“You haven’t gotten a forensics report on the blue hair, huh? Sounds to me like you ought to know where it came from. It’s not that hard to guess. Didn’t you get a sample of her hair to make a comparison? What do you mean she calls herself Olivia? Isn’t that her name?”
Nick sucked up his aggravation. Ed would focus on the one thing he wanted Ed to overlook. Ed could pick up on the slightest of inconsistencies and dig out the smallest of details that didn’t make sense.
“She’s a missing person that doesn’t want to be found. That’s the name she goes by.”
“A missing person? Really?” Ed looked like a hound dog on the scent.
“She’s of age, and she doesn’t want her parents to know where she’s living. Do you want me to tell you her real name? I don’t think you want to get into the middle of this one. What you don’t know can’t come back to bite you in the ass.”
Ed grunted. “Your Maw Maw taught you better language than that.” Ed didn’t like foul language unless he was the one uttering it.
“Yeah, she did.” Nick leaned on the desk behind them. “I’m pulling the photographer back in for questioning.” If he could find him.
“Keep me informed. And I’ll nudge Tracey to push all your requests through as quickly as possible. We need this one resolved fast.”
It must be nice to have that kind of pull with the head of the crime scene unit. Sometimes Nick believed Ed had married Tracey just so his department could get favors from hers.
He waited until Ed was well out of eavesdropping range to make his phone call. “Deputy Commissioner Bowman? I’m sorry to call you so late. My name is Nick Moreau. I’m with the New Orleans Police. We’ve located Jerilyn.”
“Is she all right?” Shuffling noises came from the background. “Connie, they’ve found Jerilyn.” A slight pause. “I’m putting you on speakerphone.” A click and a buzz. “Go ahead. Tell us. Where is she?”
“Jerilyn is alive and well, but she doesn’t want you to contact her.”
“She’s our daughter. We have a right to know where she is.”
Nick suppressed a groan. “I get that you are worried about her, sir, but you’re in law enforcement. You know that she’s not a runaway if she doesn’t want to come home. And she doesn’t.”
“Can’t we talk to her? Is she there with you?”
“No, she’s not here with me. She has a job and a place to live, and she appears to be eating well and taking care of herself. That’s all I can tell you.”
Connie spluttered her anguish into Nick’s ear. “She can’t just send me a quick text like that and expect me to stop worrying. I need to hear her voice.”
Lance Bowman made a noise of surprise. “You got a text from her? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re the reason she disappeared, Lance.”
“Connie, that’s… that’s…”
Nick needed to get off the phone and let them have their argument in private. “I’ve advised her to contact you so you won’t worry about her anymore. But I’ve done all I can do. If you try to find her… I think if you keep trying to find her, she will run again.” Bowman could hire a private detective now that he knew Jerilyn was still in the New Orleans area. “I’ve seen this happen before… It’s best if you let her contact you.”
“Don’t tell us how to handle our daughter, detective.” Bowman bit out his sharp command like he was dressing down one of his own officers.
“Sir, with all due respect, my duty is to protect the citizens of New Orleans, and Jerilyn is a resident here. I should warn you, sir, that if you try to interfere with her life when she doesn’t want you to, you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law in this situation.”
“Don’t tell me the law, Moreau.”
Nick had had enough of Bowman’s attitude. “I’m not telling you the law, Bowman. I think you know the law. I’m telling you how it’s going to go down. Leave her alone. When she’s ready, she’ll contact you.”
The call disconnected, and Nick held the receiver away from his ear. He hoped he hadn’t made Jerilyn’s situation worse.
Chapter Six
Jeri dropped another couple of shot glasses into the soapy pan under the bar and then placed her hands on her aching back just above her hips. She leaned back and then forward. Would the night never end? Every freaking customer had been cranky. It was like the whole city was on edge. Infectious. Even getting to the tourists. And it was hard to discourage a tourist’s enthusiasm for partying to forget the real world.
She glanced up and into the piercing blue eyes of the photographer. He did a very poorly executed double take.
“So you work here?”
Why was he pretending he didn’t already know she worked at Johnny J’s? Hadn’t he asked her if she worked at the bar the morning the weirdo had died?
She was in no mood to play games. If he was staying, he was drinking. “What’ll you have?”
“A draft.”
She pulled the draft and slid it in front of him. When she turned to serve another customer, he caught her by the wrist. She flinched and yanked her arm from him. “Don’t touch me.”
He raised both hands. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I just want to talk about what happened.”
Jeri stabbed him with a mean look. “I don’t.”
“Did you know the guy?”
She leaned both hands on the bar in front of her. “What are you? A cop?”
“Hey, chill. I was just curious. That’s all.”
“I didn’t know him. Now, leave me alone so I can do my job.” She glanced toward Herb, who had already zeroed in his gaze on the dude.
“Sorry I bothered you.” He took his drink and moved to the back corner of the bar where the tables were partially shrouded in darkness.
Herb leaned across the bar. “Are you okay? Was that guy bothering you?”
“He’s the creepy guy that was there when Weirdo died.”
Herb nodded. “The same one that found the dead girl?”
“Yeah, the same guy.”
“What’s he doing here?”
She whispered her complaint. “He said he wants to talk about it. And I don’t.”
“You want for me to throw him out?”
She shrugged. “Not as long as he sits back there and drinks and stays out of my face.”
“I can pull his drafts for him if you want.”
She smiled at Herb. He was a gentle giant. “That would be great. I won’t tell Darwin.”
He wasn’t supposed to handle alcoholic beverages. His previous incarceration prevented him from obtaining the necessary license. Of course, Jerilyn had obtained hers using the name of a homeless woman who had disappeared during Hurricane Katrina. Darwin didn’t know how she got her license, and Darwin didn’t want to know. She was surprised Moreau hadn’t called her on her false identity.
Herb went back to standing near the doorway to the street, and Jeri went back to serving their cranky customers. A couple of hours later, creepy photographer guy paid his tab and left the bar. Herb made a face at him as he stepped outside onto the sidewalk. Jeri smothered her amusement and returned her attention to the millionth Long Island Iced Tea she had mixed that night.
Around two in the morning, the band gave up playing because no one was listening. The rowdy crowd had started drifting out onto the street around three-thirty. Jeri breathed a sigh of relief as the last patron stumbled out of the bar at almost five. They were supposed to stay open until six, but what Darwin didn’t know didn’t hurt him or his business.
Herb locked the door, made his way over to the bar, and grabbed a handful of peanuts still in the shell. One by one, the empty shells dropped to the floor as he munched. He’d clean them up before he left. He always did.
He wiped his mouth and rendered his opinion. “I thought it would never end. People were nuts tonight.”
Herb hadn’t tossed anyone out on their butt, but he had made quite a few threats to do so.
&
nbsp; “Let’s get this mess cleaned up. I’m so ready for some sleep.” Her eyelids were beginning to twitch.
Herb moved away from the bar and started his nightly sweep of the barroom to make sure no one had passed out on the floor. Jeri chunked a few heavy drink glasses into the washtub and turned on the hot water, which was never very hot. The water heater made strange thumping and whistling noises. Jeri was certain it would fail any minute. Maybe even burst and dump water all over the dirty floor. The glassware never felt clean. She might leave the dirty glasses for Darwin in the morning. He’d throw a fit and threaten to fire her for being lazy. Hey, she might enjoy watching his histrionics.
The house lights came on. Jeri’s head popped up when Herb gasped across the room near the corner where creepy guy had camped out for hours. His hand covered his mouth as he stumbled backward.
“What’s wrong, Herb?”
He pointed at the far corner.
Jeri’s heart raced. Her intuition warned her to bolt and run. She knew what was coming straight at her, but she slipped through the service bridge and made her way to the back of the bar.
Sure enough, there on the dirty barroom floor lay the woman she’d seen in her vision. When Herb twisted to glance at her, his face had leached out all its usual reddish color. Jeri screamed bloody murder.
In the background of her screams, someone banged on the street door. Herb jerked into action, but everything seemed to progress in slow motion. Moments seemed to turn into hours. But it couldn’t have been that long between the time when Herb opened the door and when Moreau stood in front of her. She was gulping down the last bit of her screams when Moreau wrapped his arms around her and shoved her head onto his shoulder.
“Jerilyn, calm down.”
Herb snorted from behind her. “That ain’t her name, cop.”
She shook her head in the groove of Moreau’s shoulder. But Jerilyn was her name, and she suddenly wanted to be herself instead of this person she had concocted to hide from the rest of the world. The rest of the world had found her anyway.
Moreau spoke over her hiccupping. “Call 911. Tell them Detective Moreau is on the scene, and tell them I said to send a bus.”
Herb spewed his contempt all over Moreau. “What the hell, man? That woman don’t need a ride home on no bus. She needs an ambulance.”
Moreau leaned away from Jeri to glare at Herb. “Just tell them what I told you to tell them. Okay?” He waited for a fraction of second before hitting Herb with his sarcasm. “Pretty please?”
Jeri sucked down a sob and managed to speak. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know. Can you hang on, right here, and let me go check her pulse?”
Jeri nodded, but she didn’t want Moreau to let go of her. She glanced at the woman on the floor. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
Moreau released her and walked over to squat next to the woman. He placed two fingers against her neck and grimaced. “No pulse.” He leaned his ear next to the woman’s gaping mouth. “She’s gone.”
Jeri pointed a shaking finger at the dark corner of the bar only a few feet from the dead woman. “He was sitting right there.”
Moreau stood. “Who was sitting there?”
“The photographer.”
Moreau jerked as if he’d been slapped. He glanced at the dead woman and then back at Jerilyn. “I want both of you to go outside, lock the door behind you, and wait for me to come talk to you. Don’t let anyone else in here that isn’t EMT or carrying a badge. And try to act calm. Okay?”
Jeri wasn’t sure she could ever act calm again in her entire freaking life.
****
Dodge Corolla knelt beside the woman and studied her without touching her. Then, he turned her head to peer at her wound. “The way she fell and that cut on her forehead… Looks to me like she passed out and hit her head on the corner of the table.”
“There’s a lot of blood, Dodge.” Almost as much as there had been at the Jane Doe crime scene.
“Head wounds bleed like crazy. You know that, Moreau. This probably isn’t murder. It looks like an accident to me. She was probably drunk off her butt and stumbled. Hit her head on the table.” He glanced up at Moreau. “But I ain’t no cop, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Nick didn’t need Dodge’s attitude.
Was it just coincidence that the person of interest in two murders just happened to be sitting at the table close to the spot where the woman was found?
“How come you were first on the scene?” Dodge’s pointed question was valid. Nick wasn’t a first responder. Not usually anyway.
“I was already on my way here to talk to the bartender. She’s a witness in another case.”
Dodge raised an eyebrow. How did he do that? Most people couldn’t raise just one brow.
“A witness, huh?”
Like Dodge, Nick didn’t believe in coincidences.
It was no coincidence that the photographer was in the bar where Jerilyn Bowman worked. It might be a coincidence that a woman had passed out and banged her head on a table that very same night. But that was a damned big coincidence.
Nick rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes. He glanced around the bar and absorbed the scene. His nose detected a nasty combination of sweaty bodies and stale beer with just the faintest aroma of piss. With the lights on, the place reeked of hole-in-the-wall dump. He’d been inside the bar several times with the lights down low. In the dark, the place didn’t look much better. The overhead fluorescent light in the back corner flickered on and off, obviously needing new ballast because the bulb looked brand new. No black on the ends.
The bartender and the bouncer must have just started their daily closing routine. A wet towel lay on the scarred bar. Soiled glassware had been stacked near a pan of soapy water. Peanut shells still littered the grimy floor. When was the last time the place had a health inspection?
Some things were better left in the dark.
Nick’s partner sauntered up to him.
“That’s a lot of blood.” Petrie’s comment was unusually concise.
Nick pointed to the woman. “Head wound.”
Dodge interrupted them with his usual sarcasm. “Are you done yet, or do you still need time to figure out she conked her head on the table?”
Nick glared at Dodge. “I want an autopsy. A person of interest was sitting nearby before she died.”
“Yeah. Okay. If she needs an autopsy, we’ll do an autopsy.”
Nick and Petrie waited until Dodge and his assistants had carted the dead woman out the front door. Nick would have loved to move her out the back, but there was no way that was going to happen. The narrow alley was impassable from one end, and the bar was in the middle of the block. Pulling the woman out of the alley on the other end of the block would have drawn just as much attention. Thankfully, Bourbon Street was relatively quiet at six in the morning.
Petrie turned in a full circle before asking his question. “So who was she?”
Nick glanced at her driver’s license again. “Heather Mancuso. From Georgia. I think that address is near Atlanta. A suburb.”
“What was she doing here?” Petrie was good at asking questions with no answers.
If she had been visiting the New Orleans area with family or friends, why had no one noticed her absence?
“Let’s get Troy to find her family.”
Petrie nodded and lifted his cell phone to his ear.
Nick left the bar in search of Jerilyn Bowman. When he found her, she was huddled against the side of the building next door to the bar. The bouncer was sitting next to her, patting her arm. The man glanced up when Nick approached, and if Nick wasn’t mistaken, the guy snarled at him.
He motioned at Jerilyn. “I need to ask her some questions. Then, I’ll need to talk to you.”
The bouncer didn’t move.
Jerilyn patted the hand that was patting her arm. “He means we need to talk to him separately. I’ll be okay.”
Herb shot Nick a di
sgusted scowl before he walked down to the other end of the block.
Nick squatted next to her. “Are you okay?”
She blinked at him. The usual light turquoise blue of her eyes had turned bright blue. “What do you think?”
Nick felt horrible for her. She put up such a brave front, but the woman was obviously traumatized.
“Ready to go back home to Nashville?”
Her scared expression turned to spitting anger.
Nick smiled. “I didn’t think so.”
Her anger settled down to a simmer. He’d have to be careful not to turn up the heat too much; she might boil over. He wanted answers. If he pushed too hard, she’d clam up. He shifted to a better position so he wouldn’t come crashing down on top of her. She’d probably punch him in the throat if he did. He had to remember her father was a cop, and her old man more than likely had taught her a few defensive maneuvers.
“I have a lot of questions for you, and not all of them are related to what happened in there.” He nodded toward the bar.
Her anger turned to panic. “Can we talk about other things somewhere else?”
He caught her drift. There were things she didn’t want other people to overhear, and he guessed he understood that.
A gust of wind rushed past them and blew her hair about her face in a most appealing way. She almost looked like an angel. He shook the stray thought away. It never paid to romanticize a person of interest.
“Okay, we can talk somewhere else, but first answer my questions about what happened this morning.” He waited for her to agree. When she gave him a slight nod, he proceeded with the interview. “So you said the photographer came in last night.”
“It was after midnight, I think. Closer to one. He sat at that table by the storeroom. I think he drank three…no, four drafts. Just sat there in the dark drinking. The light’s been out in that corner for days. Darwin changed the bulb, but that didn’t fix it.”
The poor woman was shaking and spitting out details that he hadn’t asked for yet, like a nervous criminal or a scared witness. Which one was she?
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 6