Angela grabbed the film canister and handed it to Will. He quickly searched for an outlet. “They can work on batteries, too, but…I think the ones in this thing are dead now. There—there’s an outlet.”
He plugged in the projector and hit a button. “Turn off the big overhead bulb. Let the light in from the stairs and hallway.”
Jenna obliged him. And there, in the murky light, a horrible image appeared. It was the image of a little boy—with an ax in his skull and blood creeping down his face.
They heard a faint sound. A whisper. And it, too, was horrible. “Mommy?”
“Damn!” Will exclaimed, and played with the machine, finding the volume control. The plaintive word became louder. The image moved, as if alive. “Mommy?”
“Mommy, it hurts. It hurts so badly. Help me, Mommy,” the image said, staring at them with wide blue eyes.
“Oh, my God!” Jenna said, and jumping up, she turned on the light. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I can’t stand it. That’s horrible, so horrible.”
Even with the light on, they could faintly see the projected image.
“Turn it off, Will, turn it off, please,” Angela said. “We know what it is. We can show Jackson, and he can get it to the police. Now we know for a fact that someone was in here, that they were playing horrible tricks on Regina—a way to get her out on the balcony of her own room.”
Will turned off the projector. He was quiet a minute. “Was that the little boy you’ve been seeing, Angela?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“But you weren’t seeing a projected image—you were seeing the real thing, right?” Will said.
“I wasn’t seeing a projected image,” Angela said.
“So…do you think that whoever saw the image also saw the real ghost?” Will asked.
“Not necessarily,” Angela said. “There are all kinds of pictures at the museum—and pictures of the children can be found there. They’re probably also available in old newspaper archives. No, I don’t think that anyone had to have seen the ghosts of the children to pull this off.”
“Who the hell could have gotten into the house so easily, and managed this stuff?” Whitney asked.
“Well, David Holloway, for one,” Angela said.
Jackson’s phone rang while he was watching the senator sip a second latte. It was Andy Devereaux.
“Well, we went in, and we have a couple of guys in for questioning,” Andy said.
“Did you find anything? Anything at all to suggest that a murder—or murders—were committed there?” Jackson kept his eyes on David Holloway as he spoke.
“Nothing. There are a couple of girls here, and we’re trying to question them. And I have two members of the church council, but no Martin DuPre, and they’re saying that they’ve never had anyone who matches that description as a member of the church. I can hold all of them for about twenty-four hours, but after that, I’m going to hope that I can at least find proof of statutory rape, and that may be all that I have.”
“Thanks.”
“Come in the morning. Maybe you have a unique way of asking questions,” Andy suggested. “Right now, I’m praying the girls quit crying, that I can find out a few real names, and get something out of the crew. The financial guys are going over the books. But I need more. And I’m going to have to bring your girl, Gabby Taylor, back to identify DuPre, if he’s really the father of her child. Have you told any of this to David Holloway?”
“Yes, I’m looking at him right now,” Jackson said.
“All right. Get here in the morning. I’ve got officers on the case, but this might be something you can handle with more intuitive questions. I haven’t dealt with crazy cults before, though I have dealt with enough crazy teenage girls.”
“Do your best, Andy.”
Jackson hung up. Both Holloway and Jake were watching him.
“DuPre wasn’t there. Do you have any idea where he might be, Senator?”
“I gave him the night off,” Holloway said.
“Call him.”
The senator did so. The phone just rang and rang.
Jackson wasn’t surprised. “I doubt if he’ll be reporting to work tomorrow, Senator.”
As they sat there, Jackson’s phone rang. It was Will. “We’ve found something,” he said. “Are you still with the senator?”
“I am.”
“Can you leave him?”
“If you’re telling me I need to do so.”
Will began to speak quickly, so quickly that he didn’t understand the gist of what Will was saying at first. And then he did.
“You need to see this,” Will said. “The question is—should you bring the senator with you or not?”
Together, they watched the image projected. Jackson stared at the machinations, and thought about the fact that the answer had been in a trunk in the attic, and he grew cold. The cruelty behind the creation of the image was staggering; that the person with the mind to instigate such brutal torture was still walking around free was chilling.
He watched Senator David Holloway watching the images of the bloodied child, pleading for help, saying that “it hurt.”
He watched tears form in the senator’s eyes, and then roll down his cheeks.
“Who would do this?” he whispered.
“Someone close to you,” Jackson said, his voice harsh. He had to watch the senator’s reactions. “Someone close to you who has access to the house. I’m sure the plan was to allow the projection to lure your wife out to the balcony—and to her death. But I’m thinking that though she went to the balcony, she wasn’t ready to jump. That’s why she was thrown at the end, despite this display of smoke and mirrors, as Will would explain it. You have to know who did it, Senator. Because someone did it because they wanted to drag you down, or because they thought that they were doing you a favor. Frankly, I think it’s the first—your people are all involved in groups that do their best to tear down your campaigns.”
The senator shook his head, stricken. “It’s impossible. I knew nothing.”
He looked lost. Far older than his years.
“Would you like some water, Senator?” Whitney asked him.
The senator nodded. He had been seated in the grand ballroom, where they could best display the recorded image that was so state-of-the art, it appeared three-dimensional.
The figure began to repeat the pattern. “Mommy!”
“Turn it off!” the senator begged. “Please! Turn it off.”
Will quickly hit the switch.
“Think about it, Senator. If you can think of anything that will help us, we need to know,” Jackson said. “If you have been involved in this in any way, we need to know.”
“How dare you?” Holloway huffed.
“Senator, your people are involved up to the gills. What part you might have known about is still in question.”
“I wouldn’t have done that to Regina!”
“But, the question remains—were you being blackmailed for any reason? Did you want your wife gone—just not this way?”
“Bastard,” Holloway told Jackson.
“Well?”
“You were supposed to find ghosts!” Holloway raged.
“Were you involved?” Jackson demanded.
“I’ve told you! Dammit—I’ve told you. Yes, I knew about my people going into those wretched communities—joining the Aryans and the Church of Christ Arisen. Well, I knew about DuPre and Conroy. If they took that to mean they should go crazy—it wasn’t me. And I didn’t kill my wife.”
“It’s all still looking so gray, Senator. Not at all good,” Jackson said.
Holloway didn’t seem to have anything else to say. He stared at Jackson a long time and spoke at last. “You are a bastard, Crow. An absolute bastard.”
“Did you have my team come in just to say that yes, there were ghosts, Senator? To distract from your little Aryans involvement?” Jackson asked. “Did you think you were getting a team of paranormal experts who would want ghosts to exist, and play it out like a pack of innocent lackeys, swearing that there were ghosts?”
“You’re an ass, and I’m innocent,” Holloway said. “I did want you to prove there were ghosts. There are ghosts in that house—and ghosts caused my wife to die. Quit accusing me. Maybe I did want to prove it because I didn’t want to live with the guilt of having caused her to commit suicide—but she didn’t, and I didn’t kill her. And if you’d let well enough alone, DuPre and Conroy would have gotten what we needed, and I could have shut them all down.”
“It was all for the good of man, right?”
“I’m innocent of Regina’s death.”
“Yes, but you either killed other innocents—or brought about their deaths with you machinations, Senator.”
“No. I can’t be responsible for others turning homicidal!”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Jackson asked.
Holloway stared at him, furious.
Jake cleared his throat. “Shall I drive you home, sir?”
Holloway just shook his head. “I’ll go next door,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll just go next door.”
“Walk him over, Will, please?” Jackson asked.
Will nodded and left with the senator.
“I’m taking the projector down to the police station with me first thing in the morning,” Jackson said. “We have to keep investigating this house. Whoever used the projector seems absolutely confident in his or her ability to get away with what he’s done. The damn thing has been here. He or she put it in a trunk and thought that would be the end of it—it might have been. Some buyer another hundred years from now might have discovered it.”
“We can try to trace the purchase,” Jake said. “It’s a very expensive piece of equipment.”
