Then the name and address came up, along with a small window containing a map. With a click of the mouse, he had a map showing directions to the home of Huey Kelton, who lived on Magazine Street in the Garden District. Max had no idea who this Kelton guy was, but that was the phone Corinne had called him from to tell him that Gabrielle was dead.
Max jumped up and went out into the lobby. Audrey looked up from behind the desk. “Did you get what you needed?”
“I did, thank you. Any chance you could call me a cab?” “Can't promise one will come, but I'll do my best.” Max had a feeling her best was pretty formidable. He thanked her and went back into the business office, printed up the page with the map and Huey Kelton's address, closed the browser, and shut off the lights, then left, pulling the door closed behind him.
The cab rolled slowly through the early-evening streets of the Garden District. No traffic appeared to clog the route, but the driver never accelerated above thirty miles an hour, content to go at his own pace. In the time he'd lived in New Orleans, Max had found that pretty much summed up the populace here. Frantic or laid back, everyone did their own thing.
It had taken nearly half an hour for the cab to arrive, during which time all of Max's nervous energy had returned. The waiting made him itchy and he'd stood on the street in front of the hotel, trying his best not to look like some kind of junkie, twitching and biting his nails. When the cab did arrive, the driver reeked of booze and kept an unlit cigar chomped between his teeth. He guided the car with one hand, the other one out the window, surfing his fingers through the wind like a kid.
When Max had told him the address, he'd only grunted his assent and started driving. They'd gone through the Warehouse District, but the clubs that had made the place trendy in the last decade were either still closed up after the storm or hadn't yet opened for the night.
As they passed through the Garden District, Max found himself distracted by a bizarre spectacle. Some of the side streets were dotted with refrigerators, left out at the end of driveways as if their owners expected the garbagemen to pick them up. They hit a section of Magazine where the same phenomenon was in evidence. Some of the fridges were still covered with magnets, and all of them were taped closed with duct or electrical tape.
“What's that all about?” he asked.
The driver grunted, this time a question.
“The refrigerators. I didn't think this neighborhood flooded.”
“Didn't. But the power was out too long. Nothing but rot and E. coli and shit in those things. Who knows what's growing in there? I wouldn't open one. They got dump trucks and loaders goin’ around, picking 'em up.”
“Looks weird.”
The cabbie grunted, as if the relative weirdness of the forest of fridges hadn't occurred to him. “Drove through Gentilly and the Seventh Ward a few days ago. There's places up there where the fridges are the only things still standing. Rather lose the fridge and keep the house.”
Max shut up. What could he have said to that?
In the front seat of the cab, the driver took a swig from a flask. He didn't give a damn about being surreptitious.
Max had lost track of addresses a while ago, and he let the driver do his job. When the cab slowed, he looked around. There weren't a lot of gardens in this part of the Garden District. Trees and bushes, sure, though the hurricane had stripped most of them of any green. They were pitiful, skeletal things, and seemed lost in front of the rows of houses and apartments. The buildings were stacked up close together.
“Hard to make out numbers, but I think that's the one you want,” the driver said, around his unlit cigar. He pointed to a small, gray, neatly kept house whose bay window had been boarded up. Smaller windows were still intact, though, and a light burned inside.
Max looked at the house. Now that he was here, uncertainty took hold.
“Any way I can get you to stick around for a few minutes, in case I've got the wrong house?”
“If that's not it, it's bound to be one of these. This here's the block, for sure.”
“I just meant, if the person I came to see isn't home—
“I'm going home now. Got dinner waiting. I'm not going back to the Quarter tonight.”
Max looked into the rearview mirror. The driver wasn't even looking at him. The man's tone was flat and dull, and he knew the cabbie was lying Nobody waited at home for this guy, especially not with dinner on the table. Maybe he'd go home to a bottle and his television, and something micro-waved out of a can. He just didn't want to be bothered. But Max couldn't get angry. If their situations were reversed, he'd want to go home, too.
“Can I get a card with the number of the cab company?”
The guy nodded. “Sure, sure.” He grabbed one and passed it back.
Max paid him, tipping him a few extra bucks for his trouble, and stepped out of the cab. The car rolled away, taking with it the stink of whiskey. Max stood in front of what he hoped was Huey Kelton's house and watched the windows for a minute, looking for any sign of life.
Screw it, you're here. Just go. He didn't have any options. His cell phone was wrecked, and if nobody was at home he'd have to walk back along Magazine until he came to a bar that'd let him make a call.
Tucking the cab company's card into his pocket, he walked up to the house. For just a second, he thought he saw something move in the darkness to the side of the house, but when he narrowed his eyes for a better look, there was nothing there. Just the night, growing darker.
He went to the door and knocked. It felt quiet and empty in there. Max didn't believe in any sort of preternatural awareness, but he thought sometimes people sensed things, foremost among them the absence of other people. The house felt as if nobody was home, so that even when he knocked again, harder this time, he wished the cabdriver had agreed to wait.
For the first time he noticed the doorbell. It was half a foot from the door frame, round, with a metal button at its center, painted the same color as the house. The thing looked old and unused, and he felt sure it must be out of order.
But when he pressed the button, the bell rang, a traditional ding-dong that sounded muffled, as though it came up from the inside of a well. His feeling that no one was home intensified.
“Shit,” Max said.
He counted to ten and knocked again, his last effort before setting off down Magazine Street in search of a bar with a phone. And maybe a drink or two as he waited for a cab to come and fetch him, however long that might take.
He reached out and pressed the doorbell again.
From inside there came the chime, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Max blinked, straightening up. What the hell was that? He'd been so sure the house was empty.
“Mr. Kelton?” he called, hammering on the door. “Corinne?”
Coming down off the stoop, he moved around some bushes to the nearest unboarded window and tried to see through the curtains. The front rooms were dark, but a light burned at the back of the house. Its illumination flickered as something passed in front of it.
“Corinne?” he called through the glass.
Inside, someone screamed.
“Fuck!” Max jumped back over the bushes and started pounding on the door. “Kelton? Open the door!”
A light flicked on in front of the neighbor's house and an old man poked his head out the door. “Get away from there, boy, or I'm'a call the cops.”
Max paused, mind racing. He stared at the old man, remembering the shattering of glass and that scream. One scream only.
Then he threw himself at the door, slamming his shoulder against it once, twice, a third time. It gave a little, but not enough. He hauled back and aimed a kick at the wood right beside the knob. On the fourth kick, the lock tore through the frame, wood splintering, and the door banged open.
The neighbor was shouting. Other lights were coming on.
Max rushed into the house, calling for Corinne. He heard sounds deep in the house, the rustling of clothes, something wet, and then a dark lau
gh. He rushed along the narrow corridor toward the back, careening into the kitchen.
He saw the blood, a spray across the linoleum, but couldn't stop. His feet slipped out from under him, and he managed to twist as he fell so that he landed on his hands and knees. His fingers and palms smeared trails in the blood.
Corinne lay stretched out on the floor, her throat cut. The edges of the gash pouted as blood burbled from arteries and veins. Her shirt had been slashed and her gut sawed open from breastbone to below her navel, fistfuls of intestine yanked out and unfurled onto the floor. The stink was terrible.
Her eyes were still open, tears drying on her face.
She twitched.
Max scrabbled away from the corpse, glancing around to see if her killer was still here. The window at the back of the kitchen had been smashed, the curtain rod pulled down. Outside, it was dark. Whoever had done this had vanished into the night.
Pulling up his shirt to cover his nose and mouth against the stink of her exposed bowels, he managed to stand and spotted a telephone on the wall next to the cabinets. Shaking, he picked up the phone—the same phone Corinne had probably used to tell him Gabrielle was dead—only to have it slip from his bloody hands.
He retrieved it, and steadied himself long enough to dial 911.
“Murder,” he said. “There's …there's been a murder here.”
But death and murder, new as they were to Max, had been all too common in New Orleans of late, and like cab-drivers, the ranks of the police had thinned in the wake of the storm.
They told him to wait.
chapter
7
He tried waiting in a room at the front of the house, I I but the thought of Corinne's body lying alone in the
H
kitchen preyed on his mind and drew him back. Her glassy stare welcomed him, and though he turned his face away, he sat and kept her company.
He could not stop shaking. Everything was falling apart. The last Moment had displayed the dark underside of the magic of New Orleans, and as if in response to that, he had walked in on this slaughter.
His teeth chattered. He'd always heard the expression, but he had never thought it possible or likely. His gums hurt, but however much he tried to clamp his jaws shut, the muscles spasmed and shook in concert with the rest of his body.
Where the hell were the cops?
Max glanced from the kitchen window, just catching sight of the red splash of Corinne's demise from the corner of his eye. The killer had gone through there. And the destruction wrought on her body had been performed between him hearing her scream and then bursting into the kitchen, a space of …how many seconds? He could guess, but there was no knowing for sure. His whole concept of time had been twisted. He had come from the eighteen hundreds to the terrible present, and seconds could be years.
He waited over an hour for the police to arrive. In that time, he never once looked back at Corinne's cooling body, but neither did he leave her. He was certain that she would not want to be alone right now.
And when they did arrive, their reaction was not what he had expected.
In retrospect, he should have anticipated what happened. If he'd been thinking straight he would have expected it, but he had an image of the way things should go from here, and that image was very, very wrong.
He heard a car screech to a halt outside, some muffled voices, and then the cautious footsteps of someone entering through the broken door and approaching along the hallway. A shadow projected into the kitchen, something long wrapped in its hand.
“Down!” a voice called.
Max gasped and glanced to his right. A shape stood at the open window, a short man silhouetted by the few lights still shining outside. Illuminated by the weak glow of the single kitchen light, Max saw the ugly end of a gun pointing directly at his chest.
The shadow emerged from the hallway, a big cop also carrying a gun. “You heard him. Down!”
“Holy shit,” the cop at the window muttered.
Max held up his hands and shook his head, starting to protest. But he did not even have the chance to utter one word.
“I'll count to three,” the short cop said. “One …two…”
Max dropped forward, easing himself to the floor, pushed the final few inches by the big cop's boot. He turned just in time to avoid crushing his nose, but his cheek cracked against the floor, and he tasted blood where he'd bitten his tongue.
“Please!” Max said. “I came here and found—”
“Shut it,” the cop in the window said. “Paul, I'll come around.”
“I got him,” the big cop, Paul, said. “Move a muscle, fuckwit, and your brains will corrupt the crime scene.”
Max closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the weight of the man's boot still pressing him down. He wouldn't have been able to move even if he wanted to, and he supposed that was the whole point.
The short cop entered along the hallway a few seconds later, gun still drawn and pointing now at Max's face. He glanced around the kitchen, his face twisting into a grimace of disgust. “Holy shit, you really did a piece on her.”
“It wasn't me.”
“Yeah, I heard that one before.” A silent communication passed between the policemen, and Paul's foot pressed harder on Max's back as the other man bent his arms back and cuffed him.
“I don't believe this,” Max whispered.
“From out of town?” the short cop asked.
Max nodded.
“Figures.”
“Really, I came here to talk to her, heard a scream, found her like this. Ask the old guy outside, he saw me.”
“Already talked to him,” Paul said. “Let's get him up.”
The two cops grabbed an arm each and lifted Max to his feet, dragging him from the kitchen and into the small, dark sitting room. They dropped him into a chair and hit the light. There were a couple of comfortable armchairs, a wall lined with books, and a selection of amateurish watercolors hanging from the other walls. Max saw an open book lying facedown on the arm of the other chair. Was she reading that? he thought. When the murderer came, was she sitting there reading that, trying to distract herself from whatever it was she couldn't bear to tell me? He turned his head sideways in an effort to see the cover, but he could not make out the title or author.
“Crime Scene on the way?” Paul asked.
“Should be.” The short cop sat in the chair opposite Max, staring at him without blinking or averting his gaze. Max stared back for a moment, then glanced away and closed his eyes. He was still shaking, and his shoulders ached with his arms forced behind his back. He swallowed blood.
“Sick fuck,” the short cop said. He took out a notebook and pen, scribbled a few lines, then looked at Max again. “I'm going to take a statement.”
Max wasn't sure whether he was about to shout or cry. His breath came fast and shallow, and he ground his teeth together to stop them from chattering. This is bad, he thought, and the sound of those novice nuns striking the ground came to him again.
“Ask the old—”
“Told you, already talked to him,” Paul said. “Said you were snooping around the house, started screaming the woman's name, then you shouldered the door, came in, and he heard her screams.”
“She screamed before I forced the door.”
“So why break in?”
Max frowned. “Because she was screaming.”
“You in the habit of breakin’ down a lady's door when she's screaming?” the short cop said. “How'd you know she wasn't just gettin’ banged?”
“I heard glass breaking. The window you were at, I heard that break, and so—”
“So you stormed in to the rescue,” Paul said. He was standing by the door, and even though Max was cuffed, the cop still cradled a gun in his hands.
“Aren't you going to arrest me?” Max said. He had no idea how this worked. Was this part of the statement? Were they recording this exchange, somehow? He'd seen the cop shows and movies, but he didn't ha
ve a clue whether they'd arrest him now or at the station, or if they should even be talking without them having read him his rights. And what are my rights? he wondered. Are there even any lawyers still in New Orleans? He'd heard reports of cops being the worst looters of them all, and suddenly he felt in danger as well as in deadly, unbelievable trouble.
“Old guy says you smelled like trouble and sounded worse, the way you were hollering for that gal.”
“The broken window,” Max said. He closed his eyes and tried to shed his memory of the blood, the smell, and the sound of people hitting the ground that for some reason he could not disassociate from Corinne's murder. “Shattered glass was on the floor inside. That's how the murderer got in. I came through the door, and he got in and out the window.”
Paul shrugged, and the short cop threw him an uncomfortable glance. “Ain't for us to decide what glass went where,” Paul said. “Fact is, we got you and a corpse, and your hands covered in blood.”
“I stayed here. Waited for you.” The situation was starting to feel unreal, and Max caught a fresh whiff of death from the kitchen.
“Ever heard of suicide by cop?” the short cop said. Was that a threat in his voice? Max glanced at him, but looked away again when he saw the look in the man's eye. He was almost smiling.
“That's ridiculous.”
“New Orleans isn't a normal place nowadays. Right, Paul?”
“Right.” Paul shifted the gun, as if to draw Max's attention to it. He's going to tell me how many people he's shot since the storm, Max thought. Sweet Jesus, are these really even cops?
“Can I see some ID?” Max asked.
The short cop's eyes widened, and he almost levitated from his chair, pen and notebook spilling to the floor. “ID? You want some ID? ID this, sick fuck!” And he pulled out his gun. “Down, on the floor.”
“But…”
“Down. On. The. Floor.”
Max complied, slipping from the chair to his knees and trying to lie down sideways, doing his best not to smash face-first onto the glass-strewn floor. They should be chasing the real murderer, he thought, but he said nothing. Silence was his best option right now.
The Map of Moments Page 11