It was the same woman who, ten years ago, had directed the action on the night Charlie was tied to a tombstone.
Like everyone involved with that horror show, Nancy had apologized. She and Charlie had even managed to act cordial for the rest of the year; then Nancy had graduated, and Charlie hadn’t seen her since.
“Charlie, great to see you here,” Nancy said. She seemed a little anxious and a little shy.
As if she meant what she was saying.
Charlie nodded. “Good to see you, too.” She meant it herself. Time had gone by; they were no longer teenagers.
Nancy nodded. “I hear you’re a movie star now.”
“Hardly. Just a working actress. How about you? How is everything?”
Nancy smiled, but Charlie thought it looked a little forced. “I married Todd Camp. The quarterback. We have two kids.”
“Congratulations.”
“Twins.”
“Great.”
“Sometimes,” Nancy said, then shrugged. “Sometimes when Todd is working at the garage all day, I bring the kids here with me, and sometimes they even behave. But I love them. Anyway, I’m so happy for you. You always wanted to act.”
“Well, thanks. I’m not exactly a fixture on the red carpet, though, you know?”
“You’re doing what you want to do, and that’s what counts.”
“Thanks. Hey, how’s Sherry doing? You two were so close. Is she still around, too?”
“Sherry got married and moved to New Jersey.”
“That’s nice.”
“New Jersey? After here? I don’t know. But she has a family, became an LPN.”
“So. Twins,” Charlie said into the awkward silence that followed Nancy’s updates. “No kids for me yet, but one day, I hope.”
“I’m sure it will happen for you. As for me, I just hope for a vacation one of these days. Anyway, what can I get you?”
“Iced tea and gumbo, please.”
“You got it,” Nancy said, and moved on.
She and Jimmy chatted for a minute, and then Jimmy looked down the table at Charlie and mouthed, “Didn’t know she was working here.”
Charlie shrugged. It had been ten years since that awful night, and it was a relief to discover she didn’t really care what had happened to Nancy and the rest of them.
Once Nancy left, they chatted companionably as they waited for their food; they were almost evenly split between gumbo and shrimp and grits, breaking along pretty much the same lines for iced tea vs. frosty beers. For a few minutes the talk revolved around how to film the upcoming confrontation between Charlie and an oil baron. Brad wanted a live location, but Luke was worried about getting the clean sound that he believed the scene warranted. And then, because it couldn’t be ignored forever, the subject of the dead man, Farrell Hickory, finally came up. They were all a little spooked because he was the second reenactor to be killed.
“And we all knew them both,” Jimmy said.
Charlie turned to look at him. “We did?” she asked.
“Most of us did, at any rate,” Barry said, nodding solemnly.
“Can’t say I knew either man well,” Mike Thornton said, pushing back a lock of dark hair. He was a lot like his brother, in both looks and mannerisms. He and Brad had been making movies together since they’d been kids.
“And,” Jimmy said to Charlie, “you didn’t know either one of them, unless it’s from when you were a kid, because you weren’t there for the special reenactment they did on the Journey a week ago—like so many of us were.” He was wearing a brave face, but she could see he was deeply upset by the murders.
He had never really forgiven himself for being involved the night a serial killer had almost killed her.
“Right, I was doing that webisode series. Banshees on the Bayou.”
Brad smiled. “I hope this film is as successful as Banshees on the Bayou.”
“A bunch of us were involved because there was a corporate sponsor, so we were paid pretty decently,” Jennie said, then went quiet for a long moment. “That’s when we met the men who’ve been killed.”
“Who—who else was working that day?” Charlie asked, more worried than she wanted to let on.
“Well, your dad, for one,” Luke pointed out.
“Yeah, my dad. I know. Who else?” she asked.
“Let’s see,” Brad said, looking around. “Me and Mike, Barry and Luke... Jennie did makeup.”
“Todd and I were there, too.”
Charlie spun around to see that Nancy Camp—née Deauville—was standing right behind her. “We earn extra money any time we can. We didn’t hang around, just did the bit they were paying us for, then left. You have to try to make more money than day-care costs or it’s not worth it to work. Tons of locals were there, not just us.”
“Jimmy Smith and Grant Ferguson,” Brad added, then shook his head. “We were just extras. There was a scene between Hickory and Corley, though. I’m sure you already know this, but there was supposedly a meeting between a black Union orderly and a Confederate cavalry captain when the Journey was turned over to the Union. We were extras in that scene. We brought our own uniforms, so they cast us a lot.”
“I have my Confederate infantry uniform and a Union artillery uniform,” Barry said. “I can make money on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line.”
Charlie grinned at that. But her smile quickly faded. “Did you notice anything wrong, anything that was even a little bit off, that day? Was anyone fighting?”
“I think there was a bit of a tiff between Corley and Hickory,” Luke said. “They were both convinced they were historians, not just reenactors, and they disagreed about some detail of the scene. It got a little heated, but then your dad stepped in and calmed them down. But...well, they’re both dead, so it’s unlikely they killed each other.”
“It’s pretty damned stupid for anyone to kill someone over a reenactment,” Jennie said.
Brad shrugged. “People can be crazy sometimes.”
There wasn’t much of an argument to be made against that, so they all fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. Then Jennie made a comment about how good the food was, and the conversation turned to everyone’s favorite restaurants in their favorite cities.
Charlie found herself smiling and laughing along with the others. But all the while she was making mental notes of things she needed to tell Ethan.
Farrell Hickory and Albion Corley had both taken part in the special reenactment aboard the Journey.
They had argued, and her father had intervened.
A number of her friends had also been involved in the reenactment: Brad and Mike Thornton, Jennie McPherson, Barry Seymour, Luke Mayfield, Grant Ferguson, George Gonzales and Jimmy Smith.
She didn’t want to think that any one of them could be the killer.
Of course they were all innocent, she thought, giving herself a mental shake.
Because if one of them was the killer, surely he—or she—would have acted strangely while they were filming the rise of a ghostly army so close to the place where one of the victims lay dead.
* * *
“Wow. Ethan Delaney! As I live and breathe. Back and slumming it all in small-town America.”
“Nice to see you, too, Randy,” Ethan said, greeting his old friend outside the parish morgue on Oak Street.
The two of them were only about a month apart in age. They’d been friends throughout high school, making a lot of the same mistakes, going through the same wild stages, cleaning up their act when the world demanded they had to be adults. They’d lost contact when they went their separate ways after college. Since Ethan’s parents had moved to New Orleans, he hadn’t had much occasion to get back out to St. Francisville.
“Never thought of us as coming from
the slums,” Ethan said.
Randy grinned. “Yeah, we were all right, growing up, huh? I love this part of the world. I guess you can tell, seeing as I came back here. Look at you, though—a real live Fed.”
“And look at you, a big-shot cop,” Ethan said. “Not bad for a kid who got hauled in on more Saturday nights than anyone else I knew.”
“Detective, West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office, I’ll have you know. The deaths actually occurred in two different towns in the parish, so we were called in on lead,” Randy said, and grinned. “Special Agent Delaney. I have to say, I’m kind of surprised to see you down here for something like this. Wait, no, I’m not surprised you’re here at all. This has to do with Charlie Moreau being back in the area, too, right? Bad business back then. Though I never did understand Jonathan being so pissed at you. You threw yourself on the guy.”
“That was ten years ago,” Ethan said.
“Bet you Jonathan is still pissed,” Randy said.
“Thing is, I really have been sent down here on the case,” Ethan said. “So what have you got?”
He studied his friend, noting the man the boy had grown into. Randy was lean, but deceptively so. He had excelled on the school’s wrestling team, as well as being the football team’s top field-goal kicker. He’d told Ethan once that he knew he was never going to have the bulk and broad shoulders of some other men, so he had to make up for it with lean muscle.
“Nothing new. You probably know everything I do, since I’m sure they brought you up to speed before they sent you down here. You have the case folders, crime-scene photos, all that, right?”
“Yeah.”
Randy met his eyes and nodded. “Okay, so West Feliciana Parish has just under fifteen thousand people. Our annual crime rate is about two murders a year, and that includes negligent homicide, so it’s not like you’re looking at a major city where the cops are accustomed to investigating murders. We’re not total newbies, though, so don’t think we’re all a bunch of toothless rednecks doing alligator wrestling for reality TV.”
“Randy, I grew up here. All my friends had their teeth, although the way you showed off opening beer bottles with yours, I’m surprised you kept yours.”
Randy shrugged. “Guess I’m glad they sent you and not some big-city know-it-all. Okay, so here’s where things stand. At first, when Albion Corley was found, we were a little worried that some kind of race thing might erupt in town. We thought maybe some bigot was pissed at him for having the nerve to wear the uniform and take part in that big-deal reenactment, even as a Union orderly. Everyone liked the guy, though. Smart, a professor. Passionate about no-kill animal shelters and saving the wetlands and all that kind of thing. Then Farrell Hickory’s body turned up, found by your old girlfriend.”
“Randy, we were never a couple,” Ethan said patiently.
“Proof of fatal stupidity on your part,” Randy said.
“Might be true. She was only sixteen, though.”
“Shakespeare’s Juliet was thirteen, or something like that.”
“Wouldn’t have been right,” Ethan said.
“Okay, okay, Mr. Morality, I’m moving on,” Randy said. “So now we have one dead black man in a Union uniform, and one dead white man who played a Confederate cavalry officer. Our investigations found that the two of them had some kind of dustup during what was billed as ‘Journey Day.’ You probably remember that every year there’s a big reenactment of The Day the War Stopped. But this year, because it’s a situation that also draws a lot of interest, some enterprising person with a tour group of teachers had a brilliant idea—reenact the day the Confederates traded the Journey and her Union wounded to the Yankees for a bunch of their own prisoners. There was so much sickness aboard ship, the Rebels didn’t even want it, but the Union didn’t know that. Anyway, the cruise line offers special tours each year that focus on the Civil War, and this year they decided to feature a special reenactment of the Journey handover. To be honest, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to realize that there could be big bucks in that kind of thing, but then again, Celtic American has only owned the ship for six or seven years. The reenactment was subsidized by Gideon Oil, so the participants even got paid. Half the people I know around here were involved. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But a lot of locals turned up as extras. As far as we know, that was the last time the two victims saw each other. We actually questioned Farrell about Albion’s death once we heard they’d been seen arguing. He had an alibi for the night Albion was killed, though, and then, of course, Farrell turned up the same way. I guess you’re here to see the bodies?”
“It’s a place to start,” Ethan said.
Inside the morgue, they found Dr. Earl Franklin on duty. He had to be nearing retirement age, Ethan knew, but he was also one of the brightest and most thorough men Ethan had met in the field, and not only in Louisiana but anywhere. He greeted Ethan warmly. When he’d been young and had already set his sights on a career in law enforcement, Ethan had plagued the man relentlessly, wanting to learn everything he could, and Franklin had been unendingly patient, as well as informative.
“Great to see you,” Franklin said to Ethan now. “Sorry you’re here under such unfortunate circumstances, though.”
The ME was a stout man with wire-rimmed glasses and a head full of white hair. He would have looked at home on a big front porch, wearing a white suit and sipping a mint julep, Ethan thought wryly. Instead the man preferred libraries and skiing vacations in Colorado to sitting around anywhere.
“Good to see you. Though I’m sorry about the circumstances, too,” Ethan said.
“Well, both of you put your masks on and come in. I’ve got Mr. Corley and Mr. Hickory ready for your visit.”
Both men were laid out on steel gurneys. Their autopsies had already been performed. Sheets draped their lower extremities, revealing the Y incisions on their chests.
“No reason not to get right to it,” Dr. Franklin said. “Mr. Hickory was my only client this morning—both a good thing and a bad thing. My last was Mrs. Delsie Peterson. Do you remember her? Sorry to cut her up, but she died in her own home, alone in her bed, so the law required an autopsy, despite the fact she was ninety-eight. The old girl went easily. Just fell asleep and her heart stopped.”
“Glad to hear that. I do remember Mrs. Peterson. She fixed all our collars when we were kids and on our way into church,” Ethan said.
“Aren’t you proud of the man, Doctor? He remembers his roots.” Randy grinned.
“A very good thing. Meanwhile, here are my notes. Both men were in good health, other than stabbed through the heart by something long and sharply pointed. Like a bayonet,” Franklin said.
Ethan took a moment to look over the notes the ME handed him. Then he studied each man in turn.
There was something incredibly sad about a person’s earthly remains, no matter how they had died. When the spark of life left the body, it seemed to take everything important with it. No matter what, the body had a gray, pasty color. It didn’t matter if the person had been Caucasian, or of African, Asian, Native American or any other descent, or represented a combination of nationalities. The flesh sank in until there was nothing real left of the person who had once made the physical being vital. He’d loathed open coffins all his life. What was the point, when the person was simply gone?
Most of the time.
He made a point of touching each icy cold body. He lingered, looking over the still-visible wounds to their hearts. Both men had exercised or at least been active enough to keep their muscles tight. Neither one had been young—the wrinkles creasing their flesh testified to that—but both could have looked forward to several more decades of life if they hadn’t, somewhere and for some reason, crossed the path of a murderer.
“No bruising or defensive wounds to indicate a struggle?” Ethan asked, relucta
ntly accepting the fact that the dead weren’t going to speak with him.
“If you ask me,” Franklin said, “and I’m not the detective, of course, Randy is—it appears that both men were taken completely by surprise. They were facing their killer when he struck, and he murdered each man the same way. Quickly. No defensive wounds. I believe they knew their killer.”
“And both men were killed where their bodies were found?” Ethan asked, though he knew the answer; he’d read it in the files Jackson had given him. It never hurt to have these things confirmed, though, especially when he was talking to the medical examiner who had been at the scene.
“Definitely. The soil beneath the bodies was drenched with their blood. We’re still waiting for chemical analyses in the hope that something might turn up other than the victims’ blood, but...like I said, I feel strongly that both men knew their killer and were taken completely by surprise.”
“And dressed up in their reenactment uniforms,” Ethan murmured.
“And for that reason we’re looking at everyone—men and women—who were involved with the victims’ final reenactment,” Randy said, sounding very much like a cop and very little like the old friend with whom Ethan had gone to school.
Ethan nodded. “Last meals, Doc?”
“Gumbo—both of them,” Franklin said. “Probably from someplace here in town. They died twenty-four to forty hours apart. They weren’t at dinner together or anything. If they had been, they would have been at different stages of digestion, which they weren’t. And, actually, I’m waiting for the lab results before I can be definitive with regard to Mr. Hickory. I’m going by my own gut, if you’ll excuse the pun, in his case.”
Ethan nodded; Franklin had been at this long enough to recognize what he saw and smelled.
“They eat long before they died?” he asked.
“A couple of hours,” Franklin said.
Ethan turned to Randy. “Is there a reason why they would have been in their uniforms?”
Randy shrugged. “There’s been a photographer in town paying people to pose. He said he hadn’t asked either of them, though. He was at the reenactment, though, and took some shots there. As I’m sure you know, Brad Thornton and his brother, Mike, are making that movie with Charlie Moreau. Maybe they wanted to be extras. Hickory told his housekeeper he would be going out for a meeting, and she didn’t need to leave him dinner. His people closed up the public part of the plantation right at five. The housekeeper was the last person to see him, right about that time, and he wasn’t in uniform then. As far as Corley goes, no one seems to know anything definitive. He was on a research sabbatical, so he wasn’t expected in class. He called a friend and asked her to feed his cats for the next few days, and that’s the last we know of his whereabouts. His home is just this side of Baton Rouge, where he taught.”