Let the Devil Out (2 page)

Maureen would make sure he never found the woman he pursued. Not tonight. Not ever. And that he'd never know what hit him.

 

2

Hours later, on a quiet residential street, a couple of blocks away from the late-night bustle of Frenchmen Street, Maureen climbed into her beat-up old Honda, the door creaking as she opened it. She sat in the driver's seat, the door open, one foot out on the sidewalk. She found her cigarettes and lit up. She was not quite ready to drive home. Too much to drink. She needed more time than one cigarette would give her, but that eight to ten minutes would have to suffice. What she should do, she thought, was call a cab. Maybe she would.

She put her head back on the headrest. Yeah, maybe a cab was best. In a minute, though. After this cigarette.

With her right hand she felt around on the Honda's passenger seat. Where was her gum? She always had gum in the car. Right? Where the fuck—no, wait—that was the patrol car, that was when she always had gum. Nothing but empty cigarette packs on the Honda's passenger seat. Well, whatever. Fuck it. If she wasn't going to be driving or kissing anyone, she didn't need the gum. Her eyes closed, she smiled. No, no kissing anyone tonight.

Only one man that night had attracted her attention.

And she'd left him, the man she'd followed out of d.b.a., crumpled on a curb on Burgundy Street, on the other side of the neighborhood from where she was now, but not far from the front stoop of the woman he'd followed. She'd left him weeping hot tears onto his bloody cheeks, bleeding from the mouth, and clutching his broken wrist to his chest.

But she'd left him hours ago. She should've gone right home after that. The interlude had left her spent. Now here she was, too drunk to drive and too tired to deal with a cab.

Instead of going home like she should have, she had restarted that night's intended mission. Hustling away from Burgundy Street, Maureen had worked her way deeper into the Marigny neighborhood, toward the Bywater, asking again at the neighborhood bars and corner stores if anyone had seen Madison Leary. Of course, same as always, no one had. This search had been going on for a month.

Maureen was asking the same questions of the same people in the same places every week. It was bad police work, and she knew it. Because now these people she pestered for information that they had already told her they didn't have were starting to ask
her
questions. When they did, she dodged. She copped an attitude. Or she tried to charm. No matter what tack she took, she tried to hide her face as best she could. She kept her hood up. She looked at the ground. Anything not to be memorable.

She couldn't tell the people she talked to that she was a cop. She definitely couldn't have them figuring it out for themselves. If anyone IDed her and called the NOPD to complain, she'd be sunk. She'd never get her badge back then. She was supposed to be staying at home this month. Behaving. Waiting. Being a good girl.

Conducting her investigation while half-drunk and totally disheveled made for good-enough cover, Maureen hoped. Her wardrobe helped her blend in with the neighborhood. She hoped to come across more like a desperate ex than law enforcement. She figured she hadn't been a cop long enough to emanate the vibe of a narc. While she hadn't scored the information she wanted, she hadn't gotten caught looking for it. And she hadn't gotten caught doing anything
else
she shouldn't be doing, either. But that night, she'd done something she'd never done before. Because she had gone out asking questions after dealing with the man, she had left witnesses to the fact that she was in the same neighborhood at the same time as one of her men.

And somebody had called for help for the rotten bastard. Maureen had seen the emergency lights of the cops and the ambulance flashing down Burgundy Street. Which meant there was a police record now of his beat-down.

Avoiding someone calling an ambulance, though, would've required hurting him less. But less pain and less injury left less of a lasting impression. She had the silver-haired man to thank for teaching her that.

So, so wise of you, Maureen. Every step of the way. You're letting him burn you down, she thought, from beyond the grave. After everything you did to get away from him.

How stupid can you be?

“Excuse me, Officer.”

Maureen opened her eyes. Had she really heard that? Had she fallen asleep and dreamed it? That voice, she thought, feeling herself grinning, is in your head.

“Officer?”

It took Maureen a moment to recall that she wasn't in uniform. So was someone she knew approaching? She took a deep breath, willing herself attentive. Shit. Maybe someone she'd hassled in the neighborhood
had
figured her out. She checked her sweatshirt pocket for the ASP.

She put up her hood and climbed out of the car. Her legs were leaden. Her butt had fallen asleep. She slipped her hand into her sweatshirt pocket and gripped the ASP.

Blinking, she watched a short, slight figure approach out of the darkness, walking, no, not walking, more like sauntering, right down the middle of the street. Puffs of breath rose into the air around the figure's head. The night was so quiet Maureen could hear a metallic tinkling with every step the figure took, like the sound of spurs.

“I hear you're looking for me,” the figure said.

Not spurs, Maureen thought. Metal buckles. Undone metal buckles running up the front of a pair of tattered, knee-high leather boots.

“Dice,” Maureen said. “Not you, exactly. I've been looking for Leary.”

Dice was a street kid, a skinny girl around twenty years old. Silver piercings adorned her nose and lips. An elaborate tattoo of Smaug the dragon wrapped around her shaved head. She and the other young homeless in New Orleans called themselves “travelers.” Cops, shop owners, bar owners, and anyone else who didn't like them called them “gutter punks.” Dice was a panhandler, a pickpocket, and a petty thief, depending on her needs. And she was also a heroin addict who, the last time Maureen had seen her, had managed to string together a decent amount of clean time through force of will alone. She often toted around a beat-up banjo that she plucked at for tips on street corners while sitting on an overturned pickle bucket. At least that was the theory. Maureen had never seen her do more than attempt to tune the thing.

Tonight, as Dice got closer, Maureen couldn't see the dragon. Against the cold, Dice wore a black knit watch cap, low over her eyes. The rest of her was wrapped up in a bulky wool herringbone coat many sizes too large. The coat fell below her knees. She looked to Maureen like a child in her father's overcoat. She didn't have her banjo, either.

“You've been following me,” Maureen said.

“Only since you left the Spotted Cat,” Dice said, grinning.

The last place I was in before coming to the car, Maureen thought. After the man on Burgundy Street. “Where have you been?”

“Here. There. Around.”

“You've been hiding from me,” Maureen said.

“How can I be hiding from you,” Dice said, “when you aren't even looking for me? You said a second ago that you've been looking for Madison.”

Maureen closed the car door. She stepped into the street to meet Dice. “Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?”

Dice pouted, toeing the asphalt. Maureen noticed the toe cap of her boot was wrapped in duct tape. “Nothing more for me? No ‘How are ya' or ‘How ya been' for me?”

Maureen rubbed her eyes. “You're right. I'm sorry. It's late and I'm tired. Of course I was hoping to find you, too, along the way.”

“I'll forgive you for a cigarette,” Dice said.

Maureen obliged. Other than Dice, Maureen wasn't sure there was another person in New Orleans who had spent any time with Madison Leary and lived to tell about it. As Dice had told the story, they had lived together at a hostel for a few weeks, when Leary had first arrived in New Orleans and before she had run out of the powerful medication that kept her demons at bay. Paranoia, schizophrenia, and who knew what else. Maureen had tried recruiting Dice to help find Madison when she'd first become a person of interest in a murder case.

Soon after that, though, Madison had gone from person of interest to number one suspect. Then things had gone to shit for Maureen on the NOPD, and Dice and Madison had both disappeared into the New Orleans underground. For the past six weeks, Maureen's conscience had been gnawed raw by the idea that she had gotten Dice killed for asking her to betray Leary.

Maybe she does know where Leary is, Maureen thought. Maybe she needs a way to tell me. “I thought maybe you'd moved on. The weather is turning, it's cold living on the streets. I thought maybe you'd headed for Florida or California.”

Dice shrugged. She held her cigarette close to her mouth. On her hand was a fingerless black-and-white-striped glove. Tough picking pockets with gloves on, Maureen guessed. The things you learned staying out late in New Orleans, she thought.

“I considered it,” Dice said. “Remember Taylor? The boy who wore the blue eye shadow over one eye, the one who wanted to fuck me so bad it oozed out of his pores? He begged me to come back with him to Orlando.”

Maureen shrugged. “He seemed nice. Florida's okay. Warm. My mom and her boyfriend are thinking of retiring there.”

“The Empire of the Rat? Seriously?” Dice said.

“Not Orlando,” Maureen said. “But Florida.”

Dice waved away the idea, a disgusted look on her face. “No offense to your moms, but fuck that.” She tossed her cigarette in the street. “I like it here. New Orleans grows on you. I hear the winter doesn't last, anyway.”

“I wouldn't know,” Maureen said. “This is my first one, too.”

“And really, it's only a couple of months, which is really only a few weeks, when you think about it, until Mardi Gras gets here.
That
I want to see.”

I'm sure you do, Maureen thought. Tourist pockets to pick as far as the eye can see.

“Actually, it starts right after Christmas,” Dice said. “So it's practically fucking here already.”

Maureen could hear the hope in Dice's voice. She knew it wasn't for the holidays, or for Carnival. It was for the end of the cold, and for the chance to steal enough money to eat hot food, take a hot shower, and maybe to live indoors at a hostel or a flophouse until the Mardi Gras money ran out and she was back on the streets again. Many of the kids who Dice ran with had homes and parents to return to; it was an ill-kept secret on the streets. Maureen knew that Dice had neither of those things.

“She's a murder suspect, you know,” Maureen said. “You withhold information and you're committing a felony. And she's dangerous. You know that as well as anybody.”

Dice cocked her head, studied Maureen out of one eye. “Are you even a cop anymore?”

“Of course I am,” Maureen said. “I've just been on kind of a hiatus for a while.”

Dice nodded, sagely. “Because of that cop you knew who died in the river.”

“Madison doesn't have to talk to me,” Maureen said. “She can reach out to Detective Atkinson. She's the one working those murder cases now. I know Atkinson. She's the best there is. She's good people.” She stretched out her empty hands. “You could talk to Atkinson.”

“You've told her everything I told you?” Dice said.

“Weeks ago.”

“Then what's the point?” Dice said. She turned in a circle on her boot heel. “This Atkinson's already heard what I have to say. Why does she need to hear it from me in person?”

“We could help you,” Maureen said. “Quid pro quo. You help us; we help you. Atkinson has a lot more juice than I do.”

Dice laughed out loud. “The police? The city? Help me? Help me do what?”

“Sure,” Maureen said. “There are diversion programs, shelters, halfway houses, all kinds of resources.”

“Diversion programs,” Dice mocked, making air quotes with her fingers. “Because I need my face jammed into some bull dyke's muff in the middle of the night. Or some creepy old perv slipping his cold fingers down the back of my pants. No fucking thanks.” She laughed again. “You're terrible at this, Officer. You're a terrible storyteller. You don't believe a single word coming out of your own mouth.”

“Fine, you're right,” Maureen said. “But you know as well as I do that Madison killed two men.”

“Allegedly.”

“You're her attorney now?” Maureen said.

“Those two men followed her to New Orleans,” Dice said, her voice heating up, “and hunted her when they got here. All Madison wanted was to get away from them and the rest of their stupid group of fake soldiers. What did they call themselves?” She made air quotes again. “The Watchmen Brigade.” She made a show of rolling her eyes. “Whatever. Those two men who died, you and I both know they had it coming. The world is better off without them. Don't even tell me you don't believe that.”

“We don't get to make those decisions.”

“There you go again,” Dice said, “spouting shit that you don't believe.” She moved a step closer. “Think of it this way, then. If Madison
is
the killer you seem to think she is, look at what she did to those Watchmen. She cut both of their throats. You think it's best being out here alone after dark chasing after her when she's this crazy murderer?”

Maureen scratched at her scalp. Why had she not gone home hours ago? She'd forgotten what a pain in the ass Dice could be, like a gremlin you couldn't quite grab. And how
smart
she was. “Can you even tell me if she's stayed in town?”

“I could,” Dice said, smiling, “but I won't.” She paused. “Maybe.”

“Look who's playing games now,” Maureen said. “What does that even mean?” She reached for her wallet. “You know what.” She pulled out a ten, handed it to Dice. “This is why you followed me. Because you need fucking money. The rest of this is playing games to make yourself feel better about
begging
from me.”