Knight's Fall

by Angela Henry

  I called the escort service I’d used to set up my meeting with her the night before, and they told me she wasn’t unavailable until early evening, which was just another reason to suspect she was humanity-challenged, as demons aren’t exactly partial to sunlight. I made an appointment with her for six o’clock using a different name and decided in the meantime I needed to pay another visit to Alastair Duquesne. When I arrived the maid told me he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be seeing any visitors. She promised she’d have him call me, but I wasn’t holding my breath since she acted like she didn’t recognize me without my Armani suit.

  I had time to kill and decided to pay a visit to Crystal Sneed’s last known address. She’d formerly been living in an apartment only a stone’s throw from Minx’s place in the Marigny Triangle, a neighborhood just below the Quarter. A place I’ve been told by old-timers is what the French Quarter used to be like a long time ago, before the hordes of tourists discovered it. In other words, they don’t have to tolerate the smell of vomit wafting from Bourbon Street or wake up on Sundays to find drunken frat boys passed out in their bushes. Crystal Sneed’s apartment was on Press Street, near the railroad tracks and right on the edge of the upper ninth ward.

  I grabbed a pulled pork sandwich and some cheesy tater tots from 13 Monaghan, and before I left showed Crystal Sneed’s picture to my flirty, blonde waitress, who barely glanced at it before declaring she’d never seen her before. Once I’d paid my bill and left, I was halfway down the street when I heard someone calling out to me.

  “Hey, mister!” The waitress I’d shown the picture to hurried after me. And in the sunlight I could tell she was a lot older than her youthful attire of low-rise jeans and a belly shirt had suggested. “Why are you looking for Crystal?”

  “I’m a private eye. Her family hired me to track her down.”

  “She’s okay, isn’t she?” She looked genuinely worried.

  “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “She used to come in here a lot. But I haven’t seen her in a few months, and I’ve been really worried because I thought . . .”

  “You thought what?”

  “She had this really mean boyfriend who used to hit her and worse. I told her she needed to get away from him before he killed her.”

  “And did she?”

  “That’s what I thought when she stopped coming in here. Then about a week ago, she called me at work and asked could she borrow some money. She said she was in a lot of trouble and needed to get out of town. We were supposed to meet at Washington Square Park, but she never showed up.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since?”

  “No,” she said sadly.

  “Do you know where she was calling from?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She called me at work, and there’s no caller ID on that phone. So I don’t even have the number she called from.”

  “What about her boyfriend? You see him around lately?”

  “Nope. I only saw him once, when she brought him in here and he acted like his shit didn’t stink. I don’t know what the hell she saw in that loser. She even showed me where he carved his initials in her arm. AD. Sick fucker.”

  “Any idea how she got hooked up with him?” I asked her.

  “She told me she met him when she was a cocktail waitress at Caesar’s in Atlantic City and hooking on the side. He paid her lots of attention and showered her with expensive gifts until she agreed to follow him back here where he grew up. Then he got her hooked on drugs and started whoring her out. I feel so bad because when she called me, I started not to go. I thought she was just looking for drug money.”

  I thanked her for the info and gave her my number in case Crystal called her again or she spotted the boyfriend.

  ****

  A quick check of Crystal’s Press Street address confirmed that she hadn’t been there in a long time. A gay couple lived there now, and they’d never heard of Crystal Sneed or Anton DePreist. I headed back home to change for my meeting with Gisele and found a delivery box that had been overnighted from Neiman Marcus on the front porch. Inside was another Armani suit, this one black, plus new shoes and a white shirt. In the box was a note from Minx: Try not to get demon slime on this one. XOXO, M. I didn’t bother wondering exactly when she’d ordered it. Minx was a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about getting demon slime on my new suit: when Gisele showed up at the suite I’d reserved and saw it was me, she sprayed me in the face with a canister from her little black bag. But as I waited for the inevitable sting of pepper spray to sear my eyeballs, I was surprised when I realized she’d sprayed me with water.

  “What the hell is your problem?” I asked as I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. I heard the sound of high heels on carpet while my eyes were closed and managed to grab her before she ran past me for the door. She broke free of my grasp, poised to spray me again.

  “This is holy water. Blessed at St. Louis Cathedral, and it’ll fuck you up.”

  “Would you look at me, woman? I’m not a monster. Do you see blisters on my skin?”

  “You shouldn’t even be alive.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t that horny scarab demon you sicced on me’s type.”

  “What are you, mister, and what do you want with me?”

  “I’m human? Are you?”

  That gave her pause. She gave me an incredulous look before reaching over and grabbing a glass from the minibar. She uncapped the canister and poured the remainder of the holy water into it, then took a sip. I waited. Nothing happened.

  “Now you.” She held the glass out, and I snatched it from her and drained it.

  “Satisfied?” I asked. She nodded reluctantly but still looked wary. “Now that we’ve both established our humanity, you mind telling me why you tried to have me killed last night?”

  “You mind telling me why you’re really looking for Crystal Sneed? And don’t give me that bullshit about her family hiring you to track her down. Crystal ain’t got a family. Her parents are dead and she’s an only child.”

  “A man named Alastair Duquesne hired me to track her down because she stole a family heirloom from him.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I explained everything Duquesne told me from his meeting Crystal at the Comus Ball, her giving him a phony name, and him finding out she was really a hooker from her pimp Anton DePreist, while Gisele just shook her head and looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Boy, I can sure tell your dumb ass ain’t from ’round here.”

  “What?” She was really starting to piss me off.

  “The Comus Ball? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get tickets to the Comus Ball if you aren’t on the guest list? It’s impossible, and even more impossible for someone like Crystal. So if he lied about that, what else do you think he lied about?”

  “What about Anton DePreist?”

  “Anton’s no drug dealer. He’s a drug counselor who’s been trying to help Crystal get clean. But that shit she’s on is no joke. It won’t let her go no matter how hard she tries.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” I thought about everything Crystal’s waitress friend told me about her being lured to New Orleans by a man who showered her with expensive gifts and was so cruel he’d carved his initials into her skin, AD, not Anton DePreist, Alastair Duquesne. I threw the glass I was still holding against the wall, and Gisele flinched. How could I have been so stupid? I’d been blinded by Duquesne’s money just like Crystal had been.

  “Looks like you got played,” said Gisele, pointing out the obvious.

  “No shit.”

  “Duquesne was telling you the truth when he told you Crystal stole something from him. She told me he’d sent some pretty scary fuckers after her, and she begged me to help her. So when you started asking questions last night, I figured you were trying to drag her back to Duquesne.”

  “You have any idea what she took that he’s so ho
t to get back?”

  “She won’t tell me. Said it was safer for me not to know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t wanna know.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In the wind. She stayed with me for one night and was so scared I could barely get her to go to sleep. I made her chant a protection spell with me. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone.”

  Not many people would know about protection spells or carry spray bottles of blessed holy water on them, but Gisele sure did. Why? She must have read my mind.

  “My landlady owns Madame LuLu’s House of Voodoo in the Quarter. It’s mostly just a bunch of bullshit for the tourists—love potions and juju key chains. The real stuff is for her select clients, the ones who truly need her help. She gave me that stuff I put on your pants after I got beat up real bad by a john. I keep it in this ring,” she said, waving the finger with the ring in question. “She told me if anyone ever hurt me again or if I ever felt threatened, I should use it, and I’d never have to worry about that person bothering me again. Crystal’s my friend and I don’t want to see her hurt. So when you started asking questions about her . . .” She shrugged and gave me a sheepish look. I would have rather had an apology.

  “How do I get hold of this Anton DePreist?”

  ****

  Anton DePreist turned out to be a very hard man to track down. I’d been able to confirm that he’d been a drug counselor at the Riverview Rehab Center in St. Bernard Parish, but no one had seen or heard from him in over a week and they’d let him go. I asked about Crystal Sneed, and they told me she’d been a patient but had left against the advice of her counselor two weeks ago. Sherman Woolsey was avoiding my calls so I couldn’t even find out DePreist’s address. The only way I had to get in touch with him was the cell number Gisele had given me. It kept going straight to voice mail. I wondered if he and Crystal were together. I finally left him a message explaining that Crystal was in deep shit and I only wanted to help her. Five minutes later my cell rang.

  “Who are you? What do you want with me?” asked DePreist. He sounded scared shitless.

  “A friend of Crystal Sneed’s thought that you might know where she is.”

  “I haven’t seen Crystal in days. I want no part of what she’s gotten herself into. I can’t help her. No one can.”

  “But weren’t you trying to help her get clean? You’re just washing your hands of her?”

  “You don’t understand. There’s no getting clean from what she’s on.”

  “What do you mean? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Look, I can’t talk about this on the phone. I’ve got a flight booked, and I’m on my way to the airport in an hour. I’m getting the hell out of town and don’t have a lot of time, but I can meet you someplace.”

  I suggested Zeno’s, and to my surprise, he agreed.

  ****

  Around one thirty in the morning I finally decided to pack it in. Anton still hadn’t shown, and I had a sneaking suspicion I’d been played . . . again. I knew I should have stuck it out until closing time at three, but my eyes watered from secondhand cigarette smoke. Plus I was more than a little sick of listening to all the loudmouth drunks going on and on about their glory days and lying about all the pussy they were getting. I tossed money on the bar for the Corona I’d been nursing for hours and left. Once outside I took a deep breath of muggy night air that smelled like a mixture of night-blooming jasmine and the vomit of overindulging tourists and frat boys whooping it up on nearby Bourbon Street. By morning the smell of garbage would be added to the mix, making the smell downright rank.

  I crossed the cobblestoned street heading east on Royal, walking past a lurching tourist and an amorous couple. Though the Quarter was well-lit with gas lanterns, I instinctively kept an eye on every dark shadow and dimly lit corner. For the hell of it, I tried calling DePreist again. I was walking past the opening of an alleyway when a sound caught my attention: the ringing of a cell phone. When I ended my call, it stopped. I called DePreist’s number again, and the ringing in the alley started again. Against my better judgment, I decided to investigate. The alley was narrow and dark and lined on either side with overstuffed trash bags, some of which had burst open.

  As I walked in deeper, I felt something squish beneath my right foot; figuring I’d stepped on a grape, I didn’t bother looking down until I’d taken a few more steps. Only it wasn’t a grape I’d stepped on. It was an eyeball, a brown one to be exact. I immediately started scraping it off the bottom of my shoe and looked around for its mate. I didn’t find the other eyeball, but I found plenty of other bloodied body parts—some I couldn’t even identify—as well as clumps of dirty blond hair still attached to pieces of torn, bloody scalp. I also found scraps of clothing, a man’s expensive-looking running shoe, and a watch with a black leather strap. What the hell had done this?

  I picked my way through the alley, careful not to step on any more body parts, and stopped cold when I came upon a man’s torso wearing a green polo shirt and missing an arm, as well as the hand of the arm still attached. Both eyes were gone. The top of the head looked like it had been cracked open like a coconut. The brain was gone. I backed up and almost tripped over a man’s leg, still clothed in a pair of faded jeans and missing its foot. I knelt down and searched the pants, found a wallet in the back pocket, as well as the cell phone. I pulled the license from the wallet and quickly discovered why’d I’d been stood up at Zeno’s. I was looking at what was left of Anton DePreist. Shit!

  I quickly wiped my prints from the wallet and put it back. I got up to get the hell out of there when I saw DePreist’s other arm lying near a rusted-out dumpster. A woven hemp bracelet encircled the wrist. The hand was clenched in a tight fist and there was something inside. The fingers were starting to stiffen with rigor and I had to pry them apart. Something fell out onto the ground. I picked it up and almost dropped it when I realized it was a human finger. But it wasn’t Anton’s finger. This finger was stiff, and the skin was hard, leathery, and gray, with a blackened fingernail. The absence of blood meant it had been dead a long time. Anton must have ripped it off of his attacker, which only meant one thing . . . a fucking zombie.

  “Police! Hands in the air!” came a voice from behind me.

  I raised my hands as I looked over my shoulder and wondered just how much more fucked up my night could get. A beam from a flashlight was shining right in my eyes, and I couldn’t see shit.

  “Stand up. Turn around slowly and put your hands where I can see them.”

  I did as I was told and found myself face-to-face with Ava Duval.

  FOUR

  Less than half of 1 percent of the human population can see angels. And of that percentage, the humans that can see angels can only see them under special circumstances, usually when they’re clinically dead and caught in the light tunnel that exists between the world of the living and the afterlife. And once a person has been touched by that light, their life is forever changed and they can see things normal people can’t. Ava Duval hadn’t died that night, but she’d stepped into that light tunnel when she’d collapsed in her hallway and had been able to see me when she’d been pulled back from the brink. That alone should have kept me away from her. But it didn’t.

  A week later I’d gone back to her house and found her waiting for me. Not long after that, we’d become lovers. And because of that, I’d inadvertently let a young medical student named Mona Dial step off a curb while she was busy rummaging through her purse and get struck and killed by a car. The moment of Mona’s death was the end for me. Apparently it had also been the end for Ava, too, not to mention all the people who weren’t going to benefit from Mona’s medical expertise. It was probably best for my peace of mind that I didn’t know what she would have accomplished.

  The woman standing before me had Ava Duval’s face and the same half-moon birthmark on her neck—and that’s it. This woman wore her short hair in a pixie cut. Her body, clad in jeans and a black tank top, was
leaner and lightly muscled, without Ava’s soft curves. Whereas Ava’s brown eyes had been warm and friendly, this woman’s were hard and wary. And there wasn’t even a trace of recognition in them for me. She didn’t know me at all. But it wasn’t just the physical things that made her different. The joyful glow that had drawn me to Ava in the first place was gone. The woman who had Ava’s face—and a gun trained on me—had a sad emptiness about her that was almost palpable. Had our being together caused this? I’d been clipped. I never stopped to wonder what her punishment had been.

  “Want to tell me what you’re doing in this alley?” she asked as she took in all the gore strewn on the ground, never taking the gun off me. She had a badge on a chain around her neck and a black thigh holster strapped to her left leg.

  “Heard strange noises coming out of here. I thought someone might be hurt and decided to investigate.”

  “Oh, so you’re just a Good Samaritan, huh?”

  “I try to be.”

  She turned me around and made me put my hands against the brick wall behind me. Then she started roughly patting me down, pulling my wallet out of the pocket inside my suit jacket, and shining her flashlight on my license. Good thing I’d left the gun I’d taken from Darius Wade at home.

  “Xavier Knight?”

  “That’s right. And you are?” I was hoping she’d tell me her name. But clearly she wasn’t interested in making new friends.

  “How long have you been in New Orleans, Mr. Knight? I can tell from your accent you aren’t from around here.” That was an understatement.

  “I could say the same of you, officer.”

  “I’m a homicide detective not a police officer, and you didn’t answer my question.”

  “A year. And shouldn’t you be calling this in?”

  “I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job. Let’s go.” She gestured with the gun, indicating that I should walk in front of her.