Doing the Devil's Work (19 page)

“I do,” she said.

“At least pretend to care how other people feel,” Preacher said. “Even when they piss you off,
especially
then, in fact. You’ll get more done. Who else knows about this mix-up with her?”

“In the department,” Maureen said. “Me, and now, you.”

“It is a shame about her,” Preacher said. He thought for a long moment, collecting himself. “For the record, I don’t condone how she was treated. I’m not unsympathetic.”

“Why is it so important,” Maureen asked, “that Madison stay lost, and that Drayton not learn about that traffic stop?”

She knew Quinn’s answer, that Gage was somehow, in some shady way, connected to Caleb Heath, a connection that Quinn was motivated to keep hidden. She wanted to hear Preacher’s explanation. She hoped it was better, or at least different. She didn’t want to hear that even the irascible, proudly selfish Preacher Boyd was beholden to the mighty Heaths.

“This Clayton Gage she was with,” Preacher began, “the feds got a hit on him. Drayton has to meet with the local FBI in the morning, and the U.S. Marshals are waiting in the wings to talk to him, which is why he’s reaching out to you suddenly tonight. They’re only interested in Gage as far as I know, but Drayton’s worried it’s more than that, and that the Gage investigation is a pretense to get him in a room where they can hit him with something else.” He paused, thinking, Maureen could tell, about how much further he should go. “I’m not saying Drayton’s got
reason
for the feds to make him nervous, far be it from me to make aspersions, but, you know, it is what it is. He’s pissed as a wet cat that Gage led the feds to him. Don’t count on him being a reasonable man.”

“I knew it,” Maureen said. “Didn’t I tell you? Gage’s a kidnapper, right? Or some kind of serial killer.”

“He’s on the federal terrorism watch list,” Preacher said.

Maureen was taken aback. She hadn’t seen that coming. “Another one? Jesus, he’s got to be connected to Cooley.”

“Gage was a wanted man in Tennessee and North Carolina. For gun crimes and threats and assaults against law-enforcement officers. They’ve been looking for him for over a year and a half. They’re thinking he might have been down here running with the new offshoot of the Louisiana chapter of the Sovereign Citizens, but they couldn’t get a solid line on him. They were looking for him out in the river parishes when he turned up dead in New Orleans.”

“LaPlace,” Maureen said, “the town on Gage’s driver’s license, and where his truck was registered, that’s out that way, correct?”

Preacher nodded. “Two federal fugitives with hate-group connections dead within a week in our district? Can’t be a coincidence. They’re thinking maybe Cooley was connected to the Citizens as well.”

“I’m not familiar,” Maureen said.

“Sovereign Citizens is an antigovernment thing, mostly they work in the courts, bizarre privacy and antitax stuff, lots of paperwork and protest, but there’s a history of violent, militant offshoots growing off the main branch of the movement. Seems we have one of those here in Louisiana, a gun-happy splinter group called the Watchmen Brigade. These militant groups share a particularly violent attitude toward law enforcement. We’re a favorite target.”

“Cop haters? That’s nothing new.”

“Cop killers,” Preacher said. “To hear the feds tell it.”

“A cop-killing hate group? How do I not know about this already?”

“We haven’t had them here in Orleans Parish, not that anybody knew about till Gage got his throat cut. A Sovereign Citizens militant wing killed two cops in West Memphis three years ago. Another killed two in South Carolina over some land about a decade ago. Now they’re moving into Louisiana.”

“So it’s a Deep South thing?” Maureen asked.

“The Citizens are nationwide,” Preacher said, shaking his head, “as is the devil’s work that comes with them. The feds busted some nutbag in Alaska planning on going after cops and judges. He had grenades. One of them pulled a gun on a cop in Ohio, got himself shot dead by the side of the road.” Preacher puffed on his cigar. “When you searched Gage’s car, you check the glove box?”

“No, I did not,” Maureen said, her mouth dry. “I saw the handbags. I got distracted. Christ, he reached for it at one point. Said he was going for paperwork. I feel sick.”

“The feds are feeling pretty queasy about the whole thing, too. Get pulled over and open fire, pull the pin on a grenade when the officer is alongside the car, that’s the MO. Total ambush. They’ve done it before. Like a fucking suicide bomber at a checkpoint. It’s what happened in West Memphis and Ohio. Idaho and New Hampshire, too. Personally, I think these guys count on lowered suspicions from cops since they’re white. I heard they put bounties on specific cops in certain departments—minority officers are a favorite target.” He stopped, patted his caramel forehead with a handkerchief. “I spent some time catching up on the Internet while trying to contact you. This is why I hate computers. They’ve been more busy than ever since we got us a black president.” He wiped the corners of his mouth. “Seems we got white boys turning Taliban all across the country, including right here in the sportsman’s paradise. And now these trailer-park Taliban are turning up dead in New Orleans. Crazy times.”

This news about Gage explained the gun-show ticket, Maureen thought, and the business cards. She was willing to wager every one of those dealers exhibited at the local gun shows. Gage was a local boy who knew his way around the southern part of the state, and who knew which dealers didn’t run background checks. There were two gun shows a month in the New Orleans area alone. He probably had a whole network set up from New Orleans to New Iberia. That made sense. He’d be the perfect point man for a group looking to arm themselves to the teeth on the QT, as long as he didn’t do anything stupid like drag strange women out of bars. But they always did, didn’t they? Cooley would fit into this somewhere, maybe as Gage’s point man in New Orleans, maybe as an assistant of some kind. Maureen figured that whoever had killed them knew how the two men fit together.

Maureen also knew she had to make sure Drayton had found those business cards and the ticket, and was making use of them. He could lead the feds back to a whole network of illegal gun dealers. Goddamn, she thought. How did a murder this important land on Drayton’s plate? She’d have to talk to Atkinson, who, as far as Maureen was concerned, needed to take over the Gage investigation posthaste.

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight,” Maureen said. “We had a guy involved in a potential cop-killing conspiracy, a federal fugitive, a fucking
terrorist
, in the backseat of one of our cars, and instead of taking him to lockup, where the feds would’ve found him when he hit the system again and been able to use him against a domestic terrorist organization, an organization that’s maybe out to murder New Orleans cops, we let him go.”

“Not the NOPD’s best day,” Preacher said. “I’ll grant you that.”

“And now that the wannabe cop killer got murdered,” Maureen said, “we’re covering up the fact we ever knew him?”

“Forget you and me, what do you think this would mean for the NOPD if word got out we had him and let him go, without even bothering to run his name through our computer? We’re talking national humiliation.
Again.
Just when the department’s getting Katrina behind them. You didn’t run his ID, did you?”

“I did not,” Maureen said. “I left it to Quinn, who obviously never followed through. I fucked this up. Did I? Did I fuck this up? I got distracted by Gage’s tough-guy attitude, and then Leary and the handbags, and then you guys showed up. We had this motherfucker. We
had
him. Oh my God, I fucked this up.”

“Not that it would matter if the shit hits the fan,” Preacher said, “but none of us thought Gage was anything more than a drunk coon-ass when we had him by the side of the road. The Superdome and the French Quarter were full of ’em all day. And, don’t forget, nobody knows we had him but you, me, Quinn, and Ruiz.”

Maureen looked up at the sky, biting down hard on her bottom lip, trying to blink her vision back into focus, her heart racing.
I told you so
, she wanted to scream. It was not
none
of us who had underestimated Gage. She’d said he was dangerous. Who cared if she was wrong about exactly why he was trouble? She’d insisted they needed to hang on to him.
I told you, I told you, I told you. I told you he was trouble
. She also knew that if there was one thing Preacher didn’t want to hear right then, it was
I told you so
from her. There was no point to it. She’d accomplish nothing by reminding him of her suspicions.

“If this case somehow ties into people planning to kill cops,” Maureen said, “how can I lie about that? Why should I? We didn’t do anything wrong, not really. A couple of minor mistakes at the traffic stop, a miscommunication at the Gage crime scene.”

“No one is asking you to lie,” Preacher said. “I would never. I’m only asking for some finesse from you.”

Maureen laughed. “You do realize who you’re talking to.”

“Were it another detective in charge of the Gage murder,” Preacher said, “I might even say we should come clean. But I don’t trust Drayton, not one bit. He will hang the NOPD losing track of Gage and getting him killed on you if he can, Coughlin. He might do worse.”

“Hang what on me? I told him about the traffic stop, it’s not my fault he ignored me.”

“Anyone else witness that conversation?” Preacher asked.

“Excuse me?”

“If it comes down to your word against Drayton’s,” Preacher said, “who can vouch for your version of the story?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Who?”

“Quinn, maybe,” Maureen said. “I’m sure he was near enough to hear me talking to Drayton.”

“The same Quinn whose idea it was to let Gage off the hook in the first place?”

The same Quinn, Maureen thought, who absconded with evidence linking Gage and Caleb Heath. She knew what Preacher was asking her: was she willing to stake her career and maybe her freedom on Quinn having her back? Did she trust him?

“Wait a minute, Quinn told me it was
your
idea to release Gage.”

Preacher hesitated. “I approved it as ranking officer on the scene. There’s a difference. Maybe you misunderstood Quinn.”

“Maybe,” Maureen said, but she didn’t believe it.

“Drayton will blame you,” Preacher said, “for letting someone conspiring to kill cops get away. He will use you. When you get upstairs alone in a room with him, he will accuse you of queering his scene. He might accuse you of much worse. Cooley and Gage are in the system.

“Someone, a clever cop, say a thorough cop with ambitions, who crossed paths with them and knew where to look could find their names in the computer. What if that certain cop figured out these Sovereign Citizens and the Watchmen were moving into New Orleans? What if that cop decided to forgo the usual channels and take matters into her own hands? These fugitives are in league with cop killers, they’re wannabe cop killers themselves. Using an untraceable weapon like a blade instead of something that leaves a trail like her service weapon would be smart. Throw off suspicion. What if she had co-conspirators on the night shift? Who wouldn’t want to help ice a bunch of cop killers and defend New Orleans?”

“Enough already,” Maureen said. “I get your point. The amount of thought you’ve put into this makes me nervous. Christ almighty, I’m half convinced I did it. Would Drayton go that far, to accuse me of vigilante murder?”

“We’ve made it easy enough for him. You said it yourself, we had Gage in the car and we let him go. He was dead less than twenty-four hours later. Now why would we do that? How could that happen? Drayton’ll make you look like a fuckup at best and a corrupt cop at worst, and he’ll leave it to the feds to figure out which one you are. He’ll hang the rest of us, too, if it makes you look more guilty. I’m convinced that’s his plan.”

“I couldn’t have killed Gage,” Maureen said. “I was at the jail looking for Madison Leary and then I was at the Eighth dealing with Marques. None of that is hard to prove. I had no idea who Gage fucking was, or where he was. I thought he was in jail the whole time.”

“So what?” Preacher said. “If Drayton needs a face for the news, it’s gonna be yours. And then he’s the one in front of the cameras as the one who caught you. By the time the internal inquiry gets around to confirming your alibi, it’ll be too late. You won’t go to jail, but you’ll be done in the NOPD. Being innocent doesn’t mean you can’t be damaged goods. I don’t know what Drayton knows, or what he thinks he knows that’s got him upset. I do know that he will toss you to the feds to get their attention away from him.”

“He’s dirty, isn’t he?” Maureen asked. “That motherfucker, he caught federal attention long before this. That’s why they’re making him squirm, not telling him what the meeting tomorrow morning is about. They want to see what he does under pressure. They want to see if he’ll give up someone worse. He’s got something to hide. He’s got a guilty conscience.”

“Who doesn’t? To you, it doesn’t matter why Drayton is extra twitchy about the feds. He might very well know about Gage’s past, but it only matters that he’s nervous, and that he’s looking for something shiny, like you, to distract them, especially if he ends up feeling cornered.”

Maureen took a deep breath, let out a long sigh. “Okay. What do I tell him, Preach? What do I do? How do I play it?”

“You keep cool. You answer every question he asks. Nothing less. Otherwise, engage him as little as possible. And do not let it slip that you know the feds have come sniffing around him.”

“You tell me this stuff I’m not supposed to know and expect me to act like I don’t know anything. How do I do that?”

“That’s the easy part,” Preacher said. “Act like everyone we arrest. Act like everyone we interview at the scene of a crime. They do a great job of acting like they don’t know a damn thing, despite the fact we all know better.”

“And offer nothing more than what he specifically asks for,” Maureen said, more to herself than to Preacher.