He’d gone away after Rachel’s death, but Sarah’s dreams always brought him back. He was out there tonight. She could feel him.
A shudder gripped her, a cold, black terror. Sarah wanted nothing more than to retreat into her house, to lock herself inside until the nightmare faded, until Ashe Cain had crawled back into the shadows of her past.
Shivering, she forced herself down the porch steps and across the frozen yard to the curb. Officer Parks got out of the car and came around to open her door.
“You didn’t have to get back out,” she said. “I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door.”
“Detective Kelton made it real clear I was to take good care of you.”
“Oh, he did?”
Parks grinned at her tone. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not get on his bad side.”
He waited for her to climb inside, then closed the door behind her. A moment later, he slid behind the wheel and flashed another grin. They were probably close in age, but the cop’s boyish looks and reverent demeanor made him seem much younger.
Sarah tugged off a glove and placed her hand over the heater vent. “Are you sure this thing is working?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s going full blast.”
Then why was she still so cold?
Maybe because the bone chill had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with her ultimate destination.
An icy sludge crawled through Sarah’s veins. She was on her way to a crime scene to examine tattoos on a dead woman. The newspaper article suddenly came back to her, and she wondered again at the familiarity of the missing woman’s name.
Holly Jessup.
Where had she heard it before?
“Ma’am?”
She turned. “Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You seemed a little out of it there for a minute.”
“Did I?” Sarah shrugged. “I was just thinking how much I hate the cold.”
He gave a low chuckle. “You call this cold? Trust me, you don’t know cold until you’ve spent a winter on Lake Michigan.”
“You’re from Chicago?”
“Slidell. But I went north to stay with my grandma when I was a kid.”
“Why’d you come back down here?”
“Why do you think? I couldn’t stand the cold.”
He was smiling at her again, and there was enough ambient light in the car that Sarah could see the brief flare of attraction in his eyes. She wondered how long his interest would hold once he got to know her. She’d always had the ability to frighten off even the more ardent admirers.
Sean had been the exception. He’d lasted longer than most. But in the end, he couldn’t take it, either. He could put up with the pills but not the secrets.
Parks nodded toward her seat belt. “You might want to buckle up. We’re not going far, but the streets are like glass. If we skid into a light pole, I don’t want you going through the windshield.”
“I don’t want that, either.” Sarah fastened the shoulder harness, then put her hands back up to the vent. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering. “Where exactly are we headed?”
“The body was found at a vacant house on Elysian Fields.”
Just a few blocks from Sarah’s place on North Rampart.
“Do you suppose that’s the killer’s idea of a joke?” she said dryly.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Greek mythology. Elysian Fields. The final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous.”
Parks gave her an uneasy glance. “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing this guy’s into.”
Three
Adamant, Arkansas
Esme Floyd prowled her tiny house, her arthritic knees protesting every step. She didn’t know why she was so uneasy tonight, but she reckoned the weather had something to do with it. Not a fit night out for man or beast, her mama would have said.
But even on mild nights, Esme sometimes stayed up until all hours. Came from all those years of waiting for her son, Robert, to come dragging in at dawn, and then later, her grandbaby, Curtis, although he’d never been as bad as his daddy to lay out.
Not until that one winter…
Esme pursed her lips. She wouldn’t study on that tonight. What would be the point?
Whatever devil had been riding the boy all those years ago was gone now. He’d turned into such a fine young man. A doctor, of all things! Esme was so proud, she could strut. Not a single generation of Floyds had ever made it through high school, let alone college and medical school. Robert had quit in the ninth grade and by the time he’d turned twenty-one, he’d served time in Cummins.
Esme had no idea where her son was now. Dead, for all she knew. He took off right after he got out of the pen, leaving Curtis and the boy’s mama to fend for themselves. Esme had ended up raising the child from the time he was twelve years old. He’d been a couple of years older than Rachel when he came here to live, but the two became thick as thieves once he let down his guard.
Thankfully, the DeLaunes hadn’t minded him being around. Esme had been especially worried about James who was mighty particular about Rachel’s friends. The family had been good to her, and she would have hated giving up her job. But Curtis had always been a quiet, easygoing boy, even when he was little, and he’d had enough sense to make himself scarce when he needed to.
Except when it came to Rachel.
That trouble had started brewing right from the get-go, but Esme hadn’t the heart to take away the one good thing in her grandbaby’s life. So she’d sat back and watched his friendship with Rachel DeLaune turn into fierce devotion and later, heartbreak when the girl moved on to someone more suitable.
Esme had worried then, as she still sometimes worried on nights when she couldn’t sleep, that Curtis’s attachment to Rachel might have crossed the line into obsession.
But it didn’t much matter now. Rachel was dead, God rest her soul; had been for fourteen years.
Her killer had never been caught, but most folks in Adamant had their suspicions. The body had been found at the old Duncan farmhouse where Buddy Fears’s boy used to hang out. Esme had seen him out there herself, lollygagging about with that no-account bunch he ran with.
Smoking dope and God only knows what. Nothing but trouble, every last one of ’em.
Derrick Fears had been the worst of the lot. Not a lick of respect for his elders, or even his own body, what with all those piercings and tattoos. Marks of the devil, Esme thought with a shiver.
William Clay had been the county sheriff back then, and she’d heard him tell James once that he knew in his gut that pack of degenerates had killed Rachel, probably during some devil-worshipping ritual out at the farmhouse. And if it took him the rest of his life, he’d see them boys fry.
But it didn’t work out that way. Sheriff Clay had gone to his grave beaten and weary, Rachel’s murder the only black mark against an otherwise outstanding career.
And all these years later, the killer was still out there.
Esme tried to turn away from her dark thoughts. She got out her Bible, but she was too jittery to read. And her joints were starting to ache. The arthritis in her