Lover Beware

others.”
     
    BY NOON OF the next day the media swarmed like locusts around the Eighth Precinct, demanding information—name and photograph—of the suspect the NOPD had supposedly apprehended. Killroy offered his normal plastic smile and waved their questions away with hands that were sweating with nervousness and the intense humidity of the midday sun. Diane Sawyer and Geraldo Rivera had done their best to book Killroy and Costos on their shows.
    To Anna, it seemed as if the entire city had let out one great sigh of relief. She felt guilty over it. Guilty that she allowed tens of thousands of innocent women to let their guards down when she knew deep in her gut that the French Quarter monster as well as Barker’s assailant were still out there—lurking—laughing to himself because the NOPD had arrested the wrong man.
    The next few nights saw only the normal incarceration of drunks and pickpockets and domestic disturbances. Wires in place, Armstrong gave Janet Beech, an undercover cop passing as a hooker, a fleeting smile. “You know exactly what to say if a suspicious perp propositions you, right?”
    “I’m done for the night,” she said, lowering her mouth closer to her halter collar.
    Armstrong shook his head. “Why don’t you just wave a red flag over your head and let him know we’re about to bust his sorry ass?”
    Janet tossed her dreadlocks and cocked her hip. “You can kiss my ass. I’m out there risking my neck and you’re sitting in some squad car eating a beltbuster and drinking root beer.”
    Anna sat in a chair near the door, legs crossed. There was that quivery little feeling in her stomach. Something was going to happen tonight. Gonzales would make a move, thinking he was safe. And so would the killer. The night was hot and still, the full August moon glowing like white neon over the city. Her dad had always called such a night “Hunter’s Moon.” Something about a full moon brought the lunatics out to prowl.
    Finally, Armstrong stepped back. “Okay, ladies. Go strut your stuff. And I do mean strut. I want you on the street corners swiveling those hips like there’s no tomorrow.”
    Sherry Ritchy, with a yellow sheet as long as Anna’s leg, gave Donovan the once-over. “Clean sheet after this, right?”
    “Cross my heart…just as long as you stay out of trouble. Haul your little butt back to Hallsville and work at Wal-Mart.”
    Donovan looked back at Anna. “Costos called. He’s hung up on a case. You might as well go back to the hotel and wait.”
    “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mike?”
    “I got enough on my hands right now without worrying whether or not some FBI special agent gets her head cut off.”
     
    THERE WAS SOMETHING about New Orleans at night that brought out the dark psyche in a person. Every street and alley. Every building, old or new. Streetlights and old coach lamps. Laughter in the darkness. Jazz drifting out over the murky river and the crowded city of ancient tombs in the cemetery. It all had a certain rhythm to it that Anna had never experienced anyplace else.
    Yeah, it was home. As a student at Tulane she’d smoked her sweet Mary Jane and obliterated herself in New Orleans’s famous Hurricane drinks. She knew the old warehouses where voodoo priestesses gyrated over bloodied goat heads and stabbed needles into straw dolls and burned black candles.
    At two A.M . Anna parked her rental car at the corner of Royal and Pauline Streets. She noted immediately that the old street lamp had been broken. The moonlight overhead painted the brick street with what looked like a thin coat of milk wash.
    That feeling she had experienced in Donovan’s office gnawed more strongly at her. Not just a tickling in her belly any longer. But a hard grip of dread and anticipation that made beads of sweat crawl down her scalp.
    It was the eyes that had continued to bother her. That brief glimpse of the killer’s eyes she had viewed through Bobbie Cox as they paused on her doorstep with keys in hand. Those eyes had been familiar. Very familiar. There had been no trepidation in Bobbie’s soul before she was slaughtered. Only an odd exuberance.
    Surprise, Mama, I’m home! Happy Birthday!
    Dr. Montgomery had drilled into her head the first day of training in the PID that everyone is born with the gift. Call it hunches. Coincidence. Serendipity. Instinct. Guardian angels whispering in one’s ear.
    At times, when she least expected it, those feelings had shimmied up