by Polly Iyer
“What kind of person would I be if I didn’t help find a friend’s killer?”
Chapter Three
Here’s Looking at You, Kid
Barricades and crime scene tape cordoned off Moran’s street. The cop guarding the area recognized Lucier and let him pass. A sad mood descended on Diana. She and Keys had enjoyed an easy relationship. They’d become friends, gone out for drinks together in spite of her father’s evil eye. The same evil eye he’d leveled at Lucier in the beginning. Work for me and break the law, but don’t go near my daughter.
Galen understood Keys wasn’t interested in her sexually, and so did she. He never talked about his private life; she never asked. Wherever they went, he played the piano, and people applauded; he was that good. Now he was dead.
Lucier parked in front of a brightly painted shotgun-style house. “This is the Bywater section of New Orleans. Even though Bywater is close to the river and part of the Ninth Ward, it escaped much of Katrina’s flooding because of its higher elevation. The Lower Ninth Ward wasn’t so lucky.”
“Half the houses on the street look refurbished,” she said. “The other half don’t. Keys’s house is impeccable. Look at the flowers he planted. He was a dapper guy, always dressed in the latest fashion with his own inimitable flair.”
“Looks like he created his house in the same way. Come on.”
They got out of the car. Gawkers milled around the safe zone, straining to get a closer view of what was going on inside the house. A few people recognized Diana and called her name. Then a few more, until a frenzy developed.
“Gotta do this,” she said to Lucier as she turned and waved.
“I’m beginning to think I’m worse than your father,” Lucier said. “Instead of finding missing persons, I’m making you find murderers.”
“No one’s making me do anything. I want to find this person.”
Beecher nodded to Diana when they got to the front door. “Perfect timing. Crime scene techs are ready to pack it in. Whoever did this wiped the place clean. Desk’s been ransacked though. Computer hard drive’s smashed. They’re taking the pieces to Headquarters to see if one of our techs can decipher something we can track.
“Killers always leave something behind,” Lucier said. “If this one did, our boys’ll find it.”
“Damn shame,” Beecher said, pulling out his notebook. “Donal Harwood, stage name Keys Moran. Played at Kitty’s Kabaret in the quarter. The wife and I have gone to hear him a number of times. Sings all those Gershwin era songs, along with some jazz favorites. Other New Orleans musicians would sit in, singers hopped onstage, and the place would rock. He had a big gay following, gay himself. He put on a terrific show. The man could tickle those ivories.”
“He was talented,” Diana mused.
Lucier glanced at Diana. “In more ways than one.”
“Did you ever watch his show, Ernie?” Beecher asked.
“I know Kitty and her man, been to Kitty’s Kabaret for lunch but not for the entertainment. Now I’m sorry I missed Moran’s act.”
“Won’t be the same over there without Keys,” Charlie Cothran, chief medical examiner for Orleans Parish, said, joining them at the door.
“What’cha’ got, Doc?” Lucier asked.
Cothran tipped an imaginary hat to Diana. “One bullet to the midsection, close range, forty caliber. A second to the heart for good measure, through a pillow. I’m assuming that one killed him. I’ll know for sure when I get him on the table.”
“Time of death?”
“He’s still in partial rigor,” Cothran said. “My educated guess, taking into account the heat in the room, is that he died between thirty and thirty-six hours ago.”
“He was scheduled to go on at Miss Kitty’s last night around ten,” Beecher said. “So he bought the farm between his last performance and his scheduled time last night.”
“What time did he get off?”
“Around two. Miss Kitty said she phoned last night around eleven when he didn’t show up, but no one answered and no one’s found Moran’s phone. Techs took the pieces of the hard drive, along with the hammer that did the job.”
“Wonder what the killer thought was on it,” Lucier said to no one in particular.
“I’ll be going,” Cothran said. “You’ll have my report as soon as I can get to him. Be nice if you can find the bastard who did this, Ms. Racine.”
That familiar feeling of unrealistic expectations hit Diana, and she was a twelve-year-old child all over again. “I’ve never been that good, Dr. Cothran. I’m here because Keys was my friend. This is personal.”
“Well, good luck, ma’am. Later, Lieutenant.”
“Body’s in the bedroom,” Beecher said.
Lucier and Diana followed Beecher. Lucier scanned the room. “A lover, you think?”
Beecher nodded. “If so, a smart one. He wiped down the vacuum cleaner and every other surface in the place. Our guys vacuumed and took the basket. If anything’s left, they’ll find it.”
Diana swallowed hard when she saw the lifeless face of the man she knew as Donny Harwood on the floor. She didn’t look at Lucier. “My parents tried to keep me from seeing scenes like this, for good reason, but I saw them anyway.” She stared long and hard, her remembrances going back to the elegant charmer with whom she’d spent countless days. “He was ten years older and called me kid.” She wanted to smile until she eased back to the present.
“You okay?” Lucier asked.
Her eyes steadied on Moran. “Why would anyone want to kill him?”
“Who knows?” Lucier said. “Could be any of a thousand reasons ― lovers’ quarrel, money, or a random murder.”
Diana noted the surroundings. “Keys was one of the neatest people I’ve ever known. Meticulous. He hadn’t changed.”
“The killer cleaned up,” Beecher said. “No telling what it looked like before.”
“Neat,” Diana said. “I’d bet my last dollar.”
Lucier put his arm around her waist. “Let’s get this over with.”
Who killed you, Donny Harwood? Tell me. Show me. She knelt beside the body, put her hand on the dead man’s forehead, and scrunched her eyes closed.
Teetering between two worlds, she vacillated from one to the other until the present disappeared. Her heart raced. Galloping hooves pounded in her ears. She embraced the familiar darkness and shook off the noise to describe the static image as it appeared in her vision.
“A thin, darkish man, Latino maybe, tied to a chair. He’s naked. There’s … there’s a tattoo on his upper arm, a chain fastened with a padlock.” Her breath quickened, she wobbled. “Oh God, a black hole in his forehead.”
Diana gasped, and she jerked back, yanking her hand away from the dead man’s head. Lucier clasped her arm and helped her up.
“Enough,” he said and pulled her close while she shivered in his arms.
The picture of the man faded when she opened her eyes.
“You going to faint?”
“No.”
“Come on. Let’s get out of this room.” He guided her to the living room and sat her down. “I assume the description wasn’t Moran.”
“No. It wasn’t Keys.” Diana closed her eyes, reluctant to resurrect the image again but aware of how important it was to translate what she saw. She dug into her memory until the scene materialized. “This man was young, with light-colored eyes. Pale green or blue. No, silver. They were silver.”
“Silver?”
She nodded. “I’ve never seen anything quite like them except in scary movies.”
“Anything else?”
She searched the image for something more and shook her head. “I was seeing through Keys’s eyes. Something he saw.”
“Whatever you saw must have happened in another location, and Moran saw it. If the murder happened here, the techs would have found something.”
“Ernie, Keys couldn’t kill anyone. He wouldn’t harm a fly. That wasn’t in his nature.”
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“I’m sorry, sweetheart. We’ll do our best to find out who killed him.”
Lucier signaled the two men standing outside, and they rolled in the gurney to take the body to the morgue. He tucked his arm around Diana’s waist and led her outside. “I’m hungry. We’ll talk over lunch.”
She felt Lucier’s comfort and strength, breathed in the fresh air, but nothing erased the vision that somehow caused the death of her friend.
“One other thing. The image I saw looked like a photograph.”
Chapter Four
Putting the Wheels in Motion
After lunch, Lucier dropped Diana at her house and returned to the district to gather his team. “Willy, the tattoo must be gang-related, but I don’t recognize the chain and padlock, do you?”
“No, but I’ll check with Mendez. If a new gang’s on the streets, he’ll know.”
“Good. Run the victim’s stats. Diana said her first impression was Hispanic, but he might be multiracial or Middle-Eastern. Leave the ethnicity open.”
“The community will keep silent if he’s illegal, or even if he’s legal.”
“Do the best you can. Concentrate on the eye color and the tattoo. Those set him apart.”
“I’m on it,” Cash said.
“Check out Moran’s friends, Sam. His lovers too. Mickey, canvass Moran’s neighborhood. Did anyone hear or see something that night or notice a regular visitor or familiar car? Diana and I will visit Kitty’s Kabaret tonight. Someone there might know if Moran had a special person in his life.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll update the captain.”
“On our way,” Beecher said, answering for both of them.
Lucier knocked on Captain Jack Craven’s door. “Got a minute, Captain?”
“Come in, Ernie,” Craven said. “I was going to call you.”
“I wanted to fill you in on the Moran shooting.”
“Good. Superintendent Zamora stressed he wanted you on lead.”
“He did?”
“Said you were the best man for the job. Have a seat.”
Lucier hid his pleasure at the compliment while he explained the status of the investigation to his boss.
“Zamora said to keep Moran’s involvement with the NOPD out of the case file. We’d recently asked him to investigate a leak in the department. Not exactly illegal, but Zamora wouldn’t want to defend the action in court. We don’t need Moran’s work for us to catch the interest of the media. Zamora said if he finds out who the leaker is, he’d better have a nest egg, because he’ll be out of a job. Jake Griffin gets the news first, but he swears he doesn’t know who’s feeding him the stories.”
“I don’t believe him for a minute. He gives newsmen a bad name. Diana’s been his target from day one.”
“Too bad that psycho after your girlfriend last year didn’t knock him off, but if you mention I said that, I’ll deny it.”
Craven slammed his fist on his desk.
The leaks were getting to him, Lucier thought.
“I understand Moran was in Ms. Racine’s employ for a few years,” Craven said when he calmed.
Though it shouldn’t have, Craven’s disclosure about Moran’s employment surprised Lucier. How extensively had the captain checked Diana’s former business? “He was, for five years. Jason Connors took over the position after Moran decided to settle down here.”
“Yes, I know.”
Of course. What else does he know?
Craven guffawed. “You should see the look on your face. Come on, Ernie. I know Ms. Racine is on the level, but I’ve also seen her act. Oh, she was clever in the way she zeroed in on an audience participant. She knew exactly who to choose. Maybe it’s the suspicious nature of a cop, I don’t know, but I saw through the acting. Could be you were too blinded by her charisma to notice.”
“You’re probably right. By the time I saw her act for the first time, I was smitten.”
“If I thought she used her subjects’ information to cheat them in any way, I would have hauled her in, but she never did. Nor did she humiliate anyone.”
“No, they seemed to enjoy her exposing their deep, dark secrets.”
“Audience participants were free to refuse her reading,” Craven said. “Once they gave their consent, they became entertainment and fair game. I followed up on some of her local subjects. No one ever had a break-in or theft, so she wasn’t setting them up.”
“She didn’t need Moran or Connors,” Lucier said. “She did it because of ―”
“Her father,” Craven interrupted. “Slick little man, putting his young daughter through all that. Whatever she did, I’m sure it was out of self-preservation.”
“How did you get a list of her audience participants?”
“Old man Racine got them to sign a release after the show to use their names in promos. The kind of thing where a person says no one else knew what Diana Racine mentioned in her reading. Your girlfriend covered all her bases, but the charge of fraud followed her, no matter what the promos said.”
“She survived.”
“So, did she have one of her … visions?”
The way Craven said the word sounded condescending, but Lucier wasn’t about to call him out. Instead, he recounted the morning’s events. “We’re checking on the neighbors, gangs, and everything else we can think of. I plan to take Diana to Kitty’s Kabaret tonight. She might touch someone and have one of her, you know, visions.”
“Sorry if that sounded patronizing, but I still find it weird that she can do that.”
“Took me awhile too.
“Hell, if I were guilty of anything, I’d never touch her. No one with a secret wants to touch her. You’re about the only person I know who doesn’t have a dark corner in your life. Who else could make love to her?”
Lucier didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He was stunned to find the captain thought about Diana that way. Did everyone? Had Craven forgotten when my wife and kids were killed? How dark did life have to be?
The shock on his face must have been obvious because Craven let out a long sigh and said, “Damn. Sorry again, Ernie. That was insensitive. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Do people talk like that behind my back?”
“No, and that’s the truth. That bunch of hooey was all mine. I need to learn to filter my thoughts before I speak.”
“She doesn’t get visions every time she touches someone. She once said she’d go bonkers if that happened. She has to concentrate, find a conduit, an article of clothing or something personal that connects to the other person. In her private readings she takes the sitter’s hands, but that person is more open because she wants the reading. A person can purposely pass a thought to her, like what happened last year. She’s rarely wrong.”
“If I remember correctly,” Craven said, “she was wrong about the last case you two worked on.”
“Only partly wrong.” Lucier didn’t know where to go with this conversation other than, “You okayed her involvement in this murder, Captain. Do you want her off the case now?”
“Did you see the picture of you two going into Moran’s house in the online newspaper? Smartphones will be either the best thing that ever happened to law enforcement or the worst.” He turned his computer monitor so Lucier could see.
A smiling Diana acknowledged the crowd with Lucier standing at her side like a clueless bodyguard. “Jeez. The crowd recognized her. What was she supposed to do, stiff them?”
“No, but wherever she goes, nothing’s secret.”
“If she gives a crowd the cold shoulder, the papers will rip her apart. Snotty bitch psychic, they’d say. If she waves and smiles, she’s after publicity. For what, I don’t know. She doesn’t perform anymore. Damned if she does; damned if she doesn’t.”
“Just try to keep a low profile, okay?”
“I hate to say this, but that’s hard when Diana’s around. Maybe the CSU will come up with something, but till now, she’s given us the only lead we have.”
Lucier shrugged. What could he say?
“Do your best and keep me informed. Oh, and have fun at Kitty’s Kabaret tonight. Watch out for those reporters.”
“First I’ll visit the tech department and talk to Rudy Hodge. See if he could salvage anything from Moran’s computer that might shed light on his murder.”
Craven twisted his mouth in contemplation. “Good idea.”
Lucier strode toward the door, turned back. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“No, I’d better not tell you. It was something Diana said the first time she shook hands with you.” He waved off. “Forget I said anything.” He slipped out the door.
“Wait, Lieutenant. Come back here.” Unmistakable panic shaded Craven’s voice.
Lucier kept walking, silently laughing. Now he understood what Diana meant when she said everyone has secrets. Hmm, wonder what Captain Craven is keeping to himself. Finally, Lucier was far enough away from his boss’s office to laugh out loud.
Chapter Five
The Scent of Blood
Rudy Hodge sat in front of two computer screens in his own cubicle, down the row from two other techs. His expertise targeted wiretapping, surveillance, and computers. Most of his cases involved harvesting digital evidence for use in court. He’d been in the department the longest, and the boss said he considered him the best.
Extracting anything from a smashed hard drive proved difficult but doable in some cases. In this particular case, Hodge didn’t want to extract anything from the component sitting in front of him. He wanted to make sure not even an experienced FBI forensic computer tech could recover data, though this murder wouldn’t warrant any more technical scrutiny than what he’d do. That entailed degaussing to erase anything remaining on Moran’s computer. His email was another matter entirely.
