Wait. No. How could he ask her to do that? He couldn’t. Asking her to go to that dark place again would seem like a betrayal to her. It had to be her idea, and he wasn’t going to suggest it. There had to be some other way to find out who Deville’s next intended victim was without putting Jeri’s heart and soul at risk.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Nick would be angry with her for deceiving him, but Jeri had done what she had to do. She’d seen the final scene. She knew how Jackson Deville’s killing spree would end. If she confronted him on her own, maybe she could spare Nick getting injured. It was a long shot, but it was a risk she had to take. Whatever happened, she would survive. So would Nick.
She could see their future. It involved marriage and family. But what she couldn’t see, what she couldn’t quite seem to know, was how much getting shot would wound Nick’s career and ultimately his psyche. He had wrapped up so much of who he was in what he did. The knowledge of how getting shot again would affect him had been elusive. What good was knowing if you couldn’t know the things that mattered to you?
The fear of having him, but losing him anyway, had ground on her heart until it was nearly driving her crazy.
Connie Bowman had given her several addresses, including a former address and a current address that Jeri hadn’t already been aware of. Apparently, Deville was fond of renting rundown houses in the Irish Channel.
Lance Bowman had somehow been able to find the man no matter where he had moved. At least, that’s what Connie had told Jeri. But then Jeri’s adoptive father, being a high-ranking law enforcement officer, had resources that others didn’t have. It bothered Jeri that Lance had been so obsessed with knowing where Deville lived. What had he intended to do with the information? Had he intended to do anything at all? Had his obsession with Deville become more intense after Jeri moved to New Orleans?
Another hard thought pounded in her head. What if Jeri moving to New Orleans, what if seeing Jeri in town, had triggered Jackson Deville’s killing spree?
When she’d heard the last address, a cold chill had run through her along with a sharp, fresh stab of knowing what she didn’t want to know.
Nick wouldn’t find Jackson Deville in the place where he currently lived, the house where he kept his shrine to his victims. No, Jackson would soon arrive at yet another abandoned house, a house where he had lived with Darlene. Why was it that everywhere he’d lived with her mother had eventually become abandoned? What kind of permanent mark did evil leave on a place? Could potential owners or tenants sense the power of the evil that had resided there and shy away from inhabiting such a dark place?
She considered what she was about to do. Some might call her stupid or foolish. Some might call her brave. Jeri felt she was neither. Another emotion drove her to confront evil face to face, an undefined feeling laced with urgency and dread. The fear that if she didn’t do something about Jackson Deville nobody else could. It was her destiny from the moment she was conceived to stop him. Her grandfather, Sheldon Deville, had charged her with stopping Jackson. Sheldon knew. Just like Jeri knew.
This was what she was born to do. This was why she had been given the gift of second sight. It was Jeri’s duty to destroy the power to use the gift for evil, to deny the temptation to corrupt the gift that had been passed down through generations. It was up to her to end the cycle. For good.
She would destroy the silver pieces. But not yet.
The abandoned house was only a couple of blocks closer to the river than Nick’s sister’s house on Laurel Street. Jeri approached the front steps, which were right on the sidewalk. The proximity of the house to the street gave her no cover and no way to sneak up on the place. She felt utterly exposed. Glancing right and left, she placed her palm on the peeling blue paint of the front door.
An old woman’s scratchy voice broke the almost dead silence of the day. “Ain’t nobody lived there for twenty years.”
Jeri twisted to face her.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You thinkin’ ‘bout moving in there?”
“Maybe.” The lie might draw more information out of the woman.
“Nobody wants to live there. That dump gives off a bad vibe.” The woman moved closer to Jeri. “Sometimes late at night, strange noises come from that house.”
Jeri laughed. “Are you saying the house is haunted?”
The woman shook her head. “That place has an evil aura.”
“Has anyone been inside lately?”
The woman’s eyebrows drew together over her nose. “Well, now, I seen a man go inside a few days ago. He wasn’t very friendly.” Being unfriendly was practically a crime to native New Orleanians. “The man… He kinda looked like he was sick. I asked him if he needed help, but that man looked ugly at me and never said a word.”
So Jackson had been there.
Jeri glanced toward the front door. A wave of nausea passed over her. “I used to live here.” The words slipped from Jeri’s mouth against her will.
The woman stepped back, a horrified look forming on her wrinkled face. “I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t remember you.”
“I was a little girl.”
“Oh, you’re her.”
Jeri’s heart rate accelerated. “What do you mean?”
“I always felt sorry for that little girl. The child protective people came and took her away, you know.”
Really? No, Jeri didn’t know. She had been told that Darlene had given her up willingly.
“Why did they take her from her parents?” Why was she speaking of herself in third person? Why did other people always refer to the child in the third person as if the child hadn’t grown up? As if the child hadn’t become Jeri?
“Her momma begged them to.”
If that were so, then how did she end up with Lance and Connie Bowman? There were still little pieces of the story that the Bowmans were keeping from her. Her resentment flared again. She’d come a long way getting past her anger toward them. Now, this new information gouged into the old wound again.
She didn’t want to hear any more, didn’t want to know anything new, didn’t want to feel new hurts. “I’m going to see what’s inside the house.” If she could get inside. She’d made the decision without thinking about it.
The woman placed a gentle hand on her upper arm. “You sure you wanna do that, girl? The memories might come back to you.”
Why did this old woman care about Jeri or her memories? She shook the woman’s hand off her arm and turned her back on her. To Jeri’s surprise, the door opened with ease. Unlocked, as if inviting her to enter. The chalices and the bowl inside her backpack bumped her back as if reminding her of their existence and their potential.
The house stood empty of furnishings. She flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. No doubt the electricity had been shut off from the residence for years. Jeri began near the door dragging her fingers along the wall. The texture of the dated, flocked wallpaper scraped her fingertips. She stopped and closed her eyes. A flash of a sensory memory flew across her mind. She’d done this very thing as a child.
She continued her examination of the small house until she came to the very back room, a bedroom. To one side of the room, a closet door stood halfway open. A padlock dangled from a hinge.
Her breath left her in one big swoosh. She knew why the lock was there.
Jeri dared to enter the closet and place her hands on the rough wood of the back wall. She refused to let the house scare her. Things couldn’t hurt you. People hurt other people.
Raw emotions flooded her psyche. She dropped to the floor and sat with her legs crisscrossed. With a shudder of foreboding, she pulled the silver pieces from the backpack and arranged them in a triangle on the floor in front of her.
She stared at the objects in front of her for a long while, unable to wound herself yet again and drip blood into the curved bottoms of the silver. Jeri didn’t want to know or understand Jackson Deville’s motives for killing. His justificati
on for what he did might slam her in the chest and hit too close to her heart. If his motives had anything at all to do with her… She couldn’t handle the thought.
She’d never been much of a crybaby, but tears streamed down her face. The fear inside her escalated. It was coming at her. The end of the horror. She could feel it hovering over the house, knew it was just right outside the front door.
Jackson Deville was on his way. All she had to do was wait for him.
****
Someone had found another body on the ground floor of another building. This time, a boarded-up shop on Magazine. The call had come while Nick was still studying Deville’s morbid photo collection.
Once again, Nick stood over the lifeless body of one of Jackson Deville’s victims. He held a handkerchief over his nose. Jolene Perry had been dead for at least two weeks. Trying to sort out the timeline in his head was giving him a pounding headache. The photos on the whiteboard were out of order, just as Jeri had said they would be. So if this woman was Jolene Perry, what had happened to Marissa Dorsette?
Weariness settled between his shoulders. Were they ever going to catch this guy? Was he going to leave them a dead girl in every blasted empty house in the New Orleans metro area? He’d left Maris at the house to study Deville’s evil photo collection. Maybe she could figure out where he’d taken the photos. It was time he got one step ahead of Deville instead of always being three steps behind.
The public would demand answers soon, and that meant the pressure from the top departmental brass would bear down on him. The news crews were already piling up outside the barricades on the street outside. Deville had been dubbed the French Quarter Killer by the press, even though only one of his victims had been found in the Quarter. Nick still didn’t count Jane Doe as one of Deville’s kills. Even though the press did. It wouldn’t be long before they figured out whose victim had been discovered in the vacant shop.
Petrie wiggled his finger for Nick to come away from the group huddled around the body. His heart sank to his feet. He knew what was coming before Petrie said anything.
“Troy can’t find her anywhere.”
He ground out his disbelief. “He wasn’t supposed to let her out of his sight.”
Petrie sighed as if one could expect that kind of laxness from Troy. “He said she wanted to go to the ladies room. He couldn’t follow her in there, could he?”
“So how did she get past him? She would have had to come out the way she went in?”
Petrie snorted in derision. “Troy gets distracted easily.”
Nick suspected that Petrie’s competitive nature was getting the best of him.
“Analyzing Troy isn’t going to find her. How far could she have gone on foot? We gotta find her before Deville does.” The urgency had bored into Nick’s soul.
“What do you want me to do, Moreau?”
Couldn’t the guy come up with a plan of his own?
“Call Connie Bowman and ask her what she said to Jeri. She must have told Jeri something else. I wanna know what she said.”
Irritation flashed across Petrie’s face. He obviously preferred to be in the middle of the fresh murder investigation instead of keeping up with Jerilyn. Nick wanted to yell at the guy to grow up.
Nick shoved his cell phone toward Petrie. “Her number is in my contacts.”
Petrie took the phone and walked away.
“I want my phone back. Soon.”
The other cop grunted on his way down the hall.
When he found Jeri… He didn’t know what he was going to do. Probably hold onto to her for dear life. His anger at her would have a hard time overcoming his relief.
She’d told him they had a future together. He had to believe her. Had to believe in her ability to see their future. He had to cling to that hope. If he lost her now…before they even had a chance to build a permanent relationship…
He refocused his attention on the job in front of him. The assistant ME Dodge Corolla squatted next to the body. His squat was a balancing act because there was so much blood around the woman that the crime scene techs had placed elevated steps across the blood pool so that the body could be reached without contaminating the scene. Corolla perched unsteadily on two of the steps.
Corolla pulled down his mask to speak. “Same type wounds as the others.”
Nick could see that easily enough.
Corolla rolled her hands over so Nick could see the defensive wounds. The abrasions from ligatures around her wrists and ankles were still visible despite the level of decomposition.
The assistant ME shook his head. “Poor woman died the hard way.”
Nick had seen Deville’s photo collection. He already knew what a sick bastard the guy was.
Corolla rolled his shoulders. From what Nick had heard, the guy had already had a long day.
“Are we any closer to catching the guy?”
That was the million dollar question.
Petrie reappeared in the doorway of the back office, motioning for Nick to join him in the larger part of the store. He carefully used the elevated steps to leave the office, his heart pounding harder in his chest with every step.
“Troy went over to your apartment, just in case she went back there. He found your door open and this on your kitchen table.”
Another legal size brown envelope. He scooted further across the room out of sight of prying eyes and slid the photos out of the envelope. Petrie puffed out his cheeks. Nick closed his eyes for a second. The images didn’t disappear, as if they were permanently burned into his brain.
“Pictures of her.” Nick nodded toward the office where Dodge Corolla was still examining Jolene Perry’s body.
“There was another message.”
Petrie didn’t appear to want to say it.
“Go ahead. Tell me what it said.”
“She belongs to me.”
Had Deville already taken Jeri?
The other cop shoved a piece of paper at him with an address scrawled in Petrie’s distinctive script. “This is the other address Connie Bowman gave Jerilyn.”
He glanced up Petrie. “That’s not far from the house Deville’s been renting…or the house where my sister lives.”
Had Deville followed Nick and Jeri to his sister’s house, or had it been an unfortunate coincidence that Nick had brought Jeri to a house only two streets away from one of the houses were Jeri had lived with Jackson and Darlene Deville? Had Deville been to the house on Chippewa and seen them in the neighborhood?
Nick didn’t believe in coincidence. Yet he did believe in being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Can you finish up here? I want to go check the house out.”
“You think that’s where Jeri went, don’t you?”
Nick nodded. “When I find her, I’m going to…”
Petrie’s eyes glowed with understanding. “You’re going to be relieved that you’ve found her.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jeri’s head bumped the wall of the walk-in closet when the front door slammed. She shoved the silver pieces that were still on the floor into her backpack. On her tiptoes, she shoved the pack onto the top shelf, as far away from the edge as she could. Why had she brought the pieces with her when she hadn’t intended to use them? That had been so stupid.
On second thought, she pulled one of the chalices out and pushed the bag back onto the far reaches of the top shelf. She weighed the piece in her hand. It was heavy enough to be a weapon. She slipped out of the closet and tiptoed toward the bathroom. Once inside, she pulled the door until it was almost closed, but not quite.
The grunting and scuffling of someone being dragged against their will met Jeri’s anxious ears. Jackson was in the house, and he had brought his latest victim with him.
Jeri could imagine the terror in the woman’s eyes and the trembling in her body. She could imagine the tears streaming down his victim’s face. Her mind must be racing. Jeri wanted to bust out of the bathroom and stop him, but inst
inct told her that she needed to wait until just the right moment.
Through the crack, she saw him with the woman. Jeri slapped her hand over her mouth to keep her reaction from finding a voice. Nausea pushed up her esophagus and filled her mouth. She swallowed the vile mess, which only made the sick feeling to intensify.
She knew the woman. Bridget worked at the market where Jeri had always bought her cinnamon rolls before going to work at the bar. She wanted to scream in horror and frustration. No doubt, Jackson had a picture of her and Bridget.
Jackson shoved Bridget into the closet. For a moment or two, he was out of sight, inside the closet with his victim. It didn’t sound as if Bridget was putting up much of a fight. Had he drugged her? Is that how he subdued his victims?
A surge of electricity coursed through Jeri the exact second when Jackson found the chalice and the bowl.
“Lorelei!”
He called her by her birth name. She flinched at the harsh tone. She could hear it in his voice. He hated her name. He hated her because of what he’d done to her. Wasn’t that the way of abusers, to hate the ones they abuse?
She had to distract him before he closed the padlock on the closet door.
Pushing down her terror, she yelled her challenge. “I’m in here. Come and get me.”
He grunted with anger and rushed from the closet, leaving the door wide open.
Jeri stepped away from the cracked-open door, climbed into the tub, and pressed her back against the wall next to the bathroom door. And waited for him to burst into the small room.
He was in the room with his back to her before she could catch another breath. Before he could twist around to face her, she nailed him on the back of the head with the chalice. When he turned, fury had reddened his face. She didn’t hesitate. The chalice came crashing down on his head once again. She was afraid he’d reach out and grab her by the wrist, but he didn’t.
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 26
