Violets are Blue

I didn't have answers to her questions or my own. No one did, unfortunately. So we sat in the car, tried to keep cool in the heat, and waited for Daniel and Charles to make their next move.

If they were so careful and so good, then why did we know about them, why were we here?

Chapter 69

William found this laughable. God, it was good! Priceless. He was watching the police as they in turn watched the house of horrors owned by Daniel and Charles. It was too much. The young prince walked down LaSalle, puffing on a cigarette, haughty, confident, unafraid of anyone, superior in every way he could imagine. Michael was sleeping, so he had decided to take a stroll.

This was rich. Maybe he would see one of the local celebrities who lived in the Garden District. Like the fabulous Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, or some asshole from MTV's Real Worldhouse in the Big Easy.

There were two nondescript Lincolns parked on the street. He wondered if the magicians had noticed the cars. He smiled, shook his head. He wondered what the hell Daniel and Charles were thinking. They would be careful, of course.

They had been committing murders for a long time, years and years. So now what? Something had to give.

He continued to the end of the block, then walked south. Most of the houses here had screened-in porches crawling with vines. Along the way, he saw a fine physical specimen — a male, twenty-one or so, shirt off, pecs gleaming with sweat. That picked up his spirits. He was hosing down a silver BMW convertible, the James Bond car.

His chiseled body, the spurting water hose, and the shiny car turned William on like a light switch. But he controlled himself and walked on.

And then, just down the street, he saw a young girl. She was maybe fourteen, sitting on her front porch, gently stroking a Persian cat. She was pretty, even sultry.

The girl had long brown hair that flowed down to her small breasts. A diaphanous snakeskin-print top over a belly-length tank top. Tight, dark blue jeans, hip hugging and flared just right. Stud and hoop earrings, both gold and silver. Toe rings. Bracelets of multiple colors on one slender arm. A typical teenager — except that she was so stu

William stopped and called out to her. "Your cat is beautiful," he said, and smiled wickedly.

She looked up, and he saw that she had the same piercing green eyes as the Persian. The girl ran her eyes all over him. He could actually feel her gaze against his skin. He knew that she wanted him. Men and women always did.

"Why do you hold back?" he asked, and continued to smile. "If you want something, then you should take it. Always. That's your lesson for the day, free of charge."

"Oh, and you're a teacher?" she called from the porch. "You don't look like any teacher I've ever had."

"A teacher, but also a student."

He had desire for this girl. Not only was she a beautiful physical specimen, she had good instincts. She was sexual and knowing for her age. She used her gifts, unlike most young people, who wasted their talent and potential. She wouldn't speak again, wouldn't even smile, but she didn't look away either.

William loved her confidence, the way her bright green eyes tried to mock him but couldn't quite do it. The way she thrust her small breasts at him, her only weapons. He wanted to go up on the porch and take the beautiful girl right there. Bite her, drink her. Spill her blood all over the whitewashed wooden planks.

No. Not now, not yet, not here. God, he hated this, hated not being himself. He wanted to exercise his power, to use his gifts.

Finally, William began to walk away. It took all his will, all his power, to leave this beautiful prize sitting so invitingly on the porch.

It was then that the girl finally spoke again. "Why do you hold back?" she called, and laughed pitilessly.

William smiled, and then he turned around.

He walked back toward the girl.

"You're very lucky," he said. "You've been chosen."

Chapter 70

Something had to break for us. At seven in the morning, I sat alone at a table outside the Cafe Du Monde across from Jackson Square. I ate sugar-dusted beignets and sipped chickory-laced coffee. I stared off in the direction of the spires of St. Louis Cathedral and listened to the bleating horns of riverboats coming down the Mississippi.

It should have been a nice time in the morning, except that I was frustrated and angry and filled with energy that I didn't know what to do with.

I had seen a lot of bad cases, but this was possibly the most difficult to comprehend. The gruesome murders had been going on for more than eleven years, but the pattern was still unclear and so was the motivation of the killers.

As soon as I reached the FBI offices, I got the disturbing news that a fifteen-year-old girl was missing and that she lived less than six blocks from the magicians. It was possible that she was a runaway, but it didn't seem likely to me. Still, she had been gone less than twenty-four hours.

There was a briefing scheduled, and I went upstairs to find out more, and also why I hadn't been alerted earlier. When I entered the session that morning, I sensed the frustration everywhere I looked. It was hard to imagine a worse result: We suspected that we had tracked down the murderers, but there was nothing we could do about it. And now, possibly, they had murdered another victim right under our noses.

I sat down beside Jamilla. Both of us had containers of hot coffee plus the morning edition of the Times-Picayune. There was nothing about the missing girl. Apparently the New Orleans police had sat on the disappearance until early that morning.

Kyle was as angry as I'd ever seen him. He just wasn't himself. He was storming about the front of the room, his right hand nervously combing back through his dark hair. I didn't blame him — everything about the investigation depended on cooperation between the local police and the FBI. The NOPD had broken that trust, broken it badly.

"For once, I sympathize with Mr. Craig," Jamilla said. "The locals were way out of line."

"We could have been working on the girl's disappearance for hours," I agreed. "What a mess, and it's getting worse."

"Maybe that's our opportunity. I wonder if we could get inside the house during the party tonight. What do you think? I'd love to give it a try," she whispered. "Everybody who comes to the so-called fetish ball will be in costume, right? Presumably? Somebody needs to get inside that house. We need to do something."

Kyle stared directly at Jamilla and me. He raised his voice. "Can we have one meeting?"

''He means can he have his meeting," she whispered. I wondered why she had taken such a dislike to Kyle. He was acting strange, though; the pressure of the case was getting to him. Something had him on edge.

"Tell him what you think," I said. "He'll listen. Especially now that the girl is missing."

"I doubt it. But what can he do — fire me?"

She swiveled around to face Kyle. "I think we could probably get inside the house tonight during the party. And if we don't, what do we lose? The missing girl might be in there."

Kyle hesitated, but then he said, "Do it. Let's see what's in the house."