Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  “But it’s all based on lies. Even when a man—or woman—doesn’t mean to lie, they make promises. And then compromises. So at what point does a man sell his soul? The real problem, as I see it, is that no one in Holloway’s camp really knows how to tell the truth anymore,” Jake said.

  “That’s why you watch the body, my boy,” Jackson told him. “The little things, like the eyes. Sweat on the upper lip. You have to try to catch a liar in a lie, and see him try to weave his way out of it.”

  At the coffee shop, he ordered lattes, and he and Jake sat down to wait. He noted that the senator came down the street from Bourbon.

  Holloway entered the shop and looked quickly around. Spotting them, he came to the corner table in the rear where they waited.

  “Crow, Mr. Mallory,” he said, greeting them. He was in a tailored shirt and jeans. Not in any official business wear.

  “Casual day at the office, Senator?”

  “I’m trying to tie up a few personal affairs. I’m due back in Baton Rouge next week,” he said. He leaned closer. “So, what have you found out?” he asked.

  “Martin DuPre is some kind of elder at the Church of Christ Arisen,” Jackson said, looking at the senator.

  Holloway’s brow knit; he looked confused rather than alarmed, or about to make a denial.

  “He’s not. I sent him in a while ago to get friendly with the people there and try to find out what was going on. I was doing it in tandem with our work on the Aryans.”

  “How long ago?” Jackson asked.

  “Maybe…seven, eight months ago,” Holloway said.

  “I thought I should warn you—he may be arrested tonight. The police are going into the church with a search warrant. One of the girls who left the organization has leveled some charges.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Who would have ever imagined that DuPre would have fallen prey to that debauchery?”

  He seemed sincere. “What did DuPre tell you about the church?” Jackson asked.

  “He said he felt like an ass, but he’d get involved, and try to keep an eye on what they were going to do with their demonstrations, what manner of spin and propaganda they were going to use against me. Frankly, recently…”

  “Did you send your secretary into the Aryans fold?” Jackson asked.

  “My secretary? Lisa?”

  “Yes, the one you were sleeping with,” Jackson said.

  Holloway’s face reddened. “It was brief. It was stupid. It is over.”

  “Yes, and you were sleeping with her in the house right next door to the Madden C. Newton house—a place you own as well. You might have shared that information,” Jackson told him.

  The senator’s face went nearly purple.

  “It’s just a rental property. I don’t live there.”

  “But you did sleep there,” Jake put in quietly.

  Holloway sighed, looking downward. “I just admitted to the affair.” He looked up at them both again. “All right, the truth? I called friends in D.C., and I’d known Adam Harrison, and something about some of the people he’s used over the years. Dammit, don’t you understand? Yes, I would go to the house next door. I was frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. I loved my wife, but she wasn’t a wife to me anymore. We talked about trying again, but hell, you have to have sex to have another child, and she cried rather than have sex with me. I want to believe that there were ghosts in the place and that she freaked out and fell.”

  “She didn’t fall—she was pushed,” Jackson said.

  “How do you know that? The coroner’s office did rule it a suicide.”

  “Your staff is involved with the places that you most fear, Senator. How much you knew and didn’t know remains to be seen, since I don’t think you’re being entirely honest with me. But we now know that young girls have been dying—young girls involved with the Church of Christ Arisen.”

  “That has nothing to do with Regina,” the senator protested. “I don’t know what you expect me to say. I’m not responsible for my staff!”

  “Yes, Senator, you are. To what degree—we will find out.”

  “No. The police ruled it a suicide, but there are ghosts in that house. Regina fell from that balcony—and you can prove that ghosts caused her death. The police—”

  “The police were wrong,” Jackson told him. “And it will all come out. So, it’s not looking good for you, Senator. Your aide got very involved in the Church of Christ Arisen, and your secretary, bodyguard and chauffeur are all involved with the Aryans. Frankly, no one surrounding you is legitimate in any way.”

  “My secretary, bodyguard—and chauffeur?” he asked blankly.

  “Martin DuPre impregnated one of the girls at the church. Lisa Drummond and Grable Haines are in pictures from Aryans events. Blake Conroy was at the Aryans meeting the other night,” Jake provided. “I know because I was there,” he said.

  “Conroy—I did send Conroy,” the senator said. “But…Lisa? And Grable?”

  “Where are they all now, Senator? Why are you alone? Isn’t a bodyguard supposed to protect you on the streets?” Jackson asked.

  “I haven’t wanted people around me,” Holloway said.

  “You need to clean house,” Jackson told him. “If we found these things out in a matter of days, your constituents are going to know everything soon as well. And when the police go into the Church of Christ Arisen, I can promise you that Martin DuPre will wind up on the cover of many a newspaper, along with stories about corruption in politics.”

  Holloway nodded jerkily. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Not for a while,” Jackson said. “What would you like? I’ll get you some coffee. We’re just going to sit here awhile.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re going to wait for the police results,” Jackson said.

  The senator shook his head. “Look, don’t you get it yet, Jackson? I sent Conroy to the Aryans, and I sent DuPre to the Church of Christ Arisen. I was trying to find out if they were related in any way, because they were the groups so against me. And I think I was right. I still need the proof. But I believe that the Church of Christ Arisen was an offshoot of the Aryans. A sect, if you will. If I didn’t get people involved, I’d never know what was really happening. You’ve got to understand—if they started buying into the doctrine, I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it.”

  * * *

  Angela helped clean up after dinner, but she was bored and restless. She sat in front of the screens with Will and Whitney for a while, and kept an eye on the screen that now showed the shotgun house from the side. But there was no one there; nothing happened at all.

  Eventually, she yawned. She wondered if the police had stormed the Church of Christ Arisen yet, and if so, if they had found anything.

  “I’m going up to bed,” she said.

  “You’re not going to wait until we hear back?” Whitney asked her.

  “I have my cell phone, or you two can come and get me,” she said.

  Upstairs, she showered in her own room, both fearful and hopeful that she would see a face in the mirror. But she didn’t. She went into Jackson’s room instead and stretched out on the bed there. For a while, her thoughts were torn between wanting him to come back and be there beside her, and twisting and turning with the questions that continued to plague them and grow worse. They weren’t getting answers—just more questions.

  Eventually, she drifted, never sleeping soundly. Then, it seemed that she was wide-awake, and she wondered why. Jackson hadn’t returned.

  She realized that she had the sensation of being watched.

  Carefully opening her eyes, she looked to the doorway that separated the room she stayed in with Jackson from the room Regina Holloway had chosen.

  And there they were.

  The children, and between Percy and Annabelle, the woman she had seen in the mirror. The woman who might have been Susanne Crimshaw. Whoever she was, she was dead, and though she hadn’t died anywhere near the era the c
hildren had perished, it seemed that their souls transcended time and space, because it seemed as if they were together here now, no matter how many years apart their deaths had been.

  The woman crooked a finger at Angela, asking her to come, to follow them.

  For a moment, Angela just lay there, fighting a feeling of terror. But then she made herself get up and she walked to the specters who were beckoning to her. Susanne turned, holding little Annabelle’s hand, and Percy reached out for Angela. “Where are we going?” she whispered to him.

  “Up,” he said.

  They walked down the hallway together, and then up the stairs to the attic. Angela floundered for lights by the side of the wall, and the naked bulb sprang to life, casting light and shadow over the vast expanse of the room. “Why are we here?” Angela asked Susanne.

  The ghost raised her arm, pointing, but Angela couldn’t really see what she was trying to show her. Angela spun around. She saw a dressmaker’s mannequin, a pile of old trunks, cases and boxes. She thought at first that none of it had been touched in ages—other than the fact that she could see that the dormer windows had been wired for the alarm system. With the one bulb casting an eerie light over the piles of the past, she found the place unnerving.

  “I just don’t see,” she said softly.

  She turned around again, assessing the area slowly. There seemed to be something sad and poignant about the dressmaker’s dummy with the full soldier’s uniform upon it; made and never touched. The giant wire-mesh crate that held children’s toys from all ages seemed very sad as well. There were old wooden trains, dolls from a distant time, trains and tracks, an old stuffed rocking horse and more.

  “I don’t see,” she said again.

  She felt the woman’s presence behind her. The pretty young woman with the blond hair, the huge eyes, and jeans and T-shirt from the twenty-first century. She felt as if she touched her shoulders, turning her again.

  Angela was certain that the ghost of Susanne Crimshaw and her young friends from another age were urging her toward the trunks against the wall. She walked over to them, curious, and still uneasy and unnerved, but certain that there was something she was supposed to discover.

  She turned, wanting to know which of the trunks she should be going through, but the ghosts were gone. But she wasn’t alone. She heard her name called. “Angela! Angela!” Whitney was shouting her name, and the pounding of footsteps on the stairs told her that Whitney wasn’t coming up alone.

  “I’m here, I’m here—I’m fine,” she said.

  Whitney burst into view from the landing, and Will was right behind her.

  “We saw you—we saw you walking down the hall, and up the stairs!” Will said.

  “It’s on film. You—you weren’t alone,” Whitney said, her honey-colored skin an odd, mottled shade of paste as she looked at Angela. “We—we were scared to death for you.”

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs again. It was Jenna, rushing up to meet them. “Is everyone all right? What’s going on?”

  “Angela walked here as if she was in a trance,” Whitney said.

  “And we were watching the screens, so we could see Angela,” Will explained. “Wait until you see that film again,” Will said, staring at Angela.

  “It was Susanne Crimshaw,” Angela said flatly. “She’s here, and she’s managed to make contact with the children. They’re together, and they’re trying to help us find something.”

  “So they brought you here,” Jenna said. “They’re gone, aren’t they? I don’t—I don’t feel anything here.”

  “They’re very shy ghosts, I’m afraid,” Angela told her.

  “Well, then, let’s get started looking,” Will said. “Pick a corner, everyone.”

  “It’s huge—three wings of attic, just like three wings of house, and three wings of basement,” Jenna said. “This house is huge.”

  “Yes, but the ghosts brought Angela here,” Will said. “I’ll take a quick walk through the place.”

  He headed toward the front.

  Angela looked around. There were piles of lumber and pipe, there were ancient paint cans. All out in the open, and clearly, just what they appeared to be. She needed to be digging into the unseen—what might be hidden up here.

  She started for a far corner filled with trunks, and started to open them. They seemed to be mostly filled with clothing and mothballs.

  “Stuff from the 1920s,” Jenna said, closing one of the trunks she had opened.

  “I think I’m back in the 1860s or ’70s,” Angela said.

  “Ditto,” Whitney called.

  The third trunk that Angela opened was different. There was some kind of mechanism in it.

  “What’s that?” Whitney asked her.

  “I’m not sure…I have to get it out.”

  Will came back in. “That wing is like a big…like a shelter or something. Tons of bed frames.”

  “Slave quarters, probably, back in the day,” Whitney said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Will said, coming over to Angela. “Hey, it’s a projector.”

  “A projector?” Angela murmured. “I wonder what it was projecting.”

  Will shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was probably outstanding. I’ve used this kind in a magic show. You can project images into the air with it, the thing is amazing—and really expensive. Let’s see what’s on it—grab that roll there, in the tin can, on the bottom of the trunk.”

  Angela grabbed the film canister and handed it to Will. He quickly searched for an outlet. “They can work on batteries, too, but…I think the ones in this thing are dead now. There—there’s an outlet.”

  He plugged in the projector and hit a button. “Turn off the big overhead bulb. Let the light in from the stairs and hallway.”

  Jenna obliged him. And there, in the murky light, a horrible image appeared. It was the image of a little boy—with an ax in his skull and blood creeping down his face.

  They heard a faint sound. A whisper. And it, too, was horrible. “Mommy?”

  “Damn!” Will exclaimed, and played with the machine, finding the volume control. The plaintive word became louder. The image moved, as if alive. “Mommy?”

  “Mommy, it hurts. It hurts so badly. Help me, Mommy,” the image said, staring at them with wide blue eyes.

  “Oh, my God!” Jenna said, and jumping up, she turned on the light. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I can’t stand it. That’s horrible, so horrible.”

  Even with the light on, they could faintly see the projected image.

  “Turn it off, Will, turn it off, please,” Angela said. “We know what it is. We can show Jackson, and he can get it to the police. Now we know for a fact that someone was in here, that they were playing horrible tricks on Regina—a way to get her out on the balcony of her own room.”

  Will turned off the projector. He was quiet a minute. “Was that the little boy you’ve been seeing, Angela?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “But you weren’t seeing a projected image—you were seeing the real thing, right?” Will said.

  “I wasn’t seeing a projected image,” Angela said.

  “So…do you think that whoever saw the image also saw the real ghost?” Will asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Angela said. “There are all kinds of pictures at the museum—and pictures of the children can be found there. They’re probably also available in old newspaper archives. No, I don’t think that anyone had to have seen the ghosts of the children to pull this off.”

  “Who the hell could have gotten into the house so easily, and managed this stuff?” Whitney asked.

  “Well, David Holloway, for one,” Angela said.

  * * *

  Jackson’s phone rang while he was watching the senator sip a second latte. It was Andy Devereaux.

  “Well, we went in, and we have a couple of guys in for questioning,” Andy said.

  “Did you find anything? Anything at all to suggest that a murder—or murders—were
committed there?” Jackson kept his eyes on David Holloway as he spoke.

  “Nothing. There are a couple of girls here, and we’re trying to question them. And I have two members of the church council, but no Martin DuPre, and they’re saying that they’ve never had anyone who matches that description as a member of the church. I can hold all of them for about twenty-four hours, but after that, I’m going to hope that I can at least find proof of statutory rape, and that may be all that I have.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Come in the morning. Maybe you have a unique way of asking questions,” Andy suggested. “Right now, I’m praying the girls quit crying, that I can find out a few real names, and get something out of the crew. The financial guys are going over the books. But I need more. And I’m going to have to bring your girl, Gabby Taylor, back to identify DuPre, if he’s really the father of her child. Have you told any of this to David Holloway?”

  “Yes, I’m looking at him right now,” Jackson said.

  “All right. Get here in the morning. I’ve got officers on the case, but this might be something you can handle with more intuitive questions. I haven’t dealt with crazy cults before, though I have dealt with enough crazy teenage girls.”

  “Do your best, Andy.”

  Jackson hung up. Both Holloway and Jake were watching him.

  “DuPre wasn’t there. Do you have any idea where he might be, Senator?”

  “I gave him the night off,” Holloway said.

  “Call him.”

  The senator did so. The phone just rang and rang.

  Jackson wasn’t surprised. “I doubt if he’ll be reporting to work tomorrow, Senator.”

  As they sat there, Jackson’s phone rang. It was Will. “We’ve found something,” he said. “Are you still with the senator?”

  “I am.”

  “Can you leave him?”

  “If you’re telling me I need to do so.”

  Will began to speak quickly, so quickly that he didn’t understand the gist of what Will was saying at first. And then he did.

  “You need to see this,” Will said. “The question is—should you bring the senator with you or not?”

  * * *