A Rush of Wings (2 page)

Collins grasped her hand and shook it. Strong grip. An honest man. “Call me Trent. Or Collins, if you’re old-school. I’ll contact you soon as I hear anything.”

“Sounds good, Trent.”

Releasing Collins’s hand, Heather walked back into the pizzeria, headed for the front door. A thought circled around the anarchy symbol burning in her mind.

The pattern has changed. He’s communicating. But with whom, and why now
?

***

SITTING AT THE SMALL, lacquered desk in her room, Heather connected her laptop to the hotel’s Internet service. She tabbed open a can of Dr Pepper and took a long swallow of the cold, sweet plum–flavored soda. It hit her empty stomach like a chunk of ice.

WAKE UP.

A challenge? To law enforcement? The Bureau? Her? None of the above?

Drunken laughter and shouts—“
Dude
!
Wanna get a bite
?
Duuuude
!”—boomed past her door and down the corridor, fading as the revelers found their rooms.

Heather worked her iPod’s headphones into her ears and thumbed the volume down low so she’d hear it if anyone called. Knocking back another long swallow of Dr Pepper, she typed in an online search of Club Hell.

The Leigh Stanz bootleg she’d downloaded into her iPod curled into her ears and focused her thoughts. Low and intense, accompanied by acoustic guitar, Stanz’s voice was husky and worn, like the voice of a man emptying his heart out for the last time.

I long to drift like an empty boat on a calm sea / I don’t need light / I don’t fear darkness…

Checking the links pulled up on her search page, Heather learned that the
very
hip Club Hell had opened nearly four years earlier and was frequented by a Goth/punk/wannabevampires crowd. The kind of place Annie would’ve gigged at with WMD.

A lot of local bands and underground acts performed at the club, especially Inferno, an industrial/Goth band fronted by a young man rumored to also be the owner of Club Hell. He appeared to be known only as Dante.

Heather shook her head. Dante’s Inferno. Cute. Good for marketing, no doubt. Hoping to find out more about the club’s possible owner, she Googled Inferno and received a trillion hits. Scrolling down to the band’s official Web site, she clicked on tour dates—none in the last year; albums—two, with the third due to be released in a few days; photos. She paused, studying the captured images.

Three men in their early to midtwenties—dreads, faux hawks, hard bodies pierced and tattooed—stood in one of New Orleans’s cities of the dead, each of them looking in a different direction. Behind them stood a fourth figure in black jeans and baggy sweatshirt, hood pulled up. Head bowed, fingers holding the hood’s edges, his face unseen, he seemed to be contemplating the seashell and gravel path beneath his boots.

But what caught Heather’s attention was the pendant hanging at his throat. The anarchy symbol. She sat up straighter and enlarged the photo. Stared at a circled letter
A
fashioned out of what looked like barbed wire and strung on a black cord.

Heart pounding, Heather checked the photo’s caption. The figure was Dante. She clicked on the next photo. Dante’s back was to the camera. No visible anarchy symbol. In the next photo, she caught a glimpse of the barbed-wire pendant dangling like a charm from a twist of wire around his wrist.

Heather scrutinized each photo. The anarchy symbol wasn’t always present or visible. But she did notice one thing: Inferno’s front man was never the focus of the photos. Dante stood behind the other members or off to the side or knelt in front, head bowed. Not once did she see his face. A flash of black hair in one, a pale cheek in another, but that was all.

Another marketing ploy? The oh-so-mysterious front man? Or genuine reluctance to be front and center—except when on-stage?

Heather scrolled through online band interviews and wasn’t surprised to discover nearly all were conducted with the other members of Inferno. “In the studio” was the usual reason given for Dante’s absence.

Heather finished her can of Dr Pepper, then lined down to the last article and opened it. This time, Dante wasn’t “in the studio”; he sat, alone, for the interview. Clunking the empty can onto the desk, Heather leaned forward to read.

Dante spoke intelligently about music and the state of the music industry, French or Cajun words spicing his comments, his tone often dark and humorous.

DANTE: It’s time to return to the days of the guillotine. If you don’t have passion for music, if you don’t have le coeur, and you’re only in it for the money, the fame, or the chicks, then off with your head.

AP:         Are you serious?

DANTE: Yeah. At least that’d be honest entertainment. You need to bleed for your audience one way or another.

AP:         Why don’t you give more interviews?

DANTE: I want the focus to be on the music. Not me.

AP:         But people want to know more about you. You are the music. Why did you open Club Hell?

DANTE: (Tense) To showcase musicians, new talent.

AP:         How do you address the rumors that you’re a vampire?

DANTE: (Standing) Wrong focus. We’re done.

VAMPIRE? WAS THAT A joke? More marketing? Heather suddenly remembered Collins saying:
And a vampire hangout. Pretend, y’know
?

Using Bureau ID codes, Heather tapped into city records and looked up all pertinent info on Club Hell. The owner was listed as one Lucien De Noir, a French entrepreneur. All licenses and deeds were in his name, but based on that last interview and her own gut feeling, Heather believed De Noir was only the money man. Club Hell was Dante’s baby.

Heather plugged into the NOPD’s system with her guest security code and searched for Dante, though with no last name, she didn’t hold a lot of hope for a hit. The search spat up a list of Dantes as first names and last names and she worked her way through them quickly. She came to a halt on Dante Prejean. No social security number. No driver’s license. Age estimated to be twenty-one. Refused to give a birth date. No legal surname. Prejean was a name tacked on from the family who’d fostered him as a kid in Lafayette.

Lafayette. Daniel Spurrell’s hometown. Connections clicked and whirled through her mind like a slot machine. The bars all snapped to a stop in a line.

Anarchy symbol. Lafayette. Club Hell.

Heather skimmed Dante Prejean’s file—criminal mischief, vandalism, trespassing, loitering—all misdemeanors. She scanned for a mug shot, but didn’t find one posted. Frowning, she scrolled through case notes and arrest records. Camera malfunction was usually listed as the reason for no mug shot being taken, but one officer had jotted a different reason altogether:

Little shit won’t hold still. He moves so goddamned fast, every time we snap his picture, he’s fucking gone. This happens every freaking time with this asshole. This is the only picture he’s ever stood still for
.

HEATHER CLICKED ON THE photo. A bowed, hooded head. And a hand in front of the hidden face, middle finger extended. Defiant, even under arrest, playing games. She stared at the photo for a long time. The only mug shot Dante ever stood
still
for? Were the arresting officers plain inept?

Let me go, bro, let me go…

Leigh Stanz’s hoarse voice and sad, yearning words ended. In the ensuing silence the unasked question in Collins’s eyes looped through Heather’s thoughts:
Is the Cross-Country Killer in New Orleans
?

And is he…what?…identifying with Dante Prejean?

Now? Suddenly? After three years?

An instant message from her SAC, Craig Stearns, blipped onto the laptop’s screen:
Wallace, consultation progress
?

Heather typed:
Consultation continuing. Looks like the CCK, but not positive
. She stopped, fingers poised over the keyboard.

Should she mention the records glitch she’d run into on the flight from Seattle? The inability to access ViCAP and NCAVC files on the CCK’s victims? A problem she’d never experienced before in working this case?

Heather rubbed her face. She glanced at the window. Rain poured outside, streaking the glass with ribbons of neon-lit color. Maybe she was being paranoid. Human error. Server malfunction. Shit happens. Maybe she needed to upgrade her computer.

And yet. A change in the CCK’s pattern. A computer glitch.

Heather returned her gaze to the monitor and the blipping cursor. A knot of unease nestled in her belly.

And if the glitch
was
deliberate? Could it have been Stearns?

She shook her head. Her SAC was a stand-up guy, hard but honest. He’d even helped her with Annie when Dad refused. That kind of deception wasn’t Stearns’s way.

Heather’s fingers dropped onto the keys:
Checking leads. Nearly finished. Will contact you tomorrow
. She hit send.

Scooting her chair back from the desk, she shut the laptop down and switched off her iPod. Heather shrugged on her trenchcoat. Scooping her Colt .38 up from the desk, she slipped it into the trench’s specially designed inside breast pocket.

Time to go to Hell.

2
Club Hell

«
^
»

“F
UCK YOUR MONEY. Go to the back of the line.”

Heather squeezed free of a knot of people clustered in the crowded, narrow street and, grabbing hold of one of the brass horse head hitching posts, pulled herself up onto the teeming sidewalk.

She glanced at the speaker. He stood at the club’s entrance behind a velvet and barbed-wire rope barrier, eyes hidden behind shades. Reflections of neon light winked and edged the dark lenses and lit up the silver crescent moon inked below his right eye. Tall and lean, he wore jeans, road-weathered leather chaps, and a leather jacket marked with nomad colors, which surprised her. She’d never seen a member of one of the family-oriented gypsy-style clans
working
before, let alone for in-town squatters. At least, not at something legal. Long dark hair tied back, a mustache framing his mouth, he grinned at the fetish-dressed-but-slumming tourist slinking to the back of the line.

Heather paused. Had she seen
fangs
when the bouncer grinned? Maybe so. She’d learned at one of Annie’s gigs that for a few thousand dollars a person could get customized fangs implanted.

And given that this was Club Hell…

People fought their way onto the sidewalk, elbows and shoulders jostling Heather. A sharp jab to the ribs made her pull her arms in tight against her sides. She locked one hand around the purse strap looped over her shoulder. Her gaze skipped along the swollen line of people waiting to gain admittance.

The majority were Goth—dyed black hair, pale makeup, black lipstick and eyeliner, male and female. Some of the young men seemed to think they were Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise in that old vampire movie: long hair, lace ruffled shirts, velvet jackets, and silver-headed canes. The young women squeezed into form-fitting rubber or latex dresses, or dark velvet minis with tights and fishnet stockings.

Splashing the line with odd bits of color were kids in torn jeans and Ts, their hair buzz-cut or knotted into dreads. Some, like the admonished tourist, were simply curious.

Looking up the three-storied, black iron balconied building, Heather saw curtains fluttering in the night breeze from opened French windows on the third floor. Light flickered inside, like from a candle, and beckoned, like a curved finger.

Heather edged her way through the crowd, slipping between partiers reeking of beer and patchouli and sweat, to the bouncer. She glanced at the unmarked door beyond him—nothing identified the club.

The rain shifted into a cool drizzle, beading on Heather’s face, in her hair, and on her trench. Like Seattle, she mused. She reached into her purse and palmed her badge.

A punk queen in plaid trousers with bondage straps and a torn, black EATS YOUR DEAD tee safety-pinned up the sides submitted to the bouncer’s search. His skimming, fight-scarred hands paused at the cuff of her left trouser. Reaching under and into her boot, he slipped free a secreted switchblade.

“Naughty, naughty,” the bouncer said, one eyebrow arched. He held the gleaming blade like a pro, spinning it between his fingers before sliding it into a pocket of his leather jacket.

The punk queen smacked her forehead with a tattooed hand. A sheepish smile touched her lips. “Fuck, Von. Forgot.”

“I’ll bet,” he said. “You can have it back when you leave. Go in.”

Heather noted the name. She stood on the sidewalk, maybe a yard from him. She knew he was aware of her presence; saw it in the deceptive ease of his body, the deliberate refusal to look her way. That was fine. For now, she was content to observe.

After a couple of minutes, the bouncer turned and, head tilted to one side, regarded Heather for a long moment. “Okay, little girl,” he said, flashing another fanged grin. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Special Agent Wallace,” Heather said, stepping beside him. She flipped open her badge so only he could see it. “I’m investigating the murder next door.”

The bouncer shook his head. “Cops already been here, darlin’.”

Palming her badge, Heather looked up into the nomad’s shaded eyes. Her twinned reflection looked back: face wet, hair pulled back, rain glistening on her black trench. “I’m looking for Dante Prejean.”

Shrugging, the bouncer shifted his attention to the Goth princess swinging her weight from one foot to the next, a pout on her red-lipsticked lips. “Might be in, might not,” he said. “No tellin’.”

His hands skimmed the Goth princess’s velvet-clad curves. “Go on in, darlin’,” he said to the girl. He glanced at Heather. “You, too. Doubt it’s your kinda scene, but—”