Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  Barely had he replaced the receiver before the phone rang again. He listened as the caller gave him the information. Weariness settled over his soul.

  Petrie slid his chair back and rose to his feet. “Leblanc’s landlord is going to meet us at her apartment.”

  Nick sighed and stood. “That’ll have to wait.”

  Petrie spluttered his objection. “It wasn’t easy getting that old man to agree to let us in, Moreau.”

  Nick caught the younger cop’s eye and held his angry stare. “There’s another body.”

  Petrie deflated as if Nick had just jabbed him with a long, sharp needle.

  “Where?”

  “An abandoned house on Esplanade.”

  “Same MO?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably.” He waited for the horrible reality to sink in. “It’s her.”

  “How the hell do you know that? Was there identification with the body this time?”

  Nick sucked back his horror at what the dispatch operator had told him. “It’s her. He left me a message on the bedroom wall…in what looks like blood.” He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and glanced toward the window. The storm was blowing rain sideways, pounding the window with giant splats.

  “You? Specifically?”

  He could see all sorts of objections forming behind Petrie’s horrified stare.

  The captain broke into their stare down. “Why are you still here?”

  So Ed Moreau had already been advised of the body on Esplanade.

  “Boss, I don’t think Nick should be—”

  Ed pointed his finger at Petrie. “I make those kinds of decisions, Petrie. Don’t you forget that.”

  Petrie backed up a step as if Ed had marched straight at him.

  Ed twisted to face Nick. “You’d better break this case before it breaks you. Quit worrying about that girl and worry about your career, Nick.”

  Did Ed mean Nick’s career or his career? Ed’s ass was on the line as well. Ed had to answer for Nick’s performance just as much or maybe more than Nick did.

  Nick headed toward the door. Petrie’s heavy footsteps thudded on the floor right behind him. Would the man ever learn to tread lightly? There could be a time when that skill could save his life.

  He’d been working out something in his head when he’d gotten the phone call from Troy that the CCTV was useless. He shot his thoughts back at Petrie. “We need to see if there is a connection between the three crime scenes. Let’s see if we can find the owners and speak to them.”

  Of course, he knew who had owned The Royale Chateau Hotel. The current owner of the name Les Wakefield. It seemed that name attached to one imposter after another. What was it with the Wakefields? It was like the family name had a curse attached to it. There was a new Les in town. Maybe there was a connection between the Wakefield property and the building on Dauphine and the house of Esplanade.

  Nick took the stairs a quick pace with Petrie right behind him.

  “I tried to find out who owned the building on Dauphine. The tenant on the ground floor pays her rent to a management company. The management company wasn’t talking.”

  Nick slammed his hand on the bar handle and pushed the outer door open. He pointed toward the lot. “Your car.” He didn’t care for Petrie’s jerking driving skills, but it was raining, and Petrie’s car was closer.

  Grumbling assaulted him from behind. He ignored Petrie’s complaints, which would probably make him even grouchier.

  By the time they pulled up to the scene on Esplanade, the first responders had already cordoned the block off, diverting traffic away from the area. When he entered the house, he didn’t recognize the uniformed officer at the bottom of the stairs, so he flashed the guy his badge. The man handed him a mask, silently motioned him up the stairs, and jotted Nick’s name in the log.

  Nick could smell death from the ground floor. He climbed the stairs in slow motion, dreading what he’d find. The upstairs hallway wasn’t long enough to stall the inevitable. In the back bedroom, he found Caroline Leblanc.

  Petrie hovered right behind Nick, gagging and gulping. The younger cop had probably never seen a body so dead.

  “How long you think she’s been gone, Moreau?”

  Nick released the breath he’d been holding. “She isn’t fresh. I’m guessing she’s been dead two or three weeks.”

  Petrie whispered close to his ear. “Is that an educated guess or a Jerilyn Bowman guess?”

  Nick shot Petrie an ugly glance. “A little bit of both.”

  He circled the body, absorbing what details that he could. Decomp had already started erasing marks on the body. There was still enough tissue left that Nick could see the rather large hole in the victim’s neck. He leaned away from the body. That observation blew one of his theories. So Sheldon Deville hadn’t made the hole in Ardoin’s neck. Had the two men, father and son, collaborated in the death of Alison Ardoin? Was the son, Jackson, now going it alone?

  A shiver ran up and down Nick’s spine. Finally, he allowed his gaze to scan the walls of the small bedroom. Dried blood smeared the walls. He’d seen bloodier scenes, for sure, but there was something a thousand times more sinister about this particular scene. The vibe felt manic and driven. Psychotic.

  The killer had tacked photographs of Caroline Leblanc to the walls. By now, Nick recognized what was once a pretty face. As sick as that was, it wasn’t the most unnerving thing about the scene.

  Nick studied the message scrawled on the wall in dried blood.

  She belongs to me. You can’t have her.

  Without a doubt, the killer meant Jerilyn. He punched in the number for her new cell phone and was relieved to hear her voice.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  There was no way to prevent the public from finding out about Leblanc’s death. It didn’t take long for word to spread that she wasn’t the first victim. So Ed had to do what Ed had to do and held a conference. As the sun set in the west, Ed faced the press on the front steps of the district station house. There was no other way to calm the panic that was sure to spread like black mold in a humid bathroom if the public’s fears weren’t addressed.

  Nick watched the crowd gathered as his uncle worked the press. If he got lucky, Deville wouldn’t be able to resist making an appearance. It seemed he wouldn’t get lucky. The local news reporters wanted none of Ed’s bland reassurances that the police were doing everything to stop the killer before he struck again. The vultures wanted details. Gross, sickening details. They wanted blood.

  There were a few details that the NOPD was holding back from the public. Like the large gaping holes in the victims’ necks. But they hadn’t been able to keep the bloody message quiet. Only its content had been kept from public knowledge. The woman who had seen the message written on the fence on Nick’s sister’s street had already spoken to the press. The connection had been made.

  A tall man in a raincoat raised his voice above the rest. He stuck his microphone toward Ed and shouted his obnoxious question. “Is it true that the killer left your detectives a message in blood earlier this week?”

  Actually, it was the previous day.

  Nick suppressed the urge to squirm. It had already been a long, miserable day. He needed to be working the case instead of having his actions criticized. He needed to check on Jeri instead of watching his uncle, his boss, try to cover for Nick’s perceived inadequacies.

  Ed couldn’t deny the message. The neighbor had already gone public with it before Nick could persuade her to keep it to herself.

  “Yes, there was a message left on a fence. We’re still trying to establish who wrote it and why.”

  Nick’s sister was going to rip him up one side and down the other. She wouldn’t want people snooping around her place asking questions.

  “And wasn’t there a photograph of the victim nailed to the fence?”

  The neighbor lady had done her worst.

  Nick rubbed his tired eyes. Maybe he shou
ldn’t have. The action might be perceived as a sign of weakness when the police needed to show a unified, solid front.

  “We haven’t made a positive ID on the victim yet.”

  “So you’re saying the photo wasn’t of the victim.”

  Ed had obviously had enough. “No, I’m saying this is an on-going investigation, and I am not going to comment on the identity of the woman in the photograph.”

  Another reporter, this time a woman with long red-painted nails, shouted above the rest. “Is it true that the killer likes to take photographs of his victims?”

  “Yes, that appears to be part of his method.”

  “So then you’re saying that women in New Orleans, particularly in the Quarter, should be wary of any man who wants to take her picture?”

  Ed rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I think that everyone should be aware of the risks of getting too comfortable with strangers, not just in New Orleans, but anywhere in the world. It’s always best to be wary and observant.”

  The press wanted to label Deville a serial killer. Ed didn’t want them to do that. Nick understood Ed’s vague language, and he was quite certain the more experienced reporters in the bunch understood it as well.

  “So if you had a picture of his next victim, why couldn’t your officers prevent her from being killed?”

  Ed appeared to be the soul of patience, exaggerating his enunciation as if the reporter had asked a very stupid question. “The victim found this morning has been dead for several weeks. We couldn’t have identified her from the photograph and prevented her death.”

  Yet she had been interviewed and warned to be vigilant, a fact that Ed believed it prudent to keep quiet. How soon would it be before the other women Nick had interviewed would put it all together? How big of a mess would that create?

  Another reporter pushed to the front of the crowd. His too slick, television-presenter voice grated on Nick’s last nerve.

  “Do you have a suspect in these killings?”

  Ed hesitated, and his reluctance to answer the question rippled through the crowd gathered around him. “Yes, we do.”

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  “This is the early stage of an on-going investigation. I can’t comment on our suspect yet.”

  A short, angry blonde woman shouldered her way until her microphone was practically in Ed’s face. “Are you going to handle this better than you handled the Scarlet Thread Killings ten years ago?”

  Nick groaned. It was a fair question. The NOPD had known who the suspect in those killings was and had failed to warn the public of his menace before it was too late.

  The woman wasn’t finished. “Surely, you’ve assigned a different detective to this case.”

  Nick could hear Maris Couvillian snorting and hissing behind him.

  “The lead detective in that case is consulting on this case. I don’t think we can afford to ignore her expertise in investigating multiple killings.”

  The reporter gouged at Ed’s supervisory competence once again. “Is her expertise going to include pulling the FBI into the investigation again?”

  Ed slammed his casebook closed. He hadn’t been referring to it. Ed had a sharp memory for details. It was mostly a prop.

  “I’m not taking any more questions. My officers need to get back to work to solve this case.” He barked his comments, and from his tone, it was clear he thought talking to the press was a waste of time. Ed wasn’t going to get them on his side with his attitude. He already had a hate/hate relationship with them.

  Ed walked away from the podium at a quick clip. Nick scanned the crowd one more time. Deville hadn’t shown up for his party.

  ****

  Nick still couldn’t shake the feeling that the Ardoin and Leblanc murder scenes were connected. Maybe it was a bad idea, but Nick wanted to observe what would happen if Jerilyn spent a little time in the house on Esplanade.

  He’d put Petrie onto the task of locating the other two potential victims: Marissa Dorsette and Jolene Perry. It had been a couple of hours since Petrie began his search for them without any word that he had found them. Every second that passed wound his already taut nerves tighter.

  He’d finished with the ME at the morgue. No surprise that Leblanc had died the same way that Ardoin had.

  Nick had sorted through all the evidence he’d collected, all the fact of the case he’d been able to nail down. He needed a strong lead to yank on. Inactivity was his enemy. He had to do something to move the two cases toward a conclusion. Waiting in the squad room for something to drop onto his desk wasn’t going to get the job done.

  So now he and Jerilyn stood at the bottom of the stairs in the house on Esplanade.

  He grabbed her hand. “Are you sure you’re okay with doing this?”

  She continued gazing up the stairs. “I said I would help if I could.”

  He expected to feel her trembling, but she was steady as a rock. Jeri might have been the bravest person he’d ever met. To stand there and face the unknown. Sometimes he had to do that in his line of work, but not to this extent, not this way.

  She pointed up the stairs. “So you found her upstairs?”

  He nodded, watching every micro-reaction that shadowed her features.

  She pulled him toward the stairs, and he followed rather than led. To Nick, it seemed the roles were reversed. Shouldn’t he be taking the lead? Somehow, he knew Jeri had to do this thing her way.

  When the reached to upstairs hallway, Nick pushed ahead and cut the tape across the bedroom door to let her enter. She stood in the center of the room and wrapped her arms around her. He didn’t want to push her too hard to tell him what she was feeling. No prompting her or putting thoughts in her head. He wanted an untainted reaction. So he waited.

  After an interminably long time, she twisted to face him. “Can you feel it?”

  The blood evidence was still on the floor and the walls. The message was still visible. A crime scene tech had removed and bagged the photos. He might or might not show them to her. Sure, Nick felt something, but he would call it nausea.

  She elaborated without prompting. “I can feel his evil. It pulses. It’s… I didn’t want to know his evil. His motives for killing them…so sick.” Her voice pleaded with him for acceptance. “I’m not sick like he is.”

  Nick nodded his head slowly, making sure he held eye contact with her. “I know that.”

  He watched as she dropped to the floor and pulled three silver containers from her backpack. He recognized one of the chalices from her collection. The other chalice he’d never seen before, and the shallow bowl was unfamiliar to him.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  She glanced up at him and blinked. “Trust me, Nick.”

  He trusted her, but he wasn’t sure he trusted what was about to happen. She pulled a switchblade knife from her bag.

  “Whoa! What are you going to do with that?”

  Once again, she blinked up at him. “Trust me, Nick.”

  His gut wrenched. She was about to do something absolutely crazy.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever you’re about to do isn’t worth it, Jeri?”

  Tears formed in the corners of her turquoise blue eyes. “If I can stop him from killing again, whatever I go through is worth it.”

  He doubted that.

  Before he could stop her, she’d punctured a hole in her thumb and dripped blood into the three receptacles. Jeri had squeezed her eyes shut. As soon as the third drop splatted onto the silver surface of the bowl, she swayed and moaned.

  He should stop her. Maybe a hard shove would break her out of the spell she’d fallen under. He reached for her, but she scrambled to her feet and raced out of the room. When he caught up with her, she stood at the door of a huge walk-in closet. Once again, he attempted to reach out to her, but she was on the move again.

  She stumbled into the closet and placed her hands on the back wall. A shudder passed over her. When she turned to
face Nick, her eyes glowed with a mania he’d never seen in them.

  “I used to live here.”

  “In this house?”

  The tears streamed down her face. “No, in this closet.”

  The horror of what she was saying swept over him. Had her parents kept her locked in a closet when she was young?

  “He’s destroyed himself with his hate. He hated his father for not passing on the gift to him. He hated my mother for having me. He hated her for leaving him. He hated himself for driving her away. He loves to hate. I can’t go into that dark place in his mind again. I just…can’t do it. It’s so cold.” She jerked as if she were going to bolt into action but then didn’t move. “I have to get rid of them.”

  “Get rid of what?”

  “The chalices and the bowl.” She moved toward him and wrapped cold fingers around his wrist. “They have to go into the fire.”

  Why fire?

  She answered as if reading his mind. “They have to be melted down so no one else can use them…ever.”

  Jeri wasn’t talking sense. Her movements were becoming more jerky. Her facial expressions careened between fear and panic. He wanted to wrap his arms around her to calm her, but he was afraid of her reaction. At the moment, she seemed…untouchable.

  She continued as if she could read his mind. “Blood adds power to the gift, and the gift can either be used for evil or for good.”

  Her explanations were getting progressively more confusing rather than enlightening.

  “What does the silver stuff have to do with blood?”

  “Blood in the silver adds knowing to the seeing. That’s what Jackson wants, and that’s what Sheldon couldn’t handle. That’s why he passed the gift to me. That’s why he gave me the first chalice. He didn’t want Jackson to get his hands on it. He knew the three pieces should be separated.”