“The basement may give us more than any other room,” Whitney said.

“Hey, by the way, did you pick up anything unusual on your cameras, or on tape?” Angela asked her.

Whitney smiled, just like the Cheshire cat. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Will and I will show the film tonight. And roll our recordings. Oh, yes, we’ve begun.”

CHAPTER NINE

The Church of Christ Arisen was an impressive building, mid-1800s, handsomely whitewashed and gleaming in the sun. It was on St. Charles, set back about forty feet from the road, and commanding half a block.

Jackson was driving Jake’s car, and he pulled to the side of the road to stare at the building. Jake, at his side, was reading from the most recent file Jackson had acquired from Detective Andy Devereaux. “The main body of the church dates back to 1840 and was originally constructed by the Baptists,” Jake said. He looked up from the paper and pointed. “Main building there, and the add-ons, either side, were built in the 1900s. The Baptist congregation moved into a new location, and in the 1970s, the place was a trendy nightclub. The nightclub was purchased by the Church of Christ Arisen in the mid-1990s. They’ve owned it since. The church has a bishop, currently Richard Gull, and he deals with all tenets, all legal matters and everything having to do with the church along with a council of five members, but their identities are known only to members of the church.”

“Why?” Jackson asked him.

Jake looked at him. “Why? I don’t know. I’m reading from a file!”

“Yeah, sorry. Go on.”

“The bishop lives in the building to the left. The building to the right houses members of the church who are downtrodden or need a place to stay,” Jake read. “Hey, and Detective Andy scratched in some notes on the side. Says here, ‘Downtrodden seem to be female. Nothing to prove. No one talks.’”

Jackson had seen his share of cults, and they tended to have one strong central figure. Jim Jones. David Koresh. A host of others. Charismatic men who preyed upon the weak and needy, and promised them something far better than the struggles and misery they faced in their lives. They must have spent half their time laughing in their sleeves, since they brought women into the flock to have their choice of wives or lovers, and get away with multiple relationships in the name of God.

“Okay, so Richard Gull is over here—and his little harem is over there. And the main body of the church separates the two. Interesting.” Jackson opened his door.

“Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing? I thought we were just going to ride by and see the place,” Jake told him.

“I’m going to see it closer,” Jackson said.

“No, wait. Stay here. I’ll take a closer look. Come on, Jackson. You look like the wrath of God, come to take them all down. I’m just a young man in need of spiritual guidance.”

Jackson weighed Jake’s words; he was right. He was wearing a tailored shirt under his jacket, even if it was a casual leather jacket. Jake was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the New Orleans Saints logo.

“Just get whatever information they give out and get back here,” Jackson told him.

“Will do,” Jake agreed.

He watched the traffic and then sauntered across the street to the brick path that led the way to the church. It was ironic; an old Jewish cemetery sat on the corner of the street, nearly blocked out by a large sign that advertised:

The Church of Christ Arisen—we are the way. Respect life, all life, respect your fellow man, and our God will show you the way. Bishop Richard Gull, Sunday sermon. If you would believe, you are welcome here.

The church door opened before Jake reached it. From his position in the car across the street and slightly down, Jackson saw Jake offer the young woman who opened the door one of his devilishly charming smiles. She looked uncertain for a moment, but she opened the door wider, and Jake walked on in.

A few minutes later, he left the church and returned. Jackson reached across the car to open the door for him. “I was about to sound the cavalry horn,” he said.

Jake laughed. “I was gone ten minutes, total.”

“And what did you discover?”

“I have some leaflets,” he said, pulling printed material in sleek leaflet form from his jacket pocket, “and, drumroll, please…”

“Jake,” Jackson said flatly.

“There were three young women in there, cleaning. It’s modern inside, lots of hard, stern benches, an altar, a big cross hanging above it.”

“That’s the drumroll?” Jackson asked.

Jake laughed. “No, no. There was something interesting about the young girls who were doing the cleaning.”

“Oh?”

“All three are pregnant.”

“And how young?”

“I’m not certain about that. One might be fifteen or sixteen. I think I could guess the baby’s daddy on the three. On the side of the altar, almost as big as the cross, is a portrait. In big letters on a brass plaque below, it has the name Richard Gull. He has a good face. Graying hair—and I can see how he might have an allure. He has something else.”

“What?” Jackson asked him.

“Charles Manson eyes,” Jake said. “The church is a cult massacre waiting to happen.”

Jenna had found a stash of floor pillows in one of the closets, and she had arranged them before the screens in the ballroom. She had also taken the dust sheets off the furniture, and somehow, with the camera equipment, their jackets hung on the pegs on the rack just inside the front door, the cushions and the now-uncovered furniture, the house seemed comfortable.

Almost like being at home—someone’s home, anyway.

Coming back in with Whitney, Angela was glad to be greeted by Jenna and Will, who had been industriously moving about the house—and keeping an eye on the cameras and the equipment, and going through the digital film from the night before.

“This is super creepy,” Jenna said with enthusiasm. “Lemonade, guys? Iced tea? I made popcorn. I’ll just go get it.”

“You made popcorn?” Angela asked her incredulously.

“Hey, it’s kind of like sitting around at a friend’s house to watch a DVD,” Jenna defended herself.

“I think it’s great,” Angela assured her.

Will asked Angela about her trip to the voodoo shop, and Angela told him that she felt she’d learned a great deal. When Jenna returned with a tray filled with popcorn bowls, glasses and pitchers of iced tea and lemonade, Angela was telling Will that Mama Matisse was not madly in love with the senator.

“That’s putting it mildly,” Whitney said. “I think she considers him…not quite as honest and straightforward as he seems.”

Will laughed. “That’s just being a politician!”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Angela said. “When I spoke with Senator Holloway, I believed that he was truly bereft over the loss of his wife. It really seemed that he had loved her.”

“My great-grandmother thinks that Holloway was guilty of something. Perhaps having an affair—or not an affair, but that he’d at least gone out and had a one-nighter somewhere,” Whitney said.

“That would make him an adulterer, not necessarily a murderer,” Jenna pointed out.

“That’s true,” Angela agreed. “But we can all figure that out when Jackson and Jake get back. Right now, we’ve got the popcorn, we’ve got the refreshments, let’s see some movies!”

“All right, roll ’em!” Will said. He pointed to the screens. “Jenna and I went through them individually, but it’s kind of cool to watch them all at once, because mostly, nothing is happening.”

“Should I turn out the lights?” Whitney asked.

“It’s daytime. You can’t turn off daytime,” Will told her.

“I can pull the drapes.”

“Hey! Just roll it, please,” Angela said.

The four of them folded themselves in various positions on the cushions, cool glasses of tea and lemonade in their hands, and the popcorn set on the floor before them.

Will explained that they were watching time elapse at a high speed.

He hit the control to slow it down at one point. Up in the left-hand screen, she saw Jackson come bursting out of his room and to her doorway. His dark hair was tousled; the light in the hall reflected off his deeply bronzed and well-muscled chest, and his expression bore a look of confusion and concern.

Will looked at her. “What happened?” he asked.

Angela felt that her few years of maturity on the others faded; she was blushing, she was certain.

“Hey, that’s none of our business!” Jenna said.

“No, no, no! Nothing like that,” Angela said.

“Like what?” Whitney asked, laughing.

“I had a nightmare, and I woke up screaming,” Angela said.

“Yeah, when the sound is up, you can hear the scream,” Will said sympathetically.

Angela glared at him, and then at Whitney and Jenna. “Well, then, you all know that Jackson came rushing to my defense.”

“I wonder if he’d look quite like that if he came rushing to my defense!” Whitney said lightly.

“The big chief looks really good shirtless,” Jenna teased.

“Charming to watch the pretty people do weird things in the night!” Will said.

“Oh, Lord, please—children!” Angela said firmly.

“Did you change rooms?” Jenna asked, no longer teasing, but looking at her with concern.

She shook her head. She hesitated, but after her conversation with Whitney that morning, she was certain that they’d all had some kind of brush with the paranormal.

“No, I think that I need to be in that room. But the dream was horrendously grisly, and it did shake me up. We discovered that there’s a door that connects the two rooms, so we opened it. It was the only way not to have Jackson take charge as head of the team and tell me it was too dangerous for me to be sleeping in there,” Angela explained.