A Dark Horse

by Cooper, Blayne

“Amelia.” Coloring, she licked her lips nervously, “You won’t mention to Natalie about the…well, you know how you do that…thing.”

  Amelia laughed and walked over to buss her sister’s cheek. “I promise not to tell Natalie that I put colored dots on the inside labels of your clothes so you’ll know which things go together.”

  Relieved, Adele grinned sheepishly. “Right, that…thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  It was after eight o’clock that evening when Natalie and Adele finally settled down on a bench on the walkway that lined the Mississippi River. It was still cool outside, but warmer than the night before. The breeze was light enough that it only occasionally ruffled Adele’s short hair. They sat close together, but there was still space between them. The bench was chilly against the backs of their legs, and the scent of damp earth and water filled their nostrils.

  “Oh, my God,” Natalie groaned, wishing it wouldn’t be humiliating to unbutton her jeans. “I’m so full I can’t move.” They’d just eaten at Galatoire’s, a place Adele had described as a local institution. The food had been marvelous, and afterward they’d still managed to squeeze in a slice of bourbon pecan pie from a bakery near Jackson Square.

  Adele chortled lightly. “I told you. We have many problems in New Orleans,” she drawled in a slow, relaxed way, her accent thicker than usual. A smile broke out on Natalie’s face as she listened. “But access to good food is not one of them.” Adele shifted in her seat and kicked her legs straight out in front of her, her lips suddenly thinning.

  Natalie frowned. She could see that Adele was hurting. They would take a cab back to the inn instead of walking, even if she had to insist. “We walked a lot today. My feet are tired.”

  “Yeah.” Adele’s reply was barely audible.

  “I have pain tablets in my purse.” A memory of Detective Lejeune offering her the same thing the first time they’d met floated to the surface.

  Adele sighed. “I took one when we left the bakery. It should kick in soon. But thanks.”

  Natalie nodded, then slumped down a little in her seat and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her new olive-green Burberry coat. “Ella?”

  “Mmm?” Adele’s attention was focused on the way starlight created a crust of diamonds on the surface of the dark, lazy river.

  “Thank you for today. I really needed to do something fun.” She gestured to the bags seated next to her feet. “And the clothes. I got all these beautiful outfits for the price of one or two, thanks to you and your sister.” Her smile turned sulky. “But I can’t eat like I did tonight again or I won’t be able to fit into any of them.”

  Adele’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. “I don’t think a little good food will do you too much harm.”

  “There was nothing little about my meal tonight.” Natalie glanced at her cell phone. It was probably already past Logan’s bedtime. “Shouldn’t we be heading back?”

  “If you’d like.” Adele pulled up the collar of her jacket, looking a little contemplative. “But I’m not in any particular hurry.”

  “What about—”

  Adele’s eyes tilted upward and Natalie saw the moon shimmering in their depths, making them appear every bit as mysterious and fathomless as the black water. “Logan is with Landry in Baton Rouge. That’s where Landry lives and works now. He’s on their police force. We, um, got divorced almost two years ago. Logan won’t be back until Christmas Day.”

  Taken aback, Natalie’s tongue felt heavy in her mouth as she struggled for an appropriate response. She remembered how Logan and Adele had interacted and could only imagine how awful any separation would be for them both. Christmas was nearly two weeks away. “I’m sorry, Ella. That’s awful.”

  Adele’s jaw worked for a few seconds as she tried to shrug away the hurt. “I get him most of the time. So fair is fair, I guess.”

  “There’s nothing fair about you being away from him at all,” Natalie ground out with enough bitterness to surprise Adele and herself.

  “We share custody, but Logan spends most of the school year here with me and most of the summertime and holiday breaks with Landry.”

  “It’s not my business what happened.” Natalie shook her head. “I mean, I know Landry was angry the last time I saw him, but…” She didn’t really know how to finish that sentence.

  “Things got ugly in the months after you left. Really ugly. I pretty much ruined his life.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Ella, c’mon.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it intentionally. But I still did it.”

  Adele abruptly stopped her narrative, and Natalie decided not to push her to continue. Instead, Natalie let the sounds of the evening penetrate her consciousness: huffing joggers as they ran past, the faint, but mournful wail of a jazz saxophone from a bar down the road, the light tinkling of bare tree branches as they gently collided with the occasional gusts of wind, and the muffled laughter as a group of tourists bustled down the street in the distance.

  Natalie burrowed a little deeper into her coat. She wasn’t really cold, but she was disconcerted, and it felt safe and comfortable inside the warm cloth. The thought of Adele’s suffering upset her on a visceral level she struggled to understand.

  After a long, easy silence, Adele simply began to speak. “The Public Integrity Bureau ran with my accusation against Officer Morrell and somehow that exploded into a department-wide investigation.”

  “Why?” Natalie prompted gently and carefully, as if she was drawing out a wounded animal closer for inspection. For help.

  “For it to make sense, you have to understand, Natalie, we were under so much scrutiny during and after the Danziger Bridge shootings investigation. It went on forever, and the entire NOPD was dragged through the mud because of the actions of a few bad apples. The public lost most of their faith in us. The brass and city officials, at least some of them,” she amended mockingly, “were desperate to get that respect back and were willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. Appearance became more important than reality. It became everything.”

  Adele’s eyes fluttered closed, and she suddenly looked impossibly weary. “God, it was just a mess. Parts of it are still stuck in court or indefinitely on hold, and it’s been almost ten years.”

  Natalie scrunched up her face as she thought. “I think I remember seeing something about that on the news. It was some sort of police cover-up for some shootings during Hurricane Katrina, right?”

  Adele nodded stoically. “That’s the gist of it. It sort of set the scene for everything that came later. Once the PIB started digging into what Morrell did to Crisco, all sorts of other incidents came to light, most especially, the NOPD’s ongoing nasty habit of squelching internal allegations of abuse of power. Important people were embarrassed over the Danziger Bridge shootings, and somebody needed to pay for it. And this was their chance. Then things got passed along to our pit bull of a prosecutor and all hell broke loose.

  “By the end, the investigation shifted into a witch hunt. Sixteen officers lost their jobs or voluntarily left the NOPD as part of a plea bargain. Careers over. Pensions gone. Everything. Some of them were nothing more than thugs that needed to go. I still don’t know how they avoided jail time.” Adele looked close to tears. “But not all of them deserved what happened to them. The net cast by PIB was just so wide…they didn’t care about collateral damage at all if it meant making their case.”

  “But that’s not your fault! You had nothing to do with that.”

  Adele smiled a little at Natalie’s indignation. She tucked her legs under the bench and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees as she gazed out at the water again. Adele sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “That never mattered. The department was like a big bundle of dynamite, and my allegations were the match that lit the fuse.”

  Natalie blinke
d a few times. She had never imagined anything beyond her brother’s case. She just now realized that, for Adele, it was only the very tip of an enormous and very ugly iceberg. “So Landry was mad or upset?”

  “Mad or upset?” Adele’s tone was jaded. “He took shit for what I’d done every single day for months, and it wasn’t just teasing or name-calling. What other cops did to us both was cruel and dangerous. He got into a half-dozen fistfights with other officers because of what they said about me. There were threats to blow up our house. Our cars weren’t just keyed, they were ruined. And none of that even touches what Landry personally thought of me afterward.”

  He loved you. Natalie had seen it in his face so plainly, even while Landry was furious and yelling at Adele, there was an undercurrent of caring and fear. Still, Natalie was irrationally angry with him for not supporting his wife when she needed him most. Natalie knew with guilty certainty that she’d reacted horribly to what Adele had done to Josh’s case. But I wasn’t her husband!

  “Landry comes from a family of cops. His daddy and granddaddy were cops. His brother is a sergeant in Property Crimes. He’s got two cousins in Traffic and another in the State Highway Patrol. This damaged, if not ruined, his relationship with all of them. Well, except his granddaddy, who was already dead. His own family was furious with him for being married to a traitor.”

  Anger pounded through Natalie’s veins. “That’s not fair! You’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met.”

  “That depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?” Adele nearly sneered. “None of it was fair! And to make matters worse, everything Landry warned me about turned out to be true. Every. Single. Thing. But I wouldn’t listen. All along he warned me that I couldn’t count on backup from other cops. That it was too dangerous for me to stay on the force.”

  Natalie’s eyes were drawn to Adele’s cane as it leaned harmlessly against the bench.

  Adele’s hands shaped fists. “But did I listen? Of course not! And so while a crazy woman, whose kids I was trying to find, was stabbing me, the officers who’d been dispatched to the scene as my backup were taking their own sweet time getting there. I heard later through the grapevine that they’d stopped for coffee on the way to the scene.”

  Natalie closed her eyes and felt the slightly sick sensation that came from the blood draining from her face. Stabbed? “Jesus, Ella.” She started to wonder whether the news articles she’d read online had intentionally downplayed what had happened.

  “I’m actually a little surprised they bothered to staunch my bleeding enough to save my life. I guess they drew the line at actually watching me die.”

  The extent of Adele’s loss hit home. She lost everything. “So you couldn’t go back to the NOPD, even without your injury?”

  Adele let out a shuddering breath. “Not ever. Not if I want to stay alive. Anyway, Landry filed for divorce the day I came home from the hospital. The day after that he moved to Baton Rouge and took Logan with him. He said I’d get Logan back when a judge ordered him to do it.”

  “What?” Natalie sat up straight. “He just took your son?”

  Adele nodded mutely.

  “Christ, he’s lucky you didn’t shoot him!” Then she faltered. “You didn’t, right?”

  Adele snorted. “The thought crossed my mind. Honestly, I was worried about what my family would do. We’re not good at taking things lying down. Anyway, Landry knew he screwed up and brought Logan back a couple of days later. Ever since, we’ve actually gotten along pretty well. He’s been supportive from afar and is a good dad.”

  Natalie reached out and covered one of Adele’s hands with her own. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

  “But, Natalie, if I would have—”

  “No.” Natalie’s eyes blazed with anger. “You’re not to blame for the bigger investigation, and you were right to instigate the smaller one.”

  Dismayed, Adele said, “I don’t know how I can believe that after I hurt so many people, including myself. I’ve permanently and negatively altered Logan’s life. I lost my career, my ability to walk and not look like Quasimodo when my leg and hip get tired, my nearly ten-year marriage to a man I loved, and most of my identity.” Adele drew in a breath and affected a cheerful expression. “So…what have you been up to?”

  Wet with unshed tears, the women’s eyes met and they both burst out laughing. It was so horrible that if they didn’t laugh, they’d weep.

  The tension in the air dissolved.

  “I haven’t been up to anything nearly so interesting, Ella. And I think I’m grateful for that.” Natalie looked down at their joined hands. Adele’s skin was soft and surprisingly warm, even in the chilly air, and Natalie gave in to the urge to stroke the back of Adele’s hand with her thumb. Natalie wanted to take every ounce of Adele’s pain away and…her gaze dropped to Adele’s lips and her heart began to race.

  Natalie wanted to kiss her. She wanted to take Adele’s mouth with hers again and again until rational thought was impossible and nothing else mattered. The nearly unstoppable urge hit her so suddenly that she could barely breathe.

  “So, Natalie?”

  “Yeah?” Natalie whispered hoarsely, a swarm of butterflies taking flight in her belly.

  “Tomorrow we start working on your brother’s case, okay?”

  Natalie’s eyes snapped up to meet Adele’s. “I, um, I thought you weren’t interested.”

  Adele’s voice dropped an octave. “I’m interested.”

  Chapter Ten

  The sounds of gut-wrenching screams woke Natalie from a dead sleep. Confused and disoriented, she threw off her bedding and jumped to her feet. She wobbled a little as she whipped around in a frantic circle, trying to locate the source of the noise and decipher what was happening.

  Then it stopped.

  Heart pounding, Natalie sagged against the wall, her body trembling from an instant cold sweat that left her feeling clammy and unsettled. “Shit.” Then she pressed the heels of her hands against closed eyes. “Just a dream. It was only a dream.”

  Then another ear-piercing scream caused her to nearly jump out of her skin. The screams weren’t part of a dream. They were real. Ella? One scream blended into the next and the next. Natalie flung her suite door open and flew out of her room in a dead run toward the back of the house.

  It sounded like someone was being murdered.

  “Ouch!” She crashed into a small table in the hallway and fumbled with a vase, trying to right it before it crashed to the ground. But the vase didn’t matter, and she let it fall in the next heartbeat because it was slowing her down. Her socked feet slipped on polished wood floors and she skidded as she ran.

  Following the sounds of the shrieks, Natalie bolted down a short hallway off the kitchen and burst into another set of rooms she’d never seen. A living room, she thought, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

  She scanned the space, her gaze flicking around the room at a frenzied pace. “Ella?” The screams were louder here, but it was still hard to tell exactly where they were coming from. “Ella?” she called out forcefully.

  But, just as abruptly as before, the cries stopped completely and silence enveloped the room.

  Natalie had to hold her breath for a few seconds to listen. She couldn’t hear anything over her own panting and the blood rushing in her ears. On the heels of the panicky screams, the dead silence was almost more terrifying. Finally, and with forced slowness, Natalie exhaled. For a second, she stood rooted in place, trying to calm herself. Then she snatched up a slender, metal umbrella stand and began opening doors.

  A child’s room.

  A large bathroom.

  A closet filled with miscellaneous household items. A vacuum. A broom.

  The last door opened into a bedroom. Ella’s bedroom. Natalie lifted the umbrella stand overhead and carefully peered into the room as she crept slowly and silently inside. Immediately, she located Ella in bed, the moonlight illuminating one side of her still face, the
other side cast in black shadows.

  Natalie’s eyes widened. Ella wasn’t moving. At all. She can’t be… “Ella?” she said, her voice breaking. Her mind flashed to Misty’s dead eyes as she felt her knees threaten to give way. “Ella!” she shouted, still brandishing the umbrella stand like a batter awaiting a pitch. She began to panic. “Ella!”

  With a loud gasp, Adele jerked awake and bolted upright, causing Natalie to shriek and jump back.

  In one swift move, Adele reached under the pillow next to hers and extracted a gun and a clip. In the blink of an eye, Adele inserted the clip and pointed directly at Natalie, her aim as steady as a rock. Adele cocked the gun. “Stay back!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Natalie pleaded, dropping the umbrella stand as though it was red-hot. It clattered to the ground. “Don’t shoot. It’s me!”

  “Don’t come any fuckin’ closer,” Adele growled harshly, the animalistic sound seeming to emanate from the very pit of her stomach.

  Natalie softened her voice, her heart in her throat. “I won’t. I pr-promise.”

  Adele’s eyes looked wild and unfocused and glinted dangerously. It was clear Adele had no idea who was standing before her.

  Oh, my God. She’s going to shoot me. “Ella, it’s me. Natalie. Josh’s sister. Natalie Abbott.”

  Bewildered and breathing as though she’d just sprinted a mile, Adele squinted at the figure at the foot of her bed. As recognition slowly dawned Adele’s expression shifted from fear to anger, then back again. “Nat-Natalie?” She instantly lowered the gun and dropped it on the bed beside her.

  Natalie flinched, half expecting it to go off.

  “Fuck, Natalie, I thought you were…” Adele shook her head briskly as if to dislodge whatever evil thoughts were still lingering inside. “Christ!” She grasped at her throat and winced in pain.

  “Thank you.” Light-headed, Natalie let out a shaky breath. “Thank you for not shooting me.”

  Adele looked around the room as if trying to piece together what had just happened, her mind clearly muddled. “Why? Why are you in my bedroom with an umbrella stand?” Her voice was raspy like sandpaper. She blinked rapidly and laid her hand back on the gun, rhythmically clenching and unclenching the handle. “You looked like you were going to hit me with it.”