The Map of Moments (16 page)

H

kitchen preyed on his mind and drew him back. Her glassy stare welcomed him, and though he turned his face away, he sat and kept her company.

He could not stop shaking. Everything was falling apart. The last Moment had displayed the dark underside of the magic of New Orleans, and as if in response to that, he had walked in on this slaughter.

His teeth chattered. He'd always heard the expression, but he had never thought it possible or likely. His gums hurt, but however much he tried to clamp his jaws shut, the
muscles spasmed and shook in concert with the rest of his body.

Where the hell were the cops?

Max glanced from the kitchen window, just catching sight of the red splash of Corinne's demise from the corner of his eye. The killer had gone through there. And the destruction wrought on her body had been performed between him hearing her scream and then bursting into the kitchen, a space of …how many seconds? He could guess, but there was no knowing for sure. His whole concept of time had been twisted. He had come from the eighteen hundreds to the terrible present, and seconds could be years.

He waited over an hour for the police to arrive. In that time, he never once looked back at Corinne's cooling body, but neither did he leave her. He was certain that she would not want to be alone right now.

And when they did arrive, their reaction was not what he had expected.

In retrospect, he should have anticipated what happened. If he'd been thinking straight he
would
have expected it, but he had an image of the way things should go from here, and that image was very, very wrong.

He heard a car screech to a halt outside, some muffled voices, and then the cautious footsteps of someone entering through the broken door and approaching along the hallway. A shadow projected into the kitchen, something long wrapped in its hand.

“Down!” a voice called.

Max gasped and glanced to his right. A shape stood at the open window, a short man silhouetted by the few lights still shining outside. Illuminated by the weak glow of the single kitchen light, Max saw the ugly end of a gun pointing directly at his chest.

The shadow emerged from the hallway, a big cop also carrying a gun. “You heard him. Down!”

“Holy shit,” the cop at the window muttered.

Max held up his hands and shook his head, starting to protest. But he did not even have the chance to utter one word.

“I'll count to three,” the short cop said. “One …two…”

Max dropped forward, easing himself to the floor, pushed the final few inches by the big cop's boot. He turned just in time to avoid crushing his nose, but his cheek cracked against the floor, and he tasted blood where he'd bitten his tongue.

“Please!” Max said. “I came here and found—”

“Shut it,” the cop in the window said. “Paul, I'll come around.”

“I got him,” the big cop, Paul, said. “Move a muscle, fuckwit, and your brains will corrupt the crime scene.”

Max closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the weight of the man's boot still pressing him down. He wouldn't have been able to move even if he wanted to, and he supposed that was the whole point.

The short cop entered along the hallway a few seconds later, gun still drawn and pointing now at Max's face. He
glanced around the kitchen, his face twisting into a grimace of disgust. “Holy shit, you really did a piece on her.”

“It wasn't me.”

“Yeah, I heard that one before.” A silent communication passed between the policemen, and Paul's foot pressed harder on Max's back as the other man bent his arms back and cuffed him.

“I don't believe this,” Max whispered.

“From out of town?” the short cop asked.

Max nodded.

“Figures.”

“Really, I came here to talk to her, heard a scream, found her like this. Ask the old guy outside, he saw me.”

“Already talked to him,” Paul said. “Let's get him up.”

The two cops grabbed an arm each and lifted Max to his feet, dragging him from the kitchen and into the small, dark sitting room. They dropped him into a chair and hit the light. There were a couple of comfortable armchairs, a wall lined with books, and a selection of amateurish watercolors hanging from the other walls. Max saw an open book lying facedown on the arm of the other chair.
Was she reading that?
he thought.
When the murderer came, was she sitting there reading that, trying to distract herself from whatever it was she couldn't bear to tell me?
He turned his head sideways in an effort to see the cover, but he could not make out the title or author.

“Crime Scene on the way?” Paul asked.

“Should be.” The short cop sat in the chair opposite Max, staring at him without blinking or averting his gaze. Max stared back for a moment, then glanced away and closed his
eyes. He was still shaking, and his shoulders ached with his arms forced behind his back. He swallowed blood.

“Sick fuck,” the short cop said. He took out a notebook and pen, scribbled a few lines, then looked at Max again. “I'm going to take a statement.”

Max wasn't sure whether he was about to shout or cry. His breath came fast and shallow, and he ground his teeth together to stop them from chattering.
This is bad,
he thought, and the sound of those novice nuns striking the ground came to him again.

“Ask the old—”

“Told you, already talked to him,” Paul said. “Said you were snooping around the house, started screaming the woman's name, then you shouldered the door, came in, and he heard her screams.”

“She screamed
before
I forced the door.”

“So why break in?”

Max frowned. “Because she was screaming.”

“You in the habit of breakin’ down a lady's door when she's screaming?” the short cop said. “How'd you know she wasn't just gettin’ banged?”

“I heard glass breaking. The window you were at, I heard that break, and so—”

“So you stormed in to the rescue,” Paul said. He was standing by the door, and even though Max was cuffed, the cop still cradled a gun in his hands.

“Aren't you going to arrest me?” Max said. He had no idea how this worked. Was this part of the statement? Were they recording this exchange, somehow? He'd seen the cop
shows and movies, but he didn't have a clue whether they'd arrest him now or at the station, or if they should even be talking without them having read him his rights.
And what are my rights?
he wondered.
Are there even any lawyers still in New Orleans?
He'd heard reports of cops being the worst looters of them all, and suddenly he felt in danger as well as in deadly, unbelievable trouble.

“Old guy says you smelled like trouble and sounded worse, the way you were hollering for that gal.”

“The broken window,” Max said. He closed his eyes and tried to shed his memory of the blood, the smell, and the sound of people hitting the ground that for some reason he could not disassociate from Corinne's murder. “Shattered glass was on the floor inside. That's how the
murderer
got in. I came through the door, and he got in and out the window.”

Paul shrugged, and the short cop threw him an uncomfortable glance. “Ain't for us to decide what glass went where,” Paul said. “Fact is, we got you and a corpse, and your hands covered in blood.”

“I stayed here. Waited for you.” The situation was starting to feel unreal, and Max caught a fresh whiff of death from the kitchen.

“Ever heard of suicide by cop?” the short cop said.
Was that a threat in his voice?
Max glanced at him, but looked away again when he saw the look in the man's eye. He was almost smiling.

“That's ridiculous.”

“New Orleans isn't a normal place nowadays. Right, Paul?”

“Right.” Paul shifted the gun, as if to draw Max's attention to it.
He's going to tell me how many people he's shot since the storm,
Max thought.
Sweet Jesus, are these really even cops?

“Can I see some ID?” Max asked.

The short cop's eyes widened, and he almost levitated from his chair, pen and notebook spilling to the floor. “ID? You want some ID? ID this, sick fuck!” And he pulled out his gun. “Down, on the floor.”

“But…”

“Down. On. The. Floor.”

Max complied, slipping from the chair to his knees and trying to lie down sideways, doing his best not to smash face-first onto the glass-strewn floor. They should be chasing the real murderer, he thought, but he said nothing. Silence was his best option right now.

The short cop knelt on Max's back, knocking the wind from him. Max felt fingers delving into his pockets, hands tapping his hips and thighs, and then the map was tugged from his back pocket, crinkling as if upset at being removed.

“What's this?” the short cop asked.

“A map.”

“I can see that, sick fuck. I asked, what is it?”

Max frowned and shook his head, confused.
I can't really tell him, can I? What would he think?
“It's just a map of the city. I was looking around and…”

“Looking around for what?” Paul asked.

“Just …looking. I used to see Corinne's cousin, and—

“Who's Corinne?” the short cop asked.

Max twisted his head so he could look up at the man kneeling on his back. “The dead girl.”

“Right. And let me guess: her cousin's dead, too?”

“In the storm.”

“Right.” The cop nodded slowly, unfolding the map as he did so. “In the storm.”

The opened map hid Max's view of Paul and the cop on his back, plunging him into shadow. The weak light shone through the paper, silhouetting the short guy and stretching the profile of his face so that he looked like something unnatural and deformed. As he turned, his elongated nose and chin pointed across the map, and for the first time Max saw the small box containing the Fourth Moment. He frowned, concentrating on the reversed words, but the sheet was moving too much for him to make them out.

The cop stood from his back quickly, paused, then knelt by Max's side and slammed the map down beside him. “What's this?” He was pointing directly at the handwritten Fourth Moment.

“You wrote this?” Something about the short cop's voice had changed. There was a sense of unease there, and he tapped the map several times beside the boxed words, never actually touching them. “This? The yellow fever?” Another slight, loaded pause. “Tordu?”

“No, I didn't write it,” Max said.

The cop stood and showed the map to his companion. They exchanged a few muttered words, but Max's blood was pulsing so hard in his ears that he could not make them out. He turned on his side and looked, and they were both staring down at him. The tall one, Paul, glanced at his watch.

The short cop darted across and kicked Max hard in the side.

Max gasped, from shock as well as pain. He tried to bring his knees up against his chest, roll into a defensive ball, but the cop kicked him again, this time in the back.

“Steady,” Paul said, concern in his voice. But Max was not sure who the concern was aimed at.

“Where'd you get this?” the short cop asked. He kicked again, softer this time, more of a nudge.
“Where?”

It's the
Tordu
that's got him riled up,
Max thought. That name was appearing more and more. It reeked of trouble and dark deeds, and he still felt the dregs of its corrupted magic prickling his skin and haunting the byways of his memory.

“Where?”
the cop asked again, and stepped over Max, turning and pulling his right leg back to kick him in the face.

“Coco gave it to me,” Max said. It was a stab in the dark, but those five words changed everything.

The short cop froze, and Max heard Paul's sharp intake of breath. Max considered elaborating, taking advantage of the fear that man's name seemed to conjure, but then he would risk getting some small detail wrong.

The short cop folded the map and slipped it into his pocket.

“You need to leave,” Paul said.

“What?” Max managed to sit up, and the short guy circled behind him. Max winced. What would it be, pistol-whipped? A kick in the throat? But then he heard the jangle of keys, and the cuffs fell away from his hands. He hugged his arms, cringing as the circulation returned.

“Get out of here,” Paul said.

Max glanced past him into the hallway, and Corinne now seemed like an afterthought to these men. Her murderer was still out there. Maybe it was even Coco himself, whose mere name had shifted this situation from weird to surreal.

“The Tordu…” Max said, wanting to ask questions, plead for information, and maybe protect himself from who- or whatever they were.

The short cop raised his gun and pointed it at Max's face. He was sweating, his jaw clenched and unclenched, and Max realized that he was utterly terrified. “Out,” he said, and it emerged as a croak.

Max stood and looked at the cop's pocket into which the map had disappeared.

“No,” the cop said. “Consider this …bail payment.” He lowered the gun, and the nervous glance he exchanged with his partner spoke volumes. “Don't leave the city.”