by Jana DeLeon
She had no idea why she’d come here. The entire trip had been a mistake.
Then the room tilted and began to spin and when it stopped, she was in the alley outside the bar. Her chest tightened, and she drew in a ragged breath. Something was wrong. She glanced around, trying to remember what she was doing here. Where was her sister? Wasn’t she just there? Something had happened. Something she’d seen but couldn’t quite remember.
She squeezed her eyes together, trying to force her mind to recall what she knew was there, but all she got was a blur of the hallway from the restroom to the back door. A flash of her sister smiling at her, then nothing.
JENNY BOLTED UPRIGHT, her heart pounding in her chest. She’d almost had it. It was there, buried in the recesses of her mind, but it was trying to come out. It was something important. She just knew it.
Something that would change everything.
JACKSON LOOKED up as the desk sergeant led a man into the interview room. He knew from the man’s driver’s license picture that this was Brennan Murphy. He lived in New Orleans and worked for a small local oil company. Fortunately, he was on shore and available for an interview.
“Brennan Murphy?” Grayson asked as he stepped forward to extend his hand. “My name is Detective Grayson. We spoke on the phone. This is Detective Lamotte. Please have a seat.”
Brennan glanced at Jackson, then back at Grayson before sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the table. Grayson hadn’t explained why they wanted to speak to him, just that they would like to ask some questions and he could come down to the station or they would be happy to schedule an appointment to meet at his apartment. Grayson had reassured him that he was not a suspect and that they were only looking for information, but Jackson supposed an invitation to chat with the police always caused a bit of trepidation.
“Thank you for coming down,” Grayson said.
“I didn’t want to worry my girlfriend,” Brennan said. “What’s this about?”
“Is Cody Reynolds a friend of yours?” Grayson asked.
“Yeah. I mean, he was. We haven’t hung out in years, but we served together and then we hung out when I first got to New Orleans. Cody helped me get my job. Had a regular at the bar who worked on a rig. He got me an interview. Why? Did he do something?”
Grayson shook his head. “I’m sorry to tell you, but Mr. Reynolds is dead.”
Brennan straightened in his chair. “Dead? How?”
“He was murdered early yesterday morning in Metairie Cemetery,” Grayson said.
Brennan’s eyes widened. “Okay. Man, that’s…I don’t know what to say. I mean, if you’d said some crazy popped him in the bar or something, but the cemetery? What was he doing there? He doesn’t have any family buried in New Orleans that I know about.”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can help us with,” Grayson said. “The day before his murder, a private detective talked to him about a cold case she’d been asked to take on by a missing woman’s sister. The missing woman’s name was Caitlyn Taylor.”
“Oh, shit.” Brennan shook his head. “I told him that girl would be the death of him. You say those sort of things, you know. You never think…”
“Why did you tell him that?” Grayson asked.
“Because she had him going,” Brennan said. “He was obsessed with her and she played him every minute.”
“Played him how?” Grayson asked.
“You been to his place, right? To search and stuff?” Brennan asked.
Grayson nodded.
“Did Cody look like the kind of guy who’d live like that? Assuming it’s all the same as last time I saw it, the place looks like one of those renovation shows on television that my mother insists on playing every time she visits.”
“That’s a pretty accurate description,” Jackson said.
“Before Caitlyn, Cody had a secondhand recliner, a TV tray for a dining room, and a television on top of an old suitcase. Everything you see now was Caitlyn. He emptied his bank account and ran up every credit card he had over that girl. Even bought her a cell phone and paid to keep minutes on it. He was probably still paying off all the debt. Just the running back and forth between Baton Rouge and New Orleans had to cost a dime or two.”
“People do strange things when they’re in love,” Jackson said.
“I get that,” Brennan said. “And I’m not saying classing yourself up a little is a bad thing, but in his case, there was no point. That girl was never serious about him. A complete stranger could have seen it. But Cody was blind to everything where Caitlyn was concerned.”
“If she was never serious, then why bother classing him up?” Grayson asked.
“I think it was a game to her,” Brennan said. “Like she was trying to see how far he’d go.”
“So how did their relationship play out?” Jackson asked.
“I don’t know the details,” Brennan said. “I’d cut out a couple months before. Couldn’t take watching him lose his mind over that wh—” He gave them an apologetic look. “Sorry. I have some strong feelings about the situation.”
Jackson frowned. It was one thing to believe a friend was a fool, but Brennan seemed to take it almost personally. “Can I ask why you feel so strongly? I mean, everyone has had a friend who acted a fool over a woman at some point. Why did this one bother you so much?”
“She came on to me,” Brennan said. “At a party one weekend at Cody’s. He was damn near passed out drunk, and she suggested we go to the bedroom and, uh, have some fun.” He shook his head. “I was military. I’ve seen and heard some shit, especially with women chasing a paycheck or citizenship. And Cody and I had been talking earlier that night about him ditching the bar and working rigs with me because I was making so much money. But it still floored me. Not just hitting up his good friend but right there in his home with him in it? That’s a level of crazy I don’t have any desire to tangle with.”
“That’s pretty blatant,” Jackson said. “I assume you told Cody about it.”
“Damn straight,” Brennan said. “The next day, as soon as he was up and sober, I laid it all out for him.”
“And let me guess,” Jackson said. “He didn’t believe you.”
Brennan scowled. “Called me a few choice names and had the nerve to say I was just jealous. Jealous of what? That idiot was bankrupt over some bitch who was using him and running around with God knows how many other guys, looking for a bigger take. That was it for me. I told him that if he got rid of Caitlyn and got his common sense back, to give me a call. I was done with it.”
“I don’t blame you,” Jackson said. “So when did you hear from Cody again?”
“I didn’t. I mean, not deliberately. A couple weeks later, I ran into him at Harrah’s. He was sitting alone at the bar, so I walked up and asked how he was doing. He told me he’d asked Caitlyn to marry him. You can about imagine I was ready to call in the white jacket people. Not that I was worried she’d say yes, mind you. I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see what everyone else did.”
“Clearly, she said no,” Grayson said.
“Not just no. She laughed at him. Told him he was just her bit of fun and she had her eye on someone with money and connections. I didn’t say ‘I told you so’ but man, I was thinking it. Thinking it hard. But he was so broken up about it I didn’t have the heart to rub it in, even though he’d called me some pretty awful things. Dude looked bad. Like he had been sitting on that stool for days, drinking one after the other.”
“Was that before she disappeared or after?” Grayson asked.
“A couple weeks before. I called him a time or two and tried to get him to come out for a drink but he always turned me down. When I asked about Caitlyn, he’d clam up, and I figured he was making a last-ditch play for her and didn’t want me knowing. So I let it go.”
“How did you learn about Caitlyn’s disappearance?” Grayson asked.
“The news. Was sitting at home having dinner and up pops her face on my
television.”
“Did you talk to Cody after that?”
“Yeah. I picked up the phone and called him straight off, but he brushed me off, saying his parents were visiting and he’d call me when they left. He never did, though. Truth is I doubt his parents were there at all.”
Jackson leaned forward and looked Brennan straight in the eye. “Do you think Cody had something to do with Caitlyn’s disappearance?”
Brennan took a breath and leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t want to think so, but yeah, I’ll admit it crossed my mind. More than once and for longer than a second or two, if you know what I’m saying.”
“So you think he was capable?” Jackson asked.
“Before Caitlyn I would have said no. I mean, Cody was no saint, but he wasn’t violent. Not beyond your basic male scrap in a bar or something. But that girl had him twisted up so tight that anything could have happened when he started to unravel.”
Jackson nodded. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything about Cody’s relationship with Caitlyn or Caitlyn herself?”
“I didn’t really know her,” Brennan said, “and didn’t want to. What I saw was enough for me to make up my mind. The girl was trouble. And I don’t know how she plays into Cody’s death, but you can bet your ass, whatever it is comes back around to her.”
“Do you think there’s a chance she ran off with another man and is still alive somewhere?” Grayson asked.
Brennan raised one eyebrow. “Do you?”
His tone clearly relayed that he didn’t think that for a minute. Grayson didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t have to. All of them knew the score.
When Brennan had gone, Grayson threw his pen on the table and blew out a breath. “What do you think?”
“I think everything he said fits with part of our theory and it explains Cody’s apartment decor. Also provides motive. Opportunity was already in place, just risky.”
Grayson nodded. “But it doesn’t explain who killed Cody. What are we missing? On the surface, this seems straightforward but when you try to line things up, there’s a big hole.”
“Yeah. Who killed Cody and why.”
“Okay, so let’s run down the potentials. Start with Caitlyn’s friends. Maybe one of them found out Cody did something to Caitlyn and decided to make him pay for it.”
“But how did they find out? And why would Cody have their prepaid cell number? If the calls had come in to Cody’s phone, then I could make a case for one of them calling and asking him to meet. But Cody initiated the call. If one of Caitlyn’s friends was mad enough to kill someone over Caitlyn, then why would they have been exchanging phone numbers and calls with Cody to begin with?”
“I agree that it doesn’t track logically. Okay, what about Garrett Trahan? If he was following them he could have seen them go into the bar. There’s opportunity. And if he was infatuated with Caitlyn, that night might not have been the first time he followed her. Shaye said people have already suggested Trahan was abusive. Maybe he took it to the next level.”
Jackson nodded. “So let’s say Trahan saw Caitlyn with Cody because he followed her one weekend when she came here to meet up with him. Trahan follows her again during Mardi Gras and after their run-in, tracks them to the bar where Cody works. Trahan sees Cody and it puts him right into the stratosphere with anger. But if Garrett did something to Caitlyn and Cody knew about it, why not turn him in? Flip side, if Cody did something to Caitlyn and Garrett figured it out, why wait all this time to do something?”
“I don’t know. But we need to talk to Trahan.”
“Yep. And what about Brennan Murphy? We can’t dismiss him, either.”
“No,” Grayson agreed. “He knew Caitlyn and Cody, and all we have is his word that things went down the way they did. We didn’t ask him to alibi Mardi Gras night but if he was out partying, he probably couldn’t anyway.”
“He definitely had strong feelings about her and not in a good way. What if she didn’t hit on him? What if it was the other way around and she blew him off?”
“That might be a motive for killing Caitlyn, albeit somewhat flimsy, but why kill Cody? And more importantly, why now?”
Jackson sighed. “So many options and every one of them only works halfway.”
“We’re missing something,” Grayson repeated.
“Yeah. I guess we better get out of here and go looking for it.”
As they started out of the room, Grayson’s phone rang. He looked at the display and frowned. “It’s Victor LeBlanc.”
They both stopped walking as Grayson answered the call. Jackson listened to the one side of the conversation, wondering what the man could possibly want with them. He’d already pulled strings in DC to get the FBI assigned to his granddaughter’s kidnapping, effectively removing Grayson and Jackson from the case. They’d turned over all their case files and done a thorough debriefing with the FBI agents. What could he want now?
Grayson slipped the phone back into his pocket. “He wants to meet with us.”
“About what?”
“I have no idea, but everything about it sounds strange. He said he’ll be in a café in the French Quarter in fifteen minutes. Don’t go to his home or office and don’t call him or anyone else in his family.”
“What the hell?”
Grayson shook his head. “Something’s up. And I have a feeling it’s not going to be good.”
“He knows we’re not on the case, right?”
“Since he’s the reason we’re off, I’d have to go with he knows.”
Jackson studied his senior partner as he frowned, probably working through all the possibilities and the implications that went with them, not only for LeBlanc but for them as well. It wasn’t their case and meeting with LeBlanc wouldn’t sit well with the FBI, which wouldn’t sit well with the chief. “What do you think?”
Grayson blew out a breath. “I think I should have told him to call the chief if he wanted to talk to us. But I got the feeling he wouldn’t have done that. And since I want to know what he’s up to, I guess I’m about to break protocol. Sort of. I mean, he asked us to talk and he’s not the victim or a suspect, so it’s sort of a gray area, but I doubt the FBI will see it that way. Still, it’s one thing for me to put myself on the line. I’m not making that call for you.”
“To hell with it. There’s a little girl’s life at stake. I can always find another job.”
Grayson smiled. “How did I know you were going to say that? You realize you’re a bad influence on me, right? I never would have even considered doing this a year ago.”
“Welcome to the dark side.”
JENNY HURRIED down the path through the woods surrounding her mother’s home. The walls of her bedroom had felt like they were closing in on her, and she’d thought getting outside for a walk would help. But now, with dark clouds circling above, her anxiety was increasing. Why had she walked so far? She’d known a storm was coming. Why hadn’t she stayed closer to the house?
Thunder rumbled overhead, and she picked up her pace until she was practically jogging. How much farther now? She couldn’t remember. She’d walked this trail before, but it had been long ago and the foliage had grown so much that it didn’t look the same. Had she veered off somewhere?
She shook her head. No. There was only the one path, and it hadn’t branched.
Why hadn’t she taken the bigger trail that she usually walked? Why pick today to revisit something she probably hadn’t been on in six months or better? She slowed and glanced around, making sure she was still on the path. This had to be the way, but it seemed like she should have reached the end by now. Still, there was no break in the foliage as far as she could see. And unfortunately, she had no idea how long she’d walked down the path or how long ago she turned around.
Stupid. The whole thing was stupid.
She stopped for a minute and reached down to rub her ankle, which was hurting a bit. Maybe she’d twisted it. As she straightened back up, she realize
d that everything had gone still. Not a breath of air stirred the trees. The sound of birds and insects had disappeared as if someone had pressed a mute button. Then off to her left, a twig snapped, the crack sounding like a cannon echoing through the stillness.
She froze.
Whatever broke that twig was too large to be one of the cute, furry creatures that offered nothing to fear. This was something much bigger. She peered into the brush but couldn’t see anything beyond a thick set of vines growing up gangly bushes. Her ankle was still sore, and she wasn’t much of a runner to begin with, but she didn’t care.
She launched down the path, legs churning as quickly as she could force them, her thighs burning with the effort. Pain radiated from her ankle and shot up her leg, but she didn’t slow. Her breath came in ragged heaves, like she was drowning, and just when she thought she couldn’t make it another foot, she burst out of the woods and into the field behind her home. She staggered to a slow jog, glancing back into the trees.
About ten feet in, something moved. Something tall and thin. It was there one moment, then gone as if it had disappeared behind the tree. She whipped around and forced herself to run again. She was half limping and she wouldn’t win any races with her speed, but it was better than hanging around for what was lurking back in those trees. Because there was only one predator she could think of that fit that shape and height.
A human.
The shot from the rifle echoed through the stillness like a canon. Jenny screamed and started sprinting, all thoughts of her sore ankle completely gone. She didn’t dare turn around to look behind her because she might trip, but she continued yelling as she ran. Her mother rose from her rocking chair and grabbed the rifle that was never far from her side, then ran down the steps toward Jenny.
Jenny practically vaulted over the rail fence that separated the yard from the fields and never slowed. Her mother ran toward her, gun leveled at the woods behind her, but it was clear from the look on her face that she had no idea what was wrong. Jenny ran right past her and into the house, then collapsed into a chair in the kitchen, struggling to catch her breath.