The Evil Inside

Jackson looked over at him and, behind him, at John Alden, who stood just a foot or so behind Sam. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re ready?” John asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Jackson repeated.

They all exited the house. Jenna and her group waited while John locked the house and replaced the crime- scene tape.

When John joined them on the lawn, Sam asked him, “What about the lab report on the costume?”

“Hopefully, I’ll get it back today.”

“As soon as possible would be great,” Sam said.

“Sam, damn it, you know that I can’t give it priority. It’s a costume you took off a kid, and it may or may not have anything to do with anything.”

“I know, John, thanks,” Sam said. “Still, sooner would be better.”

“Damn it, Sam. I’m doing my best here, huh? And that’s good, considering I’m starting to think you’re almost as crazy as the kid.”

“Ah, but think of it this way. When we get to court, you’ll have done your job backward and forward, the prosecution will love you if all this investigation’s nothing and just proves the case against him is as airtight as you say,” Sam told him.

Muttering, John waved to the others and headed down to his car.

When he was gone, Jackson looked at Jenna. “Well?”

She shook her head. “I can tell you about Eli Lexington and the Braden family, but I’ve gotten nothing on Abraham Smith. Angela?”

“I saw a little girl, and I believe she died of typhoid sometime in the eighteenth century,” Angela said apologetically.

Sam stared at them both.

“I’ve got some work to do,” he said. “Alibis. We have to start cracking alibis.”

“We can give Jake a call, and he can do a lot of computer and phone work, at least with the members of the Old Meeting House.”

“Contact him for me, will you, then? I have legal papers…I’ll leave you all at Jamie’s house. I’ll be in contact soon.”

He was leaving her though, and just as she felt like someone literally reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.

“Good idea,” she said lightly. “We’ll get going on a chart, trying to trace the movements of everyone involved.”

Sam agreed and drove them to Jamie’s house. He seemed to step on the gas when he drove away.

Sam sat at his desk, trying to work. He scribbled out scenarios for the courtroom, assuming he wasn’t able to prove that Malachi Smith was covered in blood because he’d loved his parents. He scribbled out a dramatic scene in which they had discovered enough evidence to at least prove that there might have been another killer, and he imagined his voice ringing in the courtroom as he introduced the facts that might save his client. Of course, the prosecution would fight him tooth and nail, and…

He stood, stretching, and he knew that he was here, alone, because his emotions, so constantly logical and controlled, were in the midst of absolute turmoil.

He’d imagined earlier that he woke up every morning to have silken red hair sweeping over his naked flesh, and the warmth and beauty of an exquisite figure draped around his. Those green eyes of hers would open, and sometimes they’d be lazy, and sometimes frantic, and sometimes he would just leave her sleeping because work was a reality of life, and, of course, they both loved their work…

But it wasn’t imagination to relive the way Jenna had looked while “envisioning” the past, be it real, or a product of the recesses of her mind.

He sat at his desk again and buried his head in his hands, tearing his fingers through his hair.

He had to think about the case. The case.

As he sat there, he felt a gentle touch on his head.

He spun around, thinking that, somehow, though he’d locked the door, Jenna had slipped in.

He was alone. Completely alone.

His own imagination was going wild with everything that was happening.

“Hey! Is anyone here?” he demanded.

His voice echoed in the empty house.

He cursed at himself. Crazy. He had to concentrate.

He flipped a page on his notepad.

Samantha Yeager: Clerk swears she was working when Smith family killed.

“Goodman” Wilson: says congregation will attest to his presence. Jake Mallory, agent, doing computer search for members and phone work.

Councilman Andy Yates: appears open and honest, denies nothing. Good suspect, since his son involved in altercation.

The boys, David Yates and Joshua Abbott: Liars. No known alibis for any of the occasions.

He hesitated and pulled out his phone and put a call through to Andy Yates’s office. An answering machine informed him that it was Saturday, and that “Councilman Yates is devoting his weekend to his family. We hope you are enjoying yours, as well. Happy Halloween!”

He hung up.

He wanted to know where those boys had been. Maybe not Joshua. According to Jenna and Angela, Joshua seemed the kind of friend who would go along with whatever David Yates said. David Yates-the boy who had been the victim of the “evil eye.” A big kid now, a football hero. But did he really have what it would have taken to pull off the murders? Enough sense for a costume, enough rage to plot out a way for Malachi to be blamed? He was only seventeen.

Lots of heinous murders had been committed by seventeen-year-olds; he knew that well enough. Malachi was seventeen. Ah, but Malachi was supposed to be crazy.

His phone rang, and he answered absently. “Hall.”

There was a brief hesitation. “Sam, it’s John. John Alden.”

He looked at his phone, surprised Alden had felt the need to give his last name.

“Yeah, John-did you get the results back?”

Again, there was a brief hesitation. “Yeah,” Alden said thickly. “They found trace amounts of blood on that costume you pulled off the kid. Trace. The costume had been washed, and might have been dry-cleaned, as well. We’re still working on it, but…I’ll call you back in a couple of hours. They’re trying to see if it it’s a match with the blood from the crime scenes now.”

At the house, Jackson put a call through to Jake Mallory, who had remained at their new offices in Virginia. He was glad that Ashley, Jake’s fiancee, was up from her family plantation in Louisiana to be there with him, or else he’d have been manning the ship alone, since Whitney Tremont, the last of their sextet, was in Jamaica on her honeymoon.

The Krewe sat together at the dining room, talking on speakerphone.

“You want me to find and talk to all the members of a congregation when we don’t have the pastor’s agreement to let out a list of the members?” Jake’s voice positively boomed through the phone.

“I believe that Sam is getting a warrant for the records, but it’s Saturday, and that could take time,” Jenna said. “And it’s just possible that a judge might block us, too.”

“You want me to do this legally, right?” Jake said.

“Not really, but yes-we’re talking about a court case here, so everything has to be obtained legally. Not, of course, that I’d ever want you to do anything illegal,” Jackson said.

“Right…well, I can pull up public records and newspaper clippings and dig around the best I can. What do you want exactly?”