by Lisa Jackson
“Hello?” she said, her knees nearly giving way.
“This is Bentz. I got a message you called about some emergency.”
“John just called me,” she said. “Here, at the house.”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted me to repent, that if I didn’t, I would pay for my sins, the same old thing, but then he added that if I didn’t something bad was going to happen. Tonight. And it would be my fault.”
“Son of a—wait a minute. Let’s start over. Slowly. I don’t suppose you taped the conversation.”
“No…I didn’t think of it. It was over too quickly.”
“Tell me everything that’s gone on,” he suggested and she obliged. She didn’t leave out a thing, mentioning that she’d gotten several hangups, that she’d thought her red teddy was missing, that she felt the house was being watched. Bentz listened and gave her the same advice as he did before, to be careful, lock her doors, get a watchdog, keep the alarm system on. “…and you might want to consider staying with a friend. Just until this is over.”
She hung up, feeling a little better. But she knew she couldn’t sit around and wait for John to make good his threat. No way. She had to figure out who he was.
Before it was too late.
“…You want me to wear those?” the girl asked, staring at the man she’d picked up near the river and motioning to a wig of long red hair and a lacy scarlet teddy, both of which were dangling from his fingers.
“That’s right.” He was calm. And weird. And the sunglasses covering his eyes only made it worse.
She’d turned a few tricks before, when she’d been desperate and she’d been asked to do some sicko stuff, but this seemed more bizarre than usual.
But then what did she know? She just wanted to get through it and get the cash.
He walked to the window and made sure the shades were drawn in this crummy little hotel room, a room he wasn’t happy about paying for.
He’d been hyped up, and the scratch on his face bothered him. He kept looking in the mirror tacked to the back of the door and tracing the welts with his fingers, welts she’d made.
She’d been sitting on a bench in the park, near the wharf, watching the boats chugging along the lazy river. Deep in thought, wondering what she was going to do, she hadn’t heard him approach. He’d appeared out of nowhere. The park had been nearly deserted when he’d propositioned her. She’d explained that she didn’t have anywhere they could go and he’d gotten pissed off. She’d thought it was finished. But he’d been persistent.
He’d offered a hundred bucks.
She would have taken fifty.
So he’d brought her to this smelly little room just outside of the Quarter. She’d been second-guessing herself ever since his requests. But it was good money. What did it matter if she had to put on a red teddy and cover her own short carrot red locks with this longer, red/auburn wig? The sooner she did as he asked, the sooner she’d be on her way to score some crack. So okay. It was no big deal. She’d done worse things than wear some other woman’s things. She wondered if the teddy belonged to his wife or his girlfriend. Just what kind of freak was he in his dark glasses?
So now he was looking at her again with those dark, hidden eyes. Worse yet he rubbed a rosary between his fingers, and that really creeped her out. She wasn’t particularly religious, but she’d been brought up in the church, and it seemed morally wrong, just plain spooky, that he’d brought the rosary along. Sacrilegious.
But…whatever. She needed a hit. And she’d get it. If she could just get through the next half hour or so. She glanced at the bedside table. Saw the hundred-dollar bill. It was weird, too. Blacked-out eyes on Ben Franklin.
The John was fiddling with the radio on the bedside table, pushing buttons and glowering at the electronic display until he found a talk station, one she recognized. She swallowed hard as she heard Dr. Sam’s voice.
“Can’t…can’t we listen to music?” she suggested, feeling a new stab of guilt. It was as if Sam was in the room with them.
“No.”
“But—”
“Just get dressed,” he ordered, his lips compressing, his thumb and finger rubbing the rosary as if his life depended upon it. The dark glasses and scratch on his cheek convinced her to shut up.
Sliding out of her platform sandals, she stood barefoot on the worn carpet near the bed, then wiggled out of her tube top. In a few minutes this would be over and then she could leave.
Dr. Sam’s voice floated through the speakers, “So let’s hear about it, New Orleans, tell me about the love letters or the Dear John letters you’ve received.”
The guy froze. Muttered something under his breath, then whipped around glaring at her. He didn’t say a word as she kicked off her shorts and struggled into the lacy teddy. Adjusting the straps, she thought fleetingly that the guy was handsome in an eerie way. She’d concentrate on that, his good looks, and wouldn’t listen to Dr. Sam. She’d pretend. Just like she always did and she’d just get down to business, get him off and then be on her way. Stuffing her hair under the wig, she angled up her chin and looked at him defiantly.
“How’s that?”
For a moment he just looked at her, studying her like one of those fruit flies under a microscope in that stupid biology class she’d flunked. She tossed her head and the long hair of the wig swished against her shoulder blades.
“Perfect,” he finally said with the hint of a smile, “Just perfect.”
He approached her and touched her ear, playing with the series of earrings running up from her lobe. Good. He was finally going to get down to it.
He nuzzled her neck and she forced out a moan she didn’t feel, just to get it over with. Lolling her head back and closing her eyes as if she was really getting hot, she sensed something odd, something cold slide over her head to circle her neck.
What was this shit? She leaned back away from him and realized that the rosary was around her throat, the sharp beads tight against her skin.
“Hey, wait a minute,” she said, and saw him smile for the first time. It was cold. Deadly. Razor-thin lips drawn back over straight white teeth. She tried to pull away, but he yanked hard and with a flip of his wrist, twined the strands together. The beads cut into her neck, bit into her flesh, cut off her breath.
Panic spurted through her. This wasn’t right. She tried to scream. Couldn’t. Couldn’t drag in a breath of air. Flailing her arms, kicking at his knees and crotch, she fought him, but he sidestepped her bare feet and her hands did little damage against a rock-hard chest. She tried to scratch his face, but he only pulled tighter. Sweat dotted his brow. His teeth clenched with the effort, his lips curling.
No, oh, God, no. Please, somebody help me!
Her lungs were on fire. She thought she would burst.
Please, please. Help me. Please someone, hear what’s going on in here and help me!
She flung a fist at the glasses and he jerked back his head. She saw her own terror twice in the dark lenses as the distorted reflection of her face came into view. She was going to die, she knew it. And the baby within her, the one she hadn’t wanted, it was going to die, too.
He twisted around to her backside, and she felt a second’s relief. Her knees buckled. She gasped. Tried to run.
She dragged in one final breath. Tasted blood, stumbled forward, half-believing she could escape.
Then he wrenched the unholy noose again.
Chapter Twenty-one
“That’s a wrap,” Melanie said as the strains of “Midnight Confession” faded and an advertisement for an e-company started rolling.
Shoving her chair away from the desk, Sam let out her breath. She’d been nervous during the show. Edgy. Certain “John” would call again, that he’d only phoned her at the house to prove that he could. To scare her. But he hadn’t called in.
But he’d been listening. Waiting. Knowing he was stretching her nerves to the breaking point. After the phone call at her ho
use, she’d decided to bait him. Her program tonight had been about communications, specifically love letters, Dear John letters and even threatening notes though she hadn’t mentioned the card she’d received in her car.
Listener response had been hot, but “John” hadn’t phoned in…yet…There was still time. He’d proven that before when he’d called in after her program had aired.
Though it was after midnight now. Technically Friday—the day after Annie Seger’s birthday.
She turned off her equipment, studied the unlit phone-line buttons for a second, then met Melanie and Tiny in the hallway.
“No weirdos tonight,” Tiny observed.
“So far,” Sam agreed.
Tiny shoved his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “You’re disappointed, aren’t you? You kind of get off when he calls.”
“Get off?” Sam repeated, her temper sparking. “No…but we can’t find him if he hides.” She didn’t add that she wanted to lure him out, hook him, reel him in and then see that he never terrorized anyone again. Yes, in a perverse way, she wanted to know what made him tick, but more than that, she wanted him off the streets, away from the phones and out of her life.
“Do you think he’d really call in again after hours?” Melanie asked as she searched in her purse and came up with a tiny box of Tic-Tacs. “Wouldn’t that be pushing his luck? I mean, he’s got to have figured that you’ve been to the police by now. He doesn’t know that they aren’t tracing the calls—or that we aren’t.” She plopped half a dozen tiny mints into her palm and tossed them into her mouth.
“Maybe the guy knows what a cheap-ass George Hannah is,” Tiny grumbled, then waved his hands in the air. “I didn’t say that, okay? I don’t want to hear about it in the next staff meeting.”
“It’s what we were all thinking anyway,” Melanie said, yawning, as she held up the near-empty plastic box of mints in offering. “Anyone?”
“I’m good,” Tiny said, declining.
“If you say so.”
Sam shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Melanie yawned again. “God, I’m dead tonight. Anyone want to split a Diet Coke?” She was already heading down the hallway toward the kitchen.
“I’ve still got some.” Tiny turned back to the booth to set up Lights Out.
Sam was right behind but had one ear open, listening for the phones. “No caffeine for me,” she said to Melanie. It was one o’clock on Friday morning; Sam’s shift was over for the week, and she couldn’t imagine working on the weekends as well.
“Would you mind loaning me a buck for the machine?” Melanie asked as they rounded a corner and passed by a wall lined with pictures of local celebrities who had been interviewed at WSLJ.
“After you took care of Charon and the house while I was gone? I think I can manage.”
“Good.”
Sam found her wallet and handed Melanie a bill as they neared the kitchen. The first strains of soft instrumental music wafted through the hallways. Lights Out had begun and the phone hadn’t rung. “Has Eleanor mentioned anything about running Midnight Confessions seven nights instead of five?” Sam asked, trailing after Melanie.
“I heard it through the grapevine around her. Gator’s not too happy…” Melanie’s voice faded. “What in the world…Maybe you shouldn’t come in here.” Melanie stopped dead center in the doorway and was staring to her left, toward the French doors. The dollar bill that Sam had given her had fallen to the floor.
“Why not?” Sam craned her neck to look over Melanie’s shoulder.
Her blood ran cold at the sight of the cake—iced in white frosting and supporting about two dozen red candles. “Jesus.”
“This has something to do with that Annie girl,” Melanie said, swallowing hard.
Sam pushed past her and strode to the table. Her head was pounding, her heart pumping wildly. “Who did this?” she asked. “Who got in here and planted this thing?”
“I…I…don’t know.”
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNIE blazed across the white icing in red letters while the candles were burning, red wax dripping down the sides of the cake like rivulets of blood, smoke twisting upward from the tiny flames.
“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” Sam asked, glaring down at the concoction. She counted. Twenty-five candles. One for every year of Annie Seger’s life and death. “Did you do this, Melanie?”
“Me? Why? Are you nuts?” Melanie shook her head. “I—I’ve been in the booth all night. You know it. You were there…” Her face crumpled in on itself, and she blinked as if she might cry. “…How could you even think—”
Sam wasn’t listening. “Tiny!” Sam yelled, storming to the corridor, her blood pumping hard, anger, disgust and shame spurring her to the booth where Tiny was adjusting the volume and the pretaped program. He looked up, saw her and held up a finger to keep her quiet and at bay. Her fists clenched and it was all she could do not to burst into the glassed-in room and rip him up one side and down the other. By the time he lumbered into the hallway, her fingernails had dug into her palms and she was livid. “You look like you could spit nails.”
“I can,” she bit out furiously. “I found the cake.”
“The cake,” he repeated dully. “What cake?”
“Annie Seger’s birthday cake.”
“Her what? The girl who called in the other night? What the hell are you talking about?” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
“Don’t you know?”
“For God’s sake, Sam, you’re talking like a lunatic.” His face was red now. Anger? Shame? Regret?
Melanie had followed Sam halfway down the hall. “I think you’d better see for yourself.”
“Jesus Christ, now what?” Lips compressed, beads of sweat appearing on his pockmarked skin, Tiny strode through the maze of hallways and into the kitchen. Sam was right on his heels, following him step for step. Around the corner, into the kitchen, to stop dead in his tracks. “What the—Shit.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Sam said.
“But who would do this? How could they?” he asked, turning. His skin had paled, leaving the red blotches of his acne even more pronounced.
“My guess is it’s either you or Melanie. No one else is here.”
“Except the security guard,” Melanie put in.
“He doesn’t even know me.” Sam wasn’t buying it, though, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why either Melanie or Tiny would want to sabotage her this way. Melanie was her assistant and friend, a person she’d trusted to look after her job, house and cat while she was away and Tiny was half in love with her from the minute she’d walked into WSLJ. He was too smart to be reduced to schoolboy antics to garner her attention.
But then who?
Melanie said, “The guard could’ve been put up to it.”
Tiny seemed genuinely disgusted. “Are you accusing me, Sam? You really think I’d do something like this to…to…you?” he asked, a wounded look crossing his eyes behind his thick glasses.
“I don’t know.” It did seem far-fetched. Irrational. If whoever was behind it had wanted to rattle her…mission accomplished.
“And Gator was here not an hour ago, and so was Ramblin’ Rob. I saw him at the record case looking for some moldy-oldy to play tomorrow,” Tiny said.
“The boss was here earlier, too. I saw George in his office, on the phone,” Melanie added.
“Great.” So half the staff could’ve done the job.
“Don’t you trust me?” Tiny asked. His lips folded in on themselves, and he glared at Sam as if she was named Judas.
“Of course.”
“Then knock it off.” He looked like a wounded bear.
“And don’t look at me,” Melanie said, backing up, palms outward. “I’ve been with both of you all night.”
Tiny shook his head and held up a finger. “You took a break.”
“To go to the bathroom, for God’s sake!” she said. “For the first time in my life I wish George was perve
rted enough to have some surveillance cameras installed.”
“You and me both,” Sam said, then felt the tickle of a breeze against the back of her neck and noticed the muted sounds of the city filtering into the room—traffic, a solitary trombone, the wind sighing through the palms in Jackson Square. Heart in her throat, she walked to the French doors that opened onto the unused balcony. They were unlocked, just slightly cracked. “Someone was in here,” she whispered, goose bumps rising on her skin. “They came through here.” She pushed the doors open and the sound of traffic and voices drifted in with the warm breath of the wind. Laughter and the moan of the trombone.
“They? You think it was more than one guy?” Tiny asked, following her onto the balcony.
“I wish I knew,” she whispered harshly, crooking her neck to see around the corner of the building and searching the night-dark streets of New Orleans. Who had broken into the office and how had he done it? Wrapping her fingers around the decorative railing, she stared across the square to the cathedral, splashed with light, the clock face glowing as bright as a full moon, the tall spires black and jutting toward the dark sky. In front of the cathedral was the park, where palm trees blocked her view of the statue of Andrew Jackson and his rearing horse. The park was supposed to be empty now, pedestrians were locked away from the circular sidewalks at night. Had her tormentor scaled the fence, and was he lurking there, hiding in the shadows, watching her now with hidden eyes?
Despite the humidity, she felt cold from the inside out. “You bastard,” she whispered, her eyes scouring the depths of Jackson Square before she swung her gaze south, past the stately old buildings, along the narrow streets to the levee and the dark river beyond. Was he skulking in a doorway, secreting himself on a small terrace such as this, taunting her silently with his presence.
“I’m calling the security guard,” Melanie said from inside the building.
“Good.” Sam’s gaze swept the railing and floor of the never-used balcony. In the weak light she saw nothing other than pigeon droppings and dirt. “I’ll phone Eleanor on another line. If I don’t, she’ll be ticked. You”—she turned and pointed a finger at Tiny’s chest—“phone the police and make sure that Lights Out is on track—and that no one else calls in.”