Thursday night
The place might have been less eerie, Sophie thought, if it weren’t for the floodlights.
They created little spits of light...surrounded by fields of looming dark shadows.
Some of the graves were ancient—whatever had once been etched into the stones that marked them had long ago worn away.
Some—for instance, a small but very old vault—had evidently been researched, and a plaque in front told them that the man interred there had been a farmer, beloved by his wife and children. His wife, and many of those children, now lay with him in the vault.
There were carvings of angels and cherubs. Some broken, some weeping, and in the strange light, it looked as if they mourned time itself—time, and all those forgotten as it swiftly passed on by.
No grave with readable stones or plaques seemed to be less than a hundred years old, making the burial ground feel like a museum of funerary art. There were stacked graves, one stone or concrete sarcophagus atop another, mausoleums, vaults, plain markers for soldiers lost in World War I, and tombstones depicting death memorials in styles ranging from old Spanish to Victorian.
Bruce stood amidst a row of sculptured lambs, a field where children had been buried. Spanish names blended with English and other European names.
From where they were, they looked up at the old church.
“What do you think?” Sophie asked him.
He turned and looked at her. “No ghosts.”
She arched a brow. She hadn’t been looking for ghosts.
The whole thing about ghosts being real to her was far too new.
“The church...might have catacombs. What do you think?” she asked him.
He answered by walking to the church door. He tried it. It was double-padlocked.
“I think you need a search warrant,” he told her.
She nodded, admitting the truth. Yes, she would need a search warrant. They were on private property. A lie about hearing screams might not stand up in court, and if they were to find something, a good attorney could have it all thrown out.
“I think there’s something here,” she said.
“Can you get a search warrant?” he asked.
She shrugged. “We can just ask the owners, too. We’ll get a hold of Kenneth and find out about his contacts with them... They’ll probably let us search. And the burial ground is open by day. It’s small and compact, and honestly, I didn’t even know it existed, but others apparently do.”
“Then we need to get started on the proper channels,” he told her.
“We could check for an open window,” she said.
He smiled slowly. “Meet you around the other side.”
“Right,” she said.
She had to admit, as she walked around the far side of the building, where the floodlights provided little glow, that she felt chilled.
Chilled—and frightened.
And she wondered why a dark graveyard—with its old, broken, moss-covered and decaying stones—could create such an unease in her heart.
She jumped, certain that she had heard something out of place. A strange sound, like a swift whispering, with a rush of air. And then a small crack, like a step on gravel.
She froze, listening. It didn’t come again. There seemed to be some commotion from the other side of the enclosing stone wall, but she couldn’t see over it.
Teenagers?
She kept studying the windows on the church—many of them very beautiful and old, but covered over with more protective glass and securely locked.
And then—just as she was about to come around the other side—she stopped dead, something like terror suddenly filling her heart.
Someone was there.
Someone in a white gown that seemed to catch the slight breeze and move.
Sophie almost reached for her gun. She remembered Michael Thoreau’s words. She could shoot him, but he was already dead.
“Hello,” the vision said softly.
Sophie wasn’t sure how she managed to speak. “Hello.”
“You see me. You hear me.”
“I do.”
“You can’t stay. It’s very dangerous here,” the image said.
Somehow, Sophie made herself move closer. Her vision was that of a very pretty young woman. The flowing white gown was of a long-gone age.
Sophie swallowed and spoke softly, “Why? And can you tell me...”
“I’m Ann Marie. I’m waiting... I try so hard...”
Bruce came hurrying around from the other side. The ghost swirled around. Bruce saw her; he went still.
“I’m Ann Marie. I’m waiting,” she said. “You must go. Please, take this lady. Take her...and leave.”
“But we fear for someone else,” Bruce said.
“There is no one here tonight. Leave...wait for the light!”
With those words, the image faded away.
Sophie stared at Bruce.
“There’s no entry. We’re getting out of here now. We’ll come back by the daylight—with permission to search.”
“But—”
“You heard Ann Marie. There is no one here now.”
“But—”
“She won’t be back tonight to help us anymore, Sophie. We’ll come back. By day—legally.”
She nodded. He was right.
He caught her hand and they continued around the church, through the stones and the vaults and the cherubs and the angels to the spot where the wall was low.
Bruce paused for a minute. She knew that he was much more experienced with the dead than she was. He waited. Was he...waiting to see if anyone—unseen—might be there?
Then, he hefted himself up, and then reached back for her. They got back into the car and Bruce drove.
Sophie started to call the station and then decided to call Kenneth Trent instead, and he was quick to give her what he could about the old place.
Then she immediately called the contact number he had given her.
Unsurprisingly, she reached voice mail.
She hesitated, and then identified herself, and said that they’d like to search the premises.
“Recording?” Bruce asked.
“Yep.”
“They’ll call back.”
“I hope so.”
“Waiting is hard, I know.”
To her amazement, her phone rang.
“This is Detective Manning.”
“I’m Sabrina Hayes. I manage the old church and burial grounds.”
“And I’m so sorry to bother you, but—”
“No bother! I’ll be happy to meet you there first thing in the morning. If our property is being transgressed in any way, we want it stopped immediately!”
“Well, thank you—”
“Delinquents! They like to come in and put graffiti on graves and drink in the church—I thank you so much! Eight a.m.?”
Sophie was about to say that what was going on might be a lot worse than some trespassing and vandalism, but Sabrina Hayes spoke too quickly.
“Thank you, thank you!”
And she hung up.
But Sophie smiled as she looked at Bruce. “Eight a.m.”
“Excellent.”
She should have been tired. She probably was. But she was also alive with adrenaline. Once they reached Bruce’s room and the door was closed and locked behind them, she turned eagerly into his arms. He indulged her in a long, wet and wonderful kiss, but then he drew away.
“Old burial grounds, dirt, icky stuff...that’s when a shower and time and soap and suds and cool stuff is all the better.”
She smiled. “I was thinking of a bath. The hotel offers such a lovely big tub with jets and all.”
“So it does!”
They both started with their holsters and guns and then they undressed one another as they made their way to the bathroom. They were touching even as Bruce fumbled for the water, kissing as the steaming water filled the tub, and they were still half kissing and half laughing as they made their way into it.
His hands were on her.
What he could do with suds was amazing.
Steam surrounded them. They were wet and slick and it seemed that their flesh was on fire, hotter than the water. They kissed and touched...his body pressed to the length of her. They laughed, kissed all over, half-drowned, and slipped and slid until they wanted more than the tub could afford.
Soaking wet, they made it to the bed.
And he touched her.
And she touched him.
He whispered that she was a fast learner, and she assured him that he was an excellent teacher.
Then there was the unbelievable feeling of his lips again, and when she thought she might explode, implode or die of pure ecstasy, he was with her, inside her, and the incredible sensations were starting all over again...
Yes, before last night, it had been a long, long time...
But she didn’t remember anything like this, ever.
After, they were together, just breathing, limbs still entwined, holding on.
And there were no words.
No words, just finally...sleep, and the feeling that she had never been so cherished in her life.
Friday morning, early
Bruce wasn’t sure why he had expected Sabrina Hayes to be an older woman—prim, maybe super LA slim with a soft tinge of old-fashioned old-lady blue in her otherwise white hair.
She wasn’t old at all—if anything, she was pushing thirty.
She was indeed LA slim, and she showed up in yoga pants and a tank top that advertised her gym. Her hair was blond—but it did have a streak of blue. Neon blue.
She shook hands vigorously with both Sophie and Bruce, once she had opened the gates for them and led them to a patch of parking right inside.
“We’ve had trouble several times—I don’t know what it is about people thinking that historical properties are fair game for being abused. But then, half the people in this country don’t seem to think a thing about history, anyway. Hell, the schools aren’t doing anything about teaching history. Well, you see, that makes us all the more important. We have all kinds of literature about the LA area available in the church.” She suddenly made a face and asked, “Too much? Sorry, my dad is a history professor at UCLA. He’s supported our group since I was a child. We’ve saved missions all up and down the coast—and a few decaying saloons, taverns, inns and theaters, too.”
“Not too much,” Sophie assured her. “But please, tell us what kind of trouble you’ve had?”
Sabrina looked surprised. “I thought you were here because of my report. I called and said that I needed the property to be patrolled, at the very least.”
“I’m so sorry, I don’t know about the call,” Sophie said. “We’re here because—”
“You can help us, right?”
“Please, tell me, what’s been going on?”
“Last week, a group of kids climbed the wall, and I found beer bottles and all kinds of trash all over the graves. A few weeks before that, I’d come in and found out that some of the tombstones had literally been ripped out of the ground and laid up on top of each other. And then the neighbors have called us repeatedly about all the screaming going on.”
“Screaming?” Bruce asked.
“When?”
“Oh, I get calls on that almost every day. And, of course, the people reporting that the ghosts are out here partying, too.”
“I didn’t know that ghosts partied loudly,” Bruce said lightly.
Sophie glanced his way with a serious frown.
Sabrina Hayes laughed delightedly. “Trust me, I have been here at all hours. The only danger here comes from those mortal creeps who like to break in.”
They were looking for more than a creep.
Bruce waited to see what Sophie might have to say; it was her case.
“We’re worried as well, Miss Hayes, that a murderer might be at work here,” Sophie said quietly. “We need access to the grounds and the church—and whatever catacombs may lie beneath.”
“A murderer?” Sabrina Hayes said. Then she gasped. “Oh! Oh, my God, you mean that man who killed the Black Dahlia girls? Oh, no! No, no, no—nothing like that could have gone on here.”
“We’re following up on a lead. May we search the church?” Sophie asked.
“Of course. The first church on this property was here before Felipe de Neve was governor here—Spanish governor—in 1777. In that year, Neve wanted more balance—military to balance the power of the Church. The Los Angeles Pobladores was the name given the original forty-four townspeople—the name meaning townspeople! Twenty-two adults, twenty-two children. Anyway, before they came, there had been burials around the original church, but our earliest gravestones are from the Spanish period here—and, as you can see, there are numerous styles of graves now. The current church has been here since 1862. It was built in the Gothic style, and the graveyard served the people until about 1920, when it became too full to accommodate more dead—and, of course, by then, Los Angeles had many beautiful cemeteries.”
As she spoke, Sabrina Hayes led them to the front of the church where richly carved double doors allowed them entry.
The church might have been something created somewhere in Norman France; it was definitely Gothic with its graceful arches and ribbed vaulting. The altar was on a raised dais; there was a high podium—reached by winding stone steps—for a priest to deliver a sermon.
“The church is Gothic—even the shape of the windows is gothic—but the windows are Tiffany stained glass, right?” Sophie asked as they entered.
“Yes! They were fashioned in New York in pieces, and then his workers came here and put them all together, installed in the church.” She sighed. “Lucky thing—most scroungers who hang around here wouldn’t know the value of a Tiffany window if it were to bite them in the ass. Uh...sorry.”
Sophie laughed softly. “No worries.”
“Well, at least they’re protected—they’ve been reinstalled with sheets of bulletproof, earthquake proof, just about anything else proof Plexiglas on both sides.” She grimaced and continued. “I was just in the church this morning,” Sabrina said. “I didn’t see any sign of disturbance or anything.”
Bruce looked slowly and carefully around.
She was right. Nothing was out of order.
There was no blood.
It certainly didn’t appear that horrible murders had taken place here.
“What about the catacombs?” Bruce asked.
“You want to go to the catacombs, too?” Sabrina asked.
“Yes. Please,” Sophie said.
“Well, excuse me for a minute, then. I have to get to my car. As you saw at the gate, we use old-fashioned padlocks. Old things—old measures. Excuse me.”
Bruce looked at Sophie and smiled. When she had stepped out, he said, “I want to take a loop around the church while she’s opening the padlock.”
“See if you can find Ann Marie?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Go.”
He hurried out. Sabrina was at her car. He smiled and waved. “I’ll be right there—just taking a look at the fantastic windows.”
“Cool. This will take me a minute... I think I have too many keys to things!”
He waved and started around and came to the spot where he had seen the lovely young ghost the night before.
“Ann Marie?” he said softly.
No reply. Nothing at all.
He’d called Jackson while Sophie had been showering that morning; Jackson had his people back in Virginia looking up everything they could about the cemetery—including a girl named Ann Marie.
“You might have given us a last name,” he said softly, aware he was speaking to nothing but air.
He started back in. As he did so, he noticed a fresh chip on an old tombstone. Pausing, he hunkered down by it.
Then he saw that there was something different—it wasn’t a chip caused by a slight accident, by wind, rain or any other natural device.
Deep in the chip, there was something metallic.
Before he even dug in his jacket pocket for a knife and an evidence bag, he knew what he was going for.
There was a bullet imbedded in the stone.
It had very recently been fired.
He was suddenly chilled to the bone.
Someone had shot at Grant Vining. There just couldn’t be that many shooters around—especially shooting at cops trying to ferret out the truth of a series of murders. So it would seem that same someone might have been shooting at Sophie.
If so, they didn’t know the murderer.
But the murderer sure as hell knew them.
* * *
A trapdoor slightly behind the altar—created of thick heavy wood and metal—led the way down to stone steps that went to the catacombs.
Sabrina struggled with the door. Sophie hurried over to help her.
“Thank God you’ve got some muscles going for you,” Sabrina murmured.
Sophie shrugged. “I try to keep up,” she murmured.
Sabrina straightened and indicated the winding stone steps that led into the darkness below. “Oh, wait...hang on. We aren’t so historically minded that we forget safety.”
She walked up to the altar and found a switch. Lights suddenly flooded the catacombs.
“Excellent,” Sophie assured her.
Sophie started down the steps just as Bruce returned to the church. He strode over to them swiftly. “Aha! Down to the depths of hell!” he said.
“A brightly lit hell,” Sophie told him.
“All the better.”
He made his way past Sophie and down the winding stone stairs. Sabrina followed them tentatively, as though afraid of what they might find.
Sophie hoped that none of the priests had been very old. Or that they had suffered from heart disease or arthritis or any other malady that might have made the treacherous steps any worse.
The floor was rough. Stone and dirt. A large plaque on the wall noted the dead who lay beneath their feet.
There were tombs lined up along the walls, with plaques above them commemorating the dead. “Priests were buried here, in the church,” Sabrina told them. “And then, of course, those who earned special favor with the priests were buried down here, as well.”
The catacombs appeared to be clean and clear.
It wasn’t the kind of floor that might be cleaned with a few bottles of bleach.
There were no implements that suggested they might even possibly be used to bisect a human body.
“Oh, thank God!” Sabrina breathed.
Sabrina was relieved. Sophie wasn’t at all sure.
“What’s beyond that wall there?” she asked Sabrina.
“Dirt. Earth. And maybe more long-dead people,” Sabrina said. “This is it—the foundation, the catacombs...this is it. Look, I know that this is... I mean this is truly a horrible situation for all of Los Angeles, for all of California. We kind of all need to be terrified, with a killer like that running around. But even though you didn’t find what you were looking for, you will see to it that the church is more protected?”
Sophie looked her way. “Oh, definitely. I plan to have cameras up by tonight. They’ll guard the entrance to the church and take in what they can of the graveyard.”
“Cameras? Oh, well, we can’t afford them. I mean, if we could, our preservation company would have cameras everywhere.”
“We’ll see that they’re put in,” Bruce said. He was looking at Sophie oddly. She frowned at him. He was stone-cold serious.
“Are we done here?” Sabrina asked.
“For now,” Sophie told her.
As they left the church, Sophie found it strange that Bruce stayed extremely close to her—so close that she almost tripped over him.
Almost.
He wouldn’t let her fall. He steadied her and turned quickly to Sabrina Hayes. “Miss Hayes, do you know of a young woman by the name of Ann Marie who is buried here?”
“Ann Marie—do you have a last name?” Sabrina asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Bruce told her.
“The archives are actually downtown at the museum.”
“Great. Thank you,” he said. Then he told her, “Miss Hayes, forgive me. We’re going to have to get more officers down here.”
“Really? But you didn’t find anything.”
Sophie stared at him.
He looked steadily back at her.
“Someone was firing a gun into the cemetery last night. In fact, I’m going to suggest a sniper’s rifle, but then, I do have a bullet that lodged into a gravestone, so we will find out for sure.”
Sophie felt a bolt of heat and an eerie sensation of fear—unlike anything she’d experienced before—sizzle through her.
The sound she had heard last night...the commotion she had heard on the road.
Someone out there had been firing at her. There had been a silencer, or something similar to a silencer, on the gun. She’d heard the sound of that bullet...
And she—who should have known much better!—hadn’t even realized what it was. But then, she had been busy, searching for an opening, and seeing...
A ghost.
She pulled her phone out to call Captain, staring at Bruce all the while.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“Someone was shooting in here last night,” Bruce said. “I hope you don’t have the place rented out tonight.”
“Sunday...a wedding,” Sabrina said, distracted. “But are you sure—”
“Yes,” Bruce said, his voice final. “Yes, we need a crew out here.”
* * *
Sabrina Hayes wasn’t leaving her precious property; she stayed.
Sophie wasn’t leaving—not while her department was studying the stone, not while experts were working on the trajectory of the bullet.
Captain himself came out. The media frenzy on the killings was such that he was taking a hands-on interest in everything that was going on.
Henry Atkins wound up out there as well—while there were thankfully no corpses and they didn’t believe they’d found a crime scene, the place had become part of the investigation, and as such, it would be photographed.
She couldn’t help but wonder about Henry.
He did so love his work.
Henry appeared to be in a kind of strange, professional heaven.
He was actually working, but there were so many amazing things to photograph. He excitedly snapped pictures of the old angels and cherubs and the amazing monuments.
There with the forensic team, Lee Underwood shook his head while looking at Sophie. “So, it’s you and Detective Vining. Someone is out for the two of you. Idiot. If he were to kill you both, they’d just bring on more and more detectives. And it’s been announced everywhere that the FBI is in on the case, too!”
“I don’t know if they were shooting at me,” Sophie said. As far as she knew, neither she nor Bruce had said anything about having actually been in the graveyard the night before.
“I thought you guys scoped the place out? Working a lead. That’s why we’re here, right? And you all looked at it last night and met Miss Hayes here this morning. So, last night, if you were on the outskirts by the fence, someone had to be up high, shooting... Hmm. If they were aiming at you...”
“Yes?”
He shrugged. “They have lousy aim. They shot into the cemetery. It looks like they were aiming at the pretty angel over there with the folded wings. They missed. But man, they were way wide of you or your friend. Well, we have to move onward.” He made a face. “Those experts are on the bullet and trajectory,” he said, pointing to more of his team. “Me? I get to explore vandalism. Beer bottles. Oh, and cigarette butts. Yep, the good stuff!”
“At least it’s not blood today,” Sophie said.
Lee agreed. He brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead and grinned. “And, tomorrow, it’s the weekend. I’m off. But if I know you, you won’t take any time. I’ll think of you when I’m kicking back with a few at the beach!”
“You do that,” she told him, smiling.
He moved on, hunkering down to collect a cigarette butt she’d have to admit she hadn’t even seen.
She was sitting on a steplike group of tombstones. They belonged to one family. The design, she thought, was unique. The oldest tomb was up high—the others came down by six-inch increments, creating something of a pyramid effect.
A large plaque to the side of the unique configuration stated the name Johnstone, and beneath it, the several members of the family who had been buried there.
Jacob Johnstone had died in 1843. He had several sons and grandsons interred in like stone coffins on either side of him, creating the steps.
A handsome Madonna and Child stood guard across from the plaque, gentle eyes watching over all.
“That’s really beautiful,” Henry Atkins said, snapping away as he walked up to her.
“It’s a very unique burial ground,” Sophie said. She realized that she was watching Henry differently.
She couldn’t help but wonder about him.
About his pictures...
His apparent fascination with the old case plagued her.
“This place is...wonderful,” he said, his face alive with excitement. “Actually, I wonder that they’ve never done any kind of an archaeological dig here. I mean, I don’t know that much, but Miss Hayes was telling us that indigenous peoples were buried here, even before the Spanish came. Oh, I’ll bet that Chuck Thompson would just love to dig around in this place!”
“Chuck is an ME. I imagine he has enough dead bodies to deal with,” Sophie said, studying him with a frown.
Henry Atkins was oblivious. “No, no—I mean yes, but... I guess you didn’t know. Chuck was going to be an anthropologist, but then he was going to be a doctor, and somehow he wound up becoming an ME. Apparently, he was very good at it somewhere along the line in his training.”
“I see,” Sophie murmured.
Her phone buzzed. She looked down at it and saw that she had a message from an unknown number.
Something made her glance up. Bruce was watching her. She was by the side of the church, and he had stuck close by. She realized that he was standing as if he were her personal bodyguard.
They hadn’t a chance to talk alone. She didn’t know how the hell he had found the bullet.
“Check your messages,” he mouthed.
She nodded and looked down, thinking that he had written something to her.
But it wasn’t from him. It was from Angela Hawkins, Jackson Crow’s wife—and the expert in his office who dealt with case assignment and research.
Angela didn’t bother with greetings—just her name, and what she had found.
Ann Marie Beauvoir...murdered April 3, 1903. Eighteen years old at the time; she was a performer with The Follies, a group that did everything from Shakespeare to burlesque in the Los Angeles area—some of it a bit racy for the time. She headed out to meet with someone who was about to change her world...pave her way to the stages of New York City and Paris, France. Her nude body, throat slit ear to ear, was found in front of the church. She was buried there five days after her death, mourned by her family and friends.
Sophie looked up at Bruce, and knew that he had already read the message, which had been sent to both of them.
And she knew that he understood.
They needed time in the cemetery—alone.
They had to find Ann Marie. And when they did, they had to pray that she could tell them what she knew, and what she had seen of a murderer.