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

by Heather Graham

  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.”

  “He said that he didn’t kill Regina,” Jackson said. “He said that the senator killed her, that Holloway broke her heart.”

  “What does that mean?” Andy asked.

  “Did you miss the part where DuPre died?” Jackson said, disgusted.

  “Ah, come on,” Andy interrupted. “Look, I’m an officer of the law, and I respect my office. I don’t shoot to kill, and I bring a man in every time rather than shoot a bloody murderer, child molester and so on, but don’t expect me to weep over this one, Jackson Crow,” Andy said.

  “It’s not that,” Angela explained quietly. “We still don’t know what happened. Jackson’s explaining that they were listening to DuPre when Conroy burst in.”

  Andy nodded. “Yeah, well, we’ll have to piece together the rest.” He stared at Jackson. “You’ll have to come down to the station. We’ll need a slew of statements. DuPre is dead, we’ll have the bodyguard questioned at the hospital, and the senator won’t be in shape for any information until tomorrow. But I’ll need you, Jake and the nurse—she came
into the house,” he said apologetically.

  Jackson nodded. “Right.”

  The ambulance was leaving with the senator on a stretcher. The EMTs were walking with Jenna, who was still holding Holloway’s hand. The senator now had an IV in his arm and an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

  Medical pathologists from the coroner’s office had arrived, but they’d be working in the house for a while. Blake Conroy had already been situated in the back of another ambulance. He glared at them all with red, angry eyes.

  Jackson glared back with anger.

  Conroy suddenly jumped out of the ambulance, racing toward Jackson. Andy stepped between the men.

  “You shot me!” Conroy accused Jackson. “You shot me! The bastard was going to kill the senator. It was my job to shoot him.”

  “We had it covered, Conroy. And you killed the truth when you shot DuPre!” Jackson told him.

  “Stop it!” Andy said. “We’ll sort this all out at the station.”

  “I’m bringing charges against you,” Conroy threatened Jackson.

  “And you could be facing murder charges yourself,” Jackson told him.

  “He had a gun,” Conroy said.

  “Get back in the ambulance. Get back in the damn ambulance!” Andy said. “And get to the hospital… Charges are possible, Conroy, so cut the temper tantrums. And it’s 2:00 a.m., dammit,” he said irritably. “Let’s move this. Move it!”

  He got Conroy back to the ambulance. Jackson stood with Angela. She wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, Martin DuPre did become a monster,” she said quietly.

  “It wasn’t finished,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t finished. I still don’t trust Conroy. Hey!” he called to Andy. “He’s going to be in custody, right?”

  Andy looked back at him, his expression tense. “He’ll be at the hospital, and then down at the station.”

  Jackson nodded, then turned to Angela, taking her shoulders. “All right, then, go back, you, Will and Whitney. Try to get some sleep, and we’ll try to figure out if we can make any more sense out of it all tomorrow. Something still just isn’t right.”

  “We can all come to the station,” she told him.

  He shook his head wearily. “That won’t make sense, that’s for sure. Get some sleep. Get in, lock up and get some sleep. At least I won’t be that worried. DuPre is dead, and Blake Conroy will be occupied. Our time at the station will be as quick as I can make it.” He gave her a pained and rueful smile. “And it had been one of my best nights, oddly.”

  She grinned in return.

  “I can wait up.”

  “Jackson! You coming with me?” Andy scowled at him.

  Jackson gave Angela a quick kiss on the lips. “Soon,” he promised.

  He got into Andy Devereaux’s unmarked car with Jake and Jenna. Will and Whitney came over to stand by Angela.

  “He’s so upset,” Whitney remarked.

  “He wanted to know more from Martin DuPre,” she explained.

  “Well, he managed it in the best possible way,” Will said. “He may have to be happy with that.”

  “Hey, handsome, you did all right, too!” Whitney teased him. “You caught DuPre breaking into that house.”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Will said. “Come on. Let’s try to get some rest. My eyes are killing me from staring at those screens.”

  “I think a glass of wine is in order,” Whitney said. “Then, maybe, my adrenaline will be down enough for me to sleep.”

  “Sounds good,” Angela said.

  They walked slowly back to the house, tired but wired. Angela decided that when Jackson returned and had gotten some sleep, they could start inspecting the walls. He’d been angry, frustrated and disconcerted when he’d headed toward the station; a dead man still lay in the house next door. Tomorrow would be time to tell him what discoveries they might make through the ghosts.

  They walked into the grand ballroom. Will checked the door and set the alarms. “Should I forget about the cameras and film? I guess we are working on taxpayer money.”

  “Keep them up for tonight,” Angela told him.

  “Is it over? Is it really over? Did we solve it? No ghosts—just a very evil man?” Whitney asked.

  “Well, we know there are ghosts,” Angela said. “But Jackson was right—evil is done by the living.”

  She headed into the kitchen, leaving them to do whatever their wonderful technical minds did with their technical equipment. For the moment, she slid her Smith & Wesson into one of the kitchen drawers.

  She walked to the refrigerator and found a bottle of chilled Chablis. She took out the wine, opened the bottle and went to the cupboard for glasses. She noted that Jake’s computer was on the counter bypass and she went to look at the screen.

  He’d had a search engine at work. Jackson had told him to research the projector they had found. He’d gone to a number of sites, and she glanced at them curiously—the projector was in high demand by magicians.

  She started backtracking through his system, and he’d been busy, using what codes she didn’t know, but he’d done some hacking.

  As she stood there, growing absorbed, little blips alerted her to responses coming in from the questions he’d been asking.

  She clicked on the mouse, and it brought up another screen. It was listings of the trace he had made on the purchases of the projector.

  She gasped suddenly.

  “Will!” she called.

  He didn’t answer her.

  “Whitney, Will! Come in here.”

  There was still no answer. She stepped into the hall, “Hey!”

  A muffled laugh made her shake her head. Well, they were young, and the case was apparently over.

  She walked down the hallway, aggravated. But when she reached the grand ballroom, she didn’t see either of them. She walked around to look at the screens.

  And when she did, she froze, berating herself for her stupidity.

  One screen showed Whitney, knocked flat in the upstairs hallway; Angela couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive.

  Will could be seen in a like position on the landing of the central stairway, just above her.

  They had all run out at the sound of the shots next door; they had run out, leaving the Madden C. Newton house open and vulnerable.

  And they weren’t alone.

  She knew before she turned that someone was behind her.

  She even knew who.

  But the blow against her head took her down before she could turn to face their attacker.

  * * *

  Jackson gave his statement at another desk across from where Jake gave his statement. Jenna had come in after the fact, but she sat at another desk, telling the officer the senator’s condition as she had seen it, and the emergency treatment she had helped administer.

  Andy finished typing up the document, printed it out and gave it to Jackson to sign.

  “Where’s Conroy now?” he asked.

  “Hey, there’s an officer with him at the hospital. He’ll be here with an escort, don’t worry. He’s not out on the streets.” Andy chuckled. “He will need surgery on that hand.”

  “I shot for the gun,” Jackson said wearily. “And I was a split second too late.”

  “Hey, the senator is still alive.”

  “Shots should never have been fired, period,” Jackson said.

  Andy shrugged. “But they were. And the senator is going to live, and a bad man is dead. Come on, Jackson, I can live with that. You’re going to have to. Let’s see, when it all comes out—that the senator’s aide was in on fleecing and seducing young women in the name of the church—I’d say that fellow’s career may be over, but then again, he may be so damn broken now he’d be no good in politics anyway. He had to have been slipping, to have ignored everything that was going on in his own house, so to speak.”

  “Come on, Andy. We can’t let this go. We really don’t know yet if the senator was heavily involved with those people,” Jackson said. “Or�
�just how deeply others around him were involved.”

  “Fine,” Andy said wearily. “But it looks like we did find out the murderer.”

  But Jackson had heard the conversation between DuPre and Holloway. And DuPre had denied killing the senator’s wife.

  “Anyway, we can meet in the morning and try to sort more out,” Andy said.

  “Is that it for now? Can we get back?” Jackson asked.

  “You’re free to go,” Andy told him. “Just as soon as the others wrap up. The patrolman over there, Smith, will give you a ride back.”

  They left the station. Two blocks down, they passed a police car on the side of the road. There were two silhouettes visible.

  “Stop, go back,” Jackson said.

  “Sir?” Smith said.

  “Go back—there were two officers in that car, and they didn’t look right,” Jackson said.

  Even Jake, next to him in the backseat of the car, looked at him as if he was losing it.

  “Smith, go back, please.”

  “They’re probably just on break.”

  “Please,” Jackson said firmly.

  With a sigh, Smith did as he was asked. He parked the police car and Jackson hopped out. He walked toward the car.

  Both occupants were slumped over.

  Dead.

  The driver was a police officer.

  The passenger was not.

  * * *

  Angela woke with her head pounding. For a moment, she was lost—completely lost. Disoriented, and in pain.

  Then she remembered clearly what had happened. She was in Regina Holloway’s bedroom, on the floor. The pain of rug burns on her flesh told her that she’d been dragged there.

  Something was touching her foot. Whitney’s body, she realized.

  “It’s time,” she heard.

  She looked up. Grable Haines was grinning down at her, a gun in his hand. “Ghost busters, busted! Cool. The legend of this house is going to grow and grow.”

  She stared at him, knowing that he wasn’t alone when she heard the giggle behind him. It was Lisa Drummond, of course.

  “Be careful. The ghosts will get you,” Lisa said.