Heart of Evil
Page 38

More clever than he himself had known. They’d just never get it. They’d never really appreciated his amazing ability to move quickly and decisively!
He leaned back, swallowing down a delightful sip of hundred-year-old cognac.
His phone rang; regretfully, he answered it.
A problem at work. With his crisp voice, he quickly barked out commands, changing gears as cleanly and swiftly as the transmission of a Rolls-Royce.
When he hung up, he smiled. He looked at himself in the mirror.
Down, down, down, everybody was going down, down, down.
He had his next move to plan, of course. But he would do so, easily and well.
As he walked to his bedroom, he noted one of the pictures on his wall. A picture taken nearly a decade ago after a reenactment.
He paused to look at it. Patrick Donegal, Ashley’s father, had still been alive. He’d been playing the role of Marshall Donegal that day.
Too bad he hadn’t been so clever back then! Taking down Patrick Donegal would have been a coup! But now…
There she was. Ashley. Beautiful as a teenager, not quite as refined as she was now, but beautiful, even in a quick snapshot.
The boy was in the picture, too. Jake. Jake Mallory. Hell, he’d heard the damned name so much he was sick. He was a savior. A tireless benefactor to the city. So damned good, the feds had wanted him, and he’d gone to them and brought down the mighty. Staring at the photo, he frowned.
Jake really needed to go down, too.
Really.
Pleased that he had a list of victims together, he walked on past the picture and headed to bed.
Tonight, he would rest.
Tomorrow would be his next kill.
12
“Okay, look—you can see, I’m coming right back!” Beth said. She pointed to the overnight bag she had packed. “One week of clothing, and that’s with doing a load of wash sometime in between. Oh, Ashley, come with me!” she pleaded, standing by the front door.
Ashley hugged her best friend tightly. “I’ll be here when you come back,” she promised.
“Frazier!” Beth said, and turned to hug Frazier as well. “Now, you really should come with me!” she said firmly.
He smiled. “To a vegetarian cooking class? Perish the thought. I was born right here, my dear. I’m not going anywhere else in my dotage—not until they drag me out.” He kissed her forehead. “Come back soon.”
“You know I will.”
“We need to get moving. We have to stop by Benjamin Austin’s office, and then it’s a bit of a drive into New Orleans,” Jackson said politely.
Beth hugged Ashley once again.
“What time is your plane?” Ashley asked her.
“I’m not sure yet which I’m taking. The boys are going to drop me in the city, and I’ll stow my bags at one of the hotels while I take a look around. I love NOLA—I’m going to miss it, even if I only go away for a week…” Her voice trailed. “Take care of yourself. Ashley, damn it, I mean it. Take care of yourself!”
Ashley smiled. “Go!”
Jake turned to Ashley as Beth said a swift goodbye and good luck to the others.
“Stick close to the house today. Please?”
She nodded. “I’m delving into the past, per Angela’s orders,” she told him. “I’ll be a good girl.”
“She will!” Frazier assured him, setting his hands on Ashley’s shoulders.
Beth saved her last goodbye for Cliff, giving him a big kiss right on the lips. “And you hang in, mister, you hear?”
“We’ll miss you,” Cliff told Beth.
Then, finally, the three were gone.
“I have some feed bills to finesse,” Cliff said, shaking his head. “I’ll be in my apartment if you need me.”
“I’ll be in the study, playing with bills myself,” Frazier said.
“Grampa, I can do that!” Ashley chided.
Frazier shook his head. “No, thank you. Let me be useful. The old need to be useful, you know.”
“There’s no one more necessary,” Ashley told him.
He grinned, kissed her cheek, and disappeared.
“I’m out for a walk by the cemetery,” Jenna said. “Will and I are supposed to go down the road and check out your sutler friend, John Martin, but that won’t take long, I don’t think. It’s a formality. They don’t really suspect him. We’ve got some time. Where was it that the three Yankees died? In front of the wall?”
“By the family tomb, actually,” Ashley told her.
“You can’t be out there alone,” Will said. “I’ll go with you. I’ll keep quiet so you can commune, Jenna, but you’re not going out there alone.”
“A team member is always welcome,” she said.
“Well, back to the monitors,” Whitney said.
“What have you seen lately in the screens?” Ashley asked. Whitney looked at her, and she blushed. “I mean, besides our movements—and those shadows you’ve shown me.”
“A great deal actually,” Whitney told her. She studied Ashley for a minute and glanced at Angela. “Come on over,” she said to Ashley, as if Angela had given her a silent accord.
The three women went back to the screens. On one, Ashley could see Jenna and Will walking toward the cemetery.
On other screens, she could see empty rooms.
“I’m rolling back tape,” Whitney said. “This is from yesterday afternoon.”
Ashley saw herself heading into the attic, walking around thoughtfully—and making a face at the mess of black fingerprint powder that was in the room.
Then, she saw something else. Something that seemed to form out of thin air. It wasn’t dark, like a shadow. It was something light—benign, in a sense. The light seemed to reach out and nearly touch her shoulder.
But then she spun around, and the vision of light faded.
“What was that?” Ashley asked, her throat tight.
“Nothing bad—certainly nothing bad or evil!”
Angela assured her.
“And you know this…how?” Ashley asked her.
“I know because I’ve met many entities now, and even when they’re hiding, keeping themselves from me, I can tell when something is there that means nothing but kindness and love,” Angela said. “There are many spirits, ghosts, or whatever you want to call them here. Energy, as some believe. I haven’t encountered anything evil here at all. Neither have the others.”
“But—you were expecting something evil?” Ashley asked.
Angela was thoughtful for a minute. “Evil can remain. As I told you. Someone out there—a living someone—seems to feel that this place is calling out to them, demanding some kind of vengeance. The good revenants that are here are reaching out to you, trying to help you. And you’ve seen one of them—you just don’t want to admit it. Did you meet the spirit in the attic?” Angela asked.
Ashley shook her head. But tension, fear and then trust in Angela filled her. She spilled out the truth. “No, but I have an ancestor here that I have seen. He talks to me as clearly as you do.”
Whitney smiled. “Marshall Donegal?”
Ashley nodded.
“Can you talk to him now?” Angela asked. “He’s here. I can feel him.”
“I can’t see him right now,” Ashley told her. She shook her head. “I mean, did you want to have a séance or something? Would you act as a medium?”
Angela smiled. “He isn’t interested in speaking with me. Just you. When did you first see him?”
“In a dream.”
“Then go lie down. Let him enter your dreams. Let him walk you through the original battle,” Angela told her. “And don’t be afraid. We’re all nearby.”
“Can it really help?” Ashley whispered.
“We won’t know until you try,” Angela told her.
Ashley nodded. She walked up the stairs and into her own room.
That was where Marshall Donegal had found her first. In her dreams.
Dr. Benjamin Austin’s office was a busy place; the receptionist looked at them as if they were crazy when they asked to speak with him. She indicated the waiting room. There were four rambunctious children running back and forth to their mother with magazines. There were several elderly patients waiting, and two young women and two young men besides.
“You have to see him now?” she asked.
“It will just take a moment,” Jackson said, producing his badge.
The receptionist quickly ushered them into an office.
A few minutes later, the doctor hurried in with two of his patients’ charts in his hand.
“Hello,” he said, trying to juggle the charts and shake their hands. “Jake, I heard you were with the government now. Good to see you. We get all the New Orleans news out here. Your name was involved with the Holloway case. This is about Charles Osgood, isn’t it? You know, the police were already here.”
“We know that,” Jackson told him. “And we appreciate your time. We can see that you’re extremely busy.”
Benjamin Austin nodded, but said, “That’s all right. Anything I can do to help.”
“This is confidential information right now,” Jake said. “But we know what drugs the killer used to subdue Charles Osgood, and the coroner’s office is testing to see if the same drugs were used on the latest victims.”
“Latest victims?” His eyes widened. “Oh, God, yes, they’re thinking that alligators didn’t kill Marty Dean and Toby Keaton?”
“That’s right. Where were you the night before last, Dr. Austin? Forgive the question—it’s necessary,” Jake said.
He stiffened but eased quickly; he seemed to understand. “Well, that I can tell you exactly, and you can verify the information without leaving this office. I gave a speech at eight at a meeting at the Best Western down the road, had dinner at twelve—and stayed at the hotel. I didn’t sleep alone. You met my girlfriend—the receptionist who led you here.”