by Greg Herren
Synopsis
Life--and death--don't stop for disaster in the Big Easy.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina,, Chanse MacLeod struggles to reclaim his life in a shattered New Orleans. Unfortunately, his last client before the storm was murdered the very night she hired him to find her long-missing father. Determined to see the case through, he is drawn into a web of intrigue and evil that proves to be as devastating as Katrina.
Murder in the Rue Chartres
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Murder in the Rue St. Ann
eBook Copyright © 2012 By Greg Herren.
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ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-842-1
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First Print Edition: © 2007
First eBook Edition: Bold Strokes Books April 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Credits
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By The Author
The Chanse MacLeod Mysteries
Murder in the Rue Dauphine
Murder in the Rue St. Ann
Murder in the Rue Chartres
Murder in the Rue Ursulines
Murder in the Garden District
Murder in the Irish Channel
Acknowledgments
This book was written over a period of time from early October 2005 through December 2006, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastating flood that followed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to thank my editor, Joe Pittman, for his incredible patience, his insight, and his kindness. It was he who pushed for this book to be done at all, at a time when I had long since given up on there ever being a third Chanse MacLeod book. His support at a time when I was probably at one of the lowest points of my life is something for which I will always be grateful.
In those horrible weeks after the evacuation, when I had no idea when I would be able to come home, or even if I had a home to come back to or if New Orleans was gone forever, the incredible love and kindness of so many friends and strangers from all over the country made the misery almost bearable. Thank all of you for your big hearts.
My co-workers at the NO/AIDS Task Force are a great bunch of people who do amazing work for the New Orleans community. They’ve also been good friends and a valuable base of emotional support for me: J. M. Redmann, Noel Twilbeck, Mark Drake, Joshua Fegley, Allison Vertovec, Ked Dixon, Seema Gai, and Darrin Harris. Bless you all.
This book began while I was staying in Hammond, Louisiana, a wonderful little college town on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Hammond has become a second home to me, and the folks I always associate with Hammond (even though some of them are from New Orleans) are very dear to me: Bev and Butch Marshall, Michael Ledet and Patricia Brady, Elizabeth Schmidt and her husband Norman, Bev’s writing classes at Southeastern Louisiana University, and many others.
Julie Smith and Lee Pryor are two of my biggest cheerleaders. Love to you both.
A special thanks to John Pope of the New Orleans Times- Picayune, for sharing his experiences and that of other reporters in the wake of the disaster. An entire book could be written about the courage of the Times-Picayune staff, who did their jobs so that those of us scattered to the four corners of the country could know what was really going on in our beloved home city. Any errors of fact in Paige’s experiences after the hurricane are completely my fault.
Poppy Z. Brite and her husband, Chris Debarr, are also worthy of mention, for their support, their friendship, and their ability to make me laugh no matter what else is going on around me.
Becky Cochrane, Timothy J. Lambert, and Tom Wocken deserve mention for making Houston another safe haven for me.
And of course, Paul J. Willis, my life partner, makes everything worthwhile. We’ve survived a lot together, and I thank God for him every day for always loving me, supporting me in my endeavors, and loving me when I am not very lovable.
This book is dedicated to the city of New Orleans.
“I came out in the French Quarter years before I came out in the Garden District.”
from Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Chapter One
It was six weeks before I returned to my broken city.
Usually when I drove home from the west, as soon as I crossed onto dry land again in Kenner, excitement would bubble up inside and I’d start to smile. Almost home, I’d think, and let out a sigh of relief. New Orleans was home for me, and I hated leaving for any reason. I’d never regretted moving there after graduating from LSU. It was the first place I’d ever felt at home, like I belonged. I’d hated the little town in east Texas where I’d grown up. All I could think about was getting old enough to escape. Baton Rouge for college had been merely a way station—it never occurred to me to permanently settle there. New Orleans was where I belonged, and I’d known that the first time I’d ever set foot in the city. It was a crazy quilt of eccentricities, frivolities, and irritations sweltering in the damp heat, a city where you could buy a drink at any time of day, a place where you could easily believe in magic. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Any time I’d taken a trip before, within a few days I’d get homesick and started counting the hours until it was time to come home.
But this time wasn’t like the others. This time, I hadn’t been able to come home, and had no idea how long it would be before I could. Now, I was nervous, my stomach clenched into knots, my palms sweating on the steering wheel as I sang along to Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn the Beat Around” on the radio. It was everything I’d feared for the last few weeks when I thought about coming home, the anxiety building as the odometer clocked off another mile and I got closer to home.
It was different.
The most obvious thing was the lack of traffic. Even outside the airport, the traffic was usually heavy, sometimes slowing to a complete standstill. But other than a couple of military vehicles, a cement mixer, and a couple of dirty and tired looking sedans, I-10 was deserted. There was a film of dirt on everything as far as I could see, tinting my vision sepia. Huge trees lay toppled and debris was everywhere. Signs that used to advertise hotels, motels, restaurants, storage facilities, and pretty much any kind of business you could think of were now just poles, the signs gone except for the support skeleton. Buildings had been blown over, fences were wrecked and down, and almost everywhere I looked blue tarps hung on roofs, their edges lifting in the slight breeze. My breath started coming a little faster, my eyes filled, and I bit down on my lower lip as I focused back on the road.
No cars joined at the airport on-ramp, or the one at Williams Boulevard just beyond it. No planes were landing or taking off.
“Because we believe in rebuilding New Orleans, we here at—”
I jabbed a finger at the car stereo and Faith Hill’s voice filled the car. I settled back into my seat. I was ready to be out of the car. It was just past four. I’d been on the road since seven and my back was starting to ache, my legs tightening up. No matter what I found when I go
t to my house, it would feel good just to get out of the car. My best friend Paige’s apartment just a few blocks away was fine, and she’d been back as soon as power had been restored. She’d evacuated with other reporters from the Times-Picayune to Baton Rouge, and had been in and out of the city daily until she could return home. Her landline was still down, and cell phone service had been spotty since the storm for those with a 504 area code—sometimes you could get through; sometimes you couldn’t. She’d gone by my apartment and given me a report within a few days after the disaster. The roof was still on, there was no mold, all my windows were intact, and most importantly, my neighborhood was not under water. She’d emptied out my refrigerator, opened some of the windows to get air circulating to help fight mold—and when the power came back on she’d turned the air conditioning on. I was luckier than most. The flood hadn’t reached my house and the massive old oak in front of the house hadn’t fallen. For me, it was just a matter of when I could come home, rather than what would I find when I finally did.
At least I had something to come back to. So many had nothing.
A few cars zoomed onto I-10 from the Causeway, and that was even stranger. No matter the time of day, the interchange between the two highways was always stop-and-go traffic. There was just no one in New Orleans, no one going in or out. I went around the corner just after the 610 split and headed for the underpass near Metairie Road, and that’s when I saw that the mud line along the concrete walls was over my head. I choked back a sob and tried to fight the tears again. Get a hold of yourself, I thought. It’s going to get worse the further in you go. Be strong—you have to be strong.
The huge red crawfish atop the Semolina’s at Metairie Road was gone. Surely they hadn’t taken it down—the wind must have blown it away. I swallowed and then couldn’t help but smile a little. Maybe it had wound up in one of the cemeteries just beyond; wedged headfirst into a house of the dead. Now THAT would be a really fun picture, I thought, but then had the sobering thought that it also might have blown through someone’s roof. But even that struck me as funny, in a gallows humor kind of way. How would you report that to your insurance company? “Um, a huge crawfish is embedded in my roof.” It wasn’t funny, really, but it was a distracting thought.
And then I went around the curve and saw the city skyline in the distance. It was immediately apparent to me, even at that distance, that the Superdome didn’t look right.
I’d always loved the Superdome. I played in two Sugar Bowls there when I was playing college football at LSU, to the roars of crowds wearing purple and gold, holding signs saying Geaux Tigers and other Louisiana-flavored slogans. After graduation, I’d cheered the Saints on through years of futility, shaking my head with everyone else as they blew another game, another season, and sank into the NFL cellar yet again, heading back to the beer vender in my black-and-gold jersey to drown my sorrows. I’d been to concerts there—U2, one of Cher’s numerous farewell tours, and countless others. The odd oval shape just before the taller buildings of the Central Business District always brought a sense of joy to me, as another sign I was getting closer to home all those other times I’d driven back into the city. But now it meant something different, more than just another landmark of my homecoming. It was now a symbol of almost unimaginable misery and suffering, witnessed by the entire world—just as New Orleans itself meant tragedy, disaster and death instead of let the good times roll, good food, lots of drink, and Mardi Gras. As I sped closer, I could see that half the roof had been torn off by the wind.
Now, it resembled a half-peeled hard-boiled egg.
I took my eyes off it, instinctively readying myself for the interchange of I-90 West, I-10, and I-90 East, which all converged just before the St. Charles Avenue exit, with cars coming on and others trying to exit in the engineering nightmare of three or four on-ramps too close together for rational, safe merging. But there were no cars, even here. I didn’t even have to touch my brakes once as I flew through and headed down the off-ramp. I stomped down a little too hard on the brakes once I realized the traffic light at the bottom was dark and a stop sign had been erected. It didn’t matter. There was no traffic other than a station wagon crossing the intersection a block ahead. I glanced to my left and saw filthy cars, coated in mud, abandoned in the Mass Transit parking area under the elevated highway. There were hundreds of them, it seemed. I swallowed and drove ahead to St. Charles.
*
St. Charles during daylight weekday hours was always a hive of activity. The streets were crowded, the streetcars would be running, people would be walking along the sidewalks. There would be people in front of the Popeye’s, cars in the drive-through at Wendy’s, a full parking lot at Office Depot. The St. Charles Tavern was always full of people, as was the Voodoo BBQ on the opposite corner. Instead, all I could see were massive tree branches along the neutral ground and sidewalks. Some of the trees were denuded of branches and stood naked in the bright sunlight. Dirt, debris, and garbage were everywhere. Storefronts were boarded up. There were messages spray-painted on the plywood.
LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT, DON’T EVEN TRY IT.
WE ARE ARMED AND WILL SHOOT ANYONE TRYING TO BREAK IN.
But then one on a carpet shop made me smile.
8/30 I AM HERE WITH A GUN, A MEAN DOG, AND AN UGLY WOMAN.
9/2 STILL HERE, WOMAN LEFT YESTERDAY, MAKING DOG GUMBO.
I turned down Euterpe, right past the darkened Burger King, and headed for Coliseum Square. There was no sign of life anywhere. The houses were empty, no cars in the driveways or parked in front. There were piles of roof tiles and garbage everywhere I looked. One of the huge oaks in the empty park was down, its massive gnarled roots stabbing at the sky. I turned onto Camp Street and pulled up in front of my house.
Paige had been right. There was debris all around the house, and some of it was roof tile. But the front windows appeared to be intact. The iron fence was leaning closer to the ground than it had been, and one of the huge branches that shaded the walk to the porch had been torn off, but there was no sign of it anywhere. It must have been carried off by the high winds. I got out of the car, lit a cigarette, and just stared at my house.
It had only been six weeks since I left. Six weeks that seemed like a lifetime.
The one litany that had gone through my mind the entire time I was away was I want to go home! I’d been to several places in my wanderings since August 28, but everywhere I went, the places seemed different to me somehow, unreal in a strange way that made no sense. Maybe it was me that was different, I don’t know. Those weeks had passed in a strange fog, days drifting into each other, one day after another in a monotonous surreal pastiche. I’d lost track of dates, even what day of the week it was. I was numb, and when I could feel something, it was sorrow and depression. I couldn’t watch television after a certain point. I tried to read, focus on my work, but my mind just couldn’t stay focused. I found myself searching message boards online, boiling with rage when reading ignorant posts by heartless bastards who claimed we got what we deserved for being so stupid as to live below sea level, or those who claimed it was God’s punishment on New Orleans for her sins. The ignorance and cruelty of my fellow human beings had rarely surprised me before the disaster, but coming face to face with it in this instance, when we were all hurting beyond anything we could have imagined, consumed me with anger. But the rage felt good, because I’d begun to wonder if I’d ever be able to feel anything besides sorrow again—sorrow and guilt. I felt tremendous guilt for abandoning New Orleans, my city and home, to die by herself. Of course, there was nothing I could have done, but that didn’t make the feeling any less real. I somehow felt like I’d betrayed the city I loved by not staying to die with her.
I’d taken enormous pride in the fact that I’d never evacuated before. I stayed for both Jorges and Ivan since I’d moved to New Orleans. In both cases, the storms had turned to the east at the last moment, unleashing their fury elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. I’d never lost
power, phone, or cable for either one of them. It hadn’t even rained at my house during Jorges. I figured this one would do the same at first as the television started preaching death and destruction and the need to leave. While most people were stuck on the westbound lanes of I-10 on Saturday, I’d been calmly watching the doomsday forecasts on the Weather Channel. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on supplies—bottled water, canned goods, batteries, and candles, fighting my way through the panicked mobs in the store. But when I’d woken up that Sunday morning, turned on the television, and saw the size of the monster in the Gulf, in horror I realized that even if it turned east at the last minute, New Orleans was going to get hit, and hit hard. The size of the storm surge in the Gulf would surely overtop the levees along the river and the lake, and all those computer-generated models they’d been showing every year during hurricane season could possibly come true. Even as I sat staring at the Doppler images, Paige called and told me to get the fuck out of town as fast as I could. The terror in her voice was enough to erase any doubt that I had left.
“We’re going up to Baton Rouge,” she said, her voice shaking with fear, “but man, you’ve got to go this time. And pray for the city.” She hung up without giving me a chance to answer.
I packed in a daze, not knowing what to take or where I was going. Like the rest, I figured I’d go west and just get a room somewhere, maybe as far away as Houston. I don’t really remember much of that morning; it passed in a haze as I rushed around the apartment looking for things like my birth certificate, my passport, the title to my car, and other things that would be hard to replace. I was in shock, and every once in a while I would break down crying. This was it, the Big One they’d been warning about for years, and it was possible I might not ever be able to come home. But I put those thoughts out of my head; New Orleans somehow always survived…and there was still a chance it might turn and spare the city its fury.