He shook his head, his eyes sad. “No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Police! Everybody out, hands over your heads,”came a shout from the open doorway.“Now.”
The garden of the Perles Mansion had been transformed, illuminated by bright search lights as well as the flashing red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles on the street. The EMTs examined the victim and gave her oxygen, while Lamont quietly explained where they had found her and what they had done to help her.
Still unconscious, Delilah Mason was loaded onto a gurney and rushed to the hospital, siren blaring.
The next few hours would have been dreamlike had they not been so nightmarish. Harper, Tariq, Joel, and the retired couple watched in silence as the so-called Séance Garden was documented, photographed, and processed by forensic techs. All the other tour participants appeared to have fled, and Harper could hardly blame them.
A uniformed police officer took their names and brief statements, and told them to wait by the garden wall, away from the scene, to speak with the detective.
“I can’t even…I mean, what just happened?” Harper said, leaning back against the adobe garden wall.
Tariq shook his head. “Whatever it was, it’s the stuff of horror movies.”
“I was a nurse for thirty years,” Lamont said. “The last five in the ER. I’ve seen some mighty weird things. But never anything like that.”
Margene nodded in agreement. “Buried alive? That’s a new one, for sure.”
When the homicide detective arrived, he introduced himself as Detective Tom Serrano. He appeared to be in his forties with a well-padded frame, his sandy-blond hair in a military-style crew cut that made his head into a nearly perfect square. He reminded Harper of the old detective shows her father used to watch on late-night reruns, but more in the mold of Joe Friday than Columbo.
In a polite but no-nonsense, “Just the facts, ma’am,” tone, the detective asked to speak with the retired couple over near the house.
Harper and Tariq waited in silence, taking it all in. When Harper drew an audibly shaky breath, Tariq put his arm around her. Grateful, she sank into his warmth.
After another several minutes, Detective Serrano called out, “Tariq Johnson?”
“Wish me luck,” Tariq said to Harper, and pushed away from the wall.
Detective Serrano spent much longer with Tariq than he had with Lamont and Margene. It made Harper uneasy, and she strained to hear their conversation, but without luck.
The detective at last came over to Harper. “You Dr. Grae?”
She nodded.
“MD?”
“PhD. I’m a history professor.”
“Uh-huh,” the detective said. “Tell me what you saw. Don’t leave anything out.”
“The whole evening or only from when we got here?”
“From when you got here.”
“We were outside on the sidewalk. While Joel the tour guide was talking, I saw someone in an upstairs window,” Harper said. “I told the responding officers. That’s why Tariq and I went in.”
“Which window?”
“That one.” She pointed to the now-dark window.
Detective Serrano frowned and conferred with a younger uniformed officer, who had been among the first to arrive. He told the detective that after securing the scene, seeing to the victim, and ordering Tariq and Harper out of the house, he examined all the doors of the mansion, which appeared to have been not only closed, but locked.
“Get the key,” Detective Serrano snapped at the officer before turning back to Harper. “What did this person in the window look like?”
“I couldn’t really tell you. I only saw a shadow.”
“Male? Female? Any distinguishing features?”
