The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series) (43 page)

“Listen, Joe asked me to call you. He said to get you back in here before you blow up the state or something.”

“He did? He wants me to come back?”

“Christ, even the chief wants you to come back. You’re kind of a folk hero right now.” Skip could almost see her grinning.

“Now I get it. He wants me back in the office so he can take me down a peg or two.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She could hear the sergeant’s sharp inhalation.

“Oh, Sylvia, you know I’m coming back. I just don’t know if I’m ready yet.”

“Hey, don’t be ridiculous. You’re out there doing police work without a badge. You’re just going to keep on embarrassing us.”

“I’ll have my people call your people.”

She hung up and padded barefoot into the kitchen for a Diet Coke. The nice tiles Jimmy Dee had installed back when he occupied the apartment were cool to her feet. The white of the cabinets against the green of her hanging plants was pleasing to her eye. The Diet Coke could have been champagne.

Her mood had nothing to do with the phone call—she was simply pervaded by a sense of well-being, an appreciation of this moment in this day.

But because of the call, she noticed the moment.
I’m alive
, she thought.
I’m snapping back.

The thought saddened her a little, and that told her she’d grown used to her melancholy—even, possibly, come to enjoy it in some way.

She had a new thing these days to brood over— Jacomine’s disappearance. After what happened in Lockport, she wanted him all the more. She wanted him in a cell, and she wanted to cuff him herself, to feel those metal circles closing around his wrists. Failing that, she could at least go look at him in jail.

She had tracked down the murder charge against him, but big deal—the point of that was to ruin his campaign. It was laughable now:
I have a thousand bigger fish to fry.

Her scalp prickled as she remembered where she’d heard the phrase.
Shit! He said it himself!
He’s in my brain.

Cindy Lou had suggested, in her shrinky way, that maybe being vindictive wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world. But her obsession wasn’t that.

It was fear. Skip simply didn’t believe she could ever feel safe again until Jacomine was behind bars. What she had seen, the machinery he could put in motion, the vast energy he was willing to exert on anything in his way, or anything that might conceivably get in his way, was bewildering at first. Bewildering before you even noticed it was frightening—because no sane person would do it, because it really was what it seemed.

Pure evil.

The devil in human form.

The bogeyman come to life.

You didn’t see something like that every day.

* * *

After she came back from Lockport, the only people she had wanted to see were Steve and Sheila, because they’d been through it with her, and Jane Storey, because she knew. She understood. Skip could maunder on and on about Jacomine, and Jane would listen attentively, would swear she needed it as much as Skip did, to confirm her own experience.

When she was able to look past the bewilderment, fear grabbed her with a thousand tiny suction cups, like the things on the wrong side of an octopus. Cindy Lou was damned right vindictiveness wasn’t healthy, and who did Skip know who wasn’t the poster boy for mental stability? Jacomine was perfectly capable of marshaling his resources against her and hers under any rationale his twisted mind could invent.

He might decide she was still dangerous to him— and if she could in any way arrange it, she most assuredly was.

Or he might simply decide he wanted revenge.

And he knew exactly how to get her: Get Sheila, get Kenny. Get Steve or Jimmy Dee.

How in hell could she protect them?

“You can’t,” said Boo, who agreed to take her on again, at least for a few sessions, after the night of the hurricane. “You have to live life, Skip. You can take precautions—burglar alarms, things like that, but unless he’s actively threatening their lives, you have to let it go. Especially with the kids—you want them to grow up as paranoid as he is?”

“I just want them to grow up.”

Her hair stood up when she thought of what Sheila had told her. How, when Jacomine had come for her, he had ranted, “Do you know who you’re talking to? I am your Daddy! I am your father on this Earth!”

The man thought he was God, and that made him as scary as the devil.

But she saw the sense of what Boo said. With the resilience of youth, and certainly its callousness, its surpassing capacity for denial, Sheila, rather than brood on her various fortuitous escapes, was reveling in her current notoriety.

Kenny was pissed because he’d missed all the fun.

Jimmy Dee was threatening playfully to go back to pot-smoking (something he’d given up when he got the kids) on grounds his nerves needed calming.

Steve wanted to know when he could partner up with her again.

Nobody wanted Skip on their back about security. And there wasn’t really very much she could do anyway. Except one thing, and she did it: She took a private vow that she’d never let down her guard, never forget Jacomine and what he was capable of—that somehow or other she’d get him before he got her and hers.

* * *

She took her Coke out to the courtyard, where Steve was making notes, having just interviewed some kids for his project.

“Want anything?”

“No thanks. I’ve got iced tea.” He had looked at her only a moment. Now he turned back, fast, doing almost a classic double take. “What?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking—I better get hold of those witches. For Layne’s allergy.”

“Uh-uh.”

“You don’t believe in magic?”

“That’s not what’s on your mind.”

“Well, what is, big boy?”

“You know how some machines have a ‘ready’ light? You’re blinking one, baby—want to spend the afternoon in bed?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” She sat down next to him and took a pull on her Coke.

“Uh-uh again. That’s not it. You didn’t sit in my lap. You’re not following up.”

She shrugged, but she couldn’t hide her excitement. “I guess I’m a little distracted.”

He drew away a little bit, so as to get a better look at her face. “You think you know how to get him!”

Jacomine, he meant. She didn’t have to ask.

“I wish. Cappello called, that’s all. I think I’ll go to work Monday.”

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, so many people assisted so generously I’ve probably forgotten some—I apologize if I have. My deepest thanks to Tracy Johnston and Jon Carroll for a great idea over dinner; to New Orleans Police Captain Linda Buczek, John Gagliano of the coroner’s office, Sergeant Andrew Clark of the Louisiana State Police, Mike Andrews of Reed Brothers Security, Betsy Petersen, Kathy and Ken White, Kit and Billy Wohl, Chris Wiltz, Steve Holtz, Jim Alexander, two librarians— Robert Burke and Mairi McFall—and Bob Breck, who talks about weather in a way even I can understand. Thanks also to those who helped in Southwest Louisiana—Alison Owings and Stanley Dry, the kind people at the Teche News—especially Henri Clay Bienvenu and Gladys de Villiers—and Lee Pryor, with whom I would travel to the end of the earth.

Get the heart-stopping new Skip Langdon : CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION by Julie Smith at
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For a glimpse, read on …

A HOLLYWOOD WALK was basically a photo op. The prisoner had to be taken from Headquarters to what was now grandly called the Intake and Processing Center (“central lockup” in simpler days). This could easily be done without going outside, but that wasn’t sexy. When the superintendent of police got shot, the department damn well wanted everyone to know it got its man. Hence, a short walk from the garage door at the rear of Headquarters, about half a block up White Street, and over to the booking facility on Perdido.

A short walk with more media people in attendance than there were cops in the building.

Bazemore’s hands were cuffed behind him, Skip at one side, Boudreaux at the other, cameras everywhere. People eddied and swirled, shouting inane questions. Skip felt as if she’d been up for two days.

Perhaps, she thought later, she should have been more alert. In retrospect she had no idea where her attention had been when she heard the shot.

Bazemore stumbled and went down.

Reporters scrambled, some tripping over wires and falling as well.

Skip stared down at her prisoner for no more than a second—a split second, it couldn’t have been more—and immediately jerked her head up to the Broad Street overpass. A man was there, running. Traffic had slowed. But she had no shot, given the number of civilians in both places.

She simply watched, frozen, unbelieving, as the man ran, holding what was apparently a high-powered rifle. When they turned Bazemore over, his nose was gone.

Skip spent the next morning giving statements to other officers and avoiding giving any to the press. Cappello was handling that.

The letter came with her other mail—the only piece that wasn’t junk, but she would have noticed it anyway. It was in a plain white business envelope, with her name and address neatly typed, plain as you please. The arresting part was in the upper left hand corner, where the return address should have been. It was only two words: the jury. Skip called Cappello. “Sylvia, come over here.” Cappello took one look and immediately came to the same conclusion Skip had. “Omigod. Let’s get the bomb squad. And the crime lab.”

They left it there, not touching it, till the bomb squad had pronounced it safe and the lab had dusted. Then, carefully, and in the presence of witnesses, Skip slit it open and read.

Dear Detective Langdon:

We wish to congratulate you on your swift and excellent work in apprehending Nolan Bazemore, a blight on the city of New Orleans and indeed on the entire country, which used to be worth something. That’s right—used to be. This used to be a country where it was safe for old ladies to walk down the street in the middle of the day, where public schools were excellent and every child assured a good education, where neighbors took care of each other—cared about each other—and where crime was negligible. In the event a crime was committed, the criminal was entitled to a fair and speedy trial by a jury of his peers, twelve good men and true, and more often than not, justice was done. At any rate, we certainly expected it to be, and if it was not, we were surprised. We were shocked and we were outraged.

To our eternal sadness, this is no longer true. We no longer permit our grandmothers to walk alone (or our children, for that matter), we accept the decrepitude of our schools, many of us carry guns against the rising tide of crime, and we do not expect justice. We have become a nation of cynics. We expect judges to sleep on the bench, juries to acquit, and lawyers to get rich.

Why is this? We are too defeated to have any hope.

In Chief Albert Goodlett we had a chance at a real change in one of our major cities. In the only city in the world, possibly in the history of the world, that currently has two officers on Death Row. In what is possibly the worst police department in, once again, the history of the world.

There is much in a name. Chief Goodlett was a good man. An honest man. A competent man.

And he was shot to death by an unworthy enemy, an enemy of the church, the state, the Lord—of our very system of justice and the only decent chance it has had in years.

Nolan Bazemore was scum. He was not fit to lick the boots of Chief Albert Goodlett, and there will not be a single detractor among those who read this letter, black or white. This is not a racial issue. Yet Nolan Bazemore was a racist—an ignorant racist who deserved to die. Nolan Bazemore was guilty of cold-blooded homicide and he was guiltier still of another outrage—of destroying our Hope! Just when we had Hope, he destroyed it.

And so we The Jury claim responsibility, as the newspapers say, for the trial, conviction, and execution of Nolan Bazemore. It saddens us deeply that such action is necessary and yet we know that it is, and you. Detective Langdon, know that it is, and you, fellow Americans, know that it is.

The letter was signed, “Very Sincerely Yours, The Jury.”

Skip hated this. It terrified her. It scared her a great deal more than mindlessness, or simple craziness. This was complicated craziness. This was a very effective mind at work. And it made her want to run screaming into the woods.

She felt her heart beating, her pulse racing, and realized that part of what she was feeling was anger.

Part of it was irrational anger, but part of it was rational—she was pissed off at anyone who had a brain that functioned as well as the letter-writer’s and still went around killing people. A person who most assuredly knew right from wrong, and who had chosen wrong.

Chosen evil.

She shivered. It gave her goose bumps. And made her think of Errol Jacomine.

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The Skip Langdon Series
(in order of publication)

NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ

JAZZ FUNERAL

DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK (formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

HOUSE OF BLUES

THE KNDNESS OF STRANGERS

CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION (formerly Crescent City Kill)

82 DESIRE

MEAN WOMAN BLUES

Also by Julie Smith
:

The Rebecca Schwartz Series

DEATH TURNS A TRICK

THE SOURDOUGH WARS

TOURIST TRAP

DEAD IN THE WATER

OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

The Paul Macdonald Series

TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE

HUCKLEBERRY FIEND

The Talba Wallis Series

LOUISIANA HOTSHOT

LOUISIANA BIGSHOT