Dead of Night

Ears ringing, he fell back, unable to catch himself. He sensed a motion toward the door, heard a rush of footsteps, but he couldn’t seem to focus as he crashed into the wall and slid down to the floor.

* * *

Cold air rushed over Lukas’s face, rousing him. He smelled damp earth and more faintly, the scent of something burning.

Someone leaned over him and said something, and he came alert then, throwing up a defensive arm as he reached for his gun with the other hand.

“Hey, take it easy. I’m trying to help you.”

Slowly the face floating over him came into focus. It was Esme Floyd’s grandson. Lukas barely knew the man, but he had no trouble placing him. He’d seen Curtis around town a lot lately. He had a tendency to stand out, not because of his race, but because of his looks. Handsome and graceful with the light skin and green eyes of a Creole, he also had hints of his grandmother in his features. The wide nose and high cheekbones, the quiet dignity and keen intelligence. The way his eyes seemed to size Lukas up with one sweep.

“What happened?” he asked. “Do you remember?”

Lukas put a hand to the back of his head and tentatively touched the egg-size lump. “Somebody slipped up behind me and coldcocked me good, that’s what. I didn’t hear a damn thing until he was right on me. It’ll be hell living that down.”

“If I were you, I’d be more concerned about the damage to my brain than my ego. You took a nasty blow to the head.”

“I’ve had worse. Nothing a couple of aspirin won’t take care of.” Lukas pushed himself up and tried not to react to the pain that shot through the base of his skull.

But Curtis saw the wince and said sternly, “We need to get you to the hospital. You probably have a concussion.”

“I appreciate the professional opinion, Dr. Floyd, but like I said, I’ve had a lot worse.” Lukas glanced at the smashed lamp on the floor, then his gaze slowly lifted. “What are you doing here anyway?”

Curtis sat back on his heels and stared at Lukas for a moment before getting to his feet. Something flared in his eyes, an icy disdain for any real or imagined innuendo in Lukas’s question. “So that’s it. You come to, see a black man standing over you and your first instinct is to assume I’m the one who hit you.”

“I never said that.”

“That was the implication, though, wasn’t it?”

“It was just a simple question, Dr. Floyd. No offense intended.”

Curtis shrugged. “Not that there’s any reason I should have to justify myself to you, but my grandmother sent me over here. We’re going out to lunch, and she wanted to know if you’d found anything before we go.”

Lukas sniffed the air. “You smell something burning?”

“No, but it’s probably someone down the street burning leaves.”

“It’s too wet to burn leaves.” Lukas was sitting upright now. His gaze went back to the window as a gust of wind blew away the scent, bringing a fresh chill into the room. “Damn, that air’s cold.”

Curtis had retreated to the door and stood with one shoulder propped against the jamb. His professional concern had dissolved, and now he made no move to close the window or offer assistance to Lukas as he struggled to his feet.

Lukas went over to the window and glanced out. A tree limb scraped against the panes, reminding him that he’d been standing in that same spot when his attacker had slipped up behind him.

Now as he shoved the window down, he saw only his own reflection in the glass. But he had a feeling he was missing something. He’d seen something, heard something that now seemed to elude him.

He turned. Curtis was still in the doorway, watching him through narrowed eyes. Beneath a brown leather jacket, he wore a crisp white shirt that brought to mind Miss Esme at her ironing board.

For some reason, a snippet of their conversation suddenly came back to Lukas. “You think a mother won’t lie to keep her boy out of that kind of trouble?”

“Did you see anyone on your way over here?” he asked. “Somebody out on the street maybe?”

“Not that I noticed. Of course, you have only my word on that.” Curtis’s expression was inscrutable except for the glimmer of contempt in his eyes. That was all too easily discernible.

He straightened, his every move elegant and unhurried in spite of the simmering hostility. He looked to be a man who knew exactly where he was going and how he intended to get there. And Lukas had a feeling he wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way.

“I need to get back before my grandmother starts to worry,” Curtis said. “Are you sure you won’t let me take you to the hospital? If you were my patient, I’d order a CAT scan, an MRI and depending on the results, an overnight stay in the hospital.”

“For one little bump on the noggin?”

“It’s always best to eliminate unpleasant possibilities.”

“On that, we agree,” Lukas said. “Which is why the only place I’m headed at the moment is out to my car for my fingerprint kit.” He squatted beside the broken lamp. “You didn’t touch anything in here, did you?”

“You mean anything other than your pulse? I’m afraid I did.” Curtis folded his arms. “I had to move the lamp out of the way to examine you.”

“Then we’ll need to get a set of your prints for comparison. Assuming, of course, you’re not already in the system.”

Lukas had meant it as a joke, but when he glanced up, he could see Curtis’s nostrils quiver as he let out a sharp breath.

“Sorry. I guess that wasn’t so funny.”

The skin on Curtis’s face was suddenly as gray as the winter sky, and when their gazes met, he had to look quickly away. In the space of a heartbeat, the elegant facade had crumbled, and behind those green eyes, vulnerability weakened his contempt.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Lukas asked softly, taken aback by the man’s swift change.

Curtis lifted a hand and wiped it across his face, as if he could somehow scrub away the cracks and restore his stoic demeanor. “I was in some trouble in college,” he finally said. “Everything eventually got cleared up and the charges were dropped, but I was booked, processed, whatever you want to call it. I don’t know whether my fingerprints ended up in the system or not.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“No. It’s in the past.” He wore a pinkie ring on his right hand and the fingers of his left hand kept tugging at the gold. “My grandmother doesn’t know about any of this and I’d like to keep it that way. My father’s put her through a lot over the years. I don’t want her worried about me.”

“I can understand that. But you know what they say about secrets. They have a way of coming back to haunt you when you least expect it.”

“You sound as if you’ve had some experience.”

Lukas shrugged. “We all have secrets. Just take a look around this room.”

Curtis’s gaze wandered over Lukas’s face. “What are you talking about?”

He waved a hand, encompassing the blue walls and white linens. The posters of rock stars and screen idols. The dressing table strewn with makeup, perfume bottles and corsage ribbons. “This was Rachel DeLaune’s room, wasn’t it?”

Curtis pressed his lips together. “You ask that as if you assume I should know. But I was never allowed anywhere in this house except the kitchen.”

“But you knew this was Rachel’s room. How could you not? Even I know it’s hers. All you have to do is take a look around. I doubt anything’s been changed since the night she died.” Lukas paused, letting a long silence settle between them. “You can still feel her presence in here, can’t you? Tell me what she was like.”

The green eyes deepened angrily. “That’s not really what you want to know, is it?”

So he had more than just his grandmother’s nose and cheekbones, Lukas thought. He’d also inherited her insight. “No, you’re right. What I really want to know is if she was seeing anyone when she died. I can’t find a mention of a boyfriend in the police report. But a beautiful girl like that? She must have had plenty of guys sniffing around.” He walked over to the dressing table, and for a moment, swore he could still smell her perfume. After fourteen years.

“She dated,” Curtis said. “I don’t think there was anyone special.”

“Did she date you?”

Surprise flashed over his handsome features, and then he laughed, an ugly sound that didn’t suit his suave veneer. “You’re joking, right? You think James DeLaune would have allowed his precious daughter, his princess, to go out with someone like me?”

“Why not? Look how you turned out. I bet you were always smart and ambitious.”

“That wouldn’t have mattered to James DeLaune. As far as he was concerned, I was never anything but the housekeeper’s mulatto grandson.”

Lukas glanced up. “That’s not a word you hear much these days, even around here.”

“Maybe you just haven’t been listening,” Curtis said bitterly. “This town hasn’t changed as much as you seem to think.”

They were getting into some uncomfortable territory, Lukas decided. Might even be a little dangerous.

“Men like James DeLaune and my father grew up in a different era. Some of them have a hard time rising above their upbringing.”

Curtis gave him a cynical look. “Are you making excuses for racism?”

“No. I’m just stating a sad fact. Times change, but sometimes that change is slow to take hold in a small town like this. But at least nowadays you won’t get lynched for dating a white woman.”

“And that’s your idea of progress?” Curtis’s lips curled into a sneer. “You know as well as I do it doesn’t take a rope to lynch a man. All you have to do is trump up some charges against him, threaten his scholarship, ruin his reputation so that you can destroy his future and keep him in his place.”

Lukas cocked his head. “Is that what happened to you? Is that why your prints may or may not be in the system?”

“Like I said, it’s all in the past. And I think you and I are finished here.” Curtis turned to leave.

“Dr. Floyd?”

He paused.

“Were you in love with Rachel DeLaune?”

He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, his expression a mixture of anger, resolution and sorrow as he stared at some distant point. Then he closed his eyes. “Why are you dredging all this up now? Why can’t you let her rest in peace?”

Lukas shrugged. “I guess I just don’t like mysteries. They eat at me. Keep me awake at night.” He drew in a breath, letting the lingering scent of Rachel DeLaune’s perfume strengthen his resolve. “And call me crazy, but I don’t like the idea of a killer walking around loose in my town.”

Chapter 9

Sarah could lose herself in a beautiful tattoo. She’d always loved to paint and draw, but there was nothing so rewarding as working on a living canvas. The black work laid the foundation, but color brought the image to life.

“No scratching, no picking, no peeling,” she warned as she carefully applied a bandage to her client’s fresh tattoo. “Leave the gauze on for at least four hours. You can clean it with soap and water, but don’t use a washcloth. That’s too rough.”

“Should I put Vaseline on it to keep it moist?” the client asked. It was her first tattoo and she was still a bit anxious.

“No Vaseline. You can apply a little medicated ointment for the first couple of days. After that, a good moisturizer. Very important to keep it moisturized. But don’t worry about remembering all this now. I’ll give you a sheet of instructions to take home with you.”

Sarah walked the client out, then returned to her station to clean up. She heard the front door open and, glancing around the partition, she saw Sean walk in. The sight of him threw her, just as his phone call had the night before. They’d gone for months without any contact and suddenly here he was, pushing his way back into her life.

But that was Sean. His arrogance allowed him to believe he could come and go as he pleased, with little regard to the emotional toll on those he left in his wake. Sarah supposed in some respects he wasn’t so different from her. She’d gone through most of her life with her armor firmly in place. It was the only way she’d known how to survive, growing up in the shadow of a worshipped older sister.

Even now, she could remember when the revelation hit her that she and Rachel were far from equals in her father’s eyes. It wasn’t so much the expensive presents he lavished on Rachel or the amount of time he spent with her. It was the way he looked at her, the way his voice softened when he spoke to her. And nothing Sarah did or said could ever elicit that same kind of affection.

So the defenses had come up, the emotions were turned off, and she’d spent the remainder of her childhood and adolescence convincing herself and those around her that she didn’t need anyone. She was a loner, a misfit, a girl who didn’t belong anywhere except in the shadows of her own imagination.

And then Sean had come along, and she’d been tempted to let him in. He’d gotten closer to the real Sarah than anyone had in years, but there was still a part of her she couldn’t let him know. A part of her she needed to keep hidden even from herself.

Maybe it was inevitable, then, that he’d turned to someone else, a woman who didn’t have Sarah’s emotional baggage. She wanted to be philosophical and pragmatic about their breakup, but what she still felt all these months later was hurt and confused, like the little girl who’d once tried to bully her way into her father’s good graces.

Sarah wiped down the barber’s chair and cleaned her station until it was spotless. The used gloves, needles and ink were tossed into the proper waste receptacles, and everything that needed to be sterilized went into the autoclave.