kind of shape?”
“Scrub away the graffiti, haul off the trash, reseal the vaults. It’s a lot of hard work. Manual labor, actually.” I stared down at the calluses on my hands. “And the sad thing is, without the bodies, the restoration is never going to be truly complete.” I lifted my gaze to Devlin, a troubling suspicion starting to take root. “Is this where Afton Delacourt’s body was found?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I didn’t know it then. Since I can’t access the file, I had to track down the detective who was in charge of the investigation.”
“He’s still on the force?”
“Retired five years ago. He has a place on Lake Marion in Calhoun County. I finally managed to get an address through a sister who still works for the city. He didn’t want to see me at first…until I told him about Hannah Fischer.”
“What did he say?” I asked anxiously. “Did he give you any leads?”
Devlin expertly evaded my novice questions, along with my probing stare. “We’re treading on tricky ground here. I shouldn’t be telling you anything about this case. Things are moving fast…” Absently, he rubbed a thumb across his chin.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged, a strangely expressive gesture that seemed to convey everything and nothing at all. “People in high places are starting to pull strings.”
“A cover-up?”
“Let’s just say there’s interest at the highest levels. The thing is…we need a break in this case and we need it quickly, before the investigation gets booted upstairs. For whatever reason, this cemetery is being used to dispose of the bodies. As much as I hate to admit it, Gerrity could be right. If the killer is leaving clues in headstone symbols or in those epitaphs, you may be the only one who can unravel his motive. I’ve already dragged you into this. I won’t involve you any further unless you know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
All of a sudden, my heart was pumping ice water into my veins. “What
“How she died, for one thing. In explicit detail.” His voice was quiet, but inflected with something I couldn’t quite decipher.
I caught my breath at the look on his face. “How did she die?”
“Exsanguination.”
Something bleak and cold rose inside me. Dread, fear and maybe just a tinge of excitement. “Just like Hannah Fischer.”
“Yes. Just like Hannah Fischer…”
The way he trailed off made me think there was something more. My fingers itched to take his arm and turn him toward me so that I could look into his eyes, study his expression. But, of course, touching him was not a good idea. Though I certainly wanted to.
“What else did he tell you?” I asked.
“There were ligature marks on Afton Delacourt’s body. The way he described them sounded like the ones we found on Hannah Fischer.”
“Ligature marks? They were both tied up?”
He hesitated. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to tell me.
“It’s all right. I want to know,” I told him.
His eyes pinned me for the longest time, until I shivered as though an icy wind had swept over me. “They were strung up by their feet with leg irons,” he said.
The blunt description took a moment to process. Then I stared at him in revulsion. “Strung up…
“Strung up and bled out,” he said grimly.
A wave of nausea washed through me. I felt hot and cold all over. Sweat trickled down my back, but I couldn’t stop shivering. I had the most awful, bloody images in my head. Dripping carcasses, strung up on hooks in packing houses.
I tried to blink away the vision, along with the spots that swam before my eyes. “What kind of monster would do something like that?”
Devlin’s voice was level, his face expressionless, but I saw something in his eyes that scared me. “My guess is, he’s a hunter.”
Twenty-Five
I couldn’t say anything to that. The chill that slid over me was more pervasive than a ghost’s touch.
Devlin watched with sympathy as I struggled for control. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, glanced up at the sky and tried to focus on a small cloud shot through with sunlight. It was luminous and ethereal and reminded me of one of the dancing angels at Rosehill.
Drawing another shaky breath, I nodded again, as much to reassure myself as Devlin. “I’m fine.”
But, of course, I wasn’t fine. How could I be fine when I might already be in the sights of this sadistic madman?
I thought about those epitaphs posted to my blog—messages or a warning?
I thought about that black sedan—coincidence, or was I being stalked?
“What are you thinking?” Devlin asked.
“About being hunted.”
He stared down at me for the longest moment. I thought he might offer me a bit of comfort by taking my hand or patting my shoulder or—what I really wanted—pulling me into his arms. He did none of those things, but there was a feral gleam in his eyes that sent a little shiver through me. That told me the hunter was about to become the hunted.
Maybe comfort wasn’t what I wanted after all.
“You don’t have to be involved in this, you know. You can walk away right now, go home and put it all behind you,” Devlin said. “You have no obligation here.”
“And if I did see something that day? If my knowledge of cemeteries really is the key? You said yourself, you need a break in the case before it’s covered up.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.”
I shrugged. “Close enough. I can read between the lines.”
“So it would seem.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes. But there’s not a lot more I can tell you.”
“You said yesterday that if I had a question about your personal life, I should ask. I’m asking.”
I could sense his wariness, but he nodded. “What’s the question?”
“It’s about those students that came forward after Afton’s death. The ones who talked about Dr. Shaw’s séances and his theory on death.”
“What about them?”
I paused, wondering how best to go about this. I decided to be blunt. “Was your wife one of them?”
“She wasn’t my wife then. But to answer your question, she did attend one of Shaw’s séances. She was too scared to go back.”
“What happened?”
“She was repulsed by what Shaw was trying to do. According to her beliefs, a person’s power isn’t diminished with death. A bad or sudden passing can result in an angry spirit wielding that power to interfere with the lives of the living. Even enslave them, in some cases. The prospect of bringing back the dead terrified her.”
I could hardly comprehend the tragic irony of that statement.
