Now, all three of them were on the ground, punching and rolling and kicking. None of the moves Nick had learned in his training seemed to land on the guy in just the right spot. Petrie’s attempts to subdue the man were equally ineffective. Petrie’s fist swung at the guy’s head just as the man shifted his position, causing Petrie to roll toward Nick. They scrambled to untangle from one another. The Photographer grabbed his broken camera and was on his feet.
“Stop, you son-of-a-bitch.” Petrie’s voice rippled with a massive amount of pissed-offedness.
The guy froze for half a breath, just long enough for Nick to think he was going to cooperate. In that split second, a scream split the night air. Nick and Petrie involuntarily jerked their heads to locate where the noise was coming from, and Deville bolted down the street into the night.
Another ear-splitting scream made Nick’s heart jolt.
By the time Nick could get on his feet again, the guy was gone. Petrie used Nick’s arm to pull himself up.
Nick grabbed a ragged breath and glanced at Petrie’s bloody face. “You okay?”
Another scream gave them no time to assess the damage. He had no choice but to investigate the distress call and let Deville go.
Petrie pointed down the street where Deville had disappeared. “I catch him. You go find out who’s screaming.”
Nick nodded. He would have preferred chasing Deville, but he could already feel the soreness in his ribs. Petrie set off after Deville, and Nick headed toward the direction of the distress call.
When he finally located the screaming woman, she pointed them toward a message scrawled on a fence. The bright red contrasted the white paint, brilliant even in the dark of the night, illuminated by the faint light of the moon.
She’s already gone. Find her if you can.
There, nailed to the wood by a knife, was a photograph of a woman. Her glassy eyes grabbed Nick’s gaze and held it. The photo had been taken while the woman was dying. Just like the pictures of Alison Ardoin.
By now, Nick was familiar with the faces of Deville’s potential victims, the women Jerilyn had already identified. Staring back at him from her photo with large, frightened eyes was Deville’s second victim, Caroline Leblanc.
Nick snatched the knife from the wood and grabbed the picture. He ran back to his sister’s house, his heart nearly beating out of his chest. When he reached the front door, he yanked on the locked doorknob and then pounded with his fist, fearful that Deville had gotten to Jeri while he was staring at the man’s hideous message.
“Jeri? Answer me.”
She jerked the door open.
Nick pulled Jeri into his arms. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“What’s going on, Nick?” Her voice trembled.
Sure, he knew that she knew what he’d say before he said it.
“She’s already gone. Just like you said she’d be.”
Petrie grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, almost knocking Jeri down with the effort. “That was a very weird thing for you to say to her. I want to know what you meant. Because that doesn’t sound good for you or for her.”
Apparently, Deville had gotten away. Nick wanted to punch Petrie’s lights out. Not because his partner had done anything to irritate him but because Nick needed to release the anxious dread that was building inside him.
Jackson Deville was taunting him.
Chapter Twenty-five
Another shimmer of fear rippled through Jeri. Why hadn’t Nick and his partner been able to catch Jackson Deville? He’d been right there within their reach.
Petrie kept shaking his head and talking about how unnaturally strong the man had been. Was that true or just his way of covering for the fact he couldn’t subdue the guy? Nick was disturbingly quiet about what had happened outside, but Jeri had viewed the incident from the window of his sister’s house. She’d seen them struggle with Jackson.
She’d always heard that certain psychological disorders manifested with almost superhuman strength. Or maybe the man had gathered strength from a dark, powerful force. It certainly appeared as if Jackson couldn’t be stopped.
But Jackson Deville had to be stopped.
Petrie sat across from her at the shiny steel table while Nick paced behind him, nervous as a cat at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Back on Laurel Street, a crime scene investigator was gathering evidence from the fence. There they sat in an interrogation room, waiting for the man to report back to Nick. It was likely that he wouldn’t have anything definitive to say until the tests…whatever tests people like that ran…were back from wherever tests like that were done.
A million questions worked Petrie’s jaw, but nothing came out of his mouth. His skepticism glittered in his eyes. Jeri could read his face. He wasn’t prepared to believe her. So why should she bother telling him what she knew? Why didn’t he leave her alone with Nick? She could tell Nick things she couldn’t tell anyone else.
“She said she saw other names and pictures on our case board, Moreau. How does she know about other victims? You said she was imagining things…” Of course, Petrie remembered what she’d said when she’d told Nick about the other women on the whiteboard. Nick had tried to cover for her by saying she had been traumatized, but she guessed Petrie hadn’t bought Nick’s cover story. “Is she claiming that she can see things before they happen?”
His words were sharp and scored her integrity. He had addressed his question to Nick instead of her, which meant he was dismissing her like she wasn’t there.
“Yes.” Nick and Jeri answered together.
Nick followed up their answer with a sharper retort. “She’s sitting right here. You can talk straight to her, you know.”
Petrie rolled his eyes. “So you’re saying she’s a psycho.”
“You mean a psychic and, your attitude sucks, Waylon.”
Petrie grunted and addressed his comment to Jeri. “Moreau only calls me by my given name when he’s being an ass.”
Well, Petrie was being an ass.
Petrie sighed. “I was named for Waylon Jennings. My mother claims that he’s my real father. She’s a little… My real father is a shrimper out of Morgan City. Everybody knows that.”
“Your mother doesn’t seem to know.”
Petrie muttered his objection to Nick’s callous disregard for his feelings. “Leave my mother out of this.” He slid his chair away from the table, and the legs screeched across the vinyl. “Okay, then… If she can see things, maybe she can tell us where the guy is hiding. Can she see that?”
Jeri’s jaw muscles twitched. Her fingers flexed. “I haven’t seen anything since I went back to Nashville. It’s like…the screen has gone blank.”
“Well, now, that’s convenient, isn’t it?”
Petrie’s attitude chipped away at her confidence. “I’ve tried to control when I see things, but the visions come to me when they want, not when I want them to. I’ve tried to force a vision. It doesn’t work that way.”
Nick finally took a seat next to Jeri. “Why do you think you’ve stopped seeing?”
His sympathetic tone eased the tension in her stomach.
“I don’t know.” And she didn’t. “I’ve tried to figure out what triggers a vision, but there doesn’t seem to be a pattern.” She lifted her head and glared at Petrie. “I would rather not have them at all, but I’m stuck with this…ability.” She no longer thought of it as a gift. It was a damnable curse.
Petrie stood and hovered over them, glaring at Nick. “You have to excuse yourself from this case.”
Nick jumped to his feet to face Petrie. “I’m not giving up this case until I’ve got him.”
Petrie pointed a long finger at Jeri. “You can’t sleep with her and go after her father. That’s a major conflict.”
“I’m not sleeping with her.” Nick roared his denial.
Jeri’s objection was quieter. “He won’t sleep with me.” She shifted her gaze toward Nick.
Petrie huffed his disagreement. “If y
ou aren’t sleeping together, then you want to. It’s all over you. I can smell it on you.”
“You’re right. I have a personal interest in catching the guy. I want him locked up before he hurts Jeri or shoots me. Doesn’t matter. I’m not taking myself off this case.”
“Shoots you?” Petrie’s eyebrows raised about a mile high. “Has she told you that you’re going to get shot?” The fire died from his argument quickly, as if one of them had thrown cold water over him. “You’ve already been shot.”
Jeri glanced at Nick, and he caught her stare. Nick answered him. “It’s supposed to be worse next time.”
“Incredible. You’re still chasing the guy even though you think you know the guy is going to shoot you.”
“What’s so weird about that, Petrie? Cops chase people that might shoot them all the time. It’s part of the job. What’s your point?”
Jeri placed a hand on Nick’s arm. “I never said Jackson would shoot you, Nick. I didn’t see the man’s face.”
Nick shook his head. “I think it’s pretty obvious the guy is taunting me. It’s not so hard to believe he’d try to kill me, is it?”
Petrie’s gotcha smirk wasn’t easy to look at. “It’s a pretty big coincidence that we find another body right when she shows up again in New Orleans.”
Now, Jeri was on her feet as well. “I came back here because someone told me Nick needed my help.”
“Someone? Who?”
A knock on the door split their argument down the middle. The crime scene tech popped his head through the door.
“We’re done at the scene. Prelim test indicated it was human blood. No prints on the picture. We’re going to do analysis on the knife in the lab. I’ll let you know what we find. We’re sending samples of the blood to the state lab for DNA testing.” He handed a plastic evidence bag to Nick. “That’s the picture.”
Nick responded to the tech. “We’ll begin the process of trying to identify the woman.”
The tech nodded and left them.
Petrie leaned across the table toward Jeri. “So show her the picture, Moreau. Maybe she’s seen the woman in a dream.” He glared at Jeri. “So tell us…who is she?”
Nick opened the file and showed Petrie the photograph.
He fell back a step. “She was on that list of yours. The list that you wouldn’t tell me where you got the names. That list. We’ve already talked to her.”
“Jeri gave me a list of the names she saw on the whiteboard in her vision so I could warn them to be careful. That’s why I talked to them. If she was going to kill them, why would she beg me to warn them?”
When Jeri caught a glimpse of the picture, she recognized the image. “Caroline Leblanc.”
She reached for the blood-stained photo. As soon as she held it in her hands, she felt a pulse of energy rush through her. She closed her eyes, better to feel every one of her emotions, experience the ping to every one of her senses.
Nick nudged her arm. “Jeri, are you okay?”
Jeri sniffed back the sudden urge to sob. She’d tried so hard to be brave through everything, to be strong. But a person can only take so much pummeling to the psyche by other people’s desperate emotions before the swell of feelings breeches the dam.
“She’s already dead. Someone is going to find her tomorrow.” She opened her eyes and stared first at Nick and then at his partner. “You’d better have an umbrella with you. It’s going to storm.”
Petrie’s impatience flew all over them. “If you can see that, why can’t you tell us where to find him?”
He’d already asked that question, but his tone had changed. He no longer sounded sarcastic. But his words still held a load of skepticism.
“I could see the room, but I don’t know where he is. I’ve never been there before.”
Nick grabbed her elbow. Electricity zipped around them, sparking where his fingers gripped her bare flesh.
“He’s there with her now?”
“I think so. I wish I could tell you where he is.”
Nick pushed her back into a chair and sat in another, pulling himself up close to her. “Close your eyes. Pull the scene back up.”
She licked her lips and closed her eyes.
“Tell me everything you remember.”
Petrie muttered behind her.
She let loose a long, slow exhale before trying to tell them what she’d seen. “It’s an old house. No one lives there. There was no sound. But I never hear sounds with a vision. It’s always so…quiet. She was on the floor. Lots of blood. Everywhere. He hung her pictures on the walls. Lots of pictures. He wrote something on the wall, but I couldn’t read it.”
“Can you tell me anything about the victim?”
“Her hands were tied even though she was already dead.”
“What about the killer? Can you see the killer?”
The next revelation made no sense to her.
“I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders shook… I think…he was crying.”
“Crying?” Nick and Petrie voiced their surprise together.
“This is going to sound…weird.”
Petrie snorted. “No weirder than anything else you’ve said or done. Go ahead. Try us. Tell us what’s so weird. Besides him crying.”
She opened her eyes and blinked back a tear. She hated the knowing. It took her to a darker place than she had ever wanted to go. “He doesn’t want to kill them. The blood… He thinks… This is so twisted.”
Nick grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Go on, Jeri. What do you know?”
Know? So he understood about the knowing.
“He thinks he’s sharing their life if he shares their blood.”
Petrie belted out his sarcasm. “Sharing their life? That’s ridiculous. How can he share their life if he’s killing them?” He twisted to glare at Nick. “You’ve been so sure he wasn’t a serial killer. You’ve got the captain convinced it’s not a serial killing. If you believe what she says, you’ve been wrong, Moreau. Dead wrong. If another woman dies because you didn’t want to deal with a serial killer, then…”
Jeri busted into his rant. “He didn’t kill Jane Doe.”
Petrie threw up his hands. “Sure, he did.”
“No. He didn’t.” Nick’s calm voice seemed to break through Petrie’s anger. “And until we have a second body or any tangible evidence of a second victim, we don’t have a serial.”
Petrie grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. “You are being very contradictory.”
“Where are you going?”
Petrie spoke over his shoulder and kept moving. “To find Caroline Leblanc. And when I find her… I don’t know. If I find her alive and well, me and the captain are going to have a serious discussion about you, Moreau.”
The door slammed behind him.
****
Just as Jeri had predicted, dark clouds rolled in during the night and inundated New Orleans with a hard shower the following morning. Lightning streaked the sky and illuminated the darkened streets for a split second. He hoped she was wrong about someone finding another victim, but he feared the worst.
Nick shook the water from his raincoat as he entered the squad room. Petrie was waiting for him, ready to pounce.
“I checked up on your girl.”
Nick counted to five in his head before he responded. “And what did you find?”
“She was on an airplane when Jane Doe was murdered.”
He had expected a report on the whereabouts of Caroline Leblanc. Instead, his partner had been checking up on his… His girlfriend. Was Jeri his girlfriend? Had he started thinking of her that way? Did she think of him as her boyfriend?
Nick tilted his head and stared at Petrie with his eyebrows raised.
Petrie cleared his throat. “So she couldn’t have murdered her.”
Nick draped his coat over the back of his chair. “I could have told you that.” His tone was ice cold. He dropped into his rolling chair and pulled up to his desk, flipped open
the Jane Doe case file on his desk, ignoring Petrie.
“She’s a nutjob, Moreau.”
Nick lifted his gaze to meet Petrie’s. He’d had enough. “I’m not going to talk about Jeri with you anymore.” He put a bit of supervisory attitude into his tone. “Have you found Caroline Leblanc yet?”
Petrie seemed to lose his voice. He coughed and muttered without answering the question.
“You said you were going to find her. Did you?”
“Her neighbor says she hasn’t seen her around for a couple of weeks. Her employer said she quit her job a few weeks ago. Out of the blue. And she didn’t say if she had gotten a new job or not. The week before she left she’d told some of her co-workers that she’d been seeing a man she’d just met.”
Alarm bells clanged in Nick’s head. “Let’s see if we can get into her place. Find out who her landlord is.”
Petrie started tapping on his keyboard with furious jabs and punches.
Nick blinked the lack of sleep from his eyes and refocused on the file in front of him.
Jane Doe was dumped. Why dump her in the abandoned hotel? Was the killer mocking the Ardoin murder, or was the location just a bloody coincidence?
His desk phone rang, startling him out of his irritation toward Petrie.
“What?”
Detective Troy spilled his information in one big rush. “No CCTV aimed at the front door of the hotel or the back. The canvas of the neighborhood didn’t turn up anything. No one saw them enter or anyone leave on that day. But the woman in the building next door acted odd. Like she knew something but didn’t want to talk.”
“Okay. I’ll follow up with her. What’s her name?”
Troy gave him the woman’s name.
Great. All he needed was another weirdo to deal with. He’d gotten lucky with the video of Jackson Deville entering the alley next to the building on Dauphine. Apparently, he only had so much luck with CCTV.
“Okay. Thanks.”
He tapped his pen on the file. The words were starting to blur. He’d been awake too long without any real sleep. The previous night, he’d found a motel room out in Kenner and stayed with Jeri. She’d practically passed out before they could get physical. He’d curled up next to her but couldn’t sleep with her so close and his fears weighing so heavy on his mind. The specter of investigating another victim of The Photographer kept churning his mind and his gut. Sometime in the early hours, he’d finally fallen asleep, only to wake up with the worst case of nausea he’d had since he’d thrown up in the ER after he’d been shot.
Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1) Page 23