The Gone Dead Train (11 page)

After processing him, she'd checked in as off duty with dispatch and took the elevator to the tenth-floor burglary squad room. Her friend, Detective Wayne Dixon, had offered to take a break so she could use his computer to do a search on Davis and Lacy and have her findings available for her meeting with Billy Able.

She yawned over the keyboard. Must be a buildup of the tranquilizers she'd taken over the last couple of weeks plus the effect of the
ewe
. Normally she would go home after a ten-hour night shift, but this was her best opportunity to demonstrate to Able that she was good partner material. There was one opening coming available on the homicide squad for a new hire. If she impressed Able, maybe he'd go to bat for her with Middlebrook.

In three clicks she found twenty links to articles written by blues enthusiasts along with YouTube videos of club performances from Red's and Little Man's five-year-old European tour. Wikipedia listed four albums under Red's name. In the eighties, two of his songs made it into the top twenty of the R and B charts plus one crossover hit, “Burning Tree Blues.” A few other artists covered Red's songs, so there had be royalties coming from publishing unless someone had managed to swindle him on his original contracts. She copied names to track the payments. If Red had family, the royalties would belong to them.

The archives for the New Orleans
Times-Picayune
carried a six-year-old profile on Davis and Lacy in the entertainment section. They had been mainstays in the Frenchmen Street entertainment district for years and were listed as regular players at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the French Quarter Festival.

Searching further, she dug out an old crime-beat article that reported an aggravated assault charge naming Davis and Lacy as the victims. In addition to the assault, which had put both men in the hospital, there were charges of burglary and criminal damage to property that were brought against their assailant, William Cooley, aka Cool Willy. The notorious pimp had attacked Davis and Lacy in an alley outside a nightclub. He later entered their home, where he'd damaged property including their instruments.

Pulling up the name William Cooley on NCIC, the National Crime Information Center site, she found a history of arrests that began with shoplifting, assault, and solicitation of prostitution. Later he'd graduated to grand larceny and criminal assault. Yet Cooley's activities had paid well enough to hire lawyers who'd limited his jail time.

Her bruised cheek tingled. She touched it. A few more keystrokes brought up an article dated a year after the original crime-beat report:

Davis and Lacy had left New Orleans, probably out of fear of reprisal from the pimp. Now they were dead.

Frankie clicked print and was standing to retrieve her reports just as she heard Wayne Dixon's voice coming down the hall.

“It's at my desk, Coral,” Wayne said. “There are a few things you might want—photos of Brad hamming it up in the squad room, articles he clipped about cases he'd handled, and several commendation plaques.”

Frankie froze. Coral McDaniel, Brad's wife, was here.

Wayne turned the corner with a sweet-faced woman of medium height walking behind him. She was thick through the waist with cushy upper arms exposed by her sleeveless blouse. Her drab skirt cut her off below the knees. An unhealthy pink stained the bridge of her nose and spread across her cheeks. She looked nothing like the woman Frankie had imagined Brad would marry.

Frankie glanced down at a cardboard box full of plaques that had been shoved under Wayne's desk. When she looked up, Coral was standing across from her, wearing the mildly shell-shocked expression every family member of a victim gets.

Frankie thought she might black out from the guilt.

“All done?” Wayne asked.

“All what?” Frankie asked numbly.

“Did you find what you needed?” He looked puzzled, then glanced from her to Coral. “Oh, sorry. You haven't met Coral McDaniel. This is Officer Frankie Malone, a coworker of Brad's.”

Frankie had heard the rumors about Brad taking his wife to league ball games where he would introduce her to his “women friends.” Coral must have known what he was up to and been humiliated by the snickers and sidelong looks.

“We were all stunned by Brad's passing,” Frankie said, gathering her copies.

The sweetness had drained from Coral's face. “Your name used to come up on Brad's phone. He called you one night during dinner, said you were working together on a case.”

Detectives don't call patrol cops about a case. Not from home. Not during dinner
. Frankie was mortified. “I'll be out of your way in a sec,” she said, projecting a calm she didn't feel.

“I have a daughter.” Coral glared at her.

“A daughter!” Wayne's gaze darted from Coral to her. “I didn't realize. Did you know that, Frankie?”

“Not until recently.”

“That's no excuse,” Coral snapped.

Frankie gulped.

Wayne, a perceptive man, instantly got the picture. “Sorry, ladies. If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”

Frankie gathered her files and hustled toward the bathroom, the pressure in her chest blooming to the point of cutting off her air. She felt like she was dying. Or maybe she just wanted to die. She pushed through the door and ducked inside a stall.

Breathe
, she ordered herself and pawed through her purse for the bottle of tranquilizers. Two pills rolled onto her palm. She downed both and took several deep breaths. Thank God she had the bathroom to herself. She needed time to pull it together before meeting with Billy.

The door whooshed open and thumped closed. Frankie heard a gasp then the tortured sound of air rasping into lungs. From under the door, she could see Coral McDaniel's flat shoes standing beside the sink. The sobbing stretched out. No one came through the door to comfort Coral, and Frankie had no right to do so. She stood there, soaked in Coral's pain, replaying Brad's death in her mind as she had done every hour of every day for the last two and a half weeks.

S
he had escaped Brad and the hotel parking lot, her Jeep merging with the heavy I-40 traffic. Her face hurt like hell, her cheek swelling where Brad's ring had cracked against the bone. Grimly she observed there was one small gain from Brad's assault—their affair had ended before it really heated up.

She'd checked her rearview mirror and seen Brad's black SUV booming up behind her. He passed her on the left then whipped in front of her, the sun sparking off his rear window as he tried to cut her off. She hit the brakes. He switched back to the left lane and dropped even with her window. She saw his mouth twisting with ugly words. Yelling, he waved his phone at her. He was furious that she'd turned hers off. Apparently, his ego couldn't stand a woman being the first to walk away.

They were doing ninety as they approached the overpass. Frankie remembered because she'd glanced at the speedometer and let up on the gas. Brad floored the SUV and moved ahead of her into the shadow of the overpass. He pulled the same stunt, swerving into her lane, trying to make her stop, only this time he overcorrected. The SUV tilted right and went into a clockwise spin. The front bumper clipped the last support. They flashed from beneath the overpass, the SUV in a flip with its passenger-side door smashing onto the asphalt. It rolled and righted itself on the shoulder. She thought it was over until she looked in her side mirror and realized momentum had continued to roll the SUV. She saw back wheels spinning in the air as it disappeared down an embankment.

Frankie slammed to a stop, called 911, and gave the mile marker. Then she was out of her Jeep, running, running.

I
n the bathroom she heard Coral blow her nose and the sink water running. The door opened and closed. She sucked in a shaky breath, aware that the meds were already filtering into her bloodstream. She felt detached, a little fuzzy headed. She'd never taken two pills at one time. Stupid thing to do. Billy was waiting for her call.

She stumbled out of the stall to the sink to splash water on her face. The woman who stared back at her in the mirror looked glassy eyed and unreliable. And unbruised.

Overnight, the bruise on her cheek had almost disappeared.

B
illy's mobile rang as the elevator doors opened onto the CJC's mezzanine floor.

“Where do you want to meet?” he said to Frankie, as he walked along the mezzanine railing. Below him people crowded the atrium, waiting for their court cases to be called.

“Something's come up,” she said.

She sounded off her feet. A ten-hour night shift takes it out of you.

“You hungry? How about if you do what you have to do, and we'll meet at the Arcade. I have photos to show you.”

“I can't. A friend had surgery and I may have to stay with her.”

A kid ran through the atrium, screeching his head off. The sound bounced off the ceiling and fed back over the phone.

“Can't we—”

“It'll have to wait,” she said, cutting him off.

A woman from below laughed and clapped her hands. He looked down as the echo amplified over the phone. Suddenly Frankie came into view, walking quickly away from the stairwell door and through the crowd, her phone to her ear.

“Where are you?” he asked, incredulous.

“At the Baptist East Hospital in the lobby. I'm about to take an elevator.”

The elevator in the atrium binged. The doors opened, and people maneuvered their way out. The last person was a heavyset woman, her arms wrapped around a cardboard box. She glanced about as if uncertain of which way to go. Frankie, almost to the bank of elevators, stopped dead, as if poleaxed by the sight of the woman with the box.

“Hold on,” she whispered and stepped behind a concrete pillar. The woman, casting about, got her bearings and made her way toward the main exit. She stopped briefly to speak to Dave Jansen, a detective Billy knew from the burglary squad.

Frankie peered from behind the column, tracking the woman's progress. Not only was she lying to him, she was acting weird as hell.

“Sorry to leave you hanging,” she said in a husky voice.

“How about giving me a quick rundown on what you found on Davis and Lucy. We can get into the details later.”

“I'll have to get back with you. Bye.” She ducked from behind the pillar and headed for the back exit.

Mystified, he took out a pad and made a note of Jansen's name.

T
he curved awning that shaded the Rock of Ages Funeral Home entrance rippled in the breeze as Billy pulled into the parking lot. Back in Memphis two days, he'd split with Mercy, Red and Little Man were dead, and Augie had dropped an unsolvable mystery in his lap concerning his mother's death. It hadn't been much of a vacation.

A couple of years ago he'd noticed a pair of high heels in a downtown crosswalk positioned as if the woman who'd been wearing them had stepped off the curb and was snatched away. He'd considered whether the Rapture had taken her, her shoes being the only parts of her that remained. He felt the same befuddlement now, as if cosmic forces were at work and he had not properly studied for the test.

Augie's messages asked him to come to the casket room, where he'd be making arrangements for Davis and Lucy. The only funeral arrangements Billy had ever made were for his uncle Kane, the man who'd raised him after his mother's car crash. Billy worked in his uncle's Mississippi roadside diner after school until he'd left for Ole Miss, graduating with a degree in criminal justice. At his uncle's urging, he'd entered law school.

After one semester, he'd known drafting briefs and representing creeps would not be his life's passion. An early brush with injustice and racism in a case concerning the murder of two little black girls had compelled him to become a cop. He wanted a career hunting down the bad guys. The last conversation he had with his uncle Kane was on the day he'd left law school and signed up for police academy training. His uncle never forgave him for failing to raise the family's standards by becoming a professional. Billy made a decision about what was right for his life that resulted in the last living member of his family cutting him off. He never had a chance to see his uncle again.

Walking down the hall, Augie's high-octane voice jarred against the mortuary's padded silence and guided Billy to the room full of backlit caskets. He found Augie talking with an angular young man in an ill-fitting suit and narrow glasses, who was scribbling on a clipboard. Augie flung his hand toward the heavy-gauge copper burial box that was showcased in the center of the room. Only the slight upcurve of the young man's mouth betrayed his pleasure at having such a big fish on the line. The copper casket would easily run eight thousand.

“Write it down,” Augie said and jabbed the man's pad with his finger. He knocked the pad to the floor, swept it up, and handed it back. “Go on, write it,
write
it. I want forty dozen red roses. Not the cheap kind—long-stem, first-class.” Augie's lips drew back in an exaggerated grin, his eyes blinking. He wore a suit jacket and faded shorts that had a rip in the seat the size of a fist. His neon-orange flip-flops screamed against the room's quiet setting.