Love is Murder (50 page)

“Can you turn up the air?” I fanned myself. “I’m suffocating in here.” Dawson and I had
almost
suffocated in this very cemetery not so long ago.

Ass wipe didn’t react to my request.

“Please, mister. Can we let the top down again? I’m feeling a little claustrophobic?” Spending those few minutes trapped in a cheap coffin made for one with Dawson had given new meaning to claustrophobia.

What else? Something Dawson would understand for sure…

An epiphany made me smile. “I have a Hispanic friend. His name is Rocky. We could call him up and arrange a threesome.” The rock and a dead Hispanic man had launched the investigation that resulted in our little buried-alive experience. I felt fairly confident Dawson hadn’t forgotten. I hoped like hell he hadn’t.

“Shut your filthy trap.”

“What’s wrong?” I snapped, bored with his control trip. “Your mommy do bad things to you when you were a kid? You have to play big bad boy to work up an erection?”

The back of his hand connected with my face. I rode out the burn of pain.

The com link was dead. Otherwise I would have heard Dawson arguing with Nance again.

There was a strong possibility that I would be gone as well in about fifteen minutes. Images from the crime scene photos I’d studied flashed in front of my eyes like a bad horror movie.

He roared into the old cemetery and parked beneath one of the ancient trees.

I stared up at the tree, my throat going dry. Each victim had been propped against the base of a large tree. Raped then staked.

Sucked to be me right now.

He popped the trunk and got out of the car, his aim never deviating from me. He’d gotten good at this. “Get out.”

Didn’t take a genius to figure out that he had his bag of tricks in the trunk. The very evidence we needed.

I reached for the door handle and opened the damned door. Somehow between him knocking the crap out of me and now, my outrage had gotten its second wind. I emerged from his fancy car and shoved the door shut. The way I saw it, I had two options here. I could go with the flow and hope backup got here in time or I could run like hell the first chance I got.

Couldn’t run just yet. I wanted to get this guy.

He rounded the hood, a steady bead on me, and manacled my arm. When he’d dragged me to the trunk of the fancy car, he ordered, “Pick up the bag.”

A black gym bag sat in the trunk. There was other stuff. A bottle of bleach spray cleaner, towels—the kind that didn’t leave behind fibers—garbage bags. Evidence. Exactly what was needed to prove he was the killer. Anticipation blasted away any lingering fear. This low-down piece of shit was going down. I just hoped he didn’t take me with him.

He poked me with the gun and I picked up the bag. I looked directly into his eyes and prompted mine to go big and round. “I don’t want to die, mister.” Might as well play the game. Keep him off guard.

He hauled me to the tree and shoved me against it.

“Drop the bag and get on your knees.”

Whoa, wait. Not that I wanted to go that route, but wasn’t the sex supposed to come first? Serial killers did change their M.O.’s from time to time… .

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You can’t get it up?” I licked my lips. “I can help.”

“Get on your fucking knees!”

This was the moment.

The barrel of the pistol was leveled on my torso.

“Please, mister,” I pleaded, summoning tears.

He opened his mouth to snarl something else. I slugged him with the bag and darted around the tree, then ran like hell.

It was dark. Woods flanked this old cemetery. I stayed close to the tree line, zigzagging around trees and headstones. The blast of his weapon echoed in the air, a bullet thwacked into a headstone to my right. Close. Too close.

I dived for the ground. Grunted with the impact, then I scrambled into the woods.

He fired another shot.

My hands fumbling in my haste, I ripped open the bag and searched for a weapon. My fingers closed around the wooden stake. I pulled it from the bag, stared at the sharpened end. A smile spread across my lips. This was the coup de grâce. This asshole was going down.

I pushed to my feet, held the stake in my hands, dagger style. For a second I closed my eyes and cleared my head. Then I braced.

He was coming.

The distinct crunch of dry grass whispered across my senses.

I held my position another moment, listened intently to his approach, then swung around, the stake aimed for any part of him I could hit.

Shoulder.

He howled in pain.

The weapon discharged in the air.

Headlights bobbed in the darkness. Engines roared. Backup?

He hurled me to the ground. Knocked the wind out of me.

I started to get up but his weapon was aimed directly at my head. The moonlight cut right through the trees and backlit his menacing profile. Not exactly the last image I’d hoped to see.

A blast shattered the silence.

For a second I couldn’t move.

The bastard dropped his weapon and fell on top of me.

I screamed. Scrambled out from under him.

“You okay?”

Dawson.

He dragged me up, held me at arm’s length and looked me over. “You okay?” he demanded a second time.

Before I could answer half a dozen vehicles zoomed onto the scene.

And just like that cops were everywhere.

* * *

Later, an hour maybe more. The paramedics had given me a clean bill of health and an ice pack for my puffy cheek. One of the cops had found me a jacket since no one wanted to see my ass.

My legs were still a little rubbery but at least I was alive. The bag and the car held all the elements used in the previous crimes, except the stake. That element was still lodged in the asshole’s shoulder only inches above his heart. He wasn’t dead. Dawson was a crack shot. He’d made sure he got the guy good but not good and dead. The bastard had at least five murders to answer for. A search warrant had already been executed to search his home and place of business.

Nance stomped around raising hell. He wanted Dawson arrested. The cop had a swollen eye and a crooked nose where Dawson had overtaken him to get control of the car when Nance wouldn’t listen. My partner had understood the clues I’d given. I glanced across the old pauper’s cemetery. One tended to remember an event like being buried alive.

Looking no worse for the wear, Dawson swaggered over to where I waited near one of HPD’s cruisers.

As exhausted and emotionally spent as I was, every part of me perked up to watch his approach and in anticipation of the sound of his voice. I could feel the “Hallelujah Chorus” coming on.

“Since I’m not under arrest, Nance said I could take you home.”

I went all hot and gooey inside. Idiot. “Good. I’m beat.”

Dawson stared at me with those dreamy eyes, regret weighing heavy in them. “Don’t ever do anything like this again, Jackie,” he warned.

For about five seconds I considered throwing myself into his arms and just letting him have his way with me. I was that overwhelmed and worn down. I could have died tonight and I recognized that scary fact.

Thank God, good sense kicked in. “Maybe you’ve forgotten.” I went toe-to-toe with him. Held my breath so I didn’t have to deal with the usual foolish reactions to his scent. “My name is the one over the door at the office. That makes me the boss. Now—” I squared my shoulders “—take me home, Dawson. I’m done here.”

I didn’t wait for his answer. I gave him my back and walked away. Sadly I had no idea which car we’d been authorized to use but I refused to let that stop my dramatic exit.

“Maybe Nance has a good point,” Dawson called after me.

I should have kept walking but my curiosity got the better of me. I turned around and glared at him. “What?”

“You’re pretty hot as a blonde.”

I gave him the finger and walked away. Sadly I realized there was just one problem with that, I so, so, so wanted to do exactly what that crude hand gesture alluded to.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Not as long as I was the boss.

And he was too good to fire.

* * * * *

BROKEN HALLELUJAH

Toni McGee Causey

There was only one thing wrong with Causey’s story. It wasn’t long enough. I wanted it to go on for another couple hundred pages. ~SB

She should not have been here. It was the worst possible scenario.

He’d caught motion on his periphery—someone threading through the crowds, moving that same fluid way she did—a powerful motion that hit his senses as if a car were about to careen into him.

He worked hard to not jerk around and try to find her. Instead, he sat in the folding chair on the hot sidewalk just below the oak trees and strummed another verse on the battered guitar before he turned his head, turned his supposedly blind eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses and scanned across the brightly lit Jackson Square in the Quarter.

Someone dropped change in the hat in front of him, and he nodded a gruff thanks as the coins clinked, but he didn’t turn back toward them; as a blind man, no one expected him to. Instead, he bobbed his chin a bit, keeping time with the song, and used the cover motion to sort out the tourists—thick as flies—from the buskers. The girl with the hula hoop was particularly hungover and giving a bad show today, but the mime painted silver with robot costuming was in fine form, entertaining the little kids.

Had he imagined her?

He had to consciously slow down the tune he was playing; his hands shook and people politely looked away from the trembling vet. The sun beamed, brilliant against the white stucco of the rising spires of St. Louis Cathedral, and he resisted the urge to shade his eyes, afraid to find her.

Her laugh caught him in the chest and he saw her flowing—small and lithe and with a dancer’s grace—through the crowd as she greeted strangers and smiled at the children chasing the pigeons. She was more beautiful than he remembered. The sunlight caught red waves of silken hair that made his hands ache. His mouth had gone dry with fear that she’d look over and recognize him, see him through the ratty disguise, see what he had become. Years ago, the first time he’d met her, the shock of that instant attraction had been like a shotgun blast through his soul.

This was much, much worse.

Because he knew, now, what it was to be in love with someone who hated you.

“Hey, mister, you okay?” a voice near his elbow asked, and he cocked his ear a little, pretending not to see the curious girl, maybe seven, maybe eight, who stood like a wisp of hope, perched on the balls of her feet as if she were about to run. “How come you stopped playing?” she asked, when he didn’t answer her.

He looked down at his hands, still on the guitar, stiff as twigs on the strings. He couldn’t even remember what the song had been.

“I’m fine, kid.”

She took a step closer, unafraid because she was convinced he didn’t see her; her big brown eyes looked into his glasses and she whispered, “People who cry ain’t okay.”

He felt his face, and it shocked him: there were tears.

“What’s your name?” She peered up, and he could see the cookie crumbs on her cheek.

“Phineas.” He hadn’t revealed that in three years. “I’m okay. Just missing a friend.”

“Someone you lost in the war?” she asked, staring at the Navy baseball cap he wore.

“Yeah.” He resisted the urge to look to see where Sadie had gone. It wasn’t the type of war the kid understood, but it had had its losses.

A mother frantically yelled, “Marjorie Ann Naysmith!” and the kid in front of him glanced rabbit fast over her shoulder, then back at him, chagrined.

“Gotta go.” Then she stunned him by leaning in and kissing his cheek. “You play pretty,” she said. “I bet your friend liked that.”

He nodded and she ran off, and he could hear her mother above the din of techno music coming from a boom box somewhere as she chastised little Marjorie about talking to strangers. It worried him that the Marjories of the world would never believe that advice really applied to them, until it was too late.

Phin set about tapping his pockets as if he’d lost something, rummaging around, using it as an excuse to find Sadie again in the crowd. His body went taut, frozen: she was setting up her easel, facing the building he had under surveillance.

There was no way in hell that was a coincidence.

* * *

This was the fourth day in a row now that she’d tried to get this spot—the damned man had been set up right where she
had
to be. Every day. By dawn. She’d beaten him this morning, though, and was the only person out here in the silence of the square. Big, vast, with shops lining two sides, the huge St. Louis Cathedral on another, the river opposite…this place would be crazy with crowds by midmorning, speaking languages from all over the world.

But right now? It belonged to her. Finally.

Sadie opened her folding chair in the blind vet’s spot, shivering in the cool spring air, waiting for the sunrise; she watched the cleaning crews who were only just finishing pressure-washing the sidewalks of the side streets, something they did every morning here in the Quarter. There was an entire silent army keeping the place clean so that the tourists wouldn’t see what their debauchery the night before had rendered. An entire silent army, just for trash.

It had been a cleaning crew who’d found Abby.

The first rays of sun peeled back the night sky, and a cacophony of birds sang above Sadie in the magnolia trees, as if all were well in the world, and it was wrong that birds could sing after Abby died. It was wrong that the world could laugh and people could vacation. It was wrong that she still hurt with every breath, wanting the man who’d been supposed to stop her big sister, the undercover cop, from going back in when her cover was blown.

Phin.

She sank her face in her hands. Why did she think of him so much here? It had to be the stress. What she was about to do. Because all she could think of lately was Phin, who’d been her sister’s boss on the task force trying to take down human trafficking slime. Phin, who’d taken one look at Sadie when Abby had introduced them and had turned to her sister and said, “I hope like hell we get along, Dawson, because I’m going to be family.” And he’d meant it.