Revenant (31 page)

T
he moan came again, soft and muffled. I didn't have to see the girl to know she was drugged and possibly gagged. The chemicals in her bloodstream had rendered her unable to act upon the basic survival instinct of flight. She wouldn't be able to help me, or even herself. In my mind, I saw her leaning against the grave marker waiting for Mitch to draw the knife across her throat. He would do that before he cut off her finger.

When another pulse of lightning lit the sky, I searched for Mitch, but I didn't see him. He was somewhere nearby, waiting to finish the girl. I began to slowly circle toward her. I was ten feet away when I heard him.

“You don't have to do this.” His voice was a chilling whisper. “I know you don't want to hurt this girl. She's innocent. She's done nothing wrong.”

The idea that Mitch was standing in the middle of the cemetery trying to argue himself out of another murder was one of the most terrifying things I'd ever heard. I grasped the edge of a four-foot marker and peeped over it, waiting for the next burst of lightning. Mitch's face, as pale as the marble of the headstones, appeared in profile to my left. He was about eight feet away. If he'd been looking in my direction, he could have easily seen me, but his gaze was locked on something in the darkness to my right.

Beyond Mitch, Brittany was propped against a headstone, just as I'd imagined. She was naked except for the bridal veil, and her body seemed lifeless, or maybe paralyzed by drugs. As far as I could tell in the brief illumination of the lightning, her throat wasn't cut.

I rested my forehead against the back side of the cold stone and eased the gun from my pocket. I rose to a crouch, my head and arms lifting above the stone, the pistol extended in front of me. I aimed, waiting for the lightning.

Mitch whispered to the darkness as if someone hid from him, as if he were playing some sick game of hide-and-go-seek with a killer. I knew then he was hopelessly insane, and I would pull the trigger to save the girl.

“Don't hurt her.” Mitch continued talking. He spoke softly, as if he intended to charm the night. “This isn't necessary. I know you didn't mean to hurt the others. We can make this okay. I promise. I'll never let anyone hurt you.” I could tell by his voice that he was turning slowly as he spoke, casting his words in all directions. He was addressing an audience of tombstones.

When the next surge of lightning lit the scene, he was staring straight at me. It took him a second to recognize me and register the gun in my hand. His face showed shock that quickly turned to horror.

“Put your hands over your head,” I told him. Night had fallen over us again. I couldn't be certain, but Mitch's hands had looked empty.

“Carson! Run! Get out of here. You don't understand.”

“It's over, Mitch.” Lightning illuminated the cemetery once again, and I saw him rushing toward me. I leveled the gun. “Stop!” My finger caught the trigger, but the lightning flash was gone and I couldn't be certain of Mitch's location.

His voice came from my left. “Jeffrey, no!” he shouted. “No.”

A hand clutched my throat from behind. The fingers dug into my flesh, instantly choking off my air. Lightning popped and I saw Mitch still five feet away from me. Too late, I realized he hadn't been talking to himself. Someone else, someone very strong, was in the cemetery with us, and he had me by the throat. The fingers clenched tighter, cutting off my oxygen. I heard myself making an awful choking sound. I dropped the gun and put my hands up to try to tear the pressure from my windpipe.

Lightning sizzled again. “Don't scream!” Mitch said, his voice a buzzing whisper. “Whatever you do, don't scream or talk loudly.” He was much closer. Darkness fell, but he kept talking. “Jeffrey, don't hurt her. She's a friend of mine.”

“She's a deceitful bitch. Like all the others.”

“No, she's a friend. A reporter. She can help us.”

“You want to marry her, don't you?” the man holding my throat in a death grip whispered, his words raw. “You want to make her your wife, don't you? So you can have your family and leave me behind.”

“No,” Mitch said. There was a low rumble of distant thunder. “I'll always take care of you, just like you took care of me.”

Jeffrey Rayburn, the man I thought dead for the past twenty-four years, tightened his grip. With another ounce of pressure, he'd cut off the blood to my brain. Even now I felt dizziness at the fringes of my mind. My fingers crept to my belt.

Jeffrey brought the blade of the knife to my throat. He still held me in a viselike grip with his other hand. “Don't talk,” he whispered in my ear. He pushed me forward, moving me closer to Mitch. “The storm is coming. I don't want to hear the thunder. Make it stop. Make it stop now, Mitch.”

“Don't hurt her,” Mitch said. “Please, Jeffrey. She's the only person who can help us. If she reports the story, like it really is, people will understand. Let's go sit in your van and talk about this. We won't be able to hear the thunder in your van.”

“She's been writing about me, and it hasn't been very nice.” Jeffrey pressed the cold blade to my chest. “The Bridal Veil Killer. She doesn't understand. She can't.”

The blade nicked my skin with a sharp sting. I suppressed the scream that rose in my chest as warm blood trickled down between my breasts.

“Jeffrey, I talked to her. She's going to write a story explaining why those girls had to die. She wants to help us.”

I nodded slowly and felt the blade ease off my skin and his grip release a fraction. Relief made my legs shaky, but I didn't move.

“She understands?” Jeffrey whispered, his breath ruffling my hair. It was a voice I'd heard before, on the tape recorder in Tammy Newcomb's apartment.

“She does. She knows how you've suffered, Jeffrey. She's going to write about it so that everyone else understands, too.”

I moved my head slowly up and down.

Jeffrey moved me forward again. The sky lit up, and from the corner of my eye I could see the naked body of the young woman. Her eyes were wide with fear or drugs. The sky strobed again, showing the name Alana Williams carved in the cold stone above her head.

At last I fully understood. The stone marked an empty grave. Just as Jeffrey Rayburn's grave was empty. The fifth body in the grave at the Gold Rush was that of Alana Williams. She hadn't drowned. She'd been murdered. The entire drowning had been concocted to cover up the fact that Jeffrey had murdered his bride.

She was the last victim in his killing spree back in 1981.

“Jeffrey, don't hurt Carson. We need her. We have to make everyone else understand, and we need her to write the story.”

Jeffrey's grip on my throat relaxed even more. He was holding me so close against his body that I could feel the muscles move in his thighs. My fingers touched the stun gun on my belt. I worked it free of the holster and palmed it in my hand.

“Jeffrey, put down the knife.” Mitch's voice was firm but calm, his words spoken in a low voice.

“She has to die,” Jeffrey said. “She has to die before she hurts her children.”

I prayed that Mitch would keep him talking. I had the stun gun positioned in my hand, and I flipped the switch that turned it on with my thumb.

“Turn Carson loose,” Mitch said. “She needs to make notes while she talks to us.”

Instead of freeing me, Jeffrey's grip tightened. The blood pounded in my ears, and I felt the blade of his knife bite into my throat.

With every bit of strength I had, I jammed the stun gun against his inner thigh. He jerked when the voltage went through him. The knife sliced deeply into my neck. Blood gushed down my jacket, but I managed to twist free of him. I turned with him and hit him with the gun again, this time on the chest. He arced backward and fell to the ground. Lightning webbed the sky, and I looked at the anguished face of Jeffrey Rayburn as he writhed on the ground.

“Hold it!” Avery's voice cut through the night. Three flashlights jumped to life, blinding me.

Hands grabbed me, and someone wrapped something around my neck as I was lowered into a sitting position on the ground.

“Call an ambulance,” Avery said. He leaned down so that I could feel his warm breath on my face. “You're one stubborn ass, Carson Lynch.”

I didn't have the strength to argue with him. Nor with the paramedics when they arrived. I let them load me onto a stretcher and carry me to the ambulance without a whimper of protest. I felt the sting of a needle in my arm, and then I remembered only a gentle rocking motion as the ambulance sped out of the cemetery and into the night.

 

My fingers traced the layers of gauze that covered my throat as I focused on the dull green wall and blind-covered window of my hospital room. It was morning. I could tell by the light that slipped into the room. I'd slept the night away. I had to get going because I had a story to write. As soon as I started to swing my feet over the side of the bed, I realized I wasn't alone.

Mitch Rayburn got out of the chair in the corner and offered his hand. I took it and let him pull me up so I could sit on the side of the bed. My neck hurt like a son of a bitch.

“Brittany Jacks is going to be okay. He didn't hurt her,” Mitch said before I could even ask a question. “He drugged her, but he didn't do anything else.”

I looked at his handsome profile. He did resemble his brother. “Are you okay?” My voice was scratchy.

“Yes.” He stared into my eyes, unflinching. “Avery's gone for a cup of coffee. I wanted to be here when you woke up.”

“Why?”

“To explain.”

I thought of the girl. Brittany. She'd survived, but there were seven dead girls. “Can you?”

“Some of it, at least. I had no idea Jeffrey was alive, until three weeks ago. He was found, homeless and disoriented, in New Orleans.” His eyes lost their focus. “All of these years, I thought he was dead. He was my big brother, Carson. He taught me to play ball and he defended me, even when it cost him.” He shook his head as if he could throw off the past. “The police had picked him up down in the Quarter for public drunkenness. He was harassing some of the young tourists. Anyway, he told them his name, and when they checked and discovered he was using the name of a dead man, the NOPD contacted me. I drove over and identified him.”

“That must have been a terrible shock.” I could only imagine a brother risen from the grave.

“He was pitiful. I put him in a mental institution for evaluation. I didn't tell anyone because he was so broken, and I knew the media attention would make it worse. I had this crazy idea that with medication and professional help, my big brother would emerge. At first the doctors thought he might have suffered amnesia from a severe blow to the head, but the deeper they looked, the more complex the problem was. When Jeffrey realized he was being detained, he grew violent and aggressive.”

“So they put him on Thorazine?” I guessed. “Which he then gave to those girls.”

He nodded. “He didn't take his dosage, he pretended to. When he'd capture his intended victim, he'd keep her for a couple of hours, lecturing her on the responsibilities of a mother and why she'd fail. Then he'd drug her and ultimately kill her.”

“He got away with this seven times over a span of nearly a quarter of a century.” It seemed impossible that a crazy man could complete such a killing spree.

“He's smart. Completely insane, yet smart.” Mitch sat with his elbows on his knees, his head hanging. “They thought he was so heavily drugged that they didn't have to watch him closely. Everyone assumed he was what he looked like—a homeless man with no ability to connect to reality. The only peculiar thing they noted in his chart was his obsession with the evening news. He watched the local New Orleans station religiously.”

“Why did he kill Alana and those girls? Does he even know what he's done?” I pushed the pillows behind me to prop me up. Though I was weak, lying flat would make me feel vulnerable.

Mitch took a deep breath. “Last night, he showed up at my house. He'd escaped from the institution, stolen a van and come back to the coast. He told me that he and Alana had got in a fight, on the boat, because he wouldn't turn back with the storm coming. He couldn't take being yelled at. Any loud noise sets him off. He said Alana was supposed to save him. She was his bride, his wife.” His voice cracked.

“Sarah, Charlotte, Maria and Audrey were already dead. Did he kill anyone else in the years he's been missing?”

“We aren't certain yet. Avery is checking nationwide to see if we can match disappearances or murders with his MO.”

The idea was more than depressing, but it would have to be checked. “Do you think he did?”

“Jeffrey's reasoning was very specific, and it may have extended only to this location, but I can't say that for sure. I do know he killed those other girls because he thought they would marry and hurt their children. Alana was the talisman that broke the spell for him. When he married her, he didn't have to kill anymore. Then he hurt her, and he lost all hope of saving himself. The tenuous hold he had on reality snapped. After he killed Alana, he abandoned the boat and swam to the barrier islands. It's a miracle he made it in that weather, but he had a life preserver, and later, a Vietnamese shrimper picked him up.”