They stood in a modest courtyard in the French Quarter; the scene of the first murder. Sam quietly tried to absorb the "feel" of the area. Through instincts and training she hoped that she would be able to turn any subconscious observations into conscious discoveries. John walked the perimeter of the patio while Bailey stood with the New Orleans police officer that had accompanied them to the location. Although John claimed that he didn't need a guide the department had insisted on sending Detective Montenet along anyway.
"The second victim was found about four blocks from here," the detective said. "Down by Jack's. A couple of tourists stumbled over the body."
She tried to focus but her mind was suddenly filled with images of another case. She jumped at a light touch. John had stopped his restless pacing to stand behind her. She could feel his chest against her shoulder as he leaned forward.
"Relax, Sam," he said softly. "He's not saying 'Jack's', J-A-C-K-S. He's saying 'Jax', J-A-X. It's the name of a mall down by the river. It's an old brewery that's been converted."
Sam took a shaky breath. It was almost embarrassing how easily even the name could shatter her concentration. She gave him a wobbly smile and he stepped away. She instantly missed the reassuring solidity of his presence against her back, but he had been standing closer than professionalism allowed.
They walked the few blocks to the second crime scene, a small bus stand. Only the yellow tape indicated that anything had happened here. Sam studied the Plexiglas booth. There was nothing extraordinary about it. No unusual graffiti. No signs of the violent act that had occurred here only a few days earlier. She lay a mental image of the tragic photographs over the scene before her.
Tourists passed them in a constant flow, gawking curiously. Across the street Sam could see the huge letters on the side of the mall. JAX. She almost envied the shoppers in their oblivion. She was certain that each of them had their own burdens, but at least none of them had to lead her life.
"French Market is just that way," Montenet said, pointing down river. "Douglas worked there."
John leaned against a street lamppost and nodded. Sam assumed that he knew the location.
"Three murders in less than a week." Bailey's words drew her attention back to the case at hand. "And so far, no pattern that we can see. The next murder could be tonight. It could be in two weeks. We can either go home now or stay. It's less than an hour from Atlanta to here."
"An hour airtime," John muttered. "Then we get you dragging us out of bed at four a.m. to drive to Hartsfield. There's another thirty minutes. Forty-five if you don't want to show up in your pajamas. Longer if there's fog. Or road work. Parking. Airport security. Then we have to get a car when we get back here... If the Bureau would get us our own plane..."
"I'm working on it. And I'm going to take that as a vote to stay," Bailey said. "Sam?"
"I don't know," she answered. "There are factors, elements, in this city that are unique." She raked her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face. "I'm not sure I could do this in Atlanta. It seems very rooted here."
"Murder capital of the Mississippi delta," Montenet said cheerfully. "Welcome to New Orleans."*
****** "Can I change my vote?" John asked. He sat on the edge of a cot that the hotel manager had insisted was actually a bed. The walls were entirely too close together, he decided. And not a very pretty color.
Bailey tossed his carry-on bag onto the second bed in the tiny room. "Be nice, John. The department didn't have to loan us these rooms."
"Yeah, they're real swell guys. This is almost as nice as the train station."
"You have a window," Sam said through the connecting doorway. "I don't even get that."
"Poor Sam," John said. "You just get a room to yourself and enough space that you don't risk breaking a limb if you stretch." He walked into her room and sat down at the small table. "You even get chairs."
"You have chairs," Sam told him.
"They wobble."
The VCTF had quickly discovered that there were no hotel rooms to be found in the entire city. The annual Jazz and Heritage Festival was scheduled to begin in a few days and everything was booked. The NOPD's Eighth District station had offered their "babysitting suite" to the visiting Feds. The department maintained two rooms in one of the French Quarter's numerous hotels. Sam took the room reserved for flighty witnesses while John and Bailey shared the adjoining room usually occupied by the protective officers.
Bailey followed John into Sam's room and pulled up another chair.
"What have you got for me, Sam?" he asked.
"I'm not sure." She paced in short steps beside her bed. "I can't find any pattern that makes sense. He's deviating from the traditional rune layout of 'overview, specific situation, and action'. He already knows the action he's going to take."
"He's going to kill somebody," John said. "I think we already got that part."
Bailey frowned at him, for all the good it did. Sam continued.
"He's just using the runes to determine *how* he's going to kill someone."
"But which someone?" Bailey asked.
She shrugged. "I… I'm sorry, Bailey. I just can't tell, yet. He's intelligent, motivated…"
"Three murders in six days. I'll say he's motivated."
"John. More attention. Less commentary."
John sighed loudly. This wasn't getting them anywhere. So, the killer was intelligent. Personally, he had never seen the brilliance in being able to commit a murder. He listened with half an ear to Sam's sketchy profile. She still hadn't come up with anything solid. Nothing they could use to find this guy.
"I can't take anymore today," he declared in a pause. "My brain is fried. We aren't going to get anything else out of this tonight."
Bailey ran his hand wearily over his face and relented. "Fine. We'll break for the evening and pick it up again in the morning."
"But if we just go through..."
"Give it up, Sam." John stretched broadly. "I'm starving and I need to get out of this room."
****** Sam opened the door to see John waiting for her. He had changed into a pair of jeans and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He had left the jacket and tie in his room.
"Can Samantha come out and play?" he asked, ducking his head and folding his hands behind his back.
Sam smiled. "I bet you were a cute kid."
"I was adorable. Come on, Sam," he said. "Come play with me. I haven't been to New Orleans since I was old enough to get into most of the really interesting places... legally, anyway," he added with a grin. "It'll be good for you."
"Good for me?" She had already decided to go with him, but his arguments were always entertaining.
"Yeah. Absorb some atmosphere. Let the city get under your skin. Maybe it'll help your profile."
"You just want to go to dinner."
"That, too. Come on. Please?"
How could she resist? With one last look around the pathetic room, she picked up her purse and turned off the lights. As John walked beside her his bright mood began to slowly rub off on her.
"You really like it here, don't you?" she asked.
He nodded and grinned cheerfully. "How can anybody not love this city? Okay, so most of the Quarter smells kind of rank," he shrugged, "but the food, the music, the architecture..."
"The architecture? John Grant actually noticed architecture?"
"Fine. Laugh at me," he continued to smile. "I just ... yeah, I like this city."
***** John seemed to have picked the loudest place he could find. The food was spicy. The room was hot and crowded. The music was deafening. And John seemed perfectly happy.
Sam realized that he was grinning at her again. She looked down and saw her hand tapping out the rhythm on the edge of the table.
"Hard to sit still, isn't it?" he asked.
Surprisingly, she had to agree. The crashing Cajun beat seemed to get into the bloodstream. The unfamiliar combination of guitar, fiddle, and accordion made her muscles twitch. She noticed that her foot was tapping, too. As she glanced down at the floor she realized that John had risen and was now standing in front of her. She looked back up at his outstretched hand. Her own hand reached out of its own volition and placed itself firmly in his. As her mind was still coming to grips with what John was asking, her body was already following him onto the dance floor.
Voodoo, she thought. There's no way he could drag me out here otherwise. She soon found herself laughing; both at the songs being sung and at her own attempts to dance to them. She suspected that she was beginning to get a glimpse of what John saw in this city.
As a slow French ballad drew them closer she could feel his breath on her hair and his heartbeat beneath her cheek.
"If we were home," he said softly, "this would almost be a date."
"Almost," she agreed. "But I'll bet it's pretty hard to find a Cajun dance hall in Atlanta."
"I can name two without even trying."
They moved together wordlessly, listening to the music and their own thoughts.
John was a good friend, Sam thought. Actually, the way things had been going with Angel lately she could almost consider him her best friend. Did she really want to risk changing the rules of their relationship? It was working so well the way it was. But… she could still remember the brief kiss they had shared at Christmas. Could she live with just being his friend? She wasn't sure.
"If we were home," John said again after a few moments, "would you have come with me?"
"I don't know." She didn't look up. She could feel the tension in him that her admission had caused. "Maybe," she said. The muscles under her fingers didn't relax at all.
"Maybe?" he repeated.
"Yes."
"Yes maybe or yes yes?"
Sam sighed. "Probably... yes."
"Really?"
"I never would have pegged you for the insecure type," she said lightly.
"And you call yourself a profiler."
She finally looked up to see his hesitant smile. Maybe she wouldn't have to decide right away. He seemed willing to let it go for now.
*****
Sam sat on the bed in her hotel room going over her case notes one more time.
She rose and tapped lightly on the connecting door between the two rooms. She was scanning her notes again when the door opened. Her eyes slowly rose to John's face. He had leaned his head against the doorframe and closed his eyes.
"How bad do you think it would look," he asked sleepily, "if I'm accused of killing two of my superior officers in less than a year?"
"And what's Bailey ever... What is that?"
"That," John said, "is why I'm going to have to kill him. I can sleep through anything, Sam, but I can't sleep through that."
"Is he alright?" She peered past John into the darkened room behind him.
"As far as I can tell he's perfectly fine. He's just snoring. Maybe it's the mildew." He opened his eyes to look down at her but didn't lift his head. "You need something?"
She blinked at him then remembered her notes. "I just had a few ideas that I wanted to bounce off of someone. If you don't mind?"
He shrugged as he walked into her room. "It's not like I was getting any sleep anyway." He sprawled unceremoniously across her bed and began shuffling through the crime scene photos scattered there. "How can you even think about this stuff this late at night?" he asked as she sat down beside him.
"Incurable insomnia."
"It ever occur to you that this," he waved a photo at her, "might be why you're an insomniac? Next time try a Harlequin or something." He grinned as he tossed the picture back into the stack. "So, what are some of these brilliant ideas of yours that couldn't wait another four hours?"
Sam began explaining her theories to him. He made a few unhelpful comments and she realized that he was still more asleep than awake. After re-reading a page of her notes she glanced over and saw that he had dozed off again. He turned on his side and curled slightly, drawing his bare feet together and hunching his shoulders. Almost without thinking Sam reached down and pulled the blankets over him. She watched him sleep for a few moments then turned back to her notebook.
****** Sam awoke suddenly. 'Chloe's having a nightmare' was her first thought. As soon as she opened her eyes, however, she quickly realized that it wasn't Chloe's bad dreams that had startled her. John lay beside her, mumbling half-distinct phrases. In the weak light from the bedside lamp she could see the distress on his face. His head moved in short, quick jerks. His hand twitched as if he had raised it defensively in his dream. Over and over he repeated a heart-wrenching mantra…"No, Dad… no…"
Sam reached toward him. His arm instinctively rose to block her.
"I didn't mean to…" His voice was small and lost. It's desperate edge tore at Sam's heart.
She gently pushed his arm back and was finally able to touch him. She ran her hand soothingly over his hair.
"No…" he whispered. His breathing was shallow and jagged.
"Shhh," Sam told him. "It's okay. You're safe."
"No…"
Not knowing what else to do, she slipped her arms around him. His skin was cold. She continued to murmur reassurances until his shivering stopped. Slowly his breathing returned to the deep, even sound that she had learned to associate with his normal sleep. She knew she should wake him, send him back to the room he shared with Bailey.
She didn't.
When she woke again he was gone.
***** "It's open," Bailey said to the light tap on the connecting door. He turned another page of the newspaper as Sam entered. He liked to read the local papers when they were on a case. It was interesting to see how the Bureau and its agents were portrayed by the local reporters. It was also interesting to see if there were any leaks to the press. So far, the coverage by the Picayune had been critical of their efforts but not hysterical. Yet. It said nothing about the rune stones.
"Morning, Bailey," Sam said. "Where's John?"
"Breakfast," he answered without glancing up. He smiled to himself, wondering how much restraint she had needed to put the greeting before the question.
"Did he say where he was going?"
Bailey shook his head and picked up a cup of coffee. "He said he'd meet us later down at the Eighth." Finally he looked up at her. "What is it, Sam?"
"Nothing. It's nothing." She pulled out a chair and sat down. "I have an appointment with Lexi Carson this morning. She's going to try to help me understand how these runes work. Maybe together we can come up with something new on this." She pushed her hair back from her face. "I thought John might want to come along. Is there any more of that coffee?"
"Half a pot." He nodded toward the coffee-maker beside the sink. "Help yourself."
Shortly after Sam left he folded the paper. It was time to stop procrastinating. He needed to be down at the station coordinating the investigation. It was one of the duties that came with the territory when the Feds took over a case. Although he was the head of the task force, he would have preferred to leave the police liaison work to John. Local cops tended to respond better to the former police detective than they did to most of the other Federal agents. They saw him as one of their own. He knew the right buttons to push, the right complaints to make. Bailey, however, was an administrative figure, a paper-pusher. He was granted grudging respect by the officers but not the camaraderie that John usually received. It was more exasperating than he cared to admit.
****** John slouched at a table in the Café du Monde and watched the people around him. It was going to be a beautiful day and canvas walls of the restaurant had been raised, opening the patio tables to the morning air. He could see tourists and natives alike passing by on the street. He smiled as a waitress brought his coffee and beignets. They didn't serve anything else. They'd been around for a hundred and thirty years. If they had changed anything since the last time he had been here he certainly couldn't tell.
He'd been in the tenth grade? The eleventh? He couldn't remember. It hadn't mattered much to him then and it mattered even less now. He had missed homeroom more than a few times to stop by the Café. Breakfast had a tendency to drag into first period and by the time he had missed his first class it had seemed sort of pointless to go to any of the rest of them. Come to think of it, he mused, he hadn't made it to many classes at all while they had lived in New Orleans. It's a wonder he had ever managed to graduate.
Still, he had learned plenty here. Not all of it would look good on a Federal Agent's resume. He grinned to himself. Bailey would probably have a stroke if he knew some of the stunts John had pulled as a teenager in this city. Sam would probably be appalled. Sam...
Sam was going to make him crazy. When he woke this morning he had almost been convinced that he had simply had a strange dream about Sam and case notes and crime scene photos. Then he had felt the wrinkled papers and pictures beneath his head… and the woman asleep beside him. Sam had apparently stacked her own notes and the photos that she could reach without waking him on the night stand then fallen asleep herself. He knew that she would probably be terribly embarrassed if she ever found out how closely she had slept curled up against him. But then he recalled the words she had murmured as he rose.
"Shhh… it's okay. I won't let anything hurt you."
For a moment he had assumed that she thought he was Chloe. Her next words had made it clear she knew exactly who he was.
"John… it's okay."
He had leaned back over the bed to look at her face. She was still asleep. He had stared at her in bafflement. What the hell did she think she was defending him from and why? Fragments of another dream crept into his memory. Something about his father. Had he talked in his sleep? He didn't know. He hoped not. There were some things about him that Sam simply didn't need to know. His nightmares fell into that category. He had gone back to his own bed as quietly as he could, hoping that Bailey hadn't woken to notice his lengthy absence.
Bailey hadn't mentioned anything this morning and John had headed out to breakfast slightly relieved. Now in the Café he sat alone. Fond memories of the city had been pushed out of his mind. Instead, he found himself trying to decide what Sam had meant with her unconscious mumbling. Part of him was thrilled that he was obviously part of her dreams. Part of him was annoyed that she thought she had to protect him.
He stared into his coffee cup and tried to distract himself. He knew the caffeine was unhealthy. A rueful smile crossed his face. Caffeine, he realized, was a rather comical worry for a man who routinely got himself shot in the line of duty. Still, he figured, it was one thing in his bizarre life that he could actually control. Maybe he'd ask for decaf in his refill.
*Author note: "Welcome to New Orleans" is the traditional native response to the announcement of a city-related problem by a tourist. "I just got a parking ticket!" "Welcome to New Orleans." "My car was broken into!" "Welcome to New Orleans." You get the idea. This response is generally accompanied by a slightly sympathetic and always amused grin by the native. Yes, this is the voice of experience.