Krewe of Hunters 1 Phantom Evil (28 page)

“No. I can't be responsible for others turning homicidal!”

“We'll see, won't we?” Jackson asked.

Holloway stared at him, furious.

Jake cleared his throat. “Shall I drive you home, sir?”

Holloway just shook his head. “I'll go next door,” he said hoarsely. “I'll just go next door.”

“Walk him over, Will, please?” Jackson asked.

Will nodded and left with the senator.

“I'm taking the projector down to the police station with me first thing in the morning,” Jackson said. “We have to keep investigating this house. Whoever used the projector seems absolutely confident in his or her ability to get away with what he's done. The damn thing has been here. He or she put it in a trunk and thought that would be the end of it—it might have been. Some buyer another hundred years from now might have discovered it.”

“We can try to trace the purchase,” Jake said. “It's a very expensive piece of equipment.”

Jackson nodded. “Jake—first thing in the morning, start up with your computer magic.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

“It's the house—we've seen it. The answers are in the house,” Jackson repeated dully.

“We'll find the truth,” Whitney said. “I know we'll find it.”

Jackson slipped an arm around Angela's shoulder. “We're going to get some sleep,” he said. “We're going to try to get some sleep, anyway.”

“Wait!” Whitney said. “What happened with the police search at the Church of Christ Arisen? What did the senator know—and not know?”

“They missed DuPre. No one knows where he is. The senator originally sent him in like I sent Jake in—for information. He did send Blake Conroy to the meeting of the Aryans, but didn't send either Grable Haines or his secretary.”

“So he says,” Jake added.

“So he says,” Jackson agreed. “They have two council members from the Church of Christ Arisen at the station, and two of the young women who live at the church. They're all playing dumb—they won't even give their real names. I'm going to talk to them tomorrow, and if we don't get something quickly, we'll have to bring Gabby Taylor back, though she did sign statements about her time at the church. I don't think DuPre can stay underground that long. He didn't think he was caught, or in any trouble, and DuPre needs an income. If the church assets are frozen, he'll be in a desperate situation. Anyway, Jake, see what you can find out about that piece of equipment, and we'll call it a night. Oh, Whitney—how's the camera on the house next door going?”

“It's working fine. No one in, no one out,” Whitney reported.

“Keep an eye on it—the senator is in it tonight,” Jackson said. “And make sure this place is locked up tight once Will is back in. We still don't know the truth—whether the senator is involved, or whether his mental state caused him to be totally unaware of what people around him were really doing. The
thing is, he did send DuPre into the Church of Christ Arisen. So, did he send his own people to join the Aryans as well? It's worse than ghosts—it's the living, and we have to find exactly what is what.”

“Absolutely. And we'll watch the house. I'm going to be on it until four in the morning… Will is going to take over then,” Whitney told him.

“Everyone stay vigilant,” Jackson said. “I have a feeling things are going to come crashing down.”

He caught Angela's hand, forgetful of everyone around them. It didn't matter anymore. She didn't say a word, and he didn't care what anyone thought.

“Good night, then,” he said.

“Night, all,” Angela told them.

“This is really quite sad,” Angela said, as they left the group and walked up to their rooms. “All we've learned is that Senator David Holloway's entire life was a lie, and the main missing ingredient is just how much he knew about the lie he was living.”

“And we can't solve anything else now,” Jackson said.

She smiled at him as they stood in the hallway on the second floor, eyes brilliantly blue, a half smile curved into her lips. “We can solve one thing,” she told him.

“Oh?”

“The fact that it was very lonely in that bed without you.”

He wondered if he should feel badly that her words were a bolt of lightning ripping through him; if it was wrong that he could take such raw and carnal pleasure in being with her when they were sitting on a bombshell. And yet, the very history of the house reminded him that relationships were the essence of life. Angela had become a part of his life so quickly,
something that he had missed, he thought, maybe always. He had become so focused on solving every dilemma out there.

“No reply?” she queried softly.

He drew her into his arms and kissed her gently, heedless of the fact that they remained in the hallway. Then he led her inside. “I hope that was an appropriate reply?” he asked her.

“Excellent, right to the point,” she assured him.

He held her there for a moment, just looking down into the pool of her eyes, wanting to explain what he had never managed to get clear to himself. His hands were on her shoulders; his fingers delicately caressed, and he tried to form words, a sense of his feelings, the reality he knew, and why his skepticism meant so much to him.

“Jackson?”

He was quiet for a minute, and then, at last, he spoke. “I have Native American blood,” he said. “And I have done a dream quest, and seen amazing things, but that's not what touched me, made me wonder what was real, and what wasn't. Once, when I was in my early teens, with my mom's family, in northern Scotland, I was racing on horseback with friends. They thought that I had beat the hell out of them—I'm a good rider, and I had a damn good horse—but I hadn't beaten them, I'd been thrown. I wasn't ahead of them. I was lying there with a concussion, a rib broken as well, barely able to breathe. A kilted man had come along on a black horse that looked like some kind of mixed-breed warhorse and picked me up. I barely understood the man, his accent was so heavy and his speech was so strange. I was going in and out of consciousness. When I woke up, I found that I had been deposited on the steps of my mom's ancestral home in the Highlands. And then…well, later I saw the man again. I saw him on the wall in
the grand hall of my mom's family estate. The painting was of Ewan McKeough, head of the clan in the late 1500s. He was the…he was the man who rescued me. Now, mind you, half the area of Scotland was McKeough. I tried to tell myself that he had to have been a relative. But I've questioned the truth of it ever since—being a skeptic, because so many people are willing to believe anything.”

“You've known,” Angela said quietly. “And you've known that you've had the ability to see beyond what most people see.”

“My real ability is to bring out the strongest reactions in gifted people like you,” he told her.

 

“And you can bring out abilities in me?”

“All kinds of abilities!”

She smiled and he closed the door firmly, turning to her. “Tonight, I'm thinking that I'll bring out a few of your other abilities. Hmm…somehow, I just feel I'll help you along without the benefits of a strip club. I mean, if you don't mind. And, then again, feel free to strip….”

Warmth enwrapped Jackson as Angela lay in his arms. Hours of night had passed when they had been engrossed in one another, in sensation, in need, whispers and laughter, tenderness and volatility, and he had dozed and woken, and been pleased just to lie beside her. He breathed in the sweet clean scent of her hair, and felt the softness of her flesh beneath his fingers. There was even a time when he wondered at what he felt;
she
had known what it had been like to really become involved with another person, to lie comfortable and sated, happy to share time and space, wake together, share the simple pleasures of being together. He had spent his life restless and ever ready to move on, the world on his mind the second hunger was spent. He didn't know why; something had happened to him those years ago on the Scottish cliffs, and he had become obsessed with the mind, with what was real, and what was illusion in the thoughts of man. And from there he had come into the
Behavioral Science Unit, and the criminal mind had become his passion. There was always another case, and those working with him seemed a little bit hard and jaded as well, all fighting demons in their own minds. Work had been good; there had been times of escape, and he had always thought of himself as a decent man, a decent human being, but he might have been wrong. He hadn't known the pain she had known. And he had never known the simple pleasure of sleeping beside someone, waking beside them and wanting them again.

Angela had her own demons—so many tragic deaths in her past. But she had learned to control the emotions that coiled around them. He didn't think he was
emotionless,
but he had never let feelings slip beneath the surface. He knew damn well that he couldn't solve the world's problems, but the demons in him kept wanting him to do so. The loss of his teammates might have been part of it, he knew. They were ghosts that now lived in his heart. He'd never imagined that a woman could bring so much to his soul without even knowing the full damage that dwelled there now.

He wanted suddenly just to go somewhere with her and enjoy music or art, or a horseback ride through a beautiful forest, and not wonder about anything except the beauty around him and the wonder of his companion.

Then he started as there was a pounding at the door, and it burst open.

“Sorry, sorry!” Will said. “But there's someone prowling around the house next door.”

 

Angela had been sleeping so soundly she was barely aware of the pounding of the door. She finally forced her eyes open to find that Jackson was already in his jeans, just sliding into
his shoes. “What's going on?” she asked him. He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Will was just here.”

“Here? Damn—I heard some kind of pounding, but I didn't see Will.”

“They've picked up something on the cameras. It's not clear, but there's someone next door, slinking around the house. Will is staying here; he's downstairs watching the screens with Whitney. Jake is coming with me—we're going over. Jenna tried to get the senator on his cell phone… He isn't answering.”

She nodded. “All right. You go ahead, I'll hurry.”

“We've got wires. Will is going to know where we are and what's going on. It might be nothing.”

“Someone slinking around a yard is nothing?” she asked dryly.

“No, it might be another excuse. Like it's the bodyguard, and the senator called him. Everyone seems to have an answer for everything around here,” Jackson said.

She was out of bed, even as he left, closing the door behind him. She quickly slipped into jeans and a T-shirt and scrambled for her sneakers. As she pulled them on, she looked up.

They were there again. The twenty-first-century woman, Susanne Crimshaw, and the nineteenth-century children, Percy and Annabelle.

“I can't come with you,” she said. “Something is happening. We may be finding the answers.”

Susanne shook her head. Percy broke free and walked to her. He shook his head.
“No, no, it's in the wall. It's in the wall.”
They were not images made by a projector; they were real ghosts in the house, and they were trying to help her.

“What's in the wall?” she asked him.

She turned around, frowning, staring at the end of the room.
This room met the ell in the house. It was part of the original kitchen structure that had been added to the main house.

She gasped suddenly, staring at the wall, at the way the panels joined.

On the outside, it would look as if the house were now one big horseshoe. On the outside, it all blended together perfectly. But now, she wasn't sure if the space in the rooms inside was as large as the space as viewed from outside. There had to be some type of secret room or crevice.

She looked at Percy again. “You might have told me before.”

The little boy shook his head.
“I tried to warn the lady. But she didn't see me. She saw the images, but she didn't see me.”

Angela jumped up and walked to the wall, studying the paneling. There was space, she decided. Space between this room and the twist in the ell. When the buildings had been joined, they hadn't been flush. The architect who had drawn the plans for the renovation had cleverly hid the gap between the two buildings, but it was there.

Behind the wall.

She quickly wondered if whoever had designed to kill Regina Holloway had come across the plans and seen that there had to be a gap in there. Outside walls were flush, but the gap didn't allow for more rooms to be built, though on one of the ells, they might have been widened.

But they hadn't been.

She started to press on the paneling. Nothing happened. She wondered if she was being absolutely ridiculous, listening to a ghost while something tangible was happening downstairs.

“Thank you, Percy,” she said, and told him gravely, “I just
have to see what's happening downstairs. I have to make sure that I'm not needed.”

He clung to her hand.
“You see me, you hear me, please.”

She walked to the door, wishing that this room wasn't on the far side of the ell. “Will?” she called.

“Angela?” His voice came from the microphone at the camera.

“Yes, what's happening next door?”

“I don't know yet. Jake and Jackson are walking the perimeter…they're out of camera shot right now.”

“Please,”
Percy said. She looked down. It was amazing—she could see the little boy. She could
feel
the warmth where his spectral hand touched hers. “I'm so afraid for you,” he told her.

“Then help me!”

He looked at her solemnly.
“The wall. They come through the wall,”
he said.
“They use the wall.”

 

Jackson and Jake scaled the brick wall that separated the properties, landing silently on the earth on the side of the brick barrier. Jackson motioned to Jake, and Jake nodded, heading around the front while Jackson came around the back of the house next door.

The shadows were so dense that night. He moved silently, and as swiftly as possible, scanning the foliage and brush that grew along the wall and was thick and heavy around an old, moss-dripped tree in the far corner.

When he reached the back door, he saw that it was open. Not ajar, just not tightly closed. It hadn't been jimmied; there was no sign of forced entry.

Inside, he could hear voices.

He waited, speaking softly into the tiny wired microphone he was wearing. “Someone is in the house, there are voices. No forced entry. I'm waiting for Jake…we're going to go in.”

“I've got you, the line is clear,” Will assured him.

A moment later, Jake came around the other side of the house. Jackson drew his gun, indicating the door. Jake pushed it inward.

They entered by the rear door, and heard voices from the front. Silently following the sound, they moved through the house. Jackson motioned Jake to keep to the left; he stood to the right as they followed the shotgun hallway.

They crept along, holding back when they reached the front parlor. From his angle, Jackson could see Martin DuPre. He held a gun on the senator.

“You sent me in!” he accused David Holloway. “You sent me in, and I did what you told me to do. I infiltrated. I became part of them. It's what you told me to do. And now, you have to help me. You have to get me money. The cops are after me!”

“I sent you in to find out just what those people were really doing. I needed information to get them all closed down, and you know that we had a real agenda, and that I couldn't have my name involved with any of it. You became hypnotized yourself, trying to take everything for yourself, to have a good time—and you took it way too far, dragging all those girls off the streets.”

“You knew!” DuPre cried, waving the gun. “You knew!”

“In your mind, DuPre, in your mind! My name could never be tainted by scandal! I didn't tell you to drag girls off the street and force them to sleep with you,” Holloway said sharply. “What were you doing? Why are women missing, and did
you kill my wife, you son of a bitch?” Holloway demanded in return.

Jake motioned to Jackson. DuPre had a pretty careless hold on the pistol he was carrying. Jackson couldn't get a really good look at it. The weapon appeared to be a small, snub-nosed six-shooter. It would certainly be lethal at close range, and DuPre looked like a desperate man. His customary meticulousness was gone; his hair was tousled, sticking up in all directions and his customary meticulous attire was wrinkled and stained as if he'd had to crawl through some muddy terrain to escape detection.

Jackson shook his head and brought his fingers to his lips, warning Jake to be silent. He was going to have to pick the right time to bring the man down, winging him but rendering him harmless. There were still a lot of questions DuPre needed to answer.

“I didn't kill your wife, Senator.
You
killed your wife. You still can't admit the truth! You broke her heart. You put her in that house. I was nothing but your patsy—every damn thing that I did was for you.”

“You killed those girls,” Holloway said.

“I didn't kill your wife! You made Regina think she was crazy, haunted by demon children. You killed the woman who didn't worship you as a god. Well I
became
a god, Senator. I learned I had it. I had more power than you, and I have the kind of power that I can make work again, work for real.”

“The police are after you!” Holloway said.

“They'll know it was all you—when you're dead.”

Jackson and Jake frowned at one another, hearing Will's voice come through their earpieces. “Someone else is coming,
bursting through the gate. High speed. It's the bodyguard, the bald guy, Blake Conroy.”

Jackson swore. He burst out from his hiding place, gun held between both hands. “Get down, get down!” he warned the senator and DuPre.

But the front door burst open as if a bull had come through. “Don't shoot, dammit, no, don't shoot!” Jackson cried.

But gunshots exploded.

 

“Ah, hell!” Will shouted.

Angela heard the shout and the sound of gunfire.

She jerked away from her exploration of the paneling, and came running to the hallway, shouting to the camera and the microphone.

“What's going on, what happened?”

“Gunfire next door!” Will cried back. “Can't hear anything—it's mass confusion.”

“I'm on my way!”

She raced into Regina Holloway's bedroom and grabbed her Smith & Wesson from the drawer, and then raced downstairs. The others were already heading out the front door.

Police sirens could be heard on the air.

They raced around to the gate. “Get back,” she warned. “Stay flat against the wall, keep low!”

They obeyed and moved swiftly but carefully along the wall, then ran along the path to the house, and the front door.

“It's all right now,” Jackson called. “Ambulances are on the way.”

Angela frowned, and the others stayed back. She stepped carefully to the front, but Jackson called to her, “Stay back. It's a crime scene now.”

She looked inside. David Holloway lay on the ground, moaning. Jackson was at his side, staunching the flow of blood that was oozing from a shoulder wound. Jake was next to a fallen Martin DuPre; DuPre wasn't getting back up, and no ambulance was going to help him.

Blake Conroy knelt on the floor, clutching his shattered hand, and blood dripped from it as well.

“I'm coming in,” Jenna said. “I can help.”

Jenna stepped into the house, rushing past Blake Conroy to assess the senator's more dire condition. She spoke to him quietly. “It's a shoulder wound. Looks like a through and through. Breathe easily, Senator. Jackson, apply more pressure. You'll be all right.” She moved over to Conroy to examine his hand.

A moment later, the police cars arrived. Andy Devereaux stepped out of the first one, and hurried toward the house.

The ambulance came screeching to a halt.

For the next five minutes, there was mayhem.

But, eventually, Jackson, Andy and Angela stood alone on the sidewalk just outside the house. “We showed Holloway the projector and the images it had on its reels,” Jackson explained. “And he didn't go home, he decided to sleep here. We had cameras rolling on the place. The best I can figure is that he did get hold of Martin DuPre, or DuPre figured out where he was and came after him. I don't think he intended to kill the senator, but we'll never know now. He wanted money. He wanted help to get out of New Orleans. But Blake Conroy burst through the door before we could defuse the situation. DuPre panicked and got off a shot when Conroy shot him—I shot Conroy's hand, trying to get him to put his weapon down,” Jackson said.

Andy nodded, scratching his cheek. “Well, DuPre is dead.
It will save the taxpayers a lot of money. He would have gone up for murder.”