Read Online The Night Is Alive by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page A

together what we know? Shouldn’t take long. It isn’t a lot.”
    “Almost nothing,” she agreed after a moment, disgust in her tone. She picked up the newspaper behind the bar. “Another girl dead, found on the riverbank. The police haven’t released cause of death, and when I tried to speak with them, I got nowhere. I tried to tell them Gus hadn’t just died—that there had to be someone else down there in the tunnel, someone who caused him to die.” She shook her head, studying him. “Look, you’re not even an agent. How are you going to get any information?”
    He smiled. “I honestly have a private investigator’s license and I am now on the federal payroll as a consultant. Feel free to check that out. Call Jackson Crow. I think he’ll be expecting you.”
    “Call him? I don’t have a number. All I could find in the material I have from Quantico was an email address. And I couldn’t reach him on an official line now. It’s nearly eight!”
    “I have his cell number. And he might be in the office, anyway. He works long hours.”
    “Right. So I could be calling anyone!”
    He smiled at that. “Ever suspicious. That should make you a good agent, but you do have to go with your gut and trust someone at some point.”
    “I’m really not seeing why that should be you,” she said.
    “Ouch.”
    “You could have approached me earlier—while there were still people here.”
    “As you said, your grandfather’s funeral was today. And then, I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to advertise the fact that you’d called in...the ghost investigators.”
    “Give me that number,” she said, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket.
    He rattled off the numbers and she dialed. She watched him as she spoke. “Mr. Jackson Crow, please.”
    Malachi could hear the deep murmur of Crow’s voice from where he stood.
    “If you’re Jackson Crow, would you by any wild chance still be at work?” She was silent for a minute. “I see. Then...would you be good enough to call me back on an official line?”
    Jackson murmured something again. She pressed the end button on her phone and studied him while she waited for it to ring. When it did, she looked at the exchange. After she’d answered, Malachi could once again hear the deep timbre of Crow’s voice as he spoke to Abby Anderson.
    She thanked Crow, then ended the call. She frowned slightly, but now there seemed to be a touch of wonder in her eyes.
    “He said that once we get an initial investigation going, he’ll come down himself.”
    Malachi nodded.
    “He said you do know what you’re doing.”
    Malachi laughed at that. “I’ve been working as a P.I. I needed to be on my own. But I was a cop, up until about four years ago in the city of New Orleans. I have a connection in the homicide department here.”
    “A connection?” she asked. For the first time he heard a touch of hope in her voice. “What kind of a connection.”
    He smiled at that. “Detective David Caswell, homicide. My ex-partner. Have you met him?”
    “No.”
    He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. “That’s David’s card. Keep it with you. He’s a great guy. He married a woman from Savannah about a year ago and moved up here. But when we were both working in New Orleans, he was my partner.”
    He waited.
    She was still looking at him, as if he were an alien who’d suddenly landed in the tavern. Or...a ghost.
    He sighed. “So, I guess you’re with me—or on your own.”
    She was silent for another minute. “All right, then,” she said at last. “We’ll work together. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I’ve gone through all the real training, but you have the connections. You said you wanted to get started. What do you want to do?”
    “Let’s compile the little that we do know about the victims. Then we’ll figure out what we want to ask when we get in to see David. This is your city. Tomorrow I want to see where the bodies were discovered.”
    “Blue