Disconnection (16 page)

And then her mother was there in the room with her. Her hair—usually so nicely kept, in golden waves along her back—was now charred black from the smoke. Panic eclipsed the laugh lines of her face.

I’m going to drop you from the window and the firefighters are going to catch you.

Her mother picked her up. Her grasp was rough, hard. Sela’s eyes reddened from smoke. Her chest hurt from coughing.

Mommy, Mommy, Mommy
.

The fire’s pressure had already broken the window’s glass, making it easy for Sela’s mother to dangle her over the edge of the sill.

I love you, Sela
.

And then Sela fell. The feeling of air wrapped around her as it always did. It was this moment—which in real life had been the most fearful—that for the adult dreaming Sela was the most peaceful. It was the feeling of fleeing danger, of escaping, of letting the invisible hands of God’s love carry her to the safety of the fireman’s net.

When her fall finally ended, in her dream Sela the child opened her eyes, expecting to see the blue eyes of one of the firemen who had caught her.

Instead she saw the ancient face of the man who had harassed her at Frank’s Diner last week.

He smiled at her, and his teeth dripped with blood. His eyes were those of a serpent’s, and they grew larger and more fearsome the closer his face came to hers. He reached out to touch her, and maggots fell through his sleeves, their yellow slime grazing the end of Sela’s nightdress.

The time for the redeemer is at hand
.

Sela screamed,
No, no, no, no, no, no
.

The fish is hooked
.

His arm reached behind him and he drew out a long, iron crucifix covered by stink bugs and slugs and mutilated toads. He whispered in tongues.

Join us, Sela. Come to the Land of the Saved
.

(No, no, no, no.)

The crucifix came down.

Sela’s eyes opened and she was once again in present day New Orleans, in Mandy’s bathtub.

“Sela, the coffee is gonna taste nasty if you wait any longer.”

She rubbed her eyes. The water had turned cold around her. “I’ll be there in just a minute,” she called.

“No pressure. It’s
your
taste buds.”

Ten minutes later Sela was sitting in Mandy’s kitchen, sipping lukewarm coffee and watching from the window as the leaves trickled to the ground.

“Are you feeling any better?” Mandy asked, walking into the room with the newest
Elle
magazine.

Sela shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the car?”

Sela sighed. “I don’t know. I just wanted to forget about it. I went to the police, they have it on record. And I’ve contacted the insurance company. What a bunch of assholes. You pay all this money every month and expect some service for your investment, right? Wrong.”

“I still don’t understand who would want to do this to you. Everyone I know likes you.”

“You don’t have to puff up my ego, Mandy. Self-esteem is the least of my worries at this point.”

“I’m serious.” Mandy opened her refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice and poured it into a glass. “Everyone at Frank’s loves you. Or used to love you, when I was working there. Why do you think Rufus quit? That egomaniac couldn’t
bear
it that more people preferred you to him.”

“Yeah, well, Rufus was a prick. I hope he got all the way to Seattle just to make more omelets. Wait, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to say that. I need all the good karma I can get at the moment.” Sela looked up. “Sorry, God.”

Mandy smiled inside her glass. “You’re not getting all religious on me now, are you?”

Sela thought back on her dream and inwardly shivered. “Let’s just say,” she began, “that I won’t be taking the Lord’s name in vain any time soon. I don’t want to piss anyone off. Someone out there seems to think that I am ripe for redemption.”

“Very true,” Mandy acknowledged. “Anyway, I don’t see you getting all Billy Graham on me when you’re screwing some Jewish Yankee.”

“Dean,” Sela said. “His name is Dean.”

“Sure, whatever. As long as he’s a hotty. Hey, Woodrow’s cousin is pretty hot. Where’s he from again?”

“Woodrow’s cousin is a redneck from hell. Trust me, Mandy, when I tell you that you do not want any part of that animal.”

“If you say so.” Mandy shrugged, returning her attention to her magazine.

Chloe’s phone rang. “I should get this,” Sela said, standing up from the kitchen table.

“Isn’t that the phone you found that you thought was mine?” Mandy asked, looking up from her magazine.

“Yes, but it’s mine now.” Sela faked a mischievous smile for Mandy’s benefit.

Mandy nodded and made the thumbs-up sign. “Look out,” she warned. “God is always watching.”

In Mandy’s messy bedroom, Sela pressed the “on” button of the phone and held it up to her ear. “Good morning, Chloe.”

A long pause followed, then finally Chloe whispered, just loud enough for Sela to hear, “Lisa’s here.”

“Your friend Lisa? The one I spoke to last night?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by
here
. You mean she’s standing right next to you?”

“No,” Chloe confided. “She’s not standing right beside me.”

“Then, where is she?”

“I don’t know. I just know that she’s here.”

“I just spoke to her last night.”
And if she’s with you, then she’s dead, too
.

The phone cut off.

Mandy walked into the bedroom. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Just Dean,” Sela lied, putting the phone back into her purse.

“Oh, la di da.” Mandy kicked a black stiletto across the room. “I need to clean this place up.”

“It’s beyond cleaning up,” Sela replied. “It needs to be torn down.”

“At least there’s no scary sign on the wall.” Mandy put her hand over her mouth, ashamed. “Sorry, Sela. You know my dark sense of humor.”

“It’s fine,” Sela offered.

“Good.” Mandy smiled again. “I hate to leave you, but the role of glamorized secretary is calling me.”

“You have a job?”

“Yes, no, well, it’s more like an interview. At a church, no less. See how I took out my nose ring?” She pointed to her unadorned feature.

“Really?” Sela frowned. “I can’t imagine you working for a church.”

“Yeah. But a job’s a job, and this is the first almost-job I’ve had in forever, can you believe it? Are you going to be home tonight?”

“Later. I have to work.”

“You need a ride?”

“Nah, I have that rental car.”

“Okay, then. See you later.” Mandy paused, releasing along sigh. “Be careful today, okay?” She shook her finger at Sela. “Stay away from scary places and scary people. I’m really worried about you.”

You have no idea, Mandy. You have no idea
, Sela thought as she watched her best friend leave the room.

W
ell, Mr. Reed, you want to tell me what happened?”

Stuart peered out from two hands folded on the interrogation table. “It ain’t what you think,” he began. With an authoritarian briskness that seemed calculated to appease, he told Lewis the story of why he was at the strip club last night, and who was with him. When Stuart said Sela Warren’s name, the detective’s face lost all color.

“What was that name?”

“Hey, ain’t there any tobacco around here?”

“No. Tell me that name again.”

“Sela, what’s-her-name. Warren, ain’t that it? I just met her an hour before we went to that place. Hell, it was her idea. Didn’t you meet her? Hell’s bells, she was here last night, ’cause some asshole painted that damn Fishhook sign on her wall. I tell you what, detective, I ain’t ever comin’ back to New Orleans after this shit is over and done with, you can bet a cow’s hide on that. Burn down that bridge as soon as I cross it, I tell you. This town is crazy.”

“Mr. Reed,” Lewis began, taking a seat at the table, “try as I might, it’s a little too difficult to believe that you were with two murder victims on the night they died, and that you had nothing to do with their shall we say, premature demise?”

Stuart ignored Lewis’s suggestion with a snort. “That Lisa girl, I don’t even remember meetin’ her. Like I was sayin’, I was at the bar arguin’ with that spic lovin’ bartender tryin’ to Jew me out of a drink. And then that bouncer threw me out on my ass for no damn good reason and I ended up at the hospital with some monkey nurse smackin’ her gums at me, spinnin’ that damn gauze around my fuckin’ arm like I got gangrene or some shit. I tell you, ain’t no one had skin rot in my family since the forties, and that was only after my great grandpop got stung in the head by a dung beetle coming back from World War II.” He shook his head sympathetically. “Damn shame what happened to his eye.”

Lewis sighed with unveiled disgust. “I don’t want to hear anymore stories about your grandpop, Mr. Reed. That’s not why you’re here.” He looked at the file in front of him. “The bouncer stated that you broke a chair over a man’s head.”

“Hogwash. The chair was already broken. I was just finishin’ up what someone had already started.”

Lewis watched Stuart with weary eyes. All logic pointed to the country bumpkin, and yet, Lewis’s guts would not follow the facts. Stuart Reed was indeed a bigot and a racist, but picturing the man killing a girl, a girl of his own race who could one day breed Aryan babies for his white cause, did not seem to fit. And yet, the probability that one innocent man just happened to be tied with two randomly murdered girls was beyond ludicrous.

“You don’t have enough to hold me,” Stuart said, his nose flaring. “I ain’t been arrested multiple times before and not come out knowin’ what you coppers can and can’t do. I know my rights, buddy.”

The detective was about to tell Stuart that he had the right to shove his foot up his ass when he heard a loud knock on the door. Sawicki opened the door just a crack and motioned for Lewis to follow him. Lewis stood up and followed Sawicki into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

“What do you think?” Sawicki asked.

“I think he’s a waste of oxygen, but I’m just not feeling him for a serial killer. What’s your take?”

“Psychoanalysis suggests he’s completely normal. Nothing deranged, nothing out of hand. He might suffer from an acute case of megalomania, but that’s hardly something we can keep him with, Lew.”

“Damn. I’d love to put that jackass behind bars until his teeth fall out.”

“Me, too. And listen, I have more bad news, or good news, depending on your perception.”

“Shoot.”

“Bad pun. Remember Sela Warren? She had her apartment broken into last night.”

“I seem to recall that midnight phone call. Mr. Reed knows her, did you know that?”

Sawicki nodded. “His cousin came in with her last night when she complained about the break-in.”

“It would have been nice if someone had told me.”

“I tried. You weren’t receptive.”

“It was midnight and from what you said, it was just a break-in.”

“With a Fishhook sign. Anyway, there’s other issues we need to talk about.”

“Go ahead,” Lewis said.

“Forensics is finished running the lab work on that blood on Sela Warren’s wall, Lew. Came back pig’s blood. Black English pig’s blood, the same we found on the mirror at the Monteleone, and at the violinist’s house.” Sawicki paused, waiting for Lewis to take in the information. “What do you think?”

“He left only a sign,” Lewis thought aloud. “Why didn’t he finish the job? Why not kill Sela, too?” He thought back on the old newspaper article. In those days, whoever had the Fish & Cross sign painted on their door eventually was murdered. It seemed up until Sela Warren’s case, the killer had been copycatting the past. “This is Ms. Warren’s second time to run across the sign,” Lewis began, “so why is she still alive?”

“The murderer might have miscalculated her having company,” Sawicki suggested.

“He believed her to be an easy target when she really wasn’t.”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe it’s a distraction.”

“Whatever it is, it’s Stuart Reed’s ‘Get of Jail Free’ card. His cousin was with him all night, and we have several other eyewitnesses at the hospital that can vouch for him, including an angry African-American woman who claims Reed pinched her ass while she was putting gauze on his arm. In any case, there’s no way he could have left and painted that sign on the wall and killed Lisa Hart. Not a chance in Hell.”

Pamela Creek, the pretty blonde station receptionist, walked up to the two detectives. “You have a visitor here, sir,” she said, looking at Lewis.

“Who is it?”

“Reverend Applegate.”

“Tell him to come back later.”

“He says it’s urgent, Detective Kline.”

“Everything’s urgent,” Lewis muttered, taking steps in the direction of his office. “Don’t let Reed leave until I have one last chance to interrogate him,” he barked at Sawicki.

“How are you, detective?” Harold asked when Lewis entered the room. The two men shook hands as Lewis stumbled over to his desk.

“Sit down, Reverend Applegate. We’re having a busy morning, I’m afraid. What can I help you with today, Reverend?”

Harold Applegate was not a new face. Lewis had been aware of Applegate’s ministry long before his niece’s murder. Reverend Applegate was one of the few white preachers who wasn’t afraid to venture into the New Orleans ghettos and talk gang kids into coming to church service. Applegate had also developed the most successful church-based food drive in New Orleans, which in turn fed the hundreds of the city’s homeless. For his services, the current mayor had bestowed on him the key to the city.

“I’m worried about the death toll, Detective Kline,” Applegate said as Lewis took a seat behind his desk. “Frankly, my entire congregation is worried about it.”

Lewis nodded. “I understand. The current climate has affected us all in one way or another.” He thought back on the Metairie conversation he’d had with Tabitha a few nights before.

“It’s not so much the murder, detective. Though I do miss Chloe. She was so gracious. Such a perfect lamb of God.” Applegate paused, his eyes becoming misty with unshed tears.