Black Silk

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Charlie nodded, then made her way across the room toward her partner. At thirty-two, Vince was three years her senior. An average-looking man of average height with brown hair and eyes, Vince was anything but average when it came to being a cop. He had a string of commendations for his bravery in the field. Though he downplayed the awards, she knew firsthand that he deserved every one of them. Just last year he’d faced down a drugged-up junkie wielding a knife who was holding his own wife hostage. Vince got the woman away unharmed, but it had taken a dozen stitches to close the gash in his shoulder. No, Vince Kossak wasn’t even remotely average, she mused. He was everything she believed a cop should be—honest, trustworthy, a man you could stake your life on.

They didn’t come any more solid than Vince Kossak. And she’d been lucky to be assigned to work with him. The two of them made a good team. In the two years that they had been partners, she had learned a great deal from him. More than that, they had become friends. She trusted Vince with her life and vice versa. He was among the few people that she’d confided in about her sister’s murder and her determination to track down the killer.

Looking up, she caught Vince’s eye and he motioned for her to join him. “Thank you, Mrs. Ramirez. You’ve been a big help,” Vince told the woman and waved the uniformed officer over to join them. “Now if you’ll just go with the police officer, he’ll get your contact information and we’ll be in touch with you.”

“You will find this person who hurt Miss Francesca, yes?” the woman asked, her accented voice thick with tears.

“We’re certainly going to try.” Once the police officer led the woman away, Vince turned to Charlie. “Jeez, Le Blanc,” he said as he took in her wet hair and jacket. “Haven’t you ever heard of an umbrella?”

She shrugged. “The weatherman said no rain today.”

“And you believed him?”

“I was hoping he’d get it right for once.” Of course, he hadn’t gotten it right. Nine times out of ten, the weather forecasts were off the mark, as was typical for New Orleans. The weather was as wide-ranging as the people who lived there. You could find yourself in shirtsleeves and suffering from a drought one day only to be hit with freezing temperatures and floods the next day.

“You’re lucky they even let you in the front door of this place.”

“Trust me, that prissy manager wouldn’t have if he could have helped it,” she replied. “So what have we got?”

“The vic’s wallet is empty and according to the maid there’s jewelry missing.”

“A robbery gone bad?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe.” He gave her a quick rundown of the situation, explaining the maid had arrived that morning to help the victim get ready for her wedding, only to find the bride-to-be dead.

“Today was her wedding day?” While each case she investigated left a mark on her, Charlie couldn’t help feeling sad for the woman whose dreams had ended before they’d even begun.

“It was supposed to be.” He paused. “This one is going to be touchy, Le Blanc. Word from the top is that we’re to handle this with kid gloves.”

She wasn’t surprised given the real estate. “Who’s the victim?”

“Her name’s Francesca Hill. Age twenty-six, a former casino hostess.”

The name didn’t ring any bells. Charlie glanced around the apartment. Lots of white and black, bold splashes of red, modern artwork that looked like a kid had been let loose with finger paints. It all added up to one thing—money. “Casino hostessing must pay really well.”

“It does if you’re marrying the boss.”

Charlie arched her brow.

“The fiancé is J. P. Stratton.”

“Stratton,” she repeated. “As in Stratton Real Estate?”

Vince nodded. “And Stratton Hotels. The man also has an interest in two casinos and a professional football team. Our vic was supposed to become wife number five this evening.”

Charlie conjured up a vague image of a gray-haired man with a George Hamilton tan. The guy was sixty if he was a day. “Apparently Stratton likes his brides young.”

“Apparently,” Vince replied.

“Where’s the body?”

“In the bedroom.”

“How’d she buy it?” Charlie asked.

“We’re waiting for the M.E. to give the official cause of death,” he said, a troubled look coming into his eyes. “But it looks like she was strangled.”

For a moment, everything inside Charlie froze. Murder investigations were never easy. But the ones where strangulation was the cause of death were the hardest for her because it always brought back thoughts of her sister’s death.

“Listen, why don’t you stay out here and make sure the techies don’t screw up and I’ll handle things in there,” he offered and urged her away from the bedroom.

Charlie narrowed her eyes. “All right, Kossak. What’s in that bedroom that you don’t want me to see?”

Vince eyed his partner carefully, noting the shadows beneath her dark brown eyes. In the years they’d worked together he’d watched Charlie push herself, driven by demons to find justice for the victims. He knew from the countless hours she spent poring over case files that the demon that drove her hardest was finding her sister’s killer. It was the reason he was worried now about how she would respond to what was in the next room.

It had nothing to do with her toughness. He’d seen Charlie hold it together at more than one bloody homicide scene when even a seasoned vet would have lost his lunch. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t a better, smarter or more dedicated cop on the force than Charlie Le Blanc.

But for all her smarts and toughness, Charlie Le Blanc had a heart, a heart that sometimes felt way too much. And her sister’s murder was like a wound with a bandage on it that had been pulled off too soon. It was painful. And it wouldn’t take much to reopen that wound again.

“You going to answer me, Kossak?”

“Come on, Le Blanc. We’ve got a female strangling victim. Give yourself a break. Let me handle this one.”

“I can carry my end of the job, Kossak,” she informed him, her already husky voice dropping even lower.

“Nobody said you couldn’t,” he said sharply and when he noted heads turn in their direction, Vince hustled her over near a window and out of earshot of the fingerprint team. Lowering his voice, he repeated, “I never said you couldn’t carry your end of the job. Hell, half the time you’d carry mine if I’d let you. But you are not personally responsible for solving every homicide in this city.”

“I know that.”

“Then act like it. Cut yourself some slack for once.”

“I can’t,” she told him and looked away.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t,” she insisted.

“Why can’t you?” he pressed.

She whipped her gaze back to him and spat out, “Because if I don’t stop him, he might kill another—” She paused, took a steadying breath. “He might kill someone else.”

Vince said nothing. But he had no doubt that what she had been about to say was that he might kill another innocent girl like her sister.

“I thought you said this one was high priority,” she said more calmly. “So are we going to process the scene or not?”

Vince knew any further attempt on his part to dissuade her would be pointless. So he said, “Let’s do it.” He headed to the bedroom, knowing she was behind him. He paused at the door and donned gloves so as not to mar any evidence. “Ready?”