Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  The feeling crawled all over him that she was in trouble. Physical danger-type trouble.

  She hadn’t left for good because her things were still scattered around the place. Her backpack, the one she always seemed to have with her, was gone. The towel on the bar in the bathroom was still damp from a shower. He found the remains of a meal in the trash under the sink. It looked like she’d made herself some mac and cheese.

  He leaned against the island in the kitchen and studied the situation. There was nothing he could do. She wasn’t under arrest.

  His cell phone vibrated.

  “Yeah, Petrie?”

  “Your girl is here.”

  “My girl? You mean Jeri?”

  “Who else? You’d better get back here. She’s been through something, but she won’t tell me what. She says she only trusts you.”

  Petrie’s not-so-subtle criticism landed on him with a heavy punch.

  “I’m on my way.”

  It took forever to make the short distance between her apartment and the office. His car must have hit every freaking pothole on his route. The center lane of Rampart was chewed up and sometimes spit out nails that punctured unsuspecting tires. He usually avoided going that way, but he was in a hurry. Taking Rampart had not speeded up his journey one second. The construction had traffic backed up due to a wreck.

  He groaned in misery. What would the woman say while she was waiting for him?

  When he finally pushed through the door into the squad room, Jeri was waiting for him at his desk with Petrie and Ed hovering over her.

  Ed shot Nick a madder-than-hell glare. “She has quite a story to tell, Nick.”

  Oh God, how much had she told them? Nick had been very careful to tell Ed only what he needed to know. Plausible deniability and all that.

  Nick caught Jeri’s gaze and held it. “Did you have another episode?” Was that a generic enough way to describe how she’d turn up somewhere without having any idea how she’d gotten there?

  She shook her head in the negative and then held out her hand to him. Was he supposed to take it?

  “His skin is under my nails.”

  Nick studied her expression. Part horror. Part victory. Part anger. Part Fear. What the hell had happened to her?

  “Whose skin?”

  She flinched. “The photographer.”

  He glanced at Ed. The expression on his face informed Nick that Jeri’s story had better be good, for Nick’s sake.

  “Okay, tell me the story from the beginning.” His gaze shot around the room to determine who might be listening. “Wait. Let’s go into an interview room.”

  Ed cleared his throat. “Yeah, you do that.”

  The boss had just let him know he’d be listening.

  Nick grabbed the Deville case file from his desk and moved them to a private interview room. Petrie settled into a skeptical stance, leaning against the cinder-block wall with his arms crossed over his chest. It was sort of a comical pose because Petrie was thin and lanky. He didn’t look like he’d scare a kitten.

  Before Nick did anything else, he had a tech clean under her fingernails. Maybe she did have the photographer’s skin under her nails.

  When the task was complete, he settled into the chair across from her and scooted up to the table. The legs of the chair screeched across the worn vinyl flooring and made her cringe. Over the years, he’d gotten used to the attack on his eardrums, but quite often the horrendous noise got to interviewees, especially if they were already nervous.

  “Okay, from the beginning. Don’t leave out anything. It’s okay. Petrie is my partner. He needs to hear this.”

  Petrie grumbled something that sounded like, “It’s about damn time.”

  He shot his partner a silent command to remain mute. Petrie tossed a belligerent attitude back at him. He might or might not add his own twist to the interview. But Nick couldn’t kick him out. Not with Ed listening on the other side of the two-way mirror.

  Jeri straightened in her chair and then slumped. Then, she straightened again and pulled her chair closer to the steel tabletop. “I went back out today.”

  Well, that was obvious.

  “I can’t stay cooped up. I’ll go nuts. I told you that.” An apology erupted in her blue eyes. “So I thought I’d ask around. Maybe some of the people I’ve met in the Quarter would gossip and tell me things about Sheldon or the photographer that they might not tell you. Since you’re a cop, you know.”

  Petrie grunted at her statement. There was no telling what opinion lurked behind his sarcastic noise making.

  Nick ignored Petrie and proceeded with the interview. “So what did you find out?”

  She lowered her head and traced the edge of the table with her fingertip. “Nothing. I never got started.”

  For a woman who was usually very effusive, she was frustratingly slow to tell her story. He needed to speed things up, but he didn’t want her to omit something critical.

  “So what did you do?”

  She shifted in her seat and then pushed the hair out of her face. The blue was starting to fade a bit at the roots. The shifting color from roots to tips created an interesting effect.

  “I used a towel to wrap Sheldon’s tube in. It still had some red stuff on it. I was pretty sure it was some of his blood mix. So I took it with me. I don’t know why. I just did. I took it to the building where that woman died—”

  “You went into the building? Despite it still being off limits? You saw the crime scene tape, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head. “No, Nick. There wasn’t any tape. That’s why I thought it would be okay—”

  “To break and enter into a building?”

  She licked her lips and swallowed hard. “I thought the blood on the towel…if it was hers…might speak to her blood…if there was some left there. And there was.” She shuddered. “The way she died…”

  Jeri was wandering into dangerous territory. He had to steer her away from talking about the psychic stuff. Ed would surely pounce on that line of questioning if Nick let it progress. “How do you know how she died, Jeri?”

  She blinked at him. “Well, from the large stain on the floor. It was pretty obvious.”

  Yeah, sure. She might know what the large amount of blood meant for how hard the woman’s death had been. Jeri had spent some time in med school.

  “Go on.”

  “Nothing happened. I had already decided to leave when I opened a door. There was nothing in the closet. He shoved me in… I didn’t even hear him come up behind me. I didn’t even realize there was someone else there besides me. He shoved me in and locked the door.” She wrapped one hand over the other on top of the metal tabletop. The story was obviously heating up for her. “Nick, why would someone have a lock on a closet door?”

  There were reasons. The closet had probably stored valuables at one time. Quarter apartments belonged to the rich, and those people had different habits from normal people.

  “How long were you locked in the closet?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed like hours, but it might have only been minutes. It was pretty dark, and people get disoriented in the dark.”

  Yeah, he knew that.

  “How did you get out?”

  “He let me out.”

  Petrie spluttered his first sarcastic utterance. “Say what? Why would he do that?”

  She placed her palms on the table as if bracing herself. “He said some weird stuff to me. I wasn’t scared of him before, but now I am.”

  Nick’s breath hung in his throat. He felt the significance of what she was about to say to his very core. All of the instincts he’d developed while on the job rushed him. This was a moment of truth.

  “He said he didn’t want to kill me, but he would if he had to. He said I was the kind of person who saw too much.”

  He didn’t ask what the photographer meant. Nick already knew. A chill crept down his spine and landed in his lower extremities.

  “When he let me out�
� He came up behind me so I couldn’t see his face, but I was able to turn around. He acted like seeing his face changed everything. I think it frightened him that I could see him. It was so strange. He started backing up like he was about to run, so I rushed him and scratched his face. That’s how I got his skin under my nails.”

  Petrie added his sarcasm again. “This is a very…farfetched story.”

  Nick stared at Jeri, trying to pass unspoken communication to her. They had tossed the word farfetched around a few times.

  Petrie wasn’t done yet. “If he’s the killer, why would he let you go?”

  For the first time in the interview, the corners of her eyes filled with moisture. “I don’t know.” She sniffed. “I haven’t seen anything. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know that he’s the killer. But if he is, it would make more sense that he would want to kill me. I don’t understand why he doesn’t want to.”

  If Jeri’s story was true, then the photographer had to be the killer. What was Jeri to the photographer that he would be reluctant to kill her?

  Nick flipped through the documents in Sheldon Deville’s case file. “We found a photo of a little girl in Deville’s things.” He was careful not to mention where they’d found the picture. “Our computer expert age-progressed the photo. Do you recognize this woman?” He shoved the age-progressed photo in front of her.

  She gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  The age-progression was a spot-on image of Jeri. She knew it too. Her reaction was one step closer to proving her connection to Deville.

  “Who is she, Jerilyn?”

  He already knew the answer, but he wanted her to say it.

  Then, she shocked the hell out of him.

  “That’s my Aunt Darlene.”

  He fell back in his chair. His next question had just flown clean out of his head. It took him a moment to clear his racing thoughts and concentrate on how to address what she’d just said.

  “Is she the aunt that left you her estate?”

  Jeri nodded. “Why would he have a picture of her when she was young?”

  That was the question.

  She blinked back the tears that began rolling down her cheeks. “Do you think Sheldon Deville is my…”

  Her father? Well, that thought had already occurred to Nick. That’s why he’d asked Ed for the DNA test.

  Jeri shook her weepy mood off. “I think it’s time I went back to Nashville.”

  Not the reaction Nick had expected.

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Besides the emotional turmoil that would cause, he needed her to stay in New Orleans, since she was a person of interest. He could almost hear Ed having a fit on the other side of the glass.

  Nick treaded carefully. She obviously had her reasons for her about-face. “Why do you want to do that…now?”

  “I want answers from my parents. Answers they should have given me years ago. I need to know who my biological father is and how he met my aunt…my biological mother.”

  Well now, if Deville was her father, finding out how he met her aunt/mother might not be a bad thing.

  “So then…you’re purchasing a round trip ticket?”

  She leaned and met him halfway across the table. “Two.”

  “Two?”

  The intensity in her gaze nearly pushed him backward, but he held his stance.

  “Don’t you want the answer to that question too? I have a sick feeling that my past has something to do with my present.”

  More than that, an idea had been forming in the back of his mind that he hadn’t wanted to consider, the idea that Jerilyn was tied to Alison Ardoin’s murder in ways he hadn’t even begun to comprehend.

  The killer’s motivation was all about the blood. The sick truth sank into Nick’s consciousness. He had that feeling—the one he always got when he was stumbling onto the truth.

  Ardoin’s murder was going to make or break him as a lead detective. The awful knowledge that he could lose his job over the case hit him hard in the chest, nearly sucking the breath from him. Doing what he did was his life.

  Nick rose from the table. “Hang on right there.” He pointed at her as if the tip of his finger could keep her in her seat.

  He left the interview room and met Ed coming out of the observation room.

  “You can’t let her leave New Orleans unescorted. She might never come back.”

  Ed was right.

  “If she goes, you have to go with her and make sure she comes back. If she ditches you, that’s gonna be on you.”

  Sure, Ed was okay with Jerilyn buying him a plane ticket. Ed’s budget didn’t have to spring for Nick’s airfare, and there was nothing like a face-to-face interview.

  Nick studied Ed’s face and the deep lines chiseled into his forehead from years of worrying over one case or another. Nick’s mind had been made up for him. “I’m taking her home to pack.”

  Ed snorted with sarcastic amusement. “You mean to Chateau Moreau, don’t you?”

  Nick groaned. “How long have you known?”

  “From the first time you set someone up like that. It’s a sneaky way to keep up with a person of interest. I won’t tell if you won’t tell.” Ed smirked and walked off.

  Jerilyn was no longer a distraction. She was a central figure in the Ardoin case.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jeri caught a glimpse of Nick from the corner of her eye. He had the window seat. Jeri would have liked to glance out the window on occasion, but Nick kept the shade down. She was trying not to be obvious, but he was making it hard for her ignore his behavior. His lower right eyelid twitched like crazy. His fingers, clawed over the ends of the armrests, never moved. Once in a while, she got a good look at his face, but it seemed he was trying to keep his face turned away from her, maybe so she wouldn’t notice how scared he was. The guy was a white-knuckle flier.

  She suppressed a smirk and focused on the book she’d bought for the flight.

  He’d said very little since presenting his boarding pass at the gate, and she hadn’t pushed him to talk. Fresh tension had erupted between them, and now she didn’t know what to say to him. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him about her trip to the apartment where Alison Ardoin had died. She’d ran to him because her experience in the apartment had pulled her sense of personal security right out from under her. In her moment of weakness, she’d sought him out for protection. Now, it didn’t seem as though he was protecting her. It felt more like she was his prisoner.

  Whatever suspicions he’d had about her had been amplified by her confession that she’d broken into the apartment. If he had ever trusted her, the trust level was wavering or was totally crashing.

  Jeri couldn’t be responsible for his attitude toward her. If that’s the way he wanted to be, then she’d just deal with it. What other choice did she have? She could run, but eventually, he would catch up with her. Running didn’t exactly scream innocence.

  Finally, she could stand the silence no longer. “You don’t fly much, do you?”

  He pressed his lips together and then slowly exhaled before he faced her. “Not if I can get out of it.”

  She refused to apologize for dragging him along with her on the flight to Nashville. True, his boss hadn’t given him the option of saying no, but how was that her problem? When she’d purchased the tickets for that evening, he’d acted as if he were going to freak out, mumbling about not having time to prepare himself.

  “You need a Valium.”

  He glared at her.

  “Or maybe a cocktail.” She glanced down at his white knuckles gripping the armrest.

  He loosened his grip and flexed his fingers, but after a second or two, he’d clenched the armrest again. She had to get his mind off his fear of flying. Well, she didn’t have to do anything, but strangely, she wanted to ease his fear. Where had the sympathy for his distress come from?

  Before she could jump into deep wat
er, he blurted out what would have been a peculiar question under other circumstances. “So…” His nervous laughter wobbled out of his mouth. “You haven’t seen any visions…you know…about this airplane, have you?”

  She blinked at him. Had he really just asked that question?

  “Of course, you haven’t. You would have said so.”

  She could almost hear an extra wouldn’t you on the end of his sentence.

  Jeri thought it might be best if she whispered her reassurances. “If I had, I would have made sure we didn’t get on the plane. I probably would have gotten into trouble with the TSA by trying to get them to cancel the flight.” She paused for a half-second. “So does that mean you believe I can see things before they happen?”

  It was Nick’s turn to blink at her in disbelief.

  “Your visions and the things that have come true are just coincidence.” He released the armrests and patted his torso. “See? No bullet holes.”

  She snorted at his lame attempt to disprove her ability to see the future. “You aren’t dead yet, Nick.”

  Had she fully bought into the idea of having the gift of second sight? Yeah, she had.

  She leaned toward Nick. “He’s going to capture me again. The next time, I’m going to be locked in a different closet. There’s going to be blood everywhere. I’m going to freak out. I might not make it out alive.”

  Would Nick make sure that didn’t happen? Could he do anything to stop it if he tried?

  His eyes seemed to search hers. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”

  Jeri detected no judgment in his question, just a heap of curiosity.

  “I am.”

  “If you are, you’re keeping it hidden.”

  “Why do you think I wanted to get out of New Orleans?”

  His eyes flashed with understanding. Their noses were only a few inches apart. The serious expression on his face spoke straight to her heart.

  She licked her lips before speaking again. “I want this to be over, so I can start over again.”