Unhallowed Ground (Harrison Investigation #7)

Unhallowed Ground (Harrison Investigation #7) Page 45

“Are there security cameras out there?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah—but it’s a funny thing. The camera covers the area up to that trash can there. She was left just on the other side of it. Anyway, if there really is a serial killer out there and that’s who attacked her, she’s lucky as hell to be alive.”

Caleb thanked him, and managed to talk to the doctor who had treated Renee, a harried man in his forties named Martin Thayer. Since he was just getting off work, he gave Caleb a few minutes as they walked to his car.

“Lucky girl,” Thayer said, casting a glance Caleb’s way. “What with everything that’s going on around here.” He shook his head. “I saw Winona Hart in the E.R. just a few days before she went missing. Nice girl. Cute. A real flirt, but nice.”

“What was wrong with her?” Caleb asked.

“She had a burn on her hand. She told me it was from incense. But she was with a friend, and they both kept giggling and whispering and looking through this book they had. I think she was playing around with some kind of spell book.”

“You saw the book?” Caleb asked, suddenly excited. “What did it look like? Was it old?”

“No, no, just a paperback. I wasn’t really looking. I just took care of her hand and told her to quit playing with fire. She was silly—she was young. But she was a sweet kid.”

“What about Renee Otten? What was up with her?”

“We checked her alcohol level, that was for damned sure. She came to pretty fast. She was dazed, kind of panicky. Tim Jamison was here in seconds—I swear, it really was just seconds—after we called, and he was pretty brisk with her, mad as all hell that she’d been out running around alone.”

“Do you know if she was on drugs? Maybe opiates, or strange herbs?” Caleb asked.

“We didn’t do extensive drug testing, We were more interested in getting an X-ray of her skull. The cops didn’t ask me for anything else.”

“Jamison was here, and he didn’t ask you to do any drug testing?” Caleb said.

“We still have the blood.” The doctor looked at him. “But I’ll need authorization to do anything with it,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Caleb told him. “I’ll put in a phone call. Your superiors won’t give you an argument.”

“Me? Nope, not me. I’m on my way home,” Doctor Thayer said. But he was already wearing a sinking expression, as if he’d just been dragged off the beach. “All right, I’ll go back in and get things started. I won’t wait for the results, though. They’ll call me, and I’ll call you.”

“Fair enough,” Caleb said.

He left Thayer and put through a call to Adam, bringing him up-to-date and asking him to pull strings and get the tests authorized. He warned Adam that Jamison was behaving strangely, and that he wasn’t Jamison’s favorite person at the moment.

Adam assured him that he would make sure that Caleb didn’t have any trouble with the authorities. “How’s Sarah doing?” Adam asked.

“She’s fine. She’s great,” Caleb said. “That’s right—you two know each other.”

“Whatever you do, let her talk…draw her out. I think that young woman has capabilities we haven’t seen yet,” Adam said. “And to think—I sent you down there on behalf of the Lawsons, and you’ve discovered your past.”

“Yeah, great. There’s supposedly a ghost running around town looking just like me.”

“And you’ve seen this ghost?” Adam asked, amused.

“I’ve…had a dream,” Caleb said stubbornly.

“Dreams are the mind’s way of accessing the levels we don’t use when we’re awake, maybe even a means of communication. Don’t close your mind to anything, Caleb.”

“Trust me, Adam, I never have. Now, hang up on me and get hold of the powers that be—I need to know if that girl was drugged last night or not.”

Adam promised, “Will do,” and hung up.

Caleb was finally about to head over to see Renee Otten when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer anyway.

It was a husky female voice. “Mr. Anderson?”

“Yes?”

“Martha Tyler gave me your number.”

For a moment, he was blank. Martha Tyler, the witch who had lived and died a hundred and fifty years ago?

Of course not, he realized almost instantaneously. Martha Tyler, the medium.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Ginger Russell. Mrs. Frederick Russell. You found my husband’s body at the bottom of the bay. Please, I need to speak with you.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, but I’m afraid I’m fairly busy—”

“Please, Mr. Anderson, you don’t understand. My husband’s death was no accident. He was murdered.”

15

T he disturbed earth bothered her, but Sarah wasn’t sure why or where to go with her feelings of unease. She could just imagine calling the police to tell them that she might have found a body. When they asked her where and she said “The cemetery,” they would laugh her into the next county.

She tried calling Caleb, but he told her that he was meeting with Frederick Russell’s widow and would have to call her back. Before hanging up, he asked her if she was still at work, and she glanced around the street, nearly empty now that the tour was over. She told him no, but not to worry, she was fine, then blurted out, “I’m at church. Lots of people around.”

Once the lie was out and she’d hung up, it actually seemed like a good idea.

Okay, so there weren’t lots of people.

She was still certain she was safe in church. And there were things she could do there. Useful things.

Sarah used the fact that she was a local and owned a piece of local history to get permission to look into the church records. The Cathedral of the Basilica, dating from 1565, was the oldest house of worship in the city and had the oldest records in the United States, since the parish had been founded immediately upon the Spaniards’ arrival. But the English tended to be Anglican or Episcopalian. Trinity was founded later, in 1821, but, still, it would offer wonderful records.

Though she hadn’t come across any reference to religion as far as the MacTavishes or the Brennans went, she was pretty sure that they would have been Episcopalian, since the majority of Americans at the time had been Episcopalians.

Mrs. Hopkins, the secretary in charge of the records room, had been good friends with Sarah’s mother and was glad to see Sarah. She commiserated with her about the strange events taking place in their beloved city—and in Sarah’s beloved house.

There were several documents Sarah was actively looking for, particularly a death certificate for Nellie Brennan and a birth certificate for Magnus MacTavish, who might have been born there, out of wedlock, since Eleanora and Cato had never married—or might have been born in Virginia to some other woman entirely.

At last she found one of the pieces of information she had been seeking, buried in a long list of births and deaths in an old parish record book.

Nellie Brennan had died on May 16th, 1866. She had been seventeen years old. The old cursive script wasn’t easy to decipher, but there was a notation that she had died from a fall, just as Mr. Griffin had said.

Had Brennan killed his own daughter?

Sarah was afraid he had. Nellie had seen too much. She had known what he was doing, something Sarah was certain she knew, too.

He’d been abducting and killing young women, draining their blood for some awful, probably ritualistic, reason. He had most likely killed Eleanora Stewart first—and stuffed her body in a trunk in the attic, then moved on to other victims, some of whom had probably ended up behind the walls of the house.

His accomplice had been the witch Martha Tyler, who had helped him lure the girls with promises of love potions, then met her end at the hands of a lynch mob and died cursing the Grant house.

But she’d had a book. A book of magic, a book of spells. Spells that required human blood.

Sarah was about to give up the search when she found another entry that looked as if it could well be the other one she’d been most eager to find.

Baptized 1862, male child, Mag S, child of E.S.

Was that it? The record of Magnus Anderson? Born under his mother’s name, Stewart? S—for Stewart?

The full names—even the child’s first name—weren’t written out, as if whoever had made the entries knew the truth and wished to hide it, presumably to protect Eleanora’s reputation.

She carefully closed the record book and replaced it on the shelf. The past was falling into place, and nothing she’d found out contradicted her belief that the current atrocities were related to those of the past. But where did they go from there?

She hesitated, not knowing what to do. The afternoon was waning, and it would grow dark soon, so she tried calling Caleb. No answer.

She decided to try Floby, who might have found out something about the body in the attic.

He did answer her call, then groaned when she identified herself.

“Please don’t tell me that you’ve found another body in your house,” he said fervently.

“No, but…I think I might have found…well, I’ve found a bunch of dirt that’s been recently dug up.”

“In your yard?”

“No.”

“Where?”

“The cemetery.”

“The cemetery? Is this some kind of a joke?” he demanded.

“No. Please, Floby…can you come out and see what I’m talking about?”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Floby—what if someone was buried there and then dug up? Would you be able to tell?”

“In a cemetery?”

“It’s actually outside the cemetery proper, in unhallowed ground. The thing is…” She paused, then drew a deep breath and went on.