Read Online Heather Graham by Down in New Orleans - Free Book Online Page A

discover that she had to smile. “It’s one of my best, I think. Art is always subjective.”
    “And you’re good.”
    “I make a decent living.”
    “What about your husband? Ex-husband,” he corrected.
    “He makes a very decent living. He’s going to be able to afford top-notch lawyers, Lieutenant.”
    “He’s going to need them, Mrs. Marcel.”
    Ann felt a heated trembling snake along her spine. He was tough, tenacious, and determined. If criminals fell through cracks in the system, they weren’t going to do so through lack of effort on his part. This situation was awful enough without having such an enemy opposing her own efforts along the way.
    “Has it ever occurred to you, Lieutenant, that you might be wrong?”
    He looked down for a moment. She realized that he was actually trying to be gentle with her, and that was more frightening than his downright determination to be blunt. “A trail of blood led from the murder site here.”
    “But someone else might have attacked them both.”
    “From the evidence we have, such a scenario is not probable.”
    “But it’s not impossible.”
    He stared at her a long moment. “If you have something to give me, I’ll gladly look in another direction. Do you have something?”
    “No,” Ann admitted after a moment. “Not yet.”
    “Not yet?” he repeated with a frown. “Mrs. Marcel, don’t go sticking your nose into police business—”
    “I have your card, Lieutenant.”
    “I’m warning you—”
    “Don’t go sticking your nose into my business, Lieutenant.”
    A pulse at his throat betrayed his anger; he didn’t reply at first. He managed another of his smiles. “If necessary, Mrs. Marcel, I’ll see you at the station.”
    With that, he left at last, closing the door behind him with a quiet but definitive click.
    Shaking, Ann found her way to the sofa, sinking into it. The lieutenant was dangerous. A murder had been committed; a murderer was going to have to pay. It seemed painfully obvious to everyone that Jon had committed that crime.
    He hadn’t.
    How can you know that yourself? she cried inwardly. How well does one human being ever know another?
    He hadn’t killed the girl. Jon hadn’t killed the girl; Jon wouldn’t kill. She did know him.
    And she didn’t begin to know how, but she was going to have to prove that he hadn’t done it.
    He slept, but his sleep was disturbed by reckless, disjointed dreams.
    Gina’s face.
    Gina’s eyes.
    It wasn’t that he had known her long, but rather that he had known her well. She had been different . Maybe not so different. Maybe she had taught him that every poor stiff out there was some mother’s child, and maybe her laughter in the face of all adversity had helped him when he had needed it most. Gina had believed . She had believed that her life would change, that love could fill her days. She could dance with enough sensuality for a eunuch to regrow sex organs the way a lizard regrows a tail, but all she really wanted out of life was a white picket fence, two cats in the yard, two kids, a dog, and a husband who came home nights. She had loved to cook, to sew. One day, she was going to do a tour of American amusement parks, ride every roller coaster, zoom down every slide. One day.
    “One day” had seemed so very close for her!
    “One day” had ended in death.
    By eleven, Mark gave up on the concept of sleep. It wasn’t working. He crawled out of bed and into the shower, praying the water would revive him. Scrubbed but feeling lousy, he stumbled out of the shower and headed for his drawer. He paused, seeing Maggie’s picture, and sat wearily down on his bedside.
    Funny how he went through life most of the time, never forgetting his wife, but realizing that life did go on, that he had an important job, and that he wasn’t alone. He was lucky. Maggie had left him two boys, Michael, now twenty-six—the surprise of their lives in their junior year of college!—and Sean, twenty-two, getting