The Devil in Her Way

by Bill Loehfelm

  Whatever Bobby Scales had in mind, it wasn’t going to happen today.

  Marques grabbed her arm.

  “Stay here,” she said. “Do not move from this spot. Mr. Elvin is gonna come over to you. He’s gonna take you back inside.”

  Her eyes now locked on Scales, Maureen reached her hand behind her back.

  Scales did the same.

  Maureen broke free of Marques’s grip and started walking toward Scales, leaving Marques where he stood. Marques said something, but the words didn’t register.

  Scales leaned toward her. Maureen watched his feet. He bounced one foot. He was deciding, fight or flight. Maureen quickened her steps. Scales didn’t move. His hand stayed behind his back, his arm bent at the elbow and not moving. Don’t do it, she thought. Do not pull a weapon here. Not with all these people around. The musicians backed away from Scales, raising their hands and their instruments, opening space around him. The tourists had stopped in their tracks, stupid as spooked herd animals, looking around as if maybe this were another Jackson Square street exhibition.

  Maureen pulled her wallet from her back pocket. She flipped it open and raised her badge to Dodds as she strode past him. “Call nine-one-one. Now. Officer in need of assistance.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Take care of Marques. Don’t leave him alone.”

  She broke into a jog. She pointed one hand at Scales, raised her badge with the other. “NOPD. You, in the white T-shirt, stay where you are. Don’t you move.”

  She watched Scales lick his lips, turn on those bouncing toes, and bolt up the middle of Chartres Street toward Canal, people staggering out of his way as he ran.

  Maureen tucked her wallet through her belt and took off after him, half enraged that he’d run, half thrilled that he had, and fully relieved he hadn’t pulled a gun on her in the heart of the French Quarter.

  After one block she’d halved Scales’s head start. He looked back once over his shoulder. Maureen could see the shock in his face that she’d closed the gap.

  Scales had the build of an athlete, Maureen thought, but not the speed or the conditioning. She’d get him. The streets were narrow and tight. The Quarter, unlike her usual turf uptown, was laid out in a grid. It was full of people to get in the way. Scales had no alleys, no empty houses, no yards to cut through. The fences and walls were high, topped with spikes and broken glass. Not a lot of choices for him. Still, open bars and storefronts surrounded them. If he really had a gun on him, hostages and a standoff were a grim possibility.

  After only three blocks, Scales was slowing. Too many joints, too many menthols. Too much fast food. Arms and legs pumping, Maureen gained on him. Another block and she’d have him. And when she caught him? Then what? Young and strong, he was no Norman Wright, he was no Little E, no Arthur from the Garvey Apartments. She’d have to be quick and smart.

  She eyed the small of his back, targeting his tailbone. She’d nail it, full speed, with her left shoulder. That would send him flying, crashing to his face in the street. When she got her hands on him, when she got him down, she’d have to break something. Something important.

  Scales hit a hard left turn up a cross street. He ducked under a balcony, cutting the corner close, like a ballplayer hitting first base and turning for second. He was headed for Decatur, a bigger and busier street full of cars.

  Maureen, running at full speed and blind to the other side of the corner, cut it even closer, looking to gain ground. She wanted to get him before he got out into traffic.

  The blow came from nowhere, catching her flush like a flying two-by-four across the throat. Her feet flew forward out from under her. She went down hard, in a heap of arms and legs, the back of her head striking the brick building behind her as she crumpled. The air burst out of her. She was flat on her back. Tears flooded her eyes. She had to get right, get on the defensive. She waited to get hit again. Her nose was running. Coughing, spitting, she rolled over on her stomach. Cover up, she thought. Cover up. But no more blows came. She got her arms and legs under her and pushed up on her hands and knees, fighting for her breath.

  From this position, she realized, she could easily be shot in the head. She was presenting herself as a target to anyone behind her. She’d never see it, hear it, or feel it. Everything would just end. If it was gonna come, she thought, she’d be dead already.

  She felt hands on her, grabbing at her back and shoulders. She lashed out with her fists. She missed. The hands stayed on her. She blinked, shaking her head. She had to clear her vision. The hands dumped her on her sore backside, leaned her against the building. She saw a lot of blue blur. A big bald head.

  The sensations and images added up. The panic receded.

  She realized she was drooling.

  “Yo, Sixth District,” a deep voice said. “We meet again. Looks like the graduation party is over.”

  “Fuck,” Maureen said, her voice a rasp.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m not concussed,” Maureen said, coughing.

  “Fine with me,” the deep voice said. “I just don’t remember your name.”

  “Coughlin. Maureen. Pleased to meet you. Again.”

  The bald cop handed her a handkerchief. “Hardin. Franklin.”

  Maureen wiped her eyes, her nose. She put her hand to the back of her head. It came away smeared with sticky blood, but not a lot of it. Wouldn’t even need stitches. Her ponytail had cushioned that blow. She’d had more blood than that on her hands before. She wiped them on her jeans. She tried to get her feet under her and stand. Hardin held her down.

  “Easy, easy,” he said. “Try to relax. Everything’s done for now.”

  Maureen closed one eye, bringing Hardin, on one knee beside her, into focus. She sniffed, coughed some more. “Tell me you got that motherfucker.”

  Hardin shook his head. “No dice. We stopped for you when you got drilled. You went down hard.”

  He handed her a bottle of water. She rinsed her mouth and spat on the sidewalk. Swallowing hurt. She sat propped up against a boutique, a high-end shoe store. People had drifted out of the store and formed a loose cluster around her. Maureen felt for her badge, which she found on her belt. She searched the sidewalk for her shades. Hardin put them in her hand. She hung them on the front of her tank top.

  “I need to get up,” she said. “Everyone standing over me like this, it makes me … I’ll lean. I need to get off the ground.”

  “I got you,” Hardin said.

  He helped her up. He cleared away the bystanders, at least to the other side of the street.

  Maureen leaned against the building. Her breathing improved, but her heart, it beat like she was still sprinting. She patted her pockets, found her cigarettes. She pulled one out of the pack and put it in her mouth.

  “You need to hurry with that,” Hardin said, lighting it for her. “EMS will make you toss it.”

  “Call them back. Tell them not to bother. I’m fine.” Maureen took a deep drag. “There was a boy, a young boy about twelve, in the square. His name is Marques.”

  “No boy that I saw,” Hardin said, “and we came through the square. But I wasn’t looking, either. That guy Dodds who called it in sent us after you. We were rolling in from the other side of the square. We got out of the car and started running. Two of us from over on Bourbon responded, too, but your perp turned the other way. He had a car waiting on Decatur, we think. It wasn’t the guy you were chasing that took you out. He had a friend. You were ambushed.”

  “Did you get a look at him, the friend?”

  “Black kid, early twenties. We put the word out, but don’t get your hopes up. A lot of people match that description.”

  Maureen nodded, sucking on her cigarette. The hot smoke burned her throat, but her heartbeat responded. Her nerves mellowed. She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. That Hardin hadn’t seen Marques didn’t mean anything. He might’ve run right past him. Maureen hadn’t given Dodds any indication there was a connection bet
ween Scales and the boy.

  “The getaway car,” Maureen said, “was it a maroon Escalade?”

  “Indeed,” Hardin said. “Friends of yours?”

  “People of interest. A guy named Bobby Scales and another who goes by Shadow.”

  If what Hardin said was true about the ambush, Maureen thought, while she’d been staring at Scales, waiting to make her move, Shadow had been watching her. Of course he’d stayed out of sight. Maureen had seen him twice. She knew his face. He’d jogged ahead, hidden around the corner, and Scales had led her right to him. Maureen checked her memory of the chase. Not much use, that. She’d been so focused on Scales, there could’ve been clowns on unicycles a block or two ahead and she’d never have noticed. Maureen realized that during the chase, while she’d been impressed with her own speed, in truth Scales had let her hang close. He’d toyed with her. Like he and Shadow had in the Channel. Who could resist a free shot at a cop?

  She should have seen it coming, all of it.

  There was probably a third person at work in this, she thought, waiting in the car. Scales to snatch the boy, Shadow on the ground to look out and run interference, and a getaway driver. Pretty organized for a bunch of street thugs. She wasn’t dealing with three young boys from the playground anymore, Maureen realized. She’d graduated.

  “Can you send someone back to the Cabildo,” Maureen asked, “and see if that boy is there? That’s who Scales, the guy I was chasing, was after. That’s why he was in the square in the first place. That boy needs protection. Scales is into some dirt and Marques knows about it.”

  Hardin nodded. “My partner’s back at the unit, interviewing the band. If the kid’s there, we’ll hang on to him.” He keyed the mic at his shoulder and made the call. “You’re kind of fresh on the job to be doing plainclothes work.”

  Maureen drank more water, in small sips. “It’s my day off. I was in the square, having a coffee, minding my own business.”

  “So it was dumb luck,” Hardin said, “that you were there when this Scales character and his buddy show up to kidnap this boy.”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Hardin laughed. “Extraordinary. You finish field training yet?”

  “One more shift.”

  “Man, your FTO must love you.”

  “We get along,” Maureen said.

  Hardin’s radio crackled. He bent his head to listen. “No sign of this Marques kid,” he said, shaking his head. “Dodds is with my partner. He said the kid took off running soon as you turned your back. You know where to find him?”

  “I know one playground he likes,” Maureen said. “But I get the feeling that Scales knows about that, too. Other than that, I have no fucking idea.” She blew out a long sigh. She bent over, hands on her thighs. “Fuck me, I don’t feel so good.”

  Another message came over Hardin’s radio. Something about a shoplifting in another part of the Quarter. He walked a few steps away to listen to the rest of the call.

  Maureen looked around, noticing the gawkers across the street, where the other cops had herded them. Spectators, fucking always. She should get moving. Fuck EMS, who were taking their sweet time. She had to call Atkinson. And Preacher. If she was going to have any chance of controlling this story, she had to get to him before news of her escapades did. She owed him the courtesy of telling him to his face that she’d disobeyed his orders again. Preacher, she thought. Man, he was gonna flip the fuck out on her. She’d smooth it out. She’d give him the same story she’d given Hardin. Preacher wouldn’t believe it any more than Hardin did, but like Hardin, he’d pretend he believed. The tale was plausible enough to cover his ass over his trainee run amok. He’s her training officer, he could claim, not her babysitter. None of her shit would get on him. Thank the Lord no one had gotten hurt but her. So far.

  “She’s a cop?” she heard someone in the street say, the barker from the restaurant two doors down. “She’s police? Her? For real? Man, she ’bout got killed. Shouldn’t she be bigger?”

  Nice work, Coughlin, Maureen thought. You’re a regular fucking supercop.

  She touched her fingertips to her throat. She didn’t need a mirror to know she’d been bruised. And right when her cheek had almost healed. Was this gonna last her whole career? Her lower back was tightening up. She felt a new ache emerging at her tailbone from where she’d hit the sidewalk. That would bruise, too, blooming like a thundercloud.

  She pulled herself off the wall and walked over to Hardin, who was sending two late-arriving officers to the shoplifting on lower Decatur.

  “Listen, Hardin,” she said, “it’s about time for me to get out of here.”

  “You really ought to get checked out. You did hit your head.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve had worse.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I need to talk to my FTO about this fiasco,” Maureen said. “I don’t want him hearing about it from someone else first.”

  “It may be too late for that,” Hardin said. “A foot chase in the Quarter with an off-duty probie who gets knocked on her ass by the perps? It makes the wire pretty quick. And I get the feeling he’s gonna know it’s you whether or not he hears your name.”

  “I need to make the effort,” Maureen said. “Out of respect. Plus, I’m sure the story will be screwy by the time it gets to him.”

  “True enough,” Hardin said. “So what about the kid?”

  “I get the feeling he’s long gone,” Maureen said. “I think he lives in Central City. I’m sure he ran for home. But if you find him, could you hold on to him? Call Detective Sergeant Christine Atkinson in Homicide. That’s who needs him. I was helping out.”

  “’Cause you just happened to run into him.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Atkinson. I know her.” Hardin smiled. “The Spider. She knows what you’re up to? That you’re involved in her case?”

  “More or less,” Maureen said. “She’s got two cases, probably related, and Marques is a witness in both. Maybe. We’re not sure what he knows. This is why we need him.”

  “And Scales is a suspect in these killings.”

  “He’s a name that keeps coming up,” Maureen said. “And now he’s a face.”

  “He’s got a sheet?”

  “Not under that name,” Maureen said, “or not yet. But he’s getting one. The older guy that got shot on Washington the other night, and the young kid under the overpass in the CBD. Atkinson thinks he’s the main player in both.”

  “The one in the trunk of the car,” Hardin said, his face grim. “Scales did that?”

  “His first name was Michael.”

  “Give me three more minutes before you take off.”

  Hardin called over the remaining two officers. He pointed to the underside of the wraparound balcony on the corner. The shoe store had security cameras perched over its doorways, two on the Chartres Street side and another two on the cross-street side. Four cameras. Maureen’s heart leaped. Scales had run right past all of them. Shadow had stood right beneath one if not more of them. From the video they could make photos. Things were heating up for Scales and Shadow. The loose strands were starting to form a web.

  “First thing we’re gonna do after we talk here,” Hardin said, “is get a look at that video.” He pointed a finger at the other officers. “That’s what you two are doing this afternoon. You’re gonna get us everything this store has about what happened on this corner. Make it part of your canvass. Go over to Decatur, both directions from the corner. Get the security footage from the stores. We’re looking for plates on a maroon Escalade.”

  Hardin introduced the officers to Maureen, explained who she was. The officers listened, taking notes as Hardin talked. Maureen flashed back to her moments standing over the suspect on the balcony of the Garvey Apartments, when the other officers had surrounded her, waiting to see what she would do next. This was a different moment, a better moment.

  “Now tell these officers what you told me,�
�� Hardin said, “and give us descriptions of Scales and his friend. Let’s see what we can do about those two having a bad night.”

  30

  Walking back to her car though the Quarter, Maureen called Atkinson, leaving her a message about the chase and the searches for Scales and Shadow, and for Marques. Next, she called Preacher, stepping into a doorway to make the call. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying to ease her back. The effort didn’t do any good. She dreaded the morning, after her body had had a night’s sleep to tighten up.

  “I had a feeling I’d be hearing from you,” Preacher said. “You’ve been busy.”

  “I didn’t go home like you told me to.”

  “I heard.”

  “I didn’t do what I promised,” she said. “I’m sorry. I went down to the Quarter. A couple of things happened down here we need to talk about. I’m on my way to my car.” She paused, waiting for Preacher to speak. When he stayed quiet, Maureen said, “But I think we’ve gotten somewhere in the Scales case. Nothing illegal happened. Nobody got hurt, except for me. And I’m mostly okay.”

  “Sometimes, Coughlin,” Preacher said, “you’re like the daughter I never had. There’s a reason that I never had that daughter. There’s lots of reasons. Meet me, and we’ll throw around some ideas about your future.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m guessing you’re at the Mayan?”

  “I wish,” Preacher said. “I’m enjoying the hospitality of the Eighth District, over in the square sweating my ass off talking to the band director. But don’t you worry, you’ll be buying me a cigar tonight. Believe that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m out of the car, Coughlin. You know how I feel about that.” He hung up.

  Maureen closed her phone, took a deep breath, and doubled back into the Quarter.

  * * *

  Maureen found Preacher leaning against his cruiser, parked where the brass band had stood earlier. The musicians clustered against the fence, horns and cigarettes in hand, scowls on their faces. As she approached, Maureen could smell the foul cigar that Preacher was smoking. Elvin Dodds was talking to Preacher. Neither man looked happy to see her.