“Shit,” Dana breathed.
“Shit is about right. Turned out this asshole had actually moved into town just a week before the kidnapping. When we went to talk to him, he’d vanished. Skipped out on his rent, his job, everything. We found the girl’s body eight days later, buried in a shallow grave just over the state line. There was a lot of decomp and some animal predation, so the ME couldn’t get an exact time of death. His best guess, however, was death occurred less than twenty-four hours after she was taken. She had been sexually assaulted, repeatedly, in ways you don’t want to hear about. I certainly don’t want to talk about them. The cause of death was manual strangulation.”
Dana’s stomach clenched. Agent Krueger gave her a hard stare. “His fingernails had dug so deeply into the skin around her neck that he actually left some of his own DNA. DNA which belonged to the ex-boyfriend. We started a huge manhunt, but he still managed to elude us. Then, about a year later, we got a call from a local police chief in some rinky-dink little town in rural West Virginia. He had a John Doe fitted the description of our guy. Myself and another agent went down there, made a positive ID. The guy had been living in a shack out in the middle of nowhere, making a living from the land and selling some furs illegally by the looks of it, all completely off the grid which explains why we couldn’t find the sonofabitch. He must’ve panicked after he killed his ex’s child, knew we’d catch up to him sooner or later, and gone to ground. Anyway, it appeared he died in some kind of hunting accident. Shot himself in the leg, tried to crawl to help, didn’t make it. Died from a combination of blood loss, shock, and dehydration.”
“But you didn’t believe that,” Dana guessed.
“Hell no—” Agent Krueger leaned forward and placed her forearms on the desktop. The nails of her right hand clicked softly against the Formica top. “When we went to tell the family, they just didn’t seem all that surprised. I mean, they tried to act in all the ways people should act when they get that kind of news, but there just seemed something hinky about their whole performance. And then I spotted something as we were leaving. A necklace. Draped over a picture of their daughter on the mantel. The same necklace they had described the girl as wearing on the day she disappeared. I asked them about it. Said they had found it when they moved home—they moved about six months after their daughter died, couldn’t stand looking at the place they were in any longer—found it under the daughter’s bed. They were mistaken about her wearing it the day she went missing, they said. It was perfectly reasonable explanation, of course…” Agent Krueger’s upper lip curled, as though she were tasting something bitter and unpleasant. “The agent who was with me bought it just fine. But not me. Over the next year, there were three more guys turned up dead. All of them suspected of kidnapping, molesting, and killing children. The deaths of these men were all ruled accidental.”
Dana tilted a curious look at the agent. “You didn’t believe that either?”
Agent Krueger shook her head, gave a thin, humorless smile.
“How does this connect to the New York hit woman, and what does any of it have to do with Flynn?” Dana asked.
“I’m getting to that. One of the fathers of the molested girls had a connection to the New York Mob, the same Mob family Barbara Calabrese’s husband worked for. It was slim, I agree, but it was a thread, and I tugged on it. I found a ten thousand dollar withdrawal from the father’s account at the end of that thread.”
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Dana countered.
“You’re right. But there was more.” Agent Krueger leaned back so that she could open up a drawer in bottom of her desk. From it she extracted a plain white envelope, and placed that on the desktop. “In this envelope is something which was found at a death scene…that of one of the suspected pedophiles. It didn’t match any of the clothes belonged to the deceased, and so the local law enforcement bagged it and stored it in their Evidence Lockup. They didn’t suspect foul play, they were simply being thorough, which was lucky for me. I was able to obtain this piece of evidence and process it. Take a look, Miss Jordan.”
Dana slid the envelope toward her, feeling her heart suddenly thud in her chest as she pried the flap up and stuck two fingers inside, withdrawing a Ziploc evidence baggie. Inside the baggie was a small blue button, the kind that might have come from a shirt or top. Dana raised a questioning glance to the agent.
“I got a partial print from that button, Miss Jordan,” she said. “I ran it through the system, but nothing popped. Not then. I left a flag on it in case anything ever did.”
Dana swallowed, eyes darting between the button and Agent Krueger. “And something did?”
The agent nodded. “In 2005 someone named Willie Rae Flynn applied in New Orleans for a private investigator’s license. Flynn’s prints were a match for the one on that button. The thing is, no one else knows about it but me.”
A chill bloomed at the base of Dana’s spine, wound its way up to the middle of her back, and settled in at a point midway between her shoulder blades. “You withheld evidence,” she said quietly. Agent Krueger’s model features tightened as she nodded once again. “Why?”
The FBI agent reclined in her chair again, re-crossed her legs, and made her fingers into another steeple. “I put it together. I knew Willie Rae Flynn was the same woman had worked out of New York as a hitter, the same person killed these men. The same woman that Barbara Calabrese had known. And she was the woman I’d met before. I withheld the evidence and what I knew, Miss Jordan, and I waited for a position to open up down here in New Orleans, because I had no desire to bring Flynn to justice.”
Dana’s heart was beating much too fast now. Her palms felt greasy and cold. A small circle of sharp pain throbbed behind her left eye, threatening to bloom into a full blown headache as she tried to sort through what she had just heard. She saw a knowing smile flicker on Agent Krueger’s lips. The gesture made Dana want to change her clothes, her skin even. “What do you want with Flynn?” she asked.
“I want her to kill someone for me.”
The shock she felt must have been written all over Dana’s face because Agent Krueger raised both hands and made a patting gesture in the air with her down-turned palms. “There’s a very good reason I want this person dead, if it makes it any easier,” she explained, her tone so perfectly reasonable tone that it almost made Dana forget she’d just said she wanted Flynn to kill someone for her. She reached up to rub above her temple with two fingers, massaging the flaring headache there. “You were CIA before you joined the Bureau, weren’t you?” she asked dully. The slight rise of the agent’s eyebrows confirmed this. Dana frowned. “Why don’t you just kill this person—whoever they are—yourself? I bet your CIA training included how to kill people and make it look accidental.”
“Obviously I’m not going to answer that. It isn’t quite so simple, anyway.”
“Never is, is it?” Dana grimaced. “So who do you want Flynn to kill, if you don’t mind my asking that at least?”
“My stepfather,” Agent Krueger replied promptly, shocking the hell out of Dana yet again. She stared into the calm expression in the agent’s eyes. “He’s a very important man, high up in a certain government department. He is also an abusing monster who sexually and physically abused me for years.” A look of mingled disgust and discomfort rippled across Agent Krueger’s face. She sucked air between her clenched teeth. Obviously, the memory of what her own stepfather did to her caused her tremendous pain. Weakness, Dana thought, did not sit well on this woman. “He was such a nice guy around everyone else, so well respected and liked, that no one would have believed me if I’d told them what was going on. I tried to tell my mother once—she wouldn’t hear anything about it. Told me that I was making it up for attention.”
It was an all too common story heard from thousands of abused children. The adults around them, unable to accept that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, recognize such a monster in their own midst, retreated instead into deep denial. “Why did
n’t you go straight to Flynn with this? You’re taking a huge risk, involving a reporter,” Dana pointed out.
Agent Krueger’s expression turned sly. “I don’t think you ever want me to get even the idea that you were threatening me, Miss Jordan. It wouldn’t be advisable,” she said.
Dana’s flesh prickled with goose bumps. She would bet that Erin Krueger had killed people before; if not as an FBI agent, then almost certainly during her days with the CIA. The agent held Dana’s eyes in a level gaze. “If I were to approach Flynn, she would likely assume it was an FBI sting to take her down, and quite simply, she would never talk to me,” she explained.
The words rang false but neither could Dana see any thread with which to pull the excuse apart yet. She twitched a frown at Agent Krueger. “You want me to be your go-between, that’s it, isn’t it? To negotiate with Flynn. What influence do you think I have with her?”
“From what I gather, Flynn likes you. That tells me she might be willing to listen to you.”
It was entirely possible that Agent Krueger were vastly overestimating Dana’s influence with Flynn. “Just supposing I were to buy any of what you say, Agent Krueger—what would be in this for Flynn?”
Agent Krueger laughed. “You are smart, Miss Jordan. I knew you were. That’s something, however, that I will only discuss with Flynn, should she agree to talk to me.”
Dana drew a breath in. “I’ll talk to her. But I can’t promise you anything more than that.”
Agent Krueger nodded. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Even though Flynn didn’t want to leave Ariel, she made herself do so and returned to Boudreau’s place where she found the detective still slumped on the couch, flicking through the TV channels.
“Thought you didn’t want to watch Judge Judy?”
“It’s the Discovery Channel. Y’all bring me some beer?”
“I brought you Cokes. Doc said no alcohol.” Flynn scooped Chinese food from the cartons onto two plates, grabbed some cutlery from a drawer, and detached two cans of Coke from the six-pack, carried everything into the living room. “How’re you feeling anyway?”
” Like hammered shit. I think that’s how you described it, right?” Boudreau stabbed a fork into the heap of pork and noodles on her plate. “Where’d you get to anyway? No—I don’t want to know that. I can smell fucking patchouli oil on you. Y’all were visiting with Ariel again.”
“What if I was? Would you be jealous?” Flynn smirked.
Boudreau curled her lip. “Of that green-eyed bitch? Hell, no. But seriously, Flynn, I know y’all like her, but just be careful, okay? She’s a con.”
“Ex-con. She’s going straight now.”
“That’s what they all tell themselves. I don’t trust her.”
They would never see eye to eye on the matter of Ariel, that much was clear. Flynn shrugged and changed the subject. “Has Waylon gotten anywhere with identifying the mambo yet?”
“Nope. He’s still running it through the system. Unsurprisingly, mambos don’t tend to advertise their services on Google. Probably ‘Jean-Marie’ isn’t even her real name.”
The muted television played a game show in the background, reminding Flynn that she hated game shows. She hated most things on TV. Given the choice, she’d rather read a book, or rent a movie. “No luck with finding Antoine either?” she asked.
Boudreau shook her head, eyes on the silent TV screen as she gestured with her greasy fork toward the back of the cottage. “Y’all can sleep in the spare room, by the way. Bed’s still made up in there from when Carol’s sister was visiting.”
“What? I don’t get to spend all night with you?” Flynn widened her eyes and turned down her mouth in a parody of hurt. “I don’t know if I can bear it.”
Boudreau took a couple of the pills that the doctor had given her and tottered off to her bedroom to lay down, and Flynn padded through to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. As she waited for it to percolate, her thoughts turned back to Ariel, and specifically how being with Ariel had been everything she remembered, maybe even better than she remembered it. Sex with Ariel was as different from sex with anyone else Flynn had ever been with. Ariel had a talent for making it so good that you could almost wonder if maybe she had cast some kind of ‘love spell’ on you, especially when she performed that neat little trick where she could make you come using just her left nipple. But it wasn’t just the sex. Flynn could talk with Ariel—talk with her about anything, including her mixed feelings for Dana Jordan.
“I know I can’t be with her, so why can’t I stop thinking about her?” Flynn had asked.
“Love is a strange animal,” Ariel had told her. “It makes us do things we never normally would dream of doing.”
Flynn had nodded. “I wish I didn’t feel this way,” she confessed. “It makes my life complicated. And I don’t want that kind of complicated.”
Ariel had laughed, shrugged. “Too bad then that we don’t always get what we want. Sometimes we get what we need,” she said.
Amen to that, Flynn thought as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
Lying face-down, naked, with her hands secured at the wrists by red silken scarves tied to bedposts on either side of her head, Flynn became aware of someone standing alongside of the bed. She turned her head, and saw Ariel, naked also, her soft white skin glistening with an aromatic oil, smiling as she told Flynn to relax. She climbed onto the bed, straddled Flynn from behind, and began rubbing herself against Flynn’s butt, smearing sticky wetness there.
Flynn groaned and moved against the bed, trying to find relief for herself. Then Ariel leaned down and spoke into her ear. “This is how you take them, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
Ariel bore down harder until Flynn gasped and began to writhe against the silk sheets beneath her, desperate to get herself off. “Yes, you do know what I’m talking about. You can’t even stand for them to look at you. You’re afraid if they do, they’ll see you for who—for what—you are.”
Flynn shook her head. “No. You’re wrong. ”
Ariel kissed her on the side of the neck, the shoulder, an earlobe, soft kisses that sent shivers racing across Flynn’s shoulders and made her scalp tingle. She could feel the orgasm building up inside of her.
“I know you, Flynn. You can’t hide from me. And you can’t hide from them either. Look—” Ariel pointed and Flynn followed the direction of her gesture, blinking into the shadows that surrounded the bed where she perceived dark, hunched shapes like the outlines of creatures not quite human but not quite animal either. These strange and cold-eyed protean things watched her from the shadows with red eyes and hungry mouths.
“Who—what is that?” Her heart clenched until the blood pounded in her ears but her face felt cold. Desire fled from her, replaced by fear.
“The Loa see you.”
Flynn felt Ariel come, warm stickiness dripping over her buttocks and running down between her legs.
“The Loa see you, and they know who you are! Listen to them!”
Flynn heard music, loud rock music. It intruded upon the dream, pulling Flynn from the world of the dark into the light, into wakefulness. Her eyelids sprang apart and she bolted upright on the couch in Boudreau’s living room, realizing at once that she could still hear the music. She located Boudreau’s phone on the coffee table and fumbled it to her ear, cutting off the loud warbling of Journey.
“Flynn.” Her voice came out husky, both with sleep and with the residue of the fear that had pervaded her dream. She expected it would be Waylon calling, maybe about a break in the case, or—God forbid—another murder but it was Dana Jordan’s voice that exploded in her ear.
“Flynn! Jesus Christ, I was starting to think you’d died or something!”
“No. No, I’m alive. Deaf now, but alive,” Flynn responded, bewildered by the sound of the reporter’s voice on Boudreau’s phone. “What—how did you get this number?”
; “I was worried about you,” Dana said, ignoring Flynn’s question. “I heard what happened out at Bayou Castine. Are you alright?”
Scrubbing a hand over her eyes, rolling her shoulders to work the kinks out of her muscles, Flynn tried to push away the clinging remnants of the dream and the uneasy sensation that something had followed her out from it. “I’m fine. Pierce got a bit beat up and the doc said someone should stay with her. Carol’s away at her mother’s house, so I volunteered. Dana, you do know what time it is, right? And why the hell are you calling Boudreau’s phone? How’d you even get her number?”
The reporter’s tone became defensive. “Maybe you should try switching your own goddamned phone on then. I left you a dozen messages on it. I got this number from Boudreau’s partner—” Dana’s tone softened again. “I was worried about you.”
“I switched my phone off when I was at the ER with Boudreau. I must’ve forgotten to switch it on again,” Flynn explained. “Sorry if I freaked y’all out.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re alright…” Dana hesitated. “Look, can you meet me tomorrow? I have—there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure, I’ll meet you. ” Flynn suggested brunch at Café du Monde, around ten, and Dana agreed. For a moment the reporter seemed on the verge of saying something else, the ether humming with expectation, and then the moment was gone and Dana simply bid her goodnight instead.
Flynn spent a few minutes first erasing Dana’s number from Boudreau’s phone memory and then changing the ring tone to something reminded her less of handlebar mustaches and tight leather pants. Whilst she did so, fragments of the dream popped back into her memory, giving her a jolt of desire tinged strangely with guilt and unease. The words Ariel had spoken in the dream—about how Flynn hid from the women she fucked—taunted her. It was true that she hid from those women she picked up, just as she hid from everyone in her life.
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