Random Acts

by Spindler, Erica

  “I don’t get it. Done with what?”

  “I think there’s going to be a third dead queen.”

  He didn’t respond, so she pressed on. “Bad things happen in threes. Isn’t that what your mama always told you?”

  “I played ball, Dare. Three strikes and you’re out.”

  His subtext wasn’t lost on her. “I know I’m right about this, Angelo. I know it.”

  “You’re sure this doesn’t have something to do with your history with shrinks?”

  She appreciated his candor. He thought it; he said it. She owed him the same. “Maybe at first. Not now. Not after this morning. Think about it, partner. Fire her receptionist? Just for talking to me?”

  “Because she lied about talking to you,” he corrected.

  She ignored him and went on. “Then she calls me, a police officer, and delivers a ‘back off or else message?’ C’mon, what’s she trying to hide? It’s got to be something big to risk threatening a cop.”

  He sighed. “We’re not going to lunch, are we?”

  “Sure we are. Just one quick stop first.”

  “Where?” he asked, tone cautious.

  “The salon where Blackwood gets her hair done. It’s called the Queen Bee Salon and Spa.”

  He groaned. “Aww, shit, Dare. That’s just too freaky to be a coincidence.”

  They were too late, Micki saw, as the Queen Bee came into view. Four cruisers sat in front of the salon, lights flashing. One officer stood at the corner, diverting traffic around the scene, and several others were taking statements from witnesses in various states of hair horror—tin foil, curlers, and caps. A CSI van was parked directly in front and crime tape stretched across the salon’s front entrance.

  Their credentials got them through to the inner perimeter. The officer there held out the log. “You don’t have enough to do over at the Eighth?” he asked, looking at Angelo.

  “Yeah, that’ll never happen.” Angelo signed the log for them both. “This one may be related to another case we’re working.”

  “Doubt it. Seems pretty cut-and-dry.”

  Angelo snorted at the pun. “Good one.”

  He grinned. “Thanks. I thought so, too.”

  “What happened?” Micki asked, cutting their banter short.

  “Stylist attacked the owner of the salon with a pair of scissors. Came right out of the blue. One minute everything’s fine, the next it’s pandemonium.”

  Bingo. “Owner’s dead?”

  “Nah, she managed to fight her off. Got cut up pretty bad, but nothing life threatening.”

  “She still here?”

  He shook his head. “The ambulance left with her just before you got here.”

  “The perp?”

  “Dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Turned the scissors on herself. Jammed them into her own throat.” He shook his head, expression disgusted. “Who does that?”

  “Body’s still here?”

  “In the tranquility room. That’s where she did it. Detective Parsons is in charge. He’s the one wearing—”

  “—the orange tie,” Angelo finished for him. “We know each other. Thanks.”

  They crossed to the other detective, moving around techs in the process of collecting and documenting evidence. Angelo greeted Parsons with a slap on the back, then introduced Micki.

  He eyed them both suspiciously. “What’s up?”

  “This attack is similar to two others we’re investigating. Exploring a possible connection.”

  “This is a crazy one,” Parsons said. “Unique, as crimes go. Perp was cutting a client’s hair. Ms. Bea walked by, said something and our girl went nuts. Came at her with her shears.”

  “What’d she say?” Micki asked.

  “Apparently, something she says all the time. ‘It’s good to be a queen.’ I don’t know. Seems pretty innocuous to me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. One of the other stylists said it was part of her schtick. You know, since it was the Queen Bee Salon and she was the Bee. Beatrice LaTour.”

  “It’s kind of cute,” Angelo said. “You know, the play on words.”

  Parsons shrugged. “I think so, too. Apparently, Ms. Schaefer had heard it once too often.”

  “How’d Schaefer end up dead?”

  He opened his notebook, skimmed his notes. “Half dozen witnesses said the same thing. LaTour fought, blood flew, and suddenly Schaefer was on her feet, running toward the spa area.”

  “Nobody stepped in to help? Or tried to stop her?”

  “It happened so fast, they said. Shampoo girl locked herself in the color closet and called 9-1-1.”

  “Mind if we ask the witnesses a few questions?”

  “I’m done for now. Go ahead.”

  Micki and Angelo made the rounds. Every witness gave pretty much the same version of events. A sudden explosion of violence that ended as suddenly as it had begun.

  A short time later they sat in her car, engine running. Micki looked at Angelo. “What do you say we stop by the hospital, see if LaTour is up to answering a few questions?”

  “Works for me.” He snapped his seat belt. “I could blow off Blackwood’s connection to two dead queens, but not a third. Not yet.”

  “She’s involved somehow. I know it.”

  “Mad Dog,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s you. Mad Dog Dare.”

  She cocked an eyebrow, amused. “Don’t want to give pit bulls a bad name, is that it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Great,” she muttered, and pulled away from the curb. The name was just awful enough to stick.

  Chapter Seventeen

  1:20 P.M.

  The doctors had admitted Beatrice LaTour for observation, even though her wounds were mostly superficial. Her husband and grown children were clustered around her bed; the woman looked pretty beat up.

  After introductions, Micki said, “Ms. LaTour, are you up to answering a few questions?”

  Her eyes filled with tears and her chin trembled, but she said she was. Micki looked at her family. “I’ll need you folks to wait outside while we interview her.”

  One of the young men began to protest; LaTour’s husband stepped in. “It’s okay. You kids go on.” He looked back at Micki, expression determined. “I’m staying.”

  She didn’t blame him and agreed. As the door shut behind them, she turned back to the woman. “I understand Liz Schaefer’s attack was completely unprovoked.”

  She nodded. Her husband caught her hand, curved his fingers around hers.

  “Do you remember the last thing you said before the attack?”

  “It’s good . . . to be—”

  “A queen?”

  “Yes,” she managed.

  “Ms. LaTour, Beatrice, do you recognize the name Renee Blackwood? She’s a local psychiatrist?”

  She indicated she did and Micki went on. “How do you know her?”

  “A client,” she managed, voice thick, slurry.

  “Whose client?”

  Her chin wobbled some more. “Liz’s.”

  “Liz Schaefer’s? The woman who attacked you?”

  A look of horror sprang into her eyes. She seemed to press herself back into the bedding.

  “Liz Schaefer?” Micki asked again, as gently as she could.

  “Yes.”

  “Was Liz also a patient of Dr. Blackwood’s?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I— I don’t think so.”

  “Were they friends?”

  She shook her head again. Micki looked at Angelo, working to hide her disappointment. She needed Blackwood to be counseling Schaefer.

  They were so close.

  But so damn far.

  Angelo stepped in. “Can you think of any other way Liz might have been interacting with Renee Blackwood?”

  For a moment, the woman stared blankly at him. Then she blinked. “There was something . . .”

&nb
sp; She went silent. Micki realized she was holding her breath and released it.

  “Ms. LaTour?” Angelo prodded gently. “Anything you can share will be helpful.”

  “I know, it’s just— That’s right . . . she was helping Liz quit smoking.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  1:55 P.M.

  “That’s it!” Micki exclaimed as they simultaneously slammed their car doors. “We’ve got the bitch.”

  “Not so fast, Dare. So Blackwood was helping her quit smoking. It doesn’t prove—”

  “The hell it doesn’t. How do shrinks help folks quit smoking, lose weight or whatever other nasty habit they’re trying to kick? They hypnotize them.”

  Micki flipped on the cherry light mounted to her dash. “The power of suggestion, partner. Instead of helping Vanderlund, Chablis, and Schaefer overcome their feelings of anger or jealousy, she fed those feelings when she put them under. Maybe she planted some sort of trigger? Something that made them just . . . snap?”

  “I like this,” Angelo said. “She would know their hot buttons. The thing that always set them off.”

  “In Schaefer’s case, there’s no doubt what hers was.”

  “It’s good to be a queen.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We don’t even know if she practiced hypnotherapy on Vanderlund or Chablis.”

  “Oh, she did. I’m certain of it. That’s why she lied when we interviewed her. Her first screw up.”

  Angelo agreed. “She lied for the same reason every other guilty-as-sin perp does—to hide the truth.”

  Micki tightened her fingers on the steering wheel, weaving in and around the traffic that refused to yield. “If we get confirmation from Vanderlund and Chablis that she treated them using hypnosis, we bring it to the Major. See if he’ll agree to a search warrant request.”

  “Agreed.” He grabbed the door handle as she made a sudden swing left. “Why, Dare? Why would a respected shrink do this? Chance blowing it all?”

  She thought of what Pam had told her. That Blackwood had enjoyed firing her. That she’d seen it in her eyes.

  Micki glanced at him. “Just for the fun of it?”

  “Which would make her one scary, evil bitch.”

  “Actually, partner, that’d make her a sociopath.”

  Both Vanderlund and Chablis had bonded out. Interestingly, Bitty Vanderlund’s bail had been set at five million dollars, Chablis’ at five-hundred thousand. Micki wondered at the judges’ reasoning: both suspects had committed murder, both crimes had been excessively violent. Was the difference in the bonds due to a perceived value of the victims? Or the perpetrators?

  Apparently, justice in New Orleans was a snapshot of justice in America.

  They decided to try Bitty Vanderlund first. Her husband refused to let them in.

  “She couldn’t answer any questions even if I did allow you to speak with her,” he said, voice tight. “She was in such a state, our physician prescribed anti-anxiety medication. At least she can sleep now.”

  Micki wondered if he could. It looked as if he’d aged ten years since the last time she’d seen him. And he was angry. She saw the accusation in his eyes. As if, despite his wife’s full confession, despite the physical evidence against her, he believed her innocent.

  She did, too. But couldn’t share that with him, not yet. Micki handed him her card. “Have her attorney contact me. It’s just two questions.”

  He stared at the card a moment, then looked back up at her. “The questions, what are they?”

  Micki hesitated, glanced at Angelo, who nodded. “Her therapeutic work with Renee Blackwood, did it include hypnotherapy?”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Why?”

  “It’s just a question.”

  “No. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  “It did, Daddy.”

  They looked past Vanderlund to his daughter, descending the staircase behind him. Ironically, she looked every bit a queen.

  “Dr. Blackwood suggested they try it. But after a couple sessions, called it off.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Said it wasn’t effective. Mom was disappointed.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Vanderlund.” Micki heard the quiver of excitement in her own voice and wondered if they did, too. “Last question. Do you know, was there anything Vivianne Stanley used to say to your mother that made her crazy?”

  Tori had joined her father at the door. They looked at each other and simultaneously shook their heads.

  “One specific thing?” Tori said. “I can’t think of one. Dad?”

  “Me either.”

  After asking them both to call her if they thought of something, she and Angelo went in search of Cherry Chablis.

  The address of record led them to a small French Quarter apartment building. The name on the unit’s intercom was Chandler—Micki rang the buzzer. “Mr. Chandler,” Micki said when he answered, “it’s Detectives Dare and Angelo.”

  “Go away.”

  “We just have two quick questions.”

  “Not without my lawyer.”

  He hung up. Micki rang again. “I want to help you,” she said when he answered. “Just two questions.”

  He didn’t hang up; but he didn’t speak. Moments ticked by to the sound of his breathing.

  “Hear me out,” she said. “If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.”

  After another prolonged silence, he sighed. “Okay, but I probably won’t.”

  “Is there something Desiree used to say to you that always set you off?”

  “What?”

  “Something she constantly said that pissed you off, changed your mood?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t see why . . . Fuck it, whatever. She always called me ‘the Queen’s Understudy.’ The way she’d say it rubbed the wrong way. Big deal.”

  A big deal, Micki thought. Maybe a very big deal. “Thank you, Mr. Chandler. Last question. Did Dr. Blackwood include hypnotherapy as part of your treatment?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  3:25 PM.

  Hypnotherapy had been part of the man’s treatment. In fact, his story matched Vanderlund’s: after a couple tries, the shrink deemed it to be a less effective treatment option than traditional psychotherapy.

  Micki figured that was bullshit. The shrink-from-hell had used those agreed-upon sessions to plant a subconscious trigger that would put Vanderlund and Chablis under without their knowing it. From then on, she’d had free access to their subconscious and could manipulate them however she pleased.

  Sociopath. Big time.

  Now, she and Angelo had to get Major Nichols to agree to a search warrant request.

  “You want what?” he asked, looking dumbfounded.

  “A search warrant,” she repeated. “Dr. Renee Blackwood’s office and home. We’re looking for notes and recordings from her sessions with Vanderlund and Chablis. In addition, her appointment books and billing records. Computer hard drive, phone records.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Because you believe this respected psychiatrist used hypnosis to compel Bitty Vanderlund, Cherry Chablis, and Liz Schaefer to commit murder?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “She used hypnosis to magnify their feelings of anger, frustration, and jealousy. It’s like being egged on to do something you normally wouldn’t. She planted a trigger, for each the very phrase they had complained about to Blackwood in their sessions.”

  Micki paused to take a breath. “I did a little research and weirdly, it’s not the therapist’s voice you hear in your head. It’s your own. She plants the idea in your subconscious, and it becomes yours.”

  “A little research? More than Wikipedia, I hope?”

  She handed him a folder with articles she’d printed on the subject. “Case after case of the power of hypnotherapy to influence thoughts and actions. I also called a non-therapeutic hypnotist and the department shrink.”

  �
�And?”

  “It’s definitely not outside the realm of plausibility.”

  “That sounds like bullshit, Detective.” Nichols thumbed through the folder, then looked up at Angelo. “And you’re on board with all this?”

  “I wasn’t at first, but three queens, Major? All similar crimes? All connected by Blackwood?” He motioned to the folder. “There’s science to back it up.”

  “What about motive?”

  “She’s a sociopath,” Micki said. “It’s a power trip, one she gets off on.”

  Nichols drummed his fingers on the desk. “The judge may not agree.”

  “But we’ll have tried,” Micki said. “She’s dirty, I know it.”

  “Okay. Write it up, let’s see what happens.”

  The judge approved the warrant and within two hours Micki and Angelo, accompanied by two cruisers, turned into the small parking area adjacent to the psychiatrist’s office.

  “Something’s wrong,” Micki said as they climbed out. “Both times I’ve been here, a lamp burned in that front window. It’s out now. And the side window, that blind’s pulled up.”

  “A burned-out bulb,” he said. “Cleaning service forgot to lower the blind. We’ve got this, Mad Dog. Be cool.”

  “Right,” she muttered, as her cell phone went off. She saw it was Hank calling and answered. “What’s up, old man?”

  “Checking on you.”

  Something in his voice sounded wrong. “Hold on a second.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Give me five, Angelo.”

  He nodded and she returned to Hank. “I want to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For giving me that little talk about trusting my instincts. It paid off. Big time.”

  “I’m proud of you, girl.”

  “Judge granted a search warrant; I’m there now, so I have to go. How about we celebrate with a pizza tonight? My treat.”

  “You got it. Michaela?”

  She glanced toward Angelo and the other officers. He was looking at his watch. “Yeah?”

  “You know you’re special, right?”

  A knot formed in her throat. “Special as a lump of coal, you silly man.”