The Keepers

But not never.

There were exceptions.

Such as the September morning when Detective Jagger DeFarge got the call to come to the cemetery.

And there, stretched out on top of a tomb in the long defunct Grigsby family mausoleum, was the woman in white. Porcelain and beautiful, if it hadn’t been for the delicate silk and gauze fabric that spread around her, she might have been a piece of funerary art, a statue, frozen in marble.

Because she, too, was white, as white as her dress, as white as the marble, because every last drop of blood had been drained from her body.

Chapter 1

“Sweet Jesus!” Detective Tony Miro said, crossing himself as he stared at the corpse.

The cemetery itself had already been closed off, yellow crime tape surrounding the area around the mausoleum. Jagger DeFarge had been assigned as lead detective on the case, and he knew he should have been complimented, but in reality he just felt weary—and deeply concerned.

Beyond the concern one felt over any victim of murder or violent crime.

This was far worse. This threatened a rising body count to come.

Gus Parissi, a young uniformed cop, stuck his head inside the mausoleum. The light was muted, streaks of sunlight that filtered in through the ironwork filigree at the top end of the little house within the “city of the dead.”

Gus stared at the dead woman.

“Sweet Jesus,” he echoed, and also crossed himself.

Jagger winced, looking away for a moment, waiting. He wanted to be alone with the victim, but he had a partner. Being alone wasn’t going to be easy.

“Thank you, Parissi,” Jagger said. “The crime-scene crew can have the place in ten minutes. Hey, Miro, go on out and see who’s on the job today, will you?”

Miro was still just staring.

“And get another interview with Tom Cooley, too. He’s the guide who saw her and called it in, right?” Jagger asked.

“Uh—yeah, yeah,” Tony said, closing his mouth at last, turning and following Gus out.

Alone at last, my poor, poor dear, Jagger thought.

The dust of the ages seemed to have settled within the burial chamber, on the floor, on the stone and concrete walls, on the plaques that identified the dead within the vault. In contrast, the young woman on the tomb was somehow especially beautiful and pristine, a vision in white, like an angel. Sighing, Jagger walked over to the body. To all appearances, she was sleeping like a heavenly being in her pure perfection.

He pulled out his pocket flashlight to look for the bite marks that had to exist. He gently and carefully moved her hair, but there were no marks on her neck. He searched her thighs, then her arms, his eyes quick but thorough.

At last he found what he sought. He doubted that the medical examiner—even with the most up-to-date technology available—would ever find the tiny pinpricks located in the crease at her elbow.

He swore out loud just as Tony returned.

His partner was a young cop. A good cop, and not a squeamish one. Most of the crimes taking place these days had to do with a sudden flare of temper and, as always, drugs. Tony had worked a homicide with him just outside the Quarter in which a kid the size of a pro linebacker had taken a shotgun blast in the face. Tony had been calm and professional throughout the grisly first inspection, then handled the player’s mother with gentle care.

Today, however, he seemed freaked.

“What?” Tony asked.

Jagger shook his head. “No blood here at all, no signs of violence. No lividity, but she’s still in rigor…. Is the M.E. here?”

Tony nodded.

“Send him in,” Jagger said. “Have you interviewed the guide yet?”

Tony, staring at the body, shook his head. “One of the uniforms went to find him.”

“He can’t have gone far. Stay out there until they find him and interview him. And anyone who was with him. Then meet me back at the station, and we’ll get her picture out in the media. I want uniforms raking the neighborhood, the dumpsters, you name it, looking for a purse, clothing, anything they can find.”

Tony nodded and left.

The M.E. the Coroner’s Office had sent out that morning was Craig Dewey. Dewey looked like anything but the general conception of what a medical examiner should: he was tall, blond, about thirty-five. Basically, until they found out what he did for a living, most women considered him a heartthrob.

Like the others, he paused in the door. But Dewey didn’t stand there stunned and frozen as Tony and Gus had done. He did stare, but Jagger could see that his keen blue eyes were taking in the scene, top to bottom, before he approached the corpse. Finally that stare focused on the victim. He looked at her for a long while, then turned to Jagger.

“Well, here’s one for the books,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “On initial inspection, without even touching her, I’d say she’s been entirely drained of blood.” He looked around. “And it wasn’t done here.”

“No. I’d say not,” Jagger agreed with what appeared to be obvious.

“Such a pity, and so strange. Murder is never beautiful, and yet … she is beautiful,” Dewey commented.

“Dewey, give me something that isn’t in plain sight,” Jagger said.

Dewey went to work. He was efficient and methodical. He had his camera out, the flash going as he shot the body from every conceivable angle. Then he approached the woman, checked for liver temperature and shook his head. “She’s still in rigor. Other than the fact that she’s about bloodless, I have no idea what’s going on here. I’ll need to get her into the morgue to figure out how and why she died. I can’t find anything to show how it might have happened. Odd, really odd. A body without blood wouldn’t shock me—we seem to attract wackos to this city all the time—but I can’t find so much as a pinprick to explain what happened. Hell, like I said, I’ve got to get her out of here to check further. Lord knows, enough people around here think they’re vampires.”

“Right, I know,” Jagger said. “When did she die? I was estimating late last night or early this morning.”

“Then you’re right on,” Dewey told him. “She died sometime between midnight and two in the morning, but give me fifteen minutes either side.”

“I want everything you get as quickly as you get it,” Jagger said.

“I have two shooting deaths, a motorcycle accident, a possible vehicular homicide—not to mention that the D.A.’s determined to harass an octogenarian over her husband’s death, even though he’s been suffering from cancer for years—” Dewey broke off, seeing the set expression on Jagger’s face. “Sure, Lafarge. I’ll put a rush on it. This is the kind of thing you’ve got to get a handle on quickly, God knows. We get enough sensationalist media coverage around here. I don’t want to see a frenzy start.”

“Thanks,” Jagger told him.

He looked around the Grigsby family tomb one more time. It was what he didn’t see that he noted. No fingerprints in the dust. No footprints. No sign whatsoever of how the girl had come to lie, bloodless and beautiful, upon the dusty tomb of a long dead patriarch.

He wanted the CSUs, Tony and the uniforms all busy here. He had some investigating to do that he needed to tackle on his own.

He lowered his sunglasses from the top of his head to his eyes and walked back out into the brilliant light of the early fall morning.

The sky was cloudless and brilliantly blue. The air was pleasant, without the dead heat of summer.

It seemed to be a day when the world was vibrant. Positively pulsing with life.

“Hey, Detective DeFarge!”