“She doesn’t know. It was dark, she says, and late.”
Gray thought about it. “But someone threatened to kill Erin if Pipes said anything?”
“That’s not the way I read it. Pipes was personally threatened and she decided that meant Erin needs to be protected.”
“Okay,” Gray said slowly. “What was Pipes threatened with and why?”
Nat threw up his hands. He got up and went to pour two cups of coffee. One of these he gave to Gray. “She won’t say. All I can get out of her is that someone told her she was in danger and she’d better not become a problem.”
“That’s it?”
Nat nodded.
“Listen to this,” Gray said. “I think we’ve got our link, but we’ll have to move carefully. I think that little girl is the key we’ve been looking for and I think Pipes knows a lot more than she told you.”
He explained to Nat, word-for-word, exactly what happened after Marley got out of the Volvo and went into J. Clive Millet, Antiques, on Royal Street.
When he finished, Nat had forgotten his coffee and stared from one wall to the next. He drummed his fingers on the desk, made to get up, but changed his mind.
“Great,” he said at last. “Just great. They’ve got the kid. You think so, too, don’t you?”
“I do now. I didn’t when I came in here—I hadn’t even considered it.”
“Stay away from Pipes,” Nat said. “She’s probably being watched. We can’t risk the little girl.”
“I don’t have any plans to dog Pipes’s footsteps,” Gray said.
“Good. I’ve got to wear glass shoes on this one. I want to watch her for a day or two and if we don’t get any useful information, I’ll bring her in for questioning.”
“And that won’t put Erin at risk?”
“She’s at risk now. Take it from me, Gray, we don’t dare wait long. Why do you think the mother behaved the way she did with you today?”
Gray wished he was sure of the answer to that one. “You tell me if you want me to do something and I’ll do it.” He decided not to lead Nat back to the obvious: Pipes was looking for someone at the antique shop and the only possible candidate was Marley.
He wanted to get back to Royal Street. What he was starting to feel now came with the spikes of cold he had come to dread. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me up to date.”
“I haven’t,” Nat said. “That’s just the minor stuff. I want to talk to you about the best way to get Marley’s cooperation.”
“She is cooperating,” Gray said, not missing a beat. Those shivery spikes made their way up his spine, vertebra by vertebra.
“You like her a lot,” Nat said and Gray wanted to congratulate the man for superunderstatement. “But you hardly know her.”
That’s what you think.
“That piece of T-shirt has changed the whole complexity of our case.” Nat held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt me. You don’t know what I’m going to say. I’ll start by telling you we don’t have any final forensic results. It’s too early. Well, it’s not too early for the obvious stuff, but some things take too damn long for my health.”
Gray rubbed his hands together. Foreboding locked his jaw and he flared his nostrils to breathe. He wanted to be with Marley.
“I’m taking you over to see Blades. He’s going to stay till we can get there.”
That loosened Gray’s tongue. Nat’s announcement sounded like some sort of death sentence. “Why? What does he want with me?”
“He doesn’t want anything to do with you, but he’s agreed to put up with having you there.”
Gray looked at the ceiling. “Dr. Death has no sense of humor.”
“Don’t call him that today, please.”
“I don’t intend to see him today.” He didn’t believe he had time.
“Yes, you will, Gray.” When Nat’s face was expressionless—listen up. “A couple of days ago Blades told me something I didn’t believe. I’m going to tell you now, but if you ever say I did, I’ll find a way to make you wish you hadn’t.”
Gray wanted to tell Nat to keep his secrets to himself. Curiosity got the best of him. “Okay. I don’t have a history of flapping lips.”
“Just listen,” Nat said. He talked about the corpse of Shirley Cooper and the preliminary conclusions Blades had reached about the composition of material found in wounds on the body.
No brilliant comeback came to mind for Gray. He formed one comment after another, only to discard them all as pointless. “Blades has got to be joking,” he said finally.
“You know Blades,” Nat said. “Does he seem like a joker to you? You ever hear him crack even a little funny, or smile, for crying out loud?”
Gray shook his head. “But it’s not possible.”
“Dammit, don’t you do a Beauchamp on me.”
“Maybe what they found had nothing to do with the perp.”
“It did and does. Blades was sure before—even though he’s waiting for final word from Quantico—and I don’t think anyone’s going to move him now.”
Gray swallowed hard.
“That bit of Marley’s T-shirt. Blades is sure he sees traces of the same stuff he found deep in Shirley Cooper’s wounds on the fabric.”
“But—”
“No, Gray. Blades says the composition of the specimen is closest to saliva. Sort of. And most of Shirley’s wounds were inflicted through bites, some were scratches. Blades thinks the bites are the killer’s—I don’t know why. Marley’s arm was scratched—or that’s what I decided. But Blades is sure the owner of the teeth and claws doesn’t have anything resembling DNA—not as we know it. We’re looking for a killer who isn’t human…or anything else we know of.”
“You think Marley…She could have this poison or whatever it is.”
Nat studied Gray. “Blades says he found saliva on the fabric. But Marley doesn’t show signs of any bites. Also, Blades says the victim died pretty quickly after being bitten—within hours. Marley’s going to be okay.”
Gray scrubbed at his face. He felt sick.
“Love hurts sometimes,” Nat said. “I still think it’s worth having.”
Chapter 42
What Marley wanted most was to leave her workroom, lock the door behind her and find Gray.
“You do not run away.” The Ushers started a new attack and she shook her head. “Keep working,” they told her.
“Do you know where this is?” Marley said to them, indicating the house. “This is why it was given to me. Because it’s a replica of the place where those missing women are. Please help me find the real house, or whatever it is.” She had asked them before, but got only hushed gabbling in response.
The same agitated, rising and falling sounds made her light-headed. “Hush. Answer my question.” She couldn’t bear the noise.
“You push and fuss,” they told her. “Work on the house and be ready to travel. Soon.”
Unwillingly, she faced the bench and selected a tool. She began the painstaking task of removing flakes of varnish and laquer from the wall facing the front gate. She had closed the back of the house again, unable to look at that cupboard and the stairs, or to remember the pounding she had felt when she was last there—and the cries she’d heard.
The flakes came away more easily than she expected and she lowered her goggles over her eyes again. Perhaps the refinishing wasn’t as old as she had thought. The longer materials remained in place, the more they tended to cling, one layer to another, and be hard to remove.
This was not an item she would ever sell—in fact the sooner she could be rid of it, the better. Belle, whoever she may have been, must have recognized Marley as a sister-traveler and hoped the dollhouse would become her portal.
A small, very sharp-edged chisel wouldn’t have been her usual choice for the job, but she took up the tool and began sliding it beneath the red outer coat. It lifted in remarkably large pieces and beneath each one she found more of the faded
terra-cotta-colored finish that appeared to have been stippled to look like stucco.
She worked steadily for half an hour before standing back to look at her efforts. Now she knew that in addition to the added door at one corner of the building, galleries had probably been removed from an upper story. The marks where they had been could be seen now, together with the remnants of flowers painted on the walls as if hanging down—to depict the way the pretty local balconies were loaded with plants.
Surely there had been a front door. She started lifting flakes in the center front, only to have pieces of green curl away where the elevated lawns met the base of the house. Having seen the basement disguised by the mound, she knew to expect any alterations. But evidence that pillars had been removed surprised her. Why go to such lengths to disguise a dollhouse?
The basement, she realized, was not actually beneath ground level—it simply had grass-covered earth mounded against its walls. It had been hidden from the outside.
The front door began to appear in the center between places where two pillars had been.
The chatter began again. Different than she had heard before. Agitation was something she expected, but this became a rising and falling wail, anguish, and not a single discernable word except, No, repeated again and again.
Marley worked faster and faster, steadily revealing the walls of the dollhouse as they had once been.
She dropped the chisel. Not accidentally, but because it fell from her fingers of its own volition.
The room darkened.
Winnie gave a single muffled whine.
No lights formed on the ceiling, no sign of a funnel appeared, and the Ushers were quiet.
Marley’s eyes opened wide. She couldn’t blink. A deep, deep longing didn’t shock her. She wanted Gray. He was her and she was him and together they were a whole with twice the power of their individuality. When she had first seen him, complete with the scars that were imprinted on his memory but not his face, he had come to her because they were destined to be together. Their Bonding had been preordained.
A wind or a strong current wrapped her body and carried her backward. She stumbled over Winnie, but couldn’t react. The dog didn’t cry out.
Free falling, she tried to move her arms, but they remained splayed at her sides until she settled on her back, staring upward into the darkness.
Marley had no feeling at all, other than anticipation.
She saw a small room, old-fashioned, but plush. A woman, older and plainly dressed in gray, but wearing an elaborate rose-colored tulle hat, paced, wringing her hands, but it wasn’t the woman that held Marley’s attention.
A little girl sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair and whereas the woman moved in shadow, the child was illuminated as if by a spotlight. Thin with blond braids and dressed in a white buttoned blouse and jeans, her sneakered feet swung inches off the floor.
She stared ahead, her blue eyes huge behind round glasses.
She stared at Marley.
The child took gulps of air through her mouth. She coughed, but never looked away from Marley. Tears ran slowly down the girl’s cheeks.
Marley tried to speak to her, but couldn’t.
Two small hands extended toward Marley and the little girl said, “Come and get me, please. He said if you come I can go home.”
Marley reached for the girl. “Where are you?” she said, and this time had no difficulty speaking. “Tell me where to find you.”
In front of the child, the face of Pearl Brite appeared. This time the woman’s beautiful skin was marred by the type of welts Marley knew too well. “You’ll know how to come,” Pearl said. “He says you’ve been here before, but you must come quickly or it’ll be too late.”
But she didn’t know how to get there. These visions had nothing to do with the house. There had been no portal. She had not left her body. There was power worked upon her, yes, but a different power.
It was that creature, she was sure of it.
“I don’t know how to come to you,” she said, choking on each word.
“Be ready,” Pearl said, and dropped her voice to a faint whisper. “He’s torturing us.”
Chapter 43
Gray could have closed his eyes and followed the sound of sirens to their destination. Any hope of keeping the lid on even part of the investigation was gone. Thanks to the screaming cars, their lights flashing, humanity in the streets had turned like a tide to rush, staring, after the police cars, the medic vehicles—and what most of the public wouldn’t recognize as the most ominous sign of all—a large, white crime scene van with its multiple locked compartments.
He and Nat had barely arrived back at the precinct from the morgue when the call came in for Nat to get to Caged Birds on N. Peters Street, the club where Pipes Dupuis used to sing.
The meeting with Blades had frustrated both of them. He seemed to want information, but he wasn’t giving any hints that might nudge them in the right direction. Nat and Gray both came away with the feeling that Blades knew more than he was telling—not that the bizarre DNA discussion hadn’t been absorbing enough on its own.
Gray had tested the theory that Blades didn’t have any final reports and was probably wrong, but he only got more convinced the M.E. could be right.
Bucky Fist drove with Nat at his side. Voices barked over the radio and Nat carried on what sounded like a monologue with brief flurries of punctuation.
Sunk deep in the backseat, Gray tried to call Marley. He got her canned message—again. By now she’d be with Sidney Fournier, not an idea that gave him comfort.
A body had been found at Caged Birds.
So far there was no identification.
Bucky tucked the car into the trough formed by official vehicles ahead and cruised, one elbow resting on the window rim.
“You sure there’s no ID yet?” Gray said, raising his voice over the jet stream of warm, wet wind through Bucky’s window.
“If I knew—you’d know,” Nat said without turning around.
“What d’you hope for?” Gray asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You want a new one or an old one?”
Nat snorted. “Nice turn of phrase. If it’s Liza, Amber or Pearl I don’t think I’ll feel better than if it’s another one. Goddammit. As long as they stay gone, there’s hope. Maybe they’re renovating that dump of a club and an accident got misreported.”
“Sure,” Gray said. He breathed out slowly. “We can hope.” But he didn’t.
In front of Caged Birds, official vehicles turned the street into a parking lot. Bucky slipped into a spot and the three of them got out.
Nat led the way into the club. Even with the doors blocked open it reeked of stale beer. Gray didn’t recall a bar or club that didn’t look tawdry in daylight.
Weak but definite, he smelled traces of an unforgettable odor, the one that faded slowly after Marley’s encounter at River Road. The same one that hung around Shirley Cooper’s body.
He deliberately looked ahead, past Nat and Bucky and the bevy of uniforms waiting for instructions.
The first face he recognized was the gouge-cheeked pale one belonging to Dr. Blades. Gray’s stomach turned over. Blades was a man who considered himself too important to get down in the trenches, at least until initial dirty work was done. Since Blades had to be all of seven feet tall he’d be hard to miss in any crowd, but standing back from everyone else, staring straight ahead and completely immobile, he was as out of place in the teeming club as the Eiffel Tower would be in the middle of a school yard recess.
“That stench again,” Nat said abruptly, putting his hand to his nose. “It’s different from a decomposing body, but it’s filthy. It was around Shirley Cooper the first time I saw her body, too.”
Desperation rattled Gray. “I could still smell it today.” With every passing hour he was more convinced that Marley was marked for attack by a maniac.
Chief Beauchamp was the next unwelcome surprise. He saw Na
t and approached, head slightly down like a bull coming in for a charge. “Interrupt your tanning session, did I?” he said when Nat got close enough. He showed no sign of noticing how inappropriate his comment was.
Gray saw her.
Crime scene spotlights glared on the first of the two suspended cages. Inside, her back to Gray, her wrists taped to the uppermost bars, hung a woman partially covered by strips of torn clothing.
Cameras clacked, technicians moving rapidly but precisely to get every angle of a scene worthy of a horror movie.
He recognized Bernie Bois, the club manager, his rangy body sprawled in a chair, his hands covering his face.
“Who is she?” Nat asked Beauchamp.
The older man ran a hand over his sweating head and hair. “I’ll settle for who she isn’t,” he said. “Some guy from Scully’s is being tracked down to take a look.”
“Danny Summit,” Nat said.
Beauchamp grunted. “The last missing female’s father is being brought over, poor bastard. I’m talking about the one that went missing—supposedly—in the warehouse on—”
Gray cut him off. “It’s not Pearl Brite,” he said.
Beauchamp slowly looked in his direction. “Fisher? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d pop in for a pick-me-up.”
“Funny. You heard the question.” Beauchamp’s face plumped up and got shinier. “Why are you here?”
“He came with me,” Nat said. “He’s been giving us a hand. Knows some of the singers.”
“Yeah?” Beauchamp’s deep-set eyes were very close to the bridge of his nose. They turned crafty. “How come?”
“I was writing about them,” Gray said wearily.
“Oh, yeah. You quit the force to be a reporter.”
Why bother to explain himself? “Right.”
“Take a look then,” Beauchamp said.
Nat and Bucky fell in with Gray when he approached the cage and the cameras were quiet.
“She’s stacked,” Beauchamp said in a loud voice.
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