Leopard's Prey

The face was distorted in death and covered in bugs, but everyone in the bayou had seen that particular red plaid shirt many times on a shrimper named Pete Morgan.
    Pete was as good as they came. Fiercely loyal to his wife, family and friends. He’d been in the bayous all of his life. Born and raised. That red plaid shirt had been his trademark. He owned several of them and didn’t wear anything else unless it was Sunday. Remy had gone to school with him, fished with him, stood for him when he got married. Got drunk with him when his firstborn had died a week after birth. Rejoiced with him when a healthy son was born two years later.
    Remy made the sign of the cross, uncaring that anyone saw him. It was always difficult to see a gruesome murder, but to know the victim made it ten times tougher. He took a deep breath and forced himself to look around the crime scene, giving himself time to assimilate that his friend was dead and his end had been brutal.
    He knew why Gage hadn’t said a word to him. Of course he’d recognized Pete. So had Saria. It was even possible that Bijou had. Gage needed a fresh pair of eyes, completely absorbing the crime scene. Gage believed in Remy and his abilities so he’d allowed him to be just as shocked as the rest of them.
    “He isn’t shy, this killer.” Remy tested his voice, found it professional and steady. “Any boat comin’ through the swamp could have seen him, but he still took his time.” He turned and looked at Drake. “The vic hasn’t been dead that long.” Which meant Saria and Bijou just missed the killer. He might even have heard them coming.
    Drake nodded as cool as ever. “Saria was very aware of that.”
    Remy didn’t care if Saria was aware of it or not. He wanted Drake to be aware of it. He had no doubt this was the same killer. The signatures were all there. The killer didn’t bother to try to hide them—or maybe he wasn’t aware he signed his work. The first kill site Remy had seen of this man’s work had been in the vaunted Garden District in a historic bed-and-breakfast, with the victim hanging in the middle of the courtyard right beside the fountain. Just as this one was gruesome and messy, that scene had been horrendously nightmarish.
    Arterial blood had sprayed everywhere. The body swung grotesquely from the hangman’s noose, and the left hand had been cut off, dipped in oil with candles tied around the fingers and displayed obscenely on a very precise and clean altar. The altar had been in sharp contrast to the messy scene.
    Remy turned to survey the altar erected there in the swamp a few feet from the body, precisely, he knew, four and a half feet to the inch, just as it was in the last four murders, four years earlier. There was no doubt this was the same killer. If he repeated the same pattern as he’d followed four years ago, there would be at least three more bodies before he was done. Each body would have different bones removed from it, all while the victim was alive and hanging. Sometimes they died of shock and blood loss first, other times of asphyxiation.
    The killer was bold and always prepared. He took his time, and often the crime was committed in an area where anyone could happen upon him. Still, he never seemed to hurry. The altar, so meticulous and precise, was at such odds with the haphazard kill site. If Remy hadn’t known better, he would think there were two perpetrators at the scene, but he’d studied the photographs and committed the scenes to memory. There was one murderer, and he cared nothing for the victim.
    Clearly, the murder victim wasn’t human to him. The only thing he wanted was the bones; the rest was a personal ritual of some sort. He just got the job done of harvesting the bones as quickly as possible, hacking up the victim without seemingly noticing the mess, or the fact that the donor was still alive. Only then did he slow down and take his time over the preparation of the altar. Whatever he was doing seemed to catch him up in some kind of weird enthrallment—unless there were two of them—which Remy had considered more than once.
    “Voodoo?” Gage asked.
    Remy frowned and shrugged. He didn’t believe it was a voodoo altar, although certainly it appeared to be one. There were objects found in voodoo practice, but when he’d consulted Eulalie Chachere, a legitimate voodoo priestess, she had told him that the altar wasn’t right even for a black magic practitioner. Still, he would consult her