Heart of Evil

“How long had he been missing when you called in the disappearance?” Colby asked.



“A few hours,” Ashley said.



“You called in about a missing adult after just a few hours?” Colby asked, his voice level, and yet there was something suspicious in his tone.



“He had very badly wanted to play my ancestor, which he did,” Ashley explained. “He should have been around to celebrate with the others afterwards.”



Augie let out a sound of impatience. “Where is my body, please?”



Mack Colby lifted a hand, put on a latex glove with a snap, and pushed the gate open to a wider degree. Ashley slipped through, followed by her strange posse: Mack Colby and Augie, her grandfather and Beth.



Jake Mallory waited at the end of the path, before the turn to the Donegal family vault. Jake had always had a certain presence. His arms were crossed over his chest; he stood with his feet planted slightly apart and appeared formidable and authoritative as he stood there. Part of it was his height. He wasn’t particularly heavily built, but his muscles were toned, his stance was straight, and, when he moved, it was with a swift agility one might not expect in a man so tall. He wasn’t easily ruffled, and his temper seldom stood in the way of his intentions.



“So you’re the fed, huh? Did you touch anything?” Mack Colby demanded. “And what the hell kind of federal officer are you?”



Jake remained calm as he reached into the pocket of his jeans for a slim leather wallet, which he opened and presented to Mack Colby. “Agent Jake Mallory,” he said. Colby frowned, stepping forward to examine the credentials Jake had offered. His frown didn’t disappear as he stepped back.



“How did you happen to be in the area?” he demanded. “And you do understand the concept of local jurisdiction? You have to be invited down if we have a problem, and I don’t think that we’ll have a problem here. We’re capable.”



“I’m sure you are capable. I’m a friend of the family. I happened to be on my way to the house. My boss is a friend of the Donegal family as well, and Frazier Donegal called him when Ashley was first worried about the disappearance of one of their reenactors. If you’ll check with your superiors, we have been asked to join in the investigation. Of course, we were looking for a missing man before. Now, we’re looking for a killer,” Jake said evenly.



Colby wasn’t satisfied; his gaze remained fixed on Jake.



Augie cleared his throat. “May I get to the body, please?”



“A minute, Augie,” Colby said. “They found a corpse—a man obviously not in need of an ambulance. I want the crime-scene people in here—I want pictures of the body in situ. I want every fiber, hair, fingerprint. And I want all the rest of you people out!”



“Detective, I’d like to stay,” Jake said.



Mack Colby grunted. “Let me tell you—this parish has amazing forensic facilities. And we’re not a bunch of local yokels just because we’re in bayou country. You like to come down here from the big cities and—”



“I’m from Louisiana,” Jake interrupted. “I was born and raised in Orleans Parish.”



Mack Colby paused at that. He lifted his hands. “Fine. You stay.” He turned around and looked at Ashley, Frazier and Beth. “All right. The rest of you—out!”



Ashley looked at Jake. He gave her a small, reassuring smile. Despite the fact that she was standing in her family graveyard with a dead man not far away in the middle of a bizarre night, she did feel reassured. In fact, she wanted to run to him. The breeze lifted her hair and touched her face, and she kept eye contact with him. Jake Mallory had always been steady and reassuring—when they were kids, when he teased her, when he taught her how to hold a cue stick, when he played his guitar and patiently went through a melody or a beat over and over again.



When he made love to her….



She had still thought that it would be awkward to see him again. They had been so close for so many years, friends and then lovers, and she had shut him out as cleanly as if she’d shut a door in his face.



Nothing like a dead man to ease the transition into seeing one another again, she thought dryly.



The thought brought a rumble of something that threatened to be hysterical laughter from her throat, and she swallowed it down quickly.



“Out,” Colby repeated. “Good God, it’s a crime scene!”



She nodded, turned and said to Beth and her grandfather, “Shall we?”



“This is my property,” Frazier said to Mack Colby.



“And I am a law-abiding citizen, a veteran of foreign wars, and, Detective Colby, I will be kept informed of what has happened and is happening on my property. I asked Agent Mallory and his team down—he is here on my request.”



Frazier had said his piece. He turned to Ashley and nodded.



As they departed, a trio dressed in the parish’s crime-unit jumpsuits paused for a moment to ask the way to the scene. Ashley indicated the path through the vaults with their decaying elegance and hurried on out.



More officers were on crowd control; two in uniform, flanked by Drew Montague.



“Someone want to talk to that group?” Drew asked them.



“I’ve got it, Grampa,” Ashley said, hurrying forward.



One woman was weeping. Ashley quickly made her way through the officers and cars with their bright lights and reached the group of guests hovering by the old stables.



“As you know, we’ve just discovered a friend, dead, in the cemetery.” She winced. Her words sounded like an oxymoron, though they were not. “We’ll get you checked out quickly, and please, be assured, no one will be paying for the night.”



She had to lift a hand against the bright car beams that were now on her. “Please come through the front door of the main house, and we’ll be sure that you’re completely cleared of all charges.”



“I just want to go back to sleep!” one man called out.



She looked back at Drew Montague. He shrugged. “I guess it’s all right. We had a body in a hotel parking lot once, and they didn’t evacuate the hotel.”



“All right. Anyone who wants to go back to sleep is welcome to do so,” she said, hoping that was the right thing for an innkeeper to say under the circumstances. She didn’t know anything more about crime and murderers than what she had learned on television and the news, but it seemed that someone had killed Charles Osgood and displayed his body in a certain way for a reason. The scenario didn’t appear to offer danger to her guests for the rest of that night, especially since she was pretty sure the place would be crawling with police and crime-scene investigators until daylight and possibly beyond.



“Guess we’ll be safe enough tonight, with the police prowling around everywhere,” a woman said as if following Ashley’s own train of thought.



“What the hell happened?” someone else demanded.



“We don’t know anything right now,” Ashley said. “The police are here. I’m sure one of the most important things is that no one goes near the cemetery until the scene is cleared by the police. And, please, of course, be very careful.”



“Oh! He was murdered, he was murdered!” Another woman cried out. She was about fifty, in a house robe, and wearing curlers. “Oh, oh! We’ve got to get out of here, we’ve got to get out of here!” she cried, running forward and then running back.



“Calm down, Martha!” a man said firmly, stepping forward to grab her arm. “We have nothing to do with any of this. I’m going back to sleep. We’ll check out in the morning.”



“Please, all of you, I’ll be at the desk in front. Stay the night, or pack up and leave. Whichever you prefer,” Ashley said.



She noticed that Justin had appeared; he had come out of the stables alone, and she assumed that he had left Nancy with the children. He moved through the crowd and reached her side. “Charles?” he asked softly.



She nodded grimly.



“In the cemetery?”



“Yes.”



“We searched there.”



“I know. I was in there myself,” she said dully. “I have to get in the house and start handling this situation. You have the children—I assume you want to get them out of here, and don’t worry, we—”



“We’re all right,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about us. You’ve got enough on your hands right now.”



She smiled and raised her voice. “Anyone who—”



“Not so fast!”



She turned around to see that Mack Colby was striding toward her. He gazed at her impatiently and addressed the crowd. “I’m sorry, folks. I’ll need a few minutes with each of you before you pack up and leave. It can be tonight, or into the morning hours, but I’ll need to question you all.”



“About what?” Martha’s husband demanded indignantly. “We had nothing to do with this!”



“You’re here, and a man was murdered here. He took part in the reenactment, he disappeared and now he has reappeared—dead. You all were here. This is simple, people. Someone killed him, and you’re all suspects until you’re cleared. I’ll need to question every single one of you!”



“Oh, my God!” Martha shouted. And then she dropped to the ground in a dead faint.



Jake called Jackson, sorry to wake him up, but knowing that Jackson needed to be advised immediately about the situation and the arrival of Mack Colby on the scene.



“All right. Tread carefully,” Jackson said. “I’ll call Adam right now and have him get hold of his congressional friends and make sure they speak with the local officials again. They weren’t interested before—they’d already given us jurisdiction on the case. I doubt if there will be any trouble; Frazier Donegal is a force in this area, so it seems, and his contacts are endless. Do your best to get along with the local police. I’ll pack up with Angela, and we’ll be out right away. I’ll have the others follow as soon as they’ve gotten their equipment together.”