Stop Me

by Brenda Novak

  At least focusing on these calls helped keep her mind off Romain Fornier, who’d become a recurrent theme. She wouldn’t have been so concerned if her preoccupation with him was limited to what he’d told her about Adele’s name on that bathroom wall—the strange capitals, the funny e—but it wasn’t just that. More often than not, she found herself staring at the bed in the corner of her hotel room, picturing him there, which said a lot about what he’d managed to do to her in the short time she’d known him.

  “What’s gotten into me?” she asked herself, and was more than a little startled when she heard a response.

  “Excuse me?”

  Jasmine had forgotten she’d already dialed—and she certainly hadn’t realized that someone had picked up. “Is this the Bayfield marshals’ office?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is there an Alvin Huff working there?”

  “Alvin Huff, did you say?”

  “Yes. H-u-f-f.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.”

  “Thank you.” With a sigh, Jasmine hung up and moved her finger down to the next office on the list. Most marshals’ offices served small communities of about 1600 people. She couldn’t see Detective Huff going from the Big Easy to a small Western town in the Rockies and figured she was probably wasting her time. But she had a few more minutes before she planned to leave and decided to call another one or two.

  The Crystal Butte marshals’ office was next. Clearing her throat, she dialed and, once again, asked for Huff.

  “Just a minute, please.”

  “He’s there?” she nearly shouted, jumping out of her seat.

  “I’m about to check,” the woman responded, obviously startled.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  Jasmine paced the floor in her small room while she waited. “Be there,” she whispered. “Be there.”

  The woman’s voice came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Deputy Marshal Huff’s left for the day. Can I give him a message when he returns tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Please tell him Jasmine Stratford from The Last Stand, a victims’ nonprofit organization in California, needs to speak with him. It’s urgent.”

  “Would you like me to call his cell to deliver this message, Ms. Stratford?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No problem.”

  “I appreciate your help.” Jasmine gave the woman her own cell number and disconnected, then paced some more. But when Huff called her back, he wasn’t particularly forthcoming.

  “I was told you needed to speak with me.”

  “Yes. I’m Jasmine Strat—”

  “I know who you are.”

  She stopped moving. “You do?”

  “I looked you up online when I got your message. You run a victims’ charity in California. You sometimes work as a consultant for the FBI and other police agencies and have helped solved a few high-profile cases. You were on America’s Most Wanted November twenty-fourth, which led to the capture of a pedophile. Am I leaving anything out?”

  Friendliness, for one… “The fact that my sister was kidnapped sixteen years ago, and I’m committed to finding out what happened to her. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “If I remember right, your sister was taken from your family’s home in Cleveland.”

  Remembered right? Jasmine was fairly sure he was sitting in front of his computer, reading all the information he’d pulled up about her. “That’s true. But the box I just received with my sister’s bracelet in it was mailed from New Orleans. And the note that came with the bracelet was written in blood—using the same strange mix of capital letters and the odd e that you attributed to Moreau when he wrote Adele Fornier’s name on the wall of the public bathroom.”

  “Attributed?” he echoed.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Moreau murdered that little girl. I’m sure of it.”

  There was no mistaking the passion in his voice. “If that’s true, Moreau must still be alive. Because whoever sent me that package did so only a week ago. And I can’t imagine two men with such a unique signature, can you?”

  “Moreau’s dead.”

  “Then how do you explain the coincidence?”

  “I’m not explaining anything. I’m simply telling you there was far too much evidence in Moreau’s house for it to have been anyone else. There was a pair of pants with her blood on it, a video of him sexually torturing her, and one of her barrettes.”

  “There has to be an explanation.”

  “If there is, I don’t have it. That case nearly ruined my career. And it cost Romain Fornier, a man I greatly respect, far more than it cost me. I don’t want anything to do with what happened in New Orleans.”

  Jasmine had thought he’d be more intrigued by current developments. Obviously, she was wrong. He’d been too badly burned. “What about Pearson Black?” she asked.

  There was a moment’s pause, as if the change of subject took him aback. “What about him?”

  “Fornier said he kept inserting himself into the investigation, that he had more than a passing interest.”

  “Black was dirty. He’d sell his soul for a couple hundred bucks.”

  “You think someone bribed him to blow your case?”

  “That’s exactly what I think.”

  “Who would’ve put up the money?”

  “Moreau’s mother or brother. When a cop’s willing to sell his integrity that cheaply, almost anyone can buy him. It’s even possible Moreau himself promised to pay. Black visited him in jail plenty of times, claiming he was doing research on the criminal mind, that he was planning to write a book.”

  “I don’t think he’s gotten around to the book, but I hear he wrote a blog for a while.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend reading it—unless you have a cast-iron stomach.”

  Her second warning. Jasmine could barely imagine what kind of stuff she’d find there… “I don’t have a cast-iron stomach, Deputy Huff.” Pretty much the opposite, in fact. “But I am determined to find out why this case appears to be so closely related to my sister’s. Do you know how I can access his blog?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not related. It can’t be.”

  “It has to be.”

  It was his turn to sigh. “Thanks to Black’s twisted sense of humor, it’s easy enough to remember. Go to www.CopsBedtimeStoriesByBlack.com.”

  She jotted the URL on the page of police departments she’d printed out in the lobby downstairs. “How do you like working for the marshals’ office?”

  “I love it. Can’t you tell?” he said and hung up.

  Jasmine frowned as she put down the phone. Huff hadn’t given her as much as she’d hoped. She wished the lab would get back to her on what the evidence revealed. But the technicians had said it’d be at least three weeks.

  With everyone she knew far away from Louisiana, and Christmas on the horizon, three weeks seemed like an eternity. It’d be the middle of January by the time she heard from the lab.

  Briefly, she thought of Romain—again. Would he spend Christmas out on the bayou? How did he survive in such isolation day after day?

  Forget Fornier. She had things to do.

  Taking her room key from the desktop, Jasmine went down to the lobby. It was 9:30 p.m., late enough to make it likely she’d find a security guard at Big Louie’s. But first she wanted to take a look at Black’s online journal. She thought it might be smart to know a bit more about the ex-cop before confronting him in a dark parking lot on the seedy side of town.

  * * *

  It wasn’t the amount of violence in the blog that surprised Jasmine. She’d been prepared for that. It was the contemptuous tone. Black’s comments, even on an average traffic stop, painted him as the only rational, “normal” individual involved. He claimed he was growing jaded. Bemoaned it again and again. But Jasmine got the impression that he loved the power that went with the uniform. His complaints about what he
encountered every day were merely an excuse to speak freely and express more disrespect and cynicism toward the average citizen than she could endure.

  She wondered if he realized that those “stupid assholes” he belittled for infractions as minor as a tardy car registration were the very people who paid his salary. If so, he didn’t understand the term “civil servant.” Especially the “civil” part…

  “You’re a piece of work, Mr. Black,” she muttered as she skimmed the grim details he’d recorded about a serial killer in Colombia. As with the previous entries, he focused most heavily on the perpetrator’s sicker obsessions, relishing everything that was disgusting and inhumane, and offering his own hypotheses. But Jasmine was already familiar with Pedro Alonso Lopez’s crimes and didn’t respect Black enough to concern herself with his verbose and self-important analysis, so she skipped most of it. She was more interested in Black’s handling of the everyday than his fascination with a psychopath who had over three hundred deaths to his credit.

  Jumping a little farther down, she read an entry titled “Dumb Blonde” dated fourteen months ago. According to Kozlowski, that would’ve been shortly before Black was fired.

  Never fails. If a woman thinks she’s got a chance of avoiding a ticket, she’ll do just about anything.

  So I pull this woman over today, right? We’ll call her Lola since I can’t use her real name. I walk up, she rolls down her window and I find myself staring in at a woman with every beauty aid—Botox lips, silicon cleavage down to her knees, long blond hair, probably from a bottle, fake red nails, lots of makeup. She looks like some kind of porn star, you know? The kind of woman who makes you roll your eyes—and adjust yourself at the same time. She also had a lead foot, which is why I wanted to have a chat with her.

  “What did I do, Officer?” she says to me, all wide-eyed—the very picture of innocence.

  I tell her she was speeding, ask to see her driver’s license and, of course, the tears start. She doesn’t have it. It’s not in her purse, at any rate. She blubbers through the usual excuses, telling me she recently lost her purse. I smile but keep writing the ticket. So she switches tactics and asks me, in a sultry voice, “Is there anything I can do to get you off, Officer? I mean, to get you to let me off? I don’t have the money for a ticket. And my boyfriend will absolutely kill me if my insurance goes up again.”

  Her boyfriend is paying her insurance bill? At this point I have to ask myself if he’s even dumber than she is. What some guys will do for a good lay, huh?

  That was it—the end of the account.

  Why had he chosen to write about a fairly routine traffic stop?

  Jasmine checked the date of his other entries. He’d posted this out of the blue, after he hadn’t written for three weeks, and he didn’t follow it up with anything else for another ten days. It was the only entry that didn’t deal with blood and guts and a Sherlock Holmes style of unraveling the mysterious. The next blog referred to the Blond Bimbo, too, as if his meeting up with her had been really out of the ordinary.

  Surely, there had to be more interesting incidents in the life of a cop than getting propositioned by a woman with no morals. That had to happen occasionally, didn’t it? Especially if a cop seemed susceptible—by staring at cleavage down to a woman’s knees, for instance? After all, contact with desperate women of low character pretty much came with the job.

  Jasmine read the entry again. What some guys will do for a good lay… How did he know the blonde was a good lay?

  Suddenly, Jasmine rocked back. Could he have taken her up on her offer? Something had happened, something more than he’d spelled out.

  She looks like some kind of porn star, you know? The kind of woman who makes you roll your eyes and adjust yourself at the same time. He liked what he’d gotten that night. Liked the perks that sometimes went with being a cop.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  Jasmine glanced over her shoulder to see Mr. Cabanis’s daughter watching her from the front desk. “No, why?”

  “You have this…sort of disgusted expression on your face.”

  With good reason. She was sickened that a man like Black had ever been allowed to wear a badge. Was he the one who’d leaked the information about the illegal search? And, if so, what did he get out of it? After reading Pearson Black’s online journal she guessed he never did anything that didn’t benefit him in some way.

  * * *

  Jasmine was sure it was Black, although he’d lost a few pounds since the picture on his blog was taken. He’d converted that fat into muscle. At least that was how it looked to her. As she drove by him, she couldn’t see any evidence of the rounded paunch he’d had or the double chin. He was a tall, thick-necked man who wore his security jacket unzipped despite the cold and obviously took weight lifting very seriously. With his build, his face shadowed by stubble and hair rumpled enough to make Jasmine wonder if he’d bothered to run a comb through it before going to work, he looked mean in the way some pit bulls look mean. As if he should be wearing a spiked collar.

  He leaned against his sedan in the dim light of the parking lot and put out one cigarette only to light another.

  The lounge Kozlowski had mentioned was called Shooters. It was nestled between a liquor store and a bargain remnant store just down from Big Louie’s. Jasmine frowned when she saw the name, hoping it’d been inspired by shot glasses of booze and not by the number of drive-by slayings in the area.

  Finding an empty parking stall between the bar and the supermarket, she made sure she had her Mace, turned off the engine and got out. It was unlikely the ex-cop would be dangerous; he had no record of violence. But he wasn’t her only concern. The lounge had iron bars on the doors and windows and graffiti on the walls, and so did the supermarket and almost every other house or retail establishment within three blocks. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood in which she really wanted to be alone. She wasn’t all that confident Black would risk himself to protect her, despite those muscles and the security emblem on his car.

  As she crossed the section of parking lot between them, she tried to get a feel for the safety of the situation and the man she was approaching. But she felt nothing that gave her any real guidance, except a general anxiety—what anyone else would feel, she supposed. It wasn’t as if she could use her gift on demand. Occasionally, she suspected it might be possible to develop her psychic powers to that point, but there were too many drawbacks. Growing more sensitive to such input meant constantly having thoughts and feelings that were not her own, and she didn’t want to live that way. It was difficult enough when she had to explore what she could pick up on the cases she worked.

  Her boot heels clattered on the pavement as she walked. Noticing her coming toward him, Black straightened and blew the smoke from his cigarette off to one side. “You must be lost,” he said, giving her the once-over.

  She waited until his focus reached her face. “I look that out of place?”

  “Have you seen the women in this part of town?”

  She’d actually seen more men than women. Several were hanging around outside the door of the lounge, talking to each other and watching her. One had whistled when she got out of her car, another was currently indulging in a few catcalls that included commentary on how well she fit into her jeans. “Are those women you mentioned the type who make you roll your eyes—and adjust yourself at the same time?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

  One eyetooth had grown in like a fang, and it showed as Black laughed. “No, they’re whores and crack addicts. Not half as pretty as you. No temptation to me at all.”

  She ignored his allusion to her appearance. “The blonde was a temptation, though, right? Lola? The one you pulled over for speeding a year ago?”

  “She was a temptation, all right. Until I found out that she was a he.”

  Jasmine didn’t know how to respond. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He chuckled softly. “No.”

  “How’d you find out?
”

  “When I insisted I wouldn’t accept the driver’s license she—he eventually provided, which gave his name as Henry Hovell, he decided to show me proof.”

  “Why didn’t you add that to your blog? It would’ve made for a great twist at the end.”

  “Because I found him attractive as a woman. And that’s not something I wanted the other guys ribbing me about at the station.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Anyway, last I heard I was already fired from the department, so you can’t be Internal Affairs.”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I have a few questions for you.”

  His eyes raked over her again. “And those questions brought you all the way here?”

  “It’s about the Fornier case.”

  His smile disappeared—and with it that single, very unattractive fang. “I wasn’t on that case.”

  “I heard you followed it closely.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Some of your buddies down at the station.”

  “I don’t have any buddies down at the station.”

  “Most police officers are pretty close. Why didn’t you fit in?”

  “They couldn’t take that I was a better cop than they could ever dream of being.”

  And his blog was proof? She didn’t think so. “Were you out to prove it—to show them?”

  “I don’t remember getting your name,” he said instead of answering.

  She handed him her business card. “Jasmine Stratford. I’m with a victims’ charity in California.”

  There was no sign of recognition. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “I’m also a freelance profiler with reason to believe Fornier might’ve shot the wrong man when he went after Moreau. Do you think that could be true?”

  Black flicked his ashes onto the ground. “Don’t ask. You don’t want to start poking around in the Fornier case.”

  “Suppose you tell me why.”

  “What’s that old cliché? Let dead dogs lie?”