The Unseen

by Heather Graham

Page 13

 

  “Because Jake Mallory showed it to me on the screen before I left yesterday. ”

  “But if you’d seen her face, maybe you were just recalling it. ”

  “Maybe. ”

  “But?”

  “She said, ‘Too late. ’ Then the birds seemed to take up the cry. Over and over again. Too late, too late, too late. ”

  He watched her as she spoke. She never took her eyes from his, and he sensed how hard it was for her to say all this to him. He didn’t speak for a moment. “You figure…I’m a little on the unbalanced side?” she finally asked. She tried to smile.

  He shook his head slowly and offered her a wry smile. “I have Apache in me. The Apache believe in the dream state. They’re very religious people. Spirits take on the form of humans, and there’s an afterlife, in which everyone lives in happiness and abundance. ”

  “Does that mean you do think it’s possible that the dead speak to us in dreams?”

  He laughed suddenly. “Well, you already know that I speak to a dead man at the Alamo. ”

  “No, I hadn’t known he was dead until you told me. He died at the Alamo?”

  “Yes, but not the way you probably think. He’d been a courier—he was sent out by Travis during the siege. Travis kept sending out letters, because he was desperate for more men. Zachary Chase rode out on March 5, and Santa Anna’s troops attacked in full strength before dawn the next morning. So Zachary survived the Alamo and went on to fight at San Jacinto—the battle that won independence for Texas. He survived it, too, but returned to live in San Antonio. He died near the bench where we were sitting, a heart attack most likely brought on by the wounds he’d received fighting. ”

  “So, he’s real. I mean, as real as a ghost can be. Maybe he can help us?”

  “I doubt it. ”

  “Why?”

  “If he’d seen anything, he would have told me already. ”

  “You speak to him often?” she asked. “Really speak to him?” She hesitated. “Like the girl on the gurney this morning. Tara Grissom. ”

  “Often enough,” he said. He winced a little. “Zachary loves to play games. He finds it hysterical to make me talk to him when there are people around. He loves it when they stare at me as if I’m insane. I keep trying to tell him it’s not a good thing to make people think that a Ranger with a gun is a crazy man. ”

  She smiled at that but quickly turned serious again. “If he didn’t die there, why does he haunt the Alamo?” she asked.

  “Guilt, I imagine,” Logan replied. “He was chosen to ride out the day before. His friends and comrades all died, and he didn’t. ”

  “But he risked his own life, riding through enemy lines to get the message out,” Kelsey said.

  “I agree. And yet if we feel guilt, if we believe it in our own minds, that’s what’s true to us,” he said.

  He heard his own words.

  It was certainly true for him.

  But I am guilty! he told himself. I arrested Rory Norton. I brought him down, and I brought him in, and he sat on death row. And Alana died because of it.

  Rory Norton had viciously killed at least a dozen people. He’d shot anyone who had gone against him, and if he hadn’t carried out the murder himself, he’d ordered it. He’d also been responsible for dozens of other deaths with the hardcore drugs he’d supplied.

  If Logan hadn’t been so determined to bring him down, if he’d let another Ranger or another law enforcement agent take him in…

  “We can carry guilt all the way to the grave,” Kelsey said. “That’s so sad. ” She stood suddenly. “We have to go and speak with him. ”

  Logan groaned. “In broad daylight—two of us talking to a ghost? Kelsey, there are going to be tourists all over right now!”

  He realized he’d just called her by her given name for the first time. She hadn’t even noticed.

  “Yes, but we need to find out what your friend knows. ”

  “He’s not actually what you’d call a friend,” Logan said.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a ghost. ”

  “But he was living, and he must like you— I think he was trying to talk to you yesterday when you were so rude!”

  “I wasn’t rude. He wanted to make me look foolish in front of you, and I didn’t appreciate it. ”

  “Logan, he was trying to speak to you,” she insisted.

  “He would’ve told me if he’d known anything,” Logan said again.

  “You didn’t learn about this last disappearance until yesterday. ”

  “That’s true, but if Zachary had seen a woman in distress, he would have mentioned it. ”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize a woman was in distress. ”

  Logan thought about the morgue, and how the corpse had opened its eyes. “Tara said she was attacked in the darkness,” he murmured. “She didn’t say she was at the Alamo. ”

  “I’ve been in the plaza at night, and even with the lights that focus on the chapel, it can be very dark. And the areas surrounding it are dark, too. But we do know that Chelsea’s last conversation with her friend took place at the Alamo. The conversation that was interrupted by what she called ‘a man in costume’—and by that voice we heard on the tape. Logan! What’s the matter with you? We actually have someone who could steer us in the right direction, and you’re hesitating. ”

  He stood. “Fine. Let’s go to the Alamo. ”

  * * *

  They sat on the same bench and watched as tourists came and went. It wasn’t hot; the sun was bright and the day was beautiful. But Logan was anxious, worrying about the dozen tangible things they could be doing instead.

  Mothers pushed infants in strollers, dads walked by holding the hands of toddlers. The citizens of San Antonio, along with the many tourists visiting the Alamo, passed by.

  They waited an hour, and there was no sign of Zachary Chase.

  “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t he come?” Kelsey asked.

  “He’s a ghost. He appears when he chooses to,” Logan said. He hid a smile, looking at her. She was wearing a business suit again, this one a navy pinstripe with an attractive flare to the jacket and a tailored pale blue blouse beneath it. She wore little heels, maybe an inch high. They must look like an odd couple, with her so formally, even severely, dressed and him in jeans and a buckskin jacket. He was never without his service weapon, though. It was hidden by his jacket.

  “Isn’t there a way for you to contact him?” she asked, her eyes brilliant as she turned to him.

  “What? Call him on his cell phone?”

  She grimaced and wagged a finger at him. “We might’ve lost a valuable opportunity yesterday. You have to learn not to be so hostile. ”

  “I’m not hostile. ”

  “You just said that with tremendous hostility,” she said.

  He started to laugh; despite their circumstances, she could somehow make him feel lighter.

  But then his laughter faded.

  A black bird suddenly landed in front of his feet. It looked at him, tilting its head.

  He thought he heard a flutter of wings, and turned to see that birds had begun to light down around them. He wondered if he was wearing aftershave with bird pheromones and felt an odd sensation of dread.

  “The birds again,” Kelsey said in a low voice.

  Startled, he looked at her.

  “There was a crow at the kitchen window yesterday morning,” she told him. “And then here and, after that, in my dream. ”

  “The Comanche believe differently from the Apache,” he explained. “They believe all creatures bring power, and we can look to them for the particular energy and power they provide. ”

  “I have to admit, I feel as though I’m in an Alfred Hitchcock movie,” she said, frowning.

  “I thought that, too. At first. Half these guys are crows. Like Jackson Crow,” he muttered. <
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  “You think Jackson Crow is controlling the birds?” she asked skeptically.

  “No. I’m thinking along the Comanche line,” he told her. “They’re here for a reason. They’re here to give us power. ”

  The birds settled around them, but did nothing that was in any way frightening. He remembered the hawk that had taken down its prey in front of him. That had been just yesterday morning. The hawk had almost dared him to try to take its kill.

  He hadn’t done so, but he’d held his ground. Which was when he’d seen the mass of crows and myriad other birds.

  “We can walk around the Alamo,” he suggested to Kelsey.

  She nodded. “All right. Since Zachary doesn’t carry a cell phone. ”

  She stood and he joined her. He took a step forward, then paused. One of the birds was swooping toward them. Instinctively, he reached out to draw Kelsey against his chest. He thought the bird might be attacking.

  But it dropped something at their feet and flew on.

  Kelsey straightened, pulling down her jacket and brushing back her hair.

  “The little bastard was dive-bombing us!” she said.

  “No…no, it wasn’t. ”

  Logan bent down to see what the bird had dropped. It looked like a small twig, tipped in red paint.

  Kelsey gasped as his hand closed around it, and he realized what he was seeing wasn’t paint.

  It was nail polish. On the well-manicured nail of a finger.

  A human finger.

  Chapter Five

  “This is what I think it is, isn’t it?” Kelsey asked.

  Logan nodded. Kelsey was prepared; she reached into her purse and produced an evidence bag. “We have to bring it right in,” she said.

  “I’m going to call Crow. ”

  “But shouldn’t we—”

  “No, I’d rather we took it to someone else I know. Someone not associated with this case. ”

  “But…Gaylord has to be competent. Otherwise, I’m sure Jackson Crow would’ve brought in a different medical examiner,” Kelsey said. But that didn’t seem to sway his opinion.