“Detective Larue should be here momentarily,” the young officer told him. He cleared his throat. “Sir, I have to ask you and the others to be careful, this being a crime scene and all.”
“Yes, of course.”
Quinn’s phone rang. Larue.
He was moments away, and he wanted them all to sit tight until he arrived.
That wouldn’t be too hard, Quinn thought. When he returned to the bedroom, Jenny, Brad and Danni were seated at the end of the bed. Jenny was sobbing on Brad’s shoulder.
Brad tried to soothe her. “I won’t leave you again, not for a moment. I’ll never leave you again, Jenny.”
“You were so smart to hide,” Danni said.
The second officer was still sagging against the wall, watching them uncomfortably.
“Larue is on his way,” Quinn said.
As if he’d been relieved of a giant burden, the officer nodded, found the strength to stand straight and headed out to the parlor.
“Brad, did you notice in the parlor—was anything missing?”
“What?” Brad said.
“Was anything missing?”
“I—I don’t know. I was thinking about Jenny. I didn’t really look.”
“We should do that now,” Quinn said.
* * *
The two men left the room, and Danni held on to Jenny, trying to soothe her.
With Brad out of the room, Jenny clung to her. She had a strand of Danni’s hair caught in her fingers and it hurt, but Danni didn’t say a word. She just waited until Jenny felt ready to speak.
“The face!” Jenny said. “It was so... He made my skin crawl.”
“He’s a man, Jenny. Just a man. And if you saw that same mask during Mardi Gras, you wouldn’t think anything of it.”
“But I could see his eyes,” Jenny said. “They were...awful.”
“What color?” Danni asked.
Jenny was silent for a minute. Then she said, “I—I don’t know.”
“You just told me you saw them.”
“Yes! And I saw...I saw brutality and evil and...” She trailed off and turned to Danni. “But I can’t remember the color at all. They might have been brown. Or gray. Dark, I think. But there seemed to be a strange light in them. Like fire, like...death.”
A chill rippled down Danni’s spine.
Just then Brad and Quinn walked back into the room. Brad sat by Jenny again, his arm around her shoulders.
Jenny loosened her death grip on Danni—and her hair.
Quinn had the ability to impose a sense of order and security on a situation. Danni realized that she still felt frozen, numb, herself when he came over and hunkered down before Jenny. “Detective Larue is on his way, Jenny, and we’ll get everything down on paper. You were incredibly smart to hide.”
“I should have been here. I have a gun,” Brad said angrily.
“I have a feeling that this man knew you were gone. I suspect he’s started watching and waiting, aware that no one is going anywhere alone anymore and that the word is out that people shouldn’t open their doors, even to friends,” Quinn said quietly.
“He was here—in our room!” Jenny said, sounding on the verge of hysteria. “He touched our things! I’ll never be able to sleep here again.”
“You will, but you don’t need to sleep here tonight. You can come home with us,” Danni said. “My dad’s room is empty, and Billie and Bo Ray are both up in the attic.”
“Thank you, Danni,” Brad said. “And we will take you up on that for now.” Brad looked at her. He clearly recognized that the two of them coming to her house wasn’t the permanent solution he knew he was going to need.
Detective Larue came striding into the room. Quinn rose quickly and said, “Jenny, Detective Larue is here now, so we need you to think hard and tell us everything that happened.”
“He’s out there,” Jenny said. “He’s out there...in our city. He’s killed and killed...and he was here. In our house. In our room.”
“From the beginning, Jenny,” Quinn said.
Larue glanced at Quinn. “It will be easier if we do this down at the station. Jenny, we’re going to let the crime scene techs come through and see if they can find any evidence. He was in here, right? He might have touched something. He might have left some evidence. It’s best if we leave that to them, and we can go to the station and sit, have some coffee and let you tell the story as it happened, okay?”
“I’ll get you a jacket, baby,” Brad said.
Jenny suddenly stood and squared her shoulders. “No—he was in the closet. I heard him, and I peeked and...he was wearing gloves, Detective. Even I know that means there won’t be any prints. But he was in the closet, so I don’t think we should touch anything in there. God knows why. Oh! I saw his hair. He had this dark kind of punk-crazy hair. God! He was creepy. How he can walk down the streets and not be seen, I just don’t know.”
Danni said quietly, “Because he gets rid of the mask the second he’s away. And the hair is probably a wig that’s easily removed. And there aren’t many people out when he’s...when he’s attacking people. He operates in the one sweet spot when New Orleans is fairly quiet, partyers worn out and early people just getting up.”
“Let’s head out, shall we?” Quinn said.
They’d already been up all night. By the time they reached the police station, the sun was well on its way up.
Danni’s phone rang. She answered it and was greeted by Billie swearing, which didn’t happen often. But despite his exhaustion of the night before, he’d gotten up early when he heard Bo Ray moving around, and they had seen Wolf sitting by the backyard door and not holding sentinel in front of Danni’s room. They’d immediately realized that Danni and Quinn weren’t there and started looking around for an explanation.
“A note!” Billie was saying now. “A phone call, a text message!” he chastised her. “Don’t you know that this old ticker has already taken quite a lickin’ with the Cafferty clan, eh?”
Danni apologized, trying to explain without missing what was going on around her.
“I’m grateful as hell that your friend is safe,” Billie said. “But next time you remember to phone home, girl, you got me?”
Danni caught Quinn watching her. When she hung up, he said softly, “I overheard. And he has a point. But then, I have a few words for you, too, when the time is right.”
She glared at him. He wouldn’t have done any differently—and they both knew it. But she didn’t say a word.
Larue had arranged chairs in a conference room. He had a tape recorder going, and he identified himself and those in the room, explaining that Jenny LaFleur would be describing an event in which her home had been broken into by the suspected killer of Holton Morelli and Lawrence Barrett. Then he added, “And possibly the murder of Arnold Watson, as well.”
Jenny went through what had happened minute by minute. “Brad had just left,” she said. “He’d only been gone a minute or two. Then I heard a knock on the door. I thought it might be Brad, that maybe he’d forgotten something, but he has a key, so to be safe I looked through the peephole. I saw the man there, and it was like he had no face. Later I realized it was a mask, but right then he was just this scary faceless person, so I backed away and pretended no one was there. A few minutes later I went back to the door to check, and he was gone. I called Danni to tell her what had happened. She told me to call the police, but I felt stupid then. What was I going to say? A creepy freak had knocked at my door? Then...then I heard something slam against the door while I was still on with Danni, and I jumped and dropped the phone. I saw the wood start cracking around the bolt, so I ran to my room. I thought hiding under the bed was too obvious and that he would definitely look in the closet, so I wedged myself under the dressing table.”
“A very smart spur-of-the-moment plan, Miss LaFleur,” Larue told her. “What then? You saw him in your room, right?”
Jenny trembled. “A little. I heard him—heard his footsteps. I saw him at the closet, and I’m pretty sure he looked under the bed. I saw his hands when he was at the closet. He was wearing gloves.”
“What kind of gloves?” Larue asked.
“Flesh-colored, or maybe clear. They made it look like he had mannequin hands,” she said. She sat back suddenly. “I heard the sirens, and I think he left then. I just froze there. The next thing I knew, Danni was there in my room.”
“Okay, let’s go back a step,” Larue said. “You looked through the peephole at him. You saw the mask. Can you tell me anything else?”
“No,” Jenny said.
Larue produced the drawing the police artist had done.
“That’s him,” Jenny said.
“Do you remember the color of his eyes?” Larue asked.
“No. He was on the step,” Jenny said. “The light was bad. I remember they...they seemed to glow. I couldn’t see the color, though. I told Danni that. I remember that they scared me to death. I kept thinking they were demon eyes, filled with malice and hatred and evil...but I can’t remember a color.”
“That’s all right,” Larue said. “Maybe it will come to you later.”
“He was like a freak, like a mannequin. He must have been obvious. How come no one saw him? How come the police couldn’t find him?”
“Our officers started looking for him as soon as we got Miss Cafferty’s call, Miss LaFleur,” Larue told her.
“But they didn’t catch him,” she whispered.
“Jenny, the police did their best,” Quinn said. “I’m sure he strips off the disguise as soon as he hits the street. And there are courtyards and alleyways everywhere. I’m certain that before he ever knocks on someone’s door he’s scoped out exactly how he’s going to get away.”
Jenny looked at Brad. “What are we going to do?” she said desperately.
“Get some sleep,” Quinn suggested. He looked at Larue. “We’re taking them back to Danni’s house. After a few hours of sleep, maybe Jenny will remember something else.”
“All right. That’s reasonable,” Larue said.
“Before we go, though, there’s one more thing,” Quinn said.
Danni looked at him in surprise.
“Brad Henderson, for the record, please tell Detective Larue—and the recorder—what you found to be missing when you looked around the parlor.”
“My harmonica, a tambourine, some sheet music and my sax,” Brad said.
“Thank you,” Larue said, meeting Quinn’s eyes with a curious look.
Jenny spoke up again, her voice hard. “He left our place in a mask and gloves, carrying all that stuff—and no one caught him?”
“Jenny,” Brad said gently. “You’re alive, probably thanks to Danni calling the police and their sirens scaring him away. Let’s be grateful.”
Jenny began to shake again. “Oh, I am, I am grateful. But still...that freak is still out there. What if he comes back?”
“He won’t come back,” Quinn said.
Larue looked at Quinn questioningly.
“He took what he wanted. He’ll move on to someone else next. But we do have to catch him—quickly. The next person might not be so smart or so lucky.”
* * *
When they got back to the house, Quinn was pleased to see that Bo Ray was doing much better. His chipmunk cheeks were down to slightly puffy, and he was even managing to down some soft scrambled eggs. He hadn’t shaved, so he looked a little the worse for wear, but not too bad. Bo Ray was a good-looking young man in his early twenties, and in much better shape in every way than when they’d met on the first case Danni and Quinn had worked together. He’d committed no crimes himself, but he’d become involved with some very dark characters because of his drug addiction. Father John Ryan had seen to it that he went to rehab, and Bo Ray had proved to be a valuable asset ever since. He was brave in the best way, Quinn thought. Even when he was afraid, he still did what needed to be done. To Quinn, that was real courage.
Billie had cooked, but he looked both aggravated and exhausted, his white hair going every which way. He was clearly still angry with Danni; Quinn could tell by the way he looked at her. But she would weather the storm. When you got right down to it, Quinn thought, he was still angry with her himself. Given what they knew about this killer, it had been insane for her to run out in the night, even if she had called the police first.
Bo Ray forgot his breakfast when Jenny and Brad followed Quinn and Danni into the kitchen. Luckily it was still a few minutes before opening time and they were able to sit comfortably in the kitchen while Jenny told her tale again. Wolf sat with his big nose on her lap, as if he knew she was upset and was trying to make it better.
“I’ll call Father Ryan and Natasha and bring them up to speed,” Billie said. “Then I’m taking a nap. You four, go to sleep and let Bo Ray open the shop. Night will come again soon enough.”
“Night...how can I play again tonight? Or any night?” Jenny asked, looking at Brad with terrified eyes.
“It’s how we make our living,” he reminded her.
“I—I— Danni, you have to forget about playing that other place. You have to. You’re my friend, and you have to come play with us. I need to work to survive, but I’m...I’m terrified. I can’t go back out in the dark, not without you there to keep me safe.”
Danni turned to Quinn. “She’s right. We can divide and conquer, you know. I can sit in with Jenny and Brad, and you can go to La Porte Rouge.”
It made sense, of course. But while he prided himself on not being a chauvinist, he couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t letting Danni go off alone to the Midnight Royale Café with Brad and Jenny.
“Let’s think on it, shall we?” he asked. “But don’t worry—we’ll come up with something.”
“Why don’t we do it the other way?” Billie asked. “You go with Brad and Jenny. Danni and I will stick with La Porte Rouge. I won’t leave her, and we’ll ask Father Ryan and Natasha to come again, too. Not to mention that nothing happens until after the set, when things go all to hell.”
Quinn still didn’t like the suggestion, though he had to admit it did make sense, and that if he weren’t so ridiculously in love with Danni, he would freely admit it was the best plan.
He could also get Larue to assign a man to La Porte Rouge. Besides, what Billie had said was true: the killer seemed to attack around five, after closing, when he knew the local musicians would just be heading home. He attacked when he could wear a mask and pretty much count on going unnoticed.
“That’s even better,” Jenny said cheerfully.
Danni looked at her. “Oh?”
“No offense,” Jenny said. “But Quinn just...well, he looks a lot fiercer than you, that’s all.”
Brad shrugged. “So Quinn is fierce-looking, huh?”
“Safety in numbers,” Quinn said quickly.
“So that’s the plan?” Jenny asked.
“Temporarily,” Quinn said. “Probably.”
“Go to bed,” Billie said. “And I mean to sleep.”
They all rose as one and headed up the stairs. Danni and Quinn showed their guests to Angus’s old room and gave them towels and whatever else they might need, including sweats to sleep in, since they had left Brad and Jenny’s house without thinking to pack anything, and no one had been in the mood to stop there once they left the police station.
Once they were alone in the bedroom they shared, Quinn tried not to jump down her throat in anger, but he had to say something. “What were you thinking? This guy is a maniac. First, you ran out of the house without letting anyone know where you were going. Second—”
“Danni, I’ve been in the military. I’ve been a cop.”
“And you taught me how to shoot.”
“Did you have a gun on you?”
She drew in a breath and stared at him. “We can’t do this—argue like this.”
“You can’t risk your life that way—not even for Jenny!”
“Shh! She’ll hear you.”
“I’m speaking as quietly as I can. And then you suggest we split up. Are you crazy?”
“No, I’m just doing what my father would have done. Quinn, you can’t always be the conquering hero. We’re in this together. And right now I really am exhausted,” she said. “We can talk about this more when we’ve had a few hours’ sleep.”
It was true. He had to shut up.
“Fine,” he said quietly then removed his clothes neatly, pulled back the bedcovers and crawled in.
A moment later he felt her slide into her side of the bed. She didn’t touch him.
He lay there for a while, knowing he needed to sleep, his mind racing. He didn’t like to go to sleep when they were upset at each other like this. It hurt. At the same time, he kept thinking about the things Jenny had said.
Demon eyes?
Was the killer actually some kind of a demon, and was there really something special about the missing sax?
He didn’t know. The killer sounded like flesh and blood.
And the greatest evil in the world could exist in the human psyche.
He hated lying here like this, next to Danni, yet so far apart.
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