Krewe of Hunters The Evil Inside 4 (5 page)

“And you’re going to investigate all this?” he asked her.

She smiled serenely. “I do have friends, Mr. Hall.”

“Ah, yes, team members.”

“I’ll remind you that most of the cases we solve are at first thought to be almost impossible,” Jenna said.

He couldn’t decide what was really going on in her mind, her voice remained so even, and she maintained such an unruffled calm. He couldn’t help but goad her on.

“Funny—I thought the NYPD had something to do with that last one!”

“The point is, Mr. Hall, no one is asking you to do all the work. I’m not a lawyer, but I do know how to work my way around legend and superstition, and the head of my team is one of the foremost behavioral scientists in the country. We can help you.”

“And the police are just going to let you snoop around?” he asked.

“You, as the defense attorney, will demand that leeway be given in your investigation—for the benefit of your client, of course,” Jenna said impatiently.

He didn’t know why he was feeling such a hot tension, or why his muscles seemed to be bunching and his temper flaring.

Because he didn’t think that they could do it? As much as he didn’t want to think of the boy as a murderer, it seemed the most logical scenario.

He looked back at Jamie. “I’ll let you know in the morning,” he said, and strode out of the room.

Jenna looked at her uncle long and hard after Sam had left, then finally spoke. “I’m not so sure that telling Sam Hall who I am and what I do was the best move you might have made.”

“And why not?” Jamie asked indignantly.

“Some people accept that the team gets the job done. And some people think that it’s a joke. Even among the Feds,” she told him.

“You can find the truth. I know that you can find who did this—you always had the knack.”

“Oh, Jamie! Please, I’m not a miracle worker, either…. And, you have to be ready for whatever we do find. We don’t know that Malachi didn’t commit the murders yet.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But, never mind that now—what would you like for dinner?”

She laughed. “Nice change of pace!
Scrod,
of course. Only in New England can you have really wonderful scrod!”

Jamie veered the conversation away from Malachi while they ate. He talked about “Haunted Happenings,” an October event that brought tourism to Salem. He was a man who had his own deep and binding beliefs, but he was also fascinated by the faiths that others believed in. There were Wiccans in the city who were really Wiccans, believing in the gods and goddesses of the earth and in doing no harm to others, lest it come back threefold. And, he advised her, there were Wiccans in the city who were Wiccans because it was a very nice commercial venture in “Witch City.” There were parades and balls, special events for children, theatrical programs on the tall ships at Derby Wharf and so much more.

“Now, you don’t mind staying awhile, really, do you? I rather threw you into that—I mean, saying that you’d investigate,” Jamie said. “And I know, too, that you’re employed by the government, that you have responsibilities—”

“It’s all right. A few team members are still in New York tying up some loose ends from our last case, and a few are in Virginia, outside of D.C., setting up our new offices.”

He let out a contented sigh. “So you can stay.”

She smiled. “Jamie, I knew from the beginning that you invited me up here for a reason. I didn’t realize I’d arrive in time for it to really…begin in earnest.”

He watched her oddly.

“What?”

“You always had it, you know,” he said.

“Had what?”

“The sight.”

Jenna was quiet at that. Her grandmother had entertained her when she had been a child with the myths and legends of Eire. She would tell a fantastic story about banshees—and then remind her that, now and again, many a tale had started at a pub. There were spirits—and then again, there were
spirits.

It was true. Her cousin, Liam, who had become a writer, had done so discovering that the fantastic tales he could tell after a night at the pub could be put down on paper—and pay.

It was equally true that a number of people in her family had seemed to have some kind of a special sense. They could often
feel
a place, and know that violence had been committed there. They were prone to hearing the footsteps of the
ghosties
as they moved about in a place, and they could sense the presence of something that remained, even after years had gone by.

But the first time she’d
known
she had some kind of sight was when she’d been working as an R.N., and had been down in the morgue on some business.

A corpse had spoken to her. He insisted he hadn’t died of natural causes, as would be assumed. He’d been helped into the great hereafter by a greedy family member.

Of course, that first time, she’d felt the speed of her heart escalate to dangerous levels. She wondered if, frequently, ghosts did not speak to their loved ones because they were afraid of giving them heart attacks—thus prematurely making ghosts of them, as well.

And, certainly, not every soul chose to walk the earth. Some remained because they felt they had unfinished business. Some remained because of the violence of their demise. Some had something that needed to be said, and some felt that their antecedents needed protecting.

“Uncle Jamie,” she said, moving her fish around on the plate, “you’re thinking that this is going to be a far easier thing than it is.” She spoke softly, looking around. “Perhaps I do have what you call ‘the sight.’ It doesn’t mean that I can go and see the corpse of Abraham Smith and he’ll tell me who did him in. He may not have remained behind, and if he did, he may not be able to communicate. We’ve never had an instance where it was easy and cut-and-dried—where we just walked into a morgue and said,
Hey! Who’s the guilty one?
Ghosts can help, but in many different ways.”

He was watching her, listening intently. At least, with Jamie, she never had to try to pretend. Jamie told her once that he believed in the “holy ghost,” and if he said so in a creed he spoke at religious services, he’d be an idiot not to believe that there was more beyond the average range of sight. Faith, he told her, was belief in what couldn’t be seen. If a man had faith, he couldn’t always doubt what he couldn’t see. Most people had faith—even if their faith was different. A lot of different roads climbed the same hill.

He folded his napkin and set it on the table. “Jenna, I know that your team deals with what is real and tangible and out there for all to see and know. I never thought that you could come here and solve all my problems with a simple chat with the dead. It’s never a simple ‘How do you do, and can you answer a question for me?’ But we are dealing with old stories and legends around here, true and enhanced.”

“These murders aren’t legends,” she said.

“No. But, but the natural ‘storytelling’ desire is to automatically say that the kid did it, neat and tidy and a juicy, repeatable story. That he freaked out because his father was a browbeating fanatic and he figured he could say that the house was filled with devils. People want to say this, for the newspapers at least. See what other stories are out there, from dead men or the living. I know that you can sort it all out.”

“You do have faith in me,” she murmured.

“Of course!” he said cheerfully. “Well, we’d best get on home, huh? I have a feeling it’s going to be an early morning.”

“And why is that?”

“Sam Hall is going to want me to visit his client with him,” Jamie said.

“He hasn’t agreed to defend Malachi Smith yet,” she said.

Jamie grinned. “Faith, lass. I live by it!” he said cheerfully.

It was good to be back at Uncle Jamie’s house. She’d spent a lot of time coming up here as a teenager. She smiled, thinking of the past. She’d had local friends—girls who had been glad to see her—and she brought the excitement of the big city, Boston, along with her.

They’d shopped at the wonderful stores; they’d played at being Wiccan, and it had surprised her at first that her Catholic parents hadn’t minded. They had been amused. But they had seen the wars fought in their own country over religion and economics and were tolerant.

Jamie’s house was old, but the family had always seemed to agree that it was a benign house. Whatever ghosts remained, they were tolerant, as well.

Jenna went to sleep in the familiar old bedroom her uncle had always referred to as “hers.” Jamie had allowed her to have her whims: there were posters of Gwen Stefani and No Doubt and other groups on the walls. They were a little incongruous there, since the bedroom was furnished entirely in period furniture, not from the seventeenth century, but the eighteenth century. Her bed was a four-poster; an old seafaring trunk sat at the foot of it, and a washstand with an antique ewer stood against the wall, along with an old wardrobe. To walk into the room—other than the posters and the stuffed Disney creatures on the shelves—was to walk into another time.

She lay awake a long time, what she had learned from Jamie rushing through her head. She admired her uncle and his steadfast faith; all the evidence in the world might stand against Malachi Smith, but Jamie believed in him.

When she fell asleep at last, she wasn’t sure that she had done so. The room still seemed to be bathed in a gray, half light. There seemed to be movement in her room, a movement of shadows, and then they stood still at the foot of her bed, staring at her.

It was a group of women, and they were in the rather stern and drab shades of the late sixteen hundreds. Only one seemed to be in a slightly different color, and in the shadows Jenna thought it might be a dark crimson. They just stared at her, and even she, who was accustomed to meeting the dead, felt a deep unease. And then an old woman in the front lifted a hand toward her. She whispered something, and at first, Jenna couldn’t make out the words. She wanted to wake up; she wanted to reach over and turn on the bedside light or just let out a scream and run into the hallway.

But then she comprehended the words the woman was trying to speak.

“Don’t let the dead have died in vain.”

Her throat was still tight; she was still so afraid. And, yet, she was the one who sought out those who had died.

Words came at her again.

“Don’t let the blood run, don’t let more blood run. Don’t let
your
blood run.”

Sam Hall arrived at Jamie’s door at precisely eight in the morning. He was going to defend Malachi Smith, and he was going to do it pro bono.

Jenna decided that her uncle really did know how to read people.

By the time he arrived, Jenna had mused over her dream, her waking dream or her nightmare—whatever it might have been. It had been natural, certainly. The conversation all day had been about blood and murder, and her thoughts had long lingered on Salem and the city’s past.

When she opened the door, dressed and ready to go as Jamie had suggested she be, Sam didn’t seem surprised, though he might have been a bit irritated that they both were confident he wouldn’t back away from the case.

“I’m not sure why you’re coming—I have to spend time at court. I have to become the attorney of record, see what the public defender has done, see where custody lies, file motions…it could be a long day,” he said. “I’m sure the public defender he hired has already made arrangements for Malachi to be seen by a courtappointed psychiatrist, and if we’re going for a not-guilty plea, I have to make sure that we stall the court date as long as possible.”

“I’m absolutely excellent at sitting around and waiting,” Jenna assured him.

Jamie came to the door. “Let’s go,” he said. “Sam, thank you.”

Sam grunted. “I’ll drive. You two do what I say, sit when I say sit and wait as long as you have to wait.”

Jamie was cheerfully agreeable.

It was a long morning, and there was a lot of paperwork to file. Since Malachi Smith was a minor with no family and still under the age of eighteen, he had become a ward of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and there were filings to be made with the state. None of that was difficult, not, apparently, when you were a hotshot attorney. Jamie was given a hearing and appointed Malachi’s guardian. Malachi had to fire the public defender he’d been assigned and accept Sam Hall as his attorney. That was easily accomplished—Jenna waited in the car while Jamie spoke to Malachi with Sam—but then time was needed for filing all the documents Sam had prepared.

When arraigned, Malachi had not been granted bail; the crime was far too heinous. They met Evan Richardson, Sam’s assistant, who had come to Salem as soon as Sam had called him and had already worked on the motions that had set the ball rolling. He would deal with more motions and more paperwork and the courts while Sam was engaged elsewhere. Jenna liked him. Just about her age, he was a pragmatic fellow from Syracuse, New York, not embroiled in the burden of history that often came with being a New Englander.

When they finished with the legal paperwork and headed back to see Malachi with all the papers properly filed, Jamie argued the point of Malachi’s incarceration with Sam.

“I can watch the young man day and night!” he told Sam.

Sam gave him a long sideways glance. “Jamie, you’re forgetting something,” he said.

“What’s that?” Jamie demanded.

“If Malachi Smith didn’t kill his family, a vicious killer remains at large.”

Jenna felt a streak of cold zip up her spine.

“Someone who has now killed six people,” Sam said.

Jamie was silent. She remembered her dream. Blood would flow….

“All right,” Jamie said gruffly.

“And you do realize that the majority of the world will believe in Malachi’s guilt. The facts point to his guilt—until we can offer more facts,” Sam said.

Jamie nodded. “Yes, I see. If the killer strikes again, that will prove that Malachi is innocent, because he’ll have in indisputable alibi.”