pirate.”
“The tours are fun,” Abby said. She felt as though she was playing a part at that moment. Pretending everything was normal. Pretending that the Dragonslayer would go on as it always had, and that Gus would be there in spirit. Women were not dead and missing—and Gus had not been suspicious of anything before he died.
Malachi’s phone rang and he answered it, stepping aside. When he hung up, he and Jackson seemed to share some kind of intuitive exchange.
“I’ve got to run out,” Malachi said.
“We’ll show Abby the cameras we’ve got set up.” Jackson nodded to Will, who nodded back.
“See you all later,” Malachi told them. He offered her a strange smile. She sensed that he was trying to tell her he wasn’t avoiding her, but that he didn’t want to be heard by anyone else. That the connection between them was private. She smiled in return.
As he left the restaurant, Macy came up to her. “Have you eaten anything?” she asked.
“I’m not hungry right now. I’ll eat soon, Macy, I promise,” Abby replied.
“We’re going to show her what I’ve been up to all day,” Will explained to Macy. He slipped an arm around Abby’s shoulders. “Come and see your new security system. We’ll start upstairs.”
He headed up the stairs, Abby behind him and Jackson at her heels. “First camera,” Will said, “covers the hall here, in front of the apartment. It’ll show up on computer screens in the parlor area of the apartment, and in the living room at your house.” He opened the door to the apartment. A large screen, divided into eight sections, was set up on a portable table with a chair in front of it. “Down at the bottom—with the strange light filter—that’s the tunnel. Here, upper left, you have the hall. Then you have the storage room and the employee lockers and lounge area. Below that you’ve got the bar and the front entry, and the two back-to-back dining rooms. Your last camera covers the outside, the whole structure of the building. I want to make sure we can see anyone trying to get in through any other entrance.”
“That’s fantastic. Very high-tech,” Abby said.
“Thanks. I do love computers and cameras,” Will told her. “But I plan to be on Dirk’s ship tomorrow. We’ll have Kat and Angela manning these cameras, just watching what’s going on—and trying to see if anything is going on. Frankly, I think this guy moves around. I think he uses different routes to get to the river.”
“You’re right,” Abby murmured.
“The cameras will help.” Will smiled at her. “I guess you have a guardian angel of sorts.”
“Oh?”
Will looked at Jackson.
“The pirate,” Jackson said, smiling, too.
“Did you get Blue on film?” she asked incredulously.
Will shook his head. “He passed by while I was setting up the camera in the tunnel. He didn’t speak to me, but he nodded, as if he approved.”
“I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen Blue since he led me to Gus,” Abby said.
“I assume he’s keeping watch. That’s what he does for the Dragonslayer. He really is your guardian angel,” Jackson said. “We’ve all learned that there’s really no point in questioning how and when the dead choose to communicate with us. Or why some stay—and some leave. We just work with them whenever they’re willing to work with us.”
Abby nodded. “Thank you for coming here.”
“We’re looking at very much the same thing as with the other killings,” Kat told Malachi. “She was struck on the head. But the actual cause of death was drowning. And, as I’m sure you already noted, third finger of the left hand is gone. I’d say she’s been dead a good three to four weeks. Do you see the marks on her wrists? They suggest she was bound by some kind of rough rope. But, you’ll notice, there are bruises on her arms. I think she fought back.”
Malachi nodded. This poor girl didn’t look real anymore.
“Has she been identified?” he asked.
“The police are going through missing-person reports,” Kat said, “and Jackson has sent what information we have to the national database back at the offices. So far, we don’t have an identity for her.”
“That would probably put her into the same category as the other women,” Malachi said slowly. “She was a tourist, perhaps on her own. Or maybe she was here looking for work. Maybe she was just passing through—so people are searching for her somewhere else.”
“I wish there was more I could say, more I could tell you.”
Malachi took a step closer to the corpse, setting his hand gently on her arm. He felt nothing except her cold, lifeless skin.
“I tried that,” Kat murmured.
Malachi nodded; he wasn’t surprised.
“I’m going over the other autopsies, looking for anything,” Kat said. “Oh, there’s one other thing I should tell you. We did match the finger to a victim.”
For a moment, he blanked. “Who?” he asked.
“It belonged to the first victim, Ruth Seymour.”
“The killer must have been carrying it around,” Malachi said.
“David has all the information for the reports. He was disturbed, of course, that Gus hadn’t called the police. But it’s too late to ask Gus why he didn’t. Maybe he was afraid he’d be a suspect himself? We’ll never know. But at least we found out where the finger belongs.”
“Thanks, Kat.” He sighed. “I’ll get back to the Dragonslayer now. There’s something forming in my mind. I’m not sure yet what it is. But—”
“Hurry it up if you can,” Kat broke in. “We have a girl out there who might still be alive.”
“I know,” Malachi said. “I know.”
Jackson Crow left the Dragonslayer to head back to Abby’s house on Chippewa Square to meet up with Angela. They were doing character studies on everyone associated with or working in the area of the river. He didn’t tell Abby that they were concentrating on employees and frequent customers of Dirk’s tour ship and the Dragonslayer. He didn’t need to tell her, she knew.
Alone in the apartment, Abby watched everything revealed by the newly installed cameras. She was fascinated as she went from screen to screen; once the dinner hours began, customers came and went.
Bootsie, Aldous and Dirk remained at the bar. When he wasn’t busy with other customers, Sullivan hung out there and chatted with them.
She watched as Macy spoke with Grant Green, giving him the day’s report. She could see Macy go up the stairs and into the manager’s office. Macy gathered up her belongings. She hesitated at the door to the apartment as if she meant to knock, but didn’t. Instead, she walked downstairs, obviously preparing to leave.
Abby thought about stopping her; she didn’t.
As she stared at one of the screens, she gasped. She’d been looking at the dining room with the grate to the tunnel and the image of Blue Anderson. But as she watched, Blue seemed to step out of his own image. He peered into the grate, then slipped through.
Abby jumped up and hurried down the stairs. Luckily, it was growing later by then. There were a few diners but none near the image of Blue. Rather than taking the main stairway, she hurried to the back of the storage room and came down the winding stone steps. At the grate, she fell to her knees and opened the combination lock that held the grating closed. She’d moved casually, but quickly and silently. With the grate open, she caught hold of the sides and slid down, hopping the last foot. It was dark in the tunnel but she’d come with her light and her Glock—she wasn’t taking chances.
She shone the light over the tunnel.
There was something—someone—in the shadows.
She lifted the light higher.
For a moment, it was as if she saw Blue in the flesh, he was that solid and real to her. He seemed to stand there in living color.
