by Lisa Jackson
Too bad. Reed was convinced that Duval had been helped along in his death. But by whom? And why?
Reed rubbed the back of his neck.
Owen’s homicide was linked to the discovery of his sisters’ remains. Reed was sure of it; he just couldn’t prove it yet.
But it wasn’t a coincidence that Owen had been killed—silenced?—after the bodies had been located and identified.
There had been no sign of forced entry at Owen’s apartment, but Mrs. Davis had admitted to having a spare key “hidden” on the back porch, which made it possible that anyone who had been watching or had some knowledge of the key could have snagged it, let himself in and helped Owen along on his journey to death. There was no doubt that Owen had been drinking, and probably taking a few pills, possibly to bolster his confidence as he may well have been suicidal. Toxicology tests would prove if any drugs had been in his system. As to his mental state? That was something that would be tough to prove. So far no one had indicated that he was depressed enough to have taken his own life.
Reed climbed out of the car.
Margaret Le Roy was right. All of her children with the worrisome exception of Rose were now dead, all victims of homicide. And who knew about the youngest? Whatever Owen Duval had known about Rose’s whereabouts had died with him.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, walking up a short path to the back door, hearing excited barks emanating from the kitchen. He punched the code to the keyless entry to get into the house as his house key was on his key chain, which he hoped Nikki had left inside.
The dog and cat greeted him, Mikado’s tail wagging wildly even as he pranced to be let outside. “Been a long time?” Reed asked, dropping his keys onto the table before bending down to scratch the dog behind his ears, then picking up Jennings. “How about you?” he asked the cat, who immediately struggled to get down. “Okay, okay. Yeah, I love you, too.” He let both the animals into the backyard, watching as Mikado streaked to a magnolia tree, while Jennings slunk through the chairs surrounding the small table where he and Nikki sometimes drank coffee in the mornings or shared a bottle of wine with friends on an evening like this.
So where was she?
As he closed the glass door, he read his wife’s text again, texted her back that he was home, then did the same with Delacroix. His partner, too, wasn’t responding, and Reed only hoped it was because she’d gotten some new information from Owen Duval’s attorney.
Upstairs, he shed himself of jacket, slacks and dress shirt, opting for jeans and a faded T from a rock concert he’d attended twenty years earlier.
Still no response.
Which wasn’t all that unusual.
Yet.
Once downstairs in the kitchen again, he opened the French doors. Mikado bounded inside, his tail still whipping back and forth at warp speed while Reed found the animals’ bowls and food. Although he was practically tripping over Mikado, the cat was taking his sweet time about returning. “Come on, Jennings,” Reed yelled through the open door. “Dinnertime.” He opened a can of wet food, mixing it with dry and feeding a ravenous Mikado just as the tabby deigned to stroll inside and sniff before daintily eating.
Reed turned on the TV and checked his phone, rereading Nikki’s last communication once more:
Am out doing errands and research. Mikado and Jennings need to be fed. Back home soon. Love you!
And then the heart emoji. That was odd. She wasn’t one for gushy notes or hearts and flowers and oftentimes just responded with a checkmark or a thumbs-up emoji.
Don’t overthink it. She sent you a text. Heart emoji or no, it’s not a big deal.
But he did. He couldn’t rein in his thoughts now that they were careening down that dangerous path. He knew his wife too well; had been in too many situations where she and her damned curiosity, her need to write the next crime article in the Sentinel had gotten her into trouble. Serious, life-threatening trouble.
“Damn it, Nik,” he said as if she were in the room with him. In an instant he realized she wasn’t doing errands and research. Not the kind she wanted him to think about. He looked through the windows to the night beyond, where the ambient light of the city permeated the backyard and cast a sheen up into a night where a full moon was rising.
Where the hell could she be?
Had she been going to let him know earlier when she’d said she wanted to tell him something? He tried her number again, but, of course, she didn’t pick up.
And then he noticed the voice mail. One that had somehow slipped through, maybe while he was texting. From a number he associated with the department. He hit speaker, set the phone on the counter and listened:
“Hey, this is Rivera in Evidence,” the woman said. He knew her: petite, in her fifties with laugh lines near her dark eyes and a quick smile. “I’m lockin’ up the case files on Duval and I can’t get hold of Detective Delacroix. Been tryin’ for a couple of hours. Since you all are her partner, would you pass it along that we need that locket back? I’d like to seal this up with all of the evidence intact, if ya know what I mean. Sheesh. I don’t have to tell you this is highly irregular. Tell her to get in touch.” With that she hung up.
Reed stared at the phone.
Delacroix had Holly Duval’s locket?
That was news to him. Earlier in the investigation, he remembered that she’d gone down to see about the evidence in the Duval case, specifically about the locket. Right? And when she’d come back? He remembered her saying that the locket had been empty. Part of the conversation came back to him because she’d made a bit of a joke:
“ . . it wasn’t like some kind of Nancy Drew moment when the final and dangerous clue to the mystery is revealed within the clasp of a small piece of jewelry. So I just put it back with everything else.”
She’d lied.
Intentionally.
His eyes narrowed. Why? Why would his partner lie to him?
Because she has something to hide? What the hell do you know about her? Only what you’ve been told. Only what she’s told you.
A knot of fear began to tighten in his stomach. She was a recent hire, he did know that much, and the department vetted all of their employees, of course. She’d transferred from New Orleans. That’s where she’d learned about blood spatter.
Or so she claimed.
And now both Nikki and Delacroix were missing?
“What the hell?”
Fear galvanized him. He swept his phone from the counter and snagged the keys to the department’s SUV from the table. He reached for the door, but second-guessed himself and hurried back upstairs, retrieving his service weapon and holster. “Not this time,” he told the dog, who looked eagerly up at him. “Walk, later.” Reed had one foot out the door when his phone jangled. He looked at the screen. Not Nikki. Not Delacroix. A number with an out-of-state area code. He answered as he shot out the door. “Pierce Reed.”
“Uh. Yeah.” A male voice he didn’t recognize asked, “You’re the detective, right?”
Reed slowed. “Yes.”
“Yeah. Good. I, um, I saw you on TV. You’re in charge of that missing girl case, aren’t you? The one where they found the girls.”
Reed froze on the back walk, his toe hitting something that had wedged between the bricks and the root of an azalea bush. He bent down, still listening, and picked up the object, expecting it to be a dog toy. “That’s right. Who’re you?”
“Dennis. Dennis Kaminiski. And . . . and uh . . . y’know twenty years ago, um, I was visiting my aunt in Savannah. I did that every other summer or so.”
“Yeah?” Reed said, his interest piquing.
“Yeah. And well, my aunt still lives there, in the Savannah area, and she texted me a news clip where you were asking about a couple of teenagers who were in the movie theater that night. The night those girls disappeared?”
Reed couldn’t believe his ears. “You know them?”
“Well, yeah, I am one of ’em. Me and Carl Jetkins, we were at the
movies that night, but we weren’t supposed to be. We, uh, we snuck in through a side door. Carl, he knew someone who worked there and knew that the security cameras weren’t working and that this guy would let friends in the side for free. So we went to the flick and ducked out the same way we came in.”
“You saw something.”
Reed listened hard. Finally, a break!
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t come forward?” He was listening hard.
“I was a kid. Doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t. That day I was supposed to be with my grandma. She was out of it, didn’t really know I wasn’t there. She was in the bedroom, I was in the living room, had the TV on and snuck out. No one was the wiser.”
Stunned, Reed listened, barely aware that the object he’d picked up wasn’t a dog toy as expected but an e-cigarette.
“Anyway,” Kaminiski continued. “I think maybe I saw what happened. A guy came in the same way I did, I think, and took the girls out early. I saw him with two of ’em.”
“You mean three,” Reed said, trying to reconstruct the events at the theater.
“No, man. Just two. Blond. Girls. Maybe like ten or twelve or so. I just caught a glimpse, you know?”
Reed’s attention was laser focused on the conversation with the first witness to come forward in two decades.
“And I think maybe the little one, she was hiding. Carl, he said he saw a kid hiding under the row of seats, you know. He told me as we were leaving and he said he thought she maybe touched his ankle or something . . . I don’t really remember, but he was pissed about it. Like, she knocked over his drink or something.”
Rosie.
The reason she wasn’t taken. Because she wasn’t with the others.
“Would you recognize him, the guy who took the girls?”
A pause. Then, “I don’t know. It was dark by then and I didn’t really know anyone in Savannah. I lived in Cincinnati with my folks. Now, I’m closer. Just south of Charleston. Anyway, like I said, I was only there visiting. And really, I wasn’t payin’ much attention, just saw this dude slip out with the kids. Didn’t think anything of it, y’know? Thought he was with them. It’s not like they were struggling or seeming scared or anything. And, to tell the truth, I was just killin’ time, avoiding babysitting my nana. Gettin’ high.” There was a long pause. “I think I heard something about it later, but again I was more into girls and weed and well, whatever. Truth is, I barely made it through high school and, at the time, I didn’t really put two and two together. I mean, I didn’t want to, right?”
Reed couldn’t believe it. This could be the break in the case he’d been waiting for. But he had to keep moving. He glanced down at the Juul still clutched in his hand and, in the light from the fixture over the garage, saw it had lettering on it: TY.
Thank You?
Didn’t matter. He jammed the e-cig into his pocket. He didn’t have time to think about it. Right now, Nikki might be in trouble.
“Carl Jetkins can confirm this?” he asked, climbing into the department’s vehicle.
A beat.
Reed was about to start the engine but paused. “Right?”
“Uh. No, man. Carl’s dead.”
“Dead?” That stopped Reed cold.
“Yeah, car accident. Like right after that summer.”
All of a sudden Reed second-guessed the caller. Could this be a prank call? A phony? Someone just pulling his chain or looking for fame like Greta Kemp, the phony Rose Duval? He heard a baby crying and then a muffled, “Just a sec, honey.” More loudly. “Look, I gotta go.”
“No, wait.”
The baby’s cries intensified.
“I really have to go!”
Reed asked, “Are you willing to come to Savannah and give a statement?”
“Sure, yeah. I’m married, got myself a family now. A little daughter of my own. In fact, I’m babysitting her now. I called when the wife was out, didn’t want to upset her if she overheard me cuz she doesn’t know about any of this, but, yeah, I could probably drive up on Friday, probably, after work. I just don’t want Sharon to find out. She’d be beyond pissed.”
As if Reed could keep a lid on this. No way. But he didn’t have time to warn Kaminiski that the cat was already out of the bag, and probably wouldn’t have if he’d had the chance. He heard the baby crying again, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“I really gotta go. I’ll come to Savannah. On Friday,” Kaminiski promised, and then he was gone.
Reed’s mind was whirling, he had a million questions to ask Kaminiski, the first witness who had seen what had happened to the Duval girls. Maybe, just maybe, they would finally be able to put this case to rest.
As he was backing out of the drive, another text came in from Nikki and he hit the brakes. For a second he felt relief, but it was short-lived as he skimmed the message:
At the Marianne Inn. Settler’s Road. Get here fast. Be careful!
He pushed the button to speed dial her and held the phone to his ear. The call went directly to voice mail.
Crap. What did that mean?
Nothing good.
The Marianne Inn. What the hell was she doing out there?
The answer was pretty damned simple:
She was in trouble.
Serious trouble.
Possibly life-threatening trouble.
Again.
* * *
Delacroix’s head was pounding.
Anticipation fired her blood, but she slowed her car as she eyed the screen on the GPS, the red dot on the GPS screen pulsing, but not moving.
It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to realize Nikki had ditched her car.
Damn that woman!
Delacroix had waited too long.
All the planning and all the finessing to get to this point. For what? So that Nikki Gillette could fuck it up?
No way.
This was her case. More importantly, it was her life. She pounded the steering wheel with her fist, then caught herself. Pull yourself together. You can do this. You have weapons. You have training. More than that you have the need to free yourself of this, the pulse-pounding desire to see this through. You can handle it. Use what you know. Practice the patience the nuns forced upon you. Control yourself like your pious parents demanded of you. Focus the way your instructors explained to you. And examine the situation with the tools all those psychologists gave you. You can handle this. You know what you have to do.
She touched the locket on the chain that encircled her neck. It gave her strength. Calm. Centered her. She concentrated on her breathing. Slowing it deliberately. Focusing.
Her cell phone beeped again.
On the small screen, she saw Pierce Reed’s name.
Again.
Great. Just . . . effing great.
Delacroix didn’t need to deal with him, either.
Not tonight. Not when everything was finally coming together.
He would only get in the way.
She ignored the call as she passed by the Cravenses’ cabin.
A shame about Bronco. He shouldn’t have died. But then, he got curious, snooped around and . . .
She thought about texting or calling Reed.
Lying again.
But then they’d get into it.
And then she might expose herself.
Not yet.
She held on to that mantra as hard as she gripped the steering wheel.
Not yet. Not yet. Not yet!
According to the indicator on her GPS screen, Nikki Gillette’s car was parked nearby, so she drove into a spur that dead-ended not twenty yards from the country lane, parked at the base of a live oak, where scrub brush partially hid her vehicle, and climbed out. Snagging her backpack from the passenger seat, she felt the weight of her pistol at her waist, then set off along the side of the road at a brisk pace.
The night was quiet aside from the hum of insects and the lapping of the river.
Undisturbed.
/> Serene.
But it wouldn’t be for long.
* * *
No one was answering!
Reed jammed his phone into the cup holder of the SUV.
He’d called his wife multiple times.
Something was wrong. Really wrong.
He knew it and tasted fear rising in the back of his throat.
What the hell was Nikki doing at the Marianne Inn?
He saw the turnoff for Settler’s Road and hit the gas, cutting in front of a huge semi heading the opposite direction and getting a loud, angry honk from the driver.
Too bad.
The SUV slid a little, then held and he thought about hitting his lights and siren, then held off. If she was in trouble, he didn’t want to warn anyone who might want to harm her that he was coming.
“Son of a—”
He rounded the corner and spied the spur leading to Bronco Cravens’s cabin and whipped past. The Marianne Inn was less than a quarter of a mile ahead and he slowed. Nikki’s last text came to mind:
Be careful!
This, from the most careless woman he knew. Oh, God, what had she done? His mind flashed to the other times he’d thought he’d lost her, how she’d barely escaped with her life. Too many times to consider and just recently in the river near the Beaumont manor where she’d nearly drowned, how he’d watched her sink below the surface, how Sylvie Morrisette had given up her life while trying to save Nikki. His jaw clenched and his heart was cold as ice. He recalled Nikki in the hospital and how relieved he’d been that she’d been saved, only to hear that his partner had died. Wasn’t that enough?
And now? Now, dear God, he knew that Nikki was in danger again. He might lose her all because of her reckless need to ferret out the truth.
His phone rang and he snagged it from the seat. “Reed,” he spat out irritably as the call hadn’t come from Nikki.
“Yeah, this is Austin Wells.” Owen Duval’s attorney. “You called me.”
“Right.” He nodded as if the lawyer could somehow see him through the connection. “I’m looking for my partner. She’s not answering her phone. Thought I could catch her through you if she’s still at your place.”