The Unforgiven Read online

  Wendy did not come from money, and there was nothing wrong with that. But her husband, Nathan Lawrence, seemed to be an okay guy. He was a high school teacher specializing in history, civics and government. Dan had already started watching him for Wendy, and the wildest thing the man had done so far was sponsor a high school trip to the zoo.

  “Wendy, I need to tell you,” Dan said, “I’ve followed him after school every day for a week now. He’s gone home. I don’t know what has made you think he...that he might be using you, cheating on you, and staying married to keep his money.”

  “I saw the text on his phone. You are truly the best. Thank you! Loved my time with you!”

  Dan shook his head. “I hung around at the café by the school, too. I’m pretty sure that was from one of his students.”

  Wendy sat back in horror. “A student! Oh, my God!”

  “No, no, Wendy. Students might well have a distant crush on a teacher like that. I didn’t say your husband was acting wrongly in any way. I think that text might have been from Lily Levan, one of his honor students, and it was innocent—a thank-you for the help he gave her filling out forms. She’s in line for a few scholarships, but the paperwork on them can be overwhelming.”

  “Are you refusing to...to work for me?” Wendy asked.

  “No, of course not. I’ll continue on your case. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything. I think your husband is honest and upright, and I’d hate for him to find out you don’t trust him.”

  “In one set of pictures you gave me, he was with a woman,” Wendy said.

  “Wendy, he was with a man and a woman. They had folders out on the table; I believe it was a business meeting.”

  “He’s a teacher.”

  “Yes, and he helps students decide where to go for college, he helps their parents when they’re trying to figure out how to pay for college. Wendy, he didn’t leave with the couple. The couple left together, and the man’s arm was around the woman’s shoulder.”

  “And you don’t know who the couple were? What kind of an investigator are you?”

  Dan sighed. “I can use some contacts and see if I can find out who they were. You’re afraid your husband is cheating on you. Well, he wasn’t cheating on you with that woman. I didn’t know you wanted dossiers on all his students and their parents and every bartender or server he ever spoke nicely to in a restaurant.”

  “There is something up,” Wendy whispered.

  “Wendy, he isn’t cheating. He’s at school. I’ve followed him every other place he’s been. He simply heads home at night. Sometimes he does go to a restaurant. He eats. You should end this before it goes badly. Do you really want him to possibly discover you hired me because you don’t trust him?”

  Wendy stood, somewhat indignant. “You’re paid not to let him know.”

  Dan shook his head. “He won’t know from me. That’s not the point.”

  “He told me he had some kind of a business meeting, something that might bring a lot of good into our lives. But he wouldn’t tell me what it was. He was so silly about it. Then he was just... I don’t know...weird. And then he said he wanted to forget all of it.”

  “Maybe it was just a bad opportunity, and he felt weird about it,” Dan said wearily.

  “A week, just another week,” Wendy said.

  Dan knew he was good at what he did. Nathan Lawrence would never know he had been watched and followed. Dan didn’t need this client. He was solvent; he had money in the bank. But he did do this for a living—as much as he was coming to loathe it—and Wendy did pay her bills.

  He was nodding as his phone rang. He had his cell on silent, but it was vibrating on his desk.

  Ryder was calling him. Detective Ryder Stapleton, NOPD.

  “Excuse me. I have to take this,” he told Wendy. It was probably a social call, as Ryder was a friend, but it could also be something more interesting.

  She nodded and rose to leave. “One more week. I’ll pay Marleah on the way out.”

  She headed to the door to exit his office. He watched her go, wondering for a moment just how he had managed to do this to himself. He’d been a good detective with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement once upon a time.

  And he’d let bitterness over a case cause him to resign. Well, here he was—a licensed private investigator. Following errant husbands and wives, looking for rebellious teens and dealing with the emotional baggage of humanity.

  Ryder was his one salvation: his longtime friend asked him in on a case now and then as a consultant for the New Orleans PD.

  “Hey. Tell me you need me. Please, I’m begging you,” he said into the phone.

  Ryder was silent for a moment. “I need you.” He seemed to be taking a deep breath before plunging in. “Dan, it’s happened here. I need you to meet me in the Marigny.”

  “What’s happened here?”

  “A bloodbath. Like the case you had in Florida. I don’t know much yet. We’ve just arrived. A family, Dan. An old man and an old woman and their health-care worker. All slashed up, hard to tell where one body leaves off and... We’re still waiting on the medical examiner, can’t touch them until he’s here, but when I saw this... Well, I thought of you.”

  A stab of lightninglike pain streaked through Dan.

  He’d left Florida six years ago over just such a case. They’d had the killer, he’d been certain. But in court, everything had gone to hell. They just hadn’t had enough tangible evidence.

  The man had walked free despite Dan believing he’d killed more than once. The guy maintained he’d been a survivor of a brutal attack on a boat—one that killed his wife and best friends, six years earlier.

  But then he just happened to be around when very similar murders were committed a mere two hundred miles north of where the first murders had taken place.

  He’d claimed he’d moved to Orlando to get away from the horrible memories and therefore couldn’t help but be in the city where the next group of people had been heinously hacked up with an axe and a blade. But it was too much of a coincidence for Dan to ignore.

  Calabria. George Calabria. The man said they’d been attacked, and he’d fallen overboard while his wife and others were murdered. He hadn’t known who had attacked him—“a large, dark, shadowy figure from behind.” He’d barely escaped with his own life, falling into the water when he’d been slammed in the head, and then somehow surfacing, maybe semiconscious, and he eventually made it to shore.

  There had supposedly been another couple on the boat.

  Where was this couple, and who were they?

  Some new friends. Out-of-towners they’d recently met. Killed and thrown into the water, according to his story. Or maybe one of them was the killer.

  But it was all so far-fetched and suspicious.

  Dan was already standing, ready to rush out the door.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Slow down, Dan. I know this has happened similarly twice before, in Florida. But you need to understand, this is New Orleans. I’m not sure what you know about history here, but we had the infamous Axeman of New Orleans in 1919. And you know media today. They are going to start saying the Axeman is back. The guy that killed everyone back in—”

  “1918 to 1919.”

  “Uh, right, I think. The point is the city will be in a panic. If you know anything on this, which I’m guessing you do—”

  “I know what we can look for... Who we can look for.”

  “Okay, maybe. So I need you here. Now.”

  “I’m on my way. Text me the exact address. Ryder, you have to make me real on this case.”

  “I’m on it with my bosses. But it can be tricky. They like it better when you’re hired by a victim’s family, you know.”

  “We’ll find something... I... Damn, Ryder. I mean, I know it could be something else, but this.
..”

  “I saw your crime-scene photos from Orlando, and I’m seeing this. Get over here. We’ll figure out the rest soon enough. Want you to see this before...before the bodies are moved,” Ryder said.

  Dan left his office, striding out through the reception area that opened out onto the street.

  Marleah Darwin, his erstwhile receptionist/secretary/assistant, called out to him. “Dan, Mrs. Lawrence left you a check. She’s overpaying you. I tried to tell her—”

  “Later, Marleah,” he said, leaving her shaking her neatly coiffed, graying head and sighing with her usual patience.

  His office was in the Central Business District or CBD. The Faubourg Marigny or Marigny neighborhood was the other side of the French Quarter. His car was parked in a garage two blocks away. An Uber or Lyft driver would probably be near, but then he saw a cab approaching. He stepped out in the street and flagged it down.

  It would take a few minutes to get across town.

  Time to remember the scene he’d been called to in his second year as a detective with the FDLE.

  Ryder had referred to the crime-scene photos. Dan didn’t need them. The precursor to what would certainly prove to be a similar scene was indelibly imprinted in his mind. The apartment had been painted in blood. Mrs. Austin, her head caved in, her face unrecognizable, her lower arm severed from her body. Mr. Austin, his lower left calf severed—his head looking like a blood stew filled with raw meat. The niece, Miss Henrietta, so mangled it had taken days for her identity to be firmly established.

  The cabbie had an accent. Dan wasn’t sure where he was from. People in New Orleans might be from just about anywhere. It was one of the many cool things about the city of New Orleans. And wherever he had come from, this man now knew this place. He moved out of the CBD and on to Decatur, telling Dan what streets had been closed off that day.

  Dan was relieved he’d got a good cabbie.

  In minutes, Dan was looking ahead at the street just beyond Rampart and a few blocks down from Esplanade.

  Police vehicles and those labeled Crime Scene Investigation sat alongside another vehicle, the wagon from the morgue.

  And they weren’t alone.

  He saw vans from the major news stations already out, reporters pointing to the house and speculating.

  They weren’t going to get any closer in the cab. Dan handed the driver a generous tip—well deserved—and stepped out to walk hurriedly down the street. At the police line, a patrol officer would have stopped him, but Ryder Stapleton came down the few steps from the small white Victorian house beyond the vehicles, assuring the officers that Dan was with him.

  Dan liked Ryder; he was glad and grateful that Ryder had asked him to come. He was about Dan’s own age, sandy-haired, lean and fit. Dan could see that Ryder could be imposing, but yet possessed a warmth that could draw out thoughts and observations from a witness who didn’t even know they had seen or known something.

  As he approached, Ryder was shaking his head.

  “The Axeman. They’re already calling him the Axeman in the media—and we don’t even know who the hell got through to the reporters! The bodies are inside, for God’s sake. I mean, thank God, but...someone talked. They know an axe was involved in the murders—and it was left behind. Dammit, Dan! This might be your killer, but if so, he sure as hell knows his NOLA serial killers, too.”

  * * *

  “Thank you,” Katie Delaney said cheerfully as her group of seven departed her mule-drawn carriage on Decatur Street. They had been a family, one that seemed to get along remarkably well: two sets of grandparents, parents and an adorable five-year-old. The couple and their little girl lived in New Orleans, the father’s parents lived in New York, and the mother’s parents lived in Los Angeles.

  Maybe that’s why they got along so well!

  She winced inwardly, telling herself not to be so jaded. She’d been young when she’d lost all four grandparents, but she remembered that both families had gotten along fine.

  Looking back, she was glad they’d been so old, that the four of them had died before they’d had to see what happened to Katie’s parents, their children.

  “Oh, wait, please, wait just a minute!” the mom called to Katie.

  Of course, the five-year-old wanted a picture with her mule, Sarah, and Sarah had a beautiful disposition, so pictures with her were always great.

  “Please, do you mind being in the picture?” the dad asked.

  “Uh, sure,” Katie said, wrapping the reins and hopping down. “But,” she said, coming around to the sidewalk, “wouldn’t you rather I took the picture?”

  “I can do it,” a voice called.

  It was Lorna Garcia, one of Katie’s best friends and a coworker at Trudeau Carriage Company. Lorna was slender, with dark hair and dark eyes that usually radiated cheer and energy, but even as she smiled and took the man’s phone to use as a camera, she glanced at Katie with something less than happiness.

  “Say cheese grits!” Lorna told the group, and they all smiled. Katie gave the five-year-old a few apple pieces and boosted her up on a knee so she could give the mule the treats.

  “Café du Monde is right across the street,” the dad said, tour director, so it seemed, for the group.

  “Enjoy your beignets!” Katie said cheerfully, and they all waved and headed off.

  “Thank you,” the mom called back, smiling. “You were the best!” she added nicely. “I mean, the very best. Those are great stories you tell. Thanks again.”

  “No, thank you,” Katie told her. She smiled. Her stories were good, and she did have her history down pat. She had a little unusual help when it came to the stories she told that were part of NOLA lore. A little inside info she really couldn’t share with anyone.

  It wasn’t that she wouldn’t.

  It was that she really couldn’t.

  Over the years, one thing therapy had taught her was there were things you could share—and some you needed to keep to yourself because others might think that they were unbelievable.

  And that you needed more and intensive therapy.

  The entire group turned around one last time after they’d crossed Decatur Street to Café du Monde. They waved in unison. She waved back.

  Then her group was gone, and before anyone else could approach either of them, Lorna slipped her arm through Katie’s, drawing her back from the sidewalk and against the fence that surrounded Jackson Square.

  “Lorna, what’s wrong?” Katie demanded of her friend.

  “I’m so sorry, but you’re going to hear this soon enough, and I don’t want you taken off guard... I mean, nothing can ease this, but...”

  “But what, Lorna? You’re babbling. I mean, thank you for sparing my feelings. Oh, no! Jeremy—is Jeremy okay?”

  “Your cousin is fine. He called a few seconds ago. He wanted to know if we were together. It’s already on the news—”

  “What is? Lorna, please!” Katie said, frustrated and worried.

  Lorna sighed. “Brutal murders in the Marigny. Cops are there now. The media isn’t getting much, but you can see there isn’t one cop car here where there are usually a dozen and... Oh, Katie! There’s been no official police announcement yet, but...they believe everyone in the house was killed sometime last night. Um...murdered with an axe...”

  Her voice trailed.

  Lorna had been Katie’s friend since she had come to live with her dad’s cousin, Jeremy Delaney, after her parents had been killed. The girls had been in the same class in high school; they’d even chosen to go to Tulane together.

  Of course, Lorna knew Katie’s family history. That her parents had been murdered and the killer had never been caught.

  Lorna also knew Jeremy had gone down to Florida with Katie six years ago when there had been another murder and they had thought they’d finally caught the killer—her dad’s b
est friend! A man who had also lost his wife that day twelve years ago. But the police hadn’t been able to prove it.

  Katie didn’t want to feel sick—there was no reason to assume the same person that struck twelve years ago was the same person who had struck six years ago—and now, again, today. Or last night.

  No reason... Except whatever had happened was already on the news. She could see people on the street stopping to stare at their phones.

  A carriage driver with one of the other companies shouted out to a group waiting for passengers. “He’s back! The Axeman is back in New Orleans!”

  Lorna let out a soft sigh, shaking her head. “What the hell is the matter with him? Does he want to send us all to the poorhouse? Idiot! I mean, this is truly ghastly and horrible—but come on, a crazed killer can’t attack every tourist in New Orleans.” She looked at Katie and winced. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that was just Bucky being a jerk—and clearing the sidewalk of our would-be customers. His, too. But truly, I’m mostly worried about you. Please don’t be upset. This probably really is different, Katie. I feel terrible for the police—this is going to be a nightmare for them. More, I’m worried sick about you.”

  “Lorna, I’m all right. You know I’m a sound, normal human being. Well, as normal as anyone else. But yes, I will be concerned. You don’t need to worry about me, though.”

  A couple walked by them. “David, my God!” the woman said. “We have to leave—there’s a crazy man out there killing people!”

  “Martha, this vacation cost a fortune. We’re in a major hotel. We’re not going down any dark alleys.”

  They moved on by.

  “The Axeman!” someone else said as they walked past. “How do you catch a ghost?”

  “There’s DNA today. Cops are way better now than they were then,” their companion said.

  For a few minutes, both Katie and Lorna were quiet, listening to the conversation going on around them. Katie noticed dryly that their friend Benny Morten—a human statue/mime who worked the corner of the square—had forgotten he was playing a silver superhero and reached into his pocket for his phone, as eager as anyone else to get what news he could.