Krewe of Hunters: The Hidden Part 19

Diego hung up.

Brett had been watching him the whole time. "Since we know it's not Scarlet-Ben or Trisha? Or someone else here?"

"Ben did find the bodies, and everyone else seems to have an alibi for the time of the murders," Diego said. "Anyway, I'm going to head outside to meet Jane when she arrives."

"I'm going back on the computer-see if we've missed anything on Ben and Trisha," Brett said. "I'll call HQ, too-tell them to dig deeper." He hesitated. "Ben did have access to the museum and the Colt that killed the Parkers."

"I'm surprised Gray hasn't arrested him already. He brought Scarlet in just for having pictures on her camera."

"Pictures Ben told him about," Brett reminded him.

"True," Diego said. "But do you really see him being capable of it? He's not a young man."

"It doesn't take a young man to pull a trigger."

"Yes, but Larry Parker was strung up a tree. That takes strength."

"Maybe Ben and Trisha are a pair of psychopathic killers," Brett said.

Diego let that thought settle, trying to envision the two of them slinking into town, somehow getting the Parkers alone, then dragging or forcing them up the hill. "He's living his dream in his ancestral home. Are you saying his dream was to re-create his ancestors' deaths?"

"As a motive, it's a little off," Brett agreed. "But we'll look into his-and Trisha's-past. If nothing else, it always helps to eliminate suspects."

"True," Diego agreed with a nod, then headed down the stairs to await Jane's arrival.

He stepped outside into a beautiful fall day. The sun was already up, and the air was crisp and clean.

The sight that greeted his eyes, the peaks of the snowcapped Rockies rising over the tree line, seemed so serene that it was hard to imagine the horror of bloodshed intruding.

But intrude it had.

As he stood in the sun, he heard car tires on the gravel drive. He stepped forward. Jane had arrived. She parked, and he headed over to greet her.

"Grab my portfolio, will you?" she asked as she got out of the car. "I sketched his face from a few different angles. I have no idea of eye or hair color, obviously, so I played with that a bit, too."

"You don't even look tired," he told her.

She flashed him a smile. "I am, but I'll sleep as soon as we're set with this." She grabbed her purse and her computer bag, and started toward the museum.

She paused, looking around as they entered the museum. She smiled, as if she had somehow come home.

"Wow. Authentic. I love a place like this, small but real, and full of treasures. Those mannequins are incredible," she said, then frowned suddenly and approached the statue of Nathan Kendall. "Amazing workmanship," she said.

"That's Nathan Kendall, the man who founded this ranch," Diego said. "His father-in-law had it commissioned after the murders. He also commissioned one of his daughter, but she seems to have been lost over the years." He shrugged. "It's no wonder you like the West. I understand you worked in Texas at one point."

"Not to mention my husband, Agent Sloan Trent, is from Arizona," she said. "We met at an old theater in Lily, Arizona. They had a lot of old props like the collection here. I'm always fascinated by all the history out here." She smiled ruefully. "I'll gawk later. Where would you like me to set up my computer and lay out my pictures?"

"Up in the living room," Diego said. "I'll lead the way."

Upstairs, Jane greeted Brett with a smile. Scarlet hadn't appeared yet, so Diego led the way to the living room. While Jane set up her computer on the coffee table, Brett called Matt and told him and Meg to head over.

Diego sat next to Jane as she booted up her computer and hit the b.u.t.tons to bring up her rendering.

"This isn't a perfect science," she reminded him. "But we know he was Caucasian, about thirty-five, so I worked with the standards for tissue depth and so on, and then, as I said, created different combinations of eye and hair color."

Her computer had a high-def seventeen-inch screen. As she hit a key, an almost photographic likeness of a face popped up. "There he is," she said. "Our John Doe. Not a bad-looking guy. Here he is with dark hair and blue eyes. Next I have him as a brown-eyed blond." She clicked. Another sketch.

"Face look familiar to you?" Diego asked Brett.

Brett shook his head. "No wanted posters or missing persons reports that I've seen."

"This is him with a cowboy hat, sandy hair and hazel eyes," Jane said.

There was a loud gasp from the doorway.

Diego turned to see Scarlet standing there, eyes wide, face white against the rich chestnut color of her hair.

She was staring at the computer screen.

"Scarlet?" Diego said, frowning at her reaction.

She looked at him in horror. "It's him!"

"Who?"

"My stalker," she said. "It's my stalker."

"Are you sure?" Diego asked her.

"Beyond a doubt. That's him-that's the man who stopped me in town, the man who's been following me. I'm absolutely sure."

10.

Jane had risen and was watching Scarlet, who was transfixed by the computer screen.

"My G.o.d," Scarlet breathed, and then she turned to Jane. "That's scary, it's so real," she whispered. She walked closer to the computer and then, as if her knees had buckled, practically fell backward onto the sofa. "It's crazy," she murmured. "But it must be true, because that's him. That's the man who keeps trying to talk to me."

She looked at Jane again and suddenly stood, reaching out a hand. "I'm Scarlet. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so rude."

Jane smiled, taking her hand. "Not rude at all. I'm so sorry that you were startled by my rendering."

"Rendering," Scarlet repeated. "Rendering, yes." She seemed to grow even whiter. "You did this from a skull?"

"Yes."

"He's dead."

"Yes."

"Definitely dead?"

"Oh, yes. Very definitely dead," Jane said gently.

Scarlet sank back onto the couch. Diego moved over next to her, taking her shoulders and drawing her around so that she had to look at him.

"Scarlet, are you all right?"

"Yes. I think. And you're right. A gun won't do me a bit of good, will it?"

"No."

"So you know who he is?" Jane asked her.

"No. Before he started stalking me, I'd never seen him before."

"Hey!" a man called from downstairs. "It's Matt. Meg and I are coming up."

"We're in the living room," Diego called down to him.

Once Meg and Matt arrived, everyone rushed to fill them in.

"I'm not at all surprised that's the man you've been seeing," Meg said. "He clearly has a reason for coming to you. I believe he really is trying to help you."

"Why me?" Scarlet demanded. "He should have gone to one of you. You're the ghost experts, not to mention you're the FBI."

They were silent for a long moment, and then Meg said, "There was a ghost in Miami, Miguel Gomez, and he went to my friend Lara. Brett's fiancee. She wasn't a Krewe member-still isn't. She's in public relations. He believed she could help him, maybe because she was the one who found his remains."

"But I didn't find any remains!" Scarlet protested.

"In one way," Jane said carefully, "we're no different dead than when we're alive. We like certain people. We instinctively trust them. We gravitate toward them. Whoever this man is, he's coming to you for a reason."

"Great," Scarlet said. "In that case..."

She stood up and looked around the room. "Where are you? I'm ready now. Come talk to me. Tell me whatever it is you want me to know."

Nothing happened.

"Where is he now?" Scarlet demanded.

"Wherever he chooses to be. He doesn't know you've suddenly decided you want to be friends," Matt told her.

"I don't want to be friends," Scarlet protested. "I just want to know what the h.e.l.l is going on."

"He may prove to be your best friend," Diego told her softly.

Scarlet looked at him and shook her head, clearly longing to disbelieve.

"He'll come to you again," Meg a.s.sured her.

"Wonderful," Scarlet said.

"Actually," Brett said, sitting next to her, "it really is. Scarlet, it's going to be okay."

"Yeah, right. All I know is, if you guys leave me alone anywhere, even for a minute, I'll show you how good I am with a gun by shooting off your toes," she threatened.

"We won't leave you alone," Diego promised.

Silence fell.

Diego turned to Jane. "Okay, let's go ahead and get the picture Scarlet thinks looks most like her stalker to Lieutenant Gray. You can email it to Krewe HQ, too, so they can keep trying to figure out who the h.e.l.l he is."

As he spoke, his phone rang.

It was Gray.

"We've got another body," he said grimly. "And this one is fresh."

Scarlet didn't know what she was going to do with herself. There wouldn't even be any visitors to talk to, because no sooner had Diego hung up than Ben had called to tell her he'd decided not to open the museum that week.

"Just feels too awkward," he'd told her.

Frankly, she hadn't even thought about opening, but then, her brain didn't seem to be working very well.

"So...another body," Scarlet said. She bit her lower lip lightly. "Man or woman?"

"Woman," Diego told her. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking over at Matt, and she realized they were doing that thing they did, silently dividing into teams so they could go to work. She wondered who would be staying here with her.

She wasn't sure who she wanted it to be. She decided that what she really wanted was to quit, leave the case to the professionals and maybe board a cruise ship to an exotic island.

That, of course, wasn't happening.

"The journals," she said, as if she'd just made a great discovery. "We can keep studying the journals."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Meg said.

"You know, it doesn't always have to be you who stays," Scarlet said to her. "We're not playing girls against boys here."

"Honestly, none of us were thinking of it that way," Meg a.s.sured her. "But you and I have already started on the journals, so it only makes sense for us to keep going. Besides, I've always enjoyed research. Adam said he has a bunch of paperwork to catch up on but he'll stop by if he finishes in time." She turned toward Jane. "You need to get some sleep, but when you wake up, you're free to join us."

"We need to get going," Matt said.