KILLING ME SOFTLY (5 page)

"We mean you no harm," Travis was saying. "We just wanted to tell you to be careful. Folks around here don't like questions."

Instinctively Renee glanced down the quiet street, lined by trees and flanked by buildings, saw the hotel four blocks away. "Thanks. I appreciate the warning—"

"But if you're serious about exposing the truth, I kin tell you things nobody else will."

Renee's breath caught. "About Savannah?"

"About who killed her."

"You know?"

Travis shoved his hands into his pockets. "I've got it narrowed down pretty close."

She knew better than to believe him. He was clearly drunk—or at least he wanted everyone to think that. And yet, something in his eyes got to her—a stark light she immediately recognized as fear. "Then why haven't you gone to the police?"

Lem shifted uneasily, shot a quick look to Travis. "That's enough—"

"Got a wife and a kid," Travis muttered, and the urgency to his voice betrayed the fear the big grizzled man was trying to hide. "A couple of grandkids."

In other words, he was scared spitless.

"Push me."

Mind spinning, she blinked. "What?"

He put a big sweaty hand to her arm and slid it down to her wrist. "Push me away," he practically snapped. "Pretend like I'm annoying you!"

Lem pushed closer.

Renee jerked back. "What—"

"Just do it!" Travis commanded. Then, "Such a sweet thang…"

Someone was watching.
Catching on, she shoved him away from her. "I'm not interested," she said extra loudly, to which Travis laughed and staggered back into the alley, Lem hot on his heels.

Only then did Renee allow herself to glance behind her, where she saw a tall woman with long hair standing stiffly outside the restaurant.

There were many ways to kill someone—and many more ways to die. Some deaths were visible and public, garishly smeared all over the evening news for the whole world to gawk at. Others were more peaceful and private, quiet almost.

Some people died surrounded by family. For others, it was strangers who stood by them as they drew their last breath. The lucky ones passed alone.

Some deaths were of the body. Others were of the soul.

Cain turned from a photograph of a butterfly hovering over a honeysuckle. He strode away from the exhibit, stared into the darkness. He'd received more than a few horrified looks when he'd announced his plans to renovate the old abandoned church, turn it into his gallery. Even his sister had tried to talk him out of it. The building was cursed, legend said. Had been for almost a century, since someone broke in and desecrated the altar, stole the crucifix and statue of the Virgin Mary. Only a few weeks later a fever hit the town, and no matter how much time locals spent kneeling in prayer, a substantial portion of the town perished.

Cain curled his hands around the porch rail and listened to the crickets and the toads, the bayou gurgling nearby, just as he'd done as a kid, when he and Gabe had concocted increasingly creative dares pertaining to the old church. Go inside. Kneel at the altar. Sleep beneath the spot where the crucifix once hung.

The building should have been torched long ago, the locals claimed, but no one dared make the first move. So the town had let the church fall into decay, allowing wild roses to ramble up the sides and the windows, while bougainvillea and camellias consumed the porch railings. Weeds hid the rest.

He couldn't imagine a more perfect place to display his work.

He stood there now, as he had so many other nights, and stared out at the oaks sprawling down the grassy slope toward the water. The shadows danced uneasily, swaying and violating in ways that made his hands curl even more tightly around the wood rail.

Because of the woman.

He turned toward her slowly, found her standing in the shadow of an overgrown white oleander at the far side of the porch. Unnaturally still. Unnaturally pale.

"Hasn't anyone told you," he drawled, and felt the slow burn spread like poison through his body, "it's not smart to be alone with me in the dark?"

CHAPTER THREE

D
etective John D'Ambrosia emerged from the swarm of tourists crowding historic Jackson Square. He walked with purpose, his expression hard and unreadable. Despite the fact the sun had already gone down, dark aviator glasses concealed his eyes … however Gabe knew the detective saw everything.

The two had been working together for over a year, but Gabe still didn't know much about the man who'd taken over Cain's investigation. He was the son of a Texas oil heiress and New Orleans cop killed in the line of duty. D'Ambrosia kept to himself, never discussed his personal life, always declined invitations for Thursday-night poker. Not even his partner, Alec Prejean, knew much more. D'Ambrosia was rumored to be thorough and efficient, brutal when necessary, always uncompromising.

In a word, the perfect man to replace Cain. With his dark hair, dark eyes and rough edges, all he had to do was slip into a ratty black T-shirt and jeans and he fit in with the city's underbelly with remarkable ease.

"You said it was important," Gabe said when D'Ambrosia approached. "What's going down?"

D'Ambrosia motioned for Gabe to walk with him.

"A body was found in the warehouse district earlier this afternoon. Male. Caucasian. Probably twenty, twenty-five tops."

"Cause of death?"

"Single gunshot to the temple."

"ID?"

"None."

Gabe tensed. "Black fleur-de-lis on his ankle?"

"You got it." The two men stopped at Decatur Street and waited for the light to turn as a horse-drawn carriage packed with tourists ambled past. Nearby, a street performer belted out "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" on his sax.

Gabe chewed on the information, acutely aware eighteen months had passed since the last murder victim had turned up with the mark of a fleur-de-lis. It had been a commercial pilot, and the son of a bitch had been in jail. Cain had made the arrest.
"Oncle."

D'Ambrosia started walking a second before the light turned green. "Probably a courier."

Gabe reached the sidewalk and the two men turned left.

"There's more," D'Ambrosia said, and his pace quickened. Never once did he look at Gabe. "It's about Prejean."

Alec Prejean was not just Cain's former partner, but also he'd been a friend. Gabe and Val had spent numerous evenings with Prejean and his wife, Tara.

Val.
Christ. He'd forgotten to call her, to tell her he'd be late. She'd talked about a special dinner…

"We've made a positive ID on the body," D'Ambrosia said, and his grim tone sent Gabe reeling.

"Oh, Christ, it's not—"

"Not yet." D'Ambrosia wasted no words, not on details, not on compassion. "Prejean was spotted leaving the scene."

Cain's imagination had always served him well. As a boy he'd frequently left the stuffiness of the Robichaud estate and ventured out into the swamp, where fallen trees and tangled vines created his own personal sanctuary. Later, as a cop, his ability to conjure possibility out of nothingness had kept his solve rate among the highest in the state. As a photographer, his penchant for seeing beauty where others saw only waste had earned him national acclaim and an impressive income. As a man, his proclivity for experimentation brought great pleasure.

But now his imagination betrayed him. He looked at Renee Fox standing not ten feet away, at the shadows playing across her face and the fire burning in her eyes, at the curves bared by her clingy sweater and slim-fitting pants, and knew he needed to see a threat, not a woman who made him itch to touch. And taste.

For a long moment she just stood there, watching him as though she'd come face-to-face with one of the ghosts rumored to inhabit the old church.

Then she stepped toward him and smiled. It was a slow smile, almost mocking. "Tell me something," she said in a voice so rough and smoky his blood ran even hotter. "Do you personally try to run off every visitor to Bayou de Foi?"

He curved his mouth into a slow smile. "Not
every
visitor."

"I see," she said, shoving her hair behind her ears.

"Just us unfortunate souls who innocently stumble across your land?"

"Innocently?" The word practically shot out of him. "There's no such thing as innocence,
cher
." He pushed away from the porch rail and strolled toward her, didn't stop until he stood so close she had to look up to see him. "Everyone is guilty of something."

The wind blowing off the bayou pushed the hair back into her face, but this time she made no move to brush the strands away. A few lodged against her mouth, a soft pink with the slightest trace of gloss.

Ever since he'd arrived at the gallery the crickets had been carrying on, but as he watched her, he no longer heard them, heard only the sound of her breathing, maybe even her heart if he listened closely enough. He definitely heard her sigh.

Slowly, her gaze locked onto his. "What are
you
guilty of?"

The urge to slide the hair from her face was strong. The curiosity streamed through him like an aphrodisiac. What would she feel like? What would she taste like?

"That's the question, isn't it?" And from what his uncle had said, she hadn't wasted any time asking it. "And while I'm sure the fate of my soul must make intriguing conversation, I assure you it's also quite pointless."

"Tell me, though, which of my alleged sins would you like to know more about. Burning Savannah's pictures?" He'd stood on a warm spring evening with a small bonfire before him, and he'd fed it all he had to give. "That has to make me guilty, right?"

Her eyes almost seemed to glow. "I don't know, does it?"

"What about vanishing for six weeks after the grand jury failed to return an indictment?" He'd never told a soul where he'd gone, what he'd done. Not his uncle, not his cousin, not even his sister. "Does that titillate you?"

The question dangled between them on the cool breeze, but Renee said nothing.

"Or maybe," he said hoarsely, and took a deliberate step closer, violating the proper space between strangers, "you're more interested in how women come and go from my bed faster than I can develop the film of what happens there."

She lifted her chin. "If that's the truth, yes."

Not many people went toe to toe with him. Even fewer questioned him. He was a man who'd learned to use his size to his advantage. Step a little too close, stare a little too long, and he could send even a jaded punk into a skid. Size and proximity. They were the most reliable weapons he possessed.

Renee Fox responded to neither. She just … looked at him. Sweet Mary, he would have sworn she looked
through
him.

"Why are you still here?" he asked. "What do you want from me?"

"The truth," she said, point-blank. "About Savannah." Her voice was quiet but laced with steel. "After all the rumors, it's only natural I'd want to understand what really happened to her."

"Natural. Now there's an interesting word." A word that had nothing to do with the way her voice flowed through him like the moonshine he and Gabe had sneaked from Uncle Edouard's liquor cabinet in honor of their thirteenth birthdays. "Tell me,
cher
. Does this really feel natural to you?"

Her eyes darkened, answering his question without words. "Completely."

Like hell. On a hot stream of adrenaline, he lifted his hands to his eyes like a camera and framed her face, noted the way the shadows played across her eyes, like Spanish moss shimmying against the night sky. Her irises were dark olive, earthy like the swamp, with the same combination of mystery and beauty and danger.

She went very still. "What are you doing?"

He shifted the angle of his hands, focused on her mouth. Her top lip had a rounded bow, the bottom was full. "Studying," he murmured, knowing he was making her uncomfortable. "Imagining."

The lines of her face went hard as she turned from him and headed for the steps so quickly the curtain of dark hair swung like a shield against her face. "I was wrong to come here."

"Yes, you were." He stepped into her path, not about to let her go. "But you came anyway, and now here we are." Alone. In the dark. "Don't you want to know what I see when I look at you?"

Her shrug was artful. "Not especially."

"I see something wrong," he said anyway. Something that bothered him. "And the cop in me wants to know why."

"That's what this is about? The cop in you?"

"And the photographer," he conceded. "But mostly the man. When he sees you, he sees beauty on the outside, but something darker on the inside. Something … lost and alone. Broken."

That was it. She seemed broken.

Her skin reminded him of the petals of a magnolia, far lighter than the majority of the residents of south Louisiana. It fascinated him to discover there in the faint moonlight that her cheeks could go even paler, creating the kind of stark, washed-out image of a black-and-white photograph, making her look … lost, like a woman out of time and place, who just didn't … belong.

"And I want to know why." The admission surprised him. "Did he do this to you?" he asked, watching closer for flickers of recognition or flares of guilt. "Is that how he controls you?"

Confusion flitted through her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

He was a trained interrogator. He knew the signs of deception. Sometimes they were obvious, such as a twitch. Other times they were more subtle, revelation coming only through pupils going wide or a change in the rhythm of the breath.

Renee gave away nothing.

"The man who sent you here," he clarified, hating the words even as he spoke them. "The man who thinks he can use a woman to break me."

Again.

Her eyes darkened. "No one sent me here to break you," she said, then moved toward one of the windows he cleaned every morning. Light glowed from inside, illuminating the pictures visible from the porch. Dead center hung a photograph of an old oak, its trunk more than three times the size of his waist, its branches so thick that those dipping to the ground made perfect benches. "I just needed to feel closer to Savannah."