Bad Moon Rising (18 page)

“Beg,” he whispers.

“Please.”

“It won’t hurt for long, Melissa. Pretty Melissa.”

“Please
...
don’t hurt me.”

“You’re the prettiest of them so far. Such wonderful
breasts and lovely eyes. I think of them often, when I’m alone. Perhaps
...”
He ran the tip of the blade along her
cheek, to the tender skin below her right eye. “Perhaps I’ll cut out your eyes
and keep them for a souvenir. Something to remember you by. It would be a
shame for them to rot along with your head in the bottom of the bayou.”

As the knife tip bit into her skin, her mouth flew
open in a soundless wail. The beautiful sensation streaked through him—rousing
his penis so intensely he thought he would burst.

“Pig,” she sneers, her eyes suddenly wild with fury. “Worthless,
stupid pig.”

He freezes, stares at her mouth that has spat such
vile and villainous words.

“Moron. Freaking imbecile, just kill me and get it
over with. You’re sick and disgusting. You can’t even get it up like any normal
man.”

Stumbling back, as if from a blow, he trembles. Vomit
rises in his throat. Control frays
—pop, pop—
like a splintering rubber band. The thunder centers
in his head, mind splitting, and he drops the knife, covering his ears with his
shaking hands to shield them from her accusations.

“Bitch,” he groans, running at her, falling on her. He
drives his fist into her mouth, her lips exploding beneath his knuckles. “Say
my name, bitch. Say it.” He slams her again so she bucks beneath him. Her
throat gurgles. “Say it.”

“God,” she cries. “God!”

Arriving back at the apartment, J.D. coaxed Holly into
bed. She was lost someplace between shock and relief that the murder victim had
not been Melissa. Still shaking. Dazed. The bloated body of the Jane Doe she
had viewed would continue to trouble her, regardless that it hadn’t been
Melissa. No one ever forgot their first cadaver. Not for their entire life.

At last, she drifted to sleep.

The doorbell rang.

He answered the door to find Jerry Costos, soaked, his
hands jammed into his trouser pockets. J.D. hadn’t had a face-to-face with his
ex-best friend since the afternoon Jerry had asked for his resignation from the
D.A.’s office. His first instinct was to slug him. That was fast eclipsed by a
joy that surprised him. He had hated Costos with a force that had been equaled
only by the extreme closeness they had shared during their college days,
followed by the many grueling hours they had worked together in the D.A.’s
office. He had hoped never to see him again. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded of
the loss he’d felt over Jerry’s decision to prosecute Gonzalez as the French
Quarter killer.

“What the hell do you want?”

“You going to let me in? I’m drowning out here.”

“Why should I?”

“Come on, J.D. It’s time we talked.”

“You’re four years too late.”

He proceeded to close the door in Jerry’s face. Costos
braced his weight against it, gave it a hard shove so J.D. was forced to
stumble back, allowing Jerry to enter the apartment. For an eternal moment,
they stood nose-to-nose while thunder shook the walls around them.

“You look like hell,” Jerry said.

“You can go to hell.”

“I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Of course you did. You’d have to be stupid to think
you could show up here and I wouldn’t beat the shit out of you.”

“Fine. You want to take a punch at me? Go ahead. I
guess I deserve it. If it will make you feel better.”

“Don’t tell me you’re only now feeling the bite of
conscience.”

Jerry turned away, ran one hand through his dark, wet
hair. Jerry Costos was one of Louisiana’s most eligible and sought-after
bachelors. Tall, good-looking. The football stud type. He was still
good-looking, but the last years had carved a hardness to his features that was
undeniable.

“I heard from Mallory about your assault... among
other things,” Jerry said.

“The murders?”

He nodded.

“Figured that would bring you around. So how does it
feel to know you had a hand in executing the wrong man for the French Quarter
killings?”

J.D. closed the door and leaned back against it as Costos
paced the room. “Then again, you’ve known it all along, haven’t you, Jerry?
Your resigning from the D.A.’s office was evidence enough. You son of a bitch,
you rolled over for someone. Who was it?”

“I swear, J.D. The evidence proved—”

“That Gonzalez was at the wrong place at the wrong
time. Hell, even Anna told you—”

“Profilers are not infallible, Damascus.”

J.D. might have laughed had he not been simmering with
anger. Anna Travelli was one of the FBI’s sharpest agents—Hell on Wheels
Travelli, the NOPD had nicknamed her during the first Quarter murders. Had
Killroy actually listened to her, Gonzalez would still be alive, and the real
serial killer on death row.

“So how is Anna?” J.D. asked.

Jerry dropped onto the futon. “Fine, I guess. You know
Anna. She comes and goes. The job has always come first with her.”

“Problems?”

“Yeah. She still refuses to marry me.”

J.D. nodded, not surprised. Anna was FBI through and
through. Quantico’s highest-ranking female agent in the history of the force. “She’s
damn good at her job, Jerry.”

Resting his head back against the wall, Costos stared
at the ceiling. “Okay, I admit that I was pressured to put the case to bed.”

“By whom?”

“Mayor Bixby. The governor—your father. And Senator
Strong. He was running for reelection and was concerned that the negativity of
the ongoing investigation was going to hurt him. Face it. The national
publicity was decimating tourism. But I swear to you, J.D., I honestly believed
at the time that we had the right man. Besides, there were no more murders
after Gonzalez was arrested. And it wasn’t as if Gonzalez put up much of a
fight. He was going to prison, regardless, due to his attempted murder of
Anna. The jackass actually got a hard-on over all the publicity. He was a
nobody who suddenly found himself in the limelight.”

J.D. limped to a chair and eased into it. His head
throbbed like hell. He wanted to curl up beside Holly and sleep. The last thing
he wanted was to debate Costos’s screwup and open up more emotional wounds.

Jerry leaned forward, propping his elbows on his
knees. His dark eyes looked deeply into J.D.’s own. “There hasn’t been a day
that I haven’t thought about you and your family. Of how you’ve suffered.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“You’ve got every right to hate my guts. But I wish
you wouldn’t. I’ve missed you, Damascus.”

“Yeah? Well, I haven’t given you a second thought, Costos,
other than occasionally wanting to kill you with my bare hands.”

“We made one hell of a team. There wasn’t a defense
attorney out there who didn’t piss his pants when going up against us. Had we
been prosecuting O.J. Simpson, that creep would never have walked for those
murders.”

“Old news, Jerry. Why are you here?”

“Cut to the chase, right?” He nodded. “After leaving
the D.A.’s office, I did some snooping of my own on Tyron Johnson. I still don’t
believe he was involved with the murders of your family, J.D. And whether you
want to believe it or not, I still think Laura was killed by the same man who
was butchering those women.”

“Wrong place at the wrong time again.”

Jerry nodded. “We’re never going to know why she was
at the park that night. But she was. Perhaps the killer mistook her for a
hooker, then discovered the kids—”

“The M.O. is all wrong, Jerry. The killer always murdered
the victims in their own apartments. There was a ritual he went through.
Torture before death. He toyed with them sometimes for hours. Not in Laura’s
case. There were men who testified to jogging by that area shortly before the
time of the killing. They hadn’t seen or heard anything. Janice Mallory
established that my wife was killed by a stab wound to her heart. No long,
drawn-out bleeding to death before he butchered her.”

“Johnson had an alibi for that night. Christ, give up
this vigilante crusade against Tyron, J.D., before he puts you down. Let the
department do its job.”

“From what I see, they aren’t doing a hell of a lot.”
He shook his head. “They would rather not find the killer at all if it means
the truth gets out to the public. The ramifications would end Strong’s
political career. Gonzalez’s family would sue the state for millions .
..
and win. So the department is going to
stick its head up its ass and play dead.”

“What benefit is there in letting the public know
about this? It’ll paralyze this city with panic and open a lot of wounds that I’m
afraid you aren’t capable of dealing with.”

“I would run my arms and legs through a meat grinder
if it meant finding the man who killed my family, Costos. You think I don’t
want it to end?” He gave a sharp laugh and shook his head. “When I allow myself
to believe, just for a moment, that maybe it wasn’t Johnson who killed my
family for revenge, I suspect every son of a bitch I see. If it’s not Johnson,
then the bastard is living a normal life, maybe with a wife and kids, enjoying
Christmas and birthdays, kissing his wife good night and playing football with
his son.”

J.D. closed his eyes, tightly, and swallowed. “Why my
kids, Jerry? Even if they happened to see him killing Laura, what were the
chances they could ID him? They were practically babies, for God’s sake. It was
pitch-black out there. Christ, as prosecutors, we never made a case on the
testimony of young children. They aren’t reliable.”

“A panicked killer isn’t going to stop long enough to
understand that.” Jerry stood and walked to J.D. His face looked tight with
emotion. “I screwed up, John. We all did. I may no longer be in a position of
power, but I swear to you, I’m going to move heaven and earth to help find the
man who slaughtered your family.”

“Yeah? Then talk to the D.A. Convince him to get Anna
back on this case.”

“Christ. What makes you think I can convince the D.A.
to pull Anna in on this case again?”

“C’mon, Jerry. Everyone in this town knows the D.A.
doesn’t fart without getting your advice first. You might have resigned from
the office but everyone is aware that George Billings is little more than your
shadow. Anna tried to tell you Gonzalez wasn’t your man. Had she been allowed
just a little more time—”

“I nearly lost her last time—”

“She stepped over the line last time ... took too big
a risk.”

Jerry turned away.

“You owe me,” J.D. said to his back. “You owe the
women who’ve already died, and you owe it to the victim out there he’s
sharpening up his knife right now to kill. Take a trip to the morgue and check
out the bodies of Cherry Brown and Tyra Smith and tell me you won’t help to get
Anna back on this case. Or better yet . ..”

He left the chair and entered the bedroom where Holly
appeared to be sleeping deeply. He extracted Laura’s coroner’s file from the
desk drawer and returned to Jerry, the file opened to display his wife’s crime
scene and autopsy photos.

“This is the memory I live with every second of my
life, Jerry.”

He flinched and looked away. “Jesus. What the hell are
you doing with that?”

“Inspiration.”

“You bastard.” Jerry shook his head. “This is the kind
of crap that made you the
best damn assistant prosecutor in this country. I was an ass to ask for your
resignation, John. I’m sorry. Will you ever forgive me?”

“Yeah. Help me find my family’s killer, and I’ll
forgive you.”

Lying in the deep shadows of J.D.’s bedroom,
the rain a constant drum on
the roof, Holly had pretended sleep, her drowsy thoughts focused on the
conversation between two old friends. She had tried hard to keep the coroner
photos of J.D.’s wife from entering her mind. But she couldn’t. Not when every
word out of his mouth while discoursing with Costos bled with grief. They
literally shook with it, the pain. The heartbreak. The nightmare.