Deadly Night

by Heather Graham

  He spent part of the evening walking around the downstairs, checking the windows, which were all secure and in good working order, as were the locks on the doors.

  There were only two doors to the house itself, at the north and south ends, and both were solid.

  Upstairs, he went through the same ritual, then he pulled out the charts Jeremy had printed off and read through them. He decided he would follow Jenny Trent’s trail until he discovered the truth about her disappearance or came to a genuine dead end. And if that happened, he would hunt down someone who had known one of the other women who had apparently vanished off the face of the earth and start all over again until he figured out who was behind the deaths.

  It was late. He set the Colt he was licensed to carry on one of the old mahogany tables near the bed, then stripped down to his jeans and lay down to sleep. Sleep wouldn’t come, though, and he realized he was just lying there, listening to the night.

  It was impossible not to remember the previous night, which had been so close to perfection. Impossible not to remember the woman he had shared it with.

  He’d been a fool to stay away tonight. It actually hurt to stay away. He didn’t know what the hell it was about her, but he felt a burning need to be with her, to protect her.

  He frowned as he lay there, wondering if he was going off the deep end.

  Why had he been convinced that he needed to see her home last night? How he had known someone was there? Lurking. Watching from the street.

  Was it the same person who had planned on meeting Ann?

  The same person who had arranged a meeting with Jenny Trent?

  Had they ruined the killer’s plans for Ann and made him turn his attention to Kendall, even though she didn’t fit the profile?

  Or was he just creating demons in his own mind?

  It was during that thought that he saw a strange light blink across the night sky outside his window.

  Instantly tense, he rose, slipped his feet into the deck shoes he’d left by his bed and picked up the Colt.

  He waited, and the flicker of light came again. It was coming from the rear, near the slave quarters.

  Not the graveyard.

  He hurried downstairs and slipped out the front door, then, his back against the house, moved carefully toward the back.

  There it was. A small pool of light inside the farthest slave cottage.

  Keeping to the shadows, he left the concealment of the house and made his way from shack to shack. Someone was inside the last one.

  He carefully made his way closer, then paused and looked over his shoulder, trying to determine if the intruder had any accomplices. He heard something moving, but not from anywhere around him.

  He moved toward the door of the building and held out his gun with both hands, finger on the trigger.

  And then he kicked the door in.

  13

  For the first time ever, Kendall felt uncomfortable walking home.

  The action was starting on Bourbon Street, but toward home, the streets seemed unbelievably still. It wasn’t late, but for some reason, none of the other residents seemed to be out and about.

  As she walked the last block, a streetlamp sputtered and died.

  Then she thought she heard footsteps. Someone was following her but managed to disappear every time she turned around.

  She felt a sense of growing fear, which she told herself was ridiculous. She had to get past this new edginess if she ever wanted to feel normal again.

  A car went by. That should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. She looked over as it passed and felt spooked, because it seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  In fact it was, she realized, then told herself it was probably just someone looking for a certain address or maybe a parking space. She kept walking until she passed it, then got the uneasy sensation that it was following her.

  She made an abrupt turn toward Bourbon Street. The car couldn’t follow, because the street was one way against it.

  She almost ran up the block to Bourbon. Even at this end of the street, there were a few bars. And luckily, there seemed to be a lot of drunks out as well.

  A shill was handing out three-for-one flyers. A couple of men were standing in front of a strip joint, trying to lure in the unwary. A voluptuous woman in a skimpy outfit and badly fitting wig was hovering in a doorway behind them.

  She turned down the next street, back toward Royal, thinking how ridiculous it was to think she was being followed. And anyway, even if she had been, she had shaken off whoever it was.

  But as she headed toward home again from the opposite direction, she felt a growing sense of unease once more. She started walking faster.

  As she neared her front door, someone suddenly rose from the front step. She let out a scream and turned to run.

  “No! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don’t hurt me!”

  The frantic plea came from a man in threadbare jeans and a worn tweed jacket who was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall of the shack, a small fire burning at his feet, a dirty newspaper in his hands, and a flashlight, a bag of chips and a can of beer at his side. He was fifty or sixty years old and had a full beard, but he looked clean enough, despite his shabby appearance.

  And with Aidan leveling the Colt on him, he also looked terrified.

  “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” Aidan demanded.

  “Please, for the love of God, put that gun down,” the man begged.

  Aidan took his finger off the trigger and lowered his two-handed grip. He didn’t completely lower the gun or his guard, though. “Answer me,” he snapped.

  “Jimmy. I’m just Jimmy.”

  “What are you doing here, Just Jimmy? And get the hell up,” Aidan commanded.

  “Okay, okay, just don’t hurt me.” The man carefully put down his newspaper, then showed Aidan his empty hands as he got to his feet. “Please, mister, I don’t do no one any harm.”

  Aidan quickly surveyed the little hut. Jimmy seemed to keep all his belongings in a shopping bag against the back wall.

  Easy to pack. Easy to unpack.

  “How long have you been living here?” Aidan demanded.

  “Oh, I don’t live here—”

  “How the hell long?” Aidan repeated.

  “About…six months,” the man responded quickly. “Look, I work nights at the gas station down the road—’til three o’clock sometimes. I’ve been trying to save up for a place.” The little man was speaking very fast. “I’ve got to get enough money for a car before I can find a real place to live. I never broke into anyplace else, honest. I’ve never set foot up in the big house. I just come here to sleep. To stay safe.”

  Harmless bum? Or homicidal maniac?

  Jimmy was skinny as a rail. His eyes were huge in his face. He didn’t look like he had the strength to kill a fly, much less kill and dismember a woman.

  Aidan tucked the gun into his waistband. “You’ve been living here for six months?”

  “I swear, I didn’t hurt no one, and no one even knew I was here. Look, I’m a coward. I walk down the road fast as I can, come in here, then close the door and pray for morning.”

  “Why do you pray for morning?” Aidan asked.

  The little man shook his head. “I don’t look out the door. I don’t see nothing.”

  “What are you going on about?” Aidan asked with exasperation.

  “Please, I’ll just get my bag and go.”

  Aidan didn’t move from the doorway. “Not so fast.”

  The man started shaking. “Please don’t get me arrested for trespassing. I’ll lose my job. I need that job.”

  “I can’t just let you walk away,” Aidan said quietly.

  “Why in God’s name not?” the fellow pleaded.

  “Because there was a human bone in your pile of trash the other day,” Aidan told him.

  Jimmy gasped; he looked as if he would fall flat with the slightest breeze. This man was no killer, Aida
n thought.

  “I swear to God, I ain’t never hurt nobody in the whole of my life,” Jimmy whispered. “I’m Jimmy Wilson. I work down at the gas station. You can tie me up to keep me here, then go down with me come tomorrow. They’ll tell you. They’ll tell you it’s the truth. There might have been a chicken bone, mister. I try to remember to pick up the trash. Just sometimes, I’m so tired. It’s a long walk both ways. There was nobody at all here for so long, and before that, just the old lady, and I never bothered her none, I swear it.”

  Aidan wasn’t sure what to do with the man. He was pretty sure this pathetic wretch had never hurt anyone. But if he’d been living out here all that time, he might have seen something.

  Amelia’s lights already made sense. She had seen the flicker of the flashlight or a fire, just as he had done tonight.

  “Please, just let me go. I swear, I won’t come back here no more, just don’t call the cops on me.”

  “Ex-con?” Aidan asked.

  Jimmy stared at him. “Drugs. I was an addict. I stole stuff, but I never hurt no one. I got caught, I did my time and I’m clean. Beer, that’s it. But if I get in trouble again…it’ll kill me to go back. I’ve been clean, I swear it.”

  “Why did you say you come here, close the door and pray?” Aidan asked. “What are you hiding from?”

  Jimmy stared back at him, looking as if Aidan had just asked him the most idiotic question in the world.

  “Why, the ghosts, of course.”

  “Kendall, stop! It’s me.”

  She was halfway down the block; she’d moved like lightning, glad she’d put on sneakers that morning. But she knew the voice.

  She turned around and trotted back, her heart still beating like a drum. “Vinnie, what the hell’s the matter with you? You just scared ten years off my life,” she accused him.

  He stared at her, perplexed. “I was just sitting on the step, waiting for you,” he told her.

  Maybe he had just been sitting on the porch. But he was wearing his long black cape, and he’d risen like a mountain of evil.

  She shook her head, walking past him to the door. Her fingers trembled as she put her key in the outer lock. “You scared me,” she said again.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to. And you’ve never jumped like a scaredy-cat over the slightest little thing before. Sheesh, Kendall. What’s the matter with you?”

  She didn’t reply to that. “What are you doing here? You’re obviously supposed to be working.”

  “I’m on a half-hour break, and I’ve just wasted most of it sitting on your steps,” he told her. “Thank God, it doesn’t seem as if the neighbors heard you scream or the cops would probably be arresting me now.”

  “I doubt it. You know half the force, at least,” she told him. “And it was stupid of you to come here in the first place. Why would you assume I’d be home?” She was opening the door to her apartment at that point, and then she stepped back, allowing him to step inside ahead of her. She realized that even though he had scared her to death, she was glad to see him.

  “So why were you waiting for me?”

  “Because I’m your friend.”

  She arched a skeptical brow to him. “All right, because I’m broke. I had to pay my bar tab.”

  “Oh, Vinnie…”

  “Come on. You know I don’t drink that much. I’m just a friendly guy, and I like to buy drinks for people. I’ll pay you back. I get paid tomorrow. But I need a hamburger or something.”

  “You’re kidding me,” she said, staring at him.

  “No, I’m not.”

  She walked back to the kitchen and opened her bag, found her wallet and gave him forty dollars. “You are going to pay me back, because you’re no kid and you’ve got to learn how to budget.”

  “Okay, okay.” He gave her a wink. “So guess what I did today? I helped your boyfriend on his latest case.”

  “My boyfriend?”

  He grinned at her, leaning on the counter and helping himself to a banana from the fruit bowl.

  “Aidan Flynn. I hear you two are getting along.”

  “I like the guy. So what? It doesn’t make him my boyfriend.” Not that she would mind if he were, she thought.

  Vinnie shrugged. “He suspected me of being a psychotic murderer, but I set him straight.”

  “Walking around town looking like Dracula doesn’t exactly help create a boy-next-door image,” she told him, reaching into the refrigerator for a bottle of water. She tossed him one, too. He caught it deftly.

  “Hey, haven’t you heard? It’s always the boy next door who turns out to be the bad guy.”

  “You’d better get back. Your break must be over soon.”

  “I have a few more minutes. Jeremy is sitting in again tonight. He’s talking up his thing on Saturday night. I wish I hadn’t blown all my cash so I could buy a ticket. Actually, what I really wish is that we’d auditioned to play that night. There’s bound to be a ton of publicity.”

  “Well, if you didn’t have to work, you could go.”

  “I’m in. But how? Is my fairy godmother going to turn me into a prince?”

  “Aidan has a bunch of tickets, and he asked me to come and bring my friends. But how can you get off work? It’s a Saturday night.”

  “This town is full of guitar players. I can find someone to fill in for me.”

  “Cool. You’d better get going, though, since you are working tonight.”

  He grinned. “You bet.” He came around the counter and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the money. I’ll pay you back.”

  She nodded. “Don’t worry about it. You fill in at the store on short notice often enough. I guess I kind of owe you.”

  “Yeah, you do, don’t you? Just kidding, I’m going to repay you.”

  She walked him back down the hall and locked the door behind him. As soon as he was gone, the quiet seemed to envelop her. She hurried into her bedroom, and turned on the lights and the television.

  She had time. What a great night to read. The diary was still in her bag.

  First, though, she walked around the apartment and turned on all the lights, then turned on the television in the family room for good measure. She wanted noise, lots of it. And not music, either. Tonight she wanted to hear talking. Sitcoms. People laughing.

  Even if they were only on a laugh track.

  At last she slipped into a long cotton sleep tee, washed her face, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed.

  Had it only been last night that she hadn’t been alone in this same bed? It had been amazing, making love, sleeping as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But that had been last night. Tonight her struggle was not to unnerve herself so badly that she couldn’t sleep.

  But opening the diary she had been longing to finish didn’t help. It should have been fascinating. Fiona was writing about her love for Sloan Flynn and how he had never wanted to see a war between the states. Before it had started, he and his cousin Brendan had often talked about the possibility that, with their opposing views, they would end up on opposite sides. But they hadn’t fought about their differences, only prayed war would never come. But it had come, and they had indeed ended up as enemies.

  One entry was filled with excitement. Sloan had written to tell her that he was coming home, and that they could be married, but it would have to be secretly. With the Union forces encroaching, he didn’t want to put her in a dangerous position. She could claim Brendan’s protection, if it became necessary, as long as their marriage was secret.

  In another entry she wrote about her wedding night, delicately, in terms that might be used by a proper young woman of the time who was madly in love with her husband.

  Kendall found it all so sad, because she knew how it had ended. The war had come between the family in a way they had never expected. The cousins had killed one another, and Fiona had leapt to her death.

  But to learn of the earlier events through Fiona’s own words…

  Kendall stopp
ed reading, suddenly and inexplicably feeling frightened again. Refusing to be cowed, she got up and walked through her apartment, ready to meet the threat head-on, but except for Jezebel, the apartment was empty. When she returned to her bedroom, the cat went with her. It was as if Jezebel, too, needed company.

  Kendall set the diary on her nightstand and cuddled the cat close to her as she started watching a romantic comedy.

  That wasn’t great, either. All she could think was that just last night…

  More nights would come, she assured herself.

  But tonight was going to be very long.

  She turned to a cartoon station, but the subject was space vampires, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with that right now, either. She finally found a channel that showed nothing but old sitcoms and closed her eyes at last.

  Laughter should have filled her dreams.

  It didn’t.

  At first she thought she was standing on a cliff in the dark. The moon was high in the sky, but the glow it cast down was eerie and filled with shadows. There was a storm brewing somewhere in the night.

  She looked around and realized she wasn’t really on a cliff. She was on a small hill, the small hill where the Flynn plantation house stood.

  She could see the house, stark white against the darkness. Except for the windows. They looked like eyes staring out blankly at the world. It reminded her of one of the Halloween decorations at the store, and she thought that if she could only plug it in, the windows would fill with light, instead of staring at her with such dark emptiness.

  She felt a breeze lift her hair and she looked up.

  And there was the ghost.

  Fiona MacFarlane Flynn, running across the upper-level wraparound balcony, her mouth open in a silent scream.