Last Known Victim (33 page)

Friday, May 18, 2007
10:20 p.m.

S
pencer couldn't breathe. His heart beat so heavily against the wall of his chest, he feared it would burst through. He stared at the cooler, afraid to move. Afraid of what could be inside.

His sister could be dead. Or the woman he loved.

He loved Stacy. He had realized it the moment he'd had to admit she was missing. That she was most likely in the grasp of a lunatic.

He had been playing a game of chicken with himself this whole time. He had been so afraid of loving Stacy and losing her, of being vulnerable to that kind of pain, that he'd denied his feelings.

Idiot. Like that had made one iota of difference. He loved her, anyway. And now, along with grief and fear, he felt a great, yawning regret. For what he could have had. What he had stupidly denied himself.

Patti's call had sent them all into a panic. Spencer worked to control his. Quentin and Percy stood on either side of him, also fighting for calm; John Jr. and Mary had stayed behind with spouses and children.

The morgue was eerily quiet. He jumped when Patti asked, “Are you ready?”

He nodded, though every fiber of his being wanted to scream “No!”

Quentin laid a hand on his shoulder. He heard Percy draw a fortifying breath. Patti lifted the lid.

Relief was immediate, dizzying. “It's not Stacy's,” he said.

“What about Shauna?”

The brothers leaned forward to get a better look. Percy let out his pent-up breath. “No…no way. Look at the nails.”

Shauna was an artist. She worked with oil paints and turpentine every day. Nails would get in the way, so she kept hers very short.

These nails were long. Unpainted. Stained around the edges.

Spencer gazed at the hand, those nails. Long, square-tipped nails. Medium-size hand. Looked to him like it hadn't belonged to a petite woman. Even in its postmortem state, he could see its owner had certainly been out of her twenties. Maybe her thirties as well.

Not Shauna's or Stacy's, and he would bet not Yvette's, either.

Patti looked his way. “Are you thinking what I am?”

“Messinger,” he said, then turned to the lab technician. “Are Tonya Messinger's remains still here?”

He checked the computer. “Nope. Autopsy was completed this afternoon, next of kin notified.”

“How about photos?”

“Got 'em. You want the real deal or are the digitals okay?”

“Digitals work for me. I'm looking for photographs of her remaining hand.”

The technician navigated their system, then opened Messinger's file. Moments later the image filled the screen.

“It's Messinger's,” Spencer said. “Her nails were painted. It threw me off.”

Patti stepped in. “The bastard knew exactly what he was doing. The bright red nails would have immediately given the identity away, so he removed the polish before making his delivery to me.”

“Son of a bitch wanted us to be afraid.”

That had come from Quentin; Patti corrected him. “He wanted
me
to be afraid. Wanted to terrorize
me.
This is my fault. My responsibility.”

Percy squeezed her arm. “We're in this together, Aunt Patti. We're family.”

“And they're still alive,” Spencer said. “If they weren't, it wouldn't be Tonya Messinger's hand in that cooler.”

“I agree,” Patti said.

“We'll need Elizabeth Walker to confirm.”

“Already contacted her. She'll be here first thing tomorrow.”

“What now?” Percy asked.

Spencer moved his gaze around the circle. “We catch this bastard. And we do it fast.”

Saturday, May 19, 2007
Midnight

T
he first thing Yvette became aware of was a stabbing pain in her head. She moaned and opened her eyes—to complete black. No glowing clock face. No ambient light from the street outside her bedroom window or gentle glow of the moon.

She blinked and rolled onto her side. The bedding was rough. It smelled musty. Sour.

Not hers. Not home.

She remembered then. Grabbing her clothes and ducking out of the Hustle. Into the alley.

How long ago had that been?

The bum. The one who had followed her home once.

Yvette struggled to remember. She had pulled her shirt on first, then shimmied into her pants and stepped into the flip-flops.

And looked up to find him there. Staring at her. Her skin crawled, recalling the look in his eyes. Heart pounding, aware of every moment that passed, she'd told him to fuck off and hurried toward the alley entrance.

He had attacked her from behind. Hit her with something, then dragged her into the shadows.

And done what to her? How had she ended up here? Where was “here”?

The Artist.
That's how he had known where she lived, how he knew the route she took home. Because he had followed her.

Dear God, that's how he had known about Marcus owing her money. How much he owed her. He had been in the alley the night she and Marcus fought about it. Watching. Listening.

I did it for you.

He had killed Marcus because Marcus had hurt her. The realizations rushed over her in a sickening wave. She had to run. Go, now. Before it was too late.

She scrambled to her feet and immediately sank back to the cot, light-headed. Legs rubbery. She breathed deeply, waiting for the dizziness to pass. She was hungry, she realized. Thirsty. What time was it? How long had she been unconscious?

Not out the entire time. In and out. She remembered voices. Whose? A woman's? Urging her to run.

He's going to kill you. Run. Quickly.

Panic rose up in her. She fought it back. She had to keep her wits about her. People would be looking for her. The police. Patti would realize the Artist had nabbed her and would—

But would she?

She disappeared after being questioned by the police. They would see her tip money was gone, see the note she left for her landlord.

Guilty. It all made her look guilty.

Riley would have sounded the alarm. But would it do any good? Would they simply think she had planned that, too?

She was in trouble. Deep trouble.

Yvette brought her hands to her head. The woman had urged her to escape.

There must be a way out of this place.

She stood again, this time slowly. Though her legs were still rubbery, she inched cautiously forward, hands out in search of a door or window.

A way out.

She made it to a wall. The surface felt rough, rotten in places, fuzzy in others. She frowned at that. Fuzzy?

She felt her way along it, throat and eyes burning. She came to what she realized was a window. Broken. Boarded over. From the outside.

She felt around it, pressing against the unyielding boards. Her right arm snagged on glass and she jerked back, crying out in pain. She brought a hand to the stinging spot and found it wet and sticky.

Yvette breathed against a wave of dizziness. The blood pounded crazily in her head. She couldn't stop now.

Yvette moved on, straining to see more than a foot in front of her. She stumbled and righted herself, once, then again, the second time landing on her hands and knees. Into something rank.

Something dead.

She sprang to her feet, stomach rising to her throat. She scrubbed her hands against her capris, the sickening smell filling her head.

Get out. She had to get out.

She heard the faint sound of voices. A car door slamming. The Artist? Or a savior?

She moved blindly forward.

Dear God, help me. Deliver me. I'll change, I promise.

It was the same prayer she had whispered during Katrina. He had answered it then, but would He now?

Her hand landed on what felt like a paneled door. Quickly, heart racing, she felt her way to where the knob would be. Finding it, she closed her fingers over it and twisted.

The door opened.

Fresh air rushed over her. The soft glow of the moon. Crying out with relief, the sound of voices growing closer, she darted through the door—and stopped, grasping the metal rail that had kept her from falling.

She stood on a fire escape, several stories up. It swayed dangerously with the breeze and her weight.

Where was she?

She looked out over the moonlit landscape. A wasteland. Piles of rubble. An occasional building, boarded over. Broken. Cars discarded, pushed aside with the rest of the trash.

Like a nightmare world. Post-nuclear.

What had happened between being grabbed in the alley and waking up here?

No. There were trees. Overgrown vegetation.

Not a bomb. The storm. She must be in the lower Ninth ward. Or St. Bernard.

Voices. A voice calling softly to her.

Or was that the wind?

Biting back sobs of fear, Yvette eased forward, finding the first step. She grasped the rusty handrails, found the next and the next. With each step, the metal groaned a protest and she felt certain that any moment it would crumble beneath her feet.

But it didn't. Her feet found solid ground. Heart in her throat, she ran.

Saturday, May 19, 2007
7:00 a.m.

P
atti stood in the doorway to her office, a cup of coffee in each hand. She gazed at Spencer, sitting at her desk, surrounded by case files. Staring into space. Expression lost.

He was thinking about Stacy, she knew. He loved his sister, but at that moment his heart was aching for Stacy.

“She's going to be okay.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “She's a fighter.”

“Yes. A good cop, trained to defend herself.” She entered the office, handed him the coffee. “You need to sleep.”

“I'm not sleeping until I have Stacy and my sister back.”

“Let's get them back then.”

They had pulled every file remotely connected to Yvette Borger. The Maytree and Messinger murders. Marcus Gabrielle's. Stacy's notes. The Handyman files as well. Looking for the connection. The thread they had missed.

They were several hours into them with nothing but the same old questions.

“The day before Katrina hits,” Patti began, “the Handyman kills Jessica Skye, a dancer at the Hustle. He dumps her body in a shallow grave in City Park.”

Spencer took over. “He also kills Sammy. Shoots him with his own weapon. Tosses his badge in the grave with Skye, then discards his gun in the same general area.”

“Sammy's body is found uptown. His cruiser located nearby,” Patti continues.

“A present-day dancer from the Hustle claims she's being stalked by somebody calling himself the Artist. She comes to us for help. Claims the club's talent manager not only recognized our Jane Doe as Jessica Skye—”

“Which proved true.”

“—but insisted the creepy dude sending her notes used to send notes to Skye as well.”

“At the same time, she tells us the manager is missing. She fears the Artist may have killed her. She has no proof to support the claims.”

“But the manager turns up dead, right hand severed.”

“In addition, the dancer's elderly neighbor is murdered. The same night another neighbor's dog is poisoned. Dancer claims the Artist visited her that night.”

“You come on board,” Spencer went on, “and all communication from the Artist stops. Dancer disappears and he reappears.”

“Bent on punishing me.”

“To that end, Shauna and Stacy go missing. And Tonya's hand is delivered to your front door. So,” he finished, “is it Borger?”

Patti swore softly, frustrated. Stymied. Circumstantial evidence suggested it was. But her gut, the instinct she had built her career on, said Yvette had been telling the truth.

Problem was, she no longer trusted her gut.

“I don't know,” she said.

“You think she may be innocent?” He drew his eyebrows together, expression disbelieving. “What is it with you and her?”

“I don't know,” she said again.

“We've got plenty of circumstantial evidence against her.”

“But no physical.”

He thumbed through the Maytree file, then stopped and looked back up at Patti. “What kind of dog?”

“Pardon?”

“The two strands on the victim's robe. The lab was supposed to identify the breed.” He flipped through the pages. “I don't see a report. Looks like they never got back to us.”

Patti got to her feet, looking excited. “What about the dog groomer's business? Anyone ever run a client list?”

She saw by his expression that he followed her thought—maybe there was a connection there. Match the breed with one of the Perfect Pups' clients and it might lead somewhere.

“Doesn't look like it was done.”

“McBreakfast.”

Quentin and John Jr. stood in the doorway, one carrying take-out bags from McDonald's, the other a beverage tray.

Spencer's stomach growled loudly. Patti smiled. “Apparently just in time.”

The brothers dropped the bags on the desk and pulled up chairs. They all helped themselves to an Egg McMuffin.

While they ate, Spencer explained about the unidentified dog breed and the neighbor's grooming business. “I'm thinking, we finish this and contact the lab. Somehow it fell through the cracks.”

“Oh, my God,” Patti said, it suddenly hitting her like a ton of bricks.

The Artist was punishing her. By going after the women in her life. The ones she cared about most.

They all looked at her.

“June,” she said, standing. “I forgot all about June.”