Murder in the Rue Chartres

Life--and death--don't stop for disaster in the Big Easy.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina,, Chanse MacLeod struggles to reclaim his life in a shattered New Orleans. Unfortunately, his last client before the storm was murdered the very night she hired him to find her long-missing father. Determined to see the case through, he is drawn into a web of intrigue and evil that proves to be as devastating as Katrina.

Murder in the Rue Chartres

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Murder in the Rue St. Ann

eBook Copyright © 2012 By Greg Herren.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-842-1

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First Print Edition: © 2007

First eBook Edition: Bold Strokes Books April 2012

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Credits

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

The Chanse MacLeod Mysteries

Murder in the Rue Dauphine

Murder in the Rue St. Ann

Murder in the Rue Chartres

Murder in the Rue Ursulines

Murder in the Garden District

Murder in the Irish Channel

This book was written over a period of time from early October 2005 through December 2006, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the devastating flood that followed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to thank my editor, Joe Pittman, for his incredible patience, his insight, and his kindness. It was he who pushed for this book to be done at all, at a time when I had long since given up on there ever being a third Chanse MacLeod book. His support at a time when I was probably at one of the lowest points of my life is something for which I will always be grateful.

In those horrible weeks after the evacuation, when I had no idea when I would be able to come home, or even if I had a home to come back to or if New Orleans was gone forever, the incredible love and kindness of so many friends and strangers from all over the country made the misery almost bearable. Thank all of you for your big hearts.

My co-workers at the NO/AIDS Task Force are a great bunch of people who do amazing work for the New Orleans community. They’ve also been good friends and a valuable base of emotional support for me: J. M. Redmann, Noel Twilbeck, Mark Drake, Joshua Fegley, Allison Vertovec, Ked Dixon, Seema Gai, and Darrin Harris. Bless you all.

This book began while I was staying in Hammond, Louisiana, a wonderful little college town on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Hammond has become a second home to me, and the folks I always associate with Hammond (even though some of them are from New Orleans) are very dear to me: Bev and Butch Marshall, Michael Ledet and Patricia Brady, Elizabeth Schmidt and her husband Norman, Bev’s writing classes at Southeastern Louisiana University, and many others.

Julie Smith and Lee Pryor are two of my biggest cheerleaders. Love to you both.

A special thanks to John Pope of the New Orleans
Times- Picayune
, for sharing his experiences and that of other reporters in the wake of the disaster. An entire book could be written about the courage of the
Times-Picayune
staff, who did their jobs so that those of us scattered to the four corners of the country could know what was really going on in our beloved home city. Any errors of fact in Paige’s experiences after the hurricane are completely my fault.

Poppy Z. Brite and her husband, Chris Debarr, are also worthy of mention, for their support, their friendship, and their ability to make me laugh no matter what else is going on around me.

Becky Cochrane, Timothy J. Lambert, and Tom Wocken deserve mention for making Houston another safe haven for me.

And of course, Paul J. Willis, my life partner, makes everything worthwhile. We’ve survived a lot together, and I thank God for him every day for always loving me, supporting me in my endeavors, and loving me when I am not very lovable.

This book is dedicated to the city of New Orleans.

“I came out in the French Quarter years before I came out in the Garden District.”

from Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

It was six weeks before I returned to my broken city.

Usually when I drove home from the west, as soon as I crossed onto dry land again in Kenner, excitement would bubble up inside and I’d start to smile.
Almost home
, I’d think, and let out a sigh of relief. New Orleans was home for me, and I hated leaving for any reason. I’d never regretted moving there after graduating from LSU. It was the first place I’d ever felt at home, like I belonged. I’d hated the little town in east Texas where I’d grown up. All I could think about was getting old enough to escape. Baton Rouge for college had been merely a way station—it never occurred to me to permanently settle there. New Orleans was where I belonged, and I’d known that the first time I’d ever set foot in the city. It was a crazy quilt of eccentricities, frivolities, and irritations sweltering in the damp heat, a city where you could buy a drink at any time of day, a place where you could easily believe in magic. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Any time I’d taken a trip before, within a few days I’d get homesick and started counting the hours until it was time to come home.

But this time wasn’t like the others. This time, I hadn’t been able to come home, and had no idea how long it would be before I could. Now, I was nervous, my stomach clenched into knots, my palms sweating on the steering wheel as I sang along to Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn the Beat Around” on the radio. It was everything I’d feared for the last few weeks when I thought about coming home, the anxiety building as the odometer clocked off another mile and I got closer to home.

It was different.

The most obvious thing was the lack of traffic. Even outside the airport, the traffic was usually heavy, sometimes slowing to a complete standstill. But other than a couple of military vehicles, a cement mixer, and a couple of dirty and tired looking sedans, I-10 was deserted. There was a film of dirt on everything as far as I could see, tinting my vision sepia. Huge trees lay toppled and debris was everywhere. Signs that used to advertise hotels, motels, restaurants, storage facilities, and pretty much any kind of business you could think of were now just poles, the signs gone except for the support skeleton. Buildings had been blown over, fences were wrecked and down, and almost everywhere I looked blue tarps hung on roofs, their edges lifting in the slight breeze. My breath started coming a little faster, my eyes filled, and I bit down on my lower lip as I focused back on the road.

No cars joined at the airport on-ramp, or the one at Williams Boulevard just beyond it. No planes were landing or taking off.

“Because we believe in rebuilding New Orleans, we here at—”

I jabbed a finger at the car stereo and Faith Hill’s voice filled the car. I settled back into my seat. I was ready to be out of the car. It was just past four. I’d been on the road since seven and my back was starting to ache, my legs tightening up. No matter what I found when I got to my house, it would feel good just to get out of the car. My best friend Paige’s apartment just a few blocks away was fine, and she’d been back as soon as power had been restored. She’d evacuated with other reporters from the
Times-Picayune
to Baton Rouge, and had been in and out of the city daily until she could return home. Her landline was still down, and cell phone service had been spotty since the storm for those with a 504 area code—sometimes you could get through; sometimes you couldn’t. She’d gone by my apartment and given me a report within a few days after the disaster. The roof was still on, there was no mold, all my windows were intact, and most importantly, my neighborhood was not under water. She’d emptied out my refrigerator, opened some of the windows to get air circulating to help fight mold—and when the power came back on she’d turned the air conditioning on. I was luckier than most. The flood hadn’t reached my house and the massive old oak in front of the house hadn’t fallen. For me, it was just a matter of when I could come home, rather than what would I find when I finally did.

At least I had something to come back to. So many had nothing.

A few cars zoomed onto I-10 from the Causeway, and that was even stranger. No matter the time of day, the interchange between the two highways was always stop-and-go traffic. There was just no one in New Orleans, no one going in or out. I went around the corner just after the 610 split and headed for the underpass near Metairie Road, and that’s when I saw that the mud line along the concrete walls was over my head. I choked back a sob and tried to fight the tears again.
Get a hold of yourself
, I thought.
It’s going to get worse the further in you go. Be strong—you have to be strong.

The huge red crawfish atop the Semolina’s at Metairie Road was gone. Surely they hadn’t taken it down—the wind must have blown it away. I swallowed and then couldn’t help but smile a little. Maybe it had wound up in one of the cemeteries just beyond; wedged headfirst into a house of the dead.
Now THAT would be a really fun picture
, I thought, but then had the sobering thought that it also might have blown through someone’s roof. But even that struck me as funny, in a gallows humor kind of way. How would you report that to your insurance company? “Um, a huge crawfish is embedded in my roof.” It wasn’t funny, really, but it was a distracting thought.

And then I went around the curve and saw the city skyline in the distance. It was immediately apparent to me, even at that distance, that the Superdome didn’t look right.