The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) (5 page)

“Sam!”

Sam snapped back to reality, aware of the cool air of her study, aware of the clamminess of her skin—had she been sweating?—and aware that both Rodger and Michael were looking at her with concern, Michael halfway to his feet. The woman put down her coffee cup and shook her head as the two men passed a glance between each other.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, avoiding eye contact, “but that was probably the last thing that I ever expected or wanted to hear.” Looking back up at the men, she offered a shaky smile. “So, how can I help you, Rodger?”

From his seat, Rodger leaned back, the look of concern on his face fading into silent understanding. Michael also leaned back, looking briefly once more toward his partner before turning his attention back to Sam.

Rodger immediately got down to business. “When your grandfather was put away, a box of his belongings remained out of police custody. Stuff from your father’s townhome, here, that the police couldn’t get a warrant for. I don’t remember all that was in it, but it’s the only evidence from the original case that we don’t have.”

Rodger finished off his coffee and leaned forward, partially to place the cup back on the tray, and partially to look Sam in the eyes. “It could really help us if we had that box, Sam.”

At first, the request seemed unusual to Sam, who wondered why a stash of her grandfather’s belongings could be helpful in finding a copycat killer. After a moment, however, she understood.

Sipping her coffee, Sam nodded and said, “I see. You’re hoping that the contents of this box will help you think through how Grandfather committed his crimes. You’re trying to profile the killer.”

To Sam’s surprise, it was Michael who replied. “Exactly. By developing a profile of the copycat killer, we hope to catch him before he claims another victim.”

Rodger nodded to Michael before settling back in his chair again. “Can you do this for us, Sam? We may not be able to use it as evidence, but that’s the district attorney’s problem. Either way, if it helps us catch the killer, it will put this ugliness to an end.”

For a long moment, Sam sat there and considered things. She had never doubted her grandfather’s guilt. Even with all of her efforts to forget those events in her life, Sam knew that she was the granddaughter of the most prolific serial killer in the history of New Orleans, perhaps all of Louisiana. She also knew that, despite the ties of blood, she hated Vincent Castille more than she hated anyone else in the world.

After several long moments of consideration, Sam said, “The box is up in the attic. If I give it to you, do you promise—” Her voice caught for a moment as an inexplicable feeling of fear seized her heart. “Do you promise to never bring it back to me? Destroy it or seal it away in one of those police evidence rooms of yours if you like. I just never want anything of Grandfather’s in my home again.”

Rodger nodded, giving Sam the most sympathetic look she had received in a very long time, before replying, “Of course, Sam. I’ll make sure it never gets released to you.”

“Good. Then wait right here,” was Sam’s brief response before standing up and leaving the study. Heading up the stairs, which were conveniently located in the front hallway, Sam bypassed the second floor, where the guest bedrooms were located, went past the third floor, where her own bedroom was located, and went up to the attic on the fourth floor.

The attic was stuffed with boxes and chests, mannequins with dresses of all sorts, and more junk than fire safety codes should ever allow. Each box, each chest, each container was meticulously labeled—a product of Sam stuffing a mansion’s worth of junk into a townhome’s storage space.

She began to rummage, her brow furrowed and her headache back. By now, her thoughts were fully on the Bourbon Street Ripper murders. She was obsessively thinking about the vile things her grandfather had done to his victims.

“You bastard,” Sam said between her teeth, “after all these years, you still haunt me. When the hell will you go away?”

Suddenly, Sam pulled back her hands as if her fingers had been bitten. When she came to her senses, she realized that she had recoiled the moment she had touched the very box she was looking for.

It wasn’t a very large box, just two cubic feet, but it was old, was taped shut, and had written on it, very clearly, “Vincent Castille.”

For another long moment, Sam kneeled back and looked at the box as if it were evil itself, her heart racing. The side of her head was pounding, her spine was tingling as if she was suddenly out in the cold, and she felt like she was going to pass out. It was like a memory was trying to force its way to the surface, one that carried nothing but pain.

Sam began to take deep breaths, pushing back the unpleasant memories, until she was calm. Only when she had calmed herself down did her cynical, tight-lipped smirk return. “There you are, Grandfather. The sooner you are out of my life, the better.”

A few minutes later, Sam was returning to the study, carrying the old box. Without ceremony, she placed the box on her desk, right next to the coffee tray, and patted the top.

“Here you are, Rodger, and good riddance. Get this damn thing out of here.” She was appreciative when he gave her a sympathetic nod. Then she headed over to the mantle and absentmindedly straightened a few pictures, letting thoughts of the box slip out of her mind.

Rodger said, “Thanks. If we have any questions for you as the investigation continues, we’ll call you. No more reasons to show up unannounced.” He motioned his partner toward the box. “Michael, can you take that out to the car?”

Michael nodded before standing up and, grabbing the sides of the box, picked it up. For a moment, he shivered as if he was cold, and then his hands jerked violently. That was when the bottom binding of the box, covered only in old tape, broke with a loud rip, and the contents of the box spilled onto the carpet below, much like the entrails would spill from a slaughtered pig.

Everyone just stared at the broken box in Michael’s hands before looking down at the contents. Scraps of paper, half-chewed pencils, tattered remains of surgical masks, a golden pocket watch, a receipt book, a neatly folded map, and a miraculously unbroken jar of marbles all lay on the floor. A few objects rolled about the carpet, scattering in different directions.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Michael,” exclaimed Rodger as he got up to start gathering the miscellany together. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to hold old boxes by the bottom?”

Michael, who looked very flustered, apologized profusely before flipping the box over and helping his partner gather the contents to put back into the box. Sam soon joined them.

“It’s not Michael’s fault,” Sam quietly remarked to Rodger. “Everything connected to Grandfather finds a way to bring misery to others. It’s his curse.” She then offered a small smile to Michael. “Just be thankful it didn’t do this while you were outside in the rain.”

Michael gave Sam a grateful look. In a matter of minutes, the contents were back in the box and the box was securely in Michael’s arms. He was now holding the box from the bottom.

Sam looked around and said, “There, that should be everything. If I find anything else that rolled out, I’ll let you all know.”

“Thanks,” said Rodger, looking at his pocket watch. “We should get going, Sam. We need to get started on sorting through this mess.”

“And sorting through the box, too,” joked Michael, his remark sparking a soft laugh from Sam.

“Indeed,” said Sam, already feeling the relief of her grandfather’s last set of possessions leaving her home. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Leading both men toward the front door, Sam said, “And I have a deadline to make.”

At the foyer, Sam unlocked the latches and opened the front door. “So, if you have anything else that I can help you with, you’ll call me?”

“Correct,” Rodger answered, carefully stepping outside and down the front porch steps into the light drizzle, the raindrops pattering gently on his trench coat. Michael followed, looking like he was holding on to the box for dear life.

“Sounds good,” Sam replied from the porch, arms folded as she leaned casually against one of the support posts. “Good luck catching the guy who’s doing this. Lord knows the
Times-Picayune
is going to have a field day reporting it.”

Roger shook his head. “You ain’t kidding, Sam. It’ll be a media circus all over again.” Soon both detectives were getting into their car, Rodger fiddling with the safety belt for a few seconds before starting the car and driving off.

Sam watched them leave. For a moment, she was lost in thought, wondering why, after twenty years, this nightmare would return. Finally, she headed inside, latching the door tightly behind her.

“A Vincent Castille copycat,” Sam said to herself as she headed back into her study. “Maybe—just maybe—this will have a silver lining, in that I’ll finally be inspired.” It was a horrible thought, to draw inspiration from something as gruesome and horrific as the Bourbon Street Ripper murders, much less a copycat.

“Still,” Sam said, sitting at the desk and turning back to the typewriter, “if I don’t get my ass, or my act, together, then Grandfather’s inheritance will be the only thing I live off of… and God knows I don’t want anything that bastard left behind.”

With a firm resolution in mind, Sam laid her fingers on the keys of the typewriter once more.

“Okay, inspiration, come!”

Chapter 3   
Four Names, Four Leads

Sounds.

A cacophony of sounds.

Merged together in anything but harmony, the sounds of the New Orleans Police Department’s 8
^th
District were as varied as they were discordant. The most obvious of the sounds were the voices—dozens of human voices, each having their own independent conversations, some of them outright raucous. Sinking beneath those voices was the hum and clatter of an old photocopier as it spit out papers at irregular intervals. Floating along with those voices were the sounds of fingers clacking on keyboards, doors opening and closing, and shoes clapping against the linoleum floor.

And finally, rising above the murmur of those voices were two shrill sounds that cut through the others like a knife. One was the incessant ringing of an unanswered telephone, while the other was the bleating cry of an ill-tempered infant. Not to be outdone by the sound was the smell, that humid and pungent odor of a building with too many sweaty bodies on a hot afternoon. The only thing keeping the atmosphere from being choking were the dozen or so ceiling fans running at full speed high above the floor.

The floor of the precinct was almost like a grid, rows upon rows of desks facing each other and forming walkways just big enough for two adults to walk side-by-side. Five by five the rows were laid out, giving a total of fifty detectives their floor space. The walls were littered with doors leading into the offices of sergeants and lieutenants, interrogation rooms, and storage closets. At one end of the large room was an office twice the size of the others, with two large glass windows framing either side of the door. It was the office of the 8
^th
District commander.

Michael LeBlanc knew the layout of the precinct well, for on his first day he memorized where everything was located. Memorizing things was something of a hobby for Michael, who was almost like a computer, filing away facts, conversations, maps, and crime scenes into his mind, ready to call back later with perfect clarity. It was something of a gift, or so he had been told at an early age by his mother, who would go around announcing that her son would become the brightest neurosurgeon to come out of Shreveport. That was before Michael enlisted in the police academy, or applied for a transfer to New Orleans, rendering him more the family’s black sheep than their pride and joy.

Michael didn’t care. He had wanted to be a police detective as far back as he could remember.

Waiting at his desk for Rodger, Michael looked over the contents of the box they had procured from Samantha Castille, even though he had already committed the contents to memory. Most of it, Michael had to admit, was useful to prove more that Dr. Castille was a lunatic than a killer: stacks of notebooks with insane ramblings about how man’s mortal soul can only achieve transcendence through ultimate suffering, printed clippings from occult magazines about consuming the soul of one’s enemy, and diagrams of the human neural pathways.

Yeah
, thought Michael,
this guy was whacked out of his gourd. It’s as if he really believed that by murdering others, he could use their souls to extend his own natural lifespan. Not only that, but his philosophy that pain and suffering reinforced identity is as antiquated as it is barbaric.

Michael’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a loud, “Get your fucking hands off me!” Looking up quickly, he saw a rough-looking man wearing a jacket proudly displaying the Hell’s Angels logo, his face as bearded as it was scarred, being forcibly escorted by two uniformed officers toward an interrogation room.

Trailing behind them was a senior detective barking orders to the two officers, saying, “Escort Mr. Jones to the interrogation room. And one of you, get his dumb ass a bandage.”

Stopping an officer passing by, Michael inquired what was going on.

“Oh, that,” replied the officer, a young man who was clearly trying not to get involved. “There was a break-in at the Riverwalk this morning, just before the shops opened. Keith Jones, one of the bikers who hangs out ’round there, didn’t take kindly to Detective Aucoin questioning his girl about it. The two exchanged words, then Jones’s fist exchanged personal space with Aucoin’s face. Best to just stay out of it, if you ask me.”