Possession

by J. R. Ward

  Duke stared into her eyes for the longest time. "Me neither."

  By nine a.m., the sun was rarin' to go, rising up over the tree line and throwing out the kind of BTUs that suggested winter was well fucked, and summer not just a hypothetical.

  Having pulled into work, Duke parked his truck where he always did in the lot beside the Shed--but instead of getting out and moving along to clock in, he just stared through the chain-link fence at that great, rising fireball.

  With a slow, deliberate circle, he ran his hand around the steering wheel, even though he wasn't just in park, his engine was off: nowhere to go, but driving anyway.

  After he'd left Cait's, he'd gone home, and found Rolly out cold, but breathing on the sofa. At that point, he'd listened to a message from his supervisor, left sometime the night before, and discovered he was pulling a full shift in the morning--good news. And then Alex Hess had texted him that she was putting him back on the schedule at the Iron Mask next week--better news.

  Ordinarily, he hated free time.

  Although ... with Cait on the horizon? Wasn't so sure about that anymore. Especially because nights were when they were likely to see each other.

  How much had she slept in? he wondered.

  God, how long had it been since he'd thought like that? Since Nicole.

  Yeah, and you know how that worked out, a part of him bitched.

  "Shut it."

  When his brain didn't cough up anything else, he smiled harshly. Nice change of pace--you argue with yourself and sometimes you could really get through to the other guy.

  ... it's a huge reminder of how easily people's destinies can get off-track ...

  Fuck. That one sentence had been banging around his head since he'd pulled away from the curb in front of his woman's house. Over and over. To the point where it was driving him batshit.

  Taking his phone out, he put in the password, went into his voice mails, and just looked at the list. Nicole's newest had been the third he'd received while he'd been at Cait's, and unlike the other two, he'd listened to what she'd left a number of times.

  As he stared at his phone, he thought, See, this was why you stayed in your comfort zone. You started making a connection with someone, your ice got broken ... and then you started doing stupid fucking shit.

  He probably would have been okay if Cait hadn't brought up that student of hers. For some reason, that was hammering in his head, too.

  "I'm losing my mind," he said as he looked out of his truck's windshield again. "Losing it..."

  As with his attraction to Cait, he couldn't exactly explain why things were so different for him all of a sudden. Well, not completely different. He was still focused on payback when it came to his brother. But it seemed as if some other hand was on his steering wheel, turning him this way. That way. In a circle.

  Refocusing on his phone, he watched from what felt like the distance of a mile as his thumb hit ... call back.

  Just as the ringing started, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was the blond-haired man who had tailed him yesterday, stepping out from behind another parked truck. With all the nonchalance of someone who held most of the cards, he put a cigarette between his teeth and flicked a Bic, leaning into the flame.

  As he exhaled, he lifted his hand in a wave.

  "Hello?" came the response through the phone.

  Hang up, Duke ordered himself. Hang the fuck up--you don't want to do this...

  "Hello," he heard himself say.

  Chapter

  Forty-nine

  "So you can understand why we're curious about where you were."

  As the question came at G.B., he kept his cool, smiling at the detective who was sitting across the interrogation table from him.

  First thing this morning, he'd gotten the call to come down to the Caldwell Police Department, and of course he'd complied. He wasn't stupid.

  And he'd watched enough episodes of The First 48 to know how to act.

  "You're just doing your job," G.B. said with a casual shrug. "But I don't have anything else to tell you."

  Detective ... what was his name? de la Truz? ... smiled back. "Well, you could explain why you didn't think to mention that you and Jennifer Espie had been in a relationship."

  G.B. linked his hands in his lap and was careful to hold eye contact steadily. "That's because we weren't."

  "If you want to mince words, fine. But you didn't tell us you two were sleeping together."

  "It wasn't a regular thing, Detective. Come on, I'm so busy with work, I have no personal life. She and I have some friends in common, and yeah, sure, we hooked up a couple of times, but it wasn't anything serious. I just didn't think it was relevant."

  "The girl was murdered in the theater you both work in, and you didn't consider the idea that disclosing your past relations might be a good idea?"

  "What can I say. I'm a singer, not a lawyer."

  The guy flipped through his little notebook. "I hear you're an actor, too."

  "Rent's my first musical."

  Brown eyes lifted. "The director says you're a natural."

  "That's really cool of him."

  "He says you're able to summon emotion on a dime."

  "Well, that's part of the gig, isn't it?"

  De la Whoever smiled again. "Yeah. It is. Which brings me to another question I have. One of the promoters for that jazz concert you sang backup in ... what was that singer's name? Millicent?"

  "Millicent Jayson."

  "Yeah, that's the one. Anyway, the promoter said before you went onstage that night, he saw you and Jennifer arguing in her office. You know, the one with all the glass?"

  G.B. had expected this. "She was upset with me."

  "And why was that?"

  "Like I told you, we didn't have a regular thing going. She wanted that, though. And she got all up in my face."

  "About what?"

  G.B. made a show of rubbing his jaw. "I had a woman come to see me that night, someone I was actually interested in. I asked management if I could use one of the comp tickets they'd reserved for VIPs--you know, if they had any left. They did, and Jennifer was supposed to leave it at will-call for my date. She was also supposed to get me backstage clearance. When I came to get the tags for backstage, she just went off on me."

  "Cait Douglass, right?"

  Okay, it was a little surprise that they had that name. "Yeah, that's her. The woman I invited, that is."

  "She was also supposed to meet you for lunch yesterday."

  "Yeah, she and I were going to grab a quick sandwich down in the break room. Obviously, because of what happened ... we didn't, yeah, you know."

  How in the hell did--

  The detective pursued the fight angle for some time, prodding, prompting, clearly trying to trip things up. But G.B. just stayed on message and on tone--calm, cool, helpful and collected.

  Eventually, the guy shut that notebook. "Well, there's only one other thing I've got for you, then."

  "Fire away."

  "Why were you down in the basement the night Jennifer was killed?"

  G.B. frowned. "I'm sorry?"

  "I don't know if you're aware of this, but security cameras were installed about a month ago. The crime in that part of town has been rising, and the owners of the theater became concerned about break-ins. The stairwells are all monitored now. We have tape of you coming up the back about ten p.m."

  Fuck ... him.

  Wait a minute.

  G.B. smiled and shrugged again. "I went down to do vocal exercises."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'm assuming you've been down in that hall, right?"

  "Yes. I have."

  Because that was where the body had been, duh. Not that G.B. let on about that--after all, one of the easiest ways to incriminate yourself was to cop to details not provided to you.

  "Well, then you know that it extends forever, like, almost from one end of the theater complex to the other. Naturally, it ha
s the best acoustics in the building. I went down there to practice scales--the echoing is incredible; you can practically do a barbershop quartet with yourself."

  The detective's eyes narrowed. "No one has reported hearing any singing that night."

  "But that's the point. If you close the fire door at the base of the stairs, the sound isn't going to carry."

  "You expect me to believe that you went down there to yodel on the same night that girl was murdered, and no one saw you or heard you singing."

  "Look, straight up? This production of Rent could be my big break. Yeah, Caldwell is a regional market, but I had to beat out fifty guys my age with my vocal range for this fucking part. The director is a prick--everyone knows it--but he's also got a national reputation. If I don't hit those notes? He's going to throw me out and fill the part with somebody else." He leaned. "And you actually think I wouldn't be practicing late at night to get it right?"

  "Well. You've got answers for everything, haven't you."

  "I'm just telling the truth. Do with it what you will." G.B. checked his watch. "Listen, I'm sorry to say this, but I have to go to a job in about a half hour."

  "Where you working at?"

  "It's a funeral. Maybe you know the girl? She was murdered a little while ago--Sissy Barten?"

  The detective pushed a hand through his short-cropped hair. "Yeah. I know who she is."

  "You find out who did that yet?"

  "Yup."

  "Good. I'm glad to hear it." G.B. looked down. "Her family asked me to sing. I guess they'd heard me at her graduation from high school the year before--a friend of a friend got in touch with me, and like I was going to say no? It was horrible what happened to her."

  "What happened to Jennifer Espie was pretty horrible, too."

  "How was she killed, by the way?"

  "That's another thing I've been thinking about. May I see your hands?"

  "Sure." G.B. stretched them out palms down, then palms up.

  There was nothing on them. But then, he used that pair of workman's gloves, the kind that were rated for handling chemicals. Thick gloves, very thick--and they'd run up his forearms.

  They were in the Hudson River now.

  "Do you want to take samples or something?" he asked.

  "Interesting idea to bring up. You watch a lot of CSI, by any chance?"

  "No," he lied.

  "Jennifer was killed in a violent way."

  Yup. He'd walked down with her and taken her all the way around to the back exit, the one that was triple-locked, had no windows anywhere near it, and was practically in the next zip code from anyplace anyone usually was. The gloves had been in his back pockets, one jammed in each side, and she hadn't even balked at the fact that he'd had them with him. He'd turned out the light, and talked to her until she'd given in to him; then he'd pivoted her around like he was going to fuck her from behind...

  And slammed her face-first into the wall. Boom! Splash! Blood everywhere. And then he'd done it again, and again, and again...

  Messy, very messy.

  But he'd had to get it all out. In situations like that, when he'd done things just like that before, he'd always found that the violence was a purging--and the further he went with it, the cleaner he felt afterward.

  When she was no longer twitching on the floor, he'd caught his breath, and had to start thinking. Yeah, he'd remembered to bring the gloves, but kind of like a session of really good sex, he tended to be a little spacey for a while afterward.

  Next move was to get the fuck out of there--and clean the fuck up. That was how he'd ended up in that workroom ... where the brunette had come to him.

  The sex had been awesome, actually. What he was hoping, though, was that she had headed out of town right afterward--and that Jennifer's murder didn't go further than the local press.

  What he really didn't need was her connecting any dots for the CPD. And finding him with no shirt on in a room full of bleach fumes the night that some chick was killed in the basement?

  "Would you let me?"

  "I'm sorry?" he said, refocusing.

  "Take samples from under your nails?"

  "Sure. Absolutely."

  The detective knocked on the table and stood up. "This won't take long. We'll get you out fast so you can be at that funeral."

  "Thanks--and if you need anything else, just holler."

  "Oh, I will." At the door, the detective paused. "You've got quite a following here in Caldie."

  "I'm just trying to make it, like anybody else."

  The man nodded. "If you decide to go out of town, or out of state, give me a call, will you?"

  G.B. forced his brows to frown. "Am I a suspect or something?"

  "Just consider it a courtesy at this point, okay?"

  With that, G.B. was left alone in the bald little room. As his heart rate increased, his first instinct was to jump up and pace around, but he knew better. There were cameras in the corners.

  Cameras that caught everything--

  "Well ... what do you know," he whispered to himself, a kind of awe coming over him.

  He was going to get away with this, after all. In spite of those stairwell cameras that he hadn't known about--and which should have been as big a problem as that brunette for him.

  Fate, however, had smiled upon him, hadn't it. When he'd been in that workroom, before the brunette had come and found him? He remembered the lights flickering--and he was willing to bet his life on the fact that there had been some data loss associated with the power surge. Because this detective with the sharp eyes would have led with any record of G.B. and Jennifer going down those stairs together.

  Which they had done right before he'd killed her.

  Yeah, no "courtesy" for an out-of-town trip if the cops had that kind of evidence--he'd be in fucking custody.

  Something had definitely happened to that security camera in the stairwell.

  And thank God.

  It was without a doubt his savior in all this, he thought with a smile.

  Chapter

  Fifty

  So many people, Cait thought as she looked around the narthex of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

  For the past two hours, she had stood on the periphery, watching the ceaseless tide of mourners funnel in. She hadn't been to many of these kinds of services, fortunately--but she knew enough to recognize the shift in demographics: The younger the person in the casket, the larger and more diverse the crowd. When the elders passed on, usually there was only what older friends were left, with the few young being those of close familial relationship.

  Not in Sissy Barten's case.

  There were people of all ages--children, teenagers, lot of college students, some of whom Cait recognized and hugged. There were young families and middle-aged people, and then the older spectrum as well.

  Almost all of them stopped by and looked at Sissy's drawings and paintings, as if using the work as a conduit to connect themselves with her.

  No open casket, or so Cait had been told--and she was glad for that. This was hard enough without having to see Sissy--and maybe that made Cait a wimp ... but she'd read the CCJ articles on the nature of the killing. Gruesome. Very gruesome.

  "Thank you so much for this."

  Cait jumped and turned around. Sissy's mother was right at her elbow, the woman looking about a hundred years old.

  "For what--oh, bringing her art?" Cait shook her head. "It's my privilege to."

  "Will you join us for the burial? At Pine Grove?"

  "Of course. Absolutely."

  "My husband would like to leave all of this in place and then collect it after we're finished at the cemetery, if it's okay with you? We'll take the art home."

  "I have some portfolios that you can use and keep--they'll make sure everything is protected."

  "Thank you." The woman reached out and took Cait's hand, giving it a squeeze. "You were her favorite professor. She spoke of you constantly."

  Cait's eyes flooded with tears.
"Thank you for telling me that--she was a tremendously talented person, and so wonderful to be around. I'm just ... terribly sorry."

  "We are too."

  The pair of them hugged, holding on to each other for a moment that lasted an eternity. And then someone came up to talk to Mrs. Barten, and Cait stepped out of the way to dab at her eyes.

  So hard. This was just so damned hard.

  Peering to the side, she looked through an old pane of glass into the body of the church. Down the long nave, the pews that had been empty when she'd been here the day before were stuffed with people, heads turning this way and that as they chatted with the folks around them. Even out here, she could hear the chatter, the occasional coughs, the shuffling of countless feet, the creaking of old wood as more seats were taken.

  Staring down that vast aisle, she found herself locking on the altar again, and as she focused on the figure of Jesus upon the cross, and the incredible stained-glass windows all around the statue, she thought of her parents.

  True believers. They had made the commitment to their religion with their hearts, minds, and souls, their faith transforming the complex mixture of mythology and history of the Bible into a living, breathing dictate for everything they did.

  She'd resented them for it, but had never thought any deeper than that about her feelings ... or theirs. But standing in the front of the church, having stared at all those grief-stricken faces, she wondered for the first time if maybe her mother and father's mission to bring relief and guidance to people like these wasn't somehow a good thing.

  Take out the "maybe." In fact, they had told her countless times how they just wanted to help--that was what drove them.

  Cait hadn't listened. She'd been too hurt to try to see anything from their point of view. Now, though ... if she'd had a way to do anything to improve this sad occasion, if there was anything she could say or do to bring forward any help ... she'd do it--

  "Cait?"

  Cait recoiled as her name was--"G.B.?"

  "Hi. This is a surprise."

  As he leaned in for a hug, she wrapped her arms around him. "What are you doing here?" What, like she was a gatekeeper or something? "I mean, I didn't expect to see you here. Did you know Sissy?"

  He pulled back and shook his head. "The family asked me to come and sing."

  "Oh, that's so nice of you."

  He did as she had, leaning to the side and searching the crowd on the far side of the glass. "Lot of people."

  "I've been thinking the same thing."