Submission Page 15

  I resisted the urge to sucker punch him right then and there.

  Instead I turned and stormed from the room, nearly knocking his secretary over where she’d been listening on the other side of the door.

  MOLLY STOOD OUTSIDE the seedy motel room at the end of a row of others and stared at the address Thor had given her. Left with nothing much to occupy her time aside from worrying about Alan and, well, feeling sorry for herself, she’d decided to do some checking around on Alan’s sister Zoe. She hadn’t really expected anything to come from her return visit to the Goth bar on Bourbon Street, but she’d been surprised to find that Thor and the girl with the purple streaks had not only been there but they had been friendlier yet, embracing her as a friend despite her change in apparel to jeans and a plain black top. Maybe because she’d been wearing black.

  “Yeah, I know Fawn,” Thor had said.

  She’d stared at him. “Well, why didn’t you say anything last time I was here?”

  He’d shrugged and grinned. “Because you didn’t ask.”

  A half hour—and a half an iridescent red drink later—she’d been armed with the address to the motel room she now stood outside of.

  And wondering just what in the hell she thought she was doing.

  Molly stuffed the paper bearing the address into her front pocket, trying to decide if she should knock on the door or leave. Zoe didn’t know her from Adam. And she wasn’t sure how the twenty-one-year-old would view her meddling in matters that were really none of her concern.

  Maybe she should just give the information to Alan. Or, better yet, to one of his other sisters.

  Instead she found herself knocking on the motel-room door, her palms damp, her resolve slipping with each second she waited for someone to answer.

  Nobody there.

  She began to turn around when a lock turned and the door opened inward to reveal the young woman from Alan’s picture, wearing nothing but a towel…and a wedding ring.

  “ROUGH DAY, C?”

  I scowled at where Jack Cadieux took a seat across from me at the Gas Lantern. While he did that every now and again, tonight…well, tonight I would just as soon be alone.

  Oh, yeah? If that’s the case, then why aren’t you at home?

  Because drinking at a booze can didn’t make you feel as guilty as when you did it alone at home.

  “You could say that,” I mumbled, a piss-poor attempt at civility.

  “Your lady friend coming tonight?”

  I squinted at him. He had to mean Molly. And while somewhere in the back of my bourbon-addled brain I secretly hoped that she would stop by, my gut told me she wouldn’t.

  Not that I blamed her. I’d treated her like crap the last time I’d seen her. Something I seemed to be doing a lot of.

  “What’s all this? Bringing work home with you?”

  Jack gestured to the files littering the top of the table, which I’d scoured for the umpteenth time, looking for something—anything—that would give me a lead on the killer.

  But it was Jack using the word home in conjunction with the bar that bothered me. Partly because he was right. Mostly because I was coming to realize that home didn’t lie in a house or an apartment but with a person. In my case, a person I couldn’t allow myself to have.

  “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

  He held up his hands. “Hey, you don’t have to hit me over the head. I can take a hint that you don’t want company.”

  I watched as he got up and walked back to the bar.

  The place was quiet tonight, most of the Halloween revelers choosing to party in the Quarter proper, where most of the action was. Which was just fine with me. I reached for the half-empty bottle, stared at it, then poured a healthy portion into my empty glass as an empty sign of defiance.

  Hell, I was going down anyway. Why not go down in a haze of glory?

  I rubbed my numb face, thinking of my meeting with Hodge earlier. Meeting. Now there was a word for you. What I’d done hadn’t been anything less than stupid. Whereas I might have gained a bit of sympathy, seeing as my ex-wife had fallen victim to the Quarter Killer, I’d burned it all and then some by accusing Hodge of having a connection to Claire Laraway.

  And I hadn’t even been drinking.

  “You’re fucking lucky he didn’t fire you on the spot,” I said aloud, pushing the glass aside and reaching instead for the file in front of me.

  I pored over the report on the first victim, trying to push out of my mind the fact that it was Molly’s sister. I turned over the postmortem photo of her so I could focus on the report instead.

  Semen found not matching the DNA of suspect.

  Of course, the DNA report had come after. And since Claude Lafitte was a consummate ladies’ man who probably owned stock in a prophylactic company, it had been a pretty good guess that the semen had come from the killer.

  I leafed through another file until I came up with the still shot taken from the security camera across from Hotel Josephine. It had been blown up and was too grainy to make out anything more than a darkly clothed figure wearing a head scarf and big, dark sunglasses. A woman? That was what we’d all believed. But if the suspect was a woman, where had the semen come from?

  Jackson had theorized that Claire Laraway may have had another sexual conquest right before she’d met Claude Lafitte. But her friends had sworn a statement saying she’d been with them for at least four hours before she’d met up with Lafitte and liaised with him at the hotel.

  I looked back at the original file.

  Traces of K-Y jelly had been found mixed with the semen.

  But Claire had been on the pill, and no tube of the stuff had been found in any of her things.

  Then there was the fact that semen had been found in Val’s body, although there had been no sign of sex.

  I realized I was crumpling the report in my fist. I let it go and tried to smooth it out.

  It was here, damn it. I knew it was. Hiding somewhere in the maze of forensics reports and witness interviews was the map to the killer.

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I absently reached for it, not taking the time to look at the display because I’d taken so long to answer.

  “Chevalier.”

  “Alan? It’s Laure.”

  I sat up straight, as if trying to appear sober even though she couldn’t see me through the phone.

  “Zoe’s home.”

  21

  MOLLY SAT IN THE HOTEL coffee shop, staring out at the street beyond. She’d had a difficult time obtaining a reservation at any of the hotels she’d prefer to stay in and had only lucked out when someone had called to cancel their reservation. People milled everywhere inside and outside the unfamiliar hotel. She glanced at her watch. It was after midnight. Officially All Hallow’s Eve.

  She wrapped her arms around herself to fend off a shiver.

  There was so much about this city that was foreign to her. In Toledo, the fall colors would be in full swing, reds and yellows and oranges setting the green landscape on fire. Temperatures would be cool, sweaters and jackets a must, and on some nights a parka required. Nights out would include a visit to the cinema or a bookstore or a local bar to catch a classic-rock cover band.

  She slowly sipped her herb tea, the sound of jazz inescapable, even being piped through the coffee shop. Where people rushed around up north, here life moved at a slower pace. She, too, didn’t feel the need to be doing something every second of every day. Life wasn’t something to catch up with but rather something to savor.

  Of course, she also recognized that much of her new mind-set had to do with the circumstances surrounding her. Losing Claire. Hunting for the killer. Letting Alan—and now, by extension, his family—into her life.

  She sat back in her chair. No doubt Zoe was at the big house Alan had told her about, with her sisters and even possibly her brother, her new husband in tow.

  And Molly? While she felt a part of the picture, she really wasn’t. She was a tem
porary visitor from a place so outside New Orleans as to be a foreign country. Even her mother had failed to ask when she might be coming home when Molly had called to tell her of the nearly five thousand dollars in cash that had been in the lockbox. She’d promised to wire the money—minus the cost of sending it—to her mother first thing in the morning. Although by all rights she should have kept it to go toward the expense of Claire’s funeral arrangements. Arrangements she’d seen to and paid for.

  She abruptly got up from the chair, unable to sit for another moment, wallowing in self-pity. While the city might encourage a more relaxed approach to life, she’d never been one to sit back and allow things to happen. She needed to be involved.

  And part of that involvement included finding her sister’s killer so she could get back to her own life, in a place far, far from here.

  She gathered her purse, put a tip on the table, then headed out the main lobby doors, where even at this late hour a line of taxis waited. She hailed one and gave him a familiar address. She only hoped Alan would be home.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU got married?” I demanded of a red-eyed Zoe at the Chevalier house.

  After Laure’s phone call, I’d asked Jack to ply me with coffee—and lots of it—along with water, my desire to sober up as quickly as possible a top priority. Damn my weakness.

  Now here I was, facing off with my baby sister, wanting to hug her and throttle her simultaneously.

  “Do you have any idea how worried I was? How worried we all were? There’s a killer on the loose, and you choose to run off to Mexico to elope with a guy we’ve never met without letting anyone know?”

  I watched as with each word Zoe sank deeper and deeper into the sofa, her knees pulled to her chest.

  It amazed me how quickly she could turn into that little girl being scolded for bringing a stray dog home and allowing it to destroy nearly everything on the first floor. Thankfully I’d gotten home in time to stop the mutt from finding the second floor.

  Of course, I’d allowed Zoe to keep the hound from hell. In the fenced-in backyard.

  “There’s always a killer on the loose here,” she said in a small voice.

  Christ. The kid was only two months over the legal drinking age. And now she was married? What was she thinking?

  I glanced into the other room at her husband, who looked at least as young as she was and inspired a desire in me to drag him out back and wreak havoc on his face. I was pretty sure I growled.

  I turned back to Zoe.

  “Alan, please,” Emilie said, taking my arm and urging me into the dining room with her.

  I went, but not willingly.

  “She feels bad enough for what she did already. Don’t make this worse than it is.”

  I knew she was talking about Zoe’s learning of Val’s death. Of the three girls, Zoe had been the most attached to my ex. Probably because she’d been so young—eleven—when our parents had died.

  Emilie sighed heavily, apparently having a hard time dealing with everything herself. “I’m just thankful that your friend Molly brought her back to us.”

  I’d been glaring at Zoe’s sorry excuse for a husband—more boyfriend material than husband—and now snapped my gaze back to Emilie so fast I thought I heard something snap in my neck. “What?”

  Emilie blinked at me. “You didn’t know? It’s the first thing Zoe said. That some woman named Molly, a friend of yours, came knocking at the door of the motel room she and Matthew were staying at and told her she should get in contact with us as soon as possible. That there’s been a family emergency.”

  Molly….

  I turned from Emilie to Zoe, where she was now openly watching me from the other room. Molly had found his sister? But how? And why?

  “Oh, and she gave something to Zoe to give to you. Let me go get it.”

  I stalked into the living room again, considered Zoe long and hard, then asked, “Are you pregnant?”

  “Pregnant? God, that’s just like you.” She rolled her red eyes. “I use protection, Alan.”

  Well, at least she had the good sense to do that much. “The pill?”

  “No, a diaphragm. My body doesn’t react well to the hormones in the pill.”

  Diaphragm….

  My mind clicked on an image, then backtracked, following a path of bread crumbs.

  Shit.

  I stalked toward the door, then stopped and made my way back to the couch where Zoe sat. I leaned over and cupped the back of her head with my hand, briefly marveling at the softness, then kissed her forehead.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, kid.”

  I moved toward the door again.

  “Hold on,” Emilie said, hurrying into the room. She held out what looked like a photograph. “This is what Molly left for Zoe to give to you.”

  I stared down at the picture of Claire with a man I clearly recognized, even with the arm in front of his face.

  The elusive “C” hadn’t been an initial for a man with a name beginning with the letter. Rather Claire had used it as a shortened version for Seymour.

  More specifically, Captain Seymour Hodge.

  Jackpot.

  I strode purposefully toward the door.

  “What about the funeral arrangements?” Emilie asked, hugging herself with her arms.

  “They can wait until tomorrow.”

  Everything could wait, period. Because dread spread through my bloodstream like a cold drug. If things were as I thought they were, chances were Molly was in danger.

  MOLLY STOOD ON THE street outside Alan’s apartment, watching as the taxi drove off. She’d thought of asking the driver to stay in case Alan wasn’t home, then decided that if he wasn’t there, he would have to come back at some point. She would wait. There were too many unsaid things that needed to be stated. And the sooner the better.

  She looked at the apartment above. It was dark. Which didn’t bode well for her chances of his being home. She was able to turn to look for his car, but as she watched, a light switched on in his apartment. The kitchen? It appeared so.

  The wind picked up, blowing her hair across her face and giving her the first sense since she’d been down here that it was autumn. A few leaves traveled on the air, somersaulting down the street.

  She shivered and forced herself to go to the front door of the building, then up the stairs, until she stood in front of Alan’s apartment door. A jumble of emotions swirled through her. This was a man who had touched her in a way no other had before him. Made her feel special, loved, cherished. Then just as easily turned his back on her and made her feel used.

  She’d known from the beginning that demons battled within him. Dark, demanding ghosts that he chased away with bourbon when he returned home alone at night. But while she’d come to learn a bit about what had brought the unwanted visitors into his life, she couldn’t begin to fathom what it was like to be inside his mind, to live in his heart.

  The only thing she knew was that she wanted to try.

  No, had to try.

  Molly, do you believe that out there somewhere is that one person meant especially for you?

  She heard Claire’s question as clearly as if her sister stood in front of her asking it.

  You mean, like a soul mate?

  Yes.

  Her twin had posed the question during a phone conversation shortly after she’d moved to New Orleans. Molly had been at work, poring over legal tomes for a precedent to help prove a case she was working on. She’d had a headache the size of Ohio and hadn’t realized it was well after five until Claire had called.

  No, she’d said.

  Claire had laughed. I knew you’d say that.

  Then she’d fallen silent.

  Molly had thought about ringing off with the excuse that she had work to do and didn’t have time to indulge in such wistful talk. But something had kept her on the line.

  Maybe hope that what Claire had to say next might convince her she was wrong.

  I didn’t think I
believed, either. Not until today, anyway.

  Had that been the day her sister had met her married lover? The man she’d called C in her diary? The man who was possibly her killer?

  Remember all those times when Mom said she was searching for the man who would complete her?

  Molly remembered. She also remembered that their mother’s hunt had ended up with her and Claire calling dozens of strange men “Uncle.”

  Well, I think maybe that’s why I never believed. Because if Mom couldn’t find what she was looking for—and she’d been looking so hard—I thought that it couldn’t possibly be true.

  Molly’s heart had hurt at that. She hadn’t realized until that moment how damaged she and her sister had been by their mother’s activities. Had they both turned their heads away from love because they’d been convinced it didn’t exist?

  But it is true, Claire had whispered. Oh, Molly, it is.

  And Molly had known that at that moment in time for Claire, it was true.

  And now…now she knew it to be the truth, herself. Because no matter how challenging he was, and how much he had the capacity to bring her pain, the man who completed her was broken, wounded, demon-filled Alan. He was the dark to her light. He’d brought life into the empty void of her existence. He’d made her see things she hadn’t known existed. And no matter how much she tried to convince herself that she could go back to the way things were before she’d met him, she knew that was impossible. She’d been irrevocably changed.

  What remained was what she decided to do about it.

  She blinked the door to Alan’s apartment back into view, reaching out a hand to touch the wood rather than to knock. It creaked open under her fingers. The scent of a woman’s perfume, expensive and overpowering, assaulted her nose. But she couldn’t be sure if it was coming from inside the apartment or down the hall.

  “Alan?” she called softly.

  She craned her neck to see into the darkness. If she’d seen light from the street, there was no evidence of it now. Had he gone to bed? Or was he sitting inside in the dark?