Hall, Jessica (4 page)

The press.

They'd be here soon. They'd want to know what had happened, and
she was the only witness. No one knew who she was. To the rest of the world she
was nothing, nobody, a charity worker from Shreveport with a project no one had
cared about.

She couldn't tell them about her and Marc. Not by herself. No one
would believe her.

"Pretty little thing," one of the cops standing outside
the car said to another as they both stared at her. "Too young to be the
wife—girlfriend, maybe?"

She blocked out the voices and concentrated on what had happened.
She remembered walking upstairs, smelling that terrible odor, finding Marc dead.
Someone had hit her, then pain, falling, blackness. She'd woken up next to
Marc's body, flames all around her. She'd tried to drag him first, but he was
too heavy, and the fire was burning out of control. She'd gotten to a window,
but she couldn't pry away the boards over it, and then she had groped her way
downstairs. The dense, oily smoke and the heat had made it impossible to see
the way out. She'd nearly lost consciousness again.

I could have died in there. Right next to Marc.

The rest of her memory was patchy—she'd been so frightened. The
last things that had registered were the terrifying sound of the ceiling
falling in, and the strong grip of the firefighter who had hauled her out of
there.

Oh, thank God, help me—

Are you hurt?

Sable looked down at herself. Marc's blood was all over her blouse
and jacket. It was dried and flaking on her skin; it was under her fingernails.
For a moment her head swam, and she thought she might have to throw up.

"Ma'am?" One of the patrolmen looked in on her, his
expression concerned. "You want me to get Lieutenant Gamble?"

"No, thank you." She took a deep breath and willed her
voice to remain steady. "I'm fine."

She wasn't fine. Seeing Jean-Delano had been as much a shock as
finding Marc dead. But he wasn't her Jean-Delano anymore; he was Lieutenant J.
D. Gamble, a homicide detective. One of the cops had told her that after
Jean-Del had left her to go and see Marc's body. Not that it mattered. He could
have been mayor of New Orleans and it wouldn't have made a difference. Jean-Del
was part of the past, a relic, someone she'd turned her back on and forgotten.

And still the shock of seeing him kept smashing over her, as hard
and merciless as the blow that had knocked her unconscious.

Jean-Del, here. Jean-Del, a cop.
She
hadn't given anyone her name.
How did he know I was here?

The tall, lanky brunette who had been speaking to J. D. a few
yards from the car climbed in the front and looked back over the bench seat.
She had a clever, narrow face, shrewd, gray green eyes, and oddly beautiful
hands, like an artist's. "I'm Sergeant Vincent. How are you holding
up?"

The cool voice slapped Sable out of her daze, but she didn't
blink, didn't react. She had spent years learning how to hide behind her own
face, and now it was time to take cover. "I'm okay."

"Good. I'd like to ask you some questions, if you feel up to
it?" When she nodded, Sergeant Vincent took out a notebook. "What's
your full name, ma'am?"

"Isabel Marie Duchesne."

She wrote that down. "Isabel, what's your home address?"

Sable thought of her father, and how he would react to the news
that she'd nearly been killed in a fire. She couldn't allow them to contact
Remy "I don't have one."

The cop's dark eyebrows arched. "You're homeless?"

What would be a reasonable excuse? She remembered the paper she'd
left lying on the front seat of her car, folded out to the classified section.
"I'm looking for an apartment at the moment." That was part of the
truth. She had never been a very convincing liar, even under the best of
circumstances.

"You weren't looking for an apartment in this part of town,
though. Why did you come here this morning, Ms. Duchesne?"

"I'm also looking for office space."

The brunette tapped her pencil against the notebook for a moment.
"Why don't you tell me what happened, starting from the time you
arrived?"

Something made Sable's hands sting as she grabbed the edge of the
seat.
No one knows about us.
Carefully she eased her fingers off the
vinyl-covered cushion and put her hands in her lap. She had to stay calm, keep
her head straight. She didn't have to talk about Marc. All she had to do was
give a statement to the police.

But J. D. is the police,
a snide little voice inside
her head reminded her.
And your track record with him sucks.

The woman cop was waiting for her to say something. "I can't
remember much."

Sergeant Vincent regarded her for a long moment. "You have
amnesia?"

Sable stared back at her, unable to tell if she was joking or
serious. "It's just... things are a little fuzzy."

"Are they?" Sergeant Vincent glanced down and frowned.
"What did you do to your hands?"

Sable examined her palms, both of which had some long, dark
splinters embedded in the flesh above each wrist. For the life of her, she
didn't know how they had gotten there. "I don't know."

Without warning, Jean-Delano slid in behind the wheel and slammed
his door, making Sable jump.

Not Jean-Delano. J. D. Lieutenant Gamble. Have to remember that.

He had changed over the years. His hair was shorter, clipped close
to his head on the sides, probably to keep it from curling. There were a few
silver strands at his temples. He wasn't as lean as he'd been in college; his
shoulders seemed wider, his chest deeper. A thin scar flagged one of his
cheekbones and, along with the lines etching his temples, made him appear
tougher, harder.

"We'll do this at the station." J. D. started the engine
and looked at the brunette. "You ready to go?"

The way Sable's heart skipped at the sound of his voice annoyed
her.
Forget about his voice, his face. He's just a cop.

"Yeah." Sergeant Vincent flipped the notepad closed as
J. D. shifted into drive and pulled out from the curb. "In a hurry, are
we?" He didn't answer her, and she clipped on her seat belt. "Ho.
Kay."

Sable dragged her thoughts away from J. D. and concentrated on
what she had to do first. Remy—the news of what had happened would be too much
of a shock. Her father was on heart medication now, and his doctor had warned
her about the dangers of any additional stress. That meant keeping him away
from the city and out of this. "I have to get to a phone as soon as
possible."

"No problem, Ms. Duchesne." J. D.'s partner lit a
cigarette. "You can make your call from the station."

J. D.'s gaze met hers in the rearview mirror for a moment. That
was one thing that hadn't changed—the startling blue of his eyes. They went
dark when he was angry, and right now they looked as black as the depths of
hell.

Terri Vincent loved being a cop, but she wasn't too crazy about
the paperwork.

As J. D. drove them back to headquarters, she made a mental list
of the reports and the forms she would have to fill out. There were a lot.
Finding a dead body at the scene of an arson was serious business.

The New Orleans Police Department had relocated the year before
into the new, state-of-the-art facility built for them by the city as part of
an ongoing campaign to improve local law enforcement. The new headquarters
housed everything required for the day-to-day control of the eight police
districts under NOPD command, along with computerized infrastructures that
automated everything from ballistics identification to evidence tracking.
Community policing and investigation units were integrated with special teams
to coordinate local, state, and federal investigations, as well as supervise
major annual events like Mardi Gras and the Sugar Bowl.

Yet as with most metropolitan law enforcement agencies, it already
looked like the force had been entrenched in the new building for decades.
Overcrowded work space, rows of dilapidated filing cabinets, and endless stacks
of paperwork formed a labyrinth on every floor. The new computer systems
took
up precious space and generated reams of reports to add to the clutter.

Terri noticed a group of college students sitting quiet and sullen
on the hard wooden benches in front of the big desk that was the first stop on
their way to processing. Someone's Mardi Gras party had gotten out of hand,
judging from the bruised, sweaty faces and the plastic barf bags the desk
sergeant had distributed.

J. D. walked their witness straight past check-in and went for the
elevator. Terri stayed behind long enough to send a couple of uniforms to Marc
LeClare's house, to collect the widow and bring her down to the morgue to
confirm the ID.

"You going to call your dad?" Terri said as she caught
up, grabbing the elevator door before it closed.

"Later." He punched the second-floor button.

She didn't like the expression on her partner's face. It was
starting to look permanent. "You want to do the prelim report first?"
She was hopeful; J. D. was a much better typist than she was—plus their witness
probably needed a few minutes to compose herself.

"No." When the doors opened, J. D. steered Sable to the
left, toward the corridor of interrogation rooms, offices, and cubicles that
made up the Division of Homicide.

So he wanted to get right to the interview. Not a bad idea,
considering the feeding frenzy the press would descend to as soon as they heard
Marc LeClare was dead. "Want to run this by the captain first, in case
this turns out to be a murder?"

J. D. paused, long enough to make Terri realize something was
definitely wrong.

"No." He went toward the first available room.

She'd known something was up, back in the Quarter,
but
J. D. was too good a cop to ignore procedure. She caught his arm. "Hey.
Why don't we ask Hazenel and Garcia to take this one? I got that vacation time
coming up, and they still owe us for catching that leather-bar shooting last
month."

He didn't bat an eyelash. "No."

Sable watched their exchange, tensed but silent.

Terri swung a hand toward the room. "Go in and sit down, Ms.
Duchesne. We'll be with you in a minute." As soon as the witness had
crossed the threshold, Terri shut the door and got between it and her partner.
"You want to tell me exactly what is going on here?"

"I know her."

"Oh, yeah, I figured out that much. Who is she?"

"Someone I knew back in college." He stared through the
frosted glass panel, his dark eyes tracking the movements of Sable's shadow.

Terri took out a cigarette, and then remembered that the building
had a strict no-smoking policy and scowled. "Okay. Here's the deal: The
victim was your father's best friend, and you went to school with the only
witness we've got. That spells conflict of interest in large capital letters
underlined three times." When he didn't respond to the joke, she got
serious. "We have to give it over to Hazenel and Garcia. Let them handle
it."

"No."

"She's young and beautiful; Marc LeClare was old and rich.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out that equation—are you listening to
me?" She prodded his chest with a finger. "You can
not
screw
around with this girl, J. D. The captain will have your testicles for
breakfast."

"I'm not screwing—" A passing detective gave them a
curious look, so J. D. leaned in and lowered his
voice. "I'm not
screwing her, and she wasn't screwing Marc."

"And you know this how? Through your secret psychic
powers?" Terri sighed. "Jesus, for all we know,
she
could have
done LeClare and set fire to the place."

"Before or after she conked herself in the head?"

She shrugged. "Maybe trying to find parking pissed her off.
I've been tempted to slam my head into the windshield a few times, looking for
a space."

He didn't laugh, the way he normally would. "Someone tried to
kill her, Ter. I'm not letting her out of my sight. Got it?"

She'd never seen him like this. Not even around Cort when both of
them were having a crappy day. "Sure. I got it." She stepped to the
side and swung a hand at the door. "But I'm doing the interview with
you."

He dragged a hand through his short black hair, spiking it.
"Terri—"

"Don't even go there, J. D." If he was going to make a
damn fool of himself, she'd be there to cover his ass. "I don't care how
cozy you two were back at Tulane. She's a witness to an arson and possibly the
murder of our future governor. Her face will be on the front page of every
newspaper in the state by morning. You want to be listed as the detective in
charge of the case, or the embittered ex-boyfriend?"

He grabbed the knob and nearly yanked the door off its hinges.
"I question her."