Murder in the Rue Chartres

by Greg Herren

  I could feel something inside me, but I didn’t really know what it was. Fear? Horror? Something like that.

  I pulled out my cell phone. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold it, let alone hit my first speed dial number. I held it up to my ear. Nothing. It just rang and rang…and then I got that horrible recording, We’re sorry, all circuits are busy, please hang up and try again. I tried three times more before I gave up—I was ready to throw the phone across the room.

  I had to do something.

  *

  I walked out my front door, checked to see if anyone was around, sprinted across the park, and slid the envelopes marked Blaine and Venus into the mail slot at Blaine’s house. There were no cars around, so no one was home. The wind was blowing, the branches of the park’s oak trees waving lazily, leaves shivering. I then hurried over to Paige’s, and put one in her mail slot. I felt a little better. If anything happened to me…the truth would come out.

  If anything happened to me.

  My mind was spinning. I didn’t know what to do, or where to go.

  Somehow I managed to find my way back to my apartment.

  I sat there for a moment, and then felt the anger starting to rise inside of me.

  Twenty-four people had died in that fire. Been murdered in the most horrible way imaginable—incinerated to death for no reason other than being gay and in the wrong bar at the wrong time. They’d been exterminated like vermin, burned to death.

  The heat was so intense in some cases the bodies fused together.

  For thirty-two years, Percy Verlaine and Lenny Pousson had gotten away with it.

  Percy had had his own grandchildren murdered to cover it up.

  He doesn’t deserve to live.

  I got my gun out of the safe under my bed, and loaded it. I kept it clean and well oiled. I don’t like to carry it, and I certainly don’t like to use it, but I go out for target practice once a month, just to be on the safe side.

  Destiny is a funny thing. I’d never really believed in it. I was raised in the Church of Christ, and the most important tenet of that incredibly intolerant sect was free will. We choose our paths, we make decisions, and we must suffer the consequences of our actions. The notion of destiny denies free will. And even though I’d shaken off the outer trappings of my religious upbringing, at the root of my being my early training was still there, controlling what I thought and what I believed and what I did. I thought Paul’s death was a punishment for killing a man—the consequences of my taking a life.

  Now, as I sat there holding my gun, I believed differently.

  It was my destiny to punish Percy Verlaine and Lenny Pousson for their crimes.

  It was destiny that had brought Iris Verlaine to me. It was destiny that had sent me to see Catherine Hollis, to get the recorder from Valerie Stratton. It was destiny that had led me into law enforcement, so I would learn how to shoot a gun. It was destiny that had made me go into private investigation. All those years of training, all those hours spent at the shooting range perfecting my ability to handle a gun—it was all preparation for what I was about to do, what I had to do.

  The anger that had been building inside me cooled. I felt calm, and at peace. Now that the decision had been made, there was no turning back. They had to pay for their crimes. Percy Verlaine would never have been brought to justice in our courts—he had too much money and too much power. He would get away with it—and he would protect Lenny Pousson as well. He had covered for Lenny for thirty-two years—at the cost of losing two of his only grandchildren.

  He was old and he was sick, but he didn’t deserve to draw another breath.

  I had always held life to be a sacred thing, and had never understood how one person could knowingly and willingly take another life.

  Now, I completely understood.

  I put on my leather jacket, put the gun in my pocket, and walked out the back door.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It started to rain almost at the exact same moment I started the car. I turned the wipers on as I backed out of my spot and switched on the lights. The sun was just setting, but the sky was covered with dark clouds. Lightning forked nearby and the thunder that followed almost immediately was loud enough to shake my car. I drove down the drive and pulled out onto Camp Street. The streetlights weren’t working, and all of the houses were dark. The darkness was almost absolute; it was like being in the country. I circled the park—still no cars over at Blaine’s, which wasn’t a good thing—and swung back down to Magazine Street and headed for the Garden District.

  Confronting a killer is generally not a smart thing to do. I had done it once before in the past, armed with nothing more than a pocket tape recorder. It had never occurred to me that day as I went over there that he was a hardened killer, that he’d be willing to kill me as well. Live and learn. Once I confronted him with what I knew, he’d first tried to talk me into not going to the police, to let him get away. I couldn’t do it, and so he’d tried to kill me. He came after me with a knife, and we’d fought—and it was the first time in my life I ever feared I was going to die, faced my own mortality. In the ensuing struggle I’d wound up punching him and knocking him backward. He had crashed through a glass door, hit a railing, and gone over—breaking his neck when he landed on the cement courtyard below. I hadn’t meant for him to die—I was just trying to save myself—but he died anyway. I hadn’t been charged—the knife was still in his hands and there was a matching cut on my arm from when he’d come at me with it—and I’d had the tape recording of our conversation. It was open-and-shut, but nevertheless his death had haunted me in the ensuing months. I’d relived it in my dreams over and over again, waking up covered in sweat and sometimes screaming. Paul had always been there to hold me and comfort me, to make me feel safe and better.

  When Paul had been murdered, a part of me had honestly believed it was divine retribution. I had sinned by taking a life, and God was punishing me by taking the life of someone close to me, to make me suffer. There had even been a little voice whispering in my mind that the hurricane and ensuing flood was also a part of my punishment. But now I knew better. That had been self-absorption. I was not the center of the universe. Paul did not die because I loved him. A mentally disturbed man obsessed with Paul had kidnapped and killed him. That would have happened to Paul whether he knew me or not. God had not sent Hurricane Katrina to punish me. It was simply nature, the randomness of the world. Was I really so worthy of divine punishment that the city had to be destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people forced to suffer? No, I wasn’t. I knew that now.

  The recording was certainly more than enough evidence to send Lenny Pousson to death row. Whether he had set the fire at the Upstairs Lounge on Percy Verlaine’s orders—that would be up to the district attorney’s office to prove at some point. They would have to go through the financial records of Verlaine Shipping to find whatever Iris had dug up, if that evidence hadn’t already been destroyed. Percy was certainly wealthy enough to hire a battalion of lawyers to fight any charges, and given the state of his health, he’d probably die before going to trial.

  Sometimes, justice needs a little help.

  *

  It was pouring when I got to the Verlaine house; the windshield wipers were unable to keep up with the onslaught of water. I wondered briefly if the patches on the levees would hold, or if the pumps had been repaired enough to empty the streets of the gathering water, but dismissed the thought. It was just a heavy storm—we’d gotten through those plenty of times before. The deep gutters dug around the Garden District streets were already filled with water. I parked, got out of the car, and ran down to the driveway, where the gate was open. I headed up the driveway and had just climbed the front steps when the front door opened.

  Emily Hunter stood there with a box in her hands. She gave me a wry smile. Her blouse was splotched with wet marks, and her hair looked bedraggled. “Well, well, well. Look who’s here.”

  “Hello,” I
replied. “I need to see Percy.”

  “Be my guest.” She stepped aside. “He’s in his room—third door on the left at the top of the stairs.” She smiled. “Give the old bastard my regards, will you? I don’t trust myself to go in there myself. I might just smother him with a pillow.”

  “What?” It was so close to what I was thinking about it threw me a little.

  “Oh, I’ve been fired.” She gave me a nasty smile. “After twenty-odd years working here, I’ve been informed my services are no longer necessary or wanted, and told to get off the premises immediately and to never darken the door of the Verlaine home ever again. Nice, huh? Two months severance.”

  “Why?”

  “No explanation—but around here that’s no surprise.” She shrugged. “Go on in. And tell the old man to go to hell for me, will you?”

  I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. There were no lights on in the downstairs, and the staircase was dark, and I didn’t know where the light switch was. I started up the stairs. The second-floor hallway was lit up, and in just a few moments I was standing in the third doorway on the left. I felt the gun in my pocket and looked in.

  Percy Verlaine was lying in his bed, the oxygen mask over his withered face. A single light burned on his nightstand. The curtains to the big windows were open, and the rain was pelting the glass. I could barely make out the branches of a huge oak tree bending in the wind outside. “Who’s there?” he called out. He reached over to the nightstand and put on a pair of glasses. His eyes focused on me. “How did you get in?”

  “Emily let me in.” I walked into the room and pulled up a chair next to the bed. I sat down. “Why did you fire her?”

  He closed his eyes. “I don’t have to explain my dealings with my staff to you.”

  “We need to have a talk, old man.”

  He opened his eyes. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Then you can listen.” I leaned in close. “Do you remember Cathy Hollis? The niece you locked away in a mental hospital thirty years ago?”

  “I raised her like my own daughter.” He glared at me.

  “And that only makes me feel even sorrier for Margot than I already do—and believe me, I felt pretty bad for her all already.”

  “Get to your point, and spare me your lectures about things you know nothing about—and then get out.” He spat the words at me.

  “I don’t know why you hated your son-in-law so much,” I went on. “Whatever the reason, you hated him and wanted him gone—out of your daughter’s life and out of this house— for good, didn’t you?”

  “She deserved better. He only married her for her money.”

  “Did he make her happy?”

  “He made her miserable!” The eyes flashed open and glared at me again. “Anyone could see she was suffering!”

  “And so that made it all right to have him killed?”

  Lightning flashed right outside the window. He didn’t answer for a moment, and I was about to ask him again when he said, his voice so low I could barely hear him, “I didn’t have him killed. You’re wrong about that.”

  “Did you know that Iris went to see your niece before she was killed? And they had a rather interesting conversation—which Iris recorded.” I smiled at him. “I have a copy of the recording—and the police have it now as well.”

  He turned his head slowly to look at me. “You don’t understand anything. Have you ever heard the story of Henry II and Thomas à Becket?”

  “What?” I stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Becket and the King were great friends, and then the King came up with this great idea—he was having problems with the church, and decided to make Becket the new Archbishop of Canterbury—a great idea, because then his best friend would be running the organization he was having trouble with. It was a big mistake, because Becket took to the job with a vengeance. He was a bigger thorn in the King’s side than his predecessor—he gave Henry fits. One evening he cried out in irritation, ‘Is there no one who will rid me of this troublesome priest?’ A group of his knights set out that very evening and murdered Becket.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I stared at him. “You don’t expect me to believe—”

  “I didn’t order Lenny to do anything. I never asked him to kill anyone.” He blinked his eyes at me. “There was a big fight at dinner the Saturday night before it happened. Catherine and I started shouting at each other, and then Michael got involved—and then after dinner he came into my library and threatened me. He threatened me. He was going to take the children and go—told me my daughter was a whore, was carrying some other man’s child. I would never see them again if I didn’t start treating them all better. Pfah!” He spat. “What did that Ninth Ward yat trash know about family? Afterward, as Lenny and I shared a brandy, I made the horrible mistake of wishing Michael was gone and out of my hair forever. The next day, Lenny set that horrible fire.” His eyes glinted. “Did I tell him to do it? No, I didn’t.” He licked his lips. “But if you ask me if I am sorry he died, I won’t lie and say yes. I wasn’t sorry he was dead. And I’m still not.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I replied. “It’s a good try, though. How did Lenny know where Michael would be? How did he know to have a Molotov cocktail ready? How did he even know it would work? This was planned…”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He turned his head away from me.

  “You hated Michael. You didn’t think he was good enough for your daughter or to father your grandchildren. When exactly did you find out he was gay?”

  “I always knew. Do you think I would have allowed him to marry my daughter without having him checked out first?” He spat the words at me. “She married him anyway. She didn’t care. She loved him despite his perversions. Even though she knew he only wanted her money. She didn’t care. She was a fool. She had no pride.” He looked at me again. “Sometimes I find it hard to believe—even now—that she was my daughter.”

  “She was your daughter, and he made her happy. That should have been enough for you.” My voice shook. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the gun. Use me, it seemed to whisper in my head, this miserable old man deserves to die.

  “Pfah.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “How could she be happy married to a pervert?”

  “He wasn’t the only person who died in that fire.”

  The lights flickered. “A bunch of perverts got what they deserved.”

  Kill him, just do it. Stop talking and do it!

  “Why did you lock Cathy up in that mental hospital? Why didn’t you just let Lenny kill her too?”

  “I put her there to protect her from Lenny, you jackass.” He glared at me. “You don’t understand anything, do you? I was trying to protect her! She saw him do it! How much do you think her life was worth after that?”

  “You were protecting your own ass. As long as she was locked up and people thought she was unbalanced, no one would listen to her story.” I struggled to keep my voice from shaking. I could feel the anger starting to rise inside me. “Why not just turn him in? You could afford enough lawyers to keep your own sorry ass out of jail.”

  “It was a huge mess.” He closed his eyes. “We couldn’t risk the scandal. Lenny was more than willing to turn me over to the police if he went down as well. And then he started blackmailing me. I’ve paid him a lot of money over the years…” There was a roar of thunder and the lights flickered again. “I thought it was best this way. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “And so you allowed him to kill your grandchildren. What kind of monster are you?” I gritted my teeth. “That’s the one thing I can’t understand. Why would you condone that? Your life is almost over. Why did you let him kill Iris and Joshua?”

  He gaped at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you mean to sit there and tell me you don’t know he killed Iris and Joshua? To continue covering up your crimes? You don’t think I’m that stupid.” I laughed. “And surel
y you don’t expect me to think you didn’t know about that?”

  “Iris…was…killed…by…a…burglar.” He was struggling to breathe, and his face began to flush. “And Joshua…fell…he was a drunken fool. It was just a matter of time before he did something stupid.”

  I stared at him. “You didn’t know. Iris found out, you know—”

  “She threatened, she threatened me.” He closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling. “She had a recording, she had records of the payments I made…”

  “And Lenny killed her. He took all the files from her office, erased her hard drive. Joshua was looking for them—and then he fell.” I leaned forward and hissed at him, “And the fall was no accident—the way the body landed, there’s no way he fell on his own or jumped. He was thrown from the roof, Percy. Who do you suppose would want to do that?”

  Percy started gasping for breath. “Are…you…saying…that…Iris…and…”

  “The cover-up you started thirty-two years ago, old man, cost your grandchildren their lives. How does that make you feel?” I snapped.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  I turned around and faced a man about thirty-five. He was about five-nine, wearing a Tulane sweatshirt and a loose-fitting pair of jeans. He had the same color hair as Iris, the same coloring, almost the exact same features.

  “Who are you and why are you upsetting my grandfather? I think you’d better leave.”

  “You must be Darrin Verlaine. I’m Chanse MacLeod. I was hired by your sister, and then again by your brother, to find your father.” I stood up. “And I found lots of other things as well.”