Ascension Day (54 page)

‘I hear what you’re saying, Jac, but it’s not good. Not good. I know you and so I know that you’re telling the truth. But listening to this now wearing the hats of a couple of hard-boiled homicide cops – who don’t know you and on top have heard it all before – it sounds like a story, Jac. And not even a good one at that.’

‘There’s a witness, too.’

From Jac’s downbeat tone, Langfranc knew already that it was bad news. ‘And don’t tell me – they didn’t see the shooter, either?’

‘No. Old woman across the hallway. Opened her door a minute after the shot was fired – shooter long gone and just me and Alaysha standing by the body. Started screaming, “You’ve shot him, you’ve shot him!” ’

Low groan from Langfranc and a throaty, doom-laden ‘Terrific.’

‘I need your help, John. That’s why I called now.’

‘Help,
yeah
. Miracles take longer.’

‘I need someone I know to represent Alaysha. I need to know what’s happening, which direction everything might go.’

‘I can understand that.’ Langfranc was quiet for a second. ‘But this isn’t just protectiveness for your girlfriend, is it Jac? Something else is worrying you about this.’

‘Yeah.’ Deflated sigh. The seed of doubt had been there from the moment he’d realized it was Alaysha’s gun, rankling deeper as he’d ducked between the shadows of the night-time streets during the past forty-five minutes. ‘The question that’s bothered me is why frame Alaysha? With everything else that’s been going on, I thought I’d have been the main target for something like that. So if they’ve gone to the trouble of lifting her gun from her apartment, what else might be waiting in the wings? Some hefty Accomplice to Murder rap, perhaps, from other evidence they’ve planted? That’s why I need to know the lay of the land, John, before coming forward.’

‘I can see that. There wasn’t a
Times-Picayune
photographer there to snap you as you left the apartment block with the gun, was there?’

‘No.’ Jac chuckled, and Langfranc joined him a second later, as if making sure first that Jac was ready to see the light side. Though Langfranc’s chuckle quickly died when Jac told him that he was spotted by a patrol-car a few blocks away. ‘And I ran.’ Jac sighed heavily. ‘It was dark, though, and I was probably too far away for a good ID.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Langfranc took a fresh breath as he focused on the remaining options; what few were left after Jac’s catalogue of horrors and errors. ‘Did the old girl across the hall see the gun?’

‘No, don’t think so.’

‘Okay. Hopefully then we’ll get away with the story of the killer running off with it. Or, as you say, just don’t mention the gun – because that’s what the cops will naturally assume. Hopefully, too, the story will wash that you ran off in pursuit of the shooter. As for why you’re still AWOL, I’ll think of something in the meantime.’ Langfranc sucked in his breath. ‘All will depend, though, on what Alaysha might have already told them. How long will the cops have been with her now?’

‘Half an hour, maybe more.’

‘I’d better get there. Couple of good detectives could pull her apart in that time, have her head reeling. Did you prime any sort of story with her?’

‘No. No time. But she’s bright – she’ll know not to mention the gun, particularly with it being hers.’

‘Let’s hope so. Because if she mentions the killer dropping that gun on the hall floor – we’re buried before we’ve started. And you also have to pray that the cops don’t find that gun.’

‘Don’t worry – where I’ve hidden it, they’re not going to find it. At least, not in a hurry.’

‘Remember. You didn’t tell me that.’

‘I didn’t tell you that.’

29

The first to arrive on the scene, six minutes after Mrs Orwin’s call, were two patrolmen from the Eighth District, who immediately radioed in for what else they’d need: forensics, homicide, and a meat wagon. They knocked on Mrs Orwin’s door first because she’d made the call but, with their talking and the harsh static from their communicators, Alaysha’s door opened seconds after, and, quickly sensing some unease between the two parties, the officers took one each for questioning – Mrs Orwin hastily ushering her officer in and closing her door behind him.

Two more patrolmen arrived minutes later and, having conferred with their colleagues, one yellow-taped the downstairs entrance before joining his side-kick in roaming and checking for tell-tale clues, though at all times two-yards clear of the body; the hallowed forensics-only zone.  

Questioning was basic at that point, setting the general scene, which was all dutifully relayed to Lieutenant Jerome Derminget, a bloodhound-eyed homicide detective with wavy, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, when he arrived on the scene eighteen minutes later. 

Derminget looked like the type that Alaysha would have liked under different circumstances. While his eyes looked tired, as if he read police reports or books late into the night, at the same time they appeared warm, understanding. Though that part also unsettled Alaysha; they looked like they might easily strip away her defences, get to the truth.   

Derminget spent the first ten minutes questioning Mrs Orwin, and had been little more than that time with Alaysha when his station house called to inform him that they had Miss Reyner’s lawyer on the line, a certain John Langfranc, ‘And he insists on being present for any official questioning of his client.’

Derminget skewed his mouth. He didn’t like the sound of the girl’s story one bit: the shooter that nobody else had seen, appearing magically and firing just seconds after them closing the door, at the end of a big argument to boot; an eye-witness that saw both the argument and then her and her boyfriend over the body, and, to cap it all, her boyfriend, having apparently run off in pursuit of the killer, for some inexplicable reason hadn’t yet returned. It sounded like a fairy story, but Derminget had so far only been filling in background, hadn’t yet got to the harder-assed questions that might put her account to the acid-test. And the involvement of a lawyer so early rang instant alarm-bells, stank of barricades being quickly, desperately put up. If he didn’t get to those questions before her lawyer showed, her story would probably forever get stuck in la-la land. He saw his escape route in
official
.

‘Tell our lawyer friend that we’re still on the scene, and so we’re not even sure at this stage if there will be any
official
questioning of Miss Reyner. But if that is to take place, that’ll be at the station house later tonight; about which, of course, he’ll be duly informed beforehand.’

‘One minute.’ The female duty officer broke off and he could hear other voices in the background – obviously they had the lawyer on another line – before her voice came back. ‘He says he’s a friend and so he’d like to be there in any case, for moral support. He’s on his way.’

‘Okay.
Okay
.’ Fuck it.
Fuck it
! Derminget had drifted into the hallway as he’d taken the call and kept his voice low so that the girl wouldn’t overhear. He gave his best smile and soft-eyed look as he turned back in through the doorway. ‘Now, where were we?’ Maybe only ten or twelve minutes before her lawyer arrived, he’d better make the most of it.

Two hours. That’s when Jac had arranged to speak with Langfranc again when hopefully he’d be back from seeing Alaysha and the police. Another phone booth call, Langfranc advised, ‘Because we don’t want anything possibly later being traced to your cell-phone.’

After the change of shirt, Jac had instinctively headed away from the French Quarter – less people, less police. But as another police car drifted by him on Baronne Street, he felt immediately uncomfortable, vulnerable. They didn’t see him or even slow as they passed, but he was struck with the feeling that he was the only person there to draw their eye, and if one of them had looked his way, he’d have frozen or panicked in that gaze, the look in his own eyes instantly giving the game away.

He turned back towards the French Quarter. He felt in no mood to be around people, let alone crowds, but they’d at least offer some cover, distraction; to any passing police, he’d be harder to pick out amongst a milling throng.

He drifted along with the tourists and local out-on-the-towners on Bourbon Street, then turned into Bienville Street and found a bar after forty yards that looked busy and noisy enough to hopefully get lost in.

Jac ordered a Coors at the bar, then found a table deep towards the back where he was hardly visible from the street, let alone noticeable.

As Jac took the first sips of beer, he pictured again hearing the gun going off, those last footsteps on the stairs as he opened the door, Gerry’s body on the floor with part of his skull blown away, Mrs Orwin screaming,
You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him
! Fourth or fifth time he’d run the sequence through for anything he might have missed, along now with how Alaysha might be coping with the police, how she’d explain the same sequence of events? Would Langfranc have arrived yet to be able to draw their fire?

Jac sipped anxiously at his beer. His running off wouldn’t have helped – more possible suspicion and less back-up, Alaysha left to fend on her own – but with Alaysha’s gun still there, it would have been far worse. Alaysha would instantly have been prime suspect with himself as accomplice. Only with the weapon gone did they have a chance of getting away with the story that someone else had shot Gerry.

Between the crowd at the bar and milling by the entrance, Jac caught glimpses of the street outside as he drank, and over the next half hour he saw a couple of police cars passing: the normal French Quarter patrols, he wasn’t unduly worried. But when a police car stopped almost directly opposite and a patrolman got out and headed across the road, Jac’s nerves immediately tensed, his grip on his beer bottle tightening. He watched like a hawk through the revellers – past two twenty-somethings hugging and back-slapping like they hadn’t seen each in years, past a girl half doubling over and cackling like a witch at the joke of one of her two friends – as the policeman went slightly to one side, a door or two away.

Jac didn’t take his eyes off the entrance or fully ease his breath until two minutes later when he saw the policeman head away again; suddenly conscious of a few people at the bar looking his way curiously, Jac only then aware how hard his eyes had been burning through them, a trickle of sweat on his brow, his hand starting to shake on his beer bottle. 

And in turn, with those stares, Jac suddenly realized how alone he was, separate from them all. A day ago, even a few
hours
ago, he’d have enjoyed the ambience, smiled at the bonhomie around him, felt the beer chill and mellow him, finger-tapped to the beat of the music: Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was playing, and people had started to sway and foot-tap, one couple even attempting a close-clinches jive. But Jac felt cut off from it all, as if he was a world away, the throbbing beat simply fuelling the pounding of his heart and pulse, a nerve jumping in time with it just below his earlobe – one solid, deafening drumbeat that screamed, get out,
get out!… you don’t belong here
…

Jac quickly knocked back the rest of his beer and stood up, started making his way back through the heaving, milling mass. The bar had become a lot busier in the past half hour, and Jac had to push and sidle his way through, the atmosphere suddenly hot, oppressive, the feeling that they were all closing in on him –
we saw the way you looked at that policeman, and we’re going to keep you here until they come back for you
– Jac knocking the arm of a satin-shirted young guy with a pony-tail and almost spilling his drink as he leant back into Jac. ‘
Sorry… sorry
…’ Jac sweating now, heart pounding, breath short as he burst through the last of the bar crowd and back out onto the street.

But the throbbing, swirling echo of the music and people still seemed to churn through Jac’s head as he paced along Bienville Street, crossing Bourbon this time… a police siren a block away suddenly screaming along with it so that he felt in that instant dizzy, his legs weak; the feeling that he might have to start fleeing again, but now had no strength left.