Crescent City Connection

this.”
    “But maybe he does want us to figure it out. One thing we know about this man—he’s mean as the devil himself. If he didn’t want that, you can bet those two guys who pulled the job are getting the worst punishment of their lives right now. He used to do that kind of thing with the Blood of the Lamb folks—and for tiny little things. Real big, nasty stuff, for hardly anything. Public humiliation, beatings, you name it.”
    Skip said, “Maybe that’ll take his attention off Shavonne for a while.”
    And she saw a terrible compassion come into her friend’s face—not for Shavonne, but for her. She knew Cindy Lou. She probably had to bite her tongue not to blurt out, “I wouldn’t count on it.”
    Next to the parent who got the plate number, the secretary from the school had probably been the most helpful. She’d sat with the police artist until they were all reasonably pleased with the sketch they released to the media.
    Lovelace had been taken to a hotel, where she’d immediately fallen into a deep sleep. When she woke up, they showed her the sketch, but she couldn’t say whether or not it was her dad.
    Asked if she’d be willing to help with her own sketch of Daniel, her shoulders started to shake and she looked down to hide her eyes. Which left Skip, who had really only seen him in a cap and shades.
    She tried valiantly, but when her sketch was compared with the one the secretary had worked on, it was impossible to tell if they were the same man.
    So they couldn’t be sure Daniel was the gunman in the school kidnap. But what, Skip thought, did it matter? They had Darnell Roberts’s plate number, and that was almost as good for linking Jacomine to both crimes. The car, however, was probably hidden by now—no officer had seen it, and everyone in the state was looking.
    Two FBI agents were ensconced with Dorise, and her phone, with her permission, was tapped. Two others had been dispatched to St. Philip Street, to Skip’s house, at Shellmire’s insistence. “Look,” he said, “These people are into kidnapping, and they’re trying to get at you. We can’t take a chance on them trying for Sheila or Kenny.”
    She didn’t protest. There was nothing to do but go home.
    It was midnight, but Steve was up, drinking a beer and reading. He stood and came to her. She thought how kind his eyes were. “Tough day.”
    “The worst. I need wine.”
    He went to the kitchen to get it while she took a shower. She put on a cotton caftan and joined him in the cantaloupe-colored living room, grateful to have someone to come home to.
    He said, “I feel so helpless. I just wish there was something I could do.”
    “
You
feel helpless. This is the worst damn thing I’ve ever worked on.”
    “Oh, I don’t know….”
    “It is. I swear to God. It’s so personal. Like some kind of crazy duel between Jacomine and me. And I can’t just not participate. Did you know you have two bodyguards?”
    “I feel like a rock star.” He was keeping it light. “How’s Lovelace?”
    “Poor kid. Nobody knows what to do with her. Her mother’s off somewhere in Mexico, and she can’t be sent back to school with these crazies on the loose. She’s more or less in jail, although it’s a hotel. At taxpayers’ expense.” But she found she didn’t want to talk about the case anymore. Couldn’t. Couldn’t even finish her wine. After she’d sat silent for ten minutes, holding her glass and staring at the wall, Steve plucked it from her hands. “You want to talk about it?”
    She knew he meant the man she killed. “Television, huh?”
    “Uh-huh.” He gave her a good hard look. “You’re doing okay. I didn’t know if I was going to get a whole woman tonight or a bag of Skip McNuggets. So far I’m impressed. You’re fine, kiddo. You’re okay.”
    “I’m in denial.” She smiled, but he didn’t let her get away with it. He gave her another hard stare.
    “Are you?”
    “Well, I might be. I’m so exhausted I can’t honestly say one way or another. I think you’re right, though—I might be all right. And that kind of scares me.”
    “You mean it gets easier after the first one?”
    She clenched up her shoulders and closed her eyes. “God, I hope it’s not that. I just think I’ve made my peace with it.”
    “Let’s go to bed.”
    They held each other as if it were their last night together.
    When her beeper went off, she was dreaming she was walking on a roof, trying to rescue a cat. The