by Mallory Kane
“I came downstairs after I got the phone call from—” She stopped abruptly. “Um, a source.”
It didn’t matter. She didn’t have to tell him who called her when Darnell’s body had been found. He’d already figured that out. It had to be Annie Hanks, the night-shift dispatcher. They were friends.
He didn’t say anything, and after a few seconds she went on. “I wanted to listen to him one more time before I went to the crime scene. I wanted to be sure I had his exact words fresh in my mind when I saw how the boy had died. The last thing I saw before I left the house was his face—right there on that screen. The last thing I heard was him threatening you.” Her voice sounded brittle. Her eyes darted here and there around the room, as if she thought if she looked hard enough she’d find an answer to who had invaded her privacy.
“Has anyone else been in your house today? Who has a key? Housekeeper?” He watched her carefully, looking for any tell that would indicate that she was lying.
“My housekeeper has a key, but she’s out of town,” she said.
“Boyfriend?” he asked, narrowing his gaze.
“No.” Her answer was distracted, her eyes still flitting from window to window, door to door. She wasn’t lying. He’d be willing to bet she wasn’t even leaving anything out. The way she’d answered that question, he was sure there wasn’t a boyfriend.
Still trying to offer assurance and comfort, he said, “Well, I’m sure there’s some explanation.”
Connor’s gaze burned him like a laser. “Oh, really? You’re sure?” She stood, her brows lowered like delicate thunderclouds above her pale face. “You don’t believe me, do you? Why do you think I drove out to the crime scene to see you?”
Dev was tired. He was sad and disgusted, and sick of running into brick walls everywhere he turned. He also needed some distance from this ambitious reporter who’d turned his life upside down once, and for all he knew was planning to do it again. Not to mention his unwanted physical reaction to her. “I have no idea why you showed up or why you’re pulling this DVD crap. Maybe you’re bored, and thought you’d ruin my life again. Hell, maybe you do sit around and watch replays of Reghan Connor’s greatest triumphs.”
Her cheeks flamed. “Well, if I did, one of them would not be you.”
Touché. He held up a hand. “Okay. The Garden District isn’t my beat, but I’ll call them to come over and take your report.”
She studied his face, then made a dismissive gesture. “Please. Don’t bother. I’m sure I just forgot. You know how we talking heads can be.” Her voice sliced through him as sharp and neat as a well-honed sword.
Rubbing his neck, Dev eyed her narrowly. “You know as well as I do that if someone really did break in and steal a DVD, then this is a crime scene. You don’t get to say, ‘oh, never mind.’” He pulled his phone out.
She laid her hand on his. “Wait. I’d rather you didn’t make that call. It will end up all over the news.”
“Your point?” He sent her a look that was totally wasted on her. She was too upset to recognize the irony of her words.
“Besides, I don’t see anything out of place,” she said, going back to studying every inch of her walls and floor. “I don’t see how someone could have gotten in. Do you really think your colleagues will be able to find anything?”
“Probably not, but who knows? There’s always a chance. A team could dust the TV and DVD player for prints, and maybe the front and back doors.”
“But you don’t think it’ll help.” She turned to stare at him.
He had the uncomfortable feeling she was trying to see inside his head. He looked away. He wasn’t at all sure he had the stamina to hide what he was thinking from her. Not right now. “You’re probably going to have a hard time convincing anybody that you didn’t switch the disks yourself.”
“Including you?”
He laughed shortly and shook his head. “I think you’ve convinced me.”
She gave him a wan little smile tinged with gratitude, an expression he’d never seen before on her face. It surprised him.
He dialed a number and within a few minutes had arranged for the Garden District station to send over a couple of officers. The first thing they did was take her prints, so they could be eliminated. They acted less than thrilled about being there, and went about their jobs halfheartedly, not even bothering to disguise their contempt for her.
Dev knew their animosity was on his behalf, but still, she was a victim of a crime—okay, a possible crime. If these guys were under his command… But they weren’t, so he didn’t say anything.
It took them about an hour, which was a ridiculous amount of time to gather a few prints, but again he bit his tongue. After they’d finally left, he folded his arms and leaned against her door. “So, Connor,” he said, “what now?”
She looked up from scrubbing her fingertips with a dishcloth. She looked tired and annoyed as she held up her black-stained hand, palm out. “Do you think they used enough ink?”
He winced inwardly. Maybe he should say something to the team’s lieutenant about the officers’ disrespectful attitudes. Later.
He gestured toward the DVD player. “You got another copy of Fontenot’s disk?”
Her face lightened. “On my desk at work. I had the media lab make me a copy this morning, thinking you—or someone—would come by to get it. Give me two minutes to change clothes.”
Chapter Four
When Reghan came down the stairs, Dev was leaning against the front door, his arms crossed. He looked up in surprise.
“What?” she asked. “I did say two minutes.”
Without comment, he opened the front door and gestured for her to precede him out. After she locked the door, she started toward her car. Dev gave a curt laugh.
She stopped and looked at him. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“I’m going to take a wild guess,” he said wryly. “The Beemer?”
She bristled at his tone. “Something wrong with that?”
“I guess I should have parked farther down the street. My heap’s going to get a complex.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” she said dryly, raising one delicate brow at his ancient green Chevy with its cracking, peeling paint and a long, deep scratch that stretched the entire length of the passenger side. “Your car is obviously just like you. Rugged, independent, macho, and a little scruffy. It obviously couldn’t care less about appearances.”
“Hah. I’ll guarantee you that.”
She angled her head at his broad Cajun drawl, sending him the message that she knew he wasn’t really Cajun, no matter how much he enjoyed affecting the accent and the laissez les bontemps rouler attitude.
A brief shadow crossed his face. “Come on, cher. No need to take two cars. We’ll go in mine.”
She opened her mouth to object, but she didn’t have the strength to keep butting heads with him. It was exhausting, and she needed to start picking her battles. It didn’t matter which car they took to WACT. She was still shaken by the idea that someone had been in her house, looking at things, touching things. She felt violated and frightened. And according to the officers, there were no signs of forced entry, so whoever had broken in and taken the DVD had picked her locks with skill. Which meant it wouldn’t do any good to change them.
By the time she walked over to his car, Dev was standing there, ready to open the passenger door for her. “Allow me.” He yanked open the door with visible effort and a loud screech of metal-on-metal that hurt her ears. He waited like a perfect chauffeur until she got in, then slammed the door shut with another ear-splitting screech.
She winced, and laughed uneasily. When he got in he sent her a quick glance. “Don’t laugh at my girl,” he said, patting the faded dashboard. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”
“I was just thinking that she has a lot of things in common with you. Including an abrasive personality.”
When he started the engine, she was a little surprised to hear it purr like a
sleek race car. But maybe she shouldn’t have been. She’d already begun to think that if she were able to peel away Dev’s tough-as-nails exterior, she might find it hid something surprisingly tender beneath.
As he pulled away from the curb, she reached behind her for the seat belt. She groped for a few seconds, then twisted in her seat to look. “There’s no seat belt. How can you drive without a seat belt? Doesn’t Louisiana have a law?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What am I supposed to do without a seat belt?”
“Guess you better sit tight, cher.” He shot her a grin.
…
Ten minutes later, Dev parked in the WACT studio parking lot and walked around to wrench open the passenger door for Connor. That damn door had been out of kilter ever since he’d smashed the car into a warehouse wall in pursuit of a punk dope dealer. The grinding protest it gave almost drowned out the sound of his cell phone.
He looked at the number display. Givens. A cold, sick certainty settled under his breastbone. “What is it?” he barked as his brain queued up a slideshow of all his kids, and did its best to place the last time he’d seen each one.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Givens said. “I just got a report of a body floating in the Canal up around Chef Menteur Highway.”
“Chef Menteur? Wh—?” His mouth started forming the word before he could stop it. He knew there was only one reason the police out there would call the Eighth District station.
No. Not another of my kids.
“Yeah. Black male, late teens to early twenties. Throat’s slit.” Givens’ voice held the careful detachment that law officers learned to draw upon so that they could do their jobs.
For the past week and a half Dev had been losing that ability. Right now, the slideshow in his head was whirling out of control. There were nine boys who regularly slept at the center, another five or six who hung around for meals or to use the free-access computer Dev had set up, or just to have a place to crash for a few hours. More than half of them were black.
He pushed the grief and rage as far back as he could, which wasn’t very far. He had to stay focused or he was going to fall apart. Swallowing against a swelling lump in his throat, he got the pertinent information and dropped the cell phone back into his pocket. It wasn’t until then that he realized Connor had gotten out of the passenger seat and was searching his face, her eyes filled with a mixture of dread and curiosity.
“Get in,” he said shortly. It was all he could do to keep from smashing a dent into the hood of his car. He had to get out to Chef Menteur as fast as he could. As he rounded the front of the car, the slideshow kept stopping on the same face. Oh, hell no.
“That phone call,” she said, “surely, it wasn’t—?”
He ignored her. He didn’t want to talk—wasn’t sure he could. It had been a long, long time since he’d let himself cry. Hell, Devereux Gautier had never cried. But the stinging behind his eyes belied his attempt at control. Because he was dreadfully, terrifyingly sure he knew who this body was.
“Dev?”
Shut up, Connor. He glanced in the rearview mirror, then over his shoulder, before pulling out onto the street. His face must have given him away.
“Oh Dev. Where?”
“Out Chef Menteur. I’ll take you home first,” he said, starting the engine.
“No. It’s too far,” she returned. “You’d be backtracking. You need to get over there.”
The rage was fighting its way up to the forefront of his brain. “Got an urge to see another crime scene, Connor? I guess you’ll have a front row seat for this one.” He knew he was being mean, but damn it. If the body was Jimmy Treacher’s, his next Safefutures Scholarship recipient, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. Please don’t let it be Jimmy.
He realized Connor was talking. He clenched his jaw and concentrated on what she was saying.
“—promise I won’t compromise your case, Detective,” she said evenly.
He looked at her long and hard. His mouth twisted wryly. “That is a damn guarantee.”
…
At the crime scene, Reghan stood on the sidelines near Dev’s car while he talked with Detective Givens. She didn’t understand a lot about police procedure, but she did know that Givens, a detective in the Eighth District, wouldn’t have been called to a crime scene out on Chef Menteur unless it was pretty definite that the body was connected with one of his cases.
The scene was like watching a rerun of last night’s events. She even thought she saw some of the same people in the crowd. And yet, Chef Menteur was miles away from the Port of New Orleans.
She squinted at a couple of young men hanging back in the shadows. Had she seen them before? Her eyes burned, and her head hurt. She was obviously too tired to see, or to think. Hunching her shoulders and burying her hands in the pockets of her WACT windbreaker, she leaned against Dev’s ancient Chevy and waited.
It was more than an hour before he returned to the car. He was quiet and grim. After wrenching open the passenger door for her and then shutting it after she was inside, he climbed in on the driver’s side. He sat there for a minute, then arched his neck and cleared his throat.
“Who was it? One of the kids from the center?”
He sent her a look designed to quell any more questions. “Can we still get into your office to get that disk?” he asked.
So that was how he was going to play it. He had no reason to answer her. She was only there because he hadn’t wanted to waste the time to take her home. She knew how much he resented her. She’d felt the cutting edge of his contempt often enough. Still, when he’d first gotten into the car and let his head fall back against the headrest, she’d had the urge to reach out to him. It had been an odd feeling, odd and uncomfortable.
What self-sabotaging impulse had motivated her to want to comfort him? If she tried, he’d probably level her with a sarcastic comment or worse, laugh at her.
“Of course,” she answered, looking at her watch. “I can get into the building any time. The night guard knows me. I work late a lot.”
He cranked the car and pulled out onto the street, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his jaw set and his eyes dark as the night.
She was becoming an unwilling expert on Devereux Gautier’s body language. She’d seen the grief in his slumped shoulders as he’d bent down to get a good look at the latest victim’s face. She’d recognized the same anger in his clenched fists that she’d seen the night before, when he’d been examining Darnell.
Dread and regret settled like a heavy weight on her breastbone. Why hadn’t she taken the time to give Stevens the disk? Why hadn’t she taken a few minutes at lunchtime to run the copy of Fontenot’s DVD from her office to the Eighth District building? Now she had another young man’s blood on her hands. “If this body is another one of your kids—”
“I’m done talking with you about this,” he said, his ragged voice dripping with scorn. “I’m sick of seeing you sensationalize people’s tragedies on your show.”
She’d deserved that, she supposed. She accepted the glancing blow, not even resenting him. It was obvious he was so exhausted that he wasn’t editing himself at all. She couldn’t blame him. This was the third of his kids in a week and a half to be found dead—the second in less than twenty-four hours.
So she ignored his insult. “I came to you with the information about Fontenot. Why would I compromise your investigation by revealing confidential information on my show?”
He sent her a sidelong look. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. She heard his thoughts as clearly as if he’d spoken. You had no trouble compromising my life. My job.
She dropped her gaze to her hands. She couldn’t deny the reality of what she’d done to him. She’d attacked him, flayed him in front of the cameras, and she’d done it gleefully, self-righteously. Her exposé had very nearly cost him his job.
Wait a minute. Her brain seized upon that thought. Why hadn’t it? S
he looked up.
“Why didn’t you lose your job?” she asked, then winced. Obviously, Dev wasn’t the only one too tired to watch what he said. “Sorry. Never mind. None of my business.”
She stole a glance at him. An onlooker might have thought he hadn’t reacted to her question, but she saw the infinitesimal hardening of his jaw muscle. The silence was deafening as he drove through the darkened streets toward the WACT building.
“Thibaud had my name changed legally, using my real social security number.”
Her mouth dropped open. He’d actually answered her. She pushed past the shock and replayed what he’d revealed. So the beat cop who’d taken him in all those years ago, Thibaud Johnson, had protected him. He’d made sure Dev didn’t have to live his life under the shadow of an assumed identity. She shifted uncomfortably at the unexpected insight. The fact that she’d missed that detail didn’t paint her journalistic skills in a very flattering light. Or her, either.
He couldn’t possibly resent her any more than he already did. And she did want to know how he’d managed to come out smelling like a hero. In for a penny, in for a pound. “What about the charges that were pending against you in Washington state, for your stepfather’s death?” she asked.
He scorched her with a look. “Come on, Connor. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t follow the case?”
“From here?” She’d kept up with it as best she could—while pretending it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a high-profile case, even locally in Seattle, so the few details she’d collected were sketchy. “I heard your stepfather’s death was ruled self-defense. Plus, weren’t you a juvenile at the time of his death? That must have helped.”
“The pending charges were dropped,” he ground out. “The advantage of having a good lawyer.”
The harsh words bit her like a blistering winter wind. Somehow, she doubted a good lawyer was all there was to it. Her heart squeezed painfully. She didn’t like the uncertainty creeping into her mind about him.
My God. Had she gotten it all terribly wrong?
…
