A Specter of Justice by Mark de Castrique Page A

sidewalk. Witnesses said they thought she was trying to hail a taxi that was cruising the square.
    Our actors had been stationed on each of the two floors and their respective offices were the only ones whose lights were on. To add to the ghoulish reenactment, the chalk outlines on the sidewalk were drawn holding hands, even though the deaths were separated by thirteen years.
    â€œLenny Colbert played the man,” Nakayla said. “He simply paced back and forth and was seen as a silhouette. Nicole Worthington was the young woman. We hit her with a spotlight as her cue to yell taxi.”
    Newly wrote down the names. “Was she leaning out the window?”
    â€œNo. We didn’t want to take a chance.”
    â€œHave you seen either of them since last night?”
    â€œI haven’t,” Nakayla said.
    I shook my head. “I’m sure they’ll be at the top of the call list.”
    â€œLet’s move on,” Newly said.
    â€œThe next stop was the Battery Park Hotel,” Nakayla said.
    Newly shifted in his chair. “That’s a good little hike on foot.”
    â€œWe went by way of Church Street where the cemeteries used to be. The guides spoke about spirits seen walking in the moonlight, searching for their graves that had been moved as the land-locked churches expanded. They also talked about some of the old legends for which there are no standing structures.”
    â€œNo actors in sheets?”
    â€œNo. We made use of the distance by selling drinks and snack food along the route to Battery Park.”
    â€œWas Helen your ghost?”
    â€œHelen and her murderer.”
    Newly knew his ghost stories. This Helen wasn’t Helen of the bridge but a nineteen-year-old woman brutally shot and slashed in her hotel room. In the summer of 1936, Helen Clevenger came down from New York to visit her uncle and see Asheville. On the morning of July 17th, he became alarmed when she didn’t answer his knocks. He found his niece lying in a pool of blood, shot through the chest and cut around the face and throat. Police arrested a twenty-two-year-old hotel employee and got a confession out of him. I say got because the rumor is the confession was forcibly coerced. His motive was robbery and the means was a thirty-two-caliber pistol discovered in his room. It was enough for his execution.
    But on the night of Helen’s death, an eyewitness saw a running man believed to be the murderer. The physical description didn’t match the accused. It did match the build of the hotel manager’s son. The son was never seen in Asheville again. Now the Battery Park Hotel exists as senior apartments, and the elderly residents claim to catch fleeting glimpses of a young girl walking the hall near room 224, the scene of the murder.
    â€œWe paid for the current resident of what had been Helen’s room to spend the night in the Haywood Park Hotel,” Nakayla said. “Then we used a gel to cast a red aura over the interior of the room. Catherine Bagley played Helen and Tyler Winston was the murderer. They staged a brief scuffle in front of the window, and then disappeared from view. We played the sound effect of a gunshot.”
    â€œAnd their whereabouts?” Newly asked.
    Nakayla shrugged. “I don’t know. When Sam and I left you last night, we went back to the Kenilworth. Shirley was the first and only person I spoke with before coming here.”
    Newly wrote what I assumed to be the names of Catherine and Tyler. Then he stared out over the front yard for a moment. “Of the actors you’ve mentioned, which ones are members of Asheville Apparitions?”
    â€œAll of them. Since the group did so much of the organizational work, we agreed they should have first dibs on the ghost roles.”
    Newly cocked his head and eyed me with surprise. “You belong to these ghost hunters?”
    â€œNo. I was just a host in a costume.”
    â€œWas Battery Park the