Phantom of the French Quarter

by Colleen Thompson

  “Don’t say that, Maman. Please don’t say it,” Reuben whimpered. “It’s about to be all better. I know how to fix it this time.”

  “I’m not Sophie Sinclair!” Caitlyn screamed, tears burning her face. “She was my mother, and she died.”

  As if he hadn’t heard her, the man she’d once thought she knew kept speaking. “And I know I have to punish her, the same as all the rest.”

  TIPPED OFF BY THE DETECTIVE in return for his cooperation after Caitlyn’s rescue, Marcus watched from a safe distance as at least a dozen officers, including a SWAT team decked out all in black, formed a cautious circle surrounding a modest but neat one-story blue house in the Garden District.

  Clearly they were taking Reuben seriously as a suspect, after confirming that he was in none of the area hospitals and hadn’t filed a police report the previous night. From the looks of the heavy gear, they were anticipating trouble, too—the armed mayhem that a serial murderer, familiar with guns from his work, might choose to dish out if he felt cornered.

  Behind a dark van, a heavyset black woman in a brown skirt stood with a phone pressed to her ear and her arms ringed with six or eight multicolor bracelets. After a minute she put away the phone and returned from the dark van with a bullhorn, which she raised to her lips.

  “This is Detective Lorna Robinson, NOPD. I need the occupants of 1407 South Mockingbird to exit the house with your hands on top of your head. Either that, or answer your phone. We’ll give you one more chance to do that so we can clear up a few questions.”

  She pointed to a balding white man, who raised a phone to his ear. After several long moments he shook his head and put the phone away.

  Detective Robinson repeated her request. When no one emerged, she gave a nod to two armored men from the SWAT team.

  Trampling flower beds, they hurried toward the front door carrying a long black cylinder. Two-man battering ram, Marcus decided, which meant that Robinson had either come up with one fast warrant or decided that imminent danger trumped the need for one.

  With two quick pops, the door burst inward, and the officers unslung their automatic weapons and raced inside. Wishing he could be there, that he could be the one to strafe the traitor with a hail of bullets and carry Caitlyn to safety, Marcus waited with his breath held and prayed with all his might.

  He strained his ears, hungering for, and at the same time dreading, the sound of gunfire or a shrill cry. But a scream would at least mean someone inside was still living—as long as it wasn’t Caitlyn’s death cry, if Reuben decided he wasn’t going to give her up alive.

  Instead of shouts or shots, there was nothing but silence. A silence that finally ended in an indistinct squawk from someone’s radio.

  Soon all the officers moved inside, while behind the screen of shrubbery that hid him, Marcus’s heart continued pounding. Had they made an arrest? Learned Caitlyn was safe or badly injured?

  Or had they found her lifeless body hidden in the house?

  WHEN A PHONE RANG IN ANOTHER ROOM, Reuben strode toward Caitlyn as his mother went to answer.

  Caitlyn thought of trying to gain the caller’s help by screaming. Instead, seeing the madness in her former employee’s eye, she shrank back, every muscle quivering with the instinctive need to bolt.

  This was the man who had already killed at least six women. Who, for all she knew, had murdered Marcus in order to catch her on her own.

  Grief rolled over her, wave after wave that brought tears to her eyes and had her hissing through her clenched teeth, “You stay away from me, you bastard.”

  “You shut up.” Reuben sprang onto the bed, onto her, and though she pummeled him with her knees and her chained hands, she was helpless to stop him from pinning her down and shoving his face to within an inch of hers.

  Her silent tears flowed freely as he leaned low and whispered near her ear, “Listen, Sophie, we have to keep real quiet while Maman’s on the phone.”

  Too frightened to either argue or contradict his use of her mother’s name, Caitlyn could do nothing but listen to the harsh rasp of Reuben’s breath and the murmur of the old woman’s conversation—a conversation that sounded impossibly casual, as if her son were not about to…

  Caitlyn refused to let her mind go further. Refused to despair, to give up on the chance of getting out of here alive. Getting out and back to Marcus, where—if he’d somehow survived—she would beg him to forgive her for pushing away the slightest chance that they might someday be together.

  She had to help him straighten everything out back in Pennsylvania, to convince him to stay with her—or at the very least make him understand that she hadn’t shared her body lightly. That she loved him deeply and wanted far more than just one night.

  Reuben shifted his bulk to lie on top of her as he spoke roughly into her ear. “You’re mine now, Sophie. I’m finally going to have you, after all these years.”

  Struggling against his weight, against the terrifying hardness she felt jutting into her thigh, Caitlyn bit down on his shoulder. Shouting with pain, Reuben leapt off her, balling his huge fist and drawing it back.

  Though tethered by her shackles, Caitlyn still managed to dodge the blow. Cursing her roundly, he looked primed for murder—until his mother came back into the room, a cell phone in her hand and disgust in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Maman,” he said. “Sorry for the swears.”

  The glass-eyed audience and tattered walls spun around Caitlyn. He’d been about to assault and possibly kill her, and now he was apologizing to his mother for cursing?

  If she somehow survived this family’s insanity, she swore she would give her beautiful, brilliant and caring sister the biggest hug of her life.

  “That was our neighbor, Mrs. DeHart. They’re breaking into our house, Reuben!” Set amid so many wrinkles, the old woman’s eyes were wide with outrage—or maybe it was terror. “Our house! The police, with SWAT teams. So just how long do you imagine it will be before they track you here and shoot you down like a mad dog?”

  Caitlyn’s hope flared, only to be crushed when Reuben spoke.

  “They’ll never find this place. It’s not even in my name.”

  “They’ll find you, son. They’ll kill you. You have to take care of this problem and dump the body somewhere now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nothing. They’d found nothing. Marcus felt ready to burst out of his skin by the time he finally understood that the slowdown in activity and dispersal of the SWAT team meant that no one had been inside, neither the living or the dead.

  Rather than being reassured, Marcus felt even more helpless with the realization that Reuben had some other kill zone, separate from his home. Elsewhere…but where? He thought of past news stories, detailing serial murderers who dug out hidden trap-door basements beneath their houses or disguised backyard dungeons as tool sheds, but he didn’t think that the NOPD—especially Detective Lorna Robinson—was stupid enough to skip a thorough search and miss such a hideout. Just as certainly, the police were likely to check property tax rolls to find out if their suspect owned a second place, perhaps even an isolated fishing cabin on the bayou.

  The thought of Caitlyn trapped and surrounded by nothing but a maze of gator-infested waterways had Marcus shaking with the need to find Reuben and kill him with his bare hands. But anger wouldn’t help him, so he thrust it roughly out of his way and tried to focus on the most important question he would ever have to answer in his life.

  Where else might a killer take his quarry? Where would he feel safe, secure, familiar, in effortless control?

  There’s no place like home.?… No place like home… The familiar refrain repeated in Marcus’s mind, echoing over and over until his head pounded with its rhythm and the words jumbled into gibberish.

  It reminded him that he had what was undoubtedly a concussion, on top of the bullet wound. He shouldn’t even be on his feet, much less shaking off his pain to weave back toward his parked truck.

  And the last thing
he had any business doing was climbing back behind the wheel.

  But the noise inside his head had given him a flash of insight, the long-shot sliver of an idea of the one other place where Reuben might have taken Caitlyn. As crazy as it seemed, once the thought formed, he couldn’t shake it.

  Leaving the police to whatever leads they might find in either Reuben’s home or Caitlyn’s, Marcus cranked the engine and drove off to follow up his wild hunch.

  A hunch that would take him to one of the most crime-ridden areas of New Orleans—if his wavering vision and the worsening pounding in his head didn’t cause him to wreck the truck on the way.

  “WE CAN’T LEAVE, Maman. I won’t do it. Don’t you see, the priest is here now. He’s come to marry us.” Rather than shouting as he had been, Reuben had gone dead calm, speaking in a tone so chillingly reasonable that Caitlyn half expected to see a man in black materialize, a clerical collar on his neck.

  “Now, Reuben,” said his mother. “I won’t tell you again.”

  Her son smiled back at her. “This is the happiest day of my life.”

  Turning with a huff of disgust, the old woman left the room and slammed the door behind her.

  A shudder traveling through her, Caitlyn yanked against her bonds as hard as she could and was rewarded by the crack of the wood at her left side splitting. Splitting, but not breaking through completely.

  Reuben turned and frowned down at her. “In a hurry, are we?” With his wink, the sickening smile returned. “Tell you a little secret. So am I.”

  Pulling a key from his shirt pocket, he said, “Here. Let me help you up, so you can stand before God and our guests.”

  Caitlyn froze as he approached her, wondering how she could reach the sane, protective man she had known for months. The madness in his eyes convinced her that man was out of reach—probably forever—so she decided to try to use his insanity to her advantage. She racked her brain to think of some way—something she might do or say—to get free before Reuben moved on from the marriage to the “honeymoon,” a thought that filled her with more terror than the specter of her murder.

  Calling on her theater training, she steeled herself to play the hardest role of her life—before the toughest crowd.

  “I’m a little embarrassed,” she whispered to the maniac who had cast himself as her groom as he moved to free her. “It’s our wedding day, and I haven’t even had the chance to freshen up. My hair, my makeup— I’ll look just awful for our pictures.”

  “You’re beautiful, Sophie. Every bit as lovely as you always have been.”

  She flashed him a coquettish smile, despite her churning stomach. “But a girl likes to look special on her special day, and besides, I really need to powder my nose.”

  Please let him be as crazy as he looks this minute, she prayed. And please, God, whatever you do, let the bathroom in this dive have a window.

  He studied her, a measuring look, while she held her breath, waiting for his answer. Waiting to find out if, in his delusional state, she might have fooled him, or whether her last-ditch gamble had failed.

  She would never know the answer, because at that moment the bedroom door burst open and Reuben’s mother came in gripping a pistol in both hands, which trembled with the weight of the big long-barreled weapon.

  “It’s time,” she said to Reuben as Caitlyn edged behind her captor. “Time I took care of this so I can get you somewhere safe.”

  “No, Maman. You can’t.” His voice became a low growl. “I told you before, I’m going to kill her. I’m not stupid. But I’m going to do it on my own terms and in my own time.”

  His glare swung to Caitlyn, and he grabbed her by the arm with bruising pressure. “After we’ve played out our little wedding game,” he said quietly. “Played it by my rules.”

  “No. No, Reuben.” The old woman sounded resigned, broken—until she swung the gun toward Caitlyn’s chest and her finger moved on the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Everything had limits. Endurance, will—and even soul-deep love, Marcus discovered, as the backwash of adrenaline slammed him with a vengeance.

  One moment he was jamming the key into his ignition, and the next he was lying slumped sideways, his vision narrowed to a pinhole tunnel through black wool.

  Fighting off unconsciousness, he embraced the pain exploding in his right arm and ricocheting inside his skull in the hope that it would rouse him. Yet the black tunnel only tightened, constricting slowly until he saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing but a swiftly fading sense of loss.

  Sometime later, he felt vibration. Next the ringing of a telephone burrowed its way into his awareness.

  Groping for it, he opened his eyes and recognized the truck’s dashboard, though everything was out of focus. He ignored the phone and managed to get the truck started as panic jolted through him. How the hell long had he been out? Had he missed his chance to get to Caitlyn before it was too late?

  Head still swimming, he started driving and blew through a stop sign, then slammed on the brakes and fishtailed, his truck careening narrowly around a brightly painted daycare van. Cursing, he checked the rearview to see that the woman driving looked shaken but okay and her vehicle remained in control.

  “Pull yourself together,” he told himself. The last thing he wanted was to kill someone before he got there.

  Once he arrived—and assuming his hunch was right—it would be another story. Because if putting down the rabid pit bull was what it took to save the woman he loved, this time he would do it.

  Would do what he should have done for Samantha. What he wished, God help him, he had done to Theo before his only brother went on to kill again.

  AGE MIGHT HAVE ITS PRIVILEGES, but hand strength seemed not to be among them. As Reuben’s mother struggled to pull the trigger, her son lunged to grab the gun.

  Too scared to scream, Caitlyn didn’t waste an instant, ducking under his arm and racing through the doorway. Once past it, she flew down a narrow hallway with holes in its moldy Sheetrock walls and torn wads of carpet that sent up a sour stink with every step.

  As fast as she was moving, one of those clumps tripped her, sending her crashing to her hands and knees as shots cracked above her head and bullets popped against a boarded-up window.

  “Hold it right there, Caitlyn,” Reuben ordered. “Stop now, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”

  Caitlyn didn’t move a muscle, her vision drifting to the left and locking onto what appeared to be the once-white front door of the small house, her sole escape route from this hell.

  A dirty yellow waterline sliced across it halfway up, confirming her suspicion that this place was a flood house, one of those still awaiting demolition post-Katrina. But the detail that brought tears to her eyes was the cool gleam of the mint-condition latch and heavy-duty padlock someone had put on that door. And she would bet her legacy, her very future, that the only key was in the bottom of Reuben Pierce’s pocket.

  She was never getting out of here, at least not alive.

  Still, her desperate mind groped for an escape, for the slightest detail that might help her talk Reuben out of—

  Slowly she turned to look over her shoulder. Reuben was standing there, his jaw tight and the barrel of his pistol steady as it pointed straight at her chest.

  “Ready to join me at the altar?” he asked as calmly as if he were offering her a cup of coffee.

  Thinking of slaughtered lambs and sacrificial altars, she shook her head and said, “You called me Caitlyn. I heard you. So you know I’m not Sophie.”

  Pure malice lighting his gaze, he stalked his way toward her and grabbed her by the hair. “It’s your eyes, you see. They aren’t quite the same green, are they?”

  From the doll room came the sound of sobbing, Reuben’s mother weeping as though her heart were broken.

  Caitlyn felt her own heart freeze, followed by an awareness of it pumping icy terror through every vein and artery, every capillary, in her body.


  “But don’t worry, my sweet Caitlyn. I have the perfect pair here for you. They’re exactly the right shade.”

  MARCUS DROVE SLOWLY along Noble Street in Midtown, his attention straining as he took in the mix of vacant lots and dilapidated bungalows. The nearby housing projects had been torn down, but this low area, with its longstanding bad reputation, hadn’t been rebuilt, and a good number of boarded-up, flood-ravaged houses stood forgotten in spite of the red X’s spray painted on their doors.

  Though his dash clock didn’t work, the sun’s position told him it was getting close to noon, as did the heat waves rising from the broken asphalt.

  There was not a soul in sight, leading him to believe any current residents had chosen to sleep away the daylight hours.

  Praying for some sign to confirm his hunch about Reuben, he checked out empty front stoops and a couple of mangy, spotted dogs sniffing halfheartedly at the contents of a split black trash bag.

  This was crazy, hopeless, he realized, as he scanned the few cars, some of them stripped and burned out, parked along the street or in what had once been front yards.

  Even on the remote chance she might be somewhere near, he would never find her. Would fail her just as he had failed…

  That was when it caught his eye. A shape unlike the others. Slowing to a crawl, he spotted something alongside a tiny, peeling shack with a half-collapsed front porch. A gray shroud covered what could only be a parked car.