The Dead Play On (9 page)

“Of course. We’ll do anything. We want this guy stopped,” Rowdy said.

“Hell, yesterday I just wanted my sax—and my hair—back,” Jeff said. “Now I just want to stay alive.”

Lily, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand.

“Come with me,” Larue said. “We’ll go see Sergeant Hicks, and you can describe the man to him.”

Quinn thanked the three of them, and after they left the office with Larue, he read the report again. They had definitely heard shots, but no bullets or even casings had been found.

Had their attacker cleaned up the scene before he left?

In about ten minutes, Larue came back by himself.

He tossed a copy of the sketch down on his desk. Quinn stared at it.

The man was faceless and wearing a trench coat. His hair was dark and stuck straight up in wild, thick disarray.

“Wig,” Quinn said.

“I imagine,” Larue said. “And the face...?”

Quinn looked at his old partner. “Mask. And yet, if he was walking with his head down, no one would even notice.” He rose. “Thanks. Thanks for letting me in on this.”

“This case is all over the place,” Larue said. “If this
is
all the same guy, he’s versatile, no single MO. I mean, he somehow overpowers a guy who went through boot camp and military training, and shoots a needle full of heroin into his arm. Then he dresses up like some trick-or-treater and attacks those three on the street. Then he just walks up to two different doors and brutally tortures and kills two men. Given that there were no signs that either victim was suspicious in any way, he must have shown up as himself. I mean, look at that drawing. No one would open the door to that freak.”

“I believe it
is
the same person. And his tactics are changing because he’s growing more desperate. He wants that special sax,” Quinn said. “Well, thanks again. I’m going to get moving.”

“Keep me in the loop if you hear anything,” Larue said.

“Will do,” Quinn said, heading to the door.

“And try to keep it legal,” Larue said.

“Don’t worry. I have a little more freedom than you guys in blue.”

Larue shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You won’t get the department into trouble. But keep it legal anyway.”

“Absolutely,” Quinn said.

“Liar.”

“As legal as I can,” Quinn promised.

“You’re going to go back and search where the police already searched, aren’t you?” Larue asked.

“I am. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything,” Quinn said. “I think the attacker did a good job of covering his tracks.”

“But you’re going anyway?” Larue asked.

“There’s one thing you taught me that will make me do just that,” Quinn told him.

“What’s that?”

“No killer is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. We have to figure out where he’s making his mistakes. The last two killings haven’t given us much to go on, so we certainly don’t want to give him a chance to perfect his methods, do we?”

* * *

It was here somewhere, somewhere in the city. He was going to find it, though.

The whole thing could have been so easy.

He shouldn’t have needed to try so hard, to go to such lengths.

To become the Man With No Face.

Arnie Watson had trusted him, trusted him and stared in disbelief, wondering what was happening, when he’d stuck the needle in his arm.

And he’d taken the sax Arnie had that night. The sax that should have been
the
sax.

Except it hadn’t been.

But that sax was in the city. Somewhere. Arnie had given it to someone, left it to someone, entrusted it to someone.

Arnie had given away the magic sax. Who the hell had he given it to?

Who?

He pulled out the picture again. Things could still be salvaged. They couldn’t prove that Arnie’s death had been murder. Neither Rowdy nor Lily nor that ridiculous Jeff had known who he was, had recognized him. He’d never known just how important the mask was going to be until he’d visited Holton Morelli and then Larry Barrett.

And he’d never known himself, really known himself. He’d been sure he could get the sax if one of them had it.

He’d never known how far he would really go, but now he did. And he
would
get that sax. Eventually one of the local musicians would make sure of it. Because everyone wanted to live. Of course, if the cops got involved they would make sure the current owner didn’t just offer up the sax. No, the cops would try to arrange things so he would have to come for it, and then they would arrest him. He wasn’t going to let that happen, though.

He would find the damned thing himself, even if he had to murder every musician in the city to get it.

He stared at the picture some more. It made him angry. There they were, all those musicians—a few years ago, of course. The beautiful, the brilliant and the talented. Lost and alone after the summer of storms, clinging to one another. Still, they had the look. Every one of them had the look. They were superior. And none so superior as Arnie Watson.

Because of his magical saxophone.

Well, oh-so-special Arnie was dead now. And
he
was going to have the sax. He would have expected the sax to go to Arnie’s parents. And if that were true and they had passed it on to another musician, he would find out.

But he remembered Arnie the night he had died. Arnie had laughed before he’d known what was happening.

“The sax?” he’d said. “Well, of course it’s special. To me—and the person I most adore, who will hold it dear for all the right reasons.”

Who the hell was that person? He’d accidentally put Arnie out too fast to find out. But he’d been new to killing people then. He’d had no idea how easy it was.

Now he was no longer himself. He was the Man With No Face. And he would be whoever he needed to be whenever the need arose. Murder, he’d discovered, was not just easy.

It was an art.

And he was just as magical as the sax. He could disappear. He could be—and not be. He could be himself or anyone else he wanted to be.

But he had to find that sax.

He studied the picture. It wasn’t just deciding who he was going to kill next.

It was deciding just how and when his victim would die.

Chapter 5

FOR THE LAST
few years that Quinn had been with the NOPD, Larue had been his partner. He’d always been a good cop, and Quinn was glad they were still on the same side. There were way too many times when it proved beneficial to be in good graces with one of the city’s lead detectives.

Of course, there were things he and Danni sometimes did that made him extremely grateful that they weren’t cops themselves. Their unofficial status frequently saved them from struggling with a moral dilemma, not to mention from being fired for going where a policeman couldn’t legally go.

At the moment, however, Quinn didn’t have anything in mind that even remotely smacked of illegal behavior. He headed down to Frenchman Street and the block where Lily, Jeff and Rowdy had been playing.

The street was crowded with clubs and restaurants; in Quinn’s mind, it was the best place to find local talent and up-and-coming musicians. Blues and jazz spilled through open club doors, occasionally punctuated by folk music and experimental mixes. He’d seen the best drummer he’d ever encountered on Frenchman Street; the man’s arms had moved as if they were propelled by the Energizer Bunny.

It was Friday morning and still early; workers were still out cleaning up from the night before. He stopped in front of the
Blues Bear,
where the trio had been playing, and then he retraced their steps as they’d described their route to him. Lily had pointed out a spot on the map where they’d passed a tree just before being attacked. It was right by a large alleyway where vendors often set up.

The tree grew in a square opening cut from the pavement, surrounded by concrete and old paving bricks. Their attacker might have made his exit through the alleyway, but he hadn’t come from that direction, Quinn thought. He had met the three head-on just after they passed the alley. Reliving Lily’s reenactment in his mind, Quinn pinpointed the direction the shots would have taken. He would have fired toward Esplanade.

Two shots. The casings should have fallen to the ground where the attacker had stood. And the bullets had to have made impact somewhere.

Quinn crossed the street and headed down the block, inspecting the walls of the buildings as he did so.

He walked up and down, up and down.

He knew the police had searched, but things would have been a lot more chaotic then, with Jeff being rushed to the hospital, and both Rowdy and Lily in shock, unable to speak with much coherency.

He walked down a couple of blocks and then walked back slowly. He did it three times. The attacker could easily have picked up his shells, but bullets didn’t just disappear.

He returned to his original position.

Then he looked at the tree.

It was scrawny; he actually had no idea what kind of tree it was. He looked at the two square feet of dirt in which the tree sat in its oasis amid the concrete. Ducking down, he searched through the dirt with his fingers.

“What the hell?” a passerby murmured.

The man at her side whispered back, “It’s New Orleans. Just keep walking.”

There was nothing in the dirt. Quinn slowly rose and realized that he was staring right at a bullet that had pounded its way straight into the trunk of the scraggly little tree.

He pulled out his knife and the handkerchief he kept folded in a pocket for just such occasions. In less than a minute he had the flattened bullet cut from the trunk, along with a few chips of wood. He kept searching and was soon rewarded; the second bullet was lodged higher and covered by the few leaves that sprang from the bony branches.

He had them both. The attacker had found his casings, all right. But not even he had known where to find the bullets.

“May you prosper and live forever,” he told the tree then turned to hurry back across Esplanade to the French Quarter and then toward the station.

* * *

The
Cheshire Cat
was quiet, and everything seemed to be going smoothly when Danni returned from visiting Natasha. Wolf greeted her enthusiastically. There was no living being in her life—Quinn included, she thought—who greeted her with the same display of love that Wolf gave her. Dogs were the best, their love unconditional. Whether she’d been gone a few days or a few hours, Wolf greeted her in a way that let her know how much he loved her.

“Anything new?” Billie asked as she bent down, scratching the dog behind his ears.

“We’re going to become musicians,” she said, one eye on the two women who were studying the Egyptian display.

“Overnight?” Billie asked politely. “And just what instrument will
you
be playing, Danni Cafferty?”

“I have no idea, but I’ll be faking something,” she said. “Natasha said we have to become part of the music scene. Anyway, I’m going to head down to the basement for a bit. You all right there?”

“If a horde walks in, I’ll call for you,” he assured her.

Danni headed out of the shop, Wolf trotting by her side. When she was there, he was always at her heels. She didn’t mind. In fact, she liked it.

She passed her studio and glanced in; the canvas she was currently working on—a view of the river—sat on its easel. It would have to sit there for a while longer, she thought then paused, looking thoughtful. During their previous cases, her artwork had proved to be very important. She abhorred the fact, but she was known to sleepwalk—and sleep-draw or even sleep-paint. She didn’t know if she illustrated what her subconscious mind was trying to tell her or what the inspiration was, and sometimes she had no idea what the resulting artwork meant. But sometimes, when she looked closely at what she had created, she could see what had been there all along that they simply hadn’t noticed.

She decided to put away her watercolor of the river and set out a fresh canvas.

When she had done that, she headed on down the stairs that led to the “basement,” which was really at ground level and the foundation of the house. Her father’s private rooms were there; the rooms where he’d stored collectibles that would never be for sale, items that had been involved in bad things, that were supposedly—or really—cursed, along with those pieces he couldn’t bring himself to part with. Angus Cafferty had been fascinated by all things Egyptian, and also all things pertaining to medieval Europe and the Victorian era.

There were a number of boxes piled up along one wall; she knew the contents of some but not all. One of her favorite items among the collectibles was a full suit of armor that stood in one corner as if guarding the room and its contents. Against the opposite wall was an upright Victorian coffin. No one had ever been buried in it; it had been a display piece for a funeral home that had once been in the city. The funeral home today was a private residence. When she’d been little, she’d found the coffin scary, because it held a beautiful mannequin, painted to look asleep to show just how one’s loved one would look on display. Danni had always been terrified that the mannequin would suddenly open her eyes and look at her. Other oddities had also found a home there, including props and posters from a number of movies. It always amused her that one of her father’s favorites had been a giant, openmouthed stuffed gorilla from the classic but never-completed
The Gorilla That Ate Manhattan
.
He’d also kept his private stash of Egyptian artifacts down here, including masks, a mummified cat, a mummified raven and a number of funerary art pieces.

To a child, the basement had been creepy.

Now she loved being down here. It was as if she could be closer to her father.

The most important object in the basement, however, was the book.

The giant old volume had a special place on her father’s antique desk, protected by a glass dome. Danni only took it out when she needed to peruse it and was careful to return it immediately as soon as she finished. Her dad’s swivel chair sat behind the desk, and she remembered how she’d liked to sit in it. She’d curled into it many a time when he’d been alive to read or do her homework, or to be with him while he cataloged his collection or made notes on particular pieces.

If it weren’t so special to her family, the book would have been worthy of the best antiquarian bookseller in the world. Though yellowed with age, the paper was heavy and intact, the edges of the pages gold-trimmed. The book was American, something that always filled her father with great pride, and had been written by a woman named Millicent Smith and printed in 1699 in Boston. It contained herbal cures for every ailment known at the time and read like a medicinal how-to for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it also contained curious texts about deflecting curses, how to rid the world of an “evil essence still upon the earth” and other occult know-how. The information was couched very carefully; accused witches had been executed in Salem not long before its publication, and there were still rather dubious laws on the books in many states that would lead to further persecution in the decades to come. Danni knew that certain texts only became visible when read through specially colored lenses.

It was sometimes difficult to read because it wasn’t an actual occult book, and the chapters weren’t always arranged in ways that made sense to a modern reader. There was actually a chapter on musical instruments, but instead she found what she was looking for in a chapter called “Secrets of the Mind.”

“‘Music,’ wrote the dramatist William Congreve, ‘has powers to soothe a savage breast,’” Millicent’s text read. “And how incredibly true; at its worst it is strident and discordant and painful to the ears. It brings to mind war and heartache, death and disease. At its best, it prolongs life because of the happy status it creates in our hearts. And there is the core of the would-be musician. There is magic therein, but magic springs from the heart, from the longing of that which he would play or sing to bring forth the beauty that gently caresses the raw heart and opens the mind to all things.”

Danni flipped through more and more pages but could find nothing specifically on instruments, haunted or otherwise.

Yet, as she sat there, she mulled with a certain amount of amusement over how Tyler Anderson had been convinced that he had become a better player because he had Arnie’s sax. Was the music in the believing?

She didn’t know.

She wished she believed that
she
could play.

With that thought in mind, she called Quinn. He sounded winded when he answered the phone.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“On the street.”

“Doing what?”

“Walking.”

“Because...?”

“I’m on my way to the station. I dug out some bullets from a tree. They’re from the attack on the musicians the other night—gotta get ’em to Larue. They’re pretty smashed. I’d say our guy has a Glock 19, which is, unfortunately, one of the most popular handguns out there. And, of course, we’re in Louisiana—tons of permits and even more unlicensed guns. But still...”

“That’s the first real break of any kind, Quinn. That’s great,” Danni said.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “But why did you call?”

“Natasha thinks we need to be playing with a band, so we can become part of the music scene and get closer to the killer.”

He was silent a minute.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

“Bands,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Bands,” he said. “If we’re going to become part of the music crowd, we need to play with more than one band. But we’ll start with Tyler’s group. That’s where Arnie played his last gig—at La Porte Rouge.”

“Quinn, that’s fine for you, but I—I suck!”

“It will be fine.”

Easy for you to say—you love your damned guitar.

“What will I do?” she asked. “Continual renditions of ‘
Chopsticks’?”

“We can always whip out a bagpipe.”

“Funny.”

“Every band can use a backup singer,” he told her.

“Do you think Tyler’s band will let us play horribly with them?” Danni said.

“I beg your pardon. I don’t play
horribly
.
”

“
I
do.”

“You don’t need to play. You sing backup, and stand around and look pretty. Besides, we’ll bring Billie. He can really play. You heard him last night.”

Billie
could
play, and that could prove to be a godsend, Danni thought.

Quinn was quiet for a minute and then said, “Give Tyler a call, and ask if he can use an extra guitar player and a backup singer, along with Billie on sax.”

“Billie will be a big help. And if he’s there...well, you two can join the band. I’ll sit in the audience and—”

“No, you’re not getting out of it. We have to make a real effort to become part of the music scene. That’s how you get musicians to talk to you. And remember, we’ll just be starting at La Porte Rouge. We may need to play all around the city.”

“And split up?” she asked.

“No way. If we don’t know the groups or the venues, we’re not splitting up,” he said sternly. “We’re at our best together. Always.”

“Come home so we can figure this out,” she told him.

“I’ll be there soon.”

Danni had barely ended the call when her phone began to ring. Glancing down, she saw that it was her friend Jenny LaFleur.

“Hey, Jenny,” she said. She should have expected the call; Jenny must have seen the news, so she was bound to be nervous.

“They’re warning musicians to be careful,” Jenny told her. “Do you know anything? Are we in danger?”

“You need to watch out and steer clear of anyone you don’t know, yes,” Danni said. “Especially if you’re on your own.”

“Can you and Quinn come watch the band tonight? Quinn could sit in with us,” Jenny said hopefully.

“Actually, I think we’re going to be at La Porte Rouge,” Danni told her.

“Hey, I’m your friend, and I would feel a lot better if you were around.”

“We’ll get over there soon, Jenny. I promise. For tonight...”

“Is Quinn sitting in with another group?” Jenny demanded.

“That’s the plan,” Danni told her. “I’m going to sit in with them, too.”

Jenny’s dead silence did nothing for her confidence. Finally she said, “Oh. So you two are...involved in this.”