“Easily enough. There’s a sound system, which was playing funeral music and creepy noises while the killer was doing whatever he was doing, wasn’t there?”
“Yes...” She turned to look at him, a confused expression on her face. “Aidan, I didn’t leave my post all night. I did nothing but walk around and around that mausoleum.”
“But I doubt you would have heard anything even if the killer passed right by you,” he told her. “As I understand it, there’s constant commotion during one of these events.”
Van Camp’s officers began to work with their sledgehammers. In ten minutes, they’d broken through the seal.
“After you,” Van Camp said to Aidan with a little mock bow.
Aidan took one of the massive flashlights from an officer, then stepped inside and flooded the tomb with light.
It had been built for a family, allowing for about twenty-five bodies to be entombed. There was an altar at the rear. A cross that was encrusted with tomb dust and spiderwebs had been set aside. The altar was covered in blood.
A hatchet and knife had been left beside it.
Aidan damned himself a thousand times over for not finding the killer more quickly.
Whoever was doing this was doing it under their noses and certainly getting a thrill from knowing that he was killing people—and cutting their heads off—virtually in plain sight.
But how had the killer gotten into the tomb?
This one really seemed to be a locked-room mystery.
“Van Camp, we need more lights!” he called.
He reminded himself that there was really no such thing as a locked-room mystery. There was always an answer.
Van Camp came in with two officers, directing them to stay near the entrance and hold the lights high.
“How the hell?” Van Camp asked.
“This is a mortuary. Maybe there are tunnels to bring the dead straight out from the embalming rooms,” Aidan suggested. “Also,” he said, “the last interments here took place shortly after the Civil War. God knows, it might have been part of the Underground Railroad, too. This might even have been a way to hide runaway slaves.”
“But where would those tunnels be?” Van Camp demanded, looking around.
Aidan stepped back out and saw Mo watching him silently.
“Do you know anything about tunnels from the embalming room to the mausoleums?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Sondra would have known.” She brightened just a little. “Grace might know, too. She’s worked out here often enough.”
“Can you call her?” She nodded, fumbling as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. They’d taken Grace home a while ago; she might have fallen asleep.
No. Her boss had just been murdered. Grace answered on the first ring.
Mo spoke to her for several minutes then put her phone away. “She said there might have been tunnels. My house became a hospital during the Civil War, and she said this place was where many of the dead were brought because the mortician was one of the best embalmers of his day. Embalming became popular during the Civil War when soldiers died far away. Anyway, along with the dead, sometimes people were smuggled—alive—in coffins. She knows of one area where there really was an extension of the basement. It was kept shut because they were doing secret things here. They were hiding people who were running, sometimes slaves—and sometimes soldiers deserting the Southern cause. It’s behind the room where the actor who plays a mad doctor has his, uh, chop shop.”
“Thanks,” Aidan said, and hurried back to the mortuary, Van Camp in tow. Mo and Rollo were close behind. He headed straight down to the basement. The tour groups went from the basement—the embalming area—out to the graveyard, after going by the creepy displays and actors.
Mo was almost touching his back. “Over there,” she said. “You can see the gurney and the plastic bloodied body parts. You can just see the outline of a door there.” She pointed at it as she spoke. “The door’s painted the same white as the wall, and you can barely see the latch. It’s painted, too.”
Aidan walked behind the display and felt around until he found the almost-invisible latch. It was really just an outer ring. He twisted it and pushed the door open. The tunnel beyond was empty, stretching into darkness.
He turned on the light the officer had given him and walked through the tunnel. He didn’t protest when the others followed. Eventually he came to a wall and began looking around.
He glanced up at the ceiling—and saw a hatch. “Hey, anybody up there now? Gina!” he shouted. “Hey!”
He heard Gina Mason’s voice as if from the bottom of a well. “Yeah, yeah, I’m in here!” Gina called down.
“Watch out!” he warned her.
He reached up and pulled on the clasp that held the hatch door closed. It gave easily. All he had to do was figure out how the killer had hiked himself up into the tomb. Carrying a body...