Every Dead Thing

47

THE NEXT MORNING I awoke with an ache in my arms from toting the Calico, exacerbated by the lingering pain of the gunshot wound inflicted in Haven. I could smell powder on my fingers, in my hair, and on my discarded clothes. The room stank like the scene of a gunfight, so I opened the window and let the hot New Orleans air slip heavily into the room like a clumsy burglar.

I checked on Louis and Angel. Louis’s hand had been expertly bound after the doctor picked the shards of bone from the wound and padded the knuckle. Louis barely opened his eyes as I exchanged a few quiet words with Angel at the door. I felt guilty for what had happened, although I knew that neither of them blamed me.

I sensed, too, that Angel was anxious now to return to New York. Joe Bones was dead, and the police and the feds were probably closing in on Edward Byron, despite Lionel Fontenot’s doubts. Besides, I didn’t believe that it would take long for Woolrich to co

I left a message for Morphy. I wanted to see what his people had on Byron; I wanted to add flesh to the figure. As things stood, he was as shorn of identity as the faceless figures of the slain that the feds believed he had left behind. The feds might well have been right. With the local police, they could conduct a better search than a bunch of visitors from New York with delusions of adequacy. I had hoped to work my way toward him from a different direction, but with the death of Joe Bones that path seemed to have come to an end in a tangle of dark undergrowth.

I took my phone and my book of Ralegh’s writings and headed for Mother’s on Poydras Street, where I drank too many cups of coffee and picked at some bacon and brown toast. When you reach one of life’s dead ends, Ralegh is good company. “Go soul…since I needs must die / And give the world the lie.” Ralegh knew enough to take a stoical attitude to adversity, although he didn’t know enough to avoid getting his head cut off.

Beside me, a man ate ham and eggs with the concentrated effort of a bad lover, yellow egg yolk tingeing his chin like sunlight reflected from a buttercup. Someone whistled a snatch of “What’s New?” then lost his thread in the complicated chord changes of the song. The air was filled with the buzz of late morning conversation, a radio station easing into neutral with a bland rock song and the low, aggravated hum of distant, slow-moving traffic. Outside, it was another humid New Orleans day, the kind of day that leads lovers to fight and makes children sullen and grim.

An hour passed. I rang the detective squad in St. Martin and was told that Morphy had taken a day’s leave to work on his house. I had nothing better to do now, so I paid my bill, put some gas in the car, and started out once again toward Baton Rouge. I found a Lafayette station playing some scratchy Cheese Read, followed by Buckwheat Zydeco and Clifton Chenier, an hour of classic Cajun and zydeco, as the DJ put it. I let it play until the city fell away and the sound and the landscape became one.

A sheet of plastic slapped dryly in the early afternoon wind as I pulled up outside Morphy’s place. He was replacing part of the exterior wall on the west side of the house, and the lines holding the plastic in place over the exposed joints sang as the wind tried to yank them from their moorings. It tugged at one of the windows, which had not been fastened properly, and made the screen door knock at its frame like a tired visitor.

I called his name but there was no reply. I walked to the rear of the house, where the back door stood open, held in place by a piece of brick. I called again but my voice seemed to echo emptily through the central hallway. The rooms on the ground level were all unoccupied and no sounds came from upstairs. I drew my gun and climbed the stairs, newly planed in preparation for treating. The bedrooms were empty and the bathroom door stood wide open, toiletries neatly arranged by the sink. I checked the gallery and then went back downstairs. As I turned back toward the rear door, cold metal touched the base of my neck.

“Drop it,” said a voice.

I let the gun slip from my fingers.

“Turn around. Slowly.”

The pressure was removed from my neck and I turned to find Morphy standing before me, a nail gun held inches from my face. He let out a deep breath of relief and lowered the gun.

“Shit, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.

I could feel my heart thumping wildly in my chest. “Thanks,” I said. “I really needed that kind of adrenaline rush on top of five cups of coffee.” I sat down heavily on the bottom step.

“You look terrible, mon. You up late last night?”

I looked up to see if there was an edge to what he had said, but he had turned his back.

“Kind of.”

“You hear the news? Joe Bones and his crew were taken out last night. Someone cut Joe up pretty bad before he died, too. Police weren’t even sure it was him until they checked the prints.” He walked down to the kitchen and came back with a beer for himself and a soda for me. I noticed it was caffeine-free cola. Under his arm he held a copy of the Times-Picayune.

“You see this today?”

I took the paper from him. It was folded into quarter size, the bottom of the front page facing up. The headline read:

POLICE HUNT SERIAL KILLER IN RITUAL MURDERS. The story below contained details of the deaths of Tante Marie Aguillard and Tee Jean that could only have come from the investigation team itself: the display of the bodies, the ma

I put the paper down wearily. “Did the leak come from your guys?” I asked.

“Could have done, but I don’t think so. The feds are blaming us: they’re all over us, accusing us of sabotaging the investigation.” He sipped his beer before saying what was on his mind.

“One or two people maybe felt that it could have been you who leaked the stuff.” He was obviously uncomfortable saying it, but he didn’t look away.

“I didn’t do it. If they’ve got as far as Je

He considered what I said, then nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

“You speak to the editor?”

“He was contacted at home when the first edition came out. We got freedom of the press and the protection of sources coming out our ass. We can’t force him to tell but”- he rubbed at the tendons on the back of his neck-“it’s unusual for something like this to happen. The papers are real careful about jeopardizing investigations. I think it had to come from someone close to all this.”

I thought about it. “If they felt okay about using this stuff, then it must be cast iron and the source impeccable,” I said. “It could be that the feds are playing their own game on this.” It seemed to reaffirm our belief that Woolrich and his team were holding back, not only from me but probably from the police investigating team as well.