Don’t miss JoAnn Ross’s
compelling new thriller,
IMPULSE,
available in August 2006 from Pocket Books.
Sheets of lightning trembled against a vermilion sky curtained with rain.
Caitlin Cavanaugh stood at the apartment window in the French Quarter, looking down onto a writhing tangle of tropical plants. A crumbling stone statue stood in the center of the overgrown courtyard; Cait found the trio of satyrs chasing the comely nymph through the green, algae-choked water a perfect metaphor for this sin-drenched city.
“She wouldn’t have committed suicide.”
“You said it’s been fifteen years since you’ve seen your sister.” Nick Broussard was leaning against the door frame, hands in the front pockets of his dark suit trousers. “People change.”
“Now there’s a pithy observation.” The smoky neon sign from the strip club next door flashed pink and green shimmers onto the rain-slick cobblestones below. Underlying the burned wax scent of votive candles in red glass, another vaguely unpleasant odor hung in air thick enough to drink. “Maybe you ought to embroider it onto a pillow.”
“Dubois was sure enough right about you having a smart mouth on you, chère.”
Cait hated the humor she heard in his voice. To her mind there was nothing humorous about murder. “It goes along with my smart head,” she said as thunder rumbled in from the Gulf. “Unlike detective Dubois, who undoubtedly found his shield in a box of Cracker Jacks. There’s no way, given the condition of this room when he and his jerk-off partner arrived at the scene, any cop with half a brain could’ve called this a suicide.”
Crime scene photos revealed Tara had stacked all the bedroom furniture against the door before jumping—or being thrown—out the window.
“She was trying to keep someone out of here.”
“Wouldn’t be the first working girl to suffer from drug-induced paranoia.”
Cait wished she could have been surprised to learn that her twin had grown up to be a prostitute. If only . . .
No! She could give into the dark emotions battering her and wallow in guilt later. Right now the objective was to put her sister’s killer behind bars. With or without the help of the local cops who were dragging their damn feet.
“I want her book.” If she could only get her hands on Tara’s client list, she could begin narrowing down the suspects.
“We’re lookin’ for that,” he said with exaggerated patience that grated on Cait’s last nerve. “But, being a murder cop yourself, chère—”
“It’s detective,” she corrected.
“Being a murder cop yourself, Detective chère,” he said, his drawled Cajun patois as rich as whiskey drenched bread pudding, “you oughta know police investigations take time to do right.”
Cait snorted. “What you mean is the cops are giving any city hotshots who may have paid my sister for sex, time to cover their collective asses.”
He sighed heavily. Pushed himself away from the door frame and crossed the room to smooth his big hands over her shoulders.
“Hey, darlin’. This is New Orleans. Folks have a certain way of doing things here.”
“The Big Easy.”
“That’s what we call it, all right,” he agreed.
“The movie.” She shrugged off his touch. “Dennis Quaid says it to Ellen Barkin.”
He brightened at that, his smile a bold flash of white that Cait suspected had charmed more than its share of bayou belles into slipping out of their lace panties for him. “You like that movie, chère?”
“ I hate any movie that glamorizes crooked cops.”
He shook his dark head. “You’re a hard woman, Detective Cavanaugh.”
“I’m a murder cop.” Rational. Logical. Tough-minded. Where others saw shades of gray, Cait’s world consisted of black and white. Cops and killers. Good versus evil.
As a gust of wind rattled the leafy green leaves of the banana tree in the courtyard, Cait sensed a movement just beyond the lacy iron fence.
A man, clad all in black, and wearing a brimmed hat that shielded his face, was standing on the sidewalk, beneath an oak tree dripping with silvery green moss. The tree’s thick, twisted roots had cracked the cobblestone sidewalk; the limbs Tara had crashed through on her fatal fall to the ground clawed at the window, leafy branches scratching against the glass.
“The landlord said other women had been killed in this building.”
“That was before my time.” Broussard was standing close enough behind her that she could feel the heat emanating from his body, along with musky male sweat and the tang of lemon, which would’ve seemed incongruous on a man who reeked of testosterone, if Cait hadn’t known the cop trick of using lemon shampoo to wash the smell of death out of your hair. “The way the story goes, a young slave was found in the formal parlor, her dark throat slit from one pretty ear to the other.”
His hands were on her again, long dark fingers massaging the boulder-like knots at the base of her neck. “Later the police discovered eight other bodies buried in the garden. They’d all been raped. Brutalized. All had a gad cut into their breasts.”
He paused, waiting for her to ask.
The silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of the wind, moaning like lost souls outside the window.
“So, what the hell is a gad?” she finally asked on a frustrated breath.
“It’s a protective tattoo designed to protect the wearer from evil spirits. The guy who built this place was a bokor. A priest who specializes in the dark arts, what voodoo practitioners call the left-hand way. They’re not all that common, though we’ve got a handful of ’em living here in the city.”
“Sounds like the tattoos weren’t all that much protection.” Having grown up with a mother who staged fake séances, Cait didn’t believe in magic, either white or black. Or any other woo-woo things that went bump in the night.
He shrugged. “Hard to stop a man with killin’ on his mind.”
She could not argue with him about that.
“Your sister had one.”
“One what?” The rusty gate squeaked.
“A gad.”
She glanced up at him. “The report didn’t mention that.”
“The autopsy’s scheduled for tomorrow morning. It’ll probably show up in the coroner’s report.”
“Dubois still should’ve put it in.”
“Like you said, Dubois isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
The man was now in the courtyard, staring up at the window. A lightning blot forked across the sky, illuminating the malevolence in eyes which blazed like turquoise fire in a midnight dark face. Cait, who’d always prided herself on her control, tensed.
“What’s wrong, chère?” Broussard’s fingers tightened on her neck.
“That guy in the courtyard.” White spots, like paper-winged moths, danced in front of her eyes. She blinked to clear them away. “He’s—”
Gone. Cait stared down at the thorny tangle of scarlet bougainvillea and night-blooming jasmine.
He’d vanished. As quickly and silently as smoke.