Contact

by Evelyn Vaughn

  Even in here.

  She could feel her muscles stiffen, her breath strain in this cold, solid tomb of sensory deprivation. If she raised her head, she bumped it on steel.

  Something felt sticky under one elbow—don’t think about it!—and she shivered harder.

  Minutes passed.

  Desperate, she harnessed her thoughts back to logic. Okay, suppose the intruder really was the killer from the bar. What the hell would he be doing here? How could he have gotten past security? Why would anyone take such a risk?

  The last question echoed through her skull as surely as her own heartbeat and chattering teeth echoed blindly, deafening, back at her in this closed metal drawer. Why?

  Roy Chopin had almost asked if anything had been taken from Krystal’s body. Faith felt sure of that. But shouldn’t he be asking about Krystal’s personal possessions rather than her corpse? What could be—

  Taken from a corpse?

  Oh, God. A trophy.

  When the bodies on the slabs had merely been things, the empty remains of crime victims, hiding made sense. But when Faith thought of them being further victimized—here, where they should at least be safe—she couldn’t stand it.

  She might already be too late. Safety be damned. Planting her hands on the sides of the drawer, wincing to imagine whatever else might have touched the same spot, she pushed forward—

  And bumped her head on steel.

  No.

  She was locked in?

  No! Barely swallowing back an embarrassing whimper, she fumbled at the front of the drawer. Oh, God, no. She couldn’t have made such a horrible mistake. What if she suffocated in here? What if nobody found her for days? She would never have a chance to make up with her mother. She would die a virgin. It would be like being buried alive!

  When her hands encountered a latch, her relief was dizzying. Her reaction to the snick of that latch, to the rush of air that now smelled fresh in comparison to where she’d been, was heaven itself. But she didn’t have time to savor it as she threw open the door to the body drawer. She pushed the tray that held her forward, rolled stiffly off it, braced herself for an attack from—

  From nobody.

  Faith crouched there beside the open drawer, her heart pounding, her hands fisted, and faced an empty examination room. She spun one direction. Turned the other. Nothing.

  Had she imagined it?

  But no. She wasn’t imagining the scent that lingered beneath this smell of antiseptics and death. It didn’t matter if most normal people wouldn’t be able to smell it; many smokers couldn’t discern scents like baking bread or cheap perfume either, but that didn’t mean the smells weren’t there. This smell was here, too. Part musk, part heat. Power. Dominance. Evil.

  If Faith needed further proof of intrusion, Krystal’s corpse now stared blankly at the ceiling.

  Someone had moved the sheet from her blue-lipped face.

  Still catching her shuddering breath, skin crawling from her momentary entombment, Faith took a hesitant step closer to her friend’s remains. The bruised horror that had once been Krystal’s slim, smooth neck seemed all the more blasphemous. Her eyes were open, blank. Her pale blond hair…

  Was something different about her hair?

  Faith bent closer, peering at it. There was definitely a blunt wedge where a chunk of hair by Krystal’s temple had been inexpertly sliced away. Someone had taken—

  A knock at the open doorway startled her so badly, Faith sprang back from the corpse with a cry. Then she stared at her boss, confused. How had Greg gotten so close without her hearing him?

  Just how upset was she?

  Still, now that she did notice him, his heartbeat sounded comfortingly, familiarly like Greg. He wore Nikes, not boots. He, at least, wasn’t the killer.

  “This is your version of keeping distance from the case?” he asked, pale eyes frowning behind his glasses.

  Faith flushed. “I came looking for you and I…I found her like this.” It was technically the truth. She was just leaving out the middle part, where a more honest woman would say, and I heard someone coming and hid in the drawer and then climbed back out once he was gone and then I found her like this.

  “Like what?” He came closer. He had a clipboard in one hand, a pen behind his ear, fresh gloves flapping out of his pocket. That was so Greg. Now that she’d noticed him, he wasn’t the least bit silent. Just…quiet-natured.

  Easy to be with.

  “Uncovered. And…some of her hair’s been cut off. Did the medical examiner take it to run tests?”

  Greg took her by the shoulders—luckily his hands made contact with her sleeves, not her bare skin, but subtle sensations flowed across her all the same.

  Nothing bad.

  “That’s it, Faith. You’re done for the day. I don’t care where you go, but you’re too close to this case to be here until we’ve finished processing the evidence. Consider it bereavement leave.”

  This time, Faith was aware of someone else coming. He didn’t sound like a threat. He sounded like the medical examiner. “But Greg, look. She’s missing hair.”

  At least he looked—which meant he also let go of her. And he frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “Then the M.E. didn’t…?”

  “Didn’t what?” asked Dr. Mandelet, entering. He was a round man with café-au-lait skin, curly black hair and a neatly trimmed beard, his accent faintly touched by the Caribbean. His shoes, Faith noticed, had crepe soles.

  “If you took hair to test, wouldn’t you take it by the root?” asked Greg, using his pen to ruffle the fresh, blunt cut amidst Krystal’s perm.

  “I’d want the follicle attached, yes. But—” Close enough to see the cut himself, Mandelet swore. Then he glared at Faith. “Did you do this?”

  “No!”

  “Of course she didn’t,” agreed Greg. This time, his hand on her shoulder felt downright comforting. His belief in her innocence felt simple, straightforward. Easy. She found that she could still concentrate on the situation around them, even with this subtle, physical connection to another human. Interesting. “So who would have?”

  “Didn’t you say the DB was a tarot reader?” asked the M.E.

  Faith frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It matches her hands.” Now that he had an audience, Mandelet drew one of Krystal’s waxy hands out from beneath the sheet. Faith caught a glimpse of her friend’s bare hip beyond it, and felt embarrassed for her. “She’s got calluses on the inside joints of her fingers, on the edges of her thumbs. See? Feel here.”

  Faith shook her head.

  Mandelet grinned, clearly thinking Faith’s hesitance had to do with the fact that Krystal was dead, not knowing that Faith had hesitated to touch her even when she lived. “Trust me. This young lady knew her way around a deck of cards. So what I’m thinking is, one of her witchy friends snuck in.”

  “What? No!”

  “Faith,” cautioned Greg. “We’re just theorizing.”

  “It’s happened more than once around here, especially in the funeral homes,” Mandelet insisted. “Voodoo practitioners. People pretending to be voodoo practitioners. Pagans. Psychics. Hair and nail clippings are a big deal to those kinds of weirdos.”

  Faith’s roommate Evan, a practicing Wiccan, would call it the Law of Contagion. Having a piece of something, or something that had been in constant contact with your focus, was considered as good as having the actual focus.

  “Huh.” Greg sounded amused. But he also dropped his hand from Faith’s shoulder, so she couldn’t tell why he was amused and had to get her information the old-fashioned way—by turning to him. He was taller than he looked.

  “I was just thinking about how important hair and nail clippings are to us,” he explained. “Maybe this is another case of magic and science being more closely connected than they’re given credit for.”

  Sometimes Faith really liked Greg.

  “Anyway,” said Mandelet, and from the wa
y he eyed Faith, she knew he hadn’t completely discounted her as a suspect in the hair theft, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  But before he twitched the sheet back over Krystal’s face, Faith had to ask. “Wait. How—exactly how did she die? I really need to know.”

  Mandelet and Greg exchanged a look, and Greg nodded. The M.E. shrugged and pulled the sheet farther down, so that it barely covered Krystal’s breasts. “You work here, little lady. How about you tell me?”

  “She’s a desk clerk,” protested Greg, but this time Faith didn’t appreciate his protection.

  “She was strangled,” she said, starting with the obvious. “I don’t know what he used—”

  “He?” inquired Mandelet.

  “Women only account for a tenth of the murder arrests made, right? And then they usually kill lovers or their children. And aren’t women more likely to kill from a distance, like with poison, than in a physical attack?”

  Both men were nodding. So Faith felt sure enough to ask, “But what did he use?”

  “Wire garrote?” suggested Mandelet. “That would be a professional’s choice.” But he waited for her response.

  “That would leave a cleaner line, wouldn’t it?” She bent closer to what had, thankfully, been reduced back to evidence. “And a belt would have left a wider mark. I’m thinking some kind of cord or rope?”

  “Silk,” agreed Mandelet. “Red silk. I removed fibers from the wound. If we can find that rope, her DNA will be all over it. The killer may have left epithelial evidence on it from his own hands as well, so that we can work toward a second DNA match.”

  “And if we can’t find the rope? Did she maybe scratch him, or pull some of his hair, or—”

  The M.E. shook his head. “The only tissue under her nails was her own, from when she fought the rope. There was evidence that she’d had sex in the last few days, but not recently enough for us to match the semen. It seems to have been consensual, in any case. The pattern of tearing on the—”

  “That’s enough,” Greg interrupted firmly, and drew the sheet over Krystal’s face. “This is getting too personal. Faith, you’re taking a few days off, and that’s that.”

  She nodded slowly. If we can find that rope…

  It was as good a place to start as any, and she couldn’t very easily start looking for it if she was at work all day. “You’re right. I’ll go. Thank you, though. Both of you.”

  “When you get back, you’re welcome to sit in on a few autopsies,” offered Mandelet, and as disgusting a thought as it was, Faith recognized the compliment in his offer. “You have a good eye for it. You don’t want to stay a clerk forever, do you?”

  “Stop poaching my administrative staff,” warned Greg, saving Faith the necessity of answering that question. She really didn’t know what she wanted, in the long term.

  But in the short…

  She wanted to find Krystal’s killer.

  “You should call Detective Chopin,” she said, as she and Greg left the examination room. “That’s why I came looking for you. He wants to ask you some questions.”

  About whether anything had been taken. She’d let the detective and the CSU supervisor work that part out, though.

  She had her own investigating to do.

  Faith hoped she wouldn’t be the only one of the roommates to resume work that Monday. She figured their landlord, some British guy who lived with his wife north of the lake, would want his rent whether there were four people or five living in his multiroomed French Quarter apartment.

  She found Evan, at least, where she thought she would, a ten-block walk from work.

  Jackson Square.

  If Bourbon Street was the heart of the nighttime French Quarter, Jackson Square—spread between the spires of the St. Louis Cathedral and the wide Mississippi River—was its daytime heart. Tankers and barges made their slow way down the expansive river, along with riverboats playing bright calliope music. Cab horses with their great, grassy scent pulled open carriages on slow tours of the oldest part of the city. Street performers—balloon clowns, mimes and today, a truly talented saxophone player—plied their talents in exchange for tips from the tourists. Different psychic readers set out chairs or tables in what Faith had learned was a silent hierarchy, the best readers at one end of the Square, the less experienced at another.

  Krystal had been one of the best.

  And artists, protected from the heat by little more than oversize patio umbrellas, hung their work on the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the Square, hoping for a sale or a commission.

  Evan was one of those artists. He did portraits and was particularly skilled with charcoal and pastels, though he could do caricatures for a quick ten bucks as well.

  The humid August air smelled of grass, azaleas, coffee and beignets as Faith crossed the sunny square to her friend’s purple umbrella. “Hey.”

  “Hey there!” He stood from the canvas camp-chair where he’d been sitting, sketching on heaven knew what, as he saw her. Evan had been raised an old-fashioned southern gentleman, by a Garden District family that expected him to become a doctor and marry a debutante. His decision against either option had caused something of a rift in his family, though they still invited him for holidays. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “They threw me out,” she admitted, sinking onto the cement base of the fence so that he’d feel comfortable sitting as well. “My boss is calling it bereavement leave, but what that really means is, they’re uncomfortable having me so close to the evidence.”

  Evan’s eyes widened. “They don’t suspect you, do they?”

  “I doubt it. But most murdered women are killed by someone they know. Since we knew Krystal, we might know her killer. So there’s always the chance I might try to cover something up, you know? Why take that risk? Although…”

  Evan resumed his seat and turned the page in his sketchbook. “What?”

  “Were you aware that Krys was seeing anybody? Even sleeping with them?” Usually, Faith could catch a whiff of other people off her roommates, if they’d gotten close. But not always. She tried to give them their privacy.

  “Not that I know of.” Evan shrugged. “So are you going home now?”

  “No. What I want to do…This may sound weird.”

  Evan grinned. “No. Not that. Anything but weirdness.”

  “You know the community better than I do. Are you aware of any readers who are good at finding things that are lost?”

  “Like what?”

  “Krystal’s murder weapon.”

  Evan gulped, his hand slowing on the page of sketch paper. “Oh.”

  “The bastard used some sort of cord or rope, and he didn’t leave it with her body. When you pull that hard on something, then some of your own tissue is rubbed off. So if I can find the cord, we might be that much closer to finding the killer. Assuming he didn’t take it with him, of course. Or wear gloves.”

  Evan looked kind of green, but he forged on anyway. “I do know of one person who’s good at psychometry. She can touch something and tell you all kinds of things about it, like who held it last, and how they were feeling, and where they were. Nose like a bloodhound, too.”

  Her recognition of his sarcasm had everything to do with the pitch of his voice and the slight change of his body temperature and scent, and nothing to do with paranormal abilities. “I’m not a psychic.”

  “Sure you are. You’re just a different kind of psychic than most of us.”

  “No! Moonsong’s a psychic—she can look at a person’s palm and tell all kinds of things that have nothing to do with how their heart’s beating or how they smell. And Absinthe, with her horoscopes. Even Krystal. She could shuffle those cards and lay them out and tell you things nobody could have guessed. She could predict—”

  She stopped, tilted her head, met Evan’s eyes.

  “She could predict the future,” he said softly, guessing or intuiting or maybe even reading what she’d just thought.

&nb
sp; “So why couldn’t she predict hers?”

  “Well, some readers believe they can’t see their own destiny, that they’re too subjective to have any clarity.”

  “Or maybe she did predict it,” supposed Faith, “and just didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Or maybe she predicted it, and just didn’t tell us.”

  “Absinthe,” said Faith, standing.

  “Absinthe,” agreed Evan. Neither of them imagined that a frightened Krystal would go to Moonsong. Moonsong, for all her innocence and kindness, was one of the protectees of their little group, not one of the protectors. But Absinthe took no prisoners. And if she’d known something…

  It certainly would help explain some of the extra grief and guilt their usually implacable roommate was feeling.

  “I’ll go see what she knows. And then I’ll try to find someone who can help me find that rope. Are you sure you don’t have any suggestions there?”

  “Look, I’ve heard of some things my circle and I could try. Not psychic, but magic. Like maybe using a pendulum over a map to locate an item or a person, that sort of thing. But if it was my killer you were looking for, I’d put my faith in you. So to speak.” Evan turned his sketchbook. “Do you mind if I display this?”

  He’d done a charcoal sketch of Faith, every line of her face a graceful curve, a stylish edge. Her reaction—surprise, pride, uncertainty—all of it mixed in her chest, and she took an uncertain step backward. “I—”

  “I know it’s not that good,” Evan insisted.

  “No! It’s—” Beautiful. But how could she say that? “My mom would have a cow,” she said instead, changing the subject. “Once I got my picture in the paper, when my sixth-grade class sang Christmas carols at a nursing home, and she called the paper to complain about not getting permission. She never liked…”

  Never liked the idea of strangers seeing Faith. Never wanted the publicity.

  “That’s okay,” said Evan, with a shrug. “If you want, I could—”