Heather Graham - Wicked Deeds

“Wait and see how I wow people!” he told her.

He pulled into public parking near Westminster Hall and Burying Ground. “Poe’s grave, at your command, my love.”

She looked at him and smiled. “So you’re going to wow the dead people with your Poe-etic license?” she asked him.

“Sometimes,” he reminded her, “dead people are far more important than the living.”

“Sometimes,” she repeated.

The old Presbyterian church itself—long since deconsecrated and now known as Westminster Hall—offered tours on certain days of the week with reservations, and special tours when prearranged. The catacombs and the inside of the structure were only available through those special times and reservations. But the burial ground surrounding the old church was open to the public, and historical markers identified many of the notable dead.

“Poe was buried in the back at first,” Vickie said, walking quickly ahead of Griffin.

She wasn’t heading toward the back, though, but rather toward the place where Poe had been moved when admirers of his work had finally gotten together to manage the creation of a fine monument to him.

“In an unmarked grave!” she said. “He had a cousin—Neilson Poe—in the city of Baltimore. Neilson was finally contacted after Poe was found and brought to the hospital. But the thing is, Poe never came back to his senses. He was delirious from the time he was found to the time he died.”

There were other visitors to the burial ground, some wandering around to view other notable graves, some hovering by the monument to Edgar Allan Poe.

“Miss, excuse me—is he really here? Or is this just the monument? You seem to know a great deal.”

An attractive woman of about forty or forty-five had stopped in front of Vickie; she’d apparently heard her speaking.

Vickie flushed. “I don’t know that much. I just always loved his work. I do know that he was exhumed and moved here—with other members of his family, Virginia Clemm, his wife, and Maria Clemm, her mother. You can see their names if you walk around the monument.”

The woman thanked her.

Others were gathering. Some came with curiosity—and some with absolute reverence, bowing their heads, speaking softly and then just standing there, as if by gathering at his grave they could breathe in some of his brilliance.

Griffin noticed that a boy standing near the monument suddenly jerked—as if he’d been startled or touched by someone unseen.

He looked around the monument, but saw nothing but other visitors who had come to pay their respects to Baltimore’s famous poet.

Griffin walked around the monument himself, then stopped short.

A man stood there, with dark hair and a sad face. He seemed to be dressed oddly for the day and the time.

The man saw Griffin. He lifted his hand in a salute, staring at Griffin gravely.

Griffin had never been the Poe reader that Vickie was. Of course, he’d never been any kind of a historian, either—able to rattle off names and dates with such amazing conversational ease.

But even he recognized the figure.

For a moment, he thought that the man was an actor, out to entertain Baltimore visitors at the burial ground.

Then the man disappeared, as if he’d faded into the stone itself.

And Griffin could only presume that he had just seen the real Edgar Allan Poe.

* * *

The news was out; it was everywhere.

Baltimore had lost another great writer, and how oddly, how eerily! He had died in a wine cellar—at a restaurant called the Black Bird, a restaurant that entirely honored the great writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Boston claimed Poe for its own—and had just added a life-size statue of him with a raven on Boylston Street. But in life, Poe hadn’t much loved the city of his birth. To be fair, he had lived and worked more in Virginia and Maryland. It seemed, however, that just as “Washington slept here” was a common refrain, Poe was also coveted. And it was only right. New York City had quite a claim on the man, too—in the Village, and up in the Bronx, where he had last lived, and where his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, had been waiting for him to come retrieve her.

Right now, Baltimore had renewed their claim on the man—and was musing over what facts were known about his death—and how they compared with the death of Franklin Verne.

Griffin and Vickie had come to the police station to meet up with Carl Morris, having given up the illusion that they were on any kind of a vacation or even off for the weekend.

Maybe they had been on the job from the moment the dream had first plagued her that morning, Vickie thought. And, if not then, they had become completely involved once Jackson had called, or even as soon as Monica Verne had reached out to Adam.

Monica’s resolve and passion couldn’t be ignored. Vickie just wished that she hadn’t brought that passion to the media so quickly.

Monica Verne was offering a hundred-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could lead her to the true cause of her husband’s death.

“Great, just great!” Griffin muttered. “Now we’ll get calls from every demented soul in the city.”

“Well, maybe someone will come forward with good information,” Vickie told him.

They were standing with Morris and a group of officers in the center of the work floor of the station; one of the officers had brought up the live footage on the large screen that hung from the room’s ceiling, available anytime there was some type of video footage that should be witnessed by all.

Monica must have called the local news station just minutes after Griffin and Vickie had left her home; any self-respecting journalist would have hurried to her with all possible speed.

Phones were always ringing, lighting up, at the police station. It almost appeared as if an alien ship sat above them, there was such a display of sound and light as the show aired.

Morris looked at Vickie, shaking his head sadly. “We can hope, but...for the most part? This kind of thing takes up hours of work, and yields little. But yes, we can hope.”

“Well, Monica is convinced her husband was murdered,” Vickie said.

“And she’s probably right,” Griffin murmured.

“Sorry!” Carl Morris called, his voice deep, rich, loud—and extending to the different officers and detectives in the room. “Answer all calls—do your best to sort the wheat from the chaff.”

“You’re going to love this one, Detective!” an officer called out, holding up one of the police station’s yellow crime-tip forms. “The Martians are here. They learned how to beam people places by watching Star Trek reruns for hours and hours. They killed him because they had to suck out his brain.”

Morris waved a hand in the air. There wasn’t much laughter. There were far more sighs.

Morris motioned to Vickie and Griffin. They followed him into his office.

There was a monitor screen at the side of his desk. Morris picked up a remote control and hit it. “Maybe you can see something I missed. I’ve gone over the digital video or whatever the hell it is from the front-door cameras a zillion times.”

Nothing happened on the screen. Morris swore softly. “Hang on,” he told them. “I have to go find a kid.”

The kid—Officer Benedict, who appeared to be about twenty-five—hurried in after Morris stood at the door and yelled out.

“Here, sir!” Benedict said to Morris, glancing at Griffin and Vickie with a grimace. “This, sir, turns it on. Then just hit this arrow, and it will play. The arrow is Play. But the device must be powered on.”

“I got it this time, I got it!” Morris said. “Hey, these things are new. We just got them in a week or so ago. Thanks, Benedict.”