Heather Graham - Darkest Journey

“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.”

“Ah. Well, then, nice I won’t have to change planes in New Orleans.”

Jackson grinned. “Report in to me as soon as you have a feel for what’s going on. Jude and I can join you early if you think we can help. That plane goes back and forth whenever we want it to.”

Ethan took the folder and headed out of the office.

Within an hour he was on the private plane provided by Adam Harrison.

As he flew, he read the dossiers on the dead men.

Then he looked out the window and gave himself up to memories of Charlie Moreau.

* * *

“It’s going to be all right, Charlie—really. This situation has nothing to do with you or Brad or the movie. You stumbled on something very bad that someone else did. You can’t go letting it affect your life. In fact, you should be glad you found the poor man, because now the police can try to find some justice for him.”

Jonathan Moreau set his arm around Charlie’s shoulders and hugged her gently.

She was sitting with her father on a bluff high above the Mississippi. It was a short distance from Grace Church and the place where she’d found the body of a man who’d been identified as Farrell Hickory dressed in his Confederate cavalry uniform.

That area still had crime-scene tape around it.