Krewe of Hunters The Unseen (15 page)

“Do you think Logan Raintree is emotionally crippled?

Or that he’s going to go off on some kind of rampage?

Shoot up the streets?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well,

then?”

“I should have known. That’s all.”

“Logan’s past is his concern. He chose to tell you about it.”

“Yes, but…what happened to him wasn’t something like, oh, his house was robbed. His wife was
murdered.
”

“Yes.”

“And you knew it.”

“I make a point of knowing everything about anyone I’m asking to join this team,” Jackson told her.

Frustrated, she scowled at him.

“It’s important that you get to know each other on your own terms, not that I outline your lives.”

“But—”

“A team only works when every member learns to trust every other member,” Jackson said.

She would have spoken again, still irritated, but the door opened and Logan Raintree came into the room. He greeted them with a solemn, “Good morning.” They both responded. Kelsey felt guilty; she wondered if he could tell she’d been talking about him.

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He probably could. But he didn’t press it. “We need to get back on the streets. We have to find Vanessa Johnston.

I read and reread the files last night. We can’t compare lives and histories on all the victims, since we don’t know who some of them are, but I spent last night looking for a common thread between the two women we do have. So far, all we’ve got is that both were young, attractive, fascin ated with the Alamo and headed there. But,” he said, glancing from Jackson to Kelsey and offering them a crooked, almost sheepish smile, “I believe I’ve found a connection between one of them, Chelsea Martin, and Sierra Monte. And it’s something that’s been staring us in the face.”

“The Galveston diamond?” Kelsey asked.

He nodded. “Sierra Monte was presumably killed at the Longhorn,” he said. “The diamond was brought to Galveston by pirates. It was apparently stolen, then disappeared from history after it was won in a poker game in Galveston.

Historians agree on that much. The legend that says Rose took it with her is based on conjecture but the diamond’s never been found in Galveston. People with metal detectors have searched the beach for it often enough. I can imagine that someone might’ve thought Sierra Monte was looking for it at the inn, but Chelsea Martin never got there. She made it to the Alamo—her last known location. But in her spare time, she studied gems.” Logan paused. “I went to her Facebook page,” he said. “She truly loved stones and wanted to work with jewelry. But I’m willing to bet she knew about the Galveston diamond. Sierra Monte was a diamond girl, too.”

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“Did you find out anything similar about Tara Grissom?” Jackson asked him.

“Everything I read reinforced what we’ve already learned—she loved history, especially state history revolv-ing around the Alamo, the massacre at Goliad and the road to independence for Texas. She must have been aware of Rose Langley and the Galveston diamond. Although a lot of it’s legend, the story’s been around in Texas as long as I can remember.”

“But these other women… We’re assuming they were runaways or prostitutes because we haven’t been able to match them to any missing-persons cases,” Kelsey said.

“How could they be involved with the Galveston diamond?

Do you really think it’s possible that they all died because of a diamond that’s been missing for a century and a half ?”

“I think it’s the only connection I’ve found between any of the victims,” Logan said.

Kelsey sat on the edge of Jackson’s desk and picked up one of the sheets he’d been studying, a synopsis of the medical examiner’s reports.

“The Longhorn isn’t far from the Alamo,” she pointed out. “And if you’ve studied the Alamo, you probably know about the Longhorn. Most of us learned about Davy Crockett, Lieutenant Colonel Travis and Daniel Boone as school kids, no matter where we grew up, but the sad tale of Rose Langley isn’t as well-known. All the local kids would’ve heard it, of course, and so would anyone with a fixation on the period. But the Longhorn’s been torn apart over the de-cades. If there was anything hidden there, it would’ve been found by now. And where else would you look? But if the IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012

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women never even made it to the Longhorn… Anyway, just because someone liked gems and knew Texas history, why would you murder her?”

“We need to know more,” Logan said quietly. “More about all the women.”

Jackson looked across the desk at Kelsey. “We’re going to try to do that.” Jackson was thoughtful. “And yes, we have to find Vanessa Johnston. Every officer in every agency in the city is searching for her. I’d like to take an hour and go back to the morgue.”

“We’re testing at the morgue—with Kat as the M.E.?” Logan asked. “We’re bringing Kat in?”

“Yes, and I’m going to bring in our fourth and fifth team members, too. Jane Everett is meeting us at the morgue.”

“She does facial reconstructions,” Logan informed Kelsey.

“And she’s very good. She can work with all kinds of material, but she’s worked with computer images, too.”

“Jane’s done assignments for several anthropological societies,” Jackson added, “and also for the Rangers and the police.”

“Why wasn’t she brought in before?” Kelsey asked.

“Everything costs,” Logan reminded her, looking at Jackson.

“We’re also getting a computer whiz,” Jackson said. “Film and sound effects, computers—every team needs someone who’s good at those things.”

“Do I know him or her?” Logan asked.

“You both do,” Jackson said.

Kelsey was startled. “Oh?”

“Sean

Cameron.”

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Kelsey almost fell off the desk. “Sean Cameron? My
cousin,
Sean Cameron?”

“Is there family rivalry, Marshal?”

“No, nothing of the kind. Sean…Sean is great. But he…

works on movies. Documentaries—like the one he’s doing now, about the Alamo.”

“He’s done computer work for us before,” Logan said.

“Crime-scene recreations.”

“But Sean isn’t a cop.” Kelsey frowned, looking at Jackson.

“No,” Logan agreed. “Neither is Jane.”

“Is it fair to bring them into…whatever this is?” Kelsey asked.

“It’s up to them. If the team works out, they’ll wind up with training, and you’ll both have to take a few courses, too, for the proper certifications in weapons and such.” Kelsey wondered about the documentary. Would Sean still be working on it? He was no slouch. Besides being multitalented, he was what you’d consider a “man’s man.” Football, kickboxing and mixed martial arts were hobbies for him, and he’d turned down a chance to be college all-pro because he loved film and computers more.

“He’s got what we need,” Logan said, looking at her curiously.

“Does he know about this?” she murmured.

“We’ve communicated,” Jackson told her.

“And he’s a—” Logan began.

“Texan,” Kelsey finished for him. Logan raised his eyebrows and smiled at her. He was smiling far more easily.

She wished she wasn’t so glad of that.

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“When are they meeting us at the morgue?” he asked.

“In twenty minutes. At nine,” Jackson said.

“What’s the first order of business?”

“We’ll start with Kat,” Jackson said. “Most of the bodies are so decomposed that the best medical examiner in the world would have difficulty telling us much more than Gaylord did. But she has the ability to go a step further, especially now, as a member of this team.” Logan wasn’t surprised by that, Kelsey realized. Of course, he knew Kat Sokolov because he’d worked with her before.

“She…speaks with corpses?” she ventured.

Logan turned to her. If he guessed she’d been talking about him earlier and felt angry about it, he didn’t indicate that in any way. “I think Jackson means that she not only has a special ability, but she’s got the money behind her now to do the kind of testing they wouldn’t normally have done for unidentified corpses with apparent causes of death. Doing the appropriate tests, Kat can learn a great deal more. She’ll be able to give us information that could lead us in the right direction.”

Jackson spoke up. “Kat is excellent, and she’ll be dedicated to this case.”

He looked at them both. “We’ve already got our first report from her. We didn’t need an exceptionally talented M.E. to find out about the DNA in that finger, but as we all suspected, it was Vanessa Johnston’s.”

“The killer seems to be speeding up,” Logan said.

They were all quiet for a minute. Yes, they’d sus pected that the finger had been the missing woman’s. Now they IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012

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knew it. Yes, any adept technician could have gotten them that information. But Kelsey had the feeling that things were just beginning, that Jackson Crow knew exactly what he was doing, and Kat Sokolov was going to be an important addition to their, as yet, uncertain unit. But although Kelsey hadn’t made a formal decision, and neither had Logan, she
felt
as if they belonged. As if they were part of the Krewe of Hunters.

“We should’ve been able to help her,” she murmured.

Tears stung her eyes; she hadn’t known Vanessa Johnston or the others, and she’d mastered some hard lessons in law enforcement, but the human element was always there. So was the hopeless, impotent feeling that came with learning another victim was past saving.

“We just figured this out,” Jackson reminded her. “Now it’s up to us.”

“She’s probably beyond help, but not beyond justice,” Logan said. “Let’s head out. The longer it takes us to discover the truth, the more opportunity there’ll be for this killer to find his next victim.”

Kat wore a white lab jacket and her hands were gloved as she worked over the body of Tara Grissom, taking blood and tissue samples.

Logan watched her, again studying what remained of Tara’s face. He felt anger roiling inside him—a good anger, not a destructive one. It was the kind of anger that made him want to track down the killer. A completely controlled emotion. They needed to be methodical while they worked with all possible haste. He glanced over at Jackson Crow IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012

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and thought about the power the man had and what they were being offered.

Certain tests were automatically done on corpses brought in for autopsy. In cases where cause of death seemed clear, some tests usually
wouldn’t
be done. They were just too ex-pensive, especially when X-rays or physical trauma pointed to the means of death—such as broken hyoid bones or the evidence of stab wounds.

However, in this case, they desperately needed more clues. That meant more time and money.

Jackson had the federal funds necessary to pitch in when the local budget was used up. And, Logan knew, if he joined Crow’s unit, he’d have that same backing.

He saw that Jackson was staring at him, and he wondered if the other man suspected what was going on in his mind.

“I doubt I’ll be able to find needle marks if the women were injected with any substance,” Kat said apologetically.

“In some of these instances we’re down to almost no soft tissue. We could find metal poisoning in the hair or bones, but…we do have a few victims who may be able to tell us something.”

“GC-MS?” Logan asked.

She nodded, looking at Jackson. “Yes.”

To detect many of the possible substances that might’ve been used to subdue the women before they disappeared, GC-MS, or gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy, would be needed. The state of decay meant that no other approach was likely to yield results.

It seemed logical that the women had been inf luenced in some way to leave the Alamo—or wherever their location—

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without putting up any kind of fight or making a scene.

They might’ve been persuaded to come and see something or invited to do something. What that
something
was Logan and the others had no clue—except for the phone call recorded between Chelsea Martin and her friend Nancy. The call was abruptly cut off. Someone had interrupted Chelsea, and she hadn’t been seen or heard from again…until her corpse was discovered. Another possibility, as Kat had mentioned, was some form of sedative.

“I’m going to do more testing, a lot more testing,” Kat told them. “As of now, I don’t have much to give you, but I’ll look for drugs, and I’ll study the stomach contents—

those tests were done, but not really followed up. I’ll do whatever I can.” She offered them a weak smile. “It’s going to be nice to have first call on all the lab techs out there, and free rein for any test I need.”

Logan glanced across the corpse at Kelsey, who was gazing down at Tara’s face. He liked the quiet way she’d stood listening, and the empathy in her eyes. He looked at the corpse himself and wondered whether he’d lost his “talent” after Alana’s death.

Had it diminished because he’d refused to make use of it? After all, what good was a “talent” that had failed him when he’d needed it most?

But he still had it. He knew he did. Something was elud-ing him, though. He could reach out, and he could see, but he couldn’t see
enough.
He’d reached the young woman, but he’d felt blinded.

He walked over to Kelsey, who started, her attention drawn from the corpse. He took her hand; she scowled IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012