Artist (9 page)

Dupond finally gave in and loosened his belt. “Okay, I’m supposed to be training you and showing you the ropes. I’m going to tell you the truth. A lot of this is just trusting your instincts and following things where they lead you. From what I’ve seen, you have good instincts and the truth is we’re working what we have. You learn some things from experience, learn how to play the odds. If a woman gets killed you look at her husband. A guy gets killed you look at the wife. That’s statistics and you use them. But a case like this? No. You just have to plug away, cover all the bases as best you can, and let things develop.”

He signaled the waiter for the check, paid, turning away Cassie’s offer to split it, and stood up. “Come on. Let’s take a walk a
round the quarter and burn some of this off.”

The French Quarter was just gearing up for the night. Dupond wanted to stop in and listen to jazz in one of the clubs. An hour later
, they were strolling down Bourbon Street and an hour after that they were on their way home. Cassie’s car was still at the station.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Dupond offered. She gave in. The trip back was quiet. He walked her to her door, stepped back when she opened the lock.

“Eight O’clock, then?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Cassie said. He turned to leave.

“Kurt?” Cassie said. She was suddenly afraid. He turned back. She stepped forward, kissing him fully on the lips. “Thanks,” she said. “I really needed that. I had a great time.” She stepped inside and shut the door. Dupond drove home, thinking about oysters, and murder, and the way it felt when a pretty girl’s hips rubbed against yours.

There were six foreign exchange students on the list. Cassie took them one at a time. The first was an Indian. She eliminated
him on sight. Schumaker would have mentioned him being an obvious foreigner with his skin tone and heavy accent. Number Two was more promising. Charles Roy was from England. When he opened the door to the dorm room Cassie’s first thought was that he was perfect, average height, medium build, and English. When he spoke though, it was with a deep English accent that was unmistakable. Unless he was some kind of genius with his voice, it would be impossible to hide. Anyway, he had an alibi for both Kelt and Maro, unless the roommate was lying.

Number T
hree was African and Cassie scratched him off the list. The fourth turned out to be a girl, despite her listing on the class roster. That left two. The fifth visit was more promising. Richard Wiltz was twenty-five, a History Student. He opened the door to his dorm with a confused look on his face. Cassie identified herself and asked to come in.

“What’s this about?” Wiltz asked.

Cassie explained herself, trying to pass it off as routine. “We’re talking to as many people in the History Department as we can. It will just take a few minutes.” She noticed his transcript said he was English but she detected no trace of an accent.

“Uh, I guess so. Do I need a lawyer? I can call my Dad.”

“No. We’re just asking around.” She took a picture of Jill Chaisson from her bag. “Do you know this girl? Take a close look.”

He took the picture from her, looked at it, handed it back. “Sure. I can’t remember her name but she was in one of my classes last semester, or the semester before. I remember her because she was always walking around carrying a big bag with brushes and stuff in it. She the one get killed?”

Cassie nodded. “Yes. Listen, can I come in? I’d really like to talk to you.”

Wiltz didn’t seem to happy about it but he finally let her in. The place reeked of pot, which explained his reluctance to let the police in.

“First off,” Cassie said, “I don’t care about anything but finding the guy that killed this girl. I could care less about the pot I smell in here. Let’s get that straight. Don’t worry about it. But I need you to tell me anything you can about Jill Chaisson.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Wiltz said. “She was just a girl in class with me. I noticed her because she’s good looking, you know, not great but cute. I never got a chance to talk her up. She was always in and out
, you know.”

“What class was this?”

Wiltz thought a minute. “It would have to have been European History I. That’s the only class I had that wasn’t in an auditorium or on the first floor. I remember one day she was on the stairs and some stuff fell out of her bag.”

“Who was the teacher?”

“That would have been …let me see….Watt. He’s kind of a big deal in the History Department. Everybody likes him because he’s an easy grader and he’s got all these stories about the times he’s gone to Europe.”

“Anyone else in the class you know that might remember the girl?”

Another pause. “No, not really. You can probably get a list from the school. I’m actually on a math scholarship and I just took the class because it’s an easy elective. I didn’t hang around with any Liberal Arts people.”

Cassie asked a few more questions, getting no real answers. Finally, she got up to leave. “You know you’re listed as a foreign student? Why is that? You don’t sound like you have an accent.”

Wiltz grinned. “Yeah, my Mom and Dad moved over here when I was just a baby. I’ve been living here all my life. My Dad is a lawyer for a British company that has an office downtown. They talk about going back but I don’t think it’s going to happen. If they do, I’m staying here. I’ve been in New Orleans my whole life. I guess you could say I was British. I’m actually a British citizen. I plan to apply for U.S. citizenship when I’m twenty-one, in a few months. I just feel American, you know, I want to stay in the U.S. though it will probably break my mother’s heart.”

Number S
ix was from Pakistan. Cassie spent three minutes with him. When he said he didn’t recognize any of the pictures, she left and went back downtown.

That afternoon, Wesling called her in. She excused herself with Dupond and Adan, who were arguing over whether to drink Café Au Lait or chocolate milk with Café Du Monde beignets. Dupond argued for the coffee.

“It’s traditional, you idiot. Unless you’re under the age of ten, you have to drink the coffee. What kind of slob drinks chocolate milk with a beignet?”

“Apparently plenty of people,” Adan shot back. “It’s on the menu isn’t it? Do you think they’d have it there if t
hey didn’t sell it all the time? Look around next time you go. I guarantee you’ll see people with chocolate milk. It sets off the powdered sugar. Everybody knows that.”

Cassie left them to argue it out and headed for Weslings office. She had a bad feeling about the meeting. Wesling was probably looking to pull her off and send her overseas. She found her in her office, feet propped up on her desk, reading from a thick folder.

“Hey, Cassie. Come on in.” She got up and cleared a spot off a chair. Wesling was known for her ability to analyze data down to a nub, run a tight organization, and being a complete slob when it came to her own office.

“
So, how’s going with the detective? You learning anything?”

“It’s good,” Cassie said. “Both the detectives are really sharp guys. She went through the whole investigation, explaining her role and what they were doing. Wesling listened, asking a few questions along the way. She picked up another folder when Cassie finished.

“Sounds good. Have you had a chance to use your ability in any way yet?”

Cassie shook her head. “No, there’s not a lot of physical evidence. A piece of rope, some duct tape. It’s all locked away and I don’t have access. Even if I did
, I’d have to find a way to be alone. I can’t travel in front of Dupond or anyone else.”

“Do you think it would help?”

Cassie shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I’m good at locating people that way. If I could see the guy I might be able to identify him if I ran across him.” The problem put Cassie’s ability in a new light for her. Whenever she had done Remote Viewing, it was because Archer had put a target in front of her, a known target. She didn’t have to actually identify anyone, the identification was already there. Even if she could see the murderer, she still might not know who he was.

Wesling handed over a folder. “Start looking this over. This is your target overseas. You need to locate him. His picture and background are all in there. How do you feel?”

The question caught Cassie by surprise. “Good,” she said. She thought of Dupond. “Better than I’ve felt in a while. I’m actually doing some work, it’s interesting. I’m out there in the real world instead of just training.”

“Good. And your relationship with the detective? How’s that?”

Cassie was instantly furious. “Have you been watching me? How dare you? You have no right to pry into my personal life.”

Wesling held up her hands. “Hold on. Hold on. First of all, I’m obligated to keep an eye on you. Secondly, you have to remember this is not a permanent assignment. Sooner or later, you’re going to do some real work for us. This is what you signed up for. Do I have to remind you that you came to me?”

“I understand that,” Cassie said. “That doesn’t mean you have the right to follow me around like a criminal and ask me personal questions about my life.”

“Tell you what,” Wesling said. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise me that you’re still willing to work for me…” She grinned. “I’ll call off the detail and let you and your new friend have some privacy. As long as it doesn’t interfere with what you do for me. Agreed?”

Cassie saw no other choice. If she wanted to see Dupond, she would have to give in. Once again, she found herself under someone’s thumb. Wesling was better than all the other alternatives she’d been given though. “Agreed,” she said.

The setting was perfect. It was if the universe itself was tilting his way. Watt drove carefully down Robert E. Lee, the girl passed out in the passenger seat. He’d picked her up outside a bar on Clematis, a young thing, probably too young to be drinking, almost a child really. She was stumbling down the street. He saw her s
top to puke in some bushes, and continue on her way, headed toward Chef Highway.

When he circled the block, she was still there, making her way slowly but surely down the street. He pulled the car over, got out. Nobody around. Still, he acted the part of the concerned older man. Watt knew he was taking a risk. A nosy neighbor or a passing car with a driver paying attention, and he could be caught. He was in his own car, out on a public street, but this was too good to pass up. The girl saw him, stopped, tried to go around him.

“Hold on there,” he said. He touched her arm. “You look a little under the weather. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” the girl said. “Just let me go, mister.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you could use some help.” He spoke in a low voice, the one he used when he was counseling students. It reassured them he was a reasonable man. “Let me give you a ride home. You don’t want to be walking around like this. It’s getting late.”

“
Not going home. Going to my friend’s house.”

“Where does your friend live?” he asked, gently pulling her toward the car. She offer
ed no resistance. Whether she decided to take him up on his offer or just didn’t have the power to resist, he couldn’t tell. He opened the door and helped her in. She slumped into the passenger seat. By the time he walked around and opened his own door she was out. Beautiful, just beautiful, he thought. Another willing sacrifice. It was times like these that he knew he was doing the right thing, knew why he was on the earth. Who was more deserving? He put the car in gear and headed to his apartment.

A week passed with no murders. Cassie spent her time working with Dupond and occasionally Adan, interviewing neighbors for the second and sometimes third time. They went back over all the reports, scrutinized the timelines again. The coroner’s reports were straightforward. All the victims suffered rape. All were strangled, Chaisson with a rope, Kelt by hand, Maro again with a rope.

“Why is Kelt different?” Cassie wondered, sitting at her desk in the office, cold coffee in her hand. Adan was off somewhere, talking with the FBI about footprints and the thousands of types of tennis shoes and tread types.

Dupond had no answer. “We’ll ask him when we find him. I think it was just easier. Or maybe he craved human contact.”

“But why go back to the rope with Maro?”

“I think Maro was more of a statement,” Dupond said. “It’s like he was saying ‘I’m here.’or something. We should probably talk to a psychologist. Maybe get an idea of how this guy thinks.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Cassie said, “But I don’t put a lot of stock in psychology.”

“I don’t either but we’re pretty much at a dead end here. I’m going to send this stuff to a guy I know, a friend of mine. We wrestled together in college. At least he’ll give us someone else to bounce some ideas off of.”

“We need to start thinking about flushing him out,” Cassie said. “We need to make him nervous.”

“What do you mean?”

Cassie hesitated. Dupond was the one with experience. She was a complete novice. Besides, they had gone out twice this week, and things were moving along well. Two nice dinner dates, one long kiss. Dupond had even been in her apartment. She invited him in for coffee one morning when he picked her up. They hadn’t slept together yet but she could feel it out there on the horizon. The tension was building. What surprised her was the fact that she wanted it to happen. Ronnie was the first and only man she had slept with. Feeling the same way about Dupond was unnerving. It was like being in High School again.

She shook off the feeling. What was he thinking about? “This might sound stupid but I keep thinking back to what you said about why you didn’t hunt anymore. Because you hunt people now. Have you ever seen the marsh burning?”

“Sure,” Dupond said. He didn’t know where this was going.

“When I was a little girl, my Dad and I took a trip down to Grand Isle. Along Highway 1, we ran into a bunch of smoke. You could see the fire in the marsh off a little ways. There were pickups lined up along the road, maybe five or six of them. My dad told me that rabbit hunters would light the marsh on fire and head downwind. The fire drove the animals out and the hunters got a field day as the animals ran away from the fire.”

“And you want to….do what?” Dupond asked.

“Figure out a way to make him think we’re getting closer. What have we got to lose? We already said we have to wait for him to make a mistake. Who makes mistakes? Nervous people. We make him nervous. Look.”

She got up and went to the map. “We take a good sized area around the University. We print up posters with the girl’s pictures on them and hang them up. Maybe we get the television people to run a story or two about how we think the killer is in the area. Borrow a few uniforms and let them go house to house. We start here,” she pointed one end of the Lakefront, West End, “And we work it out to here, Franklin Avenue, and North to Chef Highway. All our victims ended up in that general area. Hit the neighborhoods around the University really hard.”

Dupond liked the idea. “Let’s take it a step further. We’ve got a connection to the University with Chaisson and Maro. Let’s try and set something up right in the middle of it. I’ll talk to Reed about pulling a couple of guys and having them work the campus itself. If he’s a student, and he sees detectiv
es camped out in his territory that should make him nervous.”

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“I don’t know. He’ll either get nervous and quit, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, or he’ll take it as a challenge.”

“And kill another girl?” Cassie asked.

“Maybe. Probably. But we already agreed we don’t have anything to go on. Maybe if we mess with his head, he screws up again. I know one thing though.”

“What’s that?”