Phantom Evil. Heather Graham

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      It wasn’t because of extreme danger. Rather, it might be considered that he went in because of extreme weirdness.

      “No,” he said simply.

      “First, let me assure you, you are not being let go. You will still be working for Uncle Sam,” Adam told him. “The assignments will come from me, but you’ll be heading up the team. A new team.”

       A cushy job somewhere behind a desk that didn’t involve serial killers, kidnapping or bodies discovered beneath concrete.

      Jackson wasn’t sure how he felt; numb, perhaps.

      “Take a look at this.”

      He hadn’t had a chance to look at the files yet, but Adam now handed him a month-old New Orleans newspaper bearing the headline Wife of Senator David Holloway Dies from Fall into Courtyard.

      He looked up at Adam.

      “Read the full article,” Adam suggested.

      He read silently.

      Regina Holloway, the wife of beloved state Senator David Holloway, died yesterday in a fall from a balcony at their recently purchased French Quarter mansion on Dauphine Street. Six months ago, the Holloways lost their only son, Jacob, in an accident on I-10. While there is speculation that Regina cast herself over the balcony, David Holloway has strenuously denied such a possibility; his wife was doing well and coming to terms with their loss; they were planning on building a family again.

      The police and the coroner’s office have yet to issue an official cause of death. The house, one of the grand old Spanish homes in the Quarter, was once the killing ground of the infamous Madden C. Newton, the “carpetbagger” responsible for the torture slayings of at least twenty people. Less than ten years ago, a teenager who had broken into the then–empty house also perished in a fall; the coroner’s office ruled his death accidental. The alleged drug dealer had raced into the vacant house to elude police.

      An uneasy feeling swept over Jackson, but he calmly set the newspaper back on the desk and looked at Adam Harrison.

      “That’s a tragic story,” he said. “It sounds likely that the poor woman did commit suicide, and the senator is in denial. I’m afraid I’ve seen other instances in which a woman could not accept the loss of her child.”

      “Many people are insistent that the house is haunted,” Adam said.

      “And that a ghost committed this murder?” Jackson asked. He leaned forward in his chair. “I’m not at all sure I believe in ghosts, Adam. And if they did exist, wouldn’t they be things of mist and imagination? Hardly capable of tossing a woman over a balcony.”

      “The senator has friends in high places, though he’s still only a state senator. He absolutely insists that his wife did not commit suicide,” Adam said.

      “Does he suspect murder?” Jackson asked.

      “The house was locked, no lower windows were open, and the gate to the courtyard was locked as well.”

      “Someone could have crawled over the wall or gotten through the gate,” Jackson suggested.

      Adam nodded. “That’s possible, of course. But no witnesses have come forward in the past month to suggest that such a thing might have happened. The death was determined to be a suicide fairly quickly. Are you familiar with the city of New Orleans, the French Quarter or Vieux Carré, specifically?”

      An ironic smile curled Jackson’s features. “Land of vampires, ghosts, voodoo and fantasy. But some of the world’s best cooking, and some truly great music, too.”

      “All right then. You work in behavioral science. Don’t you agree that people’s beliefs can create actions and reactions?”

      “Yes, of course. Son of Sam…Berkowitz believed that howling dogs were demons commanding him to kill. Or, it was a damn good defense.”

      “Always a skeptic,” Adam said. “And yet you’re not really, are you?” Now, Adam smiled.

      “I am a skeptic, yes. Am I open to possibility? Yes,” Jackson said carefully.

      “You know, both of your parents were amazing believers,” Adam reminded him.

      Jackson hesitated.

      Yes, they had been believers, both of them, always believing in a higher power, and it didn’t matter what path someone took to that power. Jeremiah Crow had been born a member of the Cheyenne Nation, although his ancestry had been so mixed God alone knew exactly what it was. He had loved the spiritualism of his People, and his mother had loved it as well. Nominally Anglican, his mother had once told him that religion wasn’t bad; it was meant to be very good. Men corrupted religion; and a man’s religious choice didn’t matter in the least if it was his path to decency and remembering his fellow man.

      But his maternal grandmother had come from the Highlands of Scotland, and her tales of witches and pixies and ghosts had filled his childhood. Maybe that’s why it had been while he was in the Highlands, and not on his Native American dream quest, that he had found himself in a position to question life and death and eternity, and all that fell in between.

      “You’re here because you are the perfect man for this team, Jackson,” Adam said. “You’re not going to refuse to investigate what seems like the impossible, but you’re also not going to assume a ghost is the culprit.”

      “All right. So you want me to go to New Orleans and find out exactly why this woman died? You do realize there’s a good chance that, no matter what the husband wants to believe, she committed suicide.”

      “Here’s the thing, Jackson, most people will believe that she committed suicide. It is the most obvious answer. But I want the truth. Senator Holloway has given his passion to many critical committees in our country. He has made things happen often when the rest of the country sits around twiddling its collective thumbs. He is a man who can weigh the economy and the environment, and come up with solutions. He wants the truth. He’s young in politics, barely forty, and if he doesn’t bury himself in grief, he will continue to serve the American people with something our politicians have lacked heavily in the past fifty years—complete integrity. People in Washington need him, and I’m asking that you lead the group.”

      “If it’s my assignment, I’ll take it on,” Jackson paused. “But…do I really need a unit?”

      “I believe so. I’m giving you a group to dispel or perhaps prove the existence of ghosts in the house. They all have their expertise as investigators as well.”

      He was quiet, and Adam continued, “When several members of your last unit were killed, you got to the ranch house quickly enough to save Lawson and Donatello. No one knew where the Pick–Man was killing his victims. No one knew that he had arranged for your agents to be at the ranch house.”

      Jackson felt his jaw lock, and despite the time he had taken for leave, he swallowed hard. They’d lost good agents. Among them Sally Jennings, forty–five, experienced, and yet vulnerable no matter how many years of service she had seen.

      He’d felt that he’d seen Sally; dreamed that he’d seen her, standing there at the house.

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