Let the Devil Out (38 page)

“Oh, I doubt that,” Atkinson said. “That's all right.”

“Seriously?”

They'd reached the car. Maureen opened the door, leaned into the front seat for the coffees. She handed one to Atkinson, who winced and spat as soon as she sipped.

“Too hot?” Maureen asked.

“I think I got yours,” Atkinson said. They switched cups. “Damn, Maureen, that is
a lot
of sugar.”

“Enough to stand up the spoon.”

Atkinson raised her coffee cup for a toast. “Here's to that.”

“Why don't you want to question Gage about Madison Leary's murder?” Maureen asked. “He was in town for revenge, no doubt about that. Attacking the cops, trying to murder Heath, and those blueprints for Heath's projects that Detillier found in the apartment? And bomb-making instructions on top of that?”

Atkinson chuckled. “I'm with Detillier on that. No way Gage doesn't blow himself to bits building a bomb. I'm glad we got him before he took out half of Harmony Oaks with him.”

She leaned on the cruiser, looked back at the development, picturing, Maureen could tell, the smoking carnage they'd prevented. Atkinson was good at that, Maureen had noticed, imagining horrible things. She'd put in decades on the New Orleans streets, coming up through the ranks, the model of what Maureen wanted to do. Atkinson hadn't left the city in the days and weeks after Katrina, her own Mid-City house rotting under six feet of water while she slept in the backseat of her unmarked car. Maureen wondered how much of what Atkinson saw was imagination, and how much of it was memory. Was that the price of admission to get where Atkinson was, Maureen wondered, a head full of horrible things? What did it really take to be able to do what the detective could do?

Atkinson turned to Maureen, faking a grin. “I wonder if Solomon's attitude toward his beloved son will change much when he finds out it was Caleb who got those plans for Gage.”

“It won't,” Maureen said. “Not in any way that we'll see. He'll deny Caleb had anything to do with it. It's one more reason to leave him overseas. That's a family that closes ranks against all others. Believe that.” She bumped her shoulder against Atkinson. “You're really not going to question Gage?”

“Do you believe,” Atkinson said, “that it was Gage going over that graveyard wall with Leary? Carrying wind chimes?”

“He matches the description we got from the witness,” Maureen said. “He's the right height, the right build. He's even got the right haircut.”

“In that hat,” Atkinson said, “from far enough away, so do you.”

“That fingerprint you found on the razor,” Maureen said. “I'm guessing it wasn't his.”

“It was not,” Atkinson said. She set her coffee cup on the trunk of the car and reached into her jacket. “But I found out who it does belong to.”

“That was quick,” Maureen said.

“I told you Detillier did right by me,” Atkinson said. She pulled a folded piece of paper from inside her coat and handed it to Maureen. “He helped with tracking the print. Said it was a Watchmen thing. Which it is, technically.”

Maureen opened the page. It was a copy of a photo. A mug shot of a young woman. Hardly more than a girl. Her bony shoulders were bare. She had a Mohawk haircut. Two red streaks adorned her right cheek. Not blood or bruises, but stage makeup. She'd also painted a red band over her eyes like a bandit's mask, or like war paint, Maureen thought. Under the face paint bloomed a freshly inflicted black eye. The girl's bloody top lip curled in a swollen sneer. Maureen wondered if the arresting officers had knocked the girl around. She looked the type who'd resist, not just arrest, but
everything
.

The girl in the picture looks very familiar, Maureen thought, around the eyes and nose, especially, but she couldn't place her. Like an actor in a movie, she thought, and you can't remember where else you've seen her before, but that face, you know you know it.

The initials scrawled across the bottom of the photo read “LAPD.” That didn't help. “California?”

“The photo is a couple of years old,” Atkinson said, nodding, “so you have to use your imagination.”

Maureen looked again. At second glance, the name that went with the face arrived. It clicked. Of course she knew that face. Her mouth fell open and she turned to Atkinson. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Officer Coughlin, meet Natalie Sparrow. You know her as Dice.”

“Wow,” Maureen said, handing Atkinson the paper. “Damn. Her fashion sense has improved somewhat. I wonder if I looked so
furious
at that age.” She noticed Atkinson was not amused. Something in the air around them had changed, darkened. “Oh, you don't think…” Maureen grabbed the paper, checked the back for additional information. She looked at Atkinson. “This photo, what was the charge?”

“Multiple.” Atkinson fought back her grin. She restrained all of it except for a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Homicide. Three counts. She crushed three guys against a bus with a stolen car.”

“Allegedly,” Maureen said.

Atkinson laughed. “What? Young Sparrow doesn't look like that kind of girl to you?”

“We're all that kind of girl,” Maureen said, “when we have to be.” She blew out a long sigh. “She and Leary were friends. She admitted that to me. It's why I started working with her in first place. It's not so outrageous her prints were on the razor.”

“What if Madison Leary never killed anyone?” Atkinson said. “What if someone else killed Leon Gage's son, Clayton, and the Watchmen body we found before him, Edgar Cooley? Just consider the possibility Leary didn't commit those two murders.” She paused. “It's fucking genius, if you think about it. The best lies are wrapped around a grain of truth. What if everything Dice told us about Madison Leary was
her
life story, pieces of it, at least.”

Maureen did think about it. She thought about how Dice was the only person who seemed to know anything about Madison Leary, about her mind and her history. She thought of Dice sneaking up on her on Frenchmen Street. Had she been hiding that razor then, in a pocket of her long coat? “You think Dice, this Natalie Sparrow, killed Leary?”

“I think Sparrow killed Cooley, Gage,
and
Leary. I think she was Leary's avenging angel when the Watchmen came to town looking for her.”

“Hell of an angel,” Maureen said, “who cuts the throat of the woman she's protecting.”

“Leary must've weakened,” Atkinson said. “She might've become a threat, maybe started talking of getting help. Sparrow might've tired of watching her suffer. One thing for sure, she didn't like doing this one. That's why she left the razor behind this time.”

“There's still a ton of evidence that points right at Leary being the Watchmen killer,” Maureen said, but her mind had turned, she'd felt it, from disbelieving Atkinson to simply playing devil's advocate. “We have everything that Dice said about her, for example.”

“Exactly,” Atkinson said. “We have
only
the stuff Dice told us. Did anyone talk to Leary about any of it?”

“Talk to Leary?” Maureen said. “How exactly were we going to talk to her? She was a paranoid schizophrenic living on the streets and off her meds.”

“You're making my point,” Atkinson said. “Think of the condition Leary was in. She ate three meals a week. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds when she died. Maybe. She lived on cheap street drugs and air and whatever electric crazy ran through her brain. And we believe she stalked these backwoods militia guys through the streets of New Orleans, picking them off one at a time with a razor blade? Because some homeless punk rock girl told us so?”

She held up the picture. “A punk rock girl with one terrifying fucking history. Her first contact with the police was in New Mexico, where we
think
she was born. There are a lot of gaps in her history. She was twelve. She and a boy, one with a rep at school as a bully, were ‘playing' on the roof of an abandoned warehouse. The boy fell through a hole in the roof. He died.”

“Accidents happen,” Maureen said. “Sounds more like bad parenting to me.”

“I read the report,” Atkinson said. “Lots of kids played on that roof. None of them remembered that hole being there before that kid fell through it. Two weeks later, Sparrow disappeared from her foster home. She doesn't pop up anywhere until that day in California.”

“Leary knew the Watchmen,” Maureen said. “She was with them in LaPlace for we don't know how long. And maybe these Watchmen assholes aren't half the badasses they think they are. Maybe that's why they shoot when no one else is looking. They're fucking cowards.”

“You put it like that,” Atkinson said, “and it sounds like you're rooting for Sparrow.”

“I was,” Maureen said. “Until five minutes ago.” God, why did she feel so
sad
? Like someone she knew had died. “Anyway, it doesn't matter. We can't fucking find her. Six weeks we looked for them both. Though I'm guessing we weren't looking real hard.”

“We are now,” Atkinson said. “Believe that.”

Maureen reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone. She should've saved those messages, the voice mails she'd gotten from Leary, well, no, from Sparrow where she sang Maureen those creepy songs. “You know, I thought, maybe for a little while, I could sleep through the night. Walk the streets without looking over my shoulder. Be a regular cop.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Atkinson said. “She seems to have a type, for killing, I mean, and you're not it. In fact, she seems to like you.”

“I know. That's what I'm afraid of,” Maureen said.

“When you saw her,” Atkinson said, “what did she say to you? Anything useful? Think about it again. Look at her differently now.”

“Oh, Lord,” Maureen said. “She told me she couldn't wait for Mardi Gras. That she was super excited to experience her first one.”

“So you think she's planning on staying here?” Atkinson asked. “Or maybe she was bullshitting you, blowing smoke. And that was before she killed Leary. That murder may have changed her plans. She may already be long gone. She does know how to disappear.”

Maureen opened the photo again, studying the warrior-painted face, the wild ink-black eyes that stared back at her, into her, across the years. “I think she's in New Orleans to stay. I think she's home.”

That makes two of us, Maureen thought. It's you and me, Sparrow.

She folded the photo, tucked it into her leather jacket.

May the best woman win.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks first and foremost to the McDonald, Murphy, Lambeth, and Loehfelm clans for their unwavering support of every kind.

Thanks to Jarrett, Kelcy, and the rest of the Executive Tuesday Krewe, past and present. Real recognize real. And thanks to the owners and staff of Joey K's for putting up with us.

There's one name on the cover but it takes a big team to make a book. I'm lucky enough to be part of a great one:

Tremendous gratitude to my amazing agent, Barney Karpfinger, and to Cathy and Marc at the Karpfinger Agency. No way this operation stays afloat without them.

Huge thanks also to Sarah Crichton, editor and publisher extraordinaire, for her thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and enthusiasm, and to John, Abby, Marsha, Lottchen, Rachel, Spenser, Elizabeth, and the whole amazing team at FSG and Picador. Special tip of the cap to Alex Merto for conjuring another mind-bending cover. And to Jill and Ian for keeping me pointed in the right direction on tour. I know I forgot some people, just because I always do. Forgive me. Y'all are the best. Thanks for giving me a happy writing home.

Each writing project has an extensive playlist. As you might expect, the New Orleans books (and their author) rely heavily on New Orleans music. That music includes but is not limited to: Dr. John, Anders Osborne, Kelcy Mae, Juvenile, the Revivalists, the Soul Rebels Brass Band, the Hot 8 Brass Band, Luke Winslow King, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, Galactic, the Rebirth Brass Band. Inspiration also from the Dead Weather, Band of Skulls, Juliana Hatfield, Metric, Matt Mays, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Tragically Hip, Jason Isbell, Gillian Welch.

As often happens, I took some liberties with time and place in New Orleans for storytelling purposes. I beg my fellow New Orleanians' indulgence and forgiveness.

Though Marques Greer gets a break in this book, AC and I remain supportive of the Roots of Music and their musical and educational efforts:
www.therootsofmusic.org
.

We also support the work of Steve Gleason, Team Gleason, and their ongoing efforts on behalf of people living with ALS. Find out more at
www.teamgleason.org
. No White Flags.

And finally, as always, all my love to my amazing wife, AC Lambeth, my best friend, favorite person, and the wellspring of any and all good work I do.

 

ALSO BY
BILL LOEHFELM

DOING THE DEVIL'S WORK

THE DEVIL IN HER WAY

THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS

BLOODROOT

FRESH KILLS

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR