Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(47)

“I don’t know yet. But if nothing else, it might give us a better idea of who he might have been seeing or what he might have been doing.”

*

Brad was true to his word; he quickly finished filming the scenes he wanted and told her he would let her know if he needed anything else.

“You know I’ll be on the Journey with Clara and Alexi for a week, right?” Charlie asked him.

“I do, and it’s no problem. I’ll find you if I need you. And anyway, you’re free for the day when the Journey is docked here,” he reminded her.

“Very true,” she agreed.

She said goodbye and left with Jude. Once they were in the car, he asked her, “How much do you know about Anson McKee?”

“I know that his life was cut short by the war. According to the records I’ve found, he was from this area, joined the cavalry, was voted a captain by his men. He was married and had one son. He wrote his wife a beautiful letter before he died, telling her how much he loved her. Why?”

“The resemblance to Ethan really is uncanny,” Jude said.

“You should have seen him in his wig,” Charlie said.

“His wig?” Jude was evidently amused.

“Brad had him do some extra work as one of the ghosts, and those boys did not have FBI haircuts,” Charlie said.

“Interesting.”

“I looked him up—the captain, I mean,” Charlie said. “The man helped save my life ten years ago. He led Ethan out to the unhallowed graveyard where my idiot high school friends had me tied to a headstone as a test because I was pledging their stupid club. Ethan freed me, then took down a killer when he came back looking for something he’d left behind earlier that night. If I’d still been tied to that headstone...” She shuddered.

“That’s a hell of a story. And I still can’t get over that resemblance.”

“Ethan’s got just about every nationality you can think of in his family tree, but he can’t be descended from Anson McKee. The son moved west after the war and had a family, but his descendants all live in Nevada. A few years back, one of them came to St. Francisville when they were reenacting The Day the War Stopped. Nice man. And you should read the letter McKee wrote to his wife. He really loved her, so...”

“So he wasn’t messing around elsewhere,” Jude said, then shrugged. “Still...”

“Maybe that’s why the captain comes back. Maybe he sees something of himself in Ethan. Luckily he seems to like me, too. And he’s still trying to help.” She glanced at him. “You saw the way he pointed to the river. The murders have something to do with the Journey. I’m sure of it.”

“Hopefully, we’ll find the answers—and soon.” He smiled at her. “I gather you and Alexi and Clara have a plan, but seriously, do you really know that many Civil War songs?”

Charlie groaned softly. “Oh, yeah. Trust me, I know recipes, songs...you name it. I am my father’s daughter.”

She knew then it wasn’t just her discovery of a dead man that had made her so determined to find the killer.

She was her father’s daughter. And she was going to see that he was proved innocent.

And yet...

He had lied to her. He’d told her he barely knew Farrell Hickory, but according to what she was hearing, he had known Hickory.

He had known him very well.

*

Ethan and Randy Laurent were sitting in a conference room, staring at a flat-screen TV hooked to a computer while a police tech ran through the shots Chance had taken the day of the Journey reenactment. They watched as picture after picture went by, shots of the boat or the river. Finally they came to the shots of the run-through, when the two victims had their argument, and the crowd had gathered to see.

As Ethan examined the faces in the crowd, he thought about the historical events that had been commemorated that day. From what he knew, the moment when the Journey had been handed from one side to the other had actually been a beautiful one. For those few minutes, in that one place, the war had stopped, the killing had stopped. An injured Union soldier had risen from his bed and hobbled over to embrace the Rebel orderly who had cared for him. There had been plenty of ceremony, but there had also been a human factor. After all, both the caregivers and the injured had probably found it impossible not to swap stories, memories, shared experiences of a better time.

Based on what Ethan could see in the photos, the reenactment had been especially well-done, with the injured Yankees in their hospital beds laid out on the deck. The riverboat had pulled up as close as possible right below Grace Church, and small Confederate boats had clustered nearby, ready to bring the Rebels home once the ship had been handed over.

As for the reenactors themselves, the only one missing, Ethan thought drily, was Charlie.

The rest of her friends all seemed to be there. He saw Brad and Mike Thornton—Brad an infantry sergeant, Mike a private—Grant Ferguson, Jimmy Smith, George Gonzales, Barry Seymour and Luke Mayfield, all of them in costume. Even Jennie McPherson was there, dressed in a white nurse’s apron, appropriately frayed from continual washing. Albion Corley and Farrell Hickory were front and center—especially once their argument had begun. There were dozens of consecutive shots of the two men fighting, and then showing Jonathan Moreau stepping in to intervene.

“See anything?” Randy asked, leaning closer toward the screen.