“Things seemed to have settled down since she left town.”
What was that supposed to mean? Had they? Nick could feel an oncoming storm brewing just off the coast. He could feel it coming at him. He’d been existing in the eye of the storm. Low pressure with a band of activity spinning around him. Something was going to have to give soon.
Ed pointed toward the board. So what’s your theory?
“My theory? Yeah, okay. For what it’s worth… Jackson Deville held Alison Ardoin for days without food or water before he knocked her in the head with a blunt object. What object? I don’t know. I haven’t been able to locate the murder weapon.”
He pointed at the pictures on the board as he spoke. “His father Sheldon Deville followed him, waited until he killed the girl, stuck a hole in her neck, and drained out her blood. Why did he want the blood? To drink it. Maybe he thought he was some freaking vampire.”
That was a gross thought.
“There may have been an argument. The broken glass I found in the apartment matched the glass from the unbroken tube Sheldon used to collect some of Ardoin’s blood. Maybe he had a matched set of crystal tubes. Maybe one of them was Sheldon’s and one of them was Jackson’s. Maybe there was no fight. Maybe Ardoin’s murder was a father/son team kill.”
He rubbed the back of his aching neck. “But I don’t know that any of this is true because I can’t find Deville.”
Nick slammed the palm on his hand on the board, finally allowing his frustration to show.
Ed blinked. “So how does the girl fit in with this?”
“The girl’s name is Jerilyn.”
Ed grunted.
“I don’t think she had anything to do with this until that nutjob brought her the tube with the blood in it. She had no idea who he was. She was shocked to learn he was her grandfather. I think she’s still in shock. I think that’s why she’s gone, Ed. Because it frightens her and appalls her that the two of them had made her a part of this. All she wanted to do was live her life in peace. She didn’t want any of this.”
Ed was apparently unmoved by Nick’s impassioned defense of Jeri. “You know her that well, do you?” He moved closer to Nick. “I told you to be careful about her.”
“Yeah, well, don’t worry, Boss. I pushed her away, and she put some distance between us. So we took care of that. Okay?”
Ed wasn’t done antagonizing him. “You need to get her back down here.”
“Whatever for?” Nick crossed his arms, holding back any physical manifestations of his anger. “Do you know why she left town? Do you, Boss?”
“Stop calling me Boss.”
“Well, which are you right now? Are you my boss or my uncle? Because it doesn’t seem you do too well being both.”
He unfolded his arms and backed up a couple of steps, wary of the red creeping up Ed’ neck.
“Which do you need me to be right now?”
Nick wasn’t going to answer that. Because the answer wasn’t easy.
“She left town because she hoped that if she left Jackson Deville wouldn’t kill again. She’s afraid that the killing had something to do with her that she doesn’t understand.”
Ed stared at Nick for a long time. Seemed like an eternity. “As your uncle, I’m going to tell you to be very careful. If you care about her, and it appears to me that you do, then you need to make damn sure she had nothing to do with that girl’s death. I don’t want to see you get all twisted up like you did…”
“Like I did over Charlotte?” He snorted his contempt. “That’s in the past. Charlotte Soileau has nothing to do with anything in the present. Especially not anything to do with how I feel or don’t feel about any other woman, including Jerilyn Bowman.”
“As your boss, I’m going to tell you that you need to get Jerilyn Bowman back down here and make damn sure she doesn’t know something about those murders that she hasn’t told you. You need to question her harder, Nick. She’s at the center of this. I know and you know that this whole case spins around her. You need to find out how. For your career and for mine. Because the last thing we need is even the appearance of a cover-up. I don’t want an internal affairs investigation any more than you do.”
Ed knew all about IA investigations.
“I think you should ask Maris for help with this.”
Maris Couvillian.
“Oh, no. Please, no.”
The woman could be a royal pain in the butt. Bossy. She’d take over the case even with Nick’s name still on it.
“She’s cleared a serial killing case. You know that.”
Ten years ago.
“You need a fresh perspective.”
Maris popped her head in the doorway. “Did I hear my name?”
She pushed her way into the room and stood over the whiteboard. When she turned around and raised her gaze to meet Ed’s, her eyebrows drew together over her nose. “Why do you want my input, Ed? There’s only one case here. This isn’t a serial.” Her pause was significant. “Not yet anyway.”
Nick cleared his throat as the silence grew thicker. He finally admitted his fears. “No. It’s not. But I’m afraid it’s not over yet. I’d love to catch this guy before he does this again.”
He couldn’t mention what Jeri had told him, the names she’d given him. They’d ask all sorts of questions that Nick had no answers for. Well, no answers that made any sense. At least, not to them.
Chapter Twenty-two
July had come and gone and the year had marched a third of the way through August already. Jeri stretched her legs out across the porch swing and leaned her back on the pillow propped against the armrest. A thin sliver of moon peeked out from behind the clouds that cast deep shadows across the front yard. She sighed and reveled in the cool breeze caressing her skin. For once, the night air wasn’t heavy with moisture. Sometimes, Nashville could be just as humid as New Orleans.
Her hair had grown longer, and the slight breeze blew the strands around her face. She’d let the brown grow back in at the roots so that her hair was dark on top with fading blue on the ends. The dark lipstick was gone along with the dark makeup and clothes. She looked more like the Jeri that had grown up in the Bowman household than the woman who called herself Olivia and tended bar on Bourbon Street. Her mother kept hinting that Jeri should cut the blue ends out, but Jeri felt as if she was holding onto a little piece of who she’d been in New Orleans by hanging on to the last remnants of the color.
Her homecoming had created a roller coaster of emotions. One moment, she was sentimental and recalling happy moments from her childhood, and the next moment, Lance Bowman could say something that set her emotions roiling again. Their reconciliation hadn’t been an easy process, but it was getting there. Jeri was beginning to understand why Lance and Connie Bowman had kept so much from her. Her parents were beginning to understand why their silence had hurt her so much. Theirs was an uneasy truce of sorts. Certain subjects had been beaten to death, and none of them were willing to resurrect difficult topics, all of them intent on once again keeping the peace.
Jeri was learning that peace had a price.
She removed her thumbnail from her mouth and picked at the jagged edge her teeth had made. She’d stopped chewing her nails in high school, but now the habit was back. Stress did that to her. Living under her parents’ roof again had been just as stifling as she had imagined. The problem was they wanted to treat her as if she’d never left home, and she had very definitely gotten used to living on her own. If she stayed in Nashville, she would have to find a job and move out. That would probably break her mother’s heart all over again.
It was clear that Connie Bowman hadn’t agreed with the way Lance had handled telling Jeri that she was adopted. Actually, he hadn’t handled it. Every time Connie had spoken about the way Lance had silenced any mention of the first few years of Jeri’s life, Connie would tear up and start sniffing into a crumpled up tissue.
It seemed weird thinking of them as Connie and Lance inste
ad of Momma and Daddy. Over the last few weeks, she’d gotten used to calling them by their given names, but Jeri could tell that Lance was still uncomfortable and Connie was still shocked. Lance seemed to choke up and clear his throat every time Jeri called him by his first name. Connie flinched as if she’d been punched. Sometimes Jeri felt so hard-hearted. What was her insistence on refusing to call them Momma and Daddy costing them? What was it costing her? Her stubbornness wasn’t making her any more or less independent from them.
Lance didn’t understand her fascination with the Deville family. She’d asked a lot of questions for which he didn’t give her adequate answers. Maybe he didn’t know the answers. Maybe he didn’t want Jeri to know any more about them than she already did.
But she had listened to him, really listened. It had occurred to her that Lance Bowman had done what he’d done because he was trying to protect her from the unknown, an unknown that obviously scared him. It was hard for a man like Lance to admit he was scared.
Connie, on the other hand, thought maybe it was time that Jeri learned the true reasons Lance didn’t want her around her birth father’s family. She wouldn’t tell Jeri anything, claiming that she knew nothing more than Jeri did, but she didn’t try to stop Jeri from finding out more. More than a few times over the last few weeks, Jeri had borrowed her mother’s car and driven north toward Imogene’s place. Imogene had introduced her to distant cousins she never knew she had. They’d spoken with friends of the family who knew Sheldon and Imogene and their parents. Slowly but surely, the story of how the Devilles had begun to understand and use the gift that they passed down from generation to generation had been revealed. It was like a mosaic that Jeri had struggled to piece together, but she was finally shifting all the pieces into place.
And the truth scared her. She had been right to leave New Orleans. Since she’d left, she hadn’t had another vision. Sometimes, it seemed the gift had completely left her. Had any of her previous visions been fulfilled? Would she ever know if they had?
She felt like she’d been away from New Orleans for a very long time, a lifetime. More than once, she’d almost called Nick to tell him what she’d learned, but she always stopped short before calling him. She’d left him and his skepticism behind in New Orleans. For his protection, if for no other reason. On the outer edges of her consciousness, she sensed that her presence in New Orleans was dangerous not only for her or for Jackson’s future victims, but also for Nick. She’d had a funny feeling that the only way to keep him from harm was to keep away from him.
When she glanced up, Lance was hovering over her. “I need to tell you something.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the seat and made room for him on the swing.
“Jerilyn…” He dragged out her name. Emotion swelled behind the man’s eyes.
She’d never seen Lance Bowman this way. For most of her life, she’d thought the man was made of stainless steel. No emotions. Rigid. Always in control.
“I want you to know… I’m not good at saying how I feel, so I might not say this the way I mean it. But I’m gonna try… I’ve raised you like you were my own daughter… No, that isn’t exactly so.” He held up a hand before she could respond. “Please listen.” She nodded, and he continued. “I’ve raised you the way I have because I’ve never thought of you any other way than as my daughter. I love you because you are my daughter. I will always think of you that way.”
A wad of strong emotion climbed up Jeri’s chest and lodged in her throat.
“I did what I did because I love you. I saw what Jackson Deville did to my sister, and I didn’t want that happening to you. He charmed her and married her before she had time to think about what she was doing and then twisted her into knots. He had her believing in things that were dark and frightening. He had her doing things that sane, decent people don’t do. I lost touch with her for years. He had cut her off from everyone that loved her. When she came to me to tell me about you…you were just five years old…she was scared out of her mind because he was already talking about marrying you off to one of his buddy’s children, to an older man who lived and believed just like Jackson did.”
He rubbed his eyes and then continued. “It was like a light had come on inside Darlene’s head. She made me promise to keep you away from Jackson and his father…and especially his friends. If I was stern with you…if I was too strict with you…if it seemed Connie and I smothered you, we only did it to protect you from them because we were all afraid he’d take you away and we’d never see you again.”
She waited a moment, just long enough to push down her rising emotions.
Jeri grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I know, Daddy.”
It was time to tell him what she’d been doing behind his back. She licked her lips because her father was going to explode. “Why did you tell me Jackson Deville is dead? He isn’t. I’ve met him.”
His eyes filled with dread. “You’ve met him?”
“He’s stalking me. That’s why I came back here. To get away from him.”
She hadn’t told Lance everything because she was only beginning to see things clearly, and she wasn’t yet ready to freak her father out. The knowing was hard. Jackson was stalking Jeri to find his next victim.
“You should have told me you were in danger.”
“You should have told me he was still alive.” She shook her head. “I knew it was a lie when you said it. I’d already met him.”
“I’ve tried all your life to protect you from him. I didn’t want you trying to find him.”
Well, it was too late for that. Jackson had already found her.
Jeri went in a different direction, afraid to dig deeper into the topic she’d barely touched with her father. “I’ve been visiting Imogene.”
He didn’t erupt as she thought he would. A long silence ensued. Then, when he spoke, he shocked the hell out of her.
“Did she tell you about all that supernatural stuff they believe?”
She couldn’t believe he’d acknowledged its existence. Jeri paused a moment before she answered, gathering her thoughts and sorting them into something they could both live with. “The things she told me… The things that other people up there told me… I understand why you were scared for me.”
“You’ve spoken with other people who live up there?”
“I needed to understand, Daddy. I know you don’t want to believe it, but I do. I have the gift. Sheldon gave it to me. Now, I have to figure out what to do with it.”
Horror flashed across Lance Bowman’s face.
“You have to trust me. Sheldon abused it. He knew that Jackson wanted it. He knew that Jackson wanted to corrupt it. So Sheldon kept it from him. He passed it to me because he was afraid of what Jackson would do with it. Sheldon hoped that I’d be different. And I am different from them. You have to believe that I’m different. That I’ll do the right thing. Because that’s the way you raised me.”
Jeri had never seen a tear in the man’s eyes…until that moment.
“Now that I know what I have, I can’t ignore it. But I promise you, I won’t use it the way Sheldon did, and I won’t let it consume me the way it consumed him. I won’t let lust for its power warp me like it warped Jackson. The gift scares me. It feels like…so much. But you have to understand; I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. If I don’t control it, it will control me.”
It was obvious from the growing expression of alarm on her father’s face that he wasn’t sure what she meant. “What exactly is it that you think you have to control, Jerilyn?”
She squeezed his hand harder. “I can see the future, and I have to decide how that’s going to affect other people’s lives.”
He withdrew his hand and scooted back from her. “Now you’re just talking nonsense.”
She could see it in his eyes. He knew she had the gift. He’d been in denial about its existence all the years of her existence.
“No, I’m not talking nonsense, and you know it. That’s why y
ou’ve been so scared for me. Things have already happened just like I saw them, and now it’s my responsibility to decide what I’m going to do about what I know.”
The knowing was so much harder than the seeing.
A rustle from the lawn just beyond the edge of the darkness startled both of them. Lance leaned forward and stared into the darkness.
Jerilyn already knew who hovered just out of sight.
“Imogene, come into the light.”
Her great aunt emerged from the shadows.
Lance jumped to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a message for Lorelei.”
“Don’t call her that” Lance spit out his objection to the use of Jeri’s birth name.
Jeri placed a calming hand on his forearm, and he seemed to settle down.
“What message?”
“Nick is in trouble. You need to help him.”
Imogene’s words snatched the breath from Jeri.
“Is he okay? Has he been shot?”
The other woman shook her head. “He’s about to go down a wrong path, and you’re the only one who can stop him. You know things that he needs to know.” Imogene’s eyes never strayed from hers, never blinked. “You think you’ll stop this by staying here, but it’s too late. You can’t stop what’s already happened.”
Had another woman died even though Jeri had stayed out of New Orleans?
Jeri turned to her father, the man she’d always called Daddy, trying her best to speak an apology with her eyes, her body language, the expression on her face. “I’m sorry. I have to go back to New Orleans. As soon as possible.”
He flinched. She could see the objection forming on his lips, but he never let it come out of his mouth. Maybe he was wise enough to know that some things had to be.
She turned to speak to Imogene again, but the woman was gone.
Her father pulled her into a strong embrace, the first time he’d ever hugged her. “You’re going to go no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 20