Athena Force 8: Contact (18 page)

Once she knew that the psychics of New Orleans were as safe as she could make them, that is.

The argument, outside the interrogation room, was going on too long. Soon she
would
have to use the bathroom, and she wasn’t looking forward to the logistics of that. “It was a man,” she said, loudly. “With a stocking on his head.”

Beyond the one-way mirror, all conversation ceased. She’d figured they had an intercom on.

“I don’t think he came to kill Butch. I think he came to kill me.”

The door cracked open and Captain Crawford stuck his head in. “You’re ready to talk now, Ms. Corbett?”

She fixed him with as cool a stare as she could manage. “To Roy Chopin, I am.”

Crawford narrowed his eyes and slammed the door shut.

Nobody on the other side of the mirror said anything for a moment, so Faith guessed it was all being conveyed with expressions. Then, finally, Crawford said, “Fine. But not alone.”

“I never said he had to be alone,” said Faith.

Now, when the four detectives filed into the room, Slick and Bubba looked unnerved. They didn’t know how she’d heard that. Max looked curious, and Roy…

Roy looked pissed.

“So I’m here,” he said, coolly spreading his arms. At some point across the morning he’d loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar, rolled his sleeves up to his elbow. Only because she could hear his pulse, his breathing, could she tell just how angry he really was. “Talk.”

“It’s true,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I’m Madame Cassandra.”

His gaze narrowed, almost imperceptibly. His jaw hardened similarly. But he simply folded his arms, shrugged and said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

She guessed telling her to go to hell wouldn’t count as a good interrogation technique. The point was to keep her talking, not to shut her up.

“Okay—the first thing you should know is that Madame Cassandra isn’t exactly a psychic. She’s a…a persona I made up when I tried being a psychic for a few days, about a year ago, back when I met Krystal and the others. I thought if I were psychic, that would explain some things….”

Roy never looked away from her. “Why would it matter?”

Faith shrugged. “By then, though, I’d gotten to know some of the French Quarter crowd. I liked them. They trusted me. So when they told me things they thought were important—things they’d overheard, or gotten through a reading—I started calling Butch to pass on the tips. In order to stay anonymous, I said I was Madame Cassandra, but Madame Cassandra doesn’t exist.”

“So who was with Roy in the cemetery last Thursday?” demanded Roy.

“I was. Faith. He saw past the costume. He knew me.”

The words squeezed out past his teeth. “And you
killed
him for
that?
”

Max put a hand on Roy’s arm. Roy shrugged it away, shaking his head at Faith in outraged disbelief. So much for holding back his anger.

“Of course I didn’t! Cassandra wasn’t a secret worth killing over, and I’m no killer. I was
glad
he recognized me. It was a
relief.

“I didn’t lure him there either—yes, the location was my choice, but Butch is the one who insisted that we meet, so that I could look at some mug shots.” Holding Roy’s accusing gaze, Faith related everything she could remember about what had happened in the cemetery. How strangely silent the killer had been. How he’d called her Cassandra. How she’d made her way back to Butch. How he’d instructed her on the use of his weapon.

How Butch had smiled at her, and said Roy’s name…and died.

By the time Faith finished, even Slick and Bubba looked haunted. Even Max, who probably hadn’t known Butch very well if at all, had bowed his head.

Roy moved first, finally. He bent across the table, planted one hand to the right of her, one hand to the left of her, and leaned close enough that she could count the eyelashes surrounding his blazing gray eyes. His jaw had never looked so much like a dare. His voice was a hiss of menace.

“So
why’d. You. Run?
”

“Because Butch told me to.”

He shook his head, straightened and turned away, like he couldn’t stand to look at her. Maybe he couldn’t. It was Max who gently asked, “Why do you suppose Butch would tell you something like that, sweetheart?”

Faith frowned down at the worn table, on less solid ground here. “I’ve been wondering that myself,” she admitted, eliciting a snort from Roy. “Really. And it’s only been here at the station, surrounded by cops, that I’ve come up with a theory.”

The detectives waited. Even Roy turned back long enough to widen his eyes in exaggerated anticipation.

“Butch must have realized the killer was there for me, not him,” she said. “For Madame Cassandra, anyway—how would anyone know that was me? I didn’t tell anybody I was meeting Butch, but even if someone had found out through me, they would’ve known who I really was. The only way someone would have shown up at the cemetery thinking Cassandra would be there, instead of Faith, was if someone found out about the meeting through Butch.”

She looked up to meet Roy’s gaze, a chill of horror accompanying her full realization as she said, “Chances are, anyone he told about the meeting was a cop.

“Butch was protecting me and my identity as Cassandra from one of you.”

R
oy exploded. “So now you’re saying
I
killed Butch? Right down to the dying declaration. Great story, hon, just like all your lies.”

He cut himself off, shaking his head, raising his hands as if to keep from doing something with them that he’d regret.

“Of course I’m not saying that! I called you right afterward, didn’t I? I slept with you! You think I would have done that with someone I thought was a killer?”

“Yeah? Well, that makes two of us.”

“Butch probably wouldn’t have told you about meeting Cassandra because he knew you were such a cynic about her. He might have told someone else, though, someone more open to the idea. That’s why he wanted me to leave before the police arrived. He thought he’d tipped off the serial killer, and he didn’t want him—whoever he was—connecting Cassandra to me.”

“Did he tell you to take the gun, too?”

“No.” Faith took a deep breath, turning her attention from Roy’s rage to her own predicament. She’d done what she could to give him a little closure about his partner. Maybe someday he’d even realize that she hadn’t set out to keep secrets from him. But for now…enough was enough.

“I panicked,” she admitted. “I’d never seen anybody killed before, especially someone I cared about, not even Krystal. And someone had been shooting at me. And once I ran, I was kind of committed to going fugitive. Letting Cassandra go fugitive, anyway. So, I did what a fugitive does. I got rid of the evidence.”

“Where?”

“I threw it in the Mississippi.”

Four men groaned in unison. Outside the mirror, Faith heard cursing from the captain and a few other men who must be watching.

Well, she deserved that. “It was stupid, I know, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I threw the gun, the gloves and the phone in the river, and I went home and stuffed everything I was wearing into my old backpack. I thought about throwing that away, too, but thought someone might find it in the trash, and if I burned it, someone might remember me burning something. So I figured I’d just wait until things quieted down, that it would be safest in my closet. I didn’t know there was blood on it.”

That’s when she heard something interesting happen with all four men’s heartbeats—a subtle quickening. A tightening of their bodies. With just one of them, she might not have noticed. Not even now that she knew her abilities were real, if artificially engineered. But four of them….

“There
wasn’t
blood on the clothes?” she challenged. “The captain
lied?
”

None of them admitted anything; they weren’t that stupid. But outside the room, where he thought she couldn’t hear, the captain said, “Half a year working evidence, and she thinks we can get lab results back that fast?”

Or that the police would always tell the truth in an interrogation. Damn! “What about the witness who saw Cassandra leave?”

“Saw
you
leave,” Roy countered with a finger stab at the air between them. He neither confirmed nor denied the witness, but he positively smelled of righteous fury on this one. “Saw you leave with evidence and an eyewitness account that could’ve caught Butch’s killer, assuming
you
aren’t the killer.”

“Have me take a lie detector test.”

“How’s three days in lock-up sound for a lie detector test? Spend enough time with the hookers and the druggies, I’m thinking you’ll be ready to tell us anything.”

“You’d be wrong.”

“Okay.” The door opened and the captain came in. “Chopin, you’re losing what little objectivity you had. I’m stopping this before you make a real threat and get her case thrown out.”

“You don’t have a case,” Faith admitted. It was time.

Roy’s eyes widened, and his parted lips took on new levels of mockery. “Oh, I think we do!”

Max stepped between Roy’s fury and Faith’s chair, where she was still handcuffed. “No offense, sweetheart, but we may need more than just your word to drop the charges of murder.”

Captain Crawford added, “Not to mention we just got your confession to obstruction of justice.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Hello? That story you just told? Leaving the scene of a crime? Destroying evidence?”

Time for her second secret weapon. “It’s not admissible.”

That shut them up, at least for a heartbeat or two. Faith suspected it was more her use of the lingo than the point she’d made, but she ran with it. “The search was invalid, so Roy didn’t have probable cause for the arrest.”

“Bullshit!” challenged Roy. Right. He’d been a freakin’ Serpico, whoever that was.

“Ms. Corbett,” interrupted the captain, “your roommate gave Detective Chopin permission to look around the place. That means he didn’t need a search warrant.”

“For the shared rooms, sure, but not for my bedroom, and definitely not for my closet, where I have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now the men exchanged sharp glances.
Reasonable expectation of privacy
was a solid legal term, and they knew it. They knew she knew what she was talking about.

Their very scents reflected their growing concern that she might be right.

“I may have brought Detective Chopin into my room, even into my bed, but I never gave him permission to go into my closet. So the search was invalid. Which means the arrest was invalid. Which means the confession was fruit of the poisonous tree. I’m officially asking for a lawyer now, but trust me, he or she will just confirm this. So will the D.A.”

The police stared at her.

“Michael Manning?” she reminded them, as if they might have forgotten who their district attorney was. “The one who publishes those great murder mysteries? My mother works for him. I interviewed him last year for an essay I was writing, about just this topic, and he was very clear on where the courts stand.”

The police still stared. Even Roy.

“That would be when I was still in college,” Faith explained. “When I was majoring in pre-law at Tulane.”

And damn, that felt good.

She wondered if her biological mother, Rainy Miller Carrington, had ever gotten this strong a sense of satisfaction from practicing law. She hoped so.

Maybe Faith’s choice of a major hadn’t been such a fluke, after all.

Not an hour later, they had to let her go. She’d called her roommates to reassure them of her fate and had picked up her personal effects before Captain Crawford intercepted her with the inevitable question.

“Ms. Corbett? Why in God’s name did you let all of us, yourself included, waste the whole morning if you knew your confession would be inadmissible?”

“I’m not your legal consultant, Captain.” Faith looked past him toward where Roy stood with Max. Roy wasn’t any less angry to see her walk. “I wanted Detective Chopin to hear the truth from me, and this was the only way he would. My apologies if that turned out to be a misuse of the city’s time—but I’m not the one who initiated the arrest.”

Then she headed out to the waiting room—and a surprising champion.

Greg Boulanger pushed to his feet from a plastic chair, his normally vague expression telegraphing relief. “Faith! Are you all right?”

She considered that. She was a genetically engineered lab rat. It was possible a police officer was gunning for her, especially now that the cops knew she was Madame Cassandra. She doubted even Greg could keep her job for her, not after she’d confessed to destroying evidence, whether that confession was admissible or not…if she didn’t resign, they’d just invent a reason to get rid of her. The authorities had to be able to trust their evidence technicians. She didn’t blame them.

Whoever was killing psychics was still out there. Whoever had killed Butch was still out there. Hell, whoever had ordered a hit on Rainy Miller Carrington was still out there!

The first and only man she’d ever slept with, a man she cared about, now hated her guts. And even before that, when he got an anonymous tip that she was withholding evidence in a murder case, he hadn’t questioned it. From what she could tell, he’d never once considered that the bag could have been planted.

It hadn’t been. But since she’d been in the shower, washing his touch and scent off of her even as he searched her closet, it would have been nice if Roy had at least wondered.

Maybe anonymous contacts were fine, in Roy’s book, as long as they didn’t claim to be psychic.

Was she “all right”?

“I’ve been better,” she admitted wryly, too overwhelmed by the detritus of her life to feel any of it as sharply as she knew she soon would. “What are you doing here?”

Greg pulled his glasses down on his nose to peer over them, his pale eyes insulted. “I’m your boss, Faith. When you didn’t show up for work, I called your apartment. Absinthe told me you’d been arrested, so I came to make sure you were all right, to see if you needed help with bail.”

Faith blinked at him, taken aback. That was so sweet. So…
Greg.
“You don’t think I’m guilty?”

“No.”

“Thank you,” she said, her throat tight.

His modest smile flickered across his usually solemn mouth, there and gone, before he shrugged off her gratitude. She recognized the feel of him pulling back. He’d been doing it ever since she’d told him she didn’t date co-workers.

“Well now that they’ve released you, can I at least give you a ride home?” he asked. “You’ve got to be exhausted.”

“I quit,” said Faith.

Greg stared, clearly taken aback. “What’s that?”

“Nobody’s going to want me working with evidence—”

“That’s not their call to make.” Damned if Greg’s shoulders didn’t square slightly, at the very possibility that anybody would try to fire her. Maybe still waters really did run deep. “You work for me, not them.”

“I don’t blame them. You shouldn’t either. Besides, I think it’s time I went back to school, finished getting my law degree.”

Greg’s brows had pinched together. His concern was touching. “And I can’t talk you out of this?”

“No. But what you can do,” she added, “now that I’m not working for you, is take me out for a late lunch. No matter what else I’ve got to work out right now…I’m
starved.
”

It took a long moment before understanding dawned in Greg’s eyes. When it did, his smile lingered longer. He wasn’t half-bad-looking, when he smiled.

He offered his arm like some old-fashioned gallant, an effect his beard enhanced. Since he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, Faith smiled back and took it.

Only as they reached the Plexiglas door to the street did Faith feel someone’s attention, hot and accusing, on the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder as Greg opened the door for her.

It was Roy, arms folded, staring after them.

He wore a look of pure hatred. For the first time, he truly frightened her.

Faith quickly turned and hurried out of the police station, unsettled by his Jekyll/Hyde act. What if she hadn’t really known Roy after all? What if he’d only been keeping her alive for the sex? What if Butch’s dying declaration had been some kind of warning?

Roy.

No. She refused to believe it. But did it matter? She would have to be particularly careful around cops from now on, either way.

She would have to be particularly careful around everybody.

So this was what an actual date felt like. It had been so long since her Tulane boyfriend disaster, Faith had almost forgotten.

Greg surprised her with a playful side she’d never guessed he had—though perhaps she should have, considering the way she liked his balloon smell. He took her to lunch on one of the popular, two-hour Mississippi riverboat cruises. Faith hesitated only a moment when he suggested it. While Greg couldn’t discuss active cases, he could still help her plan her next move. And surely she could take two hours to recover from her morning!

So they boarded the
Antebellum,
a white, four-deck, stern-wheeler steamboat. They barely made it up the gangplank, to the sound of a steam calliope straight out of the Golden Age, before the copper bell rang out and the twenty-five-ton paddlewheel began to turn, churning the water of the Mississippi to push them away from the landing. In minutes, Greg had them settled at a window table in the second-deck dining room, where they could watch the harbor over lunch. The
Antebellum
provided indoor and outdoor seating, but it was still August. Even on the river, August in Louisiana was hot.

And Faith was hungry. She’d gone through two helpings of fried chicken, red beans and rice and a bowl of gumbo—as well as some French bread and several glasses of iced tea—before she noticed Greg’s bemused expression as he watched her.

She flushed. “I skipped breakfast this morning. I was busy getting arrested.”

By the man I slept with last night. And this morning.

“On the basis of some pretty flimsy evidence, the way I hear it,” said Greg. “I don’t want to pry, Faith, but…”

But he’d taken time off work for her. He’d been there for her, even moreso in the end than Roy. And she’d kept enough secrets for a lifetime. So, with the sound of the steam calliope playing outside, she repeated to Greg what she’d told the detectives.

Who Madame Cassandra was, and how Butch had died.

He looked stunned—but, being Greg, it was a quiet stunned. “You think the killer was a cop?”

She sighed, shook her head. “I have no way of being sure. All I know is, he’s someone who might have learned about the meeting from Butch…and Butch told me to run. If Butch actually knew the killer, you’d think he’d have named him.”

Then she remembered Butch’s last word.
Roy.

No. Surely she would have sensed something. “Whoever he is, I’ve got to stop him. I don’t think I could leave town, knowing that my friends are still in danger.”

Greg looked concerned. “I’m really not sure what to tackle first. You leaving town, or you thinking you can take down a serial killer single-handedly.”

She thought of Lynn White and Dawn O’Shaughnessy, with whom she had dinner plans for tonight, and the interesting things they had to discuss. “I may not have to do it single-handedly. And I’m not leaving town for good. I like it here. My mother…”