City of the Dead

by Eileen Dreyer

  “It has something to do with it. Yes.”

  “And it has nothing to do with the fact that this is a neighborhood where white folk shouldn’t even turn off their engines?” He shifted on obviously sore feet. Rearranged his increasingly damp bulk. “I been on homicide for ten years, ma’am. I never seen anybody killed in a conspiracy. Not in this neighborhood. When we go lookin’ for suspects, usually the simplest answer is the right answer.” Even his red cop mustache was damp.

  Chastity straightened her shoulders. “Talk to Detective Gilchrist. That’s all I ask.”

  She just couldn’t get the image out of her head. A yo might have shot Susan Reeves. Might have stolen her purse and rings. He might even have terrorized her and then tried to cover her up with whatever was handy so that she wasn’t found so quickly. But Chastity didn’t think he would have taken the time to position one of those little angel babies precisely in the middle of Susan’s forehead, so that her staring eyes could watch it.

  What was it Susan Reeves had meant to tell her? Could somebody have been threatened by it?

  Twice while Chastity had been waiting, her cell phone had rung.

  Twice she’d let it take a message. She thought it was Max. She just wasn’t in the mood for Max yet. Besides, she didn’t know what the hell to tell him.

  Chastity sat there staring at her hands. They were shaking, she realized, a bit surprised. She hadn’t realized she was shaking. She knew her stomach was, of course. Her head was threatening to split right open, and she could smell James again. Thick and hot, a scent that had no business in the sunshine. What it did to her was meant for the dark, for slick sheets and sinning.

  At least in a normal life.

  “Move over,” she snapped at him.

  He barely raised an eyebrow, but did so. “What about him?” he asked, subtly motioning to the caretaker on her other side.

  The caretaker was petting the head of the child’s sleeping effigy that had been laid at the foot of the ten-foot cross.

  Chastity shook her head. “Even an addict has standards.”

  “We could just get it over with, ya know,” James said, not looking at her. “Some good ya-ya, like Tante Edie said.”

  “Thanks, no. I haven’t been into audiences in a while.”

  James laughed. Chastity didn’t.

  He turned to consider her, and his voice was quiet. “You okay?”

  Chastity stretched her shoulders. “What’s going to happen to that little girl?”

  That really got his attention. “There are some things that are definitely beyond the scope of even this taxi service.”

  Chastity laughed so hard she snorted. “You think I want to take that child home? Believe me, I know perfectly well what kind of parent I’d make. I want her to grow up happy and healthy.”

  Angel babies.

  Susan Reeves had come to Saint Roch to ask for a child.

  He’d given her one.

  And then he’d taken something away.

  Chastity found that she was shivering all over now. “Do you think we can go yet?”

  “You that anxious to talk to your brother-in-law?”

  “I’m that anxious to get out of the sun. My nose is getting red enough to do Barnum and Bailey.”

  “Well, I’d suggest we go back in the chapel…”

  “Not if you shoved a gun in my ribs.”

  “You don’t like my cemetery?”

  “It’s not your cemetery, James. And no. I don’t. If the other cemeteries are like this one, I don’t think I want any tours.”

  “Well, usually other cemeteries don’t come with their own crime scene van. Except Saint Louis, of course. But that’s just the neighborhood.”

  “Ms. Byrnes?” the detective asked, trudging up to them. Chastity hoped he was close to serving his thirty. He just didn’t have any gas left in him. “When did you last talk to the victim?”

  Chastity didn’t move from where the rocks were gouging her ass. “About nine o’clock last night.”

  “Uh-huh.” The detective nodded and jotted in his notebook. “And you got here, when?”

  “About two and a half minutes before you got your call.”

  Another nod. “About noon, then. Yeah?”

  Chastity gave up looking at him. She reached into her purse and rescued her little velvet bag, closing it in her shaking hand. She could smell that chapel again.

  Well, it was better than bleach.

  Not by much, though.

  At least she had James to offset it, although that didn’t settle her any more than the chapel smell did.

  “About noon.”

  “And you didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”

  Should she include the dead body in that list?

  “No,” James said for her. “Nothing.”

  “And you didn’t notice anybody else come in?” the cop demanded of the caretaker.

  The little man flinched as if he’d been smacked with a truncheon. “No. I…no. I was recementing one of the tomb doors over there at the back. I had my headset on. I’m sorry.”

  He really seemed to mean it.

  “Well,” the cop said, consulting his dog-eared notebook, “she died sometime this morning. We’re canvassing the neighborhood.”

  They were canvassing a neighborhood that made it a point not to notice anything. Chastity shifted against the hard stone and fought the urge to say something the cop would never forgive her for. He walked back to the clot of cops by the chapel, and she kept sitting there.

  Chastity knew she should be thinking of what to do next, what this meant to her and her sister and the fact that Faith was still missing. But it seemed that the image of Susan Reeves crumpled in the corner of that chapel took up all of her attention, pushing the rest back into the corners.

  She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to think, except that somehow she should have known how to prevent Susan Reeves’s death. So she just sat there.

  “Do you think I’m responsible for this?” she inevitably asked.

  Since she was already responsible for everything but 9/11.

  “It could just be a bad coincidence,” James offered dryly.

  Chastity sighed. “Or a figment of my imagination.”

  The detective walked back from his friends. “You can go now,” he said, flipping his notebook closed. “I have your numbers.”

  The detective ambled away. The caretaker popped up as if spring-loaded. James and Chastity followed in far more exhausted fashion.

  “What do we do now?” Chastity asked.

  James gave her a little smile. “Isn’t that my line?”

  She slung her purse over her shoulder. “Kareena’s,” she said. “I’m in need of some bright green walls and coffee.”

  “And another look at that hurricane.”

  Chastity shook her head. “You’re not helping, James.”

  “Sure I am,” he said, walking up behind her.

  He set a hand on her shoulder. A touch, nothing more. A fleeting contact. And yet she spun on him as if he’d just attacked her. Her breath left. Her heart stuttered. She damn near landed on her butt, she backed away so fast.

  James stared at her as if she’d turned to smoke, his hand still out.

  “Don’t—” Chastity dragged in a breath. Shook her head again. Fought the urge to vomit. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”

  His eyes widened. “You don’t like to be surprised.”

  She tried to smile. “Not like that.”

  A hand on the shoulder, a brush of hot breath on her neck. A stumble into the darkness. Into the water. She couldn’t explain it, even to ease his discomfort. She couldn’t bear it, either.

  But he nodded. He dropped his hand. “I’ll never sneak up on you.” And damn if it wasn’t the compassion in his eyes that nearly undid her. So she nodded even more briskly, thanked him, and walked out of the cemetery, sweating. It was getting worse.

  Where was she going?

  He could
n’t keep following her. He couldn’t wait. The pressure was building up in him to act, to do something, to cleanse himself with her. Because she knew.

  She knew where the other one was. She knew and she wasn’t going to tell unless he made her. He didn’t have time.

  He knew they were following him. He’d seen it. He knew they’d catch him soon, soon. They seemed as impatient as he. More impatient, maybe. He saw what they did, and they would know it. They would know and they would stop him.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but finishing this. Finishing this now.

  Bitch.

  Slut.

  Whore.

  Detective Dulane was sitting in his unmarked, wolfing down a hamburger before heading back out on interviews, when the call came through from the coroner’s office.

  “You wanted something on this floater?” Dr. Ross asked.

  Dulane set down his burger and riffled through the paperwork on his front seat to find his notes on the Jane Doe in the bayou.

  “I just wanted to make sure,” he said. “You did the entire post?”

  Ross huffed. “You have to ask. Good thing I did, too. Well, good for somebody, I’m sure. Not that little girl in my garage.”

  Dulane came right to attention. “What?”

  “You got a fondness for Saint Jude, Francis Xavier?”

  Dulane stopped scanning the scant information on the page before him. “He’s a nice guy, I guess. Why?”

  “Well, our Jane Doe had a real intimate acquaintance with him.”

  “How intimate?”

  “Intimate enough that if I weren’t such a good pathologist, I’d think she was trying to give birth to him.”

  Dulane’s wise old eyes opened wide. “To Saint Jude.”

  “To a lifelike eight-inch replica, to be sure. Isn’t this the girl was dressed up as a nun?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “Well, there’s no allegedly about her acquaintance with Saint Jude.”

  By the time Dulane got in touch with Gilchrist, just to fill him in, the cops at Jefferson had retagged his Jane Doe as Judy Doe in honor of Saint Jude. The statue was sent to evidence, and Judy was sent back to the cooler to await identification.

  It took Chastity no more than five minutes to realize that the addition of James to her interviews wouldn’t be quite as successful with her brother-in-law. Max treated James like some housekeeping tech who’d broken sterile field.

  “You want him to be here while we talk about your sister?” Max asked, eyes narrowed and hostile.

  “He knows more than you do by now, Max.”

  At least Max was beginning to look familiar to her. He was acting more like a surgeon than a tour guide. He was testy and impatient and haughty. He was, finally, in character.

  It didn’t make Chastity feel any better. There was no way she could, in this godforsaken wasteland of a house. She felt more claustrophobic here than in the Campo Santo, and that said something.

  “Susan Reeves is dead, Max.”

  Max stopped halfway into the kitchen, his face completely blank. “Who?”

  “Susan Reeves. You grew up in the same neighborhood. She was a customer at the Arlen Clinic. She’s been murdered.”

  For a second, Max just stood there as if trying to translate to a second language. “Susan? Susan the dyke? She’s dead?”

  That one almost took Chastity’s breath away. “What?”

  Max waved her off. “It’s what Susan’s always called herself. What do you mean she was murdered?”

  “She was going to meet us and talk about Faith. Somebody killed her.”

  Max just made it into the kitchen before thunking down on one of the stools. “I don’t understand.”

  Neither Chastity nor James sat. “I don’t understand, either, Max. But you need to tell us more about that clinic. About Faith’s time there. About anything and anybody at all.”

  He looked up. “You think the clinic…”

  “I believe that the girl in the bayou was another egg donor.”

  He straightened like a shot. “What? Who?”

  “A girl named Willow Tolliver. She’s been missing, too. Did you know her?”

  He looked bemused, bewildered. “No. No, I don’t recognize the name. She…she looked like Faith?”

  “Very much so.”

  He stared down at his granite countertop as if mining for answers. “You’ve found out a lot.”

  “Not enough. Can you think of any more names? Anybody Faith talked about, or had over or called? The only name from the clinic I could find in her address book was Susan’s.”

  “Really? I would have thought she’d stay in touch with at least some of those people. It meant so much to her and all.”

  “Do you recognize the name Frankie Mae Savage?”

  “Frankie…Frankie. No. I remember an Eddie, but no Frankie.”

  “Yeah. Eddie Dupre. He’s the embryologist over at the clinic. Have you ever met him?”

  “No. I checked out his credentials, of course, when Faith decided she wanted to donate. I checked out everybody at the clinic. They all passed with flying colors. I simply can’t imagine that there’s anything wrong with them.”

  “Two women connected with that clinic are dead, Max.”

  He nodded absently, his attention still on that counter. “Yes. Yes, I understand. But who’s this Frankie?”

  “A cabdriver. A client at the clinic. Somebody thought they saw Faith getting into her cab that afternoon at Gallatoire’s. You sure you wouldn’t have any more information on Faith?”

  “No. I’ve tried hard to think. But I don’t know where else Faith would have kept any other personal information. You went through her things already, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ve checked everything I found there without much success.” She sucked in a breath for calm. For focus. “What about your records, Max? Would you mind if I went through them?”

  He looked up, still puzzled. “What for?”

  “Well, you pay the bills. Something might have shown up on her credit card statements, or her cell phone bill. Long distance. Repeat numbers. Something like that.”

  “But I would have known….”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Again a pause. A consideration. Then, abruptly as always, Max got to his feet. “Of course. Whatever it takes.”

  And then he just walked out of the kitchen.

  He led them back toward the front of the house, right by those awful couches and that bleach smell to the doorway at the other side of the foyer. The one that had been locked before.

  It was still locked. Max whipped out a set of keys and bent to the door. Chastity came to an uncertain halt behind him, the house working its peculiar sorcery on her. Damn, her heart rate hadn’t been this bad when she stood over Susan Reeves’s body. Her hands were shaking again and she wanted to vomit.

  Why couldn’t he keep his records at work? At a Denny’s? In Cleveland?

  “You lock your office?” she asked, her chest tight and her hands scraping across her pants legs to wipe off the sweat.

  It had already been too long a day. She wanted to go home.

  “It’s habit,” Max said, turning the key. “From when the boys were little. They used to make a huge mess of my things.”

  He opened the door and ushered Chastity in. James, silent and watchful, waited in the foyer.

  It took Max only a few moments to find the records he wanted. Last month’s statements from the credit cards, from the phone company. While he did, Chastity tried to hold her breath. That smell seemed so concentrated in here. It seemed to wrap itself up inside her head and sear her eyes.

  Bleach and lavender.

  In a regular, nondescript office with oak and cream walls, a trophy case packed with Little League awards, and a computer.

  “Here we go,” Max was saying. “Cell phone.”

  He held up the statement. Chastity did her best to focus on the list of phone numbers. She was having trouble
, though.

  “Can you mark any numbers you know?” she asked. “I can call the rest and check them.”

  She wanted to look for a pattern of some kind. Long distance numbers, repeaters, numbers Max didn’t recognize.

  “Sure,” Max said, pulling it back before she even had time to check, “but I recognize all of them. And the only number I see a lot of here is Chuck’s. But he’s been calling a lot since your mother died.”

  There was the oddest buzzing in Chastity’s ears. A humming, as if external sound were suddenly very far away.

  “Chuck?” she asked, her voice distant to her own ears.

  Max looked up, bemused. “Yes. Chuck. Your father.”

  Chastity blinked. She listened to that dial tone in her head. She realized she was shaking again.

  “No,” she said, certain. “That’s not right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He can’t have called. Faith wouldn’t talk to him.”

  Max laughed. “Talk to him? Chastity, he’s here all the time. I told you. Faith adores her father.”

  “Here?” Chastity demanded. “Here where?”

  “Well, he lives here now. In New Orleans. Didn’t you know?”

  Louder. The noise was louder. And there was her heart, thudding in her ears like footsteps. Running. Running hard.

  “I thought you said he was dead,” James said quietly behind her.

  “I wanted…”

  “Why, look,” Max said, moving a bit to his left and reaching for something on his desk. “See? This is from Mardi Gras.”

  And there he was, right in Max’s hand. Smiling. Gray-haired and square-jawed and handsome. With jowls and creases and a sallow cast to his skin, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in a while.

  Charles Francis Byrnes.

  Smiling out from the picture as he stood with his arm around Faith’s shoulder.

  Chastity gulped in some air. She stepped back. She straightened like a marine on parade. And then she did the only thing she could do.

  She laughed.

  She laughed and she kept laughing until somebody sat her down and shoved her head between her knees.