Unseen

by Jana DeLeon

  “That’s nice,” Shaye said, trying to imagine the very sleek Cooper, in his custom-made suit, sitting on a hot, mosquito-infested deck trying to catch bass, but the image never came. “I’m afraid, though, that it’s not that kind of visit.”

  She pulled out her card and handed it to him. “You probably already know I am a private investigator. I’d like your help on a case I’m currently working.”

  He frowned. “A case? I can’t imagine how I could help with anything you’re investigating.”

  “It concerns a property you hold the listing for.”

  He immediately shifted to his “what my attorney advises” face. “If this is about an insurance claim on one of the properties, I can’t speak to you without the full consent of the seller.”

  “It’s not about insurance. It’s about a crime.”

  His eyes widened. “What crime? The police haven’t contacted me. Which property?”

  Shaye gave him the address. “Last Friday night, a woman was attacked in that unit. A woman who lives across the street saw the attack but passed out as she was calling the police. By the time units got there, the apartment was wiped clean.”

  “Well, surely, the woman who saw it identified the victim, or the woman who was attacked reported the crime?” He rubbed his jaw and Shaye could tell he was flustered.

  “I’m afraid the police have been unable to locate the victim or the perpetrator,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Which is why I have you here asking me questions and not the police. How do I even know a crime was committed? Maybe this woman was drunk and imagined everything. You say there’s no evidence. How is that possible? I watch those shows on television. There’s always something left behind.”

  “The perpetrator is very good. Very clever. The ones who get away with it for a long time usually are.”

  “No one’s so good they don’t leave a hair behind.”

  “I’m sure the CSI unit picked up plenty of hair and other items. After all, the unit is for sale so any number of people have passed through it recently. I imagine some of your hair could have been picked up in that sweep.”

  She’d said it intentionally, hoping to get a reaction from him. His jaw clenched and his expression shifted from disinterest to aggravation.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you want from me, but I’m not about to let you start a media circus over the word of one crazy woman. That condo is a big commission and I’ve got a buyer ready to pull the trigger.”

  “I’m not trying to affect your sale. I’m simply looking for answers that I think you can provide.”

  “Like what?”

  “Someone entered the unit around ten thirty that night. Unless they have a key, the only way they would be able to do that is by accessing the key in the lockbox. I understand the system provides you records of every entry that identify the Realtor requesting access.”

  “Yes, it does.” He turned to his computer and tapped on the keyboard. “The woman probably saw someone showing the apartment, assuming she saw anything at all. This will settle things up quickly, and then all this talk about a crime in my property can be shoved back under the bedcovers or into the whiskey bottle, which is where this woman should have left it.”

  He watched the screen as a list loaded and put his finger up to the screen, scanning the listings. Shaye was looking at the screen from an angle, so she couldn’t make out the entries, but his finger stopped in the middle of the page and he frowned.

  “Something wrong?” Shaye asked.

  “No. Nothing,” he said, and looked back at her. “No one accessed the condo.”

  “Really? Because your expression says differently. Look, Mr. Cooper, I know I have no legal grounds to demand the information, but the police do. I can stir things up until they decide to take a second look simply in order to make me go away. But that second look would probably require them to label the apartment as a potential crime scene, which means no one could enter. And then there’s that ugly yellow crime tape they put up keeping people from entering.”

  The look he gave her left no question what he thought about her and her veiled threat. But he must have decided she was the lesser of evils because he hit the Print button, then grabbed the printout and pushed it across the desk to her.

  “There. It shows no access at the time you’re interested in. Just as I said.”

  Shaye lifted the paper and read the entry. “The last access was at 5:00 p.m. that day. By Maria Foster. Do you know Ms. Foster?”

  “Only what she reported on her showing, and I assure you, nothing was wrong with the unit or I would have heard about it.”

  “I assume since it’s your listing, you have a spare key and can enter anytime without going through the lockbox.”

  “Yes. But I don’t like what you’re implying,” he said, growing increasingly agitated. “If someone was in the unit that night, it wasn’t me. I left the city that afternoon for my plantation. At ten thirty I was sitting on my dock catching speckled trout.”

  “Do you have anyone who can back that up?”

  “No, Ms. Archer, I don’t. The point of a getaway property is to get away. If I wanted to sit around listening to other people talk, I would have stayed in New Orleans.”

  “So the lockbox and your spare key are the only ways you know that someone could get into the unit.”

  “Building maintenance has a key, but they’re supposed to be locked in a safe. Maybe you should be talking to him. He’s an odd duck, roaming the building at all hours of the day and night. I’ve often wondered if he’s not living in the vacant units. But then, a psychotic maintenance guy isn’t a big story like the rich taking a fall. And that’s what you specialize in, right?”

  Shaye bristled but forced herself to remain calm. He was trying to provoke her. The question was why. Because he was angry about being questioned and wanted her to be angry as well, or because he was trying to divert her attention away from him?

  “I specialize in the truth,” she said. “No matter whom it involves.”

  “New Orleans’s white knightess in shining armor. How lucky we are. Look, Ms. Archer, I think your client is batshit crazy and imagined the entire thing, but even if she didn’t, I assure you that my hobbies don’t include attacking women. And even if I was foolish enough for them to, I would never be so stupid as to do it in my own listing. Especially that listing.”

  “So what you’re saying is that if you were going to commit a crime in one of your properties, you’d take the commission into consideration first.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I think we’re done talking, Ms. Archer.”

  Shaye rose from the chair and headed out of the office. That had gone about as well as expected, except for one thing: the printout she still had in her hand contained every showing of the unit since it was listed two weeks before. There were only twelve of them and three were repeat agents. It might not produce anything, but it gave her another avenue to investigate.

  And then there was that one last thing.

  When Cooper shook hands with Shaye, he’d extended his right hand, but when he’d handed her the printout, it had been with his left.

  Jackson spotted Detective Elliot in the rear of the parking lot, leaning on the fence and smoking a cigarette. He was half-hidden by a white van and the hanging limbs from a cypress tree, and it took a minute for Jackson to locate him. He frowned as he made his way over. He’d met with Elliot for an information exchange several times, but the other detective had never been this secretive until now. Jackson’s back tightened as his mind filled with a million horrible things that Elliot might have to tell him.

  Elliot nodded and stubbed out his cigarette on the metal fence post as Jackson approached. “Thanks for meeting me out here.”

  “I almost didn’t see you.”

  Elliot glanced over the parking lot. “Yeah, that part was intentional. Look, I got something to tell you, and I had to make sure no one
overheard. I was gonna wait until tonight and go to your house, but I have dinner at my mother-in-law’s tonight and if I miss, my wife is gonna flip.”

  “It’s no problem. What do you have?”

  Elliot looked down at the ground, then around the parking lot again, then pushed himself off the fence.

  “Whatever it is,” Jackson said, “you might as well spit it out. It can’t be any worse than what I already know.”

  “If this job has taught me anything, it’s that things can always be worse. Until this morning, I thought you might have heard the worst of it, but now I’m not so sure. I got to this entry in Emile’s journal and when I thought about the implications, it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  Despite the cool weather, Jackson’s hands felt clammy. He knew what was coming. Knew that the only thing that could make a hardened detective like Elliot that nervous was the secret that only he and Shaye shared.

  “The entry talked about selling an infant,” Elliot said. “Not much detail, just that an attorney handled it and he got ten thousand cash out of the deal. I know Samba was one of Clancy’s customers, and I’m sure he figured out just how profitable the business was, but what the journals don’t cover is where he got an infant to sell. Then I remembered Shaye’s medical records and I almost lost my breakfast.”

  Elliot stopped talking and drew in a deep breath, staring directly at Jackson. Then his eyes widened. “You knew,” he said. “You knew this was possible.”

  Jackson nodded. His stomach hadn’t stopped clenching since Elliot had begun talking. It was one thing to know. It was completely another to have confirmation. And this kind of confirmation was a whole other level of horrible.

  “Shaye’s memory still isn’t complete,” Jackson said, “but she remembers the birth, and she said she heard the baby crying. They told her it was stillborn, but she knows that’s not true.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I swear to God, if I had one impossible wish granted, I’d ask for that worthless piece of shit to be brought back to life just so I could kill him again.”

  “Me too.”

  “Even though it sounds underwhelming, I’m sorry, Lamotte. I can’t even imagine…”

  “Me either. Was there anything else to go on? Anything that might help identify the attorney?”

  “No. And I scanned forward about six months.” Elliot shook his head. “You know what kind of attorney does that sort of transaction, and he won’t be advertising it. The only other facts I can give you are the date and the sex of the child. It was a girl.”

  Jackson’s hands clenched until he felt his short nails digging into his palms. “You’re sure.”

  “Definitely. That asshole said clearly that if the infant had been a male child, he would have kept him for sacrificing. Eighteen years I’ve been at this job, and I’ve seen some horrible things, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I wish I hadn’t now.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Elliot clasped his hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do. Anything. You just have to ask. I’ve got a twelve-year-old daughter. When I think…” His voice choked on the last words.

  “I know you’ve got to report everything to the brass, but if you could keep the conclusions you drew to yourself, at least for now, I’d appreciate it. Shaye hasn’t told anyone else about her suspicions. Not even her mother. She wanted more information before she put that burden on her family.”

  “Well, she’s got that information now. Damn it. Of course I’ll keep my ideas to myself, but I’m not the only one familiar with Shaye’s medical file. It’s bound to come out, sooner or later.”

  “I know.”

  Jackson was afraid later was going to come a lot quicker than any of them wanted.

  8

  Corrine poured hot chocolate into two mugs and headed into the living room. It was a chilly night and while a glass of wine sounded good after a stressful day, a cup of hot cocoa sounded even better and had the added benefit of being on the list of things Eleonore could drink. She plopped into the recliner next to Eleonore and stuck her feet in front of the fireplace.

  “If you’re going to keep the house this cold,” Eleonore said, “you should at least put on socks.”

  “The heat dries out my sinuses, and I hate wearing socks. Going barefoot is the one unrefined indulgence I allow myself.”

  Eleonore raised an eyebrow. “Have you forgotten how long I’ve known you?”

  “Okay, so there might be more than one, but this is the one that irritated my father the most. I like to think that somewhere he’s suffering for all the secrets he kept and can see my bare feet.”

  Eleonore frowned. “You remember what I do for a living, right? I’ve tried not to get all doctorish, but I really wish you’d talk about everything. If you’re not comfortable doing it with me, then at least let me give you a referral to someone I trust.”

  Corrine sighed. “What makes you think I’d tell a stranger things I haven’t told you? You and Shaye are the only people I trust absolutely. It’s not that I’m keeping things from you. It’s simply that I’m still not sure how I feel about certain things, so it’s hard to convey.”

  “Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but sorting out how people feel about things is kinda in my wheelhouse.”

  Corrine smiled. “I’m a horrible pain in the ass, aren’t I?”

  “Well, that’s not a medical diagnosis…”

  Corrine tossed a pillow at her friend and missed her by a good foot.

  “You do suck at throwing things,” Eleonore said. “That’s pretty official.”

  “Sometimes, I start to say something, and then I’m afraid if I get started, I won’t ever stop. Every waking moment I jump from sad to angry to depressed to outraged, then back to sad. It’s exhausting, but I can’t seem to hit on the one emotion that fits properly.”

  “You’re making this too easy. You can’t hit on one right emotion because there’s not one right emotion. Your situation is very complex. Hell, I still haven’t sorted out how I feel about all of it, and I’m supposed to be the expert. If you had it all figured out, I’d hang up my notepad.”

  Corrine took a sip of her cocoa and stared at the fire for a bit. “For a long time—probably the first month—I hated him. I mean really and truly hated him. I’d think about all the secrets and lies and my entire body would stiffen so hard that my muscles cramped. I ground my teeth so badly at night that I broke two crowns. When Shaye would walk down the cliffs to the ocean, sometimes I’d go inside, close all the doors and windows, and scream as loudly as I could.”

  “Why did you feel you needed to hide your feelings from Shaye?”

  “Because what I was dealing with was nothing compared to what she was dealing with.”

  “So you think suffering has rank?”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  Eleonore shook her head. “No matter what happens to someone, at that exact moment, something that could be construed as worse is happening to someone else. That doesn’t lessen our own heartache. It doesn’t diminish the fact that right then, you’re dealing with one of the worst things that’s ever happened to you.”

  “Ugh. Why do you have to be so rational?” She held up her hand. “That’s rhetorical.”

  “Regardless, I will allow you to play the mother card on not sharing with Shaye. For now. But you have no excuse for not talking to me. Yes, I’m close to the subject matter, but it’s not my family. It’s not my past.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You are family. You’ve been with me longer than my own mother was. You’ve been with Shaye one week less than I’ve been. You had a relationship with my father from the day he hired you. This absolutely happened to you too. I’ll grant you that you don’t have the guilt of being a blood relative on your plate, but I’ll trump it with the guilt you’re feeling because you think you should have seen something beforehand and had us all prepared.”

  Eleonore frowned. “Maybe we have known
each other too long. You’re right, of course. My first thought was what did I miss? What did I fail to see that might have helped avoid so much heartache? And you know what I did about it?”

  “What?”

  “I talked to someone.”

  “Seriously?”

  “What? You think shrinks don’t need help too? We might have the answers for other people, but we still need help sorting out our own stuff. The most important thing a mental health professional can know is when they need help themselves. Anything else is hypocritical.”

  “Huh.” Corrine slumped back in her chair and curled her legs up under her. It had never occurred to her that Eleonore would seek help for herself. Aside from the drinking problem, Eleonore had been the one person Corrine had known who always had everything together, always had the answers. But the reality was, Eleonore was human, too. Maybe a little superhuman, but even a superhuman needed help sometimes.

  “Who do you talk to?” Corrine asked. “The same guy that helps with your drinking?”

  “No. The therapist I talk about my alcoholism with is a specialist in addiction. This was outside of his realm. But I have a colleague from medical school who specializes in family issues, particularly extreme issues that produce emotions outside of the norm.”

  “He’s here, in New Orleans?”

  “No. Boston. We Skype once a week. More at first because I had a lot to say and I wandered off topic a lot. Now my thoughts are more organized.”

  “And you tell him everything?”

  “I tell him everything that concerns me and my emotional state. I don’t share anything about you or Shaye outside of what he could learn from the news.”

  Corrine waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, I never thought you’d tell our personal business. I guess I’ve just never thought about you seeking that sort of therapy for yourself. See, sometimes you still surprise me.”