“Thank you, Dr. Gibbons,” Leroux almost yells.
“Leroux, who is Jeremy? What’s happening here?” Will tries again.
“I’ll fill you in later,” he says quietly, glancing at Wren.
Will is about to protest when someone knocks gently on the door. Leroux crosses the room to open it, and standing outside is a young orderly holding a hospital bag in front of him.
“Detective Leroux?” he asks.
Leroux holds out his identification and badge and takes the bag from his hands. He immediately looks for the receipt and finds it in another small bag. It’s from O’Grady’s Pub with a time stamp of 1:22 a.m. The credit card number is attached to the name Tara Kelley and shows she had at least two Cosmopolitans and one side of fries that evening. He looks at his watch.
Will motions for the receipt, and Leroux hands it over after dialing the number of the bar. He gets an answering machine message telling him no one will be there until noon.
“This is Detective John Leroux from the New Orleans Police Department. Please call me back as soon as this message is received. Thanks.”
“No one there?” Will asks.
“I’m waiting for Cormier to send me the owner’s information now. We can just go talk to him directly. I want to find out if anyone else saw Tara with our guy last night.”
Will lets out a puff of air. “Muller, you coming along?”
Wren looks at Leroux, silently questioning.
“If you feel up for it,” Leroux concedes. His phone chimes, and he looks down at the address and phone number displayed across his screen. “Let’s go pay a visit to Ray Singer.”
Together they leave the room the same way they came in. The sun is shining brightly, and a couple of media vans are parked out front. The latest victim is big news, and, apparently, it’s traveled fast. Wren takes in the scene before sitting down in the passenger’s seat of Leroux’s car. Jeremy is still out there, doing the same things he did to her all those years ago. But this time, she’s going to stop him for good.
CHAPTER 29
JEREMY WAKES UP FROM A fitful sleep. It’s Sunday, the day the world typically reserves for rest, but it just won’t come. The previous evening still weighs heavily on him. He feels uncertain. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had to confront in a long time, and recently it’s near constant. He flicks on the television, imagining that by now Tara will be splashed all over the news. He should feel triumphant, but the degree of sloppiness takes away from his pride. As soon as the news report begins, he feels his heart stop.
“The victim, twenty-nine-year-old Tara Kelley, was rushed to University Medical Center, where she remains in critical condition,” the news anchor reads like a footnote, like it isn’t the single most crushing blow Jeremy has ever felt.
“Could we have a potential serial killer on our hands?” the anchor asks, almost salivating at the chance to report on another death.
It’s disgusting, really, the way these folks go from six to midnight for a murder. Of course, it’s human nature to be curious, to explore, to prod through the darker parts of our psyches. Really, who is he to judge? But something rubs him the wrong way about these reports read through strangled smiles. The reporter on his screen says the victim was able to give some pertinent information to the police. He freezes, waiting for more, but she stops there, saying updates would follow as they became available.
He swallows hard. Another fuckup.
Emma was dead. The hemlock had secured his secrets behind its impenetrable wall. But Tara is different. Picking her was impulsive, and it was reckless. In his haste to feel something, he hadn’t brought her to the safety of his own home or even bothered to scout the area ahead of time. He just assumed that Elmwood Park was abandoned because it had been when he had hunted there with his father as a child.