Fatal Storm (5 page)

Wozniak turned to a young officer who looked
ready to blow lunch. “Contact headquarters. Have them send Luther
out here. Then call the building department. I want blueprints of
the Sebold mansion and property.”

The officer stole a quick glance back at the
deceased with its bluish tinge and distorted grimace. He swallowed
quick and with a nod hurried off to the squad car to call it
in.

“Let’s fan out, people,” Wozniak yelled.
“This is now a crime scene.”

A loud scream ripped through the air. Venus
flattened both hands against her mouth as though jamming the scream
back down her throat.

“All of you.” Wozniak motioned to the IPI
members. “Do you recognize this man?”

Flea’s eyes had doubled in size. If he
couldn’t handle a dead body, how could he handle a ghost? “Never
saw him before.”

“Lurch? What about you?”

“Huh?” Josh suddenly realized the chief was
referring to him. “Uh, no. Other than the three of us and the
reporter, we haven’t seen anyone else around.” He took a step
closer and chuckled. “Didn’t the Boston Strangler tie bows?”

Venus recovered enough to take a second look
at the deceased. “Oh my gods and goddesses. The scarf.” She forced
herself to study the fabric wrapped around the dead man’s neck.
“It’s hers. I complimented Sheila on the scarf. It matched her
black leather pants and red cashmere sweater. She was wearing it
last night.”

With the ghost hunters sequestered back on
the couch under the watchful eye of Sergeant Jackson, the eight
officers combing the surrounding area, and Cedar Point’s medical
examiner, Luther Jamison, outside with the body, Padre and John
secluded themselves in the dining room off the kitchen, pages of
blueprints unrolled on the polished mahogany table. The room could
easily accommodate a dinner for twenty. Ornate pictures of shipping
vessels and the harbor decorated the walls. The room needed two
chandeliers of tear drop lights to illuminate the length of the
table.

“Who gave the ghost hunters permission to
investigate this house?” John set a brass bookend of a horse’s head
at each corner of the paper to keep it from rolling back up.

“An attorney for the estate. Some guy by the
name of Jason Godfrey. He’s in California. Contracted a company
over the years to keep the grounds looking halfway decent. However,
once the Historical Society moved out and the economy took a dive,
he let everything go.” Padre ran a finger through the dust on the
table. A web hung from one chandelier to the other and Padre kept
waiting for it to drift down over their heads. “It’s obvious he
didn’t spend money to keep the interior clean.”

John focused on the film of dust collecting
in the corners of the room. “The upkeep for a mansion this size
costs an arm and a leg. Any idea what we’re looking at?” John
asked.

“I have Peters and Cromwell working on
finding out which real estate office had the account the last time
the place rented out.”

A voice boomed from the doorway. “Why the
hell isn’t this house being searched more thoroughly?” Leyton
demanded. “My daughter could be unconscious and stuffed in a closet
somewhere.”

John straightened and tried to keep his voice
under control. “My men already searched all of the rooms, Leyton.
All they could find was her jacket and purse, nothing stolen. They
didn’t find any blood in any of the rooms. I need them outside for
now until we have studied the blueprints. I would suggest you stay
in the foyer or in the library where the rest of the people are.
Padre and I will do another search for any panic rooms or vaults
added after the house was built, but we need to study the blue
prints first.”

“I can’t just sit by doing nothing. You have
to let me help.”

“I’m a father. I understand your need to do
something, but you have to face the fact, Leyton, that any clues
you might find would be questionable. I’m sorry to say this, but as
long as it’s your daughter’s scarf around the dead man’s neck, your
daughter is not only a missing person, but she is a suspect.”

“WHAT?! You can’t possibly be serious.” He
charged into the dining room like a rhino, but John held up one
hand.

“It would behoove you to stay outside on the
veranda. If you can’t stay out of the way, then I will have to have
an officer escort you back to Cedar Point. I don’t care how many
threats you make to contact the mayor, your lawyer, or a local
member of Congress. We are wasting valuable time keeping you under
control and out of the way.”

Leyton looked to Padre as if the lowly
sergeant would have any say in the matter. All Padre did was shrug.
“It’s for the best. You’re a newspaperman. Put yourself in our
shoes. How would you write the story if Sheila wasn’t involved? You
would be all over the cops for not controlling the investigation.
Perhaps it’s best if you go back to your house or keep busy at the
office. We’ll let you know if anything develops. Sooner or later
other newspapers are going to hear about this and they are going to
have a lot of questions for you. Right now this entire area is
blocked off and, knock on wood, we haven’t seen any press people.
But we can’t keep a lid on this forever.”

Leyton looked dejected. His shoulders hunched
and his bottom lip started to quiver. It was possible the burly guy
was going to breakdown and cry. “She’s my only child,” he
whispered.

John and Padre locked eyes across the table
in silent frustration. They were wasting a lot of time here. John
grabbed the walkie-talkie and clicked it on. “Porter.”

“Sir?”

“Check for any underground shelters or root
cellars. And have Luther update me as soon as he is finished out
there.”

John set the walkie-talkie down and looked at
Leyton. “You know anything about reading blueprints?”

Leyton blinked quickly, realizing he wasn’t
being exiled from the premises. “Uh, yes. I worked in the building
department during my high school days. I think I remember a thing
or two.” He pulled out a chair and bent his hulking frame over the
table. “This the first floor?”

“Yes. So far my men haven’t found any escape
tunnels, but that doesn’t mean some renovations haven’t been done
on the inside. Examine the blue print and see if you can spot any
anomalies.” John picked up the walkie-talkie again. “Sergeant
Jackson?”

“Jackson here.”

“Would you have each of our guests write up a
detailed report of everything that transpired last night. We won’t
interview them again until we get them back to the precinct.”
Voices could be heard in the background.

“Why do we have to stick around?”

“Why can’t we go home?”

“You can’t hold us against our will.”

“We didn’t do anything.”

“This house has bad karma.”

John clicked the walkie-talkie again. “The
faster they start writing, the sooner they can get to the precinct
and receive a meal. They are the last people to see Miss Monroe.
Their lack of cooperation would not look good for any future
business they hope to attract.” John set the walkie-talkie
down.

Luther came to an abrupt stop in the doorway.
He took a moment to take in the banquet size room. His gaze was
slow, almost analytical. He may as well have been looking for the
heart, lung, and kidneys of the mansion. “Holy shit. By the size
and age of this house I expected a hired help enter here sign on a
back door. Probably the first time a black man entered through the
front door.” His thin frame held up a head of enormous brain
cells.

“Let’s hear it,” John said.

He advanced and stopped in front of the
table. “No wallet or any other identification on the man. I’d say
he’s in his thirties, been dead less than twelve hours. That scarf
was tied on pretty tight but I found bruising on the neck, blood
under the deceased’s fingernails. He put up a fight. There’s a bump
on the side of his head. He might have been knocked out first. The
scarf was wrapped around his neck twice, tied in a knot, then in a
bow. Really weird. Like a Christmas package. An image of what
looked like the Liberty Bell was tattooed on his upper right arm.
Looks fresh. Other than that, won’t know more til we get him back
on the steel.”

A young man dressed in all white entered the
room and set a large thermos, a stack of drinking cups and a box of
donuts on the table. “Did you want them here, Doc?”

“Yes. Thanks, Phil.” He turned to John.
“Thought you guys could use some coffee so I had Phil make a mercy
run.”

“You are a god, Luther,” John said.

“Any suspects?” Luther poured cups of coffee
and passed them around.

“Got three ghost hunters by the staircase.”
Padre blew on the steaming cup of coffee, then took a tentative
sip.

“Ghost hunters?” Luther’s wide smile revealed
a mouth of perfect white teeth. “With the storm from hell that blew
in last night they were searching for ghosts?”

“Yeah, and Sheila Monroe was with them. She’s
still missing.” Padre pawed through the box of donuts until he
found a chocolate one.

Luther looked at Leyton Monroe and shook his
head. “Sorry. Wish I could have better news for you. Forensics
couldn’t find much with the water-soaked ground. Any footprints are
washed away. Can’t even tell what direction the man came from or if
he was dumped.”

“Well, he certainly couldn’t have walked from
the house and my daughter couldn’t possibly have carried him.”

“Actually, he could have stumbled from the
house or even the street. The way he was laying face down in the
ditch makes it appear that he was stumbling or walking and didn’t
see the ditch. He couldn’t have walked far in his condition.”

“What about satellite surveillance?” Leyton
said with renewed enthusiasm. “The victim pulls up to the house,
someone kills him, Sheila witnesses it, and the killer takes her
and the car and they drive off. They’d have it on satellite, right?
The killer is probably miles away by now, maybe left Sheila
unconscious somewhere else.”

Padre looked at John and they both knew it
was a long shot with the storm last night, but to placate Leyton,
John said, “I’ll call it in, see if anything was picked up on
satellite. It would explain why we can’t find Sheila. Maybe she
stepped out for a cigarette and the deceased and the killer were
driving together and stopped for directions, or pulled off in the
storm.”

Sara munched on a piece of fruit in silence
as she read through the missing persons report on Rick Jensen.
Dagger watched the intensity in her eyes. The remains of his greasy
hamburger were on his plate. He sat with his hands hidden under the
table, playing with his pocket knife. He drew the blade slowly
across the top of his hand and watched as blood seeped quickly from
the cut. He wiped the blood with a napkin and smiled as the cut
quickly closed, leaving barely a hint that he had injured himself.
A second cut, this time slower and deeper. When he turned his arm
and pressed the knife to his wrist, Sara had had enough.

“That vein will spray blood all over the
floor before the injury heals. And if you get blood on my new
leather jacket, you’re buying me a new one.”

Dagger flicked his gaze to Sara. Her leather
jacket hung on the back of her chair. It was a sunflower or
buttercup yellow. He never could get his shades right. And blood
red would definitely stain the leather. He snapped the knife closed
and slid it back into his pocket.

"You are having way too much fun with that,”
Sara pointed out. It was after his injury in Nebraska when a doctor
used several pints of Sara’s blood to save Dagger’s life that they
realized he now had almost the same healing abilities that Sara
possessed. He, of course, couldn’t regenerate limbs the way Sara
could. Nor could he shapeshift. But the ability to heal was the
only thing that saved his life in Nebraska.

“What can I say? It’s better than one of
those Wii games.” They sat near the fireplace at Northwoods, a huge
log cabin restaurant near the outskirts of Cedar Point. He lost
count of the number of men whose eyes had drifted to his partner,
how even the gray skies couldn’t dull the brightness of her eyes.
She didn’t need tons of makeup to enhance her natural beauty. But
there was only so much a man could take. All he had to do was level
dark eyes on the drooling admirers to send them scurrying in the
other direction. It was more his dark mood and the bulge of the
Kimber .45 under the leather jacket than his sinister glare that
kept them at a distance.

“Quit with the death rays already,” Sara said
without looking up from the report.

Damn
. Nothing
got by his partner. He should know by now she didn’t need
protection. Simon said Dagger had a streak of jealousy in his veins
since the first day Sara caught the eye of the rich homegrown
playboy, Nick Tyler. But Nick made the mistake of assuming Sara’s
interest in him was love and he had tried to pull a stealth
engagement on her, choosing a venue of two hundred close friends
and the press to pop the question. Once Sara caught wind of his
intentions, she was furious. First, his plan was hatched by Sheila
Monroe, Dagger’s ex-fiancee. And second, he wanted to be engaged
for four or five years which would keep Sara out of circulation
while Nick continued his playboy reputation. But there had been a
third reason Nick’s plan failed. Sara didn’t love him.

“Listen to this,” Sara said. “Rick Jensen’s
appointment in Miami claimed he never showed up yet his ticket was
used at O’Hare Airport.”

“What did I tell you? He ran.”

“Without any money? It says in the report
that the Jensen savings accounts and 401Ks were never touched.”

“He had been squirreling away money, a safety
stash. Every guy, and sometimes even girl, does it.”