Stop Me (13 page)

She looks like some kind of porn star, you know? The kind of woman who makes you roll your eyes and adjust yourself at the same time. He liked what he’d gotten that night. Liked the perks that sometimes went with being a cop.

“Is anything wrong?”

Jasmine glanced over her shoulder to see Mr. Cabanis’s daughter watching her from the front desk. “No, why?”

“You have this…sort of disgusted expression on your face.” With good reason. She was sickened that a man like Black had ever been allowed to wear a badge. Was he the one who’d leaked the information about the 77

illegal search? And, if so, what did he get out of it? After reading Pearson Black’s online journal she guessed he never did anything that didn’t benefit him in some way.

Jasmine was sure it was Black, although he’d lost a few pounds since the picture on his blog was taken. He’d converted that fat into muscle. At least that was how it looked to her. As she drove by him, she couldn’t see any evidence of the rounded paunch he’d had or the double chin. He was a tall, thick-necked man who wore his security jacket unzipped despite the cold and obviously took weight lifting very seriously. With his build, his face shadowed by stubble and hair rumpled enough to make Jasmine wonder if he’d bothered to run a comb through it before going to work, he looked mean in the way some pit bulls look mean. As if he should be wearing a spiked collar.

He leaned against his sedan in the dim light of the parking lot and put out one cigarette only to light another.

The lounge Kozlowski had mentioned was called Shooters. It was nestled between a liquor store and a bargain remnant store just down from Big Louie’s.

Jasmine frowned when she saw the name, hoping it’d been inspired by shot glasses of booze and not by the number of drive-by slayings in the area.

Finding an empty parking stall between the bar and the supermarket, she made sure she had her Mace, turned off the engine and got out. It was unlikely the ex-cop would be dangerous; he had no record of violence. But he wasn’t her only concern.

The lounge had iron bars on the doors and windows and graffiti on the walls, and so did the supermarket and almost every other house or retail establishment within three blocks. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood in which she really wanted to be alone.

She wasn’t all that confident Black would risk himself to protect her, despite those muscles and the security emblem on his car.

As she crossed the section of parking lot between them, she tried to get a feel for the safety of the situation and the man she was approaching. But she felt nothing that gave her any real guidance, except a general anxiety—what anyone else would feel, she supposed. It wasn’t as if she could use her gift on demand. Occasionally, she suspected it might be possible to develop her psychic powers to that point, but there were too many drawbacks. Growing more sensitive to such input meant constantly having thoughts and feelings that were not her own, and she didn’t want to live that way. It was difficult enough when she had to explore what she could pick up on the cases she worked.

Her boot heels clattered on the pavement as she walked. Noticing her coming toward him, Black straightened and blew the smoke from his cigarette off to one side. “You must be lost,” he said, giving her the once-over.

She waited until his focus reached her face. “I look that out of place?”

“Have you seen the women in this part of town?”

78

She’d actually seen more men than women. Several were hanging around outside the door of the lounge, talking to each other and watching her. One had whistled when she got out of her car, another was currently indulging in a few catcalls that included commentary on how well she fit into her jeans. “Are those women you mentioned the type who make you roll your eyes—and adjust yourself at the same time?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

One eyetooth had grown in like a fang, and it showed as Black laughed. “No, they’re whores and crack addicts. Not half as pretty as you. No temptation to me at all.”

She ignored his allusion to her appearance. “The blonde was a temptation, though, right? Lola? The one you pulled over for speeding a year ago?”

“She was a temptation, all right. Until I found out that she was a he.” Jasmine didn’t know how to respond. “You’re kidding, right?” He chuckled softly. “No.”

“How’d you find out?”

“When I insisted I wouldn’t accept the driver’s license she—he eventually provided, which gave his name as Henry Hovell, he decided to show me proof.”

“Why didn’t you add that to your blog? It would’ve made for a great twist at the end.”

“Because I found him attractive as a woman. And that’s not something I wanted the other guys ribbing me about at the station.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Anyway, last I heard I was already fired from the department, so you can’t be Internal Affairs.”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I have a few questions for you.”

His eyes raked over her again. “And those questions brought you all the way here?”

“It’s about the Fornier case.”

His smile disappeared—and with it that single, very unattractive fang. “I wasn’t on that case.”

“I heard you followed it closely.”

“Who told you that?”

“Some of your buddies down at the station.”

“I don’t have any buddies down at the station.”

“Most police officers are pretty close. Why didn’t you fit in?”

“They couldn’t take that I was a better cop than they could ever dream of being.”

And his blog was proof? She didn’t think so. “Were you out to prove it—to show them?”

79

“I don’t remember getting your name,” he said instead of answering.

She handed him her business card. “Jasmine Stratford. I’m with a victims’

charity in California.”

There was no sign of recognition. “You’re a long way from home.”

“I’m also a freelance profiler with reason to believe Fornier might’ve shot the wrong man when he went after Moreau. Do you think that could be true?” Black flicked his ashes onto the ground. “Don’t ask. You don’t want to start poking around in the Fornier case.”

“Suppose you tell me why.”

“What’s that old cliché? Let dead dogs lie?”

“It’s ‘sleeping dogs.’”

His grin slanted to one side. “Not in this case, right?” Jasmine didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “That’s not a good enough answer.”

“Try this one.” He leaned toward her, engulfing her in a cloud of smoke.

“Because you might regret it later,” he whispered. “Is that better?” He was too close. Jasmine almost reached for her Mace. But she sensed that he was only trying to intimidate her, and she refused to let him know he’d succeeded.

“Is that a veiled threat?” she asked, standing her ground.

“Not from me.” His smile returned as he leaned back—and with it that fang.

“Why would I want to hurt you?”

“You tell me.”

“I have no personal stake in the case.” He shrugged, but the action didn’t seem careless as much as studied. “I’m just informing you that there are people who won’t be happy to have certain details brought out into the light, people who have a lot to lose.”

“Like who?”

“Like whoever really killed that little girl. Moreau was a pervert. I’ll grant you that. But he wasn’t the man who murdered Adele Fornier.” The men outside Shooters who’d been trying to attract her attention had given up and gone back inside. The wind was kicking up, and it was starting to rain. “What about the evidence?”

She thought she had him, but he didn’t even blink. “Someone planted it. The blood on the pants, the barrettes, everything.”

80

“How do you know?” Jasmine demanded.

Tossing away his cigarette, Black shrugged again. “Anyone who really looked at that crime scene could tell you Moreau didn’t hide those things under his house.”

“Why not?”

“They were put there from the outside. Whoever did it entered the crawl space through the cellar door.”

“So?”

“So, if you’d just killed a girl in your house, you sure wouldn’t gather up the evidence and take it outside and around the back to go in through the cellar door.

Why risk letting someone see you when you could simply lift the trapdoor in the pantry and put it down there?”

“Why would he have to walk around? Every house I know has a back door.”

“His was completely blocked off.” Black pulled a new cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and shoved it in the corner of his mouth, unlit. “There was a big freezer in front of it, piled high with boxes full of all kinds of shit. There’s no way Moreau bothered to move it and then put it back. He had too many other options.

Besides, those boxes on the freezer were dusty as hell. They hadn’t been touched in months, not even for cleaning. He lived alone at the time, and take it from me—he was a slob.”

“Maybe the trapdoor was blocked off, too.”

“Only with a sack of potatoes. It would’ve been easy to use—yet no one did.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He thumped his chest. “Unlike Huff, I did my research. It had an old wooden floor, you know? Someone had painted the pantry, even the floor, at least a year before Adele went missing.”

“And some of the paint fell into the crack along the trapdoor and created a seal,” she said, picking up on where he was going with this.

“Which wasn’t broken when we entered to perform the search,” he finished.

“How did you see that?”

“I checked it, and I tried to tell Huff. But all he could see was Moreau’s rap sheet. He’d found his pedophile. He’d found his victim’s clothing. End of story.” He 81

cupped a hand around his cigarette as he struck a match and added, “Some detective he was.”

“Was there any evidence someone had used the cellar door?” Jasmine asked.

“Plenty. The lock had rusted so it couldn’t be opened. There were marks on the lintel indicating someone had recently forced it from the outside using a crowbar or something. There were also scuff marks in the dirt near the entrance. The bloody pants, along with the video and barrettes, were on the ground not two feet away from the entrance, as if someone had tossed them in and shut the door.”

“You pointed that out to Huff, too?”

“I tried.”

“But…”

He tossed the match away and breathed deeply, exhaling as he answered. “He said Moreau could’ve walked around and forced that door open as easily as anyone else.”

“Unlikely though you make it sound, that’s true,” Jasmine said. “They were his pants, weren’t they?”

“They were khaki work pants like the pants he typically wore. But how many men wear khaki work pants? Only jeans are more common.” Jasmine took a moment to process what he’d told her. He had a point. But she didn’t like him. And, with what Kozlowski had shared about him, he didn’t have a lot of credibility. “What about the size?” she asked.

He took another drag before responding. “Didn’t match. They were one size smaller than the pants hanging in Moreau’s closest.”

“One size isn’t enough to draw a conclusion,” she argued. “It’s possible to own one pair of pants that are slightly smaller than the rest. They could’ve been bought before Moreau gained weight. Or maybe he was on a diet and bought them because he was slimming down.”

Tilting his head back, Black blew a fresh stream of smoke into the sky. “Why am I wasting my time with you?” he asked. “You’re just like Huff. You see what you want to see.”

Jasmine had to admit she was feeling defensive of the overzealous detective.

She was defensive of Romain, too. Even more defensive of Romain. If what Black said was true, he’d been acting on erroneous information when he shot and killed Moreau.

But part of her couldn’t help believing Black. Someone other than Moreau had killed Adele Fornier. It was the man who’d sent her the note. A man who was very definitely alive.

“Why couldn’t Huff see what you saw?” she asked. “Wasn’t he concerned about those irregularities?”

82

“Like I said, Huff was so convinced he had the right culprit, he was blind to everything else. And let’s be honest. Solving such a high-profile crime wouldn’t hurt his career. He wasn’t above a little ambition. He wanted a conviction, and he did what he could to get it. I blame him and not Fornier for Moreau’s death.”

“So that’s why you informed on him.”

Throwing his cigarette on the ground, Black grabbed her arm in one lightning-quick move. “I didn’t inform on him. I kept my mouth shut, okay?” Obviously, she’d touched a sensitive spot. Or he was slightly deranged.

Jasmine glared at his fingers. “Let go.”

“Don’t try to tell me about things you don’t understand.” She met his glittering gaze. “I said let go. Now.”

“Or what?” His warm breath fanned her cheek, smelling like tobacco. “What’s a little gal like you gonna do?”

“Press charges for assault, if I have to.”

Before he could say anything else, two men stepped out of the lounge. Jasmine glanced over at them, ready to cry for help, but he dropped his hand and stepped back.

“You’re gonna wind up getting hurt, you know that?” he said.

“Another threat, Mr. Black?”

He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his blue pants. “This isn’t a safe place for a woman to be, especially at night. You’d better get out of here.” She wanted to leave. She felt a barely tethered aggression in this man, and it frightened her. But she wasn’t finished yet. “Why would Huff blame you if you didn’t do it?”

“He’s convinced I did. Just because I didn’t agree with the conclusions he drew during that search. Just because I tried to make him see there was something more going on.” He spat at the ground. “It’s thanks to him that I’m rotting out here doing nothing all night.”

Or maybe Huff was right, and it was Black who’d enabled a child killer to walk free, causing a grieving father to snap. “If it wasn’t you who snitched, who was it?” she asked.

“Moreau’s mother, I guess,” he said sulkily.

“Huff claims she wasn’t there.”

“She wasn’t. At least I didn’t see her. But Moreau could’ve told her, right?