She was staring at the page when Corby came back in.
“Mom!” he said anxiously. “There’s a man who wants to talk to you.”
She looked up frowning. “Okay. Is everything all right?”
“I found him on the sidewalk when I came back with my bike. He looked lost, and I talked to him, and I told him I’d bring you down. and you could help him. I mean I don’t bring people up here, though I suppose he could have followed me.”
“Corby.”
“Mom, it’s a dead man.”
Chapter 4
Jackson reached for his phone to call Barry before leaving the offices; he was sure their suspect was not going to be found at his home. Maybe he’d carried out his first project—turning a man into in a Halloween pumpkin scarecrow—at his place.
But he’d be gone by now.
He’d surely been watching, anxious for his work to be discovered.
Still, police needed to get out there. It never paid to second-guess any situation. But before he could dial Barry and then Angela, his phone rang.
It was Barry.
“Jackson, we’ve got another one. This time, it’s an evil doll—and it was set up at the drive-thru spooky place. It was set up because of the pandemic. Halloween Haven. Can you—”
“I’m on my way, but I have a suspect. His name is David Andre. He was turned down for work at Foxy—where our victim was the one who turned him down for his work not being up to their standards. I don’t think they’ll find him but get someone out to his residence. I’m sending you and Angela his picture and his address. And I’ll be out to Halloween Haven as fast as I can get there,” Jackson told him.
“I’m on it!” Barry promised.
Jackson hurried out to his car. He used his speaker phone to call Angela.
She didn’t answer.
She would get right back, he knew. She was probably doing something with the baby, or maybe helping Corby with his schoolwork. But she was always efficient; she would get right back to him.
Traffic was middling; it didn’t take him long to reach the Halloween theme park.
Of course.
What better place to leave a corpse dressed up as a creature?
How many would they find?
Barry had seen to it they had closed the park for the night before he got there, so Jackson produced his credentials and was given directions to the display that held the body.
Barry came rushing over to him as he drew his car up to “Evil Doll Alley.”
“Can you believe this?”
“Sadly, I can. The Krewe had a case having to do with a Halloween amusement park,” Jackson told him. “Do we have an I.D. on the new victim.”
“We do! Fingerprints came right back. Roger Newsome. He was a soldier in Viet Nam, and a cop in Colorado for years—and homeless now. He was living on the streets. He had nothing to do with special effects or the movies.”
“He might have been a random target to prove a point,” Jackson said.
“What point?”
“That our killer can make anyone into anything,” Jackson said. He paused with Barry. The detective had seen to it Dr. Martina Lopez had been called in again. She was directing the replacement of the corpse as he stood with Barry, taking in the scene.
On the one hand, the park was great. Drive-thru—something for kids and adults alike as Halloween arrived at a difficult time in the history of a nation that embraced Halloween. On the other hand . . .
It had provided a venue for a killer.
There were all kinds of life-sized evil dolls on display in the “alley.” Dolls from movies, and superhero dolls turned bad. There was an evil Raggedy-Ann, and a vicious teddy bear with blood and ooze dripping from his mouth. There was a zombie werewolf doll.
And the doll had been human. Roger Newsome. It had been a clown doll, one in a typical blousy clown costume with giant polka-dots, red nose, big ears, and floppy hat.
As he watched, Marty’s assistants carefully removed the body from the pole it had been attached to so the image of a standing, lurking clown might be created. The mouth had been painted grotesquely, making it look as if the “clown” had also been gnawing on flesh.
Jackson and Barry walked up the podium where the body was lain on a stretcher. Photographs were taken again, and then Marty worked over the body, quickly coming to the point where she ripped open the costume and looked up at them.
“Knife wound, through the heart,” she said. “But this man’s coloring is bad. I believe, if he hadn’t been murdered, he would have died soon. Not sure yet, but I think he was suffering from cancer or liver disease. I’ll know more after autopsy. I’m going to say he was in his early seventies, severely emaciated . . . suffering.” She looked up at them. “The prints came back fast. This man was a soldier who stepped up and fought for his country. And he was a cop, but he left before his pension, and I guess whatever money he was getting just didn’t pay rent.” She winced, shaking her head. “This is so not right! I mean, the killing might have been a mercy killing and . . . we must do more for our vets!”
“Agreed,” Jackson said. “But—a knife through the heart, a mercy killing?”
“For an old soldier and cop, yeah, maybe,” Marty said. “I don’t know yet what he was suffering from, but I will find out.”
Jackson nodded and looked at his phone. It was buzzing. Angela.
He answered it, speaking already. “I believe I know who are suspect might be, but we’ve found another victim—”
“Roger Newsome,” she said.
“Uh, yes. How do you know?”
“Because I’m talking to him right now,” Angela said. “In fact, he’s in our
