Black Silk

She and Vince watched as the other woman went over to her crew and had them wait while she tucked the victim’s hair inside the bag and away from the zipper. She stood there a moment longer, giving them instructions.

Charlie had come to admire Penelope Williamson immensely in the year since she’d joined the New Orleans Coroner’s Office. To her surprise, the doctor had a sense of humor—something that helped make an often gruesome job more tolerable. Charlie had seen Dr. Williamson approach the most grisly of crime scenes without hesitation. And she’d seen her handle broken and bloody corpses with the same tenderness and care she would administer to a child. Penelope Williamson cared about the dead victims. It was something the two of them had in common, Charlie thought. She also felt in her bones that if anyone would be able to provide her with the information she needed to identity Francesca Hill’s killer, it would be Dr. Penelope Williamson. And her every instinct told her that when she found Francesca Hill’s killer, she would find Emily’s killer, too.

“I know what you’re thinking, Le Blanc. And you shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions,” Vince warned.

But before she could respond, Dr. Williamson returned. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” Vince said.

“How quick can you get us the autopsy results?” Charlie asked.

Vince placed a hand on her arm and gave her a look. “Doc, what my partner’s trying to say is that we need the results on this one yesterday. So we really would appreciate it if you could process this one right away.”

“Kossak, you and Le Blanc always need your cases processed right away. But you’re going to have to wait like everyone else. The weekend’s not over yet and I’ve already got five bodies lined up in the crypt waiting for me,” she told him, referring to the two homicides and three accident victims from the previous night.

“But this one can’t wait,” Charlie began, only to grimace when Vince stepped on her foot.

“The word from the top is that this case is a priority,” Vince explained. “We’ve been ordered to solve it quickly and quietly or heads are gonna roll.”

“I don’t like politics, Kossak. They have no place in police business,” Dr. Williamson informed him.

“I agree with you,” Vince returned. “But the victim’s fiancé has friends in high places and those friends are putting pressure on the captain.”

The comment irritated Charlie—especially because she knew that despite the mayor’s efforts to rid the city of corruption, there were still a great many who held on to the good-old-boy system of doing business. “It doesn’t matter who her fiancé was or who the man is friends with,” Charlie said as she watched the body bag being carried out. “What matters is that a woman is dead and we need to catch the animal who killed her.”

“You’re right, of course,” Dr. Williamson told her. “You’ll have the autopsy results as soon as I finish.”

“Thanks. We owe you one, Doc,” Vince told her.

“You owe me several, Detective.” She shifted her gaze to Charlie and back to him again. “Both of you do and one of these days I intend to collect by having you treat me to a lavish dinner at Commander’s Palace.”

“Anytime you say, Doc. Right, Le Blanc?” Vince nudged her with his elbow. “Right?”

“Um, right,” Charlie said, pulling her thoughts back to the present.

“I intend to hold you to that,” Dr. Williamson told them, and after she gathered her bag, she headed for the door.

“Snap out of it, Le Blanc, and start focusing on this case,” Vince said in a low voice near her ear before heading for the tech guys in the next room and barking orders about the surveillance tapes.

Telling herself that Vince was right, that she did need to concentrate on the case at hand, Charlie made another sweep of the crime scene. Pictures had already been taken, evidence bagged and tagged. She walked through the bedroom, attempted to re-create where each piece of clothing, each shoe had been found. She looked at the bed, noted the markings on the mattress, outlining the position of the body when it had been found. She looked over to the spot where the stocking had been draped beside the body. As she did so, she called up the images forever etched in her memory from Emily’s bedroom six years ago. The similarities couldn’t be dismissed.

It’s the same guy.

She was sure of it—could feel it in her bones. He might have gotten away the last time, but not this time, she vowed. This time she wasn’t an unprepared law student who didn’t know enough to preserve the crime scene. This time she was a cop, one who knew what to look for and where to look for it. If he’d made a mistake, no matter how small, she would find it.

And then she would find him.

Three

“De Nova, as soon as you process those bedsheets, get back to me,” Vince told the crime-scene tech who had bagged the bed linen to take back to the lab for trace evidence.

“You got it,” the younger man said and gave him a salute that seemed strange coming from a guy with spiked orange hair.

Shaking his head, Vince turned away. A quick once-over revealed that the rest of the crew were wrapping up. Satisfied, he glanced at the young officer who was still standing guard at the door. The kid looked barely old enough to drink, Vince thought. But he was tall. He had a good four inches on his own six feet, Vince estimated. His police uniform was neatly pressed; his shoes looked as if they’d been spit-polished. And he was standing so stiff and straight, it made his own spine ache. But buff and polish and baby face aside, the kid had done a good job securing the scene. He owed him one for stopping the apartment manager and staff from traipsing through the place and making everyone’s job a thousand times more difficult. The kid had a brain and had used it, which in his book was a big plus. He made his way over to him. “Officer Mackenzie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Andrew Mackenzie, sir.”

“You can relax, Mackenzie.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and shifted his stance so that his feet were separated by a foot instead of a few inches.

Vince bit off a sigh. “Mackenzie, you did a good job here today.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“With the murder rate up, we’re a bit shorthanded in Homicide. We could use an extra pair eyes and legs on this case. How would you feel about being assigned to us temporarily?”

“You mean work with you and Detective Le Blanc on a homicide?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Vince said. “If I can get it cleared with your captain, would you be willing to stay on for a while until we close this case?”

“Yes, sir,” he said enthusiastically. “I’d consider it a privilege, sir. It’s my goal to work in Homicide one day.”

“Then now’s your chance. Who’s your captain?”

“Roussell, sir. Tom Roussell.”

“I know Captain Roussell. He’s a good man.” He had worked under Tom Roussell himself when he’d been a rookie. “I’ll run this by Captain Warren in Homicide and ask him to call and square things with Captain Roussell. In the meantime, I want you to stay posted here and make sure no one enters this place without first talking to me or Detective Le Blanc. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. Got it, sir.”

Vince placed a call to his own captain first. He gave him a quick rundown of the situation, then made the request for Mackenzie’s reassignment. The captain didn’t hesitate and said he’d handle the duty change himself. After listening to the captain reiterate the need for them to close this case quickly and quietly, Vince ended the call. He turned back to Mackenzie. “It’s all set, Mackenzie. For now, you belong to Homicide and report to me and Detective Le Blanc.”

“Thank you, sir. I promise I won’t let you down, sir.”

Vince nodded and turned away. God, but the kid made him feel like an old man. Hell, maybe in today’s youth-driven culture, thirty-two was considered old. Or maybe all the years of dealing with the ugly side of humanity had aged him prematurely. Then again, maybe his mother was right and he needed a woman in his life—someone to remind him of the good in the world after dealing with so much of the darkness. Fat chance, he thought. Since his divorce five years ago, his longest relationship had lasted all of three months. And the truth was, that relationship would have hit the skids sooner if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in the case he’d been working on at the time.

That was his problem, Vince decided. Work always came first. It had been one of his ex-wife’s major complaints—he was gone all the time. Of course, she hadn’t liked the size of his paychecks either. She’d given him an ultimatum—find another job or the marriage was over. He’d opted to keep the job. Luckily for both of them, they’d had the sense to call it quits before kids came into the picture. Last he’d heard, his ex had found herself a new husband with a nine-to-five job and a fat paycheck. But he was still a cop, he reminded himself. He was also still alone.

Shoving aside his grim thoughts, Vince went to look for his partner. He found her in the bedroom, staring at the bed where the body had been. Vince frowned. There was an edginess in her stance that worried him. Charlie kept a lot bottled up inside and although she was better than most at hiding her feelings, he knew that every case claimed a piece of her. Some more than others. He knew that scene in the bedroom had hit her hard. He also knew that it had hit much too close to home.

It was what he had been afraid of from the moment he’d arrived on the scene and discovered that single stocking on the bed. He’d worked enough crime scenes to recognize a perp’s signature. Every criminal, whether they were a torcher, a safecracker or a killer, had his or her own signature. The stocking was this guy’s signature. And from the report he’d been able to obtain on Emily Le Blanc’s case, he knew the similarities—death by strangulation and a single black stocking beside the victim—were identical to this one. Though he had attempted to downplay the situation, he knew she hadn’t bought it. The odds that the same man was responsible for both murders was more than good. Which meant Charlie had no business on this case.

But getting her to see that was another story. He knew for a fact that she’d spent countless hours during her off time scrolling through Codis, hoping to find a match in the DNA index system to the DNA recovered from her sister’s crime scene. And each time she’d come up empty. Until now. Convincing her to back away would be next to impossible. But he had to at least try. Walking into the room, he came to a stop beside her. “The techs are finishing up out there. We probably ought to head over to Stratton’s place and give him the news before someone else does.”

She turned to face him. “My car’s out front. You want to take it or follow me in yours?”

“What do you say I work this one solo?”