Peering into the dim light, she leaned forward, studying the slender, pale form lying on the grass. A graceful white leg that narrowed to an ankle, then flattened to a bare foot.
The toenails had been painted black, Caitlyn realized in the split second before a scream tore from her.
Then they rushed into the yard and saw the naked girl behind the tree trunk, saw the cheap blond wig that she was wearing…
And the cold glass eyes of staring, lifeless green.
AT THE SOUND OF CAITLYN’S SHRIEK, Marcus saw Reuben come boiling out of the house. The retired cop seemed not to see the crumpled figure with the thin bruised line around her pale neck but ran straight for Marcus himself, as he held Caitlyn, turning her physically from a sight he wished he could erase from both their minds.
“You son of a bitch, let her go!” Reuben shouted, snatching his gun from a shoulder holster and pointing it straight at them.
Seeing it, Caitlyn cried out, interposing her body between the two men and holding up a shaking hand. “No—no, Reuben. We just got home and—I—I saw her. Right here. Is she— Please tell me she’s not dead.”
Jaw dropping as he spotted the battered body, Reuben swore and dove to his knees to check the girl’s wrist for a pulse.
Certain that she was dead—she had to be, with that chalk-pale flesh and her blue lips—Marcus pulled Caitlyn even closer.
But she pushed him away and whispered, “Go now. Hurry,” worry for him burning like a fever in her eyes.
He hesitated, torn between the need to be there protecting her and older loyalties.
Then she shook her head and silently mouthed a single word. Please.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her before rushing out the gate and sprinting for the car.
He hated himself for it. For leaving Caitlyn at the precise moment she most needed his support.
And he hated Theo, too, cursed the burden of the brother who had left him with no choice except to run. Who left him almost hoping Reuben would end this with a bullet. Would put a stop to all the running, all the lying—starting with the night of his own fiancée’s murder.
As he cut between two houses, the memories nearly overwhelmed him: Samantha smiling, laughing. Lying dead in her bed with the house in flames around them.
Lying naked, her throat bruised not unlike the girl he’d just seen. Except that, in Samantha’s case, he knew exactly who had killed her.
You did, his conscience whispered. It was your fault, plain and simple. Your fault for bringing her into your life and letting her be swallowed by the chaos.
It was no wonder that Samantha’s father, Isaiah’s violence-prone ex-son-in-law, had sworn to kill Marcus. No wonder that he still would, even if the full truth were discovered.
Marcus emerged onto a sidewalk and spotted his Chevy parked a halfblock ahead. With a final burst of speed, he reached it, despite the hardening concrete of his anger weighing down his every step.
Chapter Nine
“Her name was Bree,” Detective Davis said the following day in the interview room he and his partner had borrowed to update Caitlyn on the case.
Or at least they’d claimed it was an update. Caitlyn wasn’t so sure.
“Short for Brianna,” Lorna Robinson added. “Brianna Foster, a sixteen-year-old runaway reported missing up in Memphis.”
Caitlyn crossed her arms over her stomach. “She was just a kid.”
The balding Davis shrugged.
“A street kid and a corner whore—I mean a prostitute, excuse me,” he added, responding to his partner’s sharp look. “Which made her an easy grab.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Caitlyn asked him. “Whoever’s doing this is clearly focused on me. Killing these poor girls just to terrify me.”
With a jingle of her many bracelets, Lorna Robinson placed a rich brown hand over Caitlyn’s. “He’s killing because he’s evil, twisted—”
“Or ‘disturbed ’cause of bad toilet trainin’,’ if you listen to the damned defense attorneys.” Davis’s oddly pointed teeth made his smile appear feral.
Combined with the long chin, he reminded Caitlyn of a talking fox…or perhaps a rougaroux. But she conceded that her opinion was colored by his friendship with Josiah Paine—and his phone call to Reuben suggesting her involvement.
“He does it because he likes terrifying women,” Detective Robinson insisted. “Why he’s settled on you is anybody’s guess. Maybe he saw you on a brochure or the net, or giving one of your tours, and you reminded him of the object of his obsession from back in the eighties, when he killed those prostitutes.”
“Or maybe he’s a copycat—an admirer of the previous killer’s work,” Davis suggested. “Some of those crazies like to study old-school serials the way some kids study baseball cards. Maybe we’ve got ourselves a young guy smart enough to take his lessons from the one who got away.
“Which brings us to your friend, Marcus Le Carpentier,” Davis went on, studying her with a look of frank appraisal.
Caitlyn tried to protest, but surprise and fear struck her mute. Surprise that they had somehow learned his full name, since she hadn’t shared it, and raw terror that maybe they had found something to connect Marcus to the two murders whose discovery he had just so happened, as Reuben had repeatedly pointed out, to be present to witness.
Her instincts couldn’t have led her so very far wrong…could they?
Detective Robinson explained, “Too much street crime scares off tourists, so we’ve got video surveillance cameras scattered all over the Quarter. We ended up with a great shot of him on one of them, then plugged the first name ‘Marcus’ into the federal database and ran it against suspects in cases involving violence against women.”
Unshed tears stung Caitlyn’s eyes, and her ears filled with a rushing sound. The detective’s mouth moved, but her brain couldn’t make sense of his words, not until Robinson cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Are you getting any of this, Miss Villaré?”
Caitlyn shook her head, only wanting it to end so she could go home.
Detective Davis leaned forward, enunciating slowly and loudly, as if he were speaking to a foreigner. “What my partner’s telling you is that Marcus Le Carpentier’s a wanted man. For arson of a residence—his fiancée’s apartment—to cover up her murder. According to our information, the cops in Pennsylvania say he choked her with his bare hands.”
Garish images splashed through Caitlyn’s mind: the necks of the dead women, with their thin, dark lines of bruising. Clapping a palm against her mouth, she scrambled to her feet so quickly, her chair tipped. Its metal back cracked like a thunderclap as it bounced off the floor.
“For four years, he’s been running,” Davis added. “Leaving God knows how many dead girls around the country.”
Caitlyn glared at him. “I can’t believe that. I won’t.” This ugly rougaroux was lying, just to rile her up.
Though Davis sneered, what looked like sympathy filled Lorna Robinson’s light hazel eyes. “Women have been saying that about the men they love since the dawn of time. I’ve said it myself about both of my ex-husbands, even when I knew in my heart they were lyin’ cheaters.”
“I’m not in love with Marcus Le Carpentier.” Caitlyn’s stomachache intensified with her denial. “But what you’re saying, it doesn’t make sense. If he’s from Pennsylvania, how can you expect anyone to believe he’d know about those old murders in New Orleans?”
“N’awlins is his hometown.” Sadness tinged Detective Robinson’s voice.
Davis checked a notepad and gloated, “The family lived here ’til the early nineties. Stroke got the mother real young. Then the dad took the kids and headed back East for a job.”
“You said he used his hands to—to strangle his fiancée.” Caitlyn shook her head, desperately grasping at the thinnest of straws. “But the two victims I found—those lines on their necks looked like… I can’t think what you’d call them, but—”
“Ligature
marks—like someone used a strap or rope, you mean?” Davis shrugged. “So his signature’s evolving, or he’s modeling his crime after the killings he heard about as a kid.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “How could he possibly have dumped the body in my front yard, where anyone could have seen it, when he was with me for at least two hours before I found it?”
“Killers like this,” Davis said, “have been known to team up with an accomplice. And Bree Foster had been dead for at least twelve hours before she was found.”
“I don’t believe it,” Caitlyn repeated.
Lorna Robinson stood to look her directly in the eye and challenged, “Don’t you, Caitlyn?”
Though the two detectives badgered her for a few more minutes before Caitlyn finally decided she’d had enough and walked out, that was the one question that stuck with her, echoing in her head like an unwanted snatch of song.
And crashing against memories of Reuben calling her naive, and her sister’s constant warnings that if she weren’t more careful, she was sure to end up hurt.
Right again, Jacinth, Caitlyn thought. As always.
AROUND DUSK THE NEXT EVENING, Marcus swapped the Chevy for a beat-up Dodge truck with a faded paint job, and a host of dings and dents that contrasted with a shiny new rear bumper. Where he was heading, looks didn’t count for much. It was the Ram’s strong engine and off-road capability that mattered.
With his photo series finished and the images safely in Isaiah’s hands, Marcus knew he should make the call he had been dreading and begin his long journey to the border. Instead, he parked the pickup and took one last walk along the riverfront. He kept to himself, avoiding the couples chattering and laughing as they hurried toward a brilliantly lit paddle wheeler for a dinner cruise.
Sitting on an empty bench to down the shrimp po’boy sandwich he had picked up, he watched the Mississippi’s muddy waters flowing toward the Gulf. Flowing home, as every river must. As he himself had finally done, though in the end it had brought him no peace, only the painful memory of the single meal he’d shared with a woman who had made him long for things he’d given up the right to. Who had stirred the ashes of hope he’d believed too cold to rekindle.
Now it burned in his gut, the knowledge that Caitlyn Villaré existed. That he could never claim her. Couldn’t even stay here to be certain she was safe.
Appetite gone, he pitched the rest of the sandwich into a trashcan, then started walking along the river to brace himself for the bad news he was about to deliver.
His sister answered on the third ring, sounding rushed and harried, as she often did when he called.
“How’s Theo?” Marcus began, as he always did.
“About the same,” Stacey said. “Except the facility’s raising the rates again. Another five hundred a month, starting in August. Sorry to break the bad news to you.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Marcus told her. “Sorry I can’t help you with the day-to-day.”
“Would you mind if we cut this short? I have to pick up a prescription the doctor called in for Hailey. If you could just be sure to transfer the extra money—”
“Is she okay?” Marcus tried to picture the niece he’d never seen, a nearly four-year-old girl her mother had described as a brown-eyed munchkin in long pigtails. It hurt like hell to think that she would grow up with no knowledge of her uncle. Of either uncle, since Stacey wasn’t crazy enough to allow her daughter anywhere near Theo.
“She’ll be fine. She just picked up some stomach bug at preschool, and of course she turned out to be allergic to the first medicine the doctor prescribed. The one I’ll have to throw away now, forget about the sky-high co-pay.”
Marcus heard the frustration in her words. As a single mom and overworked nurse’s aide, Stacey had her hands full and then some.
“Before you go, I have to tell you—” He gripped the handrail tightly, sucked in a breath tasting of the muddy river bottom and conceded failure. “The money’s running out. Not today or next week, but very soon—and permanently. You’ll have to find another place—maybe a state hospital—for him.”
She gave a strangled cry. “No, Marcus. We can’t do that to him. You can’t.”
“I’m sorry. But Isaiah’s dying.” It hurt like hell to say the words aloud. “He says there isn’t much time.”
“Sell your pictures on your own, then. They’re wonderful. Amazing. Every bit as good as that half-blind old—”
“Without his name, they’re worth nothing,” Marcus interrupted, not wanting to hear her run down the man who had done so much for him. For all of them. “I don’t even have a studio, or an agent of my own, let alone the kind of fame that—”
“I know you’ll think of something. You always do.”
The absolute faith in his younger sister’s voice made him wince. Still, he found himself promising, “You can believe I’ll do everything in my power, take on any kind of work. But, Stace? You do know Theo’s not getting any better? No matter what we do, he’ll never be the boy we—”
“We can’t give up now,” she pleaded. “You can’t. I wasn’t going to tell you ’til it happened, but Theo’s neurologist’s been telling me the FDA’s almost ready to approve a new medication. There’s no guarantee, of course, but the blind studies are so promising. In Europe, it’s done wonders, and in Mexico they’ve seen a huge improvement in cognition and a strong reduction in antisocial behavior.”
“This whole situation isn’t right. It never has been.” Marcus thought about Isaiah, dying alone, about Caitlyn, in danger from a murderous stalker. About the suffering of his fiancée’s grieving parents, the couple who believed their only daughter’s killer still roamed free. “I’m not helping anyone like this. You’re struggling, and I’m miserable, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“It could really work,” Stacey pleaded. “We could get him back. Remember, Marcus? Do you remember the way he was, how we all were, before it happened?”
Marcus wanted to say no, wanted to deny the memory of the curly-haired prankster of the family, the laughing boy who’d never known what it was like to have a living mother, who joked his way around their hard-drinking father’s ever-changing moods and made the task of helping to raise him a pure pleasure. Who had made them all laugh until the day he had plowed into a maple tree during a forbidden ride on his best friend’s dirt bike.
With no helmet to protect his skull, the eight-year-old boy’s world had instantly, irreparably shattered, sending out fault lines that splintered his remaining family and very quickly drove their father to his grave.
“How can we quit now,” asked Stacey, her voice breaking, “after everything we’ve gone through? How can we give up when we’re so close?”
Marcus might be able to scatter a crowd of angry bikers, but he had no defense against his sister’s tears or the guilt he felt at leaving her to handle the details of Theo’s treatment all on her own.
“If he goes to one of those horrible state places,” she added, “he won’t have any shot at all at cutting-edge therapy, just the drugs they use to keep the inmates quiet.”
“I’ll work on it,” he said. “Try to figure out a way.”
“That’s all I’ve ever asked,” she assured him, the way she assured him every time he wondered aloud about the rightness of what they were doing. “For Theo, Marcus. For our family. It’s what our parents would expect, what I know you’ll find some way to pull off.”
As he returned to the beat-up blue pickup and started driving, he told himself again and again that he had no choice. That because he was a wanted man, ripping off art buyers had become a necessity, not a choice—a necessity that bound him to a loner’s lifestyle.
An image of Caitlyn smiling across the table from him, closing her eyes as she enjoyed her last spoonful of crème brûlée, danced through his mind. But maybe he’d thought of her simply because the colorfully painted, shamelessly touristy murals he was passing marked the office of New Orleans After D
ark Guided Tours. In its small lot, a flabby man in a loudly flowered shirt— Paine himself—was climbing out of the sole car present, a gleaming black Lincoln parked beneath a security light.
Leaning over his steering wheel, Marcus noted the garish collection of bumper stickers, promoting both the Saints and Paine’s own business.
Purposefully, Marcus swung into the small lot, blocking the sleek car’s easy exit. Though Marcus had warned himself over and over that he couldn’t risk any more involvement, what would it hurt to take out a few of his frustrations on the bully who had frightened Caitlyn with his threats yesterday?
Before he could talk himself out of it, he was out of the truck, slamming the door and stalking toward Paine, who blanched but held his ground.
“Hey there, friend.” As soothingly as he spoke, Paine’s eyes looked tense, squinting from within the folds of fat that framed them. “You come to pick up a brochure? Or maybe an employment application?”
When Marcus didn’t answer, Paine produced a handkerchief and mopped beads of perspiration from his forehead. His gaze shifted for a moment to the open door of his car, as if he were thinking of taking refuge there.
“What can I do for you, sir?” He tried again. “You got a problem? Business issue? Did a couple of my guys come ’n’ see you about a loan, maybe?”
Marcus wasn’t shocked at this evidence that Paine had his greasy fingers in another business, too. An illegal business like loan sharking could potentially earn far greater profits than the legitimate tour company Paine might well be using as no more than a front.
Marcus moved in even closer, and the shorter, heavier man crabbed backward, attempting to fold himself into the driver’s seat.
“Get out,” Marcus told him. “Get out now and I won’t hurt you.”
“I can be flexible with my terms,” Paine bleated. “Quite reasonable. You need some more time? Payments lowered?”
“Up.” Marcus gestured, waiting patiently for the fat man to rise from the car.
Phantom of the French Quarter Page 8
