Stop Me

by Brenda Novak

  “It’s ‘sleeping dogs.’”

  His grin slanted to one side. “Not in this case, right?”

  Jasmine didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “That’s not a good enough answer.”

  “Try this one.” He leaned toward her, engulfing her in a cloud of smoke. “Because you might regret it later,” he whispered. “Is that better?”

  He was too close. Jasmine almost reached for her Mace. But she sensed that he was only trying to intimidate her, and she refused to let him know he’d succeeded. “Is that a veiled threat?” she asked, standing her ground.

  “Not from me.” His smile returned as he leaned back—and with it that fang. “Why would I want to hurt you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I have no personal stake in the case.” He shrugged, but the action didn’t seem careless as much as studied. “I’m just informing you that there are people who won’t be happy to have certain details brought out into the light, people who have a lot to lose.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like whoever really killed that little girl. Moreau was a pervert. I’ll grant you that. But he wasn’t the man who murdered Adele Fornier.”

  The men outside Shooters who’d been trying to attract her attention had given up and gone back inside. The wind was kicking up, and it was starting to rain. “What about the evidence?”

  She thought she had him, but he didn’t even blink. “Someone planted it. The blood on the pants, the barrettes, everything.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “How do you know?” Jasmine demanded.

  Tossing away his cigarette, Black shrugged again. “Anyone who really looked at that crime scene could tell you Moreau didn’t hide those things under his house.”

  “Why not?”

  “They were put there from the outside. Whoever did it entered the crawl space through the cellar door.”

  “So?”

  “So, if you’d just killed a girl in your house, you sure wouldn’t gather up the evidence and take it outside and around the back to go in through the cellar door. Why risk letting someone see you when you could simply lift the trapdoor in the pantry and put it down there?”

  “Why would he have to walk around? Every house I know has a back door.”

  “His was completely blocked off.” Black pulled a new cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and shoved it in the corner of his mouth, unlit. “There was a big freezer in front of it, piled high with boxes full of all kinds of shit. There’s no way Moreau bothered to move it and then put it back. He had too many other options. Besides, those boxes on the freezer were dusty as hell. They hadn’t been touched in months, not even for cleaning. He lived alone at the time, and take it from me—he was a slob.”

  “Maybe the trapdoor was blocked off, too.”

  “Only with a sack of potatoes. It would’ve been easy to use—yet no one did.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He thumped his chest. “Unlike Huff, I did my research. It had an old wooden floor, you know? Someone had painted the pantry, even the floor, at least a year before Adele went missing.”

  “And some of the paint fell into the crack along the trapdoor and created a seal,” she said, picking up on where he was going with this.

  “Which wasn’t broken when we entered to perform the search,” he finished.

  “How did you see that?”

  “I checked it, and I tried to tell Huff. But all he could see was Moreau’s rap sheet. He’d found his pedophile. He’d found his victim’s clothing. End of story.” He cupped a hand around his cigarette as he struck a match and added, “Some detective he was.”

  “Was there any evidence someone had used the cellar door?” Jasmine asked.

  “Plenty. The lock had rusted so it couldn’t be opened. There were marks on the lintel indicating someone had recently forced it from the outside using a crowbar or something. There were also scuff marks in the dirt near the entrance. The bloody pants, along with the video and barrettes, were on the ground not two feet away from the entrance, as if someone had tossed them in and shut the door.”

  “You pointed that out to Huff, too?”

  “I tried.”

  “But…”

  He tossed the match away and breathed deeply, exhaling as he answered. “He said Moreau could’ve walked around and forced that door open as easily as anyone else.”

  “Unlikely though you make it sound, that’s true,” Jasmine said. “They were his pants, weren’t they?”

  “They were khaki work pants like the pants he typically wore. But how many men wear khaki work pants? Only jeans are more common.”

  Jasmine took a moment to process what he’d told her. He had a point. But she didn’t like him. And, with what Kozlowski had shared about him, he didn’t have a lot of credibility. “What about the size?” she asked.

  He took another drag before responding. “Didn’t match. They were one size smaller than the pants hanging in Moreau’s closest.”

  “One size isn’t enough to draw a conclusion,” she argued. “It’s possible to own one pair of pants that are slightly smaller than the rest. They could’ve been bought before Moreau gained weight. Or maybe he was on a diet and bought them because he was slimming down.”

  Tilting his head back, Black blew a fresh stream of smoke into the sky. “Why am I wasting my time with you?” he asked. “You’re just like Huff. You see what you want to see.”

  Jasmine had to admit she was feeling defensive of the overzealous detective. She was defensive of Romain, too. Even more defensive of Romain. If what Black said was true, he’d been acting on erroneous information when he shot and killed Moreau.

  But part of her couldn’t help believing Black. Someone other than Moreau had killed Adele Fornier. It was the man who’d sent her the note. A man who was very definitely alive.

  “Why couldn’t Huff see what you saw?” she asked. “Wasn’t he concerned about those irregularities?”

  “Like I said, Huff was so convinced he had the right culprit, he was blind to everything else. And let’s be honest. Solving such a high-profile crime wouldn’t hurt his career. He wasn’t above a little ambition. He wanted a conviction, and he did what he could to get it. I blame him and not Fornier for Moreau’s death.”

  “So that’s why you informed on him.”

  Throwing his cigarette on the ground, Black grabbed her arm in one lightning-quick move. “I didn’t inform on him. I kept my mouth shut, okay?”

  Obviously, she’d touched a sensitive spot. Or he was slightly deranged.

  Jasmine glared at his fingers. “Let go.”

  “Don’t try to tell me about things you don’t understand.”

  She met his glittering gaze. “I said let go. Now.”

  “Or what?” His warm breath fanned her cheek, smelling like tobacco. “What’s a little gal like you gonna do?”

  “Press charges for assault, if I have to.”

  Before he could say anything else, two men stepped out of the lounge. Jasmine glanced over at them, ready to cry for help, but he dropped his hand and stepped back.

  “You’re gonna wind up getting hurt, you know that?” he said.

  “Another threat, Mr. Black?”

  He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his blue pants. “This isn’t a safe place for a woman to be, especially at night. You’d better get out of here.”

  She wanted to leave. She felt a barely tethered aggression in this man, and it frightened her. But she wasn’t finished yet. “Why would Huff blame you if you didn’t do it?”

  “He’s convinced I did. Just because I didn’t agree with the conclusions he drew during that search. Just because I tried to make him see there was something more going on.” He spat at the ground. “It’s thanks to him that I’m rotting out here doing nothing all night.”

  Or maybe Huff was right, and it was Black who’d enabled a child killer to walk free, causing a grieving father to snap. “If it wasn’t you who snitc
hed, who was it?” she asked.

  “Moreau’s mother, I guess,” he said sulkily.

  “Huff claims she wasn’t there.”

  “She wasn’t. At least I didn’t see her. But Moreau could’ve told her, right? That’s not too much of a stretch. Or maybe it was someone else. I wasn’t the only cop on that search. Kozlowski and Brenner were both there. They could’ve leaked it. Maybe someone overheard them talking at the station.”

  Jasmine found it odd that Kozlowski hadn’t mentioned his own involvement. But Black’s next statement raised even more questions.

  “For that matter, it could’ve been Fornier’s brother-in-law.”

  “His brother-in-law?” she repeated.

  “Yeah. He’s some hotshot attorney from Boston who was nosing around. Fornier thought he was trying to help, but the guy kept getting in the way.”

  The rain came down harder. Shielding her face with one hand, Jasmine considered this revelation. “You’re saying he might’ve stumbled on the information and accidentally allowed it to get out?”

  “Or maybe not so accidentally. From what I heard, he wanted his niece found, but there wasn’t much love lost between him and Fornier.”

  “What was the source of the contention between them, do you know?”

  His eyebrows knitted as if he was irritated by the question. “I have no idea. I’m just telling you it was there.”

  “Then…with so many other possibilities, why does Huff insist it was you?”

  “Because Huff doesn’t know his head from his ass. He botched that case, so he pointed the finger at me. I’m the scapegoat. Don’t you get it?”

  Jasmine “got” that Black was jealous of Huff. He’d aspired to the position of detective but hadn’t made it, although he clearly considered himself superior. Was he telling her the truth, or had he been trying to push Huff from his pedestal by derailing the investigation? “Where did Moreau live when you did the search?” Jasmine asked.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  A gust of wind blew her hair around her face. “Because I do.”

  Clicking his tongue, Black shook his head. “You have to see it for yourself, right? What I’ve said isn’t enough.”

  She didn’t bother responding to that. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “Sure. But you won’t find anything new. I opened the trapdoor to prove my point the night I discovered it was sealed shut.”

  Maybe she wouldn’t find anything beyond the marks on the lintel Black had mentioned. But she might feel something. Her abilities sometimes worked that way. “I need to be able to get the setting straight in my mind.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Like I told you, I have no personal stake in the case.” Their eyes met, but only for a brief moment before he turned his attention to getting himself another cigarette. “It’s 2303 Sea Breeze Way in the Garden District.”

  “How come you know the exact address after so long?” she asked.

  He lit up again. “I have a great memory.”

  “It wasn’t even your case.”

  “I go over there occasionally,” he admitted. “His brother and I are friends.”

  Huff had mentioned Moreau’s brother. In fact, Huff thought the brother might’ve bribed Black to help Moreau out of trouble. “His brother lives there now?”

  “Yep. So does his mother. They sold their house to pay Francis’s attorney fees and then moved into his place after he was arrested because it was cheaper.”

  Jasmine blinked raindrops from her eyelashes. “Where’s his father?”

  “Died years before the move. Heart disease.”

  “Thanks.” Figuring that was all he had to say, she turned toward her car, but he spoke again.

  “Be careful.”

  Pivoting, she raised a hand to once again shield her face. “Of what?”

  He flipped his hair out of his eyes, and his teeth—including that fang—glowed white against the heavy beard growth on his jaw. “In this case, if the bad guys don’t get you the good guys will.”

  * * *

  Jasmine couldn’t unwind enough to sleep. Every time she began to drift off, she’d see Pearson Black leaning against his car, smoking—and, seconds later, that smoke would roll over her like a suffocating blanket, burning her nose and throat, making it impossible to breathe. She’d startle into wakefulness, tell herself it was just a dream, then stare at the storm raging outside the window until her eyelids began to close and the whole cycle repeated itself.

  After experiencing the same nightmare for the third time, she began to worry that it was some sort of premonition. Was there more to Black than the morbid, drama-loving braggart he seemed to be? She sensed that he’d been selective in what he’d chosen to share with her, but why hold anything back? And was there any truth to what he’d said about that evidence being planted?

  Hoping to ease her tension enough to finally get some rest, she was about to get up and take a hot shower, when her cell phone rang. A quick glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table told her it was after midnight, but midnight in New Orleans was only ten at home. She figured it was Skye or Sheridan checking in with her.

  “What’s going on at the ranch?” she said, smothering a yawn as she answered.

  “The ranch?”

  Jasmine blinked and sat up. It was a man’s voice. With the thunder making such a racket, and her disquieting dreams about Black, she didn’t immediately recognize it. “Who is this?”

  “Romain Fornier.”

  It sort of sounded like him. But she thought he didn’t have a phone. He’d moved out into the middle of a swamp because he didn’t want to deal with other people. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “At the Flying Squirrel.”

  The ramshackle tavern with the stuffed alligator beneath the overhang at its entrance. She remembered seeing the building, which was basically a lean-to adjacent to the little grocery store on the outskirts of Portsville.

  “Tell me something only you’d know.” She was half teasing, but after her encounter with Black there was still that trace of doubt in her mind, that uneasiness that came from being in a foreign place.

  “I have a cut on my right thigh.”

  “Yeah, it’s you.”

  “How’d you know?” he asked at length.

  His tone indicated that he didn’t like accepting what he was apparently beginning to accept. And she could understand why. She didn’t always like accepting what she could do. “I touched it,” she said.

  “When?”

  Jasmine reacted to his subtle, sexy change of inflection by lowering her voice. “When I was touching the rest of you.”

  “Damn. Where was I when you were doing that?”

  She smiled. “Asleep, I guess.”

  “Next time you want to explore, would you mind waking me? I think it’d be a lot more fun.”

  “From my perspective, it wasn’t bad the way it was,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Her smile broadened. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The gruffness in his voice made Jasmine’s heart pound. She was drawing too close to the flame of their attraction, but it seemed harmless enough, since he was two hours away and she was barricaded in her hotel room. His voice on the phone gave her something to hold on to in the dark. “I was on top,” she murmured.

  “I like it so far.” His voice went even deeper. “Was I inside you?”

  Jasmine knew she shouldn’t let this continue, but the excitement flooding her senses goaded her on. “Yes. A perfect fit.”

  He groaned. “It’s getting better.”

  Scooting lower in the bed, she covered her head with the blankets. “You were speaking to me in French. I don’t know what you were saying, but—”

  “What’d it sound like?”

  She had no trouble recalling his words. She’d repeated them to herself at various times throughout the day, relishing the wonder she’d sensed in him at that mom
ent. “Tu es belle.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he translated.

  A surge of warmth seemed to lift her up and carry her over a large swell, as if she were riding an ocean wave. “Too bad you couldn’t have meant it,” she said wryly, trying to reach solid ground again.

  “Why not?”

  “You haven’t seen what you were looking at when you said it.”

  “I’ve seen the rest of you. What else did I say?”

  “I’m probably going to slaughter it, but it was something like ‘Il est été trop long.’”

  “Wait a second…. This is beginning to sound familiar.”

  “Really?” she said with a laugh. “I thought you were asleep.”

  He hesitated, seemed to wrestle with disbelief, then succumbed to the irrefutable proof in her description. “And I thought my fantasies were my own.”

  “I didn’t ask to be invited to your party.”

  “You weren’t invited. You crashed it. How?”

  All she knew was that they’d both wanted this strongly enough to make it happen. “I have no idea.”

  “Does this kind of thing occur often with you?”

  “Last night was the first.”

  Silence. Then he said, “But you enjoyed it?”

  “Every moment.” That memory should’ve lasted her through a lot of lonely nights, but here she was, already craving more.

  “Somehow it wasn’t as good for me as it was for you,” he complained.

  She swallowed to ease a sudden dry throat. “What was wrong with it?”

  “It wasn’t real.”

  Jasmine’s breathless excitement told her it was a very good thing they were so far away from each other. Any closer, and he’d be at her door or she’d be at his. “Real is overrated.”

  “How so?”

  “It gets people into trouble.” With a capital T. Throwing the covers off her head, she took a deep breath of the room’s cold air and tried to work her way back to logical, to sensible, to responsible.

  “What kind of trouble are you afraid of?” he asked.

  The kind of trouble that came with a man like Fornier: the addiction, the craving, the risk, the heartbreak. “Losing control.”

  When she was young, she’d given in to the need to escape, to feel anything but what she felt when she thought of her sister. It’d been a long, hard road since then, pulling herself out of the mire of drug addiction. She was determined to make better decisions, to hang on to her self-respect and protect her future.