Chased by Moonlight

by Nancy Gideon

  Dabbing his puffy eyes, Cummings shook his head. “No one serious, just lots of friends. She said she was too busy for a relationship. Busy—at twenty-two.” His expression crumpled with renewed anguish. “She had school and work and volunteering. She wanted to be involved in my campaign. . . . Dear God.” His gaze lifted to theirs, horrified with a new realization. “This is about me. It’s about me, isn’t it?”

  Cee Cee shifted the focus gently. “Has someone been threatening you, Mr. Cummings? Threatening to hurt your family?”

  He was silent for a long moment as he considered the awful possibility that his child was dead because of him.

  “Has anyone in your family been approached directly, Mr. Cummings? I know this is hard, but it’s very important that you try to remember.”

  “Those bastards,” he whispered. “Those bastards.”

  “Who are we talking about?” Cee Cee pressed. “A name.”

  “Legere.”

  Why wasn’t she surprised? “What kind of threats, sir? Made by whom?”

  “We’ve always been at odds. I’d propose a project to benefit the community, and if he couldn’t find a way to profit from it, he’d try to shut me down or make me pay through the nose for doing business. We were constantly tied up in court. It was a game to the old man, but his games came with harsh rules. He made no bones about wanting to measure me for cement; there was nothing subtle about Jimmy Legere. Victor Vantour was another one who was always blocking progress in the name of payoffs. But Legere and Vantour are both dead. Both of them were fighting my riverfront development program with everything they had.”

  “Everything including murder?”

  His stare grew as sharp as a stropped blade. “Maybe. You tell me, detectives.”

  “Have you had any direct dealings with Max Savoie?” Babineau asked, drawing the man’s attention away from his partner.

  “No. I know who he is. What he is. I know he’s ruthless and has the blood on his hands of anyone who ever got in Legere’s way. Like I did.” Suddenly Cummings’s gaze settled on Cee Cee, and an ugly suspicion colored his expression.

  Carefully Cee Cee put the delicate china on the table beside her chair and rose. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’m going to wash my hands.”

  Why did every damned thing have to circle back to Max Savoie?

  Resenting the fact that she’d been forced to abandon the questioning, Cee Cee made a purposeful turn into the kitchen, where Noreen Cummings was putting away silverware and chain-smoking with a very unladylike intensity. She didn’t glance up, but her hands started shaking.

  “You do everything you can to keep them safe,” she began in a casual way that invited Cee Cee to come closer. “You watch over them when they’re young. You teach them to be smart and careful. But they never quite believe you, do they, detective?”

  “About the things out there that can hurt them? No. They don’t, Mrs. Cummings. I am so sorry.”

  She nodded her perfectly coiffed head. It became a struggle for her to sort the forks into dinner, salad, and dessert, rolling each into silver cloth with a meticulous care.

  “Were you trying to protect your husband, Mrs. Cummings?”

  Her gaze flickered up with startled apprehension. Noreen Cummings was the perfect counterpoint for her husband: willowy, graceful, Norwegian fair, from the best schools and the best family. Yet Cee Cee sensed an underlying core of toughness that immediately had her respect. She was wounded but was rallying for an attack.

  “What do you mean?” Noreen asked.

  “Did someone approach you or the children? Did they make threats that you were keeping from your husband so as not to worry him? Something insignificant, that you didn’t take seriously?”

  “Sandra told me someone had been following her—never getting close, just there in the background. I thought it was someone Simon had hired but hadn’t told us about. He liked to pretend we didn’t know there was danger involved in what he did. Sweet, silly man. Of course we knew. And we accepted it because it was part of what he does.”

  “Have you asked him if he hired someone?”

  “I—I never had the chance. There was so much to plan, so much to do.”

  Cee Cee put her hand over Noreen Cummings’s elegantly manicured fingers. “None of this is your fault, Mrs. Cummings. You’re not to blame for what evil men choose to do.”

  Noreen’s voice was quiet. “I never thought he was serious.”

  “Who, Mrs. Cummings?”

  “He came up to me about six months ago at some charity event promoting development along the waterfront. Very polite but very . . . cold. He didn’t identify himself but I knew who he was. He said my name, and he said, ‘You must be proud of them. So young and innocent. It would be such a shame if anything should happen to spoil that because he cares more for his career than his children.’”

  A terrible chill settled in the pit of Cee Cee’s stomach. “And then?’

  “He walked away.”

  “Did you feel threatened? Did he touch you or make you feel in immediate danger?”

  “No. He didn’t actually do anything specific, but he scared me because he was so . . . I don’t know . . . strange, I guess, is the best word. I was so scared. I had both girls come home for a few weeks, pretending I was empty nesting.” Her smile trembled.

  “But you didn’t say anything to your husband?”

  “I was afraid he would act on it. I was afraid it would make things worse. We’ve had to deal with crazies since the first day Simon gave an interview. It’s part of the job. He told me not to fret over what crackpots might say or do.”

  “And this man was a crackpot, a crazy?”

  “Oh, no. He wasn’t making idle threats to make himself feel important. He was warning me, and I didn’t listen. If I had acted on it, Sandra would still be alive. I just couldn’t believe he would actually . . . would actually harm one of my girls.”

  “Do you know this man’s name, Mrs. Cummings?”

  “Yes.” Her gaze hardened as she said flatly, “But not so well as you, from what I’ve read in the papers.”

  Max.

  Noreen Cummings lifted a heavy antique locket that she wore on the fine gold chain about her neck. She opened it to display two beautiful, youthful faces. “Take a good look, detective. These are the two most precious things in my life. And he took one of them away from me. What are you going to do about that, detective? You think about these faces the next time you’re in bed with him.”

  Babineau drove her back to her car in silence, then kept the motor idling as he turned to her.

  “Did she give up any names?”

  “Who?” Cee Cee glanced at her partner, startled from her somber thoughts.

  “The Mrs.”

  “Nothing specific or recent. How about Cummings? He give any specifics?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Oh, how carefully he chose that remark. “Just say it, Babs. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “You know where this is leading, Ceece.”

  She said nothing.

  “The minute he connected you and Savoie, he shut down tight. How are we going to run an investigation when they’re as suspicious of us as they are of the criminals?”

  Her temper flared and cold anxiety clawed at her insides. Her tone was brittle ice. “Are you telling me to walk away, Alain? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “No. You’re a good cop, Cee Cee. I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else.” He was so earnest, some of her fear fell away—but not all. “All I’m saying is, be prepared for that suggestion to come from another direction.”

  “Cummings is going to request I be pulled from the case?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  She cursed passionately. “Then we’ll have to nail this down quick before it gets pulled out from under us.”

  Babineau sighed and ran fingers through his wavy blond hair, a rare sign of agitation. “I thought we’d see
n our last of this . . . this obscenity. When we locked down Spratt for doing Vantour, I thought we’d gotten our monster off the streets. What’s going on? A copy cat, you think?”

  “Maybe. If someone is trying to get a lot of media real fast, this will do it. We’ll be up to our asses in press alligators.”

  “I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to go up against all that late-night-creature-feature bullshit again. It scares folks. Even sensible folks.” Babineau was silent for another long minute then asked, uncomfortably, “Will Savoie give you anything?”

  Cee Cee recoiled, not because she resented the suggestion but because she was already considering it. She liked hearing it spoken out loud even less. “I’m not sure I should ask. I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to ask. We didn’t part on very good terms this morning, at his office.”

  “He’ll get over it a lot faster than he’ll get over you.”

  “I wish I could be so sure.”

  “Then what have you got to lose by asking?”

  Everything. Only everything.

  THE FEAR THAT MAYBE she already had was enough to darken her mood for the rest of the day. She canvassed the university area, speaking to roommates in the fancy sorority house, study group partners, and teachers, and all said essentially what the parents had. Everyone liked Sandra Cummings. That was the same conclusion Babineau came to, after speaking to her employer and the patrons at the club where Sandra had had her last drink.

  So why did Cee Cee feel so certain this attack on the attractive young coed was purposeful, not random? And that it was a lot closer to her own home than she cared to admit?

  She studied her notes over a fried oyster po’ boy at the House of Blues. Then she indulged herself in a leisurely smoke in that dark, noisy atmosphere, along with some icy mugs of beer at the ornately carved bar.

  It all came back to Max. Max and the way their relationship balanced so precariously on that narrow line of the law that was her career.

  In the not-so-distant past, she wouldn’t have been moping over a pint and an ashtray. She would have zealously pursued what was logically laid out for her with single-minded blinders on. She recognized the cause of that young woman’s death. While others could only speculate based on rumor and whispered folktales, she knew, she’d seen, the kind of creature capable of inflicting such brutal damage. She was sharing a bed with one.

  When fortuitous evidence had linked Benjamin Spratt, the janitor at St. Bart’s church, to a history of mental illness and murder, she’d breathed a grateful sigh that suspicion was turned away from Max. The gruesome method Spratt used to kill as part of his supposed psychosis made him for several unsolved killings in the Quarter. And everyone from the police to the press was satisfied. Cee Cee hadn’t made waves, but she knew the truth—or part of it.

  Spratt had been a convenient scapegoat at a convenient time, taking the heat off Max for things he’d done to save an abused young mother and a cocky female police detective. Cee Cee had been showered with glory for putting together the gift-wrapped pieces to close the case, but the case still stuck in her throat. Because she knew it covered a lie. She knew it protected Max Savoie.

  And now, by her failure to act aggressively, she was doing the same thing.

  She didn’t want to believe Max had killed Sandra Cummings. But she knew he could have. And that had her knocking back another logic-numbing brew. Her heart insisted it wasn’t Max; it had to be another of his kind. But her head refused to not consider him a suspect. And now those parts of her were at war again over this new crime, the part that accepted who and what he was when she’d embraced her love for him and the part of her that swore to see justice to its most unpleasant end regardless of personal cost. She was violating her oath by not going after him. But she’d be violating her vow to Max if she failed to trust him.

  Do nothing and be a bad cop. Follow procedure and ruin the best thing she’d ever had. Neither choice led to a happy ending. Well, it was time to deal with it—no matter how much it sucked.

  Cee Cee stubbed out her last cigarette and headed out into thick evening air. She sat behind the wheel of her car, fighting back the heavy melancholy stirred up by too much drink and too little sleep. And by a fact she’d been trying to ignore: Sandra Cummings reminded her of Mary Kate Malone.

  By the time she climbed the outside stairs to her second-floor apartment, she was feeling the beer and the heart-crushing wretchedness of her lot. Especially when she unlocked her door and found the place empty of all but her hungry guinea pigs. She hadn’t known until that instant which she dreaded more: finding Max there waiting and not knowing what to say to him or having him not there at all with so much left unsaid.

  She fed the animals, dropped her holster on the coffee table, then plopped onto her sofa in a boneless sprawl. Her head resting against its back, she closed her eyes, feeling the prickle of sorrow burn behind them as a frightened voice cried out through her memories.

  “Make them stop. Lottie, please make them stop.”

  Though there’d been nothing she could do, she’d still tried. She’d forced down her own panic, her own pain, and done her best to distract the worst of it away from her battered friend.

  “Does it make you feel like a man to hurt little girls?” she’d sneered. “Can’t get it up unless you’re using your fists? Do you have to tie them up before they’ll let you touch them? Is that because you’re ugly or because you’re impotent?”

  Oh, she’d had his full attention then. And the violence in his face was born of a murderous rage.

  He hadn’t used his fists. She would have preferred that. Instead, he’d gotten creative. And she would never again underestimate the imagination of a monster in men’s clothing as a horrible new agony backed with death had ripped into her.

  “Charlotte?”

  Her eyes flew open as she pulled herself from that long-ago scene now, as then, due to the timely arrival of Max Savoie. He stood in her living room regarding her with concern.

  “I knocked but you didn’t answer. Are you all right?”

  She came off the cushions with a quick, denying move, her arms locking around herself to restrain the tight clutch of panic. She paced, her movements agitated. He watched, saying nothing, waiting for her to share what had made her mood so raw and restless.

  “Sorry. I got lost in thought for a minute.”

  He didn’t have to ask where. He could tell by the sweat dotting her brow, by the snag of her respirations. He could smell the remnants of terror on her. And it took all his will power not to act upon it. Instead, he spoke her name softly.

  “Charlotte.”

  “Give me a minute, okay, so I can pull myself together.”

  He could see she was on the verge of coming apart, so he stepped into the hasty path she walked while trying to outdistance her pain. She attempted to sidestep him and he moved to counter. She looked up at him then, her eyes angry, shadowed, afraid.

  “Back off, Savoie,” she growled with warning.

  “No.”

  The touch of his hand on her cheek was all it took for her to cave. He waited for her to lean into him before anchoring her there within the wrap of his arms.

  Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She gave a cynical snort. “I’m all soggy and stink of smoke and beer.”

  “True, but I’d still do you.”

  The sound of his voice, all rumbly with tender humor, the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin provided rescue on the turbulent sea of her emotions. She laughed raggedly and held on for dear life, her fingers clenching in his hair and his collar. Her damp face pressed against the side of his neck, where she whispered, “Max. Max, hold me. Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t, sha. I won’t ever let you go.”

  Safe in the wrap of his solid familiarity, Cee Cee released the fear and pain, those dreadful scars on the psyche of a seventeen-year-old girl, in cautio
us increments. She couldn’t speak again until she gathered up a degree of control. “I don’t want to remember anymore, Max.”

  He made a soft sound, his embrace tightening. “I know, darlin’. I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I was afraid they were going to kill us. And then I was afraid they wouldn’t. I had to stay alive for Mary Kate. She was so scared.”

  He pressed a kiss to her brow, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. No one will ever hurt you again. I won’t allow it.”

  “I tried so hard not to let her know I was scared, too.”

  “You are the bravest, strongest person I know. I love you so much.”

  “I should have been able to save her from all that pain.”

  “I should have saved you both. Forgive me.” He waited, held her, surrounding her, protecting her from the worst of the remembered misery simply by being there, as he’d been there twelve years before. When she didn’t answer, he said again, with a deep, forceful urgency. “Please say you forgive me, Charlotte.”

  “I miss her so much,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard his plea. “Some days I wake up and I start to call her, and then I remember that she’s not there. I don’t know if she’ll ever be there for me again.”

  “I’m here. I’m here for you.”

  “I just feel so alone. So empty inside.”

  Max closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair, suffering for the fact that he would never be enough to fill that spot within her guarded heart. If there was any permanent place there for him at all.

  She was steady again, breathing deeply, heart rate almost normal. He marveled at her courage, knowing what it took to overcome those terrors from the past, having done so himself. Having witnessed her nightmare firsthand humbled him all the more. And made him that much more culpable.

  She stayed in his arms, comfortable in their protective strength. She rubbed the dampness from her cheek against his shoulder as she continued, “I don’t know if I can work this case. I see the Cummings girl, and I see Mary Kate. I can’t do my job properly when I’m so torn up. Maybe Babineau is right. Maybe I should step back from this one.”