The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) (15 page)

“So, he supplied you,” said Michael. “With what, heroin? Cocaine?”

“Morphine,” answered Topper without hesitation. “Same shit I’m on now. He said if I was going to kill myself, to at least do it with a gentleman’s drug.”

This seemed to satisfy Rodger for the time being. “And what did the doc want from you in exchange for these… special prescriptions?”

At this, beads of sweat began to appear on Topper’s brow. “Look,” said the junkie, “I don’t wanna go to jail. I spent twenty years trying to forget that shit. I didn’t know, and I don’t wanna know. All I know is he paid me in cold cash and Miss Emma.”

“Miss Emma?” asked Michael, who felt green for having to ask.

Rodger said, “A street name for morphine or heroin,” before returning to Topper. “Look, you aren’t a suspect in anything, Topper. We just want to know what the doc wanted from you in return for his medical services.”

Although tense as a board, Topper relaxed some, perhaps more from the medical drip than from Rodger’s assurance. After looking up at the ceiling for a long few moments, the junkie finally said, with the voice of a man with a twenty-year weight on his chest, “He had me watch certain women.” Topper’s voice cracked some. “And tell him where they’d go.”

Already, tears were forming in Topper’s eyes, and in that instant, Michael was assured of the junkie’s innocence in the murders twenty years ago.
Vincent Castille obviously didn’t tell this guy what he was doing. Why risk it? This guy is a junkie and a huge liability. Really, Mr. Jackson is lucky he wasn’t murdered himself.

“And now you’ve been in here for the past two to three weeks?” asked Rodger, focusing on the junkie’s eyes. “Has anyone come to you and asked you to do anything like that again?”

Much to Michael’s surprise, Topper suddenly got indignant. “Sir, I may be a waste of human life, but I am not going to make the same mistake twice when it can wreck other people’s lives.” Looking back up at the ceiling, Topper added, “But to answer your question, yes, I received the same offer about a week ago.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the infirmary.

“Wait, what?” asked Michael, leaning forward on the side rail of the bed. His mind raced, preparing to sort the incoming data.
If Topper was contacted by, or even saw the murderer, this entire case could be solved in a matter of days.

“Topper,” asked Rodger, sounding calm, “how did this guy contact you? What did he look like? What did he say?”

“He didn’t say nothing,” said Topper rather briskly, “and he didn’t look like nothing… He sent me a letter.” Topper pointed with his thumb to an ambiguous area behind him. “It’s in my room, in the tank. But don’t tell Mr. Bernard about it, okay? It’ll get me in huge trouble if you do.”

“Our lips are sealed,” replied Rodger with a grateful grin, before turning to his partner. “I’ll finish up with Mr. Jack here, Michael, if you go and get that letter.”

Michael, who recognized that Rodger had better rapport with this witness, nodded and headed down the hallway to Topper’s room. It was a simple matter of going back to where the junkie was nearly murdered, as the scene was still marked off with yellow police tape. Entering the bathroom area, Michael lifted up the tank lid to the toilet. Sure enough, a plastic bag was floating around inside the water, and despite the unsavory odor, Michael fished it out and opened it up.

Inside the plastic bag were a number of things one would expect a junkie to have: a bottle of pills, a wad of cash, and a small notebook filled with phone numbers and Bible verses. He decided none of that was any of his business. Also in the plastic bag was a folded-up envelope. After carefully putting the rest of the contraband back in the bag and sinking it back into the toilet’s tank, Michael unfolded and looked over the envelope.

It was a plain white envelope, the kind one can get at any office supply store. It had been taped shut with Scotch tape, and had a stamp glued in place. Looking it over, Michael immediately saw two things that stood out. For one, the envelope was a security business envelope, the kind that obfuscates the contents, rather than a small stationery envelope. Another was that the address on the envelope was typed up using a typewriter.

A typewriter
, thought Michael, looking the envelope over,
not a computer, but a typewriter.

Michael hummed to himself, tapping his lips with the corner of the envelope.
That’s significant. Typewriters are not like computers. What does this mean?

Before Michael’s wheels started turning too much, he remembered that the envelope had contents. Hastily, Michael opened the envelope up and scooped out what was inside.

Inside the envelope was the Polaroid picture of a woman on a street corner, a lady of the night, looking off to the side with disinterest. The photograph was obviously taken from a distance, so that the woman wouldn’t know she was being stalked.

“Miss Virginia Babineaux,” Michael said to the photo. It was the murder victim from the night before. The last time he had seen this woman, she was tied to a table, her body vivisected with cruel precision, a look of agony and fear on her face that still curdled Michael’s blood. And here she was, in this photo, looking bored, jaded, and very much alive.

Turning the photo over, Michael saw nothing of interest on the back of the Polaroid, so he instead looked over the letter. The language was simple, but the message was chilling.

Michael reread the letter two more times before tucking it back into the envelope and tucking the envelope into an evidence bag. He noted that the envelope didn’t contain anything else, but assumed it had held morphine pills.
The guys in the lab can test for residue
, Michael thought as he pocketed the evidence bag and headed out to join his partner.

Rodger was waiting for him in the lobby, lighting up a cigarette, a tired look on his face. Before Rodger could ask, or say, anything, Michael asked, “Is Topper still awake?”

Rodger shook his head, and Michael knew they’d be waiting another day before finding out about Topper’s “usual drop-off point.” With a sigh, Michael said, “I’ll tell you what I found on the ride back to the station.”

It took the detectives ten more minutes of signing incident reports for the clinic before Gomer Bernard allowed them to leave, and by that time the squad car with Topper’s would-be assassin was already gone. On the way back to the precinct, Michael read the letter out loud.

“The Nite Priory, what is that?” asked Rodger.

Michael pondered for a moment and said, “An alias. A clue, I guess, like Zodiac or BTK.”

Rodger harrumphed. Michael looked over and noticed that his partner’s eyes were getting bloodshot. Both of them had been awake for over twenty-four hours. They’d need to rest soon.

“So when Topper wakes up, we’ll ask him where the usual drop-off point is.”

“Right. And when we get back to the station, we can interrogate that sonabitch that you caught up on the roof.”

Rodger half-turned to his partner, which was a splendid feat considering he was driving the squad car, and said, “That reminds me… what on earth did you do up on the roof that ripped your jacket and nearly broke the perpetrator’s ribs?”

Michael, despite being tired, gave a small chuckle. “It was the weirdest thing, Rodger. I had to tackle him just before he jumped off the roof, and I suddenly felt all my inhibitions and concerns melt away. I felt invincible.”

That got another sideways glance from Rodger, who replied with, “Invincible? That’s crazy talk, Michael.”

“I know,” said Michael, nodding in agreement. “It must have been a serious adrenaline rush, Rodger. I have never felt so confident.”

“Confident, huh?” Rodger gave a bit of a laugh as he turned to the street where the precinct was located. “Just promise me one thing, Michael.”

“Oh?” replied Michael, curious. “What’s that?”

“That you won’t take chances like that again,” Rodger said, adding with a smirk, “I don’t believe the department will send me any more partners.”

Michael was surprised to find that he laughed out loud at that one.

Chapter 8   
No More Fake Smiles

Clank. Clank. Clank. Ching!

With a final ring, Sam’s typewriter clanked out the last line of her first chapter, and the writer, eyes transfixed on the last word of the page, spoke two relief-filled words: “I’m done.”

It seemed almost surreal for Sam, that she would have completed five thousand words in one evening, but even as she sat there and stared at the last page of her manuscript, the reality hit her. She had done it! She had finally made a deadline. Her first installment would go out on time.

She had always wondered what she would do if she completed a project on time, and the theoretical responses ranged from a shout of joy to a New Orleans “Who Dat” to a fist pump conjoined with a rowdy chorus of “whoops.”

However, in the face of actually completing the task, Sam found herself just leaning back and giving a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“I’m done,” she said, leaning her head back and looking up at the ceiling. “Thank. You. God.”

After a few minutes of silent reverie, Sam leaned forward and began to collect her pages, arranging them in order. Once that was done, the blond woman got up and headed across the hallway from her study, into Sam of Spades’s “office.”

It wasn’t really an office so much as a place where she handled her business, as Sam disliked technology newer than the seventies. Only at the behest of Jacob, as well as the urging of her lawyer, Kent Bourgeois, did Sam get devices such as a personal computer, a television, a fax machine, and a copier. She had adamantly refused, however, to write her manuscripts on anything but a typewriter.

So Sam’s office contained over five thousand dollars of equipment only used to send and receive faxes, copies, and e-mails. She wasn’t even sure where the equipment had come from—Kent had handled the details of their purchase, delivery, and installation, and also made sure she got a sizeable tax write-off for them. This did nothing to enhance the communication between her and the outside world, however, as Sam rarely used e-mail, preferring the phone, and had never quite figured out how to work the fax machine.

But she did use the copier to make copies of her manuscripts, and often called Kent when the toner (or ink, as she called it) ran low. Even though her attorney consistently reminded her that he wasn’t her secretary, he would end up getting the order placed, delivered, and installed anyway. All this made for a very grateful Sam, and a very satisfied Kent got to bill his client two hours each month for “miscellaneous services.”

Turning on the lights and the copier, Sam leaned against a wall and waited for the machine to warm up. As she waited, Sam read over her draft. She had to admit she had never written so well before. Even though this was just the first chapter, she managed to capture the spirit of the mystery, as well as the gruesomeness of the murders, in stark detail. Without being too graphic, she placed the reader in the role of the victim, creating the tension of being stalked, of being hunted like prey, and the terror of finally being caught. Then there was the murder itself.

Sam had wrestled for a while with how to handle the murder, knowing that she could, all too easily, go too far into the graphic detail of a torture murder at the hands of a serial killer. She had tapped her newfound pen to her lips several times, considering the shock value it would present to readers to read the vivid details locked away in her memory of her grandfather.

However, she had finally decided against it for now, cutting away from the victim’s point of view right before the first cut. With a loud rolling sound, and then a short
beep
, the copier signaled that it was ready. Sam busied herself with making two copies of her manuscript. One would go into a file here in her house, to keep in case she needed to refer to it later.

Another would go to Jacob, and ultimately Caroline, at the
Times-Picayune
. The original would go into Sam’s safe deposit box at her bank, locked away with all her other manuscripts. It was Sam’s way of securing herself against plagiarism, or so she told herself. The truth was, she didn’t fully trust anyone but her attorney or Rodger Bergeron, and hadn’t for years. And with Rodger still avoiding her, Kent was the only person who seemed to actively look out for her.

Kent had been her family lawyer since her grandfather’s time. He had been a man of thirty when Vincent Castille was arrested for serial homicide. Sam remembered that Kent was just the estate law attorney, and while he had nothing to do with her grandfather’s trial, he had been there for her when she was literally left alone—her father dead and her grandfather accused of heinous crimes.

As Sam watched the copier’s light sway back and forth, copying her manuscript, her thoughts drifted like eddies in a river. Soon, the swaying light of the copier was the swishing of wiper blades, and the repetitious hum and stutter of the machine was the monotonous patter of rain on a windshield.

Samantha was ten years old, dressed in a simple black dress, her long hair in a black ribbon, and was seated in the back of a black Mercedes-Benz, leaving her father’s funeral. In the front of the car, a chauffeur named Reginald Washington, a well-groomed and well-dressed man of color, drove. In the back of the car with Sam was Kent Bourgeois.