Blood Game: A Jock Boucher Thriller (7 page)

“Where does this go?” he asked, passing a closed door just off the kitchen.

“The cellar. Señor Dumont keeps his wine collection down there and, uh, other things.”

“I want to see it.”

“I don’t like it down there. It makes me sneeze.”

“You’re probably afraid of ghosts. Are there ghosts down there?”

“Javier, please.”

“I want to see.” He opened the door. The stairwell was steep, but a light switch illuminated the descent. He stepped in. “Are you coming?”

“Javier, it’s time to think about them coming home.”

“Then we’d better hurry.” He walked down the stairs. She followed.

The light at the foot of the stairs cast dim but sufficient illumination to allow them to walk through corridors of wine racks. Javier’s gait was unsteady, the result
of poor lighting and rough flooring, perhaps, but just as likely from the tequila shooters. Rosario begged him not to touch the wine bottles, but he ignored her, pulling out one, then another.

“These are older than me. This one’s older than my father. This is ridiculous.”

The wine collection holding no allure, he returned to the stairway but spotted a small separate chamber. He stepped inside, feeling the wall for a switch. There was none.

“Javier, please. Let’s go.”

“Just a minute. Here it is.” His face brushed against a hanging chain in the center. He pulled it, and a single naked bulb cast a blue light in the small space.
“¡Caramba! ”
Javier said.

Against the wall were glass-enclosed gun racks with rifles stacked. Waist-high display cases held pistols of every size. He lifted the glass of one and pulled out a gun. “
¿Cazador? No. ¿Bandito? Sí.
” He examined the gun in his hand with a smile.

“Put that back,” Rosario said. “Now.”

“Or what? You will take it from me? How will you do that, my little parakeet?” The barrel pointed unsteadily in her direction. “What if I told you to take your clothes off right here, right now. I would like to see you naked in this light. You look like a Madonna.”

“You don’t need a gun to fuck me, you ass. Put it back now.”

Javier’s eyebrows arched almost to his hairline. “You would speak like that to me?” He pointed the gun at her. “I said I wanted to see you naked.”

“You’re drunk. Give me that.” She stepped toward him, reaching out. Javier raised the gun.

The explosion in the small underground space was deafening. The single blue-tinted lightbulb hanging from its cord swung, buffeted by the sound waves. He had been holding the pistol loosely, having had no intention to fire it, and the recoil nearly broke his hand. He dropped it, and a second discharge went off. He fell back against a glass display case, shattering it. But in the second between the first and the second shot, he stared at a vision that seared itself into his brain. He would go to his death with the image of Rosario standing before him, arms outstretched, bathed in blue light. Gone was her smile, the dark eyes. Gone was her head above the jawline, the bottom row of teeth visible over a lower lip curled in a grotesque grimace. The body began to fall. Before it could land, Javier was running from the room, up the stairs, through the kitchen, across the backyard, flinging himself at the wall at the rear of the property, clawing his way to the top, then over. Dropping to soft ground and running, running, knowing that he would be running till the end of his days from the ghost of the woman he had murdered, a spirit that would haunt him till he drew his final breath.

L
IGHTS WERE ON LATE
in the Dumont home that night. The kitchen light was on when they got home, and Ray could feel air circulating from the open back door as soon as he entered the front.

“Stay here,” he ordered his wife. “Rosario?” he called out.
“¿Dónde estás? 
” In the connecting hallway, the door to the basement was open. Rosario never would have gone down there at night. But before checking it out, he peered into the kitchen. The remains of a meal were on the table, as well as a bottle of his tequila, well sampled, which meant he’d have to fire her. Damn. He needed to check out the basement but first went to a large locked cherrywood cabinet in the dining room. He kept a key to this piece of furniture on his key ring; he fished it out of his pocket and opened it. From a drawer he took a small pistol.

“What are you doing, Ray?” Elise called to him.

“Just stay there,” he said.

Dumont descended the stairs. The basement was dim with the ambient illumination coming from below. He held the pistol before him like a flashlight. He ignored the wine cellar; the blue glow from the man cave that held his gun collection beckoned. He approached.

“Aw, goddammit,” he said when he saw the body. He heard noise at the top of the stairs. “Elise, don’t come down here. I mean it. Don’t come down.”

•  •  •

Lights were on late in the Logan home that night. Walt Logan was chief of the New Orleans Police Department. Logan valued influential friends. Ray Dumont was one of them.

Lights were also on late in the home of Detective Fitch. He growled at the late-night call from Chief Logan.

“Sorry to bother you this late, Roscoe,” the chief said.

Roscoe? Logan hadn’t called him by his first name in the over twenty years they had worked together. If they had shared anything more than an arm’s-length working relationship, Logan would have known that Fitch hated the name.

“What is it, Chief?”

“Ray Dumont and his wife returned home from an evening with the governor to find their maid in the basement with her head blown off. She might have known the
killer. No sign of B and E. I need you to get over there. I don’t want the Dumonts embarrassed by this, uh, situation. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Right. I’m on my way. The big house on Saint Charles Avenue, right?”

“Yeah. Come see me in my office when you get in tomorrow morning.”

“Will do.”

Embarrassed? Why would they be embarrassed by the death of a domestic? Fitch asked himself. They could not have had a better alibi than an evening with the governor.
Well,
he thought as he dressed,
a rich man’s home is a labyrinth of secrets.
He knew he was being called out on a cleanup detail. Ray Dumont was waiting at the door, having heard Fitch’s car arrive. Introductions were curt.

“This way, Detective. The body is in the cellar.”

Fitch followed him down the stairs. Basements were rare in older New Orleans homes for the same reason that graves in cemeteries were elevated—another reminder that much of the city was below sea level. He followed Dumont into the room of blue light. The body was on the floor, untouched. The loss of blood was massive and filled the floor of much of the room, a reflective black pool.

“You step in here?” Fitch asked.

“Had to,” Dumont replied.

“Why?”

“To take inventory. I have some valuable weapons in here.”

“Anything missing?”

“No. The murderer must have had his own gun and taken it with him.”

“You go in there in those shoes?”

“No. The ones I wore are right inside here.” He pointed to the floor just inside the door. “I didn’t want to track blood through the house.”

“Good. You touch anything?”

“No.”

Fitch knew this was a lie, a lie he would be forced to cover up. This was why he’d been called. “Has your wife seen this?”

“I wouldn’t let her downstairs. She’s in bed.”

Fitch took a deep breath, and wished immediately he hadn’t. There was so much decay in the air. Aerated blood. The dank musk of long-fermented juice of the grape seeping through the rare imperfect cork. Mold spores so fecund in dark, humid subterranean caverns. Mostly, it was the rank scent of death.

“Got to get the body moved.” He pulled out his cell.

“You won’t get a signal down here,” Ray Dumont said. “Shall we go upstairs?”

They went to the kitchen, and Fitch made the necessary calls.

“She knew the killer,” he said, looking at the empty plate. Everything on the table was just as it had been.

“Yes,” Dumont said. “She probably let him in through
the back. I know he left that way; the door was open when we got home. You can look in her quarters. I think she let him take a bath.”

“You seem sure it was a man.”

“Look in the bathroom.”

Fitch did. The team would be busy in there, as well as the kitchen. A glance was all that was necessary. “It was definitely a man, and they probably knew each other well,” he said, “though I doubt their relationship would have stood the test of time even if she hadn’t been killed.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The state he left the bathroom. Women might excuse a guy not rinsing the tub when he’s done taking a bath, but not rinsing the sink after shaving? That’s disgusting. Anyway, they’re going to remove the body, then go through the basement first. Anything down there you don’t want them to see?”

“No, Detective, nothing.”

To Fitch, this confirmed the previous lie. “Mind if I take another look?”

“Certainly not.”

The cave was no more inviting on the second visit. Fitch sidestepped the pool of blood in an attempt to stand where the shooter had been. In the ghostly light, he calculated the height of the body, then extrapolated that of the killer; only slightly taller. Which meant he was holding the gun waist-high, pointed up. Which meant a good
possibility that the shooting was an accident. An aimed gun would have been held higher. He glanced at the far wall, at the height where the woman’s head would have been before it was blown off her body. There it was. He stepped around the gore and pried the bullet from the wall without damaging it too much. A penknife was enough; the concrete was softened and slowly rotting from humidity. He stepped back to his previous position and noticed a chink in the cement floor, close to and possibly right between the feet of the gunman. He bent over. It was recent. Something hard had fallen and chipped the cement. The gun? Yes, Fitch surmised, it had been a horrifying accident. The man had dropped the gun. Fitch got down on his knees and took his mini Maglite out of his pocket. There was a chip in the cement floor and powder burns. The gun had fired when it dropped. The second bullet could be anywhere, and the team would soon be here. Now he’d have to stay with them and oversee every last detail until they finished and left, taking custody of the second bullet if they found it before he did. It was going to be a long night. He stood up, cursing his creaking joints, and went upstairs.

“Can you make some coffee?” Fitch asked Dumont.

The owner of the estate home just looked at him.

“I know how to make a pot of coffee, if you’ll just show me where everything is,” Fitch said.

Again Dumont was dumbfounded. “I wouldn’t know where to look. The maid always prepared the coffee. I could fix you a drink . . .”

Vehicles were heard in front of the house, adhering to Fitch’s instructions—no lights, no sirens. He went to the front door. Two paramedics rushed forward with a stretcher.

“Body’s in the basement. There’s no need to rush. It’s not going anywhere.”

From a patrol car, two plainclothes officers got out and approached the house. Fitch let them get to the front door, then held up his hand. “Something you need to do before you start,” he said.

“Sure, Detective, what is it?”

Fitch stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill from his money clip. “Go buy me some coffee. Black. Master of the house doesn’t know where it’s kept.”

•  •  •

It was late the following afternoon when Fitch made it to Chief Logan’s office on South Broad Street. The chief sat behind his desk in his white shirt, looking like he had just put it on. Fitch, on the other hand, wore a shirt he had ironed himself and a tie with stains from the energetic shaking of a bottle of Tabasco sauce, the stains concealed only when he kept his sport coat buttoned. But he had showered and shaved, and his hair was combed. That was the best the
chief was going to get from him after he’d been at a crime scene all night.

“I appreciate it,” Chief Logan said.

“And?” Fitch said.

“I won’t forget it.”

“That’s better.”

Fitch threw a Ziploc bag on the chief’s desk. Had the bag not landed on the simulated leather top, its contents might have dented the wood, but Fitch knew what he was doing. He was making a point.

“What’s this?” Logan asked.

“One is the bullet that killed the maid. The other, a random shot I dug out of the wall about eight inches up from the floor. I think the shooter knew the victim and the killing was an accident. He had drunk a lot of Dumont’s tequila. Probably dropped the gun in shock after he killed her, and it discharged. Hence the second bullet.”

“What do you want me to do with them?”

“Chief Logan, it’s not my case, and in the immortal words of Rhett Butler, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn.’ ”

“Do you have the gun?”

“No. Had I gotten there before your friend Mr. Dumont, I might, but he got there first. No gun.”

“You think he’s hiding the murder weapon? His alibi is airtight. Why on earth would he—”

Fitch held up his hand and gave a slight nod. It wasn’t
exactly a command for silence from his superior, but it was damn close. “Do those bullets look familiar to you?”

Logan reached for the Ziploc. He held it up in front of his face. “What caliber are these?”

“Bingo,” Fitch said. “They’re cop killers, rifle caliber made for a pistol. Your friend kept a small collection of weapons in the basement. I did not examine them, and I kept the investigation away from them as best I could. There were gun cabinets and display cases. I think the shooter fell back on the one where he’d taken the gun and broke it. It looked to me like Dumont might have cleaned up and removed the damaged case, and the other display cases looked like they might have been moved to cover the gap. I think he took the murder weapon. I don’t believe he had anything to do with the murder, but I think your buddy might be in possession of illegal firearms. If he’s hiding the murder weapon . . .”