Murder in the Rue Ursulines (27 page)

“And then he called her last night, and she killed him.” I swallowed.

“Well, we were inclined to write it off as a mugging.” Blaine replied. “He’s a small guy, for one thing, and he was carrying a backpack filled with cash as well as his wallet. His fellow dancers warned him to take a cab rather than walk back to the Marigny—but all he said was, he wasn’t going home. His phone was taken, his wallet was emptied, and the backpack, and he was shot twice in the chest. He was dead by the time help could reach him. Someone in the vicinity heard the gunshots and called it in.”

Venus interrupted Blaine. “We’re tracing his phone carrier to get a record of his calls. One of the other dancers, I forget his name, said that before he left he called someone and was talking very quietly on his phone. The other dancer just assumed he was setting up a trick or something. Apparently, Joey was very secretive.”

I closed my eyes. “He called Rosemary, told her someone recognized him, was asking him questions about that night and what he was doing in the house?”

“And he asked her for more money.”

“He played right into her hands. I wonder if she intended to kill him all along.” I shrugged. “All she had to do was take his phone, his wallet and his backpack, and presto! It looks like another random mugging, another murder in the Quarter.”

“And we have no way of proving that she killed either of them.” Venus sighed. She stood up and gave me a long hard look. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Chanse. This wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known he was going to be killed—nor do you know for sure that it was because you talked to him.”

“Thanks.” I walked them to the door. It was nice to hear, but I didn’t believe it for a minute.

“If you find out anything—not that I am encouraging you to keep investigating, mind you—next time let me know right away, all right?” She gave me a hug.

I closed the door behind them and ignored the sound of the reporters shouting questions at them. I lay down on the couch and covered my eyes
. Poor Joey. You never try to blackmail someone who’s already killed. But then, he had no idea she’d been killing people for years.

At least, if she truly is Karen Zorn.

My fax machine rang, startling me. I jumped up and walked over to it. It whirred, and a piece of paper started printing out. My heart started racing as I looked at the caller ID and recognized the Kansas area code.

When it finished printing, I grabbed it.

It was a reproduction of a senior class photo. Across the top of the printout, before the photograph, was written
This is Karen’s senior picture. If you see her, tell her to call her mother.

I stared at the picture.

She’d changed over the years, but there was no mistaking her.

Rosemary was Karen Zorn.

I remembered Brett saying, “
She told me she was relatively new in town, didn’t know anyone, so I kind of always tried to be nice to her. But it was like she took my being nice the wrong way. She started buying me presents. At first, it was just kind of sweet, you know what I mean?  Nothing inappropriate…, like she always had the kind of protein bars I liked... She would call me all the time—on the stupidest pretext... I figured she was just lonely and wanted someone to talk to, you know? Then it started getting really weird
... I let it go as long as I could. Finally I told her she had to stop buying me things and calling me all the time. And then she turned on me. She told Glynis I’d said some inappropriate things to her.”

And Freddy:
She used to bring me presents, buy me lunch and stuff like that... She was always willing to buy beer or food or something. She was always around. It got to be a joke around the house—my little stalker. I wouldn’t sleep with her. There was just something about her that didn’t strike me as being quite right, you know what I mean? But at that party, I was just drunk enough. ... the next morning I was hungover and felt like shit. And she wouldn’t shut up. She kept going on and on about how happy she was.. it freaked me out. I told her I’d made a terrible mistake, that I didn’t love her, and she needed to leave. ..and then on Monday she went to the dean and accused me of rape.”

A definite pattern of behavior there.

I picked up my phone to call Venus when it started ringing.

The caller ID said PAIGE. I flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

There was silence at the other end. “Hello? Paige, are you there?”

And then I heard Paige say, clearly, “Rosemary, you aren’t going to get away with this, you know. You might as well put the gun away.”

Goose bumps sprang out all over my body.

I heard Rosemary say, “It doesn’t really matter at this point, does it? I don’t really care about getting away with anything. You missed the entire point of this, didn’t you? All of you?” She laughed, and it sent chills down my spine.

“You can’t shoot me in your apartment and think—“

Her apartment. I had that address.

The phone went dead.

Rosemary’s house was in the Bywater, on Desire Street between Burgundy and Dauphine.

I tried calling Venus as I ran out of the house and got into my car, but only got her voicemail. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hit the speed-dial number. I left her a very tense message, and then debated calling 911. I got the car started, pounding my hands on the steering wheel as I waited for the gate to open.
Come on, come on, come on!
 I glanced at my gun, which I’d tossed into the passenger seat. Finally the gate finished opening, and I flew down the driveway and out onto Camp Street. I drove as quickly as I could, stopping for red lights only when I could see cars coming the other way. I didn’t care if I got pulled over—although with the gun in the seat, it could be a very sticky situation. I made it through the CBD, and for the first time in my life, the lights were actually on my side. I flew around the curve where Rampart Street became St. Claude, and the traffic became heavier. I sped around cars, changing lanes and cutting people off, and the insane thought that I was living one of Jephtha’s video games raced through my head. My palms were sweating and I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly veins were popping out on my forearms.

And my cell phone didn’t ring.

It reminded me so much of the nightmarish drive out to Bay St. Louis, when I finally figured out the truth about Paul’s disappearance. That drive too was little more than a flash of memory, my heart pounding the entire way as we drove about 100 miles per hour with the siren on Venus’ police car screaming through the night. All those horrible memories were flashing through my head, and all I could think right now was that Paige, my Paige, was in the hands of a deranged killer. Nothing could happen to my Paige. Life just couldn’t be that cruel. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get those horrendous thoughts out of my head.
Paige can’t die, that bitch can’t kill Paige, nothing can ever happen to her, I don’t even want to think about what my life would be like without her. Losing Paul was hard enough—that had been horrible. I don’t think I could ever get over losing Paige.

Memories flooded through my head, one image fading into another. The night we first met, in my room at the Beta Kappa house. My door had been unlocked and she’d let herself in to smoke a joint and listen to the Pink Floyd CD I had on, getting away from Little Sister rush. I’d walked in to find her standing in the middle of my room, the joint in her hand, grooving to Pink Floyd. And as soon as she opened her mouth, I knew I’d found someone special to be a part of my life, to make it richer and fuller. I was right. My life had been the better for knowing her. She was always there at my side, helping me by making me laugh, never bullshitting me, making me be reasonable when I wanted to be childish. She’d loved Paul too, but put her own pain aside when he’d died to help me work through mine. She seemed to people to be hard as nails, but I knew beneath that wise-cracking exterior was a soft and kind-hearted loving woman whom I’d walk through fire for.

If that crazy bitch harmed so much as one hair on her head, I would make her sorry she’d ever been born.

I screeched around the corner and parked in front of a fire hydrant. The street was deserted, and I’d been right. The address was a double shotgun once painted a vibrant purple that been faded by years of exposure to the merciless New Orleans sun. There was no yard in front of it, no fence. It had all been paved over. I sat there for a moment. There was no sign of life from the house. I saw Paige’s car parked further up the block. I checked my gun, made sure the safety was off, that it was loaded. I picked up my phone and called Venus again. This time she answered. “Casanova.”

“Didn’t you get my message?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

“I’m sorry, Chanse, what’s—“

“Right after you left, I got the fax. Karen Zorn is Rosemary Shannon—and she’s a killer. Paige called me.“ I cut her off. “She’s at Rosemary’s. I don’t know how she managed to call, but Rosemary has a gun on her.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!”

“I just pulled up outside the house. I’m going in.”

“Stay in your car—Blaine is calling for back-up and we’re on our way—“

I hung up the phone. I wasn’t about to wait for the police.

Paige was in danger, and every minute counted.

I’d learned that lesson the hard way when Paul died, and I wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

Gun in hand, I got out of the car and crossed the street. I crept up the stairs on Rosemary’s side of the house. I peered in the window. The shutters were open, and no curtains or blinds impeded my view. The room was empty— no furniture, nothing. I couldn’t see into the next room, and the house was raised about six feet off the ground. There would be no way I’d be able to see into the next room without going around to the side of the house, and I didn’t want to take the risk of being seen. I turned the knob to the front door. The door swung open.

All the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I stepped into the house, leaving the door open behind me. No sense in having to try to open it again if Paige and I had to make a quick escape. I slowly started making my way across the room, trying to be as silent as possible.

And then a board groaned under my feet.

“Is that you, Mr. MacLeod?” A voice called from the next room. “There’s no need to try to sneak up on us, you know. You might as well come and join us.”

“Paige are you all right?” I called out.

“Do as she says, Chanse. She has a gun on me.”

I walked through the door, and gasped.

The second room, like the first, was completely bare of furniture other than two rickety looking old kitchen chairs. Paige was tied to one of them. Her purse was open on the floor next to her. And Rosemary Shannon was seated in the other chair right next to Paige. In her hand was a gun she had pressed to Paige’s temple. Paige was very pale, and a dark purple bruise glared at me from her right cheek. In Rosemary’s other hand she held Paige’s iPhone. She smiled when she saw me, and tossed the phone back into Paige’s purse.

“The police are on their way,” I said. “You’re never going to get away with this.” I pointed my gun at her. “Karen.”

“So, you figured it all out. But it looks like we have reached an impasse.” Rosemary smiled at me. She looked terrible. Her reddish hair had frizzed and stood up in every direction, like she’d had an electrical shock. She was wearing a purple smock-type blouse over black sweat pants. “You shoot me and I pull the trigger. You might miss me, but I won’t miss. And your friend here’s brains will be splattered all over the wall.”

“If you hurt her—“ I hissed through gritted teeth. My head was roaring. In that instant, I hated Rosemary Shannon more than I’d hated anyone in my entire life. I wanted her to suffer, I wanted her to die a long, slow, painful death. I wanted to pull out her fingernails one by one. I want to rip her frizzy hair out of her head, lock by lock, slowly, to make it as painful as possible.

“The two of you are smart,” Rosemary went on. Her voice pierced through the haze in my head, shrill and not quite sane. There was a glint in her blue eyes that I had seen before. She wasn’t sane, not by a long shot, and my heart sank even further. You can reason with a sane person. But she was crazy, had gone completely around the bend. “But not smart enough, you know. You figured out it was me—but you thought I was trying to get away with something.” She laughed, and I’d never heard a more evil sound in my life. It was chilling. “I
don’t care if I get away with it!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I loved him,” She went on. “I did everything for him in college. I loved him the first moment I saw him. I gave him presents, I wrote papers for him, I did everything I could to show him how much I loved him.
I did everything for him!”
she screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “But nothing was ever enough for him. It was always never good enough.”

“So you accused him of raping you?”

“You spoke to my bitch of a mother.” She snarled the words, and then smiled again. “Yes, I did. Maybe I did let him, maybe I did give myself to him willingly, but there are other kinds of rape, you know. He raped my soul. He raped my heart. And they let him get away with it, and he left…even though we were meant to be together. He went to Hollywood…and I knew it was because he wanted to be a star, to make a lot of money so he could make it all up to me, make up for telling me I was crazy, for acting like I wasn’t good enough, and then he married that slut Glynis Parrish.”