by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
“Saw you leave,” Roy countered with a finger stab at the air between them. He neither confirmed nor denied the witness, but he positively smelled of righteous fury on this one. “Saw you leave with evidence and an eyewitness account that could’ve caught Butch’s killer, assuming you aren’t the killer.”
“Have me take a lie detector test.”
“How’s three days in lock-up sound for a lie detector test? Spend enough time with the hookers and the druggies, I’m thinking you’ll be ready to tell us anything.”
“You’d be wrong.”
“Okay.” The door opened and the captain came in. “Chopin, you’re losing what little objectivity you had. I’m stopping this before you make a real threat and get her case thrown out.”
“You don’t have a case,” Faith admitted. It was time.
Roy’s eyes widened, and his parted lips took on new levels of mockery. “Oh, I think we do!”
Max stepped between Roy’s fury and Faith’s chair, where she was still handcuffed. “No offense, sweetheart, but we may need more than just your word to drop the charges of murder.”
Captain Crawford added, “Not to mention we just got your confession to obstruction of justice.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Hello? That story you just told? Leaving the scene of a crime? Destroying evidence?”
Time for her second secret weapon. “It’s not admissible.”
That shut them up, at least for a heartbeat or two. Faith suspected it was more her use of the lingo than the point she’d made, but she ran with it. “The search was invalid, so Roy didn’t have probable cause for the arrest.”
“Bullshit!” challenged Roy. Right. He’d been a freakin’ Serpico, whoever that was.
“Ms. Corbett,” interrupted the captain, “your roommate gave Detective Chopin permission to look around the place. That means he didn’t need a search warrant.”
“For the shared rooms, sure, but not for my bedroom, and definitely not for my closet, where I have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now the men exchanged sharp glances. Reasonable expectation of privacy was a solid legal term, and they knew it. They knew she knew what she was talking about.
Their very scents reflected their growing concern that she might be right.
“I may have brought Detective Chopin into my room, even into my bed, but I never gave him permission to go into my closet. So the search was invalid. Which means the arrest was invalid. Which means the confession was fruit of the poisonous tree. I’m officially asking for a lawyer now, but trust me, he or she will just confirm this. So will the D.A.”
The police stared at her.
“Michael Manning?” she reminded them, as if they might have forgotten who their district attorney was. “The one who publishes those great murder mysteries? My mother works for him. I interviewed him last year for an essay I was writing, about just this topic, and he was very clear on where the courts stand.”
The police still stared. Even Roy.
“That would be when I was still in college,” Faith explained. “When I was majoring in pre-law at Tulane.”
And damn, that felt good.
She wondered if her biological mother, Rainy Miller Carrington, had ever gotten this strong a sense of satisfaction from practicing law. She hoped so.
Maybe Faith’s choice of a major hadn’t been such a fluke, after all.
Not an hour later, they had to let her go. She’d called her roommates to reassure them of her fate and had picked up her personal effects before Captain Crawford intercepted her with the inevitable question.
“Ms. Corbett? Why in God’s name did you let all of us, yourself included, waste the whole morning if you knew your confession would be inadmissible?”
“I’m not your legal consultant, Captain.” Faith looked past him toward where Roy stood with Max. Roy wasn’t any less angry to see her walk. “I wanted Detective Chopin to hear the truth from me, and this was the only way he would. My apologies if that turned out to be a misuse of the city’s time—but I’m not the one who initiated the arrest.”
Then she headed out to the waiting room—and a surprising champion.
Greg Boulanger pushed to his feet from a plastic chair, his normally vague expression telegraphing relief. “Faith! Are you all right?”
She considered that. She was a genetically engineered lab rat. It was possible a police officer was gunning for her, especially now that the cops knew she was Madame Cassandra. She doubted even Greg could keep her job for her, not after she’d confessed to destroying evidence, whether that confession was admissible or not…if she didn’t resign, they’d just invent a reason to get rid of her. The authorities had to be able to trust their evidence technicians. She didn’t blame them.
Whoever was killing psychics was still out there. Whoever had killed Butch was still out there. Hell, whoever had ordered a hit on Rainy Miller Carrington was still out there!
The first and only man she’d ever slept with, a man she cared about, now hated her guts. And even before that, when he got an anonymous tip that she was withholding evidence in a murder case, he hadn’t questioned it. From what she could tell, he’d never once considered that the bag could have been planted.
It hadn’t been. But since she’d been in the shower, washing his touch and scent off of her even as he searched her closet, it would have been nice if Roy had at least wondered.
Maybe anonymous contacts were fine, in Roy’s book, as long as they didn’t claim to be psychic.
Was she “all right”?
“I’ve been better,” she admitted wryly, too overwhelmed by the detritus of her life to feel any of it as sharply as she knew she soon would. “What are you doing here?”
Greg pulled his glasses down on his nose to peer over them, his pale eyes insulted. “I’m your boss, Faith. When you didn’t show up for work, I called your apartment. Absinthe told me you’d been arrested, so I came to make sure you were all right, to see if you needed help with bail.”
Faith blinked at him, taken aback. That was so sweet. So…Greg. “You don’t think I’m guilty?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” she said, her throat tight.
His modest smile flickered across his usually solemn mouth, there and gone, before he shrugged off her gratitude. She recognized the feel of him pulling back. He’d been doing it ever since she’d told him she didn’t date co-workers.
“Well now that they’ve released you, can I at least give you a ride home?” he asked. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”
“I quit,” said Faith.
Greg stared, clearly taken aback. “What’s that?”
“Nobody’s going to want me working with evidence—”
“That’s not their call to make.” Damned if Greg’s shoulders didn’t square slightly, at the very possibility that anybody would try to fire her. Maybe still waters really did run deep. “You work for me, not them.”
“I don’t blame them. You shouldn’t either. Besides, I think it’s time I went back to school, finished getting my law degree.”
Greg’s brows had pinched together. His concern was touching. “And I can’t talk you out of this?”
“No. But what you can do,” she added, “now that I’m not working for you, is take me out for a late lunch. No matter what else I’ve got to work out right now…I’m starved.”
It took a long moment before understanding dawned in Greg’s eyes. When it did, his smile lingered longer. He wasn’t half-bad-looking, when he smiled.
He offered his arm like some old-fashioned gallant, an effect his beard enhanced. Since he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, Faith smiled back and took it.
Only as they reached the Plexiglas door to the street did Faith feel someone’s attention, hot and accusing, on the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder as Greg opened the door for her.
It was Roy, arms folded, staring after them.
He wore a look of pure hatred. For the firs
t time, he truly frightened her.
Faith quickly turned and hurried out of the police station, unsettled by his Jekyll/Hyde act. What if she hadn’t really known Roy after all? What if he’d only been keeping her alive for the sex? What if Butch’s dying declaration had been some kind of warning?
Roy.
No. She refused to believe it. But did it matter? She would have to be particularly careful around cops from now on, either way.
She would have to be particularly careful around everybody.
So this was what an actual date felt like. It had been so long since her Tulane boyfriend disaster, Faith had almost forgotten.
Greg surprised her with a playful side she’d never guessed he had—though perhaps she should have, considering the way she liked his balloon smell. He took her to lunch on one of the popular, two-hour Mississippi riverboat cruises. Faith hesitated only a moment when he suggested it. While Greg couldn’t discuss active cases, he could still help her plan her next move. And surely she could take two hours to recover from her morning!
So they boarded the Antebellum, a white, four-deck, stern-wheeler steamboat. They barely made it up the gangplank, to the sound of a steam calliope straight out of the Golden Age, before the copper bell rang out and the twenty-five-ton paddlewheel began to turn, churning the water of the Mississippi to push them away from the landing. In minutes, Greg had them settled at a window table in the second-deck dining room, where they could watch the harbor over lunch. The Antebellum provided indoor and outdoor seating, but it was still August. Even on the river, August in Louisiana was hot.
And Faith was hungry. She’d gone through two helpings of fried chicken, red beans and rice and a bowl of gumbo—as well as some French bread and several glasses of iced tea—before she noticed Greg’s bemused expression as he watched her.
She flushed. “I skipped breakfast this morning. I was busy getting arrested.”
By the man I slept with last night. And this morning.
“On the basis of some pretty flimsy evidence, the way I hear it,” said Greg. “I don’t want to pry, Faith, but…”
But he’d taken time off work for her. He’d been there for her, even moreso in the end than Roy. And she’d kept enough secrets for a lifetime. So, with the sound of the steam calliope playing outside, she repeated to Greg what she’d told the detectives.
Who Madame Cassandra was, and how Butch had died.
He looked stunned—but, being Greg, it was a quiet stunned. “You think the killer was a cop?”
She sighed, shook her head. “I have no way of being sure. All I know is, he’s someone who might have learned about the meeting from Butch…and Butch told me to run. If Butch actually knew the killer, you’d think he’d have named him.”
Then she remembered Butch’s last word. Roy.
No. Surely she would have sensed something. “Whoever he is, I’ve got to stop him. I don’t think I could leave town, knowing that my friends are still in danger.”
Greg looked concerned. “I’m really not sure what to tackle first. You leaving town, or you thinking you can take down a serial killer single-handedly.”
She thought of Lynn White and Dawn O’Shaughnessy, with whom she had dinner plans for tonight, and the interesting things they had to discuss. “I may not have to do it single-handedly. And I’m not leaving town for good. I like it here. My mother…”
But she still wasn’t sure what she thought of Tamara, after yesterday’s revelations.
“I’ve learned about some family I hadn’t known before,” she said, by way of excuse. “I thought it might be nice to go visit.”
For all she knew, Rainy Miller Carrington had parents. Siblings. Cousins. In any case, the woman certainly had a grave. Surely Rainy’s friends—the Athenas, the Cassandras—would be able to advise Faith of how much her family knew, maybe even make introductions.
“Family? That’s great!” Perhaps glad to steer the lunch conversation away from serial killers, Greg told her how he’d come from a fair-size family—always trouble, and always loved. Faith admitted little about her own discoveries, for obvious reasons, but she enjoyed listening. The jazz concert started, adding a great Dixieland flavor to the whole afternoon. It almost felt…normal. Especially for someone who’d been held on murder charges mere hours before.
Maybe she just had to take her normalcy in small doses.
While Greg talked, Faith tried to consider him as a date. He wasn’t bad-looking, for a science geek, with his curly black hair and his beard and his pale eyes behind his glasses. More important than that, he was nice. He cared about his people. He cared about his job. He clearly cared about his brother and sister.
He smelled of latex gloves and balloons, which she couldn’t help liking.
She considered it, and she felt guilty. With all that in his favor, why wasn’t she more attracted to him? Why, instead, did her thoughts stray back to the sheer physical release that she’d gotten that morning, naked and sweaty and gasping and open in every possible way—with someone else?
With a backpack full of evidence just beyond her closet door. Thinking of the backpack, Faith frowned.
“It’s not that bad,” Greg assured her, thinking she was reacting to his funny family anecdote. “My brother stopped wetting the bed eventually…whether we let him forget it or not.”
“No—I just had a really bad thought. The man who called Roy this morning. The anonymous contact. How could he have known about the backpack in my closet? How could anyone?”
Greg seemed to resign himself to this newest, dark turn in the conversation. “Your roommate Evan?”
It was possible. As Roy had told her early on—the first rule of investigative work was that everyone lied. But…Evan? Her Evan? She shook her head.
Greg nudged his glasses down, as he sometimes did when particularly serious. “You can’t imagine—Faith, you don’t think Roy made up the anonymous contact, do you?”
That was a more likely—and even worse—possibility. Especially if he’d started nosing around her room, the way she’d snooped around his place after their first time together. If he actually found the backpack, found the wig, he would need some reason to legally justify the search. He could call a friend, maybe his partner, and have them call him back. And then…
Strangely, now that she and Roy were over, Faith found herself hoping that was exactly what happened. Because the third possibility…
Her stomach clenched at the thought. Someone had left the gate unlocked, last night. “Or maybe someone else had been in the apartment. In my room!”
Wouldn’t she have smelled lingering traces of an intruder?
She’d been more than a little distracted when she’d gotten home last night. She hadn’t tried to smell anything. Now the idea that an intruder, maybe the killer himself, had been in her room gave her chills.
“I’ve got to call my roommates again,” she decided, pushing her chair back to stand—then looking, crestfallen, out the window. A wide expanse of the Mississippi lay between them and land. The Antebellum had left the French Quarter and the distinctive Huey P. Long Bridge well behind it; to judge from the narration she heard on outdoor loudspeakers, they were passing the site of the Battle of New Orleans. They easily had another hour of cruise before she could use a pay phone.
“May I use your cell phone? I’ll keep it short.”
“Sure.” He fished it from his pocket and passed it across the table to her. “Why?”
“I need to make sure my roommates are okay.” The signal line on his phone’s display wasn’t particularly strong, and the jazz band, though really good, was also fairly loud. “Would you mind if…?”
“Not at all. Want me to come with you?”
He’d been great, so far. But she didn’t need a bodyguard just yet. “No, stay in the air-conditioning. I’ll be right back.”
Easygoing as ever, Greg nodded and turned his chair to better watch the concert, signaling the waitress for more coffee.
&nb
sp; Faith headed out onto the deck, which was marginally quieter now that the rooftop calliope had stopped tooting out its carousel melodies. She hurried up an open stairway, away from the sound of the jazz band but closer to the churning wash of the two-story paddlewheel not far beneath her. At least the signal was stronger here, standing by the outside railing. She dialed her home number, covered her outside ear with her hand to block out the worst of the noise, and waited.
The phone rang.
It rang a second time.
It rang a third time.
The line clicked as the answering machine picked up. It was Evan’s voice, following Tamara Corbett’s theory of safe answering machines. “Hi! You’ve reached our apartment, but you haven’t quite reached us. If you want to leave a message for—”
Faith disconnected, still nervous. Her roommates were psychics. There was a killer on the loose who murdered psychics and who might very well know his way around their apartment.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she dialed a new number.
“Detectives Division,” answered a tired voice, on the second ring. Behind him the distinct bustle of the station sounded almost as loud as the paddlewheel Faith was muffling.
“I need to talk to Detective Max Leonard, please.” Faith winced. Well, she couldn’t very well ask for Roy. Not the Roy who’d glared hatred at her as she left the station. Not the Roy who wanted to burn her ass.
Max had recently transferred from Baton Rouge, he’d said. If Faith had a chance at objectivity with anybody…
“Hey, Boulanger, comment ça va?” That was Cajun for “how’s it going?” Max must be reading the caller ID.
“It’s not Greg, Detective Leonard. It’s Faith Corbett. I have a favor to ask.”
“Really?” Max pitched his voice a little louder, stiff with the awareness of an audience. “How can I help you, Ms. Corbett?”
The expletives that sounded near him were unmistakably Roy’s. Faith ignored them and the distinct click once the expletives stopped, which meant Roy had picked up on another line.
“I’m worried about my roommates,” she continued, hating that she had to ask for help but unwilling to risk her friends. Especially if the killer was really after the fictional Cassandra. “They aren’t answering the phone. Hopefully they’re just working the Square, but it’s rare for all three of them to be out during the midday heat, and if somebody got into my apartment once, to see what I had in my closet…. I know you don’t owe me any favors, but since whoever was in the apartment might be the psychic killer—you know, since he called me Cassandra….”
