Calling the Dead, page 30
“I let you come to brunch, that’s faith enough for now. Make me a great-grandmother, and I’ll stand on my head if you want.”
“I’ll work on that, but for now, the killer I’m chasing just called me, and he knows more about me and the people close to me than I feel comfortable with. I have an officer here with Keegan, but I want to make sure the rest of you are all right as well.”
“Thanks for calling me, then. If some killer’s after us, it’s good to know that I haven’t given you a hard enough time that you’d give him a free shot at me.”
“I thought about it, but we might need you to sit the dog when this is over,” Sept said, and laughed. “Remember what I said and I’ll call you later.”
As Keegan waved to Nathan and dragged Sept by the belt to her office, she said, “Do you need to phone anyone else, or do you have time to tell me what’s going on? It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, but you have a way of scaring the shit out of me.”
“He called me again this morning, and in a roundabout way he threatened the people I care about. I don’t mean to scare you, but I’m here because I’m scared, and I’m not afraid to admit that to you.” Sept hugged Keegan to her and kissed her. “When he said he’d give me back something that’s important to me, I had to come make sure you were all right.”
“Honey, you have Al so hyped up that I keep bumping into him when I try to season anything. At this point I’m sure he’d rather face a firing squad than tell you that he let something happen to me.” Keegan kissed her on the chin. “I’m fine, but I need you, so that means you have to put your head where it belongs and get this guy. If you don’t, you won’t take me on vacation until this is over, and I want to model swimwear for you.”
Sept looked at her and knew Keegan was trying to be brave and cheer her up, but the concern wasn’t completely hidden because Keegan’s hand slightly shook as she brought it to Sept’s face. “If you want me to concentrate, you shouldn’t mention you in a bathing suit.”
“It’ll be fine, Seven,” Keegan said, and pressed her lips to the back of Sept’s hand.
“Call Jacqueline and check on her. I have to get back to my office and wait for another phone call, so promise you’ll stick to Al.”
“Any more stuck and people would start to talk,” Keegan said. “If you get the chance, call me later and let me know what’s going on. And whatever happens, you be careful. You’re a good cop because you’re a risk taker, but remember that you’re a good cop with someone waiting at home.”
“What do you want for Christmas?” Sept asked, trying to take Keegan’s thoughts in a different direction.
“I want two things this year, Santa.”
“Name them.”
Keegan wrapped her arms around Sept’s waist and put her chin on her chest. “I want a whole day with no phone, no gun, and no work.”
“I think I can promise that, little girl. What else?”
“I want you to not think of me as the crazy chick who’s packing up the U-Haul and knitting a sweater for our dog.”
Sept had to laugh. “I’ll be happy to indulge you anything, if you explain that last statement.”
“I want you to give up your apartment and move in with me. It might be too soon, but you shouldn’t live somewhere that some psycho broke into and killed someone on the bed. You could indulge me by moving in with me and Mike.”
“Do you know how to knit?” Sept asked, before kissing her.
“I started on the matching sweaters the day you brought Mike home.”
“I’m not saying no, but we’ll talk about it when I get home tonight.”
Keegan squeezed her one last time around the waist and let her go. “I’m leaving early today, so call before you come back here to pick me up.”
“Will do, and don’t try to ditch Al.”
*
“I called ahead and had Royce take care of everything,” Lourdes said through her car window when Nathan and Sept walked out.
“Thanks, I’m headed back there now.” When Sept got back in the car, she called the office and asked Royce if the guy had called back, then asked to be patched through to her desk. Her boss said that any calls for her were being routed upstairs to the room they’d been using so the tech guys could set up a trace.
“Everything’s quiet for the moment,” Royce said, “but get your ass back here when you can. I want you on the phone with this fucker if he does decide he wants you to be his new best friend.”
“I’m almost there, so keep him talking if he does decide that. Did the search around the Jax Brewery shopping center pan out?” Sept asked and, frustrated, felt like punching the steering wheel.
“I have people covering the area, but nothing so far. If it’s Damien, no one’s spotted him.”
“Thanks, Royce, see you in a few.” Sept hung up and called Lourdes, who was still behind them. “Can you break away and get your mom and bring her to the office? If we’re going to be stuck inside all day, we might as well get something done.”
Before they reached the office she’d contacted her brothers, who still hadn’t gotten a glimpse of Damien, and her father, who was giving Fritz a progress report.
“Did he have anything new?” Nathan asked.
“We can hold Fritz off for another couple of days, but then we have to send in the feds. We don’t often see serial killers in New Orleans, but with everything going on, Fritz wants something else to blame the feds about if we can’t turn up anything.”
“We should have zip by then. Does that mean we give up?”
Sept parked in front of the building and left the blue light on top of the car. “Somebody’s taking this away from us over my dead body.”
Before Sept went inside, she scanned the block, looking at every face to make sure Damien wasn’t watching them. If he was there, he was well hidden, so she went in and took the steps two at a time to the second floor. While she stared at her office phone, willing it to ring, she called Estella at the voodoo shop on her cell.
“How long ago did you take over for your mother?” Sept asked her.
“My mom died two years ago, but I worked with her three years before that.”
Sept asked Estella to close her eyes and gave her a detailed description of Damien. “In that time, has anyone resembling that come in?”
“We have tourists all the time wanting to buy those little souvenir hex dolls, but I’m really good with faces, and I don’t remember anyone like that. Some guy who might be who you’re talking about has walked past here, but I’ve never actually talked to him.”
“Anyone else come in who asked a lot of questions?” Sept waved to George and Alex as they came in and dropped another report on the seat next to her before leaving again. “If I sent a police artist down there, could you remember enough to make a composite of the guy?” Sept sat up in her chair and put her hand up when Nathan stepped closer. “Great, I’ll have my partner there in a bit with someone.”
“You got something?” Nathan asked.
“She said a guy who came in a couple of times gave off a vibe, her words,” Sept said, relieved, because the man Estella had described didn’t sound at all like Damien. She might have held some unresolved feelings against him because of Noel and Sophie, but she wanted more than anything for it not to be him. Estella had said, though, that she was sure the guy had worn sunglasses and a low-pulled baseball cap, which made it harder to guess his true appearance. “With any luck we can get something to work with.”
“You sure you want me to go?” Nathan asked.
“Get the artist on the phone and head over there.” They were alone in the room now. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere without you, but hurry back.”
“You ready for us?” Lourdes asked as she guided an elderly woman in front of her.
“Come on in.” Sept stood and held her hand out to Maria.
Like Matilda, the woman before her wore a bright dress that reminded Sept of summer. She smiled and sat across from Sept at the table.
“I’m not sure why I’m here, but I talked to Matilda and we want to help any way we can,” Maria said in a soft voice. “Lourdes told me you want me to look through a list of names.”
“I want a little more than that.” Sept took out the list and handed it to her. “I’d be really surprised if our killer’s on this list.”
“Why do you say that?”
“After meeting you, Matilda, and Estella, I doubt that anyone who believes like you do would kill in this manner.”
Maria picked up the list but didn’t lower her eyes. “What do you want me to do, then?”
“Tell me everything you can about the people on here. My mother always says that everyone has a story. The ones on this list aren’t any different.”
Maria took the sheet, put on a pair of glasses, and didn’t say anything as she scanned to the bottom of the page. Then she talked for an hour about the families of everyone on the page she knew, if she was that familiar with them, and about any friends they’d brought to the ceremonies.
She was on the third-to-last name when the phone rang. “Savoie,” Sept said, as she smiled at Maria.
“You don’t listen very well, do you?” the voice asked.
Sept pointed at the tech manning the recorder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“But you aren’t alone, are you? And don’t even try to lie. Like I said before, I know all about you.” A clicking sound came through the line, and Sept could only guess that he was hitting his teeth together. “All that glory they dump on you is a pile of shit. You need a million people around you, showing you where to look for the answers.”
“At least I know when to ask for help,” Sept said, hoping to draw out the conversation so the tech could trace the call definitively.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you need counseling before you kill someone else. No matter what good you think you’re getting out of this, it’s wrong.” The tech wrote something down and signaled with his fingers like he was pulling a string between them, which meant to stretch it out a little more. “You said you wanted to work with only me, so tell me where you’d like to meet, and I’ll be there.”
“I’ll call you soon. Before you and your little helpers start planning where to set your trap, remember that I’m watching you. When I say to come alone, that’s what I mean. It’s the only way you’ll get back what belongs to you.”
“What, no hints?” Sept asked with a clearer head now that she knew Keegan and her family were safe.
“You’re the decorated detective, figure it out.”
“Wait,” Sept said, but the line had gone dead. “Tell me you got something?” she asked the tech.
“It’s a cell number that matches Roxie’s,” the guy said. “He must have stolen it from her after he killed her. I narrowed it down to within a block in the French Quarter, but that’s as good as it gets.”
“Which block?”
“One block near Jackson Square, ma’am.”
“Lourdes, your mom,” Sept said to Nathan as he came in, and she turned him around.
“I’ll stay with her,” Lourdes said, standing behind her mother.
Nathan ran alongside Sept with a folded sheet of paper in his hand. “Any luck, in case we actually spot this asshole?” she asked him.
“It’s something, but you aren’t going to like it,” he answered as they hit the street with the siren blaring.
She took the drawing and laughed. “Great, it’s the Unabomber.” The sketch resembled the composite the FBI had put out for years regarding the famous mail bomber.
They stopped in front of the park right across the street from where their fourth victim was found on the levee and circled the square, taking different sides. After a few turns and a walk through the place they didn’t spot anyone, but instead of going back to the office, Sept drove back out to Damien’s house.
“You think of something else to look for?” Nathan asked.
“I’m missing something, and I want to know what he took with him that he’s been able to stay away so long.” She walked through the damaged house again, trying to remember the order of the chaos from the last time to see if anything was different. Sophie’s room appeared the same, but Sept looked through the closet in the master bedroom more closely. The stuff hanging in there was stiff with mold, with only a few pieces of Noel’s showing any color at all.
Damien’s side was more interesting. From the cut of the shirts she could tell nine of his uniforms were hanging there rotting away—the department assigned patrolmen ten. The one she’d seen in the trailer outside had to have been the one he was wearing the night of the storm.
“Keep going through here and see if you stumble on anything,” she told Nathan.
The uniform in the trailer still hung on the door of the bedroom, but it had a small rip in the top of the plastic, as if Damien had lifted the covering off to get to the clothing. Unlike the ones inside the house, this shirt had both buttons on the front pockets missing. “Son of a bitch,” she said, because for every step she took forward in proving Damien innocent, the evidence knocked her back ten.
“My memory must be shot, because when I was here before, I could have sworn this thing was immaculate,” she said to herself as she closed her eyes and tried to picture what she’d seen the first time. Time made her admit that she couldn’t with conviction say the shirt had its buttons.
As she turned to leave, something on the floor near the bed lit up like a neon light. No way had she missed this when they were there before. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed.
“Nathan,” she said when her partner answered, “grab an evidence bag from the car.”
“You got something?”
“Get the bag and I’ll be happy to show you.”
When Nathan arrived, Sept had picked up the small statue by placing her pen in the hollow section underneath. “Which one is it?” he asked.
“St. Barbara, who I believe is the sign of this Chango one.” Sept dropped it in the bag and studied the surface from all sides. “It looks clean, but we’ll take it back and see if we get anything off the surface.” Before she left, she went through the closet in the trailer and picked up the three pairs of shoes Damien had inside, but all of them had a tread, including the polished shoes under the uniform.
“If his fingerprints are on that, shouldn’t we put out the word before he picks up someone else?” Nathan asked.
“This is a sticky situation, and the only thing I’m sure of is that we won’t have a say in what’s reported to the media.” Sept closed the door and walked to the car parked down the street.
“Why a sticky situation?” Nathan asked.
“In times like this, you can’t report that you should be on the lookout for a killer cop without the overstressed public going over that much-talked-about deep end.”
Nathan slipped the bag into his jacket pocket and walked faster to keep up with her. “What happens then?”
“No one will ever admit it publicly or talk about what needs to happen, but Fritz will put out the word to find him, and some cop will solve the problem by either cuffing Damien if he’s asleep or putting a fifty-cent bullet into his head, which will save the taxpayers a million-dollar trial.”
Sept stopped in the middle of the street and faced him. “Don’t look so shocked, rookie,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “It’s like bringing him home before his home is so tarnished that it’ll take longer to fix than this city. The police department took enough body blows after this shit, and Fritz can’t afford any more.”
“Your father would agree to that?”
“Don’t ask anyone in the Savoie family to pull the trigger, but there aren’t enough of us to keep someone else from doing it. And Damien isn’t helping us by going underground.”
“Hey, Sept,” the officer behind the wheel of the police car called out to her. “Thought you’d be out searching for this guy.”
“No one has come or gone from there since the patrol has been out here?” Sept asked.
“Just the crime scene guy, but he went over the place and left. Haven’t seen anyone else, and at night we move closer. Your old man put a car out back too.”
“Did you talk to the guy who was here?”
“He waved before he went in there with his kit, but whatever he was there to do didn’t take long.”
Sept glanced back at the trailer, trying to gauge how far away it was from where the guy was parked. “Did you get a good look at him?”
“Yeah, I guess, but it’s not anyone I’ve seen before. He had on one of our NOPD jackets, so I let him do his job.”
“If anyone else shows up, whether they’re on police business or not, call me and give me a heads-up.” Sept scanned the street in both directions. Not one house was being renovated or rebuilt. The gray gunk that the water had painted every surface seemed to have coated the street and the life it once housed, and everything had died.
“You got it,” the officer said, and shook hands with her and Nathan. “Hopefully we’ll get some action soon, because this place is some kind of dead at night.”
“Count your blessings, then, and hope it stays that way.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Did you hear the disrespect in her voice?” Novice asked his reflection. He was so angry that the veins in his neck stood out in vivid detail.
“Why should the warrior show you any kind of respect?” Teacher asked. “So far you’ve touched nothing of hers except someone who walked around the same building she works in.”
“But I have.” Novice walked to the window and tapped on the glass pointing to the playhouse in the back. “I have someone so she won’t have to die alone.”
“So she’ll know right before she dies how brilliant you are?” Teacher laughed so long that Novice put his fist through the glass he’d been staring through. “That will only show her what a coward you are. You’re going to hide until you have her tied down and the knife at her gut. There’s no sport in that.”
