His heart plummeted, and a wave of dizziness passed over him as he got slowly to his feet. “Who?”
“Marty Bledsoe’s wife, Francis.”
Another fire wife. He sat down on the side of the bed, and Celia slid her arms around him from behind. He took her hand. “They were in hiding,” he said. “They weren’t even in town.”
“They was in Slidell stayin’ at her mama’s. He broke in and shot her in the head, while Marty was lyin’ in bed right next to her. Must have had a silencer, because Marty didn’t even wake up till a few minutes later, when he found the room on fire.”
Stan reached for his clothes hanging over a chair. “When did you hear?”
“Just now. It all happened within the last hour.”
“All right, give me the address. I’m headed to Slidell.”
Chapter Forty-Two
By the time Stan arrived at the crime scene in Slidell, the media had descended. Armed with cameras and microphones, they stood just outside the area marked off by police tape. The moment he drove up, they surrounded him, as if he were a celebrity arriving on Oscar night.
Vultures, he thought, shoving them back with his car door as he got out of the car.
“Detective Shepherd, has tonight’s murder produced any new leads on the Fire Wife Killer?”
“Excuse me,” he said, trying to find an opening in the crowd around him.
“How many wives are left, Detective?”
“Are any measures being taken to protect the others?”
“Wouldn’t it seem that the killer knows the victims, since he was able to find this one’s hiding place?”
He shoved himself between two of them and ducked under the crime scene tape. He quickly flashed his badge at the officer standing there trying to keep order. “Stan Shepherd, Newpointe P.D. Who’s in charge here?”
“Detective Madison is the supervising officer, sir. He’s inside.”
Stan ignored the questions being shouted at him and headed for the door.
He was stopped by the logging officer before he entered the house. He showed his identification and asked for Detective Madison. Madison, who had worked with him on an occasional case that crossed from one town to the next, seemed glad to see him. “I figured you’d be showing up soon, Stan.”
Stan stepped into the house and looked around at the handful of officers collecting evidence. “Where’s Marty?”
“Out back. He’s pretty strung out. We had to take his mother-in-law to the hospital. Her blood pressure was stroke level. She took the twins with her, and Marty’s parents are supposed to go get them.”
“Did Marty see anything?”
Detective Madison shook his head. “He woke up, saw the fire, and tried to get her up. That was when he realized she’d been shot.”
“Right there beside him? He didn’t feel her body jerk or anything?”
“Claims he sleeps like the dead. Didn’t know firemen could sleep like that.”
Stan rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how they got Marty up at the station when they had a call in the night. “Well, truth is, none of us from Newpointe have slept all that sound lately. He was probably so tired he just zonked out. I was almost that way myself tonight.”
He went into the bedroom, where one of the evidence technicians was photographing the scene. The body was still lying on the sheets, apparently untouched. Stan had last seen Francis at the meeting at the courthouse, looking as worried and scared as the rest of them. She looked oddly peaceful now, pretty even, as though someone had arranged her hair on her shoulders and folded her hands across her chest. He swallowed and fought the urge to look away. He needed to look. Maybe there was something there, something that would help him get to the bottom of this.
He made himself step closer and examine the bullet hole in her forehead. “.38?” he asked Joe Madison, who had come in behind him.
“Yep. Fired at pretty close range.”
Stan leaned back against the wall that hadn’t yet burned and looked up at the ceiling. A char pattern from the flames had shot up the other wall and climbed across. “They were hiding. How could he have known where? Marty didn’t even tell me where they were.”
“Stan, I think you need to start looking at someone who knows all of these victims. Someone who knows them real well. And the first place to start is by asking Marty who he told. It’s probably a short list.”
“You’re right,” Stan said. He thought of telling Joe about his suspicions that it was another Newpointe firefighter. But someone might overhear. If that word got out, the resulting panic would render the fire department useless in Newpointe—people would rather let their houses burn than call 911. “Look, don’t say that to the vultures out there, okay? I don’t want them to start speculating.”
“I’m not talking to them,” Madison said. “I know better.”
Stan turned away from Francis’s body and headed back through the house to the patio where Marty sat with his head hanging down between his knees. He touched his friend’s neck, and Marty looked up at him.
“How’s it goin’, buddy?”
Marty rubbed his eyes. “How could this happen?” he asked. “How, Stan? We was hidin’. How did he find out where? He come in and shot her right next to me. How could I have slept through it?”
“That’s what we have to figure out,” Stan said. He found a chair and pulled it up to face Marty. Sitting close, he asked, “Who did you tell where you were?”
“Nobody!” Marty said. “I didn’t tell nobody. We just came.”
“All right, did anyone know where Francis’s mother lived?”
He closed his eyes. “Well, yeah. I mean, lotsa folks knew she lived in Slidell. I guess if they knew her maiden name it wouldn’t be that hard to find out the address. And then my car was in the driveway.”
“All right, let’s think, Marty. Can you think of anyone, say, in the fire department, who knows Francis’s maiden name and that her mother lives here?”
He thought for a moment. “Well, it wasn’t no secret. Few months ago when her daddy died, I took off work a week or so while he was in the hospital. I reckon everybody in the department knew where we were, and why.”
“How about flowers?” Stan asked. “Did any of them send you flowers when he died?”
He tried to think again. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. There were so many flowers. They might have. Why?”
“If they did, then we know they knew your wife’s maiden name. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think they could have found out the address.”
Marty began to stiffen, and looked at him as if he’d just suggested something ludicrous. “You’re thinkin’ this guy is somebody in the department?”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t you tell anyone I said that.”
“Then what? Why would one of us be doin’ somethin’ like this? Instead of lookin’ at us, you need to be out there findin’ the real killer.”
Stan looked from side to side, to make sure they hadn’t been overheard. “Marty, do you have any idea where Francis’s mother might have kept the guest book for the funeral, or the list of people who sent flowers?”
He rubbed his eyes again, trying to think. “Uh…maybe. Yeah, in there in the dinin’ room. She keeps lots of stuff like that in the drawers of the hutch. Pictures she hasn’t put in albums, that sort of thing. She mighta stuck it in there.”
“Okay. I’ll go look.”
“Stan?” Marty grabbed the lapel of Stan’s sport coat as he started to stand up. “When are they gon’ do somethin’ with her? They can’t just leave her lyin’ there. It’s wrong. All those pictures they’re takin’, and all those cops gawkin’ at her. Please, can’t you tell ’em to leave her alone?”
Stan sighed. “They’re taking the pictures for evidence, Marty. It might keep anyone else from getting killed the same way. And when we catch this creep, the pictures’ll help us nail him.”
Marty dropped his head back into his hands. “Oh, why didn’t h
e shoot me, too? Havin’ t’ see all this—it’s cruel, man.”
Stan couldn’t answer. It did seem cruel. Almost intentionally so. Was the whole thing for that purpose? To somehow make the firemen suffer when they found their wives dead? If so, why? Why hadn’t the killer shot Marty, too, or his mother-in-law? Why had he not hurt Tommy Broussard?
He went into the dining room and found the hutch. He pulled on the latex gloves he’d brought and began to go through each of the drawers until he found the guest book from Marty’s father-in-law’s funeral. There was a stack of cards stuffed inside it in a ziplock bag. He pulled them out and began to thumb through them. Some of them were small florist’s cards. He went through the cards one by one, noting who from Newpointe had sent them. There was one from Nick Foster. One from all the guys at the Midtown Station, signed by each of them individually. He checked the address on the front, then compared the handwriting to the signatures. It looked as if Dan Nichols had been the one to address the card. Where had he gotten the address? He flipped a few more cards, found one from Mark and Allie Branning, one from Craig Barnes, one from the Fords.
Joe came into the room. “Got something?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m gonna take this bag of cards for evidence. It might help me figure out who in Newpointe knew where Francis’s mother lived.”
“All right, Stan. Just log it in, so we’ll know where it is.”
A uniformed cop came in and said, “Detective Shepherd?”
“Yes,” Stan said.
“Someone from your office is looking for you. They said to tell you that Susan Ford just came out of her coma. She wants to talk to you.”
Stan’s heart leapt. “All right, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“That the woman who survived the shooting?”
“That’s right,” Stan said, dropping the ziplock bag into a paper sack and pulling off his latex gloves. “And she just might be able to tell us who’s doing all this.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Back on the Southshore in the ICU waiting room, Jill woke up and felt the pangs of hunger, the chill of the room, and a slight disorientation. She looked around. Allie was lying two chairs down from her, her vinyl recliner back as far as it would go. She thanked God that Allie was sleeping. She needed rest, and the energy that would come from it.
She stretched and tried to move into a more comfortable position, but there weren’t many choices. Dan, who had been between them when they’d fallen asleep, wasn’t there. She looked around, trying to adjust her eyes to the dim light, to see where he’d gone. Surely he hadn’t gone far—not when he’d promised Mark he wouldn’t leave Allie’s side. Her eyes strayed to the doors marked “Men” and “Women.” He must have gone there.
Closing her eyes, she let her consciousness drift as sleep came back over her.
A while later, she stirred awake again, this time to see Dan ambling slowly back in with a canned drink in his hand. He smiled when he saw that she was awake, and sat back down between Allie and her. Leaning close, he whispered, “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said. “Where’d you get that?”
“In that little kitchenette area over there. I know every nook and cranny of it. There are some stale muffins in there if you want some.”
“No,” she whispered. She didn’t tell him she was fasting. “Is that where you were? I woke up a while ago and you were gone.”
“I was over at that window overlooking that courtyard. I was bored and didn’t want to read because the light might disturb someone. So I took my book out there and read for a while. If anybody had tried to get into the waiting room, they’d have walked right past me, so you and Allie were safe. If I’d stayed in here, I would have just fallen asleep. I promised Mark I’d be alert.”
She lay the side of her head on the back of her recliner, but it wasn’t comfortable, so she shifted again. “Come here,” he whispered. He put his arm around her and guided her head to his shoulder. He was warm, and his uniform had the faint scent of aftershave and a lingering hint of smoke. He’d probably put out a fire today—he must be exhausted. Yet he was willing to give up his sleep to come here and guard Allie. The thought warmed Jill.
It wasn’t long before sleep overtook her again, but this time, instead of cold, she felt the deep, soul-stirring sense of warmth that Dan had given her.
Chapter Forty-Four
Even though it was four-thirty A.M., the security guard at the Slidell Hospital let Stan in as soon as he showed him his identification. Stan rode the elevator to the second floor, where Susan Ford’s room was. The moment he stepped off the elevator he saw Sid, Ray’s brother, sitting in the corridor beside the door, still wearing his Newpointe P.D. uniform.
“How’s it going, Sid?” Stan asked in a low voice, taking Sid’s hand in a casual shake. “I hear she woke up.”
“Yep,” Sid said. “And she got some stuff to say. You ain’t gon’ believe this.”
Stan looked past him into the room and saw Ray sitting on the side of Susan’s bed, holding her hand and kissing it and talking softly to her. Vanessa and Ben stood on the other side, leaning over the rail, their expressions poignant. At the foot of the bed, two nurses spoke softly and recorded pertinent information for her chart.
Stan stepped inside the door and rapped lightly, and Ray looked up.
“Hey, Stan. Thanks for comin’, man. How’d you get here so fast?”
Stan hated to tell him that he’d already been in Slidell because of Francis Bledsoe’s murder. “I was already here working on the case when I got the call,” he said. “I hear she woke up.”
“She sho’ did,” Ray said with a chuckle, then turned back to his wife.
Stan went to the bed rail and looked down into Susan Ford’s face. She had an oxygen mask on and looked frail, but her eyes focused on him as soon as he came into her view.
“Stan.” Her voice was weak, so weak he almost couldn’t hear, so he braced his elbows on the rails and leaned over her. She groped for her mask and pulled it off her face. “Need to…talk to you.”
“She been askin’ for you ever since she woke up,” Ray said softly. “Stan, she remembers gettin’ shot.”
Reluctant hope surged through Stan, and he told himself to stay calm. “What do you remember, Susan?”
“He…he came in…I couldn’t see his face…he was aimin’ for my head, but I swung around and ran—”
“You couldn’t see his face?” Stan asked.
“No…a mask.”
Stan leaned closer, trying to hang on every word. “Mask? Like a Mardi Gras mask?”
“No,” she whispered. “No, not that. Like Ray’s mask. The oxygen mask.”
Stan looked up at Ray, questioning. “What does she mean?”
“The face piece they…wear in fires,” she said before Ray could answer. “Had on that face piece, that mask, and a bunker hood that covered his head.”
Stan looked up at Ray again. “Does she mean…like a fireman’s hood? The mask you wear in fires?”
“Sounds like it,” Ray said.
Stan’s heart was hammering. “Susan, you didn’t see his eyes? Any identifying marks on his body? What he was wearing?”
“Bunker coat,” she said. “I just ran…”
Tears rolled out of her eyes, and Ben wiped them away. “It’s okay, Mama.”
Vanessa turned away and began to sob, and Ray got up to embrace his daughter. “Honey, you want to go out and talk to Uncle Sid?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No, I’m stayin’ with Mama. I wanna hear.”
Susan took her hand and squeezed it. “My baby. Thank goodness…you weren’t home.”
“Put the mask back on, Mama,” Vanessa coaxed. “Please put it back on.”
Susan put the oxygen mask back on and closed her eyes for a moment, resting. Stan stepped back from the bed, his mind racing. So it was a fireman, without a doubt. But which one?
“He cried,” Susan said after a moment, her eyes opening again. r />
Stan wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “He what?”
She pulled the mask down again. “He cried. After he shot me…and I was layin’ there…he thought I was dead…I wanted him to think so…and he cried, and started prayin’.”
“Praying?” Stan asked. “He was praying?”
“Some kind of Catholic prayer, I think,” she said. “He was prayin’ to Mary. Sayin”, “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so sorry.’ I thought…he might have me…mixed up with somebody named Mary…but now I think he was prayin’.”
“Why would he cry?” Vanessa asked, her eyes full of tears. “Why would some maniac shoot my mama and then cry about it?”
“I don’t know,” Stan said.
Ray’s face was confused. “Stan, do you think this killer is one of our firefighters? Somebody I sleep and eat and go to church with?”
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out,” he said.
“Hurry up, will you?”
“I’ll do my best. Look, you can all do me a big favor by keeping quiet about this. If it is a fireman, and I’m not saying it is, we don’t want to start a panic. And we sure don’t want to clue the guy in that we’ve got his number and risk having him disappear.”
“I won’t say nothin’, man,” Ray said. “Look, how’s Mark? I been wantin’ to call, but I been so busy here—”
“He’s gonna be fine. The Lord must’ve had an army of angels around him when he got shot.”
“Him and Susan both.”
Stan squeezed Susan’s hand. “I appreciate your calling me. I needed to know this.”
“You be careful, Stan, you hear?” she whispered.
“I will,” he said. “Now you get some rest.”
He left them all there, then stepped out into the hall. Sid got to his feet. “So what’d you think o’ that?”
“I think it confirms some leads I’ve already gotten,” Stan said quietly. “I didn’t want to believe it was a fireman, but I can’t ignore the evidence. Sid, I didn’t want to tell Ray, but something else has happened.”