Thursday, March 10, 2005
8:15 p.m.
S
pencer sped through the Metairie Road, City Park Avenue and I-10 intersection, making the turn onto City Park, cherry lights bouncing crazily off the underpass walls. Stacy’s first call had come in while he and Tony had been in with the captain. The second one while he was on his way home. He’d made a U-turn, heading back toward central city, before he had even ended the call.
Spencer tightened his grip on the wheel, weaving around vehicles that didn’t get out of his way fast enough. Stacy had said little besides “Get over here, ASAP.” But he’d heard the strain in her voice—the hint of a quiver—and had reacted without question.
He’d decided to make the call solo. Assess what had happened and who was needed. Give Tony a chance to eat the meal waiting for him at home. Spencer had learned the hard way that coming between the Pasta Man and his food wasn’t pretty.
He reached Stacy’s double. She sat on her porch step, waiting. He parked in the fire zone, climbed out of his vehicle and headed up to meet her.
As he neared, he saw her Glock was resting across her knees.
He stopped before her. She lifted her face. “Sorry to call you out like this. I remember what it was like.”
“No problem.” He searched her expression, concerned. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and stood. “Tony coming?”
“Nope. Thought I’d give him a chance to eat dinner. Pasta Man’s like a grizzly if you get in between him and his next meal. What’ve you got?”
She crossed to the door, opened it for him. “See for yourself.”
Her voice lacked inflection. Whether with shock or the effort to keep her emotions at bay, he didn’t know.
He followed her inside. She led him from the front of the double to the back, to the single bathroom.
He saw the creature immediately. He stopped short, no doubt about what he was looking at.
The Cheshire Cat, its bloody head floating above its body.
Pogo’s sketch brought to life.
“How did he get in?” he asked, tone sounding gruff to his own ears.
“Kitchen door. Broke one of the panes of glass, reached inside and unlocked the door. Cut himself, left some blood.”
“You touch anything?”
“Just that.” She indicated the bloody plastic bag and note card on the floor. Beside them were a pair of bright yellow Playtex gloves. The kind he had seen his mother use when washing dishes.
As if she read his mind, she said, “So I didn’t contaminate anything. If you’re worried, they were new.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
She frowned as if with thought. “I was heating the water for a shower. I just reached in…without looking. In the process some evidence might have been washed away.”
He glanced sideways. Saw the khaki capris she had been wearing earlier, the white short-sleeved sweater. A lacy bra in a delicate lavender color.
He looked quickly away, feeling like a Peeping Tom.
“Sorry,” she muttered, crossing to the garments and scooping them up. “I wasn’t thinking. I threw on a robe and…”
Her words trailed off. He shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize. This is your home, I shouldn’t have looked.”
She laughed then, one perfectly timed, infectious laugh. “You’re an investigator. Seems to me, that’s your job.”
It broke the awkwardness of the moment. He chuckled. “You have a point. I’ll remember that.”
He fitted on a pair of gloves, crossed to the note card and picked it up. The message was as simple as it was chilling.
Welcome to the game.
It was signed the White Rabbit.
Spencer looked at her. She met his gaze, hers unflinching. Steady. “I asked too many questions,” she said. “Stepped on somebody’s toes. I’m in the game now.”
He wished he could reassure her otherwise. He couldn’t.
“The Cheshire Cat,” she continued. “A character with long claws and lots of teeth. In the story the queen tries to behead it, but it disappears before she can.” She pressed her lips together a moment, as if using the time to regain emotional control. “This one wasn’t so lucky.”
“The cat fades in and out throughout the story,” Spencer said, thinking of the Cliff’s Notes he had read the night before. “Further evidence of a world in which reality has been distorted.”
“Am I the cat?” she asked. “Is that what this means? That I’m the cat, and he means for me to die this way?”
Spencer frowned. “You’re not going to die, Stacy.”
“You can’t guarantee that.” Her eyebrows drew together. “You can’t tell me I won’t. It’s the nature of the beast.”
The beast.
Man with the will to murder.
He crossed to the tub, examined the creature, then fanned out until, finally, he had taken in the entire apartment. He took his time, making notes as he went. After dumping the clothes in a hamper, Stacy silently shadowed him. Giving him space, letting him come to his own conclusions.
Spencer checked his watch. Tony should be good and full by now. He needed to get the evidence collection team over. The prints techs. If they were lucky, the bastard had left a print to go along with the blood on the broken window.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Make your calls.” She smiled slightly at his expression. “I don’t read minds, unfortunately. It’s the obvious next step in the process.”
He opened his cell, punched in Tony’s number first. While he spoke to his none-too-happy partner, he was aware of Stacy grabbing a jacket and heading out to the front porch.
He finished his calls and followed her outside. She stood at the edge of the porch, near the stairs. She looked cold. He glanced up at the cloudless dark sky, thinking that the temperature had dipped into the fifties. He hunched deeper into his jacket and crossed to stand beside her.
“They’re on their way,” he said.
“Good.”
“Are you okay?” he asked for the second time that night.
She rubbed her arms. “I’m cold.”
For a reason that had nothing to do with temperature, he suspected. He wished he could draw her against his chest, comfort and warm her.
He wouldn’t cross that line.
Even if he could, she wouldn’t let him.
“We have to talk. Quickly. Before the others get here.”
She turned. Met his eyes in question.
“Pogo’s the one,” he said. “We found sketches for the cards Leo received. And for others.”
Her gaze sharpened with interest. Became intent. He sensed her analytical mind kicking in, digesting the facts, categorizing, organizing.
“Tell me about the others,” she said.
“The March Hare. The two playing cards, the Five and Seven of Spades. The Queen of Hearts and Alice. All dead. Their deaths gruesome.”
“And the Cheshire Cat? Was he there?”
He paused, then nodded. “Decapitated, the head floating above its body.”
She pursed her lips. “If the Allen murder is the first in a series, then the people the cards represent will be victims.”
“Yes.”
“Including me.”
“We don’t know that, Stacy. Leo received the first cards, yet he wasn’t the intended victim.”
She agreed, though she didn’t look convinced. The team arrived then. Tony first. The crime-scene van immediately behind. Spencer started toward his partner; she caught his arm, stopping him.
“Why’d you tell me that?”
“You’re in the game now, Stacy. You needed to know.”
Thursday, March 10, 2005
11:30 p.m.
S
tacy surveyed her apartment, moving from room to room. The crime-scene techs had just finished. Spencer had followed them out. He hadn’t said goodbye.
She swallowed hard. She had known what to expect, of course. The black powder left by the fingerprint techs, the freshly vacuumed floor—done to pick up any trace evidence—the general sense of chaos.
She hadn’t expected the way it had made her feel. Stripped bare. Violated. She found herself on the other side of the process, once again. And again, it sucked.
Stacy reached the bathroom door. She saw that they had taken her shower curtain, and she curved her arms around her middle. Something about that naked tub hit her hard. She knew what the tub floor looked like. Streaked red, the color deepening with the deoxidization process.
Police collected evidence of a crime.
They didn’t clean up after it.
She crossed to the tub, adjusted the showerhead and turned on the water. It jettisoned out of the head, mixing with the blood, turning it pink.
Washing it away.
She watched it swirl down the drain.
“I’m sorry, Stacy.”
She looked over her shoulder. Spencer hadn’t left. He stood in the doorway, his gaze intent. “For what?”
“The mess. The late hour. That a half dozen strangers just tromped through your house. That some wacko broke in and left you that gruesome gift.”
“None of it is your fault.”
“But I can still be sorry.”
Tears pricked her eyes, and she turned quickly back to the tub. She flipped off the shower, then mopped up the water that had sprayed on the floor. She glanced over her shoulder at him. He hadn’t moved.
“You can go,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“You have a friend you can stay with tonight?”
“No need for that.”
“The door—”
“I’ll nail a board over it. It’ll be good for tonight.” She smiled grimly at his concern. “Besides, I’ve got my old friend Mr. Glock to protect me.”
“You always been such a hard-ass, Killian?”
“Pretty much.” Stacy wrung out the towel and laid it across the edge of the tub. “It made me popular around the DPD. Ball-buster Killian, they called me.”
He didn’t smile at her attempt at humor. She made a sound of exasperation. “He’s not coming back, Malone. He may intend for me to die, but not tonight.”
“Invincible, are you?”
“No. But I’m figuring this guy out. It’s a game. He’s engaging me in a battle of wits. And will. His cat to my mouse. If he’d wanted a quick kill, he would have orchestrated it that way.”
“If you won’t go, I’m staying.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
A part of her was touched by his concern for her. Warmed by it.
But the sensation reminded her of Mac. Her partner and friend. Her lover.
Liar. Betrayer.
He’d broken her heart. And worse.
And the way he’d hurt her.
She steeled herself against the memory and crossed to stand in front of him. She met his eyes. “What are you thinking here? That I’m going to fall apart and need a big strong man? You thinking you’re going to get lucky?” She cocked up her chin. “I’ll save you the rude reality check, Malone. You’re not.”
As she stepped around him, he caught her arm, stopping her. “Nice try. But I’m staying.”
She opened her mouth to argue; he cut her off. “The couch will be fine. No sex required, expected or, frankly, desired.”
Her cheeks heated. She knew he could see the color in them.
“I can’t force you to let me stay, but sleeping in the car will be damn uncomfortable, so I’m asking for mercy. What’s it going to be, Killian?”
She folded her arms across her chest. He would do it, too. The man was more pigheaded than she was, for heaven’s sake. She’d done surveillance detail, and spending the night in a car ranked up there with cold showers and stepping in shit with bare feet.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll show you the guest bedroom.”
She found an extra blanket, a never-been-used toothbrush and travel-size tube of Crest.
“A toothbrush, too,” he said when she handed him the things. “I’m overwhelmed.”
“I didn’t want you to stink up the place.”
“You’re all heart.”
“Just so you know, I’m going to lock my bedroom door.”
He removed his shoulder holster and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Have at it, sweetheart. I hope you and Mr. Glock have a great night.”
“Arrogant,” she muttered. “Pigheaded, stubborn, know-it—”
She bit the words back as she realized they all described her. As she shut her bedroom door behind her, she heard him laugh.
Friday, March 11, 2005
2:10 a.m.
S
pencer opened his eyes, instantly awake. He went for his weapon, tucked under the mattress, curled his fingers around its grip and listened.
It came again. The sound that had awakened him.
Stacy, he realized. Crying.
The sound was thick, as if she was trying to muffle it. No doubt, she perceived tears as a sign of weakness. She would hate it that he had heard her. She would be embarrassed if he checked on her.
Spencer closed his eyes and tried to block the sound out. He couldn’t. Small, hopeless-sounding, her grief tore at him. Both were so foreign to the woman she wanted him to think she was.
He couldn’t simply wait for her crying to stop.
That
was foreign to the man he was.
He stood, stepped into his jeans and fastened them. Taking a deep breath, he went to her bedroom. He stood outside the door a moment, then tapped on it. “Stacy,” he called, “are you all right?”
“Go away,” she called, voice thick. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Clearly.
He hesitated, then tapped again. “I have a pretty good shoulder. Best in the Malone clan.”
She made a strangled sound, one that sounded part laugh, part sob. “I don’t need you.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“Then go back to sleep. Or better yet, go home.”
He grabbed the doorknob and twisted. The door eased open.
She hadn’t locked it, after all.
“I’m coming in. Please don’t shoot me.”
As he stepped into the dark bedroom, the light came on.
Stacy was sitting up in bed, blond hair a wild tangle, eyes red and puffy from crying. She gripped the Glock with both hands, the weapon aimed at his chest.
He stared at it a moment, feeling like a cat burglar caught in the act. Or a deer in the headlights of a truck. A big one, traveling too damn fast for comfort.
He raised his hands over his head, fighting a smile.
Pissing her off would be a bad idea.
“The chest, Stacy? You couldn’t aim for a leg or something?”
She inched the barrel directly south. “Better?”
His nuts ran for cover. “That’s equipment I’d rather die for than do without, sweetheart. Do you mind?”
She grinned and lowered the Glock. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry. It’s genetic.”
“Good. Meet me in the kitchen in five?”
“Sounds good.” He started through the door, then stopped. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“You made me forget,” she answered simply.
He left her bedroom, mulling over what she had said. The turn of events. She had surprised him. The invitation. Her honest answer to his question.
Stacy Killian was one complicated, high-maintenance woman. The kind he made a practice of steering clear of.
So what the hell was he doing meeting her for a midnight pajama party?
She joined him in the kitchen. “What do you like to eat?”
“Everything. Except beets, liver and brussels sprouts.”
She laughed, crossed to the fridge. “Don’t have to worry about those, not with me.” She peered inside. “Enchilada bowl. Leftover Peking duck. Though I’d give it the sniff test first. Tuna. Eggs.”
He peered over her shoulder, made a face. “Pickings are slim, Killian.”
“I was a cop, remember. Cops always eat out.”
It was true. His refrigerator was emptier than hers.
“How about cereal?” she asked.
“That depends, what’ve you got?”
“Cheerios or Raisin Bran.”
“The O’s are good, definitely. Whole milk or skim?”
“Two percent.”
“That’ll do.”
She took the carton of milk from the fridge and closed the door. He saw her check the date on the carton before she set it on the counter. She took two bowls from one cabinet and two boxes of cereal from another.
They filled their bowls—she took the bran, no surprise there—and carried them to the small café table by the window.
They ate in silence. He wanted to give her time. A little space. A chance to become comfortable with him. And to decide if forgetting was enough, or if she needed someone to talk to.
She hadn’t asked him to the kitchen because she was hungry. Or because she was worried that he was.
She had needed company. Another’s support, even if that support only came in the form of a cereal buddy.
One of his sisters, Mary, third oldest of the Malone brood, was like that. Tough as nails, stubborn as a mule, too prideful for her own good. When she had gone through a divorce a couple of years ago, she had tried to keep it all in, handle everything—including her hurt—by herself.
She had finally confided in Spencer. Because he had first allowed her the space, and then the opportunity to do so. And maybe, too, because he had made so many mistakes in his own life, she figured he would be less judgmental of hers.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked finally as her spoon scraped the bottom of her bowl.
She didn’t ask about what; she knew. She stared into her bowl, as if preparing her answer.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she said after a moment, looking at him. “Not anymore.”
“Breakfast cereal with near strangers?”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Are you ever totally serious?”
“As infrequently as possible.”
“I’m thinking that would be a nice way to be.”
He thought of Lieutenant Moran. “Trust me, it has drawbacks.” He inched aside his bowl. “So, you left police work behind, moved to New Orleans to study Literature and start a new life?”
“Something like that,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “But it wasn’t the police work I wanted to leave behind. It was the ugliness of the job. The absolute disregard for life.” She let out a long, weary-sounding breath. “And here I am, smack dab in the middle of it again.”
“By your own doing.”
“Cassie’s murder was not my doing.”
“But putting yourself into the investigation was. Signing on with Noble was. Stepping through each door that opened was.”
She looked as if she wanted to argue. He reached across the table and caught her hand, curving his fingers around hers. “I’m not criticizing you. Far from it. You’re doing what comes natural. You were a cop for ten years. We both know that law enforcement isn’t a job, it’s a way of life. It’s not what you are, it’s who you are.”
He had discovered just how true those words were when he was falsely accused, suspended and facing a lifetime without police work.
“I don’t want to be that person, not anymore.”
“Then let it go, Stacy. Get out of it. Go back to Texas.”
She made a sound of frustration and stood. She carried her bowl to the sink, then turned to face him once more. “What about Cassie? I can’t just…leave.”
“What about her? You hardly knew her.”
“That’s not true!”
“It is, Stacy. You were friends for less than two months.”
“She didn’t deserve to die. She was young. And good. And—”
“And the morgue is filled with young, good people who shouldn’t be dead, but are.”
“But they’re strangers to me! And Cassie…Cassie was the person I wished I was!” She fell silent a moment; he saw her struggle for control. “And someone killed her. The same ugliness that I wanted to escape…followed me.”
Understanding, he stood and crossed to her. He caught her hands. “You think the ugliness found you? Followed you? And she died because of it?”
“I didn’t say that.” Eyes bright with tears, she shook her head and moved to free her hands from his.
He tightened his grip. “Cassie’s death doesn’t have anything to do with what you’ve involved yourself in. There’s nothing similar about her death and the White Rabbit killings.”
She knew he had a good point; he saw it in her expression. “What about her computer?”
“What about it?”
“She stumbled onto something that put her in harm’s way. It had to do with White Rabbit.”
“You believe,” he countered. “The facts don’t support that belief.” He leaned toward her. “The most obvious is most often the one ‘whodunit.’ You know that.”
“Gautreaux.”
“Yeah, Gautreaux. We have physical evidence linking him to the murders.”
“What?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “What do you have?”
“A print—”
“His or hers?”
“His. Retrieved from her apartment. And some trace.”
She nodded, skepticism becoming excitement. “What kind of trace?”
“Hair. Hers. On his clothing. Because of their past relationship, neither is strong enough to prove he did it.”
“Bullshit. No way there should be a print of his in her place. They didn’t break up amicably. The guy stalked and threatened her, no way she just let him in for a nice little chat. Plus, they broke up last year. Doesn’t he wash his clothes?”
“Jacket,” he corrected. “Denim. Doesn’t look like it’s ever seen a washing machine.”
She swore and stood. “I hate defense lawyers. They can twist the facts—”
“Hold on, there’s more. We found a hair consistent with his on her T-shirt. We got the order for the swab, results are due next week. If we’re lucky—”
“DNA will tie him to the scene. Nasty little prick.”
Spencer turned her earlier question back on her. “So why’d he take her computer?”
“To cover his ass. Maybe he sent her hate mail, maybe he knows she saved it. So when he kills her, he takes away the evidence. Or he takes it as a trophy. Or because it was the thing he perceived she loved most. Certainly more than him.”
Spencer smiled. “By George, I think she’s got it.”
She frowned suddenly. “When did you swab him?”
“Three days ago.”
“And you really think he hasn’t skipped?”
“I’m not a complete rookie, you know. We’ve got a GPS tracking device on his car. He takes one step too close to the state line and we grab him.”
He caught her hands in his, holding them gently. “Go home to Texas, Stacy. We’ve got Cassie’s killer. She doesn’t need your help anymore.”
Her hands trembled; he felt her indecision, the conflict raging inside her.
She wanted to.
She couldn’t bring herself to let go.
Spencer tightened his fingers on hers. “Go. Visit your sister. Stay until we find this crazy White Rabbit character and get him behind bars.”
She shook her head. “School doesn’t work that way. Can’t just come and go. Besides, I only have a little over a month to go in this semester.”
He frowned. “We both know a month is a long time. A lot can happen in a month.”
He knew she understood what he was saying. That death could find her in the blink of an eye.
And that this one scared him.
“He’ll follow me,” she said softly. “He knows all about me now.”
“You’re just guessing. You don’t know that for certain—”
“But I do, Malone. He’s playing the game. So am I. And the game doesn’t end until there’s only one man standing.”
He stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs. “Then go somewhere he won’t think to look for you. Someplace you’ve no connection to.”
“And how do we know he won’t wait me out? For years, the rest of my life, even. I have family, a life outside this. I’m not going to go into hiding.”
“But we’re going to catch him. Long before years pass.”
“You hope.”
She moved to slip her hands from his; he tightened his fingers on hers. “I
will
catch him, Stacy. I promise you that.”