He didn’t reply. He stepped back from the car.
Katie revved her engine. She’d been sitting too long.
And ridiculously, the day was still young. Well, it was about three in the afternoon, but for many in New Orleans, that was early. The French Quarter did have a nice supply of locals, but it was also a tourist-driven city.
Plenty of rides awaited her in the afternoon and early evening. And working might—hopefully—keep her mind off things she couldn’t control.
Even as she drove, heading back to Treme and the stables, she groaned aloud.
Tonight, everyone would be talking about the murders. And they’d have heard there had been an axe murderer busy in New Orleans just over a hundred years ago.
And that’s what they would all want to hear about tonight: the grisly deeds of the long-gone Axeman of New Orleans.
* * *
“Listen,” Dan said, striding back into Ryder’s office, “I—”
“I knew you’d come back,” Ryder said, sighing. “Dan, come on! I called you. Obviously, I want you involved. You’re one of the best investigators I know. But you know as well as I do that investigations demand patience, too. I have cops out in the neighborhood going door-to-door. We have the medical examiner prepping the bodies today, autopsies tomorrow, as you also know. Our forensic people are gathering everything.”
“I know. I want to make sure I am a consultant on this case. Officially.”
“I’ve asked the powers that be. Don’t go making them think you’re obsessed or personally invested, or I won’t have any luck.”
Dan frowned, taking his seat in front of Ryder’s desk again. He thought Ryder had hesitated, that he was thinking or worrying about something.
“What?” Dan demanded.
“You know... Well, the great powers that be tend to be more generous toward outside consultation when there’s a reason, when a victim, survivor or family member has hired an investigator. For two reasons. Gives us extra manpower and makes sure the victims know we’re doing everything humanly possible.”
“Well,” Dan said, “since the Rodenberry’s son is on maneuvers in the Middle East, it might be days before he even knows his parents have been murdered. Their closest other contact—their live-in help—was killed with them. What other family is there?”
Ryder hesitated. “Well, better than nothing, there’s Miss Delaney.”
Dan’s frown deepened. “Her folks were killed twelve years ago in Florida.”
“She’s still an interested party, since we might be dealing with a serial killer.”
Dan sat still and silent. The likelihood of Katie Delaney wanting anything to do with him was slim. “That doesn’t seem probable,” he said finally.
“But not impossible. Talk to her. She may want your help.”
“Aw, come on, Ryder. Your department hired me on the drug murders last year that took place in the Seventh Ward. And the year before that—”
“This is different. Sad but true. In a city the size of NOLA and with the tourism and everything else that haunts this town, there are bad things that happen. This is different. This is going to put the police on edge and the citizenry in a frenzy. The media will play it for all that it’s worth. I’m afraid of being stonewalled. See what you can do.”
“Okay. You’ll keep at it in the meantime, right?” Dan asked him.
“You know it.”
Dan stood to leave. Ryder was a good guy and would do all that he could for him. He knew the routine, too.
He headed out.
On the sidewalk, he took a few moments to breathe. Then to his own surprise, when a taxi came by, he hailed it and asked the driver to take him to the Garden District. He was going to go to the Garden District Book Shop and find anything he could on the Axeman of New Orleans.
But when he reached the bookstore, he looked across the street at Lafayette Cemetery.
He hadn’t lied to Katie Delaney: he had plenty of family in New Orleans. However, most of those family members were in a vault in Lafayette Cemetery.
It was beautiful, the oldest of the city-operated municipal cemeteries. Like in all the burial grounds in New Orleans conceived utilizing aboveground vaults, those spaces bore the mark of time, adding to a haunting and somewhat mystical appearance of the place. Begun in 1832, it held more than seven thousand dead, and while that was nothing compared to a few of the big cemeteries in New York, like many of those NY cemeteries, it held the dead from dozens of countries and American states. There were at least a thousand family vaults, laid out in a crosslike pattern with beautiful avenues and foliage where possible.
His family’s tomb was in a row behind the horizontal beam of the cross. The name Oliver had been carved into a stone archway at the top of the tomb. The first Oliver who had come to New Orleans had immigrated from Ireland around 1810, along with large numbers of other Irish as well as German immigrants who had settled the Irish Channel area around the same time. While Louisiana had a city named Lafayette west of New Orleans, Lafayette was once the area now encompassing the Irish Channel, the Garden District and the cemetery, hence the name of the cemetery.
He wasn’t sure why he’d come to stare at the family tomb.
While he’d been born in Florida himself—his mom had been a Gainesville native—he’d always loved New Orleans.
He was still fond of his home state, but he’d been haunted by the murders there—and the feeling that justice had not been served.
He’d had to leave.
As, apparently, had Katie Delaney. Then again, her cousin had been here. He had become her legal guardian. But, as an adult, she’d chosen not to go back.
He understood.
He could be interred in this tomb himself one day if he chose. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In New Orleans, one became ash pretty darned quickly: the blazing heat was said to cremate a body fully within a year and a day. And when one did, their remains were swept to join other remains in a holding cell to allow more of the dead to join the family.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted yet, and he hoped he had a while to decide.
Even if the life he had wanted was one that invited danger. Not that spying on errant husbands seemed to offer much danger at the moment.
“Buck up, cowboy,” he heard.
The soft voice was feminine and teasing. He turned to see a woman leaning against his family’s tomb.
New Orleans was known for the strange. For those who liked dress-up and masks.
This woman was dressed for a 1920s dance hall, in a form-skimming sheath with sequins and fringe, stockings and heels, and a cute little cap that was slightly askew on her head. She was posed with a long cigarette holder complete with a cigarette.