Contact

by Evelyn Vaughn

  “After her body’s released?” Greg finished for her, gentle.

  Faith nodded. “And contacting the coroner to see when that will be. The family wants to have two funerals, one here for her friends and one in Caddo, just for them, so I’ve been helping to arrange that.”

  Greg picked up the sheaf of evidence reports that still needed to be entered into the computer system and turned it over. “All the more reason you need a break. Things are crazy with that gang shooting.”

  Krystal’s death hadn’t been the only murder that weekend.

  “But this is a break. Everyone at home…well, they were friends with Krystal longer than I was.” Her roommates smelled of salty tears and wet misery. Their very breathing sounded like an uneven dirge. The usually strong Absinthe’s moods seemed to carry an unpleasant edge of guilt, too. Not that Faith blamed any of them. She felt more than a little guilty that her own grief felt so distant and so, well…mundane.

  Absinthe had distracted herself by increasing the spiritual “shields” around their apartment, with incense and crystals; she’d stayed up all night making protective amulets for each of them. Faith wore hers even now, under her top, more for sentimental reasons than because she believed in it.

  She didn’t disbelieve.

  Moonsong had taken to bed, hoping Krystal’s spirit could contact her in a dream so that they could say a proper goodbye—though Faith thought it was as likely that grief or depression had simply exhausted her. Evan, bless him, had run interference with Krystal’s other friends, spending hours on the phone, answering the same questions over and over. No, they didn’t know why anyone would have killed Krystal. No, the police knew nothing. No, they couldn’t believe she was dead.

  Maybe that was the difference. Faith was the only one among them to have spent time with Krystal’s corpse. She very much believed her friend was dead, so she seemed best able to handle all the customary indignities that shouldn’t be heaped on people in mourning, either her roommates or the poor Tanner family.

  Greg sighed. “Then don’t go home. Go to the zoo or the aquarium. Take a riverboat ride. Go shopping.”

  Faith shook her head. She could justify forgetting Krystal for whole minutes at a time, to focus on her work. But to shop? “I’m good here.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  She stared, confused, and he sighed. “Since you’re personally involved, you’ll want to keep some extra distance from this case. You understand that, don’t you? It’s not that I distrust you, but if anything compromises the evidence…”

  “I understand.” Between this job, and her pre-law work at Tulane, she got evidence.

  Her boss’s pale eyes focused on her as intently as they might focus on a strand of hair, or a fingerprint, or a particular bug he might be studying. Which, from Greg, was quite a compliment.

  She was still startled when she caught a whiff of attraction. Even more when, almost as if an afterthought, he tucked a strand of her blond hair behind her ear.

  Because he was wearing latex gloves—he almost always did, around here—the touch didn’t send an unpleasant jolt through her. In fact, she wouldn’t describe the sensation as unpleasant at all.

  He was a human. She was a human. It was human contact.

  But here, it still unnerved her. To judge from how his eyes widened, it unnerved him, too. Greg stepped quickly back, fisting his hand as if he’d done something wrong with it. And he hadn’t. It wasn’t like he’d traced her lips, or her collarbone. It wasn’t like he’d told her she looked hot in black.

  “I…” he said, then cleared his throat. “Sorry. We’ve still got that Storyville shooting to deal with. I’d better go check on some ballistics results the lab was faxing over….”

  To maybe the relief of both of them, Faith’s phone rang.

  She smiled reassurance at Greg as she picked it up, but he was already hurrying away. “Evidence,” she said.

  “I told you the Quarter was a dangerous place.”

  Faith hadn’t had time to brace herself against this second wave of guilt. “Mother?”

  “I just saw the news,” insisted Tamara Corbett. “Krystal Tanner—she’s one of your roommates, isn’t she? The one from Texas?”

  “Well…she was.”

  “Please, Faith. Don’t try to make light of it!”

  “Trust me, Mom. I’m not making light of anything. But there’s no reason for you to worry. You know she wasn’t killed at the apartment, don’t you?”

  “But she was in the Quarter. Were you there, too?”

  Faith scowled at her computer screen, not sure how to answer that.

  “Oh, baby…” moaned her mother, which was even worse than lecturing. Tamara had always been overly protective of Faith. All they’d ever had was each other. Leaving home to move in with Krystal and the others had been one of the hardest things in Faith’s life. Especially since she’d been able to hear the reality of her mother’s despair in her catching breath, in her pounding heartbeat, as she left. She’d been able to smell it on her, to taste it in the air.

  But that wasn’t the only thing Faith had been sensing when she moved out. The guilt in the air hadn’t just been her own. And until her mom was able to explain what that was all about…

  Well, wasn’t Faith’s life complicated enough?

  “I’m okay, Mom,” she said now, feeling like the grown-up in this equation. “I mean, of course I’m not okay, but considering everything, I’m as good as can be expected. Try not to worry.”

  That was like saying try not to fly away to a frightened bird.

  Or like saying try not to wonder where you’re from to a fatherless girl, which was essentially what her mother had said whenever Faith tried to pursue the mystery that shrouded her past. Had she inherited her freakishly keen senses from her dad’s side of the family? Was it possible she might have cousins, even distant cousins, even one, who understood what she was going through?

  Tamara had always refused to talk about Faith’s dad. He’d left them, he hadn’t wanted them, he’d died, and that was that. Her stubbornness on that front made it easier not to bleed sympathy for her seeming apprehension now.

  “I’m terrified you’re going to pull a Thomas King,” said Tamara, referring of course to the Navy SEAL team leader who’d vanished and been thought dead for over a year, until his recent dramatic rescue. Because of the political ramifications of his mission, he was still making news. “If something happened to you, what would I do? Maybe you should move back home. For a while. Just until things die down.”

  “What things? The funeral? My friends’ grief? They need me now more than ever, Mom.”

  “But you’re so close to Rampart Street, to Storyville….”

  “You’re the one who moved us to the murder capital of the United States.” As soon as she said that, Faith regretted it. Not only was it cruel, but it put the city in far too dark a light. “I’m sorry, Mom—”

  “No. You’re right. I’m just glad to know you’re safe.” And Tamara hung up.

  “Damn!” Faith hung up, too, and pressed fingers to her forehead. She loved New Orleans. She’d been just as glad to leave Kansas City, where she and her mom had lived for two years before coming south. New Orleans had a dark side, yes. But the flaws of this old, magical, slow-moving city were what made it feel like home. It made her own flaws—or her eccentricities, anyway—more acceptable somehow. More normal, even.

  Faith had longed to be normal her whole life. Living amidst the quirks of the Big Easy was as close as she’d come to it, especially once she’d found the psychic community. The older she got, the more aware Faith became of how guilty her mother felt. About something. Tamara wouldn’t say and Faith couldn’t—wouldn’t—sense it off of her. It was one thing to stumble across a jumble of half-clear impressions about someone. It would be another thing entirely to drag out someone’s hard-kept secrets. That would be invasive. A violation. Damn it.

  But whatever it was, Tamara shouldn’t also
feel guilty about moving them here.

  The phone rang again and Faith took a deep breath before answering it. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “Glad to know it,” said a much deeper voice than the one she’d expected. “That’s exactly the word I would have used.”

  His energy actually seemed to pulsate out of the phone. Or was that just the man’s inability to moderate his voice?

  “Detective Chopin,” greeted Faith, sitting up. Like he could see her. At least he’d called, and not his partner. Faith had been on the phone with Butch Jefferson as an anonymous contact too often to risk letting him recognize her disembodied voice. “Do you want to talk to one of the technicians, or maybe Mr. Boulanger?”

  “If I’d wanted to talk to them, I would’ve called them,” he said. “I figured…that is, I thought I’d ask…”

  Faith waited, feeling as handicapped as if she’d been blindfolded. All she could hear over the line in this busy office was that Chopin sounded frustrated. If he were here, she could have read his body language and his scent and even his temperature as if he were holding up cue cards with personal insights. On the phone…

  Maybe that’s why she and cell phones had such a bad history. She resented their limitations.

  “You are Faith Corbett, right?” asked the cop, managing a slightly quieter voice after all.

  “Yes, Detective. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wanted…” Chopin swore, and his voice went normal again. Which meant, pushy. “Evidence. On the Tanner case. We’re past the 24/24, and I need a damned progress report.”

  The 24/24 stood for the day before and the day after a murder, the time from which the most valid clues came. Soon, people’s recall would fade. Undiscovered physical evidence might vanish. That’s why the majority of murders were solved within the first forty-eight hours.

  Krystal had been dead thirty-seven hours and counting.

  “I’m not supposed to involve myself with the Tanner evidence, Detective Chopin.”

  “Which wouldn’t keep you from looking from a safe distance, right? So what’s the status? And call me Roy.”

  He had her there—she had looked, on the computer network. She just hadn’t modified any files. “We’re still waiting on the M.E. for the autopsy results, and so far Officer Hinze hasn’t found concrete matches on any of the fingerprints from the scene. Considering that there were over fifty prints and partials, that’s still going to take some processing. The footprints will be even more tricky—for some reason, there was a lot of spilled salt on the floor. You know this one went to the night shift, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I know. So, is the body still there? Did it—” Then he said, “Aw, f—” He bit off the swear word. “I’m sorry. Hell. I almost forgot it was your friend. I mean…uh…she.”

  “You were right the first time,” Faith assured him. The evidence in the morgue was no longer Krystal. “I hope you’ve got some leads on the bastard who murdered her.”

  He knew better than to commit himself. “Just to humor me—the body’s still there?”

  As in many cities, the crime-scene investigators were not part of the police department, so they didn’t have offices at the police station. Neither was this unit part of the parish—Louisiana talk for a county. As soon as the city coroner finished with the corpse, it would be released to the funeral parlor or moved back to the parish morgue. But as long as it remained evidence to be examined…

  “The body’s still here.” Faith’s fingers darted across her keyboard to access the proper file and confirm that. Looking only. No interference. “Why do you need to know? Do you need to see it for…something?”

  “Unless the M.E. has something pertinent to the case, I’m just as happy leaving that part to you folks. Hell. Maybe I do need to talk to Boulanger.”

  “Hold a moment, and I’ll put you through.” Never had she felt more like a glorified secretary. But at least her job kept her near law enforcement. She’d dropped out of college the previous year when she was questioning everything, including why she’d thought she would even want to be a lawyer. But in the meantime, she had to pay the rent. This job felt…right.

  Greg’s voice mail clicked on, and Chopin swore again.

  “Would you like to leave a message?” Faith asked.

  “No. I’d like you to find him. I need to see if anything got—” Did he start to form the T from taken, or was Faith imagining it? “Hunt Boulanger down and have him call me. Got it?”

  “Yes sir, detective sir,” said Faith.

  “You’re cute when you’re a smart-ass,” said Chopin, as if he could see her, and hung up.

  Faith let the phone roll off her shoulder into her waiting palm. Her neck felt cricked already. But once she had the receiver in her hand, she held it for a long moment, as if she’d be able to sense anything of importance off of it.

  Other than the fact that Officer Leone had used her line recently, she sensed nothing. Not off the telephone, anyway.

  Roy Chopin had called her cute. Actually, at the start of the conversation, he’d called her fine, too. Then he’d gotten self-conscious.

  He’d called to talk to her? Using her friend’s corpse as an excuse? Surely not.

  She’d thought she was socially inept.

  Since she’d been sitting too long anyway, Faith decided to head down to the autopsy room where the medical examiner would be working his magic. If Greg wasn’t with him, she could work her way back from there, but there was no reason to waste time checking the nooks and crannies if she’d only find him where he usually was—with the evidence.

  The frigid autopsy chamber was large for a room, but small for a morgue. Only a dozen stainless steel drawers fronted one wall, with three slabs—two regular steel tables, one with a trough underneath it—positioned down the room’s center. Two of the tables had a sheet-draped body on them. It seemed sad, them left out like this, but Faith supposed bodies were too heavy to put away every time someone ran out for coffee or a bathroom break.

  Either way, nobody was here. Nobody living, anyway.

  She glanced toward the sheet that she thought hid Krystal’s corpse. This time, she couldn’t smell her friend’s presence because she was breathing shallow, through her mouth. Although everything here had been made for easy cleaning—the floor, the tiled walls like a bathroom’s, lots of metal—even the reek of disinfectant couldn’t mask the odor of death.

  “Tell me,” she whispered, keeping her distance as she’d promised Greg she would. Never had she more fervently wished that she really was psychic. “Tell me who did this to you.”

  Then her head—Faith’s head, of course—came up. She heard something in the hallway, male footsteps. Someone was coming.

  Someone who didn’t belong here. In fact…

  She didn’t know those boots. So why did they concern her?

  She concentrated, straining to catch this particular heartbeat. It pulsed more rapidly than the heart of someone who was simply taking care of tasks at work. It sounded more like someone doing something they shouldn’t. And in this otherwise lifeless room, surrounded only by hearts that never would beat again, she recognized it.

  The killer was coming.

  Time to leave, thought Faith—but her feet didn’t move. It wasn’t from courage. Some instinct more powerful than her desire to see the killer’s face was holding her transfixed, listening to those footsteps, listening to that heartbeat. What was different about it? A murmur? A rhythmic anomaly? Could she even be sure it was the killer, and not her imagination?

  Her head couldn’t. But her instincts weren’t letting her go out there, all the same.

  The problem was, he was coming in here. She didn’t have to be psychic to guess that. This room was at the end of a hallway. He was coming in here, and either she stood here and waited for him, or she left by forcing herself to walk right by him—

  Her feet weren’t cooperating.

  He was barely ten feet from the door, if that much
. She could hear it. Nine feet. Eight….

  Faith wanted to stand her ground. But she’d been raised on paranoia for too long. Almost in defeat, she spun, tugged open one of the steel drawers at her feet—

  A man’s ashen face stared back up at her. One of the dead gangbangers. Being a crime victim, he didn’t look happy, even in death.

  The footsteps were only six feet from the doorway. Five….

  She kicked that drawer smoothly closed and yanked the handle of another. It glided open, empty. She swung in, feetfirst.

  Three feet from the doorway…

  Planting either hand on the disinfected, death-scented linoleum beneath the drawer, Faith pushed backward, sliding herself into the dark, steel confines of a drawer that normally held dead bodies.

  Chapter 3

  It was cold. Cold and dark, and so very, very close.

  Not that the former residents of this drawer had needed to see or stay warm.

  On her stomach, Faith tucked her arms beneath herself, both for warmth and to lever her face farther from the steel slab that had held countless corpses. She shivered. Even her extra-keen eyes could see nothing. She could hear nothing. Was this thing actually soundproof? If so, was it so the dead could sleep peacefully…or so that the living wouldn’t hear them?

  Stupid, thought Faith of her own fancies. Stupid, stupid. Now that she’d committed to this foolish course of action, she felt frustrated with her own cowardice. That, and its impetus.

  A person couldn’t really have such distinct hearing that she could recognize a specific heartbeat, from down the hallway. Could she? Not even a freak like her. It had to be her imagination. Or maybe she was mentally deficient. Her mother had never wanted to consult a doctor about Faith’s “condition.”

  Even if she wasn’t crazy, and the visitor to the morgue was the killer, why hide? She’d had a chance to see the man’s face, to finally know who had done this horrible thing to her friend…

  But even now, when she considered pushing out of this body locker, she couldn’t quite summon the courage. She’d been in shock when she’d gone after the killer at the bar. Now, in daylight, facing him down seemed even more foolish than hiding from him.