Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  Her parents should have been even easier to locate than Robin. They were in their sixties, an age when people tended to be more deeply rooted in their lives. A month after Robin left Illinois, Vince and Melissa Railey left their retirement community in Arizona. They’d told neighbors they were going where it “never got cold” and the cost of living was cheap. They told family they were taking a luxury round-the-world cruise and leaving their cell phones behind. They said they would be back in eight months, ten months, a year, or they might take up residence on the prettiest deserted island they passed. Their credit cards and social media, likewise, had gone unused.

  In her senior picture, Robin had looked like your typical eighteen-year-old. Her hair was short, straight, her features were bland, and her occasional comments were those of a protected teenager. She didn’t look like Martine’s choice for a best friend, though to be truthful, that observation was based mostly on the fact that Robin wasn’t Evie. Some people had been together too long and fit together too well to ever imagine anyone else in their places.

  He finished his first piece of pizza, washed it down with bottled water, then sprinkled hot red pepper flakes over the next piece. After taking a large bite that left cheese stringing from his mouth to the slice, he turned a few pages to the Winchester girls’ pictures. Beneath their photos were their proper names, Callista and Taliesin, both scratched out and replaced with their nicknames, one in hot pink ink, one in lime green, both in a very girlie style. The girls were mostly identical: Callie’s lips a little thinner, the tip of Tallie’s nose a little sharper. They wore their hair the same, the same makeup colors, but Callie wore a shirt left undone one button too low, while Tallie’s denim jacket showed little of the modestly rounded neckline of her shirt.

  He’d tried to contact Tallie and Callie’s parents a half-dozen times and got nothing but voice mail. He’d requested a copy of Tallie’s passport picture from the State Department and gotten that back, along with the information that the passport had last been scanned in London back in November—a few weeks after Callie’s funeral, Jimmy guessed. His IT guy hadn’t been able to find much of an internet presence for Tallie: no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn or any of the other countless outlets. There were a few cached references to her on the website of the investment firm she’d worked for, but nothing whatsoever since her sister’s obituary.

  Wiping his hands, he rooted through his stuff for the email he’d gotten from the Seattle detective investigating Callie’s murder, with all its attachments. Her cell phone hadn’t been recovered, but her social media accounts boasted a lot of selfies, usually surrounded by a crowd, in clubs, restaurants, theaters, sometimes alone, often in lingerie or a bikini. Alone, she mostly wore a sly, secretive smile, staring straight at the camera as if she could see into the eyes of the person viewing the pictures. In a few, she looked pensive.

  Then he came to the last picture in the file. Callista Jane Winchester, lying on her back in a cemetery, clothes damp, a wound to the back of her head, a large waterproof dressing hiding the brutal attack on her chest.

  Related? the detective had echoed when Jimmy brought up the fact. In what way?

  Mother of God, he said after Jimmy told him, and he could easily imagine the man making the sign of the cross. He was tempted himself, and he wasn’t even Catholic. I’ll help however I can, but it’s hardly even an active case here. No clues, no suspects, nothing.

  How could a person do that kind of damage to another human being and no one else know? It should be tattooed on their foreheads, the evil in their souls forcing its way out to warn anyone they met. To have the dead-cold ability to mutilate a person like that and the even deader, even colder ability to hide it from everyone who saw him... A person like that was too dangerous to walk free.

  And their guy was not only free, he had likely set his sights on Martine. Of the remaining three, she was the easiest to find, the only one living right out there in public, not fifty miles from where they’d grown up. She was the only one who had never bought into the blame game for William Fletcher’s death.

  Good thing Jimmy was more determined to keep Martine safe than the killer could possibly be to claim her.

  Flipping through the yearbook pages, he stopped at the faculty section. There he was, Fletcher the Letcher. Probably about forty, light hair going a little thin on top, dark eyes, white shirt, sport coat, printed tie. He could have sold insurance or used cars, kept books or managed personnel; he had that sort of remarkably average look.

  But none of those other jobs would have provided him pretty much unlimited access to teenage girls.

  Jimmy found the list he’d been adding to all day and wrote Fletcher’s name at the bottom. Where had he taught before coming to Marquitta? Why had he left his last job? How long had he been married, and why had his wife chosen to go to prison without presenting some sort of defense? If he’d been abusive—always a possibility in domestic cases—she might have gotten off, depending on the degree of abuse, but she hadn't even tried.

  The early start to his day was making itself felt. He rubbed his eyes, then stood and stretched out the kinks before putting the leftover pizza in the refrigerator, its empty gleaming surfaces reminding him to go grocery shopping the next day. He didn’t cook much, but he knew from experience he could live on cheese and crackers, tortilla chips and salsa, and peanut butter sandwiches, and he always appreciated a cold beer from time to time.

  Or maybe, as rain suddenly pounded the windows, a hot buttered rum.

  The rain blurred the city lights that stretched as far as he could see and made him sigh. New Orleans, with its subtropical climate, was always a damp place, and he actually preferred humidity to drier weather, but this was too much. He had four or five pairs of wet shoes drying along the bedroom wall. Every day for the past week, he’d had the option of changing clothes when he got a chance or spending the day in some degree of wetness. He wanted to put away the overcoat and feel the sunshine on his face, the sooner, the better.

  Besides, there was a hell of a difference between rain with subtropical temperatures and rain with the midthirty degrees they were having tonight. Another couple of bumps down on the thermometer, and New Orleans could wake up to snow and/or ice in the morning, and that would be the icing on a truly bad weather cake.

  He was shutting off lights when his cell phone rang. He didn’t glance at caller ID before answering it. He gave his number to so many people—suspects, witnesses, families and friends, lawyers, district attorneys—that the majority of calls came from people whose names he didn’t always recognize.

  “DiBiase,” he said, heading past the kitchen into the short hallway that connected to the bathroom and bedroom.

  “Um...” The caller cleared his or her throat. With the next word, Jimmy recognized the voice. “Detective...”

  His muscles tightened. “Martine. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I, uh, got an envelope in the mail today. I just got around to opening it, and... It’s a note that says... It says, I know what you did.” Her voice quavered on the last word, and she drew in a noisy breath. “There’s something else in the envelope. It’s stuck to the glue on the flap, and I didn’t want to tear the envelope to get it out since I thought you might want it intact, but... It looks like a piece of fabric.”

  “Fabric?” he echoed. Executing a sharp turn, he went back to the island, switching on the lights overhead, shuffling through the papers there. He found the report from the Seattle detective, scanned through it until he reached the inventory of items found on Callie Winchester’s body, and then he cursed softly. “About an inch square? Some sort of blue pattern?”

  For a long time, she was still. He wasn’t. He headed to the bedroom, shoved his feet into running shoes, threaded his belt and holstered weapon through the denim loops of his jeans, then grabbed his Taser in its ho
lster and clipped it onto his waistband in back. “Martine? Are you there?”

  After another moment of nothingness, she whispered, “Oh, God. It’s part of the bandanna we used to make the voodoo doll, isn’t it? And you found it on Paulina, too, or Callie.”

  “Callie.” He opened the coat closet in the entry, yanking on a rain slicker, shoving a canister of pepper spray into one of its oversize pockets. “I’m coming over now. Is everything locked up? All the doors, windows, the gate to the courtyard?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Tension came over the line in waves, tightening the knots in his neck, jaw and shoulder muscles. He was tempted to run down the stairs to the garage, but the elevator would be quicker. Its bell dinged and the door opened only seconds after he punched the button. “Stay on the phone with me. I’m not far away, and I don’t have to worry about breaking any traffic laws.”

  “One of the perks of the job, huh?” She sounded a little more relaxed or, at least, as if she was trying.

  “That, and parking illegally. That really comes in handy when you’re picking up takeout.” He stepped out of the elevator onto the bottom level of the garage and jogged to his car. “That’s what I did when I picked up my dinner tonight.”

  “Of course you did. While we law-abiding citizens circle endlessly.”

  Though they’d never discussed it, he’d just known she would frown on any perks he got because of the job—free or discounted meals, a pass on traffic infractions, whatever else, but especially the easy parking. Grinning because he knew she would hear it in his voice, he pulled out of the garage, made a sharp turn and headed her way. “Aw, come on. Do you know what we get paid?”

  “I hear you don’t work for the city because you love the pay.”

  “You’ve been asking about me?”

  For the first time in hours, she was back to her usual scornful self. “I don’t have to ask. You give everyone so much to gossip about that it’s hard, when we know the same people, not to hear at least some of it.”

  There’d been plenty of gossip over the years, mostly about his ways with women, some about how an honest cop could afford his lifestyle. He doubted Martine cared about the money situation—though over the years, there had been plenty of people outranking him who did—but if she’d heard any of the talk about him and women before their second meeting, she never would have let him within arm’s length of her. “Yeah, okay. I work for the city because I love the job. And I happen to have a bit of family money that helps smooth over the rough places.” Like the apartment he’d just leased. The mountain cabin he rented once a year in Wyoming. The cars he swapped out for new ones every few years.

  Before she could respond to that, he went on. “I just turned onto your block. Don’t open the door until I ring the bell.”

  “Okay.” The word sounded flat, the lighter moment gone. As he pulled into the empty space beside her car, he added his usual professional encouragement. “It’ll be okay, Martine.”

  * * *

  Martine listened to the bell, immediately followed by DiBiase’s gruff voice. “Open up. It’s pouring.” She undid the locks, then backstepped to avoid the water running from him to puddle on the mat. She wasn’t at all surprised that just one glimpse of his face sent her personal security rating zooming from no one can save me to the big strong man will protect me in half a nanosecond. It wasn’t all Jimmy, either, she reminded herself. Any woman who was feeling vulnerable would gain strength from a man in uniform, even when he didn’t actually wear a uniform. Being with Jack made her feel safe. Ditto for navy cop Alia, Jimmy’s ex-wife. People who swore to serve and protect—and who carried big guns—always got two big thumbs-up from Martine.

  But she couldn’t honestly admit that if Jack or Alia was standing in her entry she would be thinking about how easily they filled the space, or about the warmth that just sort of radiated off them, or that they smelled incredibly fresh and green and musky.

  She shook her head as she turned and started up the stairs. Shadows fell over her, one looming ahead, long and threatening, another sneaking along behind. New light bulbs, she reminded herself. At least three hundred watts each. She wanted this staircase to be visible from outer space.

  When they reached the kitchen, he hung his slicker over the back of a dining chair while she took a clean towel from a drawer and handed it to him to dry his face.

  “One of my homeless guys says the city’s going to float away if this keeps up. They’ll find us floating somewhere in the gulf, and the state will have to decide whether it wants us back. If not, we’ll all be learning Spanish.”

  Maybe Martine was shallow, but she appreciated every moment she could think of something besides her own troubles. “Does he sleep out on nights like this?”

  “He’s got places. Back when I was in Patrol, I’d pick him up on bad nights and take him to a shelter. He’d be all grateful—Thank you, young James, you’ve saved my life—and three or four hours later, I’d find him sneaking back to one of his hiding places.” He shook his head, and a bead of water fell from his hair to his temple. He wiped it away with the towel before spreading it over the lip of the sink. “Some people really can’t handle the shelters—the crowding, the rules, the conformity. Darrell’s the nicest guy you’d want to meet under a bridge or in an abandoned warehouse, but put him in a shelter...” He shook his head.

  Martine knew Jack helped homeless people and runaways and prostitutes and budding juvenile offenders beyond the scope of his job—she supposed she knew rationally that a lot of cops did. But to find out the same about DiBiase... She’d been quite happy believing the worst of him for practically the entire time she’d known him. She wasn’t sure she was comfortable with giving up one of the constants in her normally comfortable life.

  “You want coffee?” She gestured toward the counter as she picked up her own mug. She’d brewed two while on the phone, after he’d said he was coming over. Everything needed for the perfect cup was on the counter in easy reach: sugar, sweetener packets and cream, along with bottles of Bailey’s, Frangelico, Kahlúa, bourbon, whiskey and rum. Every spirit she had in the house, in fact.

  “I like variety in coffee,” he said, a teasing note lightening his words.

  “Yeah, well, the plain stuff wasn’t making the chill go away.” Wrapping her hands around her mug, she took a sip, and the rum fanned a tiny flame to life deep in her stomach. She wasn’t much of a drinker, in part because booze always made her flush uncomfortably. Now that was her goal.

  He added sugar and cream to his, bypassing the liquor as he faced her. “You okay?”

  “Oh, sure. When my friend said someone was trying to kill her, I thought she was crazy. When she said someone wanted me dead, I thought she was freaking crazy, and now she’s dead and some lunatic is threatening me.” She held the cup tighter as she went down the hall to the living room and plopped in the chair closest to the gas fireplace, its flames dancing as they released heat into the air.

  The second floor of her building had originally been a single-family home, then divided into two apartments before she bought it. She’d rented the other space occasionally, though Reece, then her employee, had been the last to live there. After she’d moved into her own place with Jones a few years ago, Martine had opened hers up again, knocking out walls, turning numerous small rooms into fewer larger rooms, exposing brick walls and ancient wood floors along the way.

  DiBiase took a seat on the couch, set his cup down, and opened a small black bag that she hadn’t noticed before. Or his truly disreputable running shoes, way overdue for a trip to the landfill. Or his sweatshirt, the angry wave logo faded but still proclaiming his loyalty to Tulane.

  In the last twenty minutes, she hadn’t noticed anything but the intense desire to break down into a sobbing, terrified heap.

  From the bag he removed latex gloves, evidence bags
and a marker, then turned his attention to the elephant in the room, sitting in the middle of the coffee table. The envelope was a regular business size, made of heavyweight kraft paper, and there were faded spots on it, likely splatters from the rain. The note, in contrast, was written on the cheapest of white paper, almost as flimsy as tissue. She’d slit the envelope along one short end, and when she’d turned it over, the note had fallen out. It had taken her a few minutes and a whole range of emotions to realize that something remained inside the envelope.

  Despite the gloves, DiBiase handled the paper gently. “We’ll need your fingerprints for exclusionary purposes. We can do that in the morning.” He sounded intense even though he looked as if nothing else existed at the moment but the note. “‘I know what you did.’ Didn’t put much thought into it, did he?”

  Her hands began to tremble again, and she took a large drink of coffee and rum and decided her next cup would be mostly rum. “Enough to make my heart stop, which, I’m guessing, was the purpose.”

  He glanced sharply at her, then slid the note into an evidence bag and picked up the envelope. “No return address. Postmarked three weeks ago in Jackson, Mississippi. You know anyone there?”

  “No.” She was still having trouble believing she knew anyone capable of murder. Sure, she thought most people, herself included, could kill to protect themselves or someone else, but cold-blooded premeditated murder...to track down someone like Paulina or Callie, to terrorize them, kill them and discard their bodies in a cemetery...

  Squeezing the top and bottom of the envelope made the sides push out, and DiBiase squinted inside, leaning closer to the lamp at the end of the sofa. “Blue bandanna. It’s faded, looks old but not worn. Like someone’s been saving it all these years.” His gaze shifted to her again. “That’s what you used to make the doll.”

  Sick deep inside, she nodded. “I told you, it was really crude. Callie, I think, or maybe Tallie, had her hair tied back with it. She said she would sacrifice it to the cause.” Hearing the word sacrifice out loud made her cringe. They’d been so stupid and insensitive and naive.