“Maybe we should talk to them,” I say. “See if any of them remember anything about the day of the parade.”

  “I know that a lot of interviews have already been done,” Bronson tells me. “But we could still talk to them again to see if they’ve thought of anything else or might be more willing to talk now.”

  We walk up to the nearest float, where we see three people seeming to make repairs to basic wear and tear that happens during a parade and maybe add something to the float. They look up as we approach.

  “Hello,” Detective Bronson says. “I’m Detective Peter Bronson, and this is Dean Steele, a private investigator and consultant for the department. We’re here investigating the murder of Scott Russo. We were hoping to have a minute of your time to talk about what you might remember from that day.”

  “We’ve already talked to the police,” one of them says. “We told them everything we remember.”

  “We can still talk to them, Shane,” another says. “They’re trying to find out what happened to Scott.” The man steps forward and reaches down from the float to shake our hands. “I’m Edmond Yardley. This is my float.”

  “Good to meet you,” I say. “Thanks for being willing to talk to us.”

  “Of course. I know this is really hard for everybody, but we want to find out what happened. Not just for Scott, but for all of us. It’s really scary to think that someone was murdered when they were part of the parade. For a lot of us, this is something we’ve done for many years and intend to do for many more, but the thought of something like that happening is terrifying.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I say. “What can you tell us about that day? Do you remember anything unusual happening?”

  He shakes his head. “Unfortunately, like I told the people who interviewed me the first time, I don’t really remember anything that seemed strange. Parade Day is always a really busy time, and we’re all super focused on what we’re doing to make sure we’re ready when it’s time to go on.”

  “I thought a lot of you did preparations and stuff all through the year to be ready,” I say.

  “We do, and you would think that would make everything pristine and ready to hit the pavement sunup on the day-of, but it never works out that way. There’s always something that needs to be done, and we’re all really wrapped up in what we’re doing for our own unit. Besides, there’s always loud music and people getting into the spirit. So much is going on, it’s almost impossible to pay close attention to anyone else,” Edmond says.

  I get much the same response from the next several people I speak to, but finally, I get to the people over in the workshop. Just like I thought when I first noticed them from across the room, they aren’t working on anything having to do with the Mardi Gras parade. Instead, they are tinkering with something that looks like it will end up on a Fourth of July display.

  “I saw him go into the float,” a woman named Lynne Adkins tells me.

  “You did?” I ask. “You saw Scott Russo go into the float?”

  She nods, turning toward me and leaning her hip against the worktable. “He went in and out a couple of times. I think he was practicing.”

  “Practicing?” I ask. “Why would you say that?”

  “The masks,” she says.

  “That’s right,” the man behind her, who introduced himself as Gene, says, pointing toward her with a screwdriver he’d been working with. “There were all those masks.”

  “What masks?” I ask.

  “Out in front of the door to the float. There was a table full of different masks. A designer made a bunch of different ones for him so he could choose which one he liked the most. They were delivered the morning of the parade,” Gene says. “I remember watching her bring them to the float and lay them out on the table so everyone involved in the king’s float unit would be able to see them and maybe give their input about which they liked the most.”

  “Is that common?” I ask. “Is there usually more than one mask available for the performers?”

  “I’m not sure about everybody, but I know this was special for the king this year. It was a new designer, and she didn’t want to limit the king. She said that a real king would have an array of the very best of everything available to him, and he would be able to choose the one he liked the most, so that was what she wanted to do for Scott Russo. The leftover masks would be kept with the float and the supplies to have on hand for next year,” Gene says.

  “Was Scott wearing his uniform when you saw him going in and out of the float?” I ask.

  “Not the first time,” Lynne says. “He was just in regular clothes the first couple of times he went in and out. But then I noticed him going in, and he was fully dressed. He waved at the people who were on the float already and headed inside. It was pretty close to the time that everybody was supposed to be ready, so I figured he was getting ready for step-off. I didn’t notice anything else. I was too focused on my own unit.”

  “Did you see anyone around who maybe shouldn’t have been here? Anyone you didn’t think was associated with the parade or the festivities?” I ask.

  “No,” Lynne tells me. “No one stood out to me.”

  “Thank you so much for your help,” Bronson says. “We appreciate it.”

  As we walk away from the workshop, he leans slightly toward me. “That’s interesting.”

  “And horrifying,” I say. “Someone was able to take advantage of the craziness before the parade to take a mask, beat and shoot someone, tie them to a chair, and get out of the warehouse while surrounded by people without being noticed.”

  Detective Bronson’s phone rings as we’re leaving the warehouse. He has a brief conversation before walking back over to Xavier and me.

  “The team was able to access what’s on Joseph Palmer’s computer,” he tells me. “They haven’t examined it extensively and were calling to see if you and I wanted to come and go through it all. They aren’t sure what we’re looking for, so they thought it might be best if we just did the investigation ourselves.”

  “That would be great,” I say. “We could find some really valuable information on it.”

  I’m feeling hopeful as we make our way back to the police department. That computer could hold insights into many aspects of the investigation, helping us to understand details like what was put into that fire in Palmer’s office and why it was put there, or why he had a second phone when he died and why it was taken from him after his death.

  My hope wanes slightly as we start to go through the files on the computer. At first, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything on it that will be helpful at all. The files seem to confirm what Celeste said about Palmer not having a career and spending his time dedicated to charity and community activities. Everything here is planning or research for various events and activities or documentation of correspondence with organizations wanting his help. I can’t see anything that would be even vaguely relevant to his murder.

  Until we find a file hidden within another folder.

  “‘Axe Man,’” I murmur, reading the name of the file. “That’s an interesting thing to call a file. Could it have something to do with a Halloween event? Does Twilight Cove do anything big for Halloween?”

  “The island does have a Halloween celebration,” Detective Bronson says, “but from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly family-friendly. I guess they could be planning something more intense, but I don’t know.”

  I open the file and see that it is full of individual audio files. They don’t have specific names or anything that may indicate what’s in them, but they each have a date and time stamp. The first is from a week before Palmer’s murder. I click on the file to open it.

  “You better be more careful. Someone could have seen you with the phone.”

  The voice is muffled and sounds almost manipulated so it’s difficult to discern whether it’s even a man or a woman, much less try to identify who it could be.

  “I don’t think anyone saw it,” another voice says.

  “That’s Joseph Palmer,” Detective Bronson says.

  “You are to have that phone on you at all times, and you better answer it every time it rings. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m glad we can be on the same page. You will pay attention to every one of my commands and do as I ask, or there will be serious consequences. I know you don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of you, do you?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You know why. You’ll hear from me again soon. Do not tell anybody about this. Remember, I will know. You can’t stop me from finding out. You have until midnight to fulfill my last instruction.”

  The audio file ends, and I feel a shudder going down my spine. The threat in the voice is chilling.

  “The Axe Man,” Xavier says. “That’s what the title means.”

  “What are you thinking, X?” I ask. “You have to explain it more.”

  “We were told that Joseph Palmer had a fascination with New Orleans,” he says. “The Axe Man murders were crimes committed by a serial killer in New Orleans from May of 1918 through October of 1919. During this time, people were viciously murdered, and the killer published warnings that no one who was playing jazz music in their homes would be killed. The crimes were never solved.”

  With that hanging heavily over us, we continue to listen to the audio files. They grow in intensity, the threats more obvious as the mys terious voice instructs Palmer to stay quiet, get rid of information, and cancel meetings that were already set up.

  “This person isn’t saying anything that tells us what he’s talking about,” Bronson says. “Everything is basically in code.”

  “He might have suspected that he was being listened to and didn’t want to give away what he was doing.”

  “Could be she,” Xavier points out. “The voice is too manipulated to really tell.”

  “These are phone calls,” I say as we continue to listen. “These must have been recorded on that second phone. Palmer could have installed a recording app that automatically recorded the calls he received. The person he was talking to made it clear that they gave him the phone. They obviously didn’t want anyone to know that they were communicating with Palmer, and they made sure that he was always available to them. He put himself at serious risk with these recordings.”

  “Do you think that’s why he was killed?” Bronson asks. “Because he was recording the phone calls?”

  “I don’t know. There’s still another file,” I say. “Look at the date and time stamp. It’s from during the party.”

  “This is the call we saw him getting on the footage. It’s why it didn’t show up on his phone records, why he was reaching for his other phone instinctively. The call went to the other phone.”

  We start the recording.

  “What do you want?” Joseph Palmer’s voice asks.

  “You know what I want,” the now-familiar voice says.

  “Stop this,” Joseph says.

  “You are going to listen to me carefully and do everything I say, or there will be very serious consequences. Do you understand me? I know you don’t want people to know the truth.”

  “Leave me alone,” Joseph says. “There’s no reason for this.”

  “Of course there is. We know what you’re doing, and you know it. You’re not going to get away with it. You’re going to do exactly what I want, or you’re going to watch everyone enjoying your party suffer. You can’t really want them to know the truth, Joseph. Why you rattle around in that house all by yourself? You don’t want them finding out.”

  “I’m going to cancel the party and send everyone home.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” they say. “If the party doesn’t continue on until midnight the way that it’s supposed to, every one of your guests will get picked off one by one as they leave your house. You can’t win this, Joseph. You will do as I say.”

  “It is just like the Axe Man,” I mutter. “He’s threatening to kill everyone at the party if Palmer doesn’t do exactly what he’s instructed to and keep the party going.”

  “It said he had a secret he didn’t want people finding out,” Bronson says. “That’s what he was jumping through all those hoops for.”

  “I don’t think so,” Xavier says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “The way the person said it. They said he didn’t really want them to find out. Not that he didn’t want them to find out. That he didn’t really want them to. That suggests he was going to tell his secret, but this person didn’t want him to. The secret was why he was jumping through the hoops, as you put it, not because he didn’t want it told, but because he was planning on telling it.”

  “And someone else didn’t want him to,” Bronson says, the reality sinking in.

  We listen back through the files again, trying to decipher the carefully worded messages from the mysterious voice. They talk of Palmer getting rid of information and making drops at set times in specific places. But it’s the call from the party that chills me the deepest.

  “You haven’t done what I told you to do. I made myself clear, Joseph. Now you’ll have to destroy what we tell you to in order to save yourself. This is your last opportunity. Your last chance to change your mind and do the right thing.”

  This is huge. It’s extremely vague and doesn’t give us much detail to build on, but it’s very clear that Joseph Palmer understood exactly what was being said. And that the voice belonged to a killer.

  “There are a lot of people talking about the possible jury retaliation angle,” Detective Bronson says. “What are your thoughts?”

  I think back on my conversation with Celeste.

  “I don’t feel like this has anything to do with it. I don’t think that someone who wanted to retaliate for what Palmer did after serving on that jury would go to this type of extreme. This is much too intense and personal. And there’s far too much secretiveness about it. If they were going to retaliate, they would simply attack. They could hurt or kill him without any fanfare. I understand the fear of retaliation, and I know that threat does exist, but why go through all of this? It just doesn’t make sense. And now with the Axe Man files, I’m even more convinced this isn’t a matter of retaliation.

  “Those calls talk about a secret. Something that Joseph Palmer didn’t want people to know but possibly that he was going to tell himself. That makes it sound like he was working with Scott Russo to reveal something.”

  “What about what Celeste said?” Xavier asks.

  “What is he talking about?” Detective Bronson asks.

  “Celeste Brewer. You remember her from the night of the party. We were talking, and she suggested that Palmer might have been planning on revealing through Scott Russo’s podcast that he had actually lied about everything he said when he talked about his time on the jury and that they actually were coerced. That would be a big secret to reveal and something that people would want to keep hidden. That could be a possibility,” I say. “It would explain the secretiveness and the threats.”

  “You don’t seem convinced,” Bronson says.

  “I still think it’s too intense. Too complicated. Whoever’s doing this wanted to taunt Palmer. They weren’t just threatening him. They were telling him to destroy things and bring them things. Obviously, he had information they did not want revealed. If the police involved in the trafficking case did plant evidence or coerce the jury, and this was them, they would have much more streamlined ways of getting to him than going through these calls. I think this is something much more personal,” I say.

  “Something that involves Scott Russo,” Bronson says.

  “At the very least, his podcast,” I say.

  “I can’t stop thinking about how someone was able to move so easily and unnoticed through both the parade preparation area and the party before killing two people,” I say later at the hotel. “It wasn’t the same with the Christmas party. Remember, the killer wasn’t supposed to be there. No one expected him to be. I don’t think it’s the same with this situation. I don’t think anybody snuck in or anything like that. But that means that whoever did this was supposed to be there. How could they not recognize the danger they were in?”

  “You’re assuming Scott Russo was getting phone calls like Joseph Palmer,” Xavier says. “And even if he was, the voice was modified. It isn’t recognizable. They wouldn’t know who was threatening them. Even if they were standing right in front of them.”

  “But then that means there’s someone they are mutually familiar with, even friends with, who has something so against them that they are willing to threaten and kill them, but neither of them was able to put together who it was. That seems unlikely. They don’t seem like the type that would run in the same circles very often. Any kind of mutual friends would probably be few and far between, which should make it fairly obvious who they would have both crossed so severely,” I say. “They would know who they hurt and wouldn’t put themselves in the position of being around them.”

  “Unless it isn’t the person they crossed,” Xavier says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “The Order,” he says. “The people who died at their hands wouldn’t have suspected the people who killed them because they had no reason to kill them. The man who killed Andrew had nothing against him. He had no reason to want him dead other than to fulfill the requirement of his induction into the society.”

  “Whoever wanted Palmer and Russo dead could have hired someone to do the actual killing for them. Or coerced. I don’t think this is just a basic hitman situation. This goes beyond that. The killing was far too intimate and intense. They didn’t just agree to do this because they were offered money. I think there was something else going on that made them agree to do this.