“Just you and me now, kid,” I say in a desolate voice. “Just you and me.”
I sip from the bottle, savoring the anesthetic bite as it spreads across my tongue. I hate myself for doing it, but I swallow anyway. Self-hatred is a familiar emotion to me, and familiarity brings comfort. As the chemical warmth diffuses through my veins, I hear the sound of rain again. The rain from my waking dreams. Not the soft hiss of drops falling on my shingles, but the hard percussive patter of rain hitting a tin roof.
I hope oblivion comes soon.
I awaken to the hiss of rain, but this time the sound is real. My bedroom window stands open, and Sean Regan is leaning in through it, his hair and shoulders soaking wet. A corona of gray light shows behind him. I look at my alarm clock: 11:50 A.M. Sixteen hours have disappeared down a hole.
“You wouldn’t answer your phone,” Sean says.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I reply, my throat dry and croaking. “That’s not how I wanted to handle it.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
The bottle of Grey Goose spilled during the night, saturating my sheets. Self-loathing fills me like poison. “Why are you here?”
“Our boy hit again this morning.”
“No way.” I rub my eyes, not really believing it. “It’s only been two days. Are you sure?”
“The victim was a fifty-six-year-old white male. Bite marks all over him. No forced entry, body found by the maid. We don’t have a ballistics match yet, but we do have this.”
Sean holds up a piece of paper and extends it toward the bed. It’s a photograph. Even from this distance, I can see that it’s of a window. On the glass above the sill, written in blood, are the words
“Holy shit.”
“We never released that to the media,” he says. “So I’d say the ballistics match is pretty much a formality. Same for the bite marks.”
I roll over and try to rise, but my whole body feels sore. Maybe after three days sober, the vodka was a shock to my system. Still, there was enough left to soak my sheets, so I didn’t drink all of it. “Where was Nathan Malik last night?”
“Home all night. Under surveillance.”
“Are you sure he was in his house the whole time?”
“We didn’t have anybody sleeping with him. But he was there.”
I wave Sean inside and push myself up to a sitting position. “What should I do? I want to do something. I want to help.”
He climbs through the window and sits on the floor, his legs crossed Indian-style. The posture makes him look twenty years younger, but his drawn face betrays his age. From the shadowy circles under his eyes-eyes that carry twice the spiritual burden they did yesterday-I’d guess he’s slept three consecutive hours since I last saw him.
“Do you want to talk about the baby?” he asks.
I close my eyes. “Not right now. Not like this.”
“Then we’ll do what we always do.”
“What?” I ask suspiciously.
“Work the case. Right here.”
I feel relief and a strange spark of excitement. “The kitchen table?”
“It’s worked before.” He picks the television remote off the floor, switches it on, and tunes the set to the local news. The screen shows Captain Carmen Piazza leaving a blue two-story house. Special Agent John Kaiser walks a step behind her.
“That’s the scene,” Sean says. “Old Metairie. The media’s amping up. Story’s going national. Some cops have started calling this guy the Vampire Lestat.”
“Tell me you’re kidding,” I mutter, wishing I’d left a bottle of water by my bed.
Sean laughs darkly. “Hey, this is New Orleans. And it fits, if you think about it. No witnesses, no forced entry, affluent male victims, teeth marks everywhere.”
I wonder what the killer will make of his new appellation. If my past experience with serials is a guide, he’ll love it.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” Sean says. “I’ll give you the details when you get out.”
I roll slowly off the bed and walk to the bathroom, unbuttoning my soiled blouse as I go.
“Hey, Cat?”
I turn back.
Sean’s green eyes focus intently on mine. “When you’re ready to talk about the baby, I am, too.”
There’s a hitch in my heartbeat. “Okay.”
His eyes go back to the television.
Chapter 14
Sean and I sit on opposite sides of my kitchen table, case files and photographs spread out between us. We’ve enacted this ritual many times before, but in the past we sat on the same side of the table. Today this new arrangement seems more appropriate.
For the past fifteen months, it’s been Sean’s habit to build a private file on every major murder case assigned to him. He keeps these files in a locked cabinet at my house, selectively adding to them as new evidence comes in. He digitally photographs what he can’t get me access to and dubs audiotapes of most witness interviews and interrogations. He’s broken countless rules and probably some laws by doing this, but the result has been to jail more killers, so he doesn’t struggle with the ethics too much.
Sean brewed coffee while I was in the shower, and by the time I emerged wearing scrub pants and a Pearl Jam sweatshirt, a cup was waiting by my chair. This kind of courtesy grew rare after the first few months of our relationship, but today it doesn’t surprise me. The pregnancy is making him walk on eggshells.
Captain Piazza hasn’t officially suspended Sean from the task force, but she did remove him as lead NOPD detective on the case. She only toured him through the crime scene this morning because his case clearance rate is so high. Piazza doesn’t know that Sean uses a lot of help from me to accomplish this, but after the captain’s little lecture at the LeGendre crime scene, I think she may suspect it.
In any case, Sean’s information flow has not been cut off. His partner is shuttling between police headquarters and the task force headquarters at the FBI building, keeping Sean informed of all new developments by cell phone. Ironically, the fortresslike new FBI field office is situated just five minutes up the shore of Lake Pontchartrain from my house. Inside that building, at least fifty people are studying the same information we’re looking at now.
“James Calhoun,” I read, naming the fifth victim. “What makes him different than the others?”
“Nothing,” says Sean, leaning his chair back on two legs. “He was alone in the house. No sign of forced entry. One paralyzing shot to the spine, then the bite marks, delivered antemortem like the others…”
“…and a coup de grace to the head,” Sean finishes. “End of story.”
“Trace evidence?”
“Aside from the note written in blood-the victim’s blood-nothing new.”
“This guy is too good,” I say with frustration. “‘My work is never done.’ He must be wearing a space suit while he does this work of his.”
“Then how is he biting them?”
“He left saliva in the bite marks again?”
“Yep.”
