He’d been warned. Nick now had more than one person who might want to harm him.
****
Nick couldn’t stand being cooped up in the hospital. When was the confounded doctor going to release him? The nurses kept telling him the doc would make his decision after he made his rounds later that day. Was the doc ever going to make an appearance?
He tried to rotate his shoulder, but the effort sent sharp stabs of pain down his arm. Stupid. There was a reason they had his arm in a sling. The bandages over the wound were so tight he might lose feeling in the arm. He hated, absolutely hated having his movements restricted.
His Maw Maw would have told him to settle down and act like a big boy. He’d always been a very poor patient. So she had said. Wouldn’t she have been hovering over him, clucking her tongue, and asking him how he had managed to get himself shot? As if he’d get shot on purpose.
He missed her.
It would have been nice if Jeri had hung around, at least until he’d been discharged from the hospital, but he understood why she felt compelled to go back to Tennessee as quickly as possible. He’d seen the panic and urgency in her bright, blue-green eyes. There had been a silent understanding passed between them. He would do what he had to do, and she would do what she had to do.
Nick admired her for her determination while at the same time being totally dismayed that she would jump into the unknown without a clue as to what she was getting herself into. He understood her desire to stop Jackson Deville from killing again. She’d been careful not to name him in their conversation, calling him Alison’s killer, but they both knew whom she was referring to.
His heart palpitated. The thought of something bad happening to her sent a wave of fear and dread rushing through him. Had he come to care about her that much? Yeah, he had.
The logic seemed backward. Because she’d claimed her vision hadn’t yet come true, he had come closer to believing it was real. Sure, she could have claimed that the shooting was a fulfillment of her earlier vision, but she hadn’t. She could have tried to convince him her gift was real by lying. But instead, she’d told him the truth. It wasn’t the same incident, which meant she’d seen him shot a second time. His entire body cringed at the possibility of going through the intense pain again.
A surge of longing shot through him. He’d give anything to see her again before she left for Tennessee. He closed his eyes and recalled the memory of her face. In Tennessee, he’d seen her face without the dark makeup. The woman was beautiful in a non-conventional way. Her face wasn’t symmetrical, and her nose was slightly crooked. Her mouth was a little on the small side. He couldn’t get her face out of his mind, or how she had looked when she stood over his bed with the concern on her face. Concern for him.
He was in the middle of his daydreaming about Jeri when Petrie marched into his room without knocking first.
“We’ve got him.”
Nick blinked, trying to reset his thinking back to business.
Petrie held out his cell phone toward Nick’s face and punched play. The scene opened with a man glancing over his shoulder before he enters the alley between the building on Dauphine where Alison Ardoin died and the building next door to it. Sheldon Deville had been beaten and probably left for dead behind the very same building.
Petrie advanced the frames forward about fifteen minutes. The same man emerges from the same alley, swiping blood off his face. Drops and smears of blood decorate his light-colored shirt and his khaki pants. He turns his face briefly toward the camera and leaves the viewer no doubt that he is Jackson Deville. Another fast forward, and Jeri shows up in the video about thirty or so minutes later. She stops on the sidewalk and stares up at the building, tilting her head back as if she’s looking toward the top of the building. Shortly afterward, Jackson Deville makes another appearance, moving across the screen toward Jeri. Within minutes, Sheldon Deville tumbles out of the alley. The footage was time and date stamped the day Sheldon died.
Nick fell back against his hard, hospital grade pillow. “Wow!”
Seldom did they ever find footage that was that clearly incriminating. Deville hadn’t been careful.
Petrie bounced on his toes; he seemed so excited at his find. “I know you asked me to look at footage from Riverview West. I didn’t see any sign of him there, but it made me think about CCTV cameras on Dauphine and what businesses might have them. We got lucky.”
Nick rubbed his hands over his face. It was such a good moment. They finally had something to link the younger Deville to the older Deville’s murder.
“How far back can we get footage? Can we see who might have gone into the building on the day Ardoin died?”
Petrie grinned. “Troy’s going through the tapes now.”
Nick nodded. “Good job.”
His partner puffed up, his chest sticking out.
“Okay, now we have to find him.”
Petrie’s phone vibrated in his hand. He held it to his ear for a short conversation.
“That was Troy. We’ve located Heather Mancuso’s car. Long-term parking at the airport.”
Well, now, that didn’t make sense. “The airport? Her car? Not a rental? Why would she park her car at the airport and head into town some other way?”
Petrie shrugged. “The crime scene tech is going over it now.” He slipped his phone into his pants pocket. “And the phone company is sending me her text history. We searched her email, but there was nothing there to help us.” Petrie smirked. “The woman was a bit…strange.”
Everybody was a bit strange.
Mancuso’s case was getting stranger by the minute. So, she’d driven to New Orleans, left her car in long-term parking, arrived in the Quarter by some other means of transportation, and ended up dead on the floor of Johnny J’s bar. And they still hadn’t been able to connect the dead woman in Jeri’s vision to Jackson Deville. But there had to be a connection. Nick could feel it was there.
****
Jeri hadn’t managed to book a flight out of New Orleans until the following morning, so she had one more night before she left town. Unease fluttered around her and through her. The building on Dauphine had drawn her back again.
She’d brought a crowbar with her. The lock on the closet door busted with ease. It would take a lot of effort for Jackson Deville to trap her in the room again. She sat with her back to the far wall. A lantern lighted the small, cramped space. In front of her, she’d placed the two chalices and the carved silver bowl. The pieces had meaning. She was sure of it.
Was it her imagination? Did the wood beneath her begin to vibrate when she placed the silver on the floor? As she had climbed the fire escape and wiggled through the broken window, it had seemed to Jeri that her backpack had been alive with the presence of the silver and crystal, pulsating and messaging her back right between the shoulder blades.
How had Sheldon used the bowl? Why had he given the first chalice to her when she was so young? Should she keep the three pieces apart? How did the tube he’d filled with Alison’s blood fit in with the rest? Sheldon had been fixated on blood. Why?
She closed her eyes and leaned her head on the wall. She had contemplated what she intended to do all the way from Nick’s hospital room to the apartment he’d rented for her to the building on Dauphine. Her mind demanded that she stop before she did something stupid. Her heart and soul pushed her forward.
With a heavy intake of breath, she opened her eyes and pulled the scoring tool from her backpack. She’d already wiped it down with alcohol before she left the apartment, just in case she got brave enough to follow through with her plan.
She pinched her eyes closed and pulled the sharp blade across the middle finger of her left hand. The cut stung, and she gritted her teeth to keep going with her experiment. One drop of her blood fell into the bowl. Nothing happened. No earth-shaking event transpired. No soul-changing revelation rushed her psyche. Her cheeks flushed, either from the temperature in the room or from the excitement of her end
eavor.
The second drop slipped off her finger and splatted into the bottom of the first chalice. Still nothing. She squeezed her finger to force the third drop into the second chalice. That’s when her eyes opened, and her psyche flooded with feelings so intense she doubled over from the weight of them.
Every other thought cleared from her mind. All she knew, all she saw, all she felt was the vision that filled the landscape of her mind. The rest of the world didn’t exist any longer. Jeri existed alone with the truth, a truth so astounding that she could hardly catch her next breath.
No doubt, she was seeing the world through Jackson’s eyes. In real time. In that moment. What the man was doing right then. She saw a wall filled with pictures. Dozens of pictures. All of them of Jeri with other women. Her heart sank when her mind’s eye fixated on a picture of Jeri with Alison Ardoin. Jeri didn’t even remember meeting the woman. There was a picture of her standing next to the woman who had died in the bar. Had he intended the woman to be his next victim and things had gone wrong when the woman had fallen and hit her head in the bar?
Never had one of the visions lasted so long or given Jeri so much insight. Never had she felt or discerned so much about his intent. His kills were all about her. All of the photos he’d taken of her were from places around New Orleans that she recognized, places she had frequented, places she had loved to go.
Darkness filled her and threatened to drag her down to a low, low place. She felt its insistent, persistent drag pulling on her heart and soul and mind. Mental resistance was all she had to fight its tenacious grip on her. Was she strong enough to fight the darkness she felt rising up from inside her? Where had it come from? Had it always been there, dormant and waiting to be freed?
What had Sheldon Deville done to her? He should have left her alone. Anger rushed through her and turned the darkness to bright red, the color of fresh blood.
She pushed up until she was standing on her feet and stumbled forward out of the closet. There was now no doubt in her mind. She had to leave New Orleans. If he hadn’t already taken the pictures, if she could prevent him from snapping the images, maybe she could save someone, maybe more than one someone.
It was her presence in New Orleans that was dangerous to Jackson Deville’s victims.
Part II – The Knowing
Chapter Twenty-one
August 2014
While he was desk-bound, his captain hadn’t been able to keep Nick from digging deeper into the Wakefield mess. That business had come to an ugly conclusion. Nick hadn’t arrested the fake Les Wakefield because the imposter, the one that had shot him outside Dylan Hunter’s condo, had hung himself from the balcony of Wakefield Manor.
His death should have closed the case, but it hadn’t. Now there was a new man claiming to be Les Wakefield, and both he and Charlotte Soileau had their doubts about his authenticity. What the hell was going on in St. Denis Parish, and why did men named Wakefield have to drag their nasty mess into Nick’s jurisdiction? As long as one of them lived in New Orleans, Charlotte would be calling him to investigate their background and movements.
The Wakefield situation had the aura of paranormal shadowing it, just as the Ardoin murder case did, only in a different way. Did Nick attract investigations that had a paranormal element? Why had he become the chosen one? He could easily live the rest of his life without having to deal with anything else that even remotely appeared paranormal.
But then there was Jerilyn. He’d willingly deal with her and her gift, if she would come back to New Orleans. The longer she’d been gone, the more he had missed her. The woman had gotten under his skin in the few days he had known her. Jeri had a way of making him see himself for what he was. That wasn’t always pleasant or comfortable. He couldn’t deny the connection they’d made in such a short time. Nick wanted to understand her, and he wanted her to understand him, and he wanted them to make their mutual understanding of each other mesh somehow.
She hadn’t tried to contact him, and he hadn’t tried to call her. He’d dared to call Lance Bowman…once. Lance had told him that Jeri was fine. The man had refused to give Nick any more information. He’d been hostile, asking Nick if he hadn’t done enough to upset her. Nick couldn’t figure what Lance thought he’d done to upset Jeri. Hell, if anything, Jeri had turned Nick’s world upside down.
The last few weeks had been rough. Nick’s recuperation had taken longer than expected because he’d developed an infection. Ed had kept him riding his desk until he’d almost gone nuts watching Petrie go out to work the tasks in the field. Today was his first day back in the field, and he was already tired. Now, he was back at the station trying to sort through all the information that had been gleaned on the Ardoin case, trying hard to get it jump-started again.
Nick pulled the whiteboard off the wall, hauled it up a flight of stairs, and placed the board on the table in an abandoned conference room. No one used the space anymore because of the leaking roof. The musty odor had assaulted his nose the moment he’d opened the door. At least, he’d have some privacy to sort out the mess in front of him.
No one had seen The Photographer since Nick had chased him. What day was that? He pulled the timeline note cards off the board and pushed them around. Oh yeah, that would have been on June the fourteenth. So the bastard hadn’t been seen for two months. Was Jackson Deville still in New Orleans? Had he discovered that Jeri had gone back to Tennessee and followed her there? Why would he? If he’d stalked her all the way to Nashville, surely Nick would have heard about it by now. Lance Bowman would have screamed in his ear about that.
He sorted through the pieces of the case. What did he know about Alison Ardoin’s murder? What did he know about Jackson Deville?
The DNA tests had shown a familial match between Sheldon Deville, his son Jackson, and Jerilyn Bowman. The skin under Jeri’s nails when she scratched Jackson had matched the skin under Alison’s nails. The victim had scratched Jackson Deville before she died. That was a pretty damning piece of evidence. He knew the killer’s name. Now, if he could locate the son-of-a-bitch.
Nick’s Uncle Ed had put every available officer on the search for Jackson Deville, and the search had come up empty. Deville’s name and picture were passed around at every District briefing.
Alison Ardoin was murdered sometime between nine and midnight on June ninth. She had been held prisoner and barely kept alive for days. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head had killed her. The weapon had an odd shape. If Nick could find the weapon and match the shape… An extensive search had been done for the murder weapon with no result. The weapon was probably long gone, along with any evidence it might have had on it. While she was fresh, Sheldon Deville had jammed a tube in her neck and siphoned off some of her blood.
Had the elder Deville been following his son? Did the younger Deville know that he had? Was that why Jackson had killed his father?
Tests of the tube that Sheldon Deville had used to mix his bloody drink had traces of both his blood and Alison’s blood. The creep had mixed their blood together to create his sick concoction. The container and its holder had no fingerprints on it. Sheldon Deville had wiped it clean before tossing it in the trash; otherwise, the glass or silver would have had not only his prints on it, but also Jerilyn’s.
Nick had nothing to go on but the DNA tests. Strong evidence, sure, but he still needed to put Deville at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder. A defense attorney could argue that Alison Ardoin had scratched him some other time. Unlikely that she had, but the evidence could still be argued that way.
If he could only find the place where Ardoin had been held. If he could only find where Jackson Deville stayed. If he could only place Jackson Deville in the building on Dauphine. If only.
Sheldon’s murder was another story. He had CCTV video of Sheldon entering the alley between the two buildings with Jackson following him a few minutes later. Jackson remained off camera long enough to kill his father. He reappeared on the video
with blood on his clothes.
If he could only find the clothes Jackson Deville had been wearing on the morning he murdered his father.
How did this all fit with the death of Heather Mancuso?
Heather had planned to meet someone she’d met on an online dating service at Johnny J’s. It was only speculation, but Jackson Deville looked enough like the man she was supposed to meet that she could have mistakenly believed Jackson was her date. It was still a mystery why she’d driven to New Orleans instead of flown and why she had left her car at the airport. Her mother suspected that Heather didn’t want to park her car in the Quarter and had taken a cab to Johnny J’s. She might have thought long-term parking was the safest place for her vehicle, especially if she anticipated being her date’s guest for the weekend. The cabbie that had driven her from the airport to Bourbon Street thought maybe he recognized her.
The man she was supposed to meet never showed up because his wife got suspicious of his behavior and the man thought he’d better cool it before she found out about his extracurricular activities. His account on the online service had since been deactivated.
So what did he have? A big wad of nothing.
He felt someone’s presence behind him and swung around to find his Uncle Ed glaring at him. “What are you doing up here?”
How had he found Nick was a better question.
“I needed some peace and quiet to think about this case.”
“The only thing you’re gonna get up here is a bad allergy attack.”
His momma’s side of the family had some serious allergy problems.
He grunted and turned his focus back to the whiteboard.
“Have you talked to the girl lately?”
The girl? “Jerilyn? No.”
“She’s still not talking to you?”
“You know she’s in Tennessee, right?” Nick wasn’t in the mood for Ed’s snarky way of squeezing information of him.
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 19
