Cold Blooded

by Lisa Jackson

  It was late afternoon, shadows lengthening over the nearby colleges of Tulane and Loyola. She parked in a designated spot, then jogged to the psychology department. Images of Detective Bentz chased after her, but she was determined to push his handsome, craggy face, and all thoughts of the murder aside. At least for the moment. She made her way up a flight of stairs to the office of Dr. Jeremy Leeds, her professor and, she thought, noting the irony, the ex-husband of Dr. Sam, the radio psychologist at WSLJ. Olivia didn’t much like the guy; he seemed pretty stuck on himself, but as he was her assigned counselor, she had to put up with him for a year or so.

  No one was seated at the secretary’s desk, so she wended her way through a labyrinthine hallway and knocked on the door to Leeds’s private office. No answer. She tried again, her knuckles, where she’d scraped them earlier on the cheese grater, aching a little. “Dr. Leeds?” she said just as she heard footsteps rounding a corner.

  “Olivia! Sorry I’m late.” His smile was wide. Apologetic. In his mid-forties, with strong features, a long, straight nose and a neatly trimmed beard, he shoved open the door and held it for her. His shoes were polished to a gloss, his casual jacket looking as if it had cost a small fortune. Natty was the word that came to mind whenever she thought of Dr. Leeds. Well, ‘natty’ and ‘fake'; there was just something about him that didn’t ring true. Nothing she could put her finger on, but something. “I had to run down the hall to catch a colleague, Dr. Sutter, before he left for the day. He’s only here part time and it’s the weekend, you know, so I was fortunate to grab him.” Leeds was patting down his pockets for his keys and rattling on, as if he were nervous. “Dr. Sutter and I are offering a two-day seminar in the spring you might be interested in. You’ve heard of him? Ah!” Leeds found his key ring as Olivia lifted a shoulder. All she knew about Sutter was by reputation, that he was a difficult taskmaster. Leeds inserted his key into the lock. “Anyway, he and I started talking, and well, I guess I’m playing the part of the absentminded professor.”

  She didn’t think so. Jeremy Leeds was sharp as a straight-edged razor. There was something too smooth about him. Cold. She felt it now, just being near him.

  “Come on in.”

  She took a chair near a small window and flipped open her folder of notes, all of which she’d taken before last night. Before, she was certain, her life had changed forever. Dr. Leeds slid into his chair on the other side of the desk—as tidy as Detective Bentz’s had been cluttered. A calendar sat on one corner, a humidor of cigars on the other. The room was small and compact, with a smattering of degrees and artwork hung on the walls. “So, what have you got there?” he asked, indicating her work. “A premise for your thesis?” He slid a pair of wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.

  “Just the germ of an idea.”

  “Oh?” He was interested. His eyebrows lifted. “Did you want me to go over it?”

  “Actually I just wanted to run some thoughts by you. It’s not on paper yet.”

  “Of course.” He leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers, and waited.

  “I’d like to do my thesis on aberrant psychology as it applies to religion.”

  “Really?” His smile faded.

  “I’m thinking of the psychology of prayer and penitence as it applies to Judeo-Christian theology.”

  “That’s quite a mouthful. Don’t you think it would be better suited if your area of expertise was theology or philosophy?”

  “I think I could make it work. And it’s what interests me,” she added, not inclined to explain any further. “You offer undergrad classes on aberrant psychology and criminal psychology and I thought I’d sit in, if that was okay.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s not a problem.” He nodded, turning the idea over in his mind. “Tell you what. Go ahead and run with this, but bring me a written proposal, an outline of your thesis, and we’ll go from there. How does that sound?”

  Just peachy, she thought, but said, “Great. I’ll call and we’ll set up an appointment.”

  “Good, good.” He stood—ever the gentleman—and she left feeling that at least one small detail of her life was back in place. She’d been struggling with a concept for her thesis. If nothing else, the murder last night had sharpened her focus.

  She hurried downstairs and outside, where the shadows had turned to dead-on night. Though it wasn’t quite five, darkness had blanketed the city and street lamps were glowing, giving the grounds an eerie feel. Olivia had always thought the massive limestone facade of Gibson Hall looked as if it belonged to part of a medieval castle, and now, in the darkness with the first few drops of rain beginning to fall, it seemed more imposing than ever.

  Crossing the thick grass, she headed for the parking lot, found her truck, and slid behind the wheel. She wasn’t alone. Other students hurried by, but somehow tonight, after the events early this morning, she felt isolated. Detached. She plunged the key into the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. Knowing she was probably making a huge mistake, she drove deeper into the city. For a macabre reason she didn’t understand, she felt compelled to drive by the scene of the crime.

  Just like the killers are supposed to do.

  Traffic was messy. It had begun to rain in earnest and huge drops fell from the sky, pelting the streets and running down the windshield so fast that the wipers could barely slap them away. Taillights glowed red, seeming to smear through the glass as she wound her way to the other side of Canal Street and through the French Quarter, where umbrella-wielding pedestrians filled the sidewalks and sometimes spilled into the streets. She turned on the radio. WSLJ was playing jazz and it grated on her nerves. Maybe it was just from being overly tired and wrung out, but she couldn’t stand the thought of vocal interpretations and riffs. She found a country station and cranked up the volume.

  Better to listen to pining and heartache.

  Yeah, right. She clicked off the radio.

  On the east side of City Park she squinted at the street signs until she found one she recognized, then rolled down the narrow street until she came to the charred, burned-out building. Not much was left, she thought as she pulled close to the curb and climbed out of her little truck.

  Crime scene tape roped off part of the yard and all of the debris and ash. Her shoes were no match for the water rushing through the street, and the jacket she kept in the cab had no hood. Nonetheless, she threw it over her shoulders and waded across the street to stare at the soggy, blackened rubble. Rain peppered her face and ran through her hair as she remembered the vivid scene from her vision. The victim—that horrified blond woman—had died horribly here, somewhere in the burned shell of a house. At the hands of a priest.

  Shivering, she whispered, “Who are you, you bastard?” She’d thought if she came here, actually stepped onto the soil where the horrid event took place, she might get a glimmer, a flash of him, might feel him again and gain some clue to his identity. Traffic crawled behind her but the rain muffled much of the city’s noise as it poured from the sky and dripped off the surrounding trees.

  She closed her eyes. Listened to her own heartbeat. Felt something. A prickle that brought a slight chill, as if the killer had passed her on the street. “Come on, come on,” she said, her eyes still closed as she turned her face skyward, felt the harsh wash of rain and strained to see something, to hear something, to smell—

  “See anything?”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin. Fists clenched, she whirled.

  In the sheeting rain, Detective Bentz was standing less than a foot away from her.

  “Oh, God, you scared me,” she said, her heart pounding in her ears, adrenalin rushing through her bloodstream. “But … no … I don’t see anything but rubble.”

  He nodded. Wearing a baseball cap with the symbol for the New Orleans Police Department emblazoned upon it and a water-repellant jacket, he asked, “What were you doing? Just now.”

  She felt foolish. Embarrassment washed up the back of her neck. “It was just an exe
rcise. I thought maybe if I actually came to the scene of the crime, I might get more of a sense of him.”

  “The killer?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced at the Jeep double-parked on the street. “Did you follow me here?”

  “Nah. Headin’ home. Thought I’d swing by. Maybe see somethin’ or get a glimmer—a hunch—of what went on now that it’s quiet here. Kinda like you were doin'.” He gave her a quick once-over. “You’re getting wet.”

  She smiled. “Now I know why you’re a detective. It’s your keen sense of observation.” Raindrops caught in her eyelashes and dripped from her nose. “There’s just no gettin’ anything past you, is there?”

  “I like to think not,” he said but gave her the barest of smiles, one that seemed genuine and she’d begun to realize was rare. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee … or dinner, before you get completely soaked?”

  “What … like in a date?” she blurted out before thinking. Of course not, Livvie. Don’t be a goose! Cripes! A date? What kind of romantic ninny are you? She swiped at the rain running down her cheeks. “Or as in you want to pump me for more information because you’ve finally figured out that I’m the best resource you’ve got?”

  “Whatever you want to call it. I know a place where you can get great Cajun shrimp and those spicy curli-cue fries,” he said, twirling a finger. “It’s a hole-in-the-wall, but has great food.”

  She couldn’t believe he was serious. “I really didn’t figure you for a curly fry kind of guy.”

  “And you claim you have ESP. Only goes to show ya.”

  “Bentz, are you trying to flirt with me?”

  His smile fell away. “Just trying to get you out of the downpour so that you would talk to me.” He was all business again. Kind of gruff. As if she’d inadvertently tromped all over his male ego. Funny, he didn’t seem to be the kind of man who had an ego problem … but then he didn’t seem like the kind who would go for the damned curly fries, either.

  “Okay. Where to?”

  “I’ll drive.” He ushered her to the Jeep and she told herself that she was making another incomprehensible mistake.

  “I could follow you.”

  “There’s not much parking around there.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  He opened the door to his Jeep and she slid into the passenger seat. It looked pretty much like every other four by four on the road, no police-issue shotgun at ready, no wire mesh or glass separating the front seat from the back, no handcuffs dangling from the glove compartment. But there was a slicker in the back with the police department logo, and of course, he was armed with a handgun.

  He drove through the rain-washed city streets with the expertise of someone who maneuvers cars through tight spots all the time. They cruised across Esplanade and into the Quarter to St. Peter, where he forced the Jeep into what appeared an impossibly small space. “It’s not The Ritz.”

  “Good. Cuz I’m not dressed for it.”

  They ducked under a dripping awning and into a narrow restaurant that smelled of grease and spices. Behind a long counter cooks sweated over boiling pots of shrimp and sizzling baskets of french fries. Bentz led her to a table near the back, past a bar where bottles of beer were packed in metal tubs of ice. He held one of the café chairs for her where, from her vantage point, she could see a glass door that opened to a rear courtyard at the back of the restaurant.

  Bentz settled into a café chair on the opposite side of a red-checked tablecloth, and as the waiter appeared said, “We’ll have a double.”

  “A double?” Olivia repeated.

  “I always eat the same thing. You’ll like it.”

  “I don’t get to choose?”

  Bentz grinned. “Next time you pick.”

  As if there was going to be a next time. “Okay.”

  “You want somethin’ to drink? Beer?”

  “Sure. A lite.”

  “And my usual,” he said to the waiter, who even with his shaved head, didn’t look old enough to serve anything remotely alcoholic but returned within seconds with two opened bottles. Bentz’s boasted zero percent alcohol.

  “Still on duty?” she asked.

  “Always. Cheers.” He tapped the long neck of his bottle against hers, then took a long swallow.

  “So what is it you want to know, Detective?” she asked over the clink of flatware and buzz of conversation. “You’re not assigned to tail me or anything like that, are you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He took a long swallow from his bottle and in the soft lighting from a kerosene lantern with a red shade, he looked less formidable than he had earlier; more approachable. He was good-looking in a rough-hewn way and he had a decent smile beneath those dark eyes.

  “I was told to keep an ‘open mind,’ that’s how it was phrased, about you. So when I ran into you at the crime scene, I thought I’d try to do just that. Listen to what you have to say.”

  “And figure out what makes me tick?”

  Again the flash of that enigmatic smile. “Somehow I don’t think that’s possible.”

  From somewhere behind her there was a crash of glass and metal hitting the hard brick floor.

  “Oops,” Bentz said, raising his thick eyebrows. She looked over her shoulder and saw a tray of broken glass, cutlery strewn helter-skelter, foaming beer running in rivulets through the cracks in the floor, and dozens of prawns, shrimp, and crawfish sliding under tables and between customers’ feet.

  “Watch out, they’re escaping,” Olivia whispered and Bentz laughed.

  A stricken waitress from whose fingers the tray had obviously tumbled was gasping in horror as the bartender, a big black man, tossed her a towel and a busboy hurried to a closet to retrieve a mop and bucket. “Smooth move,” Bentz muttered, amused.

  “The girl is traumatized.”

  “She’ll get over it. I did the same thing once. My first job. In high school. I not only dropped a tray of drinks, I splashed them over six patrons at the country club. Every one of those ladies was dressed in silk, I think. Anyway, that was my first and last day there. God, I’d forgotten about that.” He took a swig from his bottle.

  Olivia didn’t want to think of Bentz as a butter-fingered teenager, or anything other than the detective he was. “From bus boy to cop in two easy moves?”

  “Not quite.” His lips pinched a little. “I’ve had my share of missteps along the way.”

  He didn’t elaborate and Olivia couldn’t help but wonder if the reason he was drinking nonalcoholic beer had to do with one of those missteps. The waiter brought a double order of shrimp—served in buckets—along with two massive baskets of fries. The shrimp were blazing red, the fries, as promised, were spiraled and covered with some kind of hot salty spice. Bentz dumped his shrimp onto his paper-covered tray, cracked off the shrimp’s head, peeled off the shell and legs, then tossed the waste into his bucket as he plopped the meat into his mouth.

  Olivia followed suit, her fingers smearing with the liquid from the shrimp and staining from the spices and grease from the fries.

  As Bentz promised, the food was fabulous. Maybe there was more to this man than first met the eye. Maybe the gruff detective hid a more refined soul—oh yeah, right, tearing a crustacean apart with bare hands hardly suggests any sense of sophistication. Face it, Livvie, he’s a bruiser. All brash, suspicious, male cop. Remember that. He still thinks you were somehow involved with that murder. He just hasn’t figured out how. He believes in what he can see, touch, hear, and smell … Don’t trust him for a second!

  “So, tell me about this ‘gift’ you’ve got,” he suggested as he finished his first near-beer and the waiter set two more bottles onto the table. “When did it kick in? Right from the beginning? I mean were you born with it, or did something, some incident, start the ball rolling?” He cracked the back off a shrimp.

  “You mean like was I dropped on my head as an infant? Or did I faint in high school and wake up suddenly able to see events that wer
en’t happening to me?” she asked.

  “If that’s what happened.”

  “It’s not,” she snapped, her temper rising. “It’s just what most people expect to hear.”

  “Hey, whoa,” he said, lifting a hand. “I didn’t mean to push any hot buttons.” He seemed sincere and she felt a little foolish for jumping off the deep end.

  “Sorry … conditioned reflex. It’s hard to explain, but yes, I had this as a kid. Right from the get-go. Grannie Gin told me it was a gift and my mother told me it was all in my head, that I should keep quiet about it. I think she grew up embarrassed by her own mother’s gift. People would come over and Grannie, even though she was a vastly religious woman, would read tarot cards and tea leaves and all that stuff. Bernadette, that’s my mother, thought it was weird, which, I guess, it was. It always just seemed a part of my grandmother and I understood it, just not why it happened to me, too.”

  “You don’t like it, but you work with all that New Age and voodoo stuff.”

  “I know. It’s like I hate my gift but I have this weird, almost macabre fascination about it.”

  “Brinkman mentioned you’d come in and talked to him about other murders.”

  “So you talked with him.”

  “Had to. That a problem?”

  “No. Not at all.” She’d picked up a shrimp but dropped it back into her bucket. “I thought I explained all this. I’ve been in to the police department before. No one, especially Detective Brinkman, took me seriously. Just like you.”

  “Try me,” he suggested and, when she hesitated, peeled another shrimp. “Tell me your side of it. Firsthand.”

  “It’s in Brinkman’s reports, I’m sure.”

  “But I want your perspective.” He leaned back in his chair, wiped his mouth, and stared at her. “No recorders. No notes. Just tell me what you saw.”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on, Olivia. You started this,” he said, and she noticed how his hair fell over his eyes and how tiny crow’s feet fanned from his eyes, as if he squinted a lot. A thoughtful man.