Doing the Devil's Work (17 page)

“Excuse
me
, Officer,” she said, not moving from behind the desk. If she recognized Maureen, she gave no sign.

“You need to come to this window,” Maureen said, “or buzz me through that door. Y’all have some questions to answer.”

Taking her time, the deputy edged around the desk and sauntered to the window. “Bad night on the streets?”

“Always better to be out there working,” Maureen said, “than to be sitting on my ass in the air-conditioning.”

“But you keep coming to me for help,” the deputy said.

Someone in the seated family caught their breath.

The deputy leaned toward the window. She lowered her voice and raised her eyes to Maureen’s face. “You
need
to stop talking to me like I’m some corner punk. Now.”

“You
need
to stop dumping my prisoners out onto the street because you feel like it.” Maureen leaned her elbows on the counter, her nose inches from the protective plastic window. “What ambulance company was it that took my prisoner over to LSU Public the other night? You remember that? The woman, Madison Leary. Can you look that up for me?”

Maureen saw the flash of recognition in the deputy’s eyes. She hadn’t worked the night Maureen had brought Madison in, but she was a witness to the lies the other deputy told. She had no interest in protecting her coworker, Maureen knew. She’d be plenty pissed at him for putting her in this mess. She’d give up anything to get Maureen and her attitude away from the window, and to excise herself from the rest of the story.

“I want to talk to Theriot,” Maureen said. “The big, bald guy. It’s important. Where is he?”

“He’s in the shed tonight.”

“The what?”

“The guard shed, down at the end of the street, at the entrance to the construction site. The city wants someone in it twenty-four seven. Tonight, it’s his turn.”

“Don’t call him,” Maureen said, standing. “Don’t tell him I’m coming.”

She turned, almost colliding with the young mother from the family, who had come up close behind her. Her husband sat with a kid on either side of him, a boy and a girl, about seven years old, maybe twins. The man scowled, none too pleased his wife was talking to a cop.

“Excuse me, Officer,” the woman said. “Can you help us?”

“Depends,” Maureen said, in a hurry to get to Theriot. “The deputy back there can probably do more for you than I can.”

“It’s not that,” the woman said. “We came to check on my brother. He got arrested last night. We got what we needed, but now our car won’t start. My husband says it’s the battery.” She tossed a cold-eyed glance over Maureen’s shoulder at the deputy. “Seems no one in the sheriff’s department’s got any jumper cables.”

Maureen knew she had jumper cables in the cruiser. But this is how it starts, she thought. They ask for something small, then slowly raise the stakes. When the jumper cables didn’t work, she’d be hit up for cab fare, or even a ride home, like a damn taxi service. She’d get the sob story of how the brother was a quiet neighborhood guy trying to turn his life around, was there anyone she could talk to for him? Then back in the neighborhood they’d motherfuck the sheriff’s office and the NOPD to anyone who would listen. The next time NOPD came around asking questions, looking for help, no one would know a thing. Maureen took a deep breath. “Listen, I’ve got work to do. If you don’t have a phone, I’m sure the deputy can call you a cab. Or make change for the pay phone.”

“Tol’ you,” the husband grumbled.

“A cab from here to the Seventh Ward is expensive,” the woman said. “We put up what we got extra for my brother. And then our car is stuck here. I got a phone. I left a message at my cousin’s house ’bout an hour ago.” She held up a glittery white cell phone. “But he at work and hasn’t called back.”

“Typical police,” the husband said. “Quit wasting time, girl.”

Maureen stared at him, stepping in his direction, but speaking to the woman. “I’ve got cables in the unit, ma’am. Get the kids a soda. Soon as I’m done talking with the other deputy, we’ll see if we can’t get your car started. Just hang tight for a minute.”

“Thanks, Officer,” the woman said, rocking on her heels, twisting her lips at her husband. “’Preciate you.”

The husband kept his head turned away, frowning over his shoulder at nothing. The kids looked at the floor, swinging their short legs and sneakered feet under their chairs, embarrassed and confused by the adult hostility over something as simple as a ride home.

Maureen left the cruiser parked, walking the two blocks to the construction site, silent and locked up for the night. The looming square of the new jail stood tall against the highway and the stars, a black cube aglow in the faint lights from the nearby cranes. Plastic banners bearing construction company logos wrapped the box like a half-opened birthday present. Their loose edges flapped in the wind. One of the banners caught Maureen’s eye. There it was, like Atkinson had told her,
HEATH DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
. Big white letters against a blue background. She hadn’t noticed it before.

“Well,” she mumbled, “would you look at that.”

She’d seen the company banner elsewhere around the city. They’d recently finished a shiny new four-story building, lots of metal and glass, on Earhart Boulevard in her district, corporate offices or something. The building’s sleek modern look was out of character for the surrounding industrial area, which was otherwise old warehouses and tumbledown shacks lined up along one of the outfall canals from the lake. There was a bakery on the ground floor. Other cops in her district had high praise for the bakery’s coffee, but the place was never open during her night shifts.

In the guard shack, Maureen could see Theriot’s jowly profile illuminated by a laptop computer. As he stared at the screen, he methodically fed potato chips one at a time into his pink mouth. From the look on his face, she guessed he wasn’t watching the video feed of the deserted construction site. Maureen had the impression that had a giant spacecraft descended from the night sky and airlifted away the new jail, Theriot would never have noticed. He didn’t react when she shouted his name. When she got closer, she saw the white wires of his earbuds dropping from the side of his head. She picked up a piece of gravel from the street and bounced it hard off the side of the guard shack. Theriot ducked at the crack of the stone on the metal shed, throwing his earbuds to the floor with a shout and looking around.

“Over here, Theriot,” Maureen said.

“That was you? What the fuck?” Theriot’s eyes widened as he recognized Maureen. “You.”

“Yeah,” Maureen said. “Me. You remember me. I’m the one who should be asking what the fuck. Guess why I’m here.”

Theriot closed his laptop and squeezed through the narrow doorway of the guard shack, meeting Maureen in the street, his keys jingling as he moved. “How should I know?”

“Guess where I’m coming from.”

Theriot shrugged. “Again, I should know?”

“How about LSU Public,” Maureen said, “where I watched video of you and some other toolbox dumping my arrest in the waiting room and disappearing like you’re pulling a high school prank. How about that? You told me you sent her over in an ambulance, but you took her over yourself. You left her in the waiting room and didn’t even tell anyone she was there, or what was wrong with her, or where she came from. How is that acceptable?”

“You don’t understand what had happened,” Theriot said.

“How did you think I wouldn’t follow up on this? That I wouldn’t find out?”

“Because you’re a cop?” Theriot said.

His answer, Maureen realized, was genuine, not a joke or a shot. She watched as the delayed understanding drifted across his face like daylight across a dirty room, the realization that Leary had gone missing, or maybe worse.

He squeezed his temples with one hand. “Shit. I knew it. Fuck. Man, I can’t catch a break. What did she do?”

“Yeah, shit,” Maureen said. The wind kicked up, swirling dust and grit around her legs. “It just so happens we need her now, as part of a homicide investigation, and now she’s fucking gone. I watched her walk out the fucking door.” She cut her hand through the air. “No trace.”

“I called for an ambulance,” Theriot said, wiping a big hand down his now-sweaty face. “It started out right.”

Whatever modest hopes he had for his future in the sheriff’s department, Maureen knew, he felt they were quickly disappearing. She let him keep thinking it.

“I did call,” Theriot insisted. “I swear, but they were gonna make me wait an hour at least. Unless somebody’s bleeding or having a violent seizure or something, they hate coming to the jail. Not for mystery shit like her. I’d have better luck with United Cab. A psych case like her, there’s no place to put her hardly. Our psych beds at the jail are full every night. Nobody wants her. It’s a major pain in the ass for everybody.”

“It’s your fucking job,” Maureen said. “It’s what the sheriff’s department is for. To take care of the jail and the prisoners. Did I miss a memo?”

“What do you think happens,” Theriot said, “if I put a stone-crazy broad like that in my holding cell? You know what that does to the other prisoners? To those other women? Then I got a whole night full of maximum crazy and nobody gets any help. Not me, not you, not her.”

“How is any of this my problem?” Maureen said. “You’re worried about your prisoners. What about the detective I have to tell is short one material witness in a homicide case? What about that? You think I’m gonna eat this shit for you? You think I’m gonna cover for you at my own expense?”

“I’m not asking for that, but have a heart, Officer. Most of our male general population is living in tents, like it’s a fucking war or something.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Try doing my job for a week. You’re breaking my balls over one crazy lady? The city’s infested with crime, and we don’t even have a fucking jail.”

“Look, Deputy,” she said, “whether or not I have a heart, you fucked up, and we have to do what we can to fix it. The woman’s name is Madison Leary, and how about you lay off calling her a broad, for starters.”

“Whatever you say, Officer.”

“Did Leary say anything, anything at all, that might indicate where she’s gone?”

Theriot shook his head. “She was mumbling some shit about rabbits, I think. Nothing that made any sense. And then she went blank and limp. I mean, I thought for a minute she’d up and fucking died on us.” He looked around, as if someone else, maybe Leary herself, could be eavesdropping on their conversation. “To be honest, she made me real nervous, she made us all real nervous, all the deputies. I’ve been doing this a while. I’ve seen some shit that’ll straighten your short and curlies. This was something new. We were afraid to touch her, like a wire lying in the street and you don’t know if it’s live or not.”

“But you touched her,” Maureen said.

Theriot raised his hands. “Nothing bad. Nothing inappropriate. We couldn’t leave her lying on the floor, drooling. Me and another deputy, we carried her out to the car, and laid her down in the backseat and drove her over to the hospital. It’s only six blocks. It was best for everybody.” Theriot licked his lips. “When she was lying there in the backseat, she was singing. All the way to the hospital. Real quiet, the words were hard to make out. Something about a butcher’s boy. And the devil. I swear. Gave me the shakes.”

An idea floated across the back of Maureen’s mind. According to what she’d learned tonight, Madison Leary had been on the streets when Gage was killed.

“I didn’t come here for a fucking ghost story,” Maureen said. “Jesus. Grow up.”

“If you saw the security video, you saw the shape she was in. It never even occurred to me that she would wander off. She didn’t seem hardly capable of it. Then some car dumped that shooting victim outside and all hell broke loose after that.”

“And you got caught up in helping the shooting victim,” Maureen said.

Theriot hesitated, thinking for a moment, Maureen knew, that she was throwing him a lifeline. He realized she wasn’t. “He was already at the ER. I don’t know what other help we had to offer. We came back here.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe the situation had turned out as bad as it had, either for him or for Leary. “Listen, are you going to jam me up on this? Did this Leary woman, like,
see
somebody get killed? How important is she?”

Maureen shrugged. She lit a cigarette. “If it’s between me and you taking the fall, it ain’t gonna be me.”

She couldn’t pinpoint why she was making Theriot squirm the way she was. Because he whined, she thought. Because he whimpered and showed her his soft underbelly without a fight, a weakness that always brought out her claws, cop business or not. She’d hidden Leary’s existence from Drayton. Hidden the whole story of the traffic stop. She’d let Quinn make off with the Post-it note from Gage’s wallet. She was as guilty as Theriot of ass-covering behavior. Was she any better, any different, than this guy? She had no right putting the screws to him.

Theriot licked his lips again, blew out his breath. “C’mon, Officer, cut me a break. I need this job. I got alimony. I got a mortgage.”

“I can’t make any promises,” Maureen said. “You fucked up, that’s on you. You have to live with the consequences. If I have to answer for what happened to Leary, I’m pointing in your direction. I’m not gonna lie to anyone for your sake.”

“I was trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

“You mishandled a prisoner and then lied about it to me,” Maureen said. “You’re lucky you’re not up on charges right now. You realize the break I’m cutting you?”

“I wear a uniform, too, you know.” Hands on his hips, Theriot kicked at the gravel in the street. His eyes glistened with tears. “That’s the problem with you cops. You make everyone you talk to feel like a fucking criminal.”

* * *

When she reached the cruiser, Maureen unlocked the trunk and pulled out the jumper cables. She slung them over her shoulder, walking up the wooden ramp and into the intake and processing office. She got as far as the soda machines before she realized the family with the broken-down car was gone.