Ghost Shadow

“No, no. I interviewed him by phone. He was gone, you know.”

“Right. So I heard. Where was he when you spoke to him?”

“Uh-home?”

“You sure?”

“Well, he’d left Key West, you know. Like a day or two before the murder. I didn’t talk to him until the following Monday. I’m sure he could have reached Ohio by then.”

“Did you speak to him on a landline?”

“I spoke to him on the only number I had. He was all broken up. Said he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hear from her right away-he’d been afraid that once she’d seen you, she’d change her mind.”

Sloppy work, David thought. Well, they’d dragged in patrolmen. Men who did what they were told, and didn’t think to hunt down the man and talk to him in person.

He didn’t tell Guy that someone should have really traced Mike Sanderson’s movements; he could have been hiding out somewhere in the Keys. He could have surprised Tanya. She wouldn’t have fought him. She would have never suspected that he wanted to do her harm.

He thanked Guy and clicked the end button on his phone. He needed to get Liam going through official cha

The crime-scene photos were not good. The murder had been just ten years ago; the photos should have been better, more extensive. He turned on a high-powered light and ruffled through the desk for a magnifying glass.

There was something he hadn’t noticed before. Spots. He tried to rub them off the photos. They didn’t rub off. Was it poor photography? No, he thought. There was something there. Something that looked like light blue bruising on her nose and her lips.

He pulled out the autopsy photos and report. There was no mention of the bruising on the face.

Maybe it had been so light at the time that the coroner hadn’t seen it?

Impossible to tell at this late date, and it wasn’t evident until now, until he took out the magnifying glass.

Death was officially suffocation by strangling. The bruises on the neck were evident. There had been nothing beneath her nails. Tanya hadn’t fought her attacker. She had been taken completely by surprise.

That suggested someone strong, and, probably, an assault from behind.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine someone coming up behind her, someone with the strength to encircle her neck with his hands and choke the life out of her before she could put her hands up to resist. It would have been natural for her hands to dig into the hands that were on her, for her nails to have curled into flesh.

Not if her attacker was wearing gloves, and not if he stole her air so quickly she couldn’t scream or do more than lift her hands.

His phone started ringing and vibrating on the desk. He picked it up and checked his caller ID before answering it.

Pete. Lieutenant Pete Dryer.

“I thought I’d call you right away,” Pete said.

“What’s happened?” Was he calling because Guy had told him about his questioning?

“Oh, God,” Pete said.

David felt a quickening of dread; he’d made sure that the museum was locked, but he still had a sinking feeling.

“What’s happened?”

“I’m down off Front Street at the new oddities museum,” Pete said.

Thank God, a different museum, thank God…

But he knew, he knew something terrible had happened, and he had a feeling that it didn’t matter much where the body had been discovered, just that one had been.

“I found my missing stripper,” Pete said. “And God knows, maybe something is going on again, maybe your mumbo jumbo about an agenda is right. So I’m trying to unofficially let you in on this. Come on down, and I’ll do what I can.”

David was frankly surprised that he was permitted to pass by the yellow tape with Liam.

There was already a good crowd on the sidewalk as they made their way through the outer doors to the tourist attractions. People were whispering, pointing, speculating.

The museum was a medium-size place, much as the Beckett family had operated, but it was new since he’d been gone. One-storied, it occupied an old warehouse building that was just about ten thousand feet square. It was called the Eccentricities Museum, a good enough name for the exhibits it boasted on the posters flanking the doorway.

See Carl Tanzler and his Elena! Get to know Robert the Doll! Become a member of the Conch Republic-yes, it was real, for just a few hours. Find out about the secession! Meet Samuel Mudd, take a virtual tour out to the Dry Tortugas and learn what it was like when yellow fever struck.

Just as in most other museums, other exhibits came first.

There was a young woman talking to an officer at the entry, sobbing as she did so. She had been the cashier, he realized. There weren’t tours here-visitors walked through at their own pace, he saw.

Liam was moving quickly, and David followed at the same speed. He almost bumped into a model of Hemingway-in death, the man was everywhere.

Pete was already at the crime scene. He was hunkered down by the body, speaking with the M.E., who had already been working on the corpse.

The exhibit displayed Elena in wedding gown, with Carl Tanzler standing by her side. A plaque a

David’s muscles seemed to knot and contort; no model of Elena lay on the bed.

This time, the girl had dark hair. Long, dark, slightly kinky hair.

There was a photographer on hand, but Pete seemed to be impatient with him. “Angles-I need the angles. Come on, you should have a couple dozen shots by now.”

David shot wildlife. Nature. He wasn’t experienced with crime-scene photography. Luckily, there had been a few classes at college on the techniques. But they weren’t much to help him as he tried to use his small digital camera discreetly to get a few snaps.

The woman’s eyes were open wide. She stared in distorted horror into the air.

Déjà vu.

Pete, the M.E. and the police photographer-who mumbled something about the real guy being on vacation-stepped back.

Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. The bruises on her neck. Flash, flash, flash…the way her body was situated on the bed. Flash, flash, flash, her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, just like Tanya’s.

“This one has been dead for twenty-four hours,” the M.E. told Pete, pointing his gloved hands at the body. “She was held somewhere else while lividity set in…note the blood and the coloration on her arms.”

“The museum had just opened. Liam, you might go and interview the first group through here today, the ones who found her.” He gave directions to other officers and techs, staring at the body and shaking his head. “Hell. I wanted to throw her in jail for a night or two, but this…”

“She was strangled?” David asked the M.E. It seemed obvious, but nothing could be taken for granted.

The man looked up at him curiously. “Same as before.”

Flash, flash, flash. A sheet had been pulled up, but it seemed to have been done hastily. She wasn’t pretty, as Pete had said. In life, she’d had a hard look about her, David thought. There was none of the i

And the last he could remember as if it had been yesterday.

Pete looked over at him. “This one isn’t as pretty, maybe it’s a copycat. Or maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe, just maybe, you’re right. Someone has an agenda. And…”

Pete’s voice failed. David knew what he meant to say.