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“Just get to the point, Sean. I’d like to go back to sleep sometime tonight.” Although she knew that wouldn’t happen. She was wide-awake now.
“All right,” he said in a resolved tone. “I’m calling because I need your help.”
Sarah was instantly suspicious. “I’m not in a generous mood these days.”
“It’s not personal. I need your help with a case. We’ve got a body covered in ink, but no ID. I was hoping you’d come have a look, see if you recognize the artist.”
Sarah clutched the phone, trying to ignore the surge of adrenaline that already had her heart thudding. She reminded herself that Sean Kelton never did anything without a motive. “Why me?”
“Because I couldn’t get your partner on the phone,” he admitted. “And because you know every tattoo artist in the city. Come on, you always loved working my cases with me. You were good at it, too.”
She smiled, in spite of herself.
“So will you do it? I really could use your help.”
“Would I have to come to the morgue?”
“We could wait and do it there, but I’d rather you come now. The body hasn’t been moved yet, and I’d like to get your take on something at the crime scene.”
“I’m a civilian, Sean. They’re not going to let me waltz through a police barricade without some kind of credentials.”
He hesitated. “Yeah, that could be a problem, but I’ll take care of it. I’m sending a cruiser to pick you up. It’s getting nasty out here. I haven’t seen an ice storm like this since I was a kid.”
In spite of her protests, Sarah was already scrambling out of bed, reaching for a pair of clean jeans from the stack on her dresser. An urgency she couldn’t explain drove her, but her movements were still sluggish and it seemed to take forever to locate a shirt.
“How long until my ride gets here?”
“A couple of minutes.”
A couple of minutes.
Which meant he’d dispatched the car before he called…or else the crime scene was that close to her house.
“Sarah DeLaune?”
The uniformed officer standing on her porch was young, probably around twenty-five, with a broad, pleasant face and twinkling blue eyes. He touched the brim of his cap. “Lieutenant Kelton sent me to pick you up, ma’am.”
“I’m almost ready—” She glanced at his name tag. “Officer Parks. Just give me a second to grab a coat and find my keys. You can come in out of the cold if you want.”
“Thanks just the same. I’ll go wait in the car, keep the heater running.”
“Suit yourself.”
Sarah left the front door open as she shrugged into the wool jacket and gloves she’d dug out of the back of her closet when the cold front hit. A frigid wind blew through the room, lifting the edges of the newspaper on the coffee table.
The paper had been there for a couple of days now, turned to an article about a missing Shreveport woman named Holly Jessup. Sarah didn’t know her, but for some reason, she couldn’t get the name out of her head.
Holly…Jessup.
Grabbing her keys from the hall table, Sarah stepped out on the porch. The icy wind cut through her blue jeans as she struggled with the lock. Then she turned and hesitated at the edge of the porch before negotiating the frozen steps.
Snow flurries whirled over the street and drifted like feathers down to the lawn. Her tiny front yard was white and glistening, a winter wonderland that would vanish as soon as the sun came up.
Sarah hated the cold, but even she could appreciate the rarity of a snowfall in New Orleans. It happened maybe once every thirty years. She wanted to take a moment to enjoy the pristine tranquility of the night, but instead she found herself scouring the icy darkness, searching for the evil that had been awakened by her nightmare.
Ashe Cain.
No matter where she went or what she did, he was always there—watching, waiting, creeping so close at times she could smell the death scent he wore like cologne.
He’d gone away after Rachel’s death, but Sarah’s dreams always brought him back. He was out there tonight. She could feel him.
A shudder gripped her, a cold, black terror. Sarah wanted nothing more than to retreat into her house, to lock herself inside until the nightmare faded, until Ashe Cain had crawled back into the shadows of her past.
Shivering, she forced herself down the porch steps and across the frozen yard to the curb. Officer Parks got out of the car and came around to open her door.
“You didn’t have to get back out,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door.”
“Detective Kelton made it real clear I was to take good care of you.”
“Oh, he did?”
Parks grinned at her tone. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not get on his bad side.”
He waited for her to climb inside, then closed the door behind her. A moment later, he slid behind the wheel and flashed another grin. They were probably close in age, but the cop’s boyish looks and reverent demeanor made him seem much younger.
Sarah tugged off a glove and placed her hand over the heater vent. “Are you sure this thing is working?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s going full blast.”
Then why was she still so cold?
Maybe because the bone chill had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with her ultimate destination.
An icy sludge crawled through Sarah’s veins. She was on her way to a crime scene to examine tattoos on a dead woman. The newspaper article suddenly came back to her, and she wondered again at the familiarity of the missing woman’s name.
Holly Jessup.
Where had she heard it before?
“Ma’am?”
She turned. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You seemed a little out of it there for a minute.”
“Did I?” Sarah shrugged. “I was just thinking how much I hate the cold.”
He gave a low chuckle. “You call this cold? Trust me, you don’t know cold until you’ve spent a winter on Lake Michigan.”
“You’re from Chicago?”
“Slidell. But I went north to stay with my grandma when I was a kid.”
“Why’d you come back down here?”
“Why do you think? I couldn’t stand the cold.”
He was smiling at her again, and there was enough ambient light in the car that Sarah could see the brief flare of attraction in his eyes. She wondered how long his interest would hold once he got to know her. She’d always had the ability to frighten off even the more ardent admirers.
Sean had been the exception. He’d lasted longer than most. But in the end, he couldn’t take it, either. He could put up with the pills but not the secrets.
Parks nodded toward her seat belt. “You might want to buckle up. We’re not going far, but the streets are like glass. If we skid into a light pole, I don’t want you going through the windshield.”
“I don’t want that, either.” Sarah fastened the shoulder harness, then put her hands back up to the vent. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering. “Where exactly are we headed?”
“The body was found at a vacant house on Elysian Fields.”
Just a few blocks from Sarah’s place on North Rampart.
“Do you suppose that’s the killer’s idea of a joke?” she said dryly.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Greek mythology. Elysian Fields. The final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous.”
Parks gave her an uneasy glance. “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing this guy’s into.”
Three
Adamant, Arkansas
Esme Floyd prowled her tiny house, her arthritic knees protesting every step. She didn’t know why she was so uneasy tonight, but she reckoned the weather had something to do with it. Not a fit night out for man or beast, her mama would have said.
But even on mild nights, Esme sometimes stayed up until all hours. Came from all those years of waiting for her son, Robert, to come dragging in at dawn, and then later, her grandbaby, Curtis, although he’d never been as bad as his daddy to lay out.
Not until that one winter…
Esme pursed her lips. She wouldn’t study on that tonight. What would be the point?
Whatever devil had been riding the boy all those years ago was gone now. He’d turned into such a fine young man. A doctor, of all things! Esme was so proud, she could strut. Not a single generation of Floyds had ever made it through high school, let alone college and medical school. Robert had quit in the ninth grade and by the time he’d turned twenty-one, he’d served time in Cummins.
Esme had no idea where her son was now. Dead, for all she knew. He took off right after he got out of the pen, leaving Curtis and the boy’s mama to fend for themselves. Esme had ended up raising the child from the time he was twelve years old. He’d been a couple of years older than Rachel when he came here to live, but the two became thick as thieves once he let down his guard.
Thankfully, the DeLaunes hadn’t minded him being around. Esme had been especially worried about James who was mighty particular about Rachel’s friends. The family had been good to her, and she would have hated giving up her job. But Curtis had always been a quiet, easygoing boy, even when he was little, and he’d had enough sense to make himself scarce when he needed to.
Except when it came to Rachel.
That trouble had started brewing right from the get-go, but Esme hadn’t the heart to take away the one good thing in her grandbaby’s life. So she’d sat back and watched his friendship with Rachel DeLaune turn into fierce devotion and later, heartbreak when the girl moved on to someone more suitable.
Esme had worried then, as she still sometimes worried on nights when she couldn’t sleep, that Curtis’s attachment to Rachel might have crossed the line into obsession.
But it didn’t much matter now. Rachel was dead, God rest her soul; had been for fourteen years.
Her killer had never been caught, but most folks in Adamant had their suspicions. The body had been found at the old Duncan farmhouse where Buddy Fears’s boy used to hang out. Esme had seen him out there herself, lollygagging about with that no-account bunch he ran with.
Smoking dope and God only knows what. Nothing but trouble, every last one of ’em.
Derrick Fears had been the worst of the lot. Not a lick of respect for his elders, or even his own body, what with all those piercings and tattoos. Marks of the devil, Esme thought with a shiver.
William Clay had been the county sheriff back then, and she’d heard him tell James once that he knew in his gut that pack of degenerates had killed Rachel, probably during some devil-worshipping ritual out at the farmhouse. And if it took him the rest of his life, he’d see them boys fry.
But it didn’t work out that way. Sheriff Clay had gone to his grave beaten and weary, Rachel’s murder the only black mark against an otherwise outstanding career.
And all these years later, the killer was still out there.
Esme tried to turn away from her dark thoughts. She got out her Bible, but she was too jittery to read. And her joints were starting to ache. The arthritis in her knees and shoulders was getting worse all the time.
Curtis had been after her to retire ever since he’d come back home to work at the hospital in El Dorado, but to Esme, retirement was one step away from the old folks’ home. She wasn’t so stove up yet she couldn’t make herself useful.
Setting aside the Bible, she got up and padded on bare feet to the bathroom to get a glass of water. She wouldn’t take her medicine just yet. Not until the pain got so bad she couldn’t stand it. She was too afraid of getting hooked on the pills.
She went into her bedroom, but instead of crawling under the warm layers of blankets, she shuffled over to the window to look out. The night was clear and cold, the moon so bright she could see ice glistening on the barren tree branches.
Her cottage window faced the back of the DeLaune house, and she stood for a moment admiring its graceful lines through the tree branches. Oh, how she loved that place. Over a hundred years old and still just as regal and elegant as she remembered it from her childhood.
Thomas Duncan’s daughter had lived in the house, and Esme remembered when the old man had moved in with her. By then, his hair had been as white and wispy as cotton, his eyes frosted with cataracts. He’d sit in a cane rocker on the veranda for hours, mumbling to himself, paying no mind to the taunting neighborhood children who called him Crazy Ol’ Tom.
Esme used to see him out there on Sunday mornings when she and her mama walked home from church. Sometimes his two little granddaughters would be playing in the yard and Esme would stop to watch.
“Stop that gawkin’, Esme Louise,” Mama would scold with her lips pooched out in stern disapproval. “You act like you ain’t never seen old folk before.”
But it wasn’t Thomas who fascinated Esme; it was the two little girls who always seemed to be dressed in white.
“How come they don’t never get dirty, Mama?”
“They do get dirty, child, what a foolish notion. They get dirty same as the rest of us. Only difference is, they got somebody to wash up after ’em.”
“I wanna live in a house like that, Mama.”
“Esme Louise, the only way you ever gonna live in a house like that is if you the one doin’ the washin’ up. And that ain’t in the cards for you, baby girl, ’cuz I mean for you to get an education. Then you can go to Little Rock or Memphis and get yourself a real job. Make your own way. I don’t want you havin’ to do for nobody but yourself.”
Esme hadn’t said anything, but she’d thought to herself that it wouldn’t be so bad washing clothes and scrubbing floors if she could live in a place like that. She didn’t mind housework, not even the ironing that her mama took in.
Anything was better than field work. Chopping cotton under a blistering sun in the summer and picking up pecans in the fall and winter when the ground was cold and wet and cockleburs stuck to your hair and clothes like prickly brown leeches.
