Doing the Devil's Work (39 page)

Maureen enjoyed Dauphin Island, though she knew she would have enjoyed it more under different circumstances. The island was dead quiet. It had one restaurant and one general store, neither of which offered much beyond the basics or was close to her bungalow. Except for an older couple living across the canal in a raised two-story on the bay side of the island, and the yellow-eyed heron who visited mornings and evenings, she’d encountered nary another living soul. The freshly paved main road across the island made a perfect running track, with dunes stretching down to the Gulf at one end and a bird sanctuary at the other.

She’d run the island end to end each of the three days she’d been there so far, the salted breezes chapping her cheeks and lips.

On Thursday morning, the last day of Maureen’s testimony for the PIB, Quinn’s body surfaced three miles downriver, having come to rest against the barnacled hull of a tugboat. Little that was recognizable remained of his face or his hands, river denizens having had their way with the corpse. His uniform and his badge number helped identify him, as did the mother of his ten-year-old son. The woman remembered the cheap tattoo of a crawfish in the shape of a fleur-de-lis on his hip. She had been with him when he got it late one night on Frenchmen Street, and had counseled against it—speaking as if that mistake had been the first tumbling domino in Matthew Quinn’s downfall. Caleb Heath was supposed to join them that night, the woman said, to get a matching tattoo of his own, but he had stood them up.

As a consequence of her suspension, Maureen was barred from attending Quinn’s funeral. She and Ruiz and Preacher had missed it, the three of them prohibited from any contact with the department or with one another. Maureen found herself somewhat relieved at the ban. She wanted to reach out to Ruiz, but had no idea what to say to him. Of course, the ban on communication had not stopped Preacher from talking to her. He offered regular words of encouragement as well as updates about their respective proceedings fresh from his innumerable sources throughout the department. He was considering retirement, he told her in one booze-slurred message. He didn’t need the NOPD. He’d work for a pit bull rescue organization, or open a doggie day care business of his own. He wanted to deal with personalities, he’d said, that understood joy and gratitude and simple pleasures. Maureen wasn’t sure if it was cops or criminals he was looking to escape with his new career.

She’d heard nothing, from Preacher or from anyone else, about whether Caleb Heath had attended Quinn’s services. She saw in the paper that Solomon Heath had announced a major financial contribution in Matthew Junior’s name to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled NOPD officers. The amount was secret but far larger, Maureen was sure, than anything Quinn’s fellow cops could afford to put in the donation jar at the Sixth District. The statement did not mention that Quinn and Caleb Heath had known each other since they were teenagers, only the Heaths’ long-standing love of all things New Orleans. The whole article had been much more about the Heaths than about Quinn or his son.

Maureen had read Quinn’s obituary online. It was short, accompanied by his academy graduation photo. The article made no mention of where he’d gone to high school—a strange omission for a New Orleans boy, born and raised. In the comments section following the article, which Maureen knew she shouldn’t read but did anyway, Ruiz had posted a brief note telling about how he and Quinn had grown up together in Broadmoor. It was the only comment on the article that Maureen could stomach.

There wasn’t much the department could do with the story of Quinn and Scales at the river. A cop kidnapping and murdering a prisoner was tough to hide without a hurricane blowing through town, so they didn’t try. An unstable cop had gone rogue, they insisted to the media, and taken the law into his own hands with a suspect in a heinous set of crimes. As the caring father of a young child from whom he was estranged, one anonymous retired officer guessed, dealing with a child-murdering animal like Scales was too much for an already exhausted NOPD veteran to take. One who had endured the unspeakable horrors of Katrina and carried them stoically inside for years. Maybe he had first encountered Scales during those dark days, someone said. The retired officer expressed his wish, as did the superintendent and the mayor, that Quinn had availed himself of the numerous mental health resources provided by the police department.

Sometimes, the mayor said, shaking his bald head, we try to do too much by ourselves. No one serving our city, he said, should feel like they are on the front lines alone.

Maureen waited for those resources to be offered to her. At least, she thought, she waited at the beach.

Atkinson kept her distance. No calls. No drinks at Ms. Mae’s. No meals at the St. Charles Tavern or Handsome Willy’s. Maureen understood. She was damaged goods unless and until the department decided she wasn’t. She hadn’t expected, nor had she asked for, any help with her case. From a discreet distance, by omission, Atkinson had provided it, anyway. During Maureen’s hearings, the bribe from Solomon Heath had not come up. That secret had been kept. Atkinson had also officially taken over the Gage murder case, folding it into her investigation of the body Maureen had found on Magnolia Street, and of an older case from the summer, a young woman found murdered, her throat cut, in Armstrong Park. Drayton had been only too happy to let go of the Gage case, and the federal interest that came with it.

By serving up Quinn as a rogue, the department had afforded Maureen good cover from outside eyes. Though the media had noticed her suspension, they called it “administrative leave,” which meant they had accepted the department line that she was on leave for matters unrelated to the events surrounding Officer Quinn. Her house had been shot up by suspected cop killers. She had nearly drowned trying to prevent a fellow officer from making a terrible mistake. And she was so new on the force. Her district commander wondered aloud to any reporter who would listen, who could possibly question her need for some time off to regroup? If only the late Officer Quinn had been as wise, the media officers said, as Officer Coughlin. Maybe the department culture was changing for the better. No one in the media was talking about disciplinary action, no one in the police department was telling tales—not yet, anyway.

Through everything, Maureen kept quiet. She talked to no one who didn’t wear the uniform. She took her union rep’s advice. She answered the questions she was asked by the people in the department she was answerable to, nothing more and nothing less. Then she got the hell outta Dodge. She knew her future in the department depended very much on what the brass thought they could get away with letting her get away with. She knew the brass wanted the story dead and buried as fast and as deep as she did. They wanted to see if she would and could take one for the team. She hoped her silence proved her willingness to do so.

The FBI would make a run at her, Maureen knew, when she got back to New Orleans. They’d come to her quietly, when the story had started to fade from public and media consciousness, but they’d come. They’d want her help with the Watchmen. They’d want her knowledge of Madison Leary and her links to the militia. The loss of Quinn and Scales might slow the Watchmen Brigade’s move into New Orleans, Maureen thought, but it wouldn’t stop them. Why would it? They were winning. They’d be waiting for her back in New Orleans as well. When they came for her again, they wouldn’t be quiet. But they wouldn’t catch her by surprise this time. The FBI, the Watchmen, the elusive Madison Leary—Maureen had a lot of work waiting for her back home. She liked her chances of getting her badge back. She would be ready. She would blacken some eyes and turn some heads.

The body of Bobby Scales had yet to be recovered, though Maureen knew that the Mississippi could cough him up at any moment, or it could be weeks or months in the future. Or it could be never. No one had stepped forward to argue for a search, or to agitate for his body’s recovery for burial. If anyone missed Bobby Scales, they kept their feelings to themselves.

Preacher had passed word of Scales’s fate to Marques and his grandmother. He loomed large in their imaginations, though, and Maureen knew it would be some time before they were convinced of his death. She knew how those ghosts could linger. She’d visit with them when things around her had cooled, when she got back to the city. She’d never tell Marques she had argued for Scales’s life.

Before leaving for the beach, in an e-mail, Maureen told Atkinson everything she knew about Madison Leary, about who Dice was, and about how Dice had known Leary and had helped Maureen with the case. Maureen had searched Frenchmen Street for Dice herself, but she had vanished. Her friends wouldn’t talk to Maureen about her. Maureen told herself that Dice had simply moved on, as so many kids like her did, to another city where the weather stayed warmer through the winter months, or that maybe she had a home and a family she’d been able to return to, having had her fill of adventure on the streets of New Orleans. Maureen could not shake the deep dread she felt when she thought about sending Dice looking for Leary carrying nothing more than a business card. She hoped Dice had ignored her. At least there had been no more singing phone calls. Maureen was grateful for that. She’d thought about changing her phone number, but didn’t want Dice left unable to reach her. Maureen figured she would’ve heard from Preacher if Atkinson had enjoyed better luck finding Dice or Madison Leary.

From the railing of the back deck, Maureen watched as down by the canal, in a flash, the heron speared something pale on the sharp point of its beak. The bird tossed its head back and gobbled down its wriggling prey, the lump moving down its long throat, the one glistening yellow eye that Maureen could see ever watchful of its surroundings. The bird lowered its black foot into the water and opened its wings, standing motionless and baring its breast to the sun. Maureen wondered if the heron could see her watching from the porch. It was a predator, Maureen thought, perhaps the island’s largest, and it certainly was not afraid.

Those options for Dice, those possible explanations for her disappearance, Maureen knew, were the things she told herself to make herself feel better, to stop herself from obsessing on the whereabouts and activities of Madison Leary. Those thin fantasies, however, did nothing to repel or even dilute the regular visions she had of Dice lying in the dead bushes or the dry fountain of a neglected city park, or in the empty gullet of an abandoned house, or in the gutter by a broken-down van, her throat slit wide open, her dark shimmering blood pooling around her shaved head in the moonlight like a quicksilver halo, her empty eyes pointed up at the stars and the wide expanse of indigo sky, her mouth slightly open in surprise.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Major thanks as always to my family and friends for their love and support.

Special thanks to my editor, Sarah Crichton, for always pushing and for knowing that it’s never bad news if it makes a better book. Also a huge thank you to everyone at FSG, including Marsha Sasmor, Lottchen Shivers, Lenni Wolff, Abby Kagan, Spenser Lee (for unwavering support), and Alex Merto (for the eye-popping cover). Many thanks to Elizabeth Bruce and everyone at Picador.

Much gratitude to my agent, Barney Karpfinger, and his team at the Karpfinger Agency, including Cathy Jacque and Marc Jaffee. Warriors all, and people of infinite patience.

I listen to A LOT of music writing these books, including but not limited to New Orleans artists: Anders Osborne, Dr. John, the Soul Rebels Brass Band, the Rebirth Brass Band, Galactic, Truth Universal, Pleasure Club, Juvenile, the Revivalists, Kelcy Mae, the Hot 8 Brass Band, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, John Michael Rouchell, Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs, and Allen Toussaint.

The music of Gillian Welch was especially important to this book.

The Roots of Music is a real music and educational program doing great work here in New Orleans. Learn more about them here:
www.therootsofmusic.org
.

All my love to my remarkable wife, AC Lambeth, as brave, talented, wise, and understanding a partner as anyone could ask for. Nothing good happens without her.

ALSO BY BILL LOEHFELM

THE DEVIL IN HER WAY

THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS

BLOODROOT

FRESH KILLS

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Loehfelm is the author of
The Devil in Her Way
,
The Devil She Knows
,
Bloodroot
, and
Fresh Kills
. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, the writer AC Lambeth, and plays drums in the Ibervillains, a rock-and-soul cover band.

Sarah Crichton Books

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2015 by Beats Working

All rights reserved