I kicked open another door. Jamilla and I peered in. She gasped, her mouth open in a silent scream. "Oh Jesus, Alex! What the hell happened?"
I reached out and held on to her arm. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. I couldn't make myself believe it. My knees went weak.
Daniel and Charles were laid out on the floor of the room. They had been murdered. I was too stunned to speak. Kyle came into the room behind us, said not a word.
We moved closer to the bodies, but I knew they were dead. The throats of both men had been cut. And there were deep bites, fang marks.
So who was the Sire now?
Part Four
Hunt
Chapter 75
Late the following afternoon, Jamilla had to return to San Francisco. She pretty much admitted that she was burned-out and baffled. I gave her a ride to the airport, and we continued to talk about the murder case all the way there. We realized we were both obsessing.
What had happened the night before changed everything. We had tracked down the supposed killers, and they had been killed. This was a complex and thoroughly annoying murder mess in which anything seemed possible. The killers weren't necessarily clever, but they were full of surprises.
"Where do you go from here, Alex?" she asked, as we turned into the airport.
I laughed. "Oh, now it's where do I go?"
"You know what I mean. C'mon."
"I'll probably stay down here for another day or two, see if I can help out. Everyone who was in the house, at least the ones who were caught, are being held by the New Orleans police. That's a lot of freaks to be interviewed. Somebody has to know something."
"If you can get anything out of them. You think the New Orleans cops are cooperating now? They sure weren't before."
I smiled. "You know how stubborn local cops can be. We'll get what we need. It just might take a little longer. I'm sure that's part of the reason Kyle wants me to stay on."
She frowned at the mention of Kyle's name. I knew she was disappointed to be leaving, though. "I have to get back home, but I'm not going to drop this one. My friend Tim at the Examineris doing another big piece on the California murders. Maybe it all started out there. Think about it."
"Eleven years ago, maybe more," I said. "But who were the first killers? Daniel Erickson and Charles Defoe? Someone else in the cult? Is there a cult?"
She threw her hands up in the air. "I have no idea at this point. I'm practically brain dead. I'm going to get on my plane and sleep all the way home."
We talked some more about the weirdness of the case. Then I asked her about Tim at the Examiner. "Just a friend," she said.
Jamilla and I shook hands at the curbside luggage drop in front of the area marked for American Airlines. Then she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
I slid my hand behind her neck and held her for a few seconds. It was nice. The two of us had shared a lot of pain and misery in a short time. We had also been in a life-threatening situation.
"Alex, as always, an honor," she said as she pulled away. "Thanks for the Krispy Kremes and everything else."
"Keep in touch," I said. "Will you, Jamilla?"
"Absolutely. I plan to. You can count on it. I mean that, Alex."
Then Inspector Jamilla Hughes turned away and walked inside the bustling terminal at New Orleans International. I was definitely going to miss her. I already thought of her as a friend.
I watched her go, then headed back to the FBI offices in New Orleans to bury my head in some work. I went over everything we had with Kyle. Then we went over everything again, just to be sure it was as fucked up as we thought it was. The two of us agreed that there weren't even any good theories about what had happened to Daniel and Charles. We just didn't know. No one was talking so far — or maybe no one had seen anything.
"Whoever killed them wanted to show us that they were superior. To them. To us. Physically, mentally, in terms of their ruthlessness," I said. But I wasn't really sure about that. I was just thinking out loud.
"I don't think it was an accident that the whole thing feels a little like a magic trick," Kyle said. "Doesn't that strike you, Alex? Some connection to magic?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't a magic trick. Daniel and Charles are dead, and so are a lot of other people. Going back a lot of years."
"We're nowhere. Is that what you're saying?"
"Yeah. And I don't like it here," I said.
Chapter 76
I worked late that night in the FBI office. So what else was new? Around nine I was feeling lonely and edgy, all messed up. I had called home, but nobody was there. That worried me a little, until I remembered that it was my aunt Tia's birthday and Nana was throwing a party at Tia's new house in Chapel Gate, north of Baltimore.
I hadn't bought Tia a present. Damn it. Damn me. Ever since I had come to Washington as a kid, Tia had never forgotten my birthday. Not once. This year, she had given me the watch that I was wearing now. I called her house in Maryland, and I got to talk to most of my relatives. They teased that I was missing out on some great sock-it-to-me cake. They wanted to know where I was, and when I was coming home.
I didn't have a satisfactory answer to give them. "Soon as I can. I miss you all. You have no idea how much I miss being there."
I decided I needed to stop in at the magicians' house before I went back to the Dauphine. Why did I needto do that? I wondered. Because I was wired. Because I am obsessive. A couple of New Orleans policemen were stationed out front. They looked bored and underutilized, and definitely not obsessive.
I showed them ID, then I was let inside. No problem, Detective Cross.
I really wasn't sure why, but I had a vague feeling that we had missed something in the house. Forensics had spent hours going over the place. So had I. We hadn't found anything concrete. Still, I didn't like being in the old house again. The domain. Maybe I needed a gris-gris for protection.
I walked through the overdone, very ornate foyer and living room. My footsteps made the big house sound empty. I kept wondering, what were we missing? What was I missing?
The master bedroom was situated off the hall at the top of the stairs. Nothing had changed since the first time I was in there. Why in hell had I bothered to come back? The large, open room was filled with dark modern art, some of it hung, but several paintings were propped up against the walls. The magicians slept in a bed, not in the coffins we'd found below in the tunnels.
As I was searching through their closet again, I came across something I hadn't seen before. I was sure it hadn't been there when I'd examined the bedroom earlier. Lying among the shoes were effigies of Daniel and Charles — miniature dolls of the magicians.
There were slash marks across the throats, chests, and faces. Just like the way they had been murdered.
Where the hell had the gruesome effigies come from? What did they mean? What was going on down here in New Orleans? Who had gotten into this house after we sealed it? I was tempted to call Kyle, but I held off. I wasn't sure why.
I didn't want to go back down into the tunnels alone and at night — but I was here, and I figured I ought to take another quick look around. There were two cops posted right outside the door, right?
What were we missing?