Yes. And one of his first guests wound up deadin the courtyardand he sold out, right? Jackson asked. He hadnt read all the material on the housethat would have taken several years. But hed gotten the gist of what had gone down.
That one was cutanddried, too, Im pretty damn sure, though I was still a kid in high school when it happened. Apparently, the banker was expecting all the people who oohed and aahed over a good ghost story. What he got was a fellow who had just had his life seized by the IRS. Mans wife left him, and his kids disowned him. Guess he figured it would be a good place to check inand check out. There was lots of whispering when it happened, Andy said. But, from what I understand, the police work that was done was solid back then, too. That was about fifteen years ago, now. Place was sitting around, mostly all renovated but covered in dust, when Senator Holloway bought it. His son was killed in an accident soon after, which set them back on the renovations, for want of a better way to put it. He and his wife had just started fixing up the place until a couple of weeks ago.
The senator is absolutely convinced that she didnt commit suicide, Jackson said.
Andy grimaced, angling his head to the side. And what do you think? he asked. That a ghost pushed her over the balcony?
Jackson shook his head. No.
Then?
Were just here to explore every possibility. I dont believe that ghosts push people to their deaths. I do believe that people do.
The alarm never went off. No one tampered with the locks. Maybe Mrs. Holloway let someone in, but how did he get out? I suppose its possible that someone scaled the wall, but hopping down? Hed have surely broken a few bones, Andy said.
Unless he had help from the outside, Jackson said.
I dont say that something of the kind is impossible, but I can tell you that we searched this place up and down and inside out. There was just no evidence, no evidence whatsoever that anyone else was ever in the house.
I believe you, Jackson said.
But youre still here.
Jackson shrugged and grimaced. I work for the man. I go where Im told, he said. And it was pretty much so the truth. The last thing he wanted to do was offend a good officer who had probably made all the right moves. Hell, he wanted the police on his sideand because they wanted to be, not because they had been told they had to be.
Thing is, Andy told him, we all wish to hell there was something that we could tell him. Senator Holloway is a fellow who isnt all talk, air out the backside, you know what I mean? Not many can keep their souls once they get into politics. Hes rare. Hes one of the few representatives the people have faith in these days.
But he must have enemies, Jackson said. What about the people around him? Anybody have arguments with his wife? Someone who wanted something from him, and she might have been the naysayer?
Not that I know about. David Holloway insisted it wasnt anybody close to him, Andy said.
What about household staff? Jackson asked.
There were two maids. They were employed full time, nine to five, but theyre not working anymore. Ill get you the files on them, Andy told him. And those closest to the family. That would include the chauffeur, a fellow named Grable Haines, and He was thoughtful for a minute, scratching his chin. Well, most importantly, the senators aide, Martin DuPre. He can help you with other things you might want to know. Hes with the senator all the time. Then theres Blake Conroy. Hes Senator Holloways bodyguard. Ive got those files all set for you. He studied Jackson for a minute. Ive got two shootings and an apparent drug overdose right now, but Im here to help you anytime you want. You get top priority. I can even drop the files by.
Andy Devereaux was telling the truth when he said that he liked the senator; Jackson wasnt sure that investigating what had already been investigated and ruled a suicide was more important than the other cases in his workload.
Ill bother you as little as possible, he promised.
You bother me when you need to. I understand there are others coming? Andy asked.
Five, Jackson said. Theyre here to inspect the house, more than anything else. A woman named Angela Hawkins is due tonight. Shes good at talking to people, so shell probably have a few conversations with the senator and those around him. I
Whats inspecting the house going to do? Andy asked. Im telling you that our forensics people are damn good.
And I dont have a problem in the world believing that, Jackson assured him. And that means you know this house.
Yes, I do, Andy told him. Hands on his hips, he looked around. It sure is a beautiful place. No one mucked it up too much, modernizing it. Back before the 1880s, the kitchen was on the outside. They attached the place after that point, according to the plans. Added the second two stories over there, and added it all on together. It became an academy for young ladies in the 1890s, but
But there was a suicide. One of the girls went out a thirdstory window, Jackson said.
Youve done your reading, Andy said approvingly. Some say there was just an evil presence in the house, and it caused people to do bad things. The local rags picked it up at the time. Theres rumor the girl was pregnant, but there wasnt an autopsy on her. The parents wanted her interred right off, and they were rich and they got their way. The records still exist, they just dont say much, Andy told him. Ive got copies of all the old stuff at the stationthe house has become a bit of an obsession for me. He paused for a minute, and then said, I guess that history is why you ghost people are here, right?
Were not ghost people, Jackson said.
Andy shrugged. Sure. But its odd, Ill say that. It all goes back to Madden C. Newton. He was pure evil, and evil doesnt just go away.
CHAPTER TWO
No one answered Angela Hawkinss knock on the door. Shed arrived at twilight. For a moment, she appreciated the fine lines of the house, and the size of it. Shed been in New Orleans plenty of times before, and she had always loved the city and the architecture.
But Jackson Crow was supposed to have been there.
She had a key, but she didnt want to take him by surprise. He had been an ace agent who had brought down one of the countrys most heinous serial killers of recent times.
He might be quick on the draw.
Hopefully, a member of the Behavioral Science Unit of the bureau would have the sense not to shoot her, but she did know that hed been out on leave, and she really didnt want to die that way.
She knocked again, saw the bell and rang it, and waited, and no one came. He was in the city, she knew, because shed received a terse text from him. At the house. She hadnt even known how to reply. Good? Good for you, hope youre comfortable?
About to board the plane, seemed the simplest response.
She checked her phone. She had received another text from him. At the station.
What station? She had to assume he meant the police station. Wherever, he wasnt here. She used her key and entered the house.
She paused in the entry, the door still open, hoping that the atmosphere inside wasnt overwhelming. It wasnt. It wasnt depressing. The room was simply beautiful, huge, and when she flicked the switch by the door, a glittering chandelier dead indent came to life, casting glorious prisms of light about the room. Amazing that something so beautiful could have remained so for almost two hundred years. People had a tendency to destroy the old to make way for the new, something that was sometimes necessary. But that progress had kept the house so pristine and so unchanged it was just short of miraculous.
About to board the plane, seemed the simplest response.
She checked her phone. She had received another text from him. At the station.
What station? She had to assume he meant the police station. Wherever, he wasnt here. She used her key and entered the house.
She paused in the entry, the door still open, hoping that the atmosphere inside wasnt overwhelming. It wasnt. It wasnt depressing. The room was simply beautiful, huge, and when she flicked the switch by the door, a glittering chandelier dead indent came to life, casting glorious prisms of light about the room. Amazing that something so beautiful could have remained so for almost two hundred years. People had a tendency to destroy the old to make way for the new, something that was sometimes necessary. But that progress had kept the house so pristine and so unchanged it was just short of miraculous.
She left her luggage and carryon at the door, pausing to delve into her bag for the book she read on the plane. It was a little outofprint bargain she had managed to acquire from a show with which she traded frequently. One nice thing about her side job was that her antiques business created a network of friends with strange and awesome thingsincluding books. Might as well find a place to wait until Jackson chose to show himself.
Departing the entrance hall was like entering a different home; the foyer might have remained in limbo for centuries, while here the modern world had burst in hard. An entertainment room caught her eye. She didnt have a good sense of dimension, and could only think that the TV screen was huge; it was surrounded by cabinets that offered all manner of audiovisual equipment. Here, too, there was plenty of space for visitors; there was a wet barjust in case the kitchen, right around the corner, she believed, was too fara refrigerator, microwave station and a halfdozen plush chairs, recliners and sofas. Entertainment had definitely been done right.
Moving into the kitchen, she was met with a pleasant surprise. The room was absolutely beautiful, remodeled and stateoftheart with an enormous butcherblock workstation in the indent with rows of pots and pans and cooking utensils above it on wire stainlesssteel hangers. The sink and counter area had a large window that was a bypass to a counter outside on the courtyard. There was a massive refrigeratorfreezer combination, dishwasher, trash compactor, microwave, all manner of mixers, and all was shining and immaculate.
The senators wife had intended to entertain, so it seemed.
There were eight chairs around the kitchen table, and Angela drew one out and took a seat. She opened the book she had foundher true treasure trove of information on the house.
In 1888, Jack the Ripper terrorized the denizens of Whitechapel; in 1896, the man known as H. H. Holmes was hanged, having confessed to the serial killings of at least twentyseven victims before he was hanged. Before that, New Orleans had its own monster, Madden Claiborne Newton. While the mystery of the identity of Jack the Ripper makes him one of the most notorious fiends to find his way into the pages of history, Holmes far surpassed his body countas did Madden C. Newton.
Angela paused. She looked around the kitchen and felt nothing. It was so modern. Yet, this was still the home in which the atrocities had taken place. She flipped a few pages.
Newtons first murder (in New Orleans, at least) was suspected to be that of Nathaniel Petti, the bankrupt planter from whom he had purchased the property. Nathaniel Petti was a desperate man, selling his New Orleans townhome to Newton for whatever he could. He had already lost the family plantation on the river, and while Lincolns plan after the Civil War had been that the North should forgive their Southern brethren, the death of the strong and humane leader left many in the country in a mood for vengeance, and the laws during Reconstruction were often brutal on the native inhabitants of the South. Such was the case in New Orleans. Nathaniel was being taxed into the grave. He disappeared after the sale to Newton, who was newly arrived from New York City. Pettis wife and child had died during the war years, and the official assumptionif there were such a thing at the timewas that Petti had left, unable to bear the pain of being in New Orleans. While martial law became civil law, politics created almost as much of a war as that which had been fought. While the Freedman Act became law, the old guard of the South rose, and organizations such as the KKK came to life. Race riots in 1866 cost more than a hundred souls their lives, and there could be little worry given to the fact that one disenfranchised man had disappeared.
This set the stage for Madden C. Newton to begin his reign of terror.
To this day, it is not known whether or not he killed Petti; what is known is that Petti disappeared, and the motto of the day for the Reconstruction populace was, Good riddance!
Angela twisted the book to read the old, fraying dust jacket. It had been written by a man named James Stuart Douglas, born and bred in New Orleans in 1890, when the Civil War, and the era of Reconstruction, would have been fresh in historical memory. There was definitely a bit of skew in his telling of the story.
According to Douglas, the killer, Newton, found those who had newly arrived in the city, and offered them a place to stay. He also found those who were suddenly homelessapt to leave the city and look for an income somewhere else. The first known murder had been of the Henderson family from Slidell. They had been about to leave for the North, searching for a place where Mr. Henderson could find work. His son, Percy, had been twelve; his daughter, Annabelle, had been ten. All four of the Hendersons had perished after accepting Newtons offer of hospitality. The children had been brutally killed with an ax in the room where they had slept; Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had died after being tied to chairs in the basement, cut to ribbons and allowed to bleed to death. Newton had found watching people bleed to death particularly stimulating. Before Newtons execution, twentythree known victims later, he described his crimes, and told police where to find most of the bodies.
Angela stopped reading again. No wonder the house was on all the ghost tours in the city.
Darkness had come. She reminded herself that she wasnt afraid of the dark.
Maybe that wasnt truehere. The house suddenly seemed to be alive with shadows. It was probably a bad idea to read the book when she was alone and night was coming on. She wasnt really afraid of the dark, but she didnt want to start seeing things in her minds eye that werent there.
She sat still for a minute, thinking about the past. She could recall the day of the plane crash she had survivedbut which had killed her parents and everyone else on boardat any given time.
So clearly.
She was incredibly lucky to be alive.
Alive and still so aware of the strange events that had occurred when she had opened her eyes with flames and sirens all around her
A doctor had told her once that strange things could happen when the neurons in the brain were affected, causing such things as the light so many people with neardeath experiences saw, so, according to him, she hadnt seen the light of spirits leaving their mortal forms; she had experienced neurons crashing in her head. After her sessions with the doctor, she had learned to keep quiet. Nor did she ever explain why it seemed that sometimes she had more than intuition. Shed always had a good grip on the worldin many ways there were very thin lines between the truth and insanity. Peoples perception of the truth was often the difference between leading a normal and productive lifeand having someone lock you up for your own welfare.