The Death Dealer

“Even if they’re not connected, Lori Star’s certainty that she knew what happened on the highway might have disturbed someone,” Genevieve pointed out.



“True.”



“You think she’s dead, don’t you?” Genevieve asked him.



He started to deny it, but then he met her eyes and tried not to turn away. Tried not to imagine her being strangled, even though the vision haunted him night after night.



“Yes,” he said.



“And…you think all three deaths are connected, don’t you? Even though you’re the one who told me that Poe’s characters never committed vehicular homicide?”



He stared back at her. “Yes,” he admitted flatly.



“Okay, so what are we doing here?”



“Research.”



“On…?”



“‘The Mystery of Marie Roget.’ You take the story itself. I’ll look up what really happened.”



She looked skeptical, but she accepted his collection of Poe stories, while he turned to his computer. They worked in companionable silence for a while.



The Internet was full of leads, but also sent him from page to page following them up. He made notes as he went.



“There’s a forword to the story in your book, you know,” Genevieve said. She had curled into the extra chair in his office.



“Yes?”



“It was originally published in three segments. Poe probably knew the real girl, but he was living in Philadelphia when she was killed. He thought the story would put him on the literary map. He was convinced that the girl’s first disappearance—she had disappeared for several days a few years before her murder, then reappeared—had something to do with her death. He had planned on making the murderer a Navy man, but then they discovered that she might have gone for an abortion, and that she might have died in a house in New Jersey, a small inn of sorts, owned by a woman named Loss who had three sons. They thought the sons might have tried to dispose of Mary’s body. No one ever went to trial and, according to this preface, no one ever discovered the truth of her death. Poe altered his story before the final segment was published so it would agree with the latest facts in the investigation.”



“When her body was first found,” Joe said, studying his monitor, “the coroner noted that she’d been strangled. That there were bruises around her throat, and a piece of her torn dress was so tightly tied around her neck that it was embedded in the flesh.”



He looked at Genevieve. “I don’t believe Mary Rogers died because of a botched abortion, though that might have been what sent her to New Jersey. I believe the coroner’s initial report was right and she was strangled. But what I believe isn’t important. What matters is that I think the murderer also believes that she was strangled. And that he acted on that.”



“Joe, we don’t even know for sure that Lori’s dead, much less how she died,” she said.



“Let’s take a ride over to New Jersey,” he suggested.



“We’re going to find her in New Jersey?” she asked doubtfully.



“Her body will turn up in New Jersey,” he said with complete certainty.



Just then his cell phone started to ring. He answered it with a brief, “Connolly.”



“Joe, it’s Raif.”



His friend sounded strange, Joe thought, and asked, “What is it? Have you found something?”



He could hear the deep breath Raif took before answering.



“Yes.”



“What?”



“We’ve found her body.”



Genevieve was staring at him, frowning intently.



“Lori Star?” Joe asked, though he didn’t really need to. He knew that it was her. And he could make an educated guess as to what condition they’d found her in, too.



“Yeah, or so it seems. It’s in pretty bad shape.”



“You found it in the river on the New Jersey side, right?” Joe said.



“How did you know?” Raif demanded.



“I’ve read ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget,’” Joe told him.



“What? Oh, hell, a Poe story, right? Shit. I’m going to have to brush up on my reading.”



“There was a real murder, too.”



“Great,” Raif said. “Just what we need.” Joe could see Raif in his mind’s eye, sitting in the passenger seat and talking on the phone while Tom drove.



To Jersey?



“So this murder winds up in the hands of the New Jersey police, huh?” Joe said.



“Yeah, but the lead detective isn’t a bad guy. I told him I had an interest, which he understood. I explained that we’re all looking at a connection between Lori Star and our other vics. Folks can be territorial in law enforcement, but not usually stupid, so we’re welcome to be in on it.”



Joe winced, running his fingers through his hair. “Can I tag along?” he asked.



“That’s why I called you,” Raif said. “We’re on our way over to Jersey now.”



Bingo, Joe thought. “Tell me where I’m going and I’ll meet you there,” he said.



INTERLUDE



It’s so damned hard, being a ghost. Trying to communicate.



It’s just human nature, I suppose. We so badly want to know what lies beyond the world in which we live and breathe, but we’re also terrified of that knowledge. It’s so much easier to opt for denial, to pretend that we’re immortal. That other people die, not us.



Even people with tremendous courage, the ones who will fight to the death for a cause, who will run into burning buildings to rescue others in danger, find something frightening about examining what lies beyond the veil.



What the living don’t know is that sometimes, when you’re very lucky, there is someone waiting there on the other side to help.



Matt says it’s wrong to bring anyone into Hastings House, where I’m at my best. And he keeps trying to help me leave. But the two of them came by, and I had to help. The thing is, both of them knew.



Well, at least I was able to help that girl. And that’s what it’s all about. Helping.



I’m worried about Genevieve, though. I don’t want to see her die, but I think someone else does.



We know what’s happening in the world, Matt and I. He’s figured out how to turn on the TV, and sometimes I can do it, too. A lot of the time we don’t need to make that effort—and trust me, it really is an effort—though. The docents have it on a lot during the day anyway, and they leave newspapers lying around all the time, so we keep up with what’s going on.



That’s why Matt decided we had to try to get out beyond Hastings House and try to touch others. To help them.



It was exhausting. I seem to be able to move easily enough through the subway tunnels. I can even connect to the PATH train and get over to New Jersey. But outside of the tunnels…



It had to be done, though. We followed the tunnel under the Hudson, and then we went outside and started looking for her. I kept feeling myself fading, but Matt held on to me, and somehow kept me going. Kept me, well, alive, for lack of a better word.



It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We found her.



We found Lori Star, and she was still so scared, so lost. And what she had to tell us…



Well, it helped. And then again…



It didn’t.



CHAPTER 11



Genevieve was more disturbed than she had expected to find out for certain that Lori Star was dead.



The victim of a murderer.



Possibly—no, probably—the victim of the same killer who had murdered Thorne Bigelow.



She was certain that no one other than Joe and herself would instantly make that assumption. But Joe had known. He had known, before Lori was found, that she had been killed. And he had seemed to know that she would be found in New Jersey, as well.



She knew that he wasn’t going to take her with him to meet with the police. His own position was going to be tenuous enough; he was just lucky that Raif was on his side, and Raif was lucky that the New Jersey homicide officers were willing to accept that there might be a connection to Thorne Bigelow’s death and let the New York cops in on the case.



She was actually glad that she wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse to get away from him that afternoon. She hadn’t known how she was going to manage the feat, since he had been getting more and more adamant that she not go anywhere without him.



She didn’t mind that Joe was so determined to be with her, but she did mind that he continually seemed not just preoccupied but so…



Haunted.



She was worried about him. He had been so strange last night.



“Make sure you keep in touch with me,” she told him when he brought her back to her apartment. “Please.”



“And you stay here. Promise?”



“I’ll be around,” she swore.



And she would be. Just not exactly at home.



Shortly after he left, she got the call she’d been expecting from Adam Harrison. He had gotten her message, he said, and had arrived in town, where he would be happy to meet with her at her convenience. She asked him to come right over.



She felt that she knew him fairly well. He had been there when she was brought back into the light of day. And he had been at Leslie’s funeral. She knew that Joe had also gotten to know him when Adam had come to New York City to help Leslie deal with her ghostly communications when Genevieve had still been a prisoner far beneath the ground in the abandoned subway tunnel.



Adam Harrison was regal and dignified, despite his advancing age. He was a tall man, slender, with snow-white hair and kind eyes that looked out on the world without judgment. Probably the best thing about him was his ability to listen without distraction.



He greeted her like a distant uncle, with warmth, but without presumption. He held her at arm’s length for long seconds, studying her with discerning eyes before commending her on how well she looked.



She made tea and asked him about the weather in Virginia, and then about Brent and Nikki Blackhawk, the employees who had been with him in New York.