Preacher raised his hands. “Yeah, a shame.”
Maureen reached for her coffee, lifted the lid, and sipped, content to let the subject drop. Where in the hell, she thought, was this FBI stooge?
“It got me thinking,” Preacher said.
Maureen’s stomach dropped. She did not want Preacher thinking about crimes she had committed. “Were you at the scene? Did you work this?”
“I was at the St. Charles Tavern,” Preacher said. “I caught the details on the radio. Figured I might as well swing by. It was you that put the idea in my head. Those calls you were asking me about last week at the park, with the girls getting followed home from the bar. It was that Irish Garden bar, wasn’t it?”
“Is there a point to this?” Maureen asked.
“The address, it was another one not far from the bar.” Preacher rolled out his plump bottom lip. “I wanted to see what I could see. I’m curious, I’m thinking, what if maybe that was our guy? Maybe somebody caught on to him, lit him up on their own.”
“The girl,” Maureen said, “she have a boyfriend? Someone that could’ve seen this guy following her, like from the apartment or the porch or something?”
“No boyfriend,” Preacher said, shaking his head. “He’d dumped her that afternoon.” He rolled his eyes. “I heard plenty of detail about that. Job transfer. He ditched her by text. Anyway, that was why she was out alone in the first place, she said. If anyone saw what happened, we don’t know who they are.”
“So is there anything to move on?” Maureen asked. “Or are we shelving it?”
“I want to see if those calls stop coming,” Preacher said. “Far as I’m concerned, that’ll tell us if Johnny Lungblood is our man.”
“Or maybe the calls stop coming,” Maureen said, “because we never did anything about the first few.”
“Maybe.”
“The guy,” Maureen said, taking a deep breath, “he have any idea who put the hurt on him?”
“Beats me,” Preacher said. “I haven’t heard anything since he got taken to the hospital. They were working on him in the yard when I got there. I don’t think anyone at the scene talked to him much. Wasn’t much he could say. I’m sure the detective will talk to him. Eventually. Maybe when he gets out of the hospital.”
“So no one at the scene questioned this guy?” Maureen asked. “No one asked him what he was doing in that yard? If he knew that girl?”
“Coughlin, somebody caved in the guy’s ribs for him,” Preacher said. “Somebody nearly killed him. Did you miss that part of the story? Because I’m pretty sure I told it. Ambulance guys suspected a weapon like a pipe. Maybe a bat. Guy has a knee that looked like a fucked-up hamburger cauliflower. EMTs had to cut his pants off him right there in the yard.” He brushed his fingers over his pants, dismissing imaginary crumbs. “We’ll see tonight if there’s any updates when we go in. Anyways, it’ll be easier for you to stay in the loop, now that you’re back on the job.”
“Believe it,” Maureen said.
Preacher puffed out his cheeks, blew out the air in a long sigh. He raised his chin at something over her shoulder. “Hey, look, I bet this is your FBI guy.”
11
Maureen turned her head, rolling her skull along the concrete wall of the coffee shop.
A short, slender, clean-shaven black man in a charcoal suit, his head down, phone at his ear, stood at the nearby corner. His name, as he’d told her on the phone last night, was Clarence Detillier, and he was an FBI agent, domestic terrorism unit. He was going to give her a chance, he had said, to go from being a liability to a commodity. His words. She could tell over the phone that he was proud of them. She’d told him she’d be happy to talk. She even let him name the time and the place. Then she had called Preacher. She knew when to roll with backup.
Preacher had worked his web of New Orleans contacts and called Maureen back to vouch for the guy. It was Preacher who’d found out he was in the domestic terrorism unit. So it didn’t seem, as far as Preacher could tell, that Detillier was setting her up for a fall, or worse, looking to somehow use her against her fellow cops in the Gage murder case.
The FBI agent finished his phone call, tucked his phone in his jacket pocket, and headed for Maureen’s table, where an empty chair awaited him. He dusted it off with a handful of paper napkins before he sat. He extended his hand across the table.
“Clarence Detillier, FBI, New Orleans office,” he said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Maureen shook his hand. It was cold and dry. “Maureen Coughlin, NOPD.” She turned toward Preacher, who sat silent and stone-faced, his hands spread on his thighs. “This is Sergeant Preacher Boyd.”
“From the union?” Detillier asked, his eyebrows raised. Maureen could tell he hadn’t expected her to have company. Good, she thought. She’d already thrown the FBI a curve.
“Sergeant Boyd is my current duty sergeant.”
“So you’re no longer suspended?” Detillier said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” As if you didn’t already know, she thought.
“I’m here in an advisory capacity,” Preacher said, watching pigeons work a chunk of bagel in the gutter. Maureen heard protective muscle in his voice. He was advising her, and Detillier, too, that he had her back. “Moral support. Backup. Standard operating procedure.”
“You’ve had bad experiences with the federal government, Officer Coughlin?”
Preacher laughed out loud. “We’re sitting in New Orleans and you ask that?”
Detillier leaned over the table. “Hey, Sergeant Boyd, I’m as ‘from here’ as you are. Born and raised.”
Maureen straightened in her chair. “Fellas, fellas.” She turned to Detillier. “Let’s be straight about one thing. I know you said you’re bringing me an opportunity, and I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, but everyone here knows the NOPD is scared shitless of the feds these days. For reasons that have nothing to do with Katrina. Between y’all and the Department of Justice, we’re every one of us waiting to hear the ring of the blade in the air.”
Detillier folded his hands in his lap, leaned back in his seat. “Tell me your specific concerns.”
“As soon as I get my badge back,” Maureen said, “I’m talking to the FBI. The next day. How do you think that makes me look around the district, to other cops?”
“No one needed to know about this meeting except you and me,” Detillier said. His eyes shifted to Preacher. “You’re the one who brought a witness.”
Maureen laughed. “This would’ve stayed a secret? Because that would look so much better, a secret meeting with the FBI after I get my badge back. Please. Yeah, I brought a witness. So that when I’m back on the job and the rumors about me start I have an impeccable source to vouch for me. So y’all are watching us, but we’re watching y’all right back.”
“You agreed to this meeting,” Detillier said, “of your own free will.”
“We’re under a consent decree,” Maureen said. “Big Brother is watching. I’m a rookie. The only reason I’m not out on my ass already is because I’m a woman and I have dirt on the department.”
“Dirt on the NOPD,” Detillier said, “is not why I’m here. I’m interested in the future, Officer Coughlin, not the past. That’s not my department. And I think you already know that.”
“So what is it exactly about the Gage murder that interests you?” Maureen asked.
“Where he came from, for one.”
“LaPlace?”
“The Sovereign Citizens,” Detillier said. “And the Watchmen Brigade, specifically. They are of interest to us. You are of interest to them. You see where I’m headed with this.”
Preacher leaned forward in his chair, the plastic creaking under his shifting weight. “Interested in her? They tried to kill her.”
“We know that,” Detillier said. “It’s the reason we’re sitting here today.”
“You know something,” Maureen said. “What do you know?” Her heart rate doubled, trippi
ng over itself in its effort to accelerate. “They’re going to try again. When? How?”
Detillier threw the quickest glance at Preacher before he spoke, his hands raised in a calming gesture. “We don’t really know anything. I have no knowledge of another planned attack. But we’re worried about it, an attack on you, or on another officer or officers. Losing the gunrunners Gage and Cooley from their own ranks, losing their local connection, the drug dealer named Scales, we don’t believe any of that has deterred the Watchmen from moving men and weapons into New Orleans. None of those three men were in charge. None of them made decisions. They were expendable.”
The agent leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, looking at his hands as he spoke. “The Sovereign Citizens, the larger, umbrella cause that the Watchmen align themselves with and claim to support, or represent, or whatever—it’s all very fluid—are a problem. They have been for some time. Until recently, they mostly confined their efforts to the courts—filing crazy lawsuits, clogging up the system with paperwork, suing townships and judges and anyone else, squatting in foreclosed houses and filing ownership claims—shit like that.”
“More recently, my ass,” Preacher said. “Timothy McVeigh was a Sovereign Citizen.”
“There have always been outliers,” Detillier said. “Individuals. Duos and trios. Cells, if you want to call them that. We’re starting to; the language is changing. The terms we use in the U.S. are becoming more familiar in ways that nobody likes. The outliers, the extremists, they’re impossible to predict, nearly impossible to find before they act. And yes, Sergeant Boyd, I admit, we spent recent years watching for international dangers and for threats coming into the country. As a result, we are now woefully behind on what’s been growing here at home. We’re human like you. There’s only so much we can do.
“What worries us much more now is the growth, the exponential growth of these armed and dangerous militaristic offshoots like the Watchmen Brigade. These patriot groups not only don’t fear law enforcement, be it local or federal; many of them antagonize law enforcement.” He gestured toward Maureen. “They target law enforcement. And their influence is growing.
Detillier ticked off names and places on his fingers. Maureen grew ill as they added up. “That rancher in Utah and his gun buddies. The Oath Keepers, who are now national, the West Mountain Rangers in Montana, the Indiana Rangers, the Massachusetts Fighting Wolves, the Radical American Patriots, the Guardians of the Free Republic in Texas.” He shook his head. “The list goes on, and it grows. Now we have the Watchmen Brigade in south Louisiana.”
“The conspiracy in Vegas,” Maureen said. “The cops killed in the ambush, in the restaurant. That was these people you’re talking about. These are the people who are after me.”
“They got our attention around here before that,” Detillier said. “When those state police got killed in LaPlace. But, yes, the killers in Vegas called themselves Sovereign Citizens. The man they just caught in Pennsylvania who killed those state troopers at their barracks. Him, too.”
“LaPlace was three years ago,” Preacher said. “Vegas was last summer. Pennsylvania was last month. You’re not making much progress. They’re still there, and probably elsewhere in Louisiana, and now they’re here in New Orleans, too.” He nodded at Maureen. “She’s got a front door full of bullet holes to prove it.”
Maureen shook her head. “Not anymore. Rehab is done on the outside. Can’t even tell it happened anymore. I don’t even wanna think about what it cost the landlords to get it done that quick.”
“What about the inside?” Preacher asked.
“That’s got some work left,” Maureen said. “There are bullet holes above the fireplace. In my bed frame.”
“That’s gotta frighten the boys away,” Preacher said.
“Well, good luck with that,” Detillier said, loud enough to get everyone back on point. “If the events of last month have checked the Watchmen’s move into the city, it’s not for long. We’re planning aggressive countermoves. We would like your help with that.”
Maureen stretched her legs under the table, crossing her ankles. “In what capacity?”
“This is not the part where I make you a federal agent,” Detillier said. He reached into his suit-jacket pocket, produced a notepad and a pen. “This is the part where I ask you some questions. Hopefully, you give me useful answers, and we move on from there.” He clicked the pen. “What can you tell me about Madison Leary?”
Maureen crossed her arms. Not the question or the name she’d expected to hear. Leary was a New Orleans case. Skinner had told her the feds had dead Gage’s father on the hook, and that he was the person they wanted to talk about.
“She came here from LaPlace on the run from the Watchmen,” Maureen said. “Allegedly carrying a sizable wad of cash that she’d stolen from them. As far as we were able to figure, both Cooley and Gage were in New Orleans looking for her and the money. But she’s not who you want. A man named Caleb Heath, he’s the one you want.”
“Coughlin,” Preacher said, caution in his voice.
“Leary knows the Watchmen,” Detillier said. “She lived with them in LaPlace. She was one of them. The last place she lived before she came to New Orleans was with the Watchmen.”
“She’s a crazy drifter who fell in with the wrong guys at the trailer park,” Maureen said. “That’s not the same as joining a terrorist cell. She came to New Orleans to get away from them. To escape, and they hunted her here.”
“According to your friend Detective Atkinson,” Detillier said, “this poor, unfortunate victim you describe, she’s the lead suspect in the murders of Gage and Cooley.”
“Then ask Atkinson about her,” Maureen said.
“We did,” Detillier said. “And she sent us to you. She said you knew her first.”
Maureen turned in her chair and looked at Preacher, expressionless behind his dark glasses. In the park, they had theorized about how Maureen had drawn the FBI’s attention. Atkinson was the answer, then. Maureen wondered what else the detective had told the feds about her. Not too much, not everything she knew if Detillier wasn’t coming after her with cuffs.
“If you want the Watchmen,” Maureen said, turning back, “if you really want to hurt them, find Caleb Heath.” She waited for Detillier to write the name down. “Caleb Heath, son of Solomon, the owner of Heath Construction and Design. They have a house on Audubon Park. You need me to spell it for you?”
“I see their signs around the city,” Detillier said. “I know who they are.”
“They’ve rebuilt half of it,” Preacher said. “And they’re tearing down the other half so they can rebuild that. City dollars, state dollars, federal dollars. Katrina made Solomon Heath even richer than he was before the storm. And that’s saying something.”
Detillier chuckled, shaking his head. “Caleb Heath is in Dubai. You both know that already.”
“He can’t stay there forever,” Maureen said.
“I don’t know about that. He’s got a brother who lives there. Heath Construction has an office there. Among other places.” Detillier leaned across the table. “Do you have any idea how big these people really are?”
“I get the feeling you do,” Maureen said, leaning away from him. “And that you’re making your decisions accordingly. The poor people like Leary put up so much less of a fight.”
“It’s the poor people, as you put it,” Detillier said, “who shot up your house.”
“Caleb Heath bought them the guns they used to do it,” Maureen said. “Caleb Heath gave them my fucking address.”
“You have proof of this,” Detillier said. “Ironclad proof? Because that’s what we need to send agents to Dubai to arrest this man’s son. Otherwise, I don’t have taxpayer dollars for a wrongful arrest suit. Not with my budget. Not with the lawyers the Heaths can afford. That’s what I mean when I talk about how big they are.”
“I do not have that kind of proof,” Maureen said. “I did. I don’t anymore.”
/> “Officer Quinn?” Detillier asked. “I take it he’s one of your sources.”
Maureen nodded.
“Well, he’s dead,” Detillier said. “Which means anything he ever said to you is meaningless.”
“Caleb knows everything Quinn told me,” Maureen said, “and more.”
“Rebuilding New Orleans is only part of what they do,” Detillier said, shaking his head. “And a small part at that. It’s building sand castles to these people. They’re worldwide. If they get sick of Caleb in Dubai, they can send him to Jakarta, to Buenos Aires. That’s how big these people are, how deep their pockets go.”
“Here in New Orleans,” Maureen said, “the big boss lives on the edge of the park four miles away. I can show you which house. I can give you their address. Solomon seems like a decent guy. I only met him once, but I’ve seen him a bunch of times since then. I can give you a general impression. He has to know what his son is mixed up in. Have you even talked to him? Made him try to understand what his son was doing?”
Detillier sat silent and stone-faced.
Maureen turned to Preacher. “Do you believe this guy?”
“I do,” Preacher said. “Sadly enough.”
“Caleb Heath is a direct connection to the Watchmen,” Maureen said, rising from her seat, pressing her finger into the tabletop. “Direct. He’s done business with them. For them. He knows any number of them personally.”
“This business is?” Detillier asked, sighing.
“Guns,” Maureen said. “Lots of them. He finances them, bankrolls them. Or he did, through Clayton Gage, who was an old friend of his from school.” She sat back down. “Now that Heath is out of the country, I don’t know if the pipeline stayed open.”
“Clayton Gage,” Detillier said. “He’s dead, too. He was the second murder.” He drew a finger across his throat. “The necktie outside the bar.”
“Indeed,” Preacher said.
“So with the deaths of Quinn and Gage, and the disappearance of”—Detillier flipped through his notebook—“former officer Ruiz, this direct connection from Heath to the Watchmen has been totally cut off. So to speak.”
Let the Devil Out Page 9