His big brown eyes were focused on her face. Now that they were up close and personal, Claire could see that he absolutely did wear black eyeliner and man-cara, lots of it. Gross.
“Maybe what we need here is some one-on-one, Rocco. How about you take a little ride with Detective Jackson and me down to bayou country? You can tell me where you've been and what you've been doing for the last week, or so.”
Rocco didn't appear interested in her offer. “You think you're hot shit, don't you?”
“Aw, stop, Rocco, you're hurting my feelings.”
Quiet, extreme quiet. Glares, stares, gritted teeth, everybody quivering in anticipation of the first fisted blows. Then Rocco gave a tight little laugh, one with no trace of amusement. Claire heard a few nervous charity snickers. She kept her eyes on Rocco, and let Zee watch everybody else. Rocco narrowed his gaze and looked at her as if she were the most disgusting little cockroach that he'd ever stepped on. He didn't blink. He said, “Let's get outta here. I don't like the way cops smell.”
Halfway to the door, he turned back and gave Claire another hard stare. “Better watch you back, bitch. We might meet again down in the bayous one of these days.”
“That sounds vaguely threatening. Is it?”
Rocco held her gaze in a vaguely threatening manner, and then he strode out, macho leader of the pack, black leather boots scraping across the floorboards. His busty bimbo fled her hidey-hole and scurried after him. The rest of the Skulls spent a few more seconds nursing their disappointment over the lack of a bloody, knock-down-drag-out and then stomped out behind him, but with just enough nonchalance to show they weren't intimidated by the likes of two detectives from Lafourche Parish. Outside, a dozen choppers fired up all at once, engines loud and revved to ridiculous decibels, to scare them, she supposed, and then the lot of them roared off down the street, off to no good.
“Thanks for clearin' out my bar,” said the surly bartender.
Claire said, “We'll be back. If Rafe Christien happens to show up, tell him we want to talk to him. Thanks for your cooperation.”
Outside, Zee stopped, sucked in some air, and looked at Claire. “Well, that was interestin'. Can you believe those guys? I mean, who lives like that anymore? Grown men ridin' around together on big loud bikes and gettin' tattoos all over their heads. It's childish and absurd.”
Somehow, that struck Claire funny. “Childish, huh? You saying you never ran into guys like this when you worked narcotics? Who'd you run in on Saturday nights? Sunday school teachers?”
“Yeah, sure I ran into this kind of lowlife scum. But not this many at once and not in their favorite waterin' hole. Tell me about this Rocco punk. What's up with you and him?”
“Nothing much. I ran into him once a long time ago. No big deal.”
“He seems to remember you fairly well. Enough to hate your guts. You better watch your back like he said. That was definitely a threat he tossed at you.”
“He took off without throwing a punch. He's not as tough as he looks.”
“It got a little hairy in there, don't you think?”
“They're stupid men, but they know better than to assault cops in broad daylight.”
Shaking his head, Zee pulled open the driver's door of the Jeep, and Claire walked around the front and slid into the passenger's seat.
“Hey, Zee, how about us going down to lockup to see if Rafe Christien's still there? Think we can get Rene Bourdain to give us the go-ahead.”
Zee pulled out his phone. “You read my mind. Let's do it.”
A Very Scary Man
Malice ended up liking the Merchant Marine a lot. In fact, he loved it. He loved being at sea. He loved shore leaves in exotic places that he'd never seen before. He loved the hardness and callousness of some of his shipmates and the crudeness of their words and actions. He loved being able to find prostitutes in the slums of the cities they visited, and he loved pretending they were the bitch who had betrayed him with his best friend and hurting them the way he wanted to hurt her. He beat them, took them by force, slapped them around, bit them until he drew blood, and nobody said a word, not if he gave the pimp a little extra cash.
After a couple of years of service, he met his new best friend. He was an older guy on the crew, a lot older than Malice was. He was from Algiers, a town just across the river from New Orleans. He, too, was of Cajun birth, and they had a lot of stuff in common. They both liked to be violent and cruel and fed off each other when they had opportunities to find victims they could abuse. But he learned a lot because the older man finally admitted one day when he was drunk that he worked for a Louisiana crime family out of Algiers, that he did contract hits for them, and had actually murdered people for money, lots of money. He was a cold-blooded killer for hire, an actual hit man, and he fascinated Malice. He told Malice how he committed his murders when he was home on shore leave so he could ship out right afterward so no one could connect him to the crimes. It was a good and lucrative job. The hit man said that he was willing to put in a good word for him with the Mob bosses, but only if Malice was willing to study hard and learn the ropes. He said time would tell if Malice had it in him to kill people for money. But he did. Of course, he did.
As time went on, the hit man taught him to murder with precision without leaving incriminating clues. They began to practice their skills in other countries, sometimes killing some drunk they picked at complete random. His new friend taught him to stalk and watch and plan and then swoop in and stick the knife in, so to speak. He learned a lot about the art of assassination and he learned it fast and he learned it well. More important, he liked it, even better than scaring people and killing somebody by mistake like he had with Betsy.
As soon as he served a few stints, he decided he would return home. He would get a reputable job first, so he'd have a good cover, and then he could start his shiny new life as a professional hit man, earning lots of blood money and spilling lots of blood. He grinned at the idea. If only that betraying bitch at home knew what he had become, she would be terrified of him, and fear his return. And for very good reason. He intended to kill her and the man who had taken her away from him. But she wouldn't know that, no way, uh-uh, not until he stabbed the knife into her heart, cut her jugular, and then stepped back and watched her blood flush out of her, red and sticky and slick, just like his new best friend had taught him.
Chapter Twelve
Downtown, two uniformed NOPD officers manned the front desk. Rene Bourdain had paved the way, so they didn't give Claire and Zee much grief. Looked like a friendly relationship with Lieutenant Rene Bourdain went a long way in New Orleans. A tall sergeant named Chris Makowski escorted them to a small interrogation room with hospital-gray walls, a scratched-up black steel table with four uncomfortable black folding chairs, two on each side. The guest of honor had not yet made his appearance.
Fifteen minutes dragged by, and then Rafe Christien clanked in, all scruffy and bleary-eyed, dressed in white jailbird togs with
NOPD JAIL
in big black letters across the front and back. His chains dragged the ground as if he were the Ghost of Incarcerations Past. He sat down across from Claire. Mr. Docile, now that he was hooked up nice and tight to a floor ring, nursed a swollen black eye, a painful souvenir from his resisting-arrest charge, no doubt.
“Mr. Christien, we're Lafourche Parish detectives. My name's Claire Morgan, and this is Zander Jackson. We need to talk to you about a homicide case.”
They also needed to tell him that his sister was dead, which was not something she coveted. Even with a reprobate and criminal like Rafe. Wendy of cheer fame had intimated that Rafe and Madonna had been fairly close, at least in their drug-dealing/using, sibling/symbiotic sort of way. But blood was thicker than water, or so it was said.
Rafe wasn't one to waste time on idle chitchat. “What case? And what's in it for me?”
Rafe Christien was a small man, not much taller than his diminutive little sister, probably not much over five feet four or five. Hair more orange than red, brown freckles, a bouncer he did not look like. He had to be either super wiry or carry a large weighted sap, take your pick. Claire would bet on the sap or an equally big gun. And he was apparently all set up to be the primo jailhouse snitch for the right incentive, of course. Claire decided to hit him with the bad news first and judge his reaction. He could be involved with his sister's death, but somehow she doubted it.
“I'm afraid this case concerns your sister. Madonna Christien is your sister, isn't she?”
All right, that did surprise him. He revealed shock, very clearly, and his bloodshot blue eyes latched on to Claire's face and held there. “Maddie? What's goin' on with Maddie? She's okay, right? Nothin's happened to her, right?”
Beside her, Zee shifted uncomfortably. Claire shot a glance at him. She had told Wendy what had happened to Madonna. It was Zee's turn to take over.
“We got some bad news, man,” Zee started off, voice really gentle. Claire was finding that Zee was a nice young man, more sensitive than most. Then Zee sighed. “There just ain't no good way to say it, man. She's dead. Viciously murdered down in the bayous.”
Now that was not exactly the degree of sensitivity Claire had in mind, nor the way she would've broken the news, but she'd found that men, even compassionate ones, didn't like to beat around the bush with bad news.
Rafe's face paled to the color of cold ashes, his jaw went slack, and he looked at Zee as if he were a hideous apparition. Then he swiveled horrified eyes to Claire. But he wasn't breaking down or showing unbridled emotion yet, so maybe Zee did know how to break sad tidings to his fellow man. “She didn't OD?”
Claire said, “No.”
Rafe scrubbed rough, calloused hands over his face. “What happened to her? I mean, how'd she die?”
Rafe wanted details so Claire gave them to him, except for the voodoo crime scene. She was keeping that under her hat. “We believe the cause of death was strangulation, but we haven't received the official autopsy report yet.”
Now that information hit him hard. All kinds of emotions, fleeting and painful to watch, flitted across his face. Suddenly, he put his forehead down on the table and started an awful, low-pitched keening. Then he began, his words muffled against the table. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”
Neither of them said anything. Claire felt bad for him. Zee looked disconcerted. Rafe continued the prayer to the end, signed the cross as best he could shackled in handcuffs and leg irons. But he didn't cry, at least not on the outside.
“I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Christien. I truly am. Do you have any idea who might've wanted to harm your sister?”
Rafe's head jerked up. Anger flared inside his eyes, and she could see the flush rising under his whiskered cheeks. “That boyfriend of hers, that bastard Holliday, probably did it.”
“Jack Holliday?”
“That's right, the big-shot sports agentâyou know, he used to play football.”
Claire played dumb. “Jack Holliday was your sister's boyfriend? You sure about that?”
“Yeah, and she had it real bad for him. God, he treated her like crap. Like garbage.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he took out a restraining order. Led her on first, and everything, and then he sicced the cops on her when she tried to do nice things for him.”
Claire digested the different versions of the Holliday/Madonna relationship, or lack thereof. “Did you ever observe the two of them together? Go out with them, anything like that?”
Rafe frowned, looked at Zee. “No. Maddie told me how much he liked her. He just got tired of her. He thinks he's better'n her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he let Wendy introduce them and then he told Maddie to get lost. She bought him all kinds of stuffâshe loved him, I tell you, she did. A lot.”
So Rafe had not seen them together. That was a bonus point for Jack, one to add to his alibi witnesses if he was going to beat this rap. “Okay, Rafe. Anybody else you know who wanted to hurt her?”
Rafe balled his fists and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he'd just come down from a drug high and hadn't slept for the last six months. The whites of his eyes were the color of strawberries, including the seeds. “Guys hung around Maddie all the time. She's so damn pretty. But he's the one she loved.”
“Okay. Who were these other men?”
Rafe thought about it, licked dry, cracked lips. The bottom one was split just under his right nostril. His scuffle with arresting officers was one-sided, it appeared. He didn't show a lot of brilliance assaulting cops like that, but she had a feeling he didn't ever show a lot of brilliance.
“She went out with biker dudes the most. You know, the Skulls. Guys she met at Voodoo River. I got a job there; she used to come see me. Guess I still got it when I get outta here. I dunno.”
“I need names, Christien.”
“Most of 'em. She hooked some, but that don't make her bad. There was one guy. Name's Rocco. Don't know his last name. His old lady hangs out with him, but he messes with Maddie some, too. Nobody crosses him. He'd just as soon stab you in the eye as look at you. Keeps a stiletto in his right boot.” Claire filed that back as an important tidbit to remember, but then Rafe stopped and shook his head. “Them Skulls are all bad news, but they ain't got no reason to go and hurt Maddie. They liked her, thought she was sexy. Tell me who did it. I need to know. When? When did she get killed?”
Well, well, Madonna Christien had hooked up with Rocco the Pathetic Pirate Impersonator. Interesting and disturbing and nasty. Maybe that's why he'd backed off at Voodoo River before she could question him about the victim. Rafe was watching Claire closely, no doubt trying to second-guess her. More pertinent, he still hadn't wept any real tears. Somehow Claire knew he was the kind of guy who had probably stopped crying a long time ago.
Claire said, “We found her on Sunday. She's at the morgue in Lafourche Parish. Somebody's got to go down there and claim the body.”
“I guess I gotta find somebody to carry her back down to Golden Meadow. I can't.” Rafe looked bereft now, the finality probably sinking in.
“Somebody's got to sign for the remains and make funeral arrangements, Mr. Christien. You have any relatives who might want to do that?” Claire hated that word,
remains
âit just sounded like nothing much was left of the deceased. Disrespectful, somehow. One last and final slap in the victim's face.
Rafe put both hands over his face again. The handcuffs clanked. Jail music. “I guess Granny's gonna have to. She's all the family we got. Her name's Leah Plummer. I need to call her and tell her. You gotta phone I can use?”
Well, Zee didn't offer the guy his precious new white smartphone so Claire pulled her cheap and does-nothing-but-call-people TracFone off her belt. “Give me the number and I'll dial it for you.”
He did, and Claire did. She held it up to his ear but didn't let it touch him. He was pretty grubby, and she didn't know where his hands had been. Just a rule she went by.
This time Rafe had to tell the sad story in his own words and hear his granny crying at the other end. That made him break down and cry, too. Zee and Claire sat there and listened and wished they were somewhere else. In time, Granny Plummer agreed to claim the body and make funeral arrangements. Claire let them talk a few minutes about arranging bail before the funeral, and then she motioned for him to end the conversation. He did, and she closed the phone.
“We talked to Wendy Rodriguez, and she told us that she and Maddie were kidnapped when they were little girls. What can you tell us about that?”
“Yeah, that happened. Maddie was never the same again, either. Got all hung up on voodoo shit and started takin' drugs. They never got the guy.”
“Do you think he could have come back for her?”
Rafe raised bloodshot eyes. “After all these years? Why would he?”
“What about your parents? Wendy said they were murdered. Were you there the night they died?”
He began to shake his head. “I didn't have nothin' to do with that. I was out in my room in the garage. I didn't know nothin' about it till I woke up the next morning. You can't pin that on me. I was just a kid back then. Barely thirteen.”
“We're not blaming you for anything,” said Zee.
Mollified, Rafe took a deep breath. “I can't believe Sis's gone.”
Claire said, “Anything else you want to tell us, Christien?”
Mopping his wet cheeks with the tail of his prison smock, he nodded. “Yeah, I want you to find out who did this to Maddie and make sure they get the needle up in Angola.”
“We're sure gonna try,” Zee assured him.
“Oh, God, Maddie was just the best. She's been through so much, and now this. That abduction was what threw her off. She wasn't never the same, never was.”
“Do you know anybody else around her who was into voodoo?”
Rafe sobered instantly, appeared as if he was choosing his words. “Don't you go thinkin' she's some kinda kook, or somethin'. She just made up that little altar to get things she wanted. She was still scared. That snake guy used voodoo on her and Wendy when they was little. She just tried to protect herself, in case he ever came back to get her.”
Actually, Claire wondered if that could be true. First, Wendy, and now Rafe had mentioned how traumatic Maddie's childhood abduction had been. Maybe everything was connected to that whacked-out sociopath in the devil mask from long ago. Or was it a ruse set up by the perpetrator to make it look that way? Stranger things had happened. “So, Rafe, when's your hearing on the meth and resisting charges?”
“In the morning. Nine o'clock. And the judge's gonna find out that those cops planted that bag on me. I ain't done nothin', just done my job over at Voodoo River, mindin' my own business, and they come in and beat the shit outta me. Look at my face, if you don't believe me. I can barely breathe no more. Police brutality.”
“You're talking to the wrong people,” Claire said, standing up. “Sorry for your loss, Christien. We may be back, so be thinking about all this and see if you can come up with anything else that'll help us find your sister's killer.”
They walked out, glad to get out of that stuffy, closed-in, claustrophobic, and cruddy little room. Rafe Christen stayed where he was, moaning and mourning his murdered little sister, his head down on the table. Or, maybe he was weeping for himself and his busted-up face.