Death On the Dlist (2010) (28 page)

IT WAS THE THIRD CIGARETTE BUTT JULES
MOREAU HAD CRAMMED DOWN THE
back of the pew in Aunt Matilde’s crypt.
“There’s just no way Matilde would want to be forever six feet under with the
worms and the Devil. She loved the fresh air.”

Jules was dead-set on Aunt Matilde being laid to rest in the
sunshine visible from the tiny slits of windows in the elaborate crypt they’d
erected here at Crestlawn. Standing there, Jules took a look around the stone
crypt and wondered how much the sculpture of the Holy Mother Mary had cost him,
even though technically, the cost of the crypt had come straight out of
Matilde’s own savings account she’d earmarked for this very purpose, her eternal
resting place
aboveground
.

“Jules, you’re being impractical. You’ve always been impractical.
Ever since you were a little boy, you’ve been impractical. Remember when you
wanted to jump off the roof with nothing but umbrellas to hold us up? We both
got broken arms . . .
broken arms
,
Jules
. . .
broken arms
. I
could’a played college football if it wasn’t for a bum arm. Then there was
the time you thought we should be street vendors down at the Quarter.
That
was a fiasco . . .”

“I thought the tourists would
like
alligator on a stick . . .”

“I told you nobody flies in from Boca Raton or Indianapolis and
wants alligator on a stick. I told you.”

“Would you for one minute forget the alligator on a stick? I don’t
see what’s impractical about Aunt Matilde being put to rest right here.” Jules
lit up another Winston.

“Upkeep,
ma sha
. . . . upkeep.” Sensing
he was making headway, he used the Creole slang for “my dear” on his cousin.
“The price of keeping her here is double what the price will be if we leave her
where she is . . . ad infinitum . . . Every month we’ll be paying upkeep on dear
dead
Aunt Matilde’s mausoleum.”

The two had lived off Aunt Matilde their whole lives and now, so did
their wives and eight children. She had left each beloved niece and nephew a
million dollars apiece at the time of her death. Now, out of earshot of family,
friends, neighbors, and priests, Jules Moreau and his cousin, Andre Regard, both
dropped the guise that they cared about Aunt Matilde’s wishes.

“Andre Regard, if you weren’t my first cousin and we didn’t share
our first Communion, I would think you are lying to me. We save over a hundred
grand in just ten years alone if we leave Matilde in the dirt.”

“Hmm. A hundred grand is a nice little piece of change . . .” He
also crushed his cigarette down behind the stone pew.

Just as the two shook hands over the agreement to leave Auntie
Matilde where she was, six feet under, the Devil himself interceded, or so the
rest of the Moreaus and Regards would tell it in the years to come.

When the last burning butt was crushed down into the crack behind
the milky-white stone pew, the whole place blew. The sky above Crestlawn Sacred
Grounds lit up like the Fourth of July and the Super Bowl half-time show
combined.

Between Francis’s ammo, his stash of Homemade Chemical Bombs, and
the twenty or so burning cigarette butts the two Cajuns between them had crushed
down on top of the homemade arsenal, the blast had to have been three hundred
feet straight up in the air.

Even though the families had to bear the cost of rebuilding the
mausoleum, no one complained. The Devil had risen up and roared at the world.
Auntie Matilde was clearly too good, too saintly, too holy to remain in the
Lower Kingdom. Her divine presence irritated Satan and agitated all his evil
minions. And thus, it was decided. Matilde would have her wish and her eternal
soul would no longer have to be concerned with washing away in the next
flood.

Francis was sitting in his mother’s favorite wingback chair,
minus the doilies, his eyes fixed on the living room’s TV set. He couldn’t
believe his eyes. He’d been up all night watching the coverage of the “D-List
Killer,” obsessively switching channels during every commercial break so as not
to miss a moment. Rooted to the seat of the chair, around midnight, he saw two
bloody people, a man and a woman, being wheeled on gurneys out of GNE world
headquarters in New York City. The woman had unnaturally bright red hair and was
handcuffed to the gurney and surrounded by uniformed NYPD. The man had a bandage
over his eye, but was smiling broadly into the camera.

Then he saw the new blonde TV legal analyst come out walking, a
little unsteady on her feet, but walking. Her arm was in a sling and she had a
bandage on her shoulder. She was being helped by a plainclothes cop holding her
tightly by the elbow, his other arm around her shoulder. Images of Prentiss
Love, Fallon Malone, Leather Stockton, and Cassie Lake were turning on a
revolving cube on the lower right of the screen.

The killer was some TV producer madwoman . . . a tall redhead who
worked at GNE. Apparently she nutted up and committed the string of murders
because her show was on the verge of getting axed. Shortly after snagging an
interview with one of the stars, she’d offed them in order to have the last
interview of record. With exclusives like that, the ratings skyrocketed. She and
that freak, Harry Todd, were getting all sorts of offers, big-money ones from
other networks.

Not anymore. She was headed to Bedford or Sing Sing or wherever it
is they babysit killers in New York. All the TV people should go there, Francis
decided.

It had been hard enough to grapple with the pain of losing his
girlfriends in such a brutal manner, all the while feeling convinced that the
Feds had somehow engineered the whole thing to frame him so he would no longer
be a threat to their regime. But now, he was consumed with hate. He hated Sookie
Downs with all his heart and soul.

Again, Francis looked down at his hands. So they weren’t the hands
of a killer after all? The dreams about strangling Prentiss and Leather and
Fallon . . . they’d seemed so real. He prayed to God the police had the right
perp and it didn’t turn out to be him after all.
Would he
ever know the truth?

Even though the sun was now up and shining brightly outside, the
interior of the house was dark with the windows covered in newspaper. Francis
sat with his head buried in his hands, elbows balanced on his knees in
despair.

What he wanted was vengeance, and in that very moment there in his
mother’s wingback, he vowed revenge on Sookie Downs for killing the women he
loved. Somebody had to do the right thing and kill Sookie Downs. Of course,
Francis couldn’t trust the criminal justice system to prevail. What a joke.

Sookie Downs must die.

He looked out from over his fingers back at the screen. Abruptly,
the images switched. A live shot of a police press conference going on on the
front steps of GNE in New York City was interrupted by an emergency local cable
cut-in. The news alert showed a towering fire and dark plumes of smoke billowing
up over a cemetery. Something about the background looked vaguely familiar to
Francis. The handheld camera shook as another explosion rocked the cemetery . .
. the banner read in all caps
CRESTLAWN SACRED GROUNDS CEMETERY
THE TARGET OF TERRORIST ATTACK.

Francis jumped to his feet. A third blast ripped out of Aunt
Matilde’s mausoleum, which he knew so well, while flames roared into the
sky.

Francis instantly decided this would be a great time to get out of
town. Prepared to live out of his car for a while again, he hastily threw
clothes into his old duffel bag, along with several cans of Vienna sausage, and,
of course, the new .38 he just bought at the bi-annual gun and ammo show. He
gathered up his mother’s gas card and Leather Stockton’s red thong, still in its
plastic baggie. Gently placing them both in his coat pocket, he turned off the
lights in the living room and locked the front door.

Hey . . . why not kill two birds with one stone? He could easily
track down Sookie Downs once she made bond. A thought hit him . . .
Would Sookie Downs make bond?
It would be a lot harder
to kill her if she didn’t bond out of jail after initial murder charges.

Wait a minute . . . What was he thinking? Of course she’d make bond.
It was New York City . . . even terrorists make bond in the Big Apple.

New York wouldn’t be such a bad place to go for a while, anyway.
Francis had a new girlfriend there who’d been coming on to him for months on the
airwaves. He didn’t know that much about her, but he planned to get to know her
very well. She was beautiful and quite the spitfire. Francis loved that in a
woman. And obviously, his new love needed him now more than ever.

Her name was Hailey Dean.

First, my deepest thanks to my editor, Gretchen Young, who maintained great faith in me and conspired with me to create
Death on the D-List
. You are not just editor, but friend tried and true. (Plus your daughter will grow up to be a New York City cabbie and will be of great use to us both.) Thank you.

To Jim Walton and Ken Jautz, who are NOT the inspirations for this book, thank you for the support, the opportunities, and the friendship.

To our wonderful staff on
Nancy Grace
. To Dee Emmerson, bless you!

Dean Sicoli, my Executive Producer, “Bestie,” without you there would be no HLN
Nancy Grace
and I’d probably be prosecuting shoplifting cases in night court right now. Friend, forever.

And last and dearest, thank you, David. Finally I got it . . . true love. You and the twins are the joys of my life.

And my deepest thanks to my Father God and Christ, nothing can separate us from Your Love.