Prologue
They didn’t see it.
But they would.
He was an artist.
He smiled, looking at his handiwork and wondering how he would let the world know.
The media, of course. The media loved to hop on anything. So much for their opinion of his talents! They would know. He would be Anonymous. Or the Effects Man. But they would see—they would see. And read and learn. He smiled and set his pen to paper again.
The usual pen and the usual paper. Available in thousands of stores across the country—tens of thousands of stores maybe. He smiled again. And he wrote.
“ ’Twas right before Halloween
And all through the land
Creatures were appearing,
Gruesome and grand,
Witches and goblins and scarecrows, oh, my!
Skeletons, mummies, werewolves, no lie!
And what to my wondrous eye should I see
Blood and guts coming straight at me!
And blood and guts coming straight at thee!
So many ghastly ghouls on this night,
How many to see before the light!”
He started to laugh. So, he’d done a bit of mixing. It didn’t matter. They would get the point. It might take a bit, but then they’d see.
He truly was a talent!
Chapter 1
Halloween. Great holiday. Tons of fun.
And when the hell else could you hide a corpse in plain sight?
For American children—and adults as well--It was supposed to be an entertaining time, no matter what else was going on in the world. Kids loved to dress up, and people loved to decorate. It was good for the economy—especially for candy makers and those who created costumes.
Some kids—and adults--wanted to be superheroes, some wanted to be princes or princesses or fairies, and some wanted to be witches, zombies, skeletons, and other creepy beings.
There were those deeply into the old Celtic concept, that it was the night when the dead could rise to join the living, and when great care had to be taken lest evil fill the darkness.
Jackson Crow stared at the figure on the porch. It had a plastic pumpkin-jack-o-lantern for a head, and a body resembling a straw-stuffed scarecrow.
And, of course, people had just walked by it grinning. There were store-bought spiderwebs all around the railings and the roof of the porch as well. And on the other side of the front door, there was a grinning mummy.
The old Fillmore place had been abandoned for about twenty years; the city was still deciding what to do with the property.
It had the reputation for being a haunted house. It was natural when some mischievous kid—or adult, since it appeared the thing had been professionally made—had thought it would be fun to decorate a “haunted” house for the season.
People had passed by it for days, probably smiling and enjoying the fun and the artistry.
It wasn’t until Jackson had been driving with his son, Corby, after taking him for his check-up. Jackson had stopped to run quickly into the pharmacy for milk, and while doing so he’d told Corby it was okay to walk down the street to see some of the cool Halloween decorations.
And that was when his son had noticed something odd about the thing no one else had noted.
Corby had hurried back to the car anxious to talk to him.
“Jackson—Dad!” Corby had been adopted just after Christmas. He was a great kid, and he was comfortable with the adoption and living in his new home and sweetly grateful. He usually called Angela and Jackson Mom and Dad--except when he was unnerved.
“Corby, what it is?” Jackson had asked.
Corby grabbed his hand and run with him down the street to the old Fillmore house. He had seen the creature on the porch—and smelled it. Even with his mask.
He had called 911 immediately. Local authorities had to come out, even if he was FBI.
“Dad—it’s a dead man, isn’t it?” Corby said, eyes wide with horror and sadness. “Someone . . . oh, Dad!”
“I believe so, Corby, and I’m sorry—I’m sorry you’re the one who discovered the truth, but because you did, maybe . . .”
He let his voice trail.
“The sooner someone finds a crime, the better the chance it might be solved,” Corby said.
“Right, and thank you,” Jackson told him. “I’m calling Mom; I need her down here. She can have Mary take you home now. You’ve done your work.”
“Yeah, I have. There’s nothing . . .” Corby broke off and looked at Jackson and shrugged. “He’s not still here.” he said softly.
Corby wasn’t just a great kid. Like Angela and Jackson—and all Krewe members—he had the ability to speak to the dead. If they remained.
And if they chose to speak.
“I don’t feel him—or see him—anywhere either,” he said.
Police cars and an ambulance arrived. Thankfully, Jackson’s wife—Special Agent Angela Hawkins—arrived at the same time with Mary, another agent’s aunt who had come to live with them and care for the kids when Angela and Jackson were at work.
Mary was like a gift from heaven. She might have been his own aunt or Angela’s, the way she had fit into their household and lifestyle so well.
Jackson saw Angela arrive with Mary and turn the car over to her after giving Corby a hug, and Jackson believed, asking him to make sure he still did his schoolwork.
She walked over to Jackson’s side on the embankment where he was standing. He’d flashed his badge to the first officers on the scene; they had nodded and cordoned off the house and yard with crime scene tape. A detective he knew well and had worked with before, Barry Armstrong, arrived and walked over to him shaking his head.
“It’s a dead guy?” he asked Jackson. He didn’t wait for an answer. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his face. “Yep. It’s a dead guy—or a whole pack of dead raccoons. What the hell? I’ve driven by and seen this . . . this display a half a dozen times. It never occurred to me that . . . ah, man! I’ll never look at a decoration the same again!”
“There’s Marty,” Jackson noted, “and her people.”
The medical examiner who arrived was Doctor Martina Lopez, one of the best, and a tiny woman. And while she was a trained physician, she was also one of the best forensic experts—in Jackson’s opinion—in the country. She often surprised people; she was about five-feet-even, maybe ninety pounds, with steel gray hair and sharp gray eyes. She looked as if she might be the gentle, sweet granny knitting socks by the fire.
She was anything but, Jackson thought.
Except she had told him once she did like to knit.
So maybe she was just that—with a zillion more talents.
A good thing in the D.C. area, where “crazy” could be centered.
She, too, shook her head as she approached the scene.
“Hey, Barry,” she said, and then, “Jackson, Angela!” she continued, a small frown knitting her brow.
There was one dead man; she was obviously wondering why FBI agents were there.
Then her frown eased.
“Barry, this is ours?”
“Ah, yeah, our jurisdiction,” Barry said. “But . . .”
His voice trailed. He didn’t mind the Krewe being on the case as well. This one was going to garner all kinds of publicity. Halloween was on the horizon. But with the pandemic and the world going a bit insane already, Halloween—as far as parties and trick-or-treating went—was going to be low-key.