The Killing Edge

by Heather Graham

  Chloe lay with her head on his chest, wondering if it would be possible to explain to anyone that despite being in the middle of an emotional nightmare, for the first time in her life, she had realized just what love could be.

  She couldn’t explain how, but she knew that he cared about her. Just as she cared about him. But she could never force him. They were both damaged, both still learning to move past the damage.

  She didn’t speak about what had just passed between them, not physically and not what came from the heart and soul. Instead, she ran a finger over his chest and asked him, “So…what’s going on? Why did you say you don’t have much time?”

  “I was up in Fort Lauderdale this morning, and now I’m going to New Orleans.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  He had an arm crooked behind his head, and he looked at the ceiling for a moment before turning to look at her. “Stay in tonight, huh, just to indulge me and your uncle,” he said.

  “Why are you going to New Orleans?” she asked again.

  “Remember how I told you before that something just didn’t sit right with me about the past? Well, I decided to put out a call for information on the disappearance or murder of young women that had a religious aspect. I found a girl who’d been part of a strict religious sect for a while, then disappeared from one of the casinos in Broward about a year and a half ago, so I went up to investigate. That led me nowhere, but then I heard from the police in New Orleans. They had a young female murder victim with strange, possibly cult-related, carvings on her back and forehead. I have a flight this afternoon, and I may not be back until tomorrow sometime, so, please…don’t go out. Stuckey has a car watching the house. You’ll be safest here at home.”

  He wasn’t telling her, she realized; he was asking her. “I won’t go out tonight,” she promised, meaning it.

  She looked away from him for a moment, knowing she needed to tell him about Victoria’s determination to go to the potluck supper. In the end, she kept silent. The potluck was still a day away, and she’d only promised not to go out tonight.

  Besides, she wouldn’t go to the Church of the Real People unarmed.

  But she would go.

  She laid her head against his chest again, and he wrapped an arm around her. “How much time do you have before your plane?” she asked huskily.

  “A few hours,” he said.

  “Well…”

  She drew patterns on his chest, then crawled on top of him, teasing his flesh with her hair, moving against the length of his body. In a few minutes they were making love again, and when they were spent, she fell against his side, glad just to be held by him.

  In that comfortable state, and perhaps because she was still exhausted, she must have dozed.

  When she opened her eyes, the room was filled with people.

  She was paralyzed with terror for a moment, unable to move or scream, not even able to open her mouth.

  Dead people were arranged all around her. Friends from long ago. No blood dripped from their necks, and they were dressed as they had been in their coffins all those years ago. David Grant, football hero, in his handsome, go-to-church suit, and Kit, his girlfriend, at his side, in the navy dress her mother had chosen for her funeral. And there was Jen, wearing the beige suit her mother had picked out… And Vince Mahaffey, Sue Whalen, Jack Axelrod…

  They stood around her, looking at her sadly, both there and not there, as if they were made of the mist that accompanied a hot shower, except that she hadn’t been in the shower.

  And there were others….

  Girls she didn’t know, had never seen. Some of them…

  Decomposed. Wet, or covered with earth, only scraps of clothing remaining.

  Even mistier than the others, barely visible at all, were Myra…and Alana…and the seamstress.

  Frozen, she couldn’t move. Did Luke see them? No, he was breathing evenly, asleep; she could feel his chest moving beneath her head. Bizarrely, she found herself thinking that she was glad they had pulled the sheet up somewhere along the line.

  Someone stepped from the crowd, moving closer.

  Colleen Rodriguez.

  She wore the same dripping white dress, and her hair was wet, as well. She looked worse than she had before. More desperate. Her lips were moving, but Chloe couldn’t catch her words. Yet at the same time, a single whisper seemed to fill her head.

  Help us. Help us…and those who will come.

  Chloe rediscovered the ability to move at last. She bolted up, but she didn’t scream, just snapped up to a sitting position. Beside her, Luke awoke, stretching, sitting up, too, and staring at her before swiftly taking her into his arms. “Chloe, what’s wrong?”

  She was shaking, trembling. She tried to speak, couldn’t.

  “You had a nightmare, didn’t you? I can’t leave you. The police can’t protect you from your dreams, and I know how bad they can be.”

  She managed to pull away from him, to stop shaking. She kept her voice level and calm as she told him, “No. Luke, you have to go. There are more of them. Lots more of them.”

  “What?” His hair was tousled, and she could see him struggling to understand what must have sounded crazy.

  “Luke, I’m not dreaming. I’m not having nightmares. I—I’m really seeing ghosts.”

  She could read it in his eyes. He cared about her, so he wasn’t going to call the men in the white coats to take her away. He answered slowly and carefully. “Chloe, you’re amazing. You survived one massacre, and you just witnessed a second. It’s natural that you’re having a hard time accepting what’s happened. I’m going to cancel my flight and—”

  She pulled away from him. “No, you are not. Luke, I’m a psychologist, remember? I know all the symptoms of every kind of crazy. But I’m not crazy, and I’m telling you, they’re trying to help me, help us. This isn’t in my mind, and it’s not a dream. I’ve been right all this time. I know it. Two of the killers are dead, but there was a third. And you know how they say serial killers don’t stop? Well, he hasn’t stopped. He’s been clever. He’s been moving around the country, covering his tracks and practicing his craft. I think he’s got some kind of agenda with the murders at the mansions, but…he likes killing, he needs to kill. You have to go to New Orleans and find out everything you can. I’m not afraid, and don’t go telling me that I should be. I’m not afraid of the ghosts. They’re trying to speak to me, to help us. You have to go and do what you do best—investigate. And I have to see what I can learn—here.”

  She could see how concerned he was and gripped both his hands. “Luke, I’m all right. I feel that we’re on the right track, and that we have to keep moving forward. The dead deserve the truth—and a lot of living people may stay that way if we can discover what’s going on. Please, go. I’ll be waiting for you when you come back, and we’ll find Colleen. I’m certain she’s in the water somewhere. I told you, when I see her, she’s…wet. Hair and dress dripping.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “Chloe—”

  “I’ll sleep in the main house while you’re gone. And you said Stuckey has a patrol car guarding the place.”

  “Let’s shower. Then I’ll decide what I’m doing,” he told her.

  He got out of bed and started walking toward the bathroom, then paused suddenly, staring at her. He hunkered down then, frowning.

  “What is it?” she asked, rising, as well.

  He looked at her. “The carpet. It’s…wet.”

  TWELVE

  The flight to New Orleans was less than two hours, but it seemed like forever to Luke. He still wondered if he should have left or not.

  Ghosts. He didn’t believe in them. He wasn’t an atheist, exactly; he just hadn’t decided yet if there really was a God, and if there was, what he expected out of people. He’d heard about the soul being energy, and energy never actually disappeared, had heard a dozen different takes on life and death, but in his experience, dead was dead—and it was for the living
to find justice.

  He was worried about Chloe. Yet he had never seen her more certain or more confident. Or more determined.

  And then there had been the damp spot on the rug.

  Easily explained. A leak in the roof—except that there was an attic above the bedroom and no wetness there. Or someone had trailed water coming from the bathroom—except that no one had been in the bathroom.

  It was baffling.

  As the plane landed and taxied to the terminal, he told himself that he had to forget the possibility of ghosts and concentrate on what he could discover here in New Orleans.

  As he walked down the concourse, he thought that it was good to have friends. Knowing and working with the right cops often got him where he wanted to go.

  Making his way past baggage claim and toward the exit, he spotted the man in the jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap who was waiting for him. Detective Joseph Mulligan was somewhere around thirty-five. The cap kept his sandy hair off his forehead, and his eyes were a clear blue that was steady and sure. He was of medium height and medium build, maybe five inches shorter than Luke, but similarly strong.

  It was apparent that Detective Mulligan worked out and took it seriously. But then, he was a cop. It was part of his work and nothing to do with vanity.

  “Luke Cane, as I live and breathe,” Mulligan said, stepping forward, grinning, and offering his hand.

  Luke offered his own in return. “Thanks so much for helping me out.”

  “I’m thrilled as hell to see you. Sad to say, my case isn’t going anywhere. I’ll be glad to have you hustle up some more interest. Can I take your bag?”

  “I look like a girl to you?” Luke cracked, smiling. “It’s fifteen pounds, tops, and I’ve got it, thanks. Where are we heading?”

  “My place. I pulled the files after you called. I’ll show you what I’ve got, then take you around to a couple of the sites.”

  Joe Mulligan lived in an old Victorian a block off Esplanade with his wife, Clancy, and their two children, Ashley and Aislinn. Clancy and the kids greeted Luke, and Clancy offered the men a plate of sandwiches, along with coffee, while Joe handed over a stack of printouts and started pulling up web pages.

  Seated in his swivel chair, Joe turned to Luke and explained, “Some of this is official, and some is stuff I’ve come up with but haven’t gotten very far with. It’s no secret that we’ve had our problems here, that we’re still struggling to establish law and order after Katrina, but the pity is, so many folks here are just good, hardworking citizens, and they’re getting tarred along with the rotten apples.” He sighed.

  “Here’s the thing, we’re talking a few years back now, but after Katrina, our missing persons list was longer than Santa’s.” He passed Luke a photo. “Like everywhere, when someone’s killed around here, we generally find the body. A lot of our violence is drug or gang related, and they don’t even bother to try to hide their victims. Too high, or sending a message. In the beginning, it looked like this girl just disappeared.”

  “Girls disappear every day,” Luke said quietly. “Thing is, most killers are careless, or even want their victims to be found. When people disappear into thin air, there’s a clever, organized killer at work. I think we’re dealing with a psychopath back in Miami, someone—probably a man—who knows that what he’s doing is against the law but, for whatever reason, doesn’t, in his own mind, think it’s wrong. He feels no regret, no empathy, and sees himself as above everyone else, so special that he deserves his needs to be met, even if that means somebody else has to die. And I think some of those people have been dying in other places.”

  “You asked about disappearances and unsolved murders that might have a religious aspect. Like I said, for a long time, we had a missing-persons case. Her name was Jill Montague, a local girl. She was coming into the Quarter to meet friends at a bar. She left her residence in the Garden District, planning on taking the streetcar down, and never showed up. We gave her picture to every driver, ran it in the paper. No one saw her. Or no one admitted to seeing her, anyway. She left her house and that was it. Gone, zero, vanished.”

  “But you found her eventually?”

  “Beside the Mississippi. With carvings in her flesh that could be religious stuff. Where I’m lost is, I don’t understand what all this has to do with a cult massacre,” Joe told him. “Or the murders that just occurred in Miami. I know that the old case had a cult connection, but from what I’ve heard, there was nothing like that with the murders that just occurred.”

  “Ten years ago, two men were found dead in the Everglades along side a written confession. But some people thought someone else had to be involved in the massacre. The big argument against that was that nothing even remotely similar ever happened again, or not around Miami, anyway. And you know as well as I do that most profilers agree that a killer like that doesn’t just quit,” Luke said. “Either he dies—like the two killers they found in the Everglades—or he goes to prison on some other unrelated charge, or he moves on to some place else. I think there was a third killer and he went somewhere else—until last night. What interests me about your case is the design carved into your dead girl’s back and forehead.”

  “Did the killers write on their victims ten years ago?” Joe asked, puzzled. “Or just on the wall.”

  “Just on the wall. In blood.”

  “I forget. What did they write?”

  “‘Death to defilers!’,” Luke said. “And they drew a design.” He leaned forward. “What was on your victim?”

  “I don’t know. The body was in pretty bad shape when we found it, so there’s no way to tell for sure. All I can say for sure is that something was cut into her back and something else into her forehead. Maybe you can figure it out.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll take you out now and show you the lay of the land, Uptown, the Garden District, the French Quarter. Show you where the body was found, down by the river. Tomorrow we’ll head into the office and you can talk to some of the detectives. Your friend Stuckey sure knows the right people.”

  He hesitated. “Have you ever heard of a man named Adam Harrison, or a group called Harrison Investigations?”

  “No,” Luke said.

  “Do you believe in…psychic help in solving cases?”

  “No,” Luke said flatly. He knew that a lot of law-enforcement agencies had called in psychic investigators over the years, and that they claimed sometimes it helped. Personally, he doubted it. Looking at Joe, he frowned. “Do you?”

  “Yes, actually. This is New Orleans, home of Marie Laveau, remember? Well, later on that. Anyway, the superintendent sent word down the ladder—you can come in and see the autopsy photos. I don’t bring things like that here. Kids, you know.” Joe picked up his coffee cup, drained it and set it back down. “Laissez les bon temps roulez, my friend. I’ll show you what I can.”

  “Oh, my God!” Brad said to Victoria. “I had no idea you guys had anything to do with finding Myra!” He shuddered and gave his cousin a massive hug. “Poor Myra. And poor Alana, too. She was so young.” He and Jared had come over as soon as they’d heard what had happened.

  “She wasn’t, actually. Don’t you read the papers? She was thirty,” Chloe told him, setting a tray of iced tea and sandwiches on the patio table.

  “It’s so horrible, and so sad,” Jared said. “But here’s the point. There’s no reason for you two to hide out. Jeanne sure isn’t. Have you seen that interview she gave? She’s milking this for all it’s worth. She cries, she trembles, she looks so sad and scared. But it’s sure getting her a lot of press.” He shook his head, as if disgusted that anyone would use such a horror story for her own advancement.

  “Smart of her,” Chloe commented, taking a seat. “She’ll get what she wants—fame.”

  Brad looked at Victoria. “She’s out there turning herself into a major-league over night sensation, and you’re hiding at Chloe’s. Chloe—you could be cashing in on this, too.”

  “Brad, after everythin
g we’ve been through, how can you even suggest that?” she protested, appalled.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s horrible, too. And God knows, it could backfire on her. There’s a killer out there—and he might just decide she’s ripe for killing, as well.”

  “Don’t even say that!” Victoria said with a shiver.

  “I’m sorry—I’m just trying to make the two of you feel better, but I’m doing a terrible job of it,” Brad said apologetically.

  “No, what Jeanne’s doing is terrible,” Jared said, then sighed. “But she is a sensation. If you two were the sensation, we could get into any club—on the beach.” His eyes were teasing, though, and he took Victoria’s hand.

  “I don’t want that kind of fame,” Victoria told him. “Sure, it would be nice to be a well-known model, but I’d rather be recognized for my acting. Anyway, let’s face it. Which one of us is ever really hurting for money? We’ve been lucky. Jeanne didn’t have such a great life. If she’s an instant celebrity, good for her.”

  “I think we’re forgetting something here,” Chloe pointed out.

  “What?” Brad asked.

  “Three women were brutally murdered,” Chloe said.

  “You’re right, and I’m ashamed,” Jared said. “It’s just that you can’t turn on the news without seeing Jeanne—or Lacy or one of the others. Not to mention the head of the agency. He flew in this morning, apparently. I forget his name.”

  “Harry Lee,” Victoria said. “The head of Bryson World wide.”

  “Yes, him,” Jared agreed. “He’s all over the news with the rest of them.”

  “We just feel like lying low for a bit,” Chloe said.

  “Well, it’s going to be interesting to see how long you can stay off the radar,” Jared said.

  “What are you talking about?” Victoria asked.