by Stacy Green
I don’t know who I am. And she lied.
Did Miss Alexandrine know the truth? Does the ring mean anything? Will it really protect me?
Red creeps back into my vision. I close my eyes against it, but now I’m seeing red starbursts. I press my hands over my ears, like that will get my brain under control.
I was okay with not being normal because I had Gran and the Quarter. Even with my freakish face and my dented brain, I had a history. I knew who I was, and I had a purpose in life.
Her face flashes in my head, but this time she’s covered in red. Her eyes are narrowed and angry. “You stole my life.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know.”
“Yes, you did. Deep down, you knew.”
“Not at first. Not until—”
The face—Lyric’s face—snarls. “Exactly. Now you’re going to pay for it.”
I’m rocking back and forth. I don’t know if this is a memory or my imagination, but it’s wigging me out.
“It’s too hot in here.” My voice falls flat in the cell. I’m stuck in the corner of the first floor, away from the action.
“If someone doesn’t bring me a fan or something, I’m going to strip!”
Once it’s out of my mouth, I can’t resist it. Poor impulse control. I don’t give a shit right now because thinking about taking my clothes off keeps me from thinking about everything else.
But only for a second, and then the red’s back.
“Will somebody bring me a goddamn fan?”
4
Cage waited until the holding cell door clanged shut and the uniform walked away. Annabeth was curled on the floor in the corner, head on her knees.
“I’m not charging you with assaulting me.”
She lifted her head enough to glare at him. “They made me put this shitty orange thing back on, and it’s hot as hell in here.” The jail suit’s top buttons were open, revealing her white bra. “And they won’t bring a fan.”
“I’ll see what I can do after we talk.” Cage let the implication hang and sat down cross-legged in front of her, trying not to think of all the bodily fluids caked on the floor. “You’ve scratched the hell out of your arm.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“I believe you.”
“My medical records must have showed up.”
“Not yet,” Cage said. “I’m going on instinct, and I want to help you. But I need you to tell me everything.”
Annabeth edged closer, her uniform gaping open. She was either oblivious or didn’t care. “You’re being straight with me?”
“Absolutely.”
“You can get the juicy details from the hospital.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. What do you remember about that night?”
“I told you, hardly anything.”
“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
She flinched as though he’d struck her. “I don’t let myself think about it.”
Cage softened his tone. “But sometimes you can’t control that.”
He let his words sink in, giving her time to think. Annabeth remembered more than she was letting on.
“Why does it matter?”
“Every detail matters. It’s usually the overlooked ones that break a case open. I said I believe you. Can you trust me enough to let me help?”
She let out a defeated sigh. “Pain. My feet felt like I’d stomped on a hairbrush. Blinding lights. A screeching that made my head feel like it was splitting open.”
“Do you remember giving them Lyric’s name and her grandmother’s number in the ambulance?”
“No. They told me about that when I woke up. I still didn’t have a clue who I was. Gran was already there by then. She said I was her granddaughter and my name was Lyric Gaudet.” She closed her eyes. “I was so miserable. My entire body hurt, and I had to pee in a tube. I looked like a smushed pear. But she said she knew I belonged to her.”
“She used those words?”
Annabeth nodded. “She said that over and over when I kept asking who I was. It took me a while to remember the new stuff. But at least that went away. Then the surgeries started. Four in all, and this is the best they could do.” She smacked her uneven left cheek.
“Those first days in the hospital, did you have any flashes of memory you couldn’t explain?”
She picked at her tattoo. “My brain’s shit. The neurologist wanted me to do all sorts of therapy, but Gran didn’t have a lot of money, and I needed to learn how to deal with everything else.”
“Like what?”
“Like not being a pain in the ass for no reason. I used to rage at the smallest things. I broke dozens of glasses. I had to get that under control.” She studied him, suspicion lighting her eyes.
Cage scooted closer. He’d have to have these pants dry-cleaned.
“I was like a baby,” she continued. “It was months before I could do basic things like feed myself and wipe my ass. I couldn’t talk because my jaw was wired shut. You want to know what’s humiliating, even if you’re a smush-face? Having someone wipe your ass after you crap in a bedpan. You wanna hear more?” Her tired voice had turned sharp, the shame in her eyes replaced by shining anger.
“I get the picture. I’m sorry we even have to discuss it.”
Her shoulders inched down from her ears. “Whatever.”
“What about school?”
“She said I’d already graduated.” Annabeth had been weeks away from her senior year, taking AP classes at the local college.
“Did she have pictures of you around the house?”
“As a little kid, yeah. But she lost a lot of the others in Katrina. I always wondered if she was lying, because she lived in the French Quarter. Her house made it through just fine. I figured I must have been really pretty before, and she didn’t want to make me feel bad that this is the face I’m stuck with.”
Yet another mood swing, but this time she curled her body into a ball, defeated. Cage waited.
Finally, she took a long, ragged breath. “I knew I wasn’t Lyric when you showed me that picture.”
He kept his expression neutral, but his heart raced. “You recognized her?”
“I’ve been dreaming about her ever since I found out Gran was dying. The girl tells me to run like I’m racing for the state championship, whatever that means. She says, ‘Never look back,’ and then I’m running. Then everything goes blank.”
Lyric had known Annabeth was a track star. Had she helped stalk her and then reconsidered? Or had Lyric been a victim herself?
“I think you and the real Lyric were kidnapped by the same person, and she was still alive when he kidnapped you and Mickie. Thanks to the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, no one followed up on her missing persons report. Does the Lyric in your dreams say anything else?”
“Nope.”
“She must have told you her name and her grandmother’s phone number before she helped you escape. She knew your speed gave you a fighting chance.”
Annabeth stilled. Her slack face hardened, her glare sending chills down his spine.
“And I messed it up. They’re probably dead because of me.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
She jumped to her feet, her fists against her head. “It’s the truth.”
Cage slowly stood, giving her space.
Annabeth glared at him, unintimidated by his height. He braced for another attack.
Instead, she whirled around and started banging her head against the bars. “I let them die. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
Cage seized her, pinning her arms against her chest. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Calm down.”
She slammed the back of her head against him, but he was bigger and stronger. He held her still. “Annabeth, just breathe.”
The name seemed to douse her anger. She stopped fighting him and burst into sobs.
“I’m not her anymore. I’m not anybody.”
5
> The door to the holding area slammed open, nearly hitting Cage in the face. “Sorry, didn’t see you there.” The pock-faced officer Bonin had called Pietry smirked.
“No problem. Can I help you?”
Pietry cocked his head. “’Scuse me?”
“You’re out of uniform and off duty. I assume you’re here to talk to me when Bonin’s not around.”
“Smart guy. I just wanted to finish our conversation from earlier. Ninety-nine percent of the cops you’ll be working with don’t want you, and we ain’t gonna let you make us look like dumbasses to the big boys.”
“Pretty sure you can do that all on your own.”
“Cute,” Pietry said. “My point is, don’t expect anyone besides Bonin to work with you. Rest of us have it our way, you’ll be out of here before Christmas.”
“Point taken.” Cage stepped around the wide man and jogged up the old stairs, taking them two at a time. He’d expected the NOPD detectives to have issues with him, but he’d hoped the uniforms would be easier to get along with.
He slipped out the substation’s side door and walked across the small courtyard to the café. Iron tables and chairs filled the space between the station and café, and most of the seats were taken, despite the heat. Inside, the exposed brick and arched ceiling made the narrow café seem more like a tunnel with tables and chairs. The tiny black and white tiles made him dizzy.
Bonin waved to him from a corner table near the kitchen.
“Café keeps a table for the NOPD,” she said as he sat down. “Nothing goes together better than cops and donuts.”
She tossed a paper-clipped stack of papers on the table. “Medical records. And the Jasper County Sheriff sent over the accident folders. Hope you like your coffee black.”
Cage savored the first few bites of the warm beignet and then dug into the records. “She’s telling the truth.”
Bonin nodded. “August 15, 2011, she climbs from a deep ditch and steps in front of a car on a desolate county road near Jasper, Texas. The only thing that saved her is the car’s slow speed. The driver had some time to brake.”
Annabeth’s head had slammed into the windshield, and her face had been a bloody pulp and unrecognizable. Even the mole on her lip wasn’t visible. “Broken eye socket, fractured jaw, skull fracture, broken nose. Face initially unrecognizable from swelling. Fractured clavicle. How the hell was she even able to give them Lyric’s name?”
“The county sheriff said she told the driver before the paramedics arrived.” Bonin licked the powdered sugar off her fork. “Out of sheer will, probably.”
“Grandma’s desperate to believe, and the girl’s face is messed up. Charlotte Gaudet takes her home and pawns her off as Lyric.”
“I thought I recognized the family name. Charlotte was a well-known Voodoo priestess—her family dates back to the city’s early days. She lived in the French Quarter until she died a couple of weeks ago.”
“A priestess?”
A half-smile played on Bonin’s lips. “We take our traditions and ghosts seriously.”
New Orleans’s history of Voodoo and all things supernatural made for a hell of a marketing strategy. “Touristy stuff, right?”
“Some of it. But plenty of people practice Voodoo as their religion.” She held up a clear evidence bag containing the tarnished ring. “Voodoo explains why she was so desperate for this. It’s an antique mourning ring. My grandmother had one and kept a lock of her firstborn’s hair in it. See the glass face?”
She pointed to the delicate center of the ring. “That looks like dirt, but my bet’s on ashes. Charlotte’s, to be specific.”
“And why would she carry around her grandmother’s ashes?” The coffee would make him sweat even more, but he needed the caffeine.
“Probably a protection spell,” Bonin said. “If they’re Charlotte’s ashes, another priestess would have had to perform the spell before she died. Did she mention anyone else, someone she’d ask for help?”
“She said Miss Alexandrine was coming to fix things.”
Bonin’s eyes widened, her face paling to something that looked a lot like fear. “Miss Alexandrine lives a few blocks from where Annabeth was arrested. She’s a very powerful and well-respected priestess.”
“Will she curse me to die in twenty-four hours or something?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“First off, Voodoo isn’t about curses; it’s about love and light and living a better life, just like any religion,” Bonin said. “Secondly, you need to drop that attitude. You might not believe, but this is New Orleans, and spirits and magic are part of our history and culture. You want to be successful here, don’t disrespect it. Let me talk to her when she shows up.”
“I’m good with that.” Cage wasn’t worried about the Voodoo woman hexing him, but he didn’t want to lose her as a potential witness. He thumbed through the medical records. “Violent multiple sexual assaults. How far did the Jasper sheriff take the investigation?”
“His theory is she was dumped and left for dead. She was barefoot and had external injuries that probably came before the accident. Bruises around wrists and ankles indicated she’d been bound. No hit in CODIS from the rape kit. Soil and trace was taken from her fingertips. I’m trying to track down the original samples.”
CODIS was the FBI’s national DNA index system. But it only worked if the offender had been caught and his DNA entered into the system.
“Listen, there’s a reason I brought you here.”
“Besides the sugar high?”
“That’s just a bonus,” she said. “My lieutenant at Major Crimes won’t be an issue, but the Quarter’s district commander is a by-the-book guy. He’s at a conference today, but he’ll find out you’re here. Patrol guys already talking about you—and Annabeth.”
“Guess I should let the LBI know.”
“You think? Look, I’m sure you know the NOPD and city government have a long history of corruption. I’ll stand up for every cop I’ve worked with, but plenty of people still have their hands in the wrong cookie jar. And most of them think the LBI’s new division is really about having an inside narc.”
“That’s not what I signed up for,” Cage said. “The LBI wants to take some of the load off NOPD’s major crime so the police can allocate more resources to drug and gang control.”
“And you can bet that if you see something unethical, the LBI will expect you to report it to them. People are afraid the state wants to clean house.”
“Is that what you think?”
“About the state? Absolutely.”
Dani had suggested the same thing, calling Cage a Pollyanna if he really believed the state didn’t have ulterior motives. “I’m here to help with the NOPD’s major crimes. Period.”
Bonin smiled. “I know. But I wanted you to understand what you’re up against. My advice is to call the LBI as soon as we’re finished here. They can deal with the district commander and smooth things over.”
“Yeah, I will.” A line in the medical report had caught his attention. “Annabeth said her feet felt like she’d stepped on a hairbrush. How far from the accident scene did they search?”
“That’s when the sheriff got defensive,” Bonin said. “He claims they searched a five-mile radius but found nothing. He insisted she was dumped, naked and barefoot.”
Cage turned the report and pointed to the scribbled note in the margins. An overwhelmed hospital with little experience in major crimes had likely written it as an afterthought. “She had lesions on her feet. They removed longleaf pine needles.”
“Lots of pine trees in that part of Texas.”
“Look at the accident scene pictures. This is a clearing. Gravel on the side of the road. No pine trees in sight.” He pulled up Google Maps on his phone. Annabeth had been hit on a county road, but a main highway was only a few hundred feet away. He soon had an aerial view of what he was looking for. “You only see the pine trees when you see the whole picture. I suck at fi
guring out distance on a map, but I’m guessing there’s at least a couple of football fields’ worth of clearing before any of the pine trees.”
“How did she escape?”
“Lyric helped her,” Cage said. “That’s the only explanation. It’s why Annabeth had Charlotte’s phone number. That means he kept Lyric for nearly six years.”
“She’s special to him. The first victim,” Bonin said, “or an accomplice. You can’t rule that out.”
“Either way, we start with Lyric. And there’s only one person who can help us do that. How well do you know the officer she assaulted last night?”
Cage stepped outside to make the call, crouched beneath the eaves of the Eighth District Police Station. Like everything else in the French Quarter, the building was well over a hundred years old. Its stately columns and ornate entrance resembled the plantations Cage had grown up around.
Sweltering August heat snatched his breath away. He opened his top button, loosened his tie, and hit send.
“Finally,” Dani answered on the second ring. “Is it really her?” They’d met long after the girls disappeared, but Dani knew the case haunted him.
The knots in Cage’s stomach loosened at the comforting sound of her voice. He missed her already. “I think so,” he said. “She had a head injury and has no memory of Roselea.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know, and I can’t go into details. You haven’t told anyone, have you? Not even Jaymee?”
“No,” Dani said. A faint hint of defensiveness crept into her tone. “You’re not coming home tonight, are you?”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not until I get this straightened out.”
Dani’s tired sigh tweaked Cage’s nerves. “You’re supposed to be here, helping me pack. I understand why you rushed to New Orleans today, but you promised you’d be home tonight.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a lot more complicated than just bringing her home.”
“Guess you were overconfident. What did Rogers say?”
“I haven’t told him yet.” So much for his promise to Bonin. Calling his boss was a straight shot to the Georges. Cage might be an ass, but he needed more time to get through to Annabeth.
