Let the Devil Out (19 page)

“HERE,” Maureen shouted. “I'm here,” she whispered to Leary. She tossed aside the gore-soaked gauze. She reached for more. “Fuck.” None left. She'd used what she had, and it seemed there was more blood on Leary's sweater, on the gravel, on Maureen's hands, than ever. “But I found you. I finally found you.”

Never, during any of her searching, had Maureen imagined coming across Leary like this. Wounded. Dying.

The woman's eyes remained open but blank, staring up at the indigo sky. She gave no sign she heard Maureen's words, or was even aware of Maureen at her side. One shallow, rattling breath produced a tiny spray of red mist that settled on the backs of Maureen's hands. The sirens were right outside the cemetery now. EMS would take over soon, thank God, Maureen thought. They'd have better things. Resources. Supplies. They could help. They could—

“Coughlin,” Preacher said. “Move away. Slow.”

Maureen looked into Leary's eyes. Empty. Dead. The woman was no longer dying; she was dead.

“There's nothing left to do, Maureen,” Preacher said. “We have to preserve the scene. Now move away.”

She stood. Leary's blood had soaked through the knees of her uniform, and the fabric of Maureen's pant leg stuck to her skin. Her nose was running. Her hands were too bloody to wipe it. She could hear the heavy footsteps of the EMTs as they hustled up the grassy path.

Preacher shone his flashlight at her feet.

“Look at your right foot. There by her hand.”

Maureen looked down. Shining in the flashlight beam, inches from Leary's bony fingers, gleaming white against the dark stones of the gravel, lay an ivory-handled straight razor, the blade dark red with blood. Leary's murder weapon of choice. In the Cooley and Gage murders, and possibly others. Dice had described the razor for her. A wanted killer and her murder weapon, Maureen thought, lying at her side. Not hard to figure out what had happened. The questions: Why now? Why here?

“Don't touch it,” Preacher said.

Maureen stepped down from the edge of the grave, peeling off her latex gloves. She dropped them on the grave. Numbness spread through her insides. She could feel parts of her break away and dissipate into the night like smoke from a cigarette, like a soul leaving a body. Difference was, unlike the dead woman nearby, Maureen knew her parts would re-form and return to her.

“Leave her there,” she said to the EMTs as they arrived, panting. “She's dead. This is a crime scene. Sorry to waste your time.”

One of the EMTs stared at her for long moment. “Maybe you should stop by the ambulance before you leave here.” He nodded at Preacher. “We'll wait on y'all a little while.”

“Don't,” Maureen said.

“Thanks,” Preacher said. “Give us a minute here.”

Maureen walked over to Preacher, standing by the iron fence. He was looking at the wind chimes. “Something to help us find her?” Maureen asked.

“Could be,” Preacher said. “Most of the graves in this place have gifts at them, though. And who knows what they mean. Could be for the deceased lying underneath her.”

“We should call Atkinson,” Maureen said. “She'll want to know about this.”

“Indeed,” Preacher said. “We will. You okay?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“Unless I misrecollect,” Preacher said, “this is the first one you've had die on you.”

“Nonsense,” Maureen said. “I saw Cooley. Shit, I
found
him when he was two weeks gone. I saw Gage the night he was killed.”

“They were already dead.”

“I saw a friend of mine once,” Maureen said. “Well, not a friend, really, a woman I worked with. In a bar. In New York. She'd drowned. I mean, she
was
drowned. Murdered. I identified her body at the morgue.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Preacher said. “I didn't know that.” He waited a moment before he continued. “But, again, she was already gone when you saw her. Having them go under your hands, no matter who or what they were, that's a different thing. Believe me.”

“She was a killer. Those other bodies I saw here in New Orleans, she's the reason for them. She and that razor she obviously used on herself. On top of someone else's grave. A lunatic. A sick thing is what she was. Afraid to answer for what she'd done.”

Preacher said nothing, looking at the ground. He hitched up his gun belt. “Let's have a cigarette, you and me, before we get down to business securing this scene. We've warned off the EMTs. Leary ain't going anywhere.”

“You know what somebody called me once?” Maureen said. She felt light-headed. Preacher went in and out of focus. “A little redheaded angel of death. You believe that? Some people. The things they say.”

“Let's go to the ambulance,” Preacher said.

“I'm fine.”

“I know you are,” Preacher said. “I believe you. But let's get your hands clean. You've got blood up to your elbows.”

 

16

As crime scene techs got to work on the scene under Preacher's watchful eye, Detective Atkinson and Maureen walked along the main path leading through the heart of the cemetery. Waiting for the detective to speak first, Maureen walked with her hands jammed in the pockets of her leather jacket, which was zipped to her chin. She had her NOPD knit cap pulled low on her head. And she was chilled to the bone. Atkinson walked with her big hands clasped behind her back, no hat, her down coat open. Maureen was embarrassed to be struggling with the weather. Here she was the born-and-bred New Yorker zipped up tight while the native New Orleanian strode along comfortably. Maureen knew, though, it was more than Atkinson's roots that made her the tougher of the two.

They were flanked by the larger, more ornate tombs and crypts as they walked, the stone structures with columns carved in the marble at their corners, with wreaths and Bible verses carved in their walls and with gorgeous white weeping angels draped across their lintels. Everyone inside those temples—and some of the structures bore plaques with more than a dozen names—everyone inside was as dead as any poor slob buried in a potter's field, Maureen thought. As dead as Madison Leary. As dead as Tanya from Staten Island. As dead as Sebastian, who had killed Tanya and dumped her in New York Harbor. She wasn't sure what the display and posturing was for, or supposed to mean. Comfort for the living, she figured, and not the dead. What did the dead care?

Would she and her mother, she wondered, do anything for her father when the declaration came through? And why would they? Here was an instance where the living didn't care, either. His death would be a matter of paperwork. A few clicks on a keyboard. Like getting a driver's license or a new credit card. No real proof the man was dead would exist. No body. No ashes. Certainly no marble temple. Except for me, Maureen thought, there wasn't much extant physical proof he'd been alive, either. Having him declared dead was about the future, anyway, she thought, not the past. And it's about my mother, she thought, not me.

“It's good to see you back in uniform,” Atkinson said.

“Not as good as it feels,” Maureen replied. “Thanks for saying that. It was a long six weeks. I'm glad to put them behind me.”

“So you put the time to good use, then?” Atkinson asked.

Maureen's heart stopped for a moment. There was no way Atkinson could know what she'd been doing at night. No, no way. She chewed the inside of her cheek.
This
is why you don't do shit like that, running around causing trouble and breaking promises, she thought. A guilty conscience gives everything a double meaning. It eats your insides alive.

“If I was having any doubts about where I want to be and what I want to be doing,” Maureen said, kicking aside dead magnolia leaves, “I'm cured. The time did that much for me.”

“I was pulling for you,” Atkinson said. “Still am. Like I said when the shit started going down, you can be an exceptional cop if we can keep you out of jail.”

Maureen hung her head and grinned. “Skinner said something similar. I'm looking to steer clear of any more trouble in the department. I'm content with the DC forgetting who I am for a year or so, until I've earned a promotion.”

“You know why we haven't spoken before now,” Atkinson said.

“No one was supposed to be talking to me,” Maureen said. “And you're Homicide, over at HQ. I know Skinner wanted to keep things as much in the district as possible.”

“I can't even give the impression,” Atkinson said, “that I'm reaching into his shop for my own ends. I can't disrespect him like that.”

“I wasn't waiting for it,” Maureen said. “For you to swoop in and save me. You, Preacher, anybody. I knew what I had to do. I did it. And here I am. Case closed.”

“You've probably heard it already,” Atkinson said, “but you haven't heard it from me, and I was there at the river, at the end. And I know my opinion matters to you. Quinn didn't become who he was because you showed up. The rot got inside him years ago. Ruiz, too. Everyone who dealt with Quinn knew what he was, who he was. Some approved, some didn't, some changed their minds about what side they were on after things turned bad for him, but we knew the truth about him. It's not on you. It's not your fault things went so hard for him. And you're not stained with what he did or how he ended up. Not as a cop, and not as a person. Anybody worth
anything
in this department knows that. You should, too.”

“You know how it goes,” Maureen said. “You can understand things intellectually, but the rest of you can be slow to catch up. It's human nature to look back on bad shit and wonder what you could've done different. I'm getting there. About a lot of things.” She unzipped her jacket, reached inside for her cigarettes. She offered one to Atkinson, who accepted. “And maybe guilt-wise I'm not stained with Quinn's bad decisions, but in other ways I am. I'm that girl who that bad thing happened to. That girl cop who was mixed up in that thing with Quinn. I don't want to be that girl that bad thing happened to that one time. I don't want that name.”

She paused, weighing what to say next. “I've already been that person. It
sucks
. It's part of the reason I left New York.”

“Make a new name for yourself,” Atkinson said. “That's your answer.”

“You say it like it's easy.”

“No, it's not easy,” Atkinson said. “And you, you're always in such a hurry. That's what upsets you, that you can't make that new name in a week. I've never met anyone less afraid of hard work and who works with so little patience at the same time.”

Patience.
Atkinson's favorite word. There was a reason they called her the Spider. She used time as a weapon, wielding silence like a hammer, like no one Maureen had ever seen. Maureen thought of Preacher's comments at the PJ's about going from the shithouse to the penthouse in record time. If there was ever a way to sell her on something, Maureen knew, the promise of a quick trip was it. She remembered that Preacher had said it was Atkinson who'd sent Detillier the FBI agent looking for her. A move that made bringing Maureen back on the job that much more appealing to DC Skinner. Atkinson hadn't saved her, Maureen thought, but she had helped her.

“The FBI guy, Detillier,” Maureen said. “He's going to be interested in this. He asked about Leary when I talked to him the other morning. He wanted to meet her.”

“You think he knows she's dead yet?”

“I doubt it,” Maureen said. “Nobody here knows the FBI cared about her except for me and you and Preacher. He thinks she was the FBI's best bet for information on the Watchmen. So much for that.”

Atkinson shook her head. “All those resources and chasing the same homeless schizophrenic we were chasing is the best they can do?”

“That's what I said,” Maureen said. “Though to hear Detillier tell it, their resources aren't any more plentiful than ours. I told him he was wasting his time with her. That they should be bearing down on the Heaths.”

“Ah. A nonstarter, I'm guessing?”

“What do you think?” Maureen said. “Even Preacher's telling me to drop the subject. Tomorrow afternoon, I'm having that meeting with Leon Gage, the one that Detillier requested. I'm sure I'll be talking to Detillier after that. What do you want me to tell him? How do you want me to handle what happened tonight?”

“Don't worry about me and the FBI,” Atkinson said. “I can handle them. If Leary was nothing but a lead on the Watchmen to Detillier, he'll lose interest in her. It's not like she had friends for him to talk to. I'll have the case to myself, which is how I like it.”

“The case?”

“Let me ask you,” Atkinson said, “what do you think happened here tonight?”

“Suicide, obviously,” Maureen said. “She was mentally unstable and off her meds. At least, she was six weeks ago. I can't imagine things had improved for her since then, when she'd been
killing
people. The Watchmen are hunting her. We're hunting her. God only knows what demons she had chasing her all her life. She had no allies, no family, no money. The razor was right there by her hand.” She paused. “But somebody called it in. We came to the cemetery because somebody reported a body inside. You think someone else was here while she was still alive?”

Atkinson shrugged. “Maybe, probably. People sneak in here three, four nights a week. Somebody unrelated to the incident could've seen her, thought she was already dead, called it in. That's not what bothers me.”

“Why do it up here in the Garden District?” Maureen asked.

Atkinson looked around. “Pretty glorious cemetery. Probably not many paranoid schizophrenics in here.”

“Trust me,” Maureen said, “there's plenty. They were just rich.”