Midnight Caller

by Leslie Tentler

  “What about Oliver? Is he part of this?”

  “Oliver doesn’t have the stomach for it.” Carteris’s words dripped with disapproval. “But he’s been helpful to me, to a certain extent.”

  “He brings you the girls.” Rain felt sick with realization. It was Oliver who’d been seen with Rebecca Belknap at the Ascension that night.

  “He’s been watching you at my instruction. All this time, you thought he was there for counseling.” No longer needing his sunglasses, he tossed them onto the dashboard. Rain saw the bruise shadowing his right eye.

  “A gift from my son,” he said, noting her gaze. He fished steel-framed spectacles from his shirt pocket and put them on. “Oliver’s grown quite fond of you. He could never accept that you were the endgame.”

  Rain recalled the afternoon in the restaurant when Carteris had invited himself to sit at her table. He’d seemed so concerned about Oliver, even admitting to being intimidated by him. I was actually a bit fearful of him. My own son.

  All of it had been a lie.

  Last night when Oliver called her home, had he been planning to warn her? She wondered what hold Carteris had over him that compelled him to follow his orders. Was it out of fear or some kind of twisted loyalty? Why had Oliver failed to confide in her? Sitting in weary silence, Rain tried not to think about her body being left behind for wild animals to scavenge once Carteris finished with her.

  “Did you know I’m an avid sportsman?” His inquiry was as casual as if they were out for an afternoon drive. “I have a cabin I use during hunting season. I think you’ll find it rather charming in its simplicity.”

  They continued bumping along the gravel road for several more minutes, until the trees and shrubs finally began to thin. The SUV emerged into a clearing. What Rain saw stole her breath. The burned-out frame of an antebellum plantation home stood in front of them like a massive gray specter. As was the custom with bayou houses, it had been raised on stone piers to lift it above the floodwaters. But only its chimneys and the sun-faded columns of its wraparound veranda remained intact. The rest had descended into rubble.

  “This land was formerly a rice plantation. It’s been in my mother’s family for generations,” Carteris recounted. “Local folklore claims the house was burned years ago by towns-people in one of the nearby parishes. They believed voodoo was being practiced here. Can you imagine?”

  The SUV rolled to a stop in front of an overseer’s cabin set a few hundred feet back from the remains of the larger house. Although the domicile was likely as old as the ruined manor, it appeared to have benefited from a recent renovation. Its sloping tin roof looked new, and its front porch was built with fresh cypress timbers. Carteris took the knife from the armrest.

  “When I returned to the States, I considered rebuilding and residing out here, but I realized I’d miss city life. I’m hardly what one would call a country-gentleman doctor.” He smiled at her. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t require an occasional peaceful getaway.”

  Carteris climbed from the SUV. After removing a black physician’s bag from the backseat, he went around to open Rain’s door. She tensed as he reached across her lap to release the seat belt.

  “I wanted to share this place with you. It will give us time to be alone.” He helped her from the leather seat. As she stepped to the ground, her knees nearly buckled and he caught her against his chest. “Steady now.”

  The midafternoon sun beat hotly against her skin, which was still clammy from the continual moist jolt of the SUV’s air conditioner. She wondered vaguely if she might be in shock.

  “Why now?” Rain asked timorously. “You could’ve taken me at any time—”

  “Are you aware of tomorrow’s date?”

  “It’s May twenty-ninth.”

  “And that holds no significance for you?”

  When she didn’t reply, Carteris looked disappointed. “It’s the thirtieth anniversary of your mother’s death. I thought you’d have known that.”

  With his hand at the small of her back, he propelled her up the slatted stairs to the cabin’s porch. The tin roof jutted over the wood-planked flooring. It provided some relief from the sun, but the air was still heated and thick with humidity. Rain felt as if her lungs were filling with water with each shallow breath. A papery mass the size of a basketball hung under the roof’s eaves, and a horde of black wasps hummed around it.

  Carteris frowned as he regarded the nest. “That will have to go.”

  He used a key to unlock the cabin’s front door and prodded her to enter in front of him. Stale, hot air met her face.

  “The place runs on a generator, but I’ll have to start it.” He left the door open behind them to allow a little fresh air inside. With a wave of his hand, he indicated a window-box air-conditioning unit. “It might take a few hours to cool off. We also have plumbing and a propane stove. A rustic situation, but I think we’ll do just fine.”

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkened interior, Rain looked at her surroundings. There was a plaid couch with a coffee table and a rough-hewn bookcase. A metal gun safe stood in the corner next to a stacked-stone fireplace. Surprisingly, the cabin’s interior appeared…normal.

  But she nearly stopped breathing as Carteris came up behind her, standing so close she could feel his warm breath. Sweat trickled down her nape. He released the elastic band that held her hair, causing it to graze her shoulders. Gently, his fingers combed through the strands. Rain bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  “That’s much better.” His mouth next to her ear, he added, “There’s something on the bookcase you might want to see.”

  Rain moved toward the shelving on rubbery legs, grateful for any reason to put some distance between them. There were several framed photos at eye level, and she stepped closer, feeling her stomach plunge. The image in the center was of a young Desiree, wearing flare-legged jeans and a midriff-baring top. A man stood next to her mother. But it wasn’t Gavin Firth. The man in the photograph was Christian Carteris.

  “Your mother was my first and only love,” he explained. “I was a few years older than her and finishing my undergraduate degree when we met. She broke my heart when she chose your father over me.”

  Rain turned to him. It couldn’t be. If her mother was still alive, she’d be fifty-eight years old. She looked at Carteris’s unlined face and the toned build of his body. He couldn’t be more than forty-two or forty-three.

  “That’s not possible,” Rain argued. “Even with plastic surgery—”

  “Blood is the elixir of life.” He took a step closer, and her eyes darted to the knife he held in his hand. “You asked why I don’t steal from the hospital’s blood supply. The blood has to be fresh, Rain. It must be ingested by one life force directly from another.”

  She swallowed a scream as he reached for her bound hands. Rain recoiled as he sliced through the duct tape, causing the sharp blade to nick the inside of her right wrist. A thin line of red blood instantly appeared.

  “I only meant to release you,” he offered apologetically. Peeling away the tape, Carteris looked at the cut. Then he lifted it to his mouth and licked away the small amount of blood. She stood mesmerized, her pulse beating wildly.

  “Age is of no relevance to me. Do you understand now, Rain?”

  The room tilted as she fought to keep her bearings. Carteris steadied her with his hands around her waist. This wasn’t real. Rain didn’t care what she’d seen in the photo. She had to keep him talking, she realized, delay him from whatever his plans were for her.

  “Why do you call yourself Dante?” she asked in a voice made too high by encroaching panic. She placed her hand on his chest and tried to increase the slight space between their bodies.

  “You’re familiar with Dante Alighieri? The Italian poet who wrote the Divine Comedy?”

  Rain worked to recall the epic poem, which described Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and paradise. “Dante’s Inferno?”

  He smoothed he
r hair, his eyes on her mouth. “Desiree was my Beatrice. She was to have been my companion through the journey of life. But none of that really matters now, does it?”

  She felt the tremors racking her body grow stronger. To her relief, Carteris dropped his hands from her and walked to the pass-through counter separating the utilitarian kitchen from the main room. He began rummaging through the leather bag he’d brought inside. Rain estimated the distance to the cabin’s open door. She prepared to run and take her chances that she was faster than him, but her hope died as Carteris turned toward her again. He held a hypodermic needle.

  She skittered backward as he advanced, but the bookcase stopped her retreat. “Please, don’t!”

  “You’re exhausted,” he pointed out, closing in on her. “I only want to help you sleep. Things will look better once you’re rested.”

  “Don’t stick me with that!”

  “Relax.” He gave her his best bedside expression. “I’m a doctor, remember?”

  Rain tried to wring free of his grasp, but he was far stronger. She screamed and scratched at his wrists, sobbing as the needle pricked her skin. Carteris hushed her, imprisoning her against his chest as he pumped the syringe’s contents into her. He held her until her head bobbed and her body began to sag.

  “Trevor,” Rain heard herself whisper.

  She felt his lips against the top of her head. “All in due time.”

  Her struggling became increasingly weak and uncoordinated. Whatever he’d shot her with was taking rapid effect. He picked her up in his arms.

  “I have a room ready for you, little one.”

  Carteris carried her to the back of the sweltering cabin. The room was windowless and shadowy, and its feminine furnishings looked out of place. But the bed’s ironwork headboard seemed strangely familiar to her, as did the antique vanity table with its skirted apron and oval mirror. She recognized the nubbed chenille coverlet, too.

  He laid her on the bed and brushed the damp strands of hair from her face. Rain’s tongue felt too thick to speak, her limbs too heavy to move. A stuffed animal sat next to her, a pink French poodle with a rhinestone collar and flat button eyes. Her brain was fuzzy, but she knew this place from somewhere deep within her earliest memories. The scent of rose and sandalwood drifted around her, creating a bittersweet nostalgia.

  Carteris eased from the room, shutting the door behind him. She heard the metallic slide of a lock being fit into place.

  Rain’s mind floated like a life preserver on the ocean. As a child, the door in the upstairs hallway had always been closed. But whenever she could, she’d sneak inside the room and play dress-up with her mother’s things. She recalled the perfume bottle and the exotic fragrance that emerged from it when she removed its stopper. The scent was ingrained in her memory—was her brain playing tricks?

  That room no longer existed. It had been a decade after the murder when Celeste had finally found the courage to redecorate. She’d transformed the bedroom into the upstairs study, banishing the last of her mother’s presence from the house. But tumbling closer to darkness, Rain was there again.

  Somehow, Carteris had re-created Desiree’s old room.

  40

  Looking through the murky glass of the two-way window, Trevor studied the source of the nightmares that had plagued him for most of his life. His father sat hunched behind the scarred, wooden table in the precinct’s interrogation room. McGrath was with him, and his voice was a low growl through the intercom.

  “You want to spend what’s left of your sorry life in prison, Rivette?”

  “What do you want from me? I already told you everything I know!”

  McGrath leaned over the table. “You expect me to believe a guy you never met just walks into a bar and hands you a wad of cash and an expensive piece of jewelry?”

  “I was paid to deliver a package!” James pounded the table with a balled fist. “I didn’t do anything illegal!”

  “You keep telling yourself that. But you were a cop, you know better. You want to know how it looks to me? Like you were in on it from the beginning. We’re talking about kidnapping, maybe murder. You’re fucked, Rivette.”

  The yellowed folder that held James’s departmental records lay in front of the detective. Trevor already knew what the file contained—he’d read through it days ago. In addition to a laundry list of civilian complaints that included brutality and extortion, it gave the official reason for his father’s dismissal from the NOPD. James Rivette had falsified an insurance claim. He’d turned in items as stolen during a home invasion, then gotten caught fencing the goods at a pawnshop in Treme. But the file contained no mention of the near-fatal beating of his son, which had also supposedly occurred at the hands of the invented thieves. Trevor assumed the NOPD hadn’t investigated that far. It hadn’t wanted any further bad publicity. Instead, the department had closed the file on the maelstrom and quietly gotten rid of a blight on its force.

  James spoke inside the interrogation room. His voice cracked. “I—I want an attorney. A public defender.”

  “What’s the matter, you sobering up?” McGrath shoved a legal pad at him. “Look, I’m tired of hearing the same thing over and over. Why don’t you write your crap story down. I’ll give you extra credit for proper spelling.”

  The door opened and McGrath stepped out. A deep line furrowed his forehead. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he had any idea of the shit he stepped into when he agreed to deliver the necklace.”

  “Maybe not,” Trevor said quietly. Still, his father was far from innocent.

  “I’ve shown him the photos of Baptiste. He swears up and down he wasn’t the guy in the bar. There’s a sketch artist coming in and he’s agreed to work with him, but the man wore sunglasses, so it’s going to be a partial at best.” He tugged at the already slackened tie around his neck. “What about the guy who got clubbed at your sister’s house? The photographer?”

  “I just called the hospital. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

  “Damn.” McGrath shook his head. “I read through your father’s personnel files, Rivette. He’s a real piece of work.”

  Trevor nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to think about the possible charges against James being upgraded to accessory to murder. Dante—whoever the hell he was—had made this personal by drawing James into the battle. It was clear he wanted Trevor’s wound to be as deep and painful as possible. The vision of Rain’s body, brutally slaughtered, made a cold sickness wash over him.

  “What’re you still doing here?” McGrath asked as Thibodeaux turned the corner into the corridor at a brisk pace. “I thought you were headed to the Carteris residence to see if the son ever turned up.”

  “He turned up, all right,” Thibodeaux announced. “I was getting in the car out back when it came over the scanner. Two uniforms went by the Ascension for a premises check. They found a kid swinging from the rafters by his skinny goth neck. According to the driver’s license, the deceased is Oliver Carteris.”

  Trevor knew the club had been closed down since the night of the raid. “They’re sure it was a suicide?”

  “The M.E.’s just now on the scene, but all signs point to it.” Thibodeaux clicked the top of a ballpoint pen up and down as he spoke. “The kid’s cell phone indicates the last number called belonged to Dr. Sommers.”

  Had the call been a final plea from a despondent patient, or was it something more? Trevor was reaching for anything that might translate to a lead. Rain had been missing for three hours. FBI and police were frantically searching for her—manning roadblocks, distributing flyers—but they were running out of time.

  “I’m going to the Ascension.” He looked at McGrath. “You’ll call me when the sketch is ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hold up,” Thibodeaux said, following. “I’ll go with you.”

  McGrath called after them, “What do you want me to do with your old man?”

  “When you’re done wi
th him, call the FBI to pick him up. I don’t give a damn what happens to him after that.”

  Sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows of the Ascension, casting a prism of colors across the battered dance floor. Trevor watched as two forensics technicians lowered the body of Oliver Carteris to the church’s pulpit. A metal folding chair on the platform lay on its side. Evidently, the youth had stood on its seat before stepping off and hanging himself with an electrical cord tossed over one of the iron chandeliers.

  He’d been tall, Trevor estimated as the body was laid prone. An inch or two over six feet. Even in death, Oliver appeared handsome in a young–Johnny Depp kind of way—lankily built, with dusky skin and ink-black hair. Had he seen him before? Trevor wasn’t sure, but he thought of the kid who’d been standing at the edge of Coliseum Square Park that day as he and Brian drove past.

  He held the clear evidence bag that contained the contents of Oliver’s pockets. There were the driver’s license and cell phone Thibodeaux had mentioned, a small glass pipe for smoking marijuana or crack, and six Ecstasy tablets matching the ones confiscated during the raid. The bag also contained a set of car keys on a pewter fob. It was engraved with a pentagram—the equivalent of a Lacoste alligator for those who ran in Oliver’s social circle. One of the keys was undoubtedly to the Mercedes coupe that Forensics was combing over outside. But there was another with a black plastic handle bearing the Cadillac crest.

  Trevor lingered on the last item, a tasteful white business card printed in black ink. He felt his emotions splintering like glass.

  Rain Sommers, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., Psychotherapy Practice, Evaluation and Counseling for Adolescents

  “Body’s in full rigor mortis,” Thibodeaux announced. He knelt next to the corpse and gripped its stiffened arms. “Kid’s been dead for around twelve to fourteen hours. Based on the outgoing time stamp on his cell phone, it looks like he did a felo-de-se right after trying to reach Dr. Sommers.”