Krewe of Hunters 2 Heart of Evil (9 page)

“Guess we'll be safe enough tonight, with the police prowling around everywhere,” a woman said as if following Ashley's own train of thought.

“What the hell happened?” someone else demanded.

“We don't know anything right now,” Ashley said. “The police are here. I'm sure one of the most important things is that no one goes near the cemetery until the scene is cleared by the police. And, please, of course, be very careful.”

“Oh! He was murdered, he was murdered!” Another woman cried out. She was about fifty, in a house robe, and wearing curlers. “Oh, oh! We've got to get out of here, we've got to get out of here!” she cried, running forward and then running back.

“Calm down, Martha!” a man said firmly, stepping forward to grab her arm. “We have nothing to do with any of this. I'm going back to sleep. We'll check out in the morning.”

“Please, all of you, I'll be at the desk in front. Stay the night, or pack up and leave. Whichever you prefer,” Ashley said.

She noticed that Justin had appeared; he had come out of the stables alone, and she assumed that he had
left Nancy with the children. He moved through the crowd and reached her side. “Charles?” he asked softly.

She nodded grimly.

“In the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“We searched there.”

“I know. I was in there myself,” she said dully. “I have to get in the house and start handling this situation. You have the children—I assume you want to get them out of here, and don't worry, we—”

“We're all right,” he said quietly. “Don't worry about us. You've got enough on your hands right now.”

She smiled and raised her voice. “Anyone who—”

“Not so fast!”

She turned around to see that Mack Colby was striding toward her. He gazed at her impatiently and addressed the crowd. “I'm sorry, folks. I'll need a few minutes with each of you before you pack up and leave. It can be tonight, or into the morning hours, but I'll need to question you all.”

“About what?” Martha's husband demanded indignantly. “We had nothing to do with this!”

“You're here, and a man was murdered here. He took part in the reenactment, he disappeared and now he has reappeared—dead. You all were here. This is simple, people. Someone killed him, and you're all suspects until you're cleared. I'll need to question every single one of you!”

“Oh, my God!” Martha shouted. And then she dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

 

Jake called Jackson, sorry to wake him up, but knowing that Jackson needed to be advised immediately about the situation and the arrival of Mack Colby on the scene.

“All right. Tread carefully,” Jackson said. “I'll call Adam right now and have him get hold of his congressional friends and make sure they speak with the local officials again. They weren't interested before—they'd already given us jurisdiction on the case. I doubt if there will be any trouble; Frazier Donegal is a force in this area, so it seems, and his contacts are endless. Do your best to get along with the local police. I'll pack up with Angela, and we'll be out right away. I'll have the others follow as soon as they've gotten their equipment together.”

“Thanks,” Jake said.

He hung up; the pathologist from the coroner's office had arrived. Jake continued to watch as the forensics team took pictures and combed the area. He remained a bit surprised that Mack Colby hadn't forced him out when he had finished listening to the pathologist regarding the corpse.

Of course, there wouldn't be a final determination until the body had been taken to the coroner's office for a full autopsy. But according to Augie in his preliminary findings, Charles Osgood had probably been rendered unconscious by a blow to the
head—there was a pre-mortem bruise appearing on his forehead—sometime yesterday; death had not occurred until two or three hours ago, when he had, quite simply, bled to death. He had received five stab wounds to the abdomen area, apparently after his inert body had been hung from the angel, the wounds obviously caused by a sharp instrument. His blood had slowly oozed from his body, creating the puddle on the ground.

With any luck, the blow to his head had been severe enough to have kept him unconscious until death had come, though, since it had been more than twenty-four hours since he had gone missing, Augie suspected they would find drugs of some kind in his system. It seemed that the killer had been intent on keeping his victim quiet until the act of murder had been completed, but, at the least, he had saved Charles Osgood from the agony and fear that surely would have accompanied his death had he been conscious.

Jake waited while Augie's assistants brought the body down, carefully preserving the backpack and the straps that had kept him dangling from the tomb's majestic angel. Meanwhile the team searched the ground for possible footprints and used specialized lights to seek fingerprints on the tomb wall itself. There were hundreds of fingerprints, so it seemed, and the hundreds were atop more hundreds. In a small way, the Donegal cemetery was a tourist attraction in itself. The gates were usually locked, but
the wall was really no obstacle, and someone might have forgotten to lock up again.

Jake wished them well. It was going to be a difficult and long haul, trying to sort evidence. Unless something could be found on the body or the backpack itself, any fingerprints or evidence could have belonged to any of the visitors or tenants who had traversed the cemetery.

He'd been to the reenactment at the plantation several times throughout the years. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining it. The real battle had ended in the cemetery, oddly and sadly for Marshall Donegal, in front of his family crypt—he had bled out there, just like the murder victim, Charles Osgood. Jake found it curious that the body had been left so…displayed. And that the murderer had waited until now, more than twenty-four hours after the disappearance of the victim. If someone's intent had been just to ease Charles Osgood from his mortal life, that someone could have far more easily managed to stab him in the midst of the crowd that flocked around the reenactment. If the murderer had left him just lying there, the slim chance that it had been accidental—boys being boys and playing with real sharp weapons—would have existed. Someone, obviously, would have still been guilty of manslaughter, but the display meant murder for certain—and that the murderer wanted it known.

The body was wrapped, ready to be transported to the coroner's office.

“Dr. Merton,” Jake said, addressing the pathologist. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Augie, just Augie,” the medical examiner replied. “Not yet—I have to cut him open. But I do believe that toxicology reports will prove that my assumptions are correct.” He was quiet for a moment, shaking his head. “Seems like Miss Donegal was concerned from the start. If someone had paid more attention to her, he might have been found and saved.”

“It's my understanding that they did search for the fellow. My bosses were called in because the Donegals were so concerned,” Jake said.

“They didn't search hard enough, did they?” Augie asked. He looked around. “Must have been some feat—this man was no Tinkerbell. A hefty fellow. He was brought here before he was killed. That's evident by the blood patterns, I'd say, even though I'm not a blood-spatter specialist. Then again, I am an M.D., with a specialization in medical pathology, and I don't think anyone needed my expertise to see that the man was dead. Well, young man, if you need anything from me, you call me. Don't worry about blunderbuss Detective Colby. He's not a bad chap. We don't have this kind of thing happen often out here. Come to think of it, I've never seen anything like this—anywhere. But he's a decent fellow, just trying to play alpha dog right off.”

“I'm sure we'll all be fine,” Jake told him. He was done here himself; the crime-scene unit was still searching, dusting, taping and hoping for the smallest
clue. There was nothing else he could do at the scene for the moment.

He followed Augie and the body out of the cemetery.

Returning to the lawn area between the house and the outbuilding, Jake saw that while the police were holding a line with their vehicles and a number of officers, the guests who had been staying at Donegal Plantation were now gathered up by the cottage, all speaking at once. Mack Colby was lifting his hands and trying to maintain some sense of order.

Ashley was still there, still the historical damsel in distress in her white gown. She knelt next to a woman who was sitting on the ground, head between her knees, and he could see the way that Ashley's jaw was hardening. Mack Colby was really beginning to anger her. It was a good thing the detective hadn't chosen to be a doctor, because his bedside manner would have killed many a patient before curing them.

Jake walked quickly through the crowd to reach her side, hunkering down by her.

“I need to get Martha into the house!” Ashley said irritably.

“That's fine,” Colby said. “That's fine, but I repeat—no one, do you understand me? No one leaves. So settle in, folks, and if you're in a hurry to get out of here, try to be first in line for the questioning.”

The elderly woman paled, and Jake stepped in hastily to curb what Ashley might say.

“May I pick you up?” Jake asked Martha. “With your permission, I can carry you in and set you on one of the sofas.”

Ashley flashed him a glance of gratitude.

Martha placed a hand on his cheek. “Oh, yes, young man, please. My legs are feeling very wobbly.”

“Thank you,” said an older man next to them, obviously Martha's husband. “I don't think I'm quite up to lifting these days.”

“Herbert, I am not that heavy!” Martha protested.

“It's not that you're heavy, my dear,” Herbert said, “it's that I'm old.”

Martha waved a hand in the air. Jake put his arms around her and lifted her, and Ashley led the way into the house.

“I'll need a room where I can be alone with each individual,” Colby said, elbowing his way past everyone as he entered the parlor.

Tense and rigid, her lips pursed, Ashley directed him to a study on the bayou side of the house. Jake laid Martha down on the Duncan Phyfe sofa near the double stairway where her husband joined her, and followed Ashley and Colby.

The study was a pleasant room with a mahogany desk, computer, printer, and shelves lined with books and family pictures. It was a spacious room; two chairs sat in front of the desk, and a wingback chair
faced the bayou-side windows. Mack Colby had sat himself behind the desk.

“I don't want to create any problems here,” Jake said, his voice firm. “And if you question these people and have the courtesy to keep proper records, I believe everything will be in order. As I said before, the federal government was called in when this was a missing persons case. Since the victim was apparently kidnapped, the federal government has jurisdiction. But I suggest that we handle it as a joint investigation. It's a truly sad, horrible and bizarre situation, and I would think that all possible means of law enforcement would be indicated.”

Colby stared at him as if he would implode. His face was mottled and almost as red as the pool of blood in the cemetery.

“Your behavior is outrageous!” Colby told him.

“No, sir. I suggest you call your superiors, at your leisure, of course. There's no reason that this can't be a combined effort, which is always best. There's nothing in the world like cooperation between law-enforcement agencies. You'll be so much more knowledgeable than we could possibly be on so many fronts.”

Mack Colby kept looking at him as if he would finally pop, but he seemed to know that Jake was telling the truth. He leveled a finger at him.

“There's something fishy here. These folks called in the
feds
when a man had only been missing a few hours. A grown man. Someone knew something had
happened to him, and if you're not going to get at the truth, I'll be making a stink they hear up in Washington and beyond!”

“Oh, good God!” Ashley, who had been standing quietly near Jake, exploded. “I'm the one who raised the alarm, and I raised it because
I know—knew—Charles Osgood!
He would have been here celebrating. He wasn't. I knew him, don't you understand?”

Jake set an arm on Ashley's shoulders. “Really, I think Detective Colby realizes that now—he is just doing his job. But we're all good now.” He turned back to Colby. “Look, Detective, my team's expertise is in understanding why people behave the way that they do. And Ashley's intuitions assist us. Yes, we need to question everyone, but, because of the display of the body, it's evident that this wasn't simply an act of passion, a mistake or accident in the reenactment, or the casual act of a thief or drifter. This was personal, or, possibly, ritualistic. If you want to start with the guests who are down here for the first time, that's great. They can be cleared quickly, and we can begin to look at the people involved with Donegal, the reenactors and the locals.”

Colby seemed somewhat mollified, but his facial muscles were still taut. He nodded jerkily to Jake. “Fine. You're sitting in? Or are you going to do the questioning?”

“I'll sit in and watch. Thanks. I think you'll ask
the right questions, and I can judge the responses. Ashley? Would you like to start bringing people in? First, guests—”

“Yes, guests who have never been here before. I've got it,” she said.

He lowered his head, smiling. Ashley—tough Ashley—was back.

He settled into a chair. It was going to be a long night.

 

Martha could stand and walk and move, so it seemed most reasonable to let Martha, and then Herbert, go first. Ashley realized that she was trying to bring people in and out from a police questioning room as if she were still a hostess and it was a social situation, and she felt a little foolish at first but then decided it was the best way to keep everyone calm.