by King, Leo
Among many other things, Rodger appreciated that Douglas never wasted any time in getting down to business.
Rodger nodded ruefully, saying, “We aren’t one hundred percent sure on that yet, Douglas, but the brass want us to treat it like a copycat until we get proof otherwise.”
Rodger noted the grim expression on Douglas’s face before continuing, “We have a potential lead in profiling the killer.” Rodger held out his hand to Michael, who gave him the pocket notebook. Rodger held it up for Douglas to see. “We think that some or all of the people mentioned in here were accomplices to Vincent Castille. If anyone could have a lead on who this new murderer is, it would be them.”
Reflecting on Michael’s most recent theory, Rodger mentally added that one of them might very well be the murderer. As he handed the notebook over to the older man, Rodger was not wholly surprised when Douglas said, “If one of them isn’t actually the murderer, right? Because that would be my hunch.”
For a few long moments, Douglas stared at the interior of the notebook, remaining still, his old brow furrowing in thought, even as Mabel returned. She was followed by Boudreaux, who now had a bow attached to the top of his head. Mabel appeared to pay no mind as the dog jumped up on her chair and sat with entitlement. The elderly woman focused on serving cups of coffee and a plate of sliced pound cake.
Finally, Douglas spoke. “I remember these four. Until now, I never would have connected them. I’m certain the first three are still alive, and I’m pretty sure that Blind Moses is, too.”
Rodger couldn’t have hoped for better news. As he moistened some pound cake between his lips, he asked, “So you know who these people really are? Their real names? Where they live?”
By this point, Mabel had sat down, after picking Boudreaux up, and placed him on her lap. The shih tzu busied himself with the important task of trying to filch pieces of pound cake off of Mabel’s plate. Mabel didn’t seem to mind as she kept the treats just out of his reach.
“Let me see… I know where they lived ten years ago, before I retired,” replied Douglas, putting down the notebook and tapping the pages. “I haven’t kept up with anything but my gardening since then.” Picking up a coffee cup, the older man thought things over. “If I recall, Topper Jack has spent his life in the Lower Ninth Ward, in and out of rehab for cocaine. He’s a career junkie, but he knows everything about everyone downtown, I shit you not. He even helped Narcotics bust up a few drug rings.”
“An informant,” Michael said as he sipped some coffee. “That could be useful.” He made a strange puckered face, then put down the cup.
Boudreaux jumped off Mabel’s lap and trotted over to Michael. The shih tzu sniffed Michael’s leg before jumping into his lap. Michael looked down at the dog, who looked back up at him. It was apparent the two were evaluating each other.
“I think Boudreaux likes you,” commented Mabel with a warm smile.
Michael replied, “Obviously.”
Rodger shook his head, reconciling himself to the fact that Boudreaux liked everyone but him. Then he looked back at his former mentor. “What about the other three, Douglas? What can you tell me about them?”
Taking a large gulp from his cup, Douglas continued, “Well, Mad Monty is all over. He’s run everything from drug rackets to car thefts. He’s either in prison or out on parole. His real name is Tyrell Montgomery Jones. You probably remember him, Rodger.”
Rodger clenched his jaw hard, a line of sweat forming on his brow. He remembered Tyrell Jones from years ago, during the 1980s. He also remembered investigating Tyrell for manslaughter, and putting him away for close to ten years. And he also remembered Tyrell saying that if he ever got the chance, he’d cut Rodger’s balls off.
“Yeah, I remember him. Who else?” Rodger asked, his voice slightly hoarse.
“Fat Willie, or William K. Benedict, if I recall properly,” said Douglas, “is serving a life sentence up in Angola.”
Rodger was surprised that someone they were searching for was in the state penitentiary. “And what about Blind Moses? Where is he?”
Douglas gave a short laugh, as if something was very funny to him. “Whenever I’ve ever encountered the name Blind Moses, Jackson Square came up. So did a name: Dr. Lazarus. Might want to check those leads for your man.”
“A fortune-teller or palm reader, eh,” said Rodger, wondering what was so funny to Douglas. “All right, thanks for the tip.” He wondered which of the four would be the most likely candidate as a serial killer.
“Let me ask you something,” said Douglas. “Have you spoken to Samantha Castille yet?”
The room went silent, and a tension hung in the air like a low-lying fog. Rodger looked down at his plate and clenched his jaw a few times. While he had spoken to Sam, and even gotten a pivotal clue from her, he knew that wasn’t what Douglas was talking about.
Looking up at Douglas, Rodger said, “Yes, we spoke to her recently, Michael and myself, about the case. No, I haven’t talked to her about that.” He couldn’t help but sound disgusted on the final word.
While Michael seemed taken aback, Douglas just sat there and shook his head. “Rodger, you’re going to need to talk to her about it sometime. You can’t carry that to your grave.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to look that sweet little girl in the eyes and tell her you failed,” replied Rodger as he looked into Douglas’s eyes. “Rhythm and blues don’t have it right, Douglas, time doesn’t heal all wounds.”
While Michael sat there looking lost, and Douglas sat there scowling with disapproval as only an old man can, Boudreaux decided it was time to strike. The shih tzu made a quick pass for Michael’s pound cake, only for Michael to lift it out of his reach. With a frustrated snuffle, the dog sat heavily on Michael’s lap.
Quickly, Mabel acted, refilling her husband’s coffee cup. “Now, Douglas, leave poor Rodger alone. He’s a grown man. He can decide when to talk to that nice Samantha.”As she finished with the coffee, she turned to Michael and said in the most conversational of tones, “They’re just a bunch of boys sometimes, but they’ve got good hearts. It’s like an old film noir, Michael. When they were younger, these two focused day and night on hunting down the bad guy. It was just like in a Humphrey Bogart film.”
This seemed to alleviate the tension, as Rodger soon gave a low chuckle and sipped his coffee. “Well, I wouldn’t say we were that cliché. Besides, I stayed out on the floor, while Mr. Big Shot over here got an office.”
“Only because I broke up one of the Marcello boys’ gambling rackets,” said Douglas with a proud laugh, any trace of seriousness gone from his face. “Now that was a case worthy of a movie being made about it. Have you ever heard what happened, Michael?”
As Michael replied that he hadn’t, and Douglas launched into a tale of how he single-handedly broke up one of the largest illegal gambling operations in New Orleans, Rodger leaned back, the tension gone from his aging face. While he was grateful to both Mabel and Michael for breaking up the tension, he knew that, sooner or later, he’d have to have a long, painful talk with Samantha Castille.
As Douglas continued to tell his tale, Rodger’s memories hearkened back to the saddest day of his life. A large funeral held outdoors on a dreary and cloudy day, the world’s colors so muted they were nearly just shades of gray. Rodger wore the same outfit as always, standing next to Sam, only ten years old, dressed in a simple black dress. Her blond hair was wrapped with a black ribbon, and she held a bouquet of cypress flowers. As “Taps” played in the background, Rodger reached down and rested his hand on young Sam’s shoulder. The child looked up at him, and Rodger remembered seeing the blankest look he had ever seen on anyone’s face.
A face devoid of life.
Coming out of those unhappy memories, Rodger became aware that Douglas was asking him a question. “Hey, Rodger! You listening? Remember the look on Ouellette’s face when I brought in the train of bookies, all cuffed to one long bicycle chain?”
Rodg
er quickly drew himself back to reality and, with a forced chuckle, nodded and replied, “Yeah, he nearly crapped himself an entire building, Douglas.”
As Douglas continued the story, the others laughing, Rodger forced away those unhappy memories. That’s what he had done for the past twenty years, and it made it all bearable. What was one more day of avoiding the issue? With that thought, Rodger left the memories behind yet again and rejoined the conversation and lively storytelling.
A few hours later, Rodger and Michael were on the road, speeding along toward downtown New Orleans. The two detectives had come to the agreement to find and question Topper Jack first, and Rodger had suggested that they return to the precinct long enough to run a check on the informant’s last known location. Michael had agreed.
After studying the notes in his own notebook for a while, Michael finally spoke. “You know, Rodger, I just realized something.”
Rodger, who had the window rolled down and was smoking a cigarette, snapped out of his daze. “Hmm?” he replied. “Wait, what? What did you realize?”
“Let’s say for a moment that we are dealing with a genuine copycat,” Michael said, flipping through his notes to an earlier page. “In our first conversation, you mentioned that after a while, it seemed that Vincent Castille was toying with you and your partner, Edward, correct?”
“Correct,” answered Rodger. “He would purposefully leave red herrings. For example, at one murder scene, he left a key that belonged to a locker at the Greyhound station. The locker contained a set of power tools, similar to the ones used for the murders. Of course, we immediately suspected the owner of the locker, and were even able to make an arrest, but it ended up being a false lead. The owner was out of town during the murder, with his mistress in Lafayette, and couldn’t even remember losing the key.”
This information seemed important to Michael, for he immediately jotted it down. “Well, was he a patient at the hospital Castille worked for?”
That question made Rodger give a short laugh, which trailed into a smoke-induced cough. Recovering, he said, “God, if it had been that easy! No, the chump had no relation at all to Vincent Castille, not even in casual passing. The guy worked on a dredger out on the Mississippi River. We could never connect how Castille got that key.”
Michael seemed to slow down. He finally asked, “Is his name on file?”
Rodger found that to be an odd question, but he answered it anyway. “Of course, Michael, all suspects’ names are always on the reports. I think it’s on the report Edward filed. Why?”
“Just a hunch,” answered Michael, closing the notebook. “When we get back to the precinct, I want to check his name and see if he’s still around.”
“I’ll do that,” replied Rodger, “seeing as how I have to run a check for Jack’s latest whereabouts.”
That seemed to satisfy Michael, who looked out of the car as Rodger turned off onto the interstate, heading over the Mississippi River. The mighty river, one of the largest in the country, was as brown as shit-water, and smelled twice as bad. But any New Orleans native would tell you that the mighty Mississippi was as much a part of the city as the French Quarter and the Superdome. It was another part of the hell that Rodger called home.
Finishing his cigarette and putting the butt out in the ashtray before rolling up the window, Rodger said, “So what was your initial hunch? The one you were mentioning before we got sidetracked?”
“Oh right,” replied Michael as he seemed to snap out of his own thoughts. “My hunch is that if this is a real copycat killer, he’s probably going to try to play us like Vincent Castille did. We need to be ready for anything, even the people in this notebook, to be a red herring.”
“Question everything?” asked Rodger with a grin, knowing full well that his partner’s answer would be yes.
“Of course,” replied Michael with a nod. “If we’re dealing with any kind of serial killer, even a copycat, then we need to expect anything. He may change the number of days between murders, the types of locations, even the age of the victims. All we can hope is that this person is trying to emulate the method of the original murders as closely as possible.”
“Right,” replied Rodger with an affirmative nod, “because if he does, then we still have the hunch about the receipts from the hardware stores and the restaurants to work with.”
After a few minutes of silence, as Rodger drove the police car through the streets of New Orleans toward the precinct, Michael finally asked the question Rodger had been dreading.
“So, Rodger, what’s the deal between you and Sam?” asked Michael as he looked out of the window, observing the afternoon traffic. “Why is it that whenever her name comes up, or you get in front of her, you get more withdrawn than a guilty suspect?”
Rodger grimaced at his partner’s question, clenching his teeth and pretending to be too focused on the road to answer. This tactic did nothing to dissuade Michael, who spoke again after a few moments of silence. “I’m not trying to be nosy here, Rodger, but if this is something that could be significant in the future—”
“It’s nothing, really,” Rodger hastily interrupted, irritated even though he knew it was irrational. When he saw, out the corner of his eye, his partner looking at him, Rodger sighed and, stopping at a red light, turned to face his partner.
“I knew her father, and I made a bad judgment call that resulted in him getting killed,” Rodger said, staring right back into Michael’s unblinking eyes. “Sam’s already forgiven me. She forgave me about ten years ago. On Christmas Eve, actually. Sent me a long letter and a card and everything. But—”
“But you never forgave yourself, correct?” asked Michael. His attitude was passionless, as if he were simply stating a fact, just as one would state that boiling water burned.
“Correct,” said Rodger between his teeth, utterly irritated at his partner’s know-it-all attitude. It was at times like this that Michael’s brilliance was overshadowed by his lack of social skills. Resisting the urge to reply with an equally brusque comment, and partially because the traffic light chose that moment to turn green, Rodger instead focused on driving.
“So that’s it, Michael. Really. It’s one of those things that I wish I could forget, and yet know I’ll always remember.”
“Tough break, bud,” replied Michael in an almost bored tone, already looking back at his notebook. “At least she’s forgiven you by now. It would be really hard to work on this case if she was still pissed at you.”
This elicited another clenched jaw from Rodger, who actively tried to avoid personal conversations with Michael for this very reason. Even though his countenance never betrayed how frustrated he was, Rodger took the rest of the drive to the station to calm down.
By the time they pulled up into the underground garage of the police precinct, Rodger had cooled off. He knew that Michael was right—if Sam hadn’t forgiven him years ago, if she had held a grudge, they might not have gotten that box of evidence. Getting a court order when Sam was clearly not implicated in last night’s murder would have been difficult at best. Sam’s lawyer, Kent Bourgeois, was one of the best in the city, and he would block any attempt to force Sam to give up anything of hers that she didn’t want to give up.
Rodger reflected on this as he got out of the car. His reason for avoiding Sam was guilt, and he knew that. He also knew that trying to hide that guilt was useless—Douglas knew about it, Ouellette know about it, other detectives like Aucoin knew about it, and Michael had figured it out without so much as batting an eyelash.
As Rodger walked alongside his partner into the building, he decided that once the time was right, he’d talk to Sam and bury the past once and for all.
Chapter 6
The Pale Lantern
Date: Wednesday, August 5, 1992
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Canal Street
French Quarter
The lights flickered as they turned on, cutting back at the darkness
with the efficiency of a razor. A man sat up in a king-sized bed. Looking around with bleary, half-sleeping eyes, he noted his surroundings. It was the same hotel room he had checked into three days ago, and not the darkest recesses of his dreams where he had been just a moment ago. Rubbing his eyes, the man gave an “ugh” sound, followed by a cough, one that cleared his lungs of sleep-induced gunk. With a final yawn, the sort given when one has no worries as to who might overhear, the man stood up and headed to the bathroom.
The room itself was posh, as was any room in the Ritz-Carlton—one of the more expensive hotels in New Orleans. It offered down pillows and blankets, Egyptian sheets, plush red carpets that hushed one’s footsteps, a courtesy bar, and an executive desk and leather chair. The walls, papered in fleur-de-lis designs, were adorned with tasteful landscapes of fields, plantations, and the French Quarter.
The man had chosen the Ritz-Carlton on the suggestion of his publicist, who had stated that someone of his newly discovered fame should stay in nothing less than a five-star hotel. As the man stood in front of the toilet, relieving himself, he thought that he could have spent half as much for a nice bed-and-breakfast.
Business taken care of, the man flushed the toilet and looked in the mirror. “All right, Richie,” said the man to his reflection, “you might as well get started. You got a long night ahead of you.”
Richard Alfonso Fastellos, or Richie, as he was commonly known, was an author. Like many others, he had started out writing short stories and articles while he struggled to discover the real writer within him. One night, a horrific nightmare inspired him to write a sordid murder mystery. In less than six months, he had finished what would become his first best seller—The Pale Lantern.
Richie’s chronic anxiety had finally worked in his favor. Seeing as how he’d been taking medication for it since childhood, he considered the book-inspiring nightmare to be a blessing.