by Angela Henry
“Mama’s still asleep,” she said, forgoing a greeting. I set a bag of still-warm beignets and a café au lait in front of her, and her half smile of thanks told me I was forgiven for almost frying her mother’s brain with Desiree West’s business card.
“Did she work late last night?”
“Nope. Hot date.” She bit into a beignet, sending a cascade of powdered sugar down the front of her pink shirt. “I told her not to stay out too late ’cause she gets cranky if she doesn’t get enough sleep. But you know how parents are. They don’t listen to nobody.”
“Try having God as a parent and then we’ll talk,” I said without thinking.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” I laughed and quickly took a bite of a beignet.
“You’re weird, mister.”
“Who’s weird?” Madame LuLu parted the beaded curtains and emerged from the back room behind the cash register. She was still dressed in what I assumed were her date-night clothes from the night before, a short-sleeved, black, silk, oriental-style dress with red frog closures down the front that barely contained her ample curves. Her dreadlocks were pulled back from her face with a red silk scarf. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, and she smelled like a mixture of pipe tobacco, honeysuckle, and sex, which I found oddly alluring. This was one sexy woman.
“Looks like you had a much better time than I did last night.” I held the bag of beignets out to her, and she gently pushed my hand away. I figured she must have one hell of a hangover to resist what I considered a fried piece of heaven rolled in powdered sugar. She gave me a sly smile that told me more than I wanted to know.
“Loreen, be a good girl and go make Mama some coffee.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the girl with a sigh. Madame LuLu waited until her daughter was gone before she addressed me.
“I knew you’d be back to see me today; otherwise, I’d still be in bed.”
“If that were the case, why’d you stay out so late?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, right? And miss going out with Eddie DeLong because of some ex-angel’s foolishness? Not when Eddie DeLong really lives up to his name. He’s got the biggest . . .”
“Too much information,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear about her date’s anatomy.
“Heart.” She rolled her eyes. “Get your mind out of the gutter,” she snapped.
“Okay. Now what foolishness are you talking about?” I prodded.
“Maybe foolishness wasn’t exactly the right word. How about lost cause? Does that work better for you?”
“Why? Is the person I’m looking for dead?”
“You’re looking for a person?” She looked bleary-eyed and confused. “Who?”
“That wasn’t what you were talking about?” I was getting a little annoyed and impatient. I took a deep breath before I said something rude and got kicked out on my ass.
“Honey, I don’t know what I’m talking about. My head feels as big as this room, and my tongue feels like I’ve been licking asphalt. Now why don’t you tell me why you came to see me so I can crawl back into bed?”
Loreen emerged from the back room with a steaming mug of coffee just as a group of loud-talking tourists arrived. Madame LuLu took the mug and, after a long sip, gestured for me to follow her to the back room while her daughter tended to the customers. Madame LuLu didn’t waste any time.
“This person you’re looking for, have you got something that belongs to them?” She led me over to sit at the same round table we’d sat at during my first visit.
“How about something they touched?” I handed her the plastic pill bottle Crystal had given me last night.
“This’ll work. But only once.” She closed her eyes, let out a cleansing breath that reeked of alcohol, and held the bottle to her forehead, just as she had the business card, only this time instead of getting a shock, her nose crinkled up like she smelled something bad.
“What is it?”
“I smell dirt.”
“Dirt?” That sure as hell didn’t sound good. Could Crystal already be dead? Had someone buried her?
“Yeah, sour, dank, graveyard dirt.”
“But do you see anything?”
“Don’t rush me,” she snapped. Her forehead creased in concentration, and a full minute passed before she spoke again. “I can see a crypt, a casket, and . . . a crying corpse.” She shuddered but didn’t open her eyes.
“She’s still alive then?”
“If you can call it that. Poor baby.” She shook her head.
“She’s not in the casket, is she?” My heart beat fast, with a sense of urgency.
“No. But she wants to be. You’d better hurry,” she said, opening her eyes and setting the pill bottle on the table. “She’s got a gun and nothing left to lose.”
“Do you know which cemetery she’s hiding in?” I jumped up from the table. “I’ve got to get to her before she kills herself.”
“Try Lafayette. And you’d better get to her before she kills someone else. There are two bullets in that gun, and only one of them is for her.”
****
Lafayette Cemetery number one was in the Garden District, which meant it was possible Crystal didn’t trust me to get the job done and planned to stop Alastair Duquesne herself. I bet she didn’t even know someone else had beaten her to it. I only hoped she planned on laying low until nighttime, but Madame LuLu was right. She didn’t have anything left to lose, so why wait until nightfall if she didn’t care anymore who saw her? There was a Gray Line tour group touring the cemetery when I arrived. I made sure to keep my distance as I searched row after row of the aboveground tombs and vaults, looking for the one Crystal could be hiding in. At nine thirty in the morning, the muggy heat already had my shirt soaked.
Sweat ran into my eyes and between my shoulder blades as I quickly examined crypt after crypt. But though they were hundreds of years old, each one was solidly sealed, with no breach that I could detect. Some of the more ornate tombs belonging to the wealthy were made of marble, but the rest were brick and plaster and would be damned hard to break into, at least for a normal person. I remembered the almost superhuman strength of the woman who attacked me in Duquesne’s house. Crystal may have already manifested that side effect. So punching a hole in a brick wall would be nothing to her.
In the distance I could hear the tour guide telling his group how a popular local author had staged her own funeral while still alive in that very cemetery, which had also been used in the movie adaptation of one of her books. A sense of doom mingled with the urgency I already felt and made me almost frantic. A desperate person, a desperate situation, and a gun don’t mix; and with a group of unsuspecting tourists nearby, it spelled bad news. As I searched, a dozen pairs of hollow sightless eyes followed me. It was like the angels decorating the tombs were mocking me.
The sound of the tour guide and his group was getting closer, and I turned to see them gathered at the center of the intersecting walkways that divided the cemetery and formed a cross. He was leading them to Marie Laveau’s tomb, but a few of them cast curious glances my way and I’m sure I must have looked a crazy man as I wandered up and down the rows pressing against the entrances. I wiped sweat from my brow as I headed down another row when in the distance I spotted a large marble tomb decorated with the familiar statue of a man with his hands clasped in prayer.
Any angel, even an ex one like me, knew St. Jude when they saw him. And when I say I knew St. Jude, I meant it. He’d been a mentor of mine that I’d been particularly sad to have to leave behind. Then it hit me. St. Jude was also known as the patron saint of lost causes. Lost cause. Could this be the lost cause Madame LuLu had been referring to? As I approached the marble tomb, I could see it was much older than some of the others. The name carved into the arch above the sealed doorway had eroded and was almost illegible. But I could make it out: Lavolier. The grass in front of the tomb was sparse and patchy but overgrown in the narrow sections along the sides, where it almost
touched the low vaults on either side. The low-hanging branches of a large magnolia tree shaded it. I quickly looked around to make sure no one was watching and tentatively pressed against the door. To my surprise I heard a scraping sound as it gave way, opening about two inches. A musty dank smell came rushing out and almost made me gag because I knew it wasn’t just the long dead I smelled.
“Crystal?” I whispered into the gloom. “Are you in there? It’s Xavier Knight. I’m here to help you.” My voice echoed through the tomb.
I pressed harder against the slab, pushing it in another few inches and peering inside. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Crystal wasn’t there, though traces of her remained. Lying on the cold, hard, dirty floor of the tomb, right next to a casket that had seen better days, lay a sleeping bag, a lantern, and a thermos. Then I spied something dark and furry partially concealed by the sleeping bag. I reached in and pulled the edge of the sleeping bag toward me so I could get a better look, and the flopping, broken body of a dead, tan cat rolled out. The skull had been cracked open like an egg, and the brain was gone. It was too late. Even if I found her, Crystal was now beyond anyone’s help. But I still needed to find her before she moved on to human prey with or without that gun.
“What the hell are you doing, mister?” came a voice from behind me. The tour group guide and his group stood behind me; all of them stared at me with contempt and revulsion. I quickly rolled the cat back up in the sleeping bag and shoved it back into the tomb.
“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands and standing up, “it was like this when I got here.”
“No, it wasn’t,” claimed a sweating heavyset woman fanning herself vigorously with the brochure. “I saw you trying to get into all the other tombs. I saw him,” she said to her fellow tour mates. “You’re sick!”
“Someone called the police on this asshole,” came another voice from the crowd.
I took that as my cue to leave, and I ran out of the cemetery, practically colliding with another group of tourists, which had gathered at the cemetery’s arched iron gate. I headed on foot to Alastair Duquesne’s house and spotted Minx’s Range Rover still parked in front. But what I didn’t see were any signs of what had happened the night before. No crime-scene tape blocked off the front door. No police cars or vans from the crime-scene unit. No neighbors gathered and whispering on the sidewalk in front. Nothing. Just like Anton DePreist’s crime scene, everything had been cleaned up like nothing had ever happened, and I knew it was the work of the Equinox Agency. Instead of getting into the Range Rover like I should have, I walked up the wide front steps and knocked on the door. To my amazement Duquesne’s maid answered the door. I looked beyond her into the foyer and could see no traces of last night’s events. From what I could see of the living room from where I was standing, it looked neat and tidy. No broken furniture, no bloodstains, and no signs of a struggle. The maid sighed impatiently. She turned to look at where I was staring and then back at me.
“May I help you, sir?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Duquesne. Is he in?”
“I’m sorry. But Mr. Duquesne is out of the country on business. I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”
Try never, I thought. “Is there any way for me to get in touch with him?”
“I’m afraid not.” For the first time she looked uncertain, and I wondered if she knew her boss was dead and was playing the game like me or if the Equinox Agency had made it look like the unfortunate Alastair Duquesne had taken off on a business trip from which he would never return. I wondered how they would do it: plane crash, heart attack, car wreck? Whatever they had planned, I knew it wouldn’t include death by pseudo-zombie attack. These people were a lot more powerful than I realized, and that kind of power was never a good thing.
“Is everything okay, ma’am?”
“Of course. Would you like me to leave him a message in case he gets in touch with me?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not important. I’ll stop back another day.”
I headed back down the steps, got into the Range Rover, and took off like a shot. When I got to the nearest stop sign, I purposefully slammed down hard on the brakes, sending the person who’d been hiding in the backseat flying forward and catching them in a headlock before they went through the windshield. It was a man, and he kicked and struggled as I dragged him backward out of the car and threw him on the ground.
“Please don’t hurt me!” cried the man, who I could now see was a young man with unruly blond hair and a spray of freckles on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. If I had to guess his age, I’d say between eighteen and twenty-one. He looked about ready to shit himself.
“Who the fuck are you and what the hell are you doing in my car?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how I ended up in your car. I just woke up there.”
“Are you drunk?” He didn’t smell like alcohol and wasn’t funky and unkempt like a crack or meth head. In fact, he looked like a lost choirboy.
“Yeah, that’s it.” He laughed nervously, then stood up and brushed off his clothes. “I must have gotten wasted last night and crawled into the backseat of your car to sleep it off.”
“It was locked. How’d you get in?” I asked. He looked startled.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean any harm.” He had started backing away when I caught a glimpse of the initials sewn into the front pocket of his white button-down shirt. The initials were EA, the Equinox Agency.
Had they sent this joker to spy on me, or worse yet, had they gone back on their decision to detain me and sent this kid to retrieve me? I almost laughed. Instead, I grabbed the kid by his collar and slammed him up against the side of the car.
“The Equinox Agency sent you, didn’t they?”
“You . . . know about them?” he sputtered in disbelief. “But . . . how?”
“Don’t fuck with me, man. Why were you really in my car? What do they want with me?”
“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice had taken on a high-pitched quality that told me he was either lying or scared shitless.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to ponder which it was because the squealing tires of an oncoming car made us both turn. A black SUV had rounded the corner a block away and came straight at us.
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the kid. “It’s them. They found me. Help me please, mister! I can’t go back there!”
“Back where?”
“The Equinox Agency!”
Probably making a big mistake, I grabbed the kid, opened the passenger-side door, shoved him inside, then jumped behind the wheel and gunned the engine. I managed to make it through the yellow light and across the intersection just as the light turned red and the oncoming traffic kept the SUV from following us. But I wasn’t taking any chances. I kept driving, turning down narrow back alleys and side streets until I figured I’d lost them. The whole time I was driving, the kid crouched down on the floorboard of the backseat. I didn’t know why the Equinox Agency wanted him, but whatever he’d done it must be pretty serious. I finally came to a stop at the same secluded area where I’d had my little talk with Darius Wade.
“Now,” I said, not bothering to turn around, “want to tell me what’s going on? And don’t you dare try running away, or the Equinox Agency will be the least of your problems.”
****
“What do you mean you let him go?” asked Chief Sonnier. He gave Desi an incredulous look, and she had to force herself to meet his gaze.
“Yes, sir. I did.” Desi knew her decision to cut Xavier Knight loose wouldn’t go over well. But there was no use in holding him further, and he wouldn’t have talked to her otherwise. Plus, though she couldn’t put a finger on just why, she felt she could trust him. And once she explained it all to the chief, including the info she’d gotten about Alastair Duquesne, he grudgingly saw her point of view.
“I ho
pe you know what you’re doing, West. But I trust that you’ll handle it because I’ve got to take care of Kale’s screwup,” he said testily.
“What happened?”
“You didn’t hear?” She shook her head. She’d only just gotten back to headquarters and had come straight to his office.
“Vic . . . I mean David Granger disappeared during Kale’s interrogation. She claimed he vanished into thin air. He’s nowhere in the building, and we’ve got a team out looking for him.” It took everything in Desi not to smirk.
Desi took a quick shower and changed her clothes before heading to the morgue to look for Morel. Along the way she glanced though the open door of Kale’s office and saw her talking on her phone, still wearing her pretty red dress from last night. Judging by the pissy look on her face, whoever she was talking to wasn’t telling her anything she wanted to hear. Desi purposefully slowed her pace in order to hear what Kale was saying.
“A Range Rover? He’s got an accomplice? Did you give chase?” Kale looked up and saw Desi watching her and scowled before slamming her office door shut so hard the glass in the door shook.
While she was glad it wasn’t her problem, she still felt bad about Vic, or rather David. She had to stop thinking of him as Vic. Whatever he’d done, she still didn’t want to believe him to be anything other than a kid who’d made a really stupid mistake. But how had he gotten out of the building? Had he really vanished? Or was Kale just trying to cover up the fact that she’d screwed up and let a perp get the jump on her? Whatever David Granger’s story was, escaping custody had pretty much sealed his fate. According to the chief, the video camera recording Kale’s interrogation suddenly went haywire at the exact moment Kale claimed David Granger had vanished. The technicians had no idea what had caused the interference. All they knew is that when the camera started functioning normally again, Kale was standing in an empty interrogation room with her mouth hanging open.
The thought made Desi chuckle as she headed into the morgue. The smell slapped her in the face and made her eyes water. Morel, dressed in scrubs, with a plastic face guard over his nose and mouth and thick latex gloves on his hands, stood between two examining tables, both of which held remains that barely looked human. On the examining table closer to the door were the remains of what looked like a man. Much like Anton DePreist, his skull had been cracked open and much of it was missing, as well as his brain. His face was unrecognizable, as the skin had been torn and hung like shredded wallpaper. One ear was gone, as well as several fingers on the hand closer to Desi. Underneath all the blood and gore, she could make out what had been a white dress shirt. The chest and stomach cavity had been ripped open, exposing the rib cage and the slippery red internal organs. Desi recognized a partially consumed heart, intestines, and liver, then realized the foul smell came from the punctured and leaking bowels spilled across the dead man’s torn abdomen.