The Dead Play On

by Heather Graham

  Lily had made her voice harsh, guttural—and muffled.

  “He talked like that?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah. I think the mask made his voice funny. I don’t really know how to describe it. It wasn’t a cool Mardi Gras mask. It was like those featureless white faces you see in Venice at Carnevale, except it wasn’t white. It was opaque and shiny, skin-colored, and it made him...faceless,” Lily said.

  “She’s described it perfectly,” Rowdy said.

  “What about the gun?” Quinn asked. “How did you know it was real?”

  “Because he fired it,” Jeff said drily. “When he came up to us, I said, ‘What the hell?’ And the next thing I knew, he’d bashed me in the head and fired.”

  As he described the action, Lily rushed between them and pretended to slam her “weapon” against Jeff’s head.

  Jeff’s reflexes were strong; he ducked even though he must have known that she wouldn’t hit him. And even if she did, it was just a pencil. But Quinn noted the way that, the second she’d made her move, she hurriedly pointed the gun at them again.

  Jeff cleared his throat. “He fired when Rowdy made a move toward me. Maybe he couldn’t tell that Rowdy was trying to help me and not tackle him. I was about out. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I just heard the shots.”

  “Shots?” Quinn asked.

  “Yeah, two of them,” Lily said.

  “I suspect he fired in a panic, thinking Rowdy was going for him, especially because he shot twice, and he wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to his presence.”

  “Maybe, but he knew what he was doing,” Rowdy offered. “He told us to put our instruments down and move. Lily was sobbing by then and asking him how Jeff was supposed to move, but he said we’d better get him up somehow or he’d never move again. So we dropped our instruments and headed toward Esplanade as fast as we could, dragging Jeff and screaming for help. A cop heard us and called an ambulance for Jeff, and Lily and I went to the police station.”

  Larue had the report on his desk. He looked at Quinn. “Officers were sent out right away to search the area, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “You guys can take your seats again,” Quinn said, sitting down himself and turning to Larue. “No bullets? No casings?”

  Larue shook his head.

  “We’re not lying!” Lily said angrily.

  “I’m not suggesting you are. How many shots, again?”

  “Two,” Rowdy said. “And I’m sure of that. As certain as I am that we’re sitting here in this room.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “I need to know because I’m going to try to find those bullets and casings. I need your help, though. First, he took your ukulele, Lily, your guitar, Rowdy, and Jeff, your sax?”

  “Yeah, he took my sax. How did you know?” Jeff asked.

  “It’s in the report,” Larue said quickly.

  “What about the gun? Do you know what make or model it was?” Quinn asked.

  “It was a gun. It fired bullets,” Rowdy told him. “I’m sorry, but I’ve never held a gun in my life.”

  “Me, neither,” Lily said.

  “I went skeet shooting once at a casino in Mississippi,” Jeff said. “And I still couldn’t tell a rifle from a water pistol.”

  “All right, big? Small?” Quinn asked.

  “About the size of the one Detective Larue has,” Rowdy offered, pointing to Larue’s shoulder holster. “But different.”

  “Okay, let’s go in a different direction. How tall was he?” Quinn asked.

  “Tall,” Rowdy said.

  “Medium,” Lily said at the same time.

  Jeff laughed ruefully. “I thought the bastard was a short little shit. But then, he was on me like a bat out of hell, so I’m not a good judge.”

  “About how long was it from the time you were attacked to the time the cop found you and sent someone to the scene?” Quinn asked.

  “Just a few minutes,” Rowdy said.

  “Felt like forever, though,” Lily added.

  “I couldn’t begin to tell you,” Jeff said. “Those two were half carrying me, half dragging me, and the world seemed to be a blur. Why?”

  “I’m trying to figure out if he might have had an accomplice—someone to help him with the instruments, maybe someone with a car—or if he had a place in the area to stash them and himself,” Quinn said. An accomplice could even have come back later to pick up the bullets.

  “Oh!” Lily’s brown eyes went wide. “Let me think. I wish I could be more helpful, but the whole thing happened so quickly. And we were afraid we were going to die. Once he went after Jeff, we just complied as fast as we could.”

  “You did the right thing. No instrument is worth your life,” Quinn told her. “Were those the instruments you usually played?”

  “I play drums, too, but they stay at the club,” Lily told him.

  “Harmonica—and I didn’t even think of it. It was in my pocket,” Rowdy said.

  “Sometimes I play keyboards,” Jeff said. “But the bar has a piano, and I never take that home with me, either—obviously.”

  “But you always take your sax home?” Larue asked, looking at Quinn as he spoke.

  “Always,” Jeff said.

  “You’re pretty friendly with a lot of the other musicians in the city, yes?” Quinn asked them.

  “Sure,” Rowdy said. “Have been for thirty years. You never know when you’ll need someone to cover you, and you never know when work might go sour and you’ll be looking to cover for other people.”

  “Did you know the two men who were killed? Holton Morelli and Lawrence Barrett?”

  “I knew them both,” Rowdy said quietly.

  “I knew Holton,” Lily said.

  “And I knew Larry,” Jeff told them.

  “What about a musician named Arnie Watson?” Quinn asked.

  “Arnie? Of course,” Lily said softly.

  “Sure. Great guy. Terrible thing,” Jeff said.

  “He would have known what the gun was,” Rowdy said. He frowned, looking at Quinn. “They found him with a needle in his arm. Are you saying you think...?”

  “We don’t know what we think,” Quinn said. “We just know we have a lot of dead musicians.”

  Lily trembled and swallowed audibly. “You think the guy who did this to us...that he’s the same guy who broke in and murdered Holton and Larry?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Quinn said.

  “Shit!” Jeff said. “I’m lucky as hell I was just pistol-whipped.”

  “We’re all lucky as hell,” Lily said.

  “Well, there’s one bright spot,” Rowdy said. “At least it wasn’t someone who thought our music stank.”

  He was trying for levity, and the others tried to smile.

  “Whoever he is, he’s still out there,” Jeff said.

  “Let’s not panic,” Quinn said. “We’re investigating every angle, and we will put a stop to this. But even though he’s already taken your instruments, you have to be more careful than you’ve ever been. Don’t let anyone into your house—well, unless it’s your mother.”

  “And even then, be careful,” Lily murmured.

  “One more thing,” Larue said. “Will the three of you work with a sketch artist and see if you can agree on what the ‘faceless’ man looked like to the best of your recollection?”

  “Of course. We’ll do anything. We want this guy stopped,” Rowdy said.

  “Hell, yesterday I just wanted my sax—and my hair—back,” Jeff said. “Now I just want to stay alive.”

  Lily, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand.

  “Come with me,” Larue said. “We’ll go see Sergeant Hicks, and you can describe the man to him.”

  Quinn
thanked the three of them, and after they left the office with Larue, he read the report again. They had definitely heard shots, but no bullets or even casings had been found.

  Had their attacker cleaned up the scene before he left?

  In about ten minutes, Larue came back by himself.

  He tossed a copy of the sketch down on his desk. Quinn stared at it.

  The man was faceless and wearing a trench coat. His hair was dark and stuck straight up in wild, thick disarray.

  “Wig,” Quinn said.

  “I imagine,” Larue said. “And the face...?”

  Quinn looked at his old partner. “Mask. And yet, if he was walking with his head down, no one would even notice.” He rose. “Thanks. Thanks for letting me in on this.”

  “This case is all over the place,” Larue said. “If this is all the same guy, he’s versatile, no single MO. I mean, he somehow overpowers a guy who went through boot camp and military training, and shoots a needle full of heroin into his arm. Then he dresses up like some trick-or-treater and attacks those three on the street. Then he just walks up to two different doors and brutally tortures and kills two men. Given that there were no signs that either victim was suspicious in any way, he must have shown up as himself. I mean, look at that drawing. No one would open the door to that freak.”

  “I believe it is the same person. And his tactics are changing because he’s growing more desperate. He wants that special sax,” Quinn said. “Well, thanks again. I’m going to get moving.”

  “Keep me in the loop if you hear anything,” Larue said.

  “Will do,” Quinn said, heading to the door.

  “And try to keep it legal,” Larue said.

  “Don’t worry. I have a little more freedom than you guys in blue.”

  Larue shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You won’t get the department into trouble. But keep it legal anyway.”

  “Absolutely,” Quinn said.

  “Liar.”

  “As legal as I can,” Quinn promised.

  “You’re going to go back and search where the police already searched, aren’t you?” Larue asked.

  “I am. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything,” Quinn said. “I think the attacker did a good job of covering his tracks.”

  “But you’re going anyway?” Larue asked.

  “There’s one thing you taught me that will make me do just that,” Quinn told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “No killer is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. We have to figure out where he’s making his mistakes. The last two killings haven’t given us much to go on, so we certainly don’t want to give him a chance to perfect his methods, do we?”

  * * *

  It was here somewhere, somewhere in the city. He was going to find it, though.

  The whole thing could have been so easy.

  He shouldn’t have needed to try so hard, to go to such lengths.

  To become the Man With No Face.

  Arnie Watson had trusted him, trusted him and stared in disbelief, wondering what was happening, when he’d stuck the needle in his arm.

  And he’d taken the sax Arnie had that night. The sax that should have been the sax.

  Except it hadn’t been.

  But that sax was in the city. Somewhere. Arnie had given it to someone, left it to someone, entrusted it to someone.

  Arnie had given away the magic sax. Who the hell had he given it to?

  Who?

  He pulled out the picture again. Things could still be salvaged. They couldn’t prove that Arnie’s death had been murder. Neither Rowdy nor Lily nor that ridiculous Jeff had known who he was, had recognized him. He’d never known just how important the mask was going to be until he’d visited Holton Morelli and then Larry Barrett.

  And he’d never known himself, really known himself. He’d been sure he could get the sax if one of them had it.

  He’d never known how far he would really go, but now he did. And he would get that sax. Eventually one of the local musicians would make sure of it. Because everyone wanted to live. Of course, if the cops got involved they would make sure the current owner didn’t just offer up the sax. No, the cops would try to arrange things so he would have to come for it, and then they would arrest him. He wasn’t going to let that happen, though.

  He would find the damned thing himself, even if he had to murder every musician in the city to get it.

  He stared at the picture some more. It made him angry. There they were, all those musicians—a few years ago, of course. The beautiful, the brilliant and the talented. Lost and alone after the summer of storms, clinging to one another. Still, they had the look. Every one of them had the look. They were superior. And none so superior as Arnie Watson.

  Because of his magical saxophone.

  Well, oh-so-special Arnie was dead now. And he was going to have the sax. He would have expected the sax to go to Arnie’s parents. And if that were true and they had passed it on to another musician, he would find out.

  But he remembered Arnie the night he had died. Arnie had laughed before he’d known what was happening.

  “The sax?” he’d said. “Well, of course it’s special. To me—and the person I most adore, who will hold it dear for all the right reasons.”

  Who the hell was that person? He’d accidentally put Arnie out too fast to find out. But he’d been new to killing people then. He’d had no idea how easy it was.

  Now he was no longer himself. He was the Man With No Face. And he would be whoever he needed to be whenever the need arose. Murder, he’d discovered, was not just easy.

  It was an art.

  And he was just as magical as the sax. He could disappear. He could be—and not be. He could be himself or anyone else he wanted to be.

  But he had to find that sax.

  He studied the picture. It wasn’t just deciding who he was going to kill next.

  It was deciding just how and when his victim would die.

  Chapter 5

  FOR THE LAST few years that Quinn had been with the NOPD, Larue had been his partner. He’d always been a good cop, and Quinn was glad they were still on the same side. There were way too many times when it proved beneficial to be in good graces with one of the city’s lead detectives.

  Of course, there were things he and Danni sometimes did that made him extremely grateful that they weren’t cops themselves. Their unofficial status frequently saved them from struggling with a moral dilemma, not to mention from being fired for going where a policeman couldn’t legally go.

  At the moment, however, Quinn didn’t have anything in mind that even remotely smacked of illegal behavior. He headed down to Frenchman Street and the block where Lily, Jeff and Rowdy had been playing.

  The street was crowded with clubs and restaurants; in Quinn’s mind, it was the best place to find local talent and up-and-coming musicians. Blues and jazz spilled through open club doors, occasionally punctuated by folk music and experimental mixes. He’d seen the best drummer he’d ever encountered on Frenchman Street; the man’s arms had moved as if they were propelled by the Energizer Bunny.

  It was Friday morning and still early; workers were still out cleaning up from the night before. He stopped in front of the Blues Bear, where the trio had been playing, and then he retraced their steps as they’d described their route to him. Lily had pointed out a spot on the map where they’d passed a tree just before being attacked. It was right by a large alleyway where vendors often set up.

  The tree grew in a square opening cut from the pavement, surrounded by concrete and old paving bricks. Their attacker might have made his exit through the alleyway, but he hadn’t come from that direction, Quinn thought. He had met the three head-on just after they passed the alley. Reliving Lily’s reenactment in
his mind, Quinn pinpointed the direction the shots would have taken. He would have fired toward Esplanade.

  Two shots. The casings should have fallen to the ground where the attacker had stood. And the bullets had to have made impact somewhere.

  Quinn crossed the street and headed down the block, inspecting the walls of the buildings as he did so.

  He walked up and down, up and down.

  He knew the police had searched, but things would have been a lot more chaotic then, with Jeff being rushed to the hospital, and both Rowdy and Lily in shock, unable to speak with much coherency.

  He walked down a couple of blocks and then walked back slowly. He did it three times. The attacker could easily have picked up his shells, but bullets didn’t just disappear.

  He returned to his original position.

  Then he looked at the tree.

  It was scrawny; he actually had no idea what kind of tree it was. He looked at the two square feet of dirt in which the tree sat in its oasis amid the concrete. Ducking down, he searched through the dirt with his fingers.

  “What the hell?” a passerby murmured.

  The man at her side whispered back, “It’s New Orleans. Just keep walking.”

  There was nothing in the dirt. Quinn slowly rose and realized that he was staring right at a bullet that had pounded its way straight into the trunk of the scraggly little tree.

  He pulled out his knife and the handkerchief he kept folded in a pocket for just such occasions. In less than a minute he had the flattened bullet cut from the trunk, along with a few chips of wood. He kept searching and was soon rewarded; the second bullet was lodged higher and covered by the few leaves that sprang from the bony branches.

  He had them both. The attacker had found his casings, all right. But not even he had known where to find the bullets.

  “May you prosper and live forever,” he told the tree then turned to hurry back across Esplanade to the French Quarter and then toward the station.

  * * *

  The Cheshire Cat was quiet, and everything seemed to be going smoothly when Danni returned from visiting Natasha. Wolf greeted her enthusiastically. There was no living being in her life—Quinn included, she thought—who greeted her with the same display of love that Wolf gave her. Dogs were the best, their love unconditional. Whether she’d been gone a few days or a few hours, Wolf greeted her in a way that let her know how much he loved her.