The Unseen. Heather Graham
he murdered her. He’d been known to kill, so it wasn’t a surprise. We wouldn’t just consider him a criminal today, we’d consider him to be as sick and perverted as the most heinous killer out there. Oh—and, of course, he took off before the battle of the Alamo, or before anything resembling the law could catch up with him. But…”
“But?”
“I don’t know how much of this you remember from my emails,” Sandy said. “I had just bought the place—money down, no way out—when all of a sudden there were problems. I was already in here, deciding what to do about renovating a week or so before the closing, when a girl named Sierra Monte disappeared.”
“Of course I remember. But remind me what she was doing here, when the inn was in the middle of changing owners,” Kelsey said.
“Peter Ghent, the last owner, still had the place until closing. That’s how it works. I’d gotten a deal because there was no return on the down payment if anything went wrong. Anything. Ghent had some of the rooms rented, but he was like an absentee landlord. Sierra came here, apparently, because she wanted Room 207. Go figure. The rooms were super-cheap, even though it was a historic property, because Ghent wasn’t running it well. The bar sucked! It was all falling apart and I’d just started to renovate. But Sierra Monte insisted on staying. Anyway, she disappeared. A maid found blood everywhere and then the cops came in—but there was no body. And, of course, she disappeared from Room 207, so the legend continued to grow. I closed down for a bit when I took over to get the renovations finished. And then I didn’t rent out the room at all afterward but the mystery of the place encourages people to come in. You know how that goes. Now people are clamoring for 207. I’m careful who I give it to, though, because I’m afraid of some idiot freaking out in the middle of the night and jumping out the window or something! It’s hard to read people over the phone or through the internet, but, like I said, I’m careful. It’s rented out now—only because I have a big ol’ rodeo cowboy staying in it.”
Kelsey winced. “I know what you’re saying. At the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, people vie for the room where Anna Nicole Smith died. And people book way ahead for the ‘murder room’ at the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Massachusetts.”
“Exactly!” Sandy said. “But now, the stories about Room 207 are scaring people away from the inn, not bringing them in!”
As if to confirm Sandy’s words, a high-pitched scream pierced the hum of easy-listening music. Kelsey had just picked up her mug, but the earsplitting cry of terror startled her so badly that coffee sloshed over the brim. She leaped to her feet, staring at Sandy.
Sandy stared back at her, stricken, shaking her head. Kelsey set her mug on the table and went flying out to the inn’s grand salon—now its lobby—looking around for the source of the scream.
It came again, stretching long and loud, and Kelsey raced toward it.
* * *
When he reached the riverfront area and parked, Logan was still mulling over the strange behavior of the birds. He knew that the Native American half of the family—no matter how “modern” or forward-thinking they might be—would see omens in the situation. He couldn’t help wondering about it himself.
But he had to put it out of his mind.
Logan had been told by his captain that this meeting was important. In that case, he wasn’t quite sure why he was meeting an FBI agent beneath a brightly colored umbrella on the Riverwalk. It wasn’t that he had anything against the Riverwalk; it just didn’t seem like the place for an important meeting. Tourists thronged the area, along with locals. The shopping included both high-end boutiques and Texas souvenir shops, and the restaurants were varied as well as plentiful. He loved the river; watching water always seemed to improve anything. Still, this was unusual.
He wasn’t surprised that he was noticed—and hailed—by many people. He’d spent his life in San Antonio, and he’d been called on during many a “situation” at the riverfront, so he knew a number of bartenders, shopkeepers and restaurant owners. Of course, the tourists and visitors were something else entirely. One teenage boy called out, “Look! It’s Chuck Norris! Hey, Walker, Texas Ranger!”
He tipped his hat to the kid. No need to make their visitors think Texans weren’t hospitable and friendly.
He was dressed in standard departmental wear—boots, white hat and gun belt. He was carrying a Colt .45, his weapon of choice, and a popular gun among Rangers. He guessed that, in a way, he did look like Chuck Norris—or the character he’d played on a long-running TV show. Except, of course, that Norris was blond and light-skinned and he had dead-black hair and hazel eyes. People did stare. There weren’t even two hundred Rangers in the whole state, so he supposed that made his appearance especially interesting for tourists.
Another reason not to carry out an important meeting in a public place.
He did, however, recognize the man he was supposed to see, despite never having previously met him. Agent Jackson Crow was seated at one of the tables lining an iron fence that arced right out over the water, a cup of coffee in front of him. He was dressed in a black suit that seemed to scream FBI, to Logan’s mind at least. He wore dark glasses and seemed perfectly comfortable, sitting at ease while he waited for the meeting. Whatever people thought of him, he obviously didn’t give a damn.
Logan walked straight to the table. Crow was aware of him; he stood.
“Raintree, I presume,” he said, smiling as he offered his hand.
Logan shook hands, studying Crow. Yep, Indian blood. He assumed Crow was staring back at him, thinking the same thing. “Yes. I’m Logan Raintree.”
“Comanche?” Crow asked.
“All-American mutt in every way,” Logan told him. “One ancestor was Comanche, one was Apache—and two were European. Norwegian and English. You?”
“Cheyenne and all-American mutt, as well,” Crow said. “I like the concept of that. Sit, please. Thank you for meeting with me.”
“You’re welcome, but I wasn’t really given a choice—I was given an order.”
Crow didn’t respond to that. “Coffee?”
“Coffee sounds good,” Logan said, pulling out a chair. He noted that the table had been set for three. “Someone’s joining us?” he asked.
“Yes—a U.S. Marshal,” Crow said. “We’ll eat when she gets here.”
Logan slowly arched his brows. “All right, what kind of felon, madman or serial killer do we have running around San Antonio?”
“We don’t know much about him as yet. That’s where you come in,” Crow explained. “And I’m meeting with you first. Marshal O’Brien isn’t due for another half hour or so.”
“Doesn’t that mean you have to go through all of this twice?”
Crow gave him a grim half smile and shrugged. Logan had the feeling that there was always method to his madness, though at the moment, he sure couldn’t tell what it was.
A leather briefcase lay on the table. Crow reached into it and produced a sheaf of papers—photos, Logan saw.
He didn’t immediately recognize what he was looking at. At first glance it appeared to be a trash pile, but then, peering closer, he saw human bones beneath the branches, boxes and other refuse.
He looked back at Jackson Crow. “I wish I could say that a dead body was something unusual,” he said.
“It’s the circumstances that are unusual,” Jackson murmured. “Here’s another.”
The next picture was of a half-decayed body on a gurney in an autopsy room. This was a far more gruesome sight, resembling a creature imagined by a special-effects wizard; the flesh was ripped from most of the jaw and the cadaver seemed to be grinning in a macabre manner.