The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) Page 3

  Only on the bottom shelf were pills dedicated to functions other than promoting or inhibiting sleep. One such bottle, a bottle of plain aspirin so old the label was half-worn, was the target of Sam Castille’s search.

  Sam spent a moment or two half-opening and closing the cabinet door, listening to the mirror as it shuddered in its track, before finally sliding it all the way open. To Sam, the sound was reminiscent of heavy rain on a tin roof, and that was very relaxing. Finally, with the cabinet completely open, Sam found and snatched up the bottle of aspirin. Then Sam closed the door to the cabinet, coming face-to-face with her own reflection.

  Sam wasn’t pretty by conventional standards. Her face was more gaunt than normal, her cheekbones were too high, and her nose was a little too big. Her blue-gray eyes didn’t shine, and her sandy blond hair wasn’t remarkable, especially pulled back in a tight ponytail as it was. Her frame was slender, with only her hips having any definition.

  Many people had told Samantha Castille that she had that “hometown girl” look. She couldn’t care less. People weren’t something Sam was interested in.

  After staring at her reflection for a few moments, Sam flipped open the bottle of aspirin with her thumb and popped a few pills right into her mouth. She stared again at her reflection before leaning forward to check under her eyes to see if the bags were as heavy as they had been the night before. They were. By the time the bitter taste of the pills dissolving in her mouth registered, Sam was already washing it down with a mouthful of cold coffee.

  The vile combination of tastes made Sam’s face crunch up into a comical pucker. The surge of bitterness passed within a few moments, and she swallowed the wretched mouthful and shuddered in disgust.

  Leaving the opened pill bottle on the sink, she took her coffee mug, which was marked with the phrase, “If I gave a penny for your thoughts, I’d have change coming,” and headed downstairs to her study.

  Outside, the patter of raindrops softly rolled off the slated roof and down to the gutter below, sloshing out to the sidewalk of Uptown New Orleans.

  It had been storming earlier, and Sam, after trying with all her might, had abandoned all pretense of trying to work and had contented herself with sitting outside on her back porch, holding a mug of cooling black coffee, listening to the torrents of rain, and thinking of as little as was humanly possible. Only when the rain had finally dwindled to a mere patter had Sam realized she had a splitting headache, and that she had daydreamed away two hours.

  “Isn’t that just lovely,” Sam had said to herself before unfolding her legs, sliding her feet into her slippers, and walking back inside the house in search of some aspirin.

  But now with the rain having lessened up, Sam returned to her study and the large solid oak desk that acted as a centerpiece to the room, taking a seat in a large red velvet chair. The desk, the chair, the house she lived in, and most of her belongings were keepsakes from her father.

  Even the lonesome and frightfully old-looking typewriter resting on the desk was once used by her father. Sam’s fingers lingered on the sides of the typewriter, lost in nostalgia for a moment’s passing, before she ritualistically slid her fingers over the keys of the typewriter and began to type.

  Mortimer crept down the abandoned hallway, the creaking of the floorboards piercing the night’s silence like a terrified caterwaul. The investigator’s right hand stayed firmly wrapped around the butt of his trusty revolver, his left hand wrapped protectively around the flashlight that illuminated the path before him.

  Beads of sweat gathered on his brow as his eyes darted side to side, suspicious of every shadow. Soon Mortimer came upon the last door in the hallway. He took a deep breath. The answers to the Mystery of the Crimson Mask lay inside! Hands shaking, the investigator reluctantly forsook his gun and, with an audible gulp, opened the door, revealing…

  Sam stopped typing in midsentence, her lips scrunching up into a pucker and shifting to the side. “Right,” she said and moved from the typewriter to a pile of handwritten notes. There were scribbles, mind-maps, jots, and musings—all the notes of a mystery writer—and Sam shuffled through them several times before finally letting out a deep sigh. Her fingers slid from the loose-leaf papers and ceremoniously slid back to the typewriter. For a long moment, she just sat there, fingers on the keys, not typing anything.

  After a few soft breaths, Sam’s face crinkled in frustration and anger, and she quickly typed out:

  …nothing at all. Why? Because Sam is a dumb bitch who wrote herself into a corner six pages ago and has no feasible way for the Crimson Mask to be in this room. It’s in the bottom of the river with Mr. Dahl, the crooked attorney who stole it at the beginning, after being murdered by Rico-the-Freaking-Gay-Mobster.

  Mortimer Branston fails at being a private investigator, leaves New Orleans, and moves in with Vinnie the Nose, Stinky Earl the Plumber, Jimmy with the Gimpy Leg, and every other character Sam has introduced but failed to tie in to the crime to provide cushioning in case she writes herself into a corner yet again!

  Sam stopped the torrent of self-hate as she heard the clack of the typewriter’s hammers hitting the carriage of the typewriter, the paper having run out. Leaning back and covering her face with her hands, Sam let out a long sigh before finally rubbing her brow.

  “This sucks,” Sam announced to herself. “What the hell is wrong with me? You think it would be easy to write a crappy mystery.” Sighing with exasperation, Sam got up and, taking the litany of self-flagellation off the typewriter, walked away. A few moments later, the crumpled and balled-up paper landed in the wastebasket by the desk.

  Sam was a mystery writer of mild repute, known locally amongst the natives of New Orleans by her pen name “Sam of Spades.” Since she was old enough to work a typewriter, Sam had written mysteries, drawing upon her love of crime dramas and gritty detective novels to create worlds where smoke-filled interrogation rooms and back-alley information brokering were as commonplace as taxis and streetcars. While Sam of Spades had enjoyed a modest success within the metropolitan areas of New Orleans, she had never experienced true success.

  One part of it was that Sam just had difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. Even when she didn’t have coffee in her system, which was relatively rare, she would struggle to maintain focus for more than a few minutes. About the only thing that helped was alcohol. Consequently, Sam drank a lot of wine.

  Another part of this had to do with Sam’s sleep disorder. Ever since her father’s death, when she was only ten years old, Sam had never been able to sleep soundly without medication.

  Doctors and friends had offered Sam prescription sleep aids, over-the-counter drugs, and questionable home remedies to help her get a good night’s sleep—with none of it working. After a while, any doctor who treated her for her sleep disorders would give up and refer her back to the psychologist who had been treating her since she was a child—Dr. Klein.

  For Sam, going to therapy didn’t help her problems sleeping, but it did offer her a weekly chance to express her frustrations to someone who’d listen, even if he was paid to do just that. As for tackling her sleep disorder, Sam continued to pop pills and drive herself to exhaustion, finally getting a solid six to eight hours of sleep about every three days.

  Dr. Klein, whose goatee, monocle, and German accent made him look like the cliché of a Freudian psychologist, strongly disagreed with Sam’s methods of getting sleep. He’d often state it would eventually deteriorate her “mental condition to the point of irrecoverable psychosis”—this statement usually said while the doctor puffed out his chest and pointed toward the ceiling knowledgeably.

  Sam, of course, was basing a recurring villain in her stories off of him.

  The final reason Sam of Spades enjoyed only a small regional popularity was that she was notoriously late on her deadlines. With the habit of being days to weeks late with submissions, no publishing company would dare touch her. Sam was fortunate that Jacob Hueber, one of the publi
shers for the Times-Picayune, the local paper for New Orleans, was a close friend of hers from college.

  Sam didn’t have many friends. People made her very uncomfortable, which was why Jacob getting her a job at the newspaper was such a big deal. She could work from home and only had to go out to mail her publications to the newspaper—whenever she could actually get them written.

  Many times, Jacob would almost have to knock down Sam’s door to get a submission on time, and the last-minute rush resulted in a noticeable lack of quality.

  It wasn’t that Sam was lazy or didn’t like to write, nor was she without talent, but she was so often afflicted with writer’s block that she’d go days, sometimes weeks, without knowing what to write next. That, combined with her terrible sleep schedule, held back what would otherwise be a very successful career. Her only solace was in drinking a local blend of coffee and chicory, or listening to the raindrops whenever a shower would spring up overhead.

  Sam was just preparing to indulge in one of those pleasures, putting on a fresh pot of her favorite coffee, when the doorbell rang. For a moment, she just looked in the direction of the front door, startled by someone visiting this early in the morning. While it was no secret amongst those who knew Sam that she was a guiltless night owl, there weren’t that many who knew her to begin with. She chose this life of seclusion and enjoyed it, and she wasn’t so sure about an interruption at four fifteen in the morning.

  Leaving the coffee to brew, Sam moved toward the front of the house, stopping for a moment in the hallway to look inside a ticking grandfather clock. There, on a wooden shelf just below where the pendulum hung, was a gun—a service revolver left to Sam by her father.

  Whenever she answered the door, Sam always checked to make sure the weapon was present. She had never been the victim of a violent crime, and she did not want to take that chance. When she was sure the gun was in place, she headed to the front foyer.

  “One moment,” Sam called out to the person on the other side, fumbling with the old metal latch to the door. She’d see who it was and politely send them on their way. Even if she wasn’t facing another bout of writer’s block, she was in no mood to receive visitors. She never was.

  The latch finally undone, Sam opened the door and started with, “Sorry, but do you realize it’s four—”

  Samantha stopped midsentence when she saw who was standing there. Glowering through the crack in the door, dripping with cold rainwater, was someone she hadn’t seen in years.

  “Detective Bergeron,” Sam said with a start, staring at the older man. “What a pleasant surprise. Why are you here?”

  Rodger nodded at Sam through the doorway. “Sam, yes, it’s me. I need to speak with you. It will only take a moment.”

  Sam could make out another person with Rodger, someone dressed “to the nines.” She figured that was most likely Rodger’s newest partner. Had anyone else been there, Sam would have turned them away without a second thought. Her head aching again, she wondered why the detective who had put her grandfather away was here at four in the morning. Perhaps it was for a personal reason. He had once been an important part of her life, but he hadn’t even so much as sent a birthday card in years. The thought made her tense with years of resentment.

  No, thought Sam, I need to give him a chance.

  Sam suddenly realized that she was just standing there, keeping the door cracked open while staring at Rodger and the other man. Sam would often do that—stare at someone absently while lost in her own thoughts.

  “Sorry. One moment,” she said.

  Soon Sam was unlatching the door and letting the two detectives inside. By the time Rodger’s partner entered, Sam was leaning against the wall of the entry hall, considering the men curiously.

  “So nice of you to come calling on this rainy day, Detective,” she said.

  “Please, Sam, call me Rodger,” the older man said. “This is my partner, Detective Michael LeBlanc.”

  Sam shook Michael’s hand while sizing him up. His clean-cut look was offset only by the tense clench of his jaw. Sam immediately decided that this was one of those intellectual types, the kind that probably lived in their heads and had a rather noticeable lack of social graces.

  “A pleasure, Ms. Castille,” replied Michael, being very obvious about looking her over. “I’m sorry, I expected—”

  “That I was a guy,” interrupted Sam with a shrug, suspecting that Rodger had been ambiguous about her gender—a suspicion confirmed by a smirk from the senior detective. “It’s all right. I go by Sam, so a lot of people get confused.”

  To Rodger, Sam then said, “So then, what brings you by so early?”

  “Believe me, Sam,” Rodger said, looking at his hostess’s feet, “if this could have waited until the morning, I wouldn’t be disturbing you.”

  For a moment, Sam’s lips tightened as she looked Rodger directly in the face. It seemed he was avoiding eye contact with her. Sam had often wondered if Rodger had just stopped caring about her after he found out that her grandfather was a serial killer. His actions now made her believe that even more. With a soft sigh, Sam decided she was too tired to care and motioned toward the study. “Come on in. Hang your raincoats and hats up on the rack, wipe your feet, and have a seat.” She started heading back toward the kitchen. “I’m about to make some coffee. Do you want any?”

  Both men replied that coffee would be nice.

  In the kitchen, as Sam got to work on preparing the coffee for her guests, she heard the two detectives talking in her study. Due to the open ventilation between rooms, Sam was able to make out bits and pieces of the conversation.

  Sam’s thoughts turned to Rodger, and for a moment she felt a surge of nostalgia. “Twenty years,” she muttered to herself, frowning as she fought against the slowly rising feelings of panic. “Why is he coming back into my life after twenty damn years?”

  Memories assailed Sam of halcyon days. First came memories of wearing a pretty blue-and-white dotted dress, playing on a swing set at New Orleans City Park, and laughing mirthfully. Another of her handsome father, whose gentle eyes and kind face watched her with love as she played, approaching her with his arms outstretched. Next, she was running into her father’s arms and embracing him, burying her face in his chest, followed by the memory of offering her father a cypress blossom and placing it into the lapel of his jacket.

  And then a different memory assaulted Sam, a flashback of sitting in a police station as Rodger approached her with a grim look upon his face. In this memory, Rodger held up a cypress flower, the petals ripped and torn from the stem.

  With that, Samantha was shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of the coffeemaker beeping loudly, declaring its payload to be finished. She also heard Michael in the study expressing surprise that Samantha Castille was the author called “Sam of Spades.”

  The revelation that an actual police detective was a fan of hers made Sam smile inwardly. She thought to herself, as she lifted the tray and hurried into the study, that she might have to give him an autograph.

  Michael had taken a novella from the bookcase and was flipping through it. As Sam entered the study, he quickly closed it and started to put it back.

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t try to hide who I am,” Sam said as she placed the coffee tray on an uncluttered part of her desk and began pouring. “Actually, I’m surprised that Detective Ber—Rodger hasn’t told you that he knew Sam of Spades, Detective LeBlanc.”

  “Call me Michael,” said the younger detective, putting down the novella and reaching out to take a cup of coffee. “Truthfully, collecting obscure mysteries is a hobby of mine. You know, authors like Sam of Spades, Gino Elk, and Richie Fastellos—just to name a few.”

  Sam nodded in response to Michael’s comments, pouring Rodger his cup of coffee. She wasn’t at all surprised to be on the “obscure author” list, especially with an author like Gino Elk, who lived as a total recluse. However, one name did catch her off guard. “If I’m not mistaken
, isn’t Richie Fastellos on the New York Times best-seller list now?”

  “He is, indeed,” replied Michael, sipping his coffee and grinning wryly. “That’s why I don’t collect his books anymore. They’re too mainstream. Too successful.”

  At that, Sam gave a short laugh, not sure what to make of Rodger’s new partner. He seemed to be ignorant of the fact that his comments could be taken as insulting, and yet there was a sincerity to his candor that Sam appreciated.

  “Well, Detective LeBlanc,” she said as she poured her own cup of coffee, “I may be a far step away from Fastellos, but it’s nice to meet a fan just the same.”

  Her own cup of coffee made, Sam walked around the desk and took her seat. “So, Detectives, what can I do for you?” Sam said after she took a long gulp of the hot, sweet brew.

  Rodger took a long sip from his cup and then put it down on the saucer, looking as he if didn’t want to have this conversation. That look reminded Sam of the same look he had given her at the police station twenty years ago. Sam did not like that look.

  “It’s been a long night, Sam, so forgive me if I’m brusque,” Rodger started, looking her in the eyes for the first time since he knocked on her door. “There was a murder tonight in the French Quarter. The victim was killed in the same way as the Castille murders. I believe we have a copycat on the loose.”

  It was not what Sam expected to hear, and once again memories, both unpleasant and incoherent, assailed her senses. The memory that drew Sam in the most was of a long hallway with a single door at the end and a feeling of impeccable dread.

  Sam felt as if she were once again a child in a blue-and-white dotted dress standing in that long hallway. At the same time, she saw frightening images of a bloody hospital room, with walls lined with streaks of bloody handprints, and clinging globs of meat covering a bone saw and a pair of forceps.

  The memories assaulted Sam’s senses—the memory of moving with legs like lead down that hallway, her heart pounding in her throat, her mouth dry with the exhale of terrified breath.