Sins of the Demon (Kara Gillian 4)

He chuckled. A rich sound. “It’s not so bad if you actually dress for the weather.” To my surprise he pulled off his scarf and draped it around my neck, looping it with practiced ease. He gave me a grin before I could speak. “I’m from Colorado. I won’t freeze like you delicate southern flower types.”

I knew I should protest the offer and at least try to give the scarf back to him, but it was lovely and warm and it stopped the breeze from diving down the collar of my coat. Plus it smelled very faintly of whatever his cologne was, and I had to resist the very unseemly desire to bury my face in it and take a deep whiff. “Thanks,” I said instead. “I’ll give it back on my way out.”

“No hurry. So I take it you want the rundown?”

“Please.”

He pulled a small notebook from his front pocket and flipped it open.

I quickly held up my hand before he could start speaking. “Just the Cliff Notes version for right now,” I said. “I want to get through this before hypothermia sets in.”

He smiled. “Fair enough. About a hundred yards down the trail is a small picnic area, along with our victim, white male. ID in his pocket says that he’s Barry Landrieu, age thirty-seven. The Peugeot is his. No obvious sign of trauma on initial visual examination, though there appears to be blood around his nose. Coroner’s office is on the way, and crime scene is already doing their magic.”

Barry Landrieu. That name was maddeningly familiar, but my frozen brain didn’t want to tell me why.

“The witness who found the body is in the shack,” he continued before sliding the notebook back into his shirt pocket. “The BMW-Z4 belongs to him. I verified.”

This was why I adored Officer Gordon. He saw the loose threads and checked them out without being told to do so. One of these days he was going to be a fantastic detective. “I’ll deal with the witness after I see the body,” I said. At least this witness was willing to stick around, which would save me the trouble of having to hunt him down later for a statement. Detention of witnesses was one of those things that was legal only under certain circumstances. “I’m afraid that if I go inside now,” I continued, “I’ll never be able to convince myself to come out.”

The skin around his eyes crinkled attractively as he smiled. “Probably a good strategy.”

I headed down the trail and, as described, in another hundred yards the trail opened out into a clearing that had been made into a picnic site. Beyond this area I could see that the trail continued on to a deck where one could look out over the marsh. A concrete barbecue pit held old ashes and a dusting of snow that was melting into slush. A pair of picnic tables had been there long enough to collect an assortment of carvings in their surfaces on the order of “Jenny wuz here” and “Buddy N Chelsea 4eva.” And in the scruffy grass between the tables and the barbecue pit was the dead man.

A gangly male officer wearing a jacket with Beaulac PD Crime Scene emblazoned across the back crouched by the body, snapping pictures. Brown curls peeked out from beneath a black Beaulac PD baseball cap, and when he turned I saw a scattering of freckles across a slightly crooked nose. I didn’t recognize him, but I sure as hell knew the slim, red-haired woman in a similar jacket standing beside him. This was Jill, one of my best friends and one of the very few who knew about the demon summoning. I had a feeling the crouching officer was a trainee of some sort—a guess that was somewhat confirmed when he straightened and looked to her for guidance.

His eyes shifted to me as I approached, and Jill turned, flashing me a smile. “Heya, darlin’,” she said. “Lovely day for a nature walk!”

I couldn’t help but note that she wore a dark blue knit hat, a black scarf wound around her neck and leather gloves. Apparently she had checked the weather before leaving her house this morning. And hadn’t been distracted by a demon attack. “Nature and walk should never be in a sentence together,” I retorted, grimacing as a burst of wind whipped through the trees and around us. I hunched my shoulders in an attempt to bury my ears in the borrowed scarf. “This sucks ass. Tell me what you’ve found so I can finish up and get the hell out of here.”

She laughed. “Okay, grumpypants. Tracy already gave you the gist?” At my nod she continued, “It looks to me like our vic has been here since maybe late yesterday, but the CO folks will have to give the word on that. He wasn’t dressed for cold weather. No flies, but the cold is probably keeping them away.”

I crouched by the body. He was lying on his stomach with one hand up near his face and the other down along his side. One leg was cocked awkwardly over the other in a way that made me think he might have stumbled and collapsed. I peered at what I could see of his face. Blond hair. A mustache stained red. “Looks like he had a nosebleed,” I said. “Not a whole lot of blood.” I skimmed my gaze over the rest of him, but there didn’t seem to be any obvious sign of trauma. No jacket, just a long-sleeved Henley-style shirt, jeans, and boots. “Maybe he overdosed, or had a stroke. Do those cause nosebleeds?”

Jill shrugged. “Ask Dr. Lanza,” she said, referring to the parish pathologist. “Who knows, maybe there’s a big knife that we can’t see sticking into his belly. We won’t know anything for sure until the CO dudes roll this guy over.”

I nodded. There’d be no touching the body until the coroner’s office personnel got here and everything was properly photographed and documented, which meant there wasn’t much I could do except interview whoever found him. “Does his name sound familiar to you?” I flicked a glance up at Jill.

She frowned in thought then shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why? Do you know him?”

“Not sure. The name Barry Landrieu rings a bell, and I kind of get the feeling I’ve seen him before, but…” I sighed and straightened. “Hell, I probably arrested him once or something.” Though even as I said it I knew that wasn’t it. Damn it, this was going to bug the ever-loving crap out of me until I figured it out.

I turned my attention to the gangly young man. “Hi. I’m Kara Gillian. I’d shake your hand but I don’t want to take it out of my pocket.”

He gave an awkward chuckle. “Drew Blackall. Nice to meet you.”

“Drew’s fresh out of the Academy,” Jill informed me. “He told me he wanted to be just like the CSI people on TV,” she added, face completely neutral.

He turned a bright shade of crimson, and I grinned. “And how long did it take for her to disabuse you of that notion?”

“About ten minutes,” he admitted.

I was almost surprised it had taken that long. Jill had several ready-made rants about the inaccurate ways her profession was portrayed on TV and how such portrayals were detrimental to law enforcement and forensic labs.

Jill gave a pleased sigh. “Ah, I do love shaping young minds.”

I snorted. “All right, I’m going to go talk to the witness. I’m freezing my tits off out here.”

“He’s a celebrity,” Drew blurted out, then flushed as we both looked at him. “The witness. I mean, um, not like a movie star, but he’s on TV and people around here know him.…” he trailed off, face coloring.