Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow (25 page)

“Liam played football, Sean. I was a linebacker, he was a quarterback. He was never jealous of me. I have a hard time believing that Sam killed his sister. And Pete has risen like a meteor at the station. He was just a beat cop when the murder took place. He loves Key West. Maybe this list is bull. Maybe we should both be on it. Me more than you, of course. I found Tanya in the museum, and I was the one dating her. Odd, though. I’ve read the ledger over and over. Katie seems convinced it all has something to do with the first Craig Beckett, who had a man executed.”

Sean looked around the parlor. He stared back at David.

He let out a sigh. “I’m thinking that we both need to pay more attention to my sister,” he said.

“I always listen to your sister.”

Sean gave him an awkward and crooked smile. “No, no, you’re not really listening to her.”

“What do you mean?”

He could have sworn that Sean was going to say something-that he was about to break down and tell him something about Katie that was incredibly important.

But he didn’t.

Sean shook his head, disturbed. “I can’t,” he said softly. “You have to speak to Katie. This is crazy. I’ve told Katie over and over… I love my sister. And people would think that she was crazy. You’d think that-never mind. I’m telling you, just pay attention to my sister. That’s all.”

David frowned, watching him.

Sean stood suddenly. “Hell, I’m exhausted. And there’s tomorrow. Great idea for me, this coming home thing. Not a vacation at all. Two murders in a week, but for the living, life goes on. I guess that’s the way that it always has been, and always will be.”

David was tired, and wished that he could somehow shake Sean to find out what he meant. But Sean wasn’t going to talk. He seemed really tired, disgusted and frightened for his sister.

“Some major cities have a murder rate of one a day, and they can’t shut down, I suppose. Of course, statistically, our murder rate is two a year, not two a week. The investigative unit deals with drug deals, and cleaning up the street most of the time. Drugs are dangerous, the officers are up against a lot, but…not usually like this,” David said.

“You just said ‘our,’” Sean told him.

“Our-as in Key West,” David said.

“We both left,” Sean said.

“Still, we’re conchs,” David said.

Sean was watching him thoughtfully. “So, once a conch, always a conch?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” David asked, irritated. “We’ve been through history and statistics, so what are we on now?”

“My sister,” Sean said softly.

“I don’t think the city is safe right now, and I don’t intend to let anything happen to her,” David said.

“That’s not exactly where I was going. She is my sister.”

“Yes?”

“Well, this sounds odd as hell. Just what are your intentions with my sister?”

David stared back at him.

What the hell were his intentions.

“I-”

“Yes, yes, you’re going to keep her safe. And I will, too. There’s some kind of psycho out there, but a couple of fellows who work in video and print film are going to keep her safe.”

David realized that Sean had made a good point, and his defenses rose to the fore. “I served in the military, did my time in the desert, Sean.”

“But what if you’re the one putting her in danger?” Sean asked. “Say someone had been out to get you all those years ago-kill Tanya, frame you. So now that person has killed a prostitute-and Danny Zigler. And he still hasn’t left clues, and he still hasn’t been caught. It’s not like you and Katie have this long-standing love affair. You could be putting her in serious danger,” Sean said.

“Ten years ago, a killer got away with murder,” David said. “But that was then, and this is now. Science has come a long way. They’ve just discovered Danny’s body. The killer has to make a mistake. And it will be found,” David said.

Katie suddenly appeared in the entrance to the parlor.

She walked into the room. She paused, giving her brother a kiss on the cheek, and then walking over to David. She looked up into his eyes and slipped an arm around him before she faced her brother. “Sean, I love you. I’m grateful that you came home, and I’m grateful that you care about me. I’ll answer your earlier question. None of what’s happening between us was intended, so no one can have intentions. I know that I’m not backing away from my life, and I don’t want David backing away from me because of anything that’s happening. No one knows what will come in the future, but I know that what’s going on between us is honest, and that’s the only intention I want.”

“Maybe you two should just pretend then to step away from one another,” Sean suggested.

“I think it would be too late for that,” Katie said. She smiled and shrugged. “I think the damage is done, Sean, so please, don’t go asking David to stay away from me.”

“We’ve got to…I don’t know. We’ve got to be careful with every move, that’s all I have to say,” Sean told her. “Well, that’s not all I have to say, but we’re all exhausted. I’m going to bed. After I make sure the doors and windows are locked.” True to his word, he walked around the room, bolting the windows. With a nod, he left them there.

Katie turned in David’s arms. “Sorry you got involved?” she asked him.

He held her close and shook his head. “Never, Katie.”

He pulled her closer and lifted her chin. “Never,” he said. “Katie, Sean said that you had a dream, that you believed Danny was dead.”

She started to move away from him.

“Katie,” he said, pulling her back.

She stared at him, and he thought that she was holding her breath, that like Sean she was about to say something.

But she didn’t.

She stood on her toes and lightly kissed his lips. “We really do need some sleep,” she said. She caught his hand, and she led him toward the stairs.

They slept…

And they didn’t sleep.

At first, they held one another.

He drifted to sleep. He woke, feeling the heat of her form against him, feeling her moving. He didn’t move, not wanting to wake her.

But she was awake. Her fingers trailed down his chest, circled around his abdomen, moved lower. His breath caught as he felt her sudden, sure touch. He rolled, pulled her against him, taking her into his arms, meeting her lips and then using his own to create a slow trail of liquid fire along her collarbone and breasts.

For a moment, she was still, breath caught.

Then she moved. Fluid, easy, ridiculously graceful for the vital energy that suddenly poured through the two of them. Passionate, fierce…the ardent movement of her body escalated by the soft whisper of tenderness that came with the brush of her lips against his.

He became the aggressor, sweeping her beneath him.

The world went still, and there was nothing but the hunger and the need, the basic feel of flesh and cotton and sheets, and their words as they edged closer and closer to climax. Again, the world went still, and there were moments that were oddly as fulfilling as the instinctive need for sexual satiation, that could never be achieved unless more than just sex was involved.

He was becoming a philosopher, he thought.

No. Feelings were what they were. All the psychology and science in the world could never really answer the human question of why emotions raged where they did.

She lay beside him again, and slept, and he thought that again, maybe something as old as man was rising inside of him. He knew that he would die to protect her.

As the morning passed, he held her close, felt her flesh against his flesh, the rise and fall of her breathing.

What were his intentions?

He had never come home to stay. And then again, he had never felt this intimate with a woman, no matter how long they’d been together, no matter what the sexual appeal.

Not the time to think about it. There was a killer out there.

And they were no closer now than they had been ten years ago.

Or were they?

It seemed that the curtains suddenly flew, as if cool air whirled into the room. Katie sat up and looked around, and the ghost of Tanya Barnard was standing by her bed.

She reached out, and Katie took her hand.

“Please…” the ghost whispered.

She looked beyond Tanya. Danny was there, looking at her with prayerful eyes, and at his side, Stella Martin stood, watching her, waiting.

“You must help me,” she told them. “You must help me. Please, think, what do you know? Who followed you, who was with you-who killed you? Show me.”

They shook their heads, staring at her.

She looked to Danny. “The books, Danny-and the money. David saw them in your house. Who were you blackmailing-who gave you the money?”

She couldn’t hear him. His lips were moving. She tried to come closer to him, to study the movement. She wanted to scream with frustration.

I took the books from the library. And then I got the call. Stop. Stop looking for the past, or I would join it. Leave it be, and there would be money. And there was money. I found it under my pirate-skull doormat. And I didn’t know, but someone seemed to think I would find out what happened to Tanya, but I had no idea…that was the past. I kept the money. There was no way to give it back, no one to give it back to, because I really didn’t know.

Katie looked at the three ghosts. “Can’t you help me at all?”

Something, I saw something, someone thought I saw something. I saw Stella briefly. She came to the window, kept her back to the street. But then she was gone.

Stella stepped forward. Now we’re all gone, all gone, and there are impressions and things we see in our minds… Katie, help, you must help, you are the only one who can help.

She had the oddest sensation of being approached by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, all in one. Air seemed to sweep around her in massive currents. She was suddenly standing with a group in back of La Concha Hotel. She could hear the ghost-tour guide speaking, talking about the tragic suicides from the roof, and telling the story of the young man who haunted the place, a young man who had perished in the not-too-distant past when he had been distracted by a pretty young woman and plunged to his death down an elevator shaft.

Danny was with her. So was Tanya. And Stella. They were grouped around her on the tour. The others in the group seemed to be faceless. The guide was wearing a Victorian frock coat and vest, and a top hat. She couldn’t see his face. But then he turned. His face was Danny’s face.

The tour group moved from tragic event to tragic event. All the while, the tour guide talked of the ghosts that still haunted these places. Behind him, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, Tanya and Stella sobbed softly.

“She’s still here,” Danny said clearly. “She’s still here. Go anywhere on the island, wax museum, oddities museum, history museum, you’ll see our dear Elena, Elena Milagro de Hoyos… You will see her. She is Key West. She is our most famous, and most bizarre, story.”

Tanya let out a long, wailing cry, and the wind shifted and the earth moved beneath Katie’s feet.

They were standing before the hanging tree.

By the tree, the building began to fade and disappear. Next door, where the main section of Captain Tony’s stood, bar stools evaporated, and she might have been on a whirlwind tour through a time machine. Bar…telegraph office…morgue…the visions swept by. Then, the landscape was suddenly raw and overgrown, rocky, with patches around them that were barren. She could hear the sound of the water, coming from the south, coming from the north, and the west. It was all around her…

A man was being dragged to the gallows…

Cursing…

Cursing a man named Beckett who looked on with fierce and furious eyes, eyes that seemed so familiar…

Again, the wind blew; it was as if she stood still while a hurricane raged. Time whipped by her. Fishermen, pirates, wreckers, smugglers and thieves…soldiers in blue, and soldiers in gray, and then sailors from a country united once again. She heard a cry on the wind. “Remember the Maine!”

And then, suddenly, the world was still. She was walking down a long hall in a building.

A strange-looking, skinny old man turned to her, arms before him, fingers flexing. “It is love, love for what is ours, love. Love-ah, yes, and family name. We are all that we create. And I have created love.”

He moved aside. There was a bed, within the confines of an airplane cabin. There was a woman in a bridal gown, laid upon the bed.

It was just an exhibit. Count von Cosel, and his Elena.

But Elena rose from the bed and looked up. It wasn’t Elena. Katie stared at her own countenance. She was there. She had taken Elena’s place in the exhibit this time.

Her own arm raised and pointed.

She turned.

And once again, she was staring at the hanging tree, and the noose and the dead man who dangled and swung beneath the branches.

“Katie!” David said.

She had let out a cry; she was sitting up in bed, soaked with beads of perspiration, and yet shaking as if it had suddenly plunged to ten degrees in Key West.

He drew her to him. “Katie, I’m here, Katie, it’s all right. You had a nightmare.”

She stared at him. For a moment, her eyes were unfocused. Then she seemed to really see his face.

“It was just a nightmare, Katie. And I’m here. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She relaxed in his arms. Then she pulled away. She stood, and she was naked and beautiful and natural, but somehow putting a distance between them, as well.

“Katie?”

She sighed, sat back down next to him and said, “David, even if we’d found Danny alive, he wouldn’t have been able to help us. He wasn’t blackmailing anyone, but someone did think that he’d seen something, or knew something. I think he had the books on Key West just because he wanted to make his stories better, but the killer knew that there was something in the books-in the history of Key West-that might give him away. He saw Stella the night before she died. The killer must have thought that Danny saw him then, because he’d seen Stella, and maybe the murderer. That’s why Danny died.”