Darkest Journey

She told herself to forget about the past—and the ghosts of the past.

  She was safe now, surrounded by friends, and any ghosts here were helpful ones.

  She dropped to her knees, reaching for the shiny metallic object.

  “Think I’ve found something,” she called over her shoulder.

  At first she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. It was just something shining in the dirt. It wasn’t until she reached for it that she realized that it was a ring. A signet ring.

  And it was attached to a finger....

  A finger that was attached to a hand, a hand that was protruding from the earth...

  Because it was attached to a barely buried body.

  It took a few seconds to resonate in her mind, and then...

  A dead man. She had found a dead man.

  Only then did she begin to scream.

  It was happening again.

  2

  Ethan Delaney tapped on the partly open door to Jackson Crow’s office, then pushed it wide and walked in.

  He’d been with the Krewe a little more than a month. He was still becoming accustomed to working in this office in Northern Virginia, which had its own low-key friendly ways. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been used to camaraderie among agents—he was. He’d been in the New York office for the last several years, and, due to the stress level that went with working in the Big Apple, the agents there often resorted to humor to lighten the tension.

  Here, though, office doors were seldom closed, and they were never locked.

  Crow was their Special Agent in Charge, directly beneath Special Assistant Director Adam Harrison, who made himself equally available. Adam had helped Crow interview Ethan before inviting him to join the elite unit. They had both treated it like an easy dinner out, but he’d known full well that his answers had been carefully weighed, and that they’d been keeping track of his body language, as well.

  Relief.

  He hadn’t really thought about it before, but that was exactly what he felt in his new position. In his customary work in the criminal division, he’d often needed to watch his words carefully. He’d constantly had to come up with explanations for his decisions. He’d read about the Krewe of Hunters and in fact had a good friend who had transferred over before him. Aiden Mahoney had been professional when they’d talked, not lying to him and not trying to hedge, but not saying exactly what the Krewe’s specific rules and responsibilities were, either.

  But now that he was here, he’d discovered the rules weren’t written down or formally agreed upon; rather they were assumed and tacitly understood by every member of the Krewe.

  He was learning, day by day, to relax completely in this new realm. Here he could be totally honest about what he saw and sensed, things others might consider extrasensory. Truthfully, most solutions were based on logic and physical evidence, but others, the solutions to the crimes the Krewe investigated, included something more.

  He had all the right training for his position: Loyola, where he’d studied criminal psychology and forensics; a stint in the military; a master’s degree in forensic sciences from George Washington University; then the FBI Academy. He knew that training helped, but it by no means superseded something he’d been born with, something inherited from one or more of his ancestors, a mixture of Spaniards, Creoles, English, Irish, Italian and, as with so many Louisiana natives, Haitian and Choctaw. He had one living great-grandmother on his mother’s mother’s side who believed in the mysterious ways of true voodoo. He also had a great-grandfather from his mother’s father’s side who loved to teach him Choctaw legends. One great-grandmother on his dad’s side had emigrated from Norway, while one great-grandfather had come over from Scotland and married a woman of Italian descent, all of which meant that the stories Ethan had heard growing up covered a vast array of myth and legend.

  The tales were different and yet, oddly, much the same. In most of them, the supernatural played a key role, and since that agreed with his own experience of the world, it had caused him a few problems early on in school. He’d quickly learned to guard his thoughts in regard to the world around him and to keep his mouth shut about many things he might have had to say, and he’d pretty much stuck to that plan into adulthood.

  Then he’d heard about the Krewe.

  On their most recent case, his first, he’d discovered that his quick ability to communicate with the lost and disfranchised—the dead—was a bonus and not something to hide. One of the dead men, a powerful lobbyist, had spoken to him, and after that the clues had been easy to follow. The murders had not been politically motivated, but rather rooted in a family financial dispute.

  Ethan was glad he and the Krewe had been able to solve the case and especially pleased that he had proved his worth.

  “Jackson?” he said now.

  His supervisor was busy reading through a file and frowning as he did so. He quickly looked up as Ethan spoke.

  “Ethan, thanks for coming so quickly,” Jackson said, indicating the chair in front of his desk. He passed the file across the table.

  There were two pictures on the first page, men between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, both in business suits, one a muscular Caucasian, the other handsome and looking to be of mixed African American and Caucasian descent.

  “Farrell Hickory and Albion Corley,” Jackson said, indicating the men in the pictures.

  “And they’re both...?” Ethan asked.

  “Dead,” Jackson clarified. “Local police are investigating. Everything they’ve got is all there in the files, and I’ve also emailed you.”

  “They’re sure the murders are related?”

  “Both men were found in replica Civil War uniforms in shallow graves—and not in graveyards but near them.”

  “Union uniforms?” Ethan asked. A twisted get-even spree by a deranged local? The Civil War had ended in 1865. Reconstruction had officially ended with the Compromise of 1876.

  Long over—or so one would think. But down here, things were different.

  As much as Ethan wanted to believe people, in both the North and the South, had escaped the prejudices of that era, the Klan, neo-Nazis and various supremacist groups were still around. While laws could protect people, they couldn’t always deal with old hatreds that still had a pernicious hold on too many minds. Still, he believed he lived in a better world now than the one he’d been born into. And being of such mixed ancestry himself, it was painful to suspect that any murder might be motivated by prejudice.

  “Here’s the interesting thing,” Jackson told him. “Farrell Hickory was in a Confederate cavalry officer’s uniform. Albion Corley was wearing a Union naval uniform.”

  “That is interesting. You wouldn’t kill your own side, so that seems to rule out someone still stuck in the Civil War,” Ethan said.

  Jackson nodded. “Anyway, both men were stabbed in the heart. The forensics experts believe that both men were stabbed with a bayonet or something similar that could be wielded with a certain precision.”

  “If a bayonet was the murder weapon, that seems to indicate the killer is a Civil War reenactor,” Ethan said.

  “That’s what the police think. But what’s the motive? And why these two men? Both of them were descended from men who fought in the Civil War but on opposite sides. Both of them had roots in or around the area, but their jobs weren’t related, and there doesn’t seem to be any obvious connection between them.”

  Ethan listened, surprised he hadn’t seen anything about the murders on the news yet. He believed the country was trying to change the mind-set that had been so common at one time. He would have seen a clearer motive if descendants of known Klansmen had been murdered, for example, even more so if the victims were current members of the Klan or one of its spiritual cousins.

  He didn’t know the particulars of e
ither man, since he had yet to read the files, but he was sure Crow would have mentioned anything that obvious.

  And he had yet to hear why the Krewe were involved. Unless the local police had asked for help. Unless one of the men had been kidnapped or state lines had been crossed.

  Under most circumstances, three murders with the same signature were seen as the calling card of a serial killer, which was when the Bureau got involved, and so far they only had two. Of course, since the War on Terror had begun, everything, even in the FBI, had changed. And especially with the Krewe of Hunters, there really wasn’t such a thing as a norm.

  “Jackson, I need to look through that,” he said, indicating the folder.

  Jackson nodded. “You can study it on the way.”

  “On the way? Where am I going?”

  “Baton Rouge,” Jackson said, watching him for his reaction.

  “Okay,” Ethan said slowly. “I’m just curious, and I’d like to play with a full deck. The Bureau has an office in New Orleans. Granted, it’s not a Krewe office, but even here I’m not the only Louisiana agent on staff. Am I going with someone else? Were we invited in? Or will I be stepping on toes when I get there?”

  “Adam is speaking with the proper authorities. You won’t have any problems, though you’ll be working with a local detective—Randall Laurent.”

  “Randy!” Ethan said.

  “You know him?” Jackson asked.

  Ethan nodded. “We’re both from St. Francisville. He’s a good guy,” he added, pausing to grin. “He quit opening beer bottles with his teeth years ago and became a solid, tough and decent man. Seriously, he’s a good guy. We were actually at Loyola together, too. But—”

  “I’m sending you because Angela referred the call to me. She receives all our ‘invitations’ and inquiries, and she has a great way of reading between the lines and determining if the case is right for us.”

  Ethan knew Angela, a special agent with the Krewe who handled a lot of the administrative and back-end business. They were often inundated with cases, and she had an amazing ability to determine which ones might best benefit from the Krewe’s assistance.

  She and Jackson were also married and had been among the original six members of the Krewe.

  “Yes, of course,” Ethan said.

  “I believe you’re the perfect man for this situation. You know the area. If I’m not mistaken, you even used to live in the parish.”

  “I’ve been gone a long time,” Ethan said. “I have family in the area, but they’re mostly in New Orleans now.”

  “But you know people there. The lead detective is an old friend, you said. That’s always a good thing.”

  Ethan was still curious. So far he’d always worked with at least one other Krewe agent, but it sounded as if he was being sent on his own.

  He knew there were other Krewe agents who came from Louisiana, even if they didn’t come from West Feliciana Parish. Jude McCoy, another recent addition to the Krewe, had been an agent in New Orleans before he joined the Krewe.

  “If you find something, I’ll head down with Jude McCoy by the end of the week,” Jackson said, as if he’d read Ethan’s mind.

  “All right,” Ethan said. He hesitated and then shrugged. He might as well just throw it out there. “I love this job. I’m ready to go wherever the assignment leads, do whatever needs to be done. You know that. But I’m surprised. There are other agents who’ve been with the Krewe a lot longer than I have. Even Jude. He’s pretty new, but not as new as me. We’ve even become friends because we’re both from Louisiana. The Krewe started out in New Orleans. So...not to take anything away from my own abilities, but...why me?”

  “We were specifically asked if you were available,” Jackson said, his light eyes, so striking against his dark hair and tanned flesh, hard on Ethan.

  “By?” Ethan asked.

  “A woman who found one of the bodies. She spoke with some friends of hers with connections here, and they made a persuasive case. She’s a local actress, name of Charlene Moreau.”

  “Ah.” Ethan hoped that the memories suddenly flooding through him weren’t visible on his face.

  “You do know her, then?” Jackson asked.

  “I did know her,” Ethan said. “When we were kids. And I know of her now. I’ve seen her on a new cop show they’re filming down there, and in a couple of commercials. I haven’t actually seen her, though, since I was nineteen. She must have been fifteen or sixteen.”

  “How close were you?” Jackson asked.

  How close?

  Jackson must have seen his confusion, because he went on. “When we’re young, we’re often more open to what’s around us, to seeing the kinds of things we here in the Krewe see every day.”

  Ethan remembered being home from college, talking on the phone to his mother about something boring like his laundry. He was already taking criminology courses, and his mother brought up the killings that had occurred just north of Baton Rouge and how people were growing nervous in the entire area around the capital city.

  And then he’d seen the soldier at the window. A Confederate cavalry officer. The man had seemed to be beckoning to him, and at first he’d naturally thought the man was a lost reenactor needing help.

  But the soldier had led him across fields, pausing only to glare at Ethan when Ethan stopped, irritably demanding that the ghost explain what he wanted. Somehow Ethan felt compelled to follow him despite his silence and his strange behavior.

  In the end he’d followed his spectral guide to Grace Episcopal Church.

  That was when he’d seen Charlene Moreau. She’d been tied to a gravestone.

  Her head was bent as she pulled against the knots that had held her there, and despite the situation she’d been ethereally beautiful in the moonlight, hair tumbling over her shoulders, a flesh-and-blood version of the worn stone angel that stood over a nearby grave with her head bowed deep in prayer.

  Ethan pulled himself back to the present when Jackson spoke.

  “Apparently Ms. Moreau is friends with Clara Avery and Alexi Cromwell, two young actresses I know from previous cases. They’re here in our area at the moment, involved with Adam Harrison’s theater project—he’s restoring a historic theater and has hired them to deal with creative management—although they’re both from the New Orleans area originally. Both of them are also gifted—or cursed—the same way we in the Krewe are.” He paused, then went on. “And speaking of previous cases, there’s another strange association here, too,” Jackson said.

  “That being?”

  “We’ve recently worked two serial-killer cases involving the Celtic American cruise line. The cruise company wasn’t at fault, of course, but both killers carried out their work aboard their ships.”

  Ethan frowned, wondering how the recent deaths of the two reenactors could be related to the cruise line.

  Then he saw it. A slim connection, but a connection nonetheless.

  “The Journey,” he said. “Celtic American owns the Journey, and she does a run from New Orleans to Vicksburg, with a stop at St. Francisville. And of course, I know about the cases involving the Destiny and the Fate. Anyone in the world with media access knows about the cases.” He hesitated. “We’re sure there was no direct connection to the cruise line or the Journey?”

  “We can’t know for sure, not yet,” Jackson said, his tone tight. “But not as far as the owners, operators or employees of Celtic American go. But Charlene Moreau’s father is the cruise director and resident historian aboard the Journey.”

  “I know Charlene’s father. I promise you, he had nothing to do with murder.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything like that. But here’s where the connection to the cruise line comes in. Both of the dead men took part in a reenactment aboard the Journey. The ship does themed cruises.
A week ago, the theme was the Civil War. Considering the route, a lot of their cruises are Civil War–themed, but this was their once-a-year extra-special Civil War cruise. Celtic American’s claim to fame is that they specialize in historic cruises. Interestingly, the Journey offers ghost tours as well as your standard history-based ones.”

  “The Journey actually has a legitimate historical claim of its own. She was conscripted to move Southern troops up and down the Mississippi when the war began. She was seized by the Union forces when they took New Orleans in 1862, then used to move wounded Union troops. For a brief time she fell back into Confederate hands, when a small troop of Confederate soldiers slipped aboard and took her over. She went back to the Union, though—a trade was arranged that allowed for injured Rebels being held by the Union to be exchanged for the Union men aboard the ship. There had been an outbreak of fever on board, so the Confederates were only too happy to hand the ship and the men over to the Yankees, and the Journey continued on her way, mainly doing hospital runs for the rest of the war.”

  “See?” Jackson said softly. “You know your local history—something that can be invaluable in cases like this. So...back to the connection,” he continued. “Both the murdered men were involved in that extra-special reenactment aboard the ship about a week ago. That’s one of the reasons the police are so sure the killings must have been planned by someone in the reenactors’ group.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Ethan said.

  “It’s certainly possible, given what we know so far. But I don’t like to grasp at the easy answer.”

  “Sometimes the obvious answer is the truth,” Ethan said.

  “And sometimes it’s not.”

  “No,” Ethan agreed, and stood. If he was heading to Baton Rouge and then up river to St. Francisville, he was eager to get started. “What are my travel arrangements?”

  “A car’s waiting to take you home to pack and then to the airport. The plane leaves as soon as you’re aboard.”

  “As soon as I’m aboard?” Ethan asked.

  Jackson smiled. “I guess you haven’t gotten used to our form of ‘troop movement’ yet. We have a nice, new private jet. Adam financed it himself. No taxpayer dollars.”