The Incident Under the Overpass

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The Incident Under the Overpass Page 27

by Anne McClane


  Lacey looked at him, eyes wide. He really is Professor X, she thought.

  Detective Aucoin put his hand on the doorknob, and Lacey decided to ponder Eli’s mutant expertise later. “Okay, Eli, since you know all about time and you’re trying to keep me concerned with the present, what should I say to the police?”

  “Tell them the truth. Tell them what happened.”

  “What about the other part? Why my hands were bloodied?”

  One side of his mouth curved. Lacey guessed he was smiling.

  “Tell them the truth,” he said. “Tell them you were trying to stop the bleeding.” His expression transformed into Buddha-like contentment.

  “Oh. I guess that is the truth,” she said.

  “Weren’t you?” he asked. “Trying to stop the bleeding?”

  “Yes. I see what you’re saying,” she said.

  Articles of faith and space-time continuums aside, Eli had a way of making the present much simpler and less scary.

  Detective Aucoin bullied his way into the office. “Are you ready, Stacey?” he asked. He stopped cold when he noticed Eli. “Who are you? How did you get in here?” the detective said.

  Eli held his finger to his temple, Professor X-style. “I’m Lacey’s boss,” he said. “I came to find out why she was missing work.”

  The detective looked off into the distance for a moment. “Oh. Okay. This won’t take long. Follow me Sta— Ms. Becnel.”

  34

  Lacey focused on the back of the man’s head in front of her. A ring of white fringe surrounded a constellation of age spots on a weather-beaten skull. “God’s Trumpet,” she deemed him, for his refrains and responses could be heard throughout St. Daniel’s. She suspected it was because he was deaf.

  Most Sundays, Lacey liked to sleep in, so she was an infrequent attendee of eight a.m. Mass. But the rare times she made it, God’s Trumpet was always there. She had snuck into the church around 8:10, and hadn’t realized she had chosen a seat so close to him until it was too late to do anything about it.

  She cradled her face in her hands so she could surreptitiously cover her eardrums when it was time for the congregation to speak.

  What am I thankful for? she thought.

  Eli, definitely. She was convinced he had Jedi mind-tricked Detective Aucoin at the police station. The detective had been respectful and concerned in every subsequent encounter. Lacey’s interview with him after LaSalle’s death had been anticlimactic. He’d asked her what happened, she’d told him, and then he’d told her she was free to go. Eli had been gone by the time she was done.

  She’d had the sum total of two calls from Detective Aucoin since. The first telling her she was free to travel until the Weasel’s trial. The second time he told her the trial would not be until sometime in the fall.

  The Weasel. She wasn’t grateful for him, but grateful that she hadn’t lost her life to him.

  His name was Edmund Robert Villere, his mug shot a disturbing and ubiquitous visual on the Internet and in the antiquated newspaper. He had been charged in the murder of Lawrence LaSalle, whose death had been characterized as terrible collateral from a botched robbery attempt.

  “Lord, hear our prayer,” God’s Trumpet shouted from the pew ahead of her. Lacey added her own voice to the refrain, but continued her own private liturgy.

  What am I thankful for?

  Helga, most definitely.

  Helga had saved Nathan’s life, and most likely Lacey’s too. Who knew what might have happened if Lacey had faced the hired goon solo? No one had come forward to claim the body of that man, who had outstanding warrants against him in ten states. NOPD had concluded that Helga had acted in self-defense, so she was free and clear.

  Free and clear. Nathan?

  She didn’t know what would become of Nathan. All she knew of his fate had been pieced together from the news. Reports of Edmund Villere’s crime noted Nathan on the scene at the time. How her presence had escaped the media’s attention, she wasn’t sure, but she was eternally grateful. She suspected Eli had everything to do with that.

  The death and funeral of Lawrence LaSalle had dominated the news for weeks, the story angle focusing on the senseless tragedy, the seemingly random violence, and LaSalle’s legacy. She saw Nathan in sound bites; a shot of him speaking about the tremendous loss, him in a dark suit at the funeral, standing next to his wife. How could he say anything about the real story?

  Could she trust that Nathan had told her the real story? If LaSalle had hired the Weasel to kill Nathan, how come the Weasel hadn’t known LaSalle?

  It made her head hurt thinking about it. Angele figured that the whole thing had been contracted and subcontracted multiple times, and that Edmund Villere was an ambitious but incompetent sub-sub-subcontractor. At least, that was how it usually worked in the movies.

  It still felt so unreal.

  She prayed for the repose of Lawrence LaSalle’s soul. Whatever he had done in his lifetime, it was over now, and she hoped he might now find respite.

  She marveled at fate. She had not sought out Nathan, or the drama of his life. Yet she had been drawn into it all the same, forever linked by the circumstances of her first healing, and now her part in his marital infidelity. She prayed for forgiveness for any harm that transgression might have brought to Nathan and his family.

  Transgressions. Fox.

  She missed him. It was like a scar; she knew that longing would always be with her. But it felt different; there had been some fading. It felt more nostalgic, a warm flush of memory of a time long ago, a childhood time. She thought of how her crazy, mad love for him had drawn her into the Becnel family, made her a Becnel. Made her Tonti’s niece.

  How thankful am I for Tonti?

  Hard to quantify. No, impossible to quantify. She prayed that Tonti remain in good health for twenty more years, at least.

  Tonti and Fox. (And Angele). The only people who’d crossed her consciousness at this Mass that she’d known for longer than a month. Everyone else, all new. With a new job, and an open future, how much wider would her life be a month from now?

  Seek out those who are knowledgeable, young Lacey.

  Cecil! she thought. His words appeared in her head so suddenly that she looked around, thinking he might be nearby and have telepathed it. She didn’t see him.

  None of this would have happened without Cecil. The momentous date of June ninth, and Cecil. The genealogy he had given Lacey was peppered with the word traiteur amongst a plethora of dates. Aside from dates of births, marriages, and deaths, when a traiteur was marked, there were two additional dates. Lacey figured they were the dates the ability was acquired, and when it was shared. The date common between Roberta Henriette Meeks—Birdie—and Cecil Augustine Session occurred one spring when Cecil was a very small boy. April thirtieth. Before that, there was a common date between Birdie and her father, and between him and an aunt.

  But for Cecil Augustine Session, next to the typed date of April thirtieth was a handwritten one: June ninth. The day he’d showed up at Carriere & Associates and picked up the books.

  Why had he chosen to share this with Lacey? Only he knew the answer to that question. Lacey already knew there was much more to the ability than the traiteur tradition. She had not found anything on the Internet about traiteurs healing bullet wounds. And there was the quantum physics book that still made no sense to her. Maybe her mutant power warped the space-time continuum or something. Cecil had told her to seek out knowledgeable people—Eli definitely seemed to fit that bill. And she would get to spend time with him in California.

  Two things felt clear to Lacey. She felt them soul-deep, as Tonti might say: one, her immediate path should be to learn what she could do, what was within her power; and two, she would see Cecil again. Perhaps when she did, she’d be ready for his answer.

  Thank you, Cecil, she mouthed silently. Thank you for choosing me. I think.

  “Peace be with you,” God’s Trumpet shouted at her with an outstre
tched hand.

  Lacey shook it gingerly, not wanting to crush his frail and gnarled fingers. “And with your spirit,” she mumbled.

  Lacey walked up to Communion with her purse. She chose a pew at the very back of Church when she returned; easier to make a quick getaway. And it put some distance between her and God’s Trumpet.

  Waiting for Mass to end, she tried to remember what the Gospel was about and couldn’t. She chastised herself for being so self-absorbed. But then cut herself some slack. It had been a very eventful few weeks.

  She waited until the closing hymn had finished. Leaving before then would be two errors in a row, arriving late and then leaving early. She needed better karma than that. She walked out with the crowd.

  As she approached the parking lot, Lacey noticed God’s Trumpet speaking to a man close to her age. The younger man was attractive, with nice eyes and a kind expression. Remembering Angele’s admonition, she looked at his left hand as she passed and saw a ring.

  Oh well, she thought.

  She didn’t notice that God’s Trumpet was speaking to the man at a normal volume.

  35

  Lacey’s departure was imminent. All arrangements had been made, certain services suspended. She had rented a place for her and Ambrose to stay in San Luis Obispo, sight unseen. She was in a strange limbo, occupying these last few remaining days in the house as she had done for years—walking Ambrose, doing laundry, maintaining the yard. Knowing that she would return, but suspecting that she would be wholly changed by the time she did.

  In a strange way, it was another goodbye to Fox. They’d started their life together in this place, this home on Florida Boulevard. When she and Ambrose came back to this house, they would bring a world of experiences and memories totally separate from Fox. She would bring the rest of her life back here.

  The rest of her life had already begun, truly, on June ninth. All that had transpired since had placed an impenetrable layer of sediment over the traces of Fox. He was a stratum that told the history of another age.

  Love will find a way. The Tesla song had not vacated her head. It bubbled up to the surface during quiet moments. She was beginning to hate it.

  Lacey tended to some weeds in her side garden, trying to ignore the song and the potent mixture of dread and hope that filled her. She knew the nugget of dread that sat at the base of her esophagus was directly related to Nathan. She tried desperately to let hope hold the balance.

  She told herself that was the sole reason she had contacted him—to tie up that loose end and leave town on a positive note. Despite what she told herself, she knew their relationship would not be tied up anytime soon. Tugging at some dollar weed, she checked her watch.

  There hadn’t been a full day of sun since the Fourth of July. Torrential downpours during the holiday had ruined the plans of thousands of New Orleanians, but Lacey had used her time spent indoors wisely. She and Ambrose were nearly all packed and ready to go.

  The bench Lacey chose was dry. From her vantage point inside the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, she could just make out Robert Indiana’s red and blue Love sculpture. Tesla provided the audio in her head.

  She moved to the opposite side of the bench to face a tree instead.

  She saw a young couple entering the garden with a baby in a stroller, and winced like she had been jabbed with a hot poker.

  The intermittent spells had become so frequent that Lacey had devised a name for them: residuals. They felt like lingering connections with the people she had healed. Psychic or spiritual or what, she didn’t know.

  She could see things, usually right upon waking, that she couldn’t connect with any part of her life. A few days ago, she’d awoken with a young girl in her mind’s eye, maybe ten years old, white-blonde hair, the scope of her rifle trained on a ten-point buck up in some mountainous place. She’d known it was Helga.

  She knew she’d had a vision of Lawrence LaSalle in his office; it had come to her after she’d first made love to Nathan. Now she forever equated it with his death.

  Other residuals connected to Nathan had come since she’d last seen him: being present at the birth of a child. It had happened twice now, and each time she’d felt a distinct anguish.

  A walking path traced the borders of the lagoon at the center of the garden. The family with the stroller meandered along it. The late afternoon heat was oppressive. Lacey took a sip of the iced tea—unsweetened—she had purchased from the café at the museum. Even in the shade of the tree, her pink sleeveless blouse and khaki shorts were beginning to stick to her.

  “You look like you’re trying to give someone the slip,” a voice said behind her.

  She whipped around. She’d been so preoccupied with the young family that she hadn’t even thought of checking the other direction.

  Nathan was there, in a polo shirt and shorts, a rose in his hand. He looked leaner than he had the last time she’d seen him. His eyes were very tired too. As drained as he appeared, he couldn’t suppress a smile.

  “I didn’t do a very good job of it, I guess,” Lacey answered.

  Iced tea in hand, she opened her arms in a halfhearted attempt at a hug. He responded with an embrace like she was a long-lost treasure, hidden away and finally unearthed. Even in the heat, she was reluctant to disengage.

  “Nathan,” she said, breaking off. “How are you?” She knew the words were weak.

  “Better,” he said. He looked down at his hands, remembered the rose. “Here, this is for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Did you take this from the botanical garden?”

  He laughed. “You got me.”

  “I think City Park frowns upon such things.”

  “I think I can handle a little heat from the City Park police. Bring it on.”

  She twirled the rose in her fingers, careful to steer clear of the thorns. “I bet you could.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes asking the question she couldn’t bring herself to voice.

  “I’ll tell you what I can, but give me just a minute first.” He took her hand. “It’s really good to see you,” he said, his voice cracking on the first syllable. He pulled her over to the bench. “Interesting choice for a meeting place.”

  “Can’t think of a better place. It’s about as private as you can get in a public space,” Lacey said. She pulled her hand away from his and reached down below the bench. “Here, I got you some iced tea. I don’t know how you drink it; I have some sugar and sweetener if you like it that way.”

  “That was sweet of you,” he said. He held the Styrofoam cup in both hands, rolling it back and forth without drinking.

  Lacey looked forward and stretched out her arms, trying to check the time on her watch without being obvious.

  Nathan turned to her. “Do you have someplace to be?”

  Lacey blushed, another bloom in the heat. “No, no. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “No hot date that you lined up as an excuse to get away from me?”

  She felt her ire rise. “No, unfortunately. That was a good idea, though—I wish you would have mentioned it sooner.”

  “I would have. I’ve been a bit…busy.”

  Their backs to the oak tree, they sat separated by only an inch. Nathan blocked Lacey’s view of the Love sculpture.

  She had picked the only vacant bench in the area. Silent sculptures, their plaster white and rough, populated the other seats. She stared at the human form on the bench opposite, a man with half-formed features and folded arms.

  Far off, past the downtown skyline, heat lightning brightened the sky. The lagoon caught its reflection.

  “Whoa,” Lacey said. Not able to stand the silence any longer, she asked, “So, what’s going on? What happened?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Other than all the stuff I saw about your father-in-law’s funeral in the news, not much. And I know that the Wea— Edmund Villere is in custody.”

  “Well, here’s what didn’t make the news,” h
e said. “I’m out of a home, soon to be unemployed, and barely escaped a murder charge.” Nathan wouldn’t look at her. He ripped the lid off the Styrofoam cup and downed half his iced tea.

  Lacey bit on the easiest question first. “Where are you staying?”

  “My parents. Who are thrilled over the whole situation, I’m sure. Their forty-four-year-old son crashing and burning up their nice, quiet retirement.”

  Lacey hadn’t known how old he was. “Where do they live?”

  “Uptown, on Danneel Street. Same house I grew up in.”

  “I’m sure they’re more understanding of your situation than you think,” she said.

  “You don’t know my parents.”

  “You’re right.” Lacey stood. “Nathan, I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything that day. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you, to tell you how sorry I am. I’m still learning how this thing works. You wouldn’t be in this situation if I’d been able to…help your father-in-law.”

  Nathan looked up from his cup. “Are you joking?” he asked.

  Lacey stepped back and folded her arms. “No, I mean it. I…” her voice quit as she felt a stranglehold on her esophagus.

  “Lacey, I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you. We both know that. And if you had saved him, I’m deadly certain he would have finished the job that you kept interfering with. So, no, my current situation is temporary.” Nathan stood. “And preferable to being dead, which is permanent. The shit of it all,” he continued, “is that I had finally confronted him that morning.”

  Lacey unfolded her arms. “You confronted your father-in-law?”

  “Yeah.” Nathan shook his head slowly. “I told him I knew he was involved in an attempt to kill me—multiple attempts—and that I would bring the evidence forward unless he was willing to work out a compromise.”

  “You have evidence?” Lacey asked.

  Nathan stepped closer to her. “You’re not very good at card games, are you?”

 

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