“We’ll find something... I... Damn, Ryder. I mean, I know it could be something else, but this...”
“I saw your crime-scene photos from Orlando, and I’m seeing this. Get over here. We’ll figure out the rest soon enough. Want you to see this before...before the bodies are moved,” Ryder said.
Dan left his office, striding out through the reception area that opened out onto the street.
Marleah Darwin, his erstwhile receptionist/secretary/assistant, called out to him. “Dan, Mrs. Lawrence left you a check. She’s overpaying you. I tried to tell her—”
“Later, Marleah,” he said, leaving her shaking her neatly coiffed, graying head and sighing with her usual patience.
His office was in the Central Business District or CBD. The Faubourg Marigny or Marigny neighborhood was the other side of the French Quarter. His car was parked in a garage two blocks away. An Uber or Lyft driver would probably be near, but then he saw a cab approaching. He stepped out in the street and flagged it down.
It would take a few minutes to get across town.
Time to remember the scene he’d been called to in his second year as a detective with the FDLE.
Ryder had referred to the crime-scene photos. Dan didn’t need them. The precursor to what would certainly prove to be a similar scene was indelibly imprinted in his mind. The apartment had been painted in blood. Mrs. Austin, her head caved in, her face unrecognizable, her lower arm severed from her body. Mr. Austin, his lower left calf severed—his head looking like a blood stew filled with raw meat. The niece, Miss Henrietta, so mangled it had taken days for her identity to be firmly established.
The cabbie had an accent. Dan wasn’t sure where he was from. People in New Orleans might be from just about anywhere. It was one of the many cool things about the city of New Orleans. And wherever he had come from, this man now knew this place. He moved out of the CBD and on to Decatur, telling Dan what streets had been closed off that day.
Dan was relieved he’d got a good cabbie.
In minutes, Dan was looking ahead at the street just beyond Rampart and a few blocks down from Esplanade.
Police vehicles and those labeled Crime Scene Investigation sat alongside another vehicle, the wagon from the morgue.
And they weren’t alone.
He saw vans from the major news stations already out, reporters pointing to the house and speculating.
They weren’t going to get any closer in the cab. Dan handed the driver a generous tip—well deserved—and stepped out to walk hurriedly down the street. At the police line, a patrol officer would have stopped him, but Ryder Stapleton came down the few steps from the small white Victorian house beyond the vehicles, assuring the officers that Dan was with him.
Dan liked Ryder; he was glad and grateful that Ryder had asked him to come. He was about Dan’s own age, sandy-haired, lean and fit. Dan could see that Ryder could be imposing, but yet possessed a warmth that could draw out thoughts and observations from a witness who didn’t even know they had seen or known something.
As he approached, Ryder was shaking his head.
“The Axeman. They’re already calling him the Axeman in the media—and we don’t even know who the hell got through to the reporters! The bodies are inside, for God’s sake. I mean, thank God, but...someone talked. They know an axe was involved in the murders—and it was left behind. Dammit, Dan! This might be your killer, but if so, he sure as hell knows his NOLA serial killers, too.”
* * *
“Thank you,” Katie Delaney said cheerfully as her group of seven departed her mule-drawn carriage on Decatur Street. They had been a family, one that seemed to get along remarkably well: two sets of grandparents, parents and an adorable five-year-old. The couple and their little girl lived in New Orleans, the father’s parents lived in New York, and the mother’s parents lived in Los Angeles.
Maybe that’s why they got along so well!
She winced inwardly, telling herself not to be so jaded. She’d been young when she’d lost all four grandparents, but she remembered that both families had gotten along fine.
Looking back, she was glad they’d been so old, that the four of them had died before they’d had to see what happened to Katie’s parents, their children.
“Oh, wait, please, wait just a minute!” the mom called to Katie.
Of course, the five-year-old wanted a picture with her mule, Sarah, and Sarah had a beautiful disposition, so pictures with her were always great.
“Please, do you mind being in the picture?” the dad asked.
“Uh, sure,” Katie said, wrapping the reins and hopping down. “But,” she said, coming around to the sidewalk, “wouldn’t you rather I took the picture?”
“I can do it,” a voice called.
It was Lorna Garcia, one of Katie’s best friends and a coworker at Trudeau Carriage Company. Lorna was slender, with dark hair and dark eyes that usually radiated cheer and energy, but even as she smiled and took the man’s phone to use as a camera, she glanced at Katie with something less than happiness.
“Say cheese grits!” Lorna told the group, and they all smiled. Katie gave the five-year-old a few apple pieces and boosted her up on a knee so she could give the mule the treats.
“Café du Monde is right across the street,” the dad said, tour director, so it seemed, for the group.
“Enjoy your beignets!” Katie said cheerfully, and they all waved and headed off.
“Thank you,” the mom called back, smiling. “You were the best!” she added nicely. “I mean, the very best. Those are great stories you tell. Thanks again.”
“No, thank you,” Katie told her. She smiled. Her stories were good, and she did have her history down pat. She had a little unusual help when it came to the stories she told that were part of NOLA lore. A little inside info she really couldn’t share with anyone.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t.
It was that she really couldn’t.
Over the years, one thing therapy had taught her was there were things you could share—and some you needed to keep to yourself because others might think that they were unbelievable.
And that you needed more and intensive therapy.
The entire group turned around one last time after they’d crossed Decatur Street to Café du Monde. They waved in unison. She waved back.
Then her group was gone, and before anyone else could approach either of them, Lorna slipped her arm through Katie’s, drawing her back from the sidewalk and against the fence that surrounded Jackson Square.
“Lorna, what’s wrong?” Katie demanded of her friend.