Answering the Call

by Ali Vali

  The killing was the ultimate high, and the process of carrying it out, knowing it was something that could be done over and over again, was intoxicating. It had been six years, and the body count including last night stood at 114. The thrill was better than sex or anything else the average person thought mind-blowing, and the only way to keep achieving the rush was to be smart. Mistakes like the two boys couldn’t be repeated or the game was up.

  Even with the errors, the day had been exhilarating. Five kills in one day wasn’t an opportunity that came very often, so it’d been fun. The memories would have to last for the next week as normality returned, and Hunter’s persona would be put away. The hot shower was steamy enough to wash away the night’s activities, but Hunter lingered afterward, enjoying the slightly uncomfortable temperature.

  “I’m alive,” Hunter said loudly, “and there can be only one warrior.”

  Alex Perlis had been inventive in his technique—that was true—but he’d erred by not killing Sept Savoie through any means possible. The chance of repeating that enormous mistake was nil, but there was still time for indulgence.

  “The game continues.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Yesterday and last night left us with plenty to follow up on,” Sept said as everyone crammed into the conference room at their precinct. The whiteboard was covered with a timeline of events that Nathan had written out for her, but the most important was the videos they needed to study. “John, we need some guys on St. Charles stopping at every business to see who has cameras pointed at the street from Canal down to Poydras.”

  “What time span?” John asked.

  “Start at noon and go until eight last night. We’re looking for any glimpse of that pretty black sedan from our scene.” Sept checked off the top item. “The rest of you head back to the house where Lee Cenac was killed and the park dump site in the light of day and see if we missed anything. After last night, we got a late start today, but you still have time.” The follow-up everyone had done had pushed their meeting back to late afternoon.

  “The canine unit is still out there, so we’ll let them finish and concentrate on the house,” Gustave said.

  “Good plan.” Sebastian stepped next to her. “It was a long day, so let’s try to wrap everything up and report back here in the morning. I don’t want anyone making any mistakes and overlooking anything because of exhaustion.”

  “Yes, sir, and Royce has a dedicated line if anyone needs to call anything in. Use it, and update everyone,” she said as Nathan wrote that as well. “Stay safe, everyone. What happened at the Hilton yesterday proves how dangerous this guy is.”

  Gustave, Alain, and their partners stuck around after everyone dispersed, wanting to see the video. “Which one do you want to start with?” Lourdes asked as her partner Bruce rolled out the biggest television they owned.

  “Let’s start from the moment the bomb went off until you pass the car leaving the lot,” she said, trying to narrow their scope. “If we see who comes out, walks next door, and steals the car, we’ll know who we’re looking for going back from there.”

  The average day on the screen ended at two fifteen in the afternoon, and the camera caught a partial shot of the wall coming down and the panic it set off in the people entering the building from that angle. Most of them turned and ran toward Poydras Street, but five minutes in, a calm-appearing person exited from the garage stairwell.

  “Right there,” Sept said. This had to be someone to watch.

  The person stopped and adjusted the hood of the sweatshirt and never lifted their head. If the garage camera had been tampered with, the rest seemed to be common knowledge to whoever this was, who did their best to obscure their face. The only thing they did show was an eerie calm as they walked from the door to the lot next door. The actual car theft wasn’t caught on camera, and the car’s heavily tinted windows blocked an image from the side. They’d have to find a straight-on picture to have any luck seeing actual facial features.

  “Great. It’s the Unabomber,” Nathan said because of the hoodie and large sunglasses.

  “Let’s watch the walk again,” she said, and Lourdes cued the disk.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Lourdes said.

  “What?” Sebastian and Gustave asked almost together.

  The suspect stopped as if assessing their surroundings and started toward the other lot. “You can hide plenty with clothes and aviators, but your walk is hard to change,” she said. “Especially if you’re nervous despite the calm because you’ve just blown a hole in a public building and killed a guy.”

  “What does that mean?” Alain said.

  “Not many men have that much sway in their hips. Well, not many women either, but that,” Lourdes said, pointing at the screen, “is not a man.”

  “Back it up again,” Gustave said.

  Sept watched but reached for her phone when it rang.

  “Sept?”

  “Yes,” she said, glancing at the screen but seeing only a number she didn’t recognize right off.

  “This is Sergeant Nobles. I’m at the park with the canine unit. Dispatch gave me your number,” the man said. “Took us most of the day to cover the whole thing, but we’re almost done. While we didn’t find more bodies, we did find something you might want to see.”

  “Make sure you leave someone behind when you’re done.”

  “I’m not about to get on the wrong side of John.”

  Sept watched the screen, and the only person who acted out of character in the chaos happening around them was the hooded person who never lifted their head. “La diabla,” she said softly, and the words sparked an understanding of why the kid had said it.

  “I’m sorry?” Nobles said.

  “Nothing, and we’ll be there in a few.” The group ran the loop again, and she was more convinced than before that it was a woman. “They found something at the park, so we’re going to check it out.”

  “You guys concentrate on finding more CCT footage, and give Brandi a call and ask if you can talk to the operator who set Lee up with her date.”

  “You really think this is a woman?” Alain’s partner Ronnie asked. “These crimes are fucked up enough without thinking a woman could do it.”

  “You don’t think women can be as evil and fucked up as men?” she asked, and Ronnie seemed close to squirming in his chair because of her tone. “Believe me, some women can be much more imaginative in thinking of ways to hurt you than a hundred men put together.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ronnie said.

  “This could also be another disciple of Teacher,” Gustave said.

  “True, so I’ll meet you guys back here later on. We’re going to stop by the lab to see what they’ve got from last night.”

  “See you later, then,” Gustave said. “We’ll take Brandi and the other side of the street from the lot where the car was stolen.”

  Nathan gladly drove, and halfway to the park, George called her. “Hey, kiddo. You want to stop by? We’ve got everything set up for you, and the note is as useful as the first one.”

  “No statement or confession complete with selfies and where to find this guy?” She laughed and rubbed her eyes. The fatigue was starting to really take its toll. “Is an hour okay?”

  “I’m due downtown for a review for the chief, so can you come now? I’ll be brief. Jernigan wants an update before the six o’clock news. That doesn’t give me much time.”

  “Okay,” she said and mouthed the word “lab” to Nathan. “See you in a few.” If George was in a rush, they’d still have time to make it to the park.

  They were in the elevator at the lab with their eyes closed, leaning against the back of the car, when she sighed. “Damn, I’m tired.”

  “Me too, so hopefully the rest of this won’t keep us out all night again,” Nathan said as the doors opened.

  “Yeah, the last couple of months didn’t exactly prepare us for this.” Jennifer was waiting for them, and
she actually appeared happy. “Did you win the lottery?”

  “Better. We got two prints off your scrap of paper.”

  George was sitting at his desk staring at his computer monitor. It appeared like he was running the prints as plenty of samples flashed by. “Anything yet?” she asked him.

  “Give it another hour or so, and we’ll see,” George said, standing and moving to the table the note was laid out on. “Here’s what was in the St. Norbert statue.”

  The emergency call went out before they reached the table, and Sept along with everyone with her cursed. Solving these crimes was going to be hard enough without this asshole piling on. Whatever it was, the call included EMS for officers down.

  “Where is this?” she asked the dispatcher, following Nathan to the stairwell, both of them forgetting their tiredness. George and his people were already gearing up to do their part after the scene was clear.

  “The park where the dogs are working,” the woman said.

  “Fuck,” Nathan said, and she totally agreed.

  “Our timing is good, but this asshole has a death wish going after cops like this. Once we figure out who it is, they won’t make it to a trial.”

  “Shit. I’ll pull the trigger myself,” Nathan said as he sped to the park.

  The news had to be crawling all over this, so she got her phone to call Keegan. The last call to the dispatcher had sucked up the rest of her battery, which meant she would have to wait. They weren’t that far from the park, and she was right as they passed the two news vans heading in the same direction.

  “Let’s see what this is,” she said as she looped her badge around her neck.

  Her father waved them closer, and she saw FBI mixed in with their personnel. “We got another bomb—maybe more than one,” Sebastian said. “The group we left behind is buried in there.” He pointed to the spot about five hundred yards from where the body had been found. “They started at the street and worked their way in.”

  One of the uniformed officers was sitting in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask on, a large gauze bandage wrapped around his forehead, and from a glance at his name tag it was the guy she’d talked to, Nobles. Sept sat next to him and placed her hand on his back. “What happened?”

  “I came out to call you and grab our camera,” he said, taking the mask away. “The canine unit was just leaving, and we found this weird altar kind of thing in what was like a horseshoe area.”

  “Horseshoe?” she asked.

  “It was like people backed up there to dump stuff and left only one way in. That’s all we’d found and thought you’d want to see it.”

  The altar was the bait, and bringing down the piles had to have taken more than one device. “Did you hear more than one explosion? And how many guys are we looking for?”

  “My partner and two others got trapped. My ears are still ringing, and I was close enough to get hit by some of this stuff, but it sounded like more than one.”

  The EMT came around and placed the mask back on his face.

  “Thanks. We’ll talk again,” she said. She followed her father to the spot and saw the heavy equipment they’d brought in. “We were here this morning, so why not blow it then? They had plenty more targets.”

  “Maybe this time you weren’t the target,” Sebastian said as one of the officers handed him a bullhorn. She knew he had to check before sending in equipment that could potentially finish the job the bomber had started.

  “Our guy seems to be targeting cops, then. If not, why put the bombs here at all?”

  “That could be, but the garage had nothing to do with police personnel. Let’s get through this first, and we’ll speculate later.”

  “Are the dogs still in there with them?” she asked, knowing how much these guys loved the animals they worked with.

  “They’d just unleashed them to get them back in the car, so they were ahead of the officers and got clear,” Sebastian said, holding up the device in his hand. “Quiet,” he yelled, the bullhorn making his command heard over the din. “Listen.”

  She walked closer to the large pile. The area was quiet, and John called the names of the guys who were missing. Every cop available was there, along with numerous volunteers, and they all seemed to be straining to hear any sound to prove the officers were alive. John called out again, and Sept heard a faint sound that could’ve come from anywhere in the area.

  “Send the dogs back in, but protect their feet,” Sebastian said, and the entire canine unit went to work. “If they were at the bottom, we would’ve never heard them.”

  “Nathan, give me your phone, please,” Sept said half an hour later. The dogs had found one guy and were still working to find the other two. She tried Keegan, knowing she was at work now.

  Keegan’s phone rang but went to voice mail. “Call me so you won’t worry. I’m okay, so don’t listen to the news until you talk to me.” She handed it back to Nathan as she walked back to the front line. “Let me know if she calls back.”

  “Found one,” someone yelled, and two guys started digging. It took close to twenty minutes, but they pulled the officer out alive and bruised but breathing and talking. Two hours later the two others had come out as well, but in worse condition. All four of them were taken to the hospital.

  “Give them some time before you start questioning them,” Sebastian said as he left for the hospital as well. “Take some time yourself, and we’ll talk before you head to any more crime scenes. Today we were lucky, but I’m not going to take the chance with anyone else by sending you in blind.”

  “Thanks, Dad, but we’ll stick around.”

  “Go home for the night. That’s an order. Get some sleep, and then get back to work. Whoever this is will keep doing it until we catch them, and you aren’t going to do that running on fumes.”

  “Okay, but have one of the boys talk to these guys when they can. I want to see what they found in there and if their story matches the story of the survivor.”

  Sebastian simply stared at her, but she didn’t look away. “You think Nobles has something to do with this?”

  “Not necessarily, but I’m not going to skip asking questions because he’s one of us. Think about what happened before. Never again.” Right as she finished, another bomb went off.

  * * *

  Keegan walked out of her office to get the staff ready for the dinner rush. It had been hours since she’d heard from Sept, but she was trying her best not to worry a lot. From the constant news coverage about what had happened the night before and the body count that had come of it, keeping happy thoughts had been a chore.

  “Ms. Blanchard,” she heard as the kitchen staff started cleaning their stations before their last few quiet moments abruptly ended and the orders poured in. When she turned to the swinging doors that led to the main dining room, she found Nicole Voles. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Very few, Ms. Voles,” she said, trying not to bleed too much sarcasm into her voice. “I’m not going to talk to you about Sept or the case that started with Donovan.”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in what’s happening now. Some exciting things are unfolding in the city, and the news hasn’t been close to accurate in their coverage.”

  “And you want me to fill in the blanks? You did look around out there,” she said, pointing to her kitchen. “I’m a chef. Police work and how the news covers it isn’t in my purview.”

  “No, but you and Sept Savoie are close, aren’t you?” Nicole’s question sounded teasing, and Keegan thought it was meant to lower her defenses.

  “Even if that’s true, whatever Sept says to me is none of your business, Ms. Voles.”

  “So you haven’t heard?” Nicole’s demeanor changed, and she seemed genuine in her concern, but Keegan wasn’t falling for that.

  “Heard what?” The back of her neck and head grew eerily cold, as if someone had aimed a freezing vent at her.

  “There was another set of explosions, and some police office
rs were caught in the blast. It was just on the news.” Nicole came closer, and her hand on Keegan’s shoulder broke her out of the stillness the fear had trapped her in. “Have you heard from Sept?”

  She pushed by Nicole and grabbed her phone. Her call went immediately to voice mail, and the pain in her chest was real and acute. She then listened to Sept’s message not to worry coming from Nathan’s phone, and she called again but got the same result. “No, no, no,” she said, not knowing what to do.

  “Hey,” Nicole said, putting her arms around her and gently holding her. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  Keegan glanced up and desperately wanted to believe that, even though Nicole was saying the words. It was a bad dream, and then Nicole lowered her head and kissed her. The move paralyzed her, but she finally put her hands on Nicole’s chest and pushed her away but didn’t break their embrace. That’s when she heard the sharp intake of breath and turned to see Sept standing in the door with a totally shocked expression. Then she was gone.

  “Wait,” she yelled and had to force Nicole to release her by prying her arms off so she could go after Sept. When she made it out the door, all she found was Mike in the fenced yard, which meant Sept had walked over with him. She ran to the street and didn’t see any sign of her, but the abrupt departure made her angry and concerned about what Sept thought she’d walked in on.

  “When I find you, I’m going to give you a memorable lecture before I show you how happy I am you’re okay.” In reality, if one of them was the target for women to pursue, it wasn’t her. Sept was the whole sexy package, but her reaction showed she might be a little scared that Keegan wouldn’t be happy with just her.

  “Keegan, everything okay?” Nicole asked.

  “Ms. Voles, I’m sure you’re really good at your job, but that was inappropriate. I want you to leave with the understanding you’re no longer welcome here,” she said, putting her hand up to keep Nicole from coming closer.