River Road (13 page)

Melinda Hebert frowned. “FBI?” She stared at Alex and gave me a questioning look, then shook her head. “I expected the NOPD.”

Alex nodded. “We help them out on cases when there’s an overload, and they’re shorthanded right now,” he said. Smooth. The man could lie like a politician the week before election day.

Melinda Hebert stared at the floor, her expression vacant.

Alex cleared his throat. “Mrs. Hebert, could we come in for a few minutes?”

She looked startled at her breach of Southern etiquette and alarmed when Alex introduced me as the region’s sentinel. “One of the wizards was here last night,” she said, wide eyes scouring my face, looking for … what? “Doug wasn’t involved with the wizards anymore, but he said that was okay. Is”—she swallowed hard—“
was
he in trouble?”

“No, ma’am, it’s just a formality,” I said. The cops on
L&O
always said
ma’am
and
sir
to the people they interrogated. I smiled, trying to put her at ease, but I had to wonder why she’d think her husband could be in trouble with the wizards. Was he up to something he didn’t think they’d approve of?

Maybe she was almost in shock. Wives of college professors, even non-practicing wizard professors, didn’t expect this kind of violence to impact their lives. I hoped to God Elder Zrakovi hadn’t told her too many details about her husband’s death, especially about the mutilation, and wondered how they’d manage the burial. Glad funeral arrangements weren’t on my list of duties. At least not yet.

Melinda led us into the family living room. Magazines lay in an orderly stack on the coffee table, and the furniture smelled of wood cleaner and wax. Shiny hardwood floors reflected the sunlight filtering in through open windows adorned with white plantation shutters. The room was magazine-picture-perfect, and just as sterile. I liked my drafty old Victorian with its uneven floors and patina of age.

The faint buzz of Green Congress magic permeated the room, even came off Melinda when I shook her hand. Residual magic from a non-practitioner who’d been gone at least twenty-four hours shouldn’t have been this strong, but maybe after a person had spent a lot of time with a person or place it lingered.

“How long have you and Doug lived here?” I asked Melinda. Alex sat on the white leather sofa, notebook in hand, and Melinda perched as far from him as she could get and still be in the same zip code. I took an adjacent armchair covered in a soft aquatic pattern of blues and greens—ironic, given her husband’s wetlands research.

She twisted her hands in her lap. “We’ve lived here almost ten years,” she said, darting her eyes from coffee table to desk to potted plant. “Is something wrong?”

She was seriously paranoid. “Nothing wrong,” I assured her. “I can sense magic here, which is odd since Doug wasn’t practicing.” I looked around the room. “Did he do any spells or work a charm on anything in the house recently?”

After a pause, Melinda pointed toward the back of the house, to a room through whose door I glimpsed a refrigerator. “He fixed half the appliances in there using charms,” she said with a wan smile. “He always said there was no point paying repairmen when he could do it.” She sniffled. “He liked to tinker with things.”

Alex lifted his eyebrows in question. I shook my head. I’d never known magical energy to hang around a place long, but then again, I didn’t use magic for home repair. Physical magic took a huge energy toll, especially on wizards outside the Red Congress, so to me it wasn’t worth the trouble. Not implausible, though.

“When will I be able to see Doug’s…” Melinda choked on her words, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts. “When will I be able to see him? It won’t seem real until I see him.”

Alex and I exchanged glances again. I’m sure I looked like a deer facing an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. He looked like the big rig had already run him down. Melinda really didn’t need to see what was left of her husband. Besides, I’d zapped his body to Edinburgh.

“He’s still in the medical examiner’s hands, Mrs. Hebert,” Alex said in a practiced, reassuring tone. “We’ll let you know.”

Again, very smooth. I needed to practice lying. I wasn’t good at it.

Alex moved ahead before she could ask more questions. “Do you know what your husband was doing early yesterday? Did he get any phone calls? Talk to anyone?”

“He and another professor, Jeff Klein, had an early-morning meeting with someone yesterday but I don’t know who,” she said.

The Elders said Doug died several hours before we found him in Pass a Loutre, and the mutilations had taken place before the mortal knife wound. The thought of it made me want to lock my doors and vow hermit-hood. Doug had to know his killer, or at least be connected. That kind of torture was personal.

Melinda rubbed her eyes and got up, retrieving an appointment book from the desk. “When the wizards called me, I was already worried because Doug hadn’t come home.” Her voice trailed off and she began to cry. I automatically fingered the mojo bag in my pocket. I’d done a good grounding ritual before we left so I hadn’t picked up any emotion from her so far. I didn’t want to start.

“The wizards told me Jeff was missing, too?” She looked at Alex for confirmation.

“Yes, ma’am.” Obviously, Zrakovi hadn’t told her Jeff was dead, so Alex didn’t either.

She flipped the appointment book open and a photograph fell out, landing on the floor near my foot. A happy couple looked up at me. Doug and Melinda wore hiking boots and shorts, and stood in front of a fall view of mountains covered with orange- and gold-leafed trees. Doug was handsome and smiling, a far cry from the ruined man I’d seen on the bank of the bayou at Pass a Loutre.

I wished I hadn’t seen the photo, hadn’t been forced to put a whole face with that mutilation. It made him more real.

Melinda took the photo from me with shaking hands, and I lowered my empathic shields a bit to see if she was going into shock and needed medical help.

I waited for the onslaught of her emotions—and waited, and waited. Nothing. I couldn’t pick up any feelings at all. I tried to puzzle it out as Alex continued to talk.

“What do you know about this meeting Doug was supposed to have?” he asked, reaching for the appointment book and bringing Melinda’s attention back to him. “Did he set it up, or did Dr. Klein?”

She shook her head. “Doug got a call from someone night before last on his cell phone. He was all pumped about it and called Jeff. He said they were going to meet with one of the new species that had come in after Katrina. I didn’t think it was that important.”

Tears slid down her cheeks. “He was so excited, but I was tired. I wanted him to help me do some stuff around the house but all he cared about was work, especially since the hurricane changed so many things. Maybe if I’d taken a bigger interest…”

Alex handed her a box of tissues from the corner of the end table, and I dropped my emotional barricade altogether, flummoxed. From Alex, I got flashes of tension; he hated doing this. From Melinda, nothing. She was crying, so I should be pulling in all kinds of grief and sadness.

I needed an excuse to touch her, but feared if I grabbed her arm the poor woman would collapse.

Alex continued with his questions, unaware of my empathic dilemma. “What type of research did your husband do?”

“Water quality, and he was working on a couple of National Science Foundation projects on wetlands preservation with Jeff,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. She tightened her jaw, swallowing down the hurt.

I recognized the gesture. I’d done it a lot myself the last few years, especially right after Gerry died. I could also have told her swallowing pain doesn’t make the loss hurt any less or go away any faster. Nothing did.

“He was excited about all the new preternatural species being allowed in.” Melinda dismantled the tissue into tiny shreds. “I wanted him to leave it alone.”

The Heberts’ marriage sounded less than perfect. “Do you remember him mentioning any particular species?” I asked. “Merpeople, for example? Nymphs or nixes or naiads?” I touched her arm as I spoke, a soft gesture, non-threatening.

Absolutely nothing hit my emotional radar. I’d never had a human read blank before when I was actively trying to read her.

She stared at me as if I had materialized from an alien planet and begun speaking Martian. “I don’t know about any of those things,” she said slowly, looking down at my hand on her arm. I pulled it away. “Magic just … didn’t factor into our lives much. He’d talked more about it the last few weeks, because of all the changes.”

We stayed a while longer, but other than Doug Hebert’s planned meeting with Jeff Klein and an unidentified prete, there wasn’t much to go on.

“Do you have some family we could call, someone who could stay with you?” I asked. Despite her emotional void, she seemed too fragile to leave alone, her movements jerky, skin paled almost to translucence.

“I … I don’t know how to reach my family anymore.” Her voice trailed off, disconnected. “I’ll be okay.”

I looked at Alex, and he shrugged. What else could we do?

Back in the car, Alex called his and Jake’s friend Ken Hachette. Ken was a former Marine from Jake’s unit, former co-owner of the Green Gator, and, more relevant to our current problems, an NOPD homicide detective who might be willing to do a favor for Jake’s cousin, no questions asked.

Alex had gotten Doug Hebert’s cell number from Melinda, and Ken agreed to run a check on his incoming and outgoing calls. The phone itself had probably sunk into the marshes of Pass a Loutre.

I fixated on Melinda’s emotional readings—or lack thereof. Her grief seemed genuine, but why couldn’t I read her? It bothered me but I didn’t have anyone to ask about it. Empathy was nonexistent among wizards, and I couldn’t exactly call up an elf. If she weren’t human, the Elders should have known. And human or not, I should get some kind of energy from her. The whole conundrum gave me a headache.

“Isn’t the significant other usually the prime suspect in a murder?” I asked Alex, who was muttering curses at the glut of traffic on Veterans Boulevard. After all, Doug Hebert’s ring finger had been hacked off.

“You watch too much TV,” he said, then looked at me with a whisper of a smile. “Usually, though, yeah. We weren’t going to get anything out of her today. I didn’t pick up any clues that their marital problems went that deep. Sounded like the usual tension between a stay-at-home wife and a husband married to his job.”

Massaging my achy temples, I longed for the days before Katrina, when I could have just sent all the mers back into the Beyond and any murders would automatically be the purview of the Elders or local law enforcement.

Alex and I stewed in our respective thoughts until we got on the route through Mid-City. He stopped at Liuzza’s to pick up po’boys, which gave me a chance to make a phone call. The connection with Adrian Hoffman, everybody’s favorite wizard mouthpiece, was instantaneous.

“Yes, Ms. Jaco?” His voice bristled with annoyance. What else was new?

“Is there any way Doug Hebert’s widow isn’t human?” I explained about the emotions, or my inability to read them.

He might be in Edinburgh and I in New Orleans, but his sarcasm traveled through the ether just fine. “Did it ever occur to you that perhaps your all-powerful empathic abilities just didn’t work?”

“No, it didn’t.” Asshat. “My empathic abilities always work on humans, and I can usually read at least some kind of energy off non-humans.”

Since empathy was an elven trait, the Elders, in their infinite arrogance, thought it irrelevant.

I finally got Hoffman to say he’d look into Melinda Hebert’s background more closely, and snapped the phone shut. The bureaucratic tangles of the Washington, D.C., political machine had nothing on the Elders.
Obfuscate and Intimidate
: that should be their motto. It should be printed on our badges.

*   *   *

We ate in the car, then met Tish and Jake in the parking lot on Tchoupitoulas at noon. Jake and Alex huddled next to the Pathfinder, talking strategy—namely, how to find Doug Hebert’s cell phone, look for Jeff Klein’s body, keep the nymph on task, and not piss off the mermen.

I’d exchanged keys with Alex so he could drive to Plaquemines in my SUV again. He didn’t want people tracking swamp mud into his Mercedes, and Jake’s pickup didn’t have room for Alex, Tish, and the nymph.

Even at noon on a Sunday, the strip mall parking lot was full, and Tish and I studied every woman who strolled past, looking for signs of nymphomania.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “Tramp alert, due north.”

I followed her gaze to the end of the parking lot, where a tall woman in a short white skirt walked toward us. Not walked.
Walked
was like calling the Pope some religious dude. She swayed, swerved, virtually glided. If her hips twisted any more she’d be moving backward. Wavy dark red hair, almost burgundy, cascaded over her shoulders, her white tube top, and halfway down her back. She was barefoot, curvaceous, impervious to the midday sun, and oozing slutty sex appeal. She smiled and waved to the guys, who’d fallen silent to watch her approach.

“Nymph,” I hissed. I already felt inadequate. Make that short, dumpy, and inadequate.

“Look at them.” Tish nodded toward Alex and Jake. It would take a spatula to scrape their wagging tongues off the pavement.

The nymph stopped next to the guys. She was at least five-eleven and could look Jake square in his glazed-over amber eyes. Alex watched her too, but he wasn’t giving her goofy guy-face like Jake, which was odd. Maybe she wasn’t his type.

“Good luck,” I told Tish. “They may need a chaperone. Make sure she actually gets the water samples we need.”

The nymph ran a set of red manicured nails down Alex’s arm, leaving him frowning after her as she turned and headed toward Tish and me.

“Which of you is the wizard I spoke to on the phone?” Her voice was low and husky, laced with an exotic accent and guaranteed to make a guy think about doing bad things in the dark. I’d recognize it anywhere.

I looked up into her green eyes. She had at least five inches on me, even taking my heels into account. “That’s me—you’re Libby, right?”