Lover Beware

by Christine Feehan

  A young woman stood in the shadows, flanked by two officers. Hooker, by the looks of her. Bleached hair and short skirt, skimpy top, stiletto heels. The flashing red and blue cruiser lights reflected from her tear-streaked face as she hugged herself and sobbed uncontrollably.

  “I heard her screaming. She was screaming, like, horribly. ‘Help me!’ I was there—down there—” She pointed to the distant street corner. “I ran down here and saw him—on her. You know what I’m saying? Raping her, right there in that garbage.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?” an officer asked. “Can you describe him?”

  “I screamed at him. You know? Screamed at him to stop “Can you describe him, ma’am?”

  Anna stepped around the sobbing woman, struggling to put on her latex gloves, and moved up beside the victim, easing down to one knee beside the cop who continued to hold her wrist between his fingers, checking her pulse. He glanced at Anna.

  “FBI,” she said, appraising the young woman’s badly beaten face and the bleeding wound on her throat. “Is she going to make it?”

  “I think so.”

  The woman groaned. Her eyes opened slightly, focusing on Anna.

  The instantaneous assault of image and sound flashing before Anna’s eyes rocked her back. Fear rose up inside her, her heart swelling to the bursting point and pain exploding through her face. She couldn’t breathe; the pressure on her throat was crushing.

  She jumped to her feet, stumbled against the wall, her hands flying up to clutch at the nonexistent fingers around her throat.

  Then they were gone as fast as they had come, leaving her slumped against the hard bricks, gasping for air while reality rushed back on her with a force that bludgeoned as hard as the visions had.

  The squawk of radios and the siren of the arriving EMT filled up the night.

  “D929 to 951. Suspect last seen at Desire and Chartres Street, fleeing southeast along the Pauline Street Wharf,” an officer said into his radio. “Hispanic. Wearing jeans and baggy white T-shirt. Suspect is armed with a knife.”

  “K,” Dispatch responded. “All cars in Sector D respond to 929.”

  ANNA STOOD AT Rosalyn Barker’s side as the ER doctors and nurses spoke softly and comfortingly to the dazed young woman. They had ministered her wounds easily enough. Lacerations on her face from the beating. The knife injury to her throat had done little more than draw blood.

  Collecting evidence from a rape victim’s body was tedious and time consuming, and too often added to the woman’s sense of violation. Her feet in stirrups and her knees forced open, Rosalyn did her best to check her anger and keep her gaze fixed on the ceiling the entire time.

  Outside the curtained-off cubicle, the buzz of conversation droned on. Occasionally, Anna caught Detective Armstrong’s voice fending off reporters’ questions with, “No comment at this time.” Donovan sat in a corner chair in the cubicle, scrawling out notes dictated by the attending doctor, sealing each vial container, and writing his initials on them.

  “Who are you?” Rosalyn finally asked in a weak voice.

  Anna moved closer to the bed and smiled. “My name is Anna. I’m with the FBI.”

  “You don’t look like a fed.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  Her swollen lips turned up. “Yeah.”

  “Bitch of a way to spend your evening, huh? Are you up to answering a few questions, Rosalyn?”

  Her battered eyelids drifted closed, then she nodded.

  “Will you describe this man to me again?”

  “I already done that.”

  “Once more. For me this time.”

  She swallowed. “Mexican. Just as tall as me.”

  “And you are…?”

  “Five six.”

  Anna scribbled the information down on paper as Rosalyn continued.

  “Stocky. Really strong. Long shaggy black hair.”

  “Any distinguishing marks on his body?”

  Nodding. “Tattoos. Everywhere. On his neck, his arms, covering his hands. He was…creepy. Really creepy.” She winced and lifted her head, glared at the doctor who was swabbing her vagina for evidence. “Dickhead, that hurts.”

  He glanced up at her. “Sorry.”

  Her head dropped back to the pillow. “The dude stank bad. Like rotten fish. Said he wanted a blow job. I told him no way. To fuck off. Looked and smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a year. I ain’t that hungry, know what I mean?”

  “Did he attack you at that point?”

  “He left.” She touched her neck. “Then he come up behind me. From the alley, I guess. Put his hand over my mouth and stuck the knife to my throat. Dragged me into the alley and started beating me. Kept saying he was going to cut off my head.”

  “Think carefully. The knife. What did it look like? Was it a big knife? A small one?”

  She frowned and remained silent a moment. “Sorta big.”

  “Like a butcher knife?”

  “Not that big.”

  “Maybe like a steak knife?”

  “Maybe.”

  “A switchblade? Pocketknife?”

  “No. Bigger.”

  “Did you notice if he was carrying anything on his back?”

  “Nothin’ on his back.”

  “Okay.” Anna nodded. “Had you seen this man before, Rosalyn?”

  “No. Would have remembered him.”

  Anna closed the notebook and slid it into her jeans pocket. Having completed his task, the doctor left the cubicle, and Donovan stood to follow him out. Anna grabbed Donovan’s arm. “I’d like a couple minutes alone with Ms. Barker.”

  He nodded and left.

  Anna moved to the bed. “Ms. Barker, I know it’s difficult, but I want you to try to relax for me. I want you to look straight into my eyes and say nothing. Just look at me. Will you do that?”

  She nodded.

  Anna took a deep breath, and wrapped her fingers around Rosalyn’s hand.

  ANNA LOOKED OVER Donovan’s shoulder as computer images of possible suspects flashed one after another across the monitor screen. She’d said very little since leaving the victim. As usual, the flashes of insight that Anna had experienced through Rosalyn’s touch had left her exhausted and more than a little shaken.

  Around her, the anticipation of the NOPD’s Eighth District vibrated the air. At last, they had gotten a break, a detailed description of the perp they were certain was their French Quarter Killer, as well as hard-core evidence that could help nail him in court.

  Anna had more than a hunch that they were wrong. She’d suspected as much when hearing Barker’s description of her attacker. She became certain of it when experiencing the crime through the victim’s eyes and touch. The images that had so painfully assaulted Anna were not the same as those she’d experienced those few moments at the Bobbie Cox crime scene.

  Several mug shots flashed up on the screen, side by side like a lineup—potential perps, all resembling Barker’s description. Hispanic. Black shaggy hair. Tattoos. Her gaze zeroed in on one.

  “That’s him,” she said, fighting against the sudden onslaught of hot energy that rushed through her.

  Jerry moved up behind her, placed one hand on her shoulder as he looked at the screen.

  Donovan turned in his chair, his expression bemused and skeptical, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Yeah? How the hell do you know that?”

  She gave him a flat smile. “He fits the description.”

  Armstrong joined them, sipping hot coffee from a foam cup. “They all fit Barker’s description.”

  “Bring up his sheet,” Jerry told Donovan.

  Donovan punched a button and the details of Angel Gonzales’s previous crimes flashed across the screen. Convictions for assault, child molestation, larceny, and parole violations. Outstanding warrants in Texas and Mississippi for Assault with a Deadly Weapon. Hookers attacked with a knife. Perpetrator considered Dangerous.

  “Run off copies of those five suspects,” Jerry
said. “Take a drive over to Charity and show them to Ms. Barker. If she identifies Gonzales, we’ve got our man.”

  Anna walked from Donovan’s office, down the long corridor past offices and groups of conversing cops. She needed a cigarette. Badly. And a drink. A stiff one. Not to mention sleep.

  She exited the building. The miserably hot night settled over her like a damp wool blanket as she sat on the steps and stretched her long legs out, dug into her purse for a cigarette. The doors opened behind her.

  Jerry sat down beside her. He regarded her in silence for a moment. “What’s the problem?”

  She watched traffic move along the street. “Gonzales is your man, all right. Barker’s assailant. But he’s not your serial killer, Jerry.” She looked at him and shook her head. “It’s all wrong. Nothing about this M.O. matches the profile of the killer.”

  He reached for her cigarette and took a deep drag. “Go on.”

  “Your killer never raped his victims.”

  “Bobbie Cox—”

  “Bobbie Cox—hooker—may well have serviced one or more men before the killer got to her. The collection of semen from that victim is circumstantial at this point and you know it. Even if the DNA matches the perp who assaulted Barker, that doesn’t mean Bobbie didn’t have sex with Barker’s assailant before the killer got to her.

  “His pattern is definable. He performs his gruesome ritual in the victim’s apartment. He binds and gags them, tortures, then kills.”

  “So this time the woman refused to service him. He attacked her. He told her he would cut off her head.”

  “Come on, Jerry. You know as well as I that the news has been all over this. You even admitted you’ve got a snitch in the department who leaked information to the press. Every lunatic in this city knows the details of this creep’s signature—including the fact that he cuts out his victim’s heart and tucks it into what’s left of her uterus—thanks to your snitch.”

  She took her cigarette from him and smoked. “Your killer gets his jollies by domination and from inspiring fear in his victim.”

  “I venture to say that threatening to cut off Barker’s head inspired her with tremendous fear.”

  “Your killer is smart, Jerry. Organized. He’s rational enough to choose his victim, not at random, but in a calculated manner. The techs so far have been unable to pick up any evidence whatsoever at the crime scenes.”

  “So he got sloppy once. Maybe he was pissed that she refused to service him.”

  “A killer like this doesn’t get sloppy.”

  “They all get sloppy, Anna, or we would never nail them.”

  “I can name a few who didn’t. The Green River Killer, Zodiac, Twin Cities, the Colonial Parkway Killer.”

  They remained silent for a moment, each watching the cars crawl along the street, then Jerry looked at her in that way he had of staring right into her psyche. He reached out and took her hand.

  “What the hell is going on with you, Anna?”

  Feeling his fingers close around her hand, tightly, so tightly she almost flinched, she looked up at the moon before responding. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m here to do a job, and I’m attempting to do it. I simply don’t have the desire, or the time, to get emotionally involved—”

  “That’s not what I mean.” He tucked her hand in his lap, then reached for her face, forcing her to look into his eyes, his own staring hard, narrowed like two hard cold blue stones.

  “When I picked up your message for me at the St. Louis, you had another message. A Dr. Jeff Montgomery. I know the name, Anna.”

  Heat rushed to her face and she attempted to tug her hand away. He wouldn’t allow it.

  “Montgomery once worked for the CIA’s Stargate unit. Parapsychology stuff. ESP and psychic investigations. I want the truth out of you. All of it. You owe me that. This is my goddamn case and my neck is on the line and I want to know what the hell I’m dealing with.”

  “Then speak to Dr. Montgomery,” she said, annoyed. “I have my orders to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I already did.”

  She blinked, felt her heartbeat accelerate and her body begin to sweat again. “You’re lying.”

  “PID, Special Division. Classified. You’ve been trained—or brainwashed into believing—that what you do is some psychic bullcrap.”

  “And you don’t believe in psychic bullcrap. Not Jerry Costos. Just the facts, ma’am.”

  His grip on her hand turned more gentle, but his gaze continued to hold hers. “Maybe. Maybe not. Even during our relationship, there were times when I recognized there was more going on in your head than you were willing to admit. There was buzz about you from the field agents after the California Interstate Killer case. Billy Cowan, a San Jacinto, California, truck driver who liked to pick up teenage hitchhikers to rape and mutilate, leaving their bodies along the freeways of Southern California. You rescued his next victim—the daughter of the Los Angeles mayor, Ralph Lasley. Sheila Lasley and her friend Michelle had hitched a ride with the infamous killer. Michelle had escaped. You reached the young woman as she clung to life, too near death to pass on information to the authorities. But somehow, without her muttering a word, you got the description of the killer, the interior of the truck, and the cubbyhole in which he hid his victims until he found the time to kill them. Thanks to you, Sheila Lasley was located—tied and gagged, but alive—in the truck parked at a truck stop on the California-Mexico border.

  “Shortly after that, you disappeared from the field. I assume that’s when you went underground into the PID. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that this Dr. Montgomery, formerly of Stargate, had something to do with it.”

  Raising one dark eyebrow, he continued. “When I came up behind you at the Cox crime scene, you were humming ‘Happy Birthday.’ It just so happens that Bobbie’s mother’s birthday was the day after she was killed. Now I want the truth out of you. All of it. Anything you tell me will continue to be classified information. You know me well enough to know that I’ve got your back, Anna.”

  Anna remained silent, focused now on the hazy moon overhead that was fast becoming diluted by the fog that was crawling over the city, diffusing the light of the street lamps. She had lived the last years in total secrecy—alone in a world where the slightest slip of the tongue could jeopardize the PID Division. If she must confide, she knew Jerry Costos would keep the information at the cost of his job…and his life.

  She took a deep breath, and her confession trembled. “Leave it to you to dig up the dirt even on the FBI. You realize that if you breathe a word of this to anyone, the government will come down on you like a jackhammer.”

  “I understand. Anna, I just want to help.”

  Anna nodded. “Okay. I’m a PID special agent. I don’t work the BSU Profiler Division by sitting on my ass in a cramped office punching computers and paralleling previous serial cases, victims, and perps. I leave that to others, VICAP, et cetera. To do my thing—whatever that is…” She gave a throaty laugh. “I have to work the actual crime scenes. I experience the crime through whatever negative energy remains at the scene. We got lucky with Barker. I was able to witness her attacker precisely through her eyes. Which is why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Angel Gonzales attacked her. I recognized him immediately.”

  She swallowed. “FYI. It’s hell, Jerry. The fear, the pain…it’s all there. Here.” She pointed to her head. “The focus I must call upon is depleting and horrifying. I’m green yet. Very green. It doesn’t come easy. I’m not a seer who reads minds. I don’t look into crystal balls and predict the future. It’s the evil I tap in to. And each time I do, I feel as if I’m being murdered myself…or, more horrifying, perpetrating the murder, if I’m lucky enough to grab on to the assailant’s thoughts.”

  She briefly covered her eyes with one hand. “I become the assailant. I feel his thrill, his fury, his sickness. The focus it takes to go there…it’s not easy. If it were, I’d go mad. Every human being
I meet on the streets—can you imagine the infiltration of wickedness that would bombard me? Look around us—the sickos who are walking our streets. Our next-door neighbors whose closets are full of skeletons. It’s gotten to where I’m afraid to look into people’s eyes—afraid of what I’ll see there. That’s where Montgomery comes in—the training of focus. Tempering this so-called gift so I can lead some form of a normal existence. I choose whose minds I wish to crawl into. This is a job. I refuse to allow it to annihilate my existence. Were I suddenly unable to control that focus…my life would become a constant terrifying nightmare. Hell. Total hell surrounded by impending doom and evil.”

  His arm slid around her shoulders, and he pulled her close. “Christ. I had no idea.” Jerry kissed her brow, which was damp with sweat. The fog embraced them, chilling despite the heat of the night.

  As they remained silent for a long while, the lights from the passing cars became little more than dim strips of vaporous illumination, and radio music and the distant wails of police sirens were muted by the heavy damp gray blanket of mist.

  Anna felt her body go limp against his—her confession leaving her weak with relief. Tears stung her eyes at the knowledge that, at long last, she had a shoulder for support—someone who gave a damn about the circumstances which had become a burden that weighed more heavily upon her with each passing case. Once, she had obsessively embraced the FBI like a lover. Now she feared it—not the agency—but what had become, or was becoming, of her.

  A car parked at the curve and a man got out. Anna recognized him immediately as he moved toward them through the fog. Eric Damascus, J.D.’s brother, Senator Strong’s legislative director. She didn’t like him. Never had.

  Jerry released her, and she pulled away and dug into her purse for another cigarette as Damascus moved up the sidewalk.

  “Shit,” Jerry said. “Here comes trouble.”

  “Costos, how’s it going?” Eric glanced at Anna. “Agent Anna. Long time no see. What brings you back to New Orleans?”

  She gave him a flat smile but didn’t return his look. Damascus was a Grade A number one jerk. Always had been. As Senator Jack Strong’s newly appointed legislative director, he would sell his own mother’s soul to the devil if he thought it would win him points with the senator and pave the way for Eric’s own rise through the political ranks.