“Are you refusing to...to work for me?” Wendy asked.
“No, of course not. I’ll continue on your case. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything. I think your husband is honest and upright, and I’d hate for him to find out you don’t trust him.”
“In one set of pictures you gave me, he was with a woman,” Wendy said.
“Wendy, he was with a man and a woman. They had folders out on the table; I believe it was a business meeting.”
“He’s a teacher.”
“Yes, and he helps students decide where to go for college, he helps their parents when they’re trying to figure out how to pay for college. Wendy, he didn’t leave with the couple. The couple left together, and the man’s arm was around the woman’s shoulder.”
“And you don’t know who the couple were? What kind of an investigator are you?”
Dan sighed. “I can use some contacts and see if I can find out who they were. You’re afraid your husband is cheating on you. Well, he wasn’t cheating on you with that woman. I didn’t know you wanted dossiers on all his students and their parents and every bartender or server he ever spoke nicely to in a restaurant.”
“There is something up,” Wendy whispered.
“Wendy, he isn’t cheating. He’s at school. I’ve followed him every other place he’s been. He simply heads home at night. Sometimes he does go to a restaurant. He eats. You should end this before it goes badly. Do you really want him to possibly discover you hired me because you don’t trust him?”
Wendy stood, somewhat indignant. “You’re paid not to let him know.”
Dan shook his head. “He won’t know from me. That’s not the point.”
“He told me he had some kind of a business meeting, something that might bring a lot of good into our lives. But he wouldn’t tell me what it was. He was so silly about it. Then he was just... I don’t know...weird. And then he said he wanted to forget all of it.”
“Maybe it was just a bad opportunity, and he felt weird about it,” Dan said wearily.
“A week, just another week,” Wendy said.
Dan knew he was good at what he did. Nathan Lawrence would never know he had been watched and followed. Dan didn’t need this client. He was solvent; he had money in the bank. But he did do this for a living—as much as he was coming to loathe it—and Wendy did pay her bills.
He was nodding as his phone rang. He had his cell on silent, but it was vibrating on his desk.
Ryder was calling him. Detective Ryder Stapleton, NOPD.
“Excuse me. I have to take this,” he told Wendy. It was probably a social call, as Ryder was a friend, but it could also be something more interesting.
She nodded and rose to leave. “One more week. I’ll pay Marleah on the way out.”
She headed to the door to exit his office. He watched her go, wondering for a moment just how he had managed to do this to himself. He’d been a good detective with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement once upon a time.
And he’d let bitterness over a case cause him to resign. Well, here he was—a licensed private investigator. Following errant husbands and wives, looking for rebellious teens and dealing with the emotional baggage of humanity.
Ryder was his one salvation: his longtime friend asked him in on a case now and then as a consultant for the New Orleans PD.
“Hey. Tell me you need me. Please, I’m begging you,” he said into the phone.
Ryder was silent for a moment. “I need you.” He seemed to be taking a deep breath before plunging in. “Dan, it’s happened here. I need you to meet me in the Marigny.”
“What’s happened here?”
“A bloodbath. Like the case you had in Florida. I don’t know much yet. We’ve just arrived. A family, Dan. An old man and an old woman and their health-care worker. All slashed up, hard to tell where one body leaves off and... We’re still waiting on the medical examiner, can’t touch them until he’s here, but when I saw this... Well, I thought of you.”
A stab of lightninglike pain streaked through Dan.
He’d left Florida six years ago over just such a case. They’d had the killer, he’d been certain. But in court, everything had gone to hell. They just hadn’t had enough tangible evidence.
The man had walked free despite Dan believing he’d killed more than once. The guy maintained he’d been a survivor of a brutal attack on a boat—one that killed his wife and best friends, six years earlier.
But then he just happened to be around when very similar murders were committed a mere two hundred miles north of where the first murders had taken place.
He’d claimed he’d moved to Orlando to get away from the horrible memories and therefore couldn’t help but be in the city where the next group of people had been heinously hacked up with an axe and a blade. But it was too much of a coincidence for Dan to ignore.
Calabria. George Calabria. The man said they’d been attacked, and he’d fallen overboard while his wife and others were murdered. He hadn’t known who had attacked him—“a large, dark, shadowy figure from behind.” He’d barely escaped with his own life, falling into the water when he’d been slammed in the head, and then somehow surfacing, maybe semiconscious, and he eventually made it to shore.
There had supposedly been another couple on the boat.
Where was this couple, and who were they?
Some new friends. Out-of-towners they’d recently met. Killed and thrown into the water, according to his story. Or maybe one of them was the killer.
But it was all so far-fetched and suspicious.
Dan was already standing, ready to rush out the door.
“I’m coming.”
“Slow down, Dan. I know this has happened similarly twice before, in Florida. But you need to understand, this is New Orleans. I’m not sure what you know about history here, but we had the infamous Axeman of New Orleans in 1919. And you know media today. They are going to start saying the Axeman is back. The guy that killed everyone back in—”
“1918 to 1919.”
“Uh, right, I think. The point is the city will be in a panic. If you know anything on this, which I’m guessing you do—”
“I know what we can look for... Who we can look for.”
“Okay, maybe. So I need you here. Now.”
“I’m on my way. Text me the exact address. Ryder, you have to make me real on this case.”
“I’m on it with my bosses. But it can be tricky. They like it better when you’re hired by a victim’s family, you know.”