Saturday, March 12, 2005
6:00 p.m.
B
y the time they reached the French Quarter Moonwalk, the scene had been entirely cordoned off. Like bees to honey, a crowd had been drawn to the crime-scene tape and police cruisers.
Spencer angled the Camaro into a spot along the railroad tracks. He popped the glove box, retrieved the jar of Vicks VapoRub he kept there and dropped it into his jacket pocket.
He looked at Tony. “Ready to do this thing?”
“Let’s go.”
They climbed out of the Camaro. The Moonwalk, a promenade developed atop the levee at the French Quarter, lay between Jackson Square and the Mississippi River, the Café du Monde and the Jax Brewery shopping complex.
Spencer swept his gaze over the area. Damn inconsiderate of Pogo, washing up here. In terms of visibility, few spots beat this one. In terms of unwanted heat, the spot was even worse. Anything that touched tourism, the city’s biggest industry, attracted attention. The governor’s. The mayor’s. The media’s.
The mayor would come down hard on the chief, who in turn would climb his aunt Patti’s frame. Who, in turn, would put the screws to him and Tony.
Shit rolled downhill.
He and Tony were about to be hip deep in brown muck.
They crossed to one of the uniforms at the perimeter and signed in. “Fill us in.”
“Tourist found him. He got good and sick.” He pointed toward the cruisers. Spencer saw that the back door of one of them was open and a man was sitting sideways on the seat, head in hands. “My partner’s baby-sitting him.”
“Toto,” Tony murmured, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
The uniform snickered. “They caught the smell over at Café du Monde, thought it was somebody’s garbage.”
Spencer reached into his jacket pocket for the jar of Vicks. After helping himself to a smear, he held it out to Tony. He, too, smeared the goop under his nose.
They climbed the stairs to the observation area. Tony was winded when they reached the top.
He stopped to catch his breath. “I’m too old and fat for this shit.”
“I’m seriously worried about you, Pasta Man. Join a gym or something.”
“I’m afraid it’ll kill me.” They crossed the tracks, then climbed the stairs up the levee. “I’m not too far from couch-potato status. I don’t want to blow it now.”
“Don’t want to keel over before you get that gold-toned watch and pension, right? Think about that gym—”
That’s when the smell of the corpse hit them. Spencer glanced at his partner and saw the man’s eyes were watering.
They descended the stairs, then picked their way to the river’s edge. Spencer spotted Terry Landry, DIU from the Eighth. He’d been his brother’s partner before Quentin had decided to leave the force.
Landry caught sight of them and met them halfway.
“Terror,” Spencer said, greeting the man with the nickname he’d been given as a rookie. A hard-partying hothead, he was stuck with the label.
“Don’t go by the ‘Terror’ anymore, kid. I’ve settled down. Mended my ways.”
“Yeah, right.” Tony shook his hand.
“It’s true. My Thursday night AA group is my new, favorite party.”
“That our vic?” Spencer asked, pointing to a misshapen form on the rocks covering the riverbank.
“Yup. Wallet was in his pocket.”
Spencer tipped his face up to the purpling sky. “Going to have to get some lights over here.”
“On the way.”
“Did you check his pulse?” Tony asked, smirking.
“Oh, yeah,” Terry answered. “I gave him mouth to mouth. Now it’s your turn.”
It was Homicide humor. Checking for a pulse, standard operating procedure, was unnecessary in a case like this one. Spencer and Tony picked their way toward Walter Pogolapoulos’s remains. The artist’s throat had been slit. The wound formed an obscene gaping smile. The decomposition process was well underway, sped up by the warm water.
“Sometimes I hate this job.”
Tony glanced over his shoulder, toward the Café du Monde. “Either you guys want some beignets?”
“You’re a sick bastard, you know that?” Spencer fitted on gloves and crossed to the corpse. He squatted beside it, ran his gaze assessingly over the body, the area around it. He had to strain to see in the gathering dusk.
The vic looked pretty beat-up, though that didn’t surprise him. It was often the case when victims had been dumped in water. They were dragged by the current, scraped against the bottom, gouged by tree branches and sharp rocks and generally banged around. He’d even seen them chewed up by boat props and nibbled on by fish.
The pathologist would differentiate between pre- and postmortem wounds; a body in this state was way beyond his abilities.
From what he could see, it didn’t appear the killer had made any effort to weight the body. Either he hadn’t known that putrefaction gases brought a body to the surface in a matter of days—they called such vics floaters—or he hadn’t cared.
Still, Pogo had popped up a bit ahead of schedule. He hadn’t been dead—or submerged—long enough to have developed adipocere, a yellow, rancid smelling and waxy substance seen on most floaters. Spencer glanced at his partner. “Perp must’ve dumped him upriver. River currents are strong, brought him down here. What do you think? Up toward Baton Rouge? Or Vacherie?”
“Maybe. Pathologist might shed some light on it.”
As if on cue, the coroner’s investigator made the scene. “Where the hell is the van and the lights? What am I supposed to do with this one in the dark?”
He looked really pissed off. Spencer stepped forward, introducing himself. “Looks like your Saturday night just took a turn for the worse.”
“Had theater tickets.” He frowned. “How many Malones are there, anyway?”
“More than a gang, but less than a mob.”
A smile touched his mouth; he looked at Tony. “Thought you retired.”
“No such luck, my friend. You know Terry Landry.”
“Everybody knows the Terror.” The pathologist nodded in the man’s direction, then scowled. “Where’s that van?”
Several of the department’s crime-scene vans were fitted with high-powered, alley lights for nighttime crime scenes.
“I’ll check it out,” Terry said.
The pathologist made his way to the body; Tony followed him. Spencer flipped open his cell and dialed Stacy.
“Hello, Killian.”
“Malone.”
To his ears, she sounded pleased. He smiled. “FYI, Pogo’s dead.”
He heard her sharply indrawn breath. “How?”
“Don’t know for certain yet. He washed up on the riverbank. Throat was slit.”
“When?”
“Looks like it happened a couple of days ago. Hard to tell ’cause our killer dumped him into the river. You know warm water and corpses.”
Her silence said it all: they had blown it. With their best lead dead, they had nothing.
Pogo’s murder was no coincidence.
The White Rabbit had silenced him, so he couldn’t talk.
The area flooded with light. The van had arrived.
“Gotta go, Stacy. Just thought you’d want to know.”
He flipped the phone shut and wandered over to Tony. The man grinned at him. “What?” he asked.
“The prickly Ms. Killian, I presume?”
“What about it?”
“You’re going to look good with a pasta gut, Slick.”
“Blow me, Sciame.”
Tony’s laughter echoed on the water, a strange complement to Walter Pogolapoulos’s decomposing form.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
7:00 p.m.
S
tacy closed her cell phone. Pogo dead. Murdered.
She took a deep breath and headed back inside the Noble mansion, to the front parlor where Leo and Kay waited for her. Even though the NOPD had done a thorough search of the house and grounds, Stacy did her own. And like them, she found nothing.
When she entered the room, Leo leaped to his feet. “Well?”
“I didn’t find anything out of order,” she said. “No signs of forced entry. A few unlocked windows, but I don’t find that unusual this time of year. And none of the screens looked to have been tampered with.”
Kay sat on the big, overstuffed parlor couch, legs curled under her, a glass of white wine in her hand. She looked at Stacy. “You checked all the closets and cubbies?”
“Yes.”
“The attics and under the beds?”
Stacy felt for the woman. “Yes,” she said softly. “I promise you, there is no one hiding in this house.”
Leo made a sound. Almost like a growl. She turned and watched him pace. She felt his frustration. He wasn’t accustomed to being unable to control his destiny.
“You haven’t been threatened,” she said. “That’s the good news.”
He stopped. Met her eyes. “Really? I find a stranger writing a message in blood on my office floor damn threatening, thank you.”
Her cheeks heated. She pictured the cat’s head, strung up above her tub. “I’m sure you do,” she said softly. “Your life, however, has not been overtly threatened. And that’s a good thing.”
Kay whimpered. “How do you know we aren’t the playing cards?”
“Because I do. If you were his intended victims, he wouldn’t have sent you the message. It’s a game move.”
In truth, it hadn’t escaped her that the hypothesis might work for her as well.
The woman set her wine down so sharply some of the beverage sloshed over its rim. “I hate this.”
“Let’s think about the game. We played it this afternoon. Let’s figure out what he’s up to. Head him off at the pass.”
Leo nodded. “It’s the White Rabbit’s game. He’s in control.”
“He creates the story,” Stacy said. “He created this one.”
“There’s a band of heroes. They are on a mission to save Wonderland. And ultimately the rest of the world.”
“The dormouse is dead. She was under the rabbit’s control, which means that one of the heroes killed her.”
“The playing cards are also in peril.”
“Or already dead.” She glanced at Kay. She had dropped her head into her hands. “I’m in the game. Either as the Cheshire Cat or—”
“One of the heroes.” Leo snapped his fingers. “Of course! You can’t be the cat because he’s—”
“Under the control of the White Rabbit.”
“Same with us,” Kay said suddenly, lifting her head. “Thank God.”
“Before you celebrate, love, remember the heroes are always in jeopardy. From the Rabbit or his minions. And sometimes—” he paused “—from each other.”
Kay moaned; Stacy shook her head. “Someone is physically playing the game. A group. Like the one Cassie was a member of. It seems unlikely that Rosie Allen was a player which means this bastard chooses people to represent the characters.”
“Or this could be the work of a lone sicko.” Leo paused. “If it’s a group, they could be e-players.”
Her thoughts raced as she considered the various options, putting the pieces together, getting a feel for them. “The group could be an active part of the killing. Or—”
“Unwitting participants.”
They fell silent. They needed to narrow the field. She needed to tell them about Pogo.
She turned and met her boss’s eyes. “That artist, the one who created the cards, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” he repeated, looking confused. “But you and Detective Malone just—”
“He was murdered, Leo. His throat was slit, his body dumped in the Mississippi River.”
Kay caught her breath. “Oh, my God.”
“Mom?”
They turned. Alice stood in the doorway, eyes wide, cheeks pasty.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Kay shot Leo an angry glance, even as they both rushed to the girl’s side. She took the teenager into her arms, comforting her. Stroking her hair and murmuring words of comfort.
Ones that sounded authentic: promises that everything would be okay, that she had nothing to fear. Things Stacy knew the woman didn’t feel. Kay was able to put aside her own fears to relieve her daughter’s.
Stacy had thought Kay a cold perfectionist. Now, she would never look at the woman the same again.
On the other hand, Leo stood stiffly and silently beside them, looking like a fish out of water.
Kay looked accusingly at Leo once more. “I’m going to take her upstairs.”
He nodded, visibly upset, then turned and crossed to the couch. He sat heavily. “Kay blames me.”
Stacy agreed, but didn’t see where saying so would help.
“I didn’t make this happen. It’s not my fault.”
“I know,” she said softly, feeling for him. “She’s scared. She’s not thinking clearly.”
“I hate not being able to do anything. Alice is…she’s the most important thing in the world to me. To see her so shaken up and being unable to—”
He bit the words off on a sound of frustration. “That artist was our best lead.”
Their only real lead.
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Wait. Use caution in everything we do. And hope the police do their jobs.”
“Screw the police. What are
we
going to do?”
“We know that the artist wasn’t our guy. He was only the hired help.”
“The White Rabbit did it.”
“It could be. We don’t know that for sure.”
He laughed suddenly, the sound tight. “Of course it was the White Rabbit. You believe in coincidences no more than I do. When you and Detective Malone got close, he killed the artist to protect his own identity.”
She didn’t respond. That was her assessment as well, based not on fact, but common sense—and a strong gut feeling.
“It’s someone close,” she said. “Within your circle. I still believe that.”
“So, move in.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want you to stay here. With us.”
“Leo, I don’t think—”
“Kay’s upset. You saw Alice. They’ll feel safer with you living here.”
“Hire professional security. Get a dog. An electric fence. The video surveillance that Kay mentioned. Security isn’t my line.”
“I’d feel safer with you than with paid muscle.”
“Why? And don’t tell me it’s because I was a cop, that doesn’t wash.”
“Because you wouldn’t just be protecting us. You’d be protecting yourself, too.”
“I’m not worried about protecting—”
“You’re in the game, Stacy. You damn well better be interested in protecting yourself. Plus, the outcome of this matters to you. And if you’re here, you’re more likely to be a part of that outcome.”