Krewe of Hunters 7 The Unspoken (24 page)

“And now Landry is dead. He didn’t kill himself and we’re running out of suspects,” Logan said. He nodded at Will. “You’re acting like a caged tiger.”

“It’s just that—”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain,” Logan told him, smiling. “Except that you’ll have to get used to it. Usually, it won’t be this bad. In this case, Kat seems to be the catalyst. Naturally when she’s the one out there the most, you’ll worry about her. It’s not a bad thing—it’s instinct. But, trust me, if you want any kind of a future…well, you can’t change what someone is, what she wants to be, and what she wants to do with her life. Kat isn’t going to sit home, ever, while you take off to chase evil. She’s not the delicate creature the he-man protects. Under our current circumstances, every member of the team will rally around her. She is the one in greatest danger on this case. So, yes, go ahead and worry. But if I were you, I’d keep that worry to myself. She is what she is, and she’d never understand that you’d want to take risks that you feel she shouldn’t.”

Will looked at Logan for a minute, recognizing the wisdom of his words. “Can it work?” he asked quietly.

Logan smiled again. “So far, it works for me. I just keep remembering that we have one another’s backs at all times. That helps. You never walk into danger if you don’t have to, and when you do, you use your training. And you trust all your team members to do the same.”

“I do know that trying to stop people from what they feel they need to do is a mistake. And,” Will said, shrugging, “I know that because I found where I was meant to be—with the Krewe of Hunters. If you took that feeling from me, from anyone, a relationship would be doomed.”

“Hard to live with sometimes,” Logan said. “But…yeah.”

However, when they finally gathered back at the hotel, Will asked as evenly as he could how Kat and Tyler had ended up at Landry Salvage when he’d left them doing research at the hotel.

“I was sure that Sherry Bertelli was lying to save her boss. I’m still sure of it. Except that Landry is dead now,” Kat said.

“You came out to talk to Sherry, but Stewart Landry wound up dead?” Will asked.

“We were at the reception desk, talking to Sherry, and saw someone slipping furtively out the back door—Landry,” Kat explained. “We followed to find out why he was running away. He started shooting. We started shooting. But someone else was out there. Someone who’s growing careless, because the position of the bullet hole—the angle of entry—would have been almost impossible for him to achieve on his own. The idea was for us to find Landry and either believe we’d killed him, which means the killer didn’t pause to think about different weapons, bullets and shell casings, or that he killed himself. But a bullet dead center in the forehead isn’t logical because of the way our thumbs and fingers fit on a trigger. There’s always an angle.” She hesitated, looking around at the Krewe. “I’ll go in when Dr. Randall does the autopsy tomorrow, but imagine the length of your hand and a gun. Imagine manipulating your fingers and taking straight aim. Also, if he’d killed himself, there would’ve been a darker stain of gunpowder.”

“It feels like we’re back to square one,” Jane said. “Everything points to Landry. Except that now Landry is dead.”

“Great.” Kelsey shook her head. “We have one survivor who swears a mummy tried to kill him. We have four dead. And two of them, Landry and Amanda,
might
have been involved.”

“Back to the drawing board,” Logan said. “We also have the Sand Diggers, most of whom wouldn’t have any inner knowledge of the Preservation Center. But would that matter if Amanda had been the liaison? With Landry dead, the next closest salvage company is Simonton’s Sea Search—whose owner attended lectures about the ship
and
Dr. McFarland’s discussion on methods of death. Including methods that aren’t easy to trace.

“Tomorrow we’ll get a search warrant for Simonton’s home, boats, car and place of business,” Logan said. He looked at Will. “I think it’s important that we continue the dive, whether Jon Hunt’s with us or not. Because the film crew’s documentation of the wreck is all we have left. Everyone, get some rest now.”

When they were together later that night, lying in bed, half-asleep and half-curled together, Will rose up on his elbow, stroking the sleek line of Kat’s back.

She rolled over, touching his face. “You seem different,” she said.

“Shaken,” he told her.

“Will, I know how to duck,” she teased.

He nodded slowly. “I have to get used to it.”

“Can you?” she asked him. “Will you always feel as if you have to protect me?”

“It’s not easy to ignore that impulse, Kat, but will I try? Yes.”

“It’s no different, really,” she said softly. “I feel the same about you. But I trust you not to take unnecessary or foolish risks. I know you can look after yourself.”

“Hey,” he said gruffly. “I’d like to see
you
not worried if you found out someone sent a hail of bullets my way.”

“It wasn’t a hail of bullets,” she said.

“It only takes one.”

“I know.”

She searched his eyes in the dim glow of a night-light and reached out for him, bringing his lips down to hers. The kiss began as something very simple, something to seal the words between them. It grew far more impassioned and he found himself wide-awake again, sliding along her body to caress her with his tongue. Soon they were breathless, writhing in each other’s arms, and later lay spent and exhausted, ready for much-needed rest.

In the morning, Kat answered a call from the morgue; as she’d hoped, she was invited to join Dr. Randall for the autopsy.

Will left with Tyler and Sean, keeping his thoughts to himself.

He had to accept the fact that bullets could fly at either one of them, but for today he was glad she’d be safe among the dead at the morgue. The wreck of the
Jerry McGuen
seemed like a very dangerous place to be.

* * *

“So many healthy people dead,” Randall said as he and Kat worked on the corpse of Stewart Landry. “What a beautiful heart. The man was fit, toned and other than having a brain that’s just about turned to mush…”

“Whoever shot him was only a couple of feet away,” Kat said. She shook her head. “Why did he run from us? There was no reason for him to do that. He had his lawyer on the case, he’d been released….”

“Maybe he believed that since you showed up at his place again, some other evidence had been found against him.”

“That’s possible,” Kat agreed.

“And you didn’t see anyone else in the boathouse at all?” Randall asked.

“No, just Landry. I stayed with the body while Tyler searched. When the police arrived, they searched, too, but…there were at least a dozen ways of getting into or out of the boathouse. You’re on the water, there are entrances in front and on either side.… The killer could have been waiting in the boathouse or come in after we chased Landry.” She paused, looking at the corpse. Landry wasn’t speaking to her; she hadn’t expected that he would.

There was nothing else Kat could do at the morgue, so she cleaned up and called Logan. He and Kelsey, she discovered, were with the police executing the search warrant on Andy Simonton’s property. Sean and Tyler were diving with Will, and Jane was at the main branch of the public library with Dirk Manning, researching Captain Ely and the
Egyptian.

Kat put a call through to Jane, telling her she’d join them at the library. She found the two of them sitting side by side at library computers, and she drew up a chair at the third.

Jane passed her a piece of paper with a website address scrawled on it. “Try this one. There’s an article on Ely. His full name was Josiah Brentwood Ely. He joined the Union navy at the age of seventeen, near the end of the Civil War, and when the war was over, he did a lot of traveling—including some time on ships coming and going from Egypt. He was a strange man who got involved in the spiritualist craze of the late-nineteenth century. And later, he became a fundamentalist Christian. There’s more on him. I haven’t gotten to all the links yet.”

Kat thanked her and started on the computer herself. It wasn’t long before she’d connected to the site Jane had suggested. One of the links took her to an article discussing “the strange case of Captain Josiah Brentwood Ely.” Ely, according to the article, preached against dabbling in the occult, mysticism and other uses of “magic.” He told friends, family and followers that he knew of objects, physical objects, in the world that were Satan’s tools, capable of destroying entire civilizations.

He claimed that among those objects was the scepter that had belonged to the Egyptian priest Amun Mopat. Mopat had used it to countermand the plagues that hit Egypt, and to help the godless survive when Moses led his people to Israel. If it hadn’t been for Mopat and his scepter, Ely said, the New Kingdom of Egypt would have dissolved, and the Egyptian people would have been free to become believers in the one true God.

“Pretty crazy, huh?” Jane said to Kat.

“Yes, but it makes me even more convinced that whoever is doing this is after the scepter.”

“You think someone
really
believes the scepter could control the world?”

“We’ve heard crazier beliefs or, at least, just as crazy,” Kat said. She shut down the computer and stood. “The police are still at the Preservation Center?”

“Yup. It’s still under lock and key, and surrounded by crime scene tape,” Jane said, turning off her computer and rising, too. “I’ll check in with Logan. We can go there if you want.”

“To the center?” Dirk Manning asked anxiously.

“You don’t need to come with us,” Kat replied.

“You want me to stay here
alone?
”

Kat smiled. “We’ll leave you with one of Chicago’s finest,” she told him. “Maybe he’ll let you turn on the siren.”

“Very funny, young lady,” Manning said. “But, yes!
I
will sit outside in a police car.”

* * *

Just before going down to the wreck, Will called Kat.

The autopsy had been completed, he learned; they’d discovered nothing they hadn’t expected. But they’d confirmed that Landry couldn’t possibly have shot himself.

“It’s a pity the boathouse isn’t a more confined space,” Kat complained. “Whoever was in there took off before we realized there
was
anyone else.”

“I still think that one or more of the dead had to be involved,” Will said.

“Yes. But the only one talking is Austin Miller, and Austin can’t tell us anything except that he believes a mummy killed him. Anyway, Jane and I are going to the Preservation Center. I want to prowl around there some more.”

“Be careful,” he said.

“There are still plenty of cops out front. I’ll be with Jane, and we’ll be very careful,” Kat promised.

They said goodbye, and Will told himself that this was her job. He reminded himself again that he couldn’t stop her from doing it.

“Everything all right?” Tyler asked him.

Will nodded. “Kat and Jane are heading over to the Preservation Center. They’re going to start tearing the place apart, since we haven’t got anything to move forward with.”

“Maybe they’ll find something,” Tyler said with a shrug.

Sean walked over to him. “Kat has worked with cops in law enforcement for a long time. She’s smart as a whip and she knows what she’s doing,” he said.

“Can’t blame you for worrying, though,” Tyler put in. “We always worry most about the key person on any case.” He pointed at Will. “That’s you as well as Kat, so stay close by when we dive, huh?”

Will grinned. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Thirty minutes later, they were down at the
Jerry McGuen.

Will instinctively paused near the grand salon and looked in, trying to imagine what Kat had seen there. The ship at sea—the realization that a storm was coming and worse….

They were about to be rammed by an icebreaker.

But the salon held nothing for him. He joined the film crew and Sean and Tyler in the hold. They were inspecting the darkened space behind the hold door, searching for anything that might tell them another diver had been down there. Will hovered in the main section, looking at the crates. He turned, hearing something, and was startled to see what appeared to be a wavy image in the water. He blinked.

There, before him, was the shape of a man.

An Egyptian with handsome sculpted features and a look of dire warning in his eyes.

He didn’t speak; he lifted his arms to Will and seemed to form a single word with soundless lips.

Danger.

The image was that of Amun Mopat.

And Will wasn’t in danger.

Kat was.

He stared at the image, about to rise as quickly as possible to the surface, but the figure of Amun Mopat seemed to be gesturing at him, beckoning him to the wall. Wedged between one of the massive crates and the wall was a slender, narrow box, perhaps six feet long. As he struggled with it, he saw that Earl was filming his movements and Bernie was trying to attract the attention of the other men. A moment later, Tyler and Sean swam over to help him. Together, they managed to ease the heavier, larger crate far enough back to free the tarp-covered box. Will gestured at the surface and they agreed to go up.

On board, they took off their dive gear and studied the box, now removed from its tarp. Alan King was the one who suddenly exclaimed, “Look at the markings on it! There are lions and jackals and—Will, that’s it. That’s got to be the scepter of Amun Mopat. The source of all his power!”

15

D
irk Manning was happy to sit with the police.

The Preservation Center, empty of life and sound, with the auxiliary lights burning, seemed an eerie place as they walked in.

“I wonder what’s happening with the rest of the employees,” Jane said. “From what I understand, the place is actually governed by a board, but Amanda Channel was the boss. Brady and Jon reported to her, and there was a receptionist, the guards hired on by the center, and a bunch of interns coming and going.”

“I doubt any of the interns are eager to get back in. And Jon Hunt is a total basket case, so who knows if he’s even returning to work?” Kat responded.

“Where should we start?” Jane asked.

“Why don’t you take Brady’s office and I’ll take Amanda’s,” Kat suggested.

“And at this point, we’re looking for absolutely anything, right?”

“That’s about it.”

They parted ways in the hall, going to the separate offices. Kat began to rummage through Amanda’s drawers. She was surprised and somewhat saddened to see that Amanda had stashed away a bag from a chic lingerie shop, together with gift wrap and an unsigned card that read “To my Best Friend.” Kat didn’t have time to consider the pathos of that. Because behind the bag, as if caught there when the drawer was opened and closed, she found a crumpled piece of paper. Kat straightened it. The paper had a phone number on it and a quick notation: “7:30 p.m. S.B.”

Frowning, Kat studied it. She dialed the number, using her cell phone.

She had a suspicion as to whose number it might be, and she was right. Landry Salvage. Her call was answered by an automatic message that said the offices were closed.

Kat set the paper down and tapped her fingers on the desk.

S.B.

Sherry Bertelli?

Landry was dead; he’d been killed by someone who had known or guessed why she and Will wanted to talk to him again—that they still had unanswered questions. Sherry had seen them run after Landry. She must have assumed they’d discovered something else that would implicate Landry, and perhaps Landry had been ready to point the finger at her.

Sherry had access to everything that was Landry’s. Landry was madly in love with her, and would have never questioned anything she did.

And now he was dead.

She automatically tried Will on her cell phone but, of course, he didn’t answer. He was down on the dive to the
Jerry McGuen.

She should call Logan, and she did that next. He answered on the first ring. “We need to pick up Sherry Bertelli,” she said.

“The receptionist?”

“Yes. Logan, it makes sense. We didn’t find anyone in the maze when she was supposedly attacked by the so-called mummy. I’m positive
she
was the one who left that swath of wrapping. She was definitely dealing with someone at the Preservation Center—I just found a note in Amanda’s desk with her initials and a time on it. Plus Amanda was calling Landry Salvage constantly. I think that Amanda was involved with Sherry, maybe hoping to be her friend, and Sherry had access to this place because of her. She was with Landry when Dr. McFarland gave his lectures.” She paused to take a breath. “We didn’t look at her because we were too busy looking at Landry. And, frankly, she didn’t seem bright enough to carry out this plan. Talk about stereotyping, huh?”

She paused again; she thought she’d heard movement down the hall, although she and Jane should have been the only ones there. Unless it
was
Jane, coming to talk to her about something she’d found.

“Logan, get someone to bring in Sherry Bertelli. We’ll finish up here and meet you at the station.”

“We’ll get her,” he said. “I’ll send out some officers to find her right now.”

There was no further sound in the hallway. Kat stood up, about to head into Brady’s office and find out what Jane was doing and share her suspicions. Her phone rang; she saw it was Will and answered quickly. “Hey! You’re out of the water fast.”

He hesitated, and she knew he was about to say that he was worried about her.

But he managed not to. She smiled. “I’m okay, Will. I’m with Jane at the center. Listen, I just talked to Logan. Will, I think Sherry Bertelli had something to do with all this. She was everywhere with Landry, and Landry would do anything in the world for her.”

“Then we’ve got to bring her in—now. She may realize that with Landry dead, she’d be next on the suspect list.”

“Logan has detectives going for her now.”

“Good. Hey, I’ve got news for you, too. We found the scepter. Amun Mopat’s all-powerful scepter.”

“You’re kidding! You sure?”

“Alan is certain of it. He read what could still be seen on the box…but we didn’t take it out. None of us knows a thing about preservation, but…anyway, we’re coming in. I’ll drive over and meet you and Jane at the center.”

“Once they’ve brought Sherry in, maybe you should be the one to interrogate her,” Kat said. “You’ve seen her, talked with her….”

“Maybe it should be you. A woman might react more honestly with another woman.”

“Well, let’s give them a chance to bring her in first,” Kat murmured. “I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up, feeling hopeful.
Sherry Bertelli.
Right. Naturally, the men—the CEOs of the salvage companies—would be the initial suspects. And now that Landry was dead, anyone who might have known of her involvement was out of the way.

But what had she wanted? The scepter?

Kat stood, remembering how she’d thought for a moment that she’d heard Jane in the hallway. She stepped out. It was empty, just as it should have been. Then she walked down to Brady Laurie’s office and looked inside.

Jane wasn’t there.

Kat decided not to shout out her name, even if that would more easily assuage her sudden fear. If her colleague was in any kind of danger, Kat could amplify that danger by spurring someone into action.

Silently, she moved along the hall in the other direction. She passed the empty conference room and stopped, drawing her Glock and clicking off the safety. She peered through the plastic sheets that led to the clean room.

Someone was there. Someone was standing over the sarcophagus of Amun Mopat.

* * *

While the film crew had been perplexed by Will’s determination that they surface before their time was up, Tyler and Sean had been willing to follow his lead.

He apologized to the others as the boat motored in.

“Maybe this is getting to me,” he said. “I thought I saw Amun Mopat down there.”

“Maybe you did see something—a vision of the past,” Tyler told him. “We now know that Captain Ely was a quack—with a ship that had Amun Mopat for a figurehead—and we’re pretty sure that he used his ship, guided by that figurehead, to ram the
Jerry McGuen.
”

Will shrugged. “I thought he was warning me of danger. In fact, it almost seemed that he said the word. I was afraid he meant
Kat
was in danger, but I talked to her. She and Jane are at the center. She found some evidence there that incriminates Sherry Bertelli.”

He explained the situation while they completed the return trip to the dock. He was still puzzled. “I see where we might have missed something with Sherry. She could definitely be part of it. But whoever killed Brady Laurie was strong—probably
very
strong. Sherry may be fit, but judging by her size, I don’t see how she could have had the strength to kill Brady. And the guard, Abel Leary—he struggled with his attacker. With the ‘mummy.’ Maybe they were in it together. Maybe Sherry took care of Amanda and managed to befriend her for access to the Preservation Center, and Landry was the muscle behind it all.”

“It’s a theory,” Tyler said slowly, “and maybe her involvement was with—
and because of—
Stewart Landry. Maybe he was the one who wanted to destroy the center’s involvement in hopes of being next on the list of companies to salvage the wreck. Or maybe he wanted a specific object that was on the ship. Sherry just did what he asked to her to, but when it looked like he might put the blame on her, she felt she had to kill him. Amanda was already dead, so if everything pointed to Landry, then she’d be an innocent bystander.”

“All right, so Sherry befriended Amanda,” Will said. “She then had access to the center, and she might have met with Amanda before she died.”

“If that was the case,” Sean continued, “she could have somehow gotten Amanda to eat the shellfish. She must’ve known Amanda was allergic but she could have slipped it into something else Amanda was eating. Of course, they’d have had to get to the museum really fast after their meal—that kind of poison can act quickly.”

“Or they met at the Preservation Center for dinner, and when Amanda was dead and the guard taken of, she took whatever plates she’d used and escaped out the back, the same way she and Amanda both entered,” Will said.

When they arrived at the dock, Will decided he’d go straight to the center. Sean and Tyler would make their way to the police station and help out if they discovered that Sherry Bertelli hadn’t been brought in yet.

As he drove, Will kept thinking about Sherry Bertelli, Stewart Landry and the strange night they’d spent with the Egyptian Sand Diggers at the memorial service, when Sherry had been screaming in the maze. Landry had seemed truly devastated that something might have happened to his mistress. Was he really that good an actor?

Someone
other than the petite woman had been involved. And someone other than the very slight Amanda Channel, as well.

Landry. That was where it all pointed.

Except for that one night.

So who else? Simonton? The police had spent the morning searching his home and office, boats, car. Will had heard nothing back. Simonton was big; he had the necessary strength. If not Simonton, then…Dirk Manning? No. Manning was in decent shape for his age, but he
was
in his late seventies. Not as old as Austin Miller, but not young enough to take down a guard in the prime of life.

It suddenly occurred to him that many people could be excellent actors. And there’d been a great deal of knowledge about the ship and Egyptology associated with recent events….

He stepped on the gas, anxious to reach the center.

When he got to the entrance, he saw that a police car was stationed in front, just as it was supposed to be. He should have felt at ease.

But as he got out of his car and approached the entrance, he felt the chill of fear. Before going in, he called Logan’s number.

“Get over here, please,” he said quietly.

“What’s wrong?” Logan asked.

“We’ve been missing one suspect all along.”

* * *

Kat saw the figure bending over the sarcophagus of Amun Mopat that lay on the steel table. At first it was impossible to tell who it was; the person was dressed in a bunny suit, gloves, booties, hair cover and mask.

After everything that had gone on here, Kat figured a clean suit was probably pointless and she wasn’t going to bother with one herself. Fingers curled around her Glock, she moved through the different layers of plastic, walking into the clean room.

The figure looked up at her. She recognized Jon Hunt.

“Hi,” he said. Then he frowned. “What are you doing here without a suit on?”

“What are you doing here, period?” Kat asked him.

“Working. I work here,” he said.

“Jon, I thought you were taking time off. You were a mess after we found Amanda.”

“I was, yes. But work is good therapy. And when I was at home, I remembered that we never lifted the mask—or examined the mummy.”

“Jon, Amanda was found dead in the sarcophagus. It’s still considered evidence,” Kat said.

Jon walked around the sarcophagus, looking down at the death mask and the mummy. He seemed especially intrigued. She couldn’t see what had so thoroughly attracted his attention, but he seemed protective.

“You don’t understand. The scepter is here somewhere. Everything hinges on the scepter. There’s some kind of power in the crystal head. Men bowed down before the priest because of the scepter.”

“They bowed down before him because otherwise he could have them killed,” Kat said. “Look, it was the way they governed. Jon, I’m shocked that you—a scientist—can put that kind of belief in an object. Anyway, you’re not supposed to be here,” Kat told him. “The place is closed until the deaths are solved.”

“No,
I
can be here, but you shouldn’t,” he said. “I have to find the scepter. I
will
find the scepter.”

The deaths of his colleagues seem to have unhinged him,
Kat thought.

“Jon, the scepter isn’t in the sarcophagus with the mummy. The divers found it today.”

“What?” he asked, spinning to face her.

“I just talked to Agent Chan. He and two other agents were down with the film crew. They believe they’ve brought up the scepter.”

He stared at her in horror. “No!” he said.

She holstered her Glock, walking over to him. “Jon, you need to go home. You need to get some rest. You need—”

She broke off; she had reached the sarcophagus and she saw what had attracted his interest.

Jane.

Jane lay in the sarcophagus just as Amanda had, arms crossed over her chest.

Kat sprang into motion, terrified that she wouldn’t find her friend’s pulse, but when she pressed her fingers to Jane’s throat, she felt the beat of her heart. She stared at Jon. “What in God’s name—help me! Help me get her out of here!”

Jon stepped back. Kat ignored him and reached in for Jane, trying to discern what had made her lose consciousness. She had to get an ambulance quickly. Watching Jon, she searched for her cell phone, but she’d left it on the desk in Amanda’s office.

She struggled with Jane’s body, getting her out of the sarcophagus and onto the floor, then stood, realizing that Jon’s mind was far gone. She leveled the gun on him. “Jon, move away from Jane and the sarcophagus. Give me your cell phone.”

He looked back at her, a puzzled expression on his face. She shook her head. “You didn’t kill Brady Laurie, did you? It couldn’t have been you
or
Amanda, because you were the ones who were supposed to
discover
him. But, Jon, you did dress up as a mummy, didn’t you? You caused Austin Miller’s heart attack, and you caused the guard to shoot himself. Did you kill Amanda? Or did Sherry Bertelli do it?”