The Seekers Page 3

  Maybe Mike had gone to the kitchen. Easy enough to find out. She walked across the bar to the door to the kitchen.

  It was an immense room. At one time, great shanks of meat had roasted over an open fire on the giant hearth that stretched across the rear of the kitchen. It was fascinating to imagine that once upon a time, a meal for Washington might have roasted there.

  But now, there was no fire in the hearth.

  There was a giant butcher block table in the center of the kitchen. Not that long ago, the restaurant had been open. There were two freezers, three refrigerators, several ranges and three large ovens—a restaurant could easily open again. She wasn’t sure which of the coffee brewers, samovars, mixers and other implements had been there, and which Carl might have just had brought in. The ceiling’s wooden beams held every imaginable size bowl, pan and pot.

  “Mike? Brad? Anyone?”

  There was no answer. The group must have congregated in a room upstairs, perhaps filming again, chasing a gust of air—or some such other bit of “paranormal” activity.

  She liked Brad, and she liked everyone working with him, and she very much liked Carl, but she had watched a video they had done. She had to admit—to herself, at least—that she’d rolled her eyes every time someone had said, “What was that?” A creak in an old floorboard turned into a footstep by a ghost.

  She shrugged and looked around, nervous for the first time since coming to the inn.

  She thought she heard someone whispering, so she exited the kitchen and went back into the tavern.

  The great doors to the tavern had been locked; she checked them. They remained so. Otherwise, they would open out onto the large Colonial porch, where a massive curving driveway, still only composed of hard earth, swept by. Once, carriages had rounded that curve, coming off the old road that led between Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

  Keri didn’t tend to be frightened easily, but she was suddenly remembering bits and pieces of every slasher film she’d seen as a teenager. Not a good idea to head outside and wander around lonely woods out in the middle of nowhere. Or to open a locked door.

  Of course, they weren’t really in the middle of nowhere anymore. There was a large newly opened hotel just up the road about ten miles, and with it, accompanying gas stations and restaurants, all leading to the beautiful areas around Harrisburg that offered Amish country, Hersheypark, mountain hiking and so much more.

  But come night, all that surrounded the Miller Tavern was heavily forested woods, haunting and deep.

  No...not a good idea to open the door. At night, it was far too easy to believe someone might be lurking behind a tree.

  The group was probably up in 207. It was supposedly the room where the most paranormal activity had taken place.

  She started to turn to the stairs that led up, but then she thought she heard giggling and whispers. There was a door still marked Staff Only that led to the infamous basement. She opened the door and looked down; lights were low, to keep with the setting, but enough to allow for filming if a ghost were to start wandering around.

  “Guys?” Keri said.

  She thought she heard something of a sob, and then another whisper. Someone moaned, and it sounded to Keri as though they said, “I fell!”

  If someone had gotten hurt here, they were going to have to call for help—fast. They should have been seen, of course, because there had to be a camera in every room by now. But Mike hadn’t been in the tavern, watching the screens—one of them should have been there at all times. Not so much to catch ghosts, but because they were running around a historic tavern out in the middle of nowhere, and even though Carl had made sure the place had been seen by official building inspectors, the place was old.

  She hurried down the stairs and almost tripped over something. Not something; someone.

  It was Eileen. She was trying to sit up, moaning and rubbing the back of her head.

  “Eileen!”

  Quickly, Keri knelt by the blonde. “Hey, what happened? Are you all right?”

  “Oh, thank God, thank you... Help me up, Keri, please, help me up. I came down the stairs too fast, and I guess... I felt like someone pushed me. I guess I just tripped, I don’t know.”

  “Sit, sit, maybe you shouldn’t stand yet. Eileen...”

  She paused. Eileen was staring down into the room, her mouth an O of horror, her eyes transfixed. Then she screamed and grabbed Keri’s shoulders, struggling to stand. “Out, out, out, we’ve got to get out!”

  Keri turned to look.

  And she froze as well, terror streaking through her like a bolt of lightning.

  A dark figure stood over the “torture” table, a block placed there when the inn had been used as a Halloween attraction.

  A body was chained to the table.

  She didn’t know if it was a man or a woman, it was such a bloody, broken pile. Implements lay on top of and around the body, knives, pincers, mallets...

  Keri screamed; she tried to tell herself it was all a show, someone had set up the basement as a prank against the team of ghost hunters, or perhaps they had all arranged it just for her.

  It couldn’t be real.

  But Eileen’s terror was. “Keri!”

  Keri began to move, trying to help the wavering Eileen and get the two of them back up the stairs.

  She looked back, and she saw a figure standing there, softly weeping. It was a young woman, and she was in a soft white dress, dark hair wound into a braided chignon.

  The woman didn’t touch the body; she just stared down at it, tears running down her face.

  Transfixed, Keri stared at her, and then a sense of logic kicked in. There was no blood on the woman. None. She was pristine in her white. There was no way she could have recently beaten a body to a pulp.

  “Come on, come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” she urged, reaching out to the woman in white.

  “Yes, we have to get out of here!” Eileen said, hanging on to Keri. “Oh, my God,” she moaned, “it can’t be real, it can’t be real. I smell it, though, something awful, blood, death. Come on!”

  “She has to come, too!” Keri said.

  Eileen stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Come with us? We can’t help her, Keri. She’s not injured, she—she’s dead!”

  “No, no, the other woman!”

  “What other woman? Oh, God,” Eileen moaned.

  Keri looked back, and she saw that Eileen was right; there was no one else there.

  No one, other than whoever lay on the block, unrecognizable.

  She caught Eileen’s hand and she ran. Up the stairs and out into the night, screaming for help at the top of her lungs.

  2

  “This is where she was found,” Detective Catrina Billings said. “Blood everywhere, as you can still see. But the medical examiner says that she wasn’t killed here—she was posed here. The group of ‘paranormal’ experts swear that they didn’t let anyone else in and that the body wasn’t here when they set up the cameras. I sent you emails and hard copy on the crew of the Truth Seekers, along with the historic true-crime writer Keri Wolf and actor Carl Brentwood.”

  Joe stood in the basement of the inn with Agent Dallas Wicker and the detective, intrigued. It didn’t seem right. If the victim hadn’t been killed there, how was there so very much blood staining the white stone altar that had held the victim?

  “The killer collected the blood—and then spilled it here when he brought the remains to this site?” he asked.

  Billings sighed deeply. “Yes, and all this was explained to the agents who were here earlier, as well. I thought this had been handed specifically to your unit.”

  “Yes, Detective,” Dallas Wicker told her. “But the victim was an agent—one of us. You know how you’d feel if a cop had been involved. You’d want all the details, even if you got taken off th
e case.”

  Joe and Dallas had tried to get as caught up as possible on the way there. Special Agent Julie Castro, out of the New York City office, was working a kidnapping. A seventeen-year-old girl named Barbara Chrome had been snatched off the street on the Upper East Side. A tip had led Castro to Pennsylvania.

  “She was last seen in Philadelphia,” Billings said. “So I’ve been informed.”

  “And somehow, she came from Philadelphia to the Miller Inn and Tavern,” Dallas said.

  “But you ought to be hunting down what happened in Philadelphia,” Billings said.

  Joe tried to offer her a friendly smile. “The other agents are working that angle, but you know you have to see a crime scene. Cops, agents—we’re all the same.”

  Billings just stared at Joe.

  Maybe she had a right to be skeptical. He’d never expected that he’d be out in the field at such lightning speed, even though he’d already been through a rigorous interview process with Adam Harrison and Jackson Crow. He still wasn’t an FBI agent—he had to wait for the next class to begin and then graduate before he could become an agent—but he was here as a special consultant.

  Adam Harrison’s specific special unit was in charge; Jackson Crow and Adam Harrison maintained an excellent working relationship with the head office and with large field offices across the country. They were frequently the lead in cases that had anything to do with the so-called paranormal, strange rituals, or the like.

  And an agent was dead. Special Agent Julie Castro and her partner, Ed Newel, out of the New York City office, had been investigating a kidnapping that had crossed state lines. There was no way there wouldn’t be heavy FBI participation to try to solve her murder.

  Carl Brentwood had called Dallas, having met him recently in Savannah. Dallas had handed the request to Jackson, who had given it to Adam. Joe didn’t know what magic Adam had worked, but the Krewe was going to be heading up the investigation as part of a task force with local police and New York and Pennsylvania agents.

  In this instance, Joe already had a working relationship with Carl; important, since Brentwood knew and trusted him. Carl had been a guest at a bed-and-breakfast in Savannah when a spate of mysterious disappearances had threatened the B and B’s owner. He’d witnessed a dramatic showdown between a pair of killers and law enforcement, including Joe and Dallas.

  Joe had become an official consultant after Carl’s desperate call to Dallas. The young actor had asked for Joe specifically, convinced that between him and Dallas, they could clear him and his friends of any wrongdoing, and save the reputation of his newly purchased historic property.

  Joe and Dallas would see Carl later that day, as well as those who had been at the inn when the body had been discovered. The coroner also expected them at the morgue for the autopsy later.

  But first, the old inn. Catrina Billings had started them off where the body had been found, in the basement, along with the torture implements akin to those used by the original owner.

  “We’re having numerous samples of the blood tested now,” Billings told them stiffly. “We believe, as you said, that wherever she was killed, the murderer collected her blood as she died, specifically to leave here, where it was intended she be found.”

  Billings was as thin as a whippet with iron-gray hair cut short and forming natural curls close to her head. Her eyes were a match for her hair, and while she hadn’t been impolite, she had spoken crisply and coldly at every turn.

  Joe had the feeling that she believed they thought of her as a country cop, not up to par with the FBI training and technical abilities. Dallas probably hadn’t made her feel that way—he was good with people. Joe thought that he was, too, but she evidently found him to be little more than a nuisance.

  They were still going to try for a good working rapport. Maybe she just needed to trust them. Then again, maybe she was disturbed that the FBI was in on it; the victim had been found on her turf. But the coroner’s office had made a quick match on the victim, and the victim had been an FBI agent.

  “There are only two entrances to the inn—the front door, and the cellar, correct?” Dallas asked.

  Billings waved a hand in the air. “The idiot actor owner didn’t even know about the cellar entrance. He’s really barely seen the place. When he purchased it, he got it into his head immediately that he had to have it explored by ‘paranormal investigators’ before starting his own brand of renovations and opening the place again as an inn. He’s convinced that everyone here is innocent. I don’t trust any of them for a minute. Of course, the paranormal crew are all certain a ghost has struck. They’re convinced that their being here awakened evil. One of them is definitely guilty—oh, they’re claiming that someone could have come through the cellar door, the door they didn’t know about until my detectives found it.

  “The coroner will determine an approximate time of the murder—how long she was dead before she was brought in here. It’s late summer, but the weather has been nice, low sixties at night, seventies by day, so he’s hoping to make a reasonable determination. The forensic team found blood on the cellar door—again, being tested, but we’re assuming it belonged to the victim—so, the body was probably brought in that way.

  “Now, of course, you’re asking about planned entrances and exits. There are large windows, and a balcony out back. The right person could maybe get up or down. There are windows in the front, too, but blood evidence says the corpse was brought in through the cellar.”

  “May we see the rest of the inn?” Dallas asked.

  “Of course,” Billings said, looking doubtfully at Joe. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not one of the paranormal psychic consultants, are you? Because the dead woman is real. She’s no ghost.”

  “I was with the Savannah police department. I left to join the FBI,” Joe told her. “I recently worked a case that involved Carl Brentwood. I’m hoping my presence will help him stay calm, and I’ll give him any assistance I can.”

  “You worked a case he was involved in?” Billings asked. “You know, those actors, thinking that they’re privileged and can do what other people can’t.” She looked at him oddly. “Like killing people.”

  “Carl was innocent of any wrongdoing,” Joe assured her.

  She looked at Dallas for confirmation of his words.

  Dallas nodded gravely.

  “Because we’re in a bit of a strange situation right now,” she went on, “I can’t just arrest them all, and I can’t let them all go. There’s no hard evidence against any of them, just that they were all here, the only people at the crime scene. Right now, we have the group up at the new hotel. They’ve been asked not to leave the area. Until we get to the bottom of it, they need to be in reach.”

  “And they’re willing to stay?” Dallas asked.

  Billings rolled her eyes. “Oh, you haven’t met these people. They’re all claiming innocence. But they’re also convinced that there’s an ‘entity’ at the inn, and they want to get back in to keep exploring. Except for the writer, I guess. She was here for what she could gain on the old crime in the ’20s. This is all in the jackets you have,” she said, indicating the physical files she had handed him. “Forensic people want more time here, though, so far, they haven’t found anything except for what was in the basement. Blood all over this altar or torture table or whatever it is, blood at the cellar door entry. They’re almost done, though they’ll be back in today and probably clear the place by tonight. If you’re ready, we’ll head back up. We can walk the place quickly and just get to the autopsy.”

  “Thank you, Detective Billings,” Dallas said politely. If Billings wanted to be a little bit cold, they’d be just as warm as they possibly could. She was probably a good cop—just a little resentful of the interference.

  “So, looking over the rest of the inn and then autopsy,” Joe said. “And then a trip to the new hotel to meet the Trut
h Seekers, the writer and Carl?”

  Billings nodded.

  “Okay, here are the only stairs up,” she said. “According to what I’ve learned, Keri Wolf came out of the museum—facing the inn, that’s to the left of the bar—came through the tavern and looked in the kitchen. Not finding anyone, she headed back into the tavern, passed the stairs going up until she came to the basement door. The rest of the group was upstairs in 207 when Wolf came down the basement stairs and found Eileen Falcon. Falcon had fallen down the stairs and hurt herself—stunned and terrified by the sight of the corpse on the table. Wolf got her up and outside, thankfully dialing 911. Brentwood and the others upstairs heard her screaming and they went outside, too. Anyway, that’s what happened here—as it was told to us.”

  Billings led the way back through the foyer to the tavern area. From there, they crossed to the kitchen, recently upgraded but still bearing the charm of a massive fireplace and hearth and copper cookware hanging from rafters above a workstation.

  Upstairs, they visited the rooms—ten in all, with 207 being the room where the rest of the group had been gathered when Eileen and Keri had found the corpse.

  According to the group, Billings had made sure to tell them.

  “Why wasn’t Eileen Falcon with them in 207? I understand that Keri Wolf was in the museum, deep in her research, but why wasn’t Eileen with them?” Joe asked.

  “And why wasn’t someone where the screens were set up, watching the cameras?” Dallas asked. “It doesn’t do a lot of good to have cameras everywhere if you’re not watching them.”

  “Falcon was supposed to be taking over on the screens,” Billings said. “Usually, Mike Lerner set up the cameras and manned the screens, but he went up to rest and Falcon was supposed to be covering for him. But she says some kind of a noise distracted her, and she looked in the basement. And then saw the corpse, fell, and was on the stairs when Wolf came down. That’s the story as I have it.”

  “And there was no one else here—or anywhere near here—yesterday and last night?” Dallas asked.