Kitabı oxu: «Bayou Hero»

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

The Greek Revival mansion sat a hundred feet back from Saint Charles Avenue, separated from the street by a six-foot-tall wrought iron fence. The house was stately, the lawn perfectly manicured and the very air around it smelled sweeter, or so it seemed to Alia Kingsley as she snagged a few feet of curb space and climbed out of her car.

The only things more out of place than her in New Orleans’s Garden District this summer morning were the vehicles that overflowed the mansion’s brick-paved drive and clogged the side street. New Orleans Police Department cars, marked and unmarked; an ambulance, its paramedics standing idle; a van from the coroner’s office; sedans bearing US Government tags; and trucks carrying the logos of the local media outlets.

Yellow crime-scene tape kept the reporters and curious neighbors at bay. Alia flashed her credentials to the young cop standing guard at the end of the drive, and he lifted the tape so she could pass. “Who’s in charge?”

“Not me. I’m crowd control,” he said with a shrug. “Ask one of the detectives.”

With a nod, she followed the drive up a slight incline. Another uniformed officer stood guard at the back door of the house. A short distance away, a sailor, his face as colorless as his summer whites, sat at a patio table, a handkerchief pressed to his mouth. He was talking to Jimmy DiBiase, college football star turned cop and, more importantly in her opinion, if not his, her ex-husband.

This wasn’t a good start to her week.

When Jimmy saw her, he left the table and met her halfway. “I was hopin’ you’d catch this.”

“Yeah, we work so well together,” she said drily.

“We did a lot of things good together.”

“Are you sure that was you and me, or maybe one of your girlfriends?”

He had the grace to flush at that, though if he truly felt any regret it didn’t show in his voice. “Aw, sweet pea, we ain’t ever gonna work things out if you don’t give ole Jimmy a break.” With that Southern drawl and broad grin of his, he managed to make the two of them working things out sound almost reasonable. Lucky for her, at 8:10 a.m. without nearly enough caffeine in her system, reasonable didn’t put in an appearance on her list of things to be.

She gestured to the mansion behind him. “Whose house?”

“You don’t know?”

Obviously someone with money and, considering the official navy vehicle in the driveway and the kid in uniform, someone with enough rank to rate a driver. But she didn’t start her days, or her cases, making guesses, so she waited for Jimmy to tell her. He did so with great pleasure.

“Honey, you are a special guest at the family home of Rear Admiral Jeremiah Jackson Junior.”

She knew the name, of course. A special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service couldn’t spend more than a day at the New Orleans office without hearing Admiral Jackson mentioned. He was nothing less than a legend—tough as nails, hard-line, a leftover from the days when being an officer and a gentleman meant something. His career had been long and illustrious, his navy commands as shipshape as any and more than most.

“Is he the victim?” she asked, gazing at the back of the house. Windows marched across each of three stories in perfect symmetry. The admiral liked order in his job as well as his home. She knew his type well. Her own father, Rear Admiral Charles Kingsley, Retired, was just like him.

“Him. His housekeeper. Her daughter. The gardener.”

Alia’s breath caught in her chest. “How old was the daughter?”

“Mid-twenties. Had Down syndrome.”

Four homicides. The spotlight would be shining brightly on this case. “Did the housekeeper live in?”

“Had quarters right there.” He nodded toward the nearest corner of the house.

“And the gardener? Did he live here, too?”

“She. No. She just liked to get an early start before the day got too hot.”

Alia shifted her gaze to the lawn. The grass was clipped, the sidewalks, driveway and beds neatly edged. Flowers bloomed profusely, and the pots spaced evenly across the patio contained plantings so healthy they looked fake. The gardener’s dedication to her job had been admirable...though it had cost her her life.

Finally she looked at Jimmy again and asked the important question. “How did they die?”

“Stabbed. Once each on the employees, in the chest. The gardener also suffered a blow to the head. We figure she walked in and surprised the killer, so he knocked her out, then killed her. The old woman was found in bed, the daughter on the floor beside her bed.”

“And the admiral?”

Jimmy hesitated. “In his bed. When I came out to talk to the driver, the ME’s investigator was still counting the wounds. He was up to twenty-seven.”

Three people efficiently killed and one overkilled. It was safe to assume he’d been the real target, and the others had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jeez, how could being asleep in your own bed be the wrong place at the wrong time?

“You wanna go in?”

She could think of a hundred things she’d rather do, but she nodded and followed him to the back door, where the officer standing guard offered them both gloves and protective booties. The door was an old-fashioned one made of wood with a nine-paned window looking out. The pane closest to the knob was broken out.

The door opened into a space that did double duty as mudroom and laundry room, and then into a kitchen. The house might be two hundred years old, but the kitchen was definitely of the twenty-first century. Appliances, surfaces, cabinets—all were top-of-the-line and pricey. The commercial-grade stove and the refrigerator alone cost more than everything in her little house combined.

The smell of coffee coming from the maker on the countertop made her mouth water. “Is that on a timer?”

“Yeah.” It was a crime scene tech who answered. “No help there.”

Jimmy came to a stop beside the body facedown on the kitchen floor. “Constance Marks, age twenty-four. That’s her blue pickup out there. Self-employed, worked for the admiral, his daughter and some of their friends.”

Constance was slim and tanned, wore shorts with a lot of pockets and sneakers with good support, and her blond hair was matted with blood on the crown. More blood stained her shirt and seeped onto the cream-and-white tile of the floor. All that outdoor work had given her solid muscles, which hadn’t mattered a damn in the end.

“The servants’ quarters are down here.” Jimmy led the way through a door between the refrigerator and the wine cooler. Several doors opened off the hallway—a pantry, a closet—and at the end was a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. The rooms were small, the furnishings good but worn. Judging by the kitchen, no expense had been spared in the main house, while none had been wasted here.

Crime Scene Unit techs were at work in both bedrooms. The smells of blood and bodily waste were strong in the air, competing with the scents of furniture polish and antiseptic cleaner. Jimmy stopped in the doorway on the right. “Laura Owen. She put up a struggle—broke the lamp on the nightstand and knocked a pillow off the bed. She has defensive wounds on her hands.”

Laura lay on her side, a pair of thick-lensed glasses broken next to her. She was short, chubby and her face bore the distinctive features of Down syndrome. Her nightgown was white cotton, sleeveless, covered with pastel bunnies, and a ragged stuffed rabbit lay on the floor near her, its floppy ear just touching the blood.

“What kind of guy kills a mentally disabled kid just for being here?” Jimmy asked with a shake of his head.

“You think a low IQ should be a disqualifying condition for murder?” The CSU techs snickered. “Then you’d be safe, wouldn’t you?”

Alia turned across the hall to the other bedroom, and Jimmy followed her. “Wilma Owen. Killed in her sleep. No defensive wounds.”

Wilma Owen was in her late sixties, maybe early seventies, her hair white, her face bearing the lines of long life and troubles. If not for the blood that turned much of her bedding red, she would appear peacefully asleep.

Alia stepped back as two ME’s investigators came in with body bags, then she and Jimmy returned the way they’d come. “Any sign of forced entry besides the broken glass in the rear door?”

“No. And that lock’s not double-keyed, so someone could get in there easily.”

They walked through a swinging door into the formal dining room, filled with antiques. Jeremiah Jackson might have spent his life serving his country, but there’d been no need. His ancestors had amassed a fortune before the Civil War and had been among the few to hold onto it postwar. Jeremiah could have lived in luxury without ever working a day.

First question of a homicide investigation: who stood to benefit from the victim’s death?

They left the dining room for a broad hallway, easily bigger than some of the rooms. The rugs underfoot were old and valuable, the furniture costly, the art objects rare. And the man who’d owned it all had worked seventy and eighty-hour weeks, deploying for months at a time, missing important family events, being an absentee husband and father for thirty years.

As they approached the elaborate front door, she gestured toward the alarm keypad nearby. The light glowed green. “Was the alarm set?”

“We’re guessing not. You know how many people invest in fancy alarm systems, then not use them. Somebody like Jackson probably thought he was above common crime.”

There was a certain level of arrogance to anyone who attained the rank of admiral. The admiralty was small and select, theoretically only the best of the best. She could well imagine Jackson believing he was invulnerable, especially in his own home. Alia’s father had a bit of that smugness, but her mother kept it under control.

Jimmy turned up the stairs, and she followed. On the landing halfway up, she stopped to study a portrait. It was an oil and showed the admiral, a mere commander at the time, in his choker whites with his family—wife, son, daughter. Jackson appeared stern but proud, the wife fragile. The daughter, nine, maybe ten years old, stood next to her father and smiled brightly, while the son, almost a teen, looked remote. Withdrawn.

It could be difficult, growing up the only son of an ambitious, hard-ass career officer. It had been tough for Alia at times, being an only child. Such fathers tended to have expectations of their children, and they didn’t take disappointment lightly.

“What about the family? You mentioned the daughter.”

“Mary Ellen. Married to Scott Davison, lives a couple streets over, has two daughters.”

“The son?”

“Jeremiah the third. Goes by Landry, his mama’s maiden name. Works at a bar down in the Quarter and lives above it. Doesn’t visit the old homestead often.”

The esteemed Rear Admiral Jackson’s only son tended bar. Yeah, growing up had definitely been tough for Jeremiah III. “And the mother?”

“Camilla. A bit of a mystery there.”

She waited for him to go on, but he was gazing at the portrait. He’d always had an eye for the ladies, even those old enough to be his own mother, one of the reasons he and Alia were no longer married.

“What’s the mystery?”

“Huh?” He jerked his attention from the painting. “Oh. She hasn’t been seen for three, four weeks—no one’s really sure how long. The admiral told his neighbor she was visiting relatives. His daughter said the same. Gossip says she ran off, alone or with a boyfriend, or that she’s in a private hospital somewhere. They say she never was very strong, and that she drank to get through the times her husband was gone.” After a reflective moment, Jimmy finished. “Maybe it was the times he was home she needed help.”

That was one thing Alia had no experience with. Her father may have worn the silver stars in the family, but her mother was the boss. She had a strength that no three admirals could match and was proud of it. She’d taught Alia to be strong, too—one of Jimmy’s complaints about her. She’d never needed him, he’d said, and he was probably right.

“Where do you learn all these things?” she asked as they started up the last section of stairs.

“Hey, I’m a detective. Finding out stuff is what they pay me for.” Then he relented. “As important as Jackson is in navy circles, he’s that and more in New Orleans society, which means the gossip is plentiful. You just have to know who to ask.”

It was easy to find the admiral’s bedroom: it was the one where personnel swarmed, collecting evidence. Alia paused before reaching the doorway, taking quick short breaths through her mouth. Seeing the awful things that one human being could do to another never got any easier.

Two steps took her to the doorway, one more inside. The room was huge: sitting area in front of a fireplace; a delicate writing desk overlooking a front window; a massive bed; a door opening into a bathroom and closet. It was one of Louisiana’s quirks that old houses traditionally lacked closets, but this one was an exception.

The furniture, the art on the walls, the knickknacks on tables, the Middle Eastern rugs—all costly. It was overdone for Alia’s tastes, too cluttered, too much pattern and color and far too rich, but the room looked exactly what it was: a personal space for a wealthy couple in a lavish mansion.

If one could dismiss the blood.

It was a lot of blood, an entire life’s worth. It covered the admiral’s chest, saturated the sheets, soaked the mattress. There were small splatters on the wall, the shade of the lamp on the night table, the pristine white pillowcase on the opposite side of the bed, a few drops on the floor. Blood was slick. It made knives slip in wet grips, often causing killers to cut themselves. Would some of this blood belong to the killer?

Finally she forced herself to focus on the victim. He was a few inches shorter than six feet, broad shouldered, barrel-chested. At one time he’d been solid muscle, but living the good life of the admiralty had put some extra weight on him. His hair was white, thick, and his blue eyes were open, staring sightlessly toward the ceiling. Had his attacker been the last thing he’d seen in life? Had he known him? Had he known the reason for his death?

“The splatter is cast-off from the knife.” Jimmy gestured to the deadly blade still sticking out of Jackson’s chest. “It’s a butcher knife from downstairs.”

“Time of death?”

“About 5:00 a.m., best guess. We’ll know more when we get him on the table,” answered the coroner’s investigator. “He was likely asleep. Didn’t even get his hands up to defend himself.”

“So someone comes here, breaks in without a weapon and kills four people?” What’s wrong with this picture? It wasn’t a burglary gone wrong—too many small items of great value left in place. It wasn’t a planned murder. No one on a mission to kill would come without a weapon. That left a crime of passion or a killer too disorganized to plan. A killer with serious psychological problems. “Is anything obvious missing?”

“Don’t know,” Jimmy said. “The daughter’s going to come over tomorrow, after the bodies have been removed, and take a look around. She’s here four, five times a week according to the neighbor.”

He gestured to the door, and she went back into the broad hallway.

“Remember when you served me with divorce papers, you said that was the end of us?” He grinned that big ole grin. “Guess you were wrong about that. Sweet pea, we’re gonna be working this case together. You’re gonna be my partner.”

* * *

Landry Jackson had driven to the Garden District intending to go straight to his sister’s house, but he hadn’t been able to resist stopping at the family home. He’d parked a few blocks over, added a baseball cap to help the dark shades for a bit of camouflage and had been standing in the shade of a crape myrtle for the past half hour, just one more among the neighbors, reporters and the morbidly curious milling around. A few of the older neighbors seemed vaguely familiar, but he doubted any of them remembered him or would recognize him if they did.

There were whispers that confirmed what Mary Ellen had told him in her hysterical phone call earlier, that the admiral was dead. They didn’t stir any emotion in him, not even the relief he’d always expected to feel once the old man passed. Certainly no sadness. No regret.

His shrink’s voice echoed from years past. You don’t owe him anything. Being a parent doesn’t automatically entitle a person to respect or love or anything else.

In the Jackson household, being a child didn’t entitle a person to those things, either.

He stared at the house where he’d grown up, too much, too fast, and tried to summon a few happy memories. They were there. They just didn’t want to sneak out into the light at the moment. Mostly, he remembered relief every time the admiral went away, dread every time he came back. Mostly he didn’t want to remember anything, good or bad.

A murmur went up around him as two people started down the driveway toward the gate. The reporter next to him was muttering into his cell phone, and Landry listened without much interest. “Primaries appear to be Jimmy DiBiase with NOPD, and the woman is NCIS. Uh, Leah, Lina. No, Alia. Alia Kingsley. Huh.”

Landry was familiar with DiBiase from the news, the paper and his regular partying on Bourbon Street. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Alia Kingsley, though he could have and just skimmed right over her. Her hair was stark black, tightly braided, her features average with a hint of the East—Filipina, maybe, or Japanese—and her navy skirt and jacket with light blue shirt and ugly heels were just slightly this side of flattering. Did she not know how to dress to suit her less than curvy body or did she downplay her looks deliberately?

They stopped in the middle of the drive to talk to a group of men in suits—NOPD detectives, NCIS agents—who all listened while Kingsley spoke. Her gaze roamed dismissively over the media—they showed up for every major crime—and settled briefly on the others. Landry was turning away when it reached him, like a laser between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t resist glancing back at her, their gazes connecting for an instant, then he slipped through the crowd and headed to his car.

His skin was damp with sweat by the time he’d jogged the few blocks to Miss Viola’s house, whose driveway he’d borrowed. The old lady was waiting on her porch, a mug of hot tea on a table next to a half-eaten slice of buttered toast and a bottle of cold water. “Well?” For an eighty-one-year-old woman, she put a wealth of meaning into that single word.

Bypassing his car, he climbed the steps and leaned against the railing near her. She offered the bottle, and he drank half of it before answering. “They’re not releasing any information yet, but the rumors appear to be true.”

“Jeremiah Jackson Junior is dead.” Miss Viola wasn’t any sorrier than he was, though she’d known the admiral his entire life. “This much fuss for just him?”

“No. Apparently the Owens, too, and the gardener’s truck was there.”

“Poor Laura. And Constance...oh, she loved her work and was finally making good money at it. She takes care of my lawn, too, and she’s meticulous.” Miss Viola’s gaze wandered across the yard as if realizing she would never see Constance in it again.

After a solemn moment, she said, “I understand why someone would kill Jeremiah, but why the others? Why Laura? The girl wouldn’t have hurt a fly and couldn’t have been much of a witness.”

“You know the kind of people the admiral associated with.”

“May they all rot in hell.” After sipping her tea, Miss Viola waved toward his car. “Go on now and get over to Mary Ellen’s. You don’t know how this is going to hit her. Tell her to call me if she needs a thing.”

“I will.” Landry finished the water in another swallow, then set the bottle back on the table. He was halfway down the steps when she called out.

“Obviously you remember where I live. Come by once in a while. I miss your face.”

He smiled fondly and repeated his answer. “I will.”

It wasn’t far from Miss Viola’s house to Mary Ellen’s. Like the Jackson house, it dated to the early 1800s and was large, gracious, the very image of a Southern mansion with its broad porches and tall columns. It sat in the middle of the block, large expanses of lawn on either side, an American flag flying from a bracket on one column, a small pink bicycle overturned on the sidewalk.

Landry parked behind his brother-in-law’s Mercedes and took the side steps onto the porch. His knock at the door was answered so quickly that the housekeeper must have been hovering nearby. “Mr. Landry,” she greeted him grimly.

“Miss Geneva.”

“Your sister is in the sunroom.” As an afterthought, she added, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Don’t be. I’m not. But he politely thanked her. “Are the girls here?”

“No, Mr. Scott dropped them at a friend’s house.”

He nodded and headed down the wide corridor to the sunroom at the back of the house. He was sorry to have missed Faith and Mariela—they were the very best of the Jackson family—but glad they weren’t here to deal with emotions they didn’t understand.

The sun porch spanned the width of the house, enclosed on three sides with glass, with double doors that opened onto the porch and the yard beyond. Despite the heat of the day, the windows and doors were open, the ceiling fans overhead moving the heavy air in a futile attempt to provide cooling. Mary Ellen liked the heat. Sometimes she joked that she was just a tropical girl, but once, in a particularly melancholy moment, she’d told him that she could never get warm, no matter how she tried.

He understood the feeling.

She sat in a wicker rocker, arms folded across her middle, staring into the distance at something no one else could see. She did that a lot, and if questioned about it, she laughed and said her mind liked to wander. If she could see the stark, gut-wrenching look on her face at those times, she would probably never laugh again.

Her husband, sitting on a footstool in front of her, was first to notice Landry. “Mary Ellen, look, your brother’s here.”

She didn’t look. Didn’t give any sign that she’d heard Scott.

Scott met Landry halfway and shook hands. “I’m glad you came. Have you heard anything else?”

Breathing deeply of the flowering plants that filled the room, Landry shook his head. He would let the authorities tell them that the old man wasn’t the only victim. She knew Constance and the Owens way better than he did, and he’d always been the one experiencing bad news. He didn’t deliver it. “How is she holding up?”

“She’s been like that since she called you. Hasn’t cried a tear.”

Scott sounded worried, but Landry wasn’t. Tears were overrated. Their mother had cried thousands of them when they were still a family. So had Mary Ellen, and Landry had shed a few of his own. It hadn’t changed anything. It hadn’t made them feel better. There’d been no catharsis.

Navigating around furniture and plants, he crouched in front of his sister and took her hand in his. It was ice-cold. “Hey, Mary Ellen.”

Her gaze shifted slowly, a millimeter at a time, until it connected with his. A wobbly smile touched her mouth, then slipped away. “It’s true, isn’t it, Landry? It really is true. Daddy’s dead.”

“Yeah, he is.”

The tears that had concerned Scott welled in her brown eyes, so much like Landry’s, but didn’t spill over. “I knew,” she whispered. “I felt it all the way deep inside, but I kept thinking...”

That it might be a mistake. That it was never good to celebrate prematurely.

Though she seemed to be leaning toward mourning. Why? What had she seen in the admiral that made him worth mourning? Things had been no better for her than for Landry, worse even. She’d been fragile, like their mother, and in her eyes, her escape had been as bad as the situation she’d left.

But the concept of family had always been important to Mary Ellen. She heaped her family with love and respect and expectations; she forgave them anything. She stood by them no matter what. She’d even been trying from the day he left the family to bring him back into it. She’d succeeded only as far as the next generation. No way was he going to let the admiral drive him away from his nieces.

Mary Ellen’s eyes widened as if she’d just thought of something, and her fingers tightened around his in a grip that was painful. So much for fragile. “Oh, Landry, how will we tell Mama? She’ll be so heartbroken. He was her life.”

Landry blinked. He’d never been sure their mother loved their father. Camilla was wellborn, but the family had fallen on hard times. Her daddy would have sold her to the highest bidder to hold on to the family property. Jeremiah, a mere ensign at the time, had been looking for a wife suitable to the illustrious Jackson family as well as his journey into the upper echelons of navy command. Landry had never figured their marriage for anything more than a business arrangement.