Keeping Watch Read online

  Adelaide tried to relax on the bench as the boat puttered forward. She was safe now. They were safe and alive.

  She pulled in a deep breath and realized how cold she felt all over. She was partly responsible for a man’s death. There was blood on her hands. Granted, it had been shed by an alligator, but it was still on her hands.

  Chapter Nine

  Royce crossed the briefing room feeling like a new man, without the layer of bayou sludge on his skin, and all of his limbs firmly attached.

  He paused in front of the large whiteboard cluttered with the information to date on Missy Stuart and Wendy Davis.

  A knot wound in his stomach as he scanned the photos of the crime scenes. They were ugly, but so was the fact that he had the mirror sketches upstairs locked in his desk drawer. He had an obligation to share that information. And soon.

  “Care to speculate?” Detective Hicks asked from next to him.

  “They’re both posed in the same position. Both have the index finger of their right hand pointing in some direction. It’s got to be a message of some kind. Can you calculate their GPS positioning and draw a line away from their bodies?”

  “You should be running lead on this one.”

  He glanced over at Hicks. “I’ve got my hands full just trying to keep myself and Miss Charboneau breathing.”

  “I heard about your foray in the swamp this morning. Any idea who the crazy was driving the boat?”

  “If the gator left anything, we’ll get an ID.”

  “I’ll plug the coordinates into the computer. Who knows, we could catch a break and find out what they’re pointing to.”

  “Thanks.” Royce listened to Hicks retreat and refocused his attention on the board. Adelaide’s only viable link to the dead women was the fact that she’d drawn the sketches beforehand. The same sketches her abductor had burned in an attempt to destroy her along with them, but was that enough to bring Danbury in on her secret? A secret just crazy enough to get her fired. He didn’t want to do that.

  Dread darkened his mood and left him feeling uneasy. He thought about her sitting upstairs in her office with an officer posted outside her door. She was safe for now and until there was a finite connection, he planned to wait it out. Besides, she didn’t have any information that wasn’t already in play.

  Chief Danbury entered the room through the side door, followed by Officer Brooks and a couple of serious-looking guys in suits.

  FBI?

  Royce walked over, pulled out a chair at the table and sat down next to Detective Hicks, who was busy setting up his laptop. It was never good to surrender jurisdiction, but he could almost make a case for it now, if it helped nail the sick bastard before another girl died.

  “Good afternoon,” the chief said as the men all settled into their chairs on the opposite side of the table.

  A collective response rumbled through the room.

  “I’ve decided to bring in FBI Agent Craig Wilson and Special Agent John Petross, borrowed from their Behavioral Science division at Quantico. They’re stationed at the bureau in Baton Rouge, and picked up on these two cases because they bear a strong likeness to an open case in their neck of the woods.”

  Royce’s hearing went on alert, and he sat forward in his chair, feeling the first niggling of caution work through his system.

  “I’ll turn it over to them now, so they can brief you on the details.” The chief opened his notepad and picked up his pen.

  Special Agent Wilson flipped open a file folder and retrieved a stack of photographs. “Last July we encountered a series of murders in the Baton Rouge area.” He sent the handful of pictures to the left around the table. “Five women were killed in the course of a month, then it stopped just like that. We believe the killer or killers left our area.”

  “Any leads on who might have committed the crimes?” Hicks asked as he shuffled through the photographs.

  “We believe there was more than one perpetrator, but the connection between our case and yours is the posing of the bodies, the drug used to kill them and the circle of salt around them. We were never able to determine what its significance was, but there’s some sort of ritual involved.”

  The hair on the back of Royce’s neck bristled. “What about a common denominator among the women?”

  “They were all around the same age, twentysomething, but all from various walks of life.”

  Hicks slid the photos to him and he picked them up, staring at each one in detail. Women with their hair spread out around their faces, women with their eyes wide open, and the index finger of their right hand pointed in an unknown direction, and the circle of salt around them.

  “Did you ever GPS the alignment of the bodies to see if they intersected anywhere?”

  “As a matter of fact, we did. Here’s the resulting image.” Agent Wilson shoved a map across the table to him.

  Royce picked it up and stared at it, feeling his pulse rate climb like a rocket ship gearing up for the moon.

  Dots to the north, south, east and west, and a single dot in the center where the lines intersected.

  “Who was killed first?”

  “Jenny McNicholes. We found her on the north side of town in a marsh. Vivian Chase was next on the south end of the line. The other two girls to the east and west, respectively, all of them placed at the same distance from the center.”

  “And the woman in the center?”

  “Patricia Reed. We didn’t put the murders together until after the fact. She was being stalked, and the MO was different.”

  “What did she do for a living?” Royce asked, trying to put together a puzzle of his own.

  “Miss Reed was an art teacher at a local high school, and moonlighted for the police as a sketch artist. The local authorities assumed she’d upset a perpetrator she’d drawn, and that got her killed.”

  Another Beholder? Royce worked to suck in a breath, letting the information cement in his brain.

  “We’ve got a similar situation here, Agent. Our sketch artist is being tormented.” Chief Danbury stared across the table at Royce. “I put Detective Beckett in charge of securing her safety. He’s done a hell of a job so far, but it hasn’t been without its challenges.”

  “How did she die?” Royce asked, caution creeping into his thoughts. Forewarned was forearmed, and he’d use any means at his disposal to protect his Beholder. Even his own life if necessary.

  “The police found her in the trunk of a car in another county. Her throat had been cut, and oddly enough she had a patch of hair missing from the back of her head. We never found it. The car was traced as stolen, and we didn’t find a single piece of usable forensics. The case is still open with the Baton Rouge PD, and we’re stumped about motive. None of the information regarding the intersecting lines of the crime scenes was ever released to the media.”

  The air sucked out of the room. Royce put his hands down on the table for stability. The sketch of Adelaide in the car trunk surfaced in the front of his mind, and he couldn’t release it. History could repeat itself if he didn’t stay vigilant.

  “We’ll exchange case details. Maybe there’s something we missed.” Agent Wilson fingered the crime-scene photographs and put them back into his folder. “Special Agent Petross is on assignment in Baton Rouge from our Behavioral Science unit at Quantico, Virginia. He put together a working profile. I’ll turn the discussion over to him.”

  Royce pulled the small notebook out of his front shirt pocket along with a pen, wondering if anyone would notice him scribbling the phrase nut job on an entire page. It wasn’t going to help the case, but it certainly described the type of individual or individuals capable of committing such heinous crimes.

  Agent Petross picked up a stack of papers from in front of him, took one and passed the remainder around the table. “This is a synopsis of my profile in the Baton Rouge case. I found the similarities to your case are an exact mirror. Feel free to jump in with questions or comments as I go through it.”

&
nbsp; Royce stared down at the bullet points, realizing they did superimpose over their case. The information didn’t sit well with him; it got up, and crawled down inside him.

  “We don’t believe the killings were perpetrated by a single individual. The logistics of the remote to semiremote crime scenes, the posing of the bodies, the intersection of the crime locations to a single fixed point all suggest some sort of ritualistic meaning to the murders. We suspect an organization, or cult—”

  “What about a voodoo sect?” Royce glanced up at Agent Petross. “A sect that has strayed off traditional nonlethal practices, and taken to dark magic.”

  “We didn’t rule that out, but if it’s a sect that has gone rogue, they’ve never been documented.”

  Were they dealing with a voodoo sect that had yet to be identified? Or an amalgamation of sects, bent on destroying the Beholder? He liked the second option best.

  “This mastermind has a God complex. Remember he’s able to direct his followers to participate in murder—he’s got a hell of a persuasive personality. He’ll appear friendly to all those he comes in contact with, but it’s a mask he wears so the world will accept him. He’s controlling. He’ll be in his mid- to late fifties, without a wife or children, but only because anyone who gets close to him is unable to deal with his overblown ego and strange behavior. That’s where his followers come in. They see him as powerful, secretive, able to help them indulge their most primal desires.”

  Caution crept through Royce, caution and concern for Adelaide. It was all beginning to make sense in a sick sort of way. She was the Beholder at the center. The ultimate link and the ultimate target.

  “That’s what we’re up against, folks, so don’t hesitate to contact my office 24/7. The more we learn about these killings, the better our chances of tracking down the people who are responsible. We’ll be here for the rest of the afternoon if you have questions, or better yet, answers.”

  Royce nudged Hicks and leaned toward him. “Can you do that cross-check on the two crime scenes, see if they line up?”

  “Sure.”

  Royce watched Hicks pull up a map of the city and outlying areas. He entered the GPS coordinates for both murders and hit the calculate button. “They’re in perfect alignment to one another.”

  “Look at that.” Royce clamped his teeth together as he stared at the intersecting line between the scene on the north and the scene on the south. The straight line between them crossed over Adelaide’s house on Saint Charles Avenue. Tension steeled his body, cranking down his muscles to the point of pain. There was only one question in his mind. One last definitive link between Adelaide and Patricia Reed. “Tell me, Agent Wilson, was Patricia Reed adopted?”

  “Yes. We followed that information, but came up empty.”

  “She’s his target, Hicks. Adelaide Charboneau is at the center of some wacko sect’s obsession, and she’s adopted.”

  “Have you got something, Beckett?” Chief Danbury moved around the table and leaned over to stare at Hicks’s laptop screen.

  “Beckett’s right. The coordinates intersect across Miss Charboneau’s house. And she has been the target of numerous attacks and attempts on her life.”

  “Use her house as a reference point, draw a line away from it, one due east, one due west.” Royce swallowed and prayed they could catch a break.

  Hicks typed in the information, and a single intersecting line appeared on the map.

  “Use the existing distance coordinate we have from her home to the other scenes, and see where it ends up on the east and west.”

  Royce watched two more dots pop up on the screen. He leaned back in his chair, feeling his first wave of hope in days. “If they follow the pattern set in the Baton Rouge case, we could use it to catch them. The next victim will be found on the east side of the city. We have the coordinates. We’ll stake it out. Catch them when they try to dump the body.”

  The room charged with palpable energy; it vibrated through him, making him almost giddy.

  One by one the investigators milled around the laptop, staring at the image, contemplating a plan of action. Even Agents Wilson and Petross took a cursory look.

  “What’s out there, Hicks?” Danbury asked, returning to his chair on the opposite side of the table.

  “Looks like it’s just off General Meyer Avenue in Algiers. Let me pull up a topographical. There’s a park at those coordinates. I’ll get the exact address.”

  Royce looked up at the chief. “Have there been any reports of missing or abducted women?”

  “None.”

  “Good. Maybe we can get in front of this thing before anyone else dies.” But there was only one thing he wanted to get in front of right now, and she was upstairs. How much of this new information could he give her without scaring her even further?

  “I’m beat, Chief. It’s been a hell of a day.”

  “Go on, get out of here. Take Miss Charboneau to a nice supper. We booked you at the Sheraton on Canal for the night. The French Quarter safe house won’t be ready until tomorrow.” The chief reached into his front shirt pocket, pulled out a key and slid it across the table. “Don’t trash this one, we’re about out.”

  Royce suppressed a chuckle. Under all his gruffness, Chief Danbury had a heart of gold. “Thanks.”

  He stood up and pushed in his chair. “Hey, Hicks. Nice work.”

  “You, too.” Hicks went back to staring at the computer screen and Royce headed upstairs, wanting to see Adelaide in the worst way. The discovery of the Baton Rouge case was something he hadn’t seen coming.

  How was Adelaide going to react when he told her she wasn’t the only Beholder on the planet?

  Realization charged up an old memory buried in the back of his mind, of a shoe box filled with disturbing pencil drawings sketched by his five-year-old adopted sister, Kimberly, twenty-nine years ago, of the box being scuttled away by his worried parents, and hidden in the attic. Was it possible she was a Beholder, too?

  A month later, Kimberly was abducted, and found wandering in the French Quarter three days later, unharmed physically, but never the same girl. He knew that because he’d found the shoe box as a college freshman, looking for leftovers to furnish his dorm room.

  Royce took the stairs, unnerved by the memory. He’d have to follow up with a trip out to his parents’ house for confirmation that the box still existed.

  He made the landing and walked down the corridor to Adelaide’s office, where the uniformed officer nodded and stepped aside. Royce knocked on the door. “Come in.”

  Pushing it open, he was hit by the overwhelming smell of peppermint.

  “Hey.” She looked up at him from over the top of a sketch pad and smiled.

  Royce closed the door and pulled up a chair across from her, glancing at the candle in the middle of the table. “So this is how you kick back?”

  “Yeah. You’d be doing yourself a favor if you inhaled a bit more relaxing peppermint into your lungs, too. After this morning’s near-death experience in the bayou, you could use some R & R.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “A little something for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” His curiosity bubbled up. “Can I see it?”

  “You already have, sort of.” She put down her pencil and tore off the sheet. “I figured that I’d try to make him older, get him closer to what he might look like now.”

  She handed the sheet across the table to him. “I’ll help you comb through mug books if you’d like.”

  Royce stared at the drawing, at the face of the man he remembered from Kimberly’s abduction. “Thanks. I might take you up on the offer.”

  He casually put the sketch down on the table, but his hand trembled as he pulled it back. “There’s been a new development in the case.”

  Her eyes widened and she leaned forward. “Tell me…I mean, if you can. I know I’m not a detective, but I do work for this department.”

  “Our two victims aren’t the only ones in t
he state.”

  Adelaide frowned, her eyes narrowing. “That’s bad.”

  “Last year in Baton Rouge four women were killed, same posed right arm, hand and finger. Same cause of death, and all ringed in salt. The FBI worked the case and came up with some interesting conclusions.”

  “Same guy?” Her features tightened.

  “Same group. They believe it’s not the work of a single individual. But there’s more.” He trained his gaze on her.

  “A fifth victim. A victim they were able to put geographically in the center of the murders. Based on her personal information, I believe she could have been a Beholder. She was adopted, Adelaide, just like you.”

  Her gaze riveted on his, her skin going colorless under the overhead light. “Another Beholder? I never considered there might be others out there like me.”

  He stretched his hand across the table to her. She took it without hesitation.

  “It looks like it takes some doing for a Beholder to survive the inquisition and subsequent slaughter.”

  Her observation made sense to him. Hiding them out in the open. Visible, but invisible. It was brilliant. “That’s why your mother dressed you all in blue. She knew she had to protect you, give you a fighting chance.” He squeezed her hand, watching her eyes go misty like fog rolling in off the ocean.

  Reaching up with his other hand, he cupped her cheek, feeling the softness of her skin against his palm. In a hypnotic gaze he was helpless to break, he studied the intricacies of her face, of the easy way her lips bowed in a sweet smile.

  He wanted to reach across the table and pull her against him. Only the edge of the tabletop thrust against his solar plexus made him pull back.

  He was her protector; he needed to act like one.

  Royce reluctantly broke his hold on her. “What time do we get in to see the professor?”

  “I couldn’t get an appointment until tomorrow morning, after his faculty meeting. We’re seeing him at ten.”

  “Good, then we’ve got time to run over to Spells-4-U for a visit with Miss Marie.”

  “Spells-4-U?”