The Forbidden (Krewe of Hunters #34) - Heather Graham Page 0,5
a bit older than Fin, but today he looked tired.
A murder in a cemetery. A corpse lain out like the bride of Frankenstein—or, in this case, the bride of Dracula.
The sun was falling when they arrived. And since the medical examiner had made it just ahead of them, they’d headed straight to the victim.
The Christy heirs and the actors and crew of the movie—The Two Faces of the Vampire—were rounded up in the grand foyer and great room of the Christy mansion, a house that looked like something out of a B horror movie without the help of a set designer.
Fin had known of the place, though he’d never been out to the island. Every school kid in Southern Louisiana knew about the pirate, Jean Lafitte, and his base on Barataria Island.
Christy Island wasn’t far from Barataria Island, and Fin had often traveled the bayous and waterways around the area, having grown up in Houma, an hour’s drive from the city of New Orleans. Kids told stories about it, especially because the last Christy had been considered a strange bird, a hermit who preferred his own company to any other and hadn’t even met the heirs to whom he was leaving his estate.
Authorities hadn’t been called until the afternoon and while they’d gotten here in record time, the day was fading. The sky was spectacular, as shades of red, mauve, pink and gold shot across the sky, casting down strange rays of light that seemed to add a gilding to the scene.
Dr. Conrad Houseman had been bending over the corpse; he stood, looked around and shook his head. He was around fifty, Fin thought, experienced and serious.
He turned to look at Fin and Ryder.
“Sad,” he muttered.
“Extremely,” Fin agreed. He knew the young woman had been part of the crew, and well-liked by the cast and her coworkers.
“This is preliminary,” Houseman said, “but I believe she died sometime between two and four this morning. She wasn’t killed here, but she was brought here almost immediately.” He sighed. “See the puncture wounds? The killer managed to get those perfectly arranged on the jugular, bled her out...and then cleaned her up.”
“You mean...she’s missing all her blood?” Ryder asked.
Houseman shrugged. “Most of it, I’m going to warrant. She has only slight lividity, suggesting she doesn’t have much blood in her. That color isn’t makeup—that’s her color...without much blood. What lividity there is suggests she was laid out on this tomb soon after death.” He hesitated, appearing confused, and shrugged again. “They’re making a movie here. I thought that directors shot at all hours. No one saw her until this afternoon?”
“Two of the actors were just walking through the cemetery,” Ryder told him. “And they came upon her. The earliest call time for this morning was 7:00 a.m. and the owners aren’t living here—they rented it all out to the movie company.”
“Ah. So no one is on the island through the night?” Houseman asked.
“We haven’t questioned the cast and crew yet,” Ryder told him. “But the heirs hate the place—they’re making all the legal arrangements to sell it and split the profits.”
“Right, of course. Sorry. I just... I worked in New York City for twenty-plus years before coming down here and...still, I’ve never seen anything like this. Worse, I guess, but...”
“But not like this,” Ryder said, finishing for him.
“I’ll take her in now. This is as far as I can go here,” Houseman said. “Go figure—they make a vampire movie, so someone has to get carried away. Well, it’s an island. Maybe that will help you boys find her killer, though the good Lord knows, you have enough people with easy access to this place.”
He walked away from the corpse, leaving Fin and Ryder.
Ryder shook his head. “The Axeman, and now this. I realize your team usually works serial killers or those crossing state lines—”
“We come when we’re asked for help,” Fin assured him.
“Yeah. And thank you for that. I’ve worked with Agents Tiger and Broussard before, but I appreciate any help I can get. This is...” He broke off, looking back at the corpse. “Not someone angry, killing someone for something they did. Not for greed, not for jealousy. Not in my opinion.”
“Someone organized. This was planned out,” Fin said. He was relatively new to the FBI, and to the Krewe, but he’d done his courses on profiling at the Academy, and he knew when to trust his gut.
“So it’s got to be someone involved with the film.”