“And they agreed?”
Flynn arched an amused eyebrow at Dana’s surprise. “Even the CIA doesn’t keep its operatives hostage. If you want out, you get out,” she chuckled. “You just never talk about what you did for them.”
Dana’s brow crinkled with concern. “What would happen if they knew you were talking to me?”
“They don’t know. They aren’t going to know. So it’s a moot point,” Flynn assured her.
But she continued to look troubled, reaching across the table to grab Flynn’s hand in hers. “You took a risk, telling me this. Another risk. Seems like you spend a lot of your time risking something or other for me. I guess I should be flattered by that—and I am—but it scares me, too, knowing that you trust me so much.”
“Yeah. Scares me worse,” Flynn confessed. Her feelings for Dana Jordan were nothing new to her, she’d been harboring a crush on the reporter for five goddamned years, after all, but the sheer depth that existed to those feelings scared her more than anything else in her life ever had. Feeling this way about someone made you vulnerable, and vulnerability had always equated to weakness in Flynn’s world. Neither did she know how to deal with the fact that she’d been willing to kill three people all for the love of one woman. Killing for money, or on the orders of your government, that was one thing—killing out of love seemed somehow more of a primal response to Flynn. Disentangling all of her own conflicting emotions would take time, and a whole lot of effort, she knew that.
“Anyway, I love the fact you’re willing to risk this much for me. ” Dana let go of Flynn’s hand, and picked up her fork. She waved that at Flynn. “You still need to let Pierce down as gently as possible though. I don’t need a jealous, spurned cop out to get me.”
Flynn arched an eyebrow. “Did you really just use the word ‘spurned’?”
“Yes I did.”
“Women, jeez! Always so dramatic.”
A gob of egg spattered against the front of her shirt. Flynn’s mouth dropped open as she jerked a look at Dana, who smirked back at her. “You’ve only got one woman to worry about now,” the reporter said.
Flynn mock-scowled. “Shit. You mean I have to worry about y’all, too? Keeping you satisfied in bed and making you breakfast isn’t enough?”
The second gob of egg hit her in the forehead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sy Lehane never got his story, or at least not the story he had been expecting. He got a story, because Dana felt she owed him that much. She wrote a piece which dovetailed with the evidence Flynn left for the police and Fire Department to find at the North Rampart Street temple, and which completely omitted her own part in the events. Although she confessed to Flynn that it bothered her somewhat to be a party to these lies, she had even less desire to see her name splashed across the front page, especially if it were attached to the word ‘victim’.
“What does that make me?” she asked.
Flynn shrugged. “It makes you strong. It makes you someone who knows that sometimes things in life work out not the way we want them to, but the way we need them to,” she said.
Flynn had also given Dr Goldman’s card to Dana, explaining that Goldman was someone she could talk to if she felt the need to talk to a professional about her experiences.
“Agent Krueger gave you this guy’s name?” Dana asked dubiously.
“I checked him out. He doesn’t keep written records on his patients and he doesn’t insist on knowing your real name.” Flynn smiled. “What? Y’all didn’t think I’d just take Erin Krueger’s word for it, did you?”
The DNA samples found in Jean-Marie’s vehicle matched both Larue women. In Ariel’s vehicle an additional sample was found which didn’t match any of the known players in the case, and which wasn’t in the system. Flynn suspected it was Dana’s DNA, but she kept that to herself. The New Orleans Office of The District Attorney made a public announcement, jointly with the NOPD, that the ‘Voodoo Murders’ case was now closed. As all of the key players had perished in an accidental fire at a property belonging to the suspected ringleader, there would be no prosecutions.
A little over two weeks after the events of the Full Moon night, a double funeral service was held for Jeannette Larue and her daughter Anthea. True to her word, Boudreau had the bodies released to Reverend Petersen’s care and he arranged everything with the help of his congregation, even inviting Boudreau and Flynn to attend the service. He insisted that their presence would have meant a great deal to the dead women. And so, on a beautifully mild New Orleans late spring day, the two stood at a double gravesite with over a hundred other mourners, and there they noted the passing of Jeannette and Anthea Larue. Reverend Petersen led the service and his words seemed to Flynn to be heartfelt, not the rote words you often heard spoken at funerals.
At one point, as the coffins of Jeannette and Anthea were being lowered into the ground side by side, Flynn’s eye was caught by the sight of a gentleman in top hat and black mourning suit standing off to one side of the main body of mourners. His face was painted in stark white, his mouth and eyes emphasized in deep black, and around his neck he wore several strands of brightly colored beads. Into his top hat he had stuck bright red rooster feathers and shiny gold coins, like old-fashioned pirate doubloons. He looked instantly familiar from the explicit paintings on the walls of Jean-Marie’s temple. Baron Samedi, Flynn thought and her neck prickled with a chill. He must have sensed Flynn’s eyes on him because he raised his head so that his gaze met hers, and he gave her a grin and a broad wink.
Boudreau nudged her. “What’re y’all staring at? You look like you seen a ghost.”
“Excuse me,” Flynn muttered. She stepped back, skirted the edge of the mourners, keeping her eye on the Baron impersonator who had spotted her approach and veered away from her. He dodged between gravestones and crypts but Flynn caught up to him easily.
She grabbed the man by the back of his tattered jacket and spun him around, slammed him back against a nearby crypt. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.
He grinned at her, his teeth white against the black-face makeup that he wore. Flynn knew the black color was meant to indicate death and the grave, not a racial thing. Baron Samedi had no race. Red-veined blue eyes glittered from the face-paint as he raised a hand before his face and puckered his lips as though to whistle.
Flynn smacked his hand aside. A small square of unfolded paper tumbled out of his upended palm, a cloud of pale red dust floating from it to the ground. Flynn glared. She reached around her back, under her jacket, and pulled the .32 from her waistband. Pushing the barrel against the man’s midriff, she stepped close to him, close enough to smell the wine and cigars on his breath. A faint mustiness hung around his clothing, too.
“Try anything like that again. Just give me a reason,” Flynn told him.
The Baron tilted his head, still grinning at her. He gave his head a small shake, then made a quite tsk-ing sound with his tongue against his teeth. “We know you, Willie Rae Flynn,” he responded. His accent was pure swamp Cajun. “You are a troubled, violent soul, you. We know what you are, and what you need.”
A hot hard lump of anger ballooned in Flynn’s chest. Ringed around it, however, was an unease that she couldn’t put her finger on. She pressed the gun into the man’s scrawny middle. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my friends. Or I will blow you the fuck away. Just like I did your crazy-ass mambo.” She smirked as the Baron’s smile faltered for the first time. “Yeah. I blew that bitch’s brains all over the walls of her fucking temple. Maybe you’re right, Baron, I am a violent soul. Y’all would do well to remember that.”
She stepped back, still keeping the gun leveled at him. “Now, git,” she ordered. She gave the gun a brief flick for emphasis. “Get out of here before I shoot you anyway.”
“It isn’t over yet, Willie Rae Flynn,” he whispered to her. He gave the spilled red powder a rueful glance, then he turned and started walking quickly away. Flynn watched him for a
moment until she lost sight of him between the whitewashed crypts. Then she put her gun away and walked back to the graveside.
“Everything okay?” Boudreau asked.
Flynn nodded. “It is now.”
It wasn’t illegal to come to a funeral dressed as your favorite Loa and Baron Samedi was the Keeper of Cemeteries, Flynn supposed, but that the man she had just chased off was a follower of the late Jean-Marie, she didn’t doubt either. He had come here to deliver his warning to her, to let her know that they were still out there, scattered throughout the city, and that they knew who she was. Neither was it the first time lately that she’d seen one of them hanging around.
Jean-Marie’s remains had been cremated and anonymously sealed in a crypt. She had no family who could be traced and the state didn’t want her gravesite to become any kind of Mecca to her followers. Antoine had no living relations either and was similarly placed in an anonymous grave at a cemetery outside of New Orleans. Flynn, however, had claimed the ashes of Ariel Rousseau. Even though Ariel had betrayed her, Flynn didn’t want her last resting place to be as cold and anonymous as those of Jean-Marie and Antoine, and so she paid for a small, unmarked crypt in Metarie to be Ariel’s final resting place.
Whilst she was there, having watched the remains sealed into the unmarked crypt, she thought she smelled patchouli oil and, looking around for the source of the scent, she spotted a tall, attractive woman with jet dark hair and a deep cinnamon tan, standing by a water fountain nearby, silently watching her. The mysterious woman had worn a low-cut red dress and carried a red parasol over one shoulder. Something about her appearance struck Flynn as incongruous and she had taken several steps in the woman’s direction, the urge to speak to her suddenly coming over her, but before she could get close enough to even call out, a man had appeared abruptly from around a corner, stepping straight into Flynn’s path, and in the confusion of the collision, Flynn lost sight of the woman with the parasol. But she was left with the unsettling impression that the woman had been connected in some way to both Ariel and Jean-Marie.
Detective Sam Malone was also amongst the mourners at the Larue funeral. The Kenner detective nodded to Flynn and Boudreau, but he made no attempt to make conversation with them.
“He probably thinks the NOPD fucked up,” Boudreau muttered as they walked away after the graveside service. She shook her head morosely. “He’d be right, too. We did fuck up. We didn’t catch the people who killed those women.”
Flynn frowned. “Sometimes it works out that way—cases don’t so much get solved as they just unravel. Y’all know that, Pierce. I’d reckon Malone knows that, too.”
Boudreau stopped walking. Flynn carried on for a half-step before she realized Boudreau wasn’t moving and she turned back to face the detective with a quizzical expression. Boudreau’s jaw worked as though she were chewing on her own frustration.
“What?” Flynn asked.
“Sometimes I hate it—” Boudreau sighed. “I hate when innocent people die. I hate when I don’t get the bastards who did it. I hate the fucking job sometimes, Flynn.”
“Are you saying y’all want to quit being a cop?”
Boudreau sucked in a deep breath. She looked up at the sky, squinting against the glare of the sun, and shook her head. “No. I’m just saying I hate when it ends up this way, is all.”
“Y’all need to stop beating yourself up about it,” Flynn advised. “The people who killed Jeannette and Anthea, they’re dead. Gone. They got what they deserved.”
“Is that what you think? That they deserved to die?” Irritation edged Boudreau‘s voice. “And what about justice?”
“There are different kinds of justice,” Flynn pointed out.
With a hard shake of her head, Boudreau turned away and resumed walking. Flynn hesitated, trying to figure out what the detective wanted her to say, and then she gave it up, simply walked after her without a word. When they reached the Trans Am, parked across the street from the cemetery in the shade of the thick black trunk and spreading green foliage of a live oak, Boudreau stopped again and leaned on the vehicle with her arms folded along the roof. “You know what really burns me most about this?” she demanded.
Flynn shook her head. She had a feeling that Boudreau was about to tell her.
“Jeannette and Anthea really were good people. They were the honest-to-fucking-God genuine article. And they get brutally murdered by a couple nutbag ex-cons and some hedge fund manager up to his eyeballs in drugs and fucking debt. You know all those different doctors were prescribing to Camber -? ”
Flynn nodded, still feeling it was best if she didn’t speak yet.
Boudreau’s mouth curled in distaste. “Not one of those doctors were aware of the other. They didn’t know they were all prescribing a cocktail of meds to Camber. How’s that for a fucked up system?”
“Modern American healthcare, don’t’cha love it?” Flynn smiled without humor.
“Hmm. And I still wonder whose was the DNA we took from Ariel Rousseau’s vehicle—” Boudreau gave Flynn a piercing look. “I guess we’re never going to know that, huh?”
“I guess not,” Flynn agreed blandly. It wasn’t like Boudreau to be quite so introspective, not even about something as hard to swallow as the Larue deaths. There had to be something else on the detective’s mind, something far more personal. Flynn eyed her hard and steady. “Y’all want me to tell you that life ain’t fair, that it is fucked up? I think y’all know that already. So, what really is going on with you?”
Boudreau pushed herself away from the car, opened up the passenger door. She shrugged out of the black blazer worn for the funeral, tossed it onto the rear seat, and unbuttoned the collar of her black dress shirt. “Carol thinks we ought to get married,” she announced. The she ducked into the car and slammed the passenger door, leaving Flynn blinking at the empty air in shock.
“Married?” Flynn repeated once she was in the car.
Boudreau blew air in a hard sigh that managed to sound embarrassed, pissed, and confused all at once. “I don’t mean she literally wants us to get married. She’s talking about some kind of civil thing—signing papers, putting all our shit in joint names. Maybe holding some kinda ceremony. Whatever. I don’t know. She fucking sprung it on me—came home from her mama’s three days ago and just blurted it out.”
“What did you say?” Flynn asked.
“I didn’t know what to say. I told her I needed time to process.”
“How’d she take that?”
Boudreau chewed on her lower lip. “She was disappointed, I think.”
“So how do you feel about it?”
For a long moment, Boudreau frowned into middle distance without saying anything. Her eyes were clouded with the kinds of thoughts and emotions that Flynn was uncomfortable just being around. Finally she said, “I told y’all before that I’m not always even sure that I love Carol, right?” and Flynn nodded. “Well, that’s still true. But she is steady, and she is respectable, and that’s gotta be good for me, hasn’t it? Maybe for that reason I could do worse and I ought to just marry her. But I don’t know if that’s a good reason to ‘marry’ someone.”
“Lot of ‘maybes’ and a lot of questions in there, Pierce,” Flynn pointed out.
Boudreau nodded miserably. “Here’s another one—maybe I’m afraid if I don’t do this for Carol, she’ll leave me and find someone else who will. And I’ll end up on the fucking shelf. I mean, you’ve got Dana Jordan now, and you’ve made it clear she ain’t prepared to share y’all with anyone…What would I have without Carol?”
Flynn almost wanted to laugh at Boudreau’s melodramatic notions of her own future as an old maid sat upon some dusty shelf, unloved and unwanted, but she had an inkling that laughter might piss Boudreau off right now. She was also aware of gripping the steering wheel too tight, that her heart rate had picked up when Boudreau mentioned the ending of their affair, and she let her fingers relax slowly, willed her heart to slow down. Dana had war
ned that Pierce felt more deeply for her than Flynn realized, that she mightn’t take their break-up so easily, and she’d been right. Flynn made an awkward shrugging motion. “Maybe life’s too short to worry on this shit and it’s a good enough reason then?” she suggested.
Boudreau snorted. “Y’all are the great Agony Aunt of the South all of a sudden?”
“Not me, no,” Flynn said, scowling. “Hell, I’d have been happy if y’all had never mentioned this.”
Although Boudreau had taken the day off to attend the double funeral, she had brought her cell phone, and it rang now, relieving both of the embarrassing need to continue the awkward conversation. Boudreau answered curtly, then she listened for several seconds before blowing out a hard sigh. “Where’s the body?” she demanded.
Flynn threw a sharp glance across the seats as unease squirted into her gut. She saw Boudreau frown. “Desire Street? You are fucking kidding me, right?” Apparently whoever was calling wasn’t kidding because Boudreau cursed a couple times, then sighed again and told the caller to stay put, they’d be there in ten minutes. “Don’t let anyone remove the goddamned body until we get there,” she added before hanging up. She glared at Flynn. “They’ve just found another body on Desire. In exactly the same fucking spot as Jeannette Larue. Y’all will never guess who it is.”
“Probably not,” Flynn agreed neutrally.
“John Wilson. Ring a bell—?” Boudreau grimaced. “Maybe you’d be more familiar with him as Johnny Cakes?”
Flynn closed her eyes. “Aw, fuck no.”
“I’m afraid so,” Boudreau sighed. “We should get over there.”
Johnny Cakes had been killed someplace else and his body dumped on the corner of Desire and Law Streets, in almost the exact spot that Jeannette Larue had been found. The older crime scene had been released days ago, but now a new strand of crime scene tape fluttered between two telephone poles. Waylon Murray met Boudreau and Flynn as they ducked under the new tape.
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