new casinos and hotels.

But he was ready to get back into the kind of work for which he knew he had a talent. Digging. Following clues. Whether it meant studying history, people, beliefs or a trail of blood. He was good at it.

He had the mind for it, and the mind for the kind of unit Adam Harrison was putting together.

“I’m open to possibilities,” he said to Adam. “Possibilities—there are a lot of people out there manipulating spiritualism and making a lot of money off the concept of ghosts.”

Adam smiled. “That’s true, and I actually like your skepticism. As far as believing in ghosts, well, I do,” he said. “But that’s not important. I’ve got you scheduled for a flight into Louis Armstrong International Airport at nine tomorrow morning. Is that sufficient time to allow you to get your situation here in order?”

His situation here?

The apartment in Crystal City had little in it. All right, a damn decent entertainment indent because he loved music and old movies. A closet of adequate and workable clothing. Pictures of the family and friends he had lost.

He nodded. “Sure. What about these?” He lifted the file folders, the dossiers on his new unit. “When do I meet the crew?”

“They’ll arrive tomorrow and Wednesday,” Adam said. “You’ve got the dossiers; read up on them first. I figured you might want the house all to yourself for a few hours. Angela arrives first—she’ll get in tomorrow evening around six. You’ll know who they all are when they arrive if you’ve done the reading.” Adam stood, a clear sign that the interview had come to an end. “Thank you for taking this on,” he said.

“Did I actually have a choice?” he asked with a rueful grin.

Adam returned the grin. Jackson was never really going to know.

He started out of the office. Adam called him back.

“You know, you have a gift for this, Jackson. And you can really take on anything you want.”

Jackson wasn’t sure what that meant, either. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

“I know you will. And I know that we’ll all know what really happened in that house on Dauphine.”

X–Files. The thought came to Jackson’s mind as he finished with Adam Harrison.

He went down to his car, still wondering exactly what it was he was getting into.

Yeah, it was sounding like the X–Files. Or Ghost–files.

And he was going to have Ghost–file helpers. Great.

In his car, he glanced through the dossiers, scanning the main, introductory page of each. Angela Hawkins, Whitney Tremont, Jake Mallory, Jenna Duffy and Will Chan. The first woman, at least, was coming from a Virginia police force. Whitney Tremont had started out life in the French Quarter; she had a Creole background and had recently done the camera work for a paranormal cable–television show. Jake Mallory—musician, but a man who had been heavily involved in searches after the summer of storms, and been called in as well during kidnapping cases and disappearances. Then there was Jenna Duffy. A registered nurse from Ireland. Well, they’d be covered in case of any poltergeist attacks. And Will Chan—the man had worked in theater, and as a magician.

It was one hell of a strange team.

Whatever, Jackson figured; it was time he went back to work. There was one thing he’d discovered to be correct—the truth was always out there, you just had to find it.

The house seemed to hold court on the corner. It sat on Dauphine, one block in back of Bourbon and three or four blocks in from Esplanade. The location was prime—just distant enough to keep the noise down in the wee hours of the morning when the music on Bourbon Street pulsed like an earthly drum, and still close enough to the wonders of the city.

The actual shape was like a horseshoe; a massive wooden gate gave entry to the courtyard, while the main entrance on Dauphine offered a sweeping curve of stairs to the front downstairs porch and a double–door entry that was historic and fantastic in its carvings.

Jackson turned the key in the lock. As he stepped in, the alarm began to chirp and he quickly keyed in the code he had been given.

“Straight out of Gone with the Wind,” Jackson murmured aloud as he surveyed the house. “Tara meets city streets.” The front room here served as an elegant reception area, perhaps even a ballroom at one point in time. He could almost see Southern belles in their elegant gowns swirling around, led by handsome men in frock coats. A piano sat to the far end near an enormous hearth with tiled backing and a marble mantel. A second, identical fireplace was at the other end of the wall. Midroom was the grand, curving staircase.

What furniture remained was covered in dust sheets.

The hallway on the second floor led to the right and left as he headed up.

He moved on around an ell and came to a long hallway of bedrooms. Here. At the end.

This was the room.

He turned on the light. It seemed to be completely benign, a pretty room, one that had already been prepared for occupancy—or that had been occupied. A beautiful four–poster canopy bed sat on a Persian rug, covered in white. Handsome deco dressing tables sat to either side of the room, and large French doors, draped in white chintz and lace, opened out to the balcony that wrapped around the house as it faced the courtyard. Would he feel anything? He did not.

He walked over to the French doors and threw them open, stepping out on the balcony.

The courtyard below explained why a house that came with such a tragic history could still win over buyer after buyer. It was paved with brick, and in the indent, typical of New Orleans, was a fountain and sculpture. A beautiful crane spread its metal wings above the bowl and the water splashed melodically below it into a large basin.

There was a car park to the side, and elegant little wrought–iron tables, shaded by colorful umbrellas, sat across from them. He realized that the kitchen and dining room were behind the round tables, and that food could easily be passed out from the kitchen through a pass–over counter area. He wasn’t sure that had been part of the original house. He was going to have to study the blueprints again.

The only thing that marred the beauty stretched before him was the chalk mark down on the bricks where Regina Holloway had lain after she had fallen.

And died.

The blood stain had been cleaned, and yet it seemed to remain.

The courtyard was closed in by the house itself, and by a nine–foot brick wall, and the double wooden gate, large enough to let a car in. But the gate was locked, and it had a key–in pad the same as the main entrances to the house. Senator Holloway had never been a fool; the alarm had gone in the second his signature had been dry on purchase papers. All this Jackson knew because he had read the police reports on the “suicide.”

He noted, though, that it would be almost impossible to reach the wall from the end of the house. There was a good four feet between the end of the balcony and the wall; a statue of Poseidon with a trident was positioned there, so it would be a pleasant fall if one were to attempt a leap—and not make it. But, again—not impossible.

Just so damn improbable.

Maybe it was a good case for his first back in the working world; it was incredibly sad to think about the death of Regina Holloway, but he could hardly begin to imagine the loss she must have felt. He’d seen it before. Parents weren’t supposed to outlive their children. Any loss of a child was unbearable.

He heard the doorbell ringing and grimaced, thinking that the house had definitely been built at a time when the third floor housed a number of servants; the main entrance was a good distance from this wing. But he was expecting Detective Andy Devereaux, so he left the balcony and the room, pausing one minute in the doorway. Still, he felt nothing. The room was just a room. He hurried on back to the front door.

Andy Devereaux was a tall man, light mahogany in color, with powder–blue eyes that testified to his mixed heritage, if the attractive shading of his skin did not. He was bald, clean–shaven, fit and trim and tall. He wore a baseball cap to protect his pate, jeans and a tailored shirt beneath a casual, zip–up jacket. He offered Jackson a firm handshake when they met.

“Detective Andrew Devereaux, Andy, to my friends,” he said briefly.

“Jackson—first name, not last—and that’s what I am to my friends,” Jackson told him. “Thanks so much for meeting me here.”

Devereaux nodded grimly. “Hey, I’d do anything I could for the senator and his family. It’s a crying shame about Regina. A sweeter woman never drew breath.”

“Come on in, and just give me the lay of the land, will you? I got as far as Regina’s master bedroom at the end of the horseshoe,” Jackson told him.

Devereaux stepped into the house, removing the Saints cap that had shielded his eyes and sticking it into his jacket pocket after unzipping it. When the jacket front moved, Jackson could see that the man was on duty—and armed.

“You know the history of the house, right?” Andy asked him.

“Basically, the ‘ghost’ stories began back after the Civil War. And, apparently, there have been a number of suicides, or murders made to look like suicides, since then,” Jackson said.

“Yep. You’d never know it, though, standing in this parlor,” Andy said. “Rich folks keep buying the place. It’s usually a good deal. One time, it went higher than a kite—folks were trying to buy places like this, chock–full of stories. Though before Senator Holloway bought the house, it had been empty for several years. Before that, it was bought by some hotshot New York banker. The fellow wanted to make a haunted bed–and–breakfast out of it.”

“Yes. And one of his first guests wound up dead—in the courtyard—and he sold out, right?” Jackson asked. He hadn’t read all the material on the house—that would have taken several years. But he’d gotten the gist of what had gone down.

“That one was cut–and–dried, too, I’m pretty damn sure, though I was still a kid in high school when it happened. Apparently, the banker was expecting all the people who oohed and aahed over a good ghost story. What he got was a fellow who had just had his life seized by the IRS. Man’s wife left him, and his kids disowned him. Guess he figured it would be a good place to check in—and check out. There was lots of whispering when it happened,” Andy said. “But, from what I understand, the police work that was done was solid back then, too. That was about fifteen years ago, now. Place was sitting around, mostly all renovated but covered in dust, when Senator Holloway bought it. His son was killed in an accident soon after, which set them back on the renovations, for want of a better way to put it. He and his wife had just started fixing up the place until a couple of weeks ago.”

“The senator is absolutely convinced that she didn’t commit suicide,” Jackson said.

Andy grimaced, angling his head to the side. “And what do you think?” he asked. “That a ghost pushed her over the balcony?”

Jackson shook his head. “No.”

“Then?”

“We’re just here to explore every possibility. I don’t believe that ghosts push people to their deaths. I do believe that people do.”

“The alarm never went off. No one tampered with the locks. Maybe Mrs. Holloway let someone in, but how did he get out? I suppose it’s possible that someone scaled the wall, but hopping down? He’d have surely broken a few bones,” Andy said.

“Unless he had help from the outside,” Jackson said.

“I don’t say that something of the kind is impossible, but I can tell you that we searched this place up and down and inside out. There was just no evidence, no evidence whatsoever that anyone else was ever in the house.”

“I believe you,” Jackson said.

“But you’re still here.”

Jackson shrugged and grimaced. “I work for the man. I go where I’m told,” he said. And it was pretty much so the truth. The last thing he wanted to do was offend a good officer who had probably made all the right moves. Hell, he wanted the police on his side—and because they wanted to be, not because they had been told they had to be.

“Thing is,” Andy told him, “we all wish to hell there was something that we could tell him. Senator Holloway is a fellow who isn’t all talk, air out the backside, you know what I mean? Not many can keep their souls once they get into politics. He’s rare. He’s one of the few representatives the people have faith in these days.”

“But he must have enemies,” Jackson said. “What about the people around him? Anybody have arguments with his wife? Someone who wanted something from him, and she might have been the naysayer?”

“Not that I know about. David Holloway insisted it wasn’t anybody close to him,” Andy said.

“What about household staff?” Jackson asked.

“There were two maids. They were employed full time, nine to five, but they’re not working anymore. I’ll get you the files on them,” Andy told him. “And those closest to the family. That would include the chauffeur, a fellow named Grable Haines, and…” He was thoughtful for a minute, scratching his chin. “Well, most importantly, the senator’s aide, Martin DuPre. He can help you with other things you might want to know. He’s with the senator all the time. Then there’s Blake Conroy. He’s Senator Holloway’s bodyguard. I’ve got those files all set for you.” He studied Jackson for a minute. “I’ve got two shootings and an apparent drug overdose right now, but I’m here to help you anytime you want. You get top priority. I can even drop the files by.”

Andy Devereaux was telling the truth when he said that he liked the senator; Jackson wasn’t sure that investigating what had already been investigated and ruled a suicide was more important than the other cases in his workload.

“I’ll bother you as little as possible,” he promised.

“You bother me when you need to. I understand there are others coming?” Andy asked.

“Five,” Jackson said. “They’re here to inspect the house, more than anything else. A woman named Angela Hawkins is due tonight. She’s good at talking to people, so she’ll probably have a few conversations with the senator and those around him. I—”

“What’s inspecting the house going to do?” Andy asked. “I’m telling you that our forensics people are damn good.”

“And I don’t have a problem in the world believing that,” Jackson assured him. “And that means you know this house.”

“Yes, I do,” Andy told him. Hands on his hips, he looked around. “It sure is a beautiful place. No one mucked it up too much, modernizing it. Back before the 1880s, the kitchen was on the outside. They attached the place after that point, according to the plans. Added the second two stories over there, and added it all on together. It became an academy for young ladies in the 1890s, but…”

“But there was a suicide. One of the girls went out a third–story window,” Jackson said.

“You’ve done your reading,” Andy said approvingly. “Some say there was just an evil presence in the house, and it caused people to do bad things. The local rags picked it up at the time. There’s rumor the girl was pregnant, but there wasn’t an autopsy on her. The parents wanted her interred right off, and they were rich and they got their way. The records still exist, they just don’t say much,” Andy told him. “I’ve got copies of all the old stuff at the station—the house has become a bit of an obsession for me.” He paused for a minute, and then said, “I guess that history is why you ghost people are here, right?”

“We’re not ghost people,” Jackson said.

Andy shrugged. “Sure. But it’s odd, I’ll say that. It all goes back to Madden C. Newton. He was pure evil, and evil doesn’t just go away.”




CHAPTER TWO


No one answered Angela Hawkins’s knock on the door. She’d arrived at twilight. For a moment, she appreciated the fine lines of the house, and the size of it. She’d been in New Orleans plenty of times before, and she had always loved the city and the architecture.

But Jackson Crow was supposed to have been there.

She had a key, but she didn’t want to take him by surprise. He had been an ace agent who had brought down one of the country’s most heinous serial killers of recent times.

He might be quick on the draw.

Hopefully, a member of the Behavioral Science Unit of the bureau would have the sense not to shoot her, but she did know that he’d been out on leave, and she really didn’t want to die that way.

She knocked again, saw the bell and rang it, and waited, and no one came. He was in the city, she knew, because she’d received a terse text from him. At the house. She hadn’t even known how to reply. Good? Good for you, hope you’re comfortable?

About to board the plane, seemed the simplest response.

She checked her phone. She had received another text from him. At the station.

What station? She had to assume he meant the police station. Wherever, he wasn’t here. She used her key and entered the house.

She paused in the entry, the door still open, hoping that the atmosphere inside wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t. It wasn’t depressing. The room was simply beautiful, huge, and when she flicked the switch by the door, a glittering chandelier dead indent came to life, casting glorious prisms of light about the room. Amazing that something so beautiful could have remained so for almost two hundred years. People had a tendency to destroy the old to make way for the new, something that was sometimes necessary. But that progress had kept the house so pristine and so unchanged it was just short of miraculous.

She left her luggage and carry–on at the door, pausing to delve into her bag for the book she read on the plane. It was a little out–of–print bargain she had managed to acquire from a show with which she traded frequently. One nice thing about her side job was that her antiques business created a network of friends with strange and awesome things—including books. Might as well find a place to wait until Jackson chose to show himself.

Departing the entrance hall was like entering a different home; the foyer might have remained in limbo for centuries, while here the modern world had burst in hard. An entertainment room caught her eye. She didn’t have a good sense of dimension, and could only think that the TV screen was huge; it was surrounded by cabinets that offered all manner of audiovisual equipment. Here, too, there was plenty of space for visitors; there was a wet bar—just in case the kitchen, right around the corner, she believed, was too far—a refrigerator, microwave station and a half–dozen plush chairs, recliners and sofas. Entertainment had definitely been done right.

Moving into the kitchen, she was met with a pleasant surprise. The room was absolutely beautiful, remodeled and state–of–the–art with an enormous butcher–block workstation in the indent with rows of pots and pans and cooking utensils above it on wire stainless–steel hangers. The sink and counter area had a large window that was a bypass to a counter outside on the courtyard. There was a massive refrigerator–freezer combination, dishwasher, trash compactor, microwave, all manner of mixers, and all was shining and immaculate.

The senator’s wife had intended to entertain, so it seemed.

There were eight chairs around the kitchen table, and Angela drew one out and took a seat. She opened the book she had found—her true treasure trove of information on the house.

In 1888, Jack the Ripper terrorized the denizens of White–chapel; in 1896, the man known as H. H. Holmes was hanged, having confessed to the serial killings of at least twenty–seven victims before he was hanged. Before that, New Orleans had its own monster, Madden Claiborne Newton. While the mystery of the identity of Jack the Ripper makes him one of the most notorious fiends to find his way into the pages of history, Holmes far surpassed his body count—as did Madden C. Newton.

Angela paused. She looked around the kitchen and felt nothing. It was so modern. Yet, this was still the home in which the atrocities had taken place. She flipped a few pages.

Newton’s first murder (in New Orleans, at least) was suspected to be that of Nathaniel Petti, the bankrupt planter from whom he had purchased the property. Nathaniel Petti was a desperate man, selling his New Orleans “townhome” to Newton for whatever he could. He had already lost the family plantation on the river, and while Lincoln’s plan after the Civil War had been that the North should “forgive their Southern brethren,” the death of the strong and humane leader left many in the country in a mood for vengeance, and the laws during Reconstruction were often brutal on the native inhabitants of the South. Such was the case in New Orleans. Nathaniel was being taxed into the grave. He disappeared after the sale to Newton, who was newly arrived from New York City. Petti’s wife and child had died during the war years, and the official assumption—if there were such a thing at the time—was that Petti had left, unable to bear the pain of being in New Orleans. While martial law became civil law, politics created almost as much of a war as that which had been fought. While the Freedman Act became law, the “old guard” of the South rose, and organizations such as the KKK came to life. Race riots in 1866 cost more than a hundred souls their lives, and there could be little worry given to the fact that one disenfranchised man had disappeared.

This set the stage for Madden C. Newton to begin his reign of terror.

To this day, it is not known whether or not he killed Petti; what is known is that Petti disappeared, and the motto of the day for the Reconstruction populace was, “Good riddance!”

Angela twisted the book to read the old, fraying dust jacket. It had been written by a man named James Stuart Douglas, born and bred in New Orleans in 1890, when the Civil War, and the era of Reconstruction, would have been fresh in historical memory. There was definitely a bit of skew in his telling of the story.

According to Douglas, the killer, Newton, found those who had newly arrived in the city, and offered them a place to stay. He also found those who were suddenly homeless—apt to leave the city and look for an income somewhere else. The first known murder had been of the Henderson family from Slidell. They had been about to leave for the North, searching for a place where Mr. Henderson could find work. His son, Percy, had been twelve; his daughter, Annabelle, had been ten. All four of the Hendersons had perished after accepting Newton’s offer of hospitality. The children had been brutally killed with an ax in the room where they had slept; Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had died after being tied to chairs in the basement, cut to ribbons and allowed to bleed to death. Newton had found watching people bleed to death particularly stimulating. Before Newton’s execution, twenty–three known victims later, he described his crimes, and told police where to find most of the bodies.

Angela stopped reading again. No wonder the house was on all the ghost tours in the city.

Darkness had come. She reminded herself that she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

Maybe that wasn’t true—here. The house suddenly seemed to be alive with shadows. It was probably a bad idea to read the book when she was alone and night was coming on. She wasn’t really afraid of the dark, but she didn’t want to start seeing things in her mind’s eye that weren’t there.

She sat still for a minute, thinking about the past. She could recall the day of the plane crash she had survived—but which had killed her parents and everyone else on board—at any given time.

So clearly.

She was incredibly lucky to be alive.

Alive and still so aware of the strange events that had occurred when she had opened her eyes with flames and sirens all around her…

A doctor had told her once that strange things could happen when the neurons in the brain were affected, causing such things as the “light” so many people with near–death experiences saw, so, according to him, she hadn’t seen the “light” of spirits leaving their mortal forms; she had experienced neurons crashing in her head. After her sessions with the doctor, she had learned to keep quiet. Nor did she ever explain why it seemed that sometimes she had more than intuition. She’d always had a good grip on the world—in many ways there were very thin lines between the truth and insanity. People’s perception of the truth was often the difference between leading a normal and productive life—and having someone lock you up for your own welfare.

Adam Harrison seemed to be different, as had many of the officers she had worked with at the police force in Virginia. She had become known for her use of logic, careful study of a crime scene and the victim, and the possible personality of the perpetrator or perpetrators. Police officers tended to believe in intuition; good detectives always seemed to rely upon gut instinct.

Sometimes, she had almost been frightened of herself. But she had to tamp down the fear; good could come when she allowed the thoughts and “instincts” to run through her.

Take the Abernathy case. The one in which she had really made a difference. The baby had been kidnapped by kids just wanting to make money. Two teens, seventeen and sixteen. They’d easily managed to steal the baby from the babysitter. But they’d buried the little boy, and if she hadn’t come to the house, if she hadn’t added it all up—no break–in, no signs of disturbance, no prints or even smudges on the windowsill—and felt certain that the child was close, they might never have found the baby, buried in the crate right in the backyard. She would never forget the joy in the mother’s face when they had dug up that baby, and she had heard her awaken at last and cry….

She had entered the mind of the Virginia Stalker, and found the remains of Valerie Abreu, allowing the courts the evidence to put the man away.

There were battles, of course, that she couldn’t win. Life was full of them.

She had lost her parents. And she had lost Griffin.

Griffin, her fiancé, had died in her arms, with his mother softly sobbing at his side. Cancer was as cruel as any enemy she could ever face and she had been helpless against the disease. Griffin, who had seemed to understand her and love her for all that she was.

But Griffin had found peace, and Griffin had loved her. He told her that she had a special gift, and that she should always use it to the best of her ability.

Yes, she had a gift. And now she had knowledge and experience. The police academy had saved her and she’d served with the force as an officer just before the call had come from her superiors, informing her that she’d been asked to meet with a “Federal” man named Adam Harrison.

Thanks to her time with the police, she now dared to take chances she might not have before.

She stood up, determined to know, now, while she was in the house alone, why the area was driving her so crazy, making her feel so uncomfortable. Some of the houses in the French Quarter actually had basements, she remembered. Getting a better sense of the physical place would definitely be the logical move to make now.

The French Quarter was barely above sea level, but it was “high ground” for the area. The basement was only halfway below the ground, and its roof was the floor where she stood now. She still needed to spend time studying the original blueprints of the house first.

But she felt a draw she couldn’t withstand.

Angela walked toward the door and turned the handle.

The door opened, and darkness stretched before her. The basement.

Andy Devereaux appeared to be easy and low–key, something that probably served him well when interrogating suspects. His voice lulled. He was soft–spoken. Everything about him seemed easy—except that he had the sharpest gaze known to man. And like a lazy–looking, tail–twitching great cat, he could move in the blink of an eye. The uniformed officers at the station seemed to like and respect him.

Jackson stayed at the station long enough to meet some of the district personnel with whom he might come in contact when exploring all angles of the Holloway case, and then Andy drove him back to the house on Dauphine. Jackson realized that he was lucky; Devereaux seemed to like him.

Andy loved the city of New Orleans, and he loved being a cop. He wanted Jackson to understand the city, and the police force. “This department is a damn good one, and believe me, it’s had its ups and downs, and we still go through some hell now and then—God knows, things that test a man’s patience to the core. Katrina, the oil spill—we just get on our feet again and get knocked down, so you’ve got destruction, desperation and poverty, and all of them clashing together. Some folks love the city, some folks just sweep down to make a living on the misfortunes of others. We had a force down here early on, early 1800s, and then just like now, some years were good, the city was organized and reorganized—the French Quarter, Vieux Carré, that’s the original city—but the Marigny came in on it early, just like the area we call the CBD now, Central Business District. And the Americans came in to form the Garden District—or the ‘English’ area. Anyway, they get a police force going, but along came the Civil War. By 1862, the Union had taken over and you have military rule. Then, the war ends, and carpetbaggers sweep down. Lincoln is dead, and Johnson isn’t really sure he wants black men to be equal with white men, but the ball is rolling. For years, that ball bounces up and down, equality—kill the upstart Africans—equality, no not really, just don’t own the man.” He glanced sideways at Jackson. “I don’t have any chips on my shoulder. History is history,” he said.

“Amen,” Jackson told him. “Remember when we were talking earlier and you asked me if I believed that a ghost had pushed Regina Holloway over the balcony? Well, I said no, and I meant it. But I think that people can play on the emotions of others with the power of suggestion, and the history of the house is tremendously important in that respect. And the history of the New Orleans police force fits right in there, because everything written about Madden C. Newton suggests that he managed to get away with all those murders because the city was in such a knot—emotionally, socially and governmentally—when he was committing the killings.”

Andy nodded and pulled the car to a stop on the side of Dauphine in front of the house. “Best hamburgers in the world about three blocks from here on Esplanade,” he said. “A place called Port of Call. Seriously, best burgers anywhere, and best potatoes, go figure.”

“Thanks again,” Jackson said, exiting the unmarked police car.

Andy drove off.

Shadows had settled around the house. Though it was in excellent shape, it carried a poignant hint of the decaying elegance that made up so much of the city.

He walked up the steps to the porch—Angela Hawkins should have arrived by now. He unlocked the front door, calling out, “Hello,” as he did so, not wanting to startle anyone with his presence. He stepped into the grand ballroom or parlor. The great chandelier was lit, casting a haunting glow over the sheet–draped furniture.

“Hello?” he called out.

The woman was here; a big shoulder bag and a carry–on suitcase sat by the door. She traveled like a cop, he noted. Light.

“Miss Hawkins?” he said, his voice loud and strong.

Still, there was no answer. Of course, the place was huge.

He went up the stairs first, following the horseshoe, thinking she might be choosing a bedroom for the stay. But she wasn’t upstairs, so he came down to the kitchen. “Miss Hawkins?” he said again. She wasn’t there either, but she’d left a book on the table; an old one. He looked at the title. Madden C. Newton: The True Story of New Orleans’s Own Jekyll and Hyde.

He leafed through it. Interesting, and surely, almost impossible to acquire.

Where the hell was she?

The courtyard caught his eye, and he looked out, for a moment dreading the possibility that he might see a body smashed and broken on the ground. But there was no one outside—no bodies lay on the bricks.

“Miss Hawkins?”

As he spoke, he heard a whack. The sound was hard. Like an ax hitting wood, or…a pickax slamming into hard ground.

He hurried to the nearest door and threw it open, once again, strange and deadly visions coming to his mind despite his perpetual search for rationality.

She found the ghost of the ultimate evil in man. Madden C. Newton. And the ghost had taken form and shape, and was hacking up the elusive Miss Hawkins…

Whack, whack, whack.

“Miss Hawkins!”

Wooden stairs led down to a shallow basement. Someone indeed had a pickax, and looked as crazy as all hell.

Angela Hawkins was attacking the floor with a pickax and a vengeance. The dry dirt floor just beneath the staircase.




CHAPTER THREE


“What the hell are you doing?” He might have been a fool to race down the stairs to accost her—she knew how to hold an ax. The basement held an incongruous sight. Angela was about five foot eight and slender, though shapely. Despite her height, she was almost fragile in appearance. She paused for a moment, staring at him with enormous, bright blue eyes that belonged on an anime character.

Ah, great! He was being given the nut–job assignment. He should have said no. He should have just resigned, and headed off to work the casinos.

Angela remained frozen for a second longer, obviously a bit disconcerted by being discovered at her task.

“Um—hi! I’m Angela Hawkins. You must be Jackson Crow.” Maintaining a grip on the pickax with her left hand, she offered her right in a strong handshake.

“Yes, hi, nice to meet you.” The words seemed a bit ridiculous. At least she wasn’t swinging the ax at him.

He hoped he betrayed nothing in his expression. Did she know about him? That he had taken down the Pick–Man?

Was this a test?

He tried not to sound as hard and angry as he felt when he spoke.

“I’m Jackson Crow. And—sorry, excuse me, but what are you doing?”

She shrugged ruefully. Her soft–knit, cap–sleeved dress completed the perfect picture of sensuous femininity, which seemed so opposed to the strength of her handshake—and her prowess with a pickax. But then, she’d recently gone through the rigors of a Virginia police academy, so she must be in excellent physical shape. She’d been through a lot, the death of her parents, and the death of her fiancé. Maybe she had been through too much.

There didn’t seem to be a crazed light in her eyes. Which was a positive sign.

“I’m looking for a body,” she said.

“Dead—I’m assuming.”

She nodded. “Yes, or bones, I guess. I’m not sure what would happen to a body buried down here for over a hundred years.”

“And there’s a reason you think you’re going to find a body buried down here? The house has gone through a great deal of construction over the years. The bodies buried here were discovered over a hundred years ago,” he told her.

“Ah, some, but not all,” she said. “I’m looking for the body of a man named Nathaniel Petti.”

“Petti—the fellow Newton bought the house from?”

“Yes.”

“No one knows what really happened to him,” Jackson reminded her.

“Yes, that’s why I’m looking for him,” she said. With a mighty swing, she hit the ground again.

Whack!

“We’re not here to tear the place down,” he said. “What makes you think that he’s under the ground there?”

She hesitated. Just a split second. “Well, I’ve been reading, of course.”

Whack.

“You’ve been reading, and that led you to a space beneath the stairs?” Jackson asked, trying to remain courteous while he cursed Adam Harrison.

They’d sent him a maniac.

“Please, I’m honestly not sure how to explain this, but I’m almost positive that I’m doing the right thing,” she told him.

She was destroying the floor of the basement.

“You do know that we’re supposed to investigate the house—not tear it down?” he asked.

Once more, she shrugged.

“Well, I’ve gone this far…”

That was true.

Whack.

He was about to stop her. He was going to step in and tell her that he’d been charged with being the head of the team.

But the last whack did something.

She had managed to get down about three feet. And that was all it took.

He saw—a bone. A distinctive bone. A jawbone.

“Let me,” he told her, taking the pickax from her.

“Wait! Careful,” she warned.

He knew how to be careful. He used the pickax a bit away from the skull, and he used it with a strength it was simply biologically impossible for her to possess.

In a matter of minutes, he had most of the skeleton showing.

“It’s Petti,” she said. “It’s Petti, and he was the first victim.”

It was impossible to argue. It might have been someone else, but what did it matter? She had managed to discover a skeleton—almost complete, he was certain.

“I’m going to call Devereaux—the local detective in charge of the case,” he said. “We’ll let him tend to the remains. Because, after all, actually, they are his.”

Jackson eyed her as he dialed. Her discovery after being in the house a little more than an hour seemed uncanny.

It made him think about his own experience as a boy. Made him think about the men in the Cheyenne Nation, the ones who talked about the things they had seen on their dream quests. Made him…damn uneasy.

“I have a book,” she said, as if reading his mind. “A book on the murders. It was only logical to think that Newton had killed Petti, the man he bought the house from. He would have put him here, under the stairs, where it was unlikely that future digging might be done, just because of the awkwardness of the stairway.”

“The stairway is wood, it’s surely been repaired many times over the years,” Jackson said.

“But not moved, because there’s the doorway,” she pointed out.

Andy Devereaux came on the line. Jackson told him what had happened, staring at Angela Hawkins all the while. She looked back at him, never flinching.

There were no sirens. Devereaux and a team of crime scene specialists and pathologists from the coroner’s office arrived quietly. Jackson watched while Angela gave her flat and logical explanation again, and then, as they stepped away to allow the crime scene unit and then the pathologists take over, she excused herself to wash up.

He stared after her, shaking his head. The woman was a witch. She had been pleasant, serene and completely at ease, certain of herself as she had spoken to the detective. She was certainly beautiful enough with her golden hair and crystal–blue eyes, lithe figure and easy poise.

That didn’t make it any better. She was calm now, but she’d been wielding a pickax with a vengeance.

With an inward groan, he wondered what the hell it was going to be like when he met the rest of the team.

The bones had been taken by a pathology team that had been called in along with the crime scene unit, and after a great deal of discussion on exactly who should be collecting the bones. They were planning on sending the bones on to another team at the Smithsonian, a team that specialized in bones that were over a hundred years old.

Frankly, Angela didn’t need any team to tell her a simple truth; the bones were those of Nathaniel Petti, the man who had owned the house before selling out to Madden C. Newton. But the exact cause of Petti’s death might be determined, and the man with such a sad life and death might be put to rest at last.

Angela wondered if it was wrong to be starving after she had just found the remains of a human being. But she was alive herself, and being alive meant that the machine must be fueled. She couldn’t wait for the last of the police—even though she really liked Andy Devereaux—and the crime scene unit to leave.

Of course, it was a bit uncomfortable, having Jackson Crow watch her throughout the proceedings as if he was studying a strange and foreign object—or meeting an alien.

Her hunger was going to have to wait. When the other officers had left, Jackson asked Andy about the police shooting range. Andy arched a brow. “It’s getting late—”

“Can we still get in?”

“I’d like a little target practice,” Jackson said. Angela felt her cheeks color. He didn’t want target practice; he wanted to see if she was really capable with a weapon.

Andy looked at his watch. “Come on, then, let’s get the house locked up, and I’ll take you.”

Jackson stared at Angela. “Shall we get our weapons?”

Yes, she thought. She was being put on trial. Fine; she’d go to target practice.

It was quiet when they arrived; two men were down the row, earmuffs stifling the constant sound of the explosions.

Andy wasn’t practicing; he set up Jackson and Angela.

Her gun was a Glock and she knew how to use it. Somehow, she’d been blessed with twenty–twenty vision, and the ability to utilize it and her weapon properly to aim. Her stance was steady, and comfortable, and she used both hands in a grip known as the Weaver position, her weaker hand—her left—supporting her grip. She was stronger than she looked, and ready for the powerful recoil on the gun. She didn’t let Jackson’s presence disturb her, and in a matter of seconds, she’d removed the entire heart area from her target.

She turned and looked at Jackson, who hadn’t fired a shot yet. “Satisfied?”

He had the grace to grin. “I just want to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes.”

“My dossier must have told you that I can shoot,” she said.

“Some things are best viewed in the world,” he said with a shrug. He turned away from her. “Andy, this was great. Thanks.”

“Yep. I’ll get you back. It’s getting late.”

Andy brought them back to the house. Angela’s stomach had begun to ache. She couldn’t help it; she was feeling resentful and irritated. She was being judged.

At last they closed the front door on Devereaux, and Angela noted that although she had taken out her weapon as requested, she hadn’t taken her suitcases, small as they were, anywhere yet, and she should probably pick a room before going out.

“I’m just going to throw those somewhere and find a place to eat,” she said to Jackson, whose gaze remained on her.

He nodded. “I’ll go with you. I haven’t had dinner, or, anything that really resembled lunch, for that matter.”

Not an emotion in sight. Jackson Crow was an interesting and arresting man. She’d assumed that his surname, Crow, definitely meant something of a Native American background. His eyes, however, were an extremely deep shade of blue—not black at all, as she had first imagined. A strong contrast with his black hair. He seemed excellent at concealing his thoughts and emotions, but she had seen a look in those deep dark eyes a few times that seemed to judge her as being certifiably insane. Then again, of course, given the way he had found her, she supposed it might be quite logical that he’d look at her as if she was a bit askew.

If she quit on the first day, would they let her back on to the force?

She wasn’t going to quit. No matter how he looked at her.

“Did you pick a room?” she asked.

“I thought I’d take one that’s straight up the stairs and to the left. I put my bags there. Some of them need sheets and a dusting, but there are three rooms on the level just above us that have apparently been kept up…I’m assuming the senator and his wife were prepared for company, live–in help, and probably, the senator’s aide, chauffeur and bodyguard.”

“But it’s just us now?” she asked him.

“Just us. And the others will be in tomorrow.”

“Have you met any of them?”

“Nope. We’re all a surprise to one another,” he said.

She was pretty sure that she’d been quite a surprise to him.

“All right, I’ll just run these bags up. You’re in the last bedroom on the left–hand side once I’m up there?” she asked.

He nodded. “I can take your bags up for you,” he offered.

“It’s okay. I never travel with what I can’t carry. I’ll be right down.”

She felt his blue gaze on her as she grabbed her carry–on and her shoulder bag. As she reached the landing, she saw that there were three rooms to her left; the first seemed the easiest place, and so she deposited her luggage on the floor by the foot of the bed. The room was handsomely designed with a black–and–gold motif, almost à la the New Orleans Saints. Angela imagined that Regina had carefully planned it as a guest room, which, definitely, did not sound like the act of a woman contemplating suicide. In fact, from what she had seen, the grieving mother had been dedicated to making the house the perfect home for a man–of–the–people politician.

Angsela wasn’t an expert on the depression that led to suicide, so she couldn’t really be sure how people might behave before taking their own lives. A call to a few forensic psychiatrists was in order.

“Any particular cuisine in mind?” Jackson asked her as she came back down the stairs.

She gazed at him questioningly. “It is New Orleans,” she told him. “Anywhere.”

“Most places are open until at least ten. How about Irene’s?”

“Lovely.”

They locked the house and strolled two silent blocks down to Royal, passing the burst of sound that was Bourbon as they did so. Two mounted–police officers at the corner watched over the night, lest the revelers become a bit too happy. Come–on persons were in the street, hawking the cheapness of an establishment’s drinks, the wonders of the band or the exotic talents of the dancers within a certain club.

Even when Jackson was approached by a slightly long–in–the–tooth woman urging him to an upstairs establishment to see Wicked Wanda on a pole, he seemed amused.

“Sorry, I’m with a friend tonight,” he told the hawker.

“She can come, too!”

“It’s okay—I know that I’d just love Wicked Wanda,” Angela said. “But we’re heading off to dinner.”

“We serve food!” the woman told him. “We have an amazing menu. Two amazing menus, actually. Spankings are five dollars a shot, pants up or down.”

“And then the servers bring you your food,” Jackson said, grinning. “Sorry,” he lied, “we have reservations.”

They managed to elude the persistent woman, and walk quickly on down to Royal where they reached relative quiet. Royal Street was known for its antiques shops and boutiques, and was more serene than the raucous Bourbon by night.

Arriving at Irene’s, they were ushered past the first dining room to wait at the bar, where a pianist played and sang old tunes, nicely performing “At Last.” Jackson asked her if she’d like a drink, and she opted for a cabernet.

“You know, I could get the drinks,” she told him.

He grinned. “We’re on an expense account. Let me use the company’s money.”

“I wonder what the taxpayers would think about that,” she murmured.

“Actually, Adam Harrison funds the special unit. I believe he started off in a nice financial place at birth, and managed to parlay his inheritance into a tidy sum through investments and real estate. The last thing he would begrudge his people, I think, would be drinks and dinner after digging up a corpse.”

“Bones,” she corrected.

“Dead man,” he said with a grin and a shrug.

By the time he acquired the drinks, the hostess returned to lead them to a table. Angela had always liked Irene’s; the food was delicious, there were fine white cloths on the table, and the noise level was at a gentle hum.

Angela couldn’t help but note the way Jackson fascinated their server. She herself had set out to dislike the man, or, if not dislike him, set up a reserve against him. She knew that he knew a great deal about everyone on his team, while the team knew almost nothing about him—or each other. Though tall enough to stand just an inch or so above most men, he had an easy courteous manner and a slow smile that appeared to enchant everyone around him. Perhaps it was natural that he should attract attention.

“So, here we are, one day in. Body—discovered,” he said, taking a swallow of his scotch on the rocks.

“It was only logical,” she said.

He laughed. “Only logical. That man has been buried beneath the stairs since Reconstruction, and you found him in an hour.”

“I’m an extremely logical person,” she said, running her fingers up the stem of her wineglass.

“So, what’s your story?” he asked her.

“You know my story. You have the dossiers. I start the questions.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“What’s your background?” she asked.

He grinned. “Obvious, I’d say.”

“American Indian. What kind?”

“Cheyenne.”

“And what else?”

“English—well, Scottish, originally, but my mom grew up in London.”

“Cool. Are your parents alive?”

“No. My mom died from cancer eight years ago, my father had a heart attack four weeks later.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. And you?”

“My folks are gone. You know that. They died in a plane crash.”

“And since the plane crash—”

“My turn,” she interrupted. “Do you know your family—or families?”

“Yes, of course, very well. I like family. You? What is your feeling for your brother?”

“I adore him. My turn. Siblings?”

“No.”

“Ah. You’re an only child,” she said gravely.

“Yes. I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged, grinning. “I’ve met a few people who were an only child within their household, and they came out okay.”

“Ouch. Preconceived notions.”

“No, it’s just that, rich or poor, a person who has siblings has had to share upon occasion. There will always be a time when what happens in a sibling’s life is more important. That’s all.”

“Ah, but I’m Cheyenne,” he said, a quirk of amusement on his lips.

“And that means?”

“We’re all about community, and the People.”

“I see. Leaning back on your pedigree,” she said solemnly.

“Don’t forget that part of me is clansman,” he said.

“All for the good of the clan?” she asked.

He laughed. “We’re big into standing up for one another in feuds,” he said. “Actually and honestly, I do play well with others.”

Their server arrived with their food orders. She opted for another glass of wine and Jackson decided on a second scotch. He laughed and teased the pretty girl serving them, pleasantly, and not obnoxiously, Angela noted. He was still smiling when she left them at the table with their fresh drinks and plates of food.

“Do you see ghosts?” Jackson asked her.

She froze, startled by the sudden impact of the question. She had to force herself to swallow her bite of food.

“Do you?” she replied.

He took another sip of scotch, and his eyes met hers squarely. “I believe that the world is full of possibilities. Do I believe in ghosts like the ones on TV? No. I’m pretty sure that if ghosts exist they are around both by day and night, and that we don’t need to see a lot of people with their eyes wide open—deer–caught–in–the–headlights—jumping at every sound.”

“Logical,” she told him.

“Pardon?”

“Logical. If they exist, they must exist in daylight as well as in the middle of the night.”

“What about Griffin?” he asked her.

Once again, she froze. He had a knack for throwing in a tough question just when she had relaxed.

“What about him?” she asked dully. “He’s dead.”

“Do you ever ‘see’ him?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“You two were together for years,” he commented.

“Five, to be exact.”

“You didn’t foresee his death?” he asked.

She stared at him, every muscle in her body as tense as piano wire. “When they told us that the cancer had spread into every organ and riddled his bones, yes, I foresaw it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wondered if it made you—susceptible.”

“Susceptible to what?” she demanded.

“Seeing ghosts. I just wanted to make sure that you were over it, and that you were standing on even ground.”

“Am I over it? Do we ever get over the loss of loved ones? No—I have never managed to do so. My parents, and Griffin, are always alive in my heart. Do I accept the reality of it? Yes. And they are all gone. Gone. They don’t come and take my hand and direct me to dead bodies—or to lost children, for that matter.” She paused, needing to wet her lips. She didn’t sip her wine, she chugged it. Most unattractive, she was sure; she didn’t care. He could be so completely courteous. He could make her comfortable, he could make her laugh. And then, he could home right in for the kill.

“What about you?” she demanded more heatedly than she had intended. “Do your lost field agents come and speak to you in the night? Do they ask you how you didn’t happen to get there in time to save them?”

There wasn’t so much as a crack in his expression, not a change whatsoever in the steady dark blue eyes that surveyed her.

“No. They are gone. Like you, I accept that they are gone. Like you, I do remain haunted by the lives they once led.”

She flushed. He should feel badly for badgering her about the losses in her life. She was left feeling similarly—but she had phrased her words in a much meaner manner.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured uncomfortably. Damn him! She didn’t need to be apologizing to him.

“One thing is true—we can’t undo the past. We can only do our best in the present, and hope to find the answers in the future. Dessert? Coffee?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“Want to split a bread pudding? It’s out of this world here.”

She sat back, still uneasy, and totally baffled by his ability to remain so unruffled. She had been tested throughout dinner, she realized.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Another glass of wine?” he asked.

“Fine, why not?”

He ordered brandy and bread pudding, and she had another glass of wine. His conversation turned casual. He talked about his love for the city; he had worked here for nearly a year when he had first joined the bureau. “Things are always just a little bit different in these parts. Louisiana laws are still based on Napoleonic Code—French law—while the majority of the country is based on English law. It’s not major, but there are some differences. You’ll note they have parishes instead of counties.”

“I went to Tulane. I know that,” she told him. Inane. He had her dossier.

“And majored in history and philosophy,” he said.

She nodded. “And you?”

He shrugged. “I spent six years in college. I liked it. I might have stayed a college student all my life, but it doesn’t pay the bills. World religions, history and psychology.”

Angela frowned. “Psychology, of course. You were with a Behavioral Science Unit. So, tell me, because I was thinking today that someone as involved as Regina was in preparing that home to be the perfect welcoming point for her husband wouldn’t have committed suicide. And to be honest, suicide had sounded like an entirely rational explanation to me before.”

“It’s hard to say. I didn’t know her,” Jackson said.

Dessert and drinks arrived. He was persuasive; she did try the bread pudding, and it was delicious. And it felt oddly intimate to share a dessert. She hadn’t done so in years. Since Griffin had died.

He sipped his brandy. “It does seem as if she was devoted to her husband, and as if she had determined to put her life to good use. That speaks against suicide. But then again, the loss of a child might have made her snap.”

“But that kind of snap? Going over a balcony?” Regina asked.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he told her.

They left soon after. The walk back down Chartres Street was quiet; they took St. Peter’s up to Dauphine and crossed Bourbon once again. They were at the more subdued end of Bourbon there, but distracted, Angela had been walking a few steps ahead.

“Hey, honey, wanna party?” someone asked.

He was a blond frat boy. He looked harmless. He was with other blond frat boys.

She could take care of herself, she knew. But Jackson stepped forward easily, slipping an arm around her. “Not tonight, but you all have a good time, and take care,” he said pleasantly.

The frat boys waved and went on. Jackson’s hold on her eased, but they walked next to each other.

He didn’t say anything; neither did she. He knew she could have managed on her own; she knew that he had quickly defused the situation.

And then they were back. They’d left lights on, and the house on Dauphine stood white and dignified in the moonlight, captured in shadow and in a soft glow. The windows might have been eyes, and, Angela thought, the ghosts of dozens of lost souls might have looked out from behind them, gazing at the world they had left behind.

The house wasn’t evil, but evil had lived behind the facade.

Angela was suddenly certain that Regina Holloway had not committed suicide.




CHAPTER FOUR


Before retiring for the night, Jackson had done a survey of the house, studying the alarm system.

He’d learned two things: every window in the house was properly wired; and though the gate to the courtyard was wired as well, only the gate was wired. It would have been possible for someone to climb the wall into the courtyard. However, once that happened, they’d have to have the code to get through the alarm.

Even so, it was possible and probable—no matter how excellent a police force might be—that someone had come over the wall. After that…

It had been twilight when Regina Holloway died. A time when someone might have slipped over the wall. A time when she might have had the alarm off, since she had been out on the balcony. She might have had the doors locked, but if she had opened her bedroom doors to the balcony—or if anything had been left open by one of the maids—there would have been access to the house.

The night, however, was uneventful.

Angela Hawkins was still asleep when he came down to the kitchen. There was little there, but someone had seen to it that some basics had been stocked, so he was able to brew coffee and munch on one of the English muffins that had been left in a package in the refrigerator.

He called to set up an interview with the senator. First, he reached a secretary, and then was put through to the senator’s aide, Martin DuPre, and while he was asking DuPre if the senator would be available for an appointment, DuPre’s protective hedging came to a quick halt when the senator himself came on the line. He assured Jackson that he’d be there that evening around five or five–thirty, and that their investigation was the most important issue in his life at the moment. He was glad to be in New Orleans at the moment, since the state legislature wasn’t in session. He hadn’t lived at the house since his wife had died; he had taken an apartment in the city.

Jackson was in the kitchen, working on notes for the investigation, when the doorbell rang.

Answering it, he discovered a young man with a guitar case strung over his shoulder and an overnight bag in his hand.

“Hi,” the visitor said.

“Can I help you?” Jackson asked.

The young man extended a hand. “You have to be Jackson Crow. I’m Jake Mallory. I know it’s kind of early, but I grew up in the Garden District, and I was awake—and here I am.”

“Jake. Good to meet you. Come on in.”

Jackson kept his tone level, his greeting polite.

But he wondered what the hell Adam Harrison had been thinking.

Jake Mallory was tall, probably half an inch short of his own height. He had auburn, slightly long hair, an angular, well–defined face and light green eyes. His build was more lanky than bulky, but he looked as if he was about to play guitar on the streets for money. It wasn’t that he looked unkempt; he was fastidious and probably extremely attractive to young women. He just didn’t have the look of someone about to become part of an elite investigation unit.

If this was, in truth, an elite investigation unit.

Then, again, maybe he looked exactly the part, just because he didn’t offer the customary appearance.

Jake walked in and whistled at the great entry slash ballroom. “Wow. I’ve heard about this place all my life. I’ve never been in it.” He set down his bag and let the guitar case slide slowly to the parquet.

“It’s quite a house,” Jackson said.

Jake met his gaze. “Amazing. Huge, so it seems. How was your night?”

“Uneventful,” Jackson assured him. “Want the grand tour? Or did you want to take it alone?”

“Either way,” Jake said, shrugging and shoving his hands in his back pockets. He laughed. “We used to come and stare at the place when we were kids. Dare each other to go up close and all that. There were great ghost stories about it.”

“I know what the ghost stories say, and I’ve got blueprints, but you might know a lot that I don’t,” Jackson said.

Jake laughed ruefully. “Yep. Forgot that you probably know just about everything about me, too. I have to admit, it’s amazing to be here. To actually sleep here.”

“So, you’re not afraid of ghosts,” Jackson said.

“I’m fascinated by the possibilities!” Jake said.

Jackson had read that Jake was a local boy by birth; he’d also gone to school here, and gotten a music degree from Yale. He’d returned to New Orleans and worked with a musicians’ coalition in the city.

Adam had apparently found him fascinating because of his ability to find people. He’d been responsible for finding both survivors and those who had not survived after the summer of storms wrought their havoc on the city and its residents. Jackson wasn’t sure just what his specialty was, beyond an uncanny ability to find the dead. There didn’t seem to be a real investigator in his group, Angela’s police training notwithstanding.

Jake looked at Jackson with a sharp and steely look in his eyes. “We’re all being tested, though, I assume.”

“Tested?”

“Look, I’m called frequently to find the lost. So, I have to admit, I’m curious about exactly why I’m here. Regina Holloway isn’t lost, she’s dead. Everyone knows where she is. But then, you found a body last night, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t find it. Angela Hawkins found it. And how do you know about that already?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t believe you’ve turned on a television or read the local paper today,” Jake said.

Jackson frowned. “Reporters got in on it?”

“Don’t kid yourself. This is the Deep South, and it’s Louisiana. Though we have a history of corrupt politicians, sweet tea and a slow, steady lifestyle, our reporters are sharks—just like everywhere else in the country. You had police and forensics experts in here last night. That kind of thing doesn’t go unnoticed, especially when it’s the second time it’s happened. Detective Devereaux had the police spokesperson give an official statement. But…well, the speculation on what happened is far more intriguing.”

“I’m going to need a newspaper.”

“Don’t worry…there’s one in my bag,” Jake said. “I’ll call and get a paper delivered here every morning. That way, you’ll know what we’re up against as far as gossip goes.”

“What’s been written about us being in the house?” Jackson asked.

“Oh, just that the senator has brought in a team of investigators. People believe that he’s so heartbroken, he had to do something to try to prove that his wife didn’t commit suicide.”

“Did you know her?” Jackson asked.

“No. But, I’ve seen her. She was really loved here—just like the senator. Hey, he’s like a breath of fresh air. Especially in Louisiana.” Jake’s wry grin deepened. “The people loved Huey Long because he shook things up and worked for every one despite his carousing. Senator Holloway, he’s loved the same way. He wants big money to take care of big–money problems, and he wants to create work for everyone. And he was an honest–to–God family man.”

There was a sharp intelligence beneath the laid–back exterior of the man, Jackson thought. He might prove to be a far greater asset than Jackson had imagined at first sight.

“Politicians, in one way, seem perfectly understandable, but then it’s always hard to tell what is lurking in their minds, they’re so accustomed to wearing masks,” Jackson said.

“True, but I do know New Orleans, and a lot of the players here,” Jake offered.

Conversation paused. Jackson had the curious feeling that they were being watched, and he turned to see why.

Angela Hawkins looked down at them from the second–floor landing. It struck him again that she was an exceptionally beautiful woman, far too angelic looking, really, to have been a cop. Despite last night, she retained a reserve that was no less daunting than a suit of armor. Though beneath it all, he sensed her capable of a smile that would light the world. Studying her personality was an intriguing and appealing concept.

“Hi, there!” Jake called to her.

“Angela, Jake, Jake, Angela.”

“So, how did you sleep? Any ghosts prowling the halls?” Jake asked. He might have been asking her if a shopping mall had been busy.

“I was out like a light last night,” she told him. “Welcome to the crew!”

Jake smiled at her. And Angela returned it. They seemed to have an instant, easy rapport. He was surprised to find himself envious.

“Thanks. It’s good to be here.”

“I can get Jake up to speed on what I know about the house,” Angela offered.

“Sure.” Hmm. He heard the tension in his voice. What he was feeling was ridiculous; they were peers. He knew better than to feel a macho, ego–driven need to be the divine leader, most respected and most admired—and liked. He found himself thinking about his last team; they had worked so well together for so long. Each member with his or her own specialty and all of them learning to work like a well–oiled machine. But, he had to remember, they’d been together five years. This was a new team; despite his lingering feelings of pain for his last coworkers, he had to make himself start fresh, and give each member of this new team a chance to fall in—just as he had to learn to lead again, as smoothly as he had in the past.

“Sure,” he said again. “That will be great.”

He almost managed to laugh at himself as he headed back to the kitchen, to finish the notes he had been making after his conversation with Andy Devereaux, and after they had discovered the bones of Madden C. Newton’s probable first New Orleans victim.

Almost. It was one thing to understand the way the human mind worked. It was another to buck against it when you were the human in question.

“I play a lot on Frenchman Street,” Jake told Angela. “Things have changed a lot since our season of storms. The demographics in the city have changed, and it’s kind of like a movement for survival. Let’s face it, the history here is great, but tons of the tourism comes because of Bourbon Street, for people to have a good time in the old Big Easy. So, now, you don’t hear all the different stuff you used to hear—well, not as much. The bars on Bourbon mostly have pop—Journey, Bon Jovi, hard–hitting fast stuff. Of course, everything is a contradiction. Next thing you know, the best sax player known to man will show up working at one of the tourist places!”

“It’s always been a city of contradictions,” Angela assured him, liking the young man very much.

“You know it well?” he asked, arching a brow as she led them at last to the entertainment slash family room. He sat at the end of the sofa and she perched at the other, winding her legs beneath her as she faced him.

“From college,” she told him. “I grew up in Virginia, but I absolutely love New Orleans, so it does feel just a little bit like coming home. Despite the gruesome reason.”

“So, tell me, Miss Hawkins, what do you do?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I guess I’m a ‘finder,’ too. That’s what you do, right?”

He nodded, shrugging. “I guess I have a certain sense for…finding people.” He lowered his voice, looking toward the door.

“Do you?” she asked. “How do you mean?”

He hesitated a minute, then said, “Friends of mine almost went insane. Their five–year–old was kidnapped, and two boys had been kidnapped right before. One’s body had been found. I had a dream about a child holding my hand, taking me down into an area of bayou near Slidell. I found the body of the second. And it was amazing, because when I found it, I also found the old swamp house where they were keeping my friends’ little boy. He survived. I was so grateful, but the experience shook me up—that was for certain. But I didn’t dwell on it. Knowing things, seeing events and people—it isn’t always good. Some people turn away from you; they think that you’re out to hurt them, or they want to put some distance between you and them, because there might be something really odd about you.” He paused again. “I think I lost a best friend that way.” He laughed softly. “Actually, the love of my life. But…well, if you have experiences like mine, you stay sane yourself by learning to use whatever talent you have, gift or curse, to do what you can to help stop some of the depravity and evil in the world. New Orleans is my home, so my talents came in handy when the city was in trouble.”

“Do your ghosts come in dreams,” she said.

“Sometimes. Yours?”

She found herself looking to the door as well. “I get feelings that seem almost like a divining rod—and yes, I get the dreams. I—I saw something when my parents were killed in a plane crash. I saw them walking toward the light, along with a lot of other people. The therapist who worked with me afterward told me that I saw what I needed to see in order to be able to bear the grief.”

“But you never believed that.”

“No, but my time with the therapist made me extremely careful about what I say to other people!”

He laughed, his green eyes still bright. “Well, I do know people who see them—ghosts—and see them easily.”

“Really?” she asked.

“I’ll introduce you,” he said.

“They live here?”

He nodded.

“Does Adam know about them? Why wouldn’t he have brought them in on this team?”

“Well, frankly, Nikki and Brent have three small children now. I’m sure Adam would have liked to have them on a team, but they’re busy parents. I don’t believe they would work away from the city, not with their children growing up. They have their schools, their church, their sports teams…they’re good people, though. I met Adam through them, actually…” Jake paused in thought.

“I see. And I understand—I think. Adam wants a team that will stay cohesive for a while, a group that starts out together and learns to work together,” Angela said.

“You think Regina Holloway committed suicide?”

Angela simply looked at him for a moment and admitted, “No.”

“You think the house is haunted?” he asked her.

She laughed. Once again, she chose her words. “Say I believe that a house can be haunted. Perhaps things go bump in the night—or ghosts prowl the hallways. I don’t think that ghosts pushed Regina Holloway over the balcony.”

“Good conclusion.”

The voice came from the doorway and Angela turned quickly to see that Jackson Crow had finished whatever work he was doing and stood there, watching them. She felt color flood her cheeks. Just how long had he been there?

“I wanted you to let Jake know that he needs to go ahead and pick a room,” Jackson said, his blue eyes as enigmatic as ever. “The rest of the crew will be arriving soon. You might want to get settled. The two maids who worked in the house when Regina was alive won’t come back to work here, but they should be here in a few minutes to show us where the linen can be found, towels, cleaning articles, all that.”

“All right, I think I’ll go ahead and take that third room in the hallway where you two are,” Jake said. “And I’m pretty good at picking up after myself. I can cook, too,” he assured them.

“I’ll help you,” Angela said.

“I just have my guitar and my bag,” he said.

“I’ll get the guitar for you—and treat it like gold,” Angela assured him. “You wouldn’t want to drop it on the way up the stairs.”

“Sure,” he said, and they both walked past Jackson. Angela felt that he watched them, and she wondered why. She was equally curious as to why she was suddenly trying to avoid him.

Because the meeting over the pickax remained between them—and she didn’t really want him knowing that, despite her credentials, she definitely still had her vulnerabilities.

She wasn’t sure. She was confident, and she knew how to keep her own counsel. But there was something about the way that he looked at her…

She usually didn’t care, she realized. She wanted Jackson Crow to like her.

“Hi!”

The fourth member of his team, Whitney Tremont, had just rung the bell. She’d been born and bred in New Orleans just like Jake, but with the difference that Jake came from an “English” background and Whitney was pure Creole.

She was, he thought, a compelling little bundle of energy. She was little, no more than five–two or five–three, slim, with curly hair and hazel eyes, and skin the color of amber. She had a smile that was infectious, and a soft, sweet voice.

They had sent him another child.

No, there was a keen intelligence in her eyes. She had been a straight–A off–the–charts student; she had studied ethnicity, religion, philosophy, modern and ancient beliefs, while also receiving her degree in film from NYU. Her maternal great–grandmother was a noted contemporary voodoo priestess, and owned a shop called As You Believe up near Rampart Street. She had helped the local police crack down on a cult of would–be voodoo worshippers who had taken it upon themselves to bastardize the beliefs for the sake of human sacrifice—two young people had died during blood–drinking rituals. According to her file, she had a chameleon–like ability to slip into any group and be accepted as one of them—and somehow manage to film or video events and people who had never allowed such a thing before. Her expertise was cameras and film, and Jackson knew that she, like Will Chan, whom he had yet to meet, had been brought in for their work with cameras and sound.

“Hi,” he said, reaching for her large, tapestry travel bag. “Come on in. Whitney, right? Miss Whitney Tremont.”

“Jackson Crow. Love the name,” she assured him.

“Thanks.”

“So, you’ve already been digging up bodies—I’m late to the party,” she said.

He grimaced. “A skeleton. Angela Hawkins found it.”

“I’m impressed, and the majority of the people in the city are convinced that now all the ghosts who might not have been busy yet will be crawling out of the woodwork. Anyway, if they do, I’m hoping that we catch them on film. I have a lot of equipment out in the van.”

He looked over her head. There was a fellow in the driver’s seat who looked so much like her that he had to be her brother. The man waved to him; Jackson waved back.

“I’ll open the courtyard gate. And call the troops to help. Well, the two who are here now,” Jackson told her.

“Okay,” Whitney said. “That’s my brother, Tyler, over there. I’ll get him to come around the corner,” she said cheerfully.

Whitney went out; he called for Angela and Jake, and soon they were all in the courtyard, meeting Tyler and hauling heavy boxes out of the van. They decided to set up in the grand entry slash ballroom, so Jackson shut off the alarm entirely in order for them to open the middle courtyard doors and take the shortest route.

It didn’t take them more than thirty minutes to bring everything in.

Tyler was as tall as his sister was short, ranging a good foot over her head. He was as pleasant with the others as if he had been leaving his sister at summer camp, but when he was actually ready to leave, he gave her a huge hug and said seriously, “You be careful, and you don’t take any chances, and you don’t go getting your nose in where it shouldn’t be.”

“I’m all grown up now, Tyler,” she reminded him, but she hugged him in return.

“She has a tendency to rush in—right into people who have guns,” he said.

Jackson grinned. “We’ll watch out for her. I promise.”

Tyler nodded. “Adam wouldn’t have set her up with you if you weren’t good people. And if she wasn’t going to be safe.” He paused, looking around. “So this is the Newton house. It doesn’t look like a dark torture chamber, but…I’m sure it’s creepy as hell at night. You all be careful, huh? I remember when the kid took a header when the cops were after him about a decade ago. Brought it all back. And now Mrs. Holloway…it’s a shame, and it may just be that the place is bad.”

“We’ll all be looking out for each other,” Jake said solemnly.

Hugging his sister and warning her to call him, Tyler left at last.

Jackson looked at the four members of his team and the mass of boxes in the living room. “Well,” he said.

Whitney shrugged. “It’s not bad, really! Somebody else is in film, right?”

“Will Chan, but he’s not here yet,” Jackson said.

“We follow orders well,” Angela assured her.

“And I’m way brawnier than I look,” Jake added, laughing.

“That’s good. Because you can all start while I check the doors, windows and the alarm system again,” Jackson told him. “Here are the rules—no one opens the gate without me knowing it. We’re going to be opening the balcony doors from our bedrooms, so I’ll have the alarm set during the day so that we can do that. Though it will sound if we don’t key ourselves in and out of the front door—everyone understand?”

“Yes, and thank God! I can’t imagine not going out on that beautiful balcony,” Whitney said. She didn’t seem the least disturbed by the house—simply fascinated.

“We’ll dig on in and help Whitney start getting set up,” Angela assured him.

“I won’t be that long.”

He was long, though. Longer than he intended.

None of them had been up to the third floor yet. After taking the grand stairway to the second floor, he briefly checked each of the rooms on the front end of the house, and came around to the middle section, and the stairway there. He went up to the third level. Thankfully, the middle section was one big expanse of space. With remnants from the decades that the house had stood.

No one had gotten up here yet to start on the cleaning. The area was rife with dust; it almost felt as if he took a step back into a different time. Dressmakers’ dummies were along the wall, near one of the three dormer windows. Jackson checked them; the alarm wires were in place. Clothing on the dummies ranged from an antebellum ball gown to a World War II–era swing skirt.

A huge old sewing machine was in another corner, and a wire crate held toys from eons past, wooden soldiers, dolls that might have been collectibles, croquet mallets, balls and wickets. More—he couldn’t discern everything in the container.

He walked through the low hallway at the one end, arriving at the area over the ballroom, and discovered that it had been set up as a row of dormitory–style rooms, and he assumed that the rooms had been slave quarters for the household staff at one time, and servants’ quarters at another.

It was slow going, but he checked each of the dormer windows. He walked back through the main storage room and through the low–ceilinged hallway to the last ell; here, he found just two rooms, both of them large, and both of them empty. But the alarm wires were in place, and the windows were secure. He walked back down to the second floor and went through all the motions, finally reached the first, and checked that all the windows not facing the courtyard were secure.

The place was huge. Despite the fact that the police had searched the premises, and despite the alarm system, Jackson still wondered if there hadn’t been a way for someone to slip in—uninvited, and unknown.

Back in the ballroom he discovered that his crew had been busy. There was a set of television screens arranged at the far end of the room, cables, cords, lights and more equipment aligned against the wall.

“We’re trying to decide which rooms should get the cameras first,” Angela told him. She stared at him peculiarly.

“What?” he asked.

“You look like a ghost yourself,” Whitney said, giggling.

“Like you’ve been playing in a pail of plaster,” Jake added. “You went up to the attic? I’m guessing there hasn’t been a cleanup crew there.”

He groaned and looked at his arm. The sleeves of his cotton shirt were white.

Once again, the doorbell rang and he walked to the door, expecting the remainder of the team.

A tall, slender woman of African descent stood there as straight as a ramrod, and as ancient as one. She frowned, seeing Jackson, and murmured something that seemed to be a prayer against curses.

Angela swiftly came running to the door, catching the woman’s hand. “Hi, I’m Angela. Jackson is just dusty—can we help you?”

“Gran–Mama!” Whitney cried. “You’re early.”

Jackson spun back to look at the old woman. Angela had reached out a hand to invite her in.

“Who are you?” Jackson demanded.

“I am Mama Matisse. Whitney didn’t tell you that she asked me to come?” the woman asked. “Whitney, child! I don’t come where I’m not invited!”

“Gran–Mama,” Whitney began, her face chalky, “I just haven’t had time to talk to them yet.”

“No, she didn’t,” Jackson said. “You’re a priestess? A voodoo priestess?”

“Yes. But I am also Whitney’s great–grandmother,” the woman explained.

Jackson wasn’t sure whether or not to be indignant at her demeanor. But he had the feeling that this woman could help them, and that the wisdom in her eyes ran deep. He bowed his head slightly. “Whitney didn’t mention you, but, please, yes, stay, help us.” He cast Whitney a frowning glare; she lifted her hands helplessly.

“Gran–Mama—Mama Matisse—was friends with both the maids who worked here. And she knew Regina and the senator. I thought you might want to hear what she can tell us,” Whitney said.

Jackson nodded at her. “I’ll run up and take a two–minute shower. Mama Matisse, Whitney will take you into the kitchen and get you some coffee or water or whatever. Please?”

“I am here to help you,” Mama Matisse said with tremendous dignity. “I will do my best. You see, the police have not much cared for what I’ve had to say, but I can tell you this—the very day that Regina Holloway died, her maid, Rene, came running over to tell me that there were ghosts in this house. There were ghosts, and there is tremendous evil, and whether or not they are one and the same, that you must discover.”




CHAPTER FIVE


Mama Matisse drew a long bony finger down her teacup as she sat at the kitchen table. “Whitney asked me to come here today because of the maids—and because I was here, and worked with Regina Holloway,” Mama Matisse explained.

“You worked with her?” Angela looked from Mama Matisse to Whitney.

“Regina Holloway was very fond on my great–grandmother, and believed in her wisdom,” Whitney explained.

Mama Matisse nodded gravely. “The maids will not come back in this house, Trini or Rene,” she assured Angela. “They are afraid. They have taken money from the senator to live on while they look for new positions. They need to keep working in this city, so if you were to try to call them and ask them questions, they would not come to you with a ghost story. They don’t mind if I speak to you in their stead. If you question them, if the police question them again, they will not speak about the ghosts, and that is all that there is to it. But they have talked to me, and I don’t believe they care that I talk to you.”

“Thank you,” Angela said.

“They are afraid that people will think that they are crazy,” Mama Matisse said. “Loco, as Trini says,” she added.

“My great–grandmother is considered to be extremely wise,” Whitney said. “Many, many people come to her. Whether they are voodooists, Jewish, Buddhists, Christian or whatever.”

“I promise you, we’re not going to repeat anything that you say,” Angela assured her.

Mama Matisse looked at her. “If you were to repeat what I say on behalf of the maids, it wouldn’t matter. I have said it, and not them.”

Angela nodded. Mama Matisse did not easily trust people, but Whitney had asked her to come, and so here she was.

“The women, both Rene and Trini, worked here the day that Mrs. Holloway died,” Mama Matisse said.

“Did they tell you that they saw something?” Angela asked.

“Yes, they saw a ghost. Or they thought they saw a ghost. He was in the hallway, Trini told me. They saw a man, and then he disappeared. They didn’t tell Mrs. Holloway. She had said that she didn’t believe in ghosts. And the man disappeared, so he couldn’t have been real. Mrs. Holloway had told them that she was going to lie down. They later heard that she was dead, that she had killed herself, going over the balcony. They were very upset.”

“Of course,” Angela murmured.

“I didn’t believe it,” Mama Matisse said. “I didn’t believe it a minute when they said that she committed suicide. Neither did her maids. She was Catholic. She went to church every Sunday morning, and sometimes, during the week. Her faith was strong. To a Catholic, it’s a grave offense to God for us to take our own lives.”

“But she was very upset about the loss of her little boy, right?”

“She was sad, yes,” Mama Matisse said. “So sad—I was here when the senator told his wife that they always wanted more children, and that they would try again, that they would have several. Mrs. Holloway told him that they couldn’t replace Jacob. The senator said no, they would never try to replace him. But they had always wanted more children and they would try. And she said that yes, she loved children, and she loved him, and that she would fix up the house, and that one day, they would have a family. And they talked about all the needy children in the world, and maybe they would have a child, and adopt a child.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone about to commit suicide,” Jackson said from the doorway to the kitchen.

He had showered away the dust, and appeared clean, striking and confident as he came in to join them. He was casual, pausing to pour himself a cup of coffee before taking a seat across the table from Mama Matisse. “She sounds like the nicest woman imaginable. What about the other people in their lives? Those closest to them? What about their day–to–day lives?”

“I don’t know about their day–to–day lives, Mr. Crow,” she said. Angela didn’t remember that Jackson had ever introduced himself, but Mama Matisse knew who he was. “I haven’t been here before on a day–to–day basis. I can tell you this—Mrs. Holloway had many friends. But she needed time to be alone—because people kept telling her how sorry they were about her son.”

“We really need to speak with the maids,” Jackson reminded.

Mama Matisse merely stared at him.

“I’m sorry. I’m grateful that you’re here.”

“The maids will not speak to you. They will not speak to anyone anymore. They talked to the police, and they have nothing more to say. They are afraid. They have their lives to live.”

“If this case ever goes to court—” Jackson began.

“Do you think that everything is solved in a court, Jackson Crow? I think that you know differently,” Mama Matisse said.

Jackson stared back at her. Angela was certain that he had reacted inwardly, but, as usual, she saw nothing change in his expression.

“You are right. You can’t always force the truth in court,” Jackson agreed. “So, please, tell me, who was closest to them. Tell me what you can. David Holloway is a politician, so his life is full of people, but tell me what you know about his relationships.”

“Let me think about those around him…There is Mr. DuPre, and Senator Holloway’s secretary, Lisa Drummond. Lisa Drummond protects the senator at his office. Martin DuPre tries very hard to be the go–between. He protects the senator’s time. The senator still appears to be reeling from what has happened. He is dependent on those around him. He must have an aide. He is proud of Mr. DuPre, and thinks that one day he will step into politics on his own.”

“Actually, I’m curious. The government is in Baton Rouge. Why was the senator so determined to have a wonderful home in which to entertain in New Orleans, do you know?” Jackson asked.

Mama Matisse smiled. “That is no mystery. New Orleans is their home. There need be no other explanation. They had an apartment in Baton Rouge, of course,” she said.

Jackson said, “Well, of course. I’m sorry. Of course. And Baton Rouge isn’t so far, right?”

“It’s just eighty miles,” Mama Matisse said. “But that’s why Senator Holloway has a chauffeur. He works in the car when he drives there and back.”

“But he must have stayed over in Baton Rouge often enough,” Jackson said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Did Mrs. Holloway stay here alone when he was gone?” Jackson asked.

“Yes, many times. Of course, the senator was home a lot. The first week they moved in, the state legislature wasn’t in session,” the old woman told him. “You must understand, while I knew Mrs. Holloway I was not her spiritual adviser. She had her priest, but she did have me do a banishing spell.”

“A banishing spell?” Jackson asked.

“Yes, as a precaution against all evil,” Mama Matisse said. “But you must remember that Regina Holloway clung strongly to her own faith. Father Adair came and blessed the house. However, this is New Orleans, and she was part of the fabric of the city. A banishing spell is not black magic. Black magic is when you wish someone ill.”

Whitney cleared her throat and told them, “My great–grandmother does banishing spells often. And when you do a spell, it has to be done the right way. You are always careful not to wish anyone ill. If you wish a ghost to leave, you wish that the ghost finds peace, and you hope that leaving is what will bring the ghost peace.”

Mama Matisse nodded solemnly.

“I see,” Jackson said.

Angela wasn’t sure that he really “saw” anything, but she didn’t say so. Instead, she asked, “So, she wasn’t afraid of the house?”

Mama Matisse shook her head slightly. “No, I do not believe that she was afraid of her own house.”

“What about the chauffeur, Grable Haines? Is he still with the senator, and did he drive for Mrs. Holloway as well?” Jackson asked.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Mama Matisse said, “Mrs. Holloway never drove, and she only got into a car when she was going someplace with the senator. Friends picked her up sometimes, but otherwise, she did everything in the French Quarter. She liked a hat shop on Royal Street…She bought groceries just down on Royal, too. She liked to walk to Jackson Square, and go sit in the cathedral. She didn’t like to leave the area…She hated cars.”

“Because her son was killed in a car?” Angela asked.

Mama Matisse lifted her hands with a shrug. “So one might think. She didn’t own a car. She just rode with the senator when he wanted her with him. So, that means, if she had to go somewhere, she went with the senator—and Grable Haines. Oh, I believe she liked Grable. Everyone likes him. He is a handsome man,” Mama Matisse said. She leaned closer across the table toward Jackson. “But, sometimes, a man can be too handsome. Too many things in the world come too easily to him.”

“I understand,” Jackson said.

Mama Matisse smiled. “You understand, but you don’t accept many things,” she said.

Jackson smiled at her; they were challenging one another, Angela thought, and yet, it also seemed that they respected each other innately.

“Do you think that a ghost killed Regina Holloway?” Angela asked.

Jackson flashed Angela a quick look. “I’m asking,” she said quietly. “Just asking. Do you think that a ghost might have killed her?”

“I told you, I wasn’t here the day she died,” Mama Matisse said.

“But what do you think?” Jackson persisted.

“This is what they told me—Rene yelled for Trini. She was in the laundry room.” She pointed. The laundry room was a small area next to the kitchen, but the two rooms didn’t attach. “Trini said that she came quickly, and she thought she saw a man, vanishing into thin air. She made a cross on her chest and they both prayed to the Virgin and came into the kitchen, but there was nothing in here then.”

“You’re still not telling me what you think,” Jackson said, smiling.

“I think that evil can exist, that’s what I think,” Mama Matisse said. “I can only tell you what they said to me. If it’s true or not, I don’t know. But, soon after this happened, it was time for them to leave for the day. Mrs. Holloway came to the door with them, and they left. They were very frightened. That’s why they talked to me.”

“They never told Regina Holloway about the ghost?” Jackson asked.

“She said that she didn’t believe in ghosts—the maids would not have told her that they had seen one,” Mama Matisse said flatly, staring at Jackson.

“What about the alarm?” Jackson asked.

“They heard her set the alarm. She was always careful when she was alone.” Mama Matisse hesitated. “But…she didn’t like the basement. She never went there when she was alone. She locked the door that led down to the basement.”

Jackson looked at Angela. She kept staring at Mama Matisse.

“Did she say why she was scared of the basement?” he asked.

Mama Matisse shook her head. “She just said that basements—and attics—were inherently strange places. They were like depositories for the past, and she just didn’t like them.”

Jackson mulled that information over for a moment.

“She did believe, I’m sure, that she and the senator lived with a certain amount of danger and uncertainty because he was a politician.”

“Yes.”

Jackson then asked her, “Tell me about Senator Holloway’s bodyguard, Blake Conroy.”

Mama Matisse sniffed.

“He should have been guarding Mrs. Holloway, maybe,” Mama Matisse said. “The girls told me that he was always eating. Making a big mess in the kitchen, and thinking that he could make a big mess anywhere that he went. He is a big man,” she added.

“Was he mean, or rude?” Jackson asked.

“It’s rude to make a mess of a clean kitchen.”

Angela smiled; she saw that Jackson did, too.

“Did Mr. Holloway have a bodyguard just because he was a politician?” Jackson asked.

“Well, there are some people—and some groups—who don’t like the senator,” Mama Matisse said.

“Do you know who? Can you tell me about them?” Jackson coaxed. He apologized. “You see, we love New Orleans, but you know so much more than we do.”

“Senator Holloway said all people did was fight when what they needed to do was figure out a solution. To live in our world, we had to learn to compromise. Senator Holloway likes to give speeches. He says that he believes in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana—it’s a place for everyone to live, and to live together, and to remember the past so that we never repeat it,” Mama Matisse said.

“You don’t sound as if you believe all that,” Jackson said.

Angela was surprised; she hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary in Mama Matisse’s voice.

She shrugged. “He is a politician.”

“So, who disliked him? Who would want to hurt him?” Jackson asked.

“The Aryans, for one,” she said.

“Have they become a political group in this town?” Jackson asked.

“They are bigots, that’s what they are,” Jake Mallory, who had been leaned against the counter, said irritably.

“They’re Louisiana based, but they’re an offshoot of a group that formed up in North Dakota. Most people around here ignore them,” Jake said. “They could make Archie Bunker look like a bleeding–heart liberal.”

“Archie Bunker?” Whitney murmured.

“Hey, don’t you ever watch TV?” Jake asked her. “Archie Bunker, All in the Family, a major television show in its social honesty, reflecting the changing times.”

“Hey, we can do television history at another time,” Jackson mimicked.

“Right. The Aryans do hate Senator Holloway,” Whitney said. She was next to Jake, and she lifted a hand dismissively. “They have a campaign against interracial marriage. Ridiculous.” She made a face. “I’d be a poster child for what not to do! They are convinced that we’ve diluted America, and that all mixed babies should be aborted.”

“They sound charming,” Angela said dryly.

“There’s another group, too,” Mama Matisse said. “The Church of Christ Arisen.”

Jackson waited, and Whitney explained, “They are like the Baptists, the Catholics and the Presbyterians all rolled into one.”

Jake sniffed. “That insults the Baptists, the Catholics and the Presbyterians!”

“They don’t believe in anything but early to rise, early to bed. No dancing, no drinking, no sex before marriage. Adultery means you’re banished from the church,” Whitney explained. “They believed that Haiti got what it received—just like New Orleans—when nature swept in and killed people. That was God taking vengeance on sinners. They campaign against Senator Holloway because he’s a huge believer in social reform. He opened a home for unwed mothers. They were horrified.”

Jackson frowned, confused. “But—they don’t believe in abortion, I take it. Why wouldn’t they want to help unwed mothers?”

“Unwed mothers shouldn’t exist,” Whitney explained.

“I see,” Jackson said.

“That’s why the senator needed a bodyguard,” Mama Matisse said, nodding solemnly. “I believe that the senator spent time investigating the groups, trying to find out what they might be up to next. But it was all very hush–hush, so I can’t really tell you much. He was worried that they might mean to take physical action against him.”

“So, they do believe in assassination?” Jackson asked.

“There was a doctor who came down from New York City and opened a clinic—a family–planning clinic. He was on a lot of the local talk shows. He denied that he had come because they call New Orleans the Big Easy,” Whitney said. “He was a smart man, from what I could see. He said that it was better for a confused young woman to abort a child early than to give birth in a ladies’ room and flush the living child down the toilet.”

“What happened to him?” Angela asked.

Whitney looked at her with a sad grimace. “He died in a hit–and–run accident just outside his clinic. It was over in the CBD—the Central Business District. Unrelated to their son’s accident.”

Angela could see that Jackson seemed to have acquired all that he wanted from Mama Matisse.

“You have been so kind to come and talk to us,” she said. “We thank you so much.”

Mama Matisse rose. She looked at Whitney. “You know where I am. Come to see me, and we can talk more if you wish.” She turned to Jackson, studying him. “You have the ability to find all the answers—if you let yourself do so.”

“Well, thank you for your faith. I’ll see you out,” Jackson offered, rising. “Do you need a ride anywhere? It would be the least we could do.”

Mama Matisse shook her head. “I am nearing ninety. I am nearing ninety because I walk the French Quarter every day. But thank you. You do have courtesy.”

“Well, thank you,” Jackson said. Angela was surprised when Mama Matisse offered him her hand. Jackson took it. There was an interesting exchange of gazes between the two. Mama Matisse smiled. They walked out together.

“This is so, so sad,” Whitney murmured.

“Yes, and it was good of your great–grandmother to come. Especially because she’s right. We can’t make the maids talk to us.”

“Because Rene thought that she saw a ghost. And she won’t tell anyone—but my great–grandmother. Neither was here when Regina died,” Whitney said. “But I knew that they had spoken with Gran–Mama.”

“Ah, but was it a ghost? A trick of the light, or her imagination—or was someone really in the house?” Angela asked reflectively.

“I’d say that we opened a can of worms,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Now it doesn’t just seem like someone might have been responsible, it seems that way too many someones might have been responsible.”

“Way too many someones,” Angela said. “Whitney, I love your great–grandmother. She’s fascinating. I hope to see her again.”

“Yes, she is wonderful. She has so much wisdom—and kindness in her heart. But she’s not a fool, and she doesn’t like people easily.” She laughed suddenly, looking to the door. “Our fearless leader is a skeptic, and she knows it. But I think she’s seeing something deeper inside him. Something that makes him special.”

Angela wasn’t sure about that. Jackson Crow was courteous, and he knew how to be completely stoic.

Except for the fact that he didn’t seem to think much of her. She winced inwardly; oddly enough, she felt a great deal as Mama Matisse did.

There was something deep in him that he didn’t give away easily. And more oddly still, she wanted to know what it was, wanted to know more about the real man beneath the facade. Why had he been chosen to lead their team?

Firsthand knowledge and work with human behavior, she told herself dryly.

But she did have a certain gift, whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not.

She rose. “Excuse me, you all. I’m going to run upstairs for a minute.”

“Do you want us with you?” Jake asked.

“Not right now,” she told him.

Leaving them, she hurried up the stairs to the second floor—and to the room where Regina Holloway had been.

Right before she had died.

She paused for a minute, and then she lay down on the bed as Regina might have done that fateful day. She closed her eyes.

She imagined the woman who had been Regina Holloway. Her life had so recently been perfect. She’d had a loving husband. And a child. A son.

She had lived in this house; she hadn’t been afraid.

She had been lost and hurt.

Angela let the pain sweep into her, and she opened her eyes….

She could see them. Two children. They were adorable. They were near the foot of the bed, and they had a game of jacks. The little girl had blond pigtails, and she wore a calico dress that probably ended at her ankles; the little boy was in breeches and a bleached cotton shirt and gray vest. They were both seated cross–legged, facing one another as they played.

She lay very still on the bed, never sure if she was imagining, or if there was a place somewhere deep in the human soul where one could “see” what had gone on in the past.

“Annabelle!” the little boy said. He sighed and leaned over to catch the bouncing ball. “You have to drop it right where you are, or it will roll away. Look, watch me.”

The little boy dropped the ball, collected a number of jacks and caught the ball again. “See?” he said.

Annabelle nodded and took the ball from him. But her lower lip trembled. “I’m so scared, Percy. I’m so scared. I don’t like it here.”

“You don’t need to be scared. Mommy and Daddy are here; that nice man, that Mr. Newton, he’s helping us.”

“I want to go home.”

“We don’t have a home anymore, Annabelle. We don’t have a home.”

“Daddy said we were going away.”

“We will go away, unless Mr. Newton can give Daddy some kind of work. Then Daddy can work, and we can buy a house again, and we won’t have to leave our friends.”

“Our friends are all gone,” Annabelle said. “They’ve been gone since the war.”

“The war is over, Annabelle.” The little boy’s voice hardened. “We lost. So now we all have to start over again.”

Annabelle started to cry.

Percy took her into his arms, soothing her.

“There, there, Annabelle. It’s going to be all right….”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Jackson Crow’s deep voice interrupted her; the children vanished.

Angela bolted to a sitting position.

“Were you napping?” Jackson asked her, incredulous.

“No, thinking,” she told him. She rose. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to lunch.” He might have realized that she was about to say that she would just stay in the house while they went, because he thwarted her attempt before she could make it. “It’s important. I want everyone to have a chance to connect away from here, to get to know one another as much as possible.”

She nodded. But when he turned away, she paused.

This room. She had “seen” the children here, and Regina Holloway had been here before walking out on the balcony.

And then dying.

“Angela!”

Jackson Crow was waiting for her.

“I’m going to move into this room,” she told him.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“Oh, yes. It’s going to be important that I do.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said. “I respect your abilities, but it’s just not a good idea for anyone to sleep in here. Especially not you.”




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