by Greg Herren
My jaw literally dropped. “What?” I didn’t add have you lost your mind?
But I was thinking it.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Frank’s voice was low and controlled, “and not like him, but we also have to accept that what’s been happening to him over the last few days isn’t normal, either. We have no idea what’s going on in his head right now, Scotty.”
“Taylor would never run away! He’d never worry us like this!” I insisted. “That’s not how he handles things.” One of the things I loved the most about Taylor was his inability to dodge problems. He always ran right at them.
He’d known how his parents would react when he came out to them but did it anyway. It was more important to him to live his life openly and honestly, even if it meant losing his relationship with his parents and the rest of his family.
That was a kind of courage I didn’t know if I had.
“But he’s never been almost raped before,” Frank replied. “We don’t know how…” His voice trailed off. “Or suspected of being a murderer.” He gave me a weak grin. “I know, I know, but we have to consider every option, honey.”
“So, we have to—” I took a deep breath. “Do we also have to consider the possibility that he may have killed Eric, too? He wouldn’t, Frank, you know it as well as I do.”
“Well, he was drugged, wasn’t he?” Frank replied, scratching his head. “Maybe he just doesn’t remember doing it. Maybe it was self-defense.”
“Where did he get a baseball bat from?” I took another deep breath and counted to ten in my head.
Frank did have a point. Thinking logically and rationally was smarter than reacting emotionally.
Logic could also help me get a grip on myself and get my emotions under control.
“The bat might have already been there,” Frank went on, leaning back in the computer chair and folding his arms. “Maybe Eric got one of Billy’s bats from someone. Maybe even Billy. Or Rebecca.”
“But the bat is gone.” I walked over and put my arms around his shoulders and neck. His warmth felt good in my arms, like always. There’s something about feeling the heartbeat of someone you love that’s calming. “He might have killed Eric while under the influence and not remember, but would he have thought to get rid of the bat? No, the killer took the murder weapon with him—and that means Taylor’s not the killer.”
“Remember the crime scene.” Frank leaned his head against my right bicep. “You saw it. What do you remember?”
I laughed. “I don’t remember much, to tell you the truth. I was so worried about Taylor…oh my God, I can do better than remember.” I walked back into the living room and grabbed my cell phone from the table. “I took pictures.” I found the connector cable and plugged my phone into the desktop. The photo program opened immediately, and I moved the mouse to click on download photos now and also the box delete after download.
Several hundred pictures started popping up in the program window. It had been a while since I’d downloaded and deleted pictures, obviously.
Once the download was finished, Frank scrolled through until we reached the appropriate ones. “This was a smart thing to do—I don’t know that I’d have thought so clearly under the circumstances,” he said as he started scrolling through the crime scene photos.
“I figured it might come in handy in case I needed to prove I didn’t tamper with the scene,” I replied. You stumble over dead bodies as I often as I do, you learn—even when you’re in shock and aren’t exactly sure what you’re doing.
“So, the body was in the bedroom?”
“Yes.” I felt a little queasy and looked away.
“So, it’s unlikely he let his killer in, isn’t it?” Frank stared at a photo of the body. “If someone knocked and Eric let him or her in, wouldn’t they have killed him in the living room? Why would Eric lead them back into the bedroom?”
“Unless the person was someone…someone he wanted to…” I couldn’t say it.
It was bad enough he’d drugged Taylor and intended to rape him, but to have someone else join in on the fun?
I felt nauseated.
Frank wrote some notes on the legal pad on the desktop and closed the photo program. “We need to see who, if anyone, Eric was involved with—and if he was involved with anyone locally.”
“Remy Valence, for one.” I disconnected my phone and slipped it back in my pants pocket. “Maybe someone they met that night?” But no, the guys at the Brass Rail didn’t mention anyone else being with Eric and Taylor.
Brandon. Brandon was with them.
I pulled my phone out and retrieved the card he’d given me from my trench coat pocket. I dialed the number, which went straight to voice mail. I left a quick message—hey Brandon, this is Scotty, we met at the party Friday and you gave me your number? Give me a call.
If he thought I was calling for a date, so be it. Whatever it took to get him to call back.
And of course, there were the key cards. I still had mine. Anyone who’d been at the party and had gotten one could have accessed Eric’s room without him knowing.
Billy Barron hadn’t been at the party, so that ruled him out.
Maybe.
I walked back into the living room.
“We still can’t rule out that he might have run away,” Frank said again. “I called Mom and Dad—he’s not there, but they’ll call if he turns up. What about other friends?”
I tried to remember. “I’ve never met any of his friends.”
“Maybe go through his phone?”
“I don’t know his passwords.” I shook my head. “But, Frank—he would have taken his wallet and his phone. How far could he get without either?”
“How far could he get with his phone on him?” Frank reminded me. “You just tried to find him by tracking his phone. He’s not stupid. He knows his phone can be tracked and his credit card usage checked. If Taylor really did kill Eric—”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” I sighed.
I sat down on the couch, reached under the table for the cigar box of my tarot cards, and started shuffling.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if my “gift” isn’t necessarily some kind of psychic connection to the Goddess and to another plane, but rather how my mind manifests my own psychic ability when I am able to focus it; like my conscious mind can’t handle the level of concentration I can achieve, so instead my mind reads the cards or, in some instances, takes me into another plane where I can commune with the Goddess. I try not to question this gift of mine too much—you never question a gift of any kind—and there was a very long fallow period in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the flood that followed. I was angry because I’d had no warning, no foreshadowing of what was to come for my hometown, my family, and my friends.
And just like that, it was gone, gone like I’d never had the damned thing in the first place. I could shuffle the cards and pray and light candles, spread the well-worn deck out in any number of different layouts—Tree of Life, the Sorcerer’s Sign, the ones I usually did, and others that I found on the internet—and the cards just looked back at me, unblinking, with no meaning, no answers, no nothing. They were just pictures on stiff, glossy paper with no more meaning than a regular deck of cards.
And I didn’t mind. I really didn’t. What was the point of being a little bit psychic when you didn’t get a warning about a looming major natural disaster?
But it started coming back slowly, and while it’s not as strong as it used to be—the last year, after I met Frank and Colin and before Katrina, was when it was the most powerful it ever had been—it’s still there.
It’s also still as maddeningly obtuse as it ever was.
But shuffling the cards and focusing on them was keeping me from worrying about Taylor.
“I don’t want to even think about it.” Frank sat down next to me on the sofa, putting a shaking hand on my leg. “But we have to consider it.”
“Yes, I get it, but I don’t believe for one m
inute he’d ever do anything on purpose to make us worry—that’s just not Taylor.” The well-worn cards moved through my hands as I cut and shuffled and moved them around. “This is the kid who texts us and lets us know he’s running late when it’s only ten minutes, so we won’t worry.” I started spreading the cards out on the coffee table. I closed my eyes and focused my energy on the cards, sending a quiet prayer to the Goddess up from my mind, as I thought about Taylor, prayed for his safety, prayed for some insight into where he was and what he might be going through.
I opened my eyes. Reading the cards might not count as evidence, but whatever they said was good enough for me.
I started flipping over the cards as Frank stroked the inside of my thigh. When I was finished, I leaned back and glanced over the cards in order.
A brave young man with no fear.
Heading into danger, he must beware.
He cannot do it alone, he needs help.
A strong woman who cannot be trusted.
Someone will tell lies that will obstruct the seeker’s journey.
Wisdom and the answers will come from within.
“Well?” Frank breathed after a moment.
“Not great, but not bad,” I replied. “He wouldn’t run away, Frank.”
“I don’t think so, either.” He brushed his lips against my cheek as he stood up. “I’m just going to go for a little walk around, see if maybe he’s at the coffee shop or somewhere around, he might have just, you know, gone for a little walk to maybe clear his mind a bit. He’s dealing with a lot.”
Yeah, thanks for that brilliant insight, I thought but was smart enough to not say aloud. Once I heard the front door shut behind him, I went back over to the desk and opened the address book on the computer. I picked up my cell phone and dialed the private number we had for Angela Blackledge…the number we were only supposed to call for emergencies.
But Taylor being missing certainly counted as an emergency. And I knew Colin would agree with me.
The phone rang three times and then the voice mail message began. It was simple; a woman with a British accent saying You have reached the party at 058-932-98764. If this is not the number you intended to reach, hang up now. If you wish to leave a message, do so at the tone.
“Angela, this is Scotty Bradley in New Orleans.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know when the last time you spoke to Colin was, but I know you must know about what happened here on Friday night. Well, our nephew Taylor is missing right now. It may have nothing to do with your business, or Colin’s business, but after the other night I can’t help but wonder. A tracking device was found in my car; I was in an accident the other day that the police now think was deliberate, possibly attempted murder. And now Taylor is gone. The tracking device was apparently Russian technology. And apparently the police have found a body they’ve tentatively identified as Russian. I don’t know anything about your business, or what’s going on, but none of this can be coincidental and I am very worried about my nephew. Any insight you might have and would be willing to share would be gratefully appreciated. And if you can get a message to Colin, that would be terrific. I’m sure he’d want to know Taylor is missing.”
I disconnected the call.
She rarely, if ever, called back. But I felt better having left the message.
Somehow, she’d let Colin know something may have happened to Taylor.
I rolled another joint and had just taken a hit when my phone rang. The screen read Paige Tourneur. “Hello?” I said, exhaling an enormous cloud of smoke at the same time.
“Hey, Scotty, what’s up?” She sounded a bit stoned herself, which wasn’t out of character. “I just got some interesting intel from a source in the police department. About Eric and Chloe. I thought you might like to know.”
“At this point anything is good to know.” I lay back down on the sofa, taking another hit. What if Frank was right? What if Taylor just decided he couldn’t deal with any of this and ran away? He was drugged and almost raped, suspect in the murder of his would-be rapist. I didn’t know enough about whatever drug had been used on him to know whether he could have killed Eric and forgotten he’d done it because of the drug.
Fuck, this sucked.
“Well, both were killed with what the coroner believes to have been an aluminum baseball bat…but not the same bat.” She exhaled. “The bat used on Eric left flecks of blue aluminum in his scalp; the one used on Chloe, red. So definitely not the same bat. Both were hit only once and on the right side of the back of their heads. So, the killer was right-handed, most likely, or bats from the right side.” She laughed. “It doesn’t mean the same person didn’t kill them both, of course, but…you know Billy Barron was a big baseball star at LSU?”
“Does the coroner think the killer had collegiate level batting experience?” My tone was a lot more sarcastic than I’d intended, but she laughed.
“They were hit hard, but Eric was hit harder, if that makes any sense. The amount of force used on Chloe wasn’t as extreme. So, either the killer didn’t hate Chloe as much as he hated Eric, or there were two killers and Chloe’s killer was weaker, physically, than Eric’s. How’s Taylor holding up?”
I bit my lower lip. Paige was a friend, but she was also a journalist. “As well as can be expected,” I replied, which technically wasn’t a lie. She hadn’t asked me where he was, after all. “Better than I would have at his age.”
“Well, there’s something coming down the wire,” she went on. She interrupted herself with a coughing fit—she must have been smoking weed—and excused herself after gulping some water down. “Diva TV is postponing the premiere of the show indefinitely—the press release is all platitudes, really, wishing everyone the best in this difficult time, blah blah blah—but what I am actually hearing is a lot of…well, you’re the detective. You tell me what you think.”
“Okay.” Paige had sources everywhere, it was kind of creepy. She’d gotten sources everywhere during all those years reporting on the Times-Picayune’s crime beat before leaving to run Crescent City magazine. I felt a little bad for not trusting her—she’d done me any number of favors since we’d met, and she could have easily already broadcast Taylor’s name everywhere as the “young man” in the Eric Brewer murder. I thanked her again for that.
“It’s coming out either today or tomorrow.” She brushed aside my thanks. “Someone at the Advocate has his name, and editorial is holding it back for now…but my guess it’s going to be in tomorrow’s paper, which means it’s going to be everywhere. I don’t have to tell you to let him know to keep his head down and not to talk to anyone?”
“No, but thanks.”
“Anyway, someone’s coming forward. There’s going to be a big shake-up at Diva,” she went on like I hadn’t said anything. “There have been a lot of blind items and talk on some of the gossip sites…someone is coming forward to say that Eric drugged him and had sex with him while he wasn’t conscious. Which is excellent news—it establishes a pattern of behavior with him, and of course, once one comes forward, they’ll start coming out of the woodwork.”
“Any idea of who it might be?”
“The gossip sites—at least the commenters—all seem to think it’s going to be Rob Ricker.”
“Seriously?”
Rob Ricker’s mother Catriona had been a member of the cast of the Malibu show. Primarily known as a starlet with a penchant for marrying well, she’d joined the cast in the middle of a bitter and nasty divorce from her fourth husband, a music mogul. Rob was one of her two sons from her second marriage—her only children. Catriona was as shallow and narcissistic as the rest of her fellow Dames, but there was a sly, knowing self-awareness about her that audiences responded to, and she quickly became one of the most popular cast members from any franchise, landing talk show appearances and magazine covers and a book deal. Her sons, in their late teens when she joined Season 3, were gorgeous—their father Nathan a successful football star who’d made the transition to bro
adcasting. The combination of Nathan and Catriona’s stunning good looks had combined to produce gorgeous sons. The problem was they were spoiled princes of Malibu, who didn’t have any ambition other than to work out, tan, party, and get laid. Catriona was pushing them into modeling, but without much success. During Season 5 something went seriously wrong with Rob—he started drinking too much, doing drugs, disappearing for days at a time. Catriona’s decision to use Rob’s issues—whatever they were—as her storyline for Season 5 was a fatal miscalculation, and the audience turned on her. She wasn’t asked to return for Season 6.
The good news was Rob got his act together, came out of the closet, and enrolled at USC—and his younger brother David had also cleaned up his own act.
“The story I’ve heard is that Rob was one of Eric’s victims,” Paige was saying. “That’s why he went off the deep end on the show, and Catriona didn’t know anything about it…and it was all a little too close for comfort for Eric, so he made sure she got a bad edit and lost her audience, then fired her at the end of the season.”
“Wow.”
“She’s apparently planning to file a suit against the show and the network, because they knew and covered it all up to protect Eric.”
“Rob isn’t in town, by any chance?”
“The funny thing is…he actually is.” Paige practically purred the words into the phone. “Didn’t you see him at the premiere party on Friday night? I talked to him briefly—he was just drinking sparkling water, by the way—but he wasn’t at Eric’s after-party later. I’m trying to track him down even as we speak.”
“But if his mother is about to file suit, there’s no reason for him to want to kill Eric,” I replied. “In fact, he had every reason to want Eric to stay alive.”
“I’ll let you know if I find him. I should have gotten his phone number.” As she often said, it was easy for her to get people’s numbers. She could always claim to need their help with an article for the magazine, or to even profile them.
