Cajun Fire

by Rick Murcer

  She then bent over and kissed Manny on the cheek. “I’m going to take Dean out for a walk so we can talk. I’ll be back in a while so we can get in some more practice time.”

  She left the deck and headed for the front of the house via the side yard. Sampson, Manny’s huge black Lab, who had been sleeping in the shade, got up and walked beside her, touching her leg with every step until they both disappeared around the corner. Manny knew the dog sensed she needed him to walk with her and was willing to do what he could to help her lose the pain. People would do well to be like dogs, at least in that area.

  Smart boy.

  Looking at Chloe, he thought about Jen and Ian, and how he’d been looking forward to being a dad, a stay-at-home dad, before he went into something else. Something far calmer and less dangerous, like teaching or writing. Maybe cut that CD he’d always wanted to make.

  Chasing down terrorists, as noble as that sounded to his Guardian of the Universe persona, wasn’t what he had in mind. It wasn’t even in the top one hundred choices of things to do. Not for him. Not for Chloe and especially not for Jen and Ian.

  Josh was sincere. Braxton was aboard. Sophie and Alex had said yes. Somehow—he wasn’t sure quite how it worked yet—but he suspected Barb was involved as well. That was a fine team.

  Running a million scenarios through his mind, he focused on the pros and cons, and there were plenty of them. And part of him wanted to help . . . but, in the end, a man has to take care of his family.

  “I’m sorry, but no. I’m out. Getting into the heads of psychopaths is one thing, but psychopath terrorists isn’t my idea of fun. I want to have a normal family life. As much as possible at least.”

  Braxton began to speak, but Chloe raised her hand. She then turned toward her husband.

  “Manny. I love that you want to stay home with us. I really do. But you can do so much to make this world a better place.”

  Her green eyes bore into his very soul, reading his every thought. Damn, he loved this woman. But she was making him uneasy.

  “Let someone else do it, Chloe. Belle Simmons has talent. She’d do a fine job.”

  “True, but it’s more complicated than that.”

  He frowned. “How so?”

  Then his pulse quickened as he guessed the answer.

  She took his hand, her eyes as alive as he could ever recall.

  “Because, darlin’, I’m already on the team.”

  CHAPTER-4

  “I’m tired of this shit. Get me?” she said.

  “Yeah well, who isn’t? You ain’t the Lone Ranger when it comes to this assignment.”

  Detective Amy Brooks shook her head, absently wishing she would have cut her dark hair shorter last week. Sometimes, like now, it stuck to her forehead and face in the sweltering, humid weather offered by the fine state of Louisiana.

  Her husband said she looked better, “hotter,” with her hair a little longer. That was nice, and what girl didn’t want to hear that from her husband? Besides, it had been a small concession to make in light of the other problems they were having. It was one less thing to build on a budding tension in their marriage.

  No one had told her how hard it was to keep a six-year marriage together, especially for cops. Cops who married ex-cons.

  “I get that Phil,” she said. “But this is the third one this week.”

  Phillip Fuqua, her three-year partner with the New Orleans Police Department, was a smallish man with graying, wavy hair and deep-brown eyes that accented his thin face. The deep voice that was all his didn’t speak to his size and, at times, still made her smile at its dichotomy to his physical appearance.

  “Hey, this is part of what we signed up for, you know that, right?” he answered, just a tinge of his Southern accent noticeable.

  “Of course, I do. We all do. But knocking on a family’s door to tell them that their kid is down in the morgue waiting to be identified wasn’t supposed to happen this often.”

  Phil got out of the passenger side of the car and waited for Amy as she exited and walked over to his side of the unmarked Ford sedan. They leaned against the door beside one another.

  “I know you saw a thing or two in Detroit that must have been worse than this. You told me about a few of them,” he said.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  The young man’s face emerged in her mind’s eye, covered in blood and staring into a world she could only imagine existed, just after he’d died begging her to help him. Another damnable image contributing to her unceasing cycle of insomnia.

  “The problem is that this boy was still breathing when we got there, and we couldn’t do a damn thing to help him,” she said quietly.

  Phil stared at his well-polished shoes, adjusted his checkered tie, and then stood straight, still looking down as he spoke to her.

  “I’m hearin’ you. But that saying about ‘the past is the past’ applies here. We just need to do our job, okay?”

  She could tell he didn’t like this anymore than she did, but he was right.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said.

  They walked up to the rundown duplex on Dumaine Street and stepped up on the cement stoop together. She knocked on the door. After a few seconds, an older black woman dressed in a worn, flowered smock answered the door, a toddler cradled in her left arm. She glanced at Phil, then rested her expectant gaze on Amy.

  “What did dat boy do dis time?” she asked in a tired voice.

  “Is this the home of Ronald Parrish?”

  “It is. I asked y’all a question.”

  “Ma’am, he didn’t do anything. We’re here to ask you to come with us.”

  “Do what? Why?”

  Truth dawned on her face as she shifted the child to her other arm.

  People responded in dozens of ways to the news of a loved one’s death. Shock. Anger. Disbelief, and even expectancy, like Amy was seeing now.

  “Oh God in Heaven. He’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “There was a young man found near Canal early this morning and—”

  “Y’all leave me alone.”

  The door slammed, leaving both of them staring at dirty, red wood.

  Amy knocked three more times with no response. Her frustration welled up from somewhere deep. She just wanted to be done with this, to get on with the day. To be a damn detective instead of part of a death-notice squad.

  She raised her fist one more time. Phil grabbed it.

  “C’mon, Amy. We did our job. We’ve seen this here thing before. She’ll call the morgue when she’s ready,” he said, more of his Creole upbringing seeping into his words.

  “Okay. But I’m driving.”

  After placing her card and the number to the New Orleans Coroner’s Office inside the doorjamb, she and Phil moved back to the car.

  Once back in the vehicle, she started the engine, turned up the air conditioner, then reached for the gearshift. She stopped and then slammed the steering wheel three times.

  “Just once I’d like someone to explain, with some kind of rational logic, why these young people are offing each other like this. Just once.”

  Then she shifted into gear, heading south toward I-10.

  They drove in silence for a time, which Amy appreciated. He understood her question was rhetorical, but it didn’t mean she didn’t want an answer, even if it would never make sense completely.

  She stopped for the traffic light and sighed.

  “Are you better? I thought those green eyes were going to burst out your head,” said Phil.

  “Not really, but that helped. And my eyes aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Good. We’ve got—”

  Her cell phone rang, interrupting Phil.

  She glanced at the screen mounted on her dash and frowned, sharing that frown with Phil with a quick side glance.

  “What the hell does she want?”

  “Who?”

  “The captain.”

  Phil sh
rugged. “Maybe she wants to take you out for gumbo and biscuits being that y’all are so tight and everything,” he deadpanned.

  “Smartass. That woman we left probably just called to complain about something we did or didn’t do.”

  “Answer it, and we’ll find out.”

  Her stomach clenched ever so slightly at the prospect of speaking with Captain Rebecca Ellis. Just what she needed after leaving that house.

  The gray-haired witch had a reputation for being a hard-ass, but that statement only broke the surface. Amy had never met a more miserable, angry woman who needed a man, at least for a night, than the captain.

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  She fingered the Bluetooth button on her steering wheel.

  “Detective Brooks.”

  “About damn time, Brooks. Don’t let that phone ring when I’m calling you; answer it.”

  “Yes, Captain. What can I do for you?”

  “You can’t do shit for me, Brooks. It’s what I can, or have, to do for you.”

  Amy’s angst rose. “Are you going to suspend me for that incident in the Quarter? I was just doing my job. That asshole grabbed my ass and . . .”

  “Stop, Brooks. It ain’t about your grab-ass complaint or anything to do with your average performance as a detective. Although I’d bust your ass on principle if there was anyone better to do your job.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement, Captain. Why are you calling?”

  “I’ll ask the questions.”

  “Okay, Captain. Then ask them. I’ve got work to do.”

  There was brief silence, and when Captain Ellis spoke again, much of the harshness had left her demeanor.

  “Brooks, when was the last time you talked to your husband?”

  Amy’s mind raced as her instincts banged into high gear.

  “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I talked to him yesterday afternoon. He had a double-shift all-nighter to work at the club where he bounces. I’m going to ask again. Why?”

  She swore she heard Ellis exhale. “You know about the homicides last night in the warehouse on the south side?”

  Shit. Where is this going?

  “Of course. It was a drug or gang thing, right?”

  “We’re not sure. It might have been much more.”

  “What does that have to do with my Daryl?” Amy asked.

  “That’s a great question that you can help me to answer.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  But you are getting it, aren’t you?

  “Damn, Detective. I’m trying to be tactful here, but you ain’t making it easy.”

  “Suppose you explain what I’m not getting,” she said softly.

  The light turned green. Amy ignored it, fighting to catch her breath. The wait for Captain Ellis’s answer seemed like an eternity.

  “Okay. That works for me. I need you to come in and explain to me why we found your husband’s body in that warehouse.”

  CHAPTER-5

  Haley Rose Franson watched her daughter lean in closer to her husband, closer than she probably realized.

  Love was most certainly blind, and Chloe was deeply in love. Gone, as they say. She had found the kind of love that would take her to hell and back if it became necessary.

  Despite her own bout with melancholy over the last few weeks, Haley Rose smiled. She understood how that heart condition worked, for she’d felt it herself once upon a time. There was nothing like it.

  Folding her arms over her ample chest, she wondered if the world would be a better place if everyone could share in that feeling, could know that deep pool of passion.

  Heartbreak would come to some, but the chance to love and be loved so true remained pure, powerful, and, in the end, incorruptible. Chloe had found that true love, and not only in Manny, but in her son Ian.

  Haley Rose understood that as well. Ian had become the most important man in her life, at least for now.

  She focused on her daughter and son-in-law as the conversation among the seven people seated on the wooden deck intensified.

  A moment later, Chloe touched Manny’s hand and then said something that made Manny’s handsome face go from calm to quizzical.

  He wasn’t angry or shocked, as if he’d already processed those emotions, but went right to why. She’d seen a few people like him in her fifty-six years, especially guests at the inn in Galway, but none who could process information and then read someone like a fortune-teller in a gypsy circus as Manny did.

  Leaning closer to Chloe, he appeared to ask her a question, those blue eyes of his looking deep into her soul, it seemed to Haley Rose. Manny Williams could be unnerving at times. Now was one of those occasions.

  If he really put his mind to it, he could almost feel someone’s thoughts. Alex had always told Manny that his ability to do that came from a subconscious ability to notice detail—nothing more. She wasn’t so sure.

  Her stomach twisted at the thought of not being able to hide her deepest thoughts from him. She hadn’t minded at first; her life and intentions had mostly been an open book. But lately . . . lately her thoughts needed to be hers alone.

  Movement on the deck brought her out of her own world and into the present.

  Manny had risen from his chair, kissed Chloe, then Sophie, nodded to Josh and the others, then turned on his heels and walked directly toward the house, toward Haley Rose. She seemed to be the intense object of his attention.

  But why her? Did he know something? Had he seen her secret place? Or was she just paranoid?

  Before she could think another anxious thought, the sliding glass door opened, the late spring air and Manny entering at the same time.

  He moved close beside her, watching her. She held her ground, fighting the urge to step back from him.

  No doubt he noticed her almost-flinch, of course, and responded by standing still, glancing at her, then his hands, then back to her. They sized each other up a moment longer, then he gave her a small taste of that magical smile.

  Her heart was moved by that expression. It caused her uncertainty to depart as quickly as it had come. How could anyone fear a man with his nature, except maybe those on the wrong end of his abject sense of justice? She’d seen that up close regarding Doctor Fredrick Argyle. Yet this time it wasn’t about profiling another person. Somehow she knew this moment wasn’t about her, but about him. Manny Williams wanted to talk to her.

  Maybe Chloe came by some of that profiling thing naturally.

  “Haley Rose. Do you have a minute to talk?”

  “Aye, I do. Ya look like ya need one, man.”

  “Is it that obvious?” he asked, tilting his head.

  “Yeah, even to an old woman like myself. At least as obvious as ya get.”

  “Old woman, huh? I think you’ve got a few years before we go the old-woman route.”

  “Ahh. As kind as ever, you are.”

  Manny leaned against the inside wall. “I need some advice.”

  “If this is about this new unit Chloe told me about, I don’t know what wisdom I could impart to ya, lad, but I’ll try.”

  “It is, and you’ll do just fine,” he said, sighing. “All of my adult life I’ve tried to do the right thing. To be a good husband. To be a good father. To be the cop I should be and try to protect the people that come across my path.”

  “And not many have done it better. Good men are a rare thing, Manny Williams. Too bad Chloe saw ya before her mum had the chance at ya,” she said.

  He laughed, then grew serious. “Thank you for that. But I just don’t feel like that man. I’ve seen too many people I love die to think I’m a good cop. I lost Lexi and Liz on that damned cruise ship. I lost Louise to a psycho in my own home. My daughter watched her die in our arms. I almost lost Alex in San Juan. We lost Max Tucker in North Carolina.”

  She started to speak, but he raised his hand and stopped her. “Let me finish.”

  She nodded.

 
; He bowed his head, his voice growing softer. “I couldn’t protect Gavin Crosby, his wife Stella, and his son from one another. There were like family to me.”

  His voice was now a little more than a whisper. “Then I let Sophie down by letting that sick punk in Miami take out the only real love she’s ever had. That doesn’t add up to a résumé the Guardian of the Universe would be proud to own.”

  “I’m stopping ya right there. Your thoughts ain’t on the right track here. What of the hundreds of people you’ve saved, Manny? What would have happened if ya had not used that gift of yours? Are those others not as important as the loves in your life?”

  “They are. And I’ve considered what you’re saying a thousand times or more. Yet in the end, I’m as selfish as the next person who simply wants to live a life that watches my family grow and my friends laugh, and to take joy in all of it. I want to be here every Christmas morning. I want to walk Jen down the aisle. I want to take Ian to his first Tigers baseball game.”

  His eyes had once again focused on her face.

  “I want to grow old with Chloe and breathe my last with her holding my hand. All of those things I want to experience, and it needs to be free from the haunting minds of the evil men and women who seem to dominate this screwed-up planet.”

  “So ya think stayin’ out of the game, like you’re fond of sayin’, will accomplish that? Ya think ya can hide under a basket and none of that evil will ever get in?”

  “I—”

  She touched his mouth with her finger. “My turn to finish, Manny Williams. The answer is no. Because if most of the world can’t ignore it, how will the likes of you? You hate the injustice of what’s wrong in the world like no one man I’ve met.”

  She reached for his hand. “We get to decide who we are, mostly, but no one gets to truly pick what they are, Manny. Ya told me once that a person’s passion, no matter what that is, can’t land far from their soul’s heart. That we’re wired the way we are for a purpose. God’s purpose, if ya want to go down that road. Was that a lie, lad?”

  Reaching for her, he gave her a hug that most women would die for. It was the kind that said “thank you” with an emotion that was difficult to put into words. The meaning wasn’t diminished, however.