“I’ll just clean that all up,” Dan said, indicating his office.
“Please, tell me that you won’t work for that woman again!” Marleah begged as he and Katie headed into his office. “She called again after you left her a message.”
Dan stopped and turned back to her.
“You could have called me. I’d have gotten back to her.”
“No need. She just wanted you to know that while you may be the best in the city, she’d make sure that she smeared you everywhere for refusing to find her husband cheating.”
Dan shook his head and shrugged. “Not to worry, Marleah.”
He went behind his desk. Katie sat in one of the chairs in front of it, a dry smile of amusement on her face.
“So you were chasing cheating husbands?” she asked.
“He actually wasn’t cheating. She refused to accept it. Her husband has money. Not from his work. He’s a high school teacher. Family money. She only gets a part of it in a divorce if he cheats on her. At first, I thought she was worried about him, that he might have gotten involved with dangerous people or something. Then I found out about the legal agreement they made before their marriage and...that didn’t matter so much. I had told her I’d work on it a bit longer, but that I didn’t expect to find anything. Except that...”
As he spoke, he found himself staring at one of the pictures he had taken of Nathan Lawrence in what he had assumed to be a business meeting with a well-dressed man and woman.
“What?” Katie asked.
“Am I crazy? Am I seeing that woman now in everything?”
“What woman?” Katie asked.
He passed the picture over. “Jennie,” he said.
Katie took the picture from and studied it before looking back at him.
“She has tight black curls there, and I swear she’s used stage makeup or something to change her nose. But, yes, Dan! This could be her.”
“What about the man?”
Katie studied the picture again.
“It could be Neil Browne. I’m doubting that’s his real name now and that he was ever a doctor of anything. He’d be twelve years older than when I saw him. And there’s something about the nose on him, too. This guy has short, short hair, and Browne wasn’t wearing it that way when I saw him. He had longish hair, with a slash of it over his forehead.” She paused to shake her head. “It could have been them. I just can’t say for certain.”
Dan drummed his fingers on the table.
He needed to call Wendy Lawrence. But she wouldn’t help him.
He needed to reach Nathan Lawrence or, rather, get Axel to do so.
He drew out his phone and quickly called Axel, explained what he had found, and asked that he set up a meeting with the man. Thankfully, since he’d been hired to spy on Lawrence, he had all the information Axel needed to reach him.
“I’m at the autopsy on Jennie right now. Haven’t learned much yet, other than Dr. Vincent believes the first blow that slammed into her head and through her face would have caused death instantly. The other hacking was done afterward. He estimates she was in her early to midthirties. That would have made her about twenty-one when she was in Florida. I’ll get someone on Nathan Lawrence before heading back in. We’ll get something set up for this afternoon.”
Dan thanked him and ended the call.
“We’ll find out,” he told Katie, glancing at his watch. “We’d better go.”
“Right,” she agreed.
Leaving the office, he asked Marleah to leave everything on his desk just as it was. Marleah frowned but didn’t question him. She just told Katie again what a pleasure it had been to meet her.
They arrived at Coffee Science with five minutes to spare, but Jeremy was already waiting for them at one of the tables in the restaurant.
“I got coffee for us,” he said. “And I put in a few orders of avocado toast. Sound okay?”
“Sounds great,” Dan said, waiting for Katie to take a chair and then sliding in next to her.
Jeremy grimaced, looking at him. “I know Katie loves avocado toast... You can order something else.”
“I’m fine,” he assured Jeremy.
Jeremy nodded and then thanked the server who brought their order over to the table.
Then he said, “I’m glad Katie’s being protected under the circumstances plaguing the city right now. She’s still my blood, and well, I’m confused. What kind of help do you think that I can give you?”
Dan shook his head. “We’re worried there is a connection between the here and now and the past. Can you tell us about the time that Lou came up here to work with you after the flooding?”
“It was awful,” Jeremy said. “Worse than you can imagine, even. And Lou was great.”
“Jeremy,” Katie said, reaching across the table to touch is hand. “We need something a little more specific than that. Did you two offend anyone, possibly make any enemies?”
“We saved lives,” Jeremy said flatly.
“I know that. I know! But, please tell us more. It’s important, Jeremy.”
Jeremy let out a breath and was silent for a minute.
“After the storm,” Jeremy said, shaking his head and taking a long sip of coffee, “Lou wasn’t here at first. You can’t imagine the night, the darkness, the screams...the sound of gunfire. Lou got up here as quick as he could. This place was still his home, you know? Anyway, we went out from the St. Claude Avenue Bridge... I have a bass boat. By then... God, it was awful. Ninth Ward, the water was up to the rooftops. There was a guy on one of the houses, and he was pointing out places where there were people. We weren’t the only ones out there, of course, but this one man...he’d tried to help others, and then we saw that he was desperately trying to get kids out of a tiny vent, and the water was still going higher. Lou, man... Lou was the kind of guy who had to do something, and he was a good diver, even when it came to a free dive. Lou jumped off the boat and went to the vent. He got it broken open, and there were three kids in there, and he got them out just before the water kept going up. You can’t imagine that night. It was hard to get around because of the treetops, wires, electric poles... Corpses. Bodies floating in the darkness. That was the worst. We kept going. I reckon we brought in about fifty survivors, including those kids.” He hesitated.
“Then, there was coming home... I had neighbors who had managed to get out before it hit. Cops were trying, trying hard. But there was nonstop looting, not that people cared all that much about things when lives were concerned.” Jeremy paused. “Some of us had radios. Radios were the best way to communicate as satellites were not working all that great. Anyway, one night, Lou came with me to try to find my friend, Max, down in the French Quarter. Flooding was never that bad there. Guess the Frenchmen who came in to settle the place did find the highest ground. Anyway, Max had a place back then off Esplanade on Royal Street. He got through to me ’cause some weird group had cracked, and they were catching animals that were half-dead and trying to slice them up to eat. I mean, it was bad. You know your father...knew him, that is. I’m so sorry. He got food. He brought it on down there to give to the people, but there was some whacked-out guy there trying to slice up a llama—yeah, a llama. Got loose from one of the farm or stable areas up on the other side of Treme. Your dad had to force him off the llama, gave him one to the jaw to get him to stop and listen and take a sandwich. People went wild after that storm. Crazy. You couldn’t blame folks who were starving. Oh, yeah, your dad had me find some cops that night. We got the guy who wanted to slice up the llama and some others with him to get to the arena. Hope they got that fellow medical attention.”
Dan looked at Katie.
Katie looked at him.
“Jeremy, do you remember anything about this man?”
“In particular?” he asked. “During that time? Katie, I saw that man on the roof read
y to die, if he could only get those kids out of that flooding house. I saw folks screaming and crying that they would rather die than leave their pets. And cops who figured just get the animals in the boats, too, and we’ll just keep moving as fast as we can. I saw people who were so heroic it could make you shiver with amazement at the human spirit. And I saw people killing animals, breaking windows, stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down. That one guy, though... I guess the storm did something to him. You know the worst of it? I think he was ticked off your dad made the others around him realize they didn’t need to go catching pathetic strays in the street to kill for food. He didn’t like it that the people around him preferred the arena and handouts to killing in the street.”
Katie looked at Dan. “I don’t know... We’re grasping at straws here, aren’t we?” she asked weakly.
“What are you talking about?” Jeremy demanded.
Jeremy was staring hard at Dan, and Dan decided that telling the man the truth was the thing to do.
“We believe that there might be a connection.”
“A connection to what?” Jeremy asked.
“We believe Lou might have been targeted by someone who was here after the storm. Someone who found access to enough money to stage the whole thing down in Florida to kill him, who maybe even figured a way to frame George Calabria, at least through circumstantial evidence. Someone who is playing upon the old Axeman who terrorized Louisiana once, and using the concept of the immortal demon and a fixation on power and the number six that was started here about the same time by a man named Allan Pierce.”
Jeremy shook his head. He looked at Katie. “I am so lost. Katie, your father was never stupid...or blind. If the Dr. Browne who was on the boat the day they were murdered was the same man, your father would have recognized him.”
“He would have,” Katie agreed.
“But I don’t think that Dr. Browne was the man you were telling us about. I think he was one of the followers, maybe. If you saw this man again, Jeremy, would you recognize him?” Dan asked.
“The man who was going to slice up the llama?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
Jeremy inhaled and exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “No. I was dealing with one of the women in the group. She was older and not doing well. Lou told me he’d deal with the most intense of the group while I got her to help. There were EMTs in the area, and she needed attention fast. Most of what I know about the incident was getting the cops to deal with the people and the llama. Turned out the man who owned one of the big carriage companies at the time owned a few exotic pets, and the llama was a beloved pet. The llama was returned and... Well, a llama in the middle of all that. But no. I would not recognize the man again because I really didn’t see him. Remember, too, there was no light. We had our flashlights. We had the moon on some nights. The world was dark and wet, and you could still stumble upon corpses of cats, dogs, human beings just about anywhere.” Jeremy paused, inhaling and exhaling again. “Trust me. If you weren’t here, you can only imagine.”
“I know it must have been hard,” Dan said. “Is there anything else you know about the man or any of the people with him?”
“I just know they were steered toward the arena by cops.” He frowned. “But, again, do you think that someone here managed to get followers to kill for them? Wait, I guess it has happened before. But...someone got someone to Florida to murder Katie’s mom and dad and Anita Calabria, kill people again in Orlando, and then come here? I mean, it’s not like they would have been working up to kill Lou. Lou was murdered twelve years ago.”
Dan took a deep breath himself. “Whoever this person is, they might have made sure they were anonymous. From what I’ve heard, Lou Delaney wouldn’t have kept his own identity a secret. I doubt if they exchanged pleasantries, but somehow the man found out who Lou was. Maybe the man could have gone to someone else involved and lied and said something like ‘Oh, who was that? I have to thank him for what he did for me!’ And there was something that had already begun in his mind or a plan he had in his head. I’m not even sure how to explain this. There had to have been something he had going. If he revered the Axeman and Allan Pierce and had figured that the disaster was a way to manipulate people and situations, it might have seemed to him like a grand design for life, and power was falling into place. Kill Lou and the others, kill again in six years, and then come back to New Orleans six years later for his end game, his grand finale.”
Jeremy nodded gravely. “How could he have known? This killer...how could he have known Katie would move here? Is he targeting Katie? Katie! You need to relocate to Europe or Australia. Somewhere far, far from here.”
Katie shook her head. “Jeremy, if we’re right, this killer has money. He sent henchmen to do the deeds he wanted done in Florida. He would have done his research. You’re my closest relative. He probably knows about you as well as all about me.”
“And now Dan?” Jeremey asked.
“Probably,” Dan said. “Maybe we’re part of the end game, and maybe we’re not. But we know this isn’t random. And now we’re prepared.”
“And I can’t spend my life running. I just can’t,” Katie said and hesitated. “Jeremy, you have to be careful. You could be in danger, too, if this does have anything to do with what you and my dad did here after the storm. You have to be careful.”
“I have an alarm system on the house, remember,” Jeremy told her. “And I have a gun and a permit,” he assured Dan.
“Here is what we have going for us. He wants to make these killings as much like those done by the Axeman as possible. The Axeman always struck late at night or early in the morning. He used the cover of darkness. It would have been easier back then as people didn’t have sophisticated alarm systems. They barely had lighting. Most didn’t expect any kind of an attack. Now, the city is on edge. People will be prepared.”
“Except for those who can’t be,” Jeremy said quietly. “Those who are older and on fixed incomes. Those who have jobs and little children and must choose between feeding and clothing their families and shoring up their homes. The couple he killed here and their caretaker...they were on a fixed income, right? They wouldn’t have expected anyone to come after them. They didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Jeremy, I can tell you this from many years in law enforcement. It’s often the good and the innocent who suffer. But there may be connections. We need to find out if there are, and if so, what they are.”
Jeremy shook his head. “It’s not that bad things don’t happen here,” he said. “It’s a big city. Things happen. A lot of the bad has to do with the drug trade. But this killer, he isn’t after money. You think that he has money. And I doubt he’s into drugs. He’s just...”
“Probably a narcissist with psychotic traits. I don’t think that our missing Dr. Neil Browne is the leader. Though, I do think he could be the one who killed whoever Jennie was. I think he was ordered to kill her, and that it wasn’t easy, and that’s why his first blow was lethal. He wanted to make her death merciful. Remember, too, we’re working on a theory. But having spoken with you, I think it’s a very plausible theory.”
“George Calabria is here in the city,” Katie said.
Jeremy started, staring at Katie with surprise. “What?”
“We found out he is living here now, and we went to see him. He’s in a hotel to be safe,” Katie told him.
Jeremy’s gaze jerked from Katie to Dan. “Then...were you right...back in Orlando? I mean, he’s been close to the crimes in three places. I think he has money. I—”
Dan shook his head. “No. I think I was wrong. I think whoever is pulling the strings would love to see George go down for the crimes. We’re going to talk to him again.”
“I don’t know... Why is he here?” Jeremy demanded. “I thought he was going to go off and live on a far, far away island.”
“He decided
he wanted to do behind-the-scenes work for the movies,” Katie said. “Embroil himself in fantasy and get away from reality. I understand that.”
“Watch out for him,” Jeremy warned.
Dan nodded. “We’re watching out at all times.”
“But you’re going back to Katie’s house—”
“With cameras and three large dogs and me,” Dan said firmly.
“You have to sleep...dogs can be poisoned,” Jeremy said. “Katie should be—”
“Jeremy, please! The FBI is watching us. Police are watching us.”
“And you think it’s a chance to catch him. At Katie’s expense,” Jeremy said.
Katie shook her head firmly. “Not at my expense. At my insistence. I told you, I can’t spend my life looking over my shoulder. This must be solved. Here and now,” she added softly.
Jeremy sighed. “You’d better text me twice a day.”
“Yes, and you’re to text back!” Katie told him firmly.
He smiled. “Okay. And please keep in close contact. Please, please.” He wasn’t looking at Katie; he was looking at Dan.
Dan nodded.
“Okay,” Jeremy said awkwardly. “So we’re...set. Except the news about another letter to the papers and the guy being an immortal demon is out on the streets. We may all need to be worried about people doing nutty things, dangerous things, because they’re so worried.”
“Maybe,” Dan admitted. “But we’ll get through it.”
Jeremy nodded and almost smiled. “Yes, we will get through it. NOLA strong,” he said.
They were silent for a minute.
“Hey, uh, what did I tell you about the avocado toast?” he asked.
“Best I’ve ever had,” Dan assured him.
“What now?” Jeremy asked. “We sit and wait for him to strike again?”
“No. We’re going to see George again, and...a man who just might have had a meeting with Jennie and the man we know as Neil Browne,” Katie said.
The Unforgiven Page 19