Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  He pulled on his own jacket, then grabbed a hoodie from its hanger. It was black, big enough that she could wear it over her coat, bulky enough to add a little camouflage to her slender body. She didn’t argue, just slid her arms into the sleeves and stood impatiently while he zipped it, then pulled the hood over her hair, casting her face into shadow.

  “If you tie it, I’m going to look like that cartoon kid on TV.”

  “Kenny. You watch South Park? You don’t seem the smart-ass bratty-kid type.”

  Her smile was sarcastic. “My best friends have kids. I pick up popular culture by osmosis.”

  Holding on to the edges of the hood on both sides, he ducked his head to give her an intense look. “We’re taking my department car, and you’re seriously riding in the back seat, out of sight, and I really am locking you in when we get there. You good with that?”

  She nodded firmly. “I’m good.”

  The elevator was empty, and no one lingered in the garage, either. The air was cold and muffled sounds from the nearby streets, but it was warmer than it had been that morning. Maybe a normal winter was on its way back to New Orleans. Maybe everything would be back to normal soon.

  Except him and Martine. He intended to make these last few days their new normal.

  And keep it forever.

  His gaze constantly scanning, he opened the rear door of the vehicle so she could slide into the seat, closed it and got behind the wheel. Glancing into the rearview mirror, he cautioned, “Stay out of sight. I don’t want the security guards to see you.”

  Silently she disappeared from view.

  Only one guard was at the entrance, the other one probably making rounds. Jimmy acknowledged him with a wave, then turned toward Royal Street.

  Jordan’s patrol unit was parked in front of Martine’s apartment. Jimmy stopped on the opposite side of the street in front of the shop, where shadows would help hide her. This late at night on this particular block, he wasn’t concerned about impeding traffic, not that he cared much. “I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t reply, move or even, as far as he could tell, take a breath. She was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost.

  No. Not a ghost. Just invisible.

  Jordan climbed out of his car and met Jimmy at the stoop, carrying a large evidence bag and a pair of gloves. The smell of charred paper lingered in the air, thin and acrid, made sour by the water poured on it.

  “Thanks for waiting.”

  “No problem, Detective.”

  “Aw, you can call me Jimmy.” Rank didn’t mean a lot to him. He preferred to be on good terms with everyone, best terms with the officers on the street. They saw things, knew things, that came in damn useful to him. He wasn’t about to stand on formalities with someone who would eventually make him look good.

  Jimmy pulled on the gloves and felt the top of the pile. The uppermost layers had burned, but beneath were intact photographs, some areas turned to ash, others scorched, edges curling. They were cool to the touch, no dormant flames smoldering underneath.

  “Thanks, Detec—Jimmy.” Jordan held the bag open. “Is the woman who lives here okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s staying elsewhere.” Jimmy flipped through the top few layers carefully, making note that the pictures appeared older, faded, the subjects young and unaware of what was to come. His brain registered a couple of shots of a teenaged Martine before he carefully scooped up the pile and slid them into the bag. He didn’t bother to seal or initial it. Ordinarily, he would take them to the office and study them before logging them in as evidence, but it was the middle of the night. He would take them home, examine them and spread them out so the damp pages could dry thoroughly before he rebagged them. First thing in the morning, he would deliver them to Evidence.

  With his hands free, Jordan shined his flashlight on the door. “You can see where a few flames got it, and it looks the paint bubbled a bit, but it’s not much. I checked the lock, and it’s secure. I also checked the gate to the courtyard and the door to the shop, and they’re okay, too.” Jordan looked up and down the street, then lowered his voice. “Isn’t this part of that murder case—the woman found in the graveyard?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Cool.” Immediately an abashed look came over his face. “I mean, damn. Too bad.”

  Jimmy grinned, remembering a time when he would have traded his next fifty routine calls for just one with a little depth and excitement to it. He followed Jordan’s lead and looked from one corner to the other, from one side of the street to the other. When the killer had called Martine Friday morning, she’d stood out here first. Not the first time she’d come there, not the last. But he and Jordan were the only people out. A hundred people could be watching from the windows and doors of the buildings across the way, but the premises concealed them.

  The back of his neck prickled as he turned toward the cars. “Thanks a lot, Jordan. I really appreciate it.” He crossed the damp pavement in long strides, got in his car and started the engine. When he took a calming breath, he smelled Martine in the light flowery perfume that clung to her skin, in the honey scent of her shampoo and in the faint, barely there essence of fear.

  As he drove, his gaze shifted from the street ahead to the rearview mirror, back to the street. He made a series of random turns, circling the block, making absolutely certain no one was following them.

  “I assume you don’t see any crazies.”

  Martine’s voice came from lower in the back—not the seat itself but the floorboards. He grinned. She’d taken his don’t-be-seen admonition to heart.

  “Just the one driving this car. We’re coming up on the garage entrance.” Not only were they not being followed, he had seen very few cars. It seemed everyone was giving the city one more night to get over the snow and cold before they flooded the streets again.

  At the gate, he stopped. “Hey, Travers, if you see anything odd—car keeps driving by, someone paying too much attention—let me know, will you?”

  The guard, standing in the open doorway of the guard shack, blew on a cup of steaming coffee. “Always, Detective. They got you working late, huh?”

  “At least it was a short trip this time.” Smiling, listening to the even tenor of Martine’s breathing, he drove through the gate and to his space.

  * * *

  Martine stood near the counter, watching as Jimmy, wearing gloves again, meticulously separated the top pictures on the stack, reduced to ash, from half-burned photos in the middle and, at the bottom of the pile, mostly undamaged shots.

  When he finished, she counted thirty-five pictures, filled with familiar faces and memories. There were only four of the girls in most of the photos, except for the ones where the camera was handed off to a bystander—usually a boyfriend, a friend or someone eager to be a friend.

  Jimmy pulled out his cell phone and took his own pictures of the pictures, no doubt to add to his growing pile of folders. Unlike Jack, who was pretty much all digital, Jimmy liked his evidence the old-fashioned way, in hard-copy form that he could look at, touch, highlight, process in his own way.

  He slid onto a stool, then gestured her nearer. “Have you seen them before?”

  “I’ve probably got copies in my storage bin.”

  “Who’s the photographer?”

  It was mostly a rhetorical question. It was easy enough to see from the array who was missing from most of the shots. “The camera...” Her hands started to tremble. She clasped them tightly. “It was before cell phone cameras. We all had little dinky versions, of course, but this was a thirty-five-millimeter SLR film camera. Pricey, fun to use, took great pictures. It was... It was Tallie’s.”

  The name hung there in the air as invisible bands tightened around her chest. She forced out the next words with too little air to give them substance. “It doesn’t mean it w
as her. She always got multiple copies and gave them out. Those could be anybody’s—Callie’s or Robin’s or even mine.”

  “If the killer had stolen them.”

  But her place was secure; nothing was missing from Paulina’s house; and there had been no report of a theft before or after Callie’s death. Which left Tallie or Robin.

  Martine’s knees buckled, and Jimmy grabbed her, lifting her onto the stool next to his. She bent forward, pressing her forehead against her knees, taking rapid breaths that left her feeling light-headed and confused. She needed another hour of forgetfulness—an entire day of it. She was tired of knowing the worst about people she’d loved, suspecting the worst about other people she’d loved. Tired and sick and disillusioned.

  Jimmy patted her back until her breathing was under control again, but she could tell when his attention wandered back to the evidence. His shadow shifted over her as he picked up one photo, turned it over and examined it. “This one’s thicker than the others. Maybe it’s two stuck together or...”

  Martine straightened and watched as he pulled the knife from his pocket and gently worked the blade point into one corner, separating one piece of paper from the other. With that start, they came apart easily, each bearing the same wrinkles where they’d connected, but the second piece wasn’t a photo.

  Thick black letters, like the first message she’d received, were centered on a file card: It’s too late to hide, Tine.

  Jimmy slid to his feet, crossed the living room and rooted through the piles on the makeshift coffee table. He came back with the yearbook, open to the twins’ senior pictures, set the notecard on the opposite page and looked at Martine.

  The yearbook adviser had insisted on labeling their pictures Callista and Taliesin, and the girls had insisted on inking those names out and writing in Callie and Tallie. The t, the a, the l, i and e from the card bore an eerie resemblance to Tallie’s handwriting in the yearbook.

  “How could this happen?” Her voice was small and weak, the same way she felt. “How could so much love turn to that much hate?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. What could he say? I don’t know. It just happens. Life gets screwed up. She could come up with those answers on her own. The only one who might know the truth was Tallie, and it was too late for her to share. The other half of her whole was dead.

  Don’t meet any other old friends who happen to call, Jimmy had warned Martine a few days earlier. At the time, she’d taken it to mean that the killer might be watching. She much preferred that to the knowledge that the old friend was likely the killer.

  Jimmy left the counter again, going to the fireplace. A moment later, blues music drifted into the air from speakers hidden around the apartment. There were no lyrics, just sexy, sweet instrumentals that made her muscles relax and stretch and long to move.

  He came back, pulled her to her feet and shut off the light over the pictures, leaving the room illuminated only by the city’s lights spilling through the glass wall. She half expected him to lead her toward the bedroom, but instead he wrapped his arms around her, drew her near and slowly, sensuously danced her toward the center of the living room.

  “Not too sad for you?” he murmured in her ear.

  The raspy sexy sound of his voice drew a smile she couldn’t have summoned on her own. “My mother says if dancing to the blues makes you sad, then you’re not doing it right.”

  “I’d like to meet your mother.”

  Martine rested her head on his shoulder, let him lead her in languorous steps around the gleaming tile floor. Comfort was slowly seeping into her body from his body, from the rustle of the air, from the lament of the saxophones. “You would like her, and she would like you. But I have to warn you, Jack is her favorite man in the entire world.”

  “Only because she hasn’t met me yet. Does she come to town often?”

  “When she’s stopping off between trips. I’m going to ask her to come soon. While this is incredible—” she nodded to him, then herself “—sometimes...”

  “A girl needs her mother.”

  “Yes.” Just the thought of Bette in her bigger-than-life mama-lion mode was enough to bring a tear or two to Martine’s eyes. “She’ll charm you. She charms the whole world.”

  “And I’ll charm her right back.”

  Another smile worked its way out. “That’ll be a nice change. She hated my ex-husband.”

  “Parents are supposed to hate their kids’ exes. Every time I see Alia’s grandparents, they say rude things to me in Vietnamese.”

  “Do you speak Vietnamese?”

  “No. But some things don’t need translation.”

  And there it was—a laugh, when she’d begun to think she might never laugh again. She slid her arms around his neck and left a trail of kisses along his throat before brushing her mouth to his, sighing softly. “I’ve known you for six years—”

  “Five days,” he corrected her, and in a very real sense, he was right.

  “And I never imagined I’d say this, but... You’re good for me, Jimmy DiBiase.”

  And with that, she kissed him.

  Chapter 10

  In cases of emergency or convenience, cell phones were a wondrous thing. There ought to be times, though, Martine was convinced, when people should be unreachable, and this early on a Sunday morning was one of those times. She burrowed deeper under the covers, trying to block the ringing of Jimmy’s phone, but once it had penetrated her sleep, she couldn’t shut it out.

  Thankfully, it went quiet after a moment...until the message alert sounded. A few seconds after that, the ringing began again.

  Shoving back the covers, she looked at him, sprawled on his back, dead to the world, then slid out of bed. The tile floor was cold on her bare feet, making her do a little dance around the bed to the phone. All she intended to do was mute the ringer, then wake him up in case it was police business he needed to deal with. The number displayed on the screen stopped her.

  The call was coming from her shop. The only people in the world with a key to her shop were her and Anise. Had her employee gone by there and seen something wrong? Encountered some problem? Found another message from Tallie?

  She answered with a quiet “Hello” as she shrugged into Jimmy’s shirt from last night, then left the room. The music still played in the living room, the same sort of sexy, sad songs she and Jimmy had danced to, made love to, fallen asleep to. She found the remote on the mantel and shut it off, then checked out the window to see that the fog had returned. From this vantage point, it looked as if the buildings were floating atop a drab colorless cloud.

  “Hello,” she repeated.

  Anise’s response, somewhere between relief and a whimper, came suddenly. “Oh, thank God, Martine, it’s you! I’ve called and called, and I was so afraid, I didn’t know what to do!”

  The hairs on Martine’s nape stood on end, and goose bumps covered her entire body. It was just that the room was cold, she told herself, and the tile floor even colder, but she couldn’t even pretend to believe it. Something was horribly wrong. She felt it in the nausea sweeping over her, the trembling that made her clutch the phone, the roiling in her stomach. Even so, she managed an even, reasonable tone when she spoke. “Take a deep breath, Anise, then tell me why you’re at the shop this early when you know we’re closed today.”

  Anise obeyed, her first breath ragged and painful, the next a little less so. “Niles left some stuff here, and I’m meeting him this morning for breakfast so I said I’d pick it up for him, but when I got here— Oh, God, Martine, I’m so sorry I did this! I just didn’t think—I didn’t really believe—”

  Martine padded to the couch, curled into a small ball and gripped the phone tighter. “What happened when you got there, Anise?” Please let it be nothing, just some silly thing that she’s overreacting to, God, please
.

  There was a rustle of noise in the background—nothing she could identify, just a sense of sound, activity—then Anise spoke again. This time, the panic was mostly gone, her tone dull and heavy with regret. “I’ve got a message for you, Martine.”

  Another hesitation, another rustling, then... “Actions have consequences.”

  The call disconnected.

  Dear God, Tallie was at the shop, and she had Anise. If Martine wasn’t already sitting, her legs would have given way beneath her. “Anise?” she whispered, even though she knew her friend couldn’t hear. “Anise, please...oh, please...”

  She had to wake Jimmy, had to tell him, to take him with her when she went to the shop so he could arrest Tallie, so he could free Anise and bring an end to this entire awful mess. He would need time to call Jack and maybe some other officers, to make a plan, to get people in place and to keep Martine safe—

  Halfway to her feet, she sank down again. Tallie wanted to deal with her, not the police. She had killed Paulina. God help her, she had killed her own twin sister. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Anise, too, if Martine sent the police in her stead.

  Jimmy won’t let you walk through that door. It’s too dangerous.

  But what about the danger to Anise if she didn’t? She trusted Jimmy with her life. She had faith in his abilities to do his job better than anyone could, but she couldn’t bear it if her young employee suffered because of her.

  Grimly, she stood, hardly noticing the chill from the floor. She went to the guest room, dressed in jeans, a sweater and running shoes, got her slicker, then slipped into Jimmy’s room to leave his phone where she’d found it. After sliding the weapons into her jacket pockets, adding his knife just in case, she couldn’t resist stopping a moment, touching her hand to his arm and whispering without sound, “I love you, Jimmy.”

  Then, before her courage fled, she left the room, the apartment, the building. Shivering inside her slicker, she greeted the security guard as if she were just any resident out for a stroll. Once she turned the corner out of his sight, she began running.