I worked late that night in the FBI office. So what else was new?  Around nine I was feeling lonely and edgy, all messed up. I called home, but nobody was there. That worried me a little, until I remembered that it was my Aunt Tia’s birthday and Nana was throwing a party at Tia’s new house in Chapel Gate, north of Baltimore.
I hadn’t bought Tia a present. Damn it. Damn me. Ever since I had come to Washington as a kid, Tia had never forgotten my birthday.  Not once. This year, she had given me the watch that I was wearing now. I called her house in Maryland, and I got to talk to most of my relatives. They teased that I was missing out on some great sock-it-to-me cake. They wanted to know where I was on Tia’s birthday, and when I was coming home.
I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to give them. ‘Soon as I can. I miss you all. You have no idea how much I miss being there.’ I decided I needed to stop in at the magicians’house before I went back to the Dauphine. Why did I need to do that? I wondered.  Because I was wired. Because I am obsessive. A couple of New Orleans policemen were stationed out front. They looked bored and underutilized, and definitely not obsessive.
I showed them ID and they let me inside. No problem. Detective Cross.
I really wasn’t sure why but I had a vague feeling that we had missed something in the house. Forensics had spent hours going over the place. So had I. We hadn’t found anything concrete. Still, I didn’t like being in the house again. The domain. Maybe I needed a gris-gris for protection.
I walked through the over-done, very ornate foyer and living room. My footsteps made the big house sound empty. I kept wondering, what were we missing? What was I missing?
The master bedroom was situated off the hall at the top of the stairs. Nothing had changed since the first time I was in there. Why in hell had I bothered to come back here? The large, open room was filled with dark, modern art, some of it hung, but several paintings were propped up against the walls. The magicians slept in a bed, not in the coffins we’d found below in the tunnels.  As I was searching through their clothes closet again, I came across something I hadn’t seen before. I was sure it hadn’t been there when I’d canvassed the bedroom the first time. Lying among the shoes were effigies of Daniel and Charles - miniature dolls of the magicians.
There were slash marks across the throats, chests and faces. Just like the way they were murdered.
Where the hell had the gruesome effigies come from? What did they mean? What was going on down here in New Orleans? Who had gotten into this house after we sealed it? I was tempted to call Kyle, but I held off. I wasn’t sure why.
I didn’t want to go back down into the tunnels alone, and at night, but I was here, and I figured I ought to take another quick look around. There were two cops posted just outside the door, right?  What were we missing? Unspeakably violent murders that went back at least eleven years.
Our two best suspects ............