by Lisa Jackson
“I’ll meet you there,” Bentz said, and slammed the phone down. Maybe they were finally catching a break.
Sam was nervous as she walked into the den. The edge that she’d felt after taking “John’s” last call had never quite left her. She was missing something, something important, a clue as to his identity.
Earlier, Ty had taken her into New Orleans to retrieve her car, followed her here, then made a quick trip home to pick up Sasquatch and his laptop computer. Now, he was seated on the couch, computer glowing on his knees, his notes splayed upon the coffee table. While the television flickered with images of the noon news, and his dog lay near the French doors, he started sorting through the box of Sam’s old, musty folders that he’d brought down from upstairs.
TGIF went through her head as it was Friday, her weekend, and she didn’t have to work at the station again until Sunday night. Nonetheless she was burdened with the feeling that something bad was going to happen or had happened. “John’s” warning replayed through her head: All you need to know is that what happens tonight is because of you, because of your sins. You need to repent, Sam, beg forgiveness.
So familiar, so direct. He’d called her Sam.
At first she’d thought he’d meant the damned cake, that he was just trying to freak her out, but as she’d remembered the tone of his voice, the cold warning, the pure evil of his threat, she was convinced that there was more.
But nothing had happened.
Yet. Nothing’s happened yet.
This is just the calm before the storm.
She tried and failed to take heart in the fact that Annie’s birthday had come and gone. If the cake was the worst that had happened, she should be relieved. But she couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the cake was just the tip of the iceberg.
In the den, she sat at her desk and noticed Charon cowering on the top of the bookcase, eyes round.
“Sasquatch is okay,” Sam assured the cat. “You’ll get used to him.”
Just like you’ll get used to having Ty around? Remember, he lied to you from the git-go, and now he’s pursuing this half-baked theory of his.
She crumpled a wad of paper and tossed it at the cat, who couldn’t help himself and swiped at the “toy.”
Ty was convinced that Annie Seger had been murdered and the killer had gotten away with it. Sam wasn’t so certain.
Could the Houston police have been so wrong? So negligent? Or had they covered up? It seemed unlikely, and even if Annie’s murder had “slipped through the cracks” nine years ago, how did “John” and the call from the woman posing as Annie link to the past? Why was this all happening now?
Could it have been someone in the station trying to rekindle interest in a nearly forgotten case, all for publicity? Was someone at the station involved, or had one of the employees inadvertently passed along information about the phone lines into WSLJ?
Stop this. It could be anyone. A phone company employee, or someone who had worked at the station in the past, or any guest or repairman or visitor who just looked the system over when Melba’s back was turned. Someone else might have stumbled across the number. With all the computer links and technoknowledge available, any nutcase could have figured out the phone-line numbers. It’s not that big of a deal.
Scraping back the chair from her desk, she reached for the phone. She needed to call her father and tell him that Corky had seen Peter, that her brother was alive, and seemingly clean and sober. This is Peter’s responsibility, her voice nagged, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t bailing Peter out, as she might have been accused in one of the upper-division psychology courses she’d taken. This was real life, and her father deserved to have his mind put at ease about her brother. After talking to her dad she’d call Leanne Jaquillard.
She’d picked up the receiver and had started to dial before noticing that the answering machine light was flashing. Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t picked up her messages in nearly two days. Had she somehow missed another call from John? Another threat? She pushed the play button and heard a hangup. “Damn.” Then another click. Her skin crawled. It was “John,” she was certain.
A second later Leanne’s voice came through the small speaker. “Hey, Doctor Sam, I was wonderin’ if we could get together? I need to talk to you about somethin’ and it really can’t wait until group. I mean…I want to talk to you about it alone, if that would be okay? Call or e-mail me if you get this.”
Click.
The machine stopped.
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. There were no other messages, no contact from “John.” She switched on her computer, checked her e-mail, and found yet another note from Leanne asking her to call.
Charon hopped onto Sam’s lap and she stroked the cat out of habit. Something was weighing heavily on Leanne, she thought. The girl had never before called her at home. Quickly, she looked up Leanne’s phone number on her computer screen, then picked up the phone and punched out the numbers. “Be home,” she said, picking up a pencil and tapping the eraser end on the desk as the phone rang.
On the fourth ring a woman answered, “Hello?” Sam recognized Leanne’s mother’s irritated voice, and she braced herself.
“Hi, this is Samantha Leeds, Leanne’s counselor at the Boucher Center. Is she in?”
“No, as a matter of fact, she isn’t. That little fart didn’t bother comin’ home last night. I was just about to call the police and report her missin’, but I imagine she’ll come draggin’ in later this afternoon.”
Sam bristled and tapped the pencil again. The cat jumped off her lap and slunk cautiously out of the den. “Leanne left me a couple of messages, and I’d like to get in touch with her.”
“You and me both, I should a been ta work two hours ago, and I ain’t got no one to watch Billy. That’s Leanne’s job when she ain’t in school. I’m tellin’ you this is the last time she pulls this kind of stunt on me. I was up half the night worried about her.” There was an edge to Marletta’s voice, a fear that she couldn’t quite mask. “She’s usin’ again, I swear. God, don’t you discuss this with her in that stupid group she goes to?”
“What we discuss doesn’t leave the room,” Sam said, trying to remain patient and worrying about the girl.
“Well it ain’t doin’ any good, now, is it? Otherwise, she’d be home.”
“Does she do this often?”
“Much as she can.”
“But you might call the police.”
“What for? Ennytime I do, they jest give me the run-around. I’ve called too many times already and then Leanne she strolls in here like it ain’t no big deal. I’m sick and tired of chasin’ after her.”
“Still—”
“It’s not yer problem.”
Sam wasn’t sure about that. She dropped her pencil onto the desk. “Just tell her I called.”
“Yeah, yeah, if she ever shows up.”
“Thanks,” Samantha said, and hung up. Her heart twisted for Leanne. The kid had just never had a chance, with no father and Marletta for a mother. Sam decided that she’d call back tomorrow, just in case the message didn’t get through, then typed a quick e-mail to ensure the girl knew Sam was trying to reach her. She then dialed her own father, who, she decided for about the thousandth time, was no less than a saint. When he didn’t answer she felt a second’s disappointment but left a message.
“Hi, Dad, it’s Sam. You’re out, probably with the cute widow, right? Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do and call me when you get the chance. I just want you to know that Corky ran into Peter, and he’s doing great. I haven’t talked to him, of course, but I thought I’d pass on the word about brother dear. Call when you’ve got a chance, okay? Love ya!” She hung up in frustration, then heard Ty’s voice from the living room.
“Samantha—I think your cop’s on television.”
“My cop?” she said, walking into the living room, where Ty was standing, the remote in his hand, watching the television. Detective Rick Bentz fille
d the screen. A reporter was interviewing him as he and his partner were exiting a huge house in the Garden District. While the reporter tried to ask questions, Bentz kept muttering “no comment.”
“What is it?”
“A murder, apparently,” Ty said as the reporter stared into the camera.
“…so that’s it. Another woman murdered. Another one linked to prostitution. The question that has to be asked is are the killings linked? Do we have a serial killer, here, in New Orleans? It’s starting to look that way.”
Chapter Twenty-six
“Bentz has been busy lately,” Ty observed as he clicked the remote and the image on the television faded.
“Criminals don’t have weekends off,” she said, bothered by the report. The possibility of a serial killer was sobering and reminded her that there were other problems beside hers in the city. “So what have you found out?” she asked, motioning toward the notes, pictures and files spread over the coffee table.
“Not much more than I knew before.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if his muscles were strained. “I’ve got a partial list of people who were acquainted with Annie, what they’ve been doing for the past nine years and where they are now.”
“That’s a start. Tell me about them.”
“Okay.” He walked back to the couch, sat down and leaned over the coffee table to his computer. Squinting, he clicked the mouse and said, “Oswald—Wally, Annie’s father, is still up in the Northwest…in…Kelso, Washington—that’s Washington State.”
“I know where it is. He’s the guy that asked you to look into this.”
“Yep, good old Uncle Wally. As mismatched with Estelle as he could be. She was white-collar society, he, strictly blue-collar. One job to the other. I never could figure them out, but they were young when they hooked up and she got pregnant with Kent, so, they got married. Then, of course, divorced when the kids were young and Estelle found someone more suitable in Dr. Faraday. Wally never remarried, lives alone in some kind of modular home park and works for a logging company.” Ty glanced up at Samantha. “Since he wanted me to investigate what happened to his daughter, I don’t think he’s a viable suspect, but I haven’t ruled him out completely. Stranger things have happened.”
“I guess.” Samantha rounded the couch and leaned over the back, reading the computer screen over Ty’s shoulder, her head next to his.
“Estelle is still living in the house in Houston where Annie died. She’s never moved, never remarried, doesn’t even date, spends a lot of time volunteering at the church and lives off of what she got from the divorce and her investments. A shrewd lady, Aunt Estelle. She’s parlayed a sizable inheritance into a small fortune. In our one phone conversation, she agreed to be interviewed for the book as long as I see her in person. I’m not exactly at the top of her favorites list but not persona non grata either. She doesn’t want Annie’s story told, but since it will be, she’d like to tell her side of it.” One side of his mouth lifted. “She’s a controlling woman, and my guess is that she thinks that if she talks to me, I’ll take her version of what happened as gospel and print it verbatim.”
“Which you won’t.”
“Of course not. The truth is the truth. You can color it any way you want, even try to whitewash it, but it’s still the truth. Estelle is a great manipulator, but I’ll be hell to control.” He slanted a look over his shoulder. “It will be interesting to see what she has to say.”
Sam remembered the cold, dry-eyed woman who wouldn’t allow Sam to attend the graveside service for her daughter. Tall and graceful, with upswept blond hair and pale blue eyes, she’d looked down her straight nose at Samantha at the gates to the cemetery. “Please,” she’d said, “this is a private ceremony. Just family.”
“I just came to pay my respects,” Sam had replied, her heart wrenching with guilt, as if she somehow could have counseled the girl, somehow gotten through to her, somehow prevented this unthinkable tragedy.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough? My family has been devastated by this, and it’s your fault. If you had helped her—” Estelle’s cool facade had shattered and her lips had begun to tremble. Tears had filled her ghostly eyes, and she’d blinked rapidly. “You just don’t understand…Please…It would be best for everyone if you left.” Beneath her foundation makeup, Estelle had paled. She lifted a trembling hand and swiped beneath her eyelids, careful not to muss her mascara. “I—I can’t deal with this right now.” She turned to a lanky man with thinning brown hair, tanned skin and grief-stricken expression. Sam had recognized him as Estelle’s husband, Annie’s stepfather, Jason Faraday. “This is so awful, “Estelle said as the man leveled Sam a look that begged her to back off. “I…I don’t want that woman here.”
“Shh. Don’t worry,” he’d whispered, wrapping a protective arm over her thin shoulders. “Come on.” He’d shepherded Estelle toward the freshly turned mound of earth in a green expanse of lawn dotted with headstones, family plots and vaults.
Sam had gotten the message. A few weeks later, the sympathy card she’d sent to the family had been returned unopened.
“Good luck talking to her,” she said now, shaking her head to dislodge the painful memory. “I don’t think Estelle had anything to do with Annie’s death. In fact I’m not sure it wasn’t suicide. The police did check it out.”
“I was there, remember? On the force. Kicked off of the case because I was related to the deceased and because I was pretty vocal that I didn’t like the way the investigation was being handled.”
“You still haven’t convinced me that Annie was murdered. I mean the Houston police force is pretty good.” She crossed her arms over the back of the couch as he scrolled down.
“Bear with me.”
“Fine.”
“This is where things get interesting,” he said. “Jason and Estelle divorced less than a year after Annie’s death. As soon as it was legal, Jason remarries a nurse from his office staff, sells his part of the partnership in the group where he worked as a surgeon and he and the new missus pull up stakes and move to Cleveland. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “But get this, he’s been in New Orleans more than once in the last few months. His new wife’s sister lives in Mandeville, just across the lake, and he’s had a couple of conferences here.”
“Wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense. You think a killer got away with murder, and now, nine years later, he’s calling me, wanting to dredge it all up again? Why? There is no statute of limitations. Remember, whoever ‘John’ is, he blames me for Annie’s death. If he killed her, why blame me, why not let well enough alone and allow everyone to think that Annie killed herself. If what you’re saying is true, he went to great pains to make it look like she committed suicide. Why stir things up now? It doesn’t make sense.”
Ty looked up at her. “We’re not dealing with a sane man, though, are we? The guy who’s been calling you, he’s got all sorts of hangups about sin and repentance and atonement. My guess is that something triggered his need to call you and bring the Annie tragedy back into the limelight. Maybe he heard you on the radio show or maybe something happened in his personal life. We already know he’s screwed up about God and punishment and sin. He snapped, Samantha.”
She still wasn’t buying it, but played along. “Okay, just for argument’s sake, let’s say you think the killer could be Jason Faraday.”
“One possibility. He split from Estelle fast and practically gave her everything in the divorce, then pulled up stakes and got the hell out of Dodge so to speak. He started a new life for himself with ties down here.”
“Who else?” She picked at the dying fronds of a Boston fern.
“Annie’s brother. Kent and she were pretty close. They’d lived through their parents’ divorce and their mother’s remarriage. Kent was pretty messed up after Annie died. He didn’t work, didn’t go to school and suffered from some kind of depression. All this time his mother’s second marriage was breaking up. He was the man of t
he house and during that time he was committed to a private mental hospital for a while, one in Southern California, Our Lady of Mercy.”
“Catholic? For rich kids, right?” she asked, noticing how his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck.
“Troubled kids.”
“But it was run by the Catholic Church.”
“Estelle’s a devoted member of the church, so her kids were raised that way.” He slanted her a look. “It’s not a sin you know.”
“I do know. Guess how I was raised?” she asked, walking into the kitchen and dropping the brittle fronds into the trash.
“I don’t have to guess. It’s all in my notes.” “Oh, right. You know, Ty, I should be ticked off about this. It’s called invasion of privacy, I think.” She was dusting her hands as she padded back into the living room and resumed her position leaning over the back of the couch.
His smile wasn’t the least bit abashed. “So I’m a bastard, what can I say?”
“Add in insufferable, bullheaded and inflexible.”
“Your kind of man.”
“In your dreams.”
“There, too,” he admitted, sending her a hot glance that caused a catch in the back of her throat. Things were moving quickly, probably too quickly. Right now her life was turned inside out, she needed room to breathe, to think, to figure out why some twisted man was tormenting her. It wasn’t the time to get seriously involved with anyone and yet…and yet…
She cleared her throat and picked at a piece of lint on the back of the cushions. “You were telling me about the members of Annie’s family,” she reminded him.
“And I had a thought.” Rotating his head to look her square in the face, he said, “You know, since you’re a hotshot celebrity-psychologist, maybe you could make inquiries to the hospital about Kent, find out about his depression and illness.”