Heart of Evil by Heather Graham

Author:Heather Graham [Graham, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2011-01-26T13:00:00+00:00

Interlude

He watched it again. There she was, that blasted reporter, talking to Jake Mallory.

Mallory, so cool and solemn and yet easy with the reporter, revealing nothing at all.

They didn’t have good new footage to show; so far, none of the reporters or their crews had been allowed on the property, and thus they had nothing new to say. Of course, the world now knew that Charles Osgood was dead, and everyone everywhere was deliberating. It was absolutely amusing to discover just how many people were certain that a bitter Confederate ghost had committed the crime.

Or even a Yankee. Hell, four Yankees had “died” on the property that day.

Ridiculous. No one was putting blame where it belonged. Or maybe they were.

The canned video was replaced by the reporter again, the pretty woman who seemed to have a hard edge. It was the hardness of a woman who wanted to rise in her field and was willing to do just about anything to do so. She’d sleep with the boss while making her cameraman traipse through dangerous territory before setting her pretty face in front of the camera. She’d sleep with the producer. He knew that look. He’d seen it often enough in the business world. With men, it just meant that they’d stab you in the back; with a woman, it meant that she’d do just about anything.

The reporter’s face was replaced again by the image of a sea of pictures; they were artistically angled in the shot, from, clockwise, left to right, Frazier Donegal, Emma Donegal, Marshall Donegal and Ashley Donegal.

Ah, and it seemed that the generations had taken DNA from all—Ashley looked like her great-great-however-many-grandfather, and like Emma Donegal. All these decades later.

The newscast ended.

He should have felt satisfied. He’d caused the havoc he wanted. They were never going to catch him; there was just no way to prove that he had done any of this.

But then the newscast changed; there was a “this just in!” alert.

The reporter came back on. Anchorwoman Marty Dean identified herself again and announced that police believed that they had the murder weapon, an historic Enfield rifle once owned by the Civil War master of Donegal Plantation, Marshall Donegal. Tests were being done by forensic experts, seeking proof that the weapon, pulled from the Mississippi, had indeed been used in the murder.

Naturally, Marty’s station would be right on the investigation, bringing news about the heinous events at the plantation the second they became available.

He clicked off the television, startled.

The weapon shouldn’t have been found so quickly. He had left no traces; he had ditched the damn thing in the Mississippi River, and he had been careful in every possible forensic way.

He paced, trying to calm down, and he did.

They had the weapon. Even if they found old Charles’s blood, they could never trace it to him. Even if they knew how he had gotten there and killed the man, they couldn’t trace it to him.

Pity, though. The image must have been so brilliant, the dead man—dead.

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