Shadow Of The Wolf

Amy looked up at him and grinned. “You big baby. No. I’m not going to drag you across town to the Governor’s Ball and no, I’m not going to make you put on a tux. Go home to your wife. You’re off duty.”

Paul returned her grin and kissed his fingers to her. “You’re a prince, Fortenoy, an absolute prince. I’ll name an offspring for you.”

“You’d better go before someone sees you hanging around and puts your name on the assignment board.”

“I’m out of here. And be careful crossing Canal to-night—you’ll be hitting the worst of the parade traffic.”

Amy waved him away, smiling, but she was deeply immersed in the editor now and did not look up.

Amy Fortenoy had spent her life laboring under two handicaps: her looks and her family name. Amy was blond, petite and cute in a business that valued tall, svelte and striking. Her shoulder-length hair was the sundrenched color of a three-year-old’s and the texture of satin, her nose a perfect button, her face round and ingenuous. Her eyes were large and fringed with thick dark lashes, and the only thing that kept them from being breathtaking was the fact that they were more hazel than green. She had flawless Fortenoy porcelain skin, and a perfect size-six figure, which was due as much to her own efforts and the demands of the camera as it was to the Fortenoy genes.

In a business that values physical attractiveness at least as much as it did ability, if not more—there were, after all, very few ugly news anchors—being a cute blonde might not be considered a disadvantage. But cute was the operative word, and Amy was a reporter. She was tough, ambitious, alert and perceptive. All she wanted was a chance to prove what she could do, yet she had spent her career fending off advances, fighting the stereotype and being offered jobs as the weather girl by station directors who took one look at her and wondered if she could read…or if it mattered.

But the prejudices she fought in the work force were nothing to the disapproval—indeed, the disappointment—with which she had to contend in her own family. The Fortenoys were a grand old Southern family who bred tradition, snobbery and intellectuals. Amy had two brothers and three sisters, all of whom had earned at least one Ph.D. in suitably exalted subjects like philosophy or mathematics. Two were university professors, one was a doctor like their father, one was a museum curator, one was the director of a major European symphony orchestra. Among her cousins, aunts and uncles were bank presidents, Supreme Court justices, research scientists and poet laureates. Not one of them worked in television. Most of them, in fact, did not even own television sets, and those who did, only brought them out on the occasion of a presidential election or a particularly compelling PBS special.

Amy’s Grandmama Fortenoy still lived in one of those wonderful old antebellum houses on St. Charles Avenue, shaded by creeping ivy and oaks dripping with Spanish moss. On Sunday afternoons she served tea from bone china that had been in the family for three hundred years, and friends and relatives and the social elite would gather in her high-ceilinged parlor with its small brocaded chairs, and speak, in their soft sugared accents, of things lofty and genteel and utterly civilized. The Werewolf Killer would never be among their topics of conversation. And if, by chance, some well-meaning soul asked about “poor little Amy,” throats would be cleared, eyes would be averted and the subject delicately changed.

Amy was a source of bafflement and embarrassment to her family, but no more so than they were to her. Sometimes she felt like a changeling, and she could no more understand how that most carefully regulated Fortenoy family tree had come to produce her than they could.

Amy had wasted far too much time and energy early in her career fighting the tide of other people’s prejudices against her, but when she had finally realized she could do nothing about either her looks or her family, the solution to her difficulties was clear: She simply started using both to her advantage, instead of allowing them to work against her. No one expected a petite, blond, wide-eyed young woman with a sparkling smile and bubbly personality to be a crime reporter. And nobody expected her to be any good at it. Thus she was not only allowed into places a more experienced-looking reporter could never go, she actually, more often than not, had the door held for her as she went in. No one expected Byron Fortenoy’s daughter—Joseph Fortenoy’s granddaughter—to sully her hands with anything as distasteful as the news. She was therefore privy to certain information relevant to scandal, corruption and white-collar crime that would be guarded furiously from an “outsider.”

People expected Amy to be dumb, so she played dumb. They expected her to be helpless, so she acted helpless. They wanted her to be a socialite, a dilettante, a hothouse flower, and she was more than happy to play the part—when it suited her purpose. Only one thing mattered to Amy Fortenoy: success. And she knew that with the werewolf killings, she was as close to that elusive goal as she had ever been, maybe as close as she would ever get.

So, if she was a little obsessed with the case, there was more than one reason. If, like Devereaux had suggested, she had been a little overzealous in reporting the story, she had good cause. After all, the story of a lifetime only came along once, and this was hers.

Amy was on the air at six, giving her report and showing the tape. There was, of course, nothing new at all to report—the full moon was still almost two weeks away—but it was important to keep the story in the public eye. To her credit, she did not make Devereaux look like too much of a jackass on the final edit, and she left in the part about the sick, deranged individual being glorified by the media. She was trained to be fair, after all.

She left the studio at six forty-five, which left just under an hour to get across town, put on her party dress and get back downtown in time to get a quote from the mayor for the eleven o’clock news. She would also love to get a reaction to Devereaux’s remarks this afternoon from the chief coroner, and it was possible she would be able to catch him at home if she didn’t spend too much time at the party. He had been ducking her calls all day.

During Mardi Gras, Amy gave up trying to drive to work. It was impossible to keep up with which streets would be closed for what parade or for how long. It was easier and faster to simply take public transportation. She took the St. Charles trolley as far as Jackson Square and then had to walk a block and a half to catch the streetcar to Midcity. Ordinarily, this was no problem; the streets were well traveled and well lighted, and Amy enjoyed the brief walk. It gave her the chance to unwind from a busy day or, as tonight, to organize an even busier evening. But for some reason, she had forgotten about the parade.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Music, laughter, crowds and lights, extravagant costumes, gala parades. To the several hundred thousand visitors who packed the city streets every year, Mardi Gras was magic, pure and simple. To New Orleans residents like Amy, however, Mardi Gras was traffic jams, missed appointments and dancing in the streets until 4:00 a.m. when she had to get up at six. To her, there was nothing romantic about the shoulder-to-shoulder bodies that screeched and waved and cheered and blocked the sidewalk as she tried to elbow her way past, nothing thrilling about the towering floats and harlequins on stilts and fire-eating jugglers that inched down the street, blocking off both foot and vehicular traffic for six blocks in each direction.

The noise was deafening. A Dixieland band blared its trumpets in her ears as it passed less than five feet in front of her; the stereo speakers on a float a dozen yards behind roared out a marching tune. Grinning masks bobbed and leered, street lamps glinted eerily off of glass eyes. The air was alive with writhing strips of pink and purple confetti, dragons and mermaids danced in the street. Behind her, the door to a pub opened and a new mass of screeching, jostling, beer-cup-waving bodies spilled out. Amy felt as though she had stumbled into a madman’s nightmare and she thought, I don’t need this!

Gauging a break in the procession between a float featuring a giant Poseidon and a gaggle of acrobats in silver suits, Amy prepared to dash across the street. Her foot had barely left the curb when something grabbed her hard from behind.

“Hey!” she cried. Amy tried to spin around, but someone held her firm. She tried to jerk away, but an iron arm clamped around her ribs, dragging her back and jerking her off her feet.

She cried out, struggling. No one in the jostling, excited crowd seemed to notice. She wrenched around, flinging out a hand to strike, but stopped, gasping and disoriented, as she found herself staring into the grinning face of a wolf.

CHAPTER TWO

Ky Londen knew something was wrong when he was halfway up the stairs. He might have blamed it on the reaction of Voodoo, the half mutt, half black Lab at his side, but it was more than that. The minute they reached the landing and the door to Ky’s apartment came into view, man and dog froze in place. The dog dropped into a half crouch, pressing himself against Ky’s knee, his hackles rising. Though there was absolutely no visible reason for it, Ky felt his hackles rise, too.

Ky’s apartment was on the second floor of what once had been a fruit market on the corner of Rampart and Canal streets. The first floor was home to nothing but rats now, completely boarded up and always locked. The entire building might have been condemned long ago had not the Historical Preservation Society taken a particular, and in Ky’s opinion, inexplicable, interest in the place. Ky had stayed because the rent was cheap and because the historical society could occasionally be persuaded to foot the bill for improvements that kept the building, for the most part, on the right side of health-code standards. Security doors did not, unfortunately, fall into that category and on more than one occasion Ky himself, having forgotten his key, had opened the door with a well-placed shove of his shoulder.

The apartment was reached via an ironwork staircase that might once have been used as a fire escape. The scarred wooden door that faced the alley was closed, just as he had left it. There was no sign of forcible entry. Nonetheless, someone was indisputably inside. Voodoo knew it, and so did Ky.

He had never worried about intruders before. He didn’t have anything anyone would want to steal, and personal safety was the least of his concerns. But this was different. Now he was worried.

He reached down and placed a restraining hand on Voodoo’s neck, signaling the dog to stay put as he moved forward carefully. The big black dog looked fierce, but he was no hero, and was more likely to melt into a puddle of admiration at the intruder’s feet than launch an attack. Some people kept dogs for protection; Ky spent far more time protecting the dog than the other way around.

He took the remaining steps silently, and the closer he got to the door the harder his heart beat, the drier his throat grew. He paused once to glance back at the dog, but he needn’t have worried. Whatever was waiting for him behind that door had terrified the poor animal into paralysis. It was a state with which Ky could sympathize.

With every instinct in his body, Ky knew that what he was about to encounter was unlike anything he had ever dealt with before. Not a burglar, not an escaped convict he had once put away, not a homicidal ex-client. This was…different.

Ky was licensed to carry a handgun. He worked some of the roughest streets in the city, and the people he encountered were not always feeling friendly toward him. However, since leaving the New Orleans police department three years ago, he had not carried a gun. Until now, he had never felt the need for one.

Although he didn’t really believe that a gun would have protected him from what was inside his apartment, he would have felt better having one in his hand.

He did not waste time looking around for something that could be used as a weapon. There was no point in plotting a strategy. Ky had lived a rough life in an unfriendly world and had survived for almost forty years on his wits, his instincts and his lightning-fast reflexes. Even if he had wanted to, there was no time to change his modus operandi now.

He gripped the handle of the door and turned it slowly. It was unlocked. He flung open the door and flattened himself quickly against the wall, making as small a target of his body as possible.

“I assure you, I am unarmed,” a male voice said from inside the room. “Like you, I have no need for crude mechanical weapons.”

The voice was deep and powerful, now faintly amused or perhaps bored. The accent was cultured and precise but otherwise indefinable. And something about that voice—or perhaps it was the man himself, still unknown to Ky—was compelling. Perfectly aware that his life might be the price he paid for curiosity, Ky stepped cautiously across the threshold of his own apartment.

It was full dark outside, and no lamps were on inside. The only illumination came from the streetlights and car headlights below the windows that faced the street. Nonetheless, Ky’s night vision was excellent. He had no difficulty at all making out the figure who stood before the uncurtained window.

Fight-or-flight adrenaline rushed through Ky’s veins. His heart pounded in his throat, his breath was quick and strong. Every sense was more acute than it had ever been. He recognized the man immediately for what he was. And he had never seen him before in his life.

He was a big man, powerfully built, with a thick mane of silver hair that fell below his shoulders. He wore a patchwork fur vest, which was distinctly out of place for New Orleans, and carried an elaborately carved wooden walking stick. His face was stern and imperious, his eyes crystal blue.

Ky knew he was in the presence of greatness. His knees were abruptly rubbery and he wanted to sit down, but he dared not show any weakness. He thought, This can’t be.

And yet it was.

He squared his shoulders, closing his fists. He demanded, “How did you get in here?”

The other man smiled, and gestured toward the door. “Locks pose no problem for us, do they?”

Ky’s heartbeat jumped again. It was hard to swallow. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The intruder moved away from the window a few paces closer to Ky. Ky stood his ground, but all the man did was lift a medium-size canvas satchel from the coffee table. The satchel was not Ky’s, so he presumed the man had brought it with him.

“My name,” he said, “is Sebastian St. Clare, and I have a business proposition for you.”

Ky said nothing.

“You don’t have a business address,” St. Clare went on. “I presume I was right in coming here.”

Ky said, “How did you find me?” His voice was a little hoarse. He tried to swallow.

“You are a private investigator, are you not?” inquired St. Clare mildly. “How do clients usually find you?”

That was not what Ky had meant and the other man knew it. The rules had been established, and they were simple: St. Clare would ask the questions.