Mostly Murder

by Linda Ladd

  Halfway to the maze, he decided to stop at the old voodoo altar on Skull Island, as he had recently christened it, mainly because it was spooky there at night with all the creepy moss hanging almost to the ground and lots of human skulls scattered all over the place. So he laid the two girls out on the ground in front of the altar, put on his mask, and lit some of the candles. Then he took off their blindfolds so they could see the scary stuff all around them. He was getting aroused, thinking about how helpless they were, ready to take the prettiest one off alone and see just how brave she really was. But then he heard the buzz of an outboard headed fast in his direction. He froze where he was, hands on the frightened girl’s shoulders, but he could see a light filtering through the trees, one that was affixed to a boat. He couldn’t take a chance on being caught red handed, so he had no choice but to run. He took off in his boat and left the girls lying bound and gagged on the ground.

  Furious at being disturbed just when things were getting good, Malice pulled his boat into a thick stand of cypress trees and shut off the motor. He floated there a moment, nervously watching to see if the boat would come in his direction. Chances were the fisherman would not see them, and he held his breath as the boat neared the voodoo ritual island. But the guy did see them, apparently drawn closer by the candle flames. Cursing to himself, Malice watched the man pull up to the bank near the altar, and then jump out and run to help the girls. Malice could hear them screaming and screaming when the fisherman pulled the tape off their mouths, the sound echoing for miles out over the bayous.

  And then he sat there, absolutely terrified, too afraid to even move. If the fisherman decided to look for him, there was no way he could get away fast enough. He lifted the shotgun carefully out of the bottom of the boat, not wanting to kill the man, or the girls, not out in the open like this, but he was ready to, if it came to that. But Papa Damballah was with him again, protecting him from harm, because the man just got the two hysterical girls into his boat and took off toward town, probably pretty damn spooked himself.

  After that, Malice waited a long time, just in case they circled back, and then he finally started up his boat and headed out in the opposite direction. He needed to put space between himself and that island. Damn it to hell, he was just getting started with those girls. He wanted them so much he could taste it. He should never have stopped there. He should’ve continued on out deeper into the swamp and trapped them in the maze. This time, it had been a little too close for comfort. He had gotten way overconfident, and this was the second time he’d let his victims escape. He’d better get his act together and get it together quickly, or he was going to end up in a jail cell, or lying in a death chamber with a needle stuck in his arm.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Claire checked in with Sheriff Friedewald, who was still at his conference in Metairie, she alerted him to the new developments in the case. He also insisted that she take a day off while his forensics team combed the blast site. So Claire did get to pursue idle pleasures with Black, and a very enjoyable day it was. Black was feeling good again and smiling, obviously relieved to get his guilty secrets off his chest. Gabriel was going to be okay, but he was still sleeping a lot and Julie Alvarez was staying with him 24-7. So Claire and Black took advantage of their downtime and spent most of it in their huge round bed, recuperating and calming their nerves in the best way they could think of while getting reacquainted after a week apart and enjoying it immensely.

  That evening, the weather was pleasant, and they sat together out in the courtyard, enjoying fresh fried shrimp and lobster and delicate croissants sent over from the chef working next door at Black’s Hotel Crescent. Unfortunately, their idyllic day together ended abruptly when Claire’s new smartphone vibrated itself around her waterglass. She picked it up and saw that it was Zee. She punched on quickly.

  “Claire, where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to get you for hours. I couldn’t get hold of Nick, either.”

  “We both lost our phones in the explosion. Just now got our new ones up and working with the old numbers. Sorry. What’s up?”

  “You remember Wendy? The Saints cheerleader we interviewed?”

  “Of course. Did she come up with something new about Madonna?”

  “She’s dead, Claire. I’m standing in her apartment right now. NOPD is taping off the scene as we speak. Rene called me this morning. He’s here, too, lead on the investigation. And she’s posed on a voodoo altar, same M.O., same perpetrator. No doubt about it.”

  That news shocked Claire almost as much as Black’s reluctant confession had. She was struck mute, something that didn’t happen very often. Then she caught her breath. “Oh, my God. She’s dead?”

  “She’s hangin’ from the balcony, you know, that white iron one in her foyer. Rene’s got to go back downtown in a minute, but he’s gonna hold the body at the crime scene for us because it’s related to the Christien case. How fast can you get out here?”

  “I’ll borrow Black’s vehicle and be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hurry it up. God, this is so sick. She was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve to die like this.”

  Black was listening intently and showing extreme interest in her end of the conversation. “Now who’s dead?”

  “A Saints cheerleader named Wendy Rodriguez. We interviewed her about Madonna Christien. And she’s a friend of Jack’s, too. I’ve got to go. Zee’s waiting for me at the crime scene.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Don’t know the details. Zee said it’s got another voodoo altar.”

  Black frowned. “We never hear about that kind of stuff around here anymore. Not with dead bodies.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Zee’s grandmother told us, too. I’ve got to borrow your car. Mine’s still down at the boat. That okay?”

  He didn’t look particularly pleased, but he hadn’t looked pleased since the phone had rung. He handed over the keys to his Range Rover. “I wish you’d take another day off. I’m going to.”

  “Good, maybe you and Gabe can get to know each other. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. Why don’t I come along? Maybe I can be of some help.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re an alibi witness in this case, remember? Try not to worry, really. There’s gonna be all kinds of NOPD detectives working that crime scene. It’s right here in New Orleans, not too far from here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Then she headed for the garage, on her way to the apartment of the pretty cheerleader, a woman who probably didn’t look so pretty anymore. She got into the car and backed out, feeling sick to her stomach. She did not want to see what that psycho had done to Wendy Rodriguez, but she had to.

  When she arrived at Wendy’s apartment complex, there were three NOPD cruisers blocking off the entrance gate. They waved Claire through when she flashed her badge, and she followed the winding road back to Wendy’s unit. The crime scene was taped off, but thankfully, authorities outside the gate had stopped the media. And there had been plenty of them, and they had kept their cameras on her SUV. That also meant this murder was probably going to be on the morning news. Reporters would start digging and what they would dig up was Madonna’s murder and Jack Holliday’s involvement, which would really start a feeding frenzy that would never stop. If they got wind of the explosion at the boat with a guy as famous as Nicholas Black being one of the injured, it would really hit the national networks. Sometimes her life just sucked. The last twenty-four hours fit the bill, to be sure. And to think Black had told her that they would thrive and be safe in Louisiana’s slow and lazy Southern rhythms. Wrong, wrong, and more wrong.

  Three police officers stood outside the yellow tape at the apartment, talking together on the front sidewalk. Lots of neighbors were standing across the street, watching and talking excitedly into cell phones. The NOPD officers greeted Claire and raised the tape so she could duck under. She st
opped at the front door, not exactly eager to go inside. It was always that way when she knew the victim. Wendy had been so alive and vital and friendly, and not all that long ago, either. Claire wasn’t looking forward to seeing the beautiful young woman, cold and dead, eyes wide and empty and staring. Or stitched shut.

  Sucking in a bracing breath, Claire snapped on gloves and stepped into the paper booties the guys at the gate handed to her. The door stood wide open, and she walked inside and found Zee all alone in the entry hall. Her gaze latched immediately on Wendy Rodriguez. She was hanging from the upstairs banister, just as Zee had described. She was naked and had been beaten, almost as badly as Madonna. Claire wanted to close her eyes and not think about how much the girl had suffered. The killer was sick and brutal and soulless and cruel. They had to get him.

  “Hey, Claire. This is not good, not good at all.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “The media’s gathering at the gate. Did you have to talk to them?”

  “I pretended I didn’t see them.” She stared at the paint that turned Wendy’s face into a black and white skeleton, wincing at the X stitches holding her eyes shut. Candles were everywhere, on the floor under the hanging body, on the steps, all white, and the pictures of saints were sitting around, and the cornmeal on the floor had the same Veve scratched into it. “Oh, God, it’s the same perp. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “Yeah. And Jack Holliday’s connected again. We found a note on the coffee table in his handwriting.”

  “Damn, I thought we could rule him out.” Frowning, Claire moved down the hall to the den and squatted down. Rene’s forensic people were still everywhere, dusting for prints and taking photographs. The folded note was on the table outside its envelope. She lifted the front flap with her forefinger and read: Thanks for all your help, Wendy. Sorry you had to deal with the police, but I’m grateful. I’ll be over later to talk. Jack.

  Well, that’s just hunky dory, Claire thought. “Who found her?”

  “Next-door neighbor was supposed to go to a late movie with her, and when she couldn’t get Wendy to answer the door, she thought she better call the police, just in case something was wrong. The officers got here approximately eleven minutes later and found her like that, candles still burning and everything. Rene called me in when he saw the similarities to the Christien case.”

  “So she hadn’t been dead long when the neighbor called it in?”

  “We assume she hadn’t. Not sure yet.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around eleven o’clock last night. They’ve been processing here ever since. They’re waiting for us to get done before they remove the body.”

  “Then we might be able to rule Jack Holliday out. He was with Black and me last night. I saw him myself.”

  “Where?”

  “On the Bayou Blue. You sent him over there to see me, remember? And he gave me a video that proved he was in New York at the time of Madonna’s death, but it was lost in the blast. Offered to take a lie detector test and give a DNA sample. Big-time cooperative.”

  “Well, that’s good for him. If he was with you once we get the time of death nailed down, he’ll be clear and free.”

  “Have forensics found anything significant yet?”

  Zee shrugged. “They’ll be wrapping up here as soon as you give the say-so.”

  “I need to examine the body first.”

  “Climb up the steps. You can see her better. Man, she was so young and so nice and so pretty, and she has to end up like this. It’s a damn shame.”

  Claire made her way up to the first landing and tried to study the body objectively. It wasn’t easy. Wendy’s face was eggplant purple. There were trickles of blood at the needle’s puncture points around her eyelashes and lips. That meant she had still been alive, her heart pumping, when he’d stitched on her. God, this killer was a true psychopath. And then she saw the voodoo doll taped to Wendy’s hands, one identical to the one Madonna had been clutching, including Claire’s picture pinned to its face. The guy was consistent, if nothing else.

  Then she wondered if he had been the one to throw the grenades. She could have been the target, and that seemed a lot more likely scenario to her now than someone wanting to eliminate Black or Gabe. A cold shudder started somewhere at the base of her spine and undulated all the way up to the roots of her hair. She turned around and went back down the steps, not wanting to look at the corpse anymore.

  “Anybody see anything?” she asked Zee.

  “Nobody saw nothin’. The neighbors said that Wendy slept a lot durin’ the day so nobody thought much of her not being out and about. They said it was real quiet around here last night, not much goin’ on.”

  “Doesn’t look like much of a struggle went on, not like at Madonna’s house.”

  “No, everything’s as neat as a pin. And Wendy was strong and physically fit. Rene said they think she was killed upstairs in the bedroom, but it’s been cleaned up, too. Nothin’ much to see. You really think you can alibi Holliday?”

  “We were with him. So was Nancy. So were lots of customers on the boat who asked for his autograph. He was there for a while. Like you said, it depends on what time the ME comes up with.”

  “He could’ve been setting you up for the alibi. It’s hard for police to argue with a cop’s statement.”

  Surprised, Claire jerked a look at Zee. “So the guy isn’t such a hero to you anymore?”

  “No, just sayin’. It sounds pretty lucky. For him. He’s the one who called me, lookin’ for you. Maybe he planned it.”

  All that was true, of course, but she still wasn’t sure that Jack Holliday had it in him to beat a woman to a pulp like this, much less kill her. Especially not if he ran some kind of missions with Black and Booker. That would make him one of the good guys. And Wendy had been his friend. Claire had a pretty good hunch that Jack did work with Black. Then again, lots of killers kept an aura of innocence until they stretched out their arm for the lethal injection. If Holliday was indeed some kind of psychopath, he also was a very good actor. Black was gonna have a cow. He thought he’d gotten his pal out of trouble.

  “Maybe somebody’s trying to frame him.”

  Zee said, “Yeah? Who? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked around. “Seems like he took time to clean up and set the scene. Or he subdued her quickly upstairs. But she’s beaten black and blue. How did he do it without any blood spatter or overturned furniture like at Madonna’s? It doesn’t add up.”

  “He could’ve knocked her unconscious and used her as a punching bag when she couldn’t fight back. And then cleaned up with the bleach.”

  Claire envisioned that scenario in her mind, and then wished she hadn’t.

  “And you can smell bleach big time in the master bathroom. We aren’t gonna find much trace. Could be he beat her unconscious, strangled her, cleaned her up and then the apartment, did his creepy paint job, then hung her up there over the altar. But he had to have all the time in the world to do all that.”

  Whoever killed Wendy was very good at his game, and probably had lots of kills under his belt with victims they had yet to find. So how come this time out he had left two bodies for them to discover and made the crime scenes so bizarre? And how had he gotten out of Wendy’s house without being seen? How had he gotten past the security guard manning the gate into Mimosa Circle? On foot? There were tons of people living in this apartment complex. Somebody had to have seen something. She just hoped they had the guts to come forth. Or could the killer live nearby, too?

  Claire and Zee hung around until Wendy’s battered body was removed, and then had to face the reporters clamoring around with their lights and cameras outside the entrance gate. Several TV stations filmed Claire inside her car again as she pulled out, and she cursed under her breath because the last thing she needed was her picture plastered all over the evening news. Or, maybe that’s why the killer had put her image on the dolls—to use her past notoriety
to gain more publicity. Maybe he wanted to be remembered as the Voodoo Killer or some other moniker equally grotesque, and all the celebrity that kind of thing would bring to him. Lord have mercy, they could not let the particulars of the crime scene get out, not under any circumstances. She hoped Rene knew that and had done enough to prevent it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So, what you two are telling me is that you’ve pretty much come up with nothing, other than probably ruling out Jack Holliday as a suspect since his paternity tests came back negative and all his alibi witnesses turned out to be telling the truth. Not to mention that he was with you and Nicholas Black and about a hundred other witnesses around the time the second victim was murdered with the same M.O.? Is that about it, Detectives?”

  Sheriff Russ Friedewald leaned back in his swivel chair and leveled his piercing gaze at Claire, then gave another measuring stare to Zee, which caused Claire’s young colleague to shift uneasily in his chair. Claire was used to such eyeballing. Charlie Ramsay, her sheriff in Missouri, was a lot more intimidating and used a heck of a lot more cusswords. They sat together in the departmental conference room, the slats open on the mini-blinds. Russ liked to hold his meetings there instead of inside his own spacious office, which usually remained pretty much sacrosanct for him, and for him alone. He sat at the head of the table with Zee on his right and Claire on the left. They all had unopened bottles of water in front of them, in case the grilling got too hot and Zee and Claire had to douse each other. On the other side of the conference room windows, where only she could see him, Eric Sanders stopped and blew them a kiss. Quite a comedian, he was, oh yeah. An annoying comedian, too. He was on his way outside to have a smoke, no doubt.

  The sheriff continued, “And these murders are being splashed all over the newspapers as we speak with our office front and center and empty handed. And somehow the New Orleans press has dug up enough information to christen our perpetrator as the Voodoo Doctor. Do I have my facts in order?”