Fallen (4 page)

She was spinning around on one foot, looking at his white boards, scanning over his bulletin boards jammed with newspaper clippings and timelines he’d printed out, of pivotal dates. Then she saw the sketch of Anne and she walked straight up to it, hand raised like she might touch, but stopping herself.

“Is this her? Anne Donovan?”

“Yes.” Gabriel forced the admission out, the familiar and ever-present guilt rising up in his throat and squeezing. He didn’t look at the sketch. He knew every line, every nuance, every smudge of charcoal.

“She’s lovely. There’s something . . . I don’t know . . . hopeful in her eyes.”

It was a cruel irony to him that Sara of all people would recognize that. Anne had been hopeful in the months before she died, and Gabriel had obviously been aware of it on some level since he had captured it in various sketches and paintings he had done of her. But he had not been consciously aware of it at the time. He had only been aware of the satisfaction and pleasure he gained from taking his opium and absinthe in her presence.

“Amazing, if you think about it, considering the life she led.”

Sara glanced over at him. “As a prostitute, you mean?”

“Yes. It must have been an achievement to still feel hope.” It wasn’t like he had been any sort of consolation or source of hope for Anne. He often struggled to understand what the hell she had seen in him.

“God, I understand that,” she said in a soft whisper, then quickly turned, her cheeks pinking, like she realized she had just revealed too much. She cleared her throat. “So where do you start with a book like this? It’s a hundred-and-fifty-year-old murder mystery. Where do you even begin?”

The way he did with all his books, even if this one was personal. “You start with the murder. That’s what grabs reader interest. Then when you’ve shocked them into attention, you go back and scene set.”

“Scene set?”

“Try to set the stage for the murder. What life was like in 1849 New Orleans for a prostitute. Trace the timeline of the principle parties involved. Introduce the characters.”

“I don’t know if my brain works like that. I’m a forensic lab grunt. I stare at gel slides all day.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And they’re not characters. They’re people. Real human beings who lived and died.”

“I know that.” He struggled with the weight of that pressing down on him every single day. Gabriel pulled the schedule out of the printer and handed it to Sara. He wanted her gone, out of his space, away from his guilt, his raw self-hatred. “That’s why I write the books I do. We both want to solve a murder, don’t we? You want to solve your mother’s murder, and I want to solve Anne Donovan’s. And that takes logic, the kind of logic a lab grunt understands. But you also can’t solve a crime without understanding the people involved and the world in which they lived.”

She took the paper and gave him a slow nod. “True. I can see that. But I want your reassurance that whatever you write, you won’t treat my mother’s death like a juicy soap opera.”

Sorry for her pain, feeling a new rush of guilt for his role in reopening her wounds of grief, Gabriel spoke softly. “I have no intention of doing that, Sara. I want to show how the use of DNA and forensic evidence can solve crime. It can solve Anne’s murder, and it can solve your mother’s murder, if handled correctly, and result in a conviction. But that ultimately it’s the human factor that determines whether a crime will be solved, or if someone will be put behind bars for it. I don’t think the police or the courts did their job, and that’s not fair to you, or your mother.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have stated that so baldly, because she blanched. Glancing around the room at his cluttered file cabinets, stacks of papers, bookcase crammed with reference materials, she said, “I know you could have gone ahead and done this without my involvement. I know you didn’t need my permission. The case is public domain, as much as that disgusts me. So I appreciate you contacting me, but at the same time I have to wonder why you did. It would have been easier for you if you had just proceeded on your own with an independent forensic consultant.”

That was a legitimate question he had asked himself a multitude of times since he had contacted Sara and requested she work with him. Especially now that she was standing in his office, beautiful and wrenching in her grief, her determination. “I asked you to be a part of this project, because yes, I want your technical expertise, but I also want to respect your feelings, make sure I handle the presentation in a way you’re comfortable with. And I want the tenacity of someone who is personally invested.”

Now she looked like the one who wanted her gone. She even took a step back toward the door. “I am personally invested. Unfortunately.”

He hadn’t meant to nick at her wounds. He’d been trying to reassure her that he was in fact intending to be considerate of her feelings, of the personal nature and newness of her mother’s death. Yet he had obviously upset her, and Gabriel rubbed his jaw, not sure what to say. Social skills were not his forte and he was starting to feel frustrated. So he just said what he was thinking. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. And I agreed to do this, so I shouldn’t be grilling you like this.”

“It’s going to be fine. I think we’ll work well together. I’ll see you tomorrow at one. Here.” That was most likely a huge mistake, but all his materials were in his office, and if he was intimidated by one little broken blonde, then he wasn’t man or fallen angel, but simply pathetic.

She nodded, clutching the schedule and her purse, backing up another step.

“Let me walk you out.” His eighteenth-century manners, buried under a century of solitude, resurfaced, along with his feeling that he had control of the situation. He could deal with this.

“No, no, I’m fine.” Sara moved, revealing the sketch of Anne pinned to the wall behind her. “Bye.”

Then she was gone and he was staring into the pleading eyes of his long dead lover, captured by his own hands, and possibly killed by the very same.

Sara had only walked a half block on Royal Street when she saw a coffee shop and veered straight into it. She needed an iced tea and a minute to sit down, gather herself. She hadn’t expected this would be so difficult, that she would feel so awkward in Gabriel’s presence. He spoke to her with such apparent effort, like he was struggling to carry on a conversation, yet his eyes pierced her, made her feel stripped and vulnerable, weak.

That feeling of weakness was something she couldn’t stand. She should just quit, give up this ridiculous quest right here and now, forget all about the past and concentrate on the present. The future, for God’s sake. But she wouldn’t. She knew that even before she had the cap off of her bottled iced tea. She had to have answers. Had to know who killed Anne Donovan. Had to know who killed her mother. Had to know if in some bizarre, insane, utterly unbelievable way they were connected to each other.

Her cell phone rang in her purse and she retrieved it, taking a seat in the back of the coffee shop so she wouldn’t disturb anyone. It was past prime lunchtime, so the shop was quiet, only a few customers working alone on laptop computers and sipping their drinks. Her Caller ID showed a Florida phone number, but not one that she recognized.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sara, how are you?”

Her stomach dropped. Just hearing his voice made her feel guilty. “Rafe?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m back at my place since my release. I want to see you . . . I’ve been worried about you. Are you at home? I’ll stop over with some dinner.” His voice was filled with concern.

“Thanks, but I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.” Maybe that was an exaggeration, because God knows she could use someone to worry about her, but that wasn’t his burden.

And she felt horrible that she had been such a wreck, so completely incapable of supporting him in any way during the trial. Even when she had tried to defend Rafe on the witness stand, the prosecutor had shredded her. Every word out of her mouth had been manipulated, twisted to make it look like she and Rafe were the true lovers, that his relationship with her mother was a front, a con, until she had been so afraid they were creating a case against her as well as Rafe, she had shut down entirely.

She’d abandoned him essentially. Left him hung out to dry for a crime he didn’t commit, to protect herself, and now he wanted to feed her. He was definitely the better person than her.

“How are you, Rafe? Is the press leaving you alone?” Sara sipped her tea and rubbed at her temples. There was no running away. She needed to regroup, process, deal with all of her emotions, her guilt, her fear.

“Today hasn’t been too bad. Nobody camped out on my front lawn. The last three weeks I could have done without though.”

He spoke lightly, and while that should have made her feel better, it only drove home how much stronger a person he was than her. The last year had been hell for both of them in different ways, yet he had survived with his kindness, charm, and humor intact. He planned to move to the West Coast and revive his medical practice away from the media circus of Southwestern Florida, and didn’t seem to harbor any residual bitterness that he had spent six months sitting in prison while his character was dragged through the mud.

She had collapsed under the weight of her mother’s death, gotten hooked on tranquilizers, and now was sitting in New Orleans trying to feel some elusive connection to her mother’s youth. That familiar guilt, self-doubt, pressed down on her, but she fought it. This was a fresh start.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she said. “I really am.”

“I understand.”

And she knew he did. “I left town.”

“You left Naples? Why? Where are you?”

“I just needed to get away. I’ll be back soon. You can reach me on my cell if you need to talk.” She didn’t want to admit to anyone what she was doing. Going to the city her mother had grown up in smacked of the need for counseling. And if she told him about the book, he’d think she had totally lost it, grasping at forensic straws to solve a murder the police considered unsolvable at this point.

“Sara . . . where are you?” He sounded worried.

Maybe he should be.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I’ll be back soon.” Maybe. But they’d cross that bridge when she got to it. “Take care of yourself, and be sure to let me know when you’re leaving Naples. I want to see you before you head west.”

“Okay.” He paused, then just sighed. “Be well, Sara.”

“Yeah, you too.”

“I’m going to take Jessie some flowers. Can I take something for you?”

That gesture hit her like a smack. Tears popped into her eyes and Sara fought for control, to not lose it in the coffee shop. “Sure. Take my mom some carnations, will you? In a crazy, wild color.” It had been a source of contention between them. Sara had always told her mother carnations weren’t classy, they were a cheap filler flower, but her mother had liked them. Maybe for that very reason. And she had always wanted them in bright blues, greens, and hot pinks, hues achieved through dye, not nature.

“Okay, I can do that. Promise me you’ll stay in touch.”

“Yep. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.” Sara hung up the phone before Rafe could hear the waver in her voice.

And found herself digging in her bag and pulling out her manila folder. She flipped through the papers inside rapidly, stopping when she got to a copied newspaper article.

The headline was glaring and to the point. It was interesting to Sara that she had assumed media coverage of murder and other crimes had grown more sensationalist in the TV and Internet era, but from what she’d seen of the Anne Donovan case, nineteenth-century journalists had been just as salacious.

October 7, 1849—Anne Donovan, age 23, a lewd and unfortunate woman, was found MURDERED in her bed at the House of Rest For Weary Men, Dauphine Street, a den of gambling, drink, and other unsavory activities. Stabbed seventeen times with a bowie knife, her facial features obliterated, and her breasts mutilated, the violent nature of the crime has shocked even the hardened Madame Conti, who sent a girl for the coroner after being alerted of the victim’s state. Miss Donovan was last seen alive by Mr. Jonathon Thiroux, her LOVER, who maintains he heard or saw nothing of her death, even though he was in her room at the time. There have been no arrests, and we must ask, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this is what our fine city has fallen to. Are murders so commonplace and the reach of wealth so deep into our city officials that our police do not even bother to investigate such a horrific death? If Miss Donovan were murdered in a better address would justice be sought in her case?

That is perhaps a question for the mayor.

So obviously the journalist had used Anne Donovan’s murder as a platform for airing political grievances, but Sara figured any attention given the case was a positive. It meant more articles, more court papers, more documents, and more physical evidence had been gathered and had survived through the decades, which meant a higher probability that together with Gabriel St. John she could solve the crime. Which mattered to her, because if she would never see her mother’s killer behind bars, which, despite Gabriel’s opinion, seemed likely, it would give her a certain sense of satisfaction to know she had solved her great-great-grandmother’s murder.

For four generations in her family, a woman had been brutally murdered, starting with Anne Donovan. Ending with her mother. It was a fear that had plagued her all her life—the bogeyman, the family curse, the toxic press of mortality clouding everything she did, every decision, every long-term goal—that she would die young, suffer a brutal death at the hands of a stranger. Her mother had laughed at it. Disregarded it.

But her mother was dead now.

And Sara was afraid that, one way or another, she would be the next to die.