“What, Shamus? For the love of God, just tell us,” Quinn said.
“He came here—to my house. He was wound tight, upset. He had a cut on his hand. And he—he had a gun on him. He told me it was legal, and for as long as someone was running around killing musicians, he was going to carry it. He’s my friend, you know. He and Blake and I hang around together, we see each other home at the end of the night, and I’ve tried to dismiss it, but...” He paused again. “I had to talk about it. I went to confession. Me mum back in County Cork would be proud. I went to confession because I needed to talk about it, but I didn’t want to betray a friend when I still can’t believe it’s him.”
“I understand, Shamus, I do,” Danni said.
Shamus lowered his head again. “He’s my mate, my friend. But—and God help me for this—I always find a way to be dropped off first. I leave him alone with Blake.” He looked up at them. “Do it—do whatever you need to do to find out the truth.”
“Excuse me,” Quinn said. He walked into the other room, and Danni knew he was calling Larue and telling him that they needed to go ahead and pick up Gus for questioning.
“He’ll never forgive me if he finds out,” Shamus said.
Danni’s phone rang just then, saving her from having to make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep, and she excused herself to answer it.
It was Steve, according to her caller ID.
“Hey, Steve, what’s up?” she said.
He didn’t reply and her phone went dead. She looked over at Quinn as she tried calling Steve back. He didn’t answer.
She tried to tell herself that he had butt dialed her. If he was in trouble, he would have hit 911.
But anxiety ripped through her. “Quinn, tell Larue to get to Steve’s place. Have him send the closest officer there, too, and...let’s go, okay? Shamus, thanks,” she said.
And then she and Quinn were heading out to the car.
Chapter 16
QUINN PULLED OVER to the curb just as the first patrol car arrived.
He jumped out and headed for the door, leaping up the steps leading to the house.
The door was open.
An officer came running from the patrol car. “Mr. Quinn, wait!”
But Quinn was armed and ready and through the doorway even as the officer reached him. Danni burst in behind them. “Steve!” she cried out desperately.
There was no one in the living room.
They heard a noise from the back, a scraping sound. Quinn followed it, pausing for a split second at every arch and doorway, even though he was certain the killer wasn’t there anymore.
He hurried forward, anxious to find Steve before Danni could.
He was in a back room.
He was tied to a chair, his head hanging down. Quinn feared the worst.
Trying to stop Danni was like trying to change the weather. She burst past him, sliding to her knees at Steve’s feet. “Steve!” she cried.
And Steve lifted his head, making it obvious why he didn’t reply; a kitchen towel was tied around his mouth, gagging him.
He tried to say something, but it was unintelligible.
“Hang on, we’ll get you out of this,” Danni said, searching for a way to release him.
Quinn knelt down beside her, pulling out his pocketknife. Steve had been secured to a wooden kitchen chair with a belt, two neckties and what looked like his cell phone charger. Quinn quickly ripped his way through the bindings and the gag.
“Just left...out the back,” Steve gasped.
“As what? What’s he dressed as?” Quinn asked.
Not that it mattered; the costume would be off by now, and tossed or stored where they would never find it.
“Woman,” Steve said.
“A woman?” Quinn repeated.
“Dressed...dressed as a woman.”
Quinn turned to head out in pursuit.
“Mr. Quinn, you need to wait for backup,” the officer said.
“We’ve already lost him,” Quinn said in disgust as he stopped at the open back door. He could hear sirens from the street and knew the place would quickly be filled with police.
He left Danni to calm Steve and stood in the doorway, looking out. It led out to a back lawn, slightly overgrown and filled with pieces of broken furniture Steve was apparently working on. There was a short wire fence at the back, a higher wooden barrier to the left, and bushes and trees to the right. He was heading to the rear then noticed something and turned toward the bushes. Part of a hedge seemed to be flattened; he walked out that way then passed through the neighbor’s yard and reached the sidewalk.
No one of either sex was running, or even walking, down the street. There was, however, a group of children playing in one of the yards. There were about seven or eight of them, and they were taking turns throwing a ball at a net attached to the family garage.
He trotted over to them. “Hey, kids,” he said.
They stopped; the kid holding the ball surveyed him gravely and then looked down the street to where several police cars were now pulled up on the sidewalk and the lawn.
“Did you see anyone running along here? Or walking? Did you see anyone at all who you don’t know?”
“Just the lady,” the kid holding the ball told him.
“The lady? What did she look like, and where did she go?”
“She was tall,” one of the other kids offered.
“Of course she was, moron. She was wearing heels,” a slightly older boy said.
“She had dark hair—long, down her back,” the first boy offered.
“She was funny-looking,” another said.
“Fat legs!” one said, laughing.
So their killer was a tall, funny-looking woman with fat legs—or a man in disguise.
“Thanks. Which way did she go?” he asked.
They pointed around the corner. Quinn began to run, his feet pounding hard on the pavement and then the grass as he cut across a lawn. As he ran, he heard the loud revving of an engine moving down the next street.
He kept running, hoping he could catch the license tag.
But it was no good. The car was gone, undoubtedly turning onto the highway beyond the next block. He stopped, doubled over as he caught his breath, and damned the fact that they’d missed the killer again.
* * *
Once he was untied, Steve seemed to be fine, at least physically. Danni kept a comforting hand on his shoulder as he trembled in reaction then finally looked at her and said, “Sorry. Guess I’m not hero material, huh? Asshole material, yes. I know it was stupid, but I opened the damned door. But it looked like a woman. In fact, at first I thought it was Jessica.”
“Jessica Tate?” Danni asked, frowning. “Why would she be here? Her mom is in the hospital, and her son—”
“I know. I thought she might have needed something—help, maybe, a shoulder to cry on,” Steve said.
“How well do you know Jessica?” Danni asked.
“I met her at the club, or I thought I did. But you know what? I’d run into her before. I realized that when we all had a night off and met up to see what was going on along Bourbon. We got to talking, and she reminded me that we’d met at a parish competition years ago.”
“And you really thought it was her today?” Danni pressed. It wasn’t surprising that people in the city knew one another. It just seemed odd that he’d thought she would come to him at a time like this.
“She looked kind of like Jessica,” Steve said. “I just saw a woman with long dark hair standing at the door. I admit, both my libido and my curiosity made me open it.”
Danni heard a commotion at the door and realized Larue had arrived.
He walked in, commanding, “Anyone touching anything, stop now. We’ve go
t to get something on this guy from someone.” He saw Danni sitting by Steve. “Of course you got here first,” he muttered.
“Steve was just telling me what happened after the killer got in.”
“He’d just gotten a knife out of my kitchen when you and Quinn got here. Without you guys...” Steve said dully. He shook his head, humiliated.
“Let’s go back to where you were,” Larue suggested. “You opened the door and...?”
“I opened the door, and he got me with a right to the jaw. I went down, and the next thing I knew, I was being tied up with my own stuff.”
“Why did you open the door in the first place?” Larue asked.
“It was a woman,” Steve said softly.
“The killer is a woman?” Larue said.
“I know some tough women,” Steve said, “but none with a right hook like the one that downed me. No, it was a man dressed as a woman. And he looked pretty damn real, at least through the peephole.”
Larue pulled out his notebook and asked Steve to go over everything that had happened. Grace Leon had arrived with her crew by then. She suggested that Steve might need medical attention, but he said he was fine for now and promised to see a doctor later.
Quinn walked back in then, and Larue ceded the floor to him. Between the two of them, Steve was asked nearly every possible question.
When they asked what color the “woman’s” eyes were, Steve was thoughtful for a moment and told them that they were yellow. “Like demon eyes,” he said.
“Seriously?” Larue muttered.
“Contacts, maybe?” Quinn asked.
“Probably,” Steve said.
Larue swore. “Bastard changes like a chameleon. He’ll be something else next time he strikes. We’re getting nowhere,” he said in disgust.
Quinn caught Larue’s eye and nodded toward a corner. Before he turned to speak to Larue privately, he said to Steve, “I’m sorry, but we need to know everything you can think of about what happened. Would you mind talking to us down at the station?”
“Not at all,” Steve said. “The truth is, I don’t want to hang around here alone.”
“We’ll get going, then,” Larue said. “Grace, I’m saying a prayer you’ll get a print.”
“He wore gloves,” Steve said. “Black lace gloves.”
“Of course,” Larue said drily. “Grace—”
“I’ll see what I can get, anyway,” she finished for him. Then she turned to Steve and said, “Before you go, I need to know where he was, anything you can remember him touching, anything at all that could help us find even the most infinitesimal bit of forensic evidence.”
“I’m all yours,” Steve told her earnestly.
Larue headed out to join Quinn, and a minute later Danni followed. When she stepped outside and joined them, they were already talking about Gus Epstein.
“We don’t have a single piece of real evidence,” Larue said. “The best I can do is ask Epstein if he’ll come in and tell us anything he can think of for the record. I can tell him we’re talking to everyone who knew any of the victims.”
“Why not just stop by and visit him? Make it look casual, less stressful,” Danni said. “Plus we could look around his place on the sly.”
“Good idea,” Quinn said. “Though if he is our guy, he’ll find an excuse not to let us in, not if he has any kind of evidence lying around.”
“Worth a try, though. You two stop in and see him,” Larue said. “It won’t look as suspicious if I’m not there. Meanwhile, I’ll try to figure a way to get a search warrant. Because if we don’t handle this legally, any evidence we find will get thrown right out of court.”
“If we don’t handle this some way,” Quinn said, “we’ll just have more bodies piling up.” He looked at Danni. “Let’s go,” he said grimly.
* * *
“I know why we can say we’re dropping in on him,” Danni said.
“Really?” Quinn asked her. “Why?”
“We’re worried about him. Steve was just attacked, and after the killer’s targeted so many people we know, we can tell him we’re trying to check on everyone we know and make sure they’re all doing okay.”
“Sounds good,” he told her.
When they pulled up in front of Gus’s house, Quinn saw that a patrol car was parked on the block. Larue had been doing his best to keep eyes on both suspects and possible victims.
Quinn pulled up directly in front of the house. He noted that Gus’s SUV was in the drive, just where it should have been.
He went around to Danni’s side of the car, but she was already out. “Be careful,” he warned her. “He does have a gun.”
“I know.” She patted her shoulder bag. “So do I.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you do, don’t you?”
He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He looked at her with a frown then pounded harder on the door. Still no answer.
The patrol officer down the street got out of his car. “He’s in there—has to be. I never saw him leave,” he called, hurrying toward them.
“Unless he went out the back,” Quinn pointed out. “Or someone went in.”
At least the cop had the grace to blush.
“I’m going around back. Be careful and stay covered,” Quinn said to Danni, who pressed herself tightly against the wall, out of range of the windows and doors.
Gun drawn, Quinn hurried around the side of the house, trying to see through the windows as he went. The house was dark; Gus could be sleeping, getting ready for another late night.
But he wasn’t, and Quinn knew it.
When he reached the small yard, he found that, as he’d suspected, the back door was open. Using his hip to avoid contaminating evidence—not that he expected there to be any—he nudged the door open farther. He moved quietly inside, finding himself in the kitchen. Muted daylight showed dust motes on the air. Nothing was on the stove; the room was as clean and neat as if it hadn’t been used in weeks. He moved through an archway into the dining room.
He thought, when he reached the parlor, that he would find Gus tied to a chair and likely dead. But what he found instead was chaos. Furniture thrown everywhere, the buffet drawers open, upholstery ripped to shreds. He quickly checked out the two bedrooms. They, too, were destroyed—but there was no sign of Gus.
“Coming out—house is clear!” he shouted before opening the front door. “No Gus, total destruction,” he said briefly.
Danni walked in, while the officer waited outside.
“Watch what you touch,” he told her then holstered his gun and called Larue, watching as Danni moved deeper into the house.
“Damn it,” Larue said as soon as Quinn finished describing the state of the house.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Quinn said. “His place is trashed, his car is here. I’m hoping he isn’t dead, but I have no idea, because he isn’t here. Why the hell would he have trashed his own house?”
“To put us off the scent?” Larue suggested.
“Quinn!” Danni called from the front bedroom.
“Hold on,” Quinn told Larue. He headed toward the bedroom.
Danni pointed under the bed.
He knelt down to look, and there, almost hidden in the shadows, he saw a dottore mask.
He stood up and looked at Danni, his heart sinking. He hadn’t wanted it to be Gus. He hadn’t wanted it to be anyone they knew. He’d wanted to find out the killer was a total stranger.
“It gets worse,” Danni whispered. She pointed to a framed picture hanging on the wall.
The picture Danni’s father had taken of the Survivor Set.
Arnie’s face was scratched out. So were Holton Morelli’s and Lawrence Barrett’s. There were slashes over Jeff’s, Brad’s and Jenny’s faces.
br /> And there were checks on Tyler’s face—and Danni’s.
His stomach knotted, and he put the phone back to his ear. “Larue? You still there?We have to find Gus—and find him fast,” he said. “You’ve got to put out an APB, and you’ve got to say he’s armed and dangerous. He owns a Glock 19.”
* * *
It wasn’t easy convincing bar and restaurant owners to close down in NOLA—even when lives were at stake.
Even the owner of the Midnight Royale Café didn’t want to close, despite the fact that one of his house musicians had nearly been killed. His arguments were solid: no one had been attacked in a restaurant or a bar. Closing down was giving the killer just what he potentially wanted: the destruction of the local music scene. His final point, that there was no musician out there who couldn’t be replaced, earned him less sympathy. But eventually he agreed that a one-night shutdown might be in order.
It wasn’t as difficult with La Porte Rouge, where Eric Lyons ran the establishment for an absentee owner.
“Gus? I can’t believe it,” he said when Danni called him. “I mean, he’s got a temper on him, yeah, and he has a thing for Jessica, but...I still can’t believe it. As for closing for the night? Yeah, already got a request from the cops, and it’s no problem. The band needs time to get their heads together, anyway. You take care, okay?”
Danni promised that she would and told him to do the same. “Don’t forget, the killer went to Jessica’s house. Her mom is still in the hospital.”
“Speaking of...how’s Jessica doing?” he asked. “We all care about her, you know?”
“I do know. And she’s fine.”
“She’s not alone, right?”
“No, no, she’s not alone,” Danni assured him. She hesitated. “What about you and Sharon? Can you guys hang together, watch out for each other?”
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll try to reach her.”
When Danni hung up, Quinn was watching her, the light coming through her studio window casting shadows across his face. “Okay?” he asked.