Natalie's Revenge

by Susan Fleet

  “Sounds good, Frank. See you there.”

  Relieved, he cradled the phone. Maybe Jane would enlighten him about Natalie and her mother's murder. And why her notes weren't in the case file. He glanced at Miller, tapping hunt-and-peck style on his computer keyboard. He wanted to talk to Kelly, but not in front of Miller.

  “I’m heading to Café Beignet for coffee. You want one?”

  “Sure, the usual.” Miller said, deadpan. “Tell Kelly I said hi.”

  He laughed—Miller knew his ploys—and left. The break room had a coffeemaker, but the pot was usually half-full of rotgut coffee. Most Eighth District cops got their coffee at Café Beignet next door. The place opened at seven and served breakfast and lunch. Their coffee was always fresh.

  He went out the main door that faced Royal Street and turned left at the foot of the stairs. Café Beignet had tables inside, but when the weather was clear, as it was today, patrons could sit on a small patio adjacent to the station. Several tourist-types sat at round wrought-iron tables, enjoying chicory-laced coffee and beignets laden with powdered sugar. This end of Royal Street was a popular tourist destination because of all the antique stores.

  A cement bench stood below a large air-conditioner protruding from one window of the station. He checked the bench for pigeon droppings, sat down and hit the speed-dial for Kelly's number.

  She answered right away. “Hey, Frank, how you doing?”

  “Hard to say. Lotta shit going on, some good, some not. How are you?”

  “Better. I get the stitches out tomorrow.”

  “Great. Sorry I couldn’t talk long last night. I had to call my ex-wife about something.” He also needed to decide whether to tell Kelly about Gina.

  “Hmm. Did you talk to her?”

  Still thinking about Gina, he said, “Talk to her?" Had she read his mind?

  "Evelyn. You said you had to call her."

  "Oh. Right. No. She's avoiding me. How’d it go with your dad and your brother?”

  “We had a great time. Dad cooked enough food to last a month and froze it for me. He was sorry he couldn’t meet you. I told him you were in Boston working a case. How’d that go?”

  “I got a lead on the mystery woman. Her name’s Robin Adair. At least that’s the name she was using up there. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. How about dinner tonight? I’m meeting with Jane Fontenot at four, but I can pick up some takeout, be there by six.”

  “Don’t get takeout. I’ve got tons of food in the freezer. Who's Jane Fontenot?”

  “Lead detective on the Brixton murder back in '88. I want to see if it's related to the Peterson case. The shit’s hitting the fan. Now we've got a CIA agent on our back.”

  “Whoa! CIA? Why?”

  “He knew the Boston murder victim. When I went to Morgan’s office for our meeting, he was there. He's pissed that I didn’t tell him about the security video. Morgan threw him out.”

  “Jesus. What happened?”

  He checked his watch. “Tell you all about it later. I'm getting coffee for me and Kenyon. Then I gotta call Demaris."

  “Damn it, Frank, I feel like I’m out of the loop. You better give me a full report tonight."

  “I will,” he said. “I missed you.”

  After a pause, she said, “I missed you too.” But her voice sounded odd. No warmth, no nothing. Just what he needed. More trouble.

  Should he tell her about Gina? Maybe not. Let sleeping dogs lie.

  _____

  But when he called Demaris, the DA wasn't in court, he picked up right away. After a moment of shocked silence, Frank said, "Hi, Roger, how you doing? I got your message." He glanced at Miller, who rolled his eyes.

  "What have you got for me on the Peterson case?" Demaris said.

  "Got a tip on the woman in the sketch. A clerk at the Sunshine Inn said he was sure she stayed there"

  "I know. Vobitch told me they found her car in Atlanta, but the ID on the registration was bogus. What about the murder in Boston? Is it connected to ours?"

  He sipped his coffee, which aggravated the acid burning in his stomach. Demaris knew he'd been to Boston. What else did he know? "I'm not sure. I've got a name for the suspect, but they don't know where she is."

  "Which means you've got nothing. Listen up, Renzi. If you don't have a suspect in custody by next Wednesday, I'm pulling you and Vobitch off the case. We got two murders possibly related to a murder in Boston. Interstate connection like that? I'll put the State cops on it, let them solve the case."

  A click sounded in his ear, then a dial tone.

  He slammed the phone in the cradle. "Fuck."

  "Roger got a porcupine up his ass?" Miller said.

  "Worse. He just gave me a week to solve the case. If we don't deliver a suspect by next Wednesday, he'll turn the case over to the State cops." He pushed back from his desk. "I'm going for a walk."

  Miller took a look at his face and knew enough to remain silent.

  To relieve his frustration he did a fast power-walk down to the river. Ignoring the tourists, he mounted the steps to the Moonwalk and stared down at the churning water of the muddy Mississippi.

  Churning and muddy, just like his thoughts. Three weeks ago he had two murders to solve. Now he had another one in Boston, one that appeared to be connected to the New Orleans cases. He also had an ultimatum: Capture the killer or Demaris would yank him off the case.

  He conjured an image of Natalie Brixton's yearbook photo.

  Was she the killer?

  He added up what he knew about her. Jeannette Brixton had been murdered in New Orleans in 1988. Another unsolved case. Ten-year-old Natalie moved to Pecos, Texas, to live with her uncle, Jerome Brixton. In the autopsy photos Jeanette Brixton's eyes didn't look Asian, but Natalie's did. Natalie's last name was Brixton. Maybe Jeanette never married the father. Or maybe she got a divorce and took back her maiden name. But Natalie had a father somewhere. So who was he? And where was he?

  He stared into the fast-flowing waters of the Mississippi.

  No answers there.

  Natalie had lived in Pecos until she was eighteen, eight years dealing with a dysfunctional family. An alcoholic mother, a father who was having an affair, and their two children, Randy and Ellen. Randy had died under suspicious circumstances. The only person who saw it happen was Natalie. According to Gabe Rojas, Randy had sexually assaulted his sister. Ellen, now a single mother with a young son, seemed unmoved by the death of her brother and his best friend, Tex Conroy. Good riddance to both of them. Hank, the man Natalie worked with at Longhorn Jacks, had said: If you talk to her, tell her Hank says hello.

  Did Natalie kill Tex Conroy? Was she the woman who'd stayed at the Sunshine Inn near Conroy's apartment? The woman with an ankle tat, like the woman in the security video leaving Arnold Peterson's room?

  If so, it led to only one conclusion. Natalie had killed both of them.

  He gazed at the mighty Mississippi. A three-block-long tanker was plowing upriver with millions of gallons of crude oil in the storage tanks. Large white letters painted on the top deck said: NO SMOKING.

  Why didn't he want to believe Natalie was the killer? Or the woman on the video? Kelly had jived him, saying he missed the tat on her ankle because he was busy admiring her other endowments. Still, over the years he'd collared plenty of good-looking women, hauled them in on dope or burglary charges.

  But never for murder. He pictured the woman on the video. Sexy? Yes. Good-looking? Who knows, her face was hidden. But confident? Definitely, striding along like she knew exactly what she was doing.

  He thought about Kelly's comment when he showed her the yearbook picture. The girl had a tough life. But you'd never know it from the picture, smiling, looks right at the camera. In the Drama Club photos Natalie had long legs like the woman in the video. And her motto? Freedom and justice for all.

  None of this proved Natalie was a killer, but if Natalie was the woman at the Sunshine Inn, it seemed likely that she was Robin
Adair, who'd flown from Atlanta to Boston the day after Tex Conroy was murdered.

  Why didn't he want to believe it? Natalie would be thirty now, five years older than his daughter. Did she remind him of Maureen? Not really. Then he remembered Maureen's anxious expression when she told him about Evelyn not paying the tax bill, her look of relief when he'd said: You shouldn't have to handle this. I'll take care of it.

  Maybe that was it. After her mother was murdered, ten-year-old Natalie was on her own, no one to care for her, no one to fix her problems.

  He looked at the tanker with the huge warning sign: NO SMOKING.

  Ever since he got back from Texas, he had ignored the warning signs. Natalie didn't rely on others to solve her problems. She did it herself. Natalie wasn't ten anymore, she was a grown woman. He might not want to believe it, but all the evidence indicated that Natalie was a killer.

  He turned away from the Mississippi and headed back to the office. He hoped Jane Fontenot would give him the clue he needed, because he had no idea where Natalie was.

  And he was certain she wasn't done killing.

  CHAPTER 24

  When Frank walked into the Rue de la Course at four o'clock, students hunched over laptops occupied most of the tables. He figured the woman seated at a corner table in the back was Jane Fontenot.

  He bought an iced coffee and approached her. "Jane?" he said.

  Her brown eyes crinkled in a smile. "Good detective work. Have a seat, Frank."

  She might be in her sixties but she was still a good-looking woman, short attractively-styled chestnut-brown hair, a firm jaw, no lines on her tanned skin. Unlike Corrine Peterson, who was 20 years younger, Jane appeared trim and fit, exuding an unmistakable air of femininity. No wedding band. He wondered if she'd gone on the African safari alone. Somehow, he doubted it.

  “What are you doing in New Orleans, Frank? Boston’s a great town.”

  “Except for the ice and the snow and freezing your butt off on stakeouts." His usual response. The real reasons were more complicated.

  “You’re interested in the Brixton murder.”

  “Yes. Morgan Vobitch said you’re a great detective, so I figured you’d have a handle on it.”

  She didn't respond to the compliment, just sipped her latte. Finally, she said, “Sad case. Her kid was only ten, and I had to deliver the bad news.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Okay, on the surface at least. No tears, no hysterics. She seemed unusually mature for a ten-year-old. The mother left her alone while she was working. Hooking, from what I could gather. We found her in a room at the Royal Arms, a scuzzy hotel on Royal Street. Not pretty. The killer roughed her up, slugged her with something and strangled her.”

  “I saw the photos in the case file. Nothing from forensics?”

  “No semen, no prints that did us any good. You know how it is with hotel rooms, a zillion people have been there. They got a partial off her neck, but not enough for a match. The coroner thought the killer hit her with a flat-iron, the kind they keep in hotel rooms, you know? But we didn’t find one. We got fibers off the body, but that got us nowhere too. Jeannette Brixton paid for the room. For what it's worth, her toxicology report was negative for drugs and alcohol."

  “Any suspects?” He tried the iced coffee. It was okay, but not as good as Dunkin Donut's coffee.

  “We compiled a list of men known to frequent that particular hotel with women they paid for sex. I had a gut feeling about one guy, but his wife swore he was with her the whole night.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Not really. When I talked to her the day after the murder, she had a bruise on her cheek. When I asked about it, she gave me the usual bullshit, said she fell and hit it on something.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Frank, I may be retired, but I don’t need trouble.”

  “Powerful guy?”

  “Very. With powerful friends."

  "Maybe that explains it. I assume you wrote up your notes and put them in the case file. But when I checked out the file, they weren't there."

  "My notes are missing? Jesus! I put them in the file." She sipped her latte. "What’s your interest in the case?”

  “I’m looking for information on the daughter. Natalie Brixton.”

  “You know, ten years ago I got a phone call from a woman asking about the case.”

  “Do you remember what she said?”

  “Frank, I remember everything about this case. I wanted to solve this one in the worst way and struck out. You work homicides. You know how it is. Some cases grab you by the throat and won’t let go.”

  He sure did. A few of them still haunted his dreams. "What did she say?"

  “She asked if we were still working the case and did we have any leads.”

  “Did she give you her name?”

  “Mary Brown, Mary Smith, some bullshit name. She said she was calling on behalf of Natalie Brixton. She said Natalie couldn’t call because she was in Australia and it would cost too much.”

  “You think Natalie was in Australia?”

  “I think it was Natalie on the phone. Why are you so interested in her?”

  “Keep this under your hat. It may be related to the Peterson murder.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You think Natalie killed Arnold Peterson?”

  “Maybe. We linked the Peterson murder to the murder of Tex Conroy. You've been out of the country so you might not know about that one. They found Conroy in City Park. One gunshot to the head in both cases, ballistics report said the .38 caliber slugs came from the same gun. Conroy’s from Texas, so I went there to talk to his mother. Tex went to school with Natalie.”

  “I knew she went there to live with her uncle, but what’s Tex Conroy got to do with Peterson?”

  “I wish I knew. His mother put me onto Natalie. Tex and Natalie's cousin Randy were co-captains of the high school football team. Randy fell off a cliff and died. Natalie was the only person with him. Mrs. Conroy said Tex and his friends figured Natalie pushed him.”

  “Why? What possible motive would she have?”

  “Good question. I’m coming to that. At the time Natalie was 18, had just graduated from high school. When the police questioned her, she said Randy was drunk. His mother and sister confirmed this. Natalie said he got too close to the edge, slipped and fell. So they let her go.”

  “So? What’s your point? That doesn’t mean she pushed him.”

  “No, but when I talked to Randy’s sister, Ellen, she seemed indifferent about her brother’s death. Same reaction when I told her about Tex Conroy. She said, and I quote, Good riddance to both of them. Then I talked to Natalie’s friend, a guy by the name of Gabriel Rojas. Rojas told me Randy had been forcing his sister to give him blowjobs.”

  “Yuk. How did Rojas know that?”

  “Ellen told Natalie and Natalie told him.” He pulled the yearbook out of his briefcase and showed Natalie’s photo to Jane. “Check out the motto. Freedom and justice for all.”

  Jane studied the picture. “She turned out to be a beautiful girl.”

  “Yes she did. I think she also turned out to be a killer.”

  Jane sipped her latte, her expression thoughtful. A screech shattered the silence, emitted from a machine a clerk was using to make a specialty drink for a woman at the counter. After the racket stopped, he said, "Natalie got a Social Security number when she started working as a teenager, but the last tax return filed under that number was in 1995. After that, nothing."

  "So you don't know where she went."

  "Or where she is now. I think Rojas stayed in touch with her, but he's not talking. Now we got a murder in Boston that might be related to the cases down here." He gave her the details on the Boston case.

  When he finished she said, “And the Boston vic was CIA?”

  “Used to be, according to the CIA-spook I met in Boston. I think Natalie picked up several fake IDs after she left Pecos. June Carson stayed at the Sunshi
ne Inn in New Orleans when Peterson and Conroy were murdered. Now we've got Robin Adair, who most likely killed former CIA-spook Oliver James. Boston PD got her prints off a car in the parking garage and matched them to the ones they got from her apartment in Nashua, New Hampshire.”

  “And?”

  “Boston PD ran them through IAFIS and got zip.” A computerized database, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System contained fingerprints and the criminal histories associated with them. Law enforcement agencies could access mug shots of the criminals, height, weight, hair and eye color, and aliases. It also included photos of scars and tattoos. If they got a match.

  “So she’s got no criminal record," Jane said, "and she never served in the military. IAFIS has prints of all U.S. military personnel and federal employees, including CIA agents. She might have killed Conroy because he recognized her, but why kill Peterson? Or Oliver James? Even if his CIA buddy found out she was using a fake ID and James called her on it, why kill him?”

  “I don't know. I'm hoping you can help me out.”

  Jane gazed at him, expressionless. “Help you out how?”

  “I think the Peterson murder is related to your murder case. Natalie’s mother, Jeannette Brixton.”

  “That was twenty years ago. The trail is dead. Case closed.”

  “Not to Natalie. Not if she called you ten years ago to see if you were still working on it. And the case isn't closed. It's an unsolved murder.”

  “It might have been Natalie that called, but I’m not sure.”

  He took a deep breath. She was falling into the same trap he had, remembering the ten-year-old girl, devastated when she found out her mother was murdered. “Jane. It was Natalie. She wanted to know who murdered her mother. Did you give her a name?"

  "Of course not! I wouldn't give a name to a voice on the phone."

  "Okay. But you said you had a prime suspect and the guy had an alibi."

  Jane said nothing, avoiding his gaze.

  "Who’s the guy?”

  Her lips tightened. “A rich and powerful man. Not to be crossed.”