Soul Rest

  She'd fight him in person, tell herself she wasn't going to go out with him again when she was alone, but she was obeying his unspoken commands in absentia. It was all part of her lovely mess of contradictions. A submissive who wanted to be a submissive so badly she fought it like a trap. She'd given up trying to understand the paradox, but part of the problem was she sensed he did. It made her want to be with him as much as she didn't want to be with him.

  The country western text had come in after her shower. To keep her mind off her libido and the possibility of more texts, she opened her files and went to work, since this was obviously going to be a work-at-home kind of day. She couldn't face getting out of her bathrobe.

  She received feeds from a variety of news sources. As she scrolled through them, her usual routine, she frowned and stopped on one.

  Tina "DeeDee" Morgan found stabbed...

  "Ah, damn it." She'd bought DeeDee coffee one night, paid the price of a blow job to sit with her, get her impressions of life on the Baton Rouge streets, since Celeste was doing a series about it at that time. She remembered the woman had a wry sense of humor, very little education, a mild drug habit and pretty eyes. Plus doubleD tits; hence the nickname. Celeste also remembered DeeDee was twenty-three. She'd been working the streets for six years.

  The article was typically sparse, as was the police incident report. Unlike Loretta Stiles's murder, no reporters other than her would have shown up on scene for this one, and the night of the crime, Celeste had been with Leland, eating nachos and watching sports. She didn't regret that, but regretted the delay in catching the incident report. She'd been following up leads on Loretta and the drug trade series since, and DeeDee surely deserved better from her.

  Something about the information niggled at her, though, telling her she'd read something else this week that was connected. Loretta's death seemed important to it as well. She read a crap ton of material every day, stuffing her head full of details, but they had a way of sorting in her head over time that had more than once led her in the right direction. So now she sifted through her thoughts and more files, trying to jog it loose. Where was it?

  It wasn't until she'd made her second cup of coffee and had taken a couple more aspirin that it hit her. Despite thinking she was a little crazy, she called up the latest animal control summary report and found what she was seeking.

  Animal control had been called out because a lady claimed someone had killed her dog. She'd found the dog in the same cul-de-sac where DeeDee was found a week later. Placing a call to animal control, Celeste lucked out and found her usual source working the Saturday shift. Leslie pulled the detail report and shared. It wasn't a shooting, the animal control officer had been sure of that. He'd guessed the dog was hit by a car, but when Leslie got him on the phone and she and Celeste talked to him together, he was able to recollect the extent of the wounds and the blood. Stabbing? Beating? Upon reflection, the officer and Leslie guessed it could be stabbing, but Celeste could tell she was leading them to a conclusion, which meant she had nothing.

  Thanking Leslie and promising her they'd get together soon for coffee to discuss the upcoming calendar, since Celeste offered free advertising for any animal welfare events the shelter pursued, Celeste next placed a call to the woman to whom the dog had belonged.

  "I don't understand." Alana Ferrin became a little teary as she spoke to Celeste. "She was such a good dog, wouldn't hurt anyone. I had her for company, not to be a guard dog. She didn't really bark that much, except to get someone to notice and come pet her. I never had any complaints from the neighbors. She'd never gotten out, but the gate was open, like someone let her out. The police thought maybe neighbor kids did it and then she got hit by a car, but on a cul-de-sac? Who's going so fast they'd hit a dog on a cul-de-sac? Unless they did it intentionally. And it doesn't make sense. It was five miles away from my home. I wouldn't have found her at all except someone down there was nice enough to look at her collar and call."

  Her voice broke. "She was just a kind, good dog. A lot of shifty characters hang out at that cul-de-sac. The graffiti and needles, all that garbage. I know one of them did it, but I don't know why, except it was just pure cruelty."

  "Ms. Ferrin, I don't want to upset you more, but did she look like she'd been hit by a car?"

  "It's so hard to tell. The officer said a dog can be hit by a car and not have an obvious mark on her. But she had wounds. In her side and chest. She was all bloody. Oh God."

  "I'm so sorry." Celeste hated the part of the job where she had to push like that. "You sound like you were really good to her. I hope some other dog is lucky enough to be adopted by you."

  "Thank you." Alana sniffled. "But it will take a while. I just feel...it's like I've been wounded down to the soul. Someone who would do that to my Lacy, they'll do that to a person. People just don't understand that. If you'd mistreat an animal that way, something's terribly wrong with you."

  When Celeste ended the call, she sat back in her chair, frowning. It could be a complete coincidence, true. Yet she believed in being thorough, so she did some more digging and hit gold. The kind that sent a cold tingle up the base of her spine that told her she'd found something that didn't gel. Or that did.

  Alana Ferrin lived a few doors down from the Stileses.

  Scrolling through more animal control reports, she found another incident report in the Stileses' neighborhood and was back on the phone to Leslie, requesting another detail sheet. When it came through on her computer, Celeste clicked it open and frowned. A week before Loretta's death, animal control was called out to retrieve a dead dog on the street. The neighbor had insisted on animal control instead of sanitation, because the dog appeared to have been dumped in that condition, not run over. The officer who wrote the report was more detail oriented, noting that the animal had puncture wounds. He'd taken several pictures. This dog was on the thin side but not unhealthy, a shepherd mix. She didn't have tags or a chip, so she hadn't been claimed, but she did have a collar with faded pictures of dog bones on it.

  Alana's dog had tags. Otherwise she likely never would have found her pet, all that distance away. What if the dog in the Stileses neighborhood had come from another part of town...like in the area of town where DeeDee was killed? It sounded ridiculous, even to Celeste. Serial killers were far rarer than the abundance of crime dramas about them. However, the ones who existed did seem to have a tendency to establish patterns, signatures that had significance to them.

  Well, it could be her dumbest hunch of all time, but she might as well check it out. Printing out the description of the dog, she put it in her to-do files for Monday and turned her attention to her other work. However, for the rest of the weekend, a part of her mind kept chewing on it. At least it gave her an alternative to thinking about Leland, though that subject kept her mind just as engaged--and was just as puzzling.

  On Monday, by the time she headed for the area where DeeDee had been found, she'd about convinced herself she was looking for submarine races in the desert. But as she drove up and down the nearby streets, Celeste discovered what she was seeking. Getting out, she went to a scarred light post where a paper sign was showing the effects of an earlier rain, part of it already torn away. Pushing it up, she looked at the fuzzy picture of the lost dog noted there. Sadie. Black-and-brown shepherd mix. The description was written in a child's scrawl.

  She wrote down the address, wondered if she could figure out a way to verify it without letting the young owner know Sadie hadn't fallen into kind hands. Because it was entirely possible Sadie had. Black and brown shepherd mixes weren't unique. The dog picked up from the Stileses' neighborhood would have been disposed of by now, no way except the officer's photos to tell if she was Sadie, and she sure as hell wasn't showing that to a child. Plus, a connection between two dead dogs and two murdered women, both a week apart? A lot of "ifs." She tried to scoff at the idea, but damn it, the spidey sense was tingling.

  Celeste got back in her car and drove to t
he cul-de-sac where DeeDee had been found. A couple of working girls leaned on a broken chain-link fence in the empty lot, a trio of young men not too far away, one sitting on a bucket while two others stood around him. She recognized the subtle signs of their gang affiliation. MoneyBoyz. While they were acting like three kids with not much to do, they were waiting for customers to come by. It was a popular spot for transacting drug business.

  She'd asked Alana to pinpoint as exactly as she could where the dog was found on the cul-de-sac, so she stopped her car next to that spot, which was fortunately on the opposite side. It was possible she wouldn't get any crap from the boys if she did her business quickly and acted like she had every right to be there.

  The graffiti on the curb was extensive. While a lot of artists looked for vertical surfaces like the sides of buildings, most of them had a compulsive need to create, so she saw some promising artwork, despite some of it being praises of the MoneyBoyz, marking their turf. Like a colorful puzzle, it was all interlocking letters and swirling pictures. She moved along the curb, doubled back, noting the drug paraphernalia, used rubbers. She also stayed mindful of how conversation across the cul-de-sac had died off. Crouching down, she pushed some trash off the curb to get a better look at something that didn't fit.

  Rough childish letters had been scrawled over a piece of graffiti art, like a to-do list on top of a magazine ad. The letters were dark brown, nearly faded from rain. She took a picture of it with her camera phone, and then traced them on the rough ground. The first four letters could be...dead. Then...yeah. She sat back on her heels, a hard knot tying itself below her rib cage. She wasn't mistaken. Bitch. Dead Bitch.

  She shouldn't be jumping to conclusions. It could be paint or a marker, done by some insensitive asshole, making a caustic comment about finding DeeDee's body here. Or a more recent spat between hookers where one had scribbled it to start a fight. If it had been left here with the dog, it could be days old, since the dog was found a week before DeeDee was killed. But with all the trash covering it since then, and the rain hadn't been a downpour...

  "Yo bitch, why you hanging down here? You wantin' to suck some dick for money?"

  She'd stayed too long. Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she rose and faced the two males who'd come over to see what she was doing. They weren't much older than Darryl and Sean, but the hardened looks on their faces said they were far deeper into the life than the other two boys.

  She produced her card calmly. "I'm Celly Lewis. I'm a reporter. You've probably seen me around the neighborhood before. I was following up on a dog that was killed here."

  The taller boy scoffed. He might not yet be a man, but he had the frame of one, nearly six feet with broad shoulders and big hands. Despite the cooler weather, he wore a wifebeater over sagging jeans and he had several tats on rippling biceps. He looked strong and mean. His companion was slim, sporting a gold earring and LSU shirt over his jeans and high tops.

  "You write stories about dead bitches?" The taller one said. "You don't get much action, do you?"

  Despite the curled lip and tough guy expression, he had long, thick lashes and a boy's mouth. She tended to notice such things, though it didn't ever make her foolish enough to lower her guard. Behind those thick lashes were hostile eyes. His fingers were twitching as if he had a habit...one that had to do with looking for an excuse to show how badass he could be. "Do you think someone wrote that about DeeDee or the dog?" she asked in a companionable tone, as if she considered them a valuable source for her story. That often disarmed a tense situation, because people did like to feel important. "That's what's written on the ground here. 'Dead Bitch.' Or maybe it was unrelated. A warning for someone hanging around here? Did the ladies get into a fight with one another?" She looked toward the hookers.

  "We don't know no DeeDee," the tall boy said.

  "Oh hell yeah, Dogboy. Remember, she had the great big titties."

  Celeste's gaze snapped back to the boy as Dogboy shoved his friend. "Shut up, Bobby. You don't tell no one you know a dead person. Cops lock you up just for that. They looking for someone to pin it on."

  "Aw, why do they care about dead pussy like her? She was just a ho."

  Celeste glanced at Bobby but brought her gaze back to Dogboy. What she saw in his face made her increase her grip on the handgun she had tucked in a reinforced pocket holster in her coat. She knew how to shoot it with decent accuracy without having to remove the gun from its present location. She'd practiced at the range with a cheap jacket she'd bought at the Goodwill. But she always preferred to use her wits as her first defense. The gun was the last. "Wouldn't you want someone to care if someone killed you?" she asked.

  "Listen to her. She's like our foster momma, Dogboy. She don't know that our real brothers watch out for us." Bobby gave her a hard grin, his eyes sparkling a little too bright. Probably pumped up on some of the product they were selling. "We take care of anyone who fucks with us," he said.

  Dogboy didn't agree or disagree with that, but his unfriendly look fastened on her face, didn't waver. She was reminded of a snake watching prey. "That includes nosy reporters," he said.

  "I'll keep that in mind. But a reporter can also be a friend...Dogboy, was it?" Her gaze shifted deliberately to the "Dead Bitch" impression on the ground. She was pretty certain the dark-brown remnants were some type of blood. The dog's blood? Or maybe DeeDee's, which was why enough of it was still there for her to see. What were the chances the words had been written in the approximate spot where the dog had been left seven days earlier? And possibly where DeeDee herself had been killed. If so, the crime techs would have likely combed the area and photographed that evidence. But did they know about the dog?

  She needed to pull her head out of her ruminating ass, because apparently her pensiveness had been noted and hit a nerve. "Listen, bitch..." Dogboy reached under his shirt for what she was sure would be a gun or knife he could wave in her face. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to deal with that kind of posturing. She was pretty sure he wasn't planning to shoot her in broad daylight in front of two hookers and the sparse scattering of nearby neighbors, despite their houses being dilapidated enough to suggest they were mostly inhabited by junkies and "didn't see nothin'" ostriches.

  She planted her feet and prepared to defuse. But before Dogboy could follow through, his friend caught his arm. "Save it, D. Five-O."

  As the boys and the hookers melted away, she stayed in place, pulling out her notebook to write a few things down. A few seconds later, the police unit pulled up next to her, now standing all alone in the circle. "Celly?"

  She turned. Mike had his window down, and she could see that Billy was riding with him. District 1 sometimes had a shortage of units, causing the officers to have to double up. Though Billy had completed his obligatory four months of rotation through the districts that completed his BRPD academy training, someone had made the intelligent decision to have the rookie ride with Mike. She wondered if it had been Leland.

  She bent enough to wave at Billy. "Hey, boys. Out trawling for pussy? Or donuts?"

  Mike shook his head at her. "This isn't a great place for you to be hanging out."

  "That's my life, Officer. Same as you."

  "You don't have any on you, do you?" Billy asked. "Donuts?"

  Mike shook his head and tossed her a resigned look that said it all. Rookies. Though she expected he would have been happy if she had donuts as well. Sometimes she did, and it always amused her when they asked. Men did tend to think with their stomachs. "Not today. Got caught up in following some leads and didn't get past the bakery. I thought you two weren't supposed to be talking to me. Your big, bad sergeant said so."

  "Hope he wasn't too rough on you," Mike said. "Leland's a good man. One of our best."

  "I have a pretty tough hide. If you think good things about him, I'm on board." Too much on board, in fact. She missed him. She really did. She didn't want to wait until the next session or even freaking Wednesday. Why was she
letting him set the rules?

  "So why're you hanging out in a cul-de-sac with these teenage troublemakers, Celly?" Mike grinned at her. "You looking for an underage stud? I'd have to haul you in for that."

  "I have all I can handle from you, Mike. I see you and my loins are all aflutter."

  "Don't tell my wife. She scares the shit out of me. Says if she ever suspects my parts have been anywhere they shouldn't be, she'll cut them off."

  "That woman's a keeper." Celeste considered her notes. "There was a dog killed here about ten days ago." Squatting, she pointed to the scrawled writing with her pen as Mike leaned through the window to see. "I'm think that's 'Dead Bitch,' though it's been compromised at this point. Had a lot of trash over it. Animal control thought the dog might have been hit by a car, but the owner believes the dog was murdered. Maybe beaten or stabbed."

  "Christ, people who'd do that to an animal..." Billy had left his car to stand in front of Mike's grill and see what she was doing. Obviously a dog lover himself, the idea of it made his eyes and jaw much harder, showing her a face that wasn't nearly as green as she'd thought.

  "Right there with you," she said. She thought about Dogboy's eyes. There was something dead there, so focused. Unlike the TV shows, sometimes a crime could be straightforward. Most criminals weren't masterminds. Usually the hardest part was finding the first couple of dots to connect. After that, the picture might draw itself, leaving the detectives only the tedious, painstaking chore of verifying every dot to build a strong case. However, all she had right now was a wacky theory. "I'm sure the techs got the blood, but I'm looking at a possible connection to DeeDee, the prostitute who was stabbed here. That one I was just talking to, Dogboy. I think he probably knows something about it, and he might also have been involved in that laundromat owner beating last Monday." She gave Mike a faint, grim smile. "Don't worry. If any of my speculations start to feel more solid than old Magnum, P.I. episodes, I'll shoot them to the lead detectives on their cases. Marquez is handling DeeDee's, right?"

  "Yeah." He shook his head. "I'm glad you're not my wife, Celly. You'd give me gray hairs."