EQMM, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "And,” the officer went on, “what kind of fool goes around in the middle of the night tapping on folks’ doors, all in black, stocking cap pulled down so you can barely see his face? I'd'a thought he was a burglar myself. Yep, burglar for sure."

  * * * *

  Rob had let himself in, as he did every time they'd played burglar. He'd come through the unlocked outside door of the sun porch, then stood jiggling the locked interior French doors.

  Diana had entered from the kitchen, the black silk dressing gown he loved half-open. She was naked underneath.

  The way the game went, he'd jiggle the door harder. She'd shrink, then shriek, “Oh no! Please go away!"

  Her gown would fall open. He'd bang the door, bang it again, and just before he looked to be about to dash a pane of glass, reach in, and unlock the deadbolt from inside, she'd open it. He'd race through and grab her up, her robe falling to the hardwood.

  Sometimes they'd make it up the stairs. Sometimes they wouldn't.

  This time, he'd jiggled the door hard. And harder yet. But Diana didn't open the door.

  "You bastard!” she screamed, reaching for the shotgun she'd propped against the china cabinet. She threw its beautiful steely length to her right shoulder. Such a sweet fit.

  Rob's eyes grew wide. What? Then he'd laughed. A new wrinkle in their game. A twist.

  "Oh, baby,” he crooned. “You got a gun? I got a gun, too.” He winked. “Got a red-hot pistol for you, darling.” His face was pressed against the glass.

  * * * *

  Louisiana is a right-to-bear-arms state, but there might be some gray area here, legally speaking, considering that Rob wasn't actually all the way inside the house.

  Shoot ‘em. Then drag ‘em through the window. Every schoolchild knew that.

  She obviously couldn't let him in from the sun porch, however. Why would she open her door to a burglar?

  Luckily, she'd had plenty of time to make a plan, weigh the options, after Fred's call. Before Rob's first footstep on the porch.

  A woman alone in a house. A college professor. Department chair. Sheriff's daughter! Recent home invasions in the neighborhood. A rainy night. A man in black.

  This was, after all, Louisiana, where a jury had taken only three hours to acquit a Baton Rouge homeowner of shooting and killing a Japanese student whose crime had been ringing his bell. The kid had been dazzling in his all-white Saturday Night Fever suit before it blossomed blood-red, he and his friend mistaking the house for one down the street where a Halloween party was being held.

  * * * *

  Diana wanted Rob as close as possible.

  You didn't have to be a crack shot; any fool could hit someone with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, and many heedless fools did. The pellets covered a fairly wide pattern from a distance.

  But if you wanted to kill someone, you stepped closer, closer, closer still. Then the pellets would rip a huge hole.

  That was what Diana wanted, tit for tat, to tear her lover to pieces.

  "Come on, sweetheart.” Rob had urged her closer with an upturned hand, fingers wiggling, a tough-guy gesture. In character. Playing a role.

  She'd racked the shotgun, loving that sound. Loving the well-oiled smell of it. Loving to shoot.

  She'd pulled the trigger, racked again, firing twice through the French doors. The first blast had ripped Rob's heart loose and flung it against his chest wall. The second took out his guts.

  * * * *

  Fred stayed until everyone was gone. “Just a formality,” Officer Jackson had assured them of the crime-scene crew. “Want to follow procedure here. Dot all our i's and cross all our t's. I'm sure you appreciate that, being a lawman's daughter. No question but this has every appearance of a home invasion."

  After the EMS vehicle carried Rob's body away and the last cruiser departed, Fred urged Diana to come home with him, to spend the night with his family.

  "No. No, thanks, Fred,” she assured him. “You've been a brick. I couldn't ask for a better friend. But really, I'll be okay."

  And she would be, Diana thought later, lying in the stillness of her bedroom, the lilac-papered boudoir where she and Rob had shared so many delicious romps.

  She had her prestigious job. Her ever-so-terrific house. A raft of good friends. And she lived in the Big Easy.

  Then, over the rain on the rooftop, she could hear Rob crooning Brother Ray's words just as surely as if his head were on the pillow next to hers.

  Well it don't make no difference if you're young or old...

  no matter whether, rainy weather...

  you got to get yourself together...

  and let the good times roll....

  With that, Diana's heart convulsed once more with loss. Dear God, she'd miss him so. Rob, the last of her lovers, she was sure of it. She could never, ever again expose herself to such grief.

  Her final scream of anguish ripped through the sweet-scented room, and then quiet blanketed it once more. After that, there was nothing, nothing but her own breathing and the falling rain.

  Just before tipping over into darkness, Diana thought, First thing. First thing, bright and early, she'd call Gloria and tell her about the awful accident.

  Gloria would understand. Gloria would get it. And Gloria would keep her mouth shut, or...

  And Amber?

  Well, she was young, with the recklessness of a true beauty. What was one boyfriend, more or less, to such a girl? Besides, Amber was smart and clever enough to protect herself.

  And Chloe? Chloe had already tasted the fruit of revenge and found it sweet.

  With that, Diana turned over and dove headlong into the blissful sleep of the avenged.

  She dreamed it rained so hard and rained so long that the pumping stations failed. The water rose and rose until all the streets flooded. She saw herself floating in her darling little Mercedes roadster, its top down, past Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, then hanging a right into the middle of St. Charles. She was waving like a homecoming queen, smiling and waving and flirting to beat the band, floating, floating, floating down the neutral ground.

  Copyright © 2006 Sarah Shankman

  THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  According to the epigraph of O. Henry's “A Municipal Report,” Frank Norris be-lieved only three major American cities were “story cities": New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. O. Henry took the implied challenge by setting his classic story in Nashville, but few then or now would argue with the inclusion of New Orleans as a great fictional locale. Certainly the city currently coming back from the devastation of Hurricane Ka-trina has attracted many mystery writers, from Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning in the 1930s, Brett Halliday in the ‘40s, and John Dickson Carr in the ‘60s to such contemporaries as James Sallis, Dick Lochte, Julie Smith, Barbara Hambly, Tony Fennelly, Chris Wiltz, and those considered below.

  **** Poppy Z. Brite: Soul Kitchen, Three Rivers, $13.95. Rickey and G-Man, life partners and owner-chefs of the New Orleans restaurant Liquor (every recipe uses booze), hire a gifted cook who was convicted ten years earlier of the murder of his boss. Despite a corpse in the opening pages, the mystery plot is extremely slight, but good writing, involving characters, and a detailed culinary background, including some pointed satire on the foody avant-garde, make this my top choice of the books under review. According to an au-thor's note, the novel was completed the night before Katrina hit.

  **** Tony Dunbar: Tubby Meets Katrina, NewSouth, $24.95. Big Easy lawyer Tubby Dubonnet's titular opponent is not only the hurricane but also an escaped murderer who identifies with the storm. The first fully post-Katrina suspense novel is a first-rate job, crisply written and expertly paced, offering a harrowing, sometimes sardonic description of the city's physical and psychological state before, during, and after the disaster.

  *** David Fulmer: Rampart Street, Harcourt, $25. French Creole private detective Valentin St. Cyr's third case brings to life the Crescent City of 1910, with its “jass” music and flamboyant vic
e, its social, racial, sexual, and political complexities. When a wealthy citizen is murdered in the wrong part of town, his daughter refuses to accept the obvious sordid explanation.

  *** O'Neil De Noux: New Orleans Confidential, PointBlank/Wildside, $16.95. Private eye Lucien Caye, operating in the French Quarter of the late 1940s, takes on eleven highly varied cases, three new to print, ranging from heartfelt tributes to the World War II generation to full-out erotica. One common element, the vivid depiction of the sights, smells, and sounds of the city, is augmented by James Sallis's beautifully written introduction.

  *** James Lee Burke: Pegasus Descending, Simon and Schuster, $26. New Orleans is a secondary background in the latest case for New Iberia cop Dave Robicheaux, whose cases are steeped in Louisiana ethnic, political, and religious culture. The action is pre-Katrina, but the effects and aftermath are addressed in an optimistic epilogue. Despite Burke's over-fondness for macho confrontation and the rambling nature of the complicated plot, there's no denying the beauty of the writing.

  *** Barbara Colley: Married to the Mop, Kensington, $22. In her fifth appearance, housecleaning entrepreneur Charlotte LaRue helps a mobster's battered wife prepare for a Mardi Gras party. Apart from a good punning title, the book has sound writing, construction, and characterization; and a reasonably intriguing plot (though unclued in the classical sense) culminating in a moral dilemma.

  ** Laura Childs: Motif for Murder, Berkley, $22.95. In the early pages of this intermittently amusing, nancydrewish cozy, Carmela Bertrand alternates unbelievably between agony over the kidnapping of her worthless jerk of a husband and bright banter in the sitcom world of her French Quarter scrapbooking shop, Memory Mine. While promoters of tour-ism will applaud the depiction of a post-Katrina New Orleans restored to business as usual, others may find it somewhat insensitive toward the bulk of the displaced population.

  ** Jay Bonansinga: Twisted, Pinnacle, $6.99. At 347 pages, FBI profiler Ulysses Grove's storm-tossed battle with a serial killer called The Holy Ghost is more supernatural horror than mystery and exemplifies thriller bloat. Numbing repetitiousness, soggy romance, and clichéd dialogue detract from good action writing and interesting technical detail as a hurricane devastates New Orleans. The novel was written before Katrina but revised after.

  Copyright © 2006 Jon L. Breen

  ACTS OF CONTRITION by Greg Herren

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Art by Herbert Kearney

  * * * *

  Greg Herren is a longtime resident of New Orleans and has written five mystery novels set there, including Mardi Gras Mambo. He has been nominated for three Lambda Awards for Best Mystery, and his novel Bourbon Street Blues was cited by InsightOut Books as the best mystery of 2003. He lives in the lower Garden District and has no plans to relocate. Ever.

  Help me, Father,” she cried. Her brown eyes were wide open with terror. The rain was falling, drenching them both, soaking her white T-shirt so that it clung to her body. Her dreadlocked hair was dripping with water. The water ran down her face, streaming from her chin as she gripped his arms with her black-fingernailed hands. She reached for one of his hands and drew it to the crevice between her breasts. “Please, Father,” she pleaded again. He didn't pull his hand away from her cold chest. He knew in his heart he should, but somehow he couldn't. He let it rest there, feeling her frantic heartbeat through her cold, wet skin, and closed his eyes. This is a test, he reminded himself, a test. But still he left his hand there, betraying the collar he was wearing, betraying his God. He tried to pray for strength, for guidance, but all he could think about was the feel of her skin beneath his hand. Push her away, reprimand her for her temptation, do something, anything, don't just stand here with your hands on her ... be strong, find strength from your love of God, but don't just keep standing here....

  His hand remained where it was.

  And she began to laugh, her lips pulling back into a smile of exultation. Her eyes glowed with triumph.

  "Fallen priest, fallen priest,” she chanted between her laugh-ter, “You're going to hell, aren't you, Father?"

  He pulled back from her, staring at her face as it changed. She wasn't Molly anymore, the sweet young runaway he was trying to help, she was something else, something evil. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

  "Fallen priest, you're nothing but a fallen priest.” Her voice deepened and she took a step forward, her lips still curled in that horrible smile. She tore at the collar of her T-shirt, ripping it downward and exposing herself. She grabbed his hand again, and pulled it to her breasts.

  "Get thee behind me, Satan,” he finally managed to choke out, provoking her to more laughter. It echoed off the alleyway, and a light went on in a house a few yards from where he was standing. “Stop,” he whispered, glancing at the lighted window.

  "What are you so afraid of, fallen priest?” she leered, her lips pulling back even further. “That you'll be exposed for what you are?” And she laughed again, throwing her head back and sending the sound upward, to the spires of the cathedral, and more lights were going on up the alleyway.

  "Please,” he said, and pulled his hand away from her. Where the knife came from he had no idea. One moment there was nothing and in the next it was there, in his hand, the sword of the Lord. It glowed with a righteous, cleansing blue fire. It pulsed and throbbed in his hand with an almost unimaginable power. Tears filled his eyes as he raised his hand. “Please,” he whispered again, not wanting to do it, knowing he had no choice. He brought the knife down into her chest. Black blood splattered, spilling down her stomach and onto her wet denim skirt. Yet still she laughed, and he brought it down again, tears flowing down his face and mingling with the rain. She must be cleansed, she must be cleansed, she must be cleansed, he thought as he kept swinging his arm. She must be cleansed ... cleansed ... cleansed ... and he hacked at her, the blood spurting and splashing, mixing with the rain, and yet still she laughed....

  * * * *

  He sat up in his bed, wide awake and shivering, his body damp with sweat, his short, graying hair plastered to his scalp. He wiped at his face. It was still raining, the windows fogged up. He sat there, hugging his thin arms around himself trying to get warm. The digital clock on the nightstand read 9:23 A.M., but it was still dark as night. Lightning flashed, so near it was merely a sudden bright light blinding him, followed almost immediately by a roar of thunder that rattled his windows. It had been raining for days, one storm rolling in after another, filling the gutters and streets with water, swirling as the city's pumping system desperately tried to keep up. The ground was soaked, the big elephant ferns outside his door waving in the wind and drenching him every time he walked outside. He tried to slow his heartbeat by taking deep breaths, and he slowly felt warmth creeping through his body again. He threw back the covers and swung his bare feet down to the cracked linoleum. He walked over to the opposite wall.

  The walls of his apartment were cracked, the plaster buckling. The ceiling was covered with brownish water stains, and he could hear the steady plopping of water landing in the pots and pans he had set out in the kitchen to catch the leaks.

  In the center of the wall was a huge crucifix. Jesus’ face, blood running down the sides from the crown of thorns, was turned imploringly to the sky, his beautiful features twisted in agony. Blood leaked out of the wound in his side, his ribs pressing through the pale skin; the nails in his hands and feet were drenched in red.

  He grabbed the worn rosary from the small table and clutched it. Carefully he lit the votive candles, then sank to his knees and began praying. His knees ached from contact with the hard floor. The Latin words rolled off his tongue easily, feverishly, as he counted the beads with his fingers. After a few minutes, when his heart had slowed to a normal pace and he felt calm again, he finished his prayers and crossed himself. He rose to his feet, walked to the window, wiped the condensation away, and looked out into the street.


  Such a horrible dream. He still felt chilled, rubbing his arms to increase the circulation. Was it a sign from God? he wondered. The feelings—of lust and desire—the girl aroused in him had been dormant for so long. He knew they weren't wrong, but after so many years of self-denial through prayer, his vows were ingrained too deeply in his head to shake off easily. There was no reason anymore for him to feel ashamed of his feelings or to deny them, but even though he was no longer a priest, he kept his vows. Maybe she was sent by God to test his dedication to Him. He'd been released from his vows for nearly five years now, so perhaps it wasn't really a test ... but then again, God moved in mysterious ways. Maybe he was supposed to save her.

  No one knows the mind of God.

  She was one of the street people, a runaway. One of the disposable teenagers, the throwaway children who somehow made their way to the French Quarter to hang out in coffee shops or in doorways, cadging change and cigarettes from passersby. She couldn't be older than fifteen, he thought, but then again, as he got older he found it more and more difficult to judge the ages of the young. It was possible she was older. He had found her—was it only three weeks since that evening he had found her asleep in one of the back pews at St. Mark's when he'd gone in to pray? At first he'd thought it was just a bundle of rags someone had left there. Then the pile had moved, and he jumped, startled. It had only been three weeks. He hadn't stopped thinking about her since that moment she'd sat up in the pew, coughing.

  Three weeks only.

  "What's your name?” he'd asked, slipping into the pew beside her.

  She just smiled and said, “Call me Molly, Father.” He opened his mouth to correct her, but closed it again without saying anything.