Heather Graham (6 page)

He walked out into the hallway beyond the autopsy room and leaned against the wall, exhausted. How many of these had he seen? He was accustomed to coming to the morgue. He was grateful for the pathological sciences; technicians could solve crimes now when the greatest detectives in the world would fail. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t stand a chance next to modern technology.

Death by loss of blood due to the severance of the carotid artery...

But there was more to the autopsy than that. And Lee Minh was a genius. His forensic findings had helped solve many a crime before. A stomach full of half-eaten fast-food french fries had once helped the police give the D.A. the materials to convict the estranged husband of the slain woman. The husband had denied seeing her, but he had been working at the place where she’d acquired the french fries. Faced with the facts, the fellow had confessed.

So no matter how obvious Lee’s findings seemed so far, Mark was glad of his associate’s slow care with the victim. In the end, something in the autopsy just might give them what they needed.

A cup was pressed into his hands. Hot coffee. He’d been just staring at the floor. Lee, scrubbed down now, free of his work greens, was standing next to him. “You look like shit,” Lee said bluntly.

“Thanks.”

“Go home. Why are you still here?”

“I don’t know. I kept thinking that maybe you’d find something more.”

“Something more?” Lee arched a brow. “This one looks about as good as a murder case can look, if I understand the facts correctly. Miss L’Aveau’s attacker left a trail of blood all the way to the point where he collapsed. You don’t have to collar him; he’s in the hospital. Sad, but true—if the guy dies, he’ll save the state a fortune in court costs.”

“Yeah,” Mark said.

“You don’t think this guy did it?”

“As yet, we haven’t found a murder weapon.”

“They’ll come up with it by morning. Wait, hell, it is morning.”

“Hmm. No wonder I look like shit.”

“So what’s keeping you up? Cop’s intuition, the guy did it, right?”

Mark hesitated. He discovered he was picturing her again. The wife. The petite dynamo with the striking eyes—so emerald against the redness of tears.
He didn’t do it,
she’d insisted. She was convinced that Marcel was innocent.

Marcel had fallen at her front door.

Maybe he’d had a knife. Maybe she’d hidden it. How had Marcel been stabbed? The same knife? Maybe, he didn’t want to believe this, but maybe Gina had been the one with the knife. Maybe she’d been desperate enough for some reason to attack first. Maybe Marcel had even killed her in self-defense, maybe, just maybe...

Maybe he was just so damned tired he couldn’t think straight anymore.

“Go home, my friend,” Lee persisted.

“Yeah, I guess it’s time. You will tell me—”

“I will tell you anything at all that I can.”

“At any time. Call me. Right?”

“Go home. If you’re questioning me, you really do need some sleep.” Lee Minh was smiling. He’d been at his grim work all of his adult life, but though he was forty, when he smiled, he had the look of a good-natured kid playing a prank. Lee was still blessed with a thick headful of sleek, dark hair. He was a compact, wiry man of medium height, and despite his calling, he was considered one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. He and Mark spent some of their rare free evenings together, both appreciating good lager on tap and jazz music.

“Go,” Lee repeated.

Mark nodded, threw his jacket over his shoulder, and started out.

He got into his car, intending to go home.

He didn’t know when he changed his mind. Maybe he was driving on autopilot. But before he knew it, he was turning the wrong corners in the French Quarter.

Returning to the scene of the crime.

Ann showered until the water ran cold.

She was exhausted; she was wide awake. She would have stayed at the hospital, but the hospital staff wouldn’t let her in with him that night anyway.

The night had been ungodly, all those hours spent being terrified that Jon was going to die.

Now she faced the fear of what was going to happen to Jon if he lived.

She was encouraged by Jon’s stable vital signs; she was horrified by the realization that a woman had died.

A woman Jon had been painting.

A woman he had been with.

A woman he had...

No!

Where the hell was her faith? If nothing else, she knew the man better than anyone else on earth. He wasn’t a killer.

She didn’t know the circumstances, she reminded herself.

Jon wasn’t a killer; not under any circumstance. She knew that, and she did have faith in him. But Jon had gripped her hand. And she had thought that he’d been about to whisper her name. But he hadn’t done so. He had whispered...

Annabella’s.

Why hadn’t she told the cop what Jon had said? Because the cop had already pegged Jon, and she didn’t think that it would help?

Because it might be all that she might have to help him with?

She shivered.

The cop had known she was lying. She would be seeing him again. And he would persist.

“I don’t have to tell him anything!” she whispered aloud.

Well, maybe she did. She didn’t know the law that well, except that she might be hindering an investigation. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to tell anyone anything. Not until she knew more about Jon’s condition. Not until he could fight for himself.

And if he could never fight for himself?

She was going to have to fight for him.

That decided, she at last left the shower, shivering. She wrapped herself in an old, worn terry robe and made her way out to the living room. She hesitated, then turned off the light. It was morning. Early morning. Her balcony drapes were open; the French doors leading to the balcony were ajar. She could see the sun rising, gold and orange and beautiful, casting down delicate, soft rainbow reflections on wrought-iron filigree on the balconies across the way from her. Flowers spilled from planters, catching and playing with the light as well. She wondered how such a beautiful day could contain such pain. Such tragedy. But her husband’s near death didn’t change the glory of the sunrise. There was so much beauty here just in the changing colors of night and day.

She walked into the kitchen, pausing by the front door. The police had finished with her home by the time she’d returned to it. She’d been allowed to clean up Jon’s blood and their fingerprint powder. She’d had a few arguments with the remaining police techs when she’d arrived. She didn’t understand why they wanted samples of Jon’s blood from her doorway when he’d bled all over the hospital as well. And she didn’t know why they wanted his fingerprints from her doorway—no one was denying that he’d been there.

“Procedure,” a pleasant, but firm, officer had told her. “We always have to go by the book, no matter how silly it seems.”

“But you are done here,” she persisted.

“Yes.”

An officer remained in the hallway beyond the door.

For her “protection,” she had been told.

Fine. She did feel a little spooked. Because the eagle-eyed cop had been right on the money about one thing. If Jon was innocent—which he had to be—then someone else had attacked him and the poor dead girl.

Annabella’s.

The name he had whispered. The name of the club—the strip joint—where Gina had worked, where most of his “ladies” had worked.

I didn’t do it, God, I didn’t do it...

Annabella’s...

She hurried on into the kitchen, automatically reaching for the coffeepot. It was morning.

She hadn’t slept, she reminded herself. She was keyed to the breaking point. She didn’t need coffee. She needed a big glass of wine.

She found a bottle of chablis in the refrigerator. She didn’t bother with her delicate-stemmed wineglasses—she went straight for a water tumbler. She poured herself the wine and wandered back out to the French doors that had been left ajar and stepped out onto her balcony.

I didn’t do it, oh, God, I didn’t do it...

Annabella’s...

“I didn’t do it; Annabella’s!” she breathed aloud. “Damn you, Jon!” she muttered with greater force. “Why didn’t you give me a little more than that. Like the name of the person who did do it, maybe!”

She swallowed down a large gulp of wine; then, through her upraised glass, she saw a car parked across the narrow street. A man was leaned against it, looking up at her.

Not a man.

The man.

The cop. Eagle eye. Lieutenant What’s-His-Name.

A warning sizzle swept through her torso and limbs, leaving her feeling oddly breathless. He wasn’t the enemy, she tried to tell herself. She didn’t need to be afraid. He was a cop. A good guy.

Bullshit. He was after Jon. He didn’t intend to give Jon the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.

“Good morning, Mrs. Marcel,” he called up to her.

“Officer,” she acknowledged.

“Lieutenant,” he reminded her pleasantly.

“Lieutenant.”

He smiled, gray eyes already hidden by sunglasses, despite the fact that it was barely morning. He lifted a hand, indicating her wineglass. “Interesting morning brew. Even for New Orleans.”

She didn’t owe him any explanations regarding her choice of beverage; despite that, Ann found a flush rushing to her cheeks, and to her horror, she was explaining. “I haven’t been to sleep yet, Lieutenant, and it has been a harrowing night.”

“Drinking your way into oblivion, eh?”

“You might be doing the populace you serve a favor by doing something similar at this point, Lieutenant.”

His lips curved into a wry half smile. He could be very handsome, she decided. And darned irritating—and perhaps incredibly dangerous as well. To Jon.

He was suspicious. Honestly, openly, regarding Jon.

But did he think that she was hiding something as well? He was parked in front of her house, watching her.

“I would do the populace a favor...,” he repeated, his head cocking as he looked up at her. “Are you inviting me up for a drink?” he asked, his smile broadening.

She didn’t reply to his question. “Lieutenant, what are you doing down there, staring at my house?”

He shrugged. “Just making sure that everything is okay.”

“I see. You’re there for my protection?”

“Something like that,” he said, glancing toward the rising sun, then back to her. “No, quite frankly, I’m here because my car just seemed to bring me here, Mrs. Marcel. After I stopped by the alley where Gina was found.”

“Gina?”

“Miss L’Aveau. The woman who was murdered last night.”

“I see,” Ann said. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t had much time to think about the fact that a girl was dead. Gina L’Aveau. She knew the name. Jon hadn’t finished his painting of her yet; he’d still been working on it. He’d talked about Gina several times, though. “You have to meet her, Annie. She’s great. I mean, normally, you’d probably never get to know one another. That’s the whole strange thing about our society. We’re judgmental. We fall into little cliques. Good people, bad people. Clean people, dirty people. But in truth, in essence maybe, we’re all really alike. You’ll meet her for me, won’t you?” he’d demanded, and of course, she’d said that she would.

She’d never meet Gina now.

The cop was still staring at her. Glasses in place. But she knew what lurked behind the dark lenses. Those silver-gray, all-knowing, far-too-piercing eyes. She stepped back. “Well, Lieutenant, I’m very tired. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get some sleep.”

“You do that.”

“And you’re just going to stay there? Staring up at my house?”

“Something like that.”

Ann started inside, then turned back. “Are you waiting for nine
A.M.
to roll around? Are you planning to go to the D.A. for a search warrant for my house?”

He smiled. “The wheels of justice may turn slowly, Mrs. Marcel, but I do have probable cause, don’t you think?”

“The police were in here half the night.”

“So I imagine. The tech boys must have been.”

Aggravated, Ann grated her teeth. “Good night, Lieutenant,” she said again.

“Have a nice sleep.”

She was tired. So tired that her tumblerful of wine now seemed to be racing hotly through her body. That had to be her only excuse for what she was about to do.

Know your enemy. Face him!
she thought, and she continued to stare down at the man. “If you want to see the place, Lieutenant, do come on up. Have a morning cup of wine.”

He arched a brow to her. “You’re really inviting me up, Mrs. Marcel?”

She was insane. He was definitely the enemy. He probably thought she was concealing the murder weapon under her robe.

“Yes, Lieutenant, I am inviting you up.”

Idiot!
she charged herself.

He hesitated just a second, eagle eyes hidden by his Ray-Bans. He shrugged, another of his wry smiles curving his lips.

And he started toward her door.

Panic seized Ann as she stared down at the street, at the spot where he had just been. What the hell was she doing? She stood there frozen as she heard him enter the main door, heard his footsteps on the stairs. Heard his voice, low, husky, well-modulated, definitely tinged with a subtle native drawl, as he spoke with the uniformed officer in the hallway.

Then he was knocking at her door.

What in God’s name was she doing?

Making a big mistake. All she had to do was tell him to go away, she told herself. Tell him that she had made a mistake. Babble something about not talking to him without her attorney present.

Oh, good. Great. Make him really suspicious. Wind up getting herself arrested on the spot.

“Mrs. Marcel?” he asked from beyond the front door.

She found movement at last, spinning from the balcony and back into the house, then across the living room to the door. She opened it cautiously. Her mouth opened. Words half formed in her throat, but didn’t quite make it to her lips.

He slipped off the glasses. His eyes still seemed as sharp as an eagle’s—despite the fact that they were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He was exhausted, she thought. His casual suit was now somewhat rumpled, and he was gaining a hint of five o’clock about the jaw. It made him look all the more menacing, somehow. Larger. More macho-masculine. More dangerous. His mood, she thought, was as worn and reckless as her own.