Last Known Victim

“Riley, wait!”

He stopped, turned. She hurried toward him. “You forgot again.”

“Forgot-”

“My phone number. Got a pen?”

He did, in his jacket pocket. He held it out. “But I don’t have any paper.”

She took the pen. “I don’t need it.”

She caught his hand, turned it over and jotted her cell phone number in his palm.

He stared at it a moment, looking startled. Then he laughed. “Okay, then. Got it.”

She turned to walk away; this time he stopped her. “What?” she asked.

“My pen.”

“Sorry.” She held it out. He took it, then grabbed her hand. He flipped it palm up and jotted down his number.

She met his gaze, surprised.

“Now we’re even.” He walked away, not glancing back until he had reached the stairs. “Thursday night,” he called, “six to eight.”

Then he disappeared from view.

44

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

4:10 p.m.

Patti had grown up in the Bywater area of the city. When she and Sammy married, they’d bought a Creole cottage not far from her childhood home.

They had lovingly restored that cottage, pla

Located just down river from the French Quarter, Bywater was a solid, middle-class neighborhood. Neither as historic nor upscale as its nearest residential neighbor, the Faubourg Marigny, it had boasted an active and committed resident community and had begun to experience a sort of renaissance-before Katrina hit.

Floodwaters had battered the neighborhood-and permanently changed its dynamic. Some residents had rebuilt. Some had sold and moved on. And some remained indecisive still, two years out. Those properties sat, cleaned, gutted and boarded over, a terrible reminder of the past.

More horrible for Patti than for most. A daily reminder of her personal loss, an a.m. and p.m. kick in the gut.

“Nice place,” Yvette said, dropping her purse on the overstuffed couch.

“Thanks.”

“Didn’t you flood here?”

“We did.” Water had breached the west side of the Industrial Canal, inundating all but the properties closest to the Mississippi. Her and Sammy’s cottage sat closer to the river than others in the neighborhood. “But only twelve inches. We were lucky.”

Lucky. Only twelve inches of water in her home. Only her husband murdered. Life altered forever.

“You rebuilt, anyway.”

“Where else was I going to go? My life is here.”

Yvette gazed at her, brow furrowed in thought. As if studying an alien life form.

How did you explain family, roots and history to a twenty-two-year-old who, as far as she could tell, didn’t even own a pet? Instead, she asked Yvette about herself. “Why are you still here?”

She shrugged. “The French Quarter was high and dry. I was able to move up to the Hustle. I figured, why start over?”

In a way, they’d stayed for the same reason.

“I thought we should set some ground rules,” Patti said.

“Ground rules?” she repeated, arching her eyebrows. “Like what? Being in bed by ten, up by nine? No smoking?”

“This arrangement is to keep you safe. To that end, we stick together. Where you go, I go. And vice versa.”

“The bathroom?” Yvette folded her arms across her chest. “Do you watch me pee? Shower? I’ve never been under house arrest before.”

“You’ll have your own bathroom. And your own bedroom, as well. I suggest you sleep with your door open. I also insist you keep the window locked. You do what I say. Always.”

“Isn’t this going to be fun? Just like a girlfriend sleepover.”

Patti frowned at her sarcasm. “You don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of this situation.”

“Oh, I grasp it all right. There’s a maniac out there who’s killing people. And for some reason, he’s become obsessed with me. Lucky me.”

Patti cocked an eyebrow at the “Oh, well” simplicity of the response. It seemed to her that Yvette didn’t have a clue how fragile life was-or how fleeting it could be.

And that death, when it came, was quite final.

She tried another approach. “This is a business arrangement. I’m paying you a lot of money to follow my rules. If you choose not to, legally I can’t stop you. But I can’t protect you then, either. And you’ll have negated our deal. Ultimately it’s your choice.”

Yvette held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded.

“Good. Your bedroom is the second room on the right. Maybe you want to get settled in?”

She said she did and started in that direction. Patti called out, stopping her. “And Yvette?” The young woman looked back at her. “No smoking in the house.”

45

Thursday, May 10, 2007

12:15 p.m.

Stacy stood in the doorway of the tidy little kitchen, gazing down at what had once been a woman named Alma Maytree. A neighbor had called, worried over the incessant yapping of the woman’s dog-and because they hadn’t seen “Miss Alma” in several days.

Miss Alma had been eighty-two years old. A sweet old lady who had loved her baby-as she’d called her dog, Sissy-and had been kind to all her neighbors. Even the ones who didn’t deserve it.

The neighbor who’d contacted the police had feared she’d had a heart attack. Or fallen and been unable to get up.

It was much worse than that.

Someone had bashed in the right side of her head. She had fallen face first onto the white tile floor, leaving quite a mess. She wore a baby-blue chenille robe and slippers. What looked like a floral nightgown peeked out from underneath. A cast-iron frying pan lay on the floor, only inches from the body.

“The old ‘iron skillet to the head’ method. Works every time,” Baxter said.

Stacy glanced at him. “No question about the murder weapon, that’s for certain.”

“I haven’t seen one of those in ages.” Rene snapped on latex gloves. “My grandmother cooked with nothing but. Brings back memories.”

“She ever hit you in the head with one?”

He gri

The first officer had cordoned off the area around the apartment’s entrance. A dozen or so of the building’s tenants clustered just beyond, staring and whispering. One of them had offered to take care of Sissy, an offer Stacy had jumped on. A couple of officers were in the process of questioning them and their neighbors.

“Any luck finding an apartment?” Rene asked, squatting down beside the victim.

Stacy followed suit. She had made the mistake of inquiring about an apartment to several of her fellow officers. Suddenly everybody knew her business.

“One I’d want to live in? Not hardly.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Hardly.”

“If you ask me-”

“I’m not.”

“-maybe you should tough it out with Malone? He’s a jerk, but he’s okay.”

“That makes no sense at all, you know that.”

“I’m a guy. It makes perfect sense.”

“Could we please give Miss Alma here our full attention? I think she deserves it.”

“She’d dead, Killian. I don’t think she knows the difference.”

She ignored him. “Pan was definitely the weapon.” She indicated the blood, hair and other matter, probably bits of flesh and bone, clinging to its right side and bottom.

“He didn’t hit her square.”

“He was taller. Right-handed, obviously.” A left-handed killer, striking from behind, would have struck the victim on the left.

“How do you figure he was taller?”

Stacy stood and crossed to the large cabinet closest to the oven. She opened it and, as she expected, found Alma Maytree’s pots and pans. She selected one of a similar size to the one on the floor.

She motioned one of the crime techs over, a woman several inches shorter than she. “Stand right there.”