“And like I told you on the phone, you’ll do everything I ask. If you don’t, you’ll die anyway, but with the blood of those you care about staining your hands,” Alex said, and swiveled one of the lights so Sept could see what he was talking about.

  Nathan and Damien were standing on tiny footstools. Around their necks were nooses short enough to guarantee death if the stools were kicked away. “See, I told you I had someone you cared about.”

  Damien appeared so weak that Sept was afraid he’d fall without any help from Alex. “I’m who you want, so cut them down. The notes, the crimes, and all the phone calls were all for me, so let them go and we’ll settle whatever you like.”

  “So noble.” Alex took the light away from the two men and put it back on the patch of dirt. “But they’re going to stay put until we finish what needs to be done.” Alex pointed the knife at the ground. “Lie down.”

  The little clues, from his interest in the case to his constant, careful study of the pictures, came back to Sept as she pressed her back to the ground. They made sense now, but Alex would be long gone before anyone else, from her father down to George, figured things out.

  “Tell me about your family, Alex.”

  “They’re gone, so what does it matter?” He looped a rope around one of her wrists and tied the knot she’d become familiar with, muttering the steps. The other end he tied to the stake he’d driven in one corner and pulled tight, which forced Sept to twist her body in that direction. From that angle she saw his family picture. “But if you’re dying to know.” He laughed.

  “I could tell from the picture that you loved them.”

  He tied another piece around the other wrist and walked the end out of sight. When he came back, the key clicked in the cuffs as he unlocked the side he needed to tie next.

  “I loved them to a fault, but that stupid bitch I married couldn’t take what was coming to her, so I punished her the only way I knew how.”

  Overhead the sky turned darker as rainclouds moved in, and the temperature dropped. For once the weather forecasters had been right. “What does that mean?” Sept asked as he repeated his process at her feet.

  “When I told her to stay put, for once in her miserable life she tried to grow a backbone and leave with my son.” He cut Sept’s coat off and made a slit at the base of her shirt so he could rip it off. “She kept crying about the storm and how she needed to take him away, and the more she cried the more she packed. I kept telling her not to put another goddamn thing in that suitcase, but all of a sudden she acted like she had the right to do whatever she wanted.”

  The cold raised goose bumps on Sept’s skin, but she ignored the discomfort since the story he was telling made him pay less attention to her. His story and his movements engrossed him. She could’ve been anyone lying there.

  “What happened?”

  “What happened? Ha,” he said with so much venom that he drove the knife into the ground right by her head. “I took away the reason for her wanting to leave.” Alex screamed and wrapped his hands around her throat like he didn’t realize what he was doing, then started to squeeze. “I took the life right out of him, but it wasn’t wrong. My boy needed to get away from that bitch before she turned him against me.”

  Sept tried to bring her hands up to stop him before he killed her. At first the ropes wouldn’t let her move much, but the harder he squeezed, the harder she pulled. The recent rain made the stakes in the ground move enough for her to notice. She still couldn’t rip them out, and as her vision started to go black, she inanely thought of not having to face disembowelment.

  The rain eventually brought her back to consciousness. When she opened her eyes again, she felt the soreness around her throat. Alex was pacing beside her and hitting himself on the head and repeating, “I’m not stupid.”

  When Alex finally stopped walking, he whispered, “I said I was sorry, so you can shut up now. I didn’t lose complete control again, so stop your bitching.”

  The rain started to come down in a steady stream, the cold droplets making Sept feel more alert. She raised her head, hoping Damien and Nathan weren’t hanging by their necks.

  “See, she’s awake,” Alex said to someone she couldn’t see.

  “Finish your story,” Sept rasped when he dropped to his knees close to her. “Please, I want to know.”

  “Why?” Alex’s face was so close to hers that she could smell his breath.

  Everything Julio Munez had told her came back to Sept, and she tried to frame her words so they’d have some impact on him. “Because you are the better warrior and I want to learn from you.”

  “You’re about to die, Warrior, so why’s it important to learn anything at all?”

  “I might have failed in this life, but I want the knowledge of your strength in the next. If you don’t share it with me, once I’m dead I’ll keep your wife and son from returning,” she said, and dropped her head and turned her face away from him like what he did next didn’t matter.

  “That’s not fair,” he shouted, sounding like a petulant child, but Sept wouldn’t answer him. “All right,” he said, talking louder over the rain. “While she packed, our son walked into our room, and the only thing I could think of was to keep him with me. I picked him up, and when I came to, my hands were around his throat and he was dead. I don’t remember exactly what happened, so I blamed it on my wife. She had to pay, so I killed her.”

  That had to be when he went insane, Sept thought as she started to shiver, and Alex started to cry. “Once they were gone I had to get them back, and I was willing to try anything.”

  Before Sept could speak, Alex jumped again and started arguing with someone near the swing set. With any luck he would keep screaming and she could try to tip the scales. She closed her eyes and pulled down as hard as she could, not stopping when the ropes bit into her wrists. The stakes were driven in a foot deep, but they were no match for the rich delta mud that made up the foundation of most of the city.

  Her right hand came loose first, but Alex noticed her before she could free her left, and instead of coming after her, he kicked Nathan and Damien down. She screamed as she used her free hand to pull the other stake out and reached for the knife to cut her feet free.

  When she came up and wiped her hair out of her eyes, Alex was running for the house, probably for his gun. But she didn’t have time to go after him before she saved Nathan, who, unlike Damien, was twitching.

  She ran to the swing set and positioned Nathan on her shoulders so she could bear his weight and reach behind him and cut his hands free. He was still conscious enough to stop fighting and reach up for the bar long enough for Sept to put his stool back in place.

  “Hurry up before the nut comes back,” Sept yelled as she handed him the knife and moved to hold Damien up. She didn’t want to think about the fact that he was swinging and putting up no fight for air.

  Nathan cut himself down, then Damien, whom Sept lowered in place. “Where’s your gun?” she asked Nathan, who was rubbing his neck as if trying to make the pain go away.

  “He took it,” Nathan gasped.

  “Never mind. I see it,” Sept said as she stared at Alex by the house, holding both her and Nathan’s weapons. He opened fire, and Sept pushed Nathan to the ground.

  She conjured up a picture of Keegan before she took a deep breath and started to run toward Alex. If she was destined to die, that’s what she wanted to remember, she thought, as she moved closer to him. If she had learned one lesson while trapped after the storm in the Superdome with some trigger-happy idiots, it was that aggressiveness made for a lousy target.

  Someone running at you instead of cowering in one spot was harder to hit, and Sept gambled that would ring true now. As she got closer he hit her left forearm and her leg, but she kept going, and when she ran into him, they fell with her on top.

  Sept’s arm felt broken, but she refused to stop and was able to hold his left hand down so he couldn’t fire. As he raised his other hand to shoot her in the head, she imitated Erica and bit him.

  Alex screamed and pounded the side of Sept’s head with the gun, but she refused to release the bridge of his nose. He stopped hitting and got a deafening shot off.

  It took Sept a few seconds to realize she was still alive and Alex was yelling again, only this time Mike was biting him in the bicep, and he wasn’t letting up no matter how many swipes Alex took at him. Sept rolled off and grabbed her gun.

  “Mike, no,” she screamed when he moved from Alex’s arm to his neck. She cracked Alex in the head with the butt of her gun and touched Mike’s back to stop him from ripping out Alex’s throat. “No, boy.” Mike growled and lifted his head, but he didn’t bite down.

  Nathan got there as Sept sat up and cradled her left arm against her chest, making Mike finally quit. “Get the cuffs he used on me,” she told Nathan.

  “Are you sure?” Nathan whispered.

  “I’m too tired and hurt too much to play God today, so yes, I’m sure,” Sept said as she kept her eyes on Alex for any movements to make her change her mind.

  The rain continued as Nathan cuffed Alex and rolled him onto his stomach, then called for backup and an ambulance for Damien.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Nathan said as he sat next to Sept and pressed his shirt into the bullet hole in her leg. “How did we miss Alex as the killer, and why is Damien here?”

  “I don’t know, but I guess even crazy killers have moments of lucidity.” She looked in the direction of Damien’s body and shook her head. “I don’t have any explanation for Damien, but this explains why we couldn’t find him. Evidently Alex was going to use him as a way to get me here so he could kill me.” The sound of sirens in the distance made Sept close her eyes in relief.

  “You were right,” Nathan said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “The closest we’ll ever find is a crime scene investigator who becomes a murderer, then investigates his own crimes. If he left clues or made mistakes, he could certainly take care of them.”

  The first person to make it to the yard as Sept finished talking was her brother Gustave. “Check on Damien first,” she told him when he ran to her. “I need to know I wasn’t too late.” Then she gave in to the pain and welcomed the darkness that brought numbness.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Is she awake?” Sept heard her father ask Keegan. They’d kept her in the hospital for a couple of days and she’d been home ever since, everyone from Royce to Fritz ordering her to stay there until the bullet wounds healed enough that she was walking without crutches and her arm was out of a sling. According to her doctor, that would take at least a month and a half.

  “Come in, Dad,” Sept called out to him. With the restaurant closed for renovations, Keegan and Jacqueline had been content to stay home and dote on her, which was nice, but they didn’t have news about the case.

  “Hey, kid, I brought some company,” Sebastian said as Nathan followed him in.

  “I was wondering what happened to you, partner,” Sept said, and held her hand up to him. When Nathan ignored it and hugged her instead and started sniffling, she rolled her eyes at her father. “Nathan, I know you think you could’ve done more, but we’re both here and we’re alive to tell the tale and testify.”

  “I’m sorry, but I feel guilty for letting this happen.” Nathan let go and wiped his eyes.

  “Granted, it was dark out there, but I don’t remember you shooting me. If you did, don’t tell me. I don’t want to have to waste time planning my revenge on you,” Sept said. “Anything new?” she asked both men, since Nathan had been cleared for duty when the swelling in his neck went down.

  “It’s too early to tell, but the district attorney’s office thinks Alex is too far gone to be found competent to stand trial,” Sebastian said. “They have him locked in isolation in St. Charles Parish since the jail here isn’t open yet.”

  “Did he add anything else to what he said that night?”

  “He hasn’t uttered a word since we took him into custody, but he holds his hands to his ears like he’s trying to drown something out all the time,” Nathan said. “The best we can tell is that Teacher was someone Alex made up, not a real person. The doctor monitoring him said it was like a pressure valve his head made up to keep him somewhat tethered to reality.”

  “Reality? Is he kidding?” Sept said.

  “Not yours and mine by comparison, but it did help him blend in and do his job. On the flip side, it also helped him plan and execute the murders,” Sebastian said. “We need him to talk some more if we’re going to find out why he had it in for you.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” Sept said.

  Keegan broke in. “Don’t even think about it, Seven. You’re not going anywhere until I get a note from three doctors that it’s all right for you to leave the house.”

  “It might be best if we do let her talk to this guy before she recovers,” Sebastian told Keegan. “According to the same shrink, if Alex sees Sept in a position of weakness, he might open up.”

  After some more convincing, Nathan and Sebastian left with Sept for the thirty-minute drive to the neighboring parish. The jail was small compared to the one off Broad Street in New Orleans, but there were plenty of deputies on duty talking to the one Fritz had assigned from the NOPD.

  Sept waited in an interview room in a wheelchair the jail had lent her, leaning on her right elbow since her broken arm was still sore. She’d been waiting to have this conversation since the moment she woke up in the ambulance.

  The door opened and Alex shuffled in with a blank expression. He never lifted his head as the guards pushed him down in the chair opposite Sept’s, but he moved a few feet back. Before she said anything, she noticed that he now looked as mad as he acted.

  His hair was uncombed, he’d stopped shaving, and he hadn’t wiped away the drool marks on the sides of his mouth. A row of scratches littered his arms, and the red streaks clashed with his orange jumpsuit. Those, Sebastian had told Sept, were self-inflicted, as were the bruises on his forehead where he beat his head against the bars of his cell until they sedated him.

  The only wound she could identify was the set of teeth marks at the bridge of his nose, which she recognized as her contribution to his look. “Hello, Alex,” she said, and watched as the fog lifted and he sat forward and raised his head.

  “You,” Alex said, and slammed his cuffed hands on the table that separated them. “I killed you.”

  “We found them,” Sept said, ignoring the delusional talk. “And you’ll have to answer for them as well.”

  “You found who?”

  “Your wife Sonia and your son. It wasn’t hard, since you kept that part of the yard so spotless.” Sept shook her head at the guard when he stepped closer as Alex slammed his hands down again. “As it turns out, you’re not blessed by any gods, you’re just a damn wife beater who went a little crazy when he lost his punching bag.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Alex screamed, and pointed at her with both his index fingers. “She was mine, and I didn’t say she could go anywhere. Those others were only human garbage.”

  “You can act crazy all you want, but you aren’t walking away from what you did.”

  “How did you find me, anyway?” The more Alex talked, the more lucid he became.

  “It would’ve taken me a few more hours if I’d had the chance to talk to Lourdes’s mother, so I can’t take the credit.”

  “Ha.” He laughed and knocked on the surface of the table this time. “I knew you were more lucky than good.”

  “My dog found you, so what does that say about you?”

  “The dog,” Alex said, and spit on the floor. “That was my first mistake. I should’ve buried my knife into him, but I didn’t have time. Someone was coming. What did Maria have to say about me? We never met.”

  “She knew Sonia, though. Your wife was related to her sister’s husband and was an only child. I might have had a lot going on, but I remembered your story of where she was. I might not have put together that you were the killer from that, but I would’ve taken the same drive to your house. Her brother-in-law’s name was second to last on the list, so you had a few more days’ reprieve, but how this ended wouldn’t have changed. One step into that freak show at the house would’ve blown your cover.”

  “At least I took one of yours before I was done,” Alex said, and laughed. “That pathetic brother-in-law of yours is more of a screwup than you are.” He laughed harder. “All of you out looking for him, and I’m the one who finds him, headed for your family’s place on Sunday.”

  “I know what happened to Damien and how he ended up with you.”

  “How do you know that? Did you get Matilda Rodriguez to contact him on the other side?”

  This time Sept laughed at his attempt at sarcasm. “What amazes me is how you got away with it as long as you did, because in the end you’re not very smart. Six bodies to your credit, and it was you who was more lucky than good.”

  “I know you don’t care about the others, but why do you keep saying six bodies? Did you put Damien in another category?” Alex glanced up at the two-way mirror, but not for long. His eyes came back to Sept’s and his eyebrows rose.

  “I can’t count Damien because he’s alive. You managed to sprain his neck, which will limit his job to a desk for months, but he’s alive and talking,” Sept said, and took pleasure in watching his face twist in anger.

  During the story Damien had told her as they shared a hospital room, Sept felt compassion for him, and all the resentment she didn’t realize had built to a boiling point concerning Noel and Sophie melted away. The only thing she saw when she’d looked at Damien was a man beaten down by the tragedy that would forever define his life, and his grief that he’d failed again because his life hadn’t ended. She’d told him she was glad he’d survived and that she’d had the chance to help him find some peace, no matter what the past had been.

  “Damien might not share my name, but he’s a part of my family.” Alex sat in his seat as if Sept’s words had been nails that pinned him there. “So tell me, Alex, what did you get out of all this? You were calling the dead and they weren’t interested.”