The Dollmaker

Nineteen

The crime scene was crawling with cops. Uniformed officers were stationed at the front and rear entrances of the shop in order to limit access, and another half-dozen or so milled around in the showroom and on the street outside the front door.

John Gilby, the heavyset coroner’s investigator, squatted near the body, while Patrice Petty, the crime scene investigator, collected and bagged forensic samples. She wore faded jeans and paper covers over her sneakers, and her red hair was pulled back into a tight, sleek ponytail that glistened like copper. She and Alex Girard had worked together on dozens of crime scenes, and when she caught his eye, she gave him a smile and a slight nod. They’d had a flirtation going for years, and had even gone out a few times after he and Claire first split up. But nothing had come of it. Alex had told Patrice that he wasn’t ready for anything serious, and that was the truth. He also didn’t see any reason to complicate a working relationship that could be advantageous for both of them.

Two homicide detectives had been sent over by the division commander, and they stood directly across from Alex, both staring down at the body. Tony Maddox had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, jangling his keys as he rocked back and forth on his heels. He was a few years younger than Alex, maybe thirty-one or thirty-two, with dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He was a good detective, but there had always been something about him that rubbed Alex the wrong way. Sometimes his intensity and his dogged approach to an investigation reminded Alex a little too much of Dave Creasy.

Tony’s partner, Remi Broussard, was the exact opposite, a good-natured Cajun with thick, black hair he kept clipped close to his scalp, and a brush mustache that hid the scar over his lip where a suspect had sliced him open one night during an arrest.

Like Alex, both men were dressed in lightweight summer suits that were already rumpled from the heat. Maddox had gum in his mouth, and his jaw worked fiercely as he watched the coroner’s investigator finish his examination.

Alex’s gaze moved to the open refrigerator. The wire shelves that had been removed to accommodate the body had been slid behind the refrigerator, against the wall. Unnoticeable, unless you were looking for them. If the woman’s dress hadn’t been caught in the door, compromising the seal and allowing the smell to seep out, it might have been days before anyone found her.

Good idea, but sloppy execution, Alex thought. Especially from a killer who’d gone out of his way to keep the crime scene immaculate. Something or someone must have spooked him in the act, and Alex’s mind went back to Friday morning, when Claire had insisted that she’d seen someone inside the shop.

He’d dismissed the claim as her imagination, and when he’d had a look around the shop and alley to appease her, he hadn’t been as thorough or concerned as he should have. But he also knew that if the fabric had been visible then, he would have seen it. Which suggested to him that Mignon Bujold had either been killed at a later time or in a different location, her body then brought back to the collectibles shop and stuffed inside the appliance.

Or a third possibility. The killer had gone back to the body for some reason after Alex and Claire had left the shop.

Logical explanations aside, Alex could too easily imagine how all that would play out in the press, a body going undiscovered by a seasoned detective. The last thing he needed was to come off looking incompetent—or worse, a laughingstock—when his career was finally gathering some steam.

John Gilby rose with a grunt, hitched up his pants and mopped his face with a white cotton handkerchief. It was as cold as a meat locker inside the shop, but his shirt was stained underneath his arms and the bald spot at the back of his head glistened with sweat. As always, he looked a mess. His ill-fitting brown trousers were threadbare at the knees and seat, and his shirttail hung out in the back. He had on a tie, but it was loosely knotted around his neck and fell several inches short of his burgeoning waistline.

“What’s the word, Gilby?” Maddox asked impatiently, his jaw still working the gum. “Can you give us time of death?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Gilby peeled off his latex gloves and tossed them aside. “We won’t know anything until she’s opened up and we get a look at the stomach and bowels. Maybe not even then.”

“What about cause?” Remi asked.

“’Fraid I can’t help you boys out much there, either. I can tell you this, though. She’s got no visible wounds on the body that I could see, and she doesn’t appear to have been sexually assaulted. The only thing I did find was a small mark at the side of her neck.”

Alex glanced up. “Stun gun?”

“Looks like a needle track. We’ll have to order a full toxicology screen with the postmortem.” He mopped his face again, then returned the crumpled handkerchief to his pocket. “I’m done with her. Y’ all can have ’em take her out whenever you’re ready.”

Alex nodded absently as he snapped on a pair of gloves and knelt beside the body. Turning the victim’s head slightly, he moved in closer to get a look at the tiny puncture wound at the side of her neck. It was barely visible. Anyone else might have overlooked it, but Gilby was a lot more astute than his slovenly appearance suggested.

So who killed you? Alex wondered as he stared down at the body. And why?

Maddox squatted on the other side of the corpse and rubbed a thumb across his bottom lip. “Looks like the son of a bitch must have shot her up with something to incapacitate her, then stuffed her in the icebox so she wouldn’t be found for a while. He knew she wouldn’t last long in this heat.”

“Motive?”

Maddox shrugged. “An old woman alone in a shop isn’t exactly an unusual target in New Orleans. Some crunkhead strolls by, spots her through the front window and decides right then and there to knock over the place.”

He and Alex both straightened as Remi Broussard said in his deep, quiet voice, “I’m not so sure I buy that explanation. Don’t make sense a junkie taking the time to hide the body when he won’t care who finds her or when, so long as he gets his fix. And he’s not going to leave a nice ring like that on her finger, either, or cash in the register. Not when he’s got a mess of spiders crawling around inside his head.”

He was right, Alex thought. Someone else had wanted Mignon Bujold dead, and as much as he didn’t want to go there, he couldn’t stop thinking about that missing doll.

He left Remi and Maddox with the body and walked into the other room to glance out the window. He couldn’t see Claire in the restaurant across the street, but knew she was still there, waiting for him to come and tell her what he’d found.

Alex wished to hell she’d never spotted that damn doll, because he had a bad feeling now that Pandora’s box was about to be opened.

“Hey, Lieutenant, you got a minute?”

He turned as the crime scene investigator approached him. “What’s up, Patty? You find something?”

“Oh, I found plenty. We got prints and fibers all over the damn place, but the question is, do any of them belong to the killer?”

“You tell me.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about. You running this thing or am I going to have deal with that asshole, Maddox?”

Alex grinned at her bluntness. “I guess we’ll have to let the captain sort that out.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“What else did you find?”

“Come take a look.” She motioned for him to follow her over to the counter. The surface was sooty where she’d dusted for prints. “See that mark on the floor? The counter’s been scooted out of place about half an inch. I figured this might be where he took her down, so I went over the area a few times. I found this shoved up underneath the counter.” She held up an evidence bag that had already been numbered and labeled.

“What is it?”

“It’s a photograph of a kid. Looks to be six or seven. Maybe somebody dropped it and it got slid under there by mistake. Could have been there for years. Then again…” She shrugged. “You never know.”

Alex took the bag from her hand and glanced down at the photograph. Recognition shot through him like an icy needle and his chest tightened painfully. For a moment, he thought he might be having a heart attack, but a split second later, he realized what he felt was panic.

Because the child in the photograph was Claire’s daughter, Ruby.

A few minutes later, Alex stood outside on the sidewalk in front of the shop, wondering what the hell he was going to do about that picture. He’d told Patrice Petty that he would show the photograph to Mignon Bujold’s daughter to see if she recognized it, and then he’d slipped the bag into his pocket and walked off.

It was almost noon and the sun shone down on the street like a brilliant spotlight. Alex fished in his pocket for his sunglasses and put them on. After being inside the air-conditioned shop for the better part of an hour, he found the heat outside stifling. But the sweat that broke out across his forehead was cold and clammy. A nerve twitched at his temple, and he put his hand over the spot, trying to massage away the tic.

Yet no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about the photograph. It was like an iron weight in his pocket. He wanted to believe that he’d been mistaken. The kid in the picture only resembled Ruby Creasy. All that talk about a look-alike doll had planted ideas in his head. That’s all it was.

But as much as Alex wanted to believe this was just some bizarre coincidence, he couldn’t completely discount the possibility that Claire had been right all along. Somehow the doll she’d seen in the shop window was linked to her missing daughter. And now a woman who had come into possession of that doll was dead.

He ran his thumb and forefinger along the corners of his mouth as he stared out at the crowd that had gathered on the street. A couple of reporters were there, too, and the minute they spotted him, they pressed forward, shouting questions in his direction even as he deliberately turned away. The last thing he needed was for the media to get wind of that photograph.

One of the uniforms came over and said something to him. Alex nodded even though he barely heard the man’s comments. His attention was on the restaurant across the street. Claire had just come outside, and when she spotted Alex through the crowd, she hurried toward him.

She was stopped briefly by the officer guarding the perimeter, but as soon as he recognized her, he held up the tape and let her pass.

“Alex, I have to talk to you,” she said urgently as she came up beside him.

“I need to talk to you, too, but it’ll have to wait. Right now I need to get back inside.”

She caught his arm. “This can’t wait. It’s about Mignon Bujold’s killer.”

The officer standing next to Alex heard her and glanced curiously in their direction. The two reporters were standing farther away, but Alex wasn’t about to take a chance on being overheard. He’d been burned by the press before.

He took Claire’s arm and guided her around to the side of the building and underneath the crime scene tape that barricaded the alley from the sidewalk. When they were far enough away from the street, he turned with a frown. “What’s so important that you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to finish up?”

“I just had a long talk with Lily Devereaux about the doll I saw in the window the other day. Alex, she said a man Mignon didn’t know brought that doll into the shop. He told her that a child had died, and he wanted to get rid of the doll because it was too painful a reminder.”

Alex felt the ache in his chest sharpen. “You think he was talking about Ruby?”

“I don’t know. But I’m convinced the doll is connected to her kidnapping and now to Mignon Bujold’s murder. Lily told me that the doll had been sculpted by an artist named Savannah Sweete. She specializes in portrait dolls and her work is very detailed. Lily said the doll I saw in the window that day had a tiny strawberry birthmark painted on her left arm, just like the one Ruby had. That can’t be a coincidence, Alex. Even you have to see that now.”

“It still doesn’t prove that the doll is connected to Mignon Bujold’s murder. You’re jumping to an awful lot of conclusions. And I don’t deal in coincidences when I investigate a crime, I deal in facts.”

“Okay, fact one—that doll looks exactly like Ruby, right down to the birthmark on her arm and the dress she was wearing when she disappeared. Fact two—nobody could have sculpted and painted her so perfectly from a picture. The birthmark was too tiny to show up in a photograph. Whoever made that doll had to have seen Ruby in person at some time or another. And three—a few days after Mignon Bujold bought that doll from a stranger, she turns up dead. There’s a pattern here, Alex. An undeniable connection. You have to reopen Ruby’s case.”

“For your information, Ruby’s case has never been closed. As far as NOPD is concerned, it’s still an ongoing investigation.”

“Then put some manpower on it,” Claire said desperately. “I know you have the clout to do it.”

Alex massaged his pounding forehead. “Go home, Claire. Go home and let me do my job.”

“But that’s just it. Will you do your job?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You never wanted to believe that the doll looked like Ruby. You never wanted to believe there was a connection to her kidnapping. Even now, after everything I just told you, you still don’t want to believe me. You refuse to keep an open mind, and I have to wonder if you’re the best person to investigate this case.”

“That’s not for you to decide. And thanks for your faith in me, by the way.”

“I’m not trying to insult you. I know you’re a good cop. I don’t think you would deliberately do anything to sabotage an investigation, but I also know you don’t want to see me hurt. I’m afraid of what you might do to protect me. But you don’t need to worry about me. I can handle the truth. What I can’t deal with is you keeping something from me.”

His gaze broke from hers and he looked off down the alley toward the street. A hush fell over the crowd gathered in front of the shop as the coroner’s assistants wheeled the portable gurney through the front door and loaded the body into the back of a van.

If they were lucky, the autopsy would tell them how Mignon Bujold had died and approximately when. But it was the why that worried Alex. Why had she become a target? Because the doll had crossed her path?

His gaze moved back to Claire. Her eyes looked very blue even in the shade, and her lips—lips that he had kissed over and over in a desperate attempt to obliterate her past—trembled ever so slightly with emotion. He couldn’t look her in the eye so he glanced away again.

“You need to go home,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“This is a police matter. You’ll just get in the way if you stay here.”

“What about the doll?”

“What about it?”

“Do you believe me now?”

“What I believe is that you’re so desperate, you’ve convinced yourself that a doll is somehow the answer to all your prayers. You need to let it go. If there’s a connection, we’ll find it.”

“I’m not giving up on this,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t care what you say.”

He hardened his voice. “Then I’m going to give you fair warning. If you interfere in any way in this investigation, I’ll treat you just like I would anyone else. I’ll toss your ass in jail and throw away the key.”

Claire lifted her shoulders. “You do what you have to do, Alex. Because that’s what I intend to do, too.”

She turned and started walking back toward the street. Alex called after her, but she kept going. He wanted to stop her, but he couldn’t. The weight of the photograph—and his own guilt—held him back. He leaned heavily against the wall and let his head drop back against the smooth, worn brick.