Phantom of the French Quarter

by Colleen Thompson

  As the dogs drew steadily closer, Marcus felt the sting of what seemed like a thousand insect bites and scratches, along with the relentless throbbing of his injured arm. Blinking to clear the sweat pouring into his eyes, he squinted down the street and willed a pair of headlights to separate themselves from the sporadic traffic and pull off to the side.

  Nothing. Not a damned thing. And the dogs were getting so close that he could hear the deep, excited voices of their handlers.

  With nowhere to run that the animals wouldn’t find him, he thought of turning himself in. Thought of tossing aside his own years of struggle, of what surrendering would mean to Theo’s future. And thought, improbably, of losing his last chance to see Caitlyn, to hear her sweet voice, and feel her heart beating against his, beneath his as he…

  As if she weren’t lost to him already.

  His groan was followed by a rush of pure determination. If he had to run on foot through traffic, to attempt to lose his pursuit in the blare of horns, the flash of lights and the smell of diesel, he would damned well do it rather than surrender. He had fought too long for his family, for his freedom, to accept defeat.

  Bursting from the cover of the weeds, he charged toward the road—just as a low-slung pair of headlights careened onto the shoulder and tires squealed to a stop.

  With the dogs sounding as if they might explode through the underbrush at any second, Marcus jumped inside and slammed the door shut. “Go, go!”

  “Where to?” asked Craven, his narrow gaze flicking toward him.

  “Anywhere, I don’t care. Out of here—fast.”

  With a throaty rumble, the aging Camaro slipped back into the lane and glided toward safety, while Marcus caught the glint of the searchers’ flashlights…lights that were rapidly left behind. “Not too fast,” Marcus cautioned him. “No need to attract undue attention.”

  As the black ribbon of the highway led them farther away from danger, Marcus’s heartbeat slowed its break-neck rhythm.

  Minutes later, Craven asked him, “We’re away. What now?”

  Marcus knew better than to try an E.R. or walk-in clinic, where the staff would waste no time in reporting a gunshot wound. “Could use some place to clean up,” he said. “And some fresh clothes, while we’re at it.”

  The driver shoved the greasy hair away from a pair of eyes as blue and innocent as any infant’s. Licking his lips, he gave a quick nod. “Another two-fifty, and I can make that happen.”

  Marcus had the two hundred fifty, in addition to the four hundred he had already promised the guy, but very little more. Still, he was in no position to negotiate, and the entrepreneurial Craven knew it.

  “Then make it happen,” Marcus agreed, his mind already moving on to how he was going to get back to collect his belongings and his pickup.

  And whether Caitlyn had told the police about the hidden truck.

  Chapter Sixteen

  With her stomach tightly knotted, Caitlyn dug in her handbag for her cell phone, hoping she had enough battery left to make a call. Though the detectives had offered her a ride home, she wanted nothing to do with the police, who even now might be shooting Marcus down like an animal.

  Standing just inside the lobby, she was about to phone Natalie before remembering that her friend had taken her two-year-old daughter and left town for a few days—that she had called only this afternoon to remind Caitlyn to stop by her apartment to feed her fish and check her mail.

  Though she dreaded the lecture she was sure to hear from Reuben, she tried him instead, only to have her cell battery give a single chirp before it died completely.

  “Great,” she murmured, glancing first at the lobby desk, where an exasperated officer was trying to calm down a crying, drunken woman who had staggered through the front door, followed by an equally intoxicated man pleading that he hadn’t meant whatever it was he’d done to her. With the noise of their voices echoing around her, Caitlyn headed outdoors rather than wait to ask to use the phone.

  Almost immediately, she spotted a cab, and even more miraculously, she was able to flag him down. Climbing into the backseat, she gave the driver her address before sinking into a tense silence, her mind churning with worry.

  “Right there, by the front gate,” she said a few minutes later, interrupting the cabbie’s conversation with his dispatcher.

  With an absent nod, the doughy lump of a man complied, pointing out the ticker while saying, “Yeah, sure, Reggie. I can be there in about three minutes.”

  Overpaying him by half, Caitlyn interrupted again. “Can you watch until I go inside, please? It’ll only take a moment.”

  Another nod, and she stepped out of the aging cab, but no sooner did she close the door than the taxi sped away. Cursing the driver’s impatience, she hurried through the gate, her heart pumping primal fear through her veins.

  “It’ll be fine,” she told herself as she stepped through the front gate and past the spot where she had found the dead girl’s body. Keys jingling, she hurried up the front steps, past the place where Eva Rill had lurked, a gun in her withered hands.

  Carried on a sultry breeze, the strains of jazz floated from somewhere in the Quarter. A dog’s barking echoed faintly, and from another direction, a siren’s wail stretched, thin and eerie as the ghost of an old scream.

  Every tiny hair on her body rising with that thought, Caitlyn thrust her key toward the lock.?…

  And shrieked in alarm when a shadow detached itself from the space behind one of the columns—a man, this time—reaching toward her too swiftly for any hope of escape.

  Twisting away from his grasp, Caitlyn reflexively struck out, thrusting her arms forward to push him away. The heel of one hand thumped his chest, and her stiffened fingers jabbed the key into his face.

  “Stop!” Panic tore from the man’s throat, his shout even louder that her own as he backpedaled and lost his balance. With a loud grunt, he thumped down the front steps, landing on his rear end, his bald scalp gleaming beneath the security light.

  “Max?” Caitlyn cried, at last recognizing her former coworker. “Max Lafitte, what are you doing?”

  “God, my eye! You bitch! I’m only here to—”

  “To what, Max?” Caitlyn shouted, trembling above him. “To lurk by my front door when a killer’s targeted me so you can scare me to death and save him the trouble?”

  “To deliver a message from Josiah, not to be assaulted by another crazy Villaré.”

  “What do you mean, another?” she demanded. “Is this about my parents? I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m bleeding here—and I can’t see anything with my left eye.” His hand covering the injury and his head jerking on his scrawny neck, he looked and sounded less dangerous than pathetic.

  Or was she wrong about that? Had she actually stopped a deranged killer with no weapon but a key?

  “What if I lose this eye?” he continued, reminding her of the women who had lost theirs.

  “Maybe you can replace it with a glass one,” she accused, then ventured a bluff, at the same time unlocking the door without looking away from Max. “I understand you’re partial to green.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” he wailed. “I should sue your ass for everything you own.”

  Caitlyn snorted. “You want a piece of my tax lien, you’ve got it. And call the police, too. Be my guest. I’m sure they’ll be interested in how you attempted to assault me.”

  Max staggered to his feet and limped backward, his head shaking. “You’re outright crazy, do you know that? Every bit as insane as your—”

  “Wait! You said you had a message from Josiah. You saw him?”

  Lafitte kept backing away, “He says to keep your boyfriend clear of him if you don’t want him to end up floating in the Mississippi, and if you don’t want to end up joining—”

  “When did you talk to him? When did he give you that message?”

  But it was too late. Max was already hurrying tow
ard the gate, his hand covering his eye like his namesake’s pirate patch. Soon he vanished into the darkness, leaving Caitlyn to wonder how much different the outcome might have been without that single lucky jab of her key.

  Inside the house, she found a hammer, nails and leftover wood from an earlier makeshift repair, and secured the broken back door as best she could before plugging her dead cell phone into its charger. Within seconds the notification chime alerted her that she had voice mail. Probably about a hundred messages from Reuben, she decided, and cut to the chase by ignoring them and calling his cell phone directly.

  When he didn’t answer, she left a brief message before trying his home phone. No answer there, either, which struck her as strange.

  Looking for an explanation, she connected with her voice mail. The first three messages, as she’d expected, consisted of various versions of Reuben’s increasingly gruff: “Where the hell are you? I’m worried.”

  Expecting more of the same, she nearly hung up before a crisply efficient older woman began: “Hello, this is Laura Withers, from the Interim LSU Public Hospital Emergency Department. I’m calling for a Caitlyn Villaré. A patient brought in this evening, Mr. Reuben Pierce, is asking that we let you know he’s being admitted for observation following a concussion. He insisted I tell you not to worry and that he’ll be sure to call you in the morning.”

  “What?” Caitlyn erupted, as if the recorded message could answer all her questions. How had Reuben gotten a concussion? Had someone attacked him, as she’d been struck and knocked unconscious in the cemetery during the storm? Was someone—the real killer—targeting him the same way Marcus had been targeted?

  And could the killer’s point be to leave her unprotected and alone?

  LONG AND DARK, the sedan parked across the street and two doors down from Caitlyn’s mansion had the look of an unmarked surveillance vehicle. Squinting hard in its direction, Marcus made out the orange glow of a lit cigarette clenched in the teeth of the bulky silhouette behind the wheel.

  “Keep driving,” Marcus told Craven.

  The kid nodded. “I saw him, too. Cops’re staking out the place, man. So what now?”

  “Let me think for a few minutes.” Fresh from a shower, and clad in a clean though tight-fitting black T-shirt and jeans Craven had found for him, Marcus was grateful for the mild painkillers that had taken the edge off the throbbing in his arm and helped restore his focus. Going the extra mile, Craven had even brewed a pot of coffee after Marcus had passed on his offer to share a tweak—the clerk’s amphetamine of choice—to keep both of them going.

  He considered sending Craven to get his pickup but couldn’t come up with any way to get his now-twitchy accomplice past the police without triggering suspicion. After several minutes’ consideration, Marcus said disgustedly, “I have no idea. Can you just drop me at the Pink Parrot Pub?”

  “You wanna drink, there’s places closer.”

  To Marcus, the bar itself was irrelevant. Only its location mattered, but he didn’t want Craven to guess where he was going and try to sell that information to anyone who asked, including Josiah Paine, who might already have someone out looking to finish what he’d started. “Just take me there. All right?”

  During the short ride to Metairie, Marcus made certain he projected sullenness and defeat, rather than the sense of purpose he was feeling.

  Stepping inside, in case Craven was watching, Marcus found the neighborhood pub had a friendly, raucous atmosphere, as well as cheap drinks and dressed-to-thrill women looking for a good time, several of whom grinned in his direction as they eyed him at the bar. Most of the crowd’s attention, however, was riveted to the spotlight, which highlighted a big-bellied, bearded white guy who’d apparently had a few too many and was indulging in a truly unfortunate karaoke version of an old Aretha Franklin tune.

  Good-natured as it was, the jeers and laughter made the place far too loud for Marcus to place his call. So after ordering a beer so as not to rouse suspicion, he slipped out into the darkness and prayed Caitlyn would be home.

  As he used his prepaid cell to pull up the number he’d saved from her website, he prayed even harder that she would be willing to speak to him. And not only talk but allow him to convince her to help him make one last-ditch effort to escape New Orleans for good.

  Did he even have the right to try? To risk her freedom, possibly her life, so he could continue to keep a monster from facing the consequences of his actions?

  The thought brought him up short, and not for the first time, he weighed the cost of what he was doing against the memory of the happy boy he had helped to raise.

  It was the memory of that love that tipped the balance, of a duty and a responsibility that outweighed death itself. But not his concern for Caitlyn, he swore. He would find some way to keep her safe, no matter what it took.

  CAITLYN TRIED PHONING THE HOSPITAL, only to learn that Reuben’s name had not yet been added to the list of patients who’d given permission to provide confirmation of their presence and condition to callers. Because of federal privacy laws, the sympathetic-but-inflexible woman on the other end explained, she could offer nothing more specific than the hospital’s visiting hours.

  It was maddening, not knowing, so Caitlyn tried calling Lorna Robinson to see if she could find out anything about what had landed Reuben in the hospital, though she was personally convinced it had been an attack. But the detective’s voice mail picked up, playing a message that explained she was off-duty and would return calls in the morning.

  “If your needs cannot wait,” the recording advised, “please hang up and dial 9-1-1.”

  “I can’t wait!” Caitlyn burst out before disconnecting, but she knew better than to dial the emergency number over what would undoubtedly be considered a trivial concern.

  She took a deep breath and counted to ten, reminding herself that Reuben, who was as big and tough as they came, had gone out of his way to get a message to her telling her not to worry.

  “So why didn’t you leave some instructions telling me how?” she asked the empty room before Sinister poked his fluffy head into the kitchen to eye her reproachfully.

  When the office phone rang, she hurried to answer in the hope Reuben had decided to call her after all. In her rush, she grabbed it without glancing at the Caller ID, a decision she regretted the moment she heard Josiah Paine’s voice.

  “What’d you do to Lafitte?” he shouted so loudly that she had to pull the phone a foot from her ear.

  “Did you send Max to hurt me?”

  “Lafitte?” Paine nearly choked on laughter. “Believe me, if I wanted you dead, I’ve got friends better equipped for the job, you stupid bimbo. Friends who can handle you and Reuben Pierce and that jackass who tried to jump me outside my own business.”

  “You shot him,” Caitlyn accused before adding, because she knew Josiah, “And you shot him for no reason.”

  “No reason, my fat keister. That maniac threatened me to get me to stay away from you. Told me he’d destroy me if I even thought of bothering you. And anyone who saw the look in his eyes would swear on a stack of Bibles he meant what he was saying.”

  Caitlyn pictured that intense look. Shivered at the thought of Marcus’s dark eyes heating with an equally fierce passion as they gazed at her.

  The thought of that gaze forever dimming made her snap at her ex-boss, “I can see you were intimidated by the way you’re calling me at midnight, threatening me again.”

  “Not you, I’m not,” Paine qualified, anxiety making his voice more nasal. “If you talk to him, you make sure that’s a hundred percent clear.”

  “So that means no more dead girls, Josiah? No more threats from Max or your pals or horrible old women showing up to try to kill me?”

  “What the hell craziness are you talking, Caitlyn? I told you, I have nothing to do with those poor girls, and you probably know old ladies aren’t my style.”

  Caitlyn rolled her eyes, forcibly reminded of the dark-haire
d stripper he had taken up with after ditching his brassy-but-big-hearted wife of thirty-six years.

  “You honestly think,” he went on, “that I’m the kind of sicko who’d do something like he did with their eyes?”

  She ignored his outraged horror to zero in on one huge question. “How do you know about the glass eyes, Josiah? The police told me they weren’t releasing that bit of information.”

  “It—it was Lafitte who told me,” Paine stammered. “Or maybe I heard it from one of those cops I hang out with. Who knows? What does it matter? You aren’t—you aren’t recording this call, are you?”

  “What if I am?” she bluffed.

  “Wha—you’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  She could almost hear the big jerk mentally backtracking, going over what incriminating words he might have used.

  “You know I’d never really want to get anybody hurt,” he said.

  “Like you hurt Mar—my friend?” she corrected, not wanting to give Josiah Marcus’s name.

  “Listen, a man’s gotta defend himself when he’s threatened—I mean assaulted. Your boyfriend hit me, tried to kill me. Did I tell you that part?”

  “Sure he did.” If Caitlyn hadn’t been so worried about Marcus and Reuben, she would have been absolutely giddy at hearing Josiah squirm. “And I certainly would never want to take the law into my own hands,” he said, enunciating clearly for the supposed tape. “I was only—it was just talk, you know?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Exactly like your threats against me outside the post office this afternoon.”

  “I never—oh, hell,” Paine said before hanging up, defeated.

  The phone rang again only a few seconds later.

  Picking it up, she said, “You should quit while you’re ahead, Josiah. I’m sharing every word of this with the one cop I know who isn’t in your pocket.”

  A stunned silence drifted through the open connection, a silence tempered by faint strains of music in the background. A moment later… “Caitlyn?”

  At the single, anguished word, tears sprang to her eyes. “Marcus!” she cried. “Marcus, I’ve been out of my mind worrying you were dead. What happened? Are you hurt? Where are you?”