Cry Wolf

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Danjermond lived in a gracious old brick house three doors down from Conroy Cooper. Once part of a row of town houses, the building was three stories high and very narrow. The rest of the town houses had long ago fallen to the wrecking ball, leaving this one tall, elegant reminder of more genteel times. The front yard was graced with a pair of live oak heavily festooned with Spanish moss. The interlaced branches of the trees created a bower above the walk to a front entrance that boasted a black lacquered front door with a fanlight above. The only light that glowed in the gathering darkness came from the brass carriage lamp beside the door.

Laurel cut through Cooper's lawn and approached Danjermond's house from the rear, where the properties gradually backed down to the bayou. The neighborhood was quiet, populated primarily by older couples whose families had long since grown up and moved on. There were a few lights in windows up and down the block, but no one was outside to see her slip through a break in the tall hedge that surrounded Danjermond's backyard.

As at Belle Rivière, the small backyard had been paved with bricks more than a century ago and turned into a private courtyard where a small stone fountain gurgled and bougainvillea climbed what was left of the original brick wall. But there the similarities ended. There was no jungle of plant life here, no clutter of tables and chairs. The area had a very spare, austere, almost vacant feel to it. A single black wrought-iron bench sat dead center, directly behind the house, facing the fountain.

Laurel envisioned Danjermond sitting there, staring, contemplating, saying nothing, and a chill crawled over her despite the heat of the night. She had the strangest feeling she could sense his presence here, even though she knew he was away, and the idea of going into his home brought a sense of dread that lay in her stomach like a stone. Her skin was clammy with sweat, making her T-shirt stick to her in spots, drawing mosquitoes that she waved away impatiently as she forced herself to take one step and then another toward the house. She didn't have a choice and didn't have much time. There was no sense in dawdling just because she was spooked.

Even as she thought it, something rustled in the shrubbery at the back of the courtyard, and she whirled, wide-eyed to find-Nothing. A bird. A squirrel. Her imagination. Heart thumping at the base of her throat, she turned back to the house.

The last of the day had faded to black. Stars were winking on in the sky above, but their pinpoints of light did nothing to illuminate the courtyard. The hedge, a thicket well over six feet high, blocked out the surrounding world so completely that Laurel had to remind herself there were people in their living rooms watching television on either side.

The back door was locked. There had been a time when no one in Bayou Breaux would have dreamed of locking a door. Then crime had seeped out from the cities. Then Stephen Danjermond had come.

Nibbling on her thumbnail, she descended the stairs, trying to think of an alternate way in. The front would be locked, as well, not that she could risk going in that way. He might have a spare key hidden somewhere, but she didn't want to take time to search for it. The first-floor windows were way out of her reach-but the ground-floor windows weren't.

Like many old homes in south Louisiana, this one had been built with a ground floor used for storage; the living areas were above, high enough to thwart the inevitable floodwaters from the bayou. Laurel checked the nearest window, finding it jammed shut and stuck with age and old paint. Quickly she moved around the other side of the stairs and found a door that led beneath the stoop and presumably into the storage space.

She closed her fingers around the knob and tried to turn it, her hand slipping, slick with sweat, and her fingers weak with nerves. She wiped her palm on the leg of her jeans and tried again, holding her breath as the hardware caught, stuck, then, with an extra twist, released, and the door creaked open, revealing a space that was thick with cobwebs and dust. And who knew what else, Laurel thought as she pulled a flashlight from the hip pocket of her jeans. Shaded, undisturbed space close to the bayou. There wouldn't be anything unusual in finding a copperhead or two… or more. The famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark slithered up from the depths of her memory and crawled over her skin.

Shuddering, she steeled herself, drew a deep breath, pushed the door open-and a hand clamped over her mouth from behind. An arm banded around her middle, as strong as steel, and hauled her back against a body that was lean, rock-solid, and indisputably male.

Panic exploded in Laurel, shooting adrenaline through her veins, pumping strength into her arms and legs. She tried to bolt, tried to kick, tried to jab back with her elbows all at once, twisting violently in her captor's grasp. He grunted as her heel connected with his shin, but her satisfaction was small and short-lived as he tightened his hold around her middle.

"Dammit, 'tite chatte, be still!"

As quick as a heartbeat, all the fight in her froze into paralyzing disbelief. Jack. She went limp with relief, and he loosened his hold in response. Jack had come. Jack had followed her. Jack had scared the living hell out of her.

She twisted around in his embrace and smacked his arm as hard as she could with the barrel of the flashlight. "You jackass!" she hissed under her breath. "You scared me near to death!"

Jack jumped back to avoid a second thumping. He scowled at her while he rubbed at the rising welt on his arm. "What the hell are you doin' here?" he demanded in a low, graveled voice.

Laurel gaped at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I followed you," he admitted grudgingly, still cursing himself for it. If he hadn't been standing on the balcony when she had crept down the back steps of Belle Rivière… If he hadn't wondered why and let his imagination loose on the possibilities… If he had a lick of sense and the brains God gave a goat, he would have gone back in and sat down to work.

"Why?" she demanded, glaring up at him with fire in her eyes and a smudge of dirt on the tip of her upturned nose.

"'Cause even money said you were gettin' into trouble."

"So what do you care if I am?" Laurel snapped. "You looked me in face this morning and told me in no uncertain terms you didn't want me in your life. Make up your mind, Jack. You want me or you don't. You're in this or you're out."

He set his jaw and looked past her into the dark of the storage space beneath the house. He wanted her. That wasn't the question, had never been the question. The question was whether he deserved her, whether he dared take the chance to find out. The answers eluded him still, lay inside him beneath a dark cloak he hadn't worked up the courage to look beneath. It was easier not to, simpler to let her walk out of his life.

"Why are you here?" he asked again, bringing his gaze back to her.

"Because I think I know who killed my sister." Fingers tightening around the flashlight, eyes locked hard on his face, she took the plunge. "Stephen Danjermond."

Laurel held her breath, waiting for his reaction, praying he would believe her, certain he would not. Needing him to believe her.

Jack blew out a breath, tunneled his fingers back through his hair, feeling as if she had knocked him upside the head with a lead pipe. "Danjermond!" he murmured, incredulous. "He's the goddamn district attorney!"

Laurel's jaw tightened against the first wave of hurt. "I know what he is. I know exactly what he is."

He swore long and fluently. "Why? Why do you think he's the one?"

"Because he all but told me he was," she said, turning her back to him to shine her light under the stairs and to hide the disappointment. "I don't have time to explain. You either believe me or you don't. Either way, I'm going into this house to look for some kind of proof."

Jack took in the rigid set of her shoulders-so slim, so delicate, too often carrying a burden that would have crushed a lesser person. He thought of the burden that had broken her. She had lost everything-her career, her credibility, her husband-because she had believed justice had to win at all cost. And she would fight this fight, too, alone if she had to, because she believed.

Dieu, he couldn't remember if he had ever believed in anything except looking out for his own hide.

Laurel suffered through the silence, refusing to let her heart break. She didn't have the time for it now. Later, after she had figured out a way to nail Danjermond, then she would let herself deal with this. Now she had a job to do, and if she had to do it alone, so be it.

She choked down the knot in her throat and took a step into the space beneath the house. Jack clamped a hand over her shoulder and held her back.

"Hey, gimme that light, sugar. There might be snakes under here."

They emerged on the first floor of the house, through a door tucked under the main staircase. Laurel toed her sneakers off to avoid tracking in sand and dirt. Jack, in boots, opted to dust them off on the legs of his jeans.

The house was dark, all looming shapes and sinister shadows. The smells of lemon polish and cherry-tinted tobacco hung in the air. A grandfather clock marked time in the hall, ticking the seconds away, chiming the half hour. Nine-thirty.

"What are we looking for?" Jack whispered, keeping a hand on Laurel's shoulder in deference to the protective instincts rising up in him.

"Trophies," she answered, shining the narrow beam of the flashlight on the floor. Her breath hitched in her throat as something tall caught her eye near the front door, then seeped back out as she recognized the lines of a coat tree. "We know the killer kept jewelry as souvenirs because he sent some to me. I'm betting he kept some for himself, as well, as keepsakes."

"Jesus."

She shone the light into the front room-a parlor-backed out of the doorway, and continued down the hall, past a small, elegant dining room, past a bathroom. A blocky ginger cat bolted out of the next room and streaked past them, growling, making a beeline for the stairs. Laurel paused to get her heartbeat down from warp speed, then ducked into the room the cat had dashed out of.

Bookcases covered the walls from the twelve-foot-high ceiling to the polished pine floor. Here the scent of Danjermond's expensive tobacco was strongest, the furniture polish an undertone to leather chairs and the faintly musty-sweet aroma of old books. A handsome cherrywood partners desk dominated the floor space. Behind it, an entertainment center held shelves of sophisticated stereo equipment.

Laurel skirted around a wing chair and took a look at the desktop. She was afraid they would have to go upstairs to find what they were looking for. Her instincts told her a killer would keep items that secret, that meaningful, in his most private lair-his bedroom. But a study was a close second, and Danjermond obviously spent a good deal of time in his.

Slipping around behind the desk, she cast the light over a humidor, a tray of correspondence, an immaculate blotter. She slipped two fingers into a brass pull and tried the slim center drawer.

"Damn, it's locked."

Jack scanned the bookshelves by the thin, silvery light from the window, looking for a title that might strike a spark. People often hid things in books. Hollowed them out and filled them with treasures and secrets. He assumed there wasn't time to look through all of them, and searched for a likely candidate instead, but there were no titles like The Naked and the Damned, or The Quick and the Dead, or anything else that might appeal to a twisted sense of humor, just tomes on law and order, classics, poetry.

"Where's Danjermond?" he asked, pulling out a Conan Doyle first edition.

Laurel tried the drawers on the file cabinet with no luck. "Being toasted by the royal order of pearls and girdles as a man they can all look up to and entrust with the chastity of their debutante daughters."

She checked her watch and swore. They needed to find something soon, before the window of opportunity slid closed and locked them inside.

"What happens if we find something?" Jack asked as they climbed to the next floor. "We don' exactly have a warrant, angel. No judge in the country would allow evidence obtained this illegally."

"All I need is one piece," Laurel said as she crept past a small guest room and a linen closet. "Just one damning piece I can take to Kenner and hit him over the head with. He's probably turning your place upside down as we speak. Danjermond is trying to build a case against you."

The news stopped Jack in his tracks. He had thought Kenner was grasping at straws, not that anyone in the courthouse had a plan. "He really thinks he can pin Savannah's murder on me? And Annie's?"

"And four others. And don't think he won't figure out a way to do it. The man has a mind a Celtic knot would envy."

And she was going to stop him, Jack thought, watching as she shone the beam of the flashlight into another bedroom. She was risking what was left of her reputation in part to protect him.

"Bingo," she muttered, and pushed open the door.

The bed gave the room away as Danjermond's-a massive mahogany tester with ornately carved posts and a black velvet spread trimmed in gold. The underside of the canopy was decorated with shirred white silk. Jack reached up and pushed a section of fabric aside to reveal a mirror. Laurel said nothing to his arched brow. She didn't allow her mind to form any kind of scenario. She didn't want to imagine where Danjermond's sexual tastes ran, because one thought would lead to the next and on to delicate wrists bound and screams for mercy and-

"You okay, sugar?" Jack whispered. He didn't even try to stop himself from slipping his arms around her and pulling her back against him. She had gone pale too suddenly, her eyes were too wide. He bent his head and pressed a kiss to her temple. "Come on. We'll take a look and get the hell outta here."

Like every other room they had seen, this one was immaculate, impeccably decorated, strangely cold-feeling, as if no one lived here-or the one who did was not human. Not a thing was out of place. Every piece of furniture looked to be worth a fortune. Nothing appeared to have sentimental value. There were no photos of family, no small mementos of his youth. A barrister's bookcase between the windows held another collection of antique books-first editions of erotica that dated back to Renaissance Europe. But there was nothing else, no jewelry, no weapons, no photographs.

Disappointment pressed down on Laurel. She should have known better than to think Danjermond would make it easy on her, but she had hoped just the same. Now that hope slipped through her grasp like sand. If the evidence she needed wasn't here, then it could be anywhere in the Atchafalaya.

And with the disappointment came self-doubt. What if she was wrong? What if the killer was Baldwin or Leonce? Or Cooper. Or some nameless, faceless stranger.

No. She closed the last drawer on the dresser and straightened, rubbing her fingers against her temples. She wasn't wrong. She hadn't been wrong in Scott County; she wasn't wrong now. Stephen Danjermond was a killer. She knew it, could feel it, had always felt something like wariness around him. He was a killer, and he thought he was going to get away with murder.

If she couldn't find one way to implicate him, Laurel knew she would have to find another. And the longer it took her, the more women would die, and the more time Danjermond would have to build a case to frame Jack. The longer he would play his game with her, destroying her credibility, her confidence, her belief in a higher law than survival of the fittest.

"Let's go," she whispered, hooking a finger through a belt loop on Jack's Levi's and pulling him away from the bookcase. "I doubt he'll be back from the dinner for another hour, but we can't take chances."

"Wait."

It hit Jack like an epiphany as the flashlight beam swept across the collection of books. A trio bound in faded red leather sitting side by side by side on the upper left-hand shelf. L-Petite Mort, volumes one, two, and three. The Little Death. His eyes had scanned past them when he'd first realized that this collection was erotica. Erotica-the little death-orgasm. The title hadn't seemed out of place, but as he guided the beam of the light across the bindings, a sixth sense tensed in his gut like a fist.

Gently, he lifted the glass panel on the front of the case and slid it back out of the way. The three volumes came off the shelf as one.

Emotion lodged like a rock in Laurel's throat as she shone the light across a tangle of earrings and necklaces. More than six pieces. Many more. Tears swimming in her eyes, she reached in with a tweezers she'd pulled from her pocket and lifted out a heavy gold earring. A large circle of hammered gold hanging from a smaller loop of finely braided strands of antiqued gold.

"This is-" The present tense stuck to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed it back and tried again. "This was Savannah's. She had a pair made in New Orleans. A present to herself for her birthday. She was wearing the other one when they found her."

Jack kept his silence as they watched the gold hoop turn and catch the light. There were no words adequate to assuage the kind of pain he heard in Laurel's voice. Gently he closed the box and returned it to its spot in the bookcase. Laurel just stood there, her gaze locked on the earring, her eyes bleak. Jack slid an arm around her shoulders and bent his head down close to hers.

"You got him, sugar," he whispered. "That's the best you can do."

"I wish it were enough," Laurel murmured. She handed him the flashlight and dropped the earring into a Ziploc bag.

They took a final, quick glance around the room to make certain they had left everything as they had found it, then Laurel led the way into the hall, flashlight scanning the floor ahead of them-until the beam fell on a pair of polished black dress shoes.

Her first instinct was to run, but there was nowhere to run to. He stood between them and the head of the stairs. Behind her, Jack swore under his breath.

Slowly, she raised the flashlight, up the sharp, flawless crease of his black tuxedo trousers and higher, until the beam spotlighted the barrel of a silencer on the nine-millimeter gun he held in one hand and the pair of small canvas sneakers he held in the other.

"I believe these are yours, Laurel," he said in that same even tone of voice he used for all occasions. "How considerate of you to take them off."

"What happened with the League of Women Voters?" she asked, a small, detached part of her mind wondering how she could be so calm. Her pulse rate had gone off the chart. Her blood pounded so in her ears, it was a wonder she could hear herself think. And she asked him about his dinner as if this were the most normal of circumstances.

Danjermond frowned in the pale wash of light that reached his face. "In view of all the recent tragedies, I thought it inappropriate to allow the festivities to go on as they would have ordinarily."

"A selfless gesture."

A small, feline smile tucked up the corners of his mouth. "I can be a very generous man, when I so choose."

"Did you 'so choose' with my sister?" Laurel asked bitterly, her voice trembling with rage, her left hand trembling badly enough to rattle the small plastic bag holding Savannah's earring.

He tipped his head in reproach, but his gaze went directly to the evidence, and anger rolled off him like steam. "Now, Laurel, you don't really expect me to answer that, do you?"

"You might as well," Jack said, easing out from behind Laurel. He took a step and then another to Danjermond's left, forcing him to split his attention between them. "You're gonna kill us now, too-right?"

Danjermond contemplated the question for a moment, finally deciding to be magnanimous and gift them with an answer. "C'est vrai, Jack, as you might say yourself. It isn't quite according to my plan, but adjustments must sometimes be made."

"Sorry to inconvenience you," Jack drawled sarcastically, moving a little forward, enough to draw Danjermond's full concern. The barrel of the gun swung even with his chest.

"That's near enough, Jack. Don't come any closer."

"Or what?" Jack taunted. "You'll shoot? You're gonna shoot anyway. Dead is dead."

"No, no, mon ami," Danjermond purred. "There is most definitely a difference between instant death and being made to beg for death. Your cooperation could make all the difference for Miss Chandler."

Jack weighed the odds, not liking them. Danjermond was going to kill them. Heaven only knew what kind of hell he planned to put them through. He had murdered at least six women, brutally, horribly. Jack had long ago ceased to care what happened to himself, but the idea of anything like that happening to Laurel was intolerable. He couldn't just stand helpless and let it happen. Damned if he was going to play into the hands of a madman.

Never looking away from Danjermond, he grabbed Laurel's arm and jerked it up, shining the beam of the flashlight in Danjermond's face, at the same time, twisting his body to shield Laurel and push her off to the side.

Danjermond swore and flung an arm up to block the blinding light. The gun bucked once in his hand, the explosion reduced to a soft thump by the silencer. A fat Chinese vase on a stand along the wall shattered, sending shards of porcelain flying in all directions. Water cascaded to the floor, and delphinium stems fell like pickup sticks.

Propelled by Jack's weight, Laurel stumbled sideways and fell to her knees. The flashlight sailed out of her grip and crashed to the floor, rolling out of her reach, sending bands of bright amber light tumbling across the wall. She tried to scramble after it, but Jack was in front of her and Danjermond beyond him, and it was clear the battle between them was far from over.

Head down, Jack lunged for Danjermond, planting a shoulder hard in the man's chest. The two of them landed on the polished wood floor, inches from the head of the stairs, and began wrestling for control of the gun. Jack grabbed hold of Danjermond's arm and slammed it hard against the floor, but before he could shake the pistol loose, a white-hot pain sliced into his right side, momentarily shorting out all thought and all strength.

Howling in pain and rage, he twisted around to find the source. A jagged shard of white porcelain protruded from his side with Danjermond's hand closed around it, as if around the hilt of a knife, blood oozing from between his fingers. As Jack reached to dislodge the impromptu knife, Danjermond swung the gun up and slammed it into his temple.

In the blink of an eye, the balance of power shifted. Jack struggled to stay on top as his consciousness dimmed, but the world dipped and tilted beneath him. Then suddenly they were rolling, through the water, over the broken vase, pain biting, muscles burning, heart pumping.

He managed to get a hand on Danjermond's throat and started to squeeze, but the district attorney was on top of him and pulling back, pulling away. Bringing the gun up. Laurel might have screamed, but all Jack was certain of was the sharp thunk! of a bullet splintering the floor millimeters from his head as he let go of Danjermond's windpipe and knocked his gun hand to the side.

Jack surged up, twisting to reverse their positions. Pain sliced through his side, pounded in his head. He blocked it out and fought on adrenaline, groping, pushing, turning. Danjermond's back slammed into the delicately turned white balusters that guarded the second-story landing, cracking one and shaking the whole balustrade, and the gun came out of his hand and skidded across the floor, toward the stairs.

Laurel jumped back as they wrestled, wanting to do something, but the gun was on the other side of the hall and the flashlight was somewhere on the floor beneath the tangle of grunting, straining male bodies. She glanced around for something, anything, she might use as a weapon, finding nothing, but she wasn't about to settle for prayer.

Do something, do something, she chanted mentally, turning and running back into Danjermond's bedroom. She had to find a weapon, something she could hit him with, stab him with, anything.

Jack slammed a left into Danjermond's face, then lunged up and forward, scrambling for the gun that was just out of his reach. His fingertips hit the silencer, and it spun away, sliding through the pool of water and broken glass. Focused, intent, he grabbed for it again and closed his fingers around the rubber grip on the handle.

At the same time, Danjermond found the flashlight. As Jack came up and started to swing around with the gun, Danjermond came to his knees and swung the flashlight like a club. It caught Jack a vicious blow on the side of his head, snapping his head around and clouding his vision to a gray blur. Brain synapses shorted out. The gun fell from his hand and tumbled down the steps, firing a useless shot into the wall.

He tried to stand, tried to block the second strike, but the messages never connected with the appropriate muscles. The blow landed, and everything faded to black.

Laurel burst out of the bedroom with a heavy ginger jar lamp in her hands, brandishing it like a club to swing at Danjermond's head. But he grabbed her arm as she stepped into the hall and her gaze went to Jack, and the lamp crashed to the floor.

"Jack!" Laurel screamed as he lay limp at the top of the stairs, the side of his face running with blood. Thoughts flashed fast-forward through her mind in that one elongated moment she stood there staring at his still body in the dark hall-he was dead, she'd lost him, she was alone with a killer.

She started to move forward, but Danjermond held her.

"Careful, Laurel," he said quietly, his breath whistling in and out of his lungs. She could smell his sweat and his expensive cologne. She could smell blood and could only hope it was his. "You don't want to step on glass," he murmured.

"You're insane," she charged, her voice a sharp, trembling whisper. She twisted around to glare up at him, her breath catching at the sinister cast his features took on in the orange-shadowed glow of the flashlight.

"No," he said in return, smiling ever so faintly, his cool green eyes on hers, unblinking. "I'm not."