Four cops, total, Marie realized. Two must be inside the hospital, hoping to identify her body. Raymonde was Beauregard’s driver and bodyguard. Another accomplice.
“Wait. You were expecting it to be me,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. The police captain doesn’t do random calls. Especially just before dawn.”
“What’re you saying, Marie?” asked K-Paul.
“The captain expected to find me dead. You had a premonition, didn’t you, Captain?”
“What the hell?” shouted K-Paul, stepping forward.
Raymonde’s hand shifted to his gun.
Beauregard raised his hand for Raymonde to halt, to back down. “Don’t move,” he told K-Paul.
K-Paul clenched his fists, his skin flushing red.
Beauregard said, flatly, to Marie, “You should get you and yours out of town.”
“Would you kill me?”
“No. But these people don’t play.”
“What people?”
Beauregard grabbed Marie’s arm, turning her, forcing her backward.
“Hey,” yelled K-Paul. Raymonde twisted his arm up, behind his back.
Marie and Beauregard had changed positions.
“Your friend’s going to get himself killed.”
She didn’t answer. Her back faced the ER doors; Beauregard’s back faced the street. His huge body blocked hers.
“Not much time, Dr. Laveau. You should run.” Beauregard tilted his head toward K-Paul. “Get her the hell out of here.”
Raymonde released K-Paul.
“Walker,” Marie breathed.
“My men can’t search everywhere,” answered Beauregard.
“Especially rooftops.”
“It’s business. Corporate resources are always greater than civic budgets.”
“A company killed Huan?” demanded K-Paul, gripping Beauregard’s arm.
“Get your hands off me. Else I’ll shoot you myself.” There was a flash of Beauregard as he’d once been—aggressive, youthful. “Damnit. Go. Both of you.”
“Tell me why?” Marie insisted. “Who corrupted you? Why did you let it happen?”
“Don’t be thinking anything romantic,” Beauregard sneered. “Cash. Lots of it.”
“Why are you letting me go?”
“The Laveau legacy. Either you’re real and you’ll be fine, or you’re a fraud and you won’t. This New Orleans boy is hoping for the best. Walker’s a northerner,” he spat. “A hired hand. Deadly, though. He’ll come after you and yours.” He bent, whispering in her ear, “Do us all a favor. Kick his ass.” Then he smiled, straightened, and stepped aside.
Marie was exposed. She looked at the rooftop, a black, haunting plain.
It would take less than a minute for a sniper to re-aim and fire. Walker had had plenty of time. His sight was probably still aimed. He’d been watching her like a rabbit in a cage.
Thunder clapped, lightning, cracking the black sky, struck the ground.
Marie took off running. A rifle shot exploded.
“Marie,” yelled K-Paul.
“Come on,” she screamed to K-Paul, hoping the rain, the night, and the police car lights made her a difficult target.
Behind her, she heard pistols shooting high. Beauregard and Raymonde had no intention and no hope of hitting the garage roof.
“Where’s your car?” K-Paul asked, gasping. They were inside the garage.
“Fourth level.”
“Let’s take mine. It’s on the second.” K-Paul punched the elevator button.
“Stairs are faster,” said Marie, opening the stairwell door. It was claustrophobic—dark, bleak, smelling of urine. She reached for the handrail.
Steps echoed from above.
“Run.” They raced up the stairs, one, then two steps at a time, their feet clattering on metal.
The door slammed open. Light flooded the stairwell. Steps echoed, closer, louder.
K-Paul pressed his key chain. Headlights awoke, taillights flashed red. On the left, in the last row, was a black Jeep.
“Come on.” They dashed, not daring to look behind them. K-Paul grabbed her hand, pulling her forward, “Get in the backseat. Lie down.”
The upholstery was torn; yellow foam stuck out like bits of popcorn. Marie lay on her back, staring at the soft top roof.
K-Paul started the engine, pressed the gas, and the Jeep jolted in reverse.
Overhead lights and concrete beams flickered in and out through the vinyl windows.
K-Paul shifted into First.
A bullet pierced the front-passenger side. If Marie had been sitting there, she would have died.
“What the hell.” K-Paul pressed hard on the gas, circling his Jeep down the ramp to Level One.
Marie focused on her breathing, keeping it even, keeping her body from trembling. It was hot, close.
The Jeep stopped, and she knew K-Paul was inserting his key card to exit the garage.
The Jeep lurched, making a sharp left turn, bypassing the hospital. She could see a slice of Charity’s upper windows, hear the swish of the car’s windshield wipers. She propped herself up on her elbows, her eyes level with the window. She saw Beauregard and Raymonde. The unmanned police cars. Beauregard had wanted her to run. Whatever happened next wouldn’t be his responsibility. Her death might even be outside his jurisdiction.
K-Paul downshifted the clutch and the Jeep accelerated.
Beauregard hadn’t tried to save her; he was saving his own ass.
“Cops aren’t even trying to help. What the hell is this?” K-Paul’s fist hit the dash. “Who the fuck is after you?”
“Just get me out of here, K-Paul. Take me home.”
“Your home?”
“No, yours.”
“City or country?”
“Country.”
“All right. I can do that.” He checked the side and rearview mirrors. “I don’t think we’re being followed. But you should stay down, hidden. At least until the expressway.”
She dug in her pocket for her cell and speed-dialed Louise. Wake up, Louise, she thought, hearing the phone ring and ring. She clicked her cell shut and dialed again. “He’ll come after you and yours,” Beauregard had said. Panic started to build. Once again Marie-Claire was in danger and it was her fault.
“Pick up, Louise,” she shouted into the phone; she clicked her cell shut then, speed-dialed again.
“Louise, Louise. Yes, it’s me. Is Marie-Claire all right? Please check on her. Yes, now.”
“Is Marie-Claire okay?” asked K-Paul, speeding up the expressway ramp.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice wavering. The seconds waiting to hear from Louise were tortuous.
“Good,” Marie exhaled. “Take Marie-Claire to your house. Yes, now. Pack a few things. But get out of there, quick.” She paused, hearing Marie-Claire in the background, waking. “Time for school? Time for school?” she heard her daughter’s high voice say.
“Marie-Claire,” she shouted into the cell. “I love you.”
“Momma!” Marie-Claire shouted back. “Love you, too.”
She could see Louise holding the cell to Marie-Claire’s ear . . . see her daughter in her pink nightgown . . . see Beau curled on the bed next to her.
“Be good for Louise.”
“I’m good. Beau, too.”
“Let me speak to Louise.” She could see Marie-Claire giving Louise the phone, then patting, comforting, Beau.
“Thank you, Louise. Don’t let anything happen to my daughter.”
Marie clicked the cell shut, wiping rain and tears from her face. She swore Marie-Claire would never be a victim.
She heard the windshield wipers rapidly whisking back and forth. Rain sounded like a drum on the soft roof.
She shivered, cold.
“This is weird shit,” K-Paul bellowed. “I don’t get this. What the hell’s going on?” K-Paul was ranting, releasing stress. “Cops messed up. Rain flooding New Orleans. Who’d harm a child? Who’d
hurt you? What the hell’s going on?” She didn’t need to answer. K-Paul was ranting, driving fast, changing lanes, and heading away from the city.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t doubt K-Paul would get her away safely. Just as she didn’t doubt that Louise, who’d cared for Marie-Claire since she was a baby, would do everything she could to keep Marie-Claire safe. But Louise was limited. A good woman with no special training, lacking, perhaps, El and DuLac’s courage and selflessness.
She wanted to rush home and protect Marie-Claire herself. But her daughter wouldn’t be safe as long as she was hunted, as long as the murder mystery remained.
“Help.” She concentrated on the one word: “Help.”
Her cell buzzed, vibrated. A text message, white words on a black screen, appeared like magic: R U OK?
It had to be Parks. All along, he’d been trying to reach her. The 510 area code was California, Pacific time—it all began to make sense. Parks must have had an intuition that she was in danger. Without question, they were spiritually connected.
She stared at the small screen: R U OK?
She texted: no. come protect marie-claire.
Pressing Send, she felt worry lifting.
Whatever love there was or wasn’t between them, Parks would come.
Even now he was holstering his gun, slipping on his leather jacket, and shutting his apartment door.
Parks knew nothing mattered more to her than Marie-Claire’s safety. He would know, if he didn’t find Marie-Claire at home, to look for her at Louise’s.
Parks was in his car, driving. He was coming toward her just as she was being driven away.
After their last case together, Parks knew he might have to protect Marie-Claire from things both seen and unseen. With luck, he’d land at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in less than eight hours.
How much time did she need? How much time before she could safely return again to New Orleans?
If she didn’t return—if she were threatened or dying—Parks would stay, steadfast, beside Marie-Claire. He’d know she’d want him to.
Her adrenaline was spent. The motion of the Jeep lulled. The tight back space felt like a cave.
K-Paul, too, had quieted. The patter of rain, the slap of tires on asphalt made her sleepy. She didn’t have the energy to climb into the front seat.
She curled her knees tighter, crooked her elbow beneath her head. She relaxed, letting her body sway with the Jeep’s vibrations.
Pieces of memory floated in her mind.
She saw Huan, lying in her blood.
My fault, she wanted to scream, shout. Huan had been a better friend to her than she’d ever been to Huan. But she couldn’t grieve. Not yet.
El was crying.
Then it wasn’t El, it was Huan weeping . . . then Nana, her blind eyes filling with bitter tears . . . then, Mimi L’Overture, her cheeks wet, silent, holding her too-still baby. Images tumbled—the mermaid, the shape-changing creature, and the dead.
Part of her wanted to stop the pictures, but she needed more help than the concrete world could offer. Now more than ever, she needed to be the Voodoo Queen.
She knew there were layers to death, spiritual realms that stretched forward and backward in time. There were spiraling circles of cause and effect, links between women. Between blood and water. Between birth and death. Between transformations of self.
“Water needs to go where she needs to go.” What did that mean? “Watch for the waters.” Not water, but waters. Not a single body.
“K-Paul, wake me when we get there.”
“You all right?”
“No, but I hope to be.” She began shutting down, purposefully. They were on the highway. For the moment, there was nothing more she could do.
Hers and K-Pauls’s damp bodies and wet clothes were steaming, clouding the Jeep’s plastic windows. The defroster, like an asthmatic breathing, tried to suck dry the humidity.
Sleep, she told herself. Dream.
She sent her soul traveling.
The Guédé sat on the riverbank. Wind stirred storm clouds in the Gulf. Mississippi currents tugged at bodies.
Beneath the bodies was the mermaid’s face. Then the teal creature rose, her white hair lank, her abdomen swollen. Floating above water, she opened her arms to Marie.
In the embrace, Marie felt warm flesh and cool scales . . . a woman’s beating heart.
As she returned the embrace, the spirit collapsed, exploding into sprays of water.
Water mixed with rain before falling back into the river of the dead.
III
City, country, north, south,
In the beginning, loas create.
Humans uncreate.
SEVEN
K-PAUl’S BAYOU HOME
MORNING
“We’re here,” chortled K-Paul.
She woke, her mouth dry, and sat upright. Her shirt and pants were damp and sweat soaked. There were sleep lines, ridges on her face from the backseat upholstery. She felt disoriented, lost, bereft of the mermaid’s brief embrace.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” said K-Paul, opening the Jeep door, helping Marie out.
They’d reached Louisiana’s southern coast. Like a wave washing over her, Marie felt Nature’s grace.
They were in a shallow cove—colored with greens, blues, filled with loam, soft moss, and granite stepping stones. A rowboat, filled with fishing gear, was banked and anchored to a rock. Marie couldn’t help thinking that Huck Finn had played here.
Spanish moss hung like gray cobwebs and tinsel. Wild ginger, foxglove, sweet william, and hundreds of irises dotted the land.
The sky was blue, the sun achingly bright, and the horizon clear.
There was a shack on stilts with the Gulf lapping within feet of the front door. A car tire hung from a swinging rope attached to a cypress.
K-Paul was grinning like a kid. He’d taken off his lab coat, T-shirt, and shoes.
A flock of white ibis cut across the sky and, off in the distance, Marie heard the cawing of pelicans and herons.
“That’s Miranda,” said K-Paul, pointing.
A yellow tabby, perched on a branch, cleaned her paw.
“Miranda, meaning ‘worthy of admiration.’ A vain cat. She’s got to be at least sixty years old. Always been here, since my granddaddy’s day—or, at least a cat that looks like her. I think maybe she’s been reproducing herself.”
“She doesn’t seem too impressed with us.” She stepped closer to K-Paul. “Thank you.”
Unaccustomedly shy, K-Paul dipped his head.
“Thanks for letting me sleep.”
“You needed it. Let me get you something to eat.”
No more dumplings, Marie thought mournfully. No more B´nh Bao.
K-Paul didn’t move, he was smiling, dopey and foolish, waiting for her to speak.
“Your home’s beautiful,” she said, knowing she’d said the right thing when K-Paul slapped his chest, exclaiming, “Best place in the entire world. Delta land, where the Mississippi ends.” Excited, his hands swept the air.
“This has been my people’s home for generations. Me and my father tarred the roof. See this knick on the porch post? That’s where I banged my head. The house was a bit too small for three. But since my parents died, it seems too big for me.”
The house couldn’t have been more than six hundred square feet, a neat square box that proved K-Paul had come from poverty. It said a lot that K-Paul hadn’t razed the house and its memories. He hadn’t transformed it into a luxury cottage.
K-Paul cut across the yard to where pole beans and sunflowers grew. A vine was thick with tomatoes. He plucked two. On the deck, there was a box filled with a hacksaw, a hammer and ax, and snorkeling gear.
She’d been a poor friend to K-Paul, too. She hadn’t known this side of him, his rural roots.
“Let me fix breakfast,” she said. “You’ve done all the driving.”
“You’re a lousy cook. Huan told
me so.” He quickly turned from the threshold, his expression bleak. Marie knew he’d suddenly remembered Huan was dead.
“How’re we going to manage without her?”
Marie didn’t answer because she didn’t think she could keep her screams at bay. Later, much later, she’d grieve more fully for Huan. But, for now, she needed to stay focused on the connections between the city and the country, between Huan’s death and DeLaire.
K-Paul opened the front door.
“Don’t you lock it?”
“No need. Everyone knows this is my place. If they need something or come to rest, they’re welcome. Only city folks lock doors, even with themselves inside.”
She didn’t tell him that the L’Overtures might have benefited from locked doors.
She walked inside the house.
It was a large studio, a mattress on the wood floor, a basic kitchen with a table and two chairs, a potbellied stove, and shuttered windows to protect against storms.
“Shower?”
“Only upgrading I’ve done,” said K-Paul, smiling, opening another door.
Marie stepped into a cupboard-size bathroom with brass and porcelain and a clear rain forest shower with a head-high, four-by-four horizontal window to gaze at the outdoors.
“Want me to join you?”
She did, but it wouldn’t be right. Years of turning him down—then a yes out of grief, sorrow?
“Just kidding.”
There it was again. The look that said he wasn’t.
“Towels beneath the sink.”
“Thanks.”
K-Paul closed the door and she stripped down. Her body was cramped from stress and sleeping in the car.
The shower was like indoor rain, diffuse water washing away blood, dirt, and sweat. Looking through the clear window to the outdoors, she cried. The trees and sky blurred. She could blame it on the rain. Blame her tears on being startled by a crack of thunder, far beyond the inlet, the private shore.
K-Paul had left a fresh shirt on the toilet seat. She hadn’t heard him enter. She blushed, knowing he’d probably had a clear view of her body. She didn’t mind being seen nude, she just preferred to choose who and when.
When she came out, the red-haired ER doctor was fully transformed into a country boy. He’d added a wooden crucifix around his neck; the cross lay in a swath of golden chest hair. Jeans that had seen better days rode low on his hips.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 51
