for vengeance, and the laws during Reconstruction were often brutal on the native inhabitants of the South. Such was the case in New Orleans. Nathaniel was being taxed into the grave. He disappeared after the sale to Newton, who was newly arrived from New York City. Petti’s wife and child had died during the war years, and the official assumption—if there were such a thing at the time—was that Petti had left, unable to bear the pain of being in New Orleans. While martial law became civil law, politics created almost as much of a war as that which had been fought. While the Freedman Act became law, the “old guard” of the South rose, and organizations such as the KKK came to life. Race riots in 1866 cost more than a hundred souls their lives, and there could be little worry given to the fact that one disenfranchised man had disappeared.
This set the stage for Madden C. Newton to begin his reign of terror.
To this day, it is not known whether or not he killed Petti; what is known is that Petti disappeared, and the motto of the day for the Reconstruction populace was, “Good riddance!”
Angela twisted the book to read the old, fraying dust jacket. It had been written by a man named James Stuart Douglas, born and bred in New Orleans in 1890, when the Civil War, and the era of Reconstruction, would have been fresh in historical memory. There was definitely a bit of skew in his telling of the story.
According to Douglas, the killer, Newton, found those who had newly arrived in the city, and offered them a place to stay. He also found those who were suddenly homeless—apt to leave the city and look for an income somewhere else. The first known murder had been of the Henderson family from Slidell. They had been about to leave for the North, searching for a place where Mr. Henderson could find work. His son, Percy, had been twelve; his daughter, Annabelle, had been ten. All four of the Hendersons had perished after accepting Newton’s offer of hospitality. The children had been brutally killed with an ax in the room where they had slept; Mr. and Mrs. Henderson had died after being tied to chairs in the basement, cut to ribbons and allowed to bleed to death. Newton had found watching people bleed to death particularly stimulating. Before Newton’s execution, twenty–three known victims later, he described his crimes, and told police where to find most of the bodies.
Angela stopped reading again. No wonder the house was on all the ghost tours in the city.
Darkness had come. She reminded herself that she wasn’t afraid of the dark.
Maybe that wasn’t true—here. The house suddenly seemed to be alive with shadows. It was probably a bad idea to read the book when she was alone and night was coming on. She wasn’t really afraid of the dark, but she didn’t want to start seeing things in her mind’s eye that weren’t there.
She sat still for a minute, thinking about the past. She could recall the day of the plane crash she had survived—but which had killed her parents and everyone else on board—at any given time.
So clearly.
She was incredibly lucky to be alive.
Alive and still so aware of the strange events that had occurred when she had opened her eyes with flames and sirens all around her…
A doctor had told her once that strange things could happen when the neurons in the brain were affected, causing such things as the “light” so many people with near–death experiences saw, so, according to him, she hadn’t seen the “light” of spirits leaving their mortal forms; she had experienced neurons crashing in her head. After her sessions with the doctor, she had learned to keep quiet. Nor did she ever explain why it seemed that sometimes she had more than intuition. She’d always had a good grip on the world—in many ways there were very thin lines between the truth and insanity. People’s perception of the truth was often the difference between leading a normal and productive life—and having someone lock you up for your own welfare.
Adam Harrison seemed to be different, as had many of the officers she had worked with at the police force in Virginia. She had become known for her use of logic, careful study of a crime scene and the victim, and the possible personality of the perpetrator or perpetrators. Police officers tended to believe in intuition; good detectives always seemed to rely upon gut instinct.
Sometimes, she had almost been frightened of herself. But she had to tamp down the fear; good could come when she allowed the thoughts and “instincts” to run through her.
Take the Abernathy case. The one in which she had really made a difference. The baby had been kidnapped by kids just wanting to make money. Two teens, seventeen and sixteen. They’d easily managed to steal the baby from the babysitter. But they’d buried the little boy, and if she hadn’t come to the house, if she hadn’t added it all up—no break–in, no signs of disturbance, no prints or even smudges on the windowsill—and felt certain that the child was close, they might never have found the baby, buried in the crate right in the backyard. She would never forget the joy in the mother’s face when they had dug up that baby, and she had heard her awaken at last and cry….
She had entered the mind of the Virginia Stalker, and found the remains of Valerie Abreu, allowing the courts the evidence to put the man away.
There were battles, of course, that she couldn’t win. Life was full of them.
She had lost her parents. And she had lost Griffin.
Griffin, her fiancé, had died in her arms, with his mother softly sobbing at his side. Cancer was as cruel as any enemy she could ever face and she had been helpless against the disease. Griffin, who had seemed to understand her and love her for all that she was.
But Griffin had found peace, and Griffin had loved her. He told her that she had a special gift, and that she should always use it to the best of her ability.
Yes, she had a gift. And now she had knowledge and experience. The police academy had saved her and she’d served with the force as an officer just before the call had come from her superiors, informing her that she’d been asked to meet with a “Federal” man named Adam Harrison.
Thanks to her time with the police, she now dared to take chances she might not have before.
She stood up, determined to know, now, while she was in the house alone, why the area was driving her so crazy, making her feel so uncomfortable. Some of the houses in the French Quarter actually had basements, she remembered. Getting a better sense of the physical place would definitely be the logical move to make now.
The French Quarter was barely above sea level, but it was “high ground” for the area. The basement was only halfway below the ground, and its roof was the floor where she stood now. She still needed to spend time studying the original blueprints of the house first.
But she felt a draw she couldn’t withstand.
Angela walked toward the door and turned the handle.
The door opened, and darkness stretched before her. The basement.
Andy Devereaux appeared to be easy and low–key, something that probably served him well when interrogating suspects. His voice lulled. He was soft–spoken. Everything about him seemed easy—except that he had the sharpest gaze known to man. And like a lazy–looking, tail–twitching great cat, he could move in the blink of an eye. The uniformed officers at the station seemed to like and respect him.
Jackson stayed at the station long enough to meet some of the district personnel with whom he might come in contact when exploring all angles of the Holloway case, and then Andy drove him back to the house on Dauphine. Jackson realized that he was lucky; Devereaux seemed
