Unhallowed Ground

by Heather Graham

Page 44

 

  Barry cleared his throat. “You’re not just saying that, right?” he asked her.

  “No, I swear to you, he was with me. But, Renee, you should have told the police the truth. ”

  “I wanted to talk to you first,” Renee said. “I mean, you’re seeing him and all, so I…” She trailed off.

  But Sarah was barely listening. Caleb had been with her all through the night, until he had awakened to follow a ghost—Cato’s ghost—up to her attic.

  What the hell had Cato been up to last night? And if he was innocent, as he claimed and her reading seemed to prove, why would he have harmed Renee? Or had he been the one to save her by scaring the killer away?

  “It’s frightening, whatever you saw,” Sarah said. “No matter what, you can’t be alone anymore. Promise?”

  “I promise,” Renee assured her, then said, “You need to be careful, too, you know. I don’t care what anyone says, I think someone locked you in your basement. Maybe they just wanted to scare you—or maybe you weren’t supposed to get out. ”

  Before he could leave the station and head for Renee’s place, Caleb heard his name called.

  “Mr. Anderson?”

  He stopped and turned, and saw a uniformed officer standing nearby, a young man with dark close-cropped hair, dark eyes, bronze skin and square cheekbones.

  Native American?

  Caleb strode toward him.

  The man spoke quickly. “Officer Jim Tiger,” he offered, shaking Caleb’s hand. “Can you meet me around the corner at the Coquina Café? I can’t talk here,” he said.

  “I’ll see you there,” Caleb said.

  By the time Caleb had ordered two cups of coffee, Officer Tiger arrived. He accepted one of the cups, saying, “Thanks. The stuff at the station tastes like dishwater. Come on out the back. There’s a terrace, and no one will see us there. ”

  As Caleb followed him out, Tiger kept speaking. “Look, I’m not trying to be disloyal or anything, but I’m worried about Jamison. The mayor is down his throat, so he’s getting desperate. And the thing is…he hasn’t been himself lately. If you ask me, he’s grasping at straws. I don’t think we should have called the Frederick Russell case an accidental death as quickly as we did. And now he’s accusing you of chasing old legends, while he thinks we have a vengeful Indian on the warpath. ”

  “Are you a Seminole?”

  “Miccosukee, from way down south. We’re a separate tribe, but back in the day, we were all lumped together as Seminole. We have a black drink ceremony, too, though, and that’s what’s getting to me here. Jamison is way off base on this. He’s ranting on about the fact that the woman you found on the beach had been drugged. And because of the yaupon holly in her blood, he’s decided it’s a vendetta. That’s just crazy. ” He hesitated for a second. “Look, I love my job. I love St. Augustine. I even think the world of Jamison—most of the time. But he’s taking the wrong road on this one. I just…well, I’m just hoping you’ll keep looking in a different direction, because I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with the Seminole. Trust me,” he said, “we were warriors once, and we fought desperately to stay alive and stay here, where we’d had our home forever. But we didn’t drain anyone’s blood, and we didn’t run around drugging people. ”

  “Thanks for coming to me with this,” Caleb told him. “Is there anything else I might not know?”

  “Yaupon holly. It’s not a sedative. In fact, it tends to make a person more alert. It can cause delusions in sufficient quantity. ” He laughed. “The black drink is like…like a night out with your frat brothers. You go a little crazy, but you don’t start killing people and draining their blood. ”

  “But if you drugged someone with enough of it, could you convince them that something was happening—when it wasn’t?” Caleb asked.

  “Oh, hell, yeah. I convinced myself once that I was a flying eagle. I jumped off a bridge and nearly broke a leg,” Jim Tiger told him.

  “Thanks. This has been very helpful. ” They shook hands.

  After they parted ways, Caleb decided that before going to see Renee, he would make a side trip to the hospital.

  “You’re not going back to your house, are you?” Renee demanded when Sarah rose to leave.

  “No, not right now. And don’t worry. I won’t be alone,” Sarah assured her.

  “You should stay right here,” Renee insisted.

  “I’ll be all right. I’m going to take a tour, actually,” Sarah said, surprising herself, wondering when she had made that decision.

  She wasn’t ready to go back to the house, though. That much she knew. Renee’s words were haunting her. Maybe you weren’t supposed to get out….

  She felt shaken, disturbed that Renee, too, had seen Cato’s ghost.

  On top of that, the events in the diaries were plaguing her, and she wanted to get an overview, one untainted by her own take on both history and recent events.

  What better way than by taking a tour?

  And she certainly wouldn’t be alone.

  “All right then, but be careful,” Barry said.

  Sarah said her goodbyes and left Renee’s apartment, then hurried down to the Castillo. Once there, she bought a ticket for one of the popular tram tours, then called Caroline to tell her what she was doing, since they’d agreed that keeping tabs on each other was the safest practice.

  The tour director was a guy named Gil Vinici, who she knew from school. He saw her as he was collecting the tickets and arched a brow. “What the hell are you doing here, Sarah? Should I bring you up front and let you do the talking?”

  She laughed. “No thanks, I feel the need to hear a different voice. ”

  He grew serious. “I heard about the house. Are you selling it?”

  “No way. ”

  “Why would you, come to think of it. This is St. Augustine. Someone probably died in every historic house in town,” he said. “So…want to come sit up front with me, anyway?”

  “Sure, thanks. ”

  She leaned back once the tour started and enjoyed hearing him speak. Gil was good. It wasn’t a ghost tour, but he had a few grisly stories to tell, even so, like the one about the time that the garroting of a prisoner on the plaza had failed, so the prisoner had gone free. They went by the spectacular hotels built by Henry Flagler, and Gil talked about how Flagler’s second wife, Ida Alice, had attempted to kill him. He’d managed to obtain a divorce instead. Gil was informative and amusing, but he wasn’t saying anything that spurred any new thoughts in Sarah’s mind.

  At one of the cemetery stops, Gil explained that there had been many more gravestones at one time, but now the road extended over many of those graves, and corpses were often found whenever the foundation was dug for a new building.

  He let his tour group off to take pictures and turned to Sarah. “I guess your house isn’t all that unusual, come to think of it. ” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, do go by there and talk about the bones in the walls, you know. ”

  She smiled. “It’s all right. I would, too. ”

  “Hey, how’s your friend? I saw the article about her in the paper today. The police are asking for help in finding out who attacked her. They seem to think maybe it’s linked to Winona Hart’s disappearance, and maybe even that dead woman they found on the beach. ”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said.

  “I hope they catch whoever it is,” Gil said. “As you can see, business is suffering. ”

  There weren’t as many people on the tour as she would have expected, Sarah had to admit. As they sat there, a woman came up to Gil.

  “There are a couple of broken headstones over there,” she said. “On the other side of the wall. Why did they leave some of the graves outside the wall when they built it?”

  “Actually, those graves were intentionally dug beyond the wall. This part of the cemetery was consecrated. It’s hallowed ground. On the ot
her side of the wall, the not-so-holy were set to rest. Suicides, murderers…They didn’t always get markers. Oh, and that little area over there, where you see the oaks and cypress, and all that moss? That’s where a witch was supposedly hanged. Some people claim to get all kinds of strange vibes from over there. ”

  Sarah suddenly jumped down from her seat.

  “Hey, what’s up? Where are you going?” he asked her.

  “Oh, just looking around. Don’t leave without me,” she teased.

  Sarah walked along the wall and found a place where she could get across, then walked over to the copse where the cypress and oaks seemed to hug one another in the shadows, the dripping moss like extended arms.

  She looked at the earth beside the wall on that side.

  It was disturbed, as if it had been dug up. She drew out her phone. It didn’t take great pictures, but they might be good enough.

  At the hospital, Caleb waited patiently for the orderly who had first seen Renee to get a minute to talk to him. Luckily he didn’t have to wait long, since nothing much was going on in the emergency room. Someone was waiting with a sprained ankle, someone else had gotten cut up on a coquina shell and a girl sat in one corner, sneezing.

  The orderly was a young man named Rick Diehl, and he seemed happy to talk to Caleb once he had seen his credentials. “I told the cops everything I could think of, which isn’t much,” he admitted.

  “You found her—just outside the emergency doors?” Caleb asked.

  Rick nodded. “She was just over there,” he said, pointing. “I saw her lying there all crumpled up, and I went running out there. Two of the nurses and the doctor on duty followed me, so we got her inside real quick. There was a lot of blood on her forehead—looked like she’d been whacked with something. ”

  “Did you hear a car out there before you saw her?” Caleb asked him.

  “No, sorry. ”