No matter how she tried to change the subject, her group was obsessed with the Axeman of New Orleans.
She hadn’t memorized all the facts and figures regarding the Axeman, but in her training to be a guide, she’d learned about the attacks. There were different ideas, of course. And at the time, there had been arrests—wrongly, in one case. A surviving victim had accused her neighbors—an old man and his seventeen-year-old son. They’d gone to jail, looking at the death penalty, and the woman had later recanted. Many of the journalists who had explored records believed the police had pushed her into identifying her neighbors. Others believed she had done so out of jealousy or spite.
Katie’s tour ended. As the group crawled down from the carriage—tipping nicely and giving her their thanks—she saw an older man was waiting. He was watching her. He had to be waiting for her, she thought, because he was at the curb by her carriage, and she couldn’t imagine any stranger choosing one of them over the other.
The man might have been around seventy or perhaps even a few years older, but she’d seldom seen anyone so straight, lean and dignified. His soft, silvery-white hair was cut short, and the customary wrinkles of age couldn’t change the fine contours of his face.
He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt and a vest that matched his suit. He looked like a man about to walk into an important business meeting, not a tourist eager to hear the history, lore or ghost stories of New Orleans.
For a moment, she wondered if he was real. Living.
Yes, he was real. He was speaking with Lorna.
Lorna didn’t see the dead. Nor had Katie ever shared with her friend, or anyone for that matter, the fact she was able to see and speak with many of the ghosts that filled the city streets.
Her uncanny talent helped a great deal in her relaying the stories that abounded in the city.
It had started that horrible day her parents had been murdered. The ghost of Billy Battle—privateer, not pirate, as he assured her—had come to her in the water. He had probably saved her life, since she’d been floundering, heedless of whether she lived or died. She had seen him only once again, one night on the beach, since she had left the Keys so quickly after her parents’ deaths. But he had been kind and had given her so much comfort. In her new world, the dead were not to be feared; they were to be embraced.
“Katie!” Lorna called to her. “This gentleman has been waiting for you.”
“Oh?” Katie offered the man a polite but questioning smile.
He smiled back. “Yes, I’ve been very much looking forward to meeting you,” the man said.
“Oh?” she repeated.
The day was going from tragic to strange to stranger.
“May I?” he asked, indicating the step to the carriage.
“Uh...yes, of course. Do you want more of a historic tour or a ghost tour?”
“Ah, well, a good ghost tour is all about history, isn’t it?” he suggested.
“Well, yes, I’ve always felt that way.”
“A little of both, please,” he told her.
He seated himself in the wagon, in the passenger seat to the right side, making it easier for her to glance back and look at him.
Lorna waved from the sidewalk, curious. Then her attention was diverted as a couple approached her for a tour.
Katie glanced back at the man. He was studying her curiously, intently, but with a smile.
“Katie,” he said quietly, “I was waiting for you specifically because I suspect you’re someone who can help in the current situation.”
She groaned. “You mean the murders. I drive a carriage. I’m not a cop of any kind. I’m not an investigator. Do I think they’re all associated? Yes. But I can’t personally do a damned thing about it.”
“No, but—”
“But?” she asked, wanting to like him, but exasperated.
“I knew your father, Katie.”
“Okay...”
“Your dad was gifted.”
“Yes, he was extremely gifted, wonderful, brave, gracious and kind. I adored my father. I’m grateful to hear you found him the same.”
“I believe you might be gifted, too.”
“I like to believe that I’m a decent human being, so, um, thanks.”
His easy smile deepened. “Gifted. You talk to the dead, Katie. Your dad did, too.”
* * *
“I’ve already made a pile of the books I think you might find relevant. Another agent is down at the archives, seeing if there might be anything missed in the old public records.”
Dan wasn’t an easily startled person, but the voice that spoke to him as he strolled down the nonfiction aisle at the Garden District Book Shop still seemed to come out of nowhere.
Except he knew the voice.
It was Axel Tiger, an old friend from Florida, who currently worked with an elite unit of the FBI. Because he was originally from South Florida, Axel had often been called down on strange cases in the state.
Axel’s special unit was known for investigating the most bizarre cases. When he was with the FDLE, Dan had heard them jokingly called the ghostbusters, since they seemed to get any case that had any hint of the otherworldly about it.
He glanced at his watch—it was almost five in the afternoon, and he shouldn’t have been surprised. Crime scene, police station, cemetery and bookstore. But had Axel just been in New Orleans? Or had they gotten a call at their Northern Virginia offices already?
“You’re here on the murders discovered this morning?” Dan asked, staring at him. “Already?”
“Already,” Axel said.
His friend and occasional former coworker stood looking at him with a shrug. “I know you believe the murders in Florida and here had to be related. Naturally, Feds follow events like this that have crossed state lines.”
“How the hell did you get here so damned quick?” Dan demanded.
“Our fearless leader is down here, too. He can order the jet whenever he chooses.”
“Jackson Crow is here?” Dan asked. He’d worked with Axel’s field director in the past, too.
But Axel shook his head. “The big cheese is here. Seems a friend of his was killed years ago, in a similar brutal manner, out on a boat—”
“Louis Delaney.”
“Yes, the man’s name was Louis Delaney. They had met at a charity function sponsored by military vets and became friends. Anyway, Adam has been haunted by that case for years. He sent an agent down to Florida when the murders occurred in Orlando, and now... Well, we’re here.”