City of the Dead

by Eileen Dreyer

  It was something that set Chastity’s stomach to churning, like that smell of death at the corner of every block in New Orleans. Faint, familiar. Frightening.

  “Detective?” she ventured, her attention still on the splash of melon that had dried on Frankie’s ankles.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I can’t verify where Mr. Guidry was this morning, but I think I can tell you pretty conclusively that he didn’t have anything to do with this murder. This murder wasn’t about somebody losing their temper.” She sucked in another breath, her brain beginning to tumble. “It was about somebody sending a message.”

  Now everybody was looking at her.

  “And who are you, ma’am?” the detective asked.

  Chastity rubbed at her forehead. She sure wished New Orleans had a centralized homicide bureau. Then she would only have had to flash her credentials once and be done with it. “My name is Chastity Byrnes. I’m a forensic trauma liaison nurse from St. Louis. I’ve been in New Orleans looking for my sister.”

  His eyebrow lifted. “A forensic nurse…”

  Kareena scowled. “I know you don’t have a problem with that, Louis. Not if you want to maintain a smooth working relationship with the forensic nurse at Charity, anyhow.”

  He damn near smiled. “You vouch for her, Kareena?”

  “I wouldn’t be here, I didn’t.”

  He nodded. Then he turned to Chastity. “What was it you wanted to tell me, ma’am?”

  Well, here she went again, Chastity thought.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” she admitted, wondering how to condense this to Cliffs Notes. “But there was another murder about a week ago over at Saint Roch’s Cemetery. Susan Wade Reeves.”

  “We got the report on that,” he said. “Yes.”

  Chastity nodded. “Susan Reeves was found in a similar situation, shot in the face at point-blank range with what looked like a large-caliber handgun. She also had symbols of her personal faith scattered around her. One was placed right on her forehead, as if the killer wanted it to be the last thing she saw. And pardon me for asking, but is there a perfect round imprint of a muzzle avulsed into Frankie’s cheek? I can’t see from here.”

  Suddenly the detective was paying attention. “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s what they found on Susan Reeves. I think the same person murdered both these women, and did it in a way to demean them. Maybe to demean their desperation. They both sought religious intercession for their infertility. They also both sought help at the Arlen fertility clinic.”

  “And you found this out because?”

  “Because the sister I’m here looking for is also connected with the clinic.”

  The detective stared at her a moment. “You know about Ms. Reeves, Mr. Guidry?”

  “I was there when Ms. Byrnes found her.”

  The detective stood there quite silently for a minute. Then he deliberately clicked his pen closed and slid it back into his shirt pocket. “I think we’d better all go to the station now.”

  James actually paled.

  Chastity felt terrible. “I thought I was helping,” she said.

  Instead, the detective ushered James into the back of the unit himself.

  James was right. There was razor wire.

  Well, some. Like a pockmark on a pretty face, the Third District was an unkempt compound on Moss at Esplanade, on the very same Bayou St. John where Frankie Mae still lay. The site overlooked the bayou, with Spanish moss licking the ground and a cemetery taking up the other side of the street.

  Several divisions were housed there, including traffic. The Third District station itself was an uninspiring single-story yellow brick building that looked more battered than the housing projects.

  Inside, it was regulation cop shop. Much more familiar to Chastity than that reconditioned bank in the Eighth District. Not more comfortable, though. By the time Kareena parked James’s cab among the units and led the way into the station, she wasn’t the only one who was feeling frantic.

  “James doesn’t do locked doors well anymore,” Kareena said. “Not since Joliet.”

  “Which you’re going to explain to me.”

  Kareena waved her off. “Kareena was sure James had told you. Though why, shit, I don’t know. He never talk about nothin’. Sure not that unfortunate five years.”

  “In prison.”

  “In Joliet.”

  “And you’re going to tell me why.”

  Kareena waited until she’d maneuvered them by the first phalanx of officers into the waiting room by the intake desk.

  “I guess you think James, he get those burns on the job, yeah?”

  Chastity’s butt hit a chair with a thud. “Yeah.”

  Kareena shook her head. “Got ’em in prison. He wasn’t very popular, our James. Just a regular pain in the ass, yeah? He should never have been there in the first place, though.”

  “Because?”

  Kareena sighed, shot a blinding smile at one of the detectives who walked by. He smiled back and kept on walking.

  “One of the women at his firehouse, she had a bad husband. The kind that hurts people, ya know? James finally saw to it that ole boy, he found out what it was like to be on the receiving end of those punches and kicks.”

  “You don’t get Joliet for a couple of roundhouses.”

  “You do if the guy has the unfortunate luck to fall back and hit his head on a iron pig doorstop. Got him a subdural the size of Texas and a place in the Everlast Cemetery. Got James ten to fifteen for manslaughter. He served five, two of ’em in the infirmary, after the fire in his cell.”

  “That somebody set?”

  “Got in the face of one of the gang leaders over a kid who couldn’t defend himself. Gang leader figured James needed a lesson. It’s why he don’t do locked doors. He has to know he can get out.”

  Chastity felt the new weight of James settle on her chest like grief. “Yeah.”

  She remembered the ceiling in James’s bedroom. The sky, precisely reproduced in a run-down apartment. It made her hurt for him in ways she just didn’t want to. It made her want to help him. Take away some of that distrust and isolation, even though she knew perfectly well how ill equipped she was to take on that kind of project.

  It explained why he wasn’t so fond of altruism, certainly.

  Shit. Her world had just spun a little further out of control.

  “Please tell me these guys aren’t lazy enough to pin these murders on a handy ex-con,” Chastity begged.

  Kareena scowled mightily. “If they ever want any good time with Kareena as long as they live, they better not.”

  Chastity sat for a while and then she paced and then she sat again, while Kareena called in to check on Hurricane Bob, as if he were a sick relative.

  “We gettin’ the first line of thunderstorms tomorrow,” Kareena said. “The precautionary evacuation announcement goes out in the morning. You want Kareena drive you back to the airport so you can get out? Go find your sister?”

  Chastity didn’t even have to think about it. “Not till James is out of here.”

  It did occur to her, though, that if Frankie meant that Chastity would find her sister in St. Louis, then Faith might already be there. So she pulled out her own cell phone and tried to track down Moshika, who had her dog, and might find her sister.

  “Where the hell have you been?” the doctor demanded when Chastity finally found her. “Do you ever answer your phone?”

  Chastity was a crack trauma nurse, a state-of-the-art forensic nurse, but she couldn’t have figured out the extra features on a cell phone if the fate of the free world were at stake.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to call you, too, but all I’ve gotten was your answering machine.” As if that would absolve her.

  “Did you know there’s a hurricane coming your way?” Moshika demanded. “We’ve all been worried about you.”

  “Did you know there’s a hurricane coming, Kareena?” Chas
tity asked, absurdly tickled by the question. Then she turned back to her outraged friend. “I’m sorry, Moshika. Things have been a bit…complicated here. Yes, I know there’s a hurricane coming. I’m going to be out on whatever plane leaves before then, I promise. But I wanted to ask a favor.”

  “Your puppy is fine, by the way. You remember her. Lilly, who didn’t eat for three days after you left?”

  Chastity sighed. Yes, please, she thought. More guilt. “I’ll be home soon, Moshika. But until I get there, I wanted to warn you that somebody who looks like me might come looking for me.”

  “Now I know you need remedial classes in phone technology. I’ve been trying to tell you. She’s already been here.”

  Chastity straightened like a shot. “Really? When? The last couple of days? Do you know where she’s staying?”

  “She was here a week ago, Chastity. She’s gone now.”

  Chastity gaped like a fish. “A week? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a woman, claiming to be your sister Faith—you know, the one you went looking for—walking into this ER looking for you. I’m talking about us trying to get hold of you. I’m talking about her leaving again. She didn’t seem very happy about it. Apparently, you were supposed to be here, not there.”

  Oh God, Chastity thought. She could have avoided all of this. She might have somehow prevented these murders and kept James out of trouble and never had to face the fact that her father was out of prison. Faith had been at her house all along. Chastity felt sick all over again.

  “Did she leave a way to get in touch with her?”

  “No. When I told her you were in New Orleans, she just disappeared again. She was cursing a blue streak, though. Said some words even I didn’t know.”

  “Faith? Faith used obscenities?” Faith who used to be the one to wash Chastity’s mouth out when she’d committed the same crime. “Okay, Moshika, listen. I’m kind of stuck here right now. But Faith might be back. If she shows up, call. I’ll give you my friend Kareena Boudreaux’s number.” A number she never would have thought anyone in St. Louis would need. “Please. Don’t let her leave again.”

  “I got no special powers, Chastity.”

  “You have a magnetic personality, Moshika.”

  “This is gonna cost you in ways you aren’t even prepared to anticipate yet.”

  “You can spout every theory Stephen Hawking has ever proposed, Moshika. I won’t so much as blink.”

  Chastity hung up, more anxious than ever. “My sister was there. In St. Louis.”

  Kareena nodded. “Yeah. I heard.”

  Chastity rubbed at her neck. She ran agitated hands through her too-short hair. “When she heard I wasn’t there, she left again. Do you think she’s come back here?”

  “She got anyplace else to go?” Kareena asked, her attention on the door back into holding that refused to open and produce James.

  Chastity huffed. “How the hell would I know?”

  “She was looking for you. Maybe she’ll come here now.”

  Chastity sat in one of the hard plastic chairs, overwhelmed by how many ways she’d lost control of her life. “How will we know?”

  “What about askin’ Eddie Dupre?”

  “I’m not so sure. Frankie didn’t seem to think he had anything to do with what was goin’ on.”

  “Okay, then, Elvis. We could track her down.”

  Chastity sighed. “I have a feeling we’ll have to.”

  Her attention still on the door, Kareena nodded. “After we have James in our hands.”

  It was Obie Gaudet who got them out of there. The two of them were still sitting in the waiting room two hours later when the well-worn black detective shambled up and introduced himself.

  “You’re the woman who’s single-handedly agitating the entire New Orleans force,” he said to Chastity, then smiled like a kid. “Not to mention a good portion of Jefferson Parish.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chastity said, still wary. “I imagine I am.”

  “I’m Sergeant Obediah Gaudet, from Cold Case Department,” he said, easing what looked to be a sore body into a chair alongside Chastity. “We help out the district homicide departments if they need it. Detective Gilchrist told me about your theories.”

  “Is Mr. Guidry still under suspicion?”

  “There are still some questions the detectives here want to ask him. I’m just following up Detective Gilchrist’s information.”

  “Does James have a lawyer yet?” Kareena demanded, giving him the once-over. “Nobody’ll talk to us, and James’s last lawyer still livin’ in Illinois, yeah?”

  “No,” Sergeant Gaudet admitted. “I don’t think so. He’s mostly sitting in interrogation staring at people.”

  “He been charged with anything?”

  “Not that I’d heard of.”

  Kareena sighed and yanked out her phone. “I thought so. Time for a little forensic nurse intervention.”

  Kareena headed away to make her calls, and Gaudet returned his attention to Chastity.

  “I think the murders are linked,” she said.

  “There seems to be some resemblance,” he agreed. “We now have a preliminary ballistics report back on Susan Reeves, and it seems to be the same caliber weapon as was used on Frankie Mae Savage. We won’t know for certain if it’s the same weapon until her post is done tomorrow, though. She also had that muzzle imprint on her cheek, just like you said.”

  “Is there any other information from the Susan Reeves autopsy?” Chastity asked.

  Gaudet lifted an eyebrow.

  “I’m sure Detective Gilchrist told you that I’m a forensic nurse,” she said, tired of introducing herself everywhere she went. “So I’m conversant with the particulars.”

  “Probably not the particulars here, though.”

  “No full postmortem?”

  “No results. They got…uh, temporarily misplaced.”

  Chastity stared.

  “I have someone on it,” Gaudet said. “But I don’t think it’s going to make much difference. You picked up the vital similarities.”

  “And they’re not going to lose Frankie’s results?”

  He didn’t so much as shrug. “We’ll have something soon, Ms. Byrnes.” Then, pulling out his cop notebook, he began to flip pages. “Personally, I wish I could say your friend Lloyd Burgard was responsible. It’d sure make it all easier on us. Unfortunately, he’s not around to kill anybody anymore.”

  Chastity nodded. “I’m hoping that when he’s better medicated, he might be able to tell us something. He might have seen what happened to Susan.”

  Gaudet looked up from where he was scanning his notes. “I thought you knew.”

  Just how many times could Chastity’s stomach tumble without her just losing her lunch? “Knew what?”

  “About Lloyd Burgard.” Gaudet went cop still. “He’s dead.”

  If Chastity hadn’t already been sitting on one of those hard plastic chairs, she would have hit the floor. “What?”

  Gaudet assessed her reaction and softened. “I’m sorry. I thought somebody might have…” He shook his head. “Mr. Burgard hung himself in his room last night.”

  Chastity couldn’t seem to form words. She couldn’t get past the image of crazy Lloyd, so sure he was saving his soul. Thin and pressed and paranoid. Praying for salvation and only getting restraints and locked doors.

  “I thought you knew,” Gaudet repeated.

  Chastity just shook her head. “They’re sure it’s a suicide?”

  “We’re looking into it.”

  She nodded, not knowing what else to do.

  “He must have seen something,” she said. “He must have.”

  Gaudet shook his head. “If he did, he was never able to clearly describe it.”

  And now he was dead.

  In a hospital.

  Chastity wondered just how many of the doctors involved in this little investigation had privileges there? She wondered why just that tho
ught sent her pulse skyrocketing.

  “If you don’t mind,” the sergeant was saying, “I’d like to talk to you about what’s been going on.”

  So Detective Gaudet took her back into one of the interrogation rooms and had Chastity tell her story, yet again. But this time, at least she was listened to. Gaudet didn’t so much as blink when she mentioned fertility clinics. And Max hadn’t saved the sergeant’s daddy’s life, because he wrote Max’s name down along with all the others, without once hesitating.

  Chastity wondered if she should feel a measure of hope yet.

  “So you think your sister is back here and in danger.”

  “If she had anything to do with Susan Reeves and Frankie Mae Savage, yes, I do.”

  He tilted his head a bit, assessing her. “Has it occurred to you yet that you could be in danger, too? You do seem to be closely connected to a considerable amount of violence, if you haven’t actually instigated it.”

  Oddly enough, Chastity really hadn’t considered the idea that she could be at risk. She’d been so full of outrage for Susan and Frankie and now James, so afraid of her father and preoccupied by the hurricane, that she hadn’t had room for it.

  But now, even Lloyd Burgard was dead, and she was the obvious link to all the deaths.

  “Actually,” she said, wishing he’d never said a word, “it seems that I’m more dangerous to the people around me.”

  Which included James and Kareena.

  Maybe she should go home. Give this all up to the police. Wait till Faith contacted her, if she ever did. She wanted to, God knows. And if she did, Kareena and James might be better protected from whatever was happening.

  But Chastity had a terrible feeling that it was Faith who was in the real danger. Faith who was in hiding, who had touched Susan and Frankie and Willow before they’d been murdered.

  Willow, whom Chastity had almost forgotten about in the course of the last few days. Who had been murdered first, her face disintegrated by a gun blast and left wearing a habit and what should have been a priceless ring.

  Chastity stiffened. “She was dressed as a nun.”

  Sergeant Gaudet looked up. “Pardon?”