T
he morgue wasn’t Nat Archer’s favorite afternoon destination, but he’d been there often enough to take the scents and sounds in stride. He knew when to shove a bottle of wintergreen under his nose—for all the good it did—and how to neutralize the hollow noise of casket-size metal shelves sliding out and thumping shut. The shelves closed faster than they opened. Without resistance, dead weights slid easily.
Under glaring white lights, Dr. Blades sat at a stainless-steel table attached to the walls in a corner, and wrote on loose papers inside a folder. The man’s hollow cheeks held shadows the size and shade of big, ripe avocados. Nat got a fleeting image of nicking one of Blades’s veins to see green fluid oozing out.
Geez, Archer.
He could tell this case had already gotten to him, but he hadn’t realized how badly.
“Archer,” Blades said without looking up. “Glad you could finally join me.”
Nat was ten minutes late. “Good to see you, Doc,” he lied. “You said I should get right over here.”
“
Right
over here,” Blades said.
“And here I am,” Nat said, refusing to be goaded into an apology for something as trivial as ten minutes in a busy day.
With surprising speed, Blades unfolded his long, thin body and drew himself up to what had to be about seven feet. “I want
you to see something,” he said, and scuffed toward the bank of steel drawers. “Did you close the door when you came in?”
“Yeah,” Nat said. “Did you want it left open?”
That got him a faintly evil glance from ice-blue eyes. “No.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you wanted to air the place out a bit. I can open it if you like.”
Blades gave a humorless chuckle and pulled on a handle. The drawer slid out easily enough, which was always the case with small victims. The shape inside a white bag with an encircling zipper was no more than five feet, by Nat’s estimation. Maybe an inch more, but this was a diminutive corpse.
Without ceremony, Blades parted the zipper and revealed a woman’s body, or what was left of it. Shirley Cooper’s remains weren’t pretty.
Pity was never enough. Nat looked down with respect, and the cleansing surge of anger he needed to stay focused.
He frowned and shook his head. “Damn, I’d like to know exactly how this happened. What d’you want me to see?”
Blades sighed and rotated narrow shoulders. “No water in the lungs. She was dead before she went in the water.”
“You let me know that yesterday.” Nat looked at the other man and wondered if he’d dealt with one DB too many and was starting to slip.
“I know what I told you. I also told you about the neck. That happened prior to all the other wounds. Who knows if there was a gator attack on the body?”
Nat bent closer. Looking like a tracheotomy incision, a dark hole shone with a gelatinous sheen. He stood abruptly and put a hand in front of his face. “It smells different.” Even more overwhelming if that was possible.
“Yes, and that’s interesting.” Blades snorted. “But whoever did this is an amateur. They don’t know the voice is complex. Takes more to cut it out, or whatever the fool thought he was doing, than punching a plug out of the larynx.”
“Yes.” Trying to be patient, Nat submitted to the anatomy
lesson and decided to allow Blades his moments of drama. “I wonder why.” His eyes watered.
“Making a point about picking on singers, I should think,” Blades said. He pointed at the wound in the corpse’s neck. “That would mess up a singer, but some reconstruction wouldn’t have been off the table here. She would have been able to communicate.”
Nat stared at him. Of course, he probably didn’t know. “Shirley Cooper was a maid at a club, not a singer,” Nat said.
“Huh.” The hairless places where Blades’s eyebrows should be rose in a ripple of wrinkles. “Well, that’s easily worked out. The killer wanted to pretend he wasn’t just killing singers, but then he couldn’t resist leaving his trademark.”
“We’ve never seen this mark before that I know of,” Nat pointed out.
“You will when the women who actually are singers turn up,” Blades said, so coldly matter-of-fact that Nat was reminded why he didn’t like this man, not at all.
“Is that everything?” he asked, unimpressed by the macabre little show. “I need to get on.”
“You’re going to need all the help you can get with this case,” Blades told him. “Look at the wounds all over the body.”
“Hard to miss them.” There was hardly any clear skin between gouges and welts.
“Some are from teeth, but not all of them.”
“What about the others?”
“Claws.” Blades shrugged. “The different odor is in the bite marks.”
“Are they what she died of? Is there a wound I can’t see?”
“I’ve got a tentative diagnosis.”
Nat watched Blades’s face.
Muscles jerked in the man’s jaw. “Yeah.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his white coat. “She was frightened to death.”
“You serious?”
“Have you ever known me not to be? She was dead before most of the wounds were made. Definitely before the poke in the neck.”
Shit, if Blades had said Shirley Cooper died of shortness of breath Nat wouldn’t feel any more hopeless.
Nat exercised his aching jaw. “Did you get good tissue samples? There must have been plenty under her nails and even in those wounds.”
“Matter,” Blades said. He crossed his arms and faced Nat. “There was matter, is matter. All over the place.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I say. Not tissue, but matter. Unidentifiable stuff.”
A slow thud started in the region of Nat’s left temple. He massaged the spot. “I’m not following you.”
“We thought a gator had attacked the body. The wounds are consistent with that—maybe. Nothing else we can think of is. Every piece of trace evidence we’ve removed probably can’t be typed. I’m getting that from experts in the field. Very preliminary, but you can take it to the bank. We don’t think whoever, or whatever did this has DNA—not that fits with any DNA we know of.”
S
tanding at the top of the steps to the front doors of the house called Bord de L’Eau, Gray understood how a wolf ought to feel silhouetted against the moon. Any hunter with good aim could pick him off.
He deliberately avoided checking out the spot where he’d parted from Marley. If she left, she left; he couldn’t control her.
Gray smiled. He didn’t imagine anyone would have an easy time trying to make Marley do what she didn’t want to do.
If he had not seen the two women and their driver go into the pink Italianate mansion, he would wonder if anyone was at home. The bell had echoed inside the house, but so far he hadn’t heard as much as a footfall in response.
He approached the door again, and it opened wide.
An elderly man, using a shiny black cane, turned brilliantly dark eyes to Gray’s face. “You’re not going away, are you?” he said. Thick white hair waved away from his unlined face. The skin was so fine and pale, a net of blue veins showed over his forehead and temples.
“Are you?” the man repeated, his voice strong and deep. “You’re going to stay until someone talks to you. I’m talking to you, have talked to you. Now you can go.”
Gray found his composure, and his voice, in that order. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “I’m Gray Fisher. I’m a journalist, and I’m working with Sidney and with Pipes Dupuis.
They said they would be here.” He was stretching things a bit, but why not? Too bad he didn’t know Sidney’s last name.
“What would you want with her?” the man said. “Oh, come in, come in. For all I know you’ve got a photographer hiding in the bushes. Might as well get you inside.”
Gray stepped into a soaring, green-and-white marble hall that rose to a leaded-glass dome three exposed stories up. Staircases with intricate balustrades curved from either side to meet at a central landing on the second floor and from there more stairs and balustrades climbed in circles, revealing much more white stone, many marble busts, heavily carved doors, and an atmosphere of overpowering wealth.
“Could I talk to someone who lives here?” Gray asked the butler, or whatever he was. “Preferably Sidney and Pipes.”
“I live here,” the man said. “I am Bolivar Fournier. This is my house. Sidney Fournier is my granddaughter. I suppose this is something to do with her singing thing.”
“Yes,” Gray said.
Fournier snuffled. “Very well. We’d better see what we can do about you, then.”
“Grandfather?” The man who came from behind one of the staircases looked a lot like Sidney. “Who’s this?” He gave Gray a direct stare, but seemed friendly enough.
“He’s here to see your sister about writing something,” Bolivar Fournier said. “Gray Fisher, he said. He’s going to make that silly girl more inappropriate than she already is. Writing what people want to read about people like us.”
“Eric Fournier,” the younger man said, shooting out a hand and shaking Gray’s firmly.
“They’re all looking for ways to criticize us, you know,” Bolivar continued. “We’re too rich for them. They want what we’ve got. I told you no good would come of this singing thing of Sidney’s. Attracts the wrong kind of attention.”
“Sorry,” Eric said to Gray, shrugging. “Let’s go in here and I’ll give Sidney a call to come down.”
They went as a threesome into a surprisingly comfortable room furnished with antiques, but the kind that appeared touchable and touched. Gray sat on a faded purple chair with wooden arms while Eric picked up a telephone and pressed a button. “Someone’s here for you,” he said after a few moments.
“Pipes, too,” Gray said clearly.
Eric didn’t look thrilled. “Bring Pipes with you. It’s about an interview, I think. We’re in the nook.”
Their “nook” was bigger than two or three of the rooms together at the Marigny cottage Gray shared with his dad.
The grandfather made his way, cane giving dull thumps, to a chair that matched Gray’s and sat down slowly.
Silence closed in and Gray took it he wouldn’t be offered any other niceties.
From time to time Bolivar gave a dry cough. His chin slowly settled on his chest and he snored lightly.
Eric shoved his hands into the pockets of fine, gray silk slacks and propped himself against a gilt table. He looked off into the distance.
Sidney put her head around the door and did an inventory of those present before stepping across the threshold. Pipes entered immediately behind her, choosing where she put her feet so as to expose as little of herself as possible.
“I hoped we could make some headway,” Gray said, expecting Sidney to ask why he was following her and invading her home without an invitation. “Could you spare me half an hour or so? My editor is complaining about how long I’m taking on this story.” He looked significantly from Bolivar to Eric. Neither of them showed any sign of leaving.
“I forgot all about this,” Sidney said, her eyes wide. “I’m so sorry.” She checked her watch and made a face.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Gray said carefully.
“Yes, there is. I told you to come and now I’ve messed everything up. Pipes and I are going to sing together for the first time tonight. If we don’t practice, we’ll be terrible.”
Gray weighed his response.
“I’ll call you later, if you like,” Sidney said. “Would that work for you?”
She was lying for her brother and grandfather’s benefit. He didn’t have the faintest idea why. “Sure,” he said.
Pipes hovered. There was no other way to describe the way she rocked from one foot to the other, looking up from a narrow gap in her long, pale blond hair. Her hands moved incessantly.
“Why don’t you sit down, Pipes?”
Eric Fournier, talking to Pipes and reaching out to take her by the arm, surprised Gray. The man sounded entirely different now, engaged, animated—wholly focused on the singer.
She nodded and he ushered her gently to a window seat overlooking the grounds in front of the house.
Gray wanted, more strongly than he could believe, to look through that window. He wanted to know if Marley was still out there. He looked at his own watch and figured he had about twenty minutes before she could be racing away on the bike to get Nat Archer. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
“I’m glad you’ve got Pipes staying with you,” Gray said, feeling his way. “The way things are in New Orleans, it’s not a good idea for a woman to be all alone.”
“What does he mean, Eric?” Bolivar said. He seemed completely awake again. “What things?”
Eric winced. His attention kept returning to Pipes. “Nothing, Grandfather. Gray sounds a bit old-fashioned.” He laughed. “Women aren’t sheltered the way they used to be.”
“The way they should be,” Bolivar snapped. “What’s wrong? Something’s dangerous, isn’t it? You’re hiding it from me. Is Sidney in danger? We should have stopped her from going to that club.”
“No,” Sidney said quickly. “There’s nothing wrong with me. But men are always old-fashioned about the women in their own families. I understand that.”
“You’re not in her family,” Bolivar said, pointing at Gray.
Sidney’s expression showed she had already realized her mistake. “Of course not. I was talking about you, Grandfather.”
Pipes got up and approached Sidney. The two locked gazes and Sidney nodded.
Without warning, Gray felt heat building inside him. And hairs rose at the back of his neck. He glanced around, but nothing was different. Pipes had gone back to shifting her weight rhythmically.
Eric went to the two women and draped an arm over Pipes’s shoulders. “You two run along and get your practice done.” He looked down on Pipes with unshuttered absorption.
Taking her into this house hadn’t been a complete act of charity as far as Sidney’s brother was concerned.
“I’d love to listen,” Eric said quietly, his nostrils flaring.
“No,” Sidney said promptly. “We’ll call you, Gray.” She whirled toward the door and all but ran from the room with Pipes behind her.
For an instant Gray was disoriented. For the first time ever, at least since he’d been an eight-year-old expecting to die at a man’s hand, his vision faded until he barely saw the scene around him. Darkness filled his mind and in that darkness, Marley ran, arms outstretched. She sobbed. He wanted to sit down, but didn’t dare draw that kind of attention.
Marley needed him. His lungs tightened and felt on fire.
Ten more minutes had gone by, Gray saw from a mantel clock. He managed a man-to-man chuckle. “Women. Unpredictable,” he said. “I’m sorry for interrupting your day.”
“We’re glad you did, aren’t we, Grandfather?” Eric said.
The older man snuffled some more, but didn’t comment.
“He’s tired,” Eric said as if the older man wasn’t there. “The men in this family don’t have an easy time of it.”
Gray made a polite noise and took a couple of steps toward the hall.
“Look,” Eric said. “We worry about Sidney being out in the Quarter at night. We do our best to protect her. It’s a bad idea for her to be singing in clubs, but we’re afraid she’ll…Sidney’s not stable. She’s had episodes in the past when we tried to stop her doing what she wanted. Not her fault. The weakness is there.”
There wasn’t a sensible answer that Gray could think of.
“Our mother’s the same,” Eric said. He raised his eyes to indicate upper regions of the house. “Very hard on my father. He’s devoted to Mother. Spends most of the time with her. She won’t even come down for a meal anymore and she never goes out.”
“Sad,” Gray said. Why would this man tell him all this?
Eric Fournier was staring at Gray.
“I should go,” Gray said.
“Please take this the way it’s meant,” Eric said. “I love my sister very much. Growing up we were like twins. But she isn’t the same.”
“Why are you telling me this?” There was no way to avoid asking the question.
“Because you think you want to interview her for an article. You said so and she obviously knows about it. It’s a bad idea and I’m asking you to drop it.”
Gray wavered between his need to leave, now, and letting Eric Fournier talk as much as he would. The chance that the man would say something really useful made it almost impossible to stay objective.
“I wouldn’t be so worried if those other women weren’t gone,” Eric said. He glanced at Gray sharply. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the city who isn’t worried about what’s going on. Unless it’s Sidney. One of those women was her partner, but Sidney won’t discuss any of it. I don’t get it. It’s frustrating.”
“It must be.” Gray hoped he sounded polite but casual.
“Look.” Eric walked him to the front door. “To be honest,
my father and grandfather aren’t well. I don’t want them worried more than they already are.”
“Mmm.”
“It doesn’t matter what I say, does it?” Eric said. “You’re onto a story. It’s getting better all the time—from your point of view—and you’re going to write it.”
“Something like that.”
“Do me one favor if you can. Remember that Sidney has too much imagination. She lives in her own world most of the time. She makes things up about herself and everyone around her. If she says something outrageous, ignore it.”
Curiosity overcame Gray’s hurry for an instant. “For instance?”
“Anything.”
There was frustration and desperation in that one word. “One of the ways she tries to put herself in the center of attention is to make wild confessions to things she had nothing to do with. Just use your discretion, will you, please?”
Eric opened the front door. In the sharp light from outside there was no missing the signs of strain in the man’s face.
“I always do.” Gray raised a hand, hesitated, then put firm pressure on Eric’s upper arm. “I’m not anyone you have to worry about. Thanks for letting me take up your time.”
The door closed behind him without any response from Eric Fournier.
Gray jogged down the steps and along a brick pathway beside the driveway. The wide gates still stood open.
He got outside and scanned the area ahead.
“Oh, Marley,” he muttered to himself. She’d gone. He imagined her pedaling the bike—too big for her and the typical no-brakes messenger variety—into the heavy French Quarter traffic.
He’d better call a cab, then call Nat.
He reached the tree where Marley had hidden herself and made the left turn along the tall hedge.
Marley sat on the sidewalk, her arms wrapped around her legs and displaying scratched-up knees to advantage.
The bike lay on the sidewalk and from Gray’s angle, the front wheel looked suspiciously bent. He noticed his borrowed baseball cap crumpled under the frame.
Marley’s head was bowed and her hair shone fiery red in the sunlight. Where it parted, the nape of her neck showed pale and vulnerable.
The pain that hit his gut, radiating through his pelvis to his groin, all but collapsed him. He saw her as if she were at the end of a tunnel through which a beam shone like a spotlight, making her the only figure on a blank canvas.
Slowly, bending slightly to guard the pain, he walked toward her.
She must have heard him. “Gray?” Marley looked up and her eyes glittered as if she’d been crying. She held her arms out to him. “I wrecked the bike and it’s almost time. I was coming in to get you.”
Gray didn’t laugh, although he knew she was being outrageously brave to even think of storming the Fournier house. “Never mind,” he said, sinking to kneel beside her. “Are you okay?”
She slid her hands around his neck and he couldn’t look away from her green eyes. He got lost in those eyes. “I’m not okay,” she said, sounding breathless. “It’s…Are
you
okay? There’s no…Are you in pain anywhere?” Her voice faded to nothing.
He nodded and pulled her hard against him. The next stab into his belly took his breath away, but he didn’t want it to stop.
“Oh, Gray. I never thought about this happening. I didn’t expect it. We’ll have to talk. No, we mustn’t talk. Leave me now. Don’t ask any questions, just go and forget about me.”
Gray swung to sit down and lifted her effortlessly onto his lap. Dark and light colors—red, green, purple, orange,
a rim of silver—spun and he couldn’t tell if it was really out there or just in his mind. He didn’t care.