The Girl on the Edge of Summer

by J. M. Redmann

  “Highlights?” I asked.

  “Low lights, more likely. A lot of text messages. Most of them about when or where to meet or minute-by-minute updates on being bored in class. We have everything you asked for. Can dig deeper if you’d like, but I doubt we’ll find much else useful. Thought you should look at everything first.”

  I thanked her for the work, promised a check would soon make its way downstairs, and left her to her quiet weekend.

  Interesting, but not overly helpful. I’d pass it on to Joanne when I got the chance. Maybe she would see something.

  I went immediately to my computer and searched for news articles on both Tiffany’s suicide and Eddie’s murder. Half an hour later I had my answer. A week. Exactly a week. Tiffany had driven the car out to the levee on a Thursday evening, at dusk. Her body had been recovered the following morning. No way to know if she waited, perhaps a last sunset on the river, or if she gave herself no room to change her mind and, with a running leap, had thrown her life away. Eddie had been killed the following Thursday night. Again, I didn’t have the exact time; only the murderer would know that. The police report would include estimated time of death for both of them. The same day and time of day was pushing the coincidence to the breaking point. When I talked to Joanne, maybe I’d mention that as well.

  The office phone rang, but I ignored it. It was Saturday, I wasn’t officially here, and my brain was trying to tease out this puzzle.

  My instincts were dead on. It was Douglas Townson telling me he’d be here Monday afternoon and wanted an update on his case. He said he’d arrive at three p.m.

  Arrogant asshole. No “I’m sorry, I can only make it around three, will that work for you?” Instead, “I can meet at three p.m. I’ll see you then. Please have an extensive update for me.”

  I started again at the times, started to do a chart of the likely suspects, then put my pen down. Not my case. I really needed to stay out of it.

  Instead I sighed, shoved the folder Lady Jane had given me into my briefcase. I needed to read it over before I handed it to Joanne in case there was any hacking that didn’t quite toe the legal line.

  I shut up my office and headed back to the library. It was open until five on Saturdays. I could at least have as extensive a report as possible for Mr. Douglas Townson See You at Three.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I picked up where I had been reading last in Samuel Braud’s diary.

  “I’m guessing it was the case with Frederick Townson,” I said.

  She looked off in the distance, maybe seeing the buildings that had been torn down for progress, the people who once lived there.

  “The murders stopped after he died,” I said.

  She looked at me but still said nothing.

  “The young women working in the District. A brute horrifically violated them—”

  “Yes, I remember. The youngest, the most desperate. He hunted them.”

  “Hunted them?”

  “The girls had little protection other than their wits and those of us who listened for their screams. The police, all too often, cared little if a woman like that was beaten. But he picked the late hours, almost dawn, those who had just started and knew little of how best to protect themselves. Or those desperate enough to agree to…the less savory acts.”

  “Was he hunted in return?”

  She stopped, taking her arm from mine. “If that was true, would I admit it to a policeman?”

  “I have retired and am now just an ordinary citizen.”

  “Ordinary enough to let this pass?”

  “It was the one major crime I did not solve. Nor will it ever be solved. This is only between us and goes not beyond this small patch of earth.”

  “He did murder those young girls. We knew. Not with the strength of what you police needed, but he would be seen about and a woman would die that horrific death. Only when he was in the District. Arriving in one suit, leaving in another after the bloody attack. Teddy followed him once to see him throw a sack into the garbage bin. She fished it out to find clothes stained red.

  “And then Mary came running into the street, screaming, blood running down her legs from his butchery, but she was a sturdy farm girl and fought him off. We heard the terror and threw on what clothing we could.”

  “Did you kill him?” I asked quietly, keeping my voice as close to only the two of us as possible, even though there were few people on the street.

  She shook her head.

  “Then who?”

  She paused for a thought, then said, “We all did.”

  “All?”

  “Yes. Teddy saw him running down the street, so she threw a rope on him, just as she did with the horses. He fought and Rob lobbed a bottle—a full one, no less—at his head, taking him down. Then Roxanne, brave, strong, Roxanne, who wiped the blood off Victoria, his last victim, so she could be buried, hoisted a shovel and struck him. Then we all went after him, the rest of the girls on the street, Alice, Josie, Michelle Gierden, our piano player, Rob and Teddy, Roxanne.

  “I kept watch but am as guilty as the rest. There was no need for me to strike a blow, otherwise I would have. But we needed someone to watch, to give warning.”

  “No one came by?”

  “It was the darkest part of night, in the back of the District, away from the gleaming houses on Basin Street. No one came by.”

  “You left him in the street.”

  “We left him as his victims were left. You saw the crimes, what he did, Mr. Braud. Beaten to bloody pulp, violated in ways only fiends can imagine, left to choke on their most intimate garments.”

  “Who stuffed the clothing in his mouth?”

  “Mary. She took what he had rammed into her mouth and shoved it in his, screaming, crying, hysterical in her anger. And fear. ‘I cannot kill him enough,’ she cried as she did the deed. She is long gone, took to drinking after. She drowned in the Basin Canal. We don’t know if she fell or if she jumped. She could never get away from the nightmare that was real.”

  I nodded. “Save for what you and I know, this case will never be solved. It will go to our graves. Thank you, Miss Lamoureaux, for your honesty and letting me know what I suspected is indeed truth. Mr. Frederick Townson met justice.”

  We continued walking.

  “Miss Beaudoin? Was it her you were visiting today?” I asked. The one name whose fate she had not told me.

  The shadow of grief passed across her face, the tightening of the lips, eyes narrowed and looking into the distance.

  “Yes, it was,” she replied. “She passed two years ago today. I had to come visit her.”

  “This is no longer a good street.”

  “It never was a good street. I doubt it ever will be.”

  “What happened after the District was closed?”

  “We moved to the Irish Channel, put our coffee shop on the first floor and lived on the second. The men at the docks, and their wives, gave us a steady living, enough to put a little aside. I’m comfortable and can afford the flowers I bring her. Especially with Rob’s help.”

  “You must live not far from where we are,” I said, giving her my address. “My wife is not able to get out as much as she’d like. Perhaps you’d be good enough to call on her?”

  Her hand tightened at my elbow. “Thank you, Mr. Braud, but it would not be appropriate.”

  I glanced at her, the faintest olive sheen of her skin giving way her meaning.

  “As a policeman, I saw some of the worse of humankind. And some of the best. One man, as dark as the night, was one of the bravest and kindest men I’ve known. The vice that runs through the heart of this country is how some of us are allotted a portion of liberty and happiness and others are denied it. If you choose to come, you will be most welcome in our house. My wife is a big fan of Mrs. Roosevelt.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Braud. You are right, there is kindness and decency where you least expect it.”

  We came to Canal Street and she took her l
eave of me, having other errands, but promising she would call on my wife within the week.

  I continued on my walk, contemplating the past. Every day lived becomes a part of you. I wondered at my motives for inviting Miss Lamoureaux to come visit my wife. Perhaps I wanted Alibe to hear tales of me as a dashing—and kind—young policeman, the part of me I had tried to protect her from. But also a part of me I was proud of. Or maybe I wanted to relive those days through my wife’s eyes, to recall a day when my bones didn’t ache and creak, my eyes had vision that was clear and crisp. Or just to hold on to the precious few people who have passed through our lives and made a difference.

  I looked up from the page, focusing my eyes to the far wall to give them a rest. I had my answer. The answer I thought I would never find, the one meant to go to their graves, except for recording it on paper he thought no one would read save himself. I skimmed the rest of the diary, but it only continued for two more years, until the death of his wife Alibe. His final words, I love you more than life itself and know not how I will go on.

  Then the pages were blank. Augustine Lamoureaux had been only mentioned a few more times, seeing her in passing as she visited his wife. At her funeral, with Rob Byrnes, down from New York.

  I stared at the blank page for several minutes. Considered looking for the death records for Samuel Braud and Augustine Lamoureaux.

  No, I didn’t need to know that. Let the last I knew of them be that fateful meeting on Basin Street, near where the District—Storyville—used to be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  As I left the library, the late-afternoon sun warm on my face, my phone made its text noise. I looked down, didn’t recognize the number, so ignored it. I was tired, and propping my feet up in an easy chair was calling.

  But a trash truck was passing, and I’d have to wait until it moved on to get out.

  Bored, I opened the text message.

  “Can meet 2nite.”

  I texted back, “Brandon? Pizza place?”

  “No, need to show you something. Out by garage.”

  “The police are out there,” I texted back.

  “No, not close enough for them to find. Need to show you. 9p.”

  “Okay,” I reluctantly agreed. “Maybe 8?”

  “No, has to be 9.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Tell me the address.”

  “Don’t have it. Will text around 9. Be in area.”

  “Give me more info,” I texted back.

  “No time. Gotta go.”

  I texted, “Give me the block, at least.”

  He didn’t reply.

  Frustrated, I started my car and pulled out, only to be caught behind the slow-moving garbage truck. The last thing I wanted to do was fight drunken Saturday-night traffic to head out past the airport. I was tempted to tell him to forget it—if he had anything, to show it to the police.

  But he wouldn’t do that. Somehow I knew. Innocent as his involvement with Eddie and his friends might have been, or at least started, he had been sucked over the line—peer pressure, the bottomless need to fit in, had pulled him along. He thought I was safe, that I would protect him. But we didn’t live in a world of superheroes with right and wrong bright and clear. This might be a mess I couldn’t help him clean up.

  I would try. Maybe fail, but I would try.

  I headed home, having little else to do. Tempting as a beer at Mary’s place was, the last thing I needed was to be less than sober myself to face the drive through the drunken hordes.

  That left me twitching at home, with little to do but wait.

  And wait.

  I spent a little time tidying up the case notes for Mr. Douglas Townson, for his demanded meeting at three p.m. on Monday. Maybe he’d give me a bonus for actually solving it. Maybe I’d buy myself a decent bottle of Scotch if I managed to be polite to him for the entire meeting.

  Time ticked slowly away.

  I pulled out the notes the computer grannies had given me and started reading through everything they’d pulled off Tiffany’s phone, jump drive, and computer as well as the hack into Brandon’s phone. I started with the computer, but in a divide between generations, there was little of interest on it except for school papers and pictures arranged in albums from beach trips to pet selfies. I quickly skipped over those, her smiling face still alive, still able to be happy.

  Most of what she wanted hidden from her parents was on the phone. Pictures she didn’t want the ’rents to see, like ones with beer cans prominently displayed, or on Bourbon Street with red and green drinks that probably weren’t non-alcoholic. They also had printed screen shots of all the text messages. Interspersed with the ones from schoolmates about meeting before class or after class or before and after class were the crude texts from Eddie, a foul build from sweet and charming, or what passed for it to someone seventeen, to claiming love that twisted into abuse. It was sad to see how long Tiffany tried to be a nice girl, trying to see his increasingly crude demands as evidence he really liked her. How do we teach our girls to do anything other than tell these pieces of elephant shit to fuck off?

  My eyes started to burn and I put the pages down. I needed to read through them all before I handed them off to Joanne. But that didn’t mean I needed to do it right now. I’ll take them with me, I bargained. If I have to wait for Brandon, I can read a few more pages. Timeliness didn’t seem to be his super power.

  I made a quick toasted cheese sandwich, not so much because I was hungry, but it was going to be a long night and I needed something besides bile in my stomach. After eating, I even washed the dishes. Anything to keep me alert and moving while the time passed.

  I gathered the few things I might need—night goggles, cell phone battery pack. Gun…no, the cops still had my gun. I considered guns like hammers, a tool I needed, nothing more. I had one hammer; I had one gun. Inconvenient when it was unexpectedly elsewhere. Which reminded me that Torbin and Andy had borrowed my hammer and hadn’t returned it.

  More out of something to do than any intent of going over there and asking for it back, I went to the front of the house and pulled back the blinds to see if they were home. They lived down the block, and depending on where they parked, I could see their car from my window. They were home. Or their car was. They shared one, since Andy mostly worked at home on computer projects.

  As I was watching, I saw them come to the car, Torbin carrying a covered dish, probably his crawfish mac and cheese from the shape of it, and Andy a pitcher, probably of Cosmos, one of their signature drinks. They were nicely dressed. On their way to a dinner party, I guessed.

  Then I remembered, this was the weekend no one was available.

  Torbin and Andy had friends I didn’t know; they could certainly be going out to see any number of them. But it was an odd coincidence that Joanne, Alex, Danny, and Elly were also busy tonight as well.

  You’ll regret this in the morning, I told myself.

  Only if I get caught, the devil on my other shoulder argued.

  I grabbed my already packed kit—oh, preparation—then came back to the window to watch until they started to pull away.

  Lucky for me, they had to carefully arrange their dishes in the car, so I had plenty of time to prepare before they left.

  Just as their taillights winked on, I put the key in my door lock, stepping on the top step in time to see them at the corner. I hurried to my car and jumped in. They were no longer in sight, but these were mostly one-way streets and I knew the routes they’d take.

  Proving my point, I again saw their taillights as I came to the corner, turning the direction I had guessed. It wasn’t hard, there was so much street construction these days only a few roads were even passable.

  I hung back, just close enough to catch glimpses of their taillights on occasion as we wound through Tremé.

  I had a couple of advantages on them—and reasons to think I could do this and not be detected. The main one was they had no reason to think they were being followed and theref
ore no reason to look for a tail. There is no foolproof way to avoid being spotted, but this is my bread and butter and I know a few tricks of the trade. Also, they drive a cherry red Mini Cooper Clubman with a rainbow stripe across the back window. Hello! I drive a ubiquitous gray Mazda 3 that looks like every other small car in its class. In glimpses from the rearview mirror, it would be hard to notice it was the same car, especially in the approaching twilight. I also threw on a ball cap and glasses without lenses, kept in the glove box for just such occasions.

  Another plus was that Andy was clearly the driver, and his goal in life is to never ever get a ticket, so he drives like a mellow granny.

  They headed uptown, through the CBD. I let several cars get between us. Cherry red is so easy to spot. I wondered if they were going to one of the new apartment buildings that have sprouted up in what was now known as the Downtown Development District. It’s mushroomed with restaurants, condos, all the things rising young professionals crave.

  But no, they kept going, leaving the trendy area behind to head up on the far less trendy Simon Bolivar Avenue, going past Martin Luther King Avenue, multicultural diversity in intersections. It’s the quicker way uptown, unless you’re the kind of person who isn’t willing to drive through “bad” neighborhoods. It’s never bothered me, as I think I’m more a bad person than a good one.

  There were fewer cars here, but again, it’s a known route. I just had to keep them close enough to know if they turned off.

  They stayed on until Louisiana Avenue, turning toward the river.

  I just managed to get through the yellow to keep behind them. But again, this road was an orgy of construction, so no one was going fast. I was one car behind them.

  I didn’t want to get too close, so let another car slip in between us, but cut off a truck that was aggressively nosing in. It was big enough it would block my view. Their car might have been a cherry red car, but it was a small cherry red car.

  After crossing Magazine, they turned uptown on Constance, a narrow residential street.