Deadly Fate. Heather Graham
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or the woman killed back in Seward until you all came out here today. And that’s a fact—and there’s nothing I can say or do to help you. I wasn’t looking out for anyone to be on the island. I wasn’t paying much attention. We were just getting ready for the film people, sprucing this place up. Hadn’t been rented out in a while. It wasn’t dirty, but it’s like anything else. You don’t use it, somehow you still have to clean it anyway.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Don’t you think we’d like to help you? We live here—survive here. Thinking some maniac who likes to cut people in half might be running around isn’t a good thought, not for my wife and me. We’re a little old to be hitting an overcrowded job market!”
“People don’t always realize what they might know when something first happens,” Thor said. “After a while, you might remember a sound or a moment or something out on the ice. I’m pretty sure that whoever did this had some knowledge of the island.”
“Something might come to you later,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t matter how small.”
“Sure. So, what’s happening now? You’re not leaving the wife and me out on this island alone with a killer running around?”
“No, we won’t be leaving you alone,” Jackson said. “You’ll have forensic crews going through everything at the Mansion through the night.”
“You and your wife are sleeping here?” Thor asked him.
He nodded. “We were planning to, anyway. Natalie Fontaine hadn’t been sure how it would all go. We were prepared for her crew to stay at the Alaska Hut, too.”
“Someone will be here,” Thor assured him.
Justin Crowley nodded and set his hands on his chair. “Then I guess ‘someone’ can talk to me anytime they want. You finished with me for now?”
“Yes, we are. Thank you, Mr. Crowley,” Thor said. “And you know, of course, that we have search warrants that allow us to search every inch of property here, including your personal space?”
Crowley smiled. “Feel free. We’re too old for any personal kinky stuff, so it will be kind of boring, but, hey, go for it.”
Crowley left the room. “Hm,” Jackson murmured. He looked over at Thor and grinned. “Sometimes, the older, the kinkier.”
“Please, Lord, don’t give me any mental pictures!” Thor told him. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes.
“What do you think—seriously?” Jackson asked him.
“Seriously—don’t paint any mental pictures!” Thor said, and then shook his head, looking at his old partner. It had been over a decade since he and Jackson had worked together. They’d been good partners—great partners, really, even knowing what each other was thinking most of the time. They had an unspoken rule: there was no sense in doing what they were doing if it fell short of real humanity. They tended to be by the book and courteous until they couldn’t go by the book and courtesy just wasn’t in the cards anymore.
“I think that they can search this island for days and miss nooks and crannies,” he told Jackson. “I think that the film crew and the Celtic American people were taken completely by surprise. Then again, the group from the ship are actors, and the film crew are in ‘reality’ TV. As for Mr. and Mrs. Crowley—they’re either cantankerous from too much cold or just downright creepy.”
“Do you think someone else is on the island?” Jackson asked him.
Thor hesitated. “There has to be someone else—or, at the very least, a cache somewhere out here. There’s not even a speck of stage blood on anyone in this house. And yet...I still believe that one of them had to have seen something. Because, at some time, Amelia Carson was killed here or brought here. We know that. We go backward from there.” He looked at Jackson again. “I can’t help but believe that Tate Morley is here somehow. That he is out there on the island. And he’s watching us.”
* * *
They weren’t being offered any means off the island—not yet.
And it had been hours, or so it seemed. Hard to tell in Alaska in the summer—the sun never seemed to really set. Clara didn’t wear a watch, but she knew that lunch and dinner had come and gone.
State police—ready to draw their weapons at the drop of a hat!—watched over them. The crew of Wickedly Weird Productions had been brought to the entertainment room in back to wait while she, Ralph, Simon and Larry were in the parlor.
They’d all had sandwiches, provided by the police officers. They’d been offered power bars and fruit. Ralph had complained a bit about not having a proper dinner as time had gone on, but she didn’t think that he was even hungry.
It was a nice enough waiting area. The fireplace was huge and the room was done with stone and natural wood. The sofas were worn, plush leather. While the entertainment center was out in back where the TV people were gathered, there was a smaller screen in the living room.
There was no stopping the media; while neither the police nor the FBI had given out any particulars, the news that producer Natalie Fontaine and celebrity TV hostess Amelia Carson had been murdered was plastered all over the screen.
Every news channel was broadcasting the information. Reporters interviewed other guests and employees at the Nordic Lights Hotel. They spoke in serious tones.
Not one of them missed the opportunity to say that both women had now become part of the sensationalist television they had promoted during their lives. And while a man named Enfield gave a press conference along with the chief of police, neither let out the information that one woman had been beheaded and another had been cut in half.
Law enforcement was doing its best to see that the murders did not become speculative gossip.
After the third or fourth program, Larry had suggested they watch a music channel.
They had all quickly agreed.
She and her cast mates had talked for a while—a little awkwardly, since a uniformed man watched them at all times—and then they had grown silent. It wasn’t a bad silence; they were all comfortable with one another. They were not only part of an ensemble cast, they had lived aboard the Destiny in close proximity, and knew each other very well. Larry and Ralph were now partners, living together, close as could be.
And, she thought, afraid. They were all scared. Every now and then, she caught her cast mates looking at her. Though they were on edge, they were men—and the killer had targeted two women.
But even she could distance herself a little. The two women killed had been with Wickedly Weird Productions.
She was not.
Becca Marle was. Clara had heard a bit of a few of her conversations with Tommy Marchant and Nate Mahoney. They were anxious. They wanted off the island.
Becca didn’t. She felt safer here than she would elsewhere. She liked the armed policeman watching over her amid a sea of cops and the FBI men, who were in the house, as well.
Clara wished that Jackson was out there with them. But now, of course, he was with the man she thought of as Agent Viking. She hoped he was taking charge; she certainly felt more secure when he was with them.
“It’s good that Crow is here,” Ralph said.
“Definitely,” Simon agreed.
Larry grinned. “I don’t know. That Thor guy looks pretty tough to me. We’re going to be all right.” He patted Clara on the knee. “Hey, don’t go wishing you were back in NOLA. Bad things can happen anywhere. Wait—very bad things did happen out of NOLA.”
She frowned, looking at him. She couldn’t help it; she did wish she was back in New Orleans. She had been born there, grown up in the French Quarter; her parents were there, and her younger brother was getting his master’s at Tulane. Home would feel good right now. Actually, New Orleans was where she’d gotten to know Jackson