by Jaye Maiman
“I did investigate. Remember, I was doing this for Tommy, not some paying client I could give a shit about, but things were still pretty raw for me back then. I’d been kicked off the force and treated like a pariah by the guys I would’ve died defending, all ’cause I had the shit luck of contracting the ‘gay disease.’ I’m just being honest here. In ’eighty-eight, the only thing I felt towards homosexuals was anger. Pure and simple. I’m not saying I was right, I know I wasn’t, I’m just saying I may not have done my best work back then.”
I pressed my hand against the glass of the patio doors. Serra had changed a lot since we’d begun working together, but this was the first time either of us had ever broached the subject directly.
In not much more than a whisper, he added, “You know I don’t feel that way anymore, don’t you? Robin?”
“Okay, okay, fine.” The hand holding the phone shook uncontrollably. Fatigue and booze were getting the better of me. “I guess you never bothered telling Sweeney all this.”
“Don’t remember if I did or not. Sorry”
My notebook looked like it had been used as cat litter. The pages were stained and ripped. I flipped through them carefully. “So Lisa Rubin was bi, Galonardi and Anderson gay.” My chest hurt as I phrased the next question. “Any chance Mary Ryan—”
“Oh, for crying out loud, she and Tommy were madly in love.”
Counting to ten stopped the expletives from erupting from my mouth. “Tony.” One, two, three. “Aren’t you the one who told me friendship can muddy even the clearest water? All I’m asking is if it’s possible—”
“Shit. Okay. Sure, it’s possible. You want to be the one to pose that question to Ryan, because I sure as hell don’t. The man is still in love with her. He still despises himself for driving her into that fleabag hotel. You want to add a new dimension to his nightmares?”
Tony had a point. “Maybe we can take another approach,” I said. “Can you check Hope Williams’ story? Let’s see if the pattern holds up with her. In the meantime, I have more pressing concerns. Like how do I find K.T. Any suggestions?” So calm, I thought, listening to myself. Just another case. Just another case that would decide the course of the rest of my life. The pressure on my chest intensified. “Can you repeat that, Tony? I wasn’t listening.”
“You know me, Miller, I’m never quick to give false hope to anyone, so if I tell you my guts say we still got a chance to get her back alive, you better believe I mean it. And I do think there’s time. Not much, but maybe it’ll be enough. Seems to me, whoever the perp is, he’s thumbing you right about now I think you’ve tapped into something. Give me the run-down once again, this time with your eyes closed and your memory one-hundred percent engaged. As hard as it is, the best thing you can do for K.T. right now is turn off your emotions.”
Tony’s strategy had worked in the past for our clients. The end result for me, however, was more confusion. On the one hand, I had Barry NeVille, who seemed to have had opportunity for at least four out of five murders, but no obvious motive. Then there was the egghead who’d crashed into me at Dock of the Bay, shoved Rubin’s tooth in my pocket, and later lured me in the direction of the supposedly haunted Herriott place on Dauphine. Was he working in collaboration with NeVille? And what did either of these men have to do with Chamelle? I pushed myself further back in time. If Chamelle was the same man who’d followed K.T., he could have been the one who ordered the Eggs Sardou sent up to my room. The killer appeared to have a bizarre sense of humor. From the evidence we had, he apparently took pleasure in teasing investigators, planting obscure clues, dumping red herrings by the caseload, all to demonstrate his superiority. The man was good. But we were gaining on him.
Sweeney shouted my name through the door. I took my time concluding the call with Tony, then let him in. He barreled past me, trailing the scent of fresh, strong coffee. For that sin alone, I could’ve decked him.
“Dammit. We’re working on the same side, aren’t we?” He was almost whining.
“Sure we are,” I said. “Let’s just say right now I got more faith in my own investigative abilities than yours. What did you find out?”
I heard him mutter a few choice curse words before he turned to face me. “Chamelle’s got contacts on the force as well. My bud said he showed up on the scene just hours after the police did. No one knows how, or at least, no one’s saying. He’s a real loose bird, floats in and out without tossing a feather. I tried to get a number for him, but no luck. Geoffrey, my pal, says that this Fitzhugh is definitely a local, maybe even got some Cajun blood in him, vaguely remembers him asking for inside dope on any maggot with hoodoo vibes, but that’s all he could tell me.”
“You want to translate that?”
“Fitz has demonstrated interest in the crimes of the occult. Clear enough. He had no criminal record. No car registered in his name. Maybe you can find something on him in your magic compact digital thing.”
I grunted but fired up my laptop anyway. Twice I had to shoo Sweeney away. He stared at the screen like a two-year-old discovering Disney.
“Shit,” he exclaimed. “This stuff’s insane. How many addresses are on that thing? Isn’t this violating privacy? No one should have this much info but the feds.”
Without answering, I switched CDs, then dialed into our online subscription research services. The bottom line was the same: Fitzhugh Chamelle did not show up in any phone or address directory. There were plenty of news stories filed by him, though. All grisly murders, the harrowing details described with exceptional clarity. Most of the homicides occurred in Louisiana and the surrounding states. The exceptions were the out-of-town murders I already knew about, and all of those stories ran two to three days after the victims had been found, which implied that Chamelle hadn’t just been in the right place at the right time. He’d sought these stories out.
I slammed the lid of the laptop. Nothing made sense anymore. My brain started percolating conspiracy theories. Was a right-winged militia masterminding these murders? Was Chamelle the ring leader, or just a news reporter who’d latched onto the eggshell murders with unsettling zeal? And how the hell did NeVille fit into all this? Sweeney patted my shoulder and I swung around so fast, he stumbled back onto the bed.
“You gotta calm down, hon, or you gonna hurt someone, maybe yourself.”
I glanced past him to the alarm clock. Daylight was not far away, and K.T. still hadn’t been found.
He followed my gaze. “Never look at the time. That’s how you get ulcers. I should know.”
“You have ulcers?” The prospect struck me as ludicrous.
“Had. After my wife passed on. Breast cancer…she caught it late. You don’t want to know about it.”
I noticed he didn’t mention her suicide.
“Maybe I understand more than you think I do about what it feels to lose someone you love. My wife—” Astoundingly, his voice broke. He wiped his nose like a boxer and strode into the bathroom. Just when I started to think maybe he was human, he returned and winked at me like we were long-lost buddies. My skin crawled. “Can we get back on track now, huh?” he asked. “You’ve had a shot at the electronic thing, so now why don’t I prove to you what I’m made of. I’m gonna find your girlfriend, I swear. No one’s better on the street than me. Even Ryan still believes that. Give me two hours.”
I’d give him all the time in the world, as long as he’d leave me alone. I told him pretty much the same. He took it in good humor and left without much fanfare. Almost a minute later, I left the room myself. For two hours, I plodded through every inch of the Royal Orleans, then moved on to the two closest hotels. Finally, around six a.m., I stumbled back into my room.
The smell that hit me first was K.T.’s vanilla perfume, wafting through the louver panels of the closet door. My fingers squeezed into the gap between two slats and clung there as I steadied myself. I’d half-expected to find her there, in bed, waiting for me, confused by the terror etched into my face.
I couldn’t fool myself any longer. There was a good chance that somewhere in this city K.T.’s body waited to be found. I collapsed onto the bed. Once again, I’d failed. Once again, I’d lost someone I loved. I pulled my hair back from my face hard, held my hands there against my temple, my pulse beating wildly. Something flickered in my peripheral vision. A light. The message light was on. I dove for the phone. A mechanical voice announced the number of messages in the queue. The first message took forever to begin. It was Sweeney. He’d traced K.T. Bellflower to a flight that had departed New Orleans the previous evening, bound for New York City. No seat on that flight had been assigned to Fitzhugh Charnelle, at least under that name.
The relief didn’t even have time to set in before the second message began.
“It’s K.T.” Her voice was raspy, hoarse. I burst into tears of relief. “I’m sorry I didn’t call before this. I couldn’t, there was no time, I barely made the flight as it was and maybe, oh hell, maybe I wanted you to feel as alone and frightened as I did. Stupid, stupid. I need you now, oh God—” I strained to hear her. Announcements in the background drowned out her thin voice. Was she still in an airport? “I’m at Beth Israel Hospital, in New York.” A long, terrifying pause. The sound of her breathing told me she was fighting back her own tears. My throat tightened. “The bleeding started at the restaurant and there was no one around I could talk to. Not you. Not even Winnie. So I called Dr. Wolf and she said to take the first flight home, which is exactly what I did. Ginny’s with me now.” Static on the line. I realized with a start that the muscle in my left thigh was twitching wildly. I rubbed it hard, waiting, dreading her next words.
“I’m miscarrying, Rob. I’m losing my baby. And I need you with me. Dammit—” The message ended abruptly with her sobs.
I took the next plane home.
Chapter Ten
The coffee tasted like melted plastic and cigarette ash. I spilled the entire Greek-motif cupful, still steaming, into the trash can, then stared at my reflection on the polished metal casing of the pay phone. My eyes were the color of watered-down tomato juice, a cowlick had sprouted where my part used to be, and my lips were chapped and bloody from where I’d chewed them during the long flight home. And I looked better than I felt.
I’d taken a taxi straight to the hospital. The madman hunched over the wheel had treated red traffic lights the same as yellow: pause then accelerate at space-shuttle speeds. The only good news was that he’d managed to get me to the hospital in record-breaking time. We’d screeched to a halt at the hospital entrance, narrowly missing an elderly woman with a walker. I’d stuffed dollars into his sweaty palm, exited and almost dislocated my shoulder hauling luggage out of the cavernous, foul-smelling trunk in the nanosecond that Mario Andretti gave me before soaring off to catch his next fare.
The institutionalized health-care stench pelted my senses the instant I moved through the revolving doors. A parrot-voiced clerk appeared to be paging the entire medical personnel in one long squawk. Trembling, I trudged through the long maze of musty corridor. K.T. didn’t belong in this place, didn’t belong in anyplace this sterile, this devoid of light and warmth. I thought of my lover, the way she smells when she comes home at night, her hands carrying a wealth of scent stolen from her kitchen: fresh-baked bread, sticky cinnamon rolls, caramelized onions, cloves. And in bed at night, her hair smells of lemon, her skin moist and perfumed with rose-water.
The elevator pinged and I’d found myself suddenly at the threshold to her room. My breath fluttered then caught in my chest like a butterfly pinned to the cold ground by a pebble of hail. K.T. lay curled on her side, sleeping in a narrow metal bed with white sheets, white blankets, all stamped Property of Beth Israel Hospital. A yellowed, torn curtain shielded her from the other patient and a television that flickered in silence, pumping the room with an icy gray light.
Sitting vigil at her bedside was K.T.’s sister, Virginia. She sat as close as she could, knees tucked beneath the bed, gripping the safety railing with both hands, her chin resting between them. Her eyelids fluttered with obvious exhaustion. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that Ginny held the seat I should’ve occupied. I dropped the luggage in the corner and Ginny started. The look she speared in my direction was poison-tipped.
After dramatically referring to her wristwatch, she said, “Nice of you to come. Are you certain there isn’t some pickpocket you need to chase after? Or perhaps some miscreant dog has violated the curb rules?” She cupped her ear. “Say, isn’t that a car alarm sounding now? Perhaps you should check it out. We wouldn’t want some honorable physician’s car radio appropriated by wayward teenagers, would we?”
Ginny blows hot and cold about me, depending on circumstances. At that moment, searing Sahara winds stormed in my direction. Without fully realizing what I was doing, my hands swept over my cheeks. They felt like hot coals.
“She lost the baby two hours ago.” Ginny’s tone was dispassionate on purpose. I clutched my stomach and turned away. “They scheduled a D and C for late this afternoon,” she said. “Think you can stick around that long?”
Until she’d spoken the words, part of me had clung to the illusion that the baby would be okay, that K.T. was somehow emotionally and physically strong enough to prevent herself from miscarrying. But the baby was gone. I was surprised at how sick I felt. Bile rose into my mouth. I swallowed hard, brushed my hand over K.T.’s hip, then faced Ginny.
She ignored my outstretched hand. “Well?” she asked, her eyebrows cocked at me, ready and more than willing to fire a new salvo of accusations at me. “I know this interferes with your schedule.”
The Bellflowers are not known for their subtlety. I didn’t respond to her jibe. For one, I deserved it. But I also had to believe that at least some of Ginny’s hostility was a spillover from the tension in her marriage. Her husband, Larry, is a beat cop who shares some of my less desirable traits.
“Virginia, I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I promise you and K.T.—” I looked toward my lover. She frowned in her sleep. “I promise you, from now on I’ll be by her side.”
Ginny arched an eyebrow. “Your promises mean so much to me. By the way, someone called from your office a little earlier. Emergency, of course.” Her sting found its mark. I took it like a champ, apologized again, and retreated like a rabbit. The pay phone was just down the hall.
The damn on-hold music continued whining in my ear. What was taking Jill so long? I didn’t want to be out of the room when K.T. woke up.
“Okay, sorry” Jill said at last. “Tony had all of these files locked up in his office. I’ve got everything in front of me now.”
“Good. I know your load’s pretty heavy right now, but any help you can throw me is great. You’re going to have to coordinate with Theo Sweeney. Or maybe you can ask Wilmington to pitch in. I’d love to have old Elmore spitting random curse words at Sweeney. You can get Sweeney’s number from Ryan, if the reptile has one. I just don’t have the time—”
“Don’t you dare apologize. If you did insist on leading the investigation, I’d be furious with you. Now go over the instructions once more.”
I kneaded the bridge of my nose, forcing myself to concentrate. So much still had to be done, and it had to be done fast, before the trail evaporated as it had after every other murder. Chamelle had to be located and grilled. I needed to know more about NeVille and see if there was a connection between him and Chamelle. The voodoo angle had to be explored thoroughly. We needed to check up on the Galonardi case and find out if there was a reason why the murderer went on a five-year hiatus. I ran down the mental list, deciding which tasks I could trust to Sweeney and which ones I wanted my own group to pursue. A few assignments I’d take on myself.
When I was done, Jill fell silent. “Robin, this is a tall order. We’re running that undercover op at the Grand Central bar and we’re already backed up on security checks.”
“I don’t want to hear this.” I glanced down the hall toward K.T.’s room.
Ginny had promised to signal me the instant K.T.’s eyes opened. “Just find a way to get this done. Call in other investigators. Lorelli’s always desperate for work. If Tony objects, tell him I’ll foot the expense myself. I really don’t care. Just get this done, okay?”
“Rob, I know Thomas Ryan’s important to you, but I just don’t get this obsess—” She corrected herself mid-stream. “I mean, your focus on this particular case, at this particular time, confuses me.” Jill was a smart woman. She was choosing her words carefully, mindful of my short fuse. “Sweeney’s handled it up till now, why don’t you just let him continue? If it’s okay with Ryan, I don’t know why it’s not with you.”
Despite her careful treading, she’d drawn a spark. My fuse blew. “You want to know the reason?” I blurted. “Because I don’t want to let Ryan down, okay? Why is it so goddamn hard to believe that I could feel responsibility—”
The painful lump in my throat solidified, cutting off my breath. An image rose before me. My father sitting at the foot of his bed, weeping silently in a darkened room, weeks after I’d accidentally discharged a twenty-two into my sister Carol’s chest. I’d crept up beside him and tried desperately to curl under his arms. In response, he locked his hands onto his elbows, rocking himself, praying in a language I’d never heard on his lips before. He never acknowledged my presence. I was three years old.
I gasped for air. Found myself leaning against the wall, crying.
Jill whispered into my ear, “Forget I mentioned it. Give K.T. a hug from John and me.”
Nodding to myself, I dropped the phone back in its cradle. When I straightened up, I caught Ginny staring at me from down the hall. She wagged a finger at me.
K.T. was propped up on her elbows; her eyes were glassy, the skin beneath them puffy and raw-looking. As soon as she saw me, she started crying again. I dropped the bed railing and gathered her into my arms. Her belly still felt swollen. I bit my lip hard. “I’m sorry, honey,” I said. The words were for her ears only. She shushed me, covered my mouth with hers.