by Robin Caroll
A moment passed. Maybe he was giving her time to collect herself…maybe he knew what was about to come…maybe he was being the gentleman he always was, but he sat silently, holding her hand.
Dear Lord, please give me the words.
She licked her lips again. “Dimitri…” Just saying his name filled her eyes with tears. She blinked. Hard.
He squeezed her hand again. “What’s wrong, Adelaide?” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No, I have something I need to tell you.” She let out a breath. “I need you to know that you are a very special man and you are very dear to me.”
He sat still, not speaking, just holding her hand.
Her mouth was so dry, it felt like the Mohave Desert. “Please know that I never meant to lead you on. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you on a romantic level. You’re an amazing man. Romantic. Handsome. Generous. Loving.”
“But not someone you could see yourself with for the rest of your life.” His voice barely cracked.
She desperately wanted to cry, but forced back the tears. She was the one ending it…she had no right to make him feel worse. It felt like a part of her was dying. “I’m so sorry, Dimitri.”
He pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay, Adelaide. Really.”
She held him tighter than she ever had before. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she’d been too hasty.
Addy closed her eyes and inhaled, letting herself just feel. Dimitri’s arms tightened around her and his heart thudded next to hers. Warmth filled her. She exhaled.
Dimitri pulled away, just the space of a breath. His lips grazed hers.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. He deepened the kiss, pulling her tight against him. The kiss was as mind-blowing as always, but this time…this time she felt like she was cheating on Beau, and that had never happened before.
Addy pulled away. No doubt now that she hadn’t made a mistake.
Dimitri rested his forehead against hers and ran his thumb along her jawbone. “Oh, Adelaide. Thank you for your openness and honesty.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
“I’m so sorry, Dimitri.”
He smiled slightly and released her. “Don’t be. I, too, have felt something wasn’t right between us. There hasn’t been a sense of permanency. A feeling of forever.”
She nodded, relief calming the butterflies in her stomach. “You, too?”
He nodded. “We will always remain friends, though.”
“Of course.” She smiled back at him. “And our working relationship has always been separate and great.”
Again, he nodded. He took her hand and kissed it. “You are an amazing woman, Adelaide Fountaine. Beauregard is a lucky man.”
Her muscles bunched.
He shook his head. “Don’t feel guilty for loving him. You both deserve every happiness in the world.” He sobered. “I mean that. Truly.”
“I know you do.” She rested her hand against his face. “Thank you, Dimitri.”
1938
“I finally found him.” James rushed into Will’s office wearing a wide smile, George on his heels.
Will looked up from his book, every nerve ending in his body at attention. There was only one person he’d had both James and George looking for over the last three years.
“You found the man who proclaims to be the Axeman?”
“We did.” James handed over a folder. “Robert Holmes.”
Will opened the file and stared at the black and white photograph of the man staring back at him. His eyes were cold. Empty. Lifeless. He laid on a slab, obviously in a morgue with his nameplate on his chest. “He’s dead?” Will looked from James to George.
George nodded. Under Will’s direction, he’d been trained as an investigator, his sole focus in finding out who the Axeman really was. “As you can see in the file, while there isn’t cut and dry evidence Robert was the Axeman, or the police surely would have announced it, the documentation all lines up.” He approached and sat in the chair in front of Will’s desk, flipping over the photograph to the first page.
“Every night of the attacks, Robert’s wife, Samantha, said her husband hadn’t been in bed during the time. Her neighbor reported seeing blood stains on several of the shirts hanging on the line to dry.” He flipped the page to the next.
Several drawings and pictures of doors with holes in the bottom were on the sheet.
“The way the Axeman entered his victims’ homes was usually a panel on a back door of a home was removed by a chisel. Well, Robert was a woodworker, so he had several chisels and knew how to use them.” George started to reach to turn to the next page.
Will pulled the folder toward him and shut the folder. “Just tell me.”
George sat back in the chair. “Well, everyone always wondered what prompted the Axeman to start killing.”
“He was possessed by a demon, that’s why.” Will knew this. Knew it.
George nodded. “Yes, well, probably because he began to go a little mad. You see, according to his wife, Samantha, everything was fine until they had their son. He was a colicky baby, crying all the time, and that seemed to drive Robert mad. He couldn’t sleep without the aid of help. His immune system was lowered. There are countless reports Samantha made to her neighbors regarding her husband’s crazy ideas.”
“If she told so many people, why didn’t the police question him? Or arrest him?”
“Because Samantha said Robert began to believe he was one of Satan’s generals.”
Yes! He knew it! God had shown him all too clearly. Will nodded, even as his heartbeat raced. “This is the Axeman.” Glory be, merciful heavens…he’d found the man who’d weakened enough to let a demon possess him and killed Will’s sinful mother.
“Was. He and Samantha both died in the flu outbreak in the winter of 1919, which is further evidence that he was, in fact, the Axeman because the attacks stopped in the fall of 1919.”
So the demon had descended back into the bowels of hell? That was it? No action needed? Surely God didn’t call him to form the Cretum Deus and seek retribution for all the Axeman had stolen from Will. Surely this couldn’t be the end—Wait—
“You said they had a son?” Will knew that many times the sins of the father were passed down to the son. Chances were high that the demon might have left Robert near the time of death and entered the child. Bloodlines were strong and once the door was opened for evil, it could be passed down from father to son.
James nodded. “I did some research and found that they had a son, Harold, who was born in 1917.”
“What happened to this child? This son of the Axeman?” Who could have the demon within him, just waiting to be called forth by the Evil One.
“Will, it’s Harold.” James smiled. “Harold Holmes from St. Vincent and St. Mary’s.”
17
— Beau
“Captain, I’m going to strongly suggest we have extra officers out in the Quarter this evening.” Beau sat alongside Marcel in Captain Istre’s office.
The captain shut the file Beau had handed him. “You really think this copycat is going to act tonight? Attack a family with a young child?”
Beau glanced at Marcel, then nodded. “We do, sir. It follows the pattern. He’s attacked on Monday morning, late Monday night, which he probably considered Tuesday, on Wednesday, and then yesterday.”
Captain Istre nodded and ran a hand over his thinning hair. “I’m almost shocked that there hasn’t been a news report connecting all these attacks. Is Allison Williams sick or something?”
“We’ve been putting out notices all through the department that we know there’s a leak to Allison Williams here, we’re actively searching, and that you would deal with the person responsible.” Marcel grinned. “Guess that was enough to scare whoever it was to keep their trap shut.”
“Good.”
Beau inched to the edge of the seat. “We also suspect that the copycat is a relative
or in some other way connected to Harriet Lowe, one of the Axeman’s victims. Hers is the only attack not duplicated by the copycat.”
“What do we know about her?” the captain asked.
“We just got the background report back we requested. We know that she was an only child, never married, but—and we’re waiting for documentation on this—we believe she had an illegitimate child who would have been less than a year old at the time of her death.” Beau pulled out his notebook to continue.
“Having no family, her child would have been left with St. Vincent’s orphanage. According to the report, one William Lowe, aged seven months, was left there in August of 1918. He was transferred to St. Mary’s Home for Boys in 1925.” Beau flipped the page. “In 1932, changes began to happen at St. Mary’s, and in 1933 it moved to Marrero and its name was changed to Madonna Manor.”
“What happened to Lowe?”
Marcel picked up the story. “That’s just it—there’s no record of William Lowe after St. Mary’s moved and changed its name. From the reports we received, apparently it was fairly common for boys around that age of fifteen and older to run away. As they were moving, they weren’t monitored as closely as they should have. During that particular move, three boys—including William—who had been at St. Mary’s were never counted once it became Madonna Manor.”
“So they just disappeared?”
Beau nodded. “It would seem so, sir.”
“So we have no way of tracing this William to see who his family became as a man? His children? Grandchildren?”
Marcel shook his head. “No way to know who might be crazy enough to decide to copycat the murders that took their ancestor’s life.”
“We have a call in to the archdiocese to see if anyone there can remember this William Lowe and what might have happened to him.” Beau stuck his pen in the spiral loops of the notebook.
Captain Istre shook his head. “Why start the copycat attacks now?”
Beau sat back in his seat. “Well, this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the final Axeman attacks.”
“Oh, that’s just lovely. We get through Mardi Gras and Twelfth Night, and now we have the anniversary of the Axeman attacks. Great. Just great.”
Beau fingered the edge of his notebook. “There’s a chance it’s even worse, sir.”
The captain tossed his pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “The hits just keep on coming.”
“There’s a possibility a cult is involved.” Beau glanced at his partner sitting beside him.
Captain Istre sat forward, tenting his hands over his desk. “Excuse me?”
“Hear us out.” Marcel held up a finger.
Beau watched the captain’s face as Marcel explained about the robes and masks.
Marcel pressed back in his seat. “Now, the only documented cults in the area that focus less on the fanged ones and more on religious themes are The Disciples and the Cretum Deus.”
“Both of these cults have been known to wear dark, hooded robes and animal masks. Specifically the pig and sheep masks.” Beau thumbed through his notebook. “Both of the cults have been around for years and years, both are reported to put great emphasis on dates and anniversaries, and both have had reports regarding animal blood and rituals.”
That last part really was freaky. Especially since it seemed that Addy and her dad were targets. Some of the reports of the ritual killings of animals were gruesome, even to a seasoned cop. Every protective fiber in Beau seemed to be on high alert. He just couldn’t discern if that was because he cared so much, or if his detective’s hunch had kicked in.
“Is there any chatter on the streets about either of the cults planning anything?” Captain Istre picked up a rubber band and began wrapping it around his fingers, then popping it.
Marcel shook his head. “Not that we’ve heard. I called in some of the guys in narcs and special units and asked them to keep their eyes and ears open.”
“If it is one of these cults and they are planning something, surely someone would’ve heard a whisper at least.” The captain stretched the rubber band between his hands.
“We’ve put the word out so if there are any whispers, we’ll hear about it.” Beau shut his notebook. “I’m still going to ask that we up patrol in the Quarter, especially this weekend since the eighteenth is Monday.”
“You think that’s the copycat’s deadline?” the captain asked.
Both Beau and Marcel nodded. “We’ll see if we can find a reason to visit the cults as well,” Beau offered.
The captain hesitated. “We’re already exceeding estimated overtime this month, and we’re barely over halfway through.”
Beau’s chest ached. They needed extra patrol…he could feel something big was about to happen.
Captain Istre set down the rubber band. “Look, I’ll tell each shift to order the patrol units to be visible and moving all through their beat the entire time. No parking and doing reports or monitoring. All units will be moving through the Quarter, every shift this weekend. That’s the best I can do without something more specific to go on.”
Disappointment sat like a rock in the pit of Beau’s gut.
“If you find out anything, anything at all that can be confirmed, I’ll order in more patrols.”
Marcel stood, nudging Beau’s foot with his own. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Captain.”
Beau stood and nodded, but words wouldn’t form. This was a mistake. He could feel it deep in his bones. Something big and terrible was going to happen before Monday.
He followed his partner out of the captain’s office and across the floor to their desks. “Man, we need to find something.”
“I hear ya.” Marcel dropped to his seat while Beau did the same behind his desk. “Let me contact someone at the FBI office. She might have something on one of the cults. At least we might get some info.”
Beau nodded and let his notebook drop to his desk with a resounding thud. “If only the victims of the copycat were somehow connected, we might be able to get a bead on who might be his next victim. But a couple with a kid under the age of three in a city of nearly four hundred thousand people?”
He stared at his closed notebook, mind spinning. There had to be a connection that he just hadn’t seen yet.
Marcel pressed the mute button on his cell while he kept it to his ear. “We need to figure something out, because if my gal can’t give me any insight, we’re back to having nothing.”
Beau shook his head, processing his thoughts. All they had to go on was the similarity to the last name. The family who the Axeman killed was the Cortimiglia family.
He ran a search for that name in the database. That yielded no results. He ran a search on similar names in the greater New Orleans area. Two results loaded: Angelica Cordamaglia and Matt Scordamaglia.
Angelica Cordamaglia was sixty-eight years old and lived in the Garden District. She had no record, except for two parking tickets from a couple of years ago, and those she’d cleared within thirty days of issuance. She was widowed and her only child, a daughter, lived in California.
On the only other result, Matt Scordamaglia was a mortgage broker who lived on the outskirts of the Quarter. Although only thirty-six, he’d been divorced twice. Both times, the wife had filed for divorce and cited adultery as a prevailing reason. Neither of the marriages had produced children. He’d been arrested three times for solicitation of a prostitute, each time paying a fine and getting off with a slap on the wrist, as most in the city did. He had a couple of DUIs, as well as a drunk and disorderly charge, all had been processed. No open warrants or outstanding charges. He was a scum, for sure, but that didn’t make him a target for the Axeman copycat.
— Dimitri
“You were right. About everything.” Zoey’s big, round dark eyes glistened with tears.
Dimitri handed his culinary spoon to Yvette and led Zoey from the kitchen to his office. “Sit down, you look like you’re about to
fall down.” He eased her into a chair.
She was paler than usual and her eyes were bloodshot. He handed her a bottled water from the small fridge he kept in the tight space. “Now, what are you talking about?”
“Everything about Solomon’s family. At first, he brushed off my questions, but finally, he started answering. The more he answered, the more I realized that his family was a cult. I told him that and he freaked out, but then, as I explained it like you had with me, he began telling me more details that proved the fact.”
Dimitri sat in the chair beside her. “Like what?”
“Like his father is the leader. He has no idea how many females are in the group or which ones are his sisters because his father deemed them unimportant. But his brothers? They all have different mothers. Solomon said that his father has never married. Not once in his one hundred and one years, but he has fifteen sons, even though three of them are dead. And their mothers? All of them were or are married to like the bigwigs in the group.”
That was crazy.
Zoey took a drink, then her words continued to fall over one another. “Solomon says that before his mother died years ago, she told him that the only way someone could get married in the group was they had to give his dad a child first. She said that she loved one of the men in the group enough that she bore Solomon just so she could marry the man.” Zoey shivered. “Solomon said his mother was only twenty-two when she had him, and his father was seventy-one! That’s gross.”
Gross, but also not so uncommon in a cult. “What else did Solomon say that made him agree it’s a cult?”
“One of his brothers, Samuel, caused a stink years ago—before Solomon was even born. From what Solomon was told, his father exiled Samuel and no one has heard from him since. Ever. It’s like he disappeared.”
Sounded like he made an escape. Or was dead…
“Another of his other brothers, Ezra, called his father and brothers out and told them they were not living the way Jesus would have them. He said he was going to leave and tell everyone how warped the family was. Do you know what happened to him?”