Authors: Erica Spindler
She quickly accessed the call history: Deni’s call to her, and hers back, then a call to a number she didn’t recognize, one from Chris, then two calls from the first number.
Using her own phone, she called Chris. He answered right away. “Hi, Mira. What’s up?”
“Just wondering if Deni’s with you?”
“Deni? Nope. Haven’t talked to her in an hour or so.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know, I could check my phone if you want. I called to see if she wanted to go out for a pizza, but she said she wasn’t in the mood.”
More like she had another date.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“I have some bad news. Dr. Jasper is dead. She was murdered.” She heard his sharply drawn breath. “And now,” she went on, “I’m worried about—”
She couldn’t tell him about Bill Smith, not like this. Not over the phone. “Where are you?” she asked instead.
“New York Pizza. Picking up. My taste buds were all set for it, you know how that is.”
“I do.” Her thoughts tumbled forward. Maybe Chris could help her? Maybe he knew where Deni hung out? Or maybe he knew more about Deni’s secret life than she thought he did?
But she could only find out face-to-face with him.
“What size pizza did you get?”
“A large. Vegetarian. Why?”
“How ’bout we share? We could meet at the studio?”
He liked the idea. They agreed to head there immediately and hung up. But Mira wasn’t done. This time she made a call from Deni’s phone, dialing back that last call Deni had placed.
It rang several times before an automated message announced:
I’m sorry, but the subscriber you have dialed has a voice mail box that has not been set up.
She tossed the phone on the seat beside her. She would try Mr. Bill Smith later.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Thursday, August 18
8:05
P.M.
Mira pulled into the studio’s parking area, taking the space next to the only other vehicle in the lot—Chris’s truck. She hurried around to the studio entrance.
She had expected him to be waiting on the porch for her, but that wasn’t the case. She crossed to the door—and found it locked. A locked door, imagine that?
She stepped inside. And smelled pizza. Her stomach responded with a growl. “Chris?” she called out. “I’m here.”
The pocket doors to the workroom stood half open. Light tumbled through, illuminating the darkened retail area.
“Chris?” she said again and started that way.
He appeared in the doorway, his expression strange. Distraught. She stopped. “What is it?” Her words came out a whisper.
He slid the doors shut behind him. The light bled out the cracks and crevices around the old doors. “Don’t go in there.”
“Oh, my God.” She brought a hand to her mouth. It was shaking. “Is it … Deni?”
“Deni?” He looked confused. “It’s the Magdalene window. It’s gone.”
For a moment, Mira wondered if she had stopped breathing. If she might never breathe again. “What do you mean, gone? Moved?”
He shook his head. “It’s not here. I searched the studio. None of the other panels are missing.”
“Maybe Deni packed it for transport?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, why would she pack it without an install date?”
She started toward him. “Let me see.”
He hesitated, then stepped aside. Mira took a moment to prepare herself, then resolutely slid the doors open.
Nothing could have prepared her for the empty place where the Magdalene window had been.
“You’re trembling,” Chris said softly. “Are you all right?”
“Who would take it? What could they possibly want with her—”
And then she knew:
“He cast out Seven Demons.” Mary Magdalene.
“Oh, my God. I know who has it.”
“You do? Who—”
“The Judgment Day killer.”
“Mira, there’s something I have to tell you.” At his serious tone, she stopped and looked at him. “It’s about Deni. Something the neighbor said she saw.”
Mira waited, heart thudding heavily.
“When I knew for certain that the window was gone, I went across the street, to ask the neighbors if they saw anyone. Carol, directly across from us, said she saw Deni here earlier tonight. She was with a guy. They carried something big and loaded it into a van. It was crated. About the size of a large window.”
She struggled to make sense of what he was telling her. “Was Carol certain it was Deni?”
“Positive.”
“What time was that?”
Chris looked sick. “Around seven, she said.”
Mira thought back. What time had Deni called? Around six o’clock, she remembered. She’d checked the time, been surprised she had slept all day.
“Did she recognize the man?” she asked.
“No, but … she said he looked like military.”
“Military?” She stared at him. “He was in uniform?”
“No, just … He had a buzz cut. And light hair.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis. “I know what you’re implying, but it wasn’t him.”
“Then who was she with? I’m afraid for her. She wouldn’t hurt you or anyone else. And she wouldn’t take the Magdalene window unless she was being forced to. Connor tricked her somehow, got her to let him into the studio and—”
“His name’s Bill Smith.” Mira caught his hands. “Deni was seeing someone else. That’s who she’s with. I’m sorry. I only just found out.”
For a moment, he simply stared at her, then he shook his head. “That can’t be right. We see each other every day and almost every night. Everything’s been good.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, squeezing his fingers.
“How long—” He cleared his throat. “How long’s it been going on?”
“A few weeks. Since the day Preacher attacked me.”
He struggled to come to grips with the information. “That was the same day your friend Connor showed up.”
It was. She hadn’t put that together. “But Deni told me the guy’s name is Bill Smith. That he’s a bartender she met while out partying…”
But Deni had also told her, not once but three times, that there had been no one at her house the night she’d slept over.
She’d lied before. So why not tonight, too?
Mira pressed her fingers to her forehead. Connor and Deni? In this together? Coconspirators? Killers? It didn’t make sense.
She dropped her hands and met Chris’s gaze evenly. “It wasn’t Connor. I have to believe that. And if Deni really was here and helped steal the Magdalene window, she was being forced to.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m with you, then. What do we do now?”
“Good question. Problem is, I’m not exactly sure.”
“Call the cops?” he offered. “That Detective Malone. He’ll know what to do.”
“Yes,” she said. “But before we do, let’s look at it all again, see if we can figure out why the killer would take the Magdalene window.”
Headlights cut across the front of the building. They both turned in that direction.
“Mira,” he whispered, “I don’t want to scare you, but if this guy’s killing people around you, maybe this isn’t the smartest place for us to be?”
From outside came the slam of a car door.
It was too late to turn off the lights. Too late to make certain she had relocked the front door. Fear took her breath.
Chris grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the tall racks in the corner. Between the two racks and the wall was a slim space, just big enough for them to hide.
She slid in first, all the way to the wall. He behind her. Completely in shadow, they stood pressed together. He found her hand and laced their fingers together.
Moments later came a rapping on the front door, then the definite sound of the lock being tested. Mira pressed her lips together to hold back a cry. Chris squeezed her fingers tightly.
In the next moments, the person was at the workroom emergency exit, trying it. Then a beam of light darted crazily over the floors, walls and ceiling. Mira went light-headed with fear. She breathed as deeply and silently as she could, working to concentrate on her breath and the reassuring sound of Chris’s wildly beating heart.
For a long time after whoever had been trying to get in had given up, Mira and Chris didn’t move. Finally, Chris released her hand, then whispered, “Stay put. I’ll make sure he’s gone.”
She nodded. “Be careful.”
He slipped silently out. She counted in her head, imagining where he was with each number. At ninety-eight, he reappeared at the opening of their hiding place.
“All clear,” he said and reached a hand out for her. She took it and shimmied out.
“Did you check the parking lot?”
“I did. Your car and my truck, that’s it. But I think we should get out of here.”
She did, too. “But go where?”
“I have a place,” he said. “Deni doesn’t even know about it. We’ll be safe there.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Thursday, August 18
8:10
P.M.
Malone sat at his desk. Things had gone from bad to worse. He’d sent a cruiser to Gallier’s—neither she nor her vehicle had been there. He’d sent another by her studio, but hadn’t heard back yet. He’d tried calling her but she hadn’t picked up. In addition, Scott had slipped through their fingers. Malone feared the man had figured out they were on to him and gone into hiding. Scott was no uneducated, low-IQ street criminal. If he was their UNSUB, he’d have to know that taking out Dr. Jasper that way had screwed any hope of his getting away with it. The Jasper scene was a virtual mother lode of physical evidence: phone records, DNA, trace, even his name, written in the victim’s handwriting.
Knowing that, he’d either be on the run or focusing on completing what he’d begun—which would include two more folks, one of them most probably Mira Gallier.
And Bayle was still MIA.
Percy appeared at his cubicle. “Captain’s ready for us.”
Malone nodded and stood. His brother looked as frustrated as he felt. How the hell had this case suddenly spun so far out of their control?
Captain O’Shay waved them into her office. “Any word from Bayle?” she asked. When Malone indicated no, she swore. “What the hell happened between you two? The long version, Detective.”
“Nothing that I would have thought—” He cleared his throat. “I knew that she’d been in a relationship that ended badly. Badly enough that it precipitated her meltdown. I asked if the man she’d been involved with was Connor Scott and suggested she wasn’t as objective about this case as she should be.”
“Connor Scott? How the hell did you draw that conclusion?”
“The intense dislike I’d observed between them from the first time we questioned him. Her unexplainable bias against Mira Gallier. Her former partner told Stacy the guy she’d been involved with was Uptown old money. It sounds like a stretch now, but at the time it felt right.”
“How did Bayle respond?”
“She told me I was full of shit and, basically, a piece of it as well. I decided she was right, called and apologized via cell phone message. She never called me back.”
“And now, no Scott either.”
“No, Captain.”
She moved her gaze between them, then settled on Malone. “Any chance Bayle and Scott could be in this together?”
He thought a moment. “Not in my opinion. It was animosity I picked up between them. Not heat.”
“Bayle’s in trouble,” she said. “She would have come to me with her grievances, asked for a change. No way the detective I know would shirk her duties by running off.”
“Unless I was right.”
“Or,” Percy offered, “she had another breakdown?”
“There’s more, Captain,” Malone said. “We have a new lead.” At her expression, he quickly filled her in on Bill Smith.
When he’d finished, she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “What do you think?”
“Gallier could have stumbled onto something. It makes sense. By hooking up with someone close to Gallier, the perp would have been able to stay connected to the investigation and be continually apprised of her movements and frame of mind. In addition, through Deni Watts they might have had access to the keys and alarm codes to Gallier’s home and studio.”
Percy jumped in. “What we don’t have is his name at the scene of the last crime. Though,” he added, “this Smith would have known Connor Scott was a prime suspect and used his name instead of his own when he made an appointment with Jasper.”
“I told Gallier to sit tight and that I was sending a unit over to keep an eye on her. She chose to run off instead.”
Captain O’Shay frowned. “Any idea where she might have run to?”
“My best guess is Deni Watts’s to try to warn her about this Bill Smith. If not there, I’m not certain. I’d say Scott’s or her studio.”
“Let’s start with Watts’s place. Get a cruiser over there. Next, I want to know who this Bill Smith is, where he works, if he has a record. Then I want him in here for questioning. Find out where Watts hangs out and who she hangs with. If she has family, question them. Wasn’t there another boyfriend—”
“Chris Johns,” Malone said. “Carpenter, handyman. Also works for Gallier.”
“Let’s talk to him. If Watts dumped him, he’ll know something and be happy to help. And look, bring Jackson and Phillips on board. With a generic name like Bill Smith, you’re bound to have a lot to sift through.”
They nodded, stood and filed out, heading toward Malone’s office. “This thing’s eating at me,” he said. “What am I missing?”
“Same thing I am, obviously.”
Malone realized they’d stopped in front of Bayle’s cubicle. He glanced in at her desk, something plucking at his memory.
“You okay, bro?”
Then he remembered. Catching Bayle crying. Her trying to hide it, stuffing something into her desk drawer.
He stepped into the cubicle and crossed to her desk, going behind it.
“What’re you doing?”
“Something I may regret.” He slid open the top drawer and started rifling through the contents. Nothing. Forms, a notebook, a Crescent City Connection toll receipt and a couple energy bars.
“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me. Uncool, bro.”
He didn’t reply, though he knew his brother was right. Instead, he slid open the bottom drawer. Nothing again.