Flawless

  For Jude, the change of partners was not only abrupt change, it was one he wasn’t sure he felt comfortable with. His usual partner, Gary Firestone, was at the scene as well. In fact, with all the law enforcement agencies involved, the greatest danger was that evidence might get lost because of the number of people missing around.

  But Crow seemed aware of the danger and quickly organized staff into work units. Somehow, he seemed to manage it all without incurring resentment. He was spare with words, determined, efficient in movement.

  Working with him, so far, anyway, all right; they had an easy rapport, probably since they were both focused on one thing—finding the demon responsible for such heinous deaths.

  However... Jackson Crow was Krewe of Hunters. And thinking about his own past, particularly a strange event that had haunted him since he’d been in the military, he was a little wary of Jackson Crow. He was intrigued that Crow had sought him out, yet slightly troubled because of it.

  He quashed the feeling. He didn’t have time for that kind of emotion; they were in pursuit of a killer.

  While the medical examiner worked inside the church, he and Crow had stepped outside. Uniformed police were cordoning off the area with yellow tape. A crowd of onlookers had gathered.

  “Look,” Jude said quietly to Crow.

  There was a man lurking on the outskirts of the crowd.

  Summer in New Orleans. Hotter than the devil’s own seat in hell. And the guy was dressed in a sweatshirt, holding his head down, shuffling his feet, watching. There was something odd about his manner—and his appearance. His face was almost gruesome, and his nose was huge.

  “I see him,” Crow muttered.

  The man might have been a voyeur, the kind who slowed down at the scene of a car accident.

  And yet his behavior made him typical of killers who returned to see the aftermath of their work, getting their kicks all over again by seeing the police run around, the crowd gawk—and the relatives break down in tears and denial. Jude carefully started moving toward him.

  Just then, the man looked up. Jude froze behind one of the columns. It was important, he thought, that the man not see him.

  His face was...unnatural. Not as if he was wearing a mask, but makeup. Prosthetic makeup, perhaps, giving him a larger nose, a bulbous chin, harder cheek bones. The man turned to run, as if he’d sniffed out the fact that he’d been noticed. Jude shouted to Crow and began to run in pursuit.

  Jackson Crow was already beside him.

  Running.

  They tore across Rampart Street and into the Quarter...down, all the way down to Bourbon. And there they lost him. By then, of course, there were dozens of officers around.

  “Every bar, every damn bar!” Jackson ordered. “The guy in the grey sweatshirt. Black hair.”

  It was still daytime, around three o’clock, but a summer festival was in full swing. Music of all kinds was blaring, tourists were crowding around and beads were being flung from balconies. There were hawkers on the street, and the sheer flow of people, from the slightly inebriated to the out-and-out drunk did not make for easy movement. Jude thought he saw the man head into a place called Piccolo’s. He followed.

  A four-piece band was playing a “Journey” number, and the crowd was gathered by the stage, singing along. Barmaids worked their way through the revelers.

  Police and other agents were bearing down on the bar, as well.

  Jude quickly scanned the bar and the people inside it.

  Crow was still right behind him.

  “There!” Crow called out.

  Their prey had leapt on top of the bar; a girl giggled and started toward him, ready to stuff some dollar bills in his pocket, or so it appeared. But the man jumped down from the bar, a stool crashed over and she went flying back, sending others on to the floor as she did. Chaos erupted to the refrain of “Don’t Stop Believing!”

  “Lost him!” Crow said, swearing under his breath.

  Jude was already climbing over the bar himself, past the stunned bartender, standing with his mixer in hand, and through the dingy kitchen to the side street. They were on St. Ann.

  From there, he saw the man step into the passenger seat of an old Chevy around the corner from the club—and even as Jude raced after him, the car pulled out into the street.

  “Hey!” he roared to Crow. His new partner as of the morning was already outside.

  “This way!” Crow shouted.

  They moved down St. Ann at a run until they reached a bureau sedan. The driver stepped out.

  “Assistant Director Crow,” the man began, ready to leap into action as driver.

  “We’ll take it, Hicks,” Crow said, accepting the keys and tossing them to Jude. “Drive. You know the streets better than I do.”

  Jude was surprised but pleased that Crow had the sense to realize that. And it was true. He knew the one-ways and he knew the cut-offs that happened so often when New Orleans was in festival mode.

  The man driving the Chevy should have been stopped by the sheer volume of pedestrian traffic. So far, he’d banged on his horn and plowed through. Jude hopped in the driver’s seat while Crow got into the passenger side.

  Streets were closed off; there was no way to traverse them. No siren was going to clear Bourbon of the happy drunks.

  Jude shot across to a side street, but the suspect was nowhere to be seen. Moving on instinct, he sped toward Canal, hoping to cut him off.

  “Where are you going?” Crow asked.

  “We’ll catch him on the border of the Vieux Carre,” Jude said.

  And they did.

  There they saw the Chevy surging ahead and Jude did his best to follow without running over a pedestrian. Even on Canal, people were wandering on and off the road.

  “Where’s he going? What the hell?” Crow asked, shaking his head. “And who’s driving? Are we dealing with a pair of killers?

  The man in the Chevy didn’t seem to have a destination. He was driving erratically, avoiding the dozens of cop cars now on the road.

  “Airport...train station...” Crow mused. “Hey! That was him, down Tchoupitoulas!”

  “Might be going to the ort,” Jude said, still trying to follow the Chevy. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that the driver was now maneuvering around a one-way street toward the Riverwalk area—and the massive cruise port.

  Yes.

  The car was going to the port!

  As Jude drove hard, the sirenblasting, Jackson Crow got on the radio, advising all law enforcement in the area to watch out for the car and the two men, giving a description of their suspect’s clothing and appearance.

  So many ships, so many cruise lines.

  “There! Up ahead. The Celtic American line,” Crow said. “I see the car.”

  The Chevy was in front of the entry to the Celtic American line. More chaos was breaking out as last-minute cruisers competed for positions to park or drop off passengers.

  Jude jerked the sedan off to the side of the road. Crow was out of the sedan before it was in park. Seconds later, he had the driver standing on the sidewalk beside the old Chevy.

  He looked like a man in a trance. He was fifty-five or sixty, a slightly pudgy and balding businessman who seemed completely bewildered—as if he didn’t know who he was or why he was there.

  “Who were you driving? Why didn’t you stop?” Crow demanded.

  “I’m Walter Bean, I was supposed to pick up my daughter after her shift at the Red Garter... She’s a hostess there.”

  “We need you to tell us about your passenger.”

  “I’m not even sure he was real, he showed up so fast! I don’t know... I don’t understand... Suddenly he was in the car, making me drive, telling me there was a killer after me.”

  “Where did he go just now??
?? Jackson asked. “Think. Where did he go?”

  Walter Bean was very red and sweating profusely. He shook his head. “I don’t know. He said to stop here. I stopped. He got out of the car. I don’t know if he...if he was a killer. I believed he would kill me. He was frantic. He said a killer was after me, and then he said he’d kill me if I didn’t drive, didn’t get him to the port. Oh, God, oh, God...”

  The man clutched his chest.

  “Heart attack!” Jude warned.

  They patted his coat for digitalis; Jude found the vial and Jackson got a pill in the man’s mouth. Other agents ran up.

  “Get him an ambulance!” Crow yelled, gesturing to a cop in uniform who rushed forward to help.

  “Let’s move,” Jude said. He could hear sirens already. Walter Bean would now receive the medical care he needed.

  Once again, he and Crow were running.

  Jackson flashed his badge as they moved through the passenger terminal. They were asking questions at a check point when Jude found himself studying a man who had boarded the ship. He’d just crossed the air bridge and Jude could see him through the window.

  No one there had seen a man who fit the description of the man they were chasing.

  But Jude did.

  He couldn’t see him clearly; there were too many people boarding at the same time.

  He turned to Jackson Crow. “He’s on the ship. It makes perfect sense. Every city where the Archangel has killed has been a port city—a port where cruise ships depart and return. Some crew members are on for nine months or more at a stint. Some hire on for two, four or six months, especially if they’re entertainers or celebrity hosts, that sort of thing. Crow, it’s what we’ve been trying to figure out! How and why the murders happen and then stop. He’s either an employee or a passenger on a ship, and I have strong feeling it’s that ship.”

  “Why do you think it’s that ship?” Jackson asked.

  “I think I just saw him. Or, at least, I saw the man we were chasing.”

  “You’re not certain?”

  “No. Not a hundred percent certain.”

  “McCoy, we don’t even know if he’s the killer! He could be some gawker jerk who’s guilty of some minor crime—and afraid of all the law enforcement. He could also be late for a sailing.”

  “If he was just late for a sailing, he would’ve had to go through the line. But he’s here on the ship. And no one runs like that because of a parking ticket. He’s guilty of something major—probably these murders—and I believe he’s on that ship.”

  Jackson Crow stared at him a moment longer; Jude didn’t blame him. They’d met less than three hours ago. Crow had Native American in his heritage, and although Jude wasn’t in any way enamored of stereotyping, Crow had the “stoic” attributed to Native Americans down pat. Jude couldn’t begin to tell what he was thinking.

  “Gut feeling,” Jude told him, determined to be honest and equally determined to be convincing. “I have one hell of a gut feeling.”

  Jackson Crow brought out his credentials and started a rapid-fire discussion with a Celtic American security guard. Within seconds, another man came down, some senior person with the cruise line.

  When they’d finished speaking, Jude and Jackson were each handed a boarding pass.

  “Ever been to Cozumel?” Jackson asked dryly.

  “Spring break, a thousand years ago.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Then you should remember it, well enough. Anyway, let’s hope the hell we’re off by then—with him in cuffs. Because if we’re not....”

  “He’ll kill again,” Jude said quietly. He looked up at the behemoth they were about to board.

  The Destiny.

  She wasn’t one of the largest ships sailing the seas by far. She was, Jude knew—thanks to the publicity at her most recent relaunch—the pride of the Celtic American line, owned by an Irish American who had come to the States as a college student and gone on to become a billionaire. The ship was old, commissioned in the late 1930s by an English lord who was hoping to give the Queen Mary a run for her money. The timing, for obvious reasons, had been bad. She wound up serving as a hospital ship during World War II, her cruising days curtailed by the devastation facing the world. Following the war, she’d gone through numerous hands until she’d been purchased and completely refurbished by Celtic American. The company specialized in historic ships, making that history part of their charm.

  No, she wasn’t one of the largest. She still carried about seven hundred crew members.

  And over twenty-four hundred passengers.

  She was, in essence, a small city.

  Jude looked at Crow, then studied the ship again.

  “What?” Crow asked.

  “He might be feeling the heat’s on him now. And that means he just might kill again before we reach our next port.”

  * * *

  “I really think you should be playing more ballads. Old ballads,” Minnie Lawrence said, her painted red lips forming a pretty pout. “This is, after all, a piano bar.”

  Minnie had draped herself on one of the velvet lounge chairs near the piano. She was beautifully clad in a slinky blue gown with a matching headband around her short blonde hair. She managed to smile while maintaining her pout, behaving as the 1930s idol she’d once been. But she was truly sweet and very charming. Alexi could understand why she’d been so beloved in her day.

  “I believe she means old ballads,” Blake Dalton said, coming behind Minnie to lean rakishly against the chair as they both stared at Alexi Cromwell with their most beguiling smiles. “Well, what you’d call old ballads, at any rate!”

  Blake definitely had some Valentino mystery-charisma, as well.

  “I do my best,” Alexi assured the two, sorting through the book she kept for the passengers who wanted to sing. She looked up at them and sighed. “Honestly. I do. But this is the twenty-first century. And I play our passengers’ requests. That’s my job.”

  “I’m a passenger, and I’m requesting!” Minnie said.

  But you’re a dead passenger! Alexi wanted tosay.

  She refrained.

  “I do a smashing version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’” Minnie said. “And it was in The Wizard of Oz. Surely, everyone knows that.”

  “Or ‘In the Mood’!” Blake said. “Minnie sings that very well indeed.”

  “You do way too much of that new fellow, that Billie Joel man,” Minnie said. “I just can’t fix on a key with him.”

  “Most people these days don’t consider Billie Joel to be a new fellow and I’m sorry, but I never go a night without someone wanting ‘Piano Man.’ But a number of people really enjoy older numbers and ask for them, too. How about this? I promise I’ll ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ tonight. How’s that?” Alexi asked.

  Before Blake or Minnie could reply, a man came tearing through the Algiers Saloon, racing through the bar area—employees only—to leap over a neighboring sofa and continue running down the hallway of the St. Charles deck.

  He moved so swiftly that Alexi never saw his face. She had a fleeting impression of his height and appearance—and something a little ghastly. He looked as if he wearing make-up for a Shakespearean play or a classic Greek drama.

  Gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, about six feet, maybe around two hundred pounds.

  “Well, I never!” Minnie sniffed.

  “How incredibly rude,” Blake said, trembling with the indignity of it all.

  “We’ve seen plenty of rude. At least he didn’t jump over the sofa where you two are sitting!” Alexi told them, lowering her head so they couldn’t see her smile.

  Sometimes, guests sensed the pair of ghosts. She would see them shiver and look around, remind themselves that they were on a floating island with thousands of people around them. She knew i
t disturbed both Blake and Minnie when people walked through them. It didn’t hurt them—they simply didn’t like it. Blake once explained to her that if felt as if someone had shoved you carelessly in a crowd. It was rude, just rude. “Some staff member who’s late reporting in, maybe,” Alexi murmured. “Anyway, my friends, I’m going to my cabin while the stampede of boarding takes place. I’ll see you soon.”

  Alexi rose, scooping up her book, laptop and extra music pages. She smiled at Blake and Minnie. “I promise, we’ll start off with Judy Garland,” she assured them.

  “Lovely!” Minnie called after her.

  “Shall we stroll, darling?” she heard Blake ask Minnie.

  “We’ll find a place high atop and watch as we sail away, watch the city disappear, and the beauty of the moon upon the water,” Minnie agreed.

  Alexi smiled as she hurried on, anxious to get to the elevators and down below where the crew members had their cabins.

  She loved having Minnie and Blake on the ship. The Destiny had lost many employees to the ghosts they encountered onboard. People had reported seeing images disappear and things being moved about. Sheet music seemed to do that a lot, according to people who’d had worked on the ship. In fact, Alexi owed her position to the fact that the pianist who’d been preferred by the entertainment director had lasted only one cruise. As a result, Alexi had been hired. She was sure that the musician who’d left— disturbed by the way his sheet music constantly moved and keys played when he hadn’t touched them—would find a job that made him happy. He was a far better pianist than she was. But he hadn’t felt the same need to escape, to live this strange life of fantasy the way she had.