Disturbed at her thoughts, Sara crossed her arms tightly across her chest and commanded herself to stop.
His room was small, and sparse compared to the rest of his apartment, with only the bed and a dresser in it. He hadn’t bothered to pull down the shade on his window, which she found interesting. He either slept through the sun rising, or he used it as an alarm clock. It also fascinated her that she couldn’t hear him breathing. He made no sound at all, and given his angle, she couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his chest. It was utterly silent, and he wasn’t moving.
Maybe he was dead. Not that there was cause for death, since he had been alive and well a mere three hours earlier, but once the idea took root, Sara couldn’t shake it. It was possible. Anything was possible. And he wasn’t making any sound at all. What if she moved around the front of him, and found that he had been stabbed? Throat slit. Blood could be all over the bed, and she wouldn’t be able to see it from where she was. He could be dead, cold, his eyes wide open, glassy and empty.
She knew she had to be overreacting, knew he couldn’t possibly have been murdered while she was sleeping on the couch. But then again, he didn’t lock his doors, and she had been down for the count, sleeping hard and deep. If his throat had been slit, he wouldn’t have made any noise.
Bile rising into her mouth, Sara knew she couldn’t leave the room until she saw for herself that Gabriel was alive and well and fast asleep. Heart pounding, she moved forward, her palms sweaty, her sandals outrageously loud in the silence of the dark. She felt like she was going to throw up as she moved around the foot of his bed, not wanting to touch him, or lean over his back. Touch was too intimate, and she needed to see first, to process if the unspeakable had happened. Closing her eyes briefly, she moved between his bed and the window, shuffling so she didn’t trip on anything he had on the floor.
Then bracing herself, she turned and forced herself to look at the front of Gabriel, terrified of finding the worst. Almost sick with relief, she saw that his throat hadn’t been slit. There was no blood anywhere. And he was very much alive, his hand shifting slightly on his pillow.
“Thank God,” she whispered, holding her chest with her right hand. He was fine. Everything was fine. She needed to get a grip, stop seeing danger and death around every corner. And most of all, she needed to get out of his bedroom before he realized she was standing there staring at him.
Stepping back, Sara bumped the radiator. It didn’t make much of a sound, but a glance back at the bed showed Gabriel’s eyes open, blinking at her.
“Sara? What’s the matter?”
“I…” She stood there, not sure what to say, how to explain.
“Are you cold? I got out a dry shirt for you. I left it next to your purse. I’ll go get it for you.” He was starting to pull himself to a sitting position.
“No, I’m not cold, don’t get up.” Sara was embarrassed by her behavior, by his solicitude. “I was just going to the bathroom and I saw you, and I thought…you looked…” She felt herself blushing. “I thought you were dead. I was just checking to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh.” His brow furrowed.
Sara stood there, feeling like an idiot.
“Well, I’m okay. Not dead, I promise.” He smiled at her, propped up on his elbow.
“I can see that.” And she was mortified. Yet still afraid. It had been so easy to picture the blood, picture the cuts and lacerations, his still gaze. What did that say about her? “I’m sorry I fell asleep on your couch. I’m not sure what happened. I should go home.”
“Right now?” Gabriel frowned. “Absolutely not. You’re not walking to your car and driving all the way to Kenner. Just sleep here.” He patted the bed next to him. “Come on. Just lay down and we’ll go back to sleep.”
In his bed? That seemed like such a bad idea. Yet so damn tempting. She stood there, indecisive. “I left the kitten on the couch.”
“She’ll be fine there. Come on.” He pulled the sheet back so she could get in. “I can see your fear, Sara. It’s okay to be afraid of the dark after what you’ve been through.”
That kicked her in the gut, made her want to burst into tears. How could he see so clearly what she tried so hard to hide? She was afraid of the dark. Afraid of the unknown, the shadow around every corner, the future. So she kicked off her sandals and climbed onto the bed with Gabriel. She didn’t want to be alone all the time. Her head sank back onto the pillow as he pulled the sheet up over her. The bed was warm from his body heat, and soft. The pillow felt like down. And Gabriel was very masculine next to her, his body close, but not touching.
She stared at the ceiling, not wanting to look at him. Normally she slept on her side, but she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of facing him on the bed. That would be too intimate. But alternatively, turning her back on him seemed rude. So she lay there, eyes wide open, trying to slow her breathing, trying to reach for sleep, knowing it wouldn’t come.
“Relax, Sara,” Gabriel murmured to her. His hand slid in to hers and squeezed before letting go. “It’s okay.”
It was. She knew that. Everything was okay. She was okay. Kicked, torn apart, nearly destroyed, but still alive. Still her. And she slept on her side, normally, and she wanted to be normal, so Sara turned up on her left side, facing the window. When Gabriel moved in closer, his fingers stroking the back of her hair, she closed her eyes, sighing softly. It felt so good to be touched, even if it wasn’t sexual. Maybe because it wasn’t sexual. His body, warm and relaxed, brushed against hers, and he yawned right next to her ear, the rush of his breath tickling her skin.
He had taken over half of her pillow, and his hand rested on her hip, heavy and comforting on her denim skirt.
Opening her eyes, she stared out into the courtyard, watching a tree sway back and forth in the moonlight. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel the need to yank down the blinds and shut out the night. It was a beautiful view, leaves dancing, shadows shifting and changing, and she was safe inside.
Eyes drifting back shut, Sara fell asleep.
Chapter Seven
Summary of autopsy of Anne Donovan conducted by Dr. Maxwell Raphael on October 7, 1849 at 2pm in the presence of Dr. William Gregory.
Female victim, dead approximately twelve hours, purported to be Irish, twenty-three years old, with a post birth cervix, indicating she had given birth to at least one child. Victim had only a small amount of liquid and no food in her stomach at the time of death, indicting she was not intoxicated. Slightly malnourished, but no sign of disease.
Cause of death a seven inch cut across the neck running from right to left, which severed the larynx, cartilage, surrounding tissue, and carotid artery, resulting in victim hemorrhaging until death. No bruises or sign of restraints anywhere on body, expect for a thumbprint size bruise to the right of the mouth, above the lip, and two inches from the nose. In addition to neck injury, victim was cut seventeen times in the chest, abdomen, and genital area, most wounds ½ inch in width, with a significant amount of depth. All organs present and accounted for, though the uterus, bladder, stomach, and left lung all had puncture wounds from injuries. Given the uniformity of the wounds, the single weapon appears to be a straight knife. Death was immediate from the initial neck wound, and other stabs were post-mortem.
There are no signs of sexual intercourse.
* * *
Death Certificate of Anne Donovan
Be it Remembered, THAT ON THIS DAY, to-wit: the eighth of October in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-Nine and the seventy-sixth year of the Independence of the United States of America. Before me, John Richard Thomas, duly commissioned and Sworn, RECORDER OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS, in and for the PARISH OF ORLEANS, STATE OF LOUISIANA, Personally Appeared, Jonathon Thiroux, a competent witness, residing in this Parish, and doth declared that Anne Donovan, departed this life on the yesterday at approximately one thirty A.M., aged about twenty three years.
* * *
&n
bsp; “What makes sense about this?”
Gabriel turned away from his computer, where he’d been studying the affects of wormwood in absinthe on users, and turned to Sara, sitting on the couch in his office, her legs crossed and tucked under her long skirt. He could see the palpable frustration on her face.
“Why the hell would John Thiroux be the person submitting the info on Anne’s death? If I’m reading this right, he essentially filed her death with the recorder’s office, and the police had nothing to do with it.”
“He was the person to discover her death.” And would never forget it. Gabriel only wished he could remember what the hell had happened before her death. But it was a blank, just a hazy memory of Anne, and pleasure, then floating off into the abyss. Then blood. Death. “That was normal for the time period.”
“He might have killed her! Why was he filing her death certificate? That’s just weird.”
“Do you think he killed her?” Gabriel asked. He was curious. He wanted, needed, to see that he was innocent. But Sara had no such stake. Maybe she would come to a different conclusion than him, and who was to say who was right? Without DNA confirmation, they could only rationalize. They couldn’t know conclusively. But he wanted to come as close as possible.
“I don’t know,” Sara admitted. “I don’t know enough yet. But I want to investigate John Thiroux a little better. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on him in these papers.”
She wouldn’t find much either. John Thiroux had suddenly appeared in New Orleans in 1847, and had just as suddenly disappeared in 1851. Gabriel had reassumed his true name when it had become apparent he wouldn’t be leaving. That he had been locked out forever, bound to New Orleans for an indefinite amount of time.
“So that’s your mission?” He felt a strange guilt that she was determined to research and ferret out facts about him, the man sitting straight across from her, the man she had slept in the same bed with the night before. He had offered her comfort then, and he had enjoyed that. The closeness, the sense of just being with another person. It was wrong to let her traverse down a path that would result in a dead end, wasting her time. He knew all the answers she wanted. Yet he couldn’t give them. She would never believe he was immortal, never understand his punishment.
“I think it is. That feels like the logical place to start to me, since there are no other suspects. What about you? How do you piece this book together? You said you start with the crime, then scene set. Then what?”
“The principal players. Which are John Thiroux, who you are handling, Anne Donovan, and absinthe. The autopsy suggested she’d had a child… did it survive? What happened to it? Did Anne have enemies? A husband or boyfriend she’d left before becoming a prostitute? And I want to know if absinthe is psychoactive. I can’t explain exactly the process of how I lay out a book… it’s logical to me, but I can’t really explain it.” He followed the story, wrote it like a story, albeit with facts. But that was normally, when he wasn’t personally involved. Anne’s story was different, and he wasn’t unbiased. He had a desperate stake in the outcome, an intense need, or maybe hope, to solve it, to give Anne justice and to right the wrong. He also wanted closure for Sara, in some way, with her own mother’s case.
Sara tapped her finger on her bottom lip. She had gone home after they’d woken up, and Gabriel had doubted whether she would actually come back that day or not. She had looked embarrassed, had acted uncomfortable when the morning had arrived and they were sharing a bed. But after breakfast and a shower, she had come back with her cat, and had attacked his stacks of research documents tenaciously.
“I guess I’m just going to have to trust you to write it.” She smiled at him. “Since it is your book, after all. But you know what’s bugging me… if Anne was a prostitute, don’t you think it’s odd that there was no evidence of sexual intercourse? I mean, wouldn’t they have had sex when Thiroux got there? I don’t think he was paying her to chat with him.”
No, Gabriel hadn’t paid her to chat with him, though Anne had been companionship. He wondered now what Anne had thought of their relationship. It hadn’t seemed crass or dominating to him at the time, but maybe she had felt that way. Maybe she had despised him, only saw him as a means to an end. He would never know. “If he’d consumed enough alcohol and opium I doubt sex was first and foremost on his mind.”
The bigger question in Gabriel’s mind was why there was no evidence of intercourse when he himself had walked in on Anne with another man. He hadn’t been drunk yet, though he had been distracted from withdrawal symptoms. But he had seen a man over top of Anne, thrusting in perfect parody of sex. He was absolutely one hundred percent certain of that. So why hadn’t the coroner found evidence of that?
He also wanted to know who the man was, because aside from himself, the stranger was probably the most likely suspect. But in all witness statements, there was no mention of him. On the witness stand, Madame Conti had denied Anne had seen a client before him, even when Gabriel’s attorney had asked her point blank. Which meant she had been lying. But why?
“It’s hard for me to believe that sex is ever far from a man’s mind.”
Gabriel gave a laugh. “Yeah, well, when you’re making love to the bottle, a woman isn’t always necessary.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of alcohol addiction.”
“It’s fine, Sara. You don’t need to walk on eggshells with me. I’m not overly sensitive.” Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. Sometimes he did feel hyper-sensitive, but not with her. Maybe because she didn’t seem like the type to insult him intentionally, nor was she a know-it-all. She had too many of her own issues to pass judgment on his.
“Can I ask how long you’ve been sober? You seem like you’re handling it really well.”
He couldn’t tell her it had been seventy-five years without her doubting his sanity, so he said, “Seven and a half years.”
She looked impressed. “Wow. That’s fabulous.” She bit her lip, and glanced down at the stack of papers in her lap. Then she met his eye. “Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.” Even as he said yes, he knew he shouldn’t encourage intimacy with Sara, but he wanted it. He knew he did, and he was encouraging it, fostering it. Which made him wonder if he had learned a damn thing in the last century.
“I was addicted to sleeping pills. After my mom died. I couldn’t sleep, and I started taking sedatives, then more and more, then suddenly I realized that I had a serious problem. I just got out of rehab six weeks ago.”
She drew back slightly, like she expected a backlash from him. A verbal blow, maybe. But Gabriel wasn’t surprised, nor was he disappointed in her. He understood what it was like to feel the crushing pressure of reality weighing down on you, how appealing and easy it was to escape it artificially, to seek answers where there were none. What impressed him about Sara was how quickly she had fought back. Her mother had only been dead a year, so he figured she’d really only struggled with the sedatives for six months or so. That was commendable, that she had reached out for help so quickly. And watching the determination on her face, and from what he’d seen of her personality since they’d met, he had no doubt that she would conquer her dependency. Even if she couldn’t conquer her demons, given that she had no idea one was sitting four feet away from her.
He didn’t want to be her demon.
And he needed to back off emotionally.
But not before reassuring her that he thought she was amazing.
“I think that’s great that you addressed the issue so quickly. It took me a long time to admit I had a problem, and even longer to actually do something about it. You should be proud of yourself for facing it head on, and fixing it. I totally respect that.”
“Thanks. I feel better. I do. I’m kind of a control freak, and I didn’t like being out of control in my life.”
Gabriel knew that control was a fine line between screwing the lid so tight on your emotions you coul
dn’t breathe inside, and reckless, scattered explosion. “Do you have any idea as to who killed your mom? Or what went wrong in the investigation?” It was rude to ask, but lack of answers drove her, that was obvious. It had driven her right into the grip of sedatives, and right out of the state of Florida.
Sara pulled her skirt tighter over her legs, but she didn’t balk at the question. “I don’t know who could have done it, I really don’t. If it wasn’t Rafe, which I truly believe it wasn’t because first of all, he loved my mom. And second of all, I saw him drive off in the opposite direction that night. We were at dinner, and we all parted ways. She was killed only an hour later. And I think the investigation stalled because from day one they thought they had it solved by turning to the obvious. They didn’t even look into any other possibilities as far as I’m concerned. So any other leads they might have had are dried up by now I’m sure.”
That was probably true. Which showed a failing on the part of the justice system, but then again, there had probably been no other direction for them to investigate. “They had a lot of trace evidence. Did they test everything?”
“There’s the irritating part– they would never tell me exactly what they had and didn’t have. They couldn’t disclose that information… she was my mother and they wouldn’t give me any details. All I know is that hair and clothing fibers on her matched Rafe, which made sense since they were just together at dinner and he was in her house frequently. In her bed frequently, I’m sure. They had been dating for a year.”
“That must have been frustrating to you… being a forensic scientist yourself and not allowed access to the data.”
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. Very frustrating.”
Gabriel made a mental note to see if he could get the court records now that the trail was over. He was curious about that trace evidence, as well as a few other things. “Did Rafe frequently spout Bible quotes during the trial?”
Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology Page 40