All Hallows Eve: A Krewe of Hunters Novella (1001 Dark Nights) by Heather Graham Page B

here.
    “The exit from the basement is over this way,” Micah said. “We have visitors leave the house via the basement and walk back up the path to the parking lot when they’ve finished the tour.”
    He walked toward the back door.
    Jenna hovered a moment, waiting, standing still, trying to imagine what had gone on when Bradbury had died.
    “Jenna?” Micah called to her.
    “Coming,” she said.
    She waited another few beats, then turned to join him at the exit.
    And it hit her.
    A movement in the air, a change in the temperature, the sense that they were not alone. She felt a brush against her cheek, and heard a whispered voice in the red mist aura.
    I did not die by my own hand.
     
    * * * *
     
    The autopsy happened down in Boston where the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was located. Sam was pleased to discover that the medical officer on duty was Dr. Laura Foster, a woman he’d worked with several times when he practiced law in Boston. She was bright, determined, and good at her job. There was even a Salem connection. Laura was the descendant of a woman accused of witchcraft during the craze. Her ancestor wasn’t hanged. Instead, she died of the horrible conditions in the jail where she was held.
    Detective Gary Martin was there too. He was pushing fifty, with short-cropped steel-gray hair. When he’d shaken hands with Sam, Martin had expressed surprise that the FBI had interest in an apparent suicide, but seemed to accept Sam’s explanation that they were involved only because of family.
    “If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” Martin said. “It’s that you can never be sure of anything. With John Bradbury, it certainly appears he killed himself.”
    “It could have been made to look like suicide,” Sam said.
    Martin appeared skeptical. “Like I say. Anything’s possible. Maybe the autopsy will tell us something we don’t know.”
    They stood off to the side while Laura Foster went through the preliminaries, then made a Y incision in the chest and dictated her notes. Death appeared to have come from a broken neck. Otherwise, John Bradbury had been a healthy, forty-five-year-old man, with a strong heart and clear lungs. The last meal remained in the stomach. Clam chowder, white fish, greens. Everything was recorded.
    When she stopped speaking, Martin asked, “Suicide?”
    “Could be,” Laura said. “But, I doubt it.”
    Sam was listening carefully.
    “I’m not a forensics expert,” she said, “or a detective. The rope was taken and bagged as evidence yesterday. I saw it. From the way it was tied and the way he hanged, I can’t see how he could have slipped it around his own neck. Also, these abrasions here, on the side of the neck. They suggest he was dragged while the rope was in place, choking him.” She pointed at the body. “Marks here suggest he was digging at the rope before he died. This man was fighting and kicking. That’s what broke his neck. He died fast, much quicker than simple strangulation.”
    “If he killed himself,” Martin said, “he might have been fighting to the end. Perhaps regrets?”
    Laura shook her head. “I can’t say definitively death was by his own hand.”
    “So you’re calling it a murder?” Martin asked.
    Sam remained stoic, practicing something he learned a long time ago as a trial lawyer. Never let them know what you’re thinking.
    “I can’t call this a suicide,” Laura said.
    “Just great,” Martin said.
    So much for an open and shut investigation.
    “I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I’ll be doing more testing, but I suggest you start investigating this as a murder.”
    “Can you give us a time of death?” Sam asked.
    “No more than sixteen or seventeen hours. So I’m saying between the hours of two and four, yesterday afternoon.”
    Martin left the room.
    “He didn’t want a murder,” Laura said to him.
    “No one ever does. Thank you for being stubborn.”
    “I’m not being stubborn, Sam. You know me. I call it the way