by Deborah Camp
Levi looked at Kit Kat and a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Do you have something of his, by chance?”
Kit Kat nodded and touched the black, gold and red beads wrapped around her wrist. “He wore this around his neck sometimes. It’s made from rosary beads.”
Trudy drew in a deep breath, knowing that Levi would try to make the connection for them. It was disturbing that other psychics were unable to do so. She hoped that didn’t portend bad news.
“Allow me?” Levi ran his fingertips over the beads and closed his eyes. “Let’s see if I can summon him.”
All went quiet, except for the hum of the ceiling fan overhead and the faint beep of a horn out on the street. Trudy could even hear Levi’s steady in and out breathing beside her. She looked from the rapt attention on Jazeem’s face to Kit Kat’s wide-eyed wonderment as she stared at Levi. He had them all transfixed. It was part of his gift. But she had come to know him intimately and she realized the instant someone or something entered his mind. She heard the slight hitch of his breath and saw his fingers still on the beads.
After almost a full minute, a scowl pinched his features and he removed his hand from Kit Kat’s wrist as he opened his eyes. Trudy released her breath, only then realizing that she’d been keeping it captive in her lungs.
“I couldn’t find him, so I asked my spirit guide to locate him for me,” Levi said, his voice just barely above a whisper. “Gregory said that your brother – Keshawn, right?” He went on after Kit Kat squeaked in joy and grabbed one of Levi’s hands, holding it captive in hers. “Keshawn is there, but unable to speak to anyone yet. I get the feeling that it’s some kind of penance. Was he in trouble here?”
Kit Kat chewed on her lower lip a few moments, eyes downcast. “He ran his wife over with his car and made her miscarry their baby. Then he drove off a bridge and died.”
Trudy swallowed the “Holy crap!” that tried to escape from her lips and sat back in the chair, not looking at Kit Kat. Poor girl. To have a loved one so twisted in the head and heart! She wanted to throw her arms around the girl in a comforting embrace. Was she worried that Keshawn had gone to Hell instead of Heaven?
“So, he is with the angels?” Kit Kat asked in a strained voice, answering Trudy’s unasked question.
Levi gently extricated his hand from hers, but he gave hers a pat of reassurance. “I believe so. I don’t know exactly where they are, but it’s a good place. A safe place. There’s no need to worry about him.”
“Thank you.” Concern was replaced with coquettishness in Kit Kat’s dark eyes. “I’ll never forget this. Or you. Never. I’ll hold you right here.” She laid her hand flat across the lushness of her breasts.
Levi arched a brow. “You do that . . . and you’re welcome.” He glanced at Trudy and she smothered a giggle – just barely.
Jazeem picked up the deck of Tarot cards, her graceful fingers stroking them. Her long nails were painted gold with dark brown swirls. “I knew that if anyone could reach Keshawn, it would be you, Levi Wolfe. I suspected that something was keeping him from us. This makes sense to me.” Her tiger-eyed gaze lifted to him. “Have you ever had your cards read?”
“Not lately, no.”
“May I?”
Levi shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Cut the deck into thirds, s’il vous plait.” She looked at Kit Kat. “Go make us tea, child. I’ll read his leaves next.” She dimpled. “As I did for Trudy Tucker.”
“Yes, she told me.” Levi separated the deck into three stacks.
Jazeem rubbed her hands together before turning over the first card. “Let us see what fates await you, my handsome one.”
###
Sitting beside Levi on a bench inside the police station, Trudy glanced sideways at him and tried to stifle her grin, but he spied it.
“Pleased with yourself?” he asked.
“What?”
“The Tarot card reading. And the damned tea leaves. You’ve been dying to talk about it since we left Madam Jazeem’s. The whole thing was primarily about you and how wonderful you are and how lucky I am to have you. Like I didn’t already know that.”
“Awww.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Jealous? The spotlight was on you quite a bit. Kit Kat wanted to wrap herself around you.”
“I noticed.” He straightened his gray tie. “Jazeem didn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have read in a newspaper astrology column.”
“That’s not true. She said that your inner turmoil has lessened and that you will conquer each obstacle eventually. And she said that your business will continue to flourish and you’ll have to delegate more of it to others.”
He pinned her with his dark blue gaze. “And what about that isn’t exactly what you’d read in an astrology column?”
“What about your huge possessive streak that you need to learn to tame? That’s right-on. And what about when she was looking at your tea leaves and said that there will be a revelation that will change everything you believed about someone. I hope that’s not about me.”
“Could she get any vaguer? I mean, anyone could rattle off that kind of psycho-babble.”
She bounced her shoulder off his again. “Quit being such a psychic snob. I think she’s legitimate.” Catching sight of the desk officer giving them a sign, she grasped Levi’s hand. “They’re ready for us.”
They were escorted through the lobby, up a flight of stairs, and into a small conference room with a round table and six, comfortable leather chairs around it. Trudy and Levi had no sooner sat down before a chunky man with white and gray hair and a young woman with blue hair entered the room. Levi stood up and extended his hand to the woman first.
“Detective Bonifay? It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He shook hands with her and then with the man. “Detective Dupree. Levi Wolfe . . .” He glanced at Trudy who was shaking the other woman’s hand. “ . . Trudy Tucker.”
“Y’all newcomers to N’Orleans?” Dupree asked, motioning for everyone to take a seat.
“No. We’ve both visited here before,” Levi answered.
Trudy guessed that Dupree was in his mid-fifties and probably damned good at his job. He had an Irish face – square-jawed, wrinkled forehead, pugnacious nose, light green eyes – and a cigarette-roughened voice. Bonifay was so interesting to look at that Trudy had trouble not staring at her. Her dark blue hair was cut short, but was a little longer than Trudy’s. She was tanned and had an eyebrow piercing – a small round ruby. Her shirt sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and part of a dragon was visible on her right forearm while a unicorn jumping over a rainbow was colorfully tatted on the inside of her left wrist. The detective with the dragon and unicorn tattoo, Trudy thought with a suppressed giggle. She noted that Bonifay wore a wedding band. Dupree didn’t.
“Well then, welcome back.” Dupree offered up a standard smile that was there and gone and tapped his hands on top of an accordion file folder. “This here is a fraction of the case on paper we have for the salvage yard murders. Call it a general outline.” He shoved the file over to Levi. “That’s all public record, of course, but it might save you some time.” The smile appeared and vanished again, never making it to his peridot eyes. “Me and my partner, we have no problem with y’all being interested in these murders as long as you don’t hinder our investigation. You get in our way?” That smile. There and gone. “We’ll shut you down and out.”
Trudy looked from Dupree to Alice Bonifay. She started a little when she realized that Bonifay was staring intently at her. The blue-haired detective gave a short, curt nod that Trudy couldn’t interpret. Was she hostile or cordial?
“Let me assure you, detectives, that we have no wish to hinder you in any way,” Levi said, his distinctive husky voice arresting everyone’s attention. “If we do, simply tell us about it and we’ll back off. Our objective is to locate the person or persons responsible for the murders.”
“Do you think we’re phonies?” Trudy caught Levi’s quick scowl, but she d
idn’t regret her question. She wanted to know where she stood with these detectives before it went any further. Were they humoring them and laughing at them behind their backs? Indulging them as they would imbeciles? Or did they give them any credence at all?
Dupree raised his dark gray eyebrows, making the furrows across his forehead deepen, but before he could answer, his partner beat him to it.
“We’re both born and raised in Louisiana. That means we’ve cut our teeth on stories about ghosts, spirits, voodoo, and black magic. We’ve seen some peculiar things that we can’t completely explain, so we don’t lump you in with snake oil salesmen, but we don’t deal in such things and don’t have the time to mess around with them.” Bonifay’s gaze swept to Levi and stuck. “Detective Dupree and I are going to nail this sick bastard. Period. Done. That’s all, folks.” She exchanged a smug smile with Dupree.
“You’re close to making an arrest, then?” Levi’s question was met with a few tense seconds of silence as the detectives stared hard at him. Trudy listened to her heartbeats boom in her inner ears and toyed with the idea of giving Levi’s shin a good kick.
“No.” Dupree leaned back in the chair and drummed the fingers of one hand on the table top. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have our eye on someone.”
Levi rested his hands on the file and just as quickly lifted them off it. Noticing the reaction, Trudy examined the slight tightening of his lips and the pulse beating just below his ear. He shot her a side-eyed glance. Something had shaken him. She looked at the file. Ah. He’d felt something when he’d pressed his fingertips against the file – a file that undoubtedly contained photos and details about murder victims. The spirits were restless.
“I’ve seen you on television,” Bonifay said. “You talk to the dead, right?”
Craning his neck as if his collar and tie had suddenly gotten tighter, Levi drew in a deep breath before answering. “Yes. I’m able to communicate with the deceased – if they’re willing, of course.”
“Sometimes they’re not?” Bonifay asked.
“Sometimes.”
“You do the same thing?” Dupree turned to Trudy.
“No. I can experience what the perpetrator experiences.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dupree shared a hiked-eyebrow glance with his partner. “That’s different. Like the old movie . . . what was it? Something about eyes.”
“The Eyes of Laura Mars,” Trudy supplied. It was a film often linked with her because actress Fayne Dunaway’s character developed the same ability. “I can see what he sees, hears, smells, tastes as it’s happening. I’ve been in contact . . . that is, I believe I’ve connected with the salvage yard killer.”
The detectives exchanged dubious glances and then Dupree tossed off another fleeting smile. “Oh, yeah? So, who is he?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t . . . couldn’t see his face. I’m not sure it is him, but I know that he has murdering tendencies. He gutted a cat.”
Dupree chuckled. “Well, ma’am, our perp guts people – not kitty cats.”
Trudy felt her face flame with embarrassment. “He was practicing,” she said, defensively. They thought she was a light-weight, a minor nuisance like a gnat.
Levi cleared his throat. “Desmond Forté is on your lists of suspects, isn’t he?”
“That’s who you saw?” Dupree asked Trudy.
“No. I mean, I’m not certain, but it didn’t feel . . . it’s hard to explain. I don’t – that is, I can’t see him.” She drew in a deep breath and told herself to stop babbling. She looked at Levi, willing him to take the reins again. He drew his brows together. Sensing his vexation but not sure if it was directed at her or their current situation, Trudy leaned slightly away from him. The silence in the room seemed to thicken. “I haven’t met Forté yet, so I have no sense of who he is or if he’s the one I connected with. It could be, though.” She shrugged.
Levi hitched in a breath and swung his penetrating gaze back to the detectives. “You’ve questioned him?”
“We’ve questioned a lot of people,” Dupree said with a shrug. “And if we get complaints from any of them about you, we’ll be sure to let you know. I guess you understand that you can’t be running around pointing the finger at people without any proof. And having a vision isn’t proof of a damned thing.”
Levi’s only reaction to that was to quirk one eyebrow. “You’re going to see me on television discussing this case and it’ll be in the newspapers, too. My objective is to draw out the serial killer and make him want to meet us in person.” He glanced at Trudy to include her in the us. “We fully expect for Desmond Forté to reach out to us.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dupree’s smile made another brief appearance. “Why is that?”
Resting his arms on the table, Levi leaned in closer to the detectives across the table. “Because I’m going to brag about being a goddamn genius at tracking down serial killers and he’s going to be dying to prove that I’m a moron who couldn’t find a break in a bag of good luck.”
“You’re hoping for a good, old-fashioned pissing contest?” Bonifay said, getting a nod from Levi. “Might work. Forté thinks he’s a mental giant among us dwarfs. You’ll be pissing on the wrong tree, though.”
“You know about his accident,” Dupree said. “The boating accident almost three years ago.”
“Yes. The people in the boat were drunk?”
Trudy stared at her clasped hands, feeling out of the loop. This was news to her – how Forté had become paralyzed. Why hadn’t Levi told her about it before now?
“Yeah.” Dupree massaged the back of his neck. “Forté was diving off the coast of Florida and when he came up a motorboat full of half-sauced fishermen ran over him. Broke his back and paralyzed him from somewhere in his lower back down. His legs are useless. He sued them and the settlement was somewhere around two million bucks.” He nodded at the folder. “It’s all in there.”
“There’s no way he could be stalking and killing people now,” Bonifay said, absently fingering the red ruby on her right eyebrow. “The coroner said that one of the victims died within the past eight or nine months. Unless it’s a copycat killer, picking up where Forté had to leave off.” Bonifay slouched back in her chair. “The murders seemed to have stopped for a couple of years or more. Or he has been burying them someplace else until that most recent one.”
“Can you tell me what cast suspicion on him in the first place?” Levi asked.
Dupree looked at Bonifay and something seemed to pass between them before he faced Levi and Trudy again. “He’s been spotted picking up hitch-hikers by the lake and over in Slidell. “He didn’t deny that when we questioned him. He says he has a soft spot for college students who are strapped for cash and can’t afford their own wheels.” He nodded at Levi’s scoff of disbelief. “Yeah. Right. The victims weren’t in college. They were out of work or working on the streets turning tricks.” He leaned back a little, giving Levi a measured stare. “What got you interested in him?”
Levi looked at Trudy and motioned for her to answer. She glanced at the cops, then back at Levi, wishing he’d continue the discussion with the detectives.
“Um, well, are you familiar with Madame Jazeem?” she asked.
“Yeah. She’s over on Camp Street. That area was my beat when I was a rookie.” Bonifay poked her partner in the ribs with her elbow. “You’d dig her. She’s a real character. You ought to remember her, Rodie. There was a scandal with her assistant and a policeman several years ago.”
“Oh, yeah.” Dupree snapped his fingers. “Toddy Williams was accused of being some jail bait’s baby’s daddy. Big, damn mess.” He looked at Trudy. “But she’s been doing business a whole lotta years and we don’t get complaints about her conning people outta their money. What about her? Did she tell you that she thinks Forté is the killer? Does she know him?”
“She knows his sister,” Trudy said. “And she met him and found him to be very disturbing.”
“What do you me
an?” Dupree pressed. “Did he say something?”
“Not exactly.” Trudy shrugged, at a loss for words. How could she explain it without sounding goofy?
“He was disturbing psychically,” Levi said. “Without going into it, we feel that Jazeem could be on to something.”
Dupree shrugged, then shoved up from the table. He held out his hand first to Trudy and then Levi. “Gotcha. Well, like I said, we’ve got no beef with y’all as long as y’all don’t mess with our investigation or badmouth us to the public. You go spouting off about how we dropped the ball and you’re picking it up and you will get zero cooperation from us. In fact, I’ll give you tit for tat and tell the media that you two are as phony as three dollar bills.” He winked at Levi. “And don’t think I won’t, Mr. Wolfe.”
Trudy glanced at Levi. His smile was tinged with frost and the pulse in his jawline ticked, a sure sign that he was holding onto his temper.
“I do intend to use the media to our advantage, but I’ll mainly talk about us.” He motioned to himself and Trudy. “And we will only refer to the police as being cooperative and professional. Thank you for your time.” He glanced at the folder and then at Trudy. She got the message and picked it up. “We appreciate this information on the cases. Should we return it or may we keep it?”
“Keep it. We know that stuff by heart.” He touched two fingers to his forehead in a quick salute. “Y’all be careful now. It’d be a damned shame to have to add you to our case list.”
Chapter 6
Feeling as if she were being dragged along the sidewalk, Trudy wrenched her hand from Levi’s. He looked back at her, slowed his long strides, and then stopped.
“What now?” he barked.
Trudy folded her arms against her chest and glared at him. “What’s got you all pissy?”
“You.”
“What did I do?”
“You acted like a novice back there. A no-talent novice.” He rested his hands on his lean hips, his wrists holding back the sides of his suit jacket, and glared at her. “We can’t look incompetent around the cops, Trudy.”
