She fast-forwarded. When she stopped the recording, the camera was in close-up on Fontenot’s face as she spoke. “—stated in court that you blame Detective Gautier for the accident that put you in a wheelchair.”
“Of course. With a careless brush of his hand,” Fontenot imitated the gesture, “he trapped me forever in this metal prison.”
“Mr. Fontenot, it was the justice system that put you in prison.”
“My dear Reghan. You are smarter than that. I’m not talking about the penitentiary. I’m talking about this damn chair. You know the story. During his
oh-so-daring
rescue of his partner, Maxwell, and his wife, Gautier slammed me against a marble-topped table and broke my spine. I will never walk again. That cretin stole my freedom. But I am not defeated. I have resources I have not even begun to tap.”
“Resources?” her voice queried.
Even now her scalp tightened and her stomach turned in anticipation of what he was about to say.
“I will reach out, Ms. Connor. I am the father, the child, and the spirit. No one can equal me. Your Detective Gautier will suffer much more at my hand than I ever did at his. He will know the hell of watching that which he values most, destroyed.”
She punched the off button and grabbed her purse and keys and headed out to her car, feeling no more sure than she’d been before she’d watched the disk. Fontenot’s words were ominous, yes, and she was certain anyone would view what he’d said as a threat to Dev. But a threat was a far cry from proof.
Maybe once she got to the crime scene and found out if the dead teen was connected with the Johnson Center, she could decide once and for all if Fontenot was behind the killings, or if his prophetic words had been just the ramblings of a maniac.
As she approached the docks of the Port of New Orleans, blue and red flashing lights guided her to the scene. Parking at the top of Alabo Street Wharf, she pushed through the crowd of onlookers to the area cordoned off by yellow tape.
There was a stark, surreal quality to the scene. Spotlights set up by the Crime Scene Unit cut a watery path through the haze off the river, and wispy spirals of steam rose into the relatively cool predawn air, off streets still warm from yesterday’s sun. Flashing strobes lent an eerie old-movie aura to the movements of the crime scene techs as they went about the gruesome business of photographing and cataloguing the murder scene.
She stood there for a moment, just watching, feeling goose bumps rise on her skin as rivulets of sweat trickled between her breasts. The air was heavy and humid, only a shade cooler than hell, and it smelled like fish and rain and automobile exhaust. She, like everyone who’d lived in New Orleans all their lives, had learned to deal with the weather, but had never really gotten used to it.
People shouted back and forth, and every few seconds the sound of another siren split the air as an official vehicle arrived or left. Someone bumped into her from behind. She turned her head, the words “pardon me” automatically forming on her lips, but whoever had jostled her was gone, melting back into the faceless crowd. A fleeting smell of something sweet added an odd undernote to the other smells that wafted on the mist.
Then someone adjusted the beam of a spotlight, and she saw him.
Dev.
Apprehension squeezed the breath out of her. The fact that Detective Givens had called him to the scene gave her the answer she’d been looking for. This dead teenager was also one of Dev’s.
She had no trouble keeping him in sight, even with the ebb and flow of the crowd of rubberneckers. He was a couple of inches taller than everyone around him, his harshly handsome face and confident bearing drawing every eye. Faded black jeans and a black T-shirt under a summer-weight sport coat that looked effortlessly wrinkled were molded to his lean, powerful body. He was standing, hands at his side, looking down. From the grim expression on his face, she knew he was looking at the body. He stood with legs apart, like a warrior prepared for any attack. As she watched, he brushed the tail of his jacket aside and slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. A flash of light on metal drew her eye to his belt, where his New Orleans Police Department detective’s badge was clipped next to the black leather holster that held his service weapon.
Without warning, a memory hit her—the slight scrape of the stiff leather of that holster against her abdomen when it caught a thread on her favorite silk blouse. She clenched her fist, digging her car keys into her palm, using the pain to cleanse the image from her brain. After all this time, after all that had happened, she should be past such a knee-jerk physical reaction to seeing him again.
Just then, he raised his head and looked in her direction, his face starkly planed like a sculpture in the harsh spotlights. The impact of those black, piercing eyes almost buckled her knees. But his gaze paused only for an instant, then moved on, sweeping the crowd.
She swallowed hard and glanced around sheepishly. He hadn’t even noticed her.
A tall, gaunt man with average brown hair and a detective badge pinned to the pocket of his jacket stepped up to Dev. Givens probably. The two of them spoke for a moment, then Dev made a sweeping gesture toward the river. A third man, almost a foot shorter and round with a dark brown comb-over, joined them. He nodded at Dev, then spoke to Givens. Dev took a half-step backward, rubbing the heel of his palm across his forehead, an unconscious gesture that spoke of his exhaustion. His cheeks were shadowed by a day’s growth of beard, and his midnight dark hair bore the furrows of a dozen passes of his fingers.
When he looked back down at the body, something changed in his bearing. It was subtle, but Reghan caught it. His broad shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, his lips compressed, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Watching him triggered a familiar sensation inside her—a hyperawareness that flooded her senses when she was on the scent of a story. Her throat trembled and her fingers tingled. The breeze off the river, the smell of fish and garbage, even the subtle colors barely visible in the gray light of dawn, all intensified. Not only did Dev know the victim, he cared about him.
She had to get closer. She pushed forward and slipped under the yellow tape.
“Hold it, ma’am.”
A large uniformed police officer appeared directly in front of her. Football type, all thick shoulders and beefy arms that stretched the blue material of his shirt. “You need to stay behind the line. In fact—” He turned to address the onlookers. “—all of you need to go home. Excitement’s over.”
Reghan pulled her WACT identification badge out of her purse and held it up.
The officer waved it away impatiently. “You heard me—” he started as his gaze caught the name on her badge. “Hey, I know you,” he said, crossing his muscled arms and glowering down at her. “Aren’t you that reporter who caused all the trouble for Detective Gautier?”
“I’m Reghan Connor with WACT,” Reghan said, giving him her best close-up smile, although inside she groaned. There it was.
The Blue Wall.
She’d slammed into it when she’d begun probing into Dev’s past five months earlier. How could it not matter to the police that Dev’s entire life, even his fake Cajun name, was one big lie? She knew the answer—he was one of their own. She just didn’t understand it. He’d lied to them. Yet to a man, they had closed ranks around Dev to protect him from her. Even the captain, who had been blindsided by her revelations and been put in the position of temporarily suspending Dev until things were resolved, had taken his detective’s side.
Now she was persona non grata with the police department. Hardly fair.
She’d
reported the truth.
He
was the liar.
She lifted her chin and sent the officer her most commanding look. “I need to see Detective Gautier, Officer—” she glanced at his name badge “—Stevens.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught the efficient movements of the crime scene techs. They were pulling a black body bag from their van. If she didn’t make her move now, she’d lose her last chance to get a look at the body.
“No, you don’t,” the officer said. “Now why don’t you—”
Just then, a scrawny kid with a shaved head, several piercings in various places, and a large nick out of one ear pushed another teen into the police tape and jostled Stevens, who whirled, his hand reaching for his nightstick. Reghan took her opportunity. She slipped past him and headed for Dev.
She dreaded speaking to him. She didn’t want to see the hatred in his eyes when he looked at her. She deserved it, she supposed. From her point of view, she’d done a news story, telling the truth about him. But she knew he didn’t see it that way. From his perspective, they’d met three times. The first time they’d flirted, the second time they’d kissed, and the third time she’d ripped open the secrets of his past and torn a hole in his life.
For a second she lost sight of Dev, but as she got closer she realized he’d crouched down to examine the body more closely. When she was within a couple feet of him she stopped, hoping to blend into the background long enough to get a good look at the body. It was a young black man, probably just shy of twenty years old. His clothes were wet, and he had a dirty high-top tennis shoe on one foot. The other foot was bare and—Reghan swallowed hard—the toes were missing.
The photographer crouched next to Dev. “We’re done with this side, Detective,” she said.
Dev snapped a glove onto his left hand. “Then get a good close-up of his neck.” He reached out and gently turned the boy’s head. About one-and-a-half to two inches of flesh was laid open on the left side of the boy’s throat and angled downward. There was no blood, just pink, ragged tissue gaping like an obscene open mouth against his dark skin. Dev’s right hand clenched into a fist against his thigh, telegraphing his tight control.
The camera flashed, throwing the gaping neck wound into sharp focus for an instant. Reghan’s mouth went dry and her ears buzzed. Annie had told her the victim’s throat was slit. But seeing it now, for herself, she felt like she might faint.
This was one of Dev’s homeless kids—she was sure of it. Just like the boy who’d been found the week before. Fontenot’s eerie voice echoed in her head.
Your Detective Gautier will suffer as he made me suffer, but worse, much worse. He will know the hell of watching that which he values most, destroyed.
She must have subconsciously known last week when she’d heard about the first death that another teenager would die, even if she hadn’t wanted to believe Fontenot’s crazy talk. She hadn’t done anything about it then. Her hand went to her mouth as if to muffle the scream of denial she felt pushing at the back of her throat. She couldn’t make the same mistake now.
She must have made a sound, because Dev spun and stood in one fluid motion. He glared at her as he ripped off the glove. “What the hell are you doing here?” he bit out, then angled his head toward the crime scene tech without taking his eyes off her. “Get him bagged and out of here before the scene gets any
more
contaminated.”
Reghan winced. She’d been on the receiving end before of that black, intimidating glare. Back then it had been tinged with haunted pain and a touch of fear. Right now, it was a lethal combination of anger and frustration. “Detective, I need to—”
“Somebody escort Reghan Connor back to wherever she came from,” he said, making it sound as if she’d crawled out from under a particularly slimy rock.
Suddenly Officer Stevens was beside her, wrapping a massive hand around her arm in a punishing grip. Dev started to turn away.
“Wait!” she cried. Desperate not to lose her one chance to talk to him, she caught hold of his wrist. Her fingers barely fit halfway around it, but touching him sent a shiver through her, and called up the smell of soap and coffee and warm skin, and the remembered feel of his hard, erotic kiss.
Dev looked down at her hand, then efficiently twisted out of her grip. “You’re contaminating a crime scene, Connor,” he said coldly. “You should be over there with the rest of the talking heads.” He nodded toward the group of reporters being held back by police. He glanced at Stevens and inclined his own head in that direction.
“Let’s go, Ms. Connor,” Stevens said as he jerked on her arm.
She bit back a yelp of pain, struggling to keep her footing, fighting not to break eye contact with Dev. “Please,” she insisted. “This is important. I have information about the victims.”
Dev’s glare changed almost imperceptibly, a flicker of interest filtering in under the hostile skepticism.
Encouraged, she did her best to stand her ground as Stevens tugged her toward the police tape. She craned her neck and managed to hold Dev’s gaze. When he ran his hand around the back of his neck and shook his head, as if arguing with himself, triumph swelled her heart.
“Hold up,” he said to Stevens. “I’ll handle her. Break up the crowd and get the rest of the reporters out of here.”
Dismissing Stevens with a toss of his head, Dev glowered down at Reghan, his black eyes burning into hers, daring her to waste his time. “This better be good, Connor,” he growled. “In fact, it better be spectacular.”
Chapter Two
Standing so close to Dev, Reghan saw that while he’d lost weight since the last time she’d seen him, the haunted bitterness that had clung to him like a shadow even when he’d smiled was gone. Now he only looked overworked and angry.
As if feeling her scrutiny, he took a step backward, putting distance between them. He folded his arms in resignation. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“I know you knew both victims,” she said. “Personally.”
He didn’t move a muscle, but he went on full alert. She could see it in the straining tendons in his neck and the tightening of his mouth. He leaned in toward her and turned his head away from the crowd of reporters. “Who told you about that?”
She waved a hand in the reporters’ direction. “I’m not the only one who’s heard that.”
“How? Somehow I don’t picture you hunched over a police scanner waiting for a story to break,” he observed dryly, his gaze sliding from her hair down her face and neck, to the front of her thin cotton blouse, down her jeans all the way to her toes, and back up.