Diabolical (Shaye Archer Series Book 3) (18 page)

Vincent made a right turn onto a side street and Jackson continued past, then turned right on the next street and increased his speed so that he made it to the end of the street before Vincent disappeared. There was no sign of Vincent’s car at the end of the street. He cursed and looked again, but Vincent’s car was nowhere in sight.

He turned right, and when he got to the street Vincent had turned on, he slowed and looked down it. His pulse quickened when he saw Vincent’s car parked midway down. He floored his car and made a hard right onto the next street and screeched to a halt at the curb. He jumped out of his car and ran the block back to where Vincent was parked and crossed to the side opposite of his car.

They were outside the busy area of the French Quarter, but it was lunchtime, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants dotted every street surrounding downtown. Plenty of people milled around, looking at menus in windows or standing outside chatting. Jackson fell in step behind a group of women and skirted the far side of the sidewalk, scanning the opposite side of the street as he went. When he reached the spot opposite Vincent’s car, he ducked inside a retail shop and moved to the front display, where he had a clear view of the street.

Directly across from him was a sandwich shop. Next door was a bar, then a café. Retail shops made up most of the rest of that side of the street that he could see. He shook his head. The most logical conclusion was that Vincent was in the sandwich shop. It was probably the cheapest po’boys in the French Quarter or the one that gave him extra shrimp. Either way, Jackson had likely wasted his lunch hour tracking Vincent to his eating spot.

He was about to leave when he saw Vincent come out of a shop two doors down from the sandwich shop, carrying a plastic bag. Jackson looked at the name of the shop and frowned. Spirits and Spells. The first word could also be alcohol, but the second didn’t fit that product line at all. He waited until Vincent got into his car and left before exiting the store and crossing the street.

The shop was dark and smelled old, like most of the buildings in the French Quarter. The shelves were filled with some things he’d seen in horror movies and a lot of things he didn’t recognize at all. But then, this wasn’t exactly his knowledge base.

“Can I help you?”

A voice sounded behind him, and he turned to find a tall Creole man standing there.

“I was just looking around,” Jackson said. “You have some interesting things here. What are they for?”

The man stared at Jackson, his blank expression not wavering even a twitch. “If you don’t know what they’re for, then you’re probably in the wrong shop.”

“Witchcraft?” Jackson asked.

“Witchcraft, sorcery, black arts…whatever you want to call it. If that’s your bent, we can hook you up.”

“You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?”

The man raised one eyebrow. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

“I guess not,” Jackson said. “Well, thanks for the information.”

He headed out of the shop and down the street. He needed to find out who owned the shop and see if he could get the names of employees. The man he’d spoken to had fit the physical description of the man with the goat mask, but his eyes had been different from the drawing made from Clara’s description. Granted, eyes could change and depending on circumstances, a person might see things differently, but for whatever reason, Jackson didn’t think he was the guy. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t someone else connected with the shop.

The one thing Jackson knew for certain was that in all the time he’d worked with Vincent, the man had never once indicated an interest or participation in the black arts. No one else in the department had ever mentioned anything of the sort, either, and if cops knew something like that, it would have made the rounds.

Vincent had just moved up to the top of his list.

* * *

I
t was almost three o’clock
, and Shaye was ready to climb the walls when she finally got a text message from Jackson.

Check your email.

She ran to her computer and accessed her email, then let out a whoop when she saw the file attachment from Jackson. It was the list she’d been waiting on. She opened it and gave it a quick look. A little over a hundred names. More than she’d thought, but it didn’t look as if Jackson had filtered it. Given the short text, he probably couldn’t risk looking at the file himself.

She printed the list, then started down it, drawing a line through all the females. Then she made a second pass and reviewed the names more closely, eliminating those with a birth year that made them too young to have been the father. She crossed off several more, then did a quick count. Only twelve names remained. One of them might be the man who’d fathered a monster.

She started to review those twelve names and stopped when she got to number six.

Jonal Derameau.

J.D. The initials on the pentagram. She scanned the other names, but no other first or middle name started with the letter
J
.

This was it. Her hair stood on end. Her heart raced. And she knew with absolute certainty that she’d found the man who didn’t exist.

She grabbed her phone and sent a text to Jackson.

Need death certificate for Jonal Derameau.

She pressed Send then stared at the phone, waiting for the message to show as Read. It was probably only seconds, but it felt like forever when she received a text from Jackson.

OK. Give me ten.

She jumped up from her chair, too excited to sit. For the first time in her life, she wished she had a treadmill in her house. What she needed was to expend some energy, and pacing her small apartment wasn’t going to get her there. She looked outside. A jog around the block might help, but what if she was half a block away and Jackson sent the certificate sooner than he’d thought? She’d give herself a heart attack sprinting in this heat.

Better she wait inside her apartment for Jackson to send the document.

Ten minutes.

She headed for the kitchen, about to do something she tried to avoid altogether.

Clean.

A
ugust 28
, 2006

New Orleans, Louisiana

J
onal Derameau sat
in the big comfortable chair in front of the fireplace and stared out across the expansive and elegant living room of his home. It was still hot outside, but at eighty-eight, his bones grew cold easily, especially in the big drafty house. The fire crackled and danced, casting flickering shadows on the walls surrounding him.

He’d lived a long, satisfying life. Not so much in the beginning. His childhood on the plantation had been the kind of hell described in the worst of books and movies on the subject. But without that beginning to harden his heart, he wouldn’t be here, in this mansion, surrounded by expensive items.

He reached for the glass of whiskey on the side table and paused when he saw the Bible sitting beside it. His maid was the reason he’d started reading the book. The reason he’d stepped into a church five years ago—the first time in his life. Maybe it was his age that caused his heart to soften. Maybe it was the book.

Or maybe he was just tired and ready to let his anger go.

He’d done a lot of things in his life that he regretted, but there were also a lot of things he’d done that he didn’t regret, even though they were immoral. He didn’t regret killing the plantation owners. They were all horrible men who abused their wives, children, servants, and workers. Men like them didn’t deserve to exist on this earth. For what they did to others, especially what the one did to his mother. That man had started looking at his sister the same way when she was only ten. Jonal believed absolutely that they deserved to die. He would never feel one ounce of sorrow over that.

And he didn’t regret taking money from the plantation owner’s son. If he hadn’t been illegitimate, he would have inherited assets from the man, but no court recognized the black bastard son of a rich white man. He did regret the stress and worry the situation had put on the son. He was a smart businessman but emotionally weak. Jonal often wondered how much the stress of dealing with his demands played into the heart attack that killed the man before he ever made his sixty-third birthday.

The grandson had been stoic and put up a good front when Jonal had gone to see him after his father’s death. Jonal knew that his father had told him everything—the poisoning, the payments made over three decades, and finally, the pictures and the film of the grandson with the girl. The grandson knew Jonal’s power over him.

When Jonal visited him after the funeral, the grandson tried to hide his fear. But Jonal was too old and too wise. He’d seen too much fear. He’d lived it too many times himself. But he respected the grandson for his composure. Jonal saw him that one time, to make sure that if he ever needed to call in his marker, the grandson understood his place.

Jonal didn’t need money. The truth was, he hadn’t needed money in many years. The cash he’d taken from the plantation owner’s son had financed his nightclubs, which provided cover for the drugs and illegal gambling. The money he’d taken had multiplied until he couldn’t imagine ever spending it all. Katrina had destroyed the clubs and he’d thought about rebuilding, but he had grown tired of the business. So he retired to his estate on the outskirts of the city, and the man who was almost never seen had disappeared altogether.

It had been a good life. It was time to relax and enjoy it.

But now, he had a problem. For the first time, something weighed heavily on his conscience, waking him from a dead sleep and disrupting his eating habits. He’d tried to ignore it. After all, he’d never had this sort of problem before, but things had changed. And no matter how hard he wished the problem away or how many times he told himself that it wasn’t his to handle, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

It’s because of you that he’s doing this.

He took a drink of his whiskey.

Emile Samba.

He was the reason Jonal couldn’t sleep. He was the reason all the food Jonal used to love now tasted like sawdust. He was the reason Jonal read the book more and more.

Emile claimed he was Jonal’s son, but it wasn’t true. Jonal had many dalliances with many women and had the children to prove it, but he’d paid off the women long ago and the children after that. None of them contacted him. That was the agreement. And even if they’d thought to try, they didn’t know his first name or where to find him. He rarely visited his clubs, leaving their operation to trusted employees who were very well paid and watched by other trusted employees who were paid equally well.

Not a single legal document or deed had his name on it. His attorney had created layer upon layer of corporations and LLCs that it would take a lot of effort to get through, and as Jonal’s sole legal representation, he had the authority to sign documents and process money in the clubs’ bank accounts. Even this house belonged to a corporation his attorney set up. Jonal paid cash for everything, and he’d kept everything he’d made on the illegal business in cash as well, locked away in cement vaults below this very living room.

He was Mr. Derameau to everyone. Only his attorney knew his full name and where to find him. Even the maid knew him only as “Mr. Derameau” or “the mister” and she handled the hiring and payment of any other household help they might need. But now, the man who had been so careful about not leaving a trace of his existence had a problem that could lead right back to him. And the irony was, it was a situation he hadn’t caused. Not directly.

He knew Emile’s mother. She’d worked at one of his clubs serving drinks. Jonal recalled his initial assessment of her as pretty but troubled. The kind of woman that would bring problems, therefore, the kind of woman Jonal avoided. He didn’t know if Emile’s mother had told Emile that Jonal was his father, or if that was a fancy created by Emile, a young man who desperately wanted power and importance. But none of that mattered now.

Emile Samba had managed to do what no one else had done—he’d found Jonal’s home.

Found it and taken something from it. The one thing Jonal couldn’t afford to lose.

Emile had secured a position through the maid, doing landscaping and general maintenance, which gave him access to the house and the grounds. Jonal had never seen him before, so didn’t have any idea of the threat that had walked through the door invited. His heart attack provided Emile with the opportunity he’d been waiting for. Jonal had been hospitalized for over a week, and his maid had spent many hours at the hospital, giving Emile plenty of time to discover the cubby in the floor of Jonal’s office.

You should have destroyed them years ago.

It was a mistake he had no doubt he’d pay dearly for. The film and pictures would have been safe if they’d been stored with the money, and he’d considered it at length, but what stopped him
was
the safety of the money vaults, especially in the case of a fire. If a fire broke out, and Jonal didn’t survive, the vaults would protect the money, but the film, pictures, and branding iron would melt. And that’s the way Jonal wanted it.

The son had lived up to his word every single time he’d asked. The least he owed the man was his continued silence, even in death.

Jonal still remembered the look on Emile’s face when he’d confronted Jonal after Jonal returned home from the hospital.

“
I
thought
you were a man of great power,” Emile said, his disgust clear. “But you’re just a common thief, using pictures to steal money. That man paid you for your silence. Even your altar is wrong. You never knew the power of the One. You’re nobody.”

“I never claimed that kind of power.”

“That’s not what everyone says. Everyone says you’re a dark priest. That you can call out for the spirits to surround you and they will. Some even say you caused Katrina. I thought I could learn from you—my father. But you have nothing for me except what I’ve already taken.”

“I’m not your father.”

“My mother told me you were. I haunted the French Quarter waiting to see you, following you a bit more each time, careful that you wouldn’t see me.”

“You’ve wasted your time,” Jonal said. “I’m not your father and I don’t practice what you do. How much money do you want to return the items you stole?”

Emile laughed. “Money? You think this is about money?”

“Then what do you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted—greatness.”

B
ut Emile had taken
money as well—two hundred thousand dollars. Enough to keep someone of simple means living well for a long time. Jonal was still too weak to do anything himself, but he’d hired a private detective to locate Emile. It hadn’t been easy. His house was north of New Orleans, on a dirt road in the middle of the woods. The nearest town was ten miles away. The nearest home was five. Jonal wasn’t healthy enough now, but as soon as he was stronger, he would go there.

To fix his mistake.