"Is there some place you can go, somewhere safe? If not, I can arrange some protection for you."
"I got cousins in Chester."
"Okay, then. So long as you let me know where you are." Treasure twitched his head. "That was something else,
wasn't it? Junior talking to me just like he's still alive?"
"It surely was. Here's my number. Call me as soon as you
get to Chester."
He watched Treasure lope off bandy-legged along the sidewalk, and as he did his cell phone rang.
"Lieutenant? This is Captain Toni Morello from the Office of the Command Historian. I've found something that I think will really interest you."
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"You want me to come down to Fort Monroe? I can be with you by . . . say, five o'clock if that's okay."
"No . . . you don't have to do that. I have a social evening in Richmond tonight. I can meet you around nineteen hundred hours."
"Okay . . . you know where we are?"
Hicks said nothing when he returned to headquarters but went directly to his desk and started to sort through the material that he had amassed on the family backgrounds of Jerry and Alison Maitland, George Drewry, and John Mason. After a while Decker went over to him and said, "Listen, Hicks. My humblest apologies. Asking your wife to hold a séance . . . that was something I decided to do on the spur of the moment, and I just knew that you wouldn't go for it. But, come on, you have to admit that it worked. We made a serious breakthrough here . . . and if we can persuade all the other witnesses to remember what they saw—"
Hicks tossed his pen onto his desk and sat back, looking deeply unhappy.
Decker said, "If you want me to pull you off this investigation, I'll understand. Rudisill's pretty much up to speed on it."
Hicks furiously shook his head. "I want to find this sucker as much as you do, Lieutenant. I just don't want my family compromised. You really think that all of those other witnesses are going to stand up in open court and testify against Queen Aché?"
Decker said, "That isn't the point. The point is we need Queen Ache to help us find this So-Scary Guy. You think I want to work with her, after what she did to my Cathy? But life is all about priorities."
"My family is my priority, Lieutenant. My Rhoda. My Daisy."
"I don't think your family is in any danger at all. This guy
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is working to a very specific agenda. In fact I'm pretty sure that the next person on his list may be me."
"You? Why you?"
"He's not killing people at random. He has a list, and he's working his way through it one by one."
"You have evidence of that?"
"Nothing substantive. Only more nightmares, more voices, more illusions. I thought I saw Cathy in my bedroom last night and she warned me that Saint Barbara would be coming after me within forty-eight hours."
Hicks raised his eyebrows. "I don't know whether it's my place to say this, Lieutenant. I mean I'm not a psychoanalyst or nothing. But don't you think that maybe you're imagining all this crap? It could be just stress."
"Stress can't write on your apartment walls in blood, Hicks. Stress can't leave briar scratches on your feet when you're only dreaming about running through the underbrush. This investigation doesn't just have connotations of the supernatural, Hicks. It is supernatural. It's totally strange and abnormal and weird. Besides, Moses Adebolu's daughter warned me that Saint Barbara was coming for me, too, except that she used Saint Barbara's Santeria name, Changó."
"So that's what she said to you. But why you?"
"I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think it has something to do with my great-great-grandfather. Something he did when he served in the army of northern Virginia."
"You really think that these killings are connected with the Civil War?"
"The Devil's Brigade, yes. Something happened in the Battle of the Wilderness, Hicks. Something so goddamned awful that it never went away."
Captain Morello came into the office at 7:00 P.M. sharp. Decker glanced up when she appeared, but in that first in‑
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stant he didn't recognize her. Her dark wavy hair was unpinned, and her lips were glistening scarlet. Instead of her neatly pressed military uniform, she wore a black-sequined bolero, with a short black dress that clung to her hips, and glossy black panty hose.
"Lieutenant?"
Decker looked up a second time, and then he jumped up and saluted. "Yes, sir!"
She smiled and said, "At ease, Lieutenant. I'm off duty now."
"You look—well, you certainly look off duty."
"Thank you." She lifted a brown leather briefcase and said, "I discovered these papers yesterday afternoon in one of Major Drewry's research files, and I've been reading them for most of the night."
"Oh yeah?" Decker said, dubiously.
"Major Drewry bought them in October last year, when he went to an auction of family effects from the Longstreet family, out in Hopewell. He hadn't even had the chance to read most of them, let alone categorize them."
She opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of old discolored papers, tied together with gray string, which still had fragments of crusty yellow sealing wax clinging to it.
"Listen," Decker said, "do you think I can twist your arm and persuade you to do this some place more comfortable? I could really use a drink around now."
"All right," Captain Morello said. "Consider my arm twisted."
They left police headquarters and walked along East Grace Street to the Raven Bar, which was one of Decker's favorites. It was decorated to look like a turn-of-the-century library, with oak paneling and Tiffany lamps and deep leather banquettes. Decker guided Captain Morello to a
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corner booth, underneath a framed engraving of Edgar Allan Poe, his forehead like the full moon.
"Beer, please, Sandie," he asked the waitress, who was dressed in a mobcap and floor-length apron. "And what's it for you, Captain?"
"Old-fashioned, plenty of ice."
"Wouldn't have taken you for a whiskey drinker."
"Just goes to show that even hotshot detectives can misjudge people sometimes."
He rested his elbow on the table and stared at her narrowly for a full thirty seconds. She met his inspection with unflinching boldness, her eyes challenging him to tell her what kind of a woman she was.
"Daddy was something high-ranking. Mommy was a dancer."
"Wrong again. Daddy was in recycled paper products. Mommy was a paralegal."
"So why did you join the army?"
"My best friend, Marcia Halperin, wanted to sign up, so I did, too. After three weeks she decided that she hated it, and quit. But I loved every minute, and I still love it. I guess I'm the kind of woman who likes discipline and organization."
"And history?"
"Sure—but this is history with an up-to-date purpose. Most people think that the Office of the Command Historian does nothing but keep musty old archives, but the Pentagon always consults our records whenever they're planning to go into offensive military action. They can see how tactical problems were tackled in the past—what went right in the gulf and what went wrong in Somalia. An army that knows its history, Lieutenant, that's an army that knows its strength."
"Well, thanks for the lecture."
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Their drinks arrived, along with a bowl of mixed nuts. Decker took a deep swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Captain Morello laid her briefcase on the table and flipped open the catches. "I kid you not, Lieutenant. These documents are real historical dynamite. These are the personal diaries that Lieutenant General James Longstreet kept while he was in the hospital after the Battle of the Wilderness.