The Night Is Alive koh-10

by Heather Graham

  Malachi’s phone rang and he answered it, stepping aside. When he hung up, he and Jackson seemed to share some kind of intuitive exchange.

  “I’ve got to run out,” Malachi said.

  “We’ll show Abby the cameras we’ve got set up.” Jackson nodded to Will, who nodded back.

  “See you all later,” Malachi told them. He offered her a strange smile. She sensed that he was trying to tell her he wasn’t avoiding her, but that he didn’t want to be heard by anyone else. That the connection between them was private. She smiled in return.

  As he left the restaurant, Macy came up to her. “Have you eaten anything?” she asked.

  “I’m not hungry right now. I’ll eat soon, Macy, I promise,” Abby replied.

  “We’re going to show her what I’ve been up to all day,” Will explained to Macy. He slipped an arm around Abby’s shoulders. “Come and see your new security system. We’ll start upstairs.”

  He headed up the stairs, Abby behind him and Jackson at her heels. “First camera,” Will said, “covers the hall here, in front of the apartment. It’ll show up on computer screens in the parlor area of the apartment, and in the living room at your house.” He opened the door to the apartment. A large screen, divided into eight sections, was set up on a portable table with a chair in front of it. “Down at the bottom—with the strange light filter—that’s the tunnel. Here, upper left, you have the hall. Then you have the storage room and the employee lockers and lounge area. Below that you’ve got the bar and the front entry, and the two back-to-back dining rooms. Your last camera covers the outside, the whole structure of the building. I want to make sure we can see anyone trying to get in through any other entrance.”

  “That’s fantastic. Very high-tech,” Abby said.

  “Thanks. I do love computers and cameras,” Will told her. “But I plan to be on Dirk’s ship tomorrow. We’ll have Kat and Angela manning these cameras, just watching what’s going on—and trying to see if anything is going on. Frankly, I think this guy moves around. I think he uses different routes to get to the river.”

  “You’re right,” Abby murmured.

  “The cameras will help.” Will smiled at her. “I guess you have a guardian angel of sorts.”

  “Oh?”

  Will looked at Jackson.

  “The pirate,” Jackson said, smiling, too.

  “Did you get Blue on film?” she asked incredulously.

  Will shook his head. “He passed by while I was setting up the camera in the tunnel. He didn’t speak to me, but he nodded, as if he approved.”

  “I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen Blue since he led me to Gus,” Abby said.

  “I assume he’s keeping watch. That’s what he does for the Dragonslayer. He really is your guardian angel,” Jackson said. “We’ve all learned that there’s really no point in questioning how and when the dead choose to communicate with us. Or why some stay—and some leave. We just work with them whenever they’re willing to work with us.”

  Abby nodded. “Thank you for coming here.”

  * * *

  “We’re looking at very much the same thing as with the other killings,” Kat told Malachi. “She was struck on the head. But the actual cause of death was drowning. And, as I’m sure you already noted, third finger of the left hand is gone. I’d say she’s been dead a good three to four weeks. Do you see the marks on her wrists? They suggest she was bound by some kind of rough rope. But, you’ll notice, there are bruises on her arms. I think she fought back.”

  Malachi nodded. This poor girl didn’t look real anymore.

  “Has she been identified?” he asked.

  “The police are going through missing-person reports,” Kat said, “and Jackson has sent what information we have to the national database back at the offices. So far, we don’t have an identity for her.”

  “That would probably put her into the same category as the other women,” Malachi said slowly. “She was a tourist, perhaps on her own. Or maybe she was here looking for work. Maybe she was just passing through—so people are searching for her somewhere else.”

  “I wish there was more I could say, more I could tell you.”

  Malachi took a step closer to the corpse, setting his hand gently on her arm. He felt nothing except her cold, lifeless skin.

  “I tried that,” Kat murmured.

  Malachi nodded; he wasn’t surprised.

  “I’m going over the other autopsies, looking for anything,” Kat said. “Oh, there’s one other thing I should tell you. We did match the finger to a victim.”

  For a moment, he blanked. “Who?” he asked.

  “It belonged to the first victim, Ruth Seymour.”

  “The killer must have been carrying it around,” Malachi said.

  “David has all the information for the reports. He was disturbed, of course, that Gus hadn’t called the police. But it’s too late to ask Gus why he didn’t. Maybe he was afraid he’d be a suspect himself? We’ll never know. But at least we found out where the finger belongs.”

  “Thanks, Kat.” He sighed. “I’ll get back to the Dragonslayer now. There’s something forming in my mind. I’m not sure yet what it is. But—”

  “Hurry it up if you can,” Kat broke in. “We have a girl out there who might still be alive.”

  “I know,” Malachi said. “I know.”

  * * *

  Jackson Crow left the Dragonslayer to head back to Abby’s house on Chippewa Square to meet up with Angela. They were doing character studies on everyone associated with or working in the area of the river. He didn’t tell Abby that they were concentrating on employees and frequent customers of Dirk’s tour ship and the Dragonslayer. He didn’t need to tell her, she knew.

  Alone in the apartment, Abby watched everything revealed by the newly installed cameras. She was fascinated as she went from screen to screen; once the dinner hours began, customers came and went.

  Bootsie, Aldous and Dirk remained at the bar. When he wasn’t busy with other customers, Sullivan hung out there and chatted with them.

  She watched as Macy spoke with Grant Green, giving him the day’s report. She could see Macy go up the stairs and into the manager’s office. Macy gathered up her belongings. She hesitated at the door to the apartment as if she meant to knock, but didn’t. Instead, she walked downstairs, obviously preparing to leave.

  Abby thought about stopping her; she didn’t.

  As she stared at one of the screens, she gasped. She’d been looking at the dining room with the grate to the tunnel and the image of Blue Anderson. But as she watched, Blue seemed to step out of his own image. He peered into the grate, then slipped through.

  Abby jumped up and hurried down the stairs. Luckily, it was growing later by then. There were a few diners but none near the image of Blue. Rather than taking the main stairway, she hurried to the back of the storage room and came down the winding stone steps. At the grate, she fell to her knees and opened the combination lock that held the grating closed. She’d moved casually, but quickly and silently. With the grate open, she caught hold of the sides and slid down, hopping the last foot. It was dark in the tunnel but she’d come with her light and her Glock—she wasn’t taking chances.

  She shone the light over the tunnel.

  There was something—someone—in the shadows.

  She lifted the light higher.

  For a moment, it was as if she saw Blue in the flesh, he was that solid and real to her. He seemed to stand there in living color.

  “Blue.” She whispered his name.

  He looked at her, then turned and walked toward the river. Then he paused and looked back. He seemed to be waiting for her to follow.

  She did.

  The tunnel twisted and meandered and came to an end near the Savannah River. At one time, the entrance had been even closer to the river, but now it opened onto grass and parkland. The original hatch had been welded shut, but ancient, metal, ladderlike steps led up to the newer hatch.

>   She was in the area where she’d found Gus.

  Abby tried not to remember finding him and realizing he was dead.

  Determined, she fumbled with the grate and pushed at it; years ago, it had been set over the tunnel for public safety. It was supposed to be sealed. At first, she thought it was, that it wouldn’t give, wouldn’t budge.

  Then, to her amazement, it did.

  She pushed hard and hoisted herself out. She heard the lap of water against the supporting wall.

  She hurried over to the wall, staring at the river.

  She could see something there. Something in the darkness of the water.

  Something that...moved.

  Abby cried out and forgot everything else. She kicked off her shoes and removed her jacket and plunged into the Savannah River.

  8

  Leaving the morgue, Malachi drove straight back to the Dragonslayer. The historic district of Savannah was beautiful, even by night. Great oaks dripped moss onto streets where the architecture whispered of the past. Flowers bloomed copiously in beautifully grown yards and night-lights lay gently all around.

  When he’d parked, he wasn’t ready to go in.

  He sat remembering all the times he felt he’d been cursed with his strange ability to talk to the dead. In his generation, it had been his and his alone. Zachary had told him once that his grandmother had been able to talk to spirits and she’d explained to him that it was just like sound. Some folks could simply see and hear what others couldn’t quite grasp or get into their field of vision.

  He’d quickly learned not to talk about it. But when he’d seen the dead and the dead had been able to help him, show him where to go—show him how to stop a dangerous situation—he’d had no recourse but to act. And so people had thought he was psychic. Friends had trusted him for whatever it was they believed he had. Luckily, the jerks and idiots had left him alone, either scornful or intimidated. He didn’t care which.

  In New Orleans, he’d gotten lucky, being partnered with David Caswell. Caswell could be a by-the-book cop, but he was also a big believer in “gut” reactions and in hunches. Malachi had trusted in David’s intuition; in turn, David had trusted him and never pressed when Malachi had known where to go to help someone, especially after the summer of storms, when a dead man had led them to his children, alive and well and praying for rescue.

  The problem with this kind of “talent” was that you never knew when it would kick in. And, of course, you couldn’t explain to the living that ghosts were like the living; they could only tell you about a situation if they’d been there at the time. Or if they’d seen something. Blue, for instance, could only point him to the killer if he knew who the killer was. Blue was aware that the tunnel had been used recently. He’d known Gus was in the tunnel and he had led Abby there. But unless he’d actually seen the killer...

  Parking, Malachi started for the restaurant. But as he approached it, he paused. A few late-nighters were walking toward the front door.

  They didn’t see the pirate standing there, the man in the frock coat with the rakish hat and pitch-black hair.

  Blue Anderson.

  But Malachi saw him and saw him clearly. Blue, he thought, was waiting for him.

  He stood still but the pirate didn’t come any closer. Malachi strode toward him, hoping no one was watching from inside.

  When he reached Blue, he heard the crackling whistle of the man’s voice on the air—or he heard it in his own mind, he was never sure.

  “The river. Abby is at the river. He went through this tunnel...in the midst of the flurry over Gus. I did not see him...just the leaving. And I saw the boat...saw the rowboat out. When the rowboat is out, the bodies appear. Abby is out there.”

  “Where, Blue, where?” Malachi asked anxiously. Abby was a trained agent. She knew how to use a Glock and she surely had it with her.

  Blue drew a pattern in the air. “The little park—little patch of ground by the river, by the embankment. Go now.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He began to run, heedless of the fact that he ran past the rear of several other businesses and dashed between parked cars and a monument, then tore across a street where he might have been hit by oncoming traffic.

  He reached the place; he knew it, of course. He’d followed the tunnel to its end when he had first arrived. He’d checked the hatch, put in by the city years ago.

  The hatch was unsealed?

  It wasn’t just unsealed, it had been thrown open.

  He turned toward the river. There was someone in it—someone swimming, towing another person. He raced to the water, digging for his phone, then called Jackson and told him where he was and what was happening. Then he threw the phone aside and dove into the water.

  Abby seemed to be a strong swimmer but she was slowing down. She had a young woman in a life-saving hold as she swam toward the embankment. He made his way to her with strong, hard strokes, swimming as quickly as he could. The current was fierce that night.

  She seemed startled as he approached her. He saw her eyes widen with alarm. He could almost see her mind working as she weighed her options in fighting off an attacker while preserving the life of the victim. He saw the woman she held; she was unconscious—possibly dead. A trickle of blood streamed through the water but he couldn’t figure out its source. As the water sloshed around them, he saw that the skin on the woman’s wrists was raw and red, badly chafed.

  She’d recently been bound. And she was bleeding—she might be alive.

  He realized that Abby was trying to kick away from him.

  “It’s me, it’s Malachi!” he said.

  He saw relief flood her face.

  “I’ll take over,” he told her.

  He had no idea how far she’d swum out, and knowing her as he was beginning to know her, she would have made it in with her burden.

  But she was tiring.

  When she nodded, he slipped his arm around the woman’s torso and Abby eased her hold. The woman seemed to be dressed in voluminous clothing; in fact, the weight of her clothes was enough to have drowned her.

  The sound of sirens was loud in the night. Abby began to swim toward the embankment and he followed. River water lapped into his mouth, and as he neared the embankment, he felt sea grass pull at his feet. But he was there.

  He saw Jackson leaning over the supporting wall, grasping Abby’s arms. Abby was hauled up. “Hang on!” Jackson called to him. A moment later, he saw paramedics and police divers. Two more men jumped in, as well as a floating stretcher. The rescue team relieved him of his burden. He saw Jackson reaching down again and he grasped his friend’s arms, grateful for the assistance.

  Abby stood near him, shivering. He walked over to her without thinking and put his arms around her. He felt chilly in the night air, as well. They were both cold, but together, they seemed warmer.

  They watched in silence as the rescue workers hoisted the stretcher from the water. When the stretcher and the woman on it were brought up, the EMTs started artificial respiration. He listened to the counts as two men worked together, trying to breathe life into the victim.

  Water suddenly spurted from the woman’s lips.

  “She’s alive?” Abby whispered.

  “She’s alive,” an EMT said.

  Malachi saw the river-diluted blood that was smeared on much of her tangled clothing. He winced, suspecting what it signified.

  Abby began to shake in earnest.

  Malachi held her more tightly. “Pretty incredible, Abby,” he told her. “A few more minutes in that river with all that clothing tangled around her... She wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  Abby looked at him, her blue eyes enormous against the ashen color of her face.

  “It’s Helen, Malachi. It’s Helen Long. And thank God, she’s alive.”

  * * *

  Hard to believe how quickly the media arrived on the scene.

  Or maybe not. The newscasters followed calls for police and rescue vehicles.<
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  David Caswell moved to keep the media at bay, but before anyone could decide what information to keep secret, someone had guessed that the missing Helen Long had been found, and reporters immediately began setting up, even while rescue personnel and police worked the scene.

  Abby stood there shivering, watching it all, grateful for Malachi at her side. And grateful that David was shielding them from inquisitive—and sometimes aggressive—reporters.

  The situation seemed personal to her, very personal. She was grateful; they’d saved a woman.

  They’d saved a woman she knew.

  Helen Long was rushed to the hospital, and Jackson climbed into the ambulance to drive with her. Soaking wet, Abby and Malachi again made the drive to the police station, where David Caswell met them. Encased in blankets, they gave more statements.

  David kept them as briefly as possible. He looked at Abby curiously and asked how she’d known Helen was in the river. Abby told him she hadn’t known—she’d just been there and seen the disturbance in the water. They called Jackson at the hospital before they left; Helen Long was still unconscious. But the doctors hoped she’d make a complete recovery.

  When they returned to the Dragonslayer, Grant Green and Sullivan were just shutting down, and Abby realized they’d gone into the wee hours of the morning.

  It had been a long day. They’d found the body of one dead woman—unknown, but surely loved and missed, and there would be sad news for a family somewhere.

  But, she reminded herself again, they’d also saved a woman. Someone she knew and even considered a friend.

  “Oh, my God, you both look like bloody hell!” Grant told them.

  “We took a swim,” Malachi said. He didn’t mention Helen, but Abby knew everyone would hear about it soon enough. No need to come up with something clever to explain their sodden shape.

  “A good swim. We found Helen,” Abby said.

  “You found her?” Sullivan demanded.

  “She was in the river,” Abby explained.

  “You just found her—in the river?” Grant asked. “I mean, that’s wonderful! I haven’t had the news on. Oh, no, wait, is she...dead?” he asked, the last word a whisper.