by Lisa Jackson
“Yes, yes, that’s not a problem.” He nodded, turning the idea over in his mind. “Tell you what. Go ahead and run with this, but bring me a written proposal, an outline of your thesis, and we’ll go from there. How does that sound?”
Just peachy, she thought, but said, “Great. I’ll call and we’ll set up an appointment.”
“Good, good.” He stood—ever the gentleman—and she left feeling that at least one small detail of her life was back in place. She’d been struggling with a concept for her thesis. If nothing else, the murder last night had sharpened her focus.
She hurried downstairs and outside, where the shadows had turned to dead-on night. Though it wasn’t quite five, darkness had blanketed the city and street lamps were glowing, giving the grounds an eerie feel. Olivia had always thought the massive limestone facade of Gibson Hall looked as if it belonged to part of a medieval castle, and now, in the darkness with the first few drops of rain beginning to fall, it seemed more imposing than ever.
Crossing the thick grass, she headed for the parking lot, found her truck, and slid behind the wheel. She wasn’t alone. Other students hurried by, but somehow tonight, after the events early this morning, she felt isolated. Detached. She plunged the key into the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. Knowing she was probably making a huge mistake, she drove deeper into the city. For a macabre reason she didn’t understand, she felt compelled to drive by the scene of the crime.
Just like the killers are supposed to do.
Traffic was messy. It had begun to rain in earnest and huge drops fell from the sky, pelting the streets and running down the windshield so fast that the wipers could barely slap them away. Taillights glowed red, seeming to smear through the glass as she wound her way to the other side of Canal Street and through the French Quarter, where umbrella-wielding pedestrians filled the sidewalks and sometimes spilled into the streets. She turned on the radio. WSLJ was playing jazz and it grated on her nerves. Maybe it was just from being overly tired and wrung out, but she couldn’t stand the thought of vocal interpretations and riffs. She found a country station and cranked up the volume.
Better to listen to pining and heartache.
Yeah, right. She clicked off the radio.
On the east side of City Park she squinted at the street signs until she found one she recognized, then rolled down the narrow street until she came to the charred, burned-out building. Not much was left, she thought as she pulled close to the curb and climbed out of her little truck.
Crime scene tape roped off part of the yard and all of the debris and ash. Her shoes were no match for the water rushing through the street, and the jacket she kept in the cab had no hood. Nonetheless, she threw it over her shoulders and waded across the street to stare at the soggy, blackened rubble. Rain peppered her face and ran through her hair as she remembered the vivid scene from her vision. The victim—that horrified blond woman—had died horribly here, somewhere in the burned shell of a house. At the hands of a priest.
Shivering, she whispered, “Who are you, you bastard?” She’d thought if she came here, actually stepped onto the soil where the horrid event took place, she might get a glimmer, a flash of him, might feel him again and gain some clue to his identity. Traffic crawled behind her but the rain muffled much of the city’s noise as it poured from the sky and dripped off the surrounding trees.
She closed her eyes. Listened to her own heartbeat. Felt something. A prickle that brought a slight chill, as if the killer had passed her on the street. “Come on, come on,” she said, her eyes still closed as she turned her face skyward, felt the harsh wash of rain and strained to see something, to hear something, to smell—
“See anything?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin. Fists clenched, she whirled.
In the sheeting rain, Detective Bentz was standing less than a foot away from her.
“Oh, God, you scared me,” she said, her heart pounding in her ears, adrenalin rushing through her bloodstream. “But … no … I don’t see anything but rubble.”
He nodded. Wearing a baseball cap with the symbol for the New Orleans Police Department emblazoned upon it and a water-repellant jacket, he asked, “What were you doing? Just now.”
She felt foolish. Embarrassment washed up the back of her neck. “It was just an exercise. I thought maybe if I actually came to the scene of the crime, I might get more of a sense of him.”
“The killer?”
“Yeah.” She glanced at the Jeep double-parked on the street. “Did you follow me here?”
“Nah. Headin’ home. Thought I’d swing by. Maybe see somethin’ or get a glimmer—a hunch—of what went on now that it’s quiet here. Kinda like you were doin'.” He gave her a quick once-over. “You’re getting wet.”
She smiled. “Now I know why you’re a detective. It’s your keen sense of observation.” Raindrops caught in her eyelashes and dripped from her nose. “There’s just no gettin’ anything past you, is there?”
“I like to think not,” he said but gave her the barest of smiles, one that seemed genuine and she’d begun to realize was rare. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee … or dinner, before you get completely soaked?”
“What … like in a date?” she blurted out before thinking. Of course not, Livvie. Don’t be a goose! Cripes! A date? What kind of romantic ninny are you? She swiped at the rain running down her cheeks. “Or as in you want to pump me for more information because you’ve finally figured out that I’m the best resource you’ve got?”
“Whatever you want to call it. I know a place where you can get great Cajun shrimp and those spicy curli-cue fries,” he said, twirling a finger. “It’s a hole-in-the-wall, but has great food.”
She couldn’t believe he was serious. “I really didn’t figure you for a curly fry kind of guy.”
“And you claim you have ESP. Only goes to show ya.”
“Bentz, are you trying to flirt with me?”
His smile fell away. “Just trying to get you out of the downpour so that you would talk to me.” He was all business again. Kind of gruff. As if she’d inadvertently tromped all over his male ego. Funny, he didn’t seem to be the kind of man who had an ego problem … but then he didn’t seem like the kind who would go for the damned curly fries, either.
“Okay. Where to?”
“I’ll drive.” He ushered her to the Jeep and she told herself that she was making another incomprehensible mistake.
“I could follow you.”
“There’s not much parking around there.”
“Fine, whatever.”
He opened the door to his Jeep and she slid into the passenger seat. It looked pretty much like every other four by four on the road, no police-issue shotgun at ready, no wire mesh or glass separating the front seat from the back, no handcuffs dangling from the glove compartment. But there was a slicker in the back with the police department logo, and of course, he was armed with a handgun.
He drove through the rain-washed city streets with the expertise of someone who maneuvers cars through tight spots all the time. They cruised across Esplanade and into the Quarter to St. Peter, where he forced the Jeep into what appeared an impossibly small space. “It’s not The Ritz.”
“Good. Cuz I’m not dressed for it.”
They ducked under a dripping awning and into a narrow restaurant that smelled of grease and spices. Behind a long counter cooks sweated over boiling pots of shrimp and sizzling baskets of french fries. Bentz led her to a table near the back, past a bar where bottles of beer were packed in metal tubs of ice. He held one of the café chairs for her where, from her vantage point, she could see a glass door that opened to a rear courtyard at the back of the restaurant.
Bentz settled into a café chair on the opposite side of a red-checked tablecloth, and as the waiter appeared said, “We’ll have a double.”
“A double?” Olivia repeated.
“I always eat the same thing. You’ll like it.”
“I don’t get to choose?”
Bentz grinned. “Next time you pick.”
As if there was going to be a next time. “Okay.”
“You want somethin’ to drink? Beer?”
“Sure. A lite.”
“And my usual,” he said to the waiter, who even with his shaved head, didn’t look old enough to serve anything remotely alcoholic but returned within seconds with two opened bottles. Bentz’s boasted zero percent alcohol.
“Still on duty?” she asked.
“Always. Cheers.” He tapped the long neck of his bottle against hers, then took a long swallow.
“So what is it you want to know, Detective?” she asked over the clink of flatware and buzz of conversation. “You’re not assigned to tail me or anything like that, are you?”
“Not exactly.”
He took a long swallow from his bottle and in the soft lighting from a kerosene lantern with a red shade, he looked less formidable than he had earlier; more approachable. He was good-looking in a rough-hewn way and he had a decent smile beneath those dark eyes.
“I was told to keep an ‘open mind,’ that’s how it was phrased, about you. So when I ran into you at the crime scene, I thought I’d try to do just that. Listen to what you have to say.”
“And figure out what makes me tick?”
Again the flash of that enigmatic smile. “Somehow I don’t think that’s possible.”
From somewhere behind her there was a crash of glass and metal hitting the hard brick floor.
“Oops,” Bentz said, raising his thick eyebrows. She looked over her shoulder and saw a tray of broken glass, cutlery strewn helter-skelter, foaming beer running in rivulets through the cracks in the floor, and dozens of prawns, shrimp, and crawfish sliding under tables and between customers’ feet.
“Watch out, they’re escaping,” Olivia whispered and Bentz laughed.
A stricken waitress from whose fingers the tray had obviously tumbled was gasping in horror as the bartender, a big black man, tossed her a towel and a busboy hurried to a closet to retrieve a mop and bucket. “Smooth move,” Bentz muttered, amused.
“The girl is traumatized.”
“She’ll get over it. I did the same thing once. My first job. In high school. I not only dropped a tray of drinks, I splashed them over six patrons at the country club. Every one of those ladies was dressed in silk, I think. Anyway, that was my first and last day there. God, I’d forgotten about that.” He took a swig from his bottle.
Olivia didn’t want to think of Bentz as a butter-fingered teenager, or anything other than the detective he was. “From bus boy to cop in two easy moves?”
“Not quite.” His lips pinched a little. “I’ve had my share of missteps along the way.”
He didn’t elaborate and Olivia couldn’t help but wonder if the reason he was drinking nonalcoholic beer had to do with one of those missteps. The waiter brought a double order of shrimp—served in buckets—along with two massive baskets of fries. The shrimp were blazing red, the fries, as promised, were spiraled and covered with some kind of hot salty spice. Bentz dumped his shrimp onto his paper-covered tray, cracked off the shrimp’s head, peeled off the shell and legs, then tossed the waste into his bucket as he plopped the meat into his mouth.
Olivia followed suit, her fingers smearing with the liquid from the shrimp and staining from the spices and grease from the fries.
As Bentz promised, the food was fabulous. Maybe there was more to this man than first met the eye. Maybe the gruff detective hid a more refined soul—oh yeah, right, tearing a crustacean apart with bare hands hardly suggests any sense of sophistication. Face it, Livvie, he’s a bruiser. All brash, suspicious, male cop. Remember that. He still thinks you were somehow involved with that murder. He just hasn’t figured out how. He believes in what he can see, touch, hear, and smell … Don’t trust him for a second!
“So, tell me about this ‘gift’ you’ve got,” he suggested as he finished his first near-beer and the waiter set two more bottles onto the table. “When did it kick in? Right from the beginning? I mean were you born with it, or did something, some incident, start the ball rolling?” He cracked the back off a shrimp.
“You mean like was I dropped on my head as an infant? Or did I faint in high school and wake up suddenly able to see events that weren’t happening to me?” she asked.
“If that’s what happened.”
“It’s not,” she snapped, her temper rising. “It’s just what most people expect to hear.”
“Hey, whoa,” he said, lifting a hand. “I didn’t mean to push any hot buttons.” He seemed sincere and she felt a little foolish for jumping off the deep end.
“Sorry … conditioned reflex. It’s hard to explain, but yes, I had this as a kid. Right from the get-go. Grannie Gin told me it was a gift and my mother told me it was all in my head, that I should keep quiet about it. I think she grew up embarrassed by her own mother’s gift. People would come over and Grannie, even though she was a vastly religious woman, would read tarot cards and tea leaves and all that stuff. Bernadette, that’s my mother, thought it was weird, which, I guess, it was. It always just seemed a part of my grandmother and I understood it, just not why it happened to me, too.”
“You don’t like it, but you work with all that New Age and voodoo stuff.”
“I know. It’s like I hate my gift but I have this weird, almost macabre fascination about it.”
“Brinkman mentioned you’d come in and talked to him about other murders.”
“So you talked with him.”
“Had to. That a problem?”
“No. Not at all.” She’d picked up a shrimp but dropped it back into her bucket. “I thought I explained all this. I’ve been in to the police department before. No one, especially Detective Brinkman, took me seriously. Just like you.”
“Try me,” he suggested and, when she hesitated, peeled another shrimp. “Tell me your side of it. Firsthand.”
“It’s in Brinkman’s reports, I’m sure.”
“But I want your perspective.” He leaned back in his chair, wiped his mouth, and stared at her. “No recorders. No notes. Just tell me what you saw.”
She hesitated.
“Come on, Olivia. You started this,” he said, and she noticed how his hair fell over his eyes and how tiny crow’s feet fanned from his eyes, as if he squinted a lot. A thoughtful man.
“You’re right. I did. Okay … Well … Where to begin? Let’s start with last summer, that was the most recent. I remember it because it happened around the time my grandmother died. I was flying back and forth from Tucson in those weeks and each time I got to Louisiana I’d have these nightmares, more fragmented than this last one, but intense.” She studied his reaction. There was none. He ate, listened, sipped from his bottle, and didn’t reach for a notepad or pen. Maybe he thought she was making it up. Maybe he was actually starting to believe her.
“Go on,” he urged. “What was the dream about?”
“It was different in that it recurred. Very faint when I was in Tucson but extremely vivid when I was back here. It wasn’t a vision of someone being violently murdered like last night … but rather short images, every other day or so, of a victim being left to starve to death. She … she was trapped somewhere like a crypt of some kind and she was screaming and crying. There were symbols on the walls, pictures of blurry images and writing … some kind of inscription that I couldn’t make out. She was getting weaker every day, I could sense it. And I felt him. His presence.” Olivia held Bentz’s stare. He’d quit eating, was just watching her intently, as if looking for a crack in her story, a lie.
“The killer?”
“Yes. Whoever abducted her and left her to die would come and visit her, shine a flashlight into her terrified eyes, then leave. So I only got glimpses of where she was being held, only quick images of the surroundings. He … he left a vial there … I think, probably to taunt her. It could have been water, or maybe something she could take to
end her life quickly, but it was just out of reach. She, too, was chained.” Inside, Olivia shivered. “Last night the woman died violently, but this one was just the opposite, at least in the beginning … In some ways it seemed worse … a horrid waiting game where the victim was left in the dark to starve to death or die of thirst.”
“Which she did.”
“Yes … but … and this image is vague, but I think there was more. It was around the end of July or first of August. I know because Grannie was getting really sick. I flew to Tucson, closed up my apartment, and drove back here all in the span of five days. In that time things shifted. I had images of something more hideous.”
“What?”
She drew in a deep breath. “I think the girl was eventually … beheaded.”
Bentz’s lips flattened. “Like the one last night.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Like the one last night.”
Bentz didn’t know what to think. Was the woman completely off her rocker? Seriously mental? Or was there something to all this voodoo/psychic mumbo jumbo. She looked so damned normal as she sat across the table from him, her damp hair curling tighter as it dried, her fingers greasy from the food, her eyebrows knitted, her lips pulled into a tight little knot. But it was her eyes that got to him, her steady gaze that defied him to believe her, the haunted shadows just beneath the surface. “Could you draw the symbols for me?” he asked.
“Not from memory, no, but I wrote them down. Any night that I had that particular nightmare, I scribbled down what I remembered. They’re at home. I could drop them by Monday, on my way to work.”
“How about I get them from you tomorrow?”
“It’s a long drive.”
He offered her a smile and motioned for the waiter, indicating he wanted the check. “I’m a bachelor. The only thing I was going to do was watch football and do laundry.”
“Fine,” she said. “Whatever.” She picked up a prawn and he watched as she peeled it and plopped it into her mouth. “Anything else?” she asked, licking the butter from her lips and it almost seemed like a come-on. Ridiculous. But there was something about her, something a little bit naughty, that fascinated him. Just like Jennifer.