Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

John Gilby rose with a grunt, hitched up his pants and mopped his face with a white cotton handkerchief. It was as cold as a meat locker inside the shop, but his shirt was stained underneath his arms and the bald spot at the back of his head glistened with sweat. As always, he looked a mess. His ill-fitting brown trousers were threadbare at the knees and seat, and his shirttail hung out in the back. He had on a tie, but it was loosely knotted around his neck and fell several inches short of his burgeoning waistline.

“What’s the word, Gilby?” Maddox asked impatiently, his jaw still working the gum. “Can you give us time of death?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Gilby peeled off his latex gloves and tossed them aside. “We won’t know anything until she’s opened up and we get a look at the stomach and bowels. Maybe not even then.”

“What about cause?” Remi asked.

“’Fraid I can’t help you boys out much there, either. I can tell you this, though. She’s got no visible wounds on the body that I could see, and she doesn’t appear to have been sexually assaulted. The only thing I did find was a small mark at the side of her neck.”

Alex glanced up. “Stun gun?”

“Looks like a needle track. We’ll have to order a full toxicology screen with the postmortem.” He mopped his face again, then returned the crumpled handkerchief to his pocket. “I’m done with her. Y’ all can have ’em take her out whenever you’re ready.”

Alex nodded absently as he snapped on a pair of gloves and knelt beside the body. Turning the victim’s head slightly, he moved in closer to get a look at the tiny puncture wound at the side of her neck. It was barely visible. Anyone else might have overlooked it, but Gilby was a lot more astute than his slovenly appearance suggested.

So who killed you? Alex wondered as he stared down at the body. And why?

Maddox squatted on the other side of the corpse and rubbed a thumb across his bottom lip. “Looks like the son of a bitch must have shot her up with something to incapacitate her, then stuffed her in the icebox so she wouldn’t be found for a while. He knew she wouldn’t last long in this heat.”

“Motive?”

Maddox shrugged. “An old woman alone in a shop isn’t exactly an unusual target in New Orleans. Some crunkhead strolls by, spots her through the front window and decides right then and there to knock over the place.”

He and Alex both straightened as Remi Broussard said in his deep, quiet voice, “I’m not so sure I buy that explanation. Don’t make sense a junkie taking the time to hide the body when he won’t care who finds her or when, so long as he gets his fix. And he’s not going to leave a nice ring like that on her finger, either, or cash in the register. Not when he’s got a mess of spiders crawling around inside his head.”

He was right, Alex thought. Someone else had wanted Mignon Bujold dead, and as much as he didn’t want to go there, he couldn’t stop thinking about that missing doll.

He left Remi and Maddox with the body and walked into the other room to glance out the window. He couldn’t see Claire in the restaurant across the street, but knew she was still there, waiting for him to come and tell her what he’d found.

Alex wished to hell she’d never spotted that damn doll, because he had a bad feeling now that Pandora’s box was about to be opened.

“Hey, Lieutenant, you got a minute?”

He turned as the crime scene investigator approached him. “What’s up, Patty? You find something?”

“Oh, I found plenty. We got prints and fibers all over the damn place, but the question is, do any of them belong to the killer?”

“You tell me.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about. You running this thing or am I going to have deal with that asshole, Maddox?”

Alex grinned at her bluntness. “I guess we’ll have to let the captain sort that out.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“What else did you find?”

“Come take a look.” She motioned for him to follow her over to the counter. The surface was sooty where she’d dusted for prints. “See that mark on the floor? The counter’s been scooted out of place about half an inch. I figured this might be where he took her down, so I went over the area a few times. I found this shoved up underneath the counter.” She held up an evidence bag that had already been numbered and labeled.

“What is it?”

“It’s a photograph of a kid. Looks to be six or seven. Maybe somebody dropped it and it got slid under there by mistake. Could have been there for years. Then again…” She shrugged. “You never know.”

Alex took the bag from her hand and glanced down at the photograph. Recognition shot through him like an icy needle and his chest tightened painfully. For a moment, he thought he might be having a heart attack, but a split second later, he realized what he felt was panic.

Because the child in the photograph was Claire’s daughter, Ruby.

A few minutes later, Alex stood outside on the sidewalk in front of the shop, wondering what the hell he was going to do about that picture. He’d told Patrice Petty that he would show the photograph to Mignon Bujold’s daughter to see if she recognized it, and then he’d slipped the bag into his pocket and walked off.

It was almost noon and the sun shone down on the street like a brilliant spotlight. Alex fished in his pocket for his sunglasses and put them on. After being inside the air-conditioned shop for the better part of an hour, he found the heat outside stifling. But the sweat that broke out across his forehead was cold and clammy. A nerve twitched at his temple, and he put his hand over the spot, trying to massage away the tic.

Yet no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about the photograph. It was like an iron weight in his pocket. He wanted to believe that he’d been mistaken. The kid in the picture only resembled Ruby Creasy. All that talk about a look-alike doll had planted ideas in his head. That’s all it was.

But as much as Alex wanted to believe this was just some bizarre coincidence, he couldn’t completely discount the possibility that Claire had been right all along. Somehow the doll she’d seen in the shop window was linked to her missing daughter. And now a woman who had come into possession of that doll was dead.

He ran his thumb and forefinger along the corners of his mouth as he stared out at the crowd that had gathered on the street. A couple of reporters were there, too, and the minute they spotted him, they pressed forward, shouting questions in his direction even as he deliberately turned away. The last thing he needed was for the media to get wind of that photograph.

One of the uniforms came over and said something to him. Alex nodded even though he barely heard the man’s comments. His attention was on the restaurant across the street. Claire had just come outside, and when she spotted Alex through the crowd, she hurried toward him.

She was stopped briefly by the officer guarding the perimeter, but as soon as he recognized her, he held up the tape and let her pass.

“Alex, I have to talk to you,” she said urgently as she came up beside him.

“I need to talk to you, too, but it’ll have to wait. Right now I need to get back inside.”

She caught his arm. “This can’t wait. It’s about Mignon Bujold’s killer.”

The officer standing next to Alex heard her and glanced curiously in their direction. The two reporters were standing farther away, but Alex wasn’t about to take a chance on being overheard. He’d been burned by the press before.

He took Claire’s arm and guided her around to the side of the building and underneath the crime scene tape that barricaded the alley from the sidewalk. When they were far enough away from the street, he turned with a frown. “What’s so important that you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to finish up?”