“You know your mom,” he said. “She found something to investigate and she’s—investigating.”
“Right, but—why isn’t she answering her phone?”
“I’m not sure, son. I’m not sure.”
He had dealt with so much in his years as head of the Krewe—and in the years before that. But now, he felt the sheer panic that any man would feel.
Control it, you have to control it! He told himself.
“Corby, put Adam on, please.”
“Right. Dad, listen, I’m coming to you. We’re coming to you. Mom isn’t here. Adam told me why he and Josh were picking me up and not you guys—that a pregnant lady was seized in this cemetery. Dad, they got Mom, too.”
He could hear the tears in his son’s voice.
“Corby, we have to stay cool and calm; we have help. Annie Green’s father is with me—”
“Dead father.”
“Right.”
“Adam has been arguing with people. They want to interview the witness.”
“Okay, I need to speak with Adam. We do need to move quickly. We need to think like Mom, Corby. You know how she tackles problems, looking everything up.”
“There’s a hole in the ground here somewhere,” Corby said.
Jackson winced. There were holes in the ground everywhere here—it was a cemetery that was a few hundred years old, but—
“Corby, you’re right. I think there is a really, really big hole in this place somewhere. Think like Mom. Don’t come to me. Get back in the car with Adam and call up every old map you can of this place. There are lots of holes here, but we’re looking for one really big hole. See what you can find.”
“But Dad, I should be searching—”
“Think about Mom,” Jackson said softly. “You know her; you know how she works. Listen to me, I’m going to call in and get Jon Dickson and others working on similar cases. And they’ll see what they can figure out at the home office. But you think like your mom. Remember, that’s how you two got to know one another, you’re so much alike. You find out everything you can about this cemetery.”
“I . . . yes, I will! Dad, this place is so old. There could be all kinds of tunnels beneath the ground. I mean there are graves, but maybe there were catacombs for . . . for people like me, people of color. Maybe there’s a place where people were accepted to be buried or . . . I don’t know. But I will find out what I can.”
Jackson thought if there were tunnels beneath the cemetery, someone would have known. It would be part of the history of the place. But he was happy to have Corby working on the situation, doing something other than going crazy.
And he just might be right. Corby was like Angela—the kind of kid who could follow any little Internet clue and get somewhere.
“Perfect, Corby, get on it. And please, I need to speak with Adam.”
Adam got on Corby’s phone.
“Adam—"
“I’m on it. But we’re law enforcement and we have to do things legally. I will get what we need; I just need a little time. I’m having a few problems here as it’s private property. According to the woman in the office, Angela was in there. Then she left.”
“They have cameras.”
“Just at the entrances.”
“We need whatever they have anyway.”
“They’re not very cooperative, and they know their rights,” Adam said. “But . . . I know people, too. We just have a witness who isn’t . . .”
“Living,” Jackson said softly.
The ghost of Cameron Adair was watching him; he’d heard Jackson’s conversations. He looked at Jackson and said quietly. “I swear to you, I am telling the truth.”
Jackson nodded at him. “I know. And I think they’ve taken Angela, too.”
“No!” Cameron appeared stricken; he appeared to feel it was his fault that another woman had been taken, too.
Of course, there might have been something that had distracted her . . .
No. Jackson knew his wife. No matter how distracted she might become, if she had been able to, she would have called him by now.
Something had happened, something that had taken her completely by surprise.
“Adam, we need to see the footage from the front. Get it, please. And do something that gets whoever is in that front office to cooperate.”
“There’s only one person in the office,” Adam said. “Her name is Merissa Hatfield. She claims there’s another cemetery worker on the grounds today. The man who makes sure maintenance is up to par and manages the peaceful Victorian landscaping—there are rules on what can and can’t be left at graves, apparently. Anyway, she claims he would have seen something if something had happened.
Anyway, I’m getting a warrant. I’m on my own phone right now on hold. I’ll get the footage as soon as possible. We’ll know who came into the cemetery—and who went out of it.”
“Call Jon Dickson for me, will you? He’s pretty amazing at quickly getting information on other kidnappings and events that might be similar, that might give us something. I was going to do it myself, but if you--”
“Will do.”
They ended the call.
Jackson looked at Cameron, hating what he was going to say, but knowing he was right.
“They were taken for the babies,” he said. “Two pregnant women. There must be an illegal agency out there selling babies. The good thing is this--they’re both going to be all right. For now. No one is going to risk their lives until those babies are born. But we must find out where they were taken to—before they’re moved from wherever they are to somewhere else.”
Jackson headed over to the next mausoleum, the Rosser mausoleum.
Cameron Adair followed him.
It was bigger than the Miller mausoleum and the first interment had been in 1841. Names had been chiseled into the stone. The first lettering was wearing away but still just legible. Harold Burton Rosser had been born in 1788 and died in 1841, and was the founder of the Rosser Ironworks.
Since Harold’s passing all those years back, twenty-eight members of
