Adrian Phoenix - A Rush of Wings

THE SWEET, CLOYING ODOR of blood and honeysuckle hung in the rain-misted courtyard like rancid smoke. A nude figure was curled against the courtyard’s ivy-draped stone wall, his bound hands tucked beneath his face like those of a sleeping child, a stark counterpoint to his swollen and battered face. A dark mesh shirt was twisted around his throat and night-blackened blood pooled around his body. Gleamed upon skin and stone.

And on the wall above scrawled in blood—

Wake Up

HEATHER WALLACE’S MUSCLES, KNOTTED from her long flight from Seattle, kinked even tighter. The message was a disturbing addition if this was the work of the Cross-Country Killer. A warning? A command? A dark, ironic joke aimed at his dying victim?

Drawing in a careful breath, Heather stepped from the back door of DaVinci’s Pizza and walked into the shadowed courtyard. She skirted the numbered evidence placards dotting the old stone floor.

“Daniel Spurrell, age nineteen,” Detective Collins said from the doorway. “From Lafayette. LSU student. Disappeared three days ago. Discovered in the courtyard about noon by an employee.”

Tortured somewhere else, then dumped, Heather thought. Why here ?

Old-fashioned gaslit lanterns cast pale, flickering light across the courtyard. Beneath the blood stink, Heather caught a whiff of jasmine and ivy, thick and wintergreen, a white-flowered bouquet unable to mask the smell of death.

Three years she’d been tracking the CCK. And dealing with his victims never got any easier.

She knelt beside all that remained of Daniel Spurrell. Tortured. Raped. Slaughtered. Posed. Latest victim of a wandering sexual sadist.

A deep, thudding vibration emanated from next door, snaked up her spine. “What’s on the other side of the wall?” she said, her gaze on Daniel’s bruised face.

“Club Hell,” Collins answered. “Music venue. Bar.” He paused, then added, “And a vampire hangout. Pretend, y’know?”

“Do you mean Goths? Or gamers?”

Collins chuckled. “Shit, you tell me. Sounds like you’re more in the know.”

“My sister fronted a band,” Heather said. “I met all kinds at her gigs.”

Long, midnight-blue hair veiled the boy’s face. NightGlo, Heather mused. A hair color Annie’d often used when she and WMD hit the stage in all their hard-edged punk glory. Before Annie’d flamed out in a spectacular bipolar meltdown and sliced her wrists onstage.

Heather focused on a mark on the boy’s chest—something cut or scorched into the flesh. She leaned in closer. Blackened skin. Blistered. A series of circles—burned with a car lighter ?

The anarchy symbol.

Cold frosted Heather’s veins. The symbol was also new. Like the blood message. If this was the work of the Cross-Country Killer, then his signature, his reason , his drive for the kill had changed from an insular intimacy, his victim’s final desperate moments his and his alone, to an overt act inviting attention. Impossible. Theoretically. But if it had changed, what then?

Then she needed to find out why.

Heather studied Daniel’s face, the midnight-blue hair, the twist of cloth embedded into his throat, knotted around it. Breathed in the lingering smell of death and tasted it.

Why you ? Chosen ? Or wrong place, wrong time ? Why here ?

She heard her father’s voice, deep and low, his tone reverential: The dead speak only through evidence. Through evidence alone are you a voice for the dead .

Heather stood. S.A. James William Wallace—the Bureau’s leading forensic specialist and world’s lousiest father.

The dead aren’t the only ones seeking a voice, Dad .

Ah, Pumpkin , they found their voices the moment they picked up a gun, a knife, a rope, or a baseball bat, the moment they killed. Through evidence you will silence them .

Heather turned away from Daniel’s curled body. She pushed rain-damp strands of hair back from her face, listened to the pounding bass beat coming from Club Hell.

Daniel’s killer spoke loud and clear. He was an organized killer, deliberate. So it was no accident that he chose the wall next to the club. Had Daniel met his killer in there? So why leave his body here and not in the club’s courtyard, on the other side of the wall?

And if this was the work of a copycat?

Then the Cross-Country Killer was still out there, enjoying his little jaunt across the States, casually selecting victims—male and female—like a Bermuda shorts–wearing tourist picking out postcards.

Still out there. Still needing to be silenced.

As Heather crossed the courtyard, a familiar truth burned bright in her mind: She’d never allow a case to go cold to protect the reputation of a loved one; never bury evidence no matter how much it hurt.

Unlike the famous James William Wallace.

Heather joined Collins at the threshold leading into DaVinci’s. She read the unasked question in the detective’s eyes: Is the Cross-Country Killer in New Orleans ?

“Signature’s different,” she said. “The message…I’ll know more once we have the autopsy report and the DNA workup.”

“What’s your gut say?”

Heather glanced at the body. Huddled. Praying hands. Naked in the rain. Stabbed over and over. Strangled. Young and pretty, once.

Heather looked at Collins. Six one, she judged, and lean. Midthirties. She noted the tension in his shoulders, his jaw. “How deep in the shit did you get buried for calling in a fed?”

A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes. “They made you special agent for a reason. Neck deep and it’s still piling up.”

“I’ll do what I can to dig you out,” Heather said. “I appreciate your call.”

Collins regarded her for a long moment, his hazel eyes weighing, considering. He nodded. “Thanks. But I’ll dig myself out.”

“Fair enough.” Heather met his gaze. “My gut tells me this is the CCK’s work. But that’s off the record.”

A faint smile touched Collins’s lips. “Fair enough.”

“He’s probably long gone.”

Collins nodded, face bleak. “Traveling man.”

Shrieks of laughter and sharp jazz riffs drifted in from the street. And underneath it all, the steady thump-thump-thump of music from Club Hell.

“Mardi Gras,” Collins said. “Well, almost. Still three days out and it’s crazy.” He shook his head. “Y’ever been?”

“No, this is my first trip to New Orleans.”

“Let me thank your gut by treating you to a N’awlins-style dinner.” Collins pushed away from the doorway. His clean, spicy cologne cut through the courtyard’s thickening smell of death and blood.

“Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check. I want to look into a few things, maybe catch a little sleep.” Heather offered her hand. “I appreciate your time and help, Detective.”

Collins grasped her hand and shook it. Strong grip. An honest man. “Call me Trent. Or Collins, if you’re old-school. I’ll contact you soon as I hear anything.”

“Sounds good, Trent.”

Releasing Collins’s hand, Heather walked back into the pizzeria, headed for the front door. A thought circled around the anarchy symbol burning in her mind.

The pattern has changed. He’s communicating. But with whom, and why now ?

SITTING AT THE SMALL, lacquered desk in her room, Heather connected her laptop to the hotel’s Internet service. She tabbed open a can of Dr Pepper and took a long swallow of the cold, sweet plum–flavored soda. It hit her empty stomach like a chunk of ice.