The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) (12 page)

“It’s fine, but I’m not doing so well,” replied the publicist, his exhaustion apparent with every breath he took.

“Oh,” replied Richie, biting on his bottom lip as his concern rose. “What’s wrong?”

There was a modicum of irritation in Gordon’s voice as he answered, “Somehow, I managed to lose all my reservations that we printed up last week. We’re sorting things out here, but it looks like I won’t be showing up until tomorrow evening.”

Richie was no longer leaning back against his chair, but was instead sitting straight up. “Are you serious? Tomorrow evening?… What about the book signing? The talk show? The interview?”

“You’ll have to do them on your own, Richie,” replied Gordon, stifling a yawn and muffling the words “excuse me.” “You got all my e-mails, right? They should more than prepare you for everything tomorrow.”

Richie didn’t immediately reply. As he clicked into his e-mail’s offline trash bin and restored Gordon’s e-mails, Richie responded in a calm tone, “Yeah. I read them. I’ll read them again before going to bed, and again in the morning.”

“Good. Then we’ll be fine,” was Gordon’s firm reply. “You’ll be fine, Richie. This isn’t a roast. It’s just an interview at a talk show, followed by a book signing. You’ll be out and done by lunchtime.”

Thinking to himself how well that worked out for his own plans, Richie couldn’t help but grin. “Fantastic,” he said, standing up and stretching his legs a bit. “So you’ll be in town by when?”

“It’s looking like I’ll touch down at five, so expect to see me by six,” was the short and tired reply on the other end of the phone. “For now, I’m going to go home and get some sleep. It’s been a long day, Richie, and I have a long plane ride tomorrow.”

Richie voiced his sympathy and exchanged a few more pleasantries before ending the call.

“Heck, yeah,” he said to himself, grabbing his bottled water and finishing it off, then tossing the empty bottle into a nearby waste can. “I’ll be able to swing by that Bourgeois’s office and get back here in time to meet with Gordon. This is fantastic!”

Richie felt a shivering tingle go down his spine and attributed it to elation. He grabbed a pen from his briefcase and jotted his itinerary down. Feeling a secondary small shiver, he felt he must really care about seeing Kent tomorrow to bother taking notes on something so simple.

The elation was soon replaced by a sense of sincere hunger, his stomach growling loudly. “Right. I haven’t eaten all day.”

It was a small matter for Richie to get his watch, wallet, pill bottle, and shoes assembled before heading out the door. However, his thoughts of oyster po’boys and seafood gumbo were interrupted when he nearly tripped over the newspaper laid at the door of his room. Catching himself with a quick grab of the door frame, Richie looked down.

For the third time today, his eyes froze on some text laid out before him. Only this time it wasn’t an e-mail, or a jotting in a notebook—it was a newspaper headline: “Woman Butchered Last Night—Police Suspect Bourbon Street Ripper Copycat.”

For almost a full minute, Richie stood there and stared at the newspaper’s headline. Again, the sides of his mouth twitched. In his mind, wheels were already turning, and his reasons for wanting to speak with Samantha Castille were just reinforced. When he finally came to his senses, Richie leaned down and scooped up the paper, taking it inside.

He read the articles on last night’s murder, paying particular attention to the gruesome details of the crime scene. The more he read, the more fascinated he became. The story of a potential Bourbon Street Ripper copycat killer was thrilling to him. He was just about to get his pen and start underlining facts and details that he felt were important when his eyes fell upon a name he recognized from his notes on the Bourbon Street Ripper: “Senior Detective Rodger Bergeron.”

Immediately, Richie recognized Detective Bergeron as one of the two original detectives on the Bourbon Street Ripper murders case, as well as the detective credited for catching Vincent Castille. His mind a whirl, Richie circled the detective’s name several times before saying to himself, “I wonder if he’ll actually talk to me about those murders years ago? Probably not, but it can’t hurt to ask, right?”

Dropping the newspaper on the desk, Richie again headed out the door. His hunger had long since overcome his desire to continue researching the gruesome Bourbon Street Ripper murders, and besides figuring that he could think better on a full stomach, Richie needed to get out of the hotel room.

An hour later, Richie was sopping up hot sauce with the crunchy squishiness of a fried oyster that had fallen off his po’boy. Having walked about three blocks down Canal Street, one of the longest streets in downtown New Orleans, Richie had settled on a small family-owned restaurant that had come highly recommended. Run by an old, overweight woman named Mama Claire and her three sons, the Ragin’ Cajun, as it was called, was quaint and intimate. Richie had received such good service there that he was already contemplating a 20 percent tip.

Having had a lot of time to think about the idea of writing about a Bourbon Street Ripper copycat, Richie had come to the conclusion that he really wanted to pursue this kind of novel next. The timing couldn’t be better—with a real-life copycat killer on the loose, the media would love having a
New York Times
best-selling author release a book on the very same thing.
It’s a bit gruesome
, Richie thought to himself as he swallowed the last bit of his po’boy,
but any free coverage is welcome. And if the controversy of cashing in on a serial killer’s bloody trail gets me free press, then more’s the better.

Richie Fastellos didn’t care what others thought of him, especially not the media. He wrote for himself, and if people thought he was a son of a bitch for capitalizing on a possible copycat, then let them think that—so long as they bought his books.

Slurping down the last of his iced tea, Richie paid for his meal and left the Ragin’ Cajun, heading back toward the hotel. As he walked, he took in the sights of Canal Street and downtown New Orleans.

Ever since he was a teenager aspiring to be a famous author, Richie had wanted to visit New Orleans, the dark mystique of the city drawing him in like the summoning gesture of a Gypsy fortune-teller. He wasn’t sure if it was the unique blend of Spanish and French architecture, the Creole and Cajun cuisine, or the year-round relaxed atmosphere that intrigued him, but something about the city fascinated him.

This was partially the reason why he was looking to purchase a townhome here, as Richie wanted a place specifically for him to stay in whenever he came to New Orleans.

Lost in his own thoughts, as well as the sights of the city, Richie didn’t realize he was walking right into a group of strangers until a man’s voice called out, “Hey, dick, watch out!” Quickly, Richie looked up and spun to the side, pressing against the side of a building, even as the group passed him. His heart immediately started racing, and for a brief moment, Richie was sure that the guy who had yelled at him would start kicking his ass.

Once he was sure that he wasn’t about to have a full-blown anxiety attack, which he was prone to have whenever confronted by anything outside his comfort zone, he looked over at the group of people. It was just three people, two men and one woman, walking with the easily recognizable double stagger of those who have been imbibing all day. All three were holding forty-eight-ounce daiquiri cups.

As they passed, one of the men said, “Fuckwad,” to Richie, but the woman stopped and slapped her companion’s arm.

“Don’t be a douche-mouth!” she said. Then she stumbled over to Richie.

As he was pressed against the wall, Richie noted three things about the woman. One, her chest was too big to be real. Second, the black T-shirt she wore had the words “Cock Teaser” on it. Third, she was pressing those silicon puppies against his own chest.

“Hey, good-looking,” the drunk woman said, her breath rank with liquor, “don’t let my stupid friends fuck with you. Here, have a drink… ”

Richie opened his mouth to say “no, thanks.” Instead, a spit-lacquered straw ended up in his mouth. Eyes wide, Richie sucked obediently for a few moments, tasting the distinct flavor called “Sex on the Beach” before tearing his mouth away and thanking the woman.

“My pleasure, sexy,” replied Cock Teaser as she reached down and roughly manhandled Richie’s manhood. Her two friends quickly tore her away, one of them apologizing for the woman’s lewdness, the other wrapping his arm around her waist to keep her near.

The woman reared her head back and announced to the world, “I am drunker than shit and want to fuck some dick right now!”

The three stumbled off, heading toward the intersection of Canal and Dauphine. Richie shook uncontrollably as he gasped for breath. The encounter with the woman had been too much for him, and his heart was racing as panic seized him.

He struggled to keep his hands steady as he took out his bottle of anxiety medication and, popping the cover, slid two pills into his mouth. Dry-swallowing them, Richie slid down to the ground and sat there, protectively hugging the bottle against him as the medication took effect.

Once the pills had worked their magic,. Richie felt like he could function again. He took a few minutes to recover from what could only be described as a sexual assault by a drunk woman.

Inside, he felt nothing but disgust for himself and the woman. He couldn’t stand trashy women, let alone
drunk
trashy women. And her roughly grabbing him started to bring back some memories he didn’t want to have.

Straightening himself out, Richie, whose ears were burning red, wished he had reacted with more poise and dignity. By the time he got back to the Ritz-Carlton, he was thoroughly in need of a drink himself.

“I hate people like that,” Richie muttered to himself as he wandered into the hotel’s bar. “They’re always out to mess up my mojo. I hope all three of them get run over by a goddamn truck.”

Richie pushed those thoughts out of his head and focused on getting hammered. It helped dull the bad feelings.

It was ten to midnight, and Richie, seated alone at a table near a window, was on his third glass of scotch when he realized that a woman in a red dress had walked up to him. He had been lost in his own thoughts.

“Hey,” she was saying, her voice on the tired side of sultry, her rose-colored lips still managing to pout out just enough to be alluring. Her fingers, manicured and painted deep red, ran over the chair opposite him. “You look lonely. Mind if I join you?”

Richie, who was already halfway intoxicated, looked the woman over. She had to be in her late twenties, had blond hair down to her shoulders, clear blue eyes, a single beauty mark just above her mouth on the left side, and dark lashes. She was dressed in a red cocktail dress right out of the fifties.

She smelled like exotic fruits, as if her perfume was made of mangos and papayas. Overall, she looked like she had stepped out of a film noir. For a moment, Richie expected a pug-nosed mobster to come up from behind, grab her roughly by the arm, and drag her away.

His lack of an immediate response drew an “ahem” from the woman, and Richie nodded and gestured toward the seat. “Please, please, by all means. They’re not labeled.” Once the woman had taken a seat, Richie asked if he could get her a drink.

Smiling sensually, the woman shook her head, saying, “No, hon, I’m good. I just needed some company, and you look like the only man here who won’t try to take me up to his room.”

Richie looked around the bar, admitting that at this hour, the majority of people here were either married, trying to hook up with a random stranger, or both. With a shake of his head, he turned back to the woman and said, “I’m too drunk and too preoccupied for that.”

“Preoccupied?” asked the woman in red curiously, leaning forward and gazing into Richie’s eyes. “With what, hon?”

“Oh,” replied Richie as he sipped at his scotch, “I’m appearing on a talk show tomorrow morning.”

At the woman’s skeptical raise of an eyebrow, Richie quickly went on, “I’m serious. I’m a novelist, and I—”

Stopping, Richie reached into his pants pocket and whipped out his wallet. Fumbling embarrassedly with it, Richie pulled out his business card and slid it across the table toward the woman, who looked at it with mild disinterest, refusing to touch it. “See? Richard Fastellos. The author. That’s me.”

“How nice,” replied the woman, looking back into Richie’s eyes. “So you write mysteries then?”

“Yup,” replied Richie, taking back the card and gulping down his drink.

Then she asked a question that Richie wasn’t expecting. “Ever try to solve one?”

This elicited a pause from Richie, who peered at the woman through his tilted glass as he drank from it. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. It was so unreal, as if he were living out a gangster movie, complete with saxophone- and piano-laden background music.

Richie decided to go with it, figuring that if he was being pranked, or if this was some kind of alcohol-induced dream, he might as well have fun with it. Placing the glass down on the table, he shook his head, saying, “No. No, I have not.”

“Well, you should,” replied the woman, looking with boredom around the room, and then back at Richie. “They say that mystery writers would make great detectives. Why not try solving a mystery sometime?”

Richie laughed at that notion. Not a cruel, dismissive, or even sarcastic laugh, but a laugh of disbelief. “Really,” he said, “and what mystery would I try to solve? The murder that happened last night? The one people are saying is like the Bourbon Street Ripper?”

With a shrug of her pale shoulders, the woman replied, “Why not, hon? It’s as good a mystery as any. I’m sure you can offer your support to the police, you being a famous author and all. Get to know the facts about the case and see if you can”—she leaned in and accented her words slowly, her pouty lips sensually forming each word—“solve the mystery.”

Entranced, Richie stared back at her for a while, even after she had leaned back and resumed looking over the bar. Finally, slamming back the last of his scotch, Richie gave a contented sigh and said, “Ya know, why the hell not, right? I’ll solve this just like in one of my stories!”