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The Devil's Footprints
Amanda Stevens


The footprints were etched in the snow for miles, passing through walls and crossing rivers…appearing on the other side as though no barrier could stop them. In 1922 a farmer in Adamant, Arkansas, awakes to a noise on his roof and finds his snow-blanketed yard marked with thousands of cloven footprints. The prints vanish with the melting snow…only to reappear seventy years later near the gruesome killing of Rachel DeLaune. Years after her sister's unsolved murder, New Orleans tattoo artist Sarah DeLaune is haunted by the mysteries of her past.Sarah has always believed that her sister was killed by a man named Ashe Cain. But no one else had ever seen Ashe. He had "appeared" to Sarah when she needed a friend the most, only to vanish on the night of her sister's murder. The past bleeds into the present when two mutilated bodies are found near Sarah's home, the crime scene desecrated by cloven footprints.









Amanda Stevens

the DEVIL’S footprints








For Margie and Jeanie




Contents


Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


As always, my deepest gratitude goes to my wonderful editor, Denise Zaza, and everyone at MIRA Books for their encouragement and support, and to my agent, Helen Breitwieser, for her expert guidance.

Many thanks, also, to Breathe for their amazing friendship and inspiration.




Prologue


The legend

On the night of January 10, 1922, a full moon rose over the frozen countryside near Adamant, Arkansas, a tiny community five miles north of the Louisiana state line. The pale light glinted on freshly fallen snow and spotlighted the oil derrick recently constructed in Thomas Duncan’s barren cotton fields.

Despite the gusher that had been discovered on his property a few months after the Busey Number One had come in near El Dorado, Thomas refused to move to more comfortable accommodations in town, preferring instead to remain on the family farm he’d inherited from his father nearly half a century earlier.

Thomas liked being in the country. His nearest neighbor was nearly two miles away and he did sometimes get lonely, but the farm made him feel closer to his wife, Mary, who had passed away five years ago. She’d been laid to rest beneath a stand of cottonwoods on a hillock overlooking the river, and Thomas had tied bells in the branches so she would have music whenever a breeze stirred.

All day long, the chime of the bells had been lost in the icy howl of an Arctic cold front that roared down from the northeast. The gusts had finally abated in the late afternoon, but the weather was still bitter, even for January, and a snowfall—the first Thomas could remember in over a decade—blanketed his yard and fields in a wintry mantel. He watched the swirl of flakes from his front room window until dusk. Inexplicably uneasy, he fixed an early supper and went up to bed.

Something awakened him around midnight. The snow brought a preternatural quiet to the countryside, the silence so profound that Thomas could easily discern the pump out in the field as it siphoned oil from deep within the earth. Early on, the mechanical rhythm had kept him awake until all hours, but he was used to it now and that wasn’t what had disturbed his rest.

Still half-asleep, he thought at first he’d heard a gunshot and he wondered if someone was out tracking a deer. Then he worried there might have been an explosion at the well; he got up to glance out the window where the wooden derrick rose like an inky shadow from the pristine layer of snow.

As he crawled back under the warm covers, he heard the sound again, a loud, steady clank, like something being dropped against the tin roof of his house.

Or like heavy footsteps.

The hair at the back of Thomas’s neck lifted as a terrible dread gripped him. He scrambled out of bed, pulled on his clothes and grabbed a shotgun and coat on his way outside.

Using a side door to avoid the slippery porch, he trudged around to the front of the house where he had a better view of the roof.

The moon was bright on the snow, a luminous glow that turned nighttime into a subdued twilight, and the air was pure and so cold that his nostrils stung when he breathed. He turned, looked up and what he saw chilled him to the bone. Cloven footprints started at the edge of the roof, moved in a straight line up the sloping tin and disappeared over the peak.

Slowly, Thomas turned in a circle, his gaze encompassing the yard, the barn, the cotton fields and finally returning to his house and then up the porch steps right to his front door. He saw now what he had not noticed before. The footprints were everywhere. He’d never seen anything like them. He’d lived in the country all his life and he knew the tracks hadn’t been made by a four-legged animal, but by something that walked upright. And the stride was long and at least twice as wide as the footprints Thomas had left in the snow.

A terrible premonition settled over him. The farmhouse had been his home since he was a boy, and on Sunday mornings when his neighbors headed into town for church services, he had instead walked the fields alone. The peace he found there was deep and profound, the clean silence of the freshly plowed earth more suited to his idea of prayer and reflection. But now, as he stood in his own front yard, Thomas Duncan had the sense that a part of his heritage had been desecrated.

An urgency he couldn’t explain prodded him, and he rushed back to the house, avoiding the prints on the steps and across the frozen porch as he flung open the front door. His heart hammered against his chest as he stepped inside, expecting to see melting tracks on the plank flooring. The only snow, however, was from his own boots.

Quickly he bolted the door and strode down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. As he opened the back door, his gaze dropped. The prints started at the threshold and continued down the steps and across the yard to the open field, as if something had come in the front door, passed through the house without leaving a mark, and let itself out the back way.

More afraid than he’d ever been in his life, Thomas moved back inside and clicked the thumb-lock on the door. He shoved a chair under the knob and sat down at the table, shotgun across his knees, to wait for daylight.

By morning, word of the footprints had spread throughout the town, and with it, speculation as to their source. One of Thomas’s neighbors followed the tracks right up to the edge of the river where they continued in the same straight line on the other side.

For several nights after that, some of the men sat up with Thomas, waiting to see if the strange phenomenon reoccurred. When nothing happened, the community began to breathe a little easier—until a local preacher sermonized that the drillers, in their quest to strike it rich, had somehow punched a hole straight down to hell, unleashing the devil himself to run unbridled across the countryside.

The cloven footprints vanished with the melting snow and were eventually forgotten in the tiny Arkansas community.

Then seven decades later, they reappeared near the mutilated body of sixteen-year-old Rachel DeLaune.




One


She had no idea he was there.

Seated on the porch steps of the old Duncan farmhouse, the girl remained blissfully unaware of his vigil. If she had turned she would have seen him, but she didn’t turn. Instead, she pulled her jacket more tightly around her slight body, as if stricken by a sudden chill.

In the distance, the ancient bells up in the cottonwoods tinkled in the shifting twilight. Ghost music, he thought. A serenade for the dead.

He listened for a moment, eyes closed, anticipation strumming the nerve endings along his spine. Then he crept a few steps closer.

And still she heard nothing.

Not surprising. He’d learned a long time ago the importance of a silent approach. No squeaking shoes. No snapping twigs. Not even an exhaled breath. He moved like a shadow, like a stealthy predator bearing down with eagle-eyed precision on his prey.

Her head suddenly lifted, as if yanked by the invisible bond that connected them, and he froze, heart hammering, until the danger passed.

She settled back to her daydreaming as her dog played nearby in the tall grass. Her back was to him; he longed to call out her name, make her turn so he could glimpse her face, stare deeply into those dark, dark eyes.

A shiver coursed through him. He wanted that contact more than anything in the world, but it couldn’t be today. It would be night soon, and the longer he stayed out, the harder it became to control his natural urges. The demons driving him sometimes made him careless and greedy and all too willing to risk everything he needed to keep hidden.

But for her, it might be worth it.

Outwardly, she looked like a normal girl. Straight dark hair with a fringe of bangs across her forehead. Pale skin. Deep brown eyes. Nothing at all extraordinary about her appearance.

On the inside, though, where it counted the most, Sarah DeLaune was anything but normal.

She was young, only thirteen, so he had to be very careful with her. He was older, wiser and—in some ways—worldlier, although he could shed his dreary veneer as easily as peeling away the Goth persona he’d adopted. Unlike normal-looking Sarah, he had embraced the trappings of darkness, because without the black clothes and heavy makeup, he became someone else.

“Gabriel, you leave that squirrel alone. You hear me?” she scolded her dog. “Don’t make me cut a switch!”

He smiled at the idle threat. Sarah would never harm a hair on that mutt’s head. Until now, Gabriel had been her only companion. Until now.

The dog trotted over to the steps, and Sarah cupped his homely face in her hands, scratched behind his shapeless ears. Gabriel started to flop at her feet worshiping her, but a change of wind brought a new scent, a new excitement, and the dog whirled, his keen eyes searching the shadows at the corner of the house.

He started to step back out of sight, but it was too late. He’d gotten careless and now he’d been spotted.

As Gabriel bounded toward him, he reached into his pocket and snagged one of the treats he kept in a plastic bag. He’d learned early on that Sarah’s dog had a weakness for bacon.

Skidding to a halt, the ugly mutt sniffed his hand, then greedily gobbled the morsel right from his palm. He dug out another, his gaze never leaving Sarah.

She’d risen from the steps and stood looking at him as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Her instincts told her to run, but her curiosity urged her to stay. For a girl like Sarah, there really was no choice.

Slowly, she walked through the dead weeds toward the corner of the house, peering into the shadows.

He drew several quick breaths as he watched her. He’d been in her house on any number of occasions when the family was out. He’d drifted through the silent rooms, touched her things, absorbed her scent. He knew her so well by now. Her habits, her secrets, her innermost fears. Sometimes, it almost seemed as if she were a mirror image of himself. And yet for all that, he’d never before been this close to her.

A quiver of excitement vibrated through him as their eyes met for the first time. In that instant, he could feel her gaze penetrating the darkest recesses of his soul, probing the deepest corners of his mind, the way he’d searched every crevice of her room.

“Hey, you!” she called. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The intensity of her focus disconcerted him and he had to glance away as she approached. “I just wanted to have a look around. I didn’t think anyone would be here this time of day.”

“Well, you thought wrong.” She gave him a scowling appraisal. “Who are you anyway? I’ve never seen you out here before.”

“My name is Ashe Cain,” he said, careful to remain in the shadows where she couldn’t get a good look at him.

“Never heard of you, and I know everyone in town.”

“I’m not from Adamant.”

That caught her interest. “Where you from then?”

“Does it matter? I’m not trespassing, am I?”

“Yeah, but nobody gives a shit about this place.” She cocked her head as she continued to study him, apparently not the least bit afraid. He should have had more faith, he realized.

“Ashe Cain.” She repeated his name slowly, as if testing the feel of the syllables against her lips. “Is that your real name or did you just make it up?”

The question startled him. “No, it’s my real name. Why?”

“Because all the Goth kids at my school give themselves lame-ass names like Twilight and Shadow.” She paused with a mocking smile. “And Ashe.”

He scoffed at her suggestion. “Don’t lump me in with those poseurs. I’m not like that.”

“Why’d you come out here then?” She nodded toward the old farmhouse behind him. “This is their hangout.”

“I came to see the footprints.”

Something darted through her eyes before she gave a derisive laugh. “That’s just a stupid legend. The footprints don’t really exist.”

“Are you sure?”

She scratched the back of her knee. “I’ve been out here lots of times and I’ve never seen them.”

“Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not real. Besides, I have seen them.”

“You’ve seen the footprints? Where?”

“I can show you if you want.”

A gust of wind ruffled her dark hair, the same breeze that stirred the bells in the distance. For the first time, he sensed her hesitancy. Not from fear, exactly, but from an instinctive resistance that would have to be slowly and carefully chipped away.

That same thrill of anticipation soared up his spine, and he turned his head so she wouldn’t see his smile.

She thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. “Even if I believed you, which I don’t, I have to get home. My old man hates it when I’m late for dinner.”

“I hope you’re not leaving on my account. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I would never hurt you.”

Her head shot up. “Do I look afraid? Please. Besides, you even think about laying a hand on me, my dog will kick your Emo ass.”

He glanced down at the complacent mongrel at her side. “I can see that.”

“He’s a lot meaner than he looks,” she warned.

He knelt and held out his hand, and Gabriel came over to sniff for more bacon. “Nah, he likes me. Don’t you, boy? Good dog,” he crooned, burying his hand in the soft fur. “I used to have a dog just like this. Maybe they came from the same litter.”

The notion seemed to intrigue her. “Gabriel just showed up at my house one day. I always wondered where he came from.” She paused as an unwelcome thought struck her. “You’re not going to claim your dog ran away or something, are you?”

“No, he died. Someone poisoned him.”

“On purpose? Man, that bites.” She dropped to the grass beside Gabriel, dinnertime and her earlier reticence forgotten. “What kind of psycho would do something like that to a poor, helpless animal?”

“Someone evil,” he said. “Someone without a soul.”

Their gazes met and he saw her shiver. “My sister keeps bugging my folks to get rid of Gabriel. She hates him.”

“Are they going to?”

“Probably. My dad takes her side every damn time. They both make me sick.”

Her anger caused his heart to beat even harder. He had to take a couple of breaths to curtail his excitement.

Sarah wrapped her arms around Gabriel and gave him a squeeze. “They’ll be sorry, though, won’t they, boy?”

“What are you going to do?”

She lifted her thin shoulders. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll think of something.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

Her expression turned suspicious. “Why would you do that?”

“Because that’s what friends do. They help each other out.”

“News flash, retard. We’re not friends. You don’t even know me.”

Oh, but I do, Sarah. Still he had to be careful, not push too hard.

“And anyway, I don’t need your help and I don’t want any friends. Gabriel is all I need.” Her tone was harsh and defiant, but he, and only he, could see the bereft shadow in her eyes.

His chest tightened; he knew that pain so well. They were so much alike, he and Sarah. Dark, sad, lonely. Her solitude drew him like a newborn baby grasping for its mother’s breast.

She scrambled to her feet and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “Hey, I’m sorry I called you a retard.”

He smiled. “That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I hate when people call me that.”

“Who calls you that?”

She answered with a shrug. If she noticed the edge in his voice, she didn’t let on. “Are you coming back out here tomorrow?”

“I will if you want me to.”

“Like I care one way or the other. I was just asking.”

But that was a lie. She did care. Whether she knew it or not, she needed him as much as he needed her. She’d come back tomorrow, because she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

Sitting cross-legged in the grass, he watched her cut across the edge of the field toward the road, Gabriel at her heels. The air chilled as the twilight deepened, and he knew he needed to be on his way, too. The voices inside his head were getting more desperate by the moment. He was out of time. He couldn’t ignore them any longer.

He rose and stood listening to the bells pealing in the distance. Death music. He smiled. A serenade for the doomed.




Two


Fourteen years later

Winter came late as it always did to the Deep South.

It arrived with only a whisper through the magnolia trees—a creeping shadow, an unwelcome presence easily ignored until a bitter cold front swept down from Canada, bringing freezing rain and record-breaking temperatures all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Downed power lines, disrupted city services, massive pileups on the interstates—it was the kind of chaos New Orleans hadn’t known since Katrina.

Even without the inconveniences, Sarah DeLaune hated the cold. Earlier, as she listened to sleet pelt against her windows, she’d been gripped by a strange anxiety, and she found herself wondering how she would cope if summer never came again. If the winter storm raging outside her house was not merely an anomaly, but a permanent shift in the subtropical climate of the Gulf Coast.

As she fantasized about being trapped in a frozen universe, she’d slipped so deeply into the gloom of her own thoughts that even the Valium she’d taken mid-morning couldn’t dig her out.

She’d recognized the early stages of cabin fever, and in spite of the incessant warnings issued by the weather service, she’d gone out, precariously negotiating the icy streets to the French Quarter, where she found the seedy bar that had been her hangout of late warm and inviting.

The party atmosphere, along with a few drinks and half a Xanax, had nudged her toward a mellower outlook, and at midnight she’d gone home to bed, eventually sinking into the kind of bone-melting sleep she hadn’t known in months.

She’d been dreaming about her dead sister when the phone woke her up. She had no idea how long it had been ringing, because even after she opened her eyes, the sleep demons held her firmly in their grasp. Rachel’s disembodied head floated above the bed, and the barest hint of sulphur hung on the chilly air, then another piercing ring sent the nightmare skittering back to the darker realm of Sarah’s subconscious.

Her movements lethargic and dreamlike, she sat up in bed, willing her hand toward the receiver. But the caller had given up. In the ensuing quiet, Sarah could have sworn she heard the ghostly ticking of her alarm clock, even though she’d unplugged it days ago.

Leaning back against the headboard, she wondered how long she’d been asleep. She wanted to know the time, too, but not enough to get up and go find another clock. Nor did she check her phone to see who had been calling at so late an hour. A phone call after midnight was never a good thing.

Her first thought was that her ailing father had taken a turn for the worse. When she’d been there a week ago, the doctor had warned her that the old man had only a few months at best. The doctor had tried to break it to her gently, but he needn’t have worried. Sarah would hardly be grief-stricken when the time came. She and her father had never been close. Sometimes, when he looked at her with the same old contempt, she wondered why she even bothered. She could have drifted along quite happily in their estrangement if Michael—Dr. Garrett—hadn’t persuaded her to try and make amends before it was too late.

He liked to tell her that avoidance wasn’t a solution, but Sarah wasn’t so sure about that. Sweeping her problems under the rug had worked pretty well for her in the past. Might have continued to work, if the insomnia hadn’t forced her back into treatment. And now, thanks to her visits back home, the nightmares had also returned.

Everything is connected, Sarah.

Well, no kidding.

She jumped, realizing that she’d drifted off again. Sitting upright in bed with her eyes wide open. She hadn’t been asleep, but the last few moments—or had it been hours?—had passed without her awareness. Now the phone was ringing again.

Someone really wanted to get in touch with her.

Sarah waited a moment, hoping the caller would give up again. When that didn’t happen, she reached for the phone with a sigh, as she glanced out the window. Just beyond her tiny courtyard, the dead branches of an oak tree windmilled in a frigid gust.

“Hello?”

“Finally.”

She recognized the voice at once, and his exasperated tone was like the prick of a needle against her spine. How like Sean Kelton to think she had nothing better to do, even in the middle of the night, than wait for his call.

“Are you there?” he demanded.

“Yes, I’m here. What do you want?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Her hand tightened on the phone. “What do you mean?”

“It took you forever to answer and now you won’t say anything. It’s like you’re there, but you’re not.”

“For God’s sake, it’s the middle of the night. I was asleep.”

Sean fell silent. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a bit. “I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”

“It couldn’t wait until morning?”

“I didn’t know I’d wake you up,” he said defensively. “You never sleep unless…” His voice trailed off with the slightest edge of accusation. “What are you taking these days?”

“That’s none of your business. You gave up the privilege of poking around in my private life when you moved out.”

Hang up, a little voice urged her. Just press the button and make him go away.

His voice was so familiar, the regret it stirred was still so deep that Sarah’s free hand reached out for the pill bottle on her nightstand. Not finding it in the dark, her fingers scrambled across the wood surface.

“It may not be any of my business, but I still care about you, Sarah. I’ve been hearing things lately that worry me.”

“What kind of things?”

“You’ve been hanging out in some pretty rough places.”

“What, are you spying on me now?” The crab-like hand searched through the nightstand drawer and closed, like a claw, around a plastic medicine bottle. She cradled the phone against her shoulder as she twisted off the cap, then dry-swallowed half a Xanax. The bottle was alarmingly empty.

“I’m concerned about you. I know how you get when you drink. Especially if you’re still popping pills.”

“Oh, and how do I get, Sean? Why don’t you tell me?”

Another pause, one that seemed filled with his own regret. “You get reckless.”

“You used to like that about me.”

“There’s a difference between being reckless and self-destructive. Took me a while to figure that out, but I see it pretty clearly now.”

“Is that why you left?”

“You know why I left.”

No, she really didn’t, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask any more than it would let her chase him down the morning he walked out.

Looking back, Sarah realized that he had been trying to tell her for weeks that it was over, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it, so she refused to listen. She’d been out running errands that morning and had noticed something different about the house the moment she walked through the door. But she hadn’t stopped to consider what it might be. Instead, she’d gone into the kitchen for coffee and that was when she found his note propped against the sugar bowl.

You’re going to hate me for this, but I did what I had to do. If you want to talk, I’ll listen, but I don’t think there’s much left to say at this point.

Sarah had folded the note and slipped it into her pocket as she walked calmly into the bedroom, then opened the door of the closet as if trying not to set off a bomb.

Sean’s side was always a mess, but not that morning. His clothes were all gone. Suits, pants, shirts, everything. Nothing left, but a couple of hangers dangling from the rod and a crumpled shirt on the floor.

He’d cleaned out the bathroom, too, and as Sarah walked through the house, she saw what her subconscious had noted earlier. Missing CDs and books. His laptop. Favorite pictures.

Everything of his—gone.

A big chunk of her life—gone.

And now here he was, nearly a year later, calling her in the middle of the night.

“How long can you just sit there and not say anything?” he asked angrily.

“You’re the one who called me. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Sarah—”

“Just get to the point, Sean. I’d like to go back to sleep sometime tonight.” Although she knew that wouldn’t happen. She was wide-awake now.

“All right,” he said in a resolved tone. “I’m calling because I need your help.”

Sarah was instantly suspicious. “I’m not in a generous mood these days.”

“It’s not personal. I need your help with a case. We’ve got a body covered in ink, but no ID. I was hoping you’d come have a look, see if you recognize the artist.”

Sarah clutched the phone, trying to ignore the surge of adrenaline that already had her heart thudding. She reminded herself that Sean Kelton never did anything without a motive. “Why me?”

“Because I couldn’t get your partner on the phone,” he admitted. “And because you know every tattoo artist in the city. Come on, you always loved working my cases with me. You were good at it, too.”

She smiled, in spite of herself.

“So will you do it? I really could use your help.”

“Would I have to come to the morgue?”

“We could wait and do it there, but I’d rather you come now. The body hasn’t been moved yet, and I’d like to get your take on something at the crime scene.”

“I’m a civilian, Sean. They’re not going to let me waltz through a police barricade without some kind of credentials.”

He hesitated. “Yeah, that could be a problem, but I’ll take care of it. I’m sending a cruiser to pick you up. It’s getting nasty out here. I haven’t seen an ice storm like this since I was a kid.”

In spite of her protests, Sarah was already scrambling out of bed, reaching for a pair of clean jeans from the stack on her dresser. An urgency she couldn’t explain drove her, but her movements were still sluggish and it seemed to take forever to locate a shirt.

“How long until my ride gets here?”

“A couple of minutes.”

A couple of minutes.

Which meant he’d dispatched the car before he called…or else the crime scene was that close to her house.



“Sarah DeLaune?”

The uniformed officer standing on her porch was young, probably around twenty-five, with a broad, pleasant face and twinkling blue eyes. He touched the brim of his cap. “Lieutenant Kelton sent me to pick you up, ma’am.”

“I’m almost ready—” She glanced at his name tag. “Officer Parks. Just give me a second to grab a coat and find my keys. You can come in out of the cold if you want.”

“Thanks just the same. I’ll go wait in the car, keep the heater running.”

“Suit yourself.”

Sarah left the front door open as she shrugged into the wool jacket and gloves she’d dug out of the back of her closet when the cold front hit. A frigid wind blew through the room, lifting the edges of the newspaper on the coffee table.

The paper had been there for a couple of days now, turned to an article about a missing Shreveport woman named Holly Jessup. Sarah didn’t know her, but for some reason, she couldn’t get the name out of her head.

Holly…Jessup.

Grabbing her keys from the hall table, Sarah stepped out on the porch. The icy wind cut through her blue jeans as she struggled with the lock. Then she turned and hesitated at the edge of the porch before negotiating the frozen steps.

Snow flurries whirled over the street and drifted like feathers down to the lawn. Her tiny front yard was white and glistening, a winter wonderland that would vanish as soon as the sun came up.

Sarah hated the cold, but even she could appreciate the rarity of a snowfall in New Orleans. It happened maybe once every thirty years. She wanted to take a moment to enjoy the pristine tranquility of the night, but instead she found herself scouring the icy darkness, searching for the evil that had been awakened by her nightmare.

Ashe Cain.

No matter where she went or what she did, he was always there—watching, waiting, creeping so close at times she could smell the death scent he wore like cologne.

He’d gone away after Rachel’s death, but Sarah’s dreams always brought him back. He was out there tonight. She could feel him.

A shudder gripped her, a cold, black terror. Sarah wanted nothing more than to retreat into her house, to lock herself inside until the nightmare faded, until Ashe Cain had crawled back into the shadows of her past.

Shivering, she forced herself down the porch steps and across the frozen yard to the curb. Officer Parks got out of the car and came around to open her door.

“You didn’t have to get back out,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door.”

“Detective Kelton made it real clear I was to take good care of you.”

“Oh, he did?”

Parks grinned at her tone. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not get on his bad side.”

He waited for her to climb inside, then closed the door behind her. A moment later, he slid behind the wheel and flashed another grin. They were probably close in age, but the cop’s boyish looks and reverent demeanor made him seem much younger.

Sarah tugged off a glove and placed her hand over the heater vent. “Are you sure this thing is working?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s going full blast.”

Then why was she still so cold?

Maybe because the bone chill had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with her ultimate destination.

An icy sludge crawled through Sarah’s veins. She was on her way to a crime scene to examine tattoos on a dead woman. The newspaper article suddenly came back to her, and she wondered again at the familiarity of the missing woman’s name.

Holly Jessup.

Where had she heard it before?

“Ma’am?”

She turned. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You seemed a little out of it there for a minute.”

“Did I?” Sarah shrugged. “I was just thinking how much I hate the cold.”

He gave a low chuckle. “You call this cold? Trust me, you don’t know cold until you’ve spent a winter on Lake Michigan.”

“You’re from Chicago?”

“Slidell. But I went north to stay with my grandma when I was a kid.”

“Why’d you come back down here?”

“Why do you think? I couldn’t stand the cold.”

He was smiling at her again, and there was enough ambient light in the car that Sarah could see the brief flare of attraction in his eyes. She wondered how long his interest would hold once he got to know her. She’d always had the ability to frighten off even the more ardent admirers.

Sean had been the exception. He’d lasted longer than most. But in the end, he couldn’t take it, either. He could put up with the pills but not the secrets.

Parks nodded toward her seat belt. “You might want to buckle up. We’re not going far, but the streets are like glass. If we skid into a light pole, I don’t want you going through the windshield.”

“I don’t want that, either.” Sarah fastened the shoulder harness, then put her hands back up to the vent. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering. “Where exactly are we headed?”

“The body was found at a vacant house on Elysian Fields.”

Just a few blocks from Sarah’s place on North Rampart.

“Do you suppose that’s the killer’s idea of a joke?” she said dryly.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Greek mythology. Elysian Fields. The final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous.”

Parks gave her an uneasy glance. “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing this guy’s into.”




Three


Adamant, Arkansas

Esme Floyd prowled her tiny house, her arthritic knees protesting every step. She didn’t know why she was so uneasy tonight, but she reckoned the weather had something to do with it. Not a fit night out for man or beast, her mama would have said.

But even on mild nights, Esme sometimes stayed up until all hours. Came from all those years of waiting for her son, Robert, to come dragging in at dawn, and then later, her grandbaby, Curtis, although he’d never been as bad as his daddy to lay out.

Not until that one winter…

Esme pursed her lips. She wouldn’t study on that tonight. What would be the point?

Whatever devil had been riding the boy all those years ago was gone now. He’d turned into such a fine young man. A doctor, of all things! Esme was so proud, she could strut. Not a single generation of Floyds had ever made it through high school, let alone college and medical school. Robert had quit in the ninth grade and by the time he’d turned twenty-one, he’d served time in Cummins.

Esme had no idea where her son was now. Dead, for all she knew. He took off right after he got out of the pen, leaving Curtis and the boy’s mama to fend for themselves. Esme had ended up raising the child from the time he was twelve years old. He’d been a couple of years older than Rachel when he came here to live, but the two became thick as thieves once he let down his guard.

Thankfully, the DeLaunes hadn’t minded him being around. Esme had been especially worried about James who was mighty particular about Rachel’s friends. The family had been good to her, and she would have hated giving up her job. But Curtis had always been a quiet, easygoing boy, even when he was little, and he’d had enough sense to make himself scarce when he needed to.

Except when it came to Rachel.

That trouble had started brewing right from the get-go, but Esme hadn’t the heart to take away the one good thing in her grandbaby’s life. So she’d sat back and watched his friendship with Rachel DeLaune turn into fierce devotion and later, heartbreak when the girl moved on to someone more suitable.

Esme had worried then, as she still sometimes worried on nights when she couldn’t sleep, that Curtis’s attachment to Rachel might have crossed the line into obsession.

But it didn’t much matter now. Rachel was dead, God rest her soul; had been for fourteen years.

Her killer had never been caught, but most folks in Adamant had their suspicions. The body had been found at the old Duncan farmhouse where Buddy Fears’s boy used to hang out. Esme had seen him out there herself, lollygagging about with that no-account bunch he ran with.

Smoking dope and God only knows what. Nothing but trouble, every last one of ’em.

Derrick Fears had been the worst of the lot. Not a lick of respect for his elders, or even his own body, what with all those piercings and tattoos. Marks of the devil, Esme thought with a shiver.

William Clay had been the county sheriff back then, and she’d heard him tell James once that he knew in his gut that pack of degenerates had killed Rachel, probably during some devil-worshipping ritual out at the farmhouse. And if it took him the rest of his life, he’d see them boys fry.

But it didn’t work out that way. Sheriff Clay had gone to his grave beaten and weary, Rachel’s murder the only black mark against an otherwise outstanding career.

And all these years later, the killer was still out there.

Esme tried to turn away from her dark thoughts. She got out her Bible, but she was too jittery to read. And her joints were starting to ache. The arthritis in her knees and shoulders was getting worse all the time.

Curtis had been after her to retire ever since he’d come back home to work at the hospital in El Dorado, but to Esme, retirement was one step away from the old folks’ home. She wasn’t so stove up yet she couldn’t make herself useful.

Setting aside the Bible, she got up and padded on bare feet to the bathroom to get a glass of water. She wouldn’t take her medicine just yet. Not until the pain got so bad she couldn’t stand it. She was too afraid of getting hooked on the pills.

She went into her bedroom, but instead of crawling under the warm layers of blankets, she shuffled over to the window to look out. The night was clear and cold, the moon so bright she could see ice glistening on the barren tree branches.

Her cottage window faced the back of the DeLaune house, and she stood for a moment admiring its graceful lines through the tree branches. Oh, how she loved that place. Over a hundred years old and still just as regal and elegant as she remembered it from her childhood.

Thomas Duncan’s daughter had lived in the house, and Esme remembered when the old man had moved in with her. By then, his hair had been as white and wispy as cotton, his eyes frosted with cataracts. He’d sit in a cane rocker on the veranda for hours, mumbling to himself, paying no mind to the taunting neighborhood children who called him Crazy Ol’ Tom.

Esme used to see him out there on Sunday mornings when she and her mama walked home from church. Sometimes his two little granddaughters would be playing in the yard and Esme would stop to watch.

“Stop that gawkin’, Esme Louise,” Mama would scold with her lips pooched out in stern disapproval. “You act like you ain’t never seen old folk before.”

But it wasn’t Thomas who fascinated Esme; it was the two little girls who always seemed to be dressed in white.

“How come they don’t never get dirty, Mama?”

“They do get dirty, child, what a foolish notion. They get dirty same as the rest of us. Only difference is, they got somebody to wash up after ’em.”

“I wanna live in a house like that, Mama.”

“Esme Louise, the only way you ever gonna live in a house like that is if you the one doin’ the washin’ up. And that ain’t in the cards for you, baby girl, ’cuz I mean for you to get an education. Then you can go to Little Rock or Memphis and get yourself a real job. Make your own way. I don’t want you havin’ to do for nobody but yourself.”

Esme hadn’t said anything, but she’d thought to herself that it wouldn’t be so bad washing clothes and scrubbing floors if she could live in a place like that. She didn’t mind housework, not even the ironing that her mama took in.

Anything was better than field work. Chopping cotton under a blistering sun in the summer and picking up pecans in the fall and winter when the ground was cold and wet and cockleburs stuck to your hair and clothes like prickly brown leeches.

Spring was the only time Esme enjoyed being outdoors, before the cloying heat of summer settled like a wool blanket over the countryside, while the air was still drowsy with roses and lilacs, and strawberries lay hidden like Easter eggs in lush, dewy vines.

Her mama had died in the springtime.

Esme had just turned thirteen, and she’d left school to take care of her younger brother and sisters. She’d married at sixteen, had a baby at seventeen and was widowed by the time she turned twenty.

When James and Anna DeLaune moved into the house as newlyweds, Esme had already been working there for years. James had paid her a visit, hat in hand, one Saturday afternoon and asked if she would please stay on and help them out. His young wife was frail and couldn’t handle that big place all by herself. Esme had been there ever since.

Forty years she’d spent taking care of that house, and for the most part, she’d been content with her work. But after Rachel’s death, everything changed. A terrible darkness had settled over the place.

James had doted on that girl—everyone did—and once she was gone, he couldn’t bear to step foot inside. He’d spent most of his time holed up in his chambers at the county courthouse, ignoring the needs of his troubled child and heartsick wife.

Anna hadn’t been strong enough to carry the burden of her grief alone. She’d died a few months later. They said it was heart trouble, but Esme had her doubts. Anna had been a young woman, only thirty-six, and Esme suspected that Doc Washington had fudged the death certificate out of compassion for a family already broken by grief and guilt.

Esme had wondered then—and she would wonder until the day she died—if Anna DeLaune had deliberately taken her own life, leaving her youngest behind to deal with the sorrow in the only way she knew how.

Poor child.

Sarah had always been such a puzzle to Esme. She’d never had any friends to speak of. Didn’t give a hoot about parties and sleepovers the way Rachel had. Instead, she’d spent her time roaming the countryside by herself, sometimes at all hours.

And those eyes…

Lord have mercy, the way that girl could look at you would lift the hair right up off the back of your neck.

But for all her peculiar ways, Sarah had been Esme’s favorite. Maybe because of the way her daddy treated her.

Never made any bones about who his favorite was.

After the funeral, Sarah had closed herself off. Wouldn’t talk to a soul about what happened. Even the special doctor called in by Sheriff Clay couldn’t unlock the secrets trapped in that child’s memory. But there were nights, while in the grip of a nightmare, that she would whisper a name.

Sometimes it seemed to Esme that, if she listened closely enough, she could still hear that name in the wind.

Shivering from the cold seeping in through the window, she lifted her gaze to the roof where moonlight glinted off a thin layer of snow. For a moment…

She blinked and looked again. Jesus Lord.

Someone was up there.

She could barely see him against the backdrop of night sky, but he was there, a nebulous form moving quickly up the slanting roof.

The glass slipped from Esme’s hand and shattered against the cold, tile floor. Shards bit into her bare feet, but she paid scant attention to the pain. Her focus was still on the roof.

He must have been stooped over before, because now he rose up against the moonlight, a towering silhouette with a pale face and dark-rimmed eyes.

Esme tried to scoff at herself. She couldn’t see that kind of detail in the dark. It was nothing more than an old woman’s superstition.

But he was there. No matter how much she wished to deny it.

And in the split second before he bounded over the peak and disappeared on the other side of the roof, Esme could have sworn he’d seen her, too. She could feel the heat of his eyes burning into her soul.




Four


Sarah spotted the glow from the pulsing lights even before they turned onto Elysian Fields. The street was the main thoroughfare through Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood that had become increasingly hip and trendy as refugees from the French Quarter fled across Esplanade Avenue to escape the tourists.

As they made the corner, she saw the police cars and emergency vehicles lined up at the curb. She counted three patrol cars, a crime-scene van and a vehicle from the Orleans Parish coroner’s office. A grim motorcade that almost always signaled a violent crime.

Even at this hour, lights burned in some of the pastel-painted bungalows and guest cottages along the street, and the curious had begun to gather. A few worried neighbors had thrown coats over their pajamas and hurried out to investigate the commotion. They stood in a tight cluster, breaths frosting on the cold air as a procession of cops marched in and out of the house.

Crime had never been a stranger in New Orleans. A brief calm had settled over the city after the flood, but once the state police and National Guard moved out, the local authorities had been overwhelmed by the escalating violence. Longtime residents already knew to keep a constant vigil. There were places you did not go alone and at night, but the Marigny had never been one of them.

Now, with so many neighborhoods still unlivable, a new breed of criminal—bolder and more violent than ever before—had moved into the upscale safe havens. Once the sun went down, everyone but the very brave or the very foolish was already home, sequestered safely behind locked doors and windows until daylight.

As Sarah got out of the car, a blast of cold air blew down her collar and jolted her from the lingering effects of her Xanax haze. Parks came around to her side and they crossed the street together. She could feel the curious eyes of the neighbors on them, and when she glanced back, a silence settled over the crowd. They shifted uncomfortably and looked away, no doubt wondering about her relationship to the victim.

Parks said something to one of the officers guarding the perimeter, and then he motioned for Sarah to follow as he ducked under the police tape and started up the walkway. Like most houses in the area, the Creole-style cottage was elevated from the ground with steps leading up to a narrow, gingerbread-trimmed porch.

Before they reached the top, the front door opened and Sean came out. Sarah paused with one foot on the next step, her gaze lifting. Someone pushed past her and clambered up to the porch, spoke briefly to Sean, then hurried into the house. Behind her, Parks gently nudged her forward, but Sarah ignored him. Her focus was only on Sean.

He was tall, trim, a commanding presence even at the age of thirty-three. At one time, he’d been the youngest homicide detective on the force, but no one who knew him had been surprised by his rapid ascension. Sean had always been quick to take advantage of an opportunity.

His black wool overcoat was unbuttoned and flapping in the wind. Sarah was surprised he even owned one. The cold front had caught most people unprepared and they’d had to make do with layers of sweaters and jackets.

The coat, however, was his only concession to the frigid temperature. His head was bare, and when he moved from beneath the porch roof, snowflakes settled in his black hair. He brushed them away as he stood gazing down at Sarah.

She’d told herself after his phone call that she wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t let him see how much he’d hurt her. How much seeing him bothered her. Driving by his house in the middle of the night was one thing, but here she had nowhere to hide.

And yet she found herself clinging to his gaze, remembering the intimacy, remembering every nuance and gesture, every whisper, every promise.

She caught herself then and glanced away, but almost immediately her gaze came back to him. He’d called her tonight. He’d asked for her help. She didn’t have to hide or pretend. She had every right to be here.

He came down a step or two and gave Parks a curt nod. But his gaze never left Sarah’s. “Got her here in one piece, I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

Parks headed back down the stairs as Sean waited for Sarah. When they reached the porch, he pulled her away from the congestion near the front door.

“Sarah,” he murmured.

She glanced away, unnerved by her reaction to him.

His voice turned gruff. “What the hell have you been doing to yourself? You look terrible.”

Anger tightened her jaw muscles. “It’s good to see you, too, Sean.”

“I’m serious. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“I was sleeping when you called.”

She could see skepticism in his face. “And how long had it been before that?”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked in exasperation.

“Doing what?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. “I told you earlier, I’m worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Sarah—”

She pulled away when he tried to touch her. “You said you wanted me to look at the victim’s tattoos. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

His features hardened, and that, too, was familiar. Sean didn’t deal well with rejection, not even the mildest rebuke. “Damn it, why do you always have to act like this?”

“Like what?”

“Misunderstood. Put upon. Like you were the only one who got hurt when we split up.”

“You know, Sean, that argument might be a little more convincing if you’d waited longer than four months before getting married. How is Catherine, by the way? Does she know you called me?”

He sighed. “I’m not doing this with you. Not here.”

“Fine. Why don’t you show me what you want me to see and then let me get the hell out of here?”

He ran his hand through his dark hair. It was longer than Sarah remembered, brushing the collar of his overcoat. He could use a shave, too, and his eyes were ringed with dark circles. She wasn’t the only one who needed a good night’s sleep.

The front door opened and a young officer hurried onto the porch. He stumbled down the stairs, took a few shaky steps into the yard, then bent over and vomited into a row of frozen camellia bushes.

A wave of nausea rolled through Sarah’s stomach. She tried to tell herself the sound of the cop’s retching had triggered the response, but deep down, she knew it was panic. Not for what she was about to see, but for the way Sean still made her feel.

“This is a bad one, Sarah.”

His voice caused her to jump.

“I don’t have any right asking you to do this. Lapierre would probably have my badge if she got wind of it,” he said, referring to the female lieutenant.

Sarah had heard Sean talk about Angelette Lapierre before. She was a tough, thirtysomething Cajun who had come up through the ranks of the detective bureau. In spite of her age and gender, she’d been recently appointed the Homicide Division commander following a scandal that had claimed badges all the way to the top, decimating an already undermanned police force.

In the wake of her promotion, rumors abounded about her past, her affiliations and an affair with the newly elected mayor. According to Sean, Angelette Lapierre had visions of grandeur and was out to make a name for herself no matter who she had to take down—or sleep with—to get what she wanted.

He rubbed the back of his neck, frustration and weariness settling into every line and groove of his face. “She’s on a tear about crime-scene contamination, which, ask any cop out here, is a joke. It’s always been a problem, but nowadays we get people walking in off the damned street to gawk. Half the time we’re so exhausted, we don’t even notice.”

“If you know you’ll get in trouble, why did you ask me to come here?”

He flexed his fingers, anxious to get back to the action. “Because I want to catch this son of a bitch. And you’ve got more insight into this kind of thing than any detective I know. The rest is just bullshit.”

That was Sean. If he had to break a few rules, exploit an old relationship, he didn’t much care so long as he got results. He was probably more like Angelette Lapierre than he wanted to admit.

“I have a bad feeling this guy is just getting warmed up,” he said. “We find another body, and all hell’s gonna break loose. You can bet your ass, Lapierre will start showing up for some face time. The chief of police, the FBI…they’ll all want a piece of the glory. This may be my only chance to show you a crime scene while it’s still fresh. If you’re willing.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

But he still hesitated. “It’s more than just the tattoos. He drew this all over the walls.” He took a piece of paper from his coat pocket and showed her the sketch he’d made. “You know about this stuff. Can you tell me what it is?”

A tingle shuttled up Sarah’s spine. “It’s an udjat. Some people call it the Eye of Lucifer.”

Sean sucked in a breath. “It’s satanic, in other words.”

“It sometimes has that connotation. It’s also called the all-seeing eye. Maybe the killer is trying to tell you that he’s watching you.”

“Or watching someone.”

The dread deepened, lifting the hair at the back of Sarah’s neck. “Did you find anything else?”

“The victim has a pentagram tattooed in her palm.”

Oh, God…“Nothing out here?”

“You mean footwear evidence?”

She turned, searching the darkness. “Any unusual prints around the house?”

“Define unusual.”

She hesitated. “You’d know them if you saw them.”

“That’s all I get?”

“For now. Are we going inside?”

He gave her an assessing look. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”




Five


The front door was glossy with heavy coats of black enamel and was trimmed with a brass knocker and doorknob. Sarah paused, the metal numbers hammered into the wooden door frame catching her attention.

She put out a gloved finger to trace them, but Sean stopped her. “The crime scene techs have been out here, but once we’re inside, it’s better if you don’t touch anything.”

A draft of cold air followed them into the house and Sarah stood in the small foyer, shivering, pulse pounding as she took a quick glance around.

Like a lot of residences in the area, the cottage had been gutted and was now in a chaotic state of renovation. Paint cans and drop cloths littered the living room floor, and Sarah could smell varnish, sawdust—and another scent that didn’t belong there.

Sulphur.

Her stomach jolted as the metallic taste of fear coated her tongue. Sean hadn’t told her where the body was, but she knew. Maybe it was the muted voices echoing down the stairwell or the swish of shoe covers in the hallway above her. Or maybe she had innate radar when it came to death and violence.

Sean handed her a pair of plastic booties and she slipped them over her shoes. He put his hand on her elbow, guiding her toward the stairs. Sarah wished she could grab the banister to steady herself, but she remembered his warning not to touch anything.

“Who owns this place?” she asked, trying not to think about what waited for her upstairs.

“Alain and Juliette Fontenot. They started the renovations just before Christmas and were hoping to move in by spring. I have a feeling this is going to put a damper on their enthusiasm.”

“Were they the ones who found the body?”

“No, one of the workmen did. They shut down the job on Friday for the weekend, and then when the ice storm hit early this morning—yesterday morning now—the foreman called and gave the crew an extra day off. This guy says he came by to pick up some tools he left here.”

“At this hour? How did he get in?”

“He has a key, but he claims the back door was open. He didn’t think anything of it at first, just figured someone had forgotten to lock up on Friday. Then he found a broken window and decided to have a look around to see if any of the tools and equipment had been stolen. That’s when he discovered the body. He called 911 from his cell phone.”

“You think he’s telling the truth?” They were almost at the top step now. Sarah paused, paralyzed for a moment by the unknown.

“First door on the right,” Sean said behind her. “To answer your question, I don’t think he’s our perp. But I also doubt that the tools he came by for tonight were his.”

“At least he called the police.”

The wooden stairs creaked beneath their feet, and as they stepped onto the landing, two men talking in the doorway glanced over their shoulders. One of them was Danny LeJeune, Sean’s partner. The other man was tall, slender, ridiculously handsome with dark hair and eyes the color of good jade. Sarah recognized him from a party she’d gone to once with Sean. He was Tony Vincent from the coroner’s office.

He’d been a big hit at that party, she recalled. In spite of his reserved nature, his looks had attracted most of the single women in the room and at least half the wives. Sarah had watched from a distance, amused by the outrageous flirting, a bit smug in the knowledge that one Sean Kelton was probably worth a dozen Tony Vincents. Now she would have to reevaluate that assessment.

“We’re ready to get her bagged whenever you’re done,” Vincent said.

Sean nodded. “Give us a minute. I’ve brought in someone to have a look at the tattoos.”

Vincent’s gaze flicked briefly over Sarah as he headed for the stairs. “No problem. Just holler when you’re ready.”

After he was gone, Danny LeJeune came over and gave Sarah a quick hug. “Hey, gorgeous. Long time, no see.”

“How are you, Danny?”

“Can’t complain.” He gave her a weary smile. “No offense, hon, but you’re just about the last person I wanted to see walk up those stairs. I was hoping you’d finally wise up and tell this guy to go to hell.”

“Easy,” Sean warned, and Sarah was surprised by the tension in his voice. She’d never known him to be at odds with his partner. They’d always been close.

Danny shrugged. “She’s got no business being here, and you damn well know it. I wouldn’t let a dog of mine go near that room, much less…” He trailed off, obviously not knowing what to call Sarah these days.

She flinched and she felt Sean stiffen beside her.

“Lapierre is going to shit a brick when she hears about this,” Danny said.

Sean shrugged. “Who says she has to know? If anyone asks, we brought in an expert consultant.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s convincing.”

“If there’s trouble, I’ll make sure it doesn’t touch you,” Sean said. “This is on me.”

“You’re damn straight, it’s on you. But that’s not my only concern here.” Danny glanced down at Sarah and his voice softened. “You don’t have to do this. Just turn around and head back down those stairs. Walk out the front door and keep going.”

Sarah knew there was a double meaning in his advice. He was warning her to stay away from Sean.

She appreciated the sentiment. Danny was a good guy and she liked him. She’d even found herself wishing at times that she’d met him first.

He was a couple of inches shorter than Sean, but wider in the shoulders and broader in the chest. After a few drinks, he liked to reminisce about his glory days as a linebacker for the LSU Tigers. Sarah thought that he probably hadn’t changed much since then. In spite of his wife’s efforts to keep him on the straight and narrow, he could still party with the best of them. He’d just become more adept at hiding that part of his life.

Sarah put her hand on his arm. “I’m okay with this, Danny. I want to help if I can.”

“You’re both nuts if you ask me.” But he fished a jar of Vick’s from his pocket and opened the lid. “Smell’s not as bad as some. The cold helps, but you might want a dab of this just the same.”

Sarah smoothed some underneath her nostrils as Sean took her elbow. She walked ahead of him, pausing only briefly at the threshold before she entered.

She tried not to look at the victim, but she saw immediately that the woman was Caucasian with light brown hair and a slim build. She was lying facedown on the floor, so it was difficult to judge her age. Sarah had the impression that the victim was young, though.

She tried to keep her eyes averted, but it was impossible to ignore the blood. Large puddles near the body. Arterial spurts on the walls. It was as if the poor woman had been bled dry.

Sarah couldn’t see any wounds. The damage was hidden by the position of the body, and she was suddenly very glad that the victim hadn’t been turned over.

She put a hand to her mouth. “What did he do to her?”

“It’s probably best if you don’t know,” Sean said.

Sarah forced herself to take a deep breath and the vapor made her eyes water. She glanced around the room. It was large with high ceilings and ornate molding that had recently been restored. Two long windows faced the neighboring house, but the glass had been covered with cardboard and taped securely at the edges, allowing no light to show through to the outside.

Sean hadn’t been exaggerating earlier. The udjats were everywhere, even staring down at them from the ceiling.

“Did he use her blood to draw them?”

“We don’t know that yet, but I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet.” He paused, gesturing with a gloved hand. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

She had. A long time ago.

A full-length mirror had been propped against the wall opposite the doorway and positioned so that the body could be viewed from certain angles. But Sarah’s gaze was riveted, not on the reflection of the victim, but on the wall behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder at the words that had been scrawled backward in blood.

uoy ma I

She turned back to the mirror and read them again in the reflection.

I am you

A rush of panic blindsided her, and she took an involuntary step back, right into Sean. His hands gripped her arms to steady her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just…I don’t know. That message on the wall kind of threw me.” She nodded toward the mirror. “Was that already here?”

“Not according to the workman. He said this room was empty when they knocked off work on Friday.”

“Why would the killer bring such a large mirror with him? Just so you’d be able to read his message?”

“I don’t think so,” Sean muttered. “I think the son of a bitch wanted to watch himself.”

Sarah moved toward the mirror, catching a glimpse of her own reflection. Dark, sober eyes stared back at her. Black hair tangled from the wind. Pale skin. Dry lips. No wonder Sean had commented on her appearance. She did look like hell.

From where she stood now, she could still see the strange message on the wall behind her reflection. I am you.

“Maybe I was wrong earlier when I said he wants you to know he’s watching. Maybe he’s trying to tell you that someone is watching him.” Sarah could see her lips move in the mirror, but it seemed as if someone else had spoken. She felt an odd detachment from her own reflection.

“What are you talking about?”

She shook her head, not really understanding her own thoughts. “Maybe I should just look at the tattoos.”

Sean took her arm and circled her around to the other side of the body, careful to avoid the blood on the floor. The victim’s pale, waxy skin provided a macabre canvas for the ink on her arms and legs.

Her head was turned to the side, but her blood-matted hair concealed her face. All Sarah could see was one eye, open and staring. Like the painted udjats on the walls and ceiling, it seemed to follow her as she knelt on the floor beside the body.

“Do you know who she is?”

“No, not yet. We’re checking with the neighbors, but so far no luck.”

“When did it happen?”

“According to the coroner, she’s been here at least forty-eight hours.”

It had probably happened on Saturday night then, only a few blocks from Sarah’s house. She found herself wondering what she had been doing at the exact moment of the woman’s death. Had she experienced any kind of premonition, some inexplicable sign that evil had been that near?

She bent her head and tried to concentrate on the tattoos. Skulls, dragons, serpent-entwined crosses. Nothing creative or unique about any of them. The designs were typical of the flash found on the walls of tattoo parlors all over the city.

But the red-and-black symbol on the victim’s back…that was unusual. And it was fresh. Scattered on the floor beside the body was the familiar paraphernalia of Sarah’s art—thimble-sized ink cups, Vaseline, soiled paper towels. The killer had tattooed his victim at the murder scene. And he’d taken care to do it right.

That explained the barricaded windows, Sarah thought. He knew he’d be a while and didn’t want to worry about discovery.

She leaned forward, studying the blood that had oozed from the needle stippling and dried on the woman’s skin.

Behind her, Sean said, “She was still alive when he did that one.”

“Looks like it bled quite a bit. She may have been drinking before he brought her here.” The danger of excessive bleeding was why they never tattooed drunks at the shop. That and the morning-after regrets.

“We’ll find out when we get the toxicology report.”

Sarah paused, struck by something he’d just said. “What did you mean, she was alive when he did that one? The tattoos on her arms and legs are old. You can tell by how badly most of them are faded.”

“I was talking about the pentagram in her right palm. See here? Ink smears, but almost no blood.”

Sarah stared at the tattoo for a moment. Sean had called it a pentagram, but he was wrong. She started to correct him, but his attention was still focused on the victim’s back.

“That’s a pretty big tat. How long would it take to apply a design like that?”

Sarah shrugged. “Several hours, depending on the artist. But this guy’s no scratcher. He knows what he’s doing. Look how clean and sharp the edges are.”

“What about the ones on her arms and legs? Any chance you recognize the artist?”

She shook her head. “Nothing stands out about the style, and the designs are pretty run-of-the-mill. And like I said, they’re old. She’s had most of them for years.”

The creak of a footstep made them both turn. Danny came into the room and stood looking down at the body. He cocked his head, studying the strange design on the victim’s back. “Hey, I never noticed before, but from this angle, it looks like a pair of naked women.” He tilted his head the other way. “With really big breasts.”

“Very helpful,” Sean said. “It doesn’t look like much of anything to me.”

“That’s because you’ve got no imagination.” Danny squatted at the dead woman’s feet. “You know what it reminds me of? No, seriously. It looks like one of those inkblots that shrinks use to analyze their patients.”

Sean started to say something, but Sarah turned excitedly. “No, he’s right. That’s exactly what it looks like. A Rorschach inkblot.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means something different to everyone who looks at it. That’s the whole point. A patient’s spontaneous response is supposed to reveal deep secrets or significant information that can be used in a psychological evaluation.” Sarah turned back to the body. “There are only ten true Rorschach inkblots. Five black-and-white, two red-and-black and three multicoloreds. They’re kept secret to protect the integrity of the test. The inkblot cards you see on TV and in movies are most likely fakes.”

“What about this one?”

“I can’t say for sure. You’d need to show it to someone who’s an expert in Rorschach inkblot therapy, but that might be a difficult. The cards aren’t used much anymore.”

“How is it you know so much about these inkblots?” Sean’s voice was deliberately casual.

Sarah met his gaze. You already know the answer to that. Aloud she said, “I read a lot.”

“I still say it looks like two women with big breasts,” Danny said. “What deep, dark secret does that reveal about me?”

“That you’ve got a one-track mind,” Sean said. “But I didn’t need an inkblot to tell me that.”

Sarah’s interpretation was very different from Danny’s. Instead of two bodies, she saw faces—one light, the other dark.

Her gaze lifted to the mirror propped against the wall. She wanted to glance away, but she couldn’t. This was the view the killer would have had when he looked up from his work. His own reflected face with the disturbing missive scrawled on the wall behind him.

I am you.

“Say it is real,” Sean said. “If these inkblots are secret, the perp would need insider knowledge about them, right? Either as a patient or a doctor, and judging by his handiwork here, I’m pretty sure I know which one. But we can start by checking with some of the therapists in the city who still use these inkblots in their evaluations. Who knows? We might get lucky and find one who likes to talk.”

“Shit,” Danny said in disgust. “Do you have any idea how much I hate dealing with those condescending assholes? Never met one yet who didn’t give me the creeps.”

Their voices faded as Sarah continued to stare at the mirror. Suddenly she knew why the message had hit her so hard. It reminded her of something that had been said to her a long time ago.

We’re the same, Sarah. Not outwardly, of course. But inside, our souls are mirror images.

No, she thought. It can’t be him.

Her throat constricted and a film of sweat coated her skin. She told herself to relax, breathe deeply, but it was too late.

The darkness was coming for her.



A little while later, Sarah stood shivering on the front porch as two beefy men negotiated the slippery steps with the stretcher. She didn’t want to stare at the body bag, but she couldn’t seem to look away. The victim had been someone’s sister or daughter or mother, and now she was gone, murdered by a psycho with a very dark compulsion.

Leaning her head against a newel post, she closed her eyes. Sean had asked her to wait while he finished up, but she was desperate to get home. She’d been outside for too long, and her face and hands were numb from the cold. But the frigid air had done nothing to dispel the dread still hammering at her chest. She recognized it for what it was—a memory trying to force its way out.

A therapist had once told her that every subconscious contained a special place—a vault—where lost memories were stored. Usually, those memories stayed locked up tight, but every once in a while, a song, a face or a seemingly random event could crack open the safe and provide a tantalizing, sometimes terrifying glimpse into the past.

The room upstairs had done that for Sarah. But the tumblers hadn’t been turned by the puddles of blood on the floor or even the tattoos on the victim. The vault had been breached by the killer’s message. And by the sight of her own pale face staring back from the mirror.

The door opened and Sean stepped out on the porch.

He moved up beside her. “Are you okay? You had me worried when you ran out like that.”

“Yeah, I was kind of surprised by that, too,” Sarah said. “I thought I had a strong constitution. Never considered myself the squeamish type.”

“Sometimes it hits you all of a sudden. I’ve seen it happen to guys who’ve been on the force for years.” Sean hesitated. “But maybe in your case, there’s a little more going on than a weak stomach.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were thinking about Rachel, weren’t you? Damn it, I could kick myself for dragging you over here like this. I should have thought about how it would affect you.”

She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal. I saw your face when you ran out. It was like you’d seen a ghost. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Here?” She glanced around. The professionals and onlookers alike were starting to disperse, but Sarah still had no intention of getting into something so private. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time.”

“I can spare a few minutes. Besides…” Sean sighed. “It’s the same old story. Nobody saw or heard anything. Not a lot more we can do tonight except file the report and wait for the autopsy. And it might help if you told me what happened upstairs.”

He put his hand on the railing next to hers. Not quite touching. Just close enough for her to know it was there.

“I don’t think so, Sean.”

“Why not? You always refused to talk about Rachel because you didn’t want to drag your past into our relationship. At least that’s what you said. What’s stopping you now?”

“Why do you even care?”

“Sarah.”

The mild rebuke sent a shiver up her spine. She could feel his eyes on her in the dark and she wanted to move away, but not nearly as much as she wanted to stay.

She looked out over the darkened street where moonlight softly illuminated frozen treetops. The flashing police lights reflected off tiny icicles, turning them into sapphires and rubies and in the distance, the palest of amber. The glistening neighborhood looked clean and beautiful and deceptively peaceful in the dark.

Sean shifted restlessly, impatient as always to cut to the heart of the problem. “After you and I got together, I read every newspaper account of the murder I could get my hands on. I even put in a few calls, tried to convince the local authorities to let me have a look at the police report. The one thing that seemed consistent in every account was the county sheriff’s conviction that it was a ritual murder. They found satanic symbols at the crime scene, just like upstairs. Is that what hit you so hard?”

Sarah pushed damp strands of hair from her face. “Just leave it alone, okay? I’ve told you a million times I don’t like dredging all that stuff up. It doesn’t do any good. I don’t remember anything about that night, and at this point, I doubt I ever will.”

“But you do remember. You’re just not letting those memories come out. That’s why you still have nightmares. It’s possible you know who the killer is. And you know he’s still out there.”

Sarah tried to muster an indignant response that would end this. “Oh, so you’re a shrink now?”

“It doesn’t take a shrink to figure this thing out. You were found near the crime scene covered in your sister’s blood. Whatever you saw that night traumatized you so badly you decided to forget what happened. But those memories are still buried in your subconscious. They come out when you dream. So you don’t sleep until your body shuts down from exhaustion because you’re desperate to keep them at bay for as long as you can.” Sean leaned down and said in her ear, “Why won’t you let them out, Sarah? Who are you trying to protect?”

Startled, she moved back, away from him, trying to put distance between herself and the past. But it was too late. She could feel herself slipping into that dark void of paranoia and guilt that had stalked her through most of her teenage years and followed her into adulthood. She found herself scouring the icy darkness, searching for the evil that she knew would sooner or later come back for her.

Sean touched her arm and she jumped.

“You remembered something earlier, didn’t you?”

Slowly she turned to face him. “Is that why you asked me to come here? Because you thought the crime scene would jog my memory?”

It seemed to Sarah that he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “I called you because I want your help.”

She wasn’t convinced. There was something else at play here, something that Sean might not even be completely aware of himself. Somewhere along the way, he’d become obsessed with her sister’s murder. It was no longer about Sarah’s peace of mind. It wasn’t even about justice. Sean had convinced himself—knowingly or otherwise—that he was the one person who could catch Rachel’s killer.

“If you really want my help, why are you badgering me about something that happened fourteen years ago? Maybe you should try focusing on a crime you might actually be able to solve.”

He winced and she could tell he was on the verge of a retort, then he changed his mind and shrugged. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t the right time to get into all that. But there’s something I need to know before I have Parks take you home.” His face looked both dark and pale in the light spilling out from the windows. “What did you mean earlier when you asked if we’d found any unusual prints around the house?”

Sarah glanced up at the sky. The swirling snowflakes reminded her of tiny, dancing angels. She put out a hand to catch one in her palm.

“What kind of prints were you talking about, Sarah?”

She remained silent as her fingers closed over a snowflake.




Six


Adamant, Arkansas

Christmas Eve

The temperature dropped after dark and it had started to mist. Ashe shivered in his lightweight jacket as he glanced yet again over his shoulder, making sure he couldn’t be spotted.

An unnecessary precaution, because the house was on a two-acre lot at the end of the street. Even if the closest neighbors should glance outside, they would see only a shadow beneath the DeLaunes’ living room window.

Nor was there any need to worry about passing cars. The streets were deserted. He couldn’t see anything but the kaleidoscopic blur of twinkling lights in the distance. On Christmas Eve, the good citizens of Adamant were home celebrating with their families.

But the night was like any other to him. He felt nothing more than a fleeting twinge of regret that no one knew or cared how he spent his Christmas Eve. He didn’t dwell on his loneliness, because being invisible had its compensation.

Shrugging off the disquiet, he turned back to the window. It was nearly midnight. Everyone except Sarah’s father had gone up to bed, and he sat dozing in an easy chair in front of the fireplace. Blissfully unaware.

Earlier, the family had gathered around the Christmas tree to exchange presents. The window was open a crack to allow the smoke from the old man’s pipe to escape, and Ashe had been able to hear their voices so clearly it was almost as if he were a part of the celebration. He’d followed the conversation with avid fascination, even though his eyes had been riveted on Sarah.

Dressed in jeans and a pale yellow sweater, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, she’d sat cross-legged on the floor, opening her gifts with a brooding scowl that had irritated her father. The contrast between her sister’s girly squeals as she tore into one package after another had finally become too much for him.

“I’ve had enough of this.” He got up and strode over to Sarah, grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. “If you want to sit there and sulk, you can damn well do it in your room. You’re not going to ruin the evening for the rest of us.”

Her mother nervously rose to her feet. “James—”

“Stay out of this, Anna. I should have taken care of this at dinner when she was being so rude and aggressive with her sister. She’s an ungrateful little brat, and I’m not going to sit here and tolerate this surly behavior any longer.”

Still clutching her arm, he marched Sarah out of the room and up the stairs. He was gone for a long time, and when he came back, he looked flushed and angry.

“Daddy, are you okay?” Rachel asked softly.

He smiled, his anger melting when he looked at her. “I’m fine, princess, don’t you worry. I’ve got something that’ll make us both feel better.” He plucked a tiny package from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table beside his chair. “Come have a look.”

“Another present?” She gave a little laugh as she tore away the ribbon and paper with frenzied excitement. From Ashe’s place at the window, he saw a flash of fire from the open box before Rachel threw her arms around the old man’s neck. “Daddy! Diamonds? Are they real?”

“Of course they are. Would I give my princess anything but the real thing?”

“But I thought…Mama said I should wait until next year and get them for graduation.”

“And I say you should have them now.”

“Thank you, Daddy. Thank you…thank you…thank you!” She planted a kiss on his cheek after each thank-you, then hugged him tightly. He clung to her for a moment before she got up and ran over to show her mother.

“Mama, look! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? Isn’t Daddy just the sweetest thing?”

Her mother murmured something Ashe couldn’t hear, and then she watched her oldest daughter gather up all her presents and rush upstairs to try on her new earrings.

After she was gone, Anna walked over to the fireplace. “Why didn’t you tell me about the earrings?”

“Since when do I need your permission to get my own daughter a gift?”

“Sarah’s your daughter, too, James. Why didn’t you give her something special?”

“Because it would have been a waste. Nothing we do is ever good enough for that girl.”

“That’s not true. She’s just going through a difficult stage. I wish you’d try to be a little more understanding—”

“A stage?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t kid yourself, Anna. She’s always been like this. That girl has always had problems. She’s a liar and a thief, and I should have done something about it a long time ago.”

Sarah’s mother sat down on the hearth and folded her hands in her lap. “You’ve always been so hard on her.”

“She’s out of control and you damn well know it. I’m sick to death of dealing with her problems. I hate to think what she’ll be like in a few more years. I see kids like her come through my courtroom all the time. Something needs to be done, and soon, or we may all live to regret it. I’m beginning to think Lydia Mason was right. St. Stephen’s is the best place for a girl like Sarah.”

“I hardly think Lydia Mason is an expert on what’s best for our daughter. I can’t believe you took her to see that woman behind my back.”

“She’s the only therapist in town.”

“You could have talked to the counselor at school or consulted with someone in El Dorado. Why did it have to be her?”

“What’s really got your goat here, Anna? The prospect of sending your daughter away to school, or what Lydia might tell that preacher husband of hers about you? I know how highly you value his opinion.”

“This has nothing to do with Tim. I’m not sending Sarah away. I don’t care what anyone says. She’s only thirteen years old!”

“Will you calm down? It’s not like we’re abandoning her. St. Stephen’s is only an hour’s drive from here. You can visit her whenever you want.”

“I’ll never agree to this. She needs me.”

“And what about your other daughter? What about her needs? I swear to God, the way that girl looks at Rachel sometimes makes my blood run cold.”

“She resents Rachel because of the way you treat her. She knows Rachel is your favorite. Everyone knows it. You don’t even try to hide it.”

“Rachel is a beautiful young woman with a brilliant future ahead of her. I’m proud of her. Why should I have to hide it?”

Sarah’s mother stared down at her hands. “If I’d known it was going to be this way—”

“What would you have done differently?” he goaded. “Go on, say it.”

“She’s just a child. What I did is not her fault.”

“Maybe not. But I can’t help how I feel.”

“Yes, you can. Why won’t you just admit it? This isn’t about Sarah. It’s about punishing me.”

Ashe’s blood pumped fiercely as he watched Sarah’s mother rise and rush from the room. His curiosity was at a fevered pitch. He thought he knew everything about Sarah, but here was a new morsel, a secret that would need to be uncovered then studied and savored.

He returned his attention to Sarah’s father and felt something dark gathering inside him. The old man had no idea what waited for him as he stared broodingly into the flames.

After a while, he nodded off, and Ashe thought how easy it would be to slide up the window, slip into the house and take a stick of firewood to the old man’s skull. Or a knife to the thick, beefy neck. He could almost feel the warm blood spew over his hands, and for a moment, the desire was almost too much to resist.

But vengeance was worth waiting for and the time had to be right.

After all, the worst punishment wasn’t death. It was losing the thing prized above all else.




Seven


By mid-morning on Tuesday, the temperature had climbed twenty degrees, and the trees around Esme Floyd’s house were dripping from the melting ice. The sun was finally out, but the wind still carried a sharp bite.

Shivering, Lukas Clay reached back inside the squad car to grab his heavy jacket. A cup of coffee would have hit the spot, but he wasn’t about to turn around and drive back downtown. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could head home and catch a nap.

His job as chief of police in a town of barely three thousand people was normally uneventful, but the past thirty-six hours had been intense. An ice storm in this part of the country was always serious business. Very few drivers or vehicles were equipped to handle the treacherous roadways, and overhead power lines were always susceptible to falling tree branches.

As soon as the bad weather set in, Lukas had mobilized a task force consisting of two full-time and four part-time officers to patrol the outlying areas to make sure no one, especially the elderly, got stranded in the freezing temperatures. He’d been out all night himself and had just been on his way home when Esme Floyd’s call came in. There’d been a disturbance at the DeLaune place the night before.

Lukas folded his sunglasses and slipped them in his pocket as he glanced around. Backed up to an old pear orchard, Esme’s cottage was raised off the ground on brick pillars and underpinned with weathered lattice-work. Eyes gleamed from the darkness beneath the house, and a second later, an orange tabby shot through the slats and leaped to the top of a woodpile, where a black-and-white tomcat lay sunning.

Smoke curled up from the brick chimney, and as Lukas tracked the wispy stream, he spotted a buzzard circling the woods behind the orchard.

Something dead back there.

He watched for a moment, his eyes watering in the wind. As the vulture floated serenely on the air currents, a shotgun blast startled a flock of blackbirds out of the treetops and halted Lukas in his tracks.

The echo of gunfire vibrated against his chest. His heart jumped once, twice, three times before settling back to its normal beat.

Jesus, get a grip. Just somebody out hunting rabbits.

He’d been stateside for, what? Nearly two years and still the sound of gunfire—or a revving car engine—could propel him straight back to the war.

An army psychiatrist had assured him that it wasn’t uncommon for the effects of PTSD to linger or even worsen over time, but Lukas had finally figured out for himself how he needed to deal with the aftermath. He’d have to find a way to compartmentalize his time in Iraq, the same way he had everything else in his life. It was just like cleaning house. A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Some of those memory boxes—like his childhood—were to be opened rarely and with great caution, although he supposed he hadn’t had it any rougher than a lot of kids. Southern boys were raised with certain expectations. Once you accepted your place, once you mastered the pursuits deemed manly enough by a culture still mired in the past, you were rewarded for your trouble with jealousy and bitterness because your old man suddenly saw in you the passing of his own youth. Your triumphs became his failings, and he would do anything to prove he was still the better man even if it meant breaking you in ways you could never have imagined.

Sometimes the rivalry lasted well beyond the grave. How else could he explain his decision to come back here? Lukas wondered. Or even his career choice. Why follow in his father’s footsteps if the idea of besting the old man’s accomplishments didn’t still hold some twisted appeal?

Not that it was going to be easy to live up to—let alone surpass—his father’s reputation. William Clay had been a legend in Union County for as long as Lukas could remember. He’d served as county sheriff for the better part of twenty-five years, and in all that time, only one major case had gone unsolved.

Lukas glanced over his shoulder, a momentary spurt of adrenaline nudging away his fatigue. Fifty yards behind him, the DeLaune house rose like a stately specter, its pale walls and gleaming windows a constant reminder of the town’s darkest secret.

Sixteen-year-old Rachel DeLaune hadn’t just been murdered. Her body had been mutilated, the crime scene desecrated with satanic symbols. And in spite of his father’s best efforts, the killer had never been caught.

Not yet, at least.

A thrill of excitement slid up Lukas’s backbone even as he shuddered in dread. Something about that house always gave him the creeps. He couldn’t explain it. It was a fine old place, beautiful in the spring and summer when the roses and crepe myrtle were in bloom. But in the dead of winter, surrounded by an army of skeletal trees with their limbs quivering in the wind, the house looked cold and bleak and abandoned.

Some said it was haunted. Some even claimed they’d seen Rachel’s ghost at an upstairs window staring down at them as they passed by on the street.

But Lukas didn’t believe in ghosts. Not the kind that came back from the grave anyway. The only thing that had ever haunted him was his past.

Which was why he’d locked it away.

Turning back to the cottage, he stepped up on the concrete porch and knocked on the door. As he waited for someone to answer, he watched the buzzard’s spiral tighten over a spot in the woods where the quarry lay dead or dying.

After a moment, Esme Floyd drew back the wooden door and peered at him through the storm door. She was tall and thin with posture as straight as a yardstick and eyes that snapped with intelligence. The cotton dress she wore was crisp and spotless, her hair an improbable shade of silvery blue.

“Miss Esme, I’m Lukas Clay. I hear you reported some kind of disturbance at the DeLaune place last night.”

“Lukas Clay? Well, Lord have mercy. I liked to not recognized you.” She slipped on her glasses as she examined him through the door. “You used to take after your daddy, but I swear, you the spittin’ image of your mama nowadays. Except for them eyes. Dark as muscadines. You got your daddy’s eyes, all right.”

She fumbled with the latch, then pushed open the door for him to enter. Stepping into her little house was like crawling into a blast furnace. The warmth was a welcome respite from the wind and cold at first, but after a few minutes, Lukas felt as if someone had cocooned him in a thick layer of wool. The cloying heat took his breath away, and he quickly peeled off his gloves and unzipped his jacket.

“Better take off that coat,” Esme warned. “Else you freeze to death when you go back outside.”

Lukas shrugged out of his jacket and she hung it on a hook near the front door.

“So you knew my mother?”

“I was acquainted with her,” Esme said. “She was a real fine woman.”

His mother had died when Lukas was seven, and he’d always been fascinated to hear about her through others. The box that held his memories of her had been put away for so long, he couldn’t seem to find them anymore.

“Your daddy and Mr. James used to be big fishing buddies,” Esme reminisced. “They’d go off on trips, sometimes stay gone for a week or more at a hitch. Your mama’d come by the house to pick him up when they got in. You’d always stay in the car, but I’d see you out there now and then, peeking out the back glass.”

Lukas smiled. “I can barely remember those days.”

“You were just a little thing, real quiet and shy. After your mama died, God rest her soul, your daddy quit coming around so much. I guess he had his hands full raising you.”

Or maybe he’d found other pastimes besides fishing, Lukas thought. Because being a widower, much less being a father, had never changed the old man’s behavior one whit. He’d always done as he damn well pleased.

Lukas followed Esme into the tiny living room where she’d set up her ironing board in front of the television. A soap opera was on, and she watched the story for a moment before she reached down and switched off the set.

“Tell me what happened last night,” he said.

“It’s like I told that lady on the phone. I saw something out my bedroom window.” Esme picked up the hot iron and plowed it into a shirt. A cloud of steam rose as the iron hissed against the freshly starched fabric.

The smell of ironed cotton brought back an unexpected memory. Lukas suddenly had a vision of his mother standing behind an ironing board pressing one of his father’s khaki uniforms as tears rolled down her cheeks. Lukas had been maybe four or five at the time.

“What’s wrong, Mama?”

“Nothing, son. I’m just tired, that’s all. You run along and play. I have to get these shirts done so I can get supper on the table by the time your daddy gets home.”

Strange to be remembering that now, Lukas thought, as he sat down in a chair near the ironing board. “What did you see, Miss Esme?”

She glanced up, her eyes flickering with something Lukas couldn’t define. “Somebody on top of Mr. James’s house, that’s what.”

He stared at her in surprise. “On top of the house? In the middle of an ice storm?”

“The sleet had stopped by then. And the moon was out. I could see him up there plain as day.”

“You could tell it was a man?”

She guided the point of the iron across the shirt collar. “Only thing I could tell for sure was that he was up to no good. Why else would somebody be up there that time of night?”

“What time was this?”

“After midnight. More like one o’clock.”

“Are you always up that late?”

“My old arthritis bothers me at night. Sometimes it helps to get up and walk around.”

“So you looked out the window and you saw someone on the roof of the DeLaune house. Why didn’t you call the station?”

“I didn’t want nobody out on those slick roads because of me. Somebody get killed driving over here, I got that on my conscience.”

“Yeah, but we might have been able to catch him last night. It was probably just someone trying to find a way in out of the cold, but if it happens again, you call us. Hear?”

She went back to her ironing. Lukas watched her for a moment, mesmerized by her strong strokes.

“Have you seen anything like that before? Anyone coming around the house acting suspicious? Any strange cars parked out on the street?”

“Not lately, I ain’t.”

“But you have seen something?”

The iron faltered and another cloud of steam rose up from the shirt. “It was a long time ago. Before they sent him to the pen.”

“Who?”

“That ol’ Fears boy.” Her tone was pure contempt.

“Are you talking about Derrick Fears?”

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with scorn. “I’d see him out on the sidewalk sometimes, watching the house. I’d try to run him off before Mr. James catch him, but he wouldn’t budge. Just stand there and mock me. Sometimes he’d cup his hands to his mouth and squeal like he was real bad hurt. You ask me, there’s something bad wrong with a body who’d do something like that after what this family went through. Something done took that boy’s soul a long time ago.”

“Did you ever call the police when you saw him out there?”

“Nothing the police could do about it. Ain’t no law against standing on the sidewalk actin’ a fool, is they?”

“Do you think it could have been Derrick Fears you saw on the roof last night?”

“They still got him locked up, last I heard.”

“No, he’s out.”

“Out?” She said the word as if she couldn’t quite comprehend its meaning.

Lukas nodded. “He paid his debt to society and they set him free.”

She slammed the iron down so hard on the board, the rickety legs threatened to fold. “Now don’t that just beat all? He slices somebody up in a knife fight and don’t get as much time as my boy Robert did for stealing some blamed old car. That don’t seem right to me.”

“It doesn’t seem right to me, either, but I’m not here to argue the shortcomings of our judicial system,” Lukas said. “I’m trying to figure out who was up on that roof last night and why.” He walked over to the window and glanced out.

The path from the cottage led straight up to the DeLaune house, but trees blocked the view. How well could she have seen the roof in the middle of the night, even if the moon had been out?

As Lukas studied the back of the house, a slight movement in one of the upstairs windows caught his attention. He kept his gaze on the same spot, but when he didn’t see anything else, he wondered if he’d glimpsed the reflection of a bird or the play of sunlight in the glass.

He glanced over his shoulder where Esme was noisily putting away the ironing board. “No one’s living in the house right now?”

“No one left but Mr. James. And he won’t be coming back home, bless his heart.”

“What about the daughter? Sarah.”

“She lives in New Orleans. Her and Mr. James don’t get along, but since he took sick, she’s been coming around more than she used to.” In spite of the overheated house, Esme plucked a sweater off a hook and draped it over her scrawny shoulders.

“Miss Esme, were you here the night Rachel DeLaune was murdered?”

Her gnarled hand clutched the sweater to her bony chest. “Why you asking me about that? It don’t have nothing to do with somebody being up on that roof, does it? Besides, I don’t like thinking about that night.”

“But you do think about it, don’t you? Everyone in this town thinks about it. Because no one ever paid for that girl’s murder.”

“Your daddy did everything he could to find out who did it. He went to his grave still looking for her killer.”

“But he never found him, did he?”

Esme trained her penetrating gaze on Lukas. “And you think you can find him, I guess. You think you can do what your daddy couldn’t?”

Lukas was surprised and a little unnerved by how easily she’d read him. “I just want to do my duty by this town.”

“Humph.”

He ignored her dismissive response. “Tell me about the night they found her body,” he said. “Where were you?”

“I was right here at home, that’s where.”

“How did you hear about it?” When she didn’t answer, Lukas said softly, “Look, I know this is hard for you. You’ve worked for the family for years. You helped raise those girls. It was a terrible thing that happened, and a dark cloud has been hanging over this town ever since. I’ve read all the police reports, been over them I can’t tell you how many times. But right now, I’d really like to hear about that night from you.”

She pressed her lips together. “It won’t help you. Might even do more harm than good stirring up that mess. You ever think of that?”

“What I think is that Rachel DeLaune deserves justice. I don’t care how long it’s been. You were there that night, Miss Esme. You may be the only person in town who can still help me piece together what happened. Will you do that?”

She was silent for a moment. “I still say no good can come from digging up the past. Sometimes it’s best to leave a body resting in peace. But I reckon you’ll keep after me until I tell you what I know.”

Lukas smiled. “I have been known to dig in my heels.”

“Oh, I can see that stubbornness in your eyes. Your daddy had it, too.” She sighed wearily. “I’ll tell you what I can remember, but then I don’t want to talk about it no more.”

Lukas nodded.

Esme gazed out the window. “I was just fixin’ to turn in when Miss Anna called me. She said something bad had happened to Sarah.”

“To Sarah?”

“That’s what she said. A neighbor had found the child walking down the side of the road, covered in blood. They didn’t know if she was hurt bad or not because they couldn’t get her to talk. Wouldn’t say a word to nobody. Only thing they knew to do was bring her home. Mr. James finally got it out of her that something had happened at the old Duncan farmhouse. He grabbed his pistol and took off over there. Miss Anna called the doctor and then she called me.”

“Was your grandson still living with you then? Where was he during all this?”

An infinitesimal pause before she lifted her chin and said haughtily, “My boy was right here in his bed where he belonged. I didn’t see no need in waking him up. Nothing he could do.”

“What happened when you got to the house?”

“Miss Anna had Sarah in the bathtub washing the blood out of her hair.”

“Why would she do that? Didn’t she realize she could have been destroying evidence of a crime perpetrated against her daughter?”

“She wasn’t thinking about nothing like that. She just wanted to get her baby girl clean as fast as she can.”

“What did she think had happened to Sarah?”

Esme pursed her lips. “Wasn’t my place to ask questions. I just tried to help the best way I knew how.”

“What did you do?”

“I gathered up the dirty clothes and took them downstairs. That’s when I heard Mr. James come back. He’d found Rachel at the farmhouse and carried her all the way back home. Even if he cut through the orchard and came across the field, he still had to pack her close to a mile.”

The blood on one daughter had been washed down the drain while the other daughter’s body had been removed from the crime scene. Evidence hadn’t just been tampered with in this case…it had been trampled on.

“Judge DeLaune knows the law as well as anyone. Why would he remove his daughter’s body from the crime scene?”

“The doctor was already on his way to the house to see about Sarah. Makes sense Mr. James would want to get Rachel home as fast as he can, don’t it? He was too late, though. I took one look at what they’d done to that poor baby and I knew she was dead. Nobody could live through that. Mr. James knew it, too. He took her into his study and laid her out on the divan. Told me to go call Sheriff Clay, tell him to come quick. As soon as he arrived, he went into the study with Mr. James and they stayed there for a long time. When they finally came out, I heard him say he was going over to arrest Derrick Fears.”

“But Fears had an airtight alibi for that night,” Lukas said.

Esme gave him a sidelong glance. “You think a mother won’t lie to keep her boy out of that kind of trouble?”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“That’s what your daddy thought.”

“Maybe that was his problem,” Lukas said. “He was already dealing with a contaminated crime scene and a witness who couldn’t remember how she happened to be covered in blood. By focusing on Fears, he neglected to look for other suspects.”

Esme studied him for a moment. “You would have done things different, I guess.”

He smiled. “Put it this way. I’m not my father.”

“Maybe not.” She plucked at a button on her sweater as she turned to stare at the back of the DeLaune house. “But I still say you got his eyes.”




Eight


Lukas didn’t really expect to find anything at the DeLaune house. Footprints left on the frozen ground would have been lost once the ice started to thaw. And, too, he had to wonder if Esme had imagined the whole thing. She lived alone and was getting on in years. Her eyesight probably wasn’t as good as it used to be, and the view from her cottage was obscured by all the trees. In the dark, the barren limbs whipping over the roof might have looked like someone running up the steep slope.

But Lukas searched the grounds anyway, because in spite of her advanced years and failing eyesight, Esme Floyd didn’t strike him as the type prone to flights of fantasy. And if someone had been up on that roof in the middle of the night, he damn well wanted to know who it was.

He glanced back at the cottage, saw Esme in the window and gave a quick wave. Then he walked around to the front of the house and used her key to let himself in.

The house was cold and deathly still. Like a tomb, he thought. An apt description, since the place had seen its share of grief and tragedy. And now the owner, the last of the DeLaune family save for the youngest daughter, was in the hospital with only weeks, possibly days, to live.

Lukas lingered in the foyer as he glanced around the silent rooms, taking in the shrouded furniture and the tightly closed drapes and shutters that blocked most of the sunlight. Esme had told him that she still came over every other day to clean and air out the rooms, but the house already had an abandoned smell even though Lukas suspected there wasn’t a speck of dust to be found in the entire place.

The living room was to his left, the dining room and kitchen to his right. Straight ahead, an oak staircase with a polished banister led to a long, second-story gallery and the bedrooms.

Lukas began in the living room and made sure all the windows were secure before he slid back a set of pocket doors that led into a study. As he stepped inside, he sniffed the air. The scent of leather and pipe tobacco still hung heavy in the room.

The gloomy silence pecked at his nerves, so he opened the drapes. Sunlight flooded in and he turned, taking in the room in one sweep. Glass-fronted bookcases lined the wall behind a fine old mahogany desk, and a leather sofa and two armchairs were grouped around a brick fireplace.

In spite of the handsome furnishings, the room was nondescript, like a picture clipped from a magazine. It was understated and dignified, and yet there was a hint of something unpleasant that Lukas didn’t understand until he remembered what Esme had said earlier. James DeLaune had carried his daughter’s body back from the farmhouse and placed her in his study.

Lukas walked around the sofa, sliding his hand across the cracked leather as his gaze lifted to the carved oak mantel above the fireplace. It was crowded with photographs and they were all of Rachel DeLaune.

And in every shot, her smile charmed and mesmerized, but there was something haunting in her eyes.

If she’d lived, she would have grown into a knockout. Already at sixteen, she’d had a smoldering innocence that could drive a man wild. Maybe even compel him to kill.

Was that why she’d been murdered so viciously? Had she been the victim of a boyfriend’s jealous rage…or the target of a madman’s fantasy?

There wasn’t a single photograph of James DeLaune’s youngest daughter. Esme said that Sarah and her father had never gotten along, and as Lukas studied the shrine to James’s dead daughter, he began to understand what his youngest must have faced. Here in this room, Rachel’s presence was almost tangible. Here in this room, the old man had tried desperately to keep his favorite daughter alive, but the only way he could do that was by shutting everyone else out. Including Sarah.

Lukas reached for one of the photographs, then froze when he heard a noise over his left shoulder.

He turned, almost expecting—dreading—to see Rachel DeLaune’s ghost slipping up behind him. When he found the room empty, he let out a quick breath.

Exiting the study, he walked back through the living room to the foyer where he stood listening to the house. The noise was coming from upstairs. Someone was moving about on the second floor.

He unzipped his jacket to make his weapon more accessible as he quietly climbed the stairs, his gaze lifted to the shadows above him.

The rooms on the second floor opened onto the gallery, and as he neared the top of the stairs, he zeroed in on the door to his far right. It was slightly ajar and he could tell the sound was coming from inside that room.

Keeping his shoulder pressed to the wall, he drew his gun and gripped it with both hands, barrel pointed at the floor, so anyone waiting inside the room wouldn’t be able to knock it from his hands.

Pushing the door open with the toe of his boot, he flattened himself against the wall and waited a heartbeat before easing around the doorjamb and through the bedroom doorway. Crouching, he quickly shifted his gaze from one corner to the next, noting the position of the bed, nightstand, dresser and desk.

No one was there. The room was empty.

And it was freezing inside. Colder than anywhere else in the house. Someone had cracked a window and frigid air rushed in. Lukas hadn’t noticed the open window from the outside, but now he realized it was the source of both the cold and the sound. When the wind gusted a certain way, a tree limb scraped across the glass panes, like a bony hand trying to find a way in.

Lukas wondered if Esme had left the window open the last time she’d come over to air out the house.

Holstering his weapon, he took a quick look out the window. The tree grew right up against the house. Someone could easily scale the branches and climb onto the roof. And maybe that same someone had found a window unlocked and crawled in out of the cold last night.

Better have another look around outside, he decided. Maybe he’d missed a footprint.

As he started to turn away from the window, he saw a reflected movement behind him in the glass; his heart jumped as he whirled. His arm came up, but complacency and exhaustion slowed his reflexes. He barely deflected the blow as the lamp connected with his skull and his knees folded like the flimsy legs on Esme’s ironing board.

Ears ringing, he fell back, unable to catch himself. He sensed a motion toward the door, heard a rush of footsteps, but he couldn’t seem to focus as he crashed into the wall and slid down to the floor.



Cold air rushed over Lukas’s face, rousing him. He smelled damp earth and more faintly, the scent of something burning.

Someone leaned over him and said something, and he came alert then, throwing up a defensive arm as he reached for his gun with the other hand.

“Hey, take it easy. I’m trying to help you.”

Slowly the face floating over him came into focus. It was Esme Floyd’s grandson. Lukas barely knew the man, but he had no trouble placing him. He’d seen Curtis around town a lot lately. He had a tendency to stand out, not because of his race, but because of his looks. Handsome and graceful with the light skin and green eyes of a Creole, he also had hints of his grandmother in his features. The wide nose and high cheekbones, the quiet dignity and keen intelligence. The way his eyes seemed to size Lukas up with one sweep.

“What happened?” he asked. “Do you remember?”

Lukas put a hand to the back of his head and tentatively touched the egg-size lump. “Somebody slipped up behind me and coldcocked me good, that’s what. I didn’t hear a damn thing until he was right on me. It’ll be hell living that down.”

“If I were you, I’d be more concerned about the damage to my brain than my ego. You took a nasty blow to the head.”

“I’ve had worse. Nothing a couple of aspirin won’t take care of.” Lukas pushed himself up and tried not to react to the pain that shot through the base of his skull.

But Curtis saw the wince and said sternly, “We need to get you to the hospital. You probably have a concussion.”

“I appreciate the professional opinion, Dr. Floyd, but like I said, I’ve had a lot worse.” Lukas glanced at the smashed lamp on the floor, then his gaze slowly lifted. “What are you doing here anyway?”

Curtis sat back on his heels and stared at Lukas for a moment before getting to his feet. Something flared in his eyes, an icy disdain for any real or imagined innuendo in Lukas’s question. “So that’s it. You come to, see a black man standing over you and your first instinct is to assume I’m the one who hit you.”

“I never said that.”

“That was the implication, though, wasn’t it?”

“It was just a simple question, Dr. Floyd. No offense intended.”

Curtis shrugged. “Not that there’s any reason I should have to justify myself to you, but my grandmother sent me over here. We’re going out to lunch, and she wanted to know if you’d found anything before we go.”

Lukas sniffed the air. “You smell something burning?”

“No, but it’s probably someone down the street burning leaves.”

“It’s too wet to burn leaves.” Lukas was sitting upright now. His gaze went back to the window as a gust of wind blew away the scent, bringing a fresh chill into the room. “Damn, that air’s cold.”

Curtis had retreated to the door and stood with one shoulder propped against the jamb. His professional concern had dissolved, and now he made no move to close the window or offer assistance to Lukas as he struggled to his feet.

Lukas went over to the window and glanced out. A tree limb scraped against the panes, reminding him that he’d been standing in that same spot when his attacker had slipped up behind him.

Now as he shoved the window down, he saw only his own reflection in the glass. But he had a feeling he was missing something. He’d seen something, heard something that now seemed to elude him.

He turned. Curtis was still in the doorway, watching him through narrowed eyes. Beneath a brown leather jacket, he wore a crisp white shirt that brought to mind Miss Esme at her ironing board.

For some reason, a snippet of their conversation suddenly came back to Lukas. “You think a mother won’t lie to keep her boy out of that kind of trouble?”

“Did you see anyone on your way over here?” he asked. “Somebody out on the street maybe?”

“Not that I noticed. Of course, you have only my word on that.” Curtis’s expression was inscrutable except for the glimmer of contempt in his eyes. That was all too easily discernible.

He straightened, his every move elegant and unhurried in spite of the simmering hostility. He looked to be a man who knew exactly where he was going and how he intended to get there. And Lukas had a feeling he wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way.

“I need to get back before my grandmother starts to worry,” Curtis said. “Are you sure you won’t let me take you to the hospital? If you were my patient, I’d order a CAT scan, an MRI and depending on the results, an overnight stay in the hospital.”

“For one little bump on the noggin?”

“It’s always best to eliminate unpleasant possibilities.”

“On that, we agree,” Lukas said. “Which is why the only place I’m headed at the moment is out to my car for my fingerprint kit.” He squatted beside the broken lamp. “You didn’t touch anything in here, did you?”

“You mean anything other than your pulse? I’m afraid I did.” Curtis folded his arms. “I had to move the lamp out of the way to examine you.”

“Then we’ll need to get a set of your prints for comparison. Assuming, of course, you’re not already in the system.”

Lukas had meant it as a joke, but when he glanced up, he could see Curtis’s nostrils quiver as he let out a sharp breath.

“Sorry. I guess that wasn’t so funny.”

The skin on Curtis’s face was suddenly as gray as the winter sky, and when their gazes met, he had to look quickly away. In the space of a heartbeat, the elegant facade had crumbled, and behind those green eyes, vulnerability weakened his contempt.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Lukas asked softly, taken aback by the man’s swift change.

Curtis lifted a hand and wiped it across his face, as if he could somehow scrub away the cracks and restore his stoic demeanor. “I was in some trouble in college,” he finally said. “Everything eventually got cleared up and the charges were dropped, but I was booked, processed, whatever you want to call it. I don’t know whether my fingerprints ended up in the system or not.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“No. It’s in the past.” He wore a pinkie ring on his right hand and the fingers of his left hand kept tugging at the gold. “My grandmother doesn’t know about any of this and I’d like to keep it that way. My father’s put her through a lot over the years. I don’t want her worried about me.”

“I can understand that. But you know what they say about secrets. They have a way of coming back to haunt you when you least expect it.”

“You sound as if you’ve had some experience.”

Lukas shrugged. “We all have secrets. Just take a look around this room.”

Curtis’s gaze wandered over Lukas’s face. “What are you talking about?”

He waved a hand, encompassing the blue walls and white linens. The posters of rock stars and screen idols. The dressing table strewn with makeup, perfume bottles and corsage ribbons. “This was Rachel DeLaune’s room, wasn’t it?”

Curtis pressed his lips together. “You ask that as if you assume I should know. But I was never allowed anywhere in this house except the kitchen.”

“But you knew this was Rachel’s room. How could you not? Even I know it’s hers. All you have to do is take a look around. I doubt anything’s been changed since the night she died.” Lukas paused, letting a long silence settle between them. “You can still feel her presence in here, can’t you? Tell me what she was like.”

The green eyes deepened angrily. “That’s not really what you want to know, is it?”

So he had more than just his grandmother’s nose and cheekbones, Lukas thought. He’d also inherited her insight. “No, you’re right. What I really want to know is if she was seeing anyone when she died. I can’t find a mention of a boyfriend in the police report. But a beautiful girl like that? She must have had plenty of guys sniffing around.” He walked over to the dressing table, and for a moment, swore he could still smell her perfume. After fourteen years.




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