Phantom Evil

Page 6

She shrugged ruefully. Her soft-knit, cap-sleeved dress completed the perfect picture of sensuous femininity, which seemed so opposed to the strength of her handshake—and her prowess with a pickax. But then, she’d recently gone through the rigors of a Virginia police academy, so she must be in excellent physical shape. She’d been through a lot, the death of her parents, and the death of her fiancé. Maybe she had been through too much.
There didn’t seem to be a crazed light in her eyes. Which was a positive sign.
“I’m looking for a body,” she said.
“Dead—I’m assuming.”
She nodded. “Yes, or bones, I guess. I’m not sure what would happen to a body buried down here for over a hundred years.”
“And there’s a reason you think you’re going to find a body buried down here? The house has gone through a great deal of construction over the years. The bodies buried here were discovered over a hundred years ago,” he told her.
“Ah, some, but not all,” she said. “I’m looking for the body of a man named Nathaniel Petti.”
“Petti—the fellow Newton bought the house from?”
“Yes.”
“No one knows what really happened to him,” Jackson reminded her.
“Yes, that’s why I’m looking for him,” she said. With a mighty swing, she hit the ground again.
Whack!
“We’re not here to tear the place down,” he said. “What makes you think that he’s under the ground there?”
She hesitated. Just a split second. “Well, I’ve been reading, of course.”
Whack.
“You’ve been reading, and that led you to a space beneath the stairs?” Jackson asked, trying to remain courteous while he cursed Adam Harrison.
They’d sent him a maniac.
“Please, I’m honestly not sure how to explain this, but I’m almost positive that I’m doing the right thing,” she told him.
She was destroying the floor of the basement.
“You do know that we’re supposed to investigate the house—not tear it down?” he asked.
Once more, she shrugged.
“Well, I’ve gone this far…”
That was true.
Whack.
He was about to stop her. He was going to step in and tell her that he’d been charged with being the head of the team.
But the last whack did something.
She had managed to get down about three feet. And that was all it took.
He saw—a bone. A distinctive bone. A jawbone.
“Let me,” he told her, taking the pickax from her.
“Wait! Careful,” she warned.
He knew how to be careful. He used the pickax a bit away from the skull, and he used it with a strength it was simply biologically impossible for her to possess.
In a matter of minutes, he had most of the skeleton showing.
“It’s Petti,” she said. “It’s Petti, and he was the first victim.”
It was impossible to argue. It might have been someone else, but what did it matter? She had managed to discover a skeleton—almost complete, he was certain.
“I’m going to call Devereaux—the local detective in charge of the case,” he said. “We’ll let him tend to the remains. Because, after all, actually, they are his.”
Jackson eyed her as he dialed. Her discovery after being in the house a little more than an hour seemed uncanny.
It made him think about his own experience as a boy. Made him think about the men in the Cheyenne Nation, the ones who talked about the things they had seen on their dream quests. Made him…damn uneasy.
“I have a book,” she said, as if reading his mind. “A book on the murders. It was only logical to think that Newton had killed Petti, the man he bought the house from. He would have put him here, under the stairs, where it was unlikely that future digging might be done, just because of the awkwardness of the stairway.”
“The stairway is wood, it’s surely been repaired many times over the years,” Jackson said.
“But not moved, because there’s the doorway,” she pointed out.
Andy Devereaux came on the line. Jackson told him what had happened, staring at Angela Hawkins all the while. She looked back at him, never flinching.
There were no sirens. Devereaux and a team of crime scene specialists and pathologists from the coroner’s office arrived quietly. Jackson watched while Angela gave her flat and logical explanation again, and then, as they stepped away to allow the crime scene unit and then the pathologists take over, she excused herself to wash up.
He stared after her, shaking his head. The woman was a witch. She had been pleasant, serene and completely at ease, certain of herself as she had spoken to the detective. She was certainly beautiful enough with her golden hair and crystal-blue eyes, lithe figure and easy poise.
That didn’t make it any better. She was calm now, but she’d been wielding a pickax with a vengeance.
With an inward groan, he wondered what the hell it was going to be like when he met the rest of the team.
The bones had been taken by a pathology team that had been called in along with the crime scene unit, and after a great deal of discussion on exactly who should be collecting the bones. They were planning on sending the bones on to another team at the Smithsonian, a team that specialized in bones that were over a hundred years old.
Frankly, Angela didn’t need any team to tell her a simple truth; the bones were those of Nathaniel Petti, the man who had owned the house before selling out to Madden C. Newton. But the exact cause of Petti’s death might be determined, and the man with such a sad life and death might be put to rest at last.
Angela wondered if it was wrong to be starving after she had just found the remains of a human being. But she was alive herself, and being alive meant that the machine must be fueled. She couldn’t wait for the last of the police—even though she really liked Andy Devereaux—and the crime scene unit to leave.
Of course, it was a bit uncomfortable, having Jackson Crow watch her throughout the proceedings as if he was studying a strange and foreign object—or meeting an alien.
Her hunger was going to have to wait. When the other officers had left, Jackson asked Andy about the police shooting range. Andy arched a brow. “It’s getting late—”
“Can we still get in?”
“I’d like a little target practice,” Jackson said. Angela felt her cheeks color. He didn’t want target practice; he wanted to see if she was really capable with a weapon.
Andy looked at his watch. “Come on, then, let’s get the house locked up, and I’ll take you.”
Jackson stared at Angela. “Shall we get our weapons?”
Yes, she thought. She was being put on trial. Fine; she’d go to target practice.
It was quiet when they arrived; two men were down the row, earmuffs stifling the constant sound of the explosions.
Andy wasn’t practicing; he set up Jackson and Angela.
Her gun was a Glock and she knew how to use it. Somehow, she’d been blessed with twenty-twenty vision, and the ability to utilize it and her weapon properly to aim. Her stance was steady, and comfortable, and she used both hands in a grip known as the Weaver position, her weaker hand—her left—supporting her grip. She was stronger than she looked, and ready for the powerful recoil on the gun. She didn’t let Jackson’s presence disturb her, and in a matter of seconds, she’d removed the entire heart area from her target.
She turned and looked at Jackson, who hadn’t fired a shot yet. “Satisfied?”
He had the grace to grin. “I just want to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes.”
“My dossier must have told you that I can shoot,” she said.
“Some things are best viewed in the world,” he said with a shrug. He turned away from her. “Andy, this was great. Thanks.”
“Yep. I’ll get you back. It’s getting late.”
Andy brought them back to the house. Angela’s stomach had begun to ache. She couldn’t help it; she was feeling resentful and irritated. She was being judged.
At last they closed the front door on Devereaux, and Angela noted that although she had taken out her weapon as requested, she hadn’t taken her suitcases, small as they were, anywhere yet, and she should probably pick a room before going out.
“I’m just going to throw those somewhere and find a place to eat,” she said to Jackson, whose gaze remained on her.
He nodded. “I’ll go with you. I haven’t had dinner, or, anything that really resembled lunch, for that matter.”
Not an emotion in sight. Jackson Crow was an interesting and arresting man. She’d assumed that his surname, Crow, definitely meant something of a Native American background. His eyes, however, were an extremely deep shade of blue—not black at all, as she had first imagined. A strong contrast with his black hair. He seemed excellent at concealing his thoughts and emotions, but she had seen a look in those deep dark eyes a few times that seemed to judge her as being certifiably insane. Then again, of course, given the way he had found her, she supposed it might be quite logical that he’d look at her as if she was a bit askew.
If she quit on the first day, would they let her back on to the force?
She wasn’t going to quit. No matter how he looked at her.
“Did you pick a room?” she asked.
“I thought I’d take one that’s straight up the stairs and to the left. I put my bags there. Some of them need sheets and a dusting, but there are three rooms on the level just above us that have apparently been kept up… I’m assuming the senator and his wife were prepared for company, live-in help, and probably, the senator’s aide, chauffeur and bodyguard.”
“But it’s just us now?” she asked him.
“Just us. And the others will be in tomorrow.”
“Have you met any of them?”
“Nope. We’re all a surprise to one another,” he said.