“So why do you have them all now?”
“Because he doesn’t want Jackson to have them.”
Nick studied her ragged explanations. His understanding of what she was saying was still a bit shaky. “So…if you get rid of the pieces, you’ll go back to…normal? No more visions?”
“I’ll always have second sight, Nick. It’s my choice now if I want to understand the meaning of what I see or to know the dark places in other people’s hearts. And I don’t.”
Her words shot a ragged bolt of lightning through his heart. “Have you… Do you know my heart?”
She placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “Please don’t do what you’re tempted to do. Don’t kill him in cold blood to save me.”
Her precise assessment of the temptation that had been filling his mind startled him.
“Then, you know how I feel about you.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve known longer than you have, but that’s not because I know things but because… I’m a woman.”
He laughed. “So you’re saying there’s knowing and then there’s…knowing.”
She pulled his arm around her, and he liked it.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Let’s get rid of those things, then.”
He held her for a while because it just felt so damn good to hold her. As long as she didn’t make a move to leave, he was content to stay. Even in the midst of the bloody mess her birth father had made.
Together, they left the house on Esplanade. She still hadn’t told him about the vision she’d seen inside the house. He didn’t think he wanted to know.
****
Nick had run out of choices. His friend at Riverview West had no vacancies. He couldn’t risk going back to his sister’s on Laurel Street. Deville might show up there again. Nick didn’t think he was being followed, but somehow, Deville always found him. It was a like the guy was Nick’s shadow.
So he brought Jeri home with him, not daring to let her out of his sight.
He glanced at his front door, halfway expecting another envelope of gory photos to slide under the crack any second.
Jeri’s arms wrapped around him from behind. “You realize he’s out there, don’t you?”
He rubbed his hands up and down his cheeks. Tension dragged on the corners of his mouth. He wanted to turn around and face her, to smile, to reassure her that she was safe with him. He couldn’t be sure they were safe anywhere. Who was Deville’s target? Jeri or Nick? Or both?
Surely, she’d seen Deville’s sick message written in blood on the wall of the house on Esplanade. Because of her strong powers of insight, she probably knew exactly what Deville had meant. Why wasn’t she freaking out?
She began rubbing his shoulders, up and down, a merciful easing of the tension in his muscles.
“He’s not going to bother us tonight.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
Sadness filled her eyes. Of course, she knew. She was sure.
She placed a gentle hand on his cheek. The warmth of her touch radiated through him, warming every part of his body. Such an easy gesture with so much impact.
“We’re going to be all right.”
“You already know how this is going to end, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“And we’re going to be all right?”
A half-hearted smile wobbled on her lips. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
“You’re not just telling me that so I won’t panic?”
She crossed her heart. “Promise.”
Without thinking, only feeling, he lowered his lips to hers. The longing in him caught fire. Her body molded to his, and he could sense her desire rising to meet his, felt it in every touch, every deep kiss. He’d never thought of her as a particularly sweet woman, but right then, right there, she was being ever so sweet to him.
He wanted to take her and be one with her, but the bloody message scrawled on the bedroom wall in the house on Esplanade kept roaring through his mind. Deville thought she belonged to him. Until the man was captured, Jeri wasn’t safe.
Despite her reassurances that Deville wasn’t going to bother them that night, he couldn’t get past the fear that tangling in the bed sheets would leave them vulnerable to attack. How awful would that be to be attacked in the midst of making love?
He tried to shake the stray thoughts off as he led her to the bedroom. She didn’t hesitate to follow him. He stroked her cheek and peered into her turquoise blue eyes. “I want… Can we… I need… I feel…” His words clogged his throat.
She pulled him down with her onto the bed. “Shhh. I know what you mean.”
Being with her was sweet and beautiful and real. The closeness was what he’d wanted with Charlotte but couldn’t have. He felt a bit guilty for thinking of Charlotte while he was making love to Jeri, but he needed to bury the ghost of his unresolved feelings for the other woman. There was no room in his heart for both of them. Jeri had won.
It seemed to last forever, but it was over too soon, and he immediately wanted to make love to her again. She rested her head on his shoulder with her hand on his chest. He tilted his head to try to catch her eye, but she was already asleep.
His eyes remained wide open. He wouldn’t sleep. Not with a killer outside his door.
Chapter Twenty-seven
When Nick arrived at the station the next morning, he had Jerilyn with him. He didn’t care what Ed thought. Nick wasn’t leaving her alone until Deville was caught. He finally found Petrie staring at the whiteboard that had been moved from the squad room to a conference room. Pictures of Marissa Dorsette and Jolene Perry had been added to the board. Tags beneath their pictures outlined a timeline. Both women were missing, and Petrie had noted their last known sighting.
Jeri gasped behind him as they entered the room, and Nick’s stomach dropped to the floor.
“So they’re both missing?” He hoped like hell they weren’t already dead.
Petrie twisted on his heel. “Where have you been?”
Nick had finally fallen asleep early in the morning and had failed to set an alarm. Jeri had gently nudged him awake. If she hadn’t, he’d still be asleep.
No sense lying. “I had a late night. I needed the rest anyway.”
Petrie turned his sharp gaze toward Jeri. “I’ll bet you did.”
Ed Moreau and Maris Couvillian interrupted their snarky conversation. Ed jumped right into the middle of a conversation they hadn’t even begun yet. “If you don’t wrap this up soon, the FBI is going to grab it. Maris is here to help. No arguments.” He paused to cast a questioning glance toward Jeri. “What’s she doing here?”
There were so many ways Nick could answer the question. “You heard about the message he wrote on the wall, didn’t you?”
Ed grunted. “Make sure she stays out of the way.”
Jeri wouldn’t be in the way.
Nick offered one more justification for her presence. “I think the key to catching him is in her memory somewhere.”
His statement seemed to surprise everyone in the room, everyone except Jeri.
The silence that followed compelled him to elaborate, something he hadn’t been inclined to do intending to protect Jeri from further distress. He needed her to be sharp and focused, not obsessed on the trauma from a past that was just beginning to emerge from the shadows.
“She spent several years as a child with him. He kept her locked in a closet in the house on Esplanade for days at a time. There may be other memories she’s suppressing that could help us figure out where this guy is holed up.”
Maris jumped in and added her authoritative opinion because that’s what Maris always did. “This type of killer’s pathology has a trigger. Something has set him off. She might be able to help us figure out what it was.”
Jeri’s face turned pale. “I was so young. I didn’t even know he was my father. I don’t remember him.”
“Maybe we could find someone to hypnotize her.” Maris was
enjoying making Jeri squirm way too much. The woman had that kind of a mean streak.
Petrie cleared his throat. “While you’ve been napping…” He turned accusing eyes on Nick. “I’ve been following leads.”
Ed waved a hand. He didn’t care who followed what lead as long as they led to the killer. “Keep me updated.” He banged the door shut behind him.
Maris spoke first. “So? Have you found out anything useful?”
Her take-charge attitude was going to make working the case that much more difficult.
Petrie kept his attention on Nick while he answered the question. “I finally located the owner of the building on Dauphine.” It had taken Petrie weeks to track him down. The man no longer lived in the United States. “I emailed him a picture of Jackson Deville that I snagged from his Tennessee driver’s license. He remembers the guy. Deville rented the place from him for about five months before he kicked him out. And Deville had a woman and a little girl with him.”
Nick caught a glimpse of Jeri from the corner of his eye. Tension creased her forehead. Her eyes glittered with sudden insight.
Her question wobbled around the room. “He forced them to leave, didn’t he?”
Petrie nodded, sympathy erupting in his brown eyes. “The neighbors told the owner…James Pembroke…that they thought Deville was locking the little girl in the closet. Instead of contacting the police, he insisted that they move. He hasn’t been able to keep a tenant there since then. Potential renters say they feel an evil presence in the place. They think they hear someone crying.”
Pain flashed across Jeri’s face as if her heart had been lashed with a whip. “I don’t remember living there, but I’m…I’m the little girl.” She stared across the room at the wall as if trying to look into a dark past. “That’s why there was a lock on the closet door.” She sucked in a ragged breath. “I don’t remember living in the house on Esplanade either, but I’m pretty sure I’ve lived there.”
Ever the cynic, Maris jumped on her cryptic comment. “If you can’t remember, how do you know you lived there?”
Jeri blinked at her. Maybe she knew instinctively that Maris wasn’t a particularly intuitive woman. “I just know.”
Petrie snorted with derision. “Get used to it, Maris. The woman just knows things.”
Jeri held up one hand. “Please be quiet. I’m going to call my mother.”
Petrie opened his mouth to object to her demand, but she was already on her cell phone making the call.
“Hi, Mom. Listen, I don’t have time to explain. I promise I will later…when this is over. But…can you remember where…where we lived when I was little.” She listened for a while. “No, I mean when I lived with Darlene and Jackson.” More silence while Jeri absorbed what her mother was saying. “This is important. I’ll wait while you look.” She held the phone away from her. “She’s going to go through some old letters from my…from Darlene.”
“Darlene?” Maris was jumping into the case late. How could she keep up if she hadn’t been fully briefed yet?
“I was talking to my adopted mother, Connie Bowman. Darlene is my father’s sister, my biological mother. Jackson Deville’s wife.”
“So you’re Jackson Deville’s daughter? That’s how you’re connected to this case?” She shot an incredulous look at Nick. “Do you know where she lives? Maybe we could talk to her.”
Jeri caught Nick’s eye. “She’s dead.”
“Maybe you should get me up to speed on this case.” She pointed at the whiteboard. “There isn’t much there, and I’ve read your case file. You have a lot of information stuffed in your head that you need to share.”
Nick glared at Maris. He would decide how much she needed to know.
Jeri held her hand up. “She thinks she has his current address here in New Orleans.” She repeated the address while Petrie jotted it down in his notebook.
Nick recognized the address. “That’s in the Channel. Not far from where my sister lives.”
“Why would her mother have Deville’s address?” Maris could pick up on the slightest of details.
“It’s a long story.”
Maris would have to wait for the full story. She grumbled, but he made a point to ignore her mumbled protests.
Jeri remained on the call another couple of minutes. Whatever Connie was saying, Jeri was keeping to herself. Nick kept his eyes on her. She ended the call quietly while Petrie made arrangements to investigate the house in the Channel where Jeri had lived with Jackson Deville.
They all headed out the door ahead of Nick and Jeri, but Nick stopped Jeri at the doorway. “What else did Connie say?”
Jeri held his gaze. Didn’t flinch. “Nothing important.”
He didn’t believe her. His instinct pushed him to press her to tell him what Connie had said. Nick hesitated.
“Nick, are you coming?”
Petrie’s impatient voice broke their stare down.
Nick took her hand. “I want you to stay here. Please.”
She nodded and pulled her hand away from his. The fire in her eyes told him that she clearly didn’t like being left behind.
****
When they arrived at the location with a half-dozen uniformed officers, the house was empty. Unlike the other crime scenes, this place wasn’t vacant. Jeri had sent them to Jackson Deville’s residence. Inside the back bedroom, they had found what Jeri had described to Nick. A wall of death.
Nick’s stomach jerked with spasms of nausea. Which was sicker? Deville’s gory photographs, his shrine to his victims, or Nick’s irritation that neither Marissa Dorsette’s or Jolene Perry’s body had been found at the location? Of course, he should have preferred that the women were found alive, but his gut had told him they were already dead. Deville’s pictorial history of his crimes proved him correct.
He had to be honest with himself about his reaction. It was partly selfish and partly selfless. He wanted the ordeal to be over with. He wanted the last body to be found. He wanted the killer caught. He wanted to know that Jeri was safe from Deville.
If he were going to be shot, he wanted that to be over with as well.
Maris Couvillian stood in the middle of the room with her arms folded over her chest. Photographs covered three of the four walls in the bedroom. Tons of photos. She stared at the pictures as if willing them to tell their stories.
Nick pointed at one section of the wall. “That’s Marissa Dorsette.” He shifted his direction toward another section. “And that’s Jolene Perry.”
“They’re already dead.” Maris wasn’t one to soften a blow. She touched a photo in the gallery. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t your girlfriend know?”
It was a valid question. Deville had stalked his daughter and chosen his victims from her casual contacts. Jeri knew none of the victims personally. She had merely crossed paths with them. The women had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The victims were not the killer’s focus. Jackson Deville was obsessed with the daughter that was taken away from him. His victims were collateral damage.
If he told Maris that Jeri had never seen the pictures, he’d be lying. How to explain the strange phenomenon that was Jeri’s gift?
“How did she know about Marissa and Jolene, then?”
Maris wasn’t going to give up until she had wrangled the truth out of him.
Petrie shot off his mouth. “Jeri is one of those psychics.”
“You believe in that crap?”
Nick held his sharp reply and counted to five before answering. “I do now.”
“How do you know she isn’t working with her old man to do this?”
Petrie answered for Nick. Maybe he could see the red creeping up Nick’s neck. “She was out of town when Caroline Leblanc died.”
“So you’ve ruled her out as a suspect?” Maris bit out her question as if she was in utter disbelief at Nick’s naiveté.
“Yes, I have.”
“Becaus
e she’s psychic, or because she’s your girlfriend?”
So Maris had picked up on the nature of his relationship with Jerilyn. She was sharp. Maris might not be very intuitive, but she was hyper-observant. He had to say that about her.
His jaw tensed, and he defended Jeri through clenched teeth. “No, I ruled her out because I can’t put her at either crime scene at the time of the murders.”
Maris snorted. “You know, sleeping with a suspect can dull your judgment.”
“I’m not… She’s not a suspect, Maris. His behavior towards her… He intends for her to be his last victim. So you need to step back.”
There was so much he’d left out of his official working case file. There was no mention of Deville locking Jeri in the closet in the apartment on Dauphine. If Maris knew about that incident, her attitude might change. Nick had no inclination to enlighten her. Not at the moment. Maybe later when his pulse rate had slowed. As it was, he was likely to say something to Maris that he would regret later.
She unfolded her arms and lifted her hands, palms up. “You’re kinda sensitive about her, aren’t you?”
“Can we focus?” He nodded toward the wall of horror. “We need to figure out where he took these pictures.”
That would be a difficult task. Deville had once again taken his pictures of his victims before and after they died, but he had been very careful to exclude anything from the frame that would identify where he had killed them.
Petrie moved around the room, studying the wall of photos. “We need to get Jeri down here to look at this last set of pictures. Maybe she knows who Deville’s next victim is.”
That was possible but highly unlikely. Jeri hadn’t remembered meeting any of the other women. What Nick wanted to do was give Jeri some alone time in the house. Some privacy to do her thing would probably yield more information than forcing her to look at the gruesome evidence of her father’s crimes.
He was glad that they hadn’t yet managed to destroy the silver pieces that seemed to heighten her awareness of the thoughts and intents of other people’s hearts. She wouldn’t be happy at his request that she use them again. But she would. She’d told Nick she’d do anything to stop Deville from killing again.
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 25
