Книга - The Séance

The Séance
Heather Graham


A channel for the dead–a warning to the living A chill falls over Christina Hardy's housewarming party when talk turns to a recent murder that has all the hallmarks of the so-called “Interstate-Killer” murders from fifteen years before. To lighten the mood, the guests drag out an old Ouija board for a little spooky fun…and that's when things become truly terrifying. Summoned by the Ouija board, the restless spirit of Beau Kidd, the lead detective–and chief suspect–on the original case, seeks Christina's help: the latest killings aren't copycat crimes, and he wants his name cleared.Back in the real world, cop-turned-writer Jett Braden is skeptical of Christina's ghostly encounters, but his police sources confirm all the intimate details of the case–her otherworldly source is reliable, and the body count is growing. The spirits are right. The Interstate Killer is still out there, and Christina's life is hanging in the balance between this world and the next.









Heather Graham

The SÉance








For Mary Walkley, with many thanks for many things,

and with very best wishes to Leigh Collett




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19




Prologue


Christie opened her eyes.

Everything seemed to be as it should be. The small porcelain clock on the mantel—Gran’s favorite, brought over from Ireland—sat in its place, the seconds ticking away softly. A night-light burned in the bathroom, because she didn’t like total darkness.

The air conditioner hummed.

The clock chimed softly.

It was midnight.

Then she realized what was wrong. Granda was in the room. He was watching her from the old white rocker that faced her bed. He was smoking his old pipe and rocking gently, and he smiled as she opened her eyes.

“Granda?” she murmured.

“Ah, girl, I woke you,” he said. “I didna mean to do so.”

“It’s okay, Granda,” she told him, curious. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, my girl, just the way it is,” he said, and he leaned toward her. “I want you to be good to Gran, that’s all, Christie. Be there for her.”

She almost laughed aloud in protest. She was twelve years old, and she didn’t even live near Gran, so she could hardly be much help to her. “I’m a kid, Granda,” she reminded him. “I can’t even go to the mall by myself.”

She was rewarded with one of his deep and endearing smiles. “So y’are young, girl, so y’are. But children can give a lot of love.”

She frowned, surprised suddenly that he looked so good, and that he was so calm, just sitting there, rocking, the pleasant odor of his pipe tobacco so strong. Gran had been on him about that pipe lately. And he had tried to stop smoking it to please her, which had been easy enough, since he’d been sick in bed so much lately. That was why she was there then, actually, when she should have been back home and going to school. They had come up to help Gran. Of course, Gran wasn’t alone. Christie’s uncle, her mother’s brother, and his wife and two sons lived in the area, but Christie suspected that her grandmother needed her mother. Certainly her mother believed that daughters had more of a bond with their parents—or maybe daughters were just more useful.

“She should know it, aye, she should, but you make sure she knows I love her, eh?” Granda said.

“Oh, Granda. She knows.”

“And your mom, too. But she has your da, and he’s a good man.”

“Mom loves you, too, Granda,” Christie said firmly, feeling it was important that he really understood that.

“Aye. And you love me, too, eh, moppet?”

“Of course!”

“Gran is the one who will miss me most.”

“What are you going on about, Granda? You’re not going anywhere!”

“Be there for her,” he said, then rose and set his pipe on the mantel. He came to the bed, sat by her side and scooped her into his arms against his chest, and held her as he had often done when reading her a story—or making one up. She seldom knew what was true and what wasn’t, because Granda had, so Gran told her, the gift of blarney. But she loved him and loved his stories, and all her friends loved him, too, because he had such a way with the tales he’d brought over from the old country.

He smoothed back her hair. “The Irish are special,” he told her. “They have the gift of sight.”

She remembered one time when Granda had said so in front of her father. He had remarked dryly, “Ummhmm. Special. Give ’em a fifth of whiskey and they’ve got the sight, all right.”

Granda hadn’t been angry; he’d laughed right along with her father. Her dad hadn’t been born in Ireland, like her mom, but his parents had been born there. And even though she wasn’t quite a teenager, she was very aware of what went on around her.

A lot of their Irish friends did have a habit of consuming whiskey.

“Guard your gift,” Granda said softly to her.

“Oh, Granda, I’m too young to drink,” she told him. “Honestly.”

He laughed. “I mean the gift of sight, y’little sass,” he told her playfully. “I have to go, Christie. But I’m all right. You let Gran know that, okay?”

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“Somewhere beautiful,” he said. “Where all wars cease, where God sees goodness, not religion. Where the grass is as ever green as that I knew in Eire.”

The way he spoke was scaring her. She hated when anyone talked about death. She knew that her grandparents were older, that things happened. But she always thought as long as she was cheerful and convinced them that they were still young, nothing could go very wrong. “A place that beautiful?” she teased. “We should go with you.”

“’Tis not to be, not now,” he said. “All in time. Gran will meet me one day. Till then, you give her what she needs.”

He smoothed her hair again. Then he frowned for a moment, looking around.

“What is it, Granda?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Ah, well, ’tis all new to me, but it seems…well, there are many doors. Indeed, I have opened a new door. No reason to worry, moppet.” He held her close, smiling tenderly. “You just remember all I’ve said to ye, me little girl.” Cradling her, he began to sing an old lullaby. Granda had a great voice. He’d never been a performer—except in pubs—but he could have been, she thought proudly. He didn’t think a thing of his talent—all Irish men could be tenors, if they chose, in his opinion.

As he held her, singing, she drifted off to sleep.



In the morning she heard the soft sound of tears coming from the parlor. It was a parlor in this house, and not a living room, like she had in Miami. Her grandparents had bought the place before so much of Orlando had been bought up by the Disney Company, then hotel and restaurant chains, and other mega-entertainment companies. It was one of the really old houses in the area, one of the very few that had been there before the Civil War—or the War of Northern Aggression, as some of Granda’s friends liked to call it. It had been falling to ruin when they had found it, which was why they had been able to afford it. They called it a Victorian manor. Christie’s two cousins—even though they were boys—found it creepy. She loved it—but then, she loved her grandparents, and they never insisted that she turn off all the lights.

Now it was daylight. But even from her upstairs bedroom, she could hear the soft sound of sobbing down in the parlor.

She stepped from the bed and hurried to the top of the stairs. She heard her father’s voice first. “Mary, Seamus is at peace now. He’s at peace.”

“Hush now, Sean,” her mother said to her father. “Mom knows that. We’ll all be crying just because we miss him so.”

Gran suddenly looked up the staircase, looking sad but strong. Gran always looked strong. She held out her arms. “Christie, girl.”

Christie ran down the stairs to sit on her grandmother’s lap, and hugged her, frowning. “Gran? What is it?”

“Granda. He—he’s gone.”

“Gone?” Christie said with a frown. Then her memories of the night washed over her like a wave. “Oh…he told me that he had to go.”

There was a strange silence. “When you were at his bedside, Christie?” her father asked.

“No, Dad. Last night. He was in my room, smoking his pipe, sitting in the rocker. He told me that he had to go, and that you’d meet him in time, Gran. He said that I needed to be here for you. He said it would be green, like Eire. And…”

Again there was silence. Moments later there were people at the door. Her grandmother set her down as the paramedics and police entered. Christie frowned, wondering why the police were there, then found herself forgotten as the paramedics hurried up the stairs. She followed. Someone asked Gran what had happened; she explained that she had awakened to find him cold.

“He’s been dead for hours, since at least midnight,” someone else said. Then someone got on the phone with Granda’s doctor, and Christie realized that since he had “passed” at home, they had to make sure Gran hadn’t killed him.

Christie was appalled.

But it was only then that she realized the rock-bottom truth of it.

Granda had gone.

Granda was dead.

But he had been in her room!

After midnight.

Her mother saw her and took her hand. Her mother was sobbing, and Christie felt her pain, her own sense of loss, but somehow, hers wasn’t as bad. Granda had been at peace, ready to live in a land that was as green as Eire again.

“Mom, it’s all right, it’s all right,” she said urgently.

Her mother was distracted and didn’t seem to really hear her. “He was ill,” she whispered. “In pain. And now…he’s not.”

“I saw him, Mom. Last night. He loves you all so much. He said he’s fine, and he wants you to be fine, too.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” her father said gently. “Hey, it’s cold today, young lady. You need slippers.”

“I’ll take her,” her mother said.

Her mother walked with her to the room, still distracted, crying, quietly now, the tears sliding down her face.

When they reached Christie’s room, her mother paused and stared at Christie, frowning. “I…I can almost smell his tobacco in here.”

“He was here. With me. I told you that, Mom.”

Her mother looked at her then as if hearing her for the first time. She forgot all about slippers as she paled and walked away.

That night, the Irish of the area came. First and foremost the family, of course, her uncle and aunt and her cousins, all in mourning, the boys, who were slightly older than Christie, looking very mature and somber, and being tender and even courteous to her.

Granda had left explicit instructions. He was not to be mourned. His life was to be celebrated in the old way. So his cronies also came, and they drank beer, and they lamented, but they celebrated, too, telling stories, drinking more beer. Granda’s family did him proud, hosting all those who had loved him the way it was done in the old country.

Seamus Michael McDuff was buried three days later.

At the gravesite, everyone cried. He had been seventy, had had a full life. He’d come from Ireland to the United States with his wife, his daughter and his son, and he’d created a good home for them. He’d been a pastry chef, and he’d worked very hard and saved his money, and finally he’d opened his own restaurant, where he also employed his Irish knack for a ditty and blarney, entertaining as well as feeding many people. He’d loved God and his family; he’d been a good man.

It was while the ancient Irish bagpipes were emitting the mournful notes of a lament that Christie saw him again.

Most people were standing, but Gran was still seated when he went to her side, touched her hair and whispered into her ear.

Gran looked up, startled, frowning. Then it seemed to Christie that the hint of a wistful smile shone through her tears.

Granda turned, as if aware that Christie was watching, and winked. He looked so healthy. So much younger. His playful Gaelic self.

She couldn’t help smiling, too.

The service was coming to an end, the bagpiper playing “Danny Boy.”

It was then that she looked up, across the expanse of the cemetery.

There was another funeral going on, small in comparison to her grandfather’s. There were a man and a woman and a priest. Just three people. The woman was crying her heart out. The priest was speaking, obviously trying to comfort her. Strangely, it seemed to Christie that they were in a hurry, as if they didn’t want to be seen by anyone else.

There was something so terribly sad about it.

She saw her grandfather again. He was eyeing her with a touch of wistful humor.

“Love is all we can take with us to the grave,” he murmured. “It is the greatest part of any existence, and in that, I have died so rich.”

She wanted to speak to him; she also wanted to scream.

Because he couldn’t really be there.

She heard him whisper. “If y’would, girl. Kindness to others, in me honor.”

She realized that his service had come to an end, and somehow she was holding a rose. She followed the others’ lead and dropped it down on the coffin. She turned away and noticed that one rose had fallen on the ground. She picked it up and, without thinking, started walking over to the other funeral, which had ended. The priest and the distraught couple were gone. Only the caretakers were there now, getting ready to lower the coffin into the ground.

“Do you know this man?” the caretaker asked as she drew nearer.

“No.”

“Then…?”

She set the rose she was holding on the coffin. “Go with God,” she murmured.

“Christina!” She heard her mother’s voice, calling. She turned away from the sadness of the grave where so few had mourned and hurried back to her family.

Later, thinking that it would make her grandmother feel better, she told Gran that she’d seen her grandfather. Gran stared at her, then said, “Aye, lovie, I sensed him there, that I did.”

But that night, to her surprise, her mother seemed angry. “Christie, please, stop saying that you’re seeing your grandfather. Stop it. It’s hurtful, do you understand?”

She didn’t understand. “I wasn’t hurting anyone,” Christie protested.

“And you wandered off…God, that was dreadful. To think that he was buried at the same time, on the same day, as my father.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

Her mother shook her head. “Christina, I’m sorry. I love you so much, and I know you’re hurting, too…but you’re dreaming. Dreaming at night, daydreaming when you’re awake. You cannot see Granda. And you must stop saying that you do!”

Her mother was upset, of course; she had just lost her father. Christie understood that. But, it was almost as if her mother were…

Afraid.

If she really was seeing her grandfather, wasn’t that a good thing?

To be honest, she wished that he would come again, closer, that he would speak to her, that he would explain.

Who had that other freshly dug grave belonged to?

Her mother hadn’t answered her, but she heard other people talking. Everyone said it was terrible. There had been a murderer on the loose, but luckily he was dead. He’d been killed by the police, or he was the police, or something like that. She was irritated by the way people clammed up when she came near. She was nearly a teenager, after all, tall for her age, and she was actually developing a shape. It was insulting to be treated like a child. Then she realized that she had set a flower on a murderer’s grave. That was disturbing. But she had seen Granda just before, and he had spoken about kindness….

“What’s going on?” she asked her friend Ana, who lived down the street and was her own age. Ana had come to the funeral and then back to the house afterward, of course, along with her parents and her cousin Jedidiah, looking handsome in his military uniform. Her grandparents’ next door neighbor was there, too, Tony, who was eighteen already. He and Jed were off talking, so she was able to talk to Ana alone.

“You didn’t know?” Ana asked her. “They got that guy that was killing people. I guess maybe you didn’t hear as much about him down south, but up here, people were paranoid. He was buried today, too.”

And she had put a rose on his coffin.

Later, when she was alone with her grandmother, she was told again to stop talking about seeing her grandfather.

“You loved him, my girl. I know that. But you must stop saying you’ve seen him, though I know you are only trying to ease my heart.”

“Am I hurting you, Gran?” she asked.

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what?”

Gran looked at her very seriously. “It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. So today you’ve said goodbye. Never, ever think of him as speaking to you…being near you…again.”

“Granda would never hurt me.”

“Not Granda.”

“But—”

Gran was suddenly intense. “To see Granda…you have opened a door. And God alone knows who else might pass through that door.”

Gran’s words chilled her.

“Gran, was Ana telling me the truth? No one thinks twelve is old enough to understand anything, but it is. Tell me, please, was a murderer buried today?”

Her grandmother’s face went white. “Never speak of it, never speak that name in connection with your grandfather!”

“What name?”

“Never you mind. It’s over. An awful time is over. And your grandfather…well, he’s in God’s arms now. Where monsters go, I do not know.”

Gran kissed her then, and held her. “’Tis all right, my girl, ’tis all right. We have love. I have you, and I have your Mom, and my dear son and his lads…. ’Tis all right.”

Christie looked at her. She wanted to scream, because it wasn’t all right. They were always trying to shelter her from the world, but surely it was better to understand the world than hide from it.

But here in her grandparents’—her grandmother’s now—house, everyone was too upset.

Too lost.

She didn’t know why, and it made her afraid. Not afraid of Granda, but just…

Afraid.

Afraid of the dead.

That night, she didn’t sleep. She lay awake, praying silently in her soul that he wouldn’t come.

And he didn’t.

She had probably just been so upset that she was imagining things.

Granda, don’t come again. Don’t ever come again. If you love me at all, please, don’t ever come again.

She told herself that all she felt was the whisper of a breeze, though there was none. A gentle touch, as if…

As if she had been heard and understood.

Her grandfather didn’t appear.

In fact, she never saw him again, not even in dreams.

And as the years passed by, slowly, certainly, she forgot.

It had only been a dream, just as her mother had said.

She was able to believe that for nearly twelve years. And then one day she learned that her grandmother’s words were true.

Seeing the dead…

Was dangerous.




1


An autopsy room always smelled like death, no matter how sterile it was.

And it was never dark, the way it was in so many movies. If anything, it was too bright. Everything about it rendered death matter-of-fact.

Facts, yes. It was the facts they were after. The victim’s voice was forever silenced, and only the eloquent, hushed cry of the body was left to help those who sought to catch a killer.

Jed Braden could never figure out how the medical examiner and the cops got so blasé about the place that they managed not only to eat but to wolf down their food in the autopsy room.

Not that he wasn’t familiar enough with autopsy rooms himself. He was, in fact, far more acquainted with his current surroundings than he had ever wanted to be. But eating here? Not him.

This morning, it was doughnuts for the rest of them, but he’d even refused coffee. He’d never passed out at an autopsy, even when he’d been a rookie in Homicide, and he didn’t feel like starting now.

Even a fresh corpse smelled. The body—any body—released gases with death. And if it had taken a while for someone to discover the corpse, whether it was a victim of natural, self-inflicted or violent death, growing bacteria and the process of decay could really wreak havoc with the senses.

But sometimes he thought the worst smells of all were those that just accompanied the business of discovering evidence: formaldehyde and other tissue preservers and the heavy astringents used to whitewash death and decay. Some M.E.’s and their assistants wore masks or even re-breathers—since the nation had become litigation crazy, some jurisdictions even required them.

Not Doc Martin. He had always felt that the smells associated with death were an important tool. He was one of the fifty percent of people who could smell cyanide. He was also a stickler; he hated it when a corpse had to be disinterred because something had been done wrong or neglected the first time around.

There wasn’t a better man to have on a case.

Whenever a death was suspicious, there had to be an autopsy, and it always felt like the last, the ultimate, invasion. Everything that had once been part and parcel of a living soul was not just spread out naked, but sliced and probed.

At least an autopsy had not been required for Margaritte. She had been pumped full of morphine, and at the end, her eyes had opened once, looked into his, then closed. A flutter had lifted her chest, and she had died in his arms, looking as if she were only sleeping, but truly at rest at last.

Doc Martin finished intoning the time and date into his recorder and shut off the device for a moment, staring at him.

He didn’t speak straight to Jed, though. He spoke to Jerry Dwyer, at his side.

“Lieutenant. What’s he doing here?”

Inwardly, Jed groaned.

“Doc…” Jerry murmured unhappily. “I think it’s his…conscience.”

The M.E. hiked a bushy gray eyebrow. “But he’s not a cop anymore. He’s a writer.”

He managed to say the word writer as if it were a synonym for scumbag.

Why not? Jed thought. He was feeling a little bit like a scumbag this morning.

Doc Martin sniffed. “He used to be a cop. A good one, too,” he admitted gruffly.

“Yeah, so give him a break,” Jerry Dwyer told him. “And he’s got his private investigator’s license, too. He’s still legit.”

This time Martin made a skeptical sound at the back of his throat. “Yeah, he got that license so he could keep sticking his nose into other people’s business—so he could write about it. He working for the dead girl? He know her folks? I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I want to see justice done,” Jed said quietly. “Maybe the entire force was wrong twelve years ago.”

“Maybe we’ve got a copycat,” Martin said.

“And maybe we got the wrong guy,” Jed said.

“Technically, we didn’t get any guy, exactly,” Jerry reminded them both uncomfortably.

“And you feel like shit for having written about it, as if the cop who was killed really did do it, huh?” Doc Martin asked Jed.

“Yeah, if that’s the case, I feel like shit,” Jed agreed.

Jerry came to his defense again. “Listen, the guy’s own partner thought he was guilty. Hell, he was the one who shot him. And Robert Gessup, the A.D.A., compiled plenty of evidence for an arrest and an indictment.” Jerry cleared his throat. “And so far, no one has been proved wrong about anything. We all know about copycats.”

“Thing about copycats is, they always miss something, some little trick,” Doc Martin said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t the M.E. on the earlier victims. Old Dr. Mackleby was, but he passed away last summer from a heart attack, and the younger fellow who was working the case, Dr. Austin, was killed in an automobile accident. But don’t worry, if there’s something off-kilter here, I’ll find it. I’m good. Damned good.”

“Yeah,” Jerry Dwyer said, adding dryly, “Hell, Doc, we knew that before you told us.”

Martin grunted and turned the tape recorder back on. Jerry gave Jed a glance, shrugging. He’d warned Jed that they might have trouble. He’d told him right out that if Martin said he had to leave, he had to leave.

An autopsy was a long, hard business, and Jed knew it. In his five years in Homicide, he’d learned too well just how much had to be done meticulously and tediously. And messily.

He’d never expected to attend one when his presence wasn’t necessary in solving a case, but the truth was, he didn’t have to be here today.

Except in his own mind.

The woman on the table was already out of her body bag. There had been no need to inspect her clothing. She hadn’t been found with any.

The discovery of her body on the I-4 had been not just a tragedy but a shock to the police and anyone who had been in the area for the original killings twelve years ago. Her name was Sherri Mason; she had come to what the locals called Theme Park Central in the middle of the Florida peninsula because she’d wanted to be a star. The police knew her identity because her purse—holding not just her ID but fifty-five dollars and change and several credit cards—had been found discarded near her naked body.

She had been found not just lying there but carefully displayed, arranged, stretched out on her back as if she were sleeping, her arms crossed over her chest, mummy-style. They were assuming, an assumption to be verified during the autopsy, that she had been sexually assaulted.

Just like the other five victims—those who’d been slain twelve years ago.

The problem was, everyone had spent the past twelve years assuming that the killer of those five young women—found beside the same highway and left in the exact same position—had perished himself. He had been a cop named Beau Kidd, shot by his own partner, who had discovered him with the body of the fifth woman. Beau had drawn his own weapon, giving his partner no choice but to fire. He’d never gone to trial, since he’d been pronounced dead at the site, exhaling his last breath over the body of his final victim.

Assuming he really had been the killer. Certainly the remaining detectives working the case and the D.A.’s office had thought so, and there had been enough circumstantial evidence to make the case.

That evidence had been sound, Jed knew. He had investigated the case himself after he left the force. He had interviewed as many people who’d been involved as he could find. His first book, the one that had made his reputation as an author, had been about the case. A work of fiction, names changed, but it had been clearly based on the career of the Interstate Killer.

Like everyone else, he’d unquestioningly blamed the deaths on the man who had died, one of the detectives assigned to the case.

Jed put the past and all his doubts out of his mind as Doc Martin went on to make observations and take photographs. The body showed signs of rough handling, with abundant bruising. As expected, she had been sexually assaulted, but, as in the past, the killer had been careful. More testing would be necessary, but every one of them was glumly certain there would be no fluids found from which to extract DNA.

The majority of the bruising was around her neck. Like the original victims, she’d been strangled.

Occasionally the M.E. had a question for Jerry, who explained that Sherri had last been seen at a local mall, and that her car had been found in the parking lot there. She had met friends to see a movie, then left alone. When she hadn’t shown up for work the following day, a co-worker had reported her missing and filed the report when the requisite twenty-four hours had passed. On the third day after her disappearance, she had been found alongside the highway.

Jed realized that Jerry was staring at him. “The same?” he inquired.

“I didn’t attend any of the original autopsies, remember?” Jed replied.

“You did the research,” Jerry reminded him.

Jed hesitated, shook his head grimly, and spoke. “The previous victims disappeared and were discovered within a few days. They bore bruises, as if they’d fought with their captor. There were signs of force, but no slashes, no cigarette burns or anything like that. No DNA was ever pulled from beneath fingernails, and no DNA was acquired from the rape kits. That was one of the reasons for thinking the killer was a cop. Whoever killed those girls knew how to commit a murder without leaving evidence.”

“None of you were on the case, or even near it?” Doc Martin asked, looking up.

Both men shook their heads.

“I wasn’t here, either, at the time. I was working Broward County back then,” Doc Martin murmured. “Hell, come to think of it, Jed, you weren’t much more than a kid at the time.”

“Eighteen, and in the service,” Jed told him.

Doc Martin settled down to work then. After the back of the body had been inspected, it was bathed and any trace evidence collected in the drain. Tools clicked against the stainless steel of the autopsy table. Scrapings were taken from beneath Sherri’s nails, but Jed was already certain that they would find nothing. Next came the scalpel, the Y incision, the removal of organs and fluids for testing. Everyone went quiet. Jed found himself thinking about Sherri’s dreams. She had come to Orlando looking for a start. To create a résumé to take with her to New York or California. With all the theme parks in the area, she’d had a solid chance of finding work as a dancer or singer.

So who had she met, what had she done, that had changed the shimmering promise of life that had stretched before her?

“Well, Doc?” Jerry asked quietly. Jed gazed at his old friend. Jerry had been on the force for several years before he’d joined himself. He, too, had spent his fair share of time in the autopsy room. But today…This death had affected them all. She’d been so young. Death was part of living. But losing life at a time when dreams were at their strongest was especially poignant.

Doc Martin looked at them, shaking his head sadly. “The tox screens will take a little time, but I’m not expecting they’ll turn up anything. The kid was clean. Dancer, I imagine, hoping to grow up to be a fairy princess. Cause of death? Strangulation. Was she tortured before death? Hell, yes—I’d sure call it torture to be continually assaulted, knowing that death is probably imminent. The bruising appears to be indicative of her having been forced and the fact that she fought. We’ll analyze the nail scrapings, of course, but—”

“But if her murder was committed by the Interstate Killer,” Jed said dully, “there won’t be any DNA beneath the nails. And there won’t be any semen in the vaginal canal.”

“Just like twelve years ago, like a cop or an M.E. or a crime scene tech, someone who knew exactly what would nail him, did it,” Jerry said.

“Or an avid student of forensics?” Jed said.

Doc Martin was thoughtful for a moment. “No way to know for sure, but it’s certainly possible.”

A few minutes later they were standing outside the morgue. The sun was high and hot, the sky the kind of crystal blue the state was known for. But the storm clouds were already brewing. Hell, it was summer. That meant a storm like nobody’s business sometime during the day, around three or four, usually. Locals loved the phenomenon, though the tourists had a penchant for running from the theme parks when the rains started, not realizing they would be gone in an hour or so.

Then the night would be beautiful, crystal clear, even if humid and hot.

“Well?” Jerry demanded, staring at Jed.

“Well, either everyone involved fucked up entirely and Beau Kidd wasn’t the killer, or we’ve got a copycat out there who studied the case and is imitating the original too damn well.”

“Hell, I knew that.”

“Jerry, I was in and out of town when it all went down,” Jed reminded his friend. “And I wasn’t on the force then, either. Who’s your partner these days?”

“O’Donnell. Mal O’Donnell. And he wasn’t around twelve years ago, either. Hey, you want to get some dinner?”

Dinner? Jed’s stomach turned at the thought. Did that make him a wimp? he wondered. He could still smell death and disinfectant. Still, he started to agree, hoping, probably vainly, that Jerry might say something that would give him a clue to the truth about the murders. Did he feel guilty? Hell, yes—if he’d made a mistake. Not only had he made the perp in his novel the homicide cop, even though the man’s name had been changed for legal reasons, but the case he had used was glaringly evident.

The real cop was dead.

Yeah, but his parents weren’t. And they had to live every day with the world’s belief in their son’s guilt, a belief he had perpetuated in his novel.

Jed realized that he wanted the current killing to be the work of a copycat—he didn’t want to be responsible for the continued life of a horrible mistake.

“Hey, you in there somewhere?” Jerry asked him.

“Yeah, sorry.” Jed looked at his watch. “I can’t join you for dinner. I have a commitment.”

“Yeah?”

“My cousin Ana. One of her best friends when she was growing up just moved into her grandmother’s house. I promised I’d show up for the housewarming.”

“Cool. Where’s the house?”

“Almost horse country. An old pre-Civil War place, one of the few still left in the area.”

“Ah. A rich kid.”

“No, not really. I grew up down the street, and Ana is still there, since she bought her parents’ house. Christina’s place is just older and bigger. Her grandparents were immigrants and bought the place way before the theme park explosion, when the countryside was nothing but groves.”

“Must be worth a fortune now,” Jerry noted.

“Yeah, I guess. But you know how neighborhoods build up. Christina has almost an acre, with a big sloping lawn, almost looks like the place is on a hill, but there’s a modern ranch on her right, and a 1930s art deco-style bungalow on her left.”

“Sounds cool,” Jerry commented. “Better than the cookie-cutter housing developments that have gone up everywhere. Anyway, if you think of anything, give me a call. And stop by the precinct sometime. The guys will be happy to see you.”

“Yeah, they like to torture me about my books.”

“What? You a sissy now? Can’t take the torture? I’m betting I’ll see you soon enough,” Jerry told him. He pointed a finger. “I know you, and you’re not going to let this go. And that’s cool with me,” he added. “We’ve got the mayor and the governor breathing down our necks. The feds even have a squad on it.”

“Then I’m sure the perp will be caught.”

“Yeah?” Jerry said morosely. “We had about six counties’ worth of detectives and the feds on the case the last time. Anyway, keep in touch. Have fun hobnobbing with the rich and famous.”

“I told you, Christina’s family wasn’t rich,” Jed said, laughing.

“If she sold that place, she’d be rich now.”

“She won’t sell it,” Jed said flatly. But did he really know that? Christina had been his kid cousin’s friend. He didn’t actually know her all that well, though for some reason he felt as if he did. He had just seen her six months ago at her grandmother’s funeral. The gangly kid she had once been had grown into a beautiful woman. Tall and slim, but shapely. Regal, and stoic in the face of grief. She’d been wearing black, a suit with one of those slim pencil skirts. Her hair had been a blaze of deep red against the black, something Jed remembered well. The sun had lit up the length of it as it swept down her back, and the color had been almost startling.

Irish red, he reckoned.

She hadn’t cried at the service, but those enormous blue eyes of hers had been filled with a greater depth of emotion than any tears could have evoked. She’d loved her granny, the last of her family except for two cousins. He knew them, too, though they weren’t the same age. Dan and Michael had graduated one after the other right behind him, but they’d had different interests and hung out with different friends. He’d gone for a basic BA, while Michael and Daniel McDuff had gone into the arts. Daniel was still struggling as a performer, while Michael did freelance production work for several of the local theme parks and planned to found his own company one day.

Jed knew through Ana that despite having grown up several hours away in South Florida, Christina had been the closest of the three grandchildren to her grandmother. According to Ana, Christina and her grandmother had shared a special bond.

He’d turned down tonight’s invitation at first. He had never been a real part of the crowd. But oddly enough, it was the memory of Christina at her grandmother’s funeral that had turned him around. She had grown up not just beautiful but intriguing. She’d acquired an air of sophistication that was best described as alluring. In addition, she’d lost her parents just five years earlier, and had worn a lost and weary look he knew all too well himself.

He wished that he could somehow ease things for her. It was so easy to become bitter after so much loss. He had certainly done so, but Christina didn’t look as if she had.

He was surprised by how eager he felt to go, even if Ana’s old friend had grown up very nicely and he felt that they shared a bond of grief.

He usually avoided any woman who might be considered a friend. He didn’t like sympathy, and he didn’t like to talk. Margaritte had been dead for four years. He wasn’t as dead inside himself as he had been, but he still wasn’t certain that he even liked people in general, much less that he wanted to let himself get close to anyone. Best to veer far away from anything that might be an actual relationship. Barhopping and one-night stands were his preferred mode of existence.

Still, Ana had begged. And for a while, at least, he didn’t want to think about the Interstate Killer, and whether the original was alive or dead.

Or the fact that he was very afraid the nightmare was starting all over again.



There were still boxes everywhere.

For the life of her, Christina couldn’t figure out why she’d given in when Ana had insisted that she have a housewarming before she was fully moved in, but in Ana’s mind, it was good luck. At least she’d said “small gathering” and meant it. Just Ana, maybe her cousin Jed, Tony and Ilona from next door, and her own two cousins, Mike and Dan. The menu was simple: sodas, beer and wine from the quick mart down on the highway and barbecue delivered by Shorty’s. That was easy enough, she supposed.

But still…

This was her first day. The first day when she was completely out of her condo in Miami, when her boxes were filling this house, when she would sleep here for the first time after inheriting the house and deciding to move in.

Ana arrived early, while Christina was still considering the piano question. The piano was a crucial part of her work. It was almost like a physical attachment.

The light in the parlor was best, but she didn’t like having shelves piled with paper and drawers full of disks around, or all her office supplies cluttering up the small room. Still, her piano looked great right in front of the bay window.

It was staying, she decided. She would eventually find—and be able to afford—some good oak or maple office furniture that would suit the decor. And if not, the library was across the hall, a perfect place for office supplies and equipment. She could just walk across when she needed something. No big deal.

Why were there so many boxes? she wondered with dismay.

Because I’m incapable of parting with anything, she reminded herself.

She felt like the keeper of the family heritage or something. It was so hard to believe that everyone was gone except for Mike, Dan and herself. And neither Mike nor Dan felt the need to keep things like the cocktail napkin her mom had saved from her first date with her dad. Or all the hundreds of pictures from Ireland, or even the pictures of all of them as kids.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the clang of the old front door bell. She opened the door to let Ana in. Ana had a big box in her hand, with a plastic-wrapped cardboard tray on top. Christina quickly reached over to help her.

“No, no…if I just aim for a flat surface, I’ll be fine,” Ana told her cheerfully.

A flat surface sounded easy enough.

An empty flat surface involved deeper thought.

“The pass-through between the kitchen and dining room,” Christina said quickly.

Ana cut a path through the hall and parlor to reach her destination. Except for the clutter of boxes, the house was clean. It was a large, airy place, the perfect family home, in Christina’s mind. The hall worked as a breezeway, a traditional old time “shotgun” approach that allowed the house the best of whatever breeze was available. The stairway stood to the left of the hall and led to the second floor, a beautifully carved banister leading the way.

Ana knew her way around the house. She had been Christina’s friend forever, and had spent plenty of time here whenever Christina was up visiting her grandparents.

“This really is a super place,” Ana said, leading the way.

The house was wonderful. Christina had always loved it, and her grandmother, knowing how much she loved it and how well she would take care of it, had left it to her. But neither Mike nor Dan had been forgotten. They had received trust funds from the woman who had come to the U.S. to make her own way, and had done well simply by being hard-working, careful and smart.

“Okay,” Ana said, setting down her burden. “Now I’ll have a beer. Want one?”

“Sure.”

Ana headed for the refrigerator and produced two icy bottles, which they clinked together in a toast. “To you living here full-time,” Ana said.

“I always knew I would, but I really didn’t want the day to come,” Christina told her.

“She lived a good long life,” Ana said.

A long life, but an often painful one, Christina thought. Gran had lost Granda too soon, and then, much too young, her daughter and son, and their spouses, but she had called on an inner reserve and been there for her three grandchildren. Maybe she had been tired. Ready to join those who had gone before her.

“Ah, that she did,” Christina said softly, lifting her bottle again and offering her best imitation of her grandmother’s heavy accent.

The doorbell rang again. The two of them hurried to answer it.

“Hey, is Jed coming?” Christina asked Ana.

“He said he was. But that won’t be him. He said he was meeting a friend for something work-related this afternoon and he’d be late if he came at all.”

“Who would have figured he’d become a bestselling writer, huh?” Christina asked.

“I thought he was going to be a football hero and get me lots of dates,” Ana said with a sigh.

Christina rolled her eyes at her friend, shaking her head. Strange, she barely knew Jed anymore. He’d seemed like a god when they’d been kids. She’d seen him at her grandmother’s funeral, where he’d been reserved but kind, but she’d felt so bereft that she’d barely noticed anyone. He’d said the right things, though. While everyone else had been telling her what a good and long life her grandmother had lived, he had simply said that he knew how she would miss her gran, and that losing someone hurt, no matter how old they’d been, even if knowing they’d had a long life and lived it well eventually helped with the healing process.

He would know, she thought, having lost his wife when she was only twenty-five.

“Hey, there, you two,” she said, pleased, as she opened the door. Dan and Mike had come together. They were just a year apart and had often been taken for twins, they were so much alike. Dan had half an inch over his older brother’s height of six two, but they both had the deep red hair that seemed to run with an unbridled strength in the family, and the warm hazel eyes that had been Gran’s. Her own were blue—her father’s eyes.

“Welcome home, little cutie,” Dan said, stepping in and giving her a hug.

“Little? She’s five ten, if she’s an inch,” Michael said, shaking his head as he followed his brother inside. They loved to tease her about her height. It had started when she reached her current max in eighth grade and never stopped.

“Ha, ha, love you, too,” she said, accepting a hug from Michael in turn. They were both good-looking and always had been. She peered past them to the porch, then stared at them, puzzled.

“What, no dates?”

“Ana told us it was family night,” Dan said, grinning.

“Hey, there’s a real little bit,” Michael said, catching hold of Ana and lifting her up for a hug. She really was tiny—five feet even—and they loved to tease her, too.

“Put me down,” Ana commanded, then swung on Daniel. “And don’t you even think about it.”

“I’m innocent,” Dan said.

“Like hell,” Ana muttered, but she gave him a grin. Adulthood had taken them in different directions, but it didn’t matter. A bond had been formed when they were young, when this house, and Gran, brought them together, and it had never been broken.

Only Jed Braden had been on the outside, Christina thought. A year older than Michael, two years older than Dan. And somehow different, set apart. Maybe it had been his determination to go into the service. Not because he longed to go to war, but because he wanted the benefits to get through college. He’d been gone a lot once he joined up, and then he’d gotten married in a beautiful ceremony to the gorgeous, gentle Margaritte. He’d drawn even further away from them after that, shouldering increasing responsibility by becoming a cop and then a detective.

And then a widower and famous but semireclusive writer.

She shook off thoughts of Jed. It felt slightly uncomfortable somehow, seeing him again.

Maybe because they seemed to meet all too frequently at funerals.

“Hey,” she said cheerfully, realizing that her cousins were staring at her, waiting for her to speak. She offered a huge smile. “I admit I hadn’t really planned to entertain strangers tonight, but you guys could have brought the current loves of your lives,” Christina told them.

“I have no love in my life,” Dan said with a feigned mourning note in his voice.

“I want no love in my life,” Mike said, and his tone was sharper. He’d been married once, and his divorce hadn’t been a pleasant one, though he had dated since.

“Well, Tony from next door is coming, and he’s bringing Ilona, the girl we met at the funeral. They live together,” Christina told them. “So come on. The menu’s barbecue and beer. I’ll get the plates out as soon as I get some of the boxes off the chairs so we can use the parlor.”

“I’ll help,” Ana said as they all walked deeper into the house. Suddenly she let out an exclamation as she pulled something out of a box. “Look, it’s a Ouija board.”

“I never throw anything away,” Christina admitted sheepishly.

“Why would you even consider throwing this away?” Ana demanded. Picking up the Ouija board, she walked over and sat in a wing chair and stared at it raptly. “Oh, my God, remember? We used to have so much fun with this thing.”

Christina found herself feeling strangely irritated, wishing she’d thought to stick the damn thing somewhere out of sight, or, that she’d gotten rid of it altogether.

She groaned aloud. “We had fun because we were kids who knew the answers we wanted to hear, so we pushed it around to get them,” she said.

“We’ve got to play with this sucker again,” Ana said, entranced, and obviously unaware that Christina was nowhere near as anxious as she was to dredge up past fun and games. “Don’t you remember? We had so much fun. Sometimes you’d wrap a towel around your head like a turban and call yourself Madame Zee, and we’d have a séance. It was so much fun. But this guy…” She patted the Ouija board affectionately. “We asked it so many questions. It was great. We have to play with it again.”

“Why? I know what I’m going to be when I grow up,” Christina said. “And we are all grown up, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Supposedly,” Mike threw in skeptically.

“Grown up—not dead,” Ana said with mock impatience. “Let’s ask it something.”

“I don’t want any answers to any questions—prophecies can be self-fulfilling,” Christina said.

“Maybe you don’t want any answers,” Dan said. “But I want to know if I’m going to have to be a fluffy all my life.”

“Fluffy?” Ana giggled. “Don’t you mean ‘fluffer’? And don’t you have to be a girl for that? Or maybe not, these days.”

“Cute, shorty, very cute,” Dan said dryly.

“A lot of the entertainers at the parks call playing a character being a ‘fluffy,’” Christina explained, unable to hide a smile. “Dan is in the running to play Zeus in a new show, but in the meantime…”

“In the meantime, I’m Raccoon Ralph,” Dan said.

“Raccoon Ralph?” Ana said, and burst into gales of laughter.

“If we were still kids, I’d be bopping you on the head right now,” Dan said.

“Thank God we’re not kids, then,” Ana said.

“Enough of that,” Mike said, suddenly serious. “You two need to be careful,” he said.

“We’re just teasing each other,” Ana told him, frowning.

Mike shook his head impatiently. “I wasn’t talking about you and Dan. I’m talking about you and Christie. I was watching the news earlier,” he said. “They were warning women to be careful. There’s been a murder.”

“A murder?” Christina asked.

“Are you talking about the woman they found along the highway?” Ana asked.

Mike nodded. “You must have heard about it, even down in Miami,” he said to Christina.

“I did. But it was just one woman, right?” Christina asked.

“Yeah, but it’s got a lot of people around here worried. The killer is a copycat of the Interstate Killer,” Mike told them.

“I saw it on the news earlier, too,” Ana said. “It sounded like they don’t know if they really got the right guy to begin with, right?”

“I don’t think anyone is admitting that yet,” Mike said.

“Can it be the same guy?” Christina asked. “I mean, I’m not an expert, but I always thought that a killer like that escalated until he was killed or caught and locked away. Would a serial killer take a break that long?” She felt vaguely uneasy. She knew that the so-called Interstate Killer had plagued the central part of the state a dozen years ago. She also knew that he had supposedly been killed.

And buried.

“Maybe he didn’t take a break,” Dan theorized aloud. “Maybe he was gone…traveling from state to state.”

“Possibly. They say that killers often keep on the move. Thank God for computers. They’ve made a big difference,” Mike said.

“Jed will know more about it,” Ana said confidently.

“That’s right. He wrote a book about the killings,” Dan said.

“Jed wrote a novel,” Ana said. “Based loosely on real events.”

Michael was quiet, frowning at Christina.

“What?” she demanded.

He shook his head, then pointed a finger at her. “Sherri Mason, the woman who was killed, was five feet eight inches tall, about one hundred and thirty pounds. She had blue eyes—and long red hair.”

They all stood in silence for a long moment.

“Wow. Thanks a lot for that,” Christina said at last.

Ana slipped a supportive arm around her friend’s waist. “We can handle ourselves. It’s the unwary who usually wind up in trouble.”

“That’s not the point,” Michael said, and took a deep breath. “Christie, you have to be careful. The last victims, twelve years ago…they were all tall. And all had light eyes and—”

“And long red hair,” Dan breathed softly.

“Just like Sherri Mason,” Mike said. “Who was killed just the same way. As if she’d been killed by…a ghost.”




2


Jed should have headed straight over to Christina’s house, and in fact he had meant to.

But he didn’t.

For some reason he found himself traveling down the road that led to one of the largest local cemeteries.

Beau Kidd had been laid to rest there. His parents and his sister, furious that Beau had been labeled a killer without a trial, grieving his death, had ordered a fine tombstone for him. A glorious angel in marble rested atop it, kneeling down in prayer.

It was dusk when he arrived, and the gates were closed, but the cemetery was one of the oldest in the area. Broken tombstones belonging to those who had served in the United States military as far back as the Seminole Wars could be found there. No one had ever spent the money for a high fence, so he was easily able to hop the low wall and enter. He knew this cemetery well. Too well, he thought.

Margaritte was buried here.

But he hadn’t come to mourn at her grave or feel sorry for himself. Not tonight.

He was losing it, he thought. Visiting a cemetery, as if Beau Kidd could talk to him from the grave and offer him help.

No, he told himself. He had simply decided to check on the monument, that was all. In the years after the killings and Kidd’s own death, the tombstone had been vandalized several times. Then Beau Kidd’s mother had appeared on television and made such a tearful plea to be let alone that the vandalism had stopped. No requests by law enforcement or even arrests could have put an end to the graffiti and damage the way her softly sobbed plea had done.

He could see the angel as he headed down the path. What surprised him was that he wasn’t the only one who had come to check on Beau Kidd’s grave tonight.

There was a young woman standing there. He frowned, for a moment thinking it might be Christina Hardy. This woman, too, had long red hair, and she was tall, slim and shapely, with elegantly straight posture.

But when she turned as Jed approached, he saw that though she was attractive, her features were quite different from Christina’s. For one thing, her eyes were a pale yellow-green color, not a brilliant blue.

He didn’t recognize her, but she obviously recognized him.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“Do I know you?” he asked bluntly.

“Katherine Kidd, Beau’s sister,” she said.

“We’ve never met.”

“No? Sorry, but I know who you are. You’re an opportunist. You wrote a book about my brother. As if the events weren’t painful enough.”

“I wrote a work of fiction,” he said. Why defend himself? He should just let her lambaste him. That might work out better for both of them.

“Why are you here? Do you want to hammer a stake into my brother’s heart? Do you think he’s alive and killing again?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”

He turned to go.

“If you’re lost, your wife’s grave is nowhere near here,” she called after him.

He squared his shoulders and kept walking.

“Wait!”

He was startled when she ran after him. Her eyes were troubled when she awkwardly touched his arm to get him to turn around. “Why are you here?” she demanded.

He hesitated. “I don’t know, exactly. I guess…I wanted to think. Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Beau was never the killer,” she said.

“How can you be so certain?” he asked.

“He was my brother.”

He let out a soft sigh. “You do know that every homicidal maniac is some mother’s son?”

“I know you investigated when you wrote your book. I know you were a cop. And I know you have a license now as a private investigator. You came here because you’re feeling guilty for what you did to my brother’s reputation. You want absolution? Fine. Prove that’s not just a copycat out there. Prove Beau was innocent.”

He stared at her, unable to think of anything to say.

“I’ll pay you,” she offered suddenly.

He shook his head. “No. No, you won’t pay me.”

“You don’t really believe in Beau’s innocence, do you? Not even now, with the evidence lying in the morgue,” she said.

“I don’t know what I believe right now,” he told her honestly.

She shook her head. “I’ve read every word let out by the police, the newspapers, every single source. No copycat could be so exact.”

“I don’t know yet just how exact he was,” he said.

“I do. And I know that Beau wasn’t a killer, no matter how guilty he looked. And you…you used him.”

“I used a story, a real-life story,” he said quietly. “And I’m going to investigate, but no one owes me anything. I guess that’s why I was here tonight. This one is between the two of us, Beau and me,” he told her.

He nodded and walked away again. When he looked back, she was standing where he had left her, looking bereft and alone.

“I’ll keep you informed—when I can prove something,” he told her.

He thought that she smiled as she lifted a hand to wave goodbye.

There was a low ground fog beginning to rise. Looking up, he saw that the moon was full. Odd night. Most of the time around here, the fog came in the early morning. Between the moon and the fog, the cemetery seemed to be bathed in some kind of eerie glow.

As he headed to his car, he thought about Sherri Mason, lying on the autopsy table. Sherri…tall, slim, with long red hair.

Before he knew it, he was heading back into the cemetery. “Katherine!” he shouted, running.

She was standing by her brother’s monument again. She looked up, startled.

“You need to get out of here,” he told her. She stared at him blankly. “It’s dark, and there’s a killer loose. Where’s your car?”

“Along the street, just past the gate.”

“I’ll see you to it.”

“All right.” She sounded unconvinced, but she didn’t argue.

He walked her to the Honda parked by the curb. She must have arrived after the cemetery had officially closed, as well. She slid behind the driver’s seat and lowered the window. He ducked down to talk to her, but before he could speak, she said, “I know, long red hair. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m twenty-four, but I still live with my folks. I’ll be okay.”

He nodded as she turned her key in the ignition, and he watched the Honda’s lights disappear into the fog.

He stood there for a long moment, feeling a strange sensation of dread grip his spine like an iron claw. Beautiful women with long red hair.

Christina Hardy fell into that category, as well.



He had lost her tonight, thanks to the cop-turned-writer.

But he would prevail. He would behave normally. He was a special person, unique; amazing things went on in his mind. He could walk, talk, smile and act completely normal, and all the while he would be planning his next kill.

But there had been an almost frightening moment when he had felt as if he might combust, the opportunity had been so good.

She had been there, so appetizing.

He made himself breathe, told himself to function. There was his world, his inner world, and then there was the world beyond. Sometimes he could combine them, but it was over now.

Still, there had been those moments when he had almost been able to taste and feel the results of his brilliance. He had come here tonight by happenstance, unable to resist a visit to the grave of the man who had taken the blame for everything he himself had done all those years ago. And then…to see Kidd’s sister…

It was too good.

She was such a pretty thing. All that lovely hair…

Then he’d shown up.

Jed Braden was big and broad-shouldered, clearly capable of holding his own in a fight.

But that didn’t matter. The point lay in his own brilliance, not in something as crass as a physical fight. He loved watching the dumb fucks chase their tails while he went gleefully about his business.

God, he loved the press. The newscasters were so grave when they talked about the latest killing. Then, with the switch of a camera angle, a smile instead of a somber look. Suddenly it was “Lots of fun on tap for Halloween this year.”

But at home, watching their plasma TVs, the viewers would be reeling. No change in camera angle for them. A killer was on the loose….

The experts were all baffled. It would never be like the crime shows. He was far too intelligent. There would be no solving his murders in a one-hour show.

How he loved the attention. His double life. Defying profilers and “behavioralists,” knowing they were more confused than ever now.

And all thanks to his own brilliance.

Breathe. Be ready. Walk, talk, smile, and all while the other world lived on in his mind. The time would come again—and soon—when it would become real once again.



“Quit staring at me. You’re giving me chills,” Christina said to her cousins.

Mike shook his head, looking away. “I just want you to be careful.”

“I am careful. I’ve always been careful. I never go anywhere with strangers. I’m street smart, honest. You guys know that,” she said.

“Just keep your doors locked, okay?” Dan said.

“I told you, I’m always careful. I carry pepper spray, I don’t talk to strangers and I don’t open the door without checking through the peephole,” Christina assured him.

The doorbell rang.

Christina jumped, then flushed in embarrassment.

Mike said, “I’ll get it,” and headed down the hall.

“Remember how much fun we had with this thing?” Ana said, returning to the original subject. Christina wasn’t sure why, but she was sorry she’d kept the damn thing around. Ana seemed way too enamored of it.

“It’s Tony from next door,” Mike said when he returned a minute later, two more people in his wake. “And his fiancée,” he added, stressing the word.

Tony went over to Christina, took her shoulders and gave her a peck on the cheek. He’d been a gaunt, geeky boy, but he’d grown into a tall, well-built man. His eyes were gray, his hair sandy-colored, and his nose and ears were no longer too big for his face.

“Hey, Tony, thanks for coming,” Christina said.

“Nasty fog out there,” he said. “I couldn’t even see your house from mine.”

“Spooky,” Ilona agreed.

“Christina, you remember Ilona, don’t you?” Ana asked.

“We met at the funeral,” Ilona said, stepping forward to take Christina’s hand. She had a warm grip and sympathetic green eyes. She was slim, with long, straight blond hair and a pleasant way about her.

“Yes, of course we met,” Christina said warmly. “Congratulations. I didn’t know the two of you were engaged. When’s the big day?”

“Oh, we haven’t planned that far ahead yet,” Ilona said.

“I say we ask the Ouija board,” Ana suggested.

“I say we have a beer and some barbecue,” Mike protested from the doorway.

“Oh, all right, but then we do the Ouija board,” Ana insisted.

“What about Jed? Should we wait for him before we eat?” Christina asked.

“My dear cousin will get here in his own good time,” Ana said. “He can eat when he gets here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Christina agreed.

“Let’s eat, then,” Dan said.

“Worked up a real appetite being a fluffy, huh?” Ana teased.

Dan gave her a fake scowl as they all moved into the kitchen and started eating.

The conversation was general and pleasant as it moved from topic to topic. It turned out that Ilona had originally come from Ohio, which led to a discussion about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nice, easy stuff.

So why, Christina kept wondering, was she feeling so on edge?

Ilona asked Christina about her work, and she explained that writing advertising jingles was more difficult than most people thought, as well as a crucial element in selling the product. “If you can get people to remember a jingle, then they’ll remember the product,” she explained. As she spoke, she could hear Dan, Mike and Tony talking about the murdered woman who had been found beside the highway.

When everyone seemed to have finished eating, Ana reached over for Christina’s plate. “Done with this?”

“Cleanup time?” Dan said, noticing. “Let me help.” He came over with a large garbage bag and they all tossed their paper plates into it. “Gran wasn’t the type to let any of us get away without picking up after ourselves, right, Christie?”

“Right. But,” she added, smiling to take any sting out of the words, “it’s easier when all you have to do is grab a garbage bag.”

“Gran made us scour her copper collection every Sunday,” Mike put in, a nostalgic smile curving his lips.

“Yeah, and it was a pain in the butt,” Dan said, and grinned at Christina. “You gonna keep all that copper glowing forever?” he asked. His eyes indicated the array of copper pans and molds lining the special racks their grandfather had constructed to hold the collection.

“Of course,” she said.

“Better you than me,” Dan told her, laughing.

“Christina was always the keeper of the keys,” Tony said, lifting his beer to her.

“The keys?” Ilona said, puzzled.

“Christie was always the one who loved all the old family stuff,” Tony explained. He sounded slightly impatient.

“Oh,” Ilona said in a cool tone.

“I’m sorry,” Tony murmured, pulling her close.

“Get a room,” Dan teased.

Ilona laughed softly, blushing, and drew away from Tony.

“Why would they get a room when they have a perfectly good house?” Mike asked.

“Forget it, it’s Ouija board time,” Ana announced.

“The parlor is a mess,” Christina said.

“We can just sit on the floor,” Ana said, waving away her objection. “We’ll start with Tony and Ilona. Maybe the Ouija board can give us a wedding date.”

“Sure,” Tony said with a shrug.

Ilona giggled. “Shouldn’t we dim the lights or something?”

“Why not?” Mike asked with a shrug, moving to the switch that controlled the lights.

Dan made a sound as if a soft and wicked wind were moving through the room.

Christina, arms folded against her chest as she leaned against the arched doorway, groaned.

Ilona and Tony set their fingers on the planchette, which began to move, finally settling over the J.

“January,” Ana breathed.

“It’s gotta be at least July,” Tony said. “We’re just not ready yet.”

“Look at that,” Mike said as the planchette started moving around erratically. “She wants January, he won’t be ready until July, and poor Mr. Ouija doesn’t know what to do.”

“You’re pushing it,” Tony accused Ilona.

“No—you’re pushing it,” Ilona protested.

“Don’t take it so seriously. It’s just a game,” Mike said lightly, as if aware that a real argument was in the offing.

And that was all that it was: a game, Christina reminded herself.

“Fingers barely touching the planchette,” Ana advised. “Christina, come over here and help me show them how to do it.”

“Oh, all right. But we’re not doing this all night,” Christina protested. She flashed a smile at Ilona. “I want to learn more about how you and Tony got together. Who cares when the wedding is? We’ll all have a good time whenever you choose to have it—if we’re invited, of course.”

“Of course you’re invited,” Ilona said.

“All right, all right,” Ana said. “Just get down here.”

“Is it dark enough? Want it spookier?” Dan teased.

“That fog is spooky enough,” Ilona said, and shivered.

“It’s just fog,” Christina said, barely managing not to shout. Damn. It wasn’t like her to be so edgy, but it was unnerving to realize how closely she fit the description of the victim of a serial killer.

Either a copycat…

Or a maniac who had somehow escaped detection for twelve years.

“And don’t forget the moon,” Ilona added.

“Are you thinking werewolves?” Tony teased her.

“There are enough real monsters out there,” Christina said. “There’s no need to make up more.”

There was a sudden uncomfortable silence in the room. She realized she had snapped out the words rather than simply speaking them.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. What was wrong with her? It was just…

It was just that stupid Ouija board and the idea of talking to spirits. She suddenly found the past welling up in her mind, a vision that was far too real. She could see Gran, after her grandfather had died. Sitting in her chair, looking at her so somberly. She’d dreamed that she’d talked to her grandfather. A psychology professor had once told her that such dreams were defense mechanisms, a way to reconcile oneself to losing someone. But Gran had said, “It’s dangerous. You have opened a door….”

That was just Gran and the Irish speaking. She had never had such dreams again. Not even when she had lost her parents.

All of that was far behind her now. She was a perfectly rational, sane person, and it was just the Irish sense of fun that made them all pretend to believe in banshees and leprechauns and even dreams.

“Okay, Ana, let’s show everybody how it’s done,” she said, then lowered her voice teasingly. “It was a dark and stormy night…no, it was a dark and foggy night, with a strange, full moon rising above the mist.”

Her light banter didn’t seem to be helping her mood any, she thought, and apparently it was obvious.

“You okay, Christie?” Mike asked.

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

“My fault,” Mike said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Mike, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at anyone. I guess I’m just tired.”

“You’re really okay?” Dan said softly.

“Yes, of course. Come on, Ana. Let’s do this Ouija thing and be done with it, okay?”

“Hello, Ouija board,” Ana said, as if she were greeting an old friend.

Christina forced a grin, then set her fingertips very lightly on the planchette, which took off, slowly spelling out “Hello, good evening.”

“Is there a spirit in you tonight, Ouija board?” Ana asked.

“Is she for real?” Christina heard Tony whisper to Dan.

“Who knows?” Dan replied.

“Real? Real is what we make it,” Mike put in.

Christina knew that she wasn’t moving the planchette, so Ana had to be the one causing it to spell out the answer.

“Y-E-S,” Ilona read softly.

“Who are you?” Ana asked.

They all stared as the planchette began to move again and Dan read aloud, “B-E-A-U-K-I-D-D…Bookid?”

“It must mean boo, kid,” Mike said. “Boo, like Halloween. Kid, like a trick-or-treater.”

“No,” Dan murmured. “B-E-A-U. Beau, like a man’s name.”

“Like General Beauregard, the Confederate military leader,” Tony offered. “Right?”

“Beau Kidd. The detective who was supposedly the Interstate Killer!” Dan gasped.

“You did that on purpose!” Mike accused Ana.

“The hell I did,” she retorted adamantly.

“The thing moves by the power of suggestion,” Mike said impatiently.

“Ask him what he wants,” Dan said. “Watch—it will spell out, ‘I was framed. I’m innocent.’”

“What do you want?” Ana asked the spirit softly, ignoring Dan.

Christina gritted her teeth, longing to lift her fingers from the planchette, but somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

The planchette continued to move.

It was Ana, damn her. She had to be forcing it.

But what was really unnerving Christina was that she didn’t think Ana was forcing it.

Dan whispered behind them, “Puh-lease. You’d think we were still teenagers, telling scary stories out in the woods.”

“Be quiet. It’s spelling something,” Ana said impatiently.

“H-E,” Mike began.

“L-P,” Dan finished.

“Help,” Ilona breathed.

“Hang on, it’s not finished,” Christina said.

“They must be moving it,” Tony whispered to Ilona. “But they’re good. Spooky, huh?”

“‘Help,’ again,” Mike said. “It’s getting kind of monotonous, don’t you think?”

What other letters added to “help” would make another word? Christina wondered as the planchette kept moving.

“‘Help me please,’” Dan whispered.

The planchette was practically racing around the board.

Help me please help me please help me please….

Then, suddenly, it came to a definite stop in the middle of the board.

The room fell dead silent, even the doubters momentarily spellbound.

A thunderous knocking broke the silence and brought a scream from Ilona’s lips. As if in response, the planchette seemed to rise and soar straight into the air.

And then they heard the front door burst open.




3


“What the hell?” Dan demanded.

Jed stared back at his old family friend, wondering why he looked so spooked. Okay, maybe he’d opened the door a bit more forcefully than necessary, but it hadn’t been locked.

Although even if it had been locked, he would have forced it open, anyway, he had to admit.

He was definitely on edge, he thought, but he’d also heard someone scream.

“You tell me,” Jed said to Dan. “What the hell is going on in here? I heard a scream.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Sorry.” He stepped back so Jed could come in and closed—and locked—the door after him. “Good to see you, Jed. The screamer was Ilona, Tony’s fiancée. She got spooked after Ana insisted on playing with the Ouija board.”

“That’s why the dim lights, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” Daniel agreed dryly.

By then they had reached the parlor and Ana leapt up and rushed over to meet him, giving him a quick hug. “You made it.”

“I said I’d come,” he told her, looking past her to Christina Hardy, who was slowly rising. She was one of those women with the ability to do normally awkward things with the sinuous grace of curling ivy. She walked over, a small smile on her face, and gave him a quick, friendly hug in greeting. “Welcome. There’s still barbecue in the kitchen.”

“Good. I’m famished.”

“Hi, Jed,” Mike said. “You know Tony, but have you met Ilona?”

Jed nodded toward the woman at Tony’s side. They’d met briefly at the funeral. “Nice to see you again,” he told her.

“You, too,” Ilona said.

“Did you know Jed’s a famous writer?” Mike asked.

“I’m not really famous,” Jed said quickly, embarrassed.

“Speaking of which, guess what name those two—” Mike paused to indicate Ana and Christina “—just dredged up. Beau Kidd.”

Jed frowned. Even if his nerves hadn’t already been on edge, the name would have stung. Damn it, he thought. He hadn’t caused what had happened to the cop. He had just built fiction around the facts of what had already happened.

Yeah. Fiction that clearly skewered the man.

“Beau Kidd?” he said, and he knew that his voice was harsh.

“Oh, Jed, don’t sound so mad. We were just playing with the Ouija board,” Ana said.

“After talking about the recent murder,” Dan explained.

“Ouija board?” Jed said skeptically.

“Hey, blame Ana, not me,” Christina said lightly.

“I’m telling you, it spelled out his name,” Ana said stubbornly.

“Come in the kitchen, I’ll warm up some food for you,” Christina said.

“Don’t bother,” Ana teased. “He used to be a cop. He even eats cold pizza.”

“Well you don’t have to eat cold barbecue,” Christina said firmly, then stared at him with those crystal-blue eyes of hers and smiled slowly. “Thanks for coming.”

He shrugged a little awkwardly. “Sure.”

She strode past him, smooth and sleek. He followed.

She was already reaching into the refrigerator by the time he stepped into the kitchen. She handed him a beer.

“So how’s it going?” she asked after he thanked her, helping herself to one, as well, and leaning back against the counter. A subtle grin curved her lips. “When does your next book come out?”

He arched a brow. “Last month, actually.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“That’s cool.”

“I should have kept up.”

“Amazingly, the entire world doesn’t rush out to the store the minute a book of mine comes out.”

She flushed. “Yeah, well, I’m one of Ana’s best friends. I should have known.”

“Not even all of Ana’s friends rush out the minute I have a book on the shelves,” he assured her.

She smiled and dug into the refrigerator again. He realized with an inner smile that she had planned for his arrival as she pulled out a microwave-ready plate with chicken, ribs and corn on the cob.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he was hungry. He’d showered, and the smell of the autopsy room no longer seemed to fill his nostrils.

But he couldn’t forget the dead woman or what had happened at the cemetery.

Couldn’t forget that Christina Hardy was a beautiful redhead.

He warned himself to get his thoughts under control. He couldn’t let himself become obsessed with this, couldn’t let it consume him and everyone around him.

“So how’s it going in jingle land?” he asked. “What’s your latest?”

Her smile deepened as she played with the dial on the microwave. “‘Come to the Grand, walk on the sand, hear the steel band, sunsets and glory, the minute you land,’” she sang lightly.

“That was you? I hear it all the time,” he told her.

“It’s a great resort,” she told him. “I was given a comp weekend when I was hired, so I got to check it out for free. It’s one of those all-inclusive places. Really nice. You step out from your private bungalow right onto the beach.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” he teased.

“As long as I am working.”

“Well, this place is worth a mint,” he told her.

“I’d panhandle before I sold this house,” she assured him passionately, then seemed embarrassed by the emotion she had betrayed. She offered him a wry smile. “Hmm. And are you suggesting I won’t get work?”

He laughed. “Never,” he vowed solemnly.

The microwave beeped. She reached in for his plate, and he walked over to take it from her. The scent of barbecue was strong, but her perfume was more alluring. He remembered how, years ago, he had thought she was a pain in the butt and wished she and Ana would go away.

Things certainly changed, he thought wryly.

She smiled and brushed by on her way to get him a fork, knife and napkin. His muscles tightened. Hell, yes, things changed.

Ana appeared in the kitchen. “Hurry up,” she said to Christina. “You’re the only one who can make that stupid Ouija board work.”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Christina protested.

Jed felt his muscles tighten again, and not in a good way.

“Beau Kidd?” he said to Christina.

She flushed. “I swear, I didn’t make it do anything,” she protested.

“Whatever you say,” he said curtly.

He hadn’t meant to be so brusque. She barely moved, but he could feel her stiffen from across the room.

“It’s just that I worry, okay?”

She sighed. “I know. I’m a redhead.”

“A beautiful redhead,” he told her, trying to atone.

“I’m a big kid, and I’ve lived on my own for a long time now. I don’t do stupid things.”

“Don’t assume that all victims are stupid.”

“I’m not. But I am careful,” she told him. “Really.” She was irritated. Why not? It was a good cover-up for being frightened.

She walked out of the kitchen, toward the parlor. He followed her, keeping his distance and stopping in the doorway.

“You made that name—Beau Kidd—appear,” Mike said, staring accusingly at Christina.

“I sure as hell didn’t,” she replied, and her voice betrayed her annoyance. “Twelve years ago, I was thirteen and my mom turned the news off every time something came on TV that she thought I shouldn’t know about. In fact, my parents used to argue about it. My dad thought I needed to be aware of what was going on in the world, but my mom just thought I was too young to know some things—no, a lot of things.”

“You still must have heard the name,” Dan said. He was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, arms folded over his knees.

“I’m sure I did, but a lot has happened since then, in my life and in the world,” she informed him, her tone irritated. “I didn’t move the planchette.”

“Right. Beau Kidd did it himself, because there is no copycat killer and he wants us to know he’s innocent,” Mike murmured dryly.

“Maybe he didn’t do it,” Ana said. “And maybe his spirit did move the planchette.”

“Now you’re scaring me,” Jed teased his cousin.

She frowned, staring at him with a stubborn set to her jaw. “Oh, right, Mr. He-man. There’s no possibility that anything you haven’t seen for yourself could possibly be real.”

“What’s the phrase? A ghost in the machine?” Tony said, his tone light, as if he were hoping to lift the tension that had suddenly filled the room.

“If there were a ghost here, it would be Gran, yelling at us,” Dan said, grinning, and evoking smiles from the others at last.

“Was she mean?” Ilona asked.

“Heavens, no,” Christina said. “But she had a very clear vision of right and wrong.” She flashed a smile. “I don’t think she’d be yelling. We haven’t messed anything up.”

“Well, she wasn’t all that fond of the way I’m running my life,” Dan said, shrugging. “I tried to explain to her that I intend to be more than Raccoon Ralph.”

“And you will be,” Christina said. “You’re going to be Zeus.”

“Right. And Halloween is around the corner. I’ll get to play some pretty scary stuff,” Dan said.

“The three-year-olds are trembling in their boots,” Ana teased, then suggested, “Why don’t we ask the Ouija board when you’ll get your big break?”

Mike groaned. “I’m getting another beer.” He started down the hall, almost crashing into Jed, who was still standing in the doorway. “Beer?” he suggested.

“Yeah, sure, one more,” Jed said, heading to the kitchen with him.

A few seconds later, they heard a loud and startled clamor from the parlor.

They frowned at each other and rushed back to the other room. Jed was in the lead, and when he reached the arched doorway, he was almost hit in the head with the planchette.

“Hey, who threw that?” he demanded. Ducking had saved him from a good shot right in the face.

“She did,” Ana said, pointing to Christina.

“I did not!” Christina protested.

Ana met his eyes, looking more than a little scared. “It…it was like it got mad and flew cross the room,” she said.

“Ana, get a life,” Jed snapped.

“What’s going on?” Mike demanded from just behind Jed.

“We asked it if Dan was going to get the part he wants,” Christina said.

“And it spelled out ‘help’ again,” Ilona said, eyes wide.

“They’re pulling your leg, Ilona,” Mike told her.

Ana let out a long, aggrieved sigh.

“Whatever. Let’s put the stupid thing away,” Christina said. Without waiting for anyone to agree, she reached for the box.

“Throw the stupid thing away,” Dan suggested.

“Christina, throw an old treasure away?” Tony teased. “Never.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t throw anything away. You might recall a box I packed up when a few people forgot about it after one Christmas dinner,” Christina said, looking from Mike to Dan and smiling complacently.

“Yes, and we appreciate it,” Dan said, then explained to the others. “We got bonds for Christmas one year when we were kids. We forgot all about them, but Christina stuck them in a box and held on to it. Our bonds matured and ended up being worth a bundle.”

“And we thank her for it,” Mike said, then turned to Christina. “Want me to help you pack anything up?” he asked as he turned up the dimmer switch.

“No, but thank you for the appreciation.” She rose from the floor as gracefully as ever.

Dan yawned, then apologized. “Sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’m on first shift tomorrow. Costuming at seven in the morning for the eight o’clock breakfast. This was fun. Thanks, Ana. Christina.”

“I should take off, too,” Jed said, anxious to get away. He still couldn’t get the autopsy off his mind, and the last thing he needed was to spend the evening at a party where the conversation kept turning to Beau Kidd.

“Christina, Ana, thanks for dinner, and, Christie, welcome to the neighborhood.”

“Thanks for coming,” she said, and walked over to him for a brief hug. There was still something reserved between them.

His fault, she decided as he waved to the others and started toward the door.

“This is your home, too, just like always,” he heard Christina tell her cousins as they followed a few steps behind.

“Thanks, kid,” Dan told her. “But one day you might have a sex life, and you wouldn’t want us walking in on you.”

“Let’s go,” Mike said. “I don’t want to hear about my little cousin’s sex life, okay?”

“Would you rather walk in on it?” Dan asked.

“Outta here,” Mike said firmly.

Jed was almost at the door, but he still overheard the last remarks from the group in the parlor.

“What the hell was with Jed tonight?” Tony asked.

“The Beau Kidd thing,” Ana said. “When he wrote his book, he was sure Kidd was guilty, but now he doesn’t know.”

Jed headed out the door to his Jeep and gunned the engine.

Ana was right.



Ana left a few minutes later with Tony and Ilona. Dan and Mike had offered to drive her home, but Tony had assured them that he and Ilona would see her safely inside. Ana had bought her parents’ house when they had retired down to their place in the Keys, so she’d never moved once in her life. And at the price of real estate, she was lucky—as Christina was herself.

Christina locked the front door as the stragglers left. One thing she didn’t have was an alarm system. Something she should probably consider in the future, she decided.

There wasn’t much to do as far as cleaning up; paper plates for food that had arrived in cardboard cartons didn’t create much of a mess. She was done in five minutes.

When the water stopped running, the house seemed almost painfully silent.

She walked back into the parlor and immediately noticed the Ouija board. “You suck,” she muttered. Her eyes moved over the many boxes littering the room.

For some reason, all those boxes made her feel uneasy. The fact that the house didn’t have an alarm—which had never bothered her before—now made her even more uneasy. The silence weighed on her.

And she wished to God they had never played with the stupid Ouija board.

She found herself walking around, turning on every light in the house. She even turned on the plasma television in the living room, thinking the noise would be good.

The news came on instantly.

“As is common in such cases,” an attractive young anchorwoman was saying, “there was evidence that the police didn’t share with the public when the Interstate Killer was at work twelve years ago. The police have not yet commented on whether or not the murder of Sherri Mason shares any of those confidential similarities or not. As you may be aware, the Interstate Killer’s spree ended with the death of the man who had become the prime suspect, Detective Beau Kidd. Kidd was familiar with two of the victims, who—”

Christina was tempted to throw the remote control across the room; she hit the power-off switch instead.

Groaning, she rechecked the front door, turned off the lights and started up the stairs.

She hadn’t taken over her grandmother’s room, and she wouldn’t. It was going to be her guest room, she had decided.

“Beau Kidd, indeed,” she murmured aloud in annoyance when she reached her own room. “If this house is haunted, it’s haunted by Granda and Gran. Good people who loved me.”

She had never felt afraid in this house, and she was angry that the night’s events had left her feeling so unnerved.

So she was a redhead. There were lots of redheads out there, natural and otherwise. It was a popular color.

She locked her doors. She didn’t go off with strangers. She was careful.

She looked around her room, the same room she’d always stayed in as a child. It had changed a great deal over the years. She had a new bed, for one thing—a Christmas present from a few years ago. It was a queen, with a handsome cherry-wood sleigh-style frame. Her dresser and wardrobe matched, as did the artfully concealed entertainment center.

She headed straight to it, turning on the television and finding a channel with nothing but sitcom repeats.

“So there. I will have no news tonight,” she said.

Her voice rang strangely loud in the empty house. She was glad when the sound of the television filled the space.

She was even more pleased when a commercial with a jingle she had written popped up on the screen. “Ever soft, ever silky, ever gentle to the touch, oh, dear Biel’s Tissue, we thank you very much.”

Not poetry or even her most brilliant lyric, but it was a good, catchy tune.

She smiled, walked into the bathroom and slipped into the cotton sleep shirt that hung on the back of the door, then washed her face and brushed her teeth. A few minutes later she drew back her covers and settled beneath the clean, cool comfort of her sheets.

And she stared at the television, not seeing a thing.

She rose again and turned on the lights she had turned off earlier. She was certain that from the street, her house was lit up like a Christmas tree. She turned the television down, plumped her pillow and closed her eyes, hoping that the soft drone of the sitcom would help her sleep. It wasn’t as if she had anything imperative going on early in the morning; she was just going to finish setting up the house and emptying boxes.

But she was tired. She wanted to sleep.

She tossed around for a while, forcing herself to lie still with her eyes closed, half listening to the television.

Then, head on the pillow, eyes closed, she felt a strange prickling sensation. She couldn’t pinpoint anything different about the air around her or the sounds she was hearing. It was an old house, and it creaked. But she knew every creak, and she wasn’t hearing anything she shouldn’t have been.

But the sensation stayed with her.

She felt as if she were a child again, frightened as she watched a spooky movie, closing her eyes…

If this had been a movie, though, she would have felt compelled to open her eyes, but this was real life, and she fought the desire. If she kept her eyes closed, she would be all right. It would be like hiding beneath the bed or taking refuge in a closet.

I won’t. I won’t open my eyes, she thought. And it will go away.

But the feeling didn’t go away, and finally she had to open her eyes and look into the shadows, just to prove that there was nothing there.

She opened one eye slowly.

If felt as if her blood congealed and her heart froze.

She closed her eye again. She must have imagined what she thought she’d seen. A shadow. A shadow in the shape of a man. Standing at the end of the bed.

Her frozen heart began to thunder.

A normal response, she told herself, given that there was a killer on the loose.

This was all nonsense, she thought. No one could possibly be there.

She opened both eyes, bolting up to a sitting position at the same time.

Someone was there.

A tall, solid, yet somehow shadowy figure standing at the foot of her bed.

Christina screamed and leapt out of bed, then practically flew out of the room.

She raced to the door, out to the hall and down the stairs. She burst out the front door, onto the porch and leapt over the two steps that led to the ground. She ran until she reached the end of the driveway, and then she finally turned back, gasping, checking to see if he was in pursuit.

It was difficult to see, though, because it was such a strange night. The fog was still lying low to the ground, while above, shimmering through with an illumination like silver, was the great orb of the full moon.

Instinct was kicking in. Fog or not, she would see him coming from the front of the house, and he clearly wasn’t in pursuit. But she didn’t have her keys. That was okay; she could just go next door to Tony’s house, and she would be safe.

In her mind’s eye, she pictured the figure coming after her, catching her, tackling her right before she could reach Tony’s door.

Then there was a tap on her shoulder.

She froze.

Spun around.

Screamed.

He was there.

It was impossible, but he was there. He’d somehow gotten out of the house without her seeing and ended up behind her.

And he wasn’t a shadow, either. Not only that, she had seen his face before.

It took her a moment to remember where she had seen it, and when.

Then she knew.

She had seen it, plastered all over the newspapers after Beau Kidd had been shot kneeling over the body of his latest victim.

“Christie…”

Did he say her name, or was it the breeze? Or was she only deep in some horrible nightmare where the dew-damp grass beneath her bare toes was ridiculously real and the face of the man before her was bizarrely vivid?

“Christie…”

The world seemed to be fading, getting lost in the fog.

“Please…help me.”

She had never passed out before in her life, but she did then, dropping flat onto soft, wet earth, seeing nothing but stygian darkness.




4


“Hey.”

Christina became aware of the deep, rich voice at the same time as she felt the chilling discomfort of the ground beneath her.

The sun was rising, she realized, feeling completely disoriented.

“Christie?”

She blinked. The sun created a haze as it burned off the last of the fog, so she blinked again, turning her head slightly to make out someone standing above her. For a moment she felt a resurgence of fear. But the sunlight was bright, and when she blinked a third time, her vision cleared and she finally saw who was standing there.

Jed Braden.

He hunkered down by her side.

“Are you all right?” His tone was anxious, harsh.

She realized that she was lying on her lawn and frowned.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded anxiously, his hands on her shoulders, his face close, his features tense.

“No, I’m not hurt. I’m fine.”

She saw relief fill his face.

“Fine? Really?”

“Absolutely. I swear it.”

“Thank God you’re alive,” he murmured.

She struggled to rise up on her elbows. “I guess I…fell asleep.”

“You’re joking, right?” he said. His voice hardened to a sharper edge. “You told me you were smart, remember? You said you didn’t do stupid things.”

She stared at him. She must have had a nightmare. She couldn’t possibly have seen the ghost of Beau Kidd. There in the light of day, the idea was just too ridiculous. But she really was lying on the grass, so she really had run out of the house. And she had run because someone had been there. Hadn’t he?

She blurted the words without thinking. “There was someone in my house.”

Jed stared at her, slowly arching a brow. “Someone was in your house?” He sounded both concerned and doubtful.

“Yes.”

Anxiety tightened his features. “So someone broke in and chased you out, then…forced you to sleep on the ground?”

She stared at him. “I’m telling you, there was a man at the foot of my bed.”

“But you’re also telling me you weren’t attacked, right?”

“No. He was just…there.”

“What was he doing?”

“Staring at me. I…felt him there, opened my eyes and saw him, then jumped up and ran out,” she explained.

“You locked up, right? You made sure you locked up after everyone left?”

He stood then, and reached down to help her to her feet. He was in jeans, a knit polo shirt and a casual suede jacket, towering and at ease. “Christina, usually people run somewhere when they’re running away from danger. They don’t just curl up and go to sleep on the front lawn.”

“I didn’t just curl up and go to sleep!” she flashed angrily.

“Oh?”

“Look, I’m not kidding.”

“Christie, bad things are happening,” he said softly, dark eyes on her like onyx. “This is no time to cry wolf.”

“I would never do that,” she said, her temper growing, her tone an aggrieved growl.

“All right, so exactly what happened?”

“I came running out here and…”

“And?”

“And I’m not sure.”

His voice went very soft then. “You’re sure you weren’t molested in any way?”

Was she? She’d passed out cold. But she hadn’t been assaulted or anything. She was certain of it.

“No. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t even touched,” she murmured.

“Okay, so this man broke into your house to stare at you and then did…what when you ran out? Ransacked the place?”

No…somehow he moved faster than I did. He tapped me on the shoulder and scared me so badly I fainted. But she could hardly say that.

She lowered her head, lashes falling, flushing. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, let’s take a look around, huh?” He strode toward the house. For a moment she stood watching him; then she hurried after him.

“Jed, what are you doing here, anyway?” she asked.

“I came over to have coffee with Ana, and then I saw you lying out here.” He motioned for her to stay on the porch, his face wearing a stern mask of warning.

“He could still be here,” he said, and it made sense—except that she knew he didn’t believe her that anyone had been there in the first place.

But she knew he didn’t dare ignore her. He might think that she was crazy, that she’d had too much to drink while playing with the occult, but there was a killer in the area, and he couldn’t take chances.

“I think I’d be safer with you,” she called as he disappeared into the house. “In all those slasher movies, when the guy goes off and leaves the girl she ends up dead!”

There was no answer.

She stood nervously on the porch, feeling like a fool. Despite the fact that this was Florida, autumn was well on the way, and she was chilled, standing there in her damp cotton nightgown and bare feet.

“Jed?”

There was still no answer. She looked around, since there was nothing else to do. The day was coming on nicely. By midafternoon, it would be hot. The sky was crystal-blue now, but no doubt this afternoon the thunderclouds would come rolling through.

Jed returned at last, startling her out of her reverie as he stepped outside and shook his head. “Nothing. There’s no one in there now.”

She let out a long breath. “Jed, it was real. He was real. I opened my eyes, and I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed.”

“We’ll walk through the house together,” he told her, the expression in his dark eyes an enigma. “You can see if anything is out of place.”

She followed him into the house. “Upstairs first?” he suggested.

Upstairs, the rooms that her family had claimed in earlier days were empty and undisturbed. Even in her bedroom, everything looked normal. The sheets were tossed back, as they had been when she bolted, but everything else looked just as she had left it.

“Anything?” Jed asked.

She shook her head.

He stared at her. “You and Ana shouldn’t have been playing with that stupid Ouija board.”

“Oh, so now you believe in Ouija boards?” she said.

“No. But I do believe in the power of suggestion.”

They traipsed downstairs. The kitchen was tidy, thanks to her efforts the night before. There was a last garbage bag waiting to go out, but that was it.

In the parlor, the boxes remained where they had been.

Too bad I don’t have a ghost who wants to unpack for me, she thought.

No. She didn’t have a ghost at all. Besides, if anyone was haunting this place, it would be Gran, just as they’d said last night. And she would be a stern but kindly ghost.

But of course there were no such things as ghosts, she told herself.

“So has anything been stolen?” Jed asked. “Or even moved?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

She couldn’t help but wish that her hair wasn’t sporting blades of grass, and that her cotton sleep shirt wasn’t damp and hugging her uncomfortably.

“The silver isn’t missing?” There was a dry note in his voice, she noticed.

“No,” she said, increasingly upset.

Looking more disturbed than amused, he said, “Christie, if someone really had been in the house, either something would be missing or you would have been followed out and attacked on the lawn.”

She glanced around the parlor, and then she frowned.

The Ouija board.

It had been moved; she was certain of it.

She had set it on top of some other boxes when they had finished with it the night before, but now…

Now it was back in the center of the floor.

“That moved,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Jed asked.

“The Ouija board.”

He groaned.

“I’m serious!”

He was so silent that she could have sworn she could hear every breath either one of them took and even their heartbeats.

“Sit down, Christina,” he suggested.

She looked at him, puzzled. Then she realized that he was trying to be patient and had reverted to being a cop trying to calm a distraught citizen.

“Christina, I admit I wasn’t a cop for all that long, but I never heard of anyone breaking into a house just to move a Ouija board.”

She flashed him an irritated glance and stiffened, refusing to give him the satisfaction of sitting down as ordered.

“I’m telling you, when I went to bed last night, that box wasn’t there.”

“Sit down,” he said again. “I can get you a glass of water or put some coffee on if that will help.” He wasn’t making fun of her, she knew. He was just treating her the same way he had when they’d all been kids and he had five years’ advantage over them.

“Jed, I’m telling you—”

“No. Let me talk,” he said.

He pushed her down into one of the big wing chairs and hunkered down in front of her, taking her hands. “It’s hard. Trust me, I understand how hard it is.”

“What are you saying?”

“Christie, you have Dan and Mike, but other than that, you’ve lost your entire family.” His face hardened for a moment, and she knew why. He occasionally talked about his late wife, and sometimes he would smile or even laugh when he talked about something fun they had done.

But he never, ever spoke about the months of her illness or her actual death.

“I’m really not sure you should keep this house,” he told her.

“I love this house.”

“But you’re dangerously close to being haunted by it. By the house itself, by the memories, good and bad, of all the years here. When I lost Margaritte, I stayed in the house for a while. I couldn’t part with any of her belongings. They even sent me to a police shrink. Eventually I gave her clothing to charities that could use it and only kept a few special mementos. And I sold the house and moved, because it was the only way I was ever going to stay sane.”

She stared at him and squeezed his hand in comfort. There were so many stages of grief: shock, disbelief, anger…no, fury. Then, sometimes, a dullness. Acceptance. Enough time to learn that you would never forget. A time to forgive. And then…not peace, as some suggested, but at least gratitude for those who tried to help you, and an ability to function and move forward, because that was somehow ingrained alongside the survival instinct.

But she had already accepted her grandmother’s death. Gran had lived a long life, and every memory she had that revolved around her grandparents was good.

The house, if it had a personality at all, was good.

“I’m okay. Really. And I love this house. Gran left it to me because she knew that. I’ll never sell it,” she told him. “But thank you for your concern.” She cleared her throat. At another time in her life, she mused, she might have been thrilled to have Jed Braden practically on his knees in front of her, but this moment was far too raw for that. “I’m all right,” she said, indicating that she wanted to get up. He stood first, and since his hand was still on hers, he helped her up, too. “Do you want coffee? Or something to eat?” she offered.

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I need to get going. I have a few self-imposed deadlines today, but I’m only a phone call away if you need me.”

He did think she was crazy, she thought. Or at least emotionally fragile right now because of Gran’s death.

“We checked every room,” she said. “There’s no one here. And like you said, no one breaks into a house just to move a Ouija board.”

He smiled a little ruefully and reached for her, pulling a blade of grass from her hair. “Call me if you need me.”

“Sure. Thank you,” she said, and smiled at him. Like hell, she fumed in silence. That damned Ouija board had moved.

She managed to keep her smile in place as she walked him to the door.

“Christina,” he said gravely, then hesitated.

“I know. There’s a killer on the loose with a thing for redheads. I’ll be very careful, I swear.”

“Sleeping on the lawn isn’t being careful.”

“I wasn’t—Oh, never mind. It won’t happen again.”

“I really am here if you need me.”

“Right,” she said, thinking, I had such a crush on you once, buddy.

He was still crush-worthy, she had to admit. The character worn into his features by life made him a striking man.

The fact that he was obviously patronizing her was a sharp wake-up slap, however.

“Thank, Jed. Thanks. I will call if I need you—if there’s a real problem,” she assured him, and there was only a slight note of coldness in her tone.

If he heard it, he gave no sign, and left.

She closed and locked the door, then looked around. The house was silent. Then the old grandfather clock chimed out the hour of 8:00 a.m. and she jumped.

With an irritated sigh, she headed for the kitchen and the coffeemaker. While coffee brewed, she raced upstairs. She’d been wearing those damp blades of grass just a little too long, and she had too much to do that day to be hanging around in her nightshirt.

Maybe she was crazy, she thought as she showered. Or at least more fragile than she had thought, too open to suggestion.

Because he was right. No one broke into a house just to move a Ouija board.

Unless…

Unless they wanted you to think you were crazy.



Police Detective Shot and Killed Disposing of Victim.

Police Detective Beau Kidd Identified as Interstate Killer.

The newspaper headlines gave no indication that Beau had only been the alleged killer. A little voice inside Jed nagged at him guiltily, even though he knew, rationally speaking, that if the department, the news and everyone else had condemned Beau Kidd, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have done so, too.

He had seen the story as terrifying, horrible, sad—and a lesson about how impossible it was to know even those closest to you, those who should be trustworthy. He had been completely convinced of Beau Kidd’s guilt.

Now he was equally convinced he’d been wrong.

Why?

Sitting at his computer in his townhouse overlooking one of the area’s natural lakes, Jed called up his files on the case. He stared at the names and ages of the previous victims as if some new truth would suddenly be revealed. Kelly Dunhill, twenty-four; Janet Major, twenty-eight; Denise Grant, thirty-one; Theodosia Wallace, twenty-two; and Grace Garcia, twenty-five. Only one of them, Grace, had come from the area, and she had been born in Tampa. The others had migrated south from four different states, Kelly from Tennessee, Janet from New York, Denise from Iowa and Theodosia from California. All had long red hair, ranging from strawberry-blonde to a deep, dark auburn. Their eye colors had been different, and their heights had ranged from five six to five nine. Each one had been found in the grass off one of the state’s highways, naked, arms crossed over her chest. None had shown signs of torture, such as cigarette burns, but there had been bruises on the bodies, as if they had been pushed around when they were alive.

As if they had tried to fight their abductor.

They’d all been sexually molested, but no semen had been recovered; their killer had used condoms. Nor had there been any flesh beneath their fingernails, so there was no way to test for DNA. The killer had been very careful.

The “no’s” were endless.

No fingerprints, no DNA, no footprints, no cigarette butts found by the dump scenes. Simple physiology said that something was left behind when two bodies came together. But not in this case. Nothing of any use whatsoever had ever been discovered. It was baffling, and had been seen as indicating that someone in law enforcement or forensics had been involved.

He read through everything he had acquired from the newspapers and police files, hoping to see something, anything new, a spark of information or even misinformation that might help him. There was nothing.

He decided to take a trip down to his old precinct.



Christina looked around the house while she waited for a new singer, a local girl named Allison Chesney, to show up to work with her on a new nonfat potato chip commercial. The promotions department at the giant food manufacturer had chosen her because of one of her previous jingles, which had been filled with “pep,” or so her contact had told her.

She’d managed to get rid of the boxes, storing most of them up in the attic—a perk most of the houses in the area didn’t have. She even had a basement, another rarity in the state. Going up to the attic and down to the basement had been a bit overwhelming. Why, she wondered, hadn’t she realized just how much stuff she would find there? Despite that, there had been plenty of room for her boxes. In time, she promised herself, she would check out everything that was already there.

She sat down at the piano in the parlor, feeling happy as she ran through the jingle herself one more time. She was ready to try out Allison Chesney’s sound, she decided, just as the doorbell rang.

Being smart, as she had promised everyone she would be, she looked through the peephole before opening the door. The young woman on the other side was a pretty brunette with flashing hazel eyes. As soon as Christina opened the door, she offered her hand with a shy smile. “Christina? I’m Allison.”

“Hi, great to meet you. Come on in.”

“This is your house?” Allison said in awe as she stepped inside.

“Yes.”

“It’s fabulous.”

“Thank you. It’s been in the family a long time,” Christina replied. “Can I get you something before we get started? Tea? Coffee? A bottle of water?”

“Water would be great, thanks.”

“Make yourself comfortable in the parlor,” Christina told her, pointing the way.

She got a bottle of water from the kitchen and returned to find Allison standing by the piano, looking out the bay window.

“This is really spectacular,” Allison told her. “I grew up in a place just like this.”

“Really? Where are you from?”

“The Gainesville area.”

“It’s pretty around there.”

Allison laughed. “Pretty quiet.”

“It can’t be too quiet. It’s a university town,” Christina reminded her.

“Yeah, and that’s about it. But at least it’s close to the action here. Well, action Florida-style. I thought I was so good when I was a kid that I was sure I’d be a big deal in New York by now,” she said ruefully. “But that’s not the way it happened.”

“Don’t put yourself down. I listened to your demo,” Christina told her. “You’re good.” She sat down at the piano bench and smiled in return. “Or are you trying to tell me that doing jingle work is slumming it?”

“Oh, good God, no!” Allison said. “Not at all. It’s just that…well, I guess it’s this house and, quite honestly, you. What are you? About twenty-five?”

“On the nose.”

“And you’re so successful,” Allison murmured.

“I’m paying the bills,” Allison said, smiling.

“Did you ever want to compose great operas or something?” Allison asked, openly curious.

“Nope. I always liked writing little ditties. Must be my Irish heritage,” she said dryly. “Quite frankly, I just got lucky with my first jingle and found a good agent. My cousin Dan is an actor, though, and he’s still trying to get a break into the big time. Well, the bigger time, anyway.”





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