“Thanks, Kat.” He sighed. “I’ll get back to the Dragonslayer now. There’s something forming in my mind. I’m not sure yet what it is. But—”
“Hurry it up if you can,” Kat broke in. “We have a girl out there who might still be alive.”
“I know,” Malachi said. “I know.”
Jackson Crow left the Dragonslayer to head back to Abby’s house on Chippewa Square to meet up with Angela. They were doing character studies on everyone associated with or working in the area of the river. He didn’t tell Abby that they were concentrating on employees and frequent customers of Dirk’s tour ship and the Dragonslayer. He didn’t need to tell her, she knew.
Alone in the apartment, Abby watched everything revealed by the newly installed cameras. She was fascinated as she went from screen to screen; once the dinner hours began, customers came and went.
Bootsie, Aldous and Dirk remained at the bar. When he wasn’t busy with other customers, Sullivan hung out there and chatted with them.
She watched as Macy spoke with Grant Green, giving him the day’s report. She could see Macy go up the stairs and into the manager’s office. Macy gathered up her belongings. She hesitated at the door to the apartment as if she meant to knock, but didn’t. Instead, she walked downstairs, obviously preparing to leave.
Abby thought about stopping her; she didn’t.
As she stared at one of the screens, she gasped. She’d been looking at the dining room with the grate to the tunnel and the image of Blue Anderson. But as she watched, Blue seemed to step out of his own image. He peered into the grate, then slipped through.
Abby jumped up and hurried down the stairs. Luckily, it was growing later by then. There were a few diners but none near the image of Blue. Rather than taking the main stairway, she hurried to the back of the storage room and came down the winding stone steps. At the grate, she fell to her knees and opened the combination lock that held the grating closed. She’d moved casually, but quickly and silently. With the grate open, she caught hold of the sides and slid down, hopping the last foot. It was dark in the tunnel but she’d come with her light and her Glock—she wasn’t taking chances.
She shone the light over the tunnel.
There was something—someone—in the shadows.
She lifted the light higher.
For a moment, it was as if she saw Blue in the flesh, he was that solid and real to her. He seemed to stand there in living color.
“Blue.” She whispered his name.
He looked at her, then turned and walked toward the river. Then he paused and looked back. He seemed to be waiting for her to follow.
She did.
The tunnel twisted and meandered and came to an end near the Savannah River. At one time, the entrance had been even closer to the river, but now it opened onto grass and parkland. The original hatch had been welded shut, but ancient, metal, ladderlike steps led up to the newer hatch.
She was in the area where she’d found Gus.
Abby tried not to remember finding him and realizing he was dead.
Determined, she fumbled with the grate and pushed at it; years ago, it had been set over the tunnel for public safety. It was supposed to be sealed. At first, she thought it was, that it wouldn’t give, wouldn’t budge.
Then, to her amazement, it did.
She pushed hard and hoisted herself out. She heard the lap of water against the supporting wall.
She hurried over to the wall, staring at the river.
She could see something there. Something in the darkness of the water.
Something that...moved.
Abby cried out and forgot everything else. She kicked off her shoes and removed her jacket and plunged into the Savannah River.
8
Leaving the morgue, Malachi drove straight back to the Dragonslayer. The historic district of Savannah was beautiful, even by night. Great oaks dripped moss onto streets where the architecture whispered of the past. Flowers bloomed copiously in beautifully grown yards and night-lights lay gently all around.
When he’d parked, he wasn’t ready to go in.
He sat remembering all the times he felt he’d been cursed with his strange ability to talk to the dead. In his generation, it had been his and his alone. Zachary had told him once that his grandmother had been able to talk to spirits and she’d explained to him that it was just like sound. Some folks could simply see and hear what others couldn’t quite grasp or get into their field of vision.
He’d quickly learned not to talk about it. But when he’d seen the dead and the dead had been able to help him, show him where to go—show him how to stop a dangerous situation—he’d had no recourse but to act. And so people had thought he was psychic. Friends had trusted him for whatever it was they believed he had. Luckily, the jerks and idiots had left him alone, either scornful or intimidated. He didn’t care which.
In New Orleans, he’d gotten lucky, being partnered with David Caswell. Caswell could be a by-the-book cop, but he was also a big believer in “gut” reactions and in hunches. Malachi had trusted in David’s intuition; in turn, David had trusted him and never pressed when Malachi had known where to go to help someone, especially after the summer of storms, when a dead man had led them to his children, alive and well and praying for rescue.
The problem with this kind of “talent” was that you never knew when it would kick in. And, of course, you couldn’t explain to the living that ghosts were like the living; they could only tell you about a situation if they’d been there at the time. Or if they’d seen something. Blue, for instance, could only point him to the killer if he knew who the killer was. Blue was aware that the tunnel had been used recently. He’d known Gus was in the tunnel and he had led Abby there. But unless he’d actually seen the killer...
Parking, Malachi started for the restaurant. But as he approached it, he paused. A few late-nighters were walking toward the front door.
They didn’t see the pirate standing there, the man in the frock coat with the rakish hat and pitch-black hair.
Blue Anderson.
But Malachi saw him and saw him clearly. Blue, he thought, was waiting for him.
He stood still but the pirate didn’t come any closer. Malachi strode toward him, hoping no one was watching from inside.
When he reached Blue, he heard the crackling whistle of the man’s voice on the air—or he heard it in his own mind, he was never sure.
“The river. Abby is at the river. He went through this tunnel...in the midst of the flurry over Gus. I did not see him...just the leaving. And I saw the boat...saw the rowboat out. When the rowboat is out, the bodies appear. Abby is out there.”
“Where, Blue, where?” Malachi asked anxiously. Abby was a trained agent. She knew how to use a Glock and she surely had it with her.
Blue drew a pattern in the air. “The little park—little patch of ground by the river, by the embankment. Go now.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He began to run, heedless of the fact that he ran past the rear of several other businesses and dashed between parked cars and a monument, then tore across a street where he might have been hit by oncoming traffic.
He reached the place; he knew it, of course. He’d followed the tunnel to its end when he had first arrived. He’d checked the hatch, put in by the city years ago.
The hatch was unsealed?
It wasn’t just unsealed, it had been thrown open.
He turned toward the river. There was someone in it—someone swimming, towing another person. He raced to the water, digging for his phone, then called Jackson and told him where he was and what was happening. Then he threw the phone aside and dove into the water.