The Unforgiven

by Heather Graham

“Oh, no, no, no!” Katie said. “You don’t mean Dan Oliver. Look, he’s not even a cop anymore. I didn’t know he was living in New Orleans. Go figure on that, of all the cities in all the world... But no! He was obsessed with skewering George.”

  “So? Maybe George did have something to do with it. Maybe he didn’t. You believe in the man. You have good instincts. In that case, let’s clear him altogether by finding the truth, shall we?”

  “Can we find it this many years later?”

  “You’d be surprised. Where is George now, by the way?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “After the trial, he was a mess. First, he said something about heading to the least congested island out there and burrowing himself away in a hole. Then he decided that would make him crazy. All he would do would be to sit and remember. He wanted to plunge into something else that would keep him busy and send his mind in other directions. He loved the movies, too, and decided he would look for the least skilled, most legwork job he could find with any old movie-production company. I told him to call me when...when he wanted old friends in his life again.”

  “But he never called you.”

  “No.”

  The dogs started to bark. Katie frowned.

  Adam Harrison sat back. “That should be Dan Oliver now with one of my team, Special Agent Axel Tiger. They knew each other from Florida, so I sent Axel after Dan. Katie, please don’t just sit there. Let’s go introduce them to the dogs and let them in.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dan wasn’t sure it was the right time for him to be arriving on Katie Delaney’s doorstep.

  Yet, according to Ryder, he needed her help to keep him in the loop on everything that was happening with the case.

  Axel’s arrival had been beneficial. Dan knew he’d comprehend just how beneficial once his head stopped reeling.

  Katie came out of the pretty little Treme house along with Adam Harrison, calling to the dogs that it was all right. She reached the wooden fence ahead of Adam, talking to the dogs, telling them he and Axel were good.

  Dan knew dogs. Most of the time, he thought they were far more honest and giving than people. But he knew he’d been jaded for a while now, and it was his own fault. He needed to get over the past, get over himself.

  And this might be his chance.

  He ducked down to pet the three giant shepherds that greeted him with slobbery excitement once they’d been assured he and Axel were friends.

  He glanced up as Axel introduced himself to Katie and greeted Adam. He noted Katie was watching him. She looked wary, but at least he seemed to have gained her approval by being a dog person.

  “Shall we go in? It’s getting late,” Adam said.

  Katie didn’t say a word. She turned and led the way.

  She went straight to the front door, allowing the others to follow. Inside, she moved through the narrow entry hall to the parlor at the left of the house and into the dining area, where she took a seat. She sat stoically with her hands folded before her.

  The others joined her at the table.

  “Well, all right, I’ll begin,” Adam said. “Axel and I are here at the request of the local police. Because of the nature of the crime, they know they’ll be dealing with rumors, truth and myth. I became involved with this on a personal level when Katie did.” He stared at Dan Oliver. “I know how hard you fought to bring a killer to justice. Whether you had the right man or not, we don’t know.”

  “It wasn’t George,” Katie said flatly. She gave Dan what he construed as an extremely hostile glance.

  “Maybe not,” Adam agreed. “And Axel is willing to start back from scratch, but he’ll consider all the accumulated knowledge of the crimes that have occurred.”

  “What about you?” Katie demanded, her stare on Dan.

  Dan nodded. “I am willing to go back over everything I know and to investigate these murders to the best of my ability.”

  Axel gave him a nudge with his foot beneath the table.

  Dan gritted his teeth but added, “With an open mind to the fact I might have been wrong.”

  “Really?” Katie said doubtfully.

  He met her gaze; she was so sure. As sure as he had been the man had been guilty.

  “With an open mind,” he said, and suddenly he meant it.

  Hell, just this morning, he’d believed there were no such things as ghosts. And while the couple on the Delaney boat that long-ago day had seemed to be specters, they might well have been real.

  Real killers.

  “There will be many in law enforcement who believe the killings are copycats of one another, and here in New Orleans, copycats of the killer who struck in 1918 and 1919 and perhaps before that as well.”

  “About that,” Axel interjected. “Dan has a...contact who might be able to help us with the historical murders.”

  “And who might that be?” Adam looked at Dan with curiosity.

  Dan hesitated. Was Axel really expecting him to talk about this in front of Adam right now? In front of Katie Delaney? He glanced at Adam, still trying to grasp everything Axel had told him about the man—and his Krewe of Hunters. Adam nodded encouragingly. Dan let out a sigh. “Her name was...is Mabel Greely, and she was best friends with one of the Axeman’s victims,” he said.

  To his surprise, no one mocked him.

  Not even Katie Delaney.

  “She was a friend of a victim—not a victim herself?” Adam inquired.

  Dan nodded. After the different ways Katie had looked at him—most of them hostile—she was now looking at him without doubt.

  She seemed thoughtful.

  “Did she know who did it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but she believes—as do many people who have studied this—it might have been a man named Momfre.”

  Katie leaned back in her chair. “First to die, as accepted by most people as the victims of the Axeman, were Joseph and Catherine Maggio. Then Louis Besumer and his mistress, Harriet Lowe, were attacked, but they didn’t die. The police arrested a man who had worked at their store, but there was no evidence against him, and he was released. Besumer himself wound up being arrested for the attacks. Harriet Lowe began accusing him of being a German spy, claimed he’d attacked her before... It was all kind of confused, and police officers wound up being demoted over it all. Harriett Lowe later died after a surgery that was supposed to relieve the injuries she had received.”

  “You just know all this?” Dan asked, frowning.

  She shrugged. “I’m a tour guide.”

  “Then, go on—though, obviously, whoever it was isn’t the person doing it now,” Dan said.

  “But our axe murderer is playing on it,” Adam said.

  “I think so, too,” Dan said. “And I think he’s going to copy a lot of what happened. He had nothing like this back in Florida—no New Orleans legend to call up—but this might be... I don’t know...his main play?” He looked at Katie who was staring back at him.

  She didn’t seem quite as hostile as she had before.

  “George Calabria has no ties to New Orleans,” she told him.

  “I said I’m coming into this now with an open mind. Please go on. I just bought a handful of books on the subject, but you seem to have it down pat. What then?” Dan asked.

  He noted that, for the most part, Adam and Axel were sitting back, listening.

  Katie glanced around at the three of them. “Okay, next, the Axeman attacked a pregnant woman. She survived and so did the child. It was a bit different. Police believed she’d been attacked with a bedside lamp, and they didn’t associate it with the Axeman right away. All she could remember was a dark figure standing over her. They arrested a man that time, too, but once again couldn’t prove it. The fellow ran when police came after him. There was just
no kind of evidence that suggested he did it, but he had a criminal record, and the police were desperate. Because of the nature of the attack—a brutal surprise—they began to think it was the Axeman.”

  “What was her name?” Dan asked.

  “Anna Schneider,” Katie told him.

  He shook his head. “Not my ghost’s friend.”

  Katie arched a brow in his direction. He shrugged. “I was approached at the cemetery.”

  “Approached?”

  Axel explained, since they’d had a longer conversation with Mabel as they’d walked out of the Garden District. “There’s a young woman who was friends with a victim—she wasn’t a victim herself. She died of tuberculosis while still young, though. In life, the Axeman murders haunted her, and I believe she’s remained because she is still seeking the truth.”

  “And I thought it would be hard to discover the truth after twelve years!” Katie said. “Now we’re looking at more than a hundred. You said her name was Mabel Greely? I’ll get to public records and see what I can find on her.”

  “You’ve done that kind of research before?” Dan asked.

  She grimaced. “Hey, I’m a guide. Licensed and all. We strive to tell the truth that goes along with our legends.”

  “Who were the Axeman’s other victims?” Axel prompted.

  “Okay, so next we have Joseph Romano, an elderly man. He survived the attack. His nieces came in when they heard a commotion, and like Anna Schneider, they could report on what they saw, a big man in a dark coat and slouched hat escaping as they arrived. Joseph survived the initial attack but died two days later because of the injuries he sustained. Then...”

  She paused, wincing.

  “Then...” Dan said in encouragement.

  She shook her head. “The worst. He attacked Rosie and Charles Cortimiglia, and their daughter, Mary. Charles and Rosie survived, but Mary was found dead in her mother’s arms. Only two years old. Their lives were ruined. They had lost their baby daughter, and they divorced. Mary accused an old man, a neighbor, and his seventeen-year-old grandson. They were both arrested and did jail time, and the seventeen-year-old was sentenced to hang. Mary later recanted. And with good reason. The old man was too infirm to have committed the crimes, and the grandson was too big to have fit through the panel that had been chiseled away at the back.”

  “Cortimiglia? No,” Dan muttered. Katie’s glance at him was hostile again. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Mabel Greely claimed her friend was a victim...”

  He knew why Mabel had stuck around, why her passion to find justice had been so great that she’d stayed year after year. Her friend had been murdered by the man.

  And he had gone on to kill again.

  A child.

  The Axeman had killed a baby.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “What was the surname of the first victims again? Maggio? I think Mabel said she knew a woman named Maggio, right, Axel?” He looked at the other man, who nodded. Dan went on. “She must have still been reeling from the loss of her friend when the monster struck again.”

  “I know. It’s so hard to think about an innocent child. At least they think the baby died quickly, one blow to the back of the head or neck,” Katie said. “Anyway, a man named Steve Boca came next. He woke up to find a dark-clad man in a slouched hat standing above him and went to catch him only to discover he’d been bashed in the head. He survived. Next, Sarah Laumann. She survived the attack but could remember nothing about it. Then—in what is considered to be the last of the Axeman attacks—Mike Pepitone. He was killed, and his wife was left with six children. But there’s much more in between all that. Mrs. Pepitone wound up in Los Angeles where she purportedly shot and killed a man named Momfre—with various spellings. Some researchers claim they can find no such incident. I don’t know. In that theory, she claimed the man who broke in on her in Los Angeles was the same man who killed her husband. All in all, six were killed and six survived in the number of what most people accept to be the Axeman’s killings. There were incidents before about dark, shadowy men attacking people, back in 1910 and 1911, but in those cases, the killer wanted money. It was over a hundred years ago. It’s unlikely any more evidence will come to light, so no one can prove anything one way or the other. Researchers just go with what is out there and make their best educated guess. But the Axeman didn’t take things. He hacked, sliced and killed.”

  “And it’s believed the letter sent to the Times-Picayune came from the real killer?”

  “Yes, the letter was received on March 13, 1919, and in it he claimed he was more than a man, that he was a demon or a devil. He refers in it to a Satanic Majesty and claims he is the worst spirit in any realm of the real or fantasy. He claimed he was going to pass over New Orleans on the following Tuesday at twelve fifteen at night, and he would spare those who played jazz. People played jazz like their lives depended on it, and no one was killed that night. He taunted the police. And I guess he did. They couldn’t catch him. He removed panels often to get into homes, and he left bloody axes everywhere he went. He used a knife, an axe and anything he could to bash people. Maybe he was more than a man—he was a monster.”

  “Today, he would have been caught. Forensic science has come so far,” Adam said.

  “Really?” Katie said. “They never caught whoever killed my parents.”

  “You’re right,” Adam said, looking apologetic. “But if we’re right, and this is the same killer, we will get him this time.” He smiled and reached out across the table to squeeze her hand. “We have more than forensic science on our side this time. We have tools others don’t. Katie, we’re going to get this guy. Now, there is one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You may be in danger.”

  “Me?” she asked, surprised.

  “The killer missed you once. You weren’t on the boat when your parents were killed. If we’re right, the killer might want to finish off what they were doing.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “Did you miss the fact that while the dogs aren’t mine, I basically live with three giant animals that would tear you to ribbons if you tried to hurt me?”

  Dan looked at Adam. If there was one thing he had learned in his years in and out of law enforcement, it was that kind of killer was not working with a full deck. Any rationality, an agenda, anything... Such a killer could be obsessive.

  Determined to carry out a job.

  “I’m okay,” Katie insisted at their worried faces. “I’m right next to Monty. He’s a great guy. If I was in danger, he’d be right there for me.”

  “But doesn’t he work the carriages himself sometimes?” Adam asked her.

  “Yes, but the dogs don’t go with him.”

  “We’ll get someone to keep an eye on things around here,” Adam said, nodding at Axel. “All right, here’s one thing we need right away—”

  “Sketches,” Dan interrupted. “We need a sketch artist, and Katie has to give us some kind of likenesses of the mystery couple who were on the boat when her parents were killed.”

  “I was thinking about dinner. It’s gotten very late, and I’m not a young man,” Adam said.

  “The four of us? Go to...dinner?” Dan sputtered.

  “Yes. It’s a meal one eats at the end of the day,” Adam said, smiling.

  “But I should get back to work,” Katie said.

  “Katie, I’m sure you do fine. And your company will do well enough without you for a night,” Adam told her.

  “Uh...”

  Dan could see she was worried about forging any kind of an alliance with them.

  She might not have been so worried if he hadn’t been there.

  “Katie,” he said, wincing inwardly, “I am serious. I will stop trying to prove George did these things and look elsewhere. It’s best if we can both help on this...”

&
nbsp; “All right, all right. I know a place that’s local, the owner is local,” Katie said. She stood. “Let me just tell Monty I won’t be working for the rest of the night.”

  * * *

  She was still wary; there was no way for her not to be wary of Dan Oliver.

  But he did know the cases.

  And now that she’d talked with him more, she thought Dan seemed like a haunted man. Not by ghosts—though, it appeared he was—but by the past. The murder scenes he’d witnessed had apparently done something to him. He was passionate about finding the truth.

  “I think we should bring Dan into this on a double-pronged deal,” Adam said. They had ordered; she’d assured him the shrimp and grits here were about the best to be found anywhere, and the table had ordered the meal along with Mama Didi’s famous corn bread and salads.

  “Ryder Stapleton, with the NOPD, told me I needed to have a survivor hire me,” Dan said, looking straight at Katie.

  She sighed. “I do all right, but I don’t have the funds to hire a private investigator.”

  “I’ll take a dollar,” he told her.

  The man was serious.

  “Of course, we’ll bring you in as a consultant,” Adam Harrison said. “I believe we’ll be taking lead in the case, and if so, that is all you need. But, Katie, yes—give him a dollar. Hire him officially.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  Axel laughed. “Now. You need to give him a dollar now. It’s a verbal contract witnessed by Adam and me.”

  She dug in her pocket for a dollar and gave it to Dan.

  There was something in the pained look he gave her as he accepted it that suddenly made it all seem more palatable to her.

  “So we’re set,” Adam said. “We have a great artist in the NOLA office. We’ll go to him for the sketches as soon as we’ve finished eating.”

  Their food arrived. Dan compared it to a place a friend of his owned that was in the Irish Channel.

  “You really have family here?” Katie asked Dan.

  He hesitated and shrugged. “I have family here—they’re in Lafayette Cemetery. I do have a sister not so far away—she’s living in Baton Rouge. I grew up going back and forth. My dad’s family—and my mom—are in Lafayette Cemetery.”