“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 living room.” She was silent a minute. “The ghost of the man is here, Jackson. And he thinks he can help us.”
*
Roger Newsome had been a tall, dignified man in life. He’d been slim to a point that showed his illness, but he still stood tall. He had a fine face with good cheekbones and a strong chin, and large dark intense eyes. When he smiled, she knew he’d had a fine sense of humor. She believed he must have been a kind man, and she was sorry for all the bad that had befallen him.
“I shot a man; I don’t know if I could have talked him down or not, but I shot him and he died there and . . . I resigned. I should have been a traffic cop. I went to war, and I knew how to fight, but when I was a civilian . . . well, the fellow I shot was suffering from severe mental disease. I think something else could have been done, so . . . well, I resigned. And right after, I found out I’d gotten hep C from a blood transfusion during my time in the military, and while there are drugs now that can help, it was too late, so my liver has been killing me for a long time. Of course, I should have found decent work, but I wound up with odd jobs . . . and then on the streets.”
“I’m so sorry!” Angela told him. Corby sat on her lap, listening. His dark eyes were big with compassion, and she hugged him tightly.
“Anyway, this fellow, this man, David Andre, invited me to his place. He said he had some work that needed to be done in his cellar. But we didn’t go to his house; we went to a shop that looked like it had been abandoned. He said he just needed some tools that were there. I went in with him and he explained it had closed with the pandemic, that it had been a workshop for creature effects. And I was fascinated! There was a laughing, adorable pig right next to one of the most grotesque zombies I’d ever seen. But while I was being amazed and enjoying myself, he was getting a knife. He apologized to me—but he said he’d been watching me and knew my death would be painful so . . . he was going to get it over with for me. He needed material. There were those who deserved to die—and me, who needed to die.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Angela breathed again.
But Roger Newsome shook his head. “Don’t be—I’m finally feeling useful again.”
“How did you know to come here?” she asked softly.
“Oh, I’d read about some ‘Krewe’ cases. I hung around your headquarters sometimes. You have nice, compassionate people working for you.”
Angela stood, setting Corby on his feet.
Jackson should be arriving soon. She could explain more once they were in the car. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“Remember, I don’t know exactly where we were,” Roger Newsome’s ghost said.
“I know. But we’ll drive around the district where some of those workshops and factories are located. Hopefully, you’ll find it for us.”
Corby looked at her. Mary, holding the baby in her arms, stood in the doorway to the bedrooms. She didn’t see the dead the way Jackson, Angela, and Corby did—but she sensed them.
She shook her head at Angela.
Corby shouldn’t go. Not when they didn’t know what they would find. He faced the evil men could do to their fellows often enough.
“Corby, thank you. Thank you so much for helping. Now, will you help Mary with the baby?” she asked. “And you all will need to order dinner—”