She lowered the revolver, knelt down and dug Tex's wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. But his car keys weren't there. Where could they be? She had to find them, had to get out of here as fast as possible. And to do that, she needed a car.
She gripped one of his arms, heaved him over onto his back and gasped. His face was a bloody mess, his eyes open and staring.
Her heart pounded like a wild thing.
Focus. Concentrate. Get the keys.
Frantic now, she searched his front pockets and found them. Holding the gun against her right leg, she ran back to his Cadillac.
When she emerged from the grove of trees, the picnic area was deserted. Relieved, she got in the car, cranked the engine and glanced in the rearview mirror.
Her heart almost stopped.
A blue-and-white NOPD cruiser was approaching the Cadillac.
Panic clawed her throat. Had someone heard the shot?
Maybe not. No siren, no flashing lights on the cruiser. But the distinctive powder blue Caddy belonged to the dead man someone would eventually find in the woods.
Now the cruiser was almost upon her. She grabbed Tex’s cowboy hat off the back seat, jammed it on her head, turned away and pretended to look at something on the passenger seat.
Moments later the cruiser passed her, continued down the narrow road and disappeared.
Her stomach heaved. She opened the car door and vomited on the grass. After a moment, she opened the bottle of Aquafina, rinsed her mouth and spat on the ground. Her hands were shaking, her whole body wracked with tremors. She had to get out of here.
She did a U-turn and drove out of the park.
Ten minutes later she drove down Esplanade Avenue at the edge of the French Quarter. Her insides were still shaking. Two blocks over she parked the Cadillac in a strip mall near where it had been parked before. She took a packet of alcohol-soaked baby wipes out of her tote, used one to clean the steering wheel and door handles, got out and walked away.
On the way back to her rental car she dropped Tex's keys in a trash bin on the sidewalk, jogged to her car, got in and opened Tex’s wallet. And found 200 dollars in cash. Maybe he’d just gotten paid.
When he spotted her in the Circle K, he'd seen the girl he used to intimidate in high school and got excited, thinking she might give him a tumble. What a joke. No, not a joke, a disaster. He’d followed her outside. Forced her to talk to him. Prevented her from leaving. Which left her no choice but to kill him.
Tex had always been a shit, but did he really deserve to die?
She blinked back tears.
Her years of living dangerously were catching up to her.
Last night after she shot Peterson, she'd felt triumphant. She enjoyed the risky parts: the hunt, the deception, the challenge of reeling him in. Most of all, she enjoyed the anger.
Anger made her feel powerful. The gun made her dangerous.
She was no victim, she was an avenger.
But she had just killed an innocent man in cold blood.
Killing Tex was an unforeseen complication, unforeseen and dangerous.
Arnold Peterson and Tex Conroy, shot with the same gun. Sooner or later the cops would figure that out. She had to ditch the gun someplace where it would never be found.
She pocketed the 200 dollars, polished the wallet with another baby wipe and cranked the rental car. She didn’t know how long it would take for someone to find Tex’s body and call the police, but with no ID on him, it would take them a while to figure out who he was. By then she’d be gone.
As she pulled away from the curb, raindrops splattered the windshield. Her mouth still tasted sour, but the monumental iceberg inside her was gone. She pulled over beside a trash bin on the sidewalk, dropped Tex’s wallet into it and kept driving. Two blocks later she stopped at a traffic light.
The entrance to the interstate was a block away. She glanced at her wristwatch. 4:35. Rush hour. Traffic would be heavy on the I-10.
The nail that sticks up is hammered down.
Her favorite Asian proverb.
Her maroon Toyota Corolla would be one car of many, just another drone headed home to Slidell after work. She'd love to stop on the twin-span that arched over the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain and toss the gun, but that would be impossible during rush hour.
She would have to stop in Slidell and dump the gun. Then she’d get back on the I-10 headed east and dump June Carson, too.
June had served her purpose. Time to be someone else.
Hey, Natalie, great to see you.
Tex's voice, jolting her. Haunting her.
She closed her eyes, willing the voice to stop.
When I saw that bird hanging around your neck, I knew it was you
.
A horn blared behind her. She opened her eyes. The light was green.
She stomped the gas, gritted her teeth and thought about her mother, visualizing the disgusting crime scene photographs.
Mom in a sleazy hotel room. Beaten and strangled by a monster.
CHAPTER 6
“How'd your meeting with Morgan go?" Kelly set containers of Chinese takeout on her kitchen counter and drank from a bottle of Bud Light.
"It was ugly." Frank relaxed into his chair and guzzled some Heineken. Nothing like a cold one after a long day. No, two long days. Twenty-two hours ago he'd been eyeballing Peterson's corpse. But for the next few hours at least, he could relax and enjoy the company of his smart, sexy lover.
Slim and trim in shorts and a scoop-neck jersey, she brought the takeout to the table. "How bad was it? Any F-bombs?" After Katrina, she'd worked Homicide for a while, got to know Vobitch's explosive style first hand.
"A meeting with Vobitch without F-bombs? Be serious." He rose from his chair and put his arms around her. “How hungry are you?”
“Hungry enough to eat dinner before we get into mischief.”
Mischief. Sounded good to him. He was tired, but not that tired. He gave her his Robert Mitchum bedroom-eyes look. “Eat your dinner. You'll need the energy later."
She gave it back to him, a femme-fatal stare. She had the sexiest sea-green eyes he’d ever seen and a gorgeous bod to go with them. Not to mention a bawdy sense of humor. She took the chair opposite his, dumped sweet-and-sour sauce over her egg roll and set the plastic container on the table. “Who’s the woman on the security video?”
“Hell if I know,” he said, eyeing the half-empty sweet-and-sour container.
She grinned. “Oops. You need more? I might have some in the fridge.”
“Nah, I’m in the mood for hot.” He dumped the remaining sweet-and-sour on his plate, added mustard sauce and stirred it with an egg roll.
“Eeeew. How can you eat that?”
“Like this.” He took a big bite, chewed and swallowed. “How was your day?” Kelly worked Domestic Violence now and that could be brutal.
“Good, actually. Remember the woman I told you about that got her nose broken by her so-called boyfriend?”
“Yeah. We should put these guys on a desert island without any water.”
“Nah. That’s too good for them."
“She got kids?”
“A five-year-old boy, which makes it worse. He sees what his father’s doing to his mother. That’s what I told her. I think it convinced her to leave the asshole. I got them a temporary placement at the New Orleans Women’s Shelter. She’ll do okay.” Kelly brushed tendrils of dark hair away from her face. “Come on, Frank, tell me about the mystery woman on the video.”
“Not much to tell. She was smart enough to conceal her face with a floppy hat and sunglasses, so we can’t even put out a picture. I think I’d recognize her if I saw her though. She’s got a very distinctive walk.”
“Yeah? Sexy?” Kelly arched an eyebrow. "Nice bod?"
He pretended to consider the question. Kelly worked out at a gym three times a week, ate whatever she wanted and never gained an ounce: five-seven, long legs and a great ass. Her upper endowments weren’t bad either.
“Well, not as nice as yours.”
“Very good, Detective Renzi. That is the correct answer. Did you get the autopsy report?”
“Oh, yeah. Big rush on this one. One .38 caliber slug to the head, ligature marks on the wrists and ankles. Whoever shot him tied him up first.”
“Maybe he was into S & M. Maybe the woman’s a dominatrix.”
“No way. The purse she was carrying wasn't big enough to hold whips and chains."
"You think she killed Peterson?"
He gnawed on a boneless sparerib. "That's what Miller and Vobitch think. I'm not convinced.” He dug into his Kung Bao Chicken.
After a while Kelly set her plate aside and gave him a speculative look. “You think it was a hit?”
“If it was, we got plenty of suspects. His wife knew he was screwing around, and Peterson's flunky told me he had gambling debts. How’s that for possibilities? One shot to the head makes it look like a hit. But maybe somebody wants to con us into thinking that. There's a fire escape outside the window. Someone could have got in and shot him, got out the same way.” He finished his chicken and leaned back in his chair.
"Maybe the woman was his mistress. Maybe she asked him to leave his wife and marry her, he said he wouldn't, and bam, she shoots him. Never underestimate a woman scorned."
"True." He'd experienced that first hand, had a messy divorce to prove it. "But I don't think so. She was too calm and collected when she left the room."
“So who is she? A high-class call girl? Plenty of those around.”
"Yeah. The Canal Street brothel was the tip of the iceberg."
He carried their plates to the sink and ran hot water over them. After two years, he felt comfortable in the house Kelly had once shared with her husband. Terry O’Neil had been a cop, too. Five years ago, driving home one rainy night, he stopped to help a disabled motorist in the breakdown lane on the I-10 and got hit by an eighteen-wheeler. Terry died instantly. The motorist and the truck driver survived. End of story. Except for the widow.
Kelly wrapped her arms around his waist and said in the sexy voice he loved, “You don’t have to clean up, Frank. I’ll do it later.”
He pulled her close, savoring the feel of her body. “Have I told you lately that I think about making love to you at least three times a day?”
She moaned low in her throat and kissed him hard and deep.
His cell phone rang. Damn! He didn't dare turn it off. A break in the Peterson case could come at any time. “Sorry. I need to take this.”
“Yo, Frank," said Kenyon Miller. "Hate to bother you on a Friday night, but I think we just caught a break. One of the District-Three uniforms called me a half hour ago, said they found an unidentified body in City Park. White male, mid-thirties, one shot to the head.”
“One to the head,” he repeated for Kelly’s benefit, saw her eyes widen.
“I’m at the scene now. Looks like it might be the same caliber slug as the Peterson hit."
“Be there in ten minutes.” He shut his cell, dreading Kelly’s reaction. Every time they were set to hop in the sack, he'd get a call and have to leave.
“It’s okay, Frank. I know you’re under the gun. This might be a lead.”
Relieved, he embraced her and did his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation. “I’ll be baaaack.”
“Oooh. The Terminator. I can't wait.” Turning on a seductive drawl. “I guess I’d better slip into something more comfortable.”
He grinned. “How about bare skin? That’d be good.”
_____
Slidell, Louisiana
Getting to Slidell, normally a forty-minute drive, took an hour and a half, the rush hour traffic slowed by wind-driven rain. The panic she'd felt when the NOPD cruiser drove past Tex’s Cadillac was gone, but her mouth still tasted sour. Shooting Tex with the gun she’d used to kill Peterson was a huge problem. She had to ditch the gun where no one would find it.
She stopped at a convenience store and bought some granola bars and a liter of bottled water. Alternately munching a granola bar and swigging water, she got on a secondary road and drove toward Lake Pontchartrain. On a map the lake looked like a big bite taken out of the Louisiana boot. A twenty-three-mile causeway bisected the lake, ferrying north shore commuters to New Orleans. Slidell was on the eastern end of the lake near the Mississippi border.
A sign directed her to the lakefront. She took the turn, felt relieved when no cars followed her. A steady rain drummed the car roof. Scrub pines lined the dark narrow road, but no streetlights. Her headlights pierced the foggy gloom, wipers sweeping the rainwater off the windshield.
Two minutes later she arrived at a gravel landing overlooking the lake. She killed the headlights and windshield wipers. Two wooden docks jutted out into the lake, barely visible in the fading light. The landing appeared deserted, not a soul in sight, no vehicles, no lights.
Creepy. Silent and still.
She rolled down her window and raindrops spattered her face. A sudden
caw
startled her. Perched on a gnarled limb in a nearby tree, a blackbird was scolding her. The
caw-caw-caw
pierced her like a primal scream. Was it a sign? A warning?
Birds had always been her lucky charms. But not today.
Tex had recognized her firebird talisman. She tried not to think about his bloody face and his crumpled body, disgusting images that kept returning. She forced herself to count to three hundred, slowly, to make sure no one came along to observe her.
Satisfied that she was alone, she pulled the hood of her windbreaker over her head and left the car. Windblown rain pelted her face as she strode to the lake. A ghostly mist hovered over the water, and the air smelled briny. Like a scene from a horror movie, thick banks of impenetrable fog rolled toward her. The closest dock was ten yards away. A small dingy was tied to a stanchion with thick coils of rope. The other dock had no boat, but it was thirty yards farther away. Unwilling to stray too far from the car, she chose the dock with the boat.
Dump the gun and get out of here as fast as possible.
She walked to the end of the dock where it jutted out over the water. Twenty yards from shore it was eerily quiet. The mist over the lake was like a live thing, rolling waves that dampened her face. Spooked by the gloom and the sinister fog, she dug the .38 Special out of her pocket, dropped it in the water and felt a surge of relief. She couldn’t imagine anyone finding it.
She turned to retrace her steps and her heart almost stopped.
Twenty yards away someone in a yellow rain slicker stood at the other end of the dock.
She was surrounded by water. The only way back to the car was along the dock. To quell the panicky thump of her heart she took deep breaths: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Mustering her courage, she strode toward the shore. And the yellow rain slicker.
As she drew closer she realized it was an older man, not tall, maybe two inches taller than she was, but husky enough to bulk out the yellow slicker. Visible inside the hood was a pale doughy face. Inside the dough, the man's beady hamster-like eyes were fixed upon her face, glaring at her.
“This is private property.” A deep voice-of-doom.
“I’m sorry. My friend’s house is near here and I can't find it.”
“I been watching you,” he said, eyes fixed on hers. “You been here ten minutes. That’s plenty of time to figure out your friend doesn’t live here.”
Her heart jolted. Watching her. Had he seen her drop the gun in the lake?
“I thought I might be able to see her house from the end of the dock.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Valerie Duncan,” she said, conjuring a name from her past. Val, her dancer-girlfriend in New York. She edged toward her car. “Sorry I disturbed you. I’ll call her and get directions.”
Keeping his body between her and the car, Beady-Eyes put his hand in the pocket of his yellow slicker.
Sweat dampened her palms. Did he have a gun? Then a more ominous thought. Maybe he was a cop.
“I got no use for people who think they can just waltz onto my property, missy. Had one-a-my boats stolen last year.”
“That's terrible. But I’m not interested in your boat.”
He licked his bottom lip and his eyes roved over her body, assessing her. She knew that look. If she didn’t do something fast, he would jump her.
“I’m leaving now,” she said firmly, and set out for her car with long determined strides.
Behind her, footsteps crunched the gravel. She didn’t dare turn and look. She reached the car and yanked open the door. Climbed behind the wheel and locked the door. Looked out the window.
A looming presence in his yellow slicker, Beady-Eyes stood by the car, his face clenched in a scowl.
She started the car and slammed it into reverse. The wheels churned the gravel, throwing bits of dirt against the undercarriage. She did a U-turn and drove off, rocketing down the dark narrow road, gripping the wheel with her sweaty hands.
A heart-pounding minute later she reached the main road. The headlights of other cars reassured her, but she was exhausted. Atlanta was 400 miles away and she didn’t dare stop at a motel. June Carson had to disappear without a trace.
She got on the I-10 headed east and assessed the damages. If Beady-Eyes had seen her drop the gun in the lake, he'd have said so. He was just another powerful man who enjoyed hassling women. If he'd made a move on her, she'd have knocked him on his ass.
Now that she'd dumped the gun she could focus on her next task. Get to Atlanta and get on a plane. To keep herself awake, she put on Joan Jett’s
Runaways
album, singing along as she barreled down the highway. She knew the lyrics by heart.
Two hours later she stopped to buy gas and use the restroom. Back on the road, she put on a Bon Jovi CD, singing along at the top of her lungs.
She loved the titles: "Runaway" and "I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead."
And best of all: "
Work for the Working Man."
T
he lyrics were perfect:
I ain’t living, just to die
.