Mas came down the front steps of City Hall with Kaddouri. They were taking a lunch break, and Mas brought her expanding file along. They passed through the center archway and turned left, heading up the block. She pulled the fax of Fareed Aly’s phone logs out of the file and scanned it as they walked.
“Another Christmas baby.”
Kaddouri nodded. “Yeah, this guy’s the Grinch from Hell, huh?”
“How did he support himself?” she asked him, scanning the logs. “Did he have a job? Friends? Family? What did you guys find out?”
“He was a radiologist until he got laid off,” Kaddouri told her.
Mas glanced at him, waiting for more.
“And he had some local family,” he continued. “Twin older siblings, forty-two years old, over in St. Bernard’s Parish on Cavanaugh.” He pointed at the fax. “Eli and Seraj Aly. That’s who the last call was from.”
Mas flipped to the last page of the fax to see, and frowned at something. “He got a call from a restricted number, right before they called,” she told him.
She tucked the fax back in the file, and speed dialed her secretary. “Hey, it’s me. Fareed Aly got a restricted call the morning he jumped. Call the phone company and get the digits. Thanks, Charlene.”
Mas ended the call, looked around, and blew a sigh. She needed to eat before she dealt with any more aggravation.
They strolled down the block, taking in the sunshine streaming through the leafless trees. The streets around City Hall were pleasant and substantially back to normal. Everything had been steam-cleaned, aired out and re-painted, and the utilities had all been restored. An uninformed visitor would never suspect that anything was amiss, but Mas couldn’t help feeling like she was in a theme park. New Orleansland.
She felt Mark’s eyes on her, and thought he was waiting for her to say something. “The place is coming along,” she offered.
He nodded, looking around as well, then looked back to her as she was finishing a long, hearty yawn.
“’Scuse me,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“You getting enough sleep?”
“Yeah...”
He just looked at her, waiting for the real answer. She wasn’t fooling anyone.
“The nightmares are back,” she confessed. “Cap’n thinks I need a shrink.”
She was annoyed at the suggestion and let it show. But Kaddouri just shrugged. He didn’t see it as something to take offense over.
“Do you?” he asked.
She shrugged back, unconvinced. “I don’t care what they say, when you see a shrink everything winds up in your file.”
“You can talk to me. I’m strictly off the record.”
She debated his offer, but she decided to pass. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s me. This case would drive anyone nuts. Maybe that’s why it’s never been solved.”
They were passing a Christian bookstore, and paused to look in the window. A shop clerk was finally taking down the artificial Christmas tree. She smiled at them, and Mas and Kaddouri smiled back, watching her work.
“Jesus! Those fake trees are tacky,” Mas commented to Kaddouri.
“That’s got nothing to do with Jesus,” he remarked. “That’s Wall Street, baby.”
“Christmas trees are pagan, you know that?” she said. “Some of the Germanic tribes used to decorate their trees with the body parts of their victims.”
Kaddouri grinned. “Well, that must have put them in the holiday spirit.”
Mas didn’t grin back. She just nodded, taking in the Christian books and artifacts on display as she turned something over in her mind. He had a feeling that he knew what it was.
They stopped at Marcelle’s Sausage Shack down the block and ordered some boudin veggie sausage sandwiches at the take-out window. The standing space at the wall counter was taken up with a lunchtime crowd, but a sidewalk table was being vacated. They grabbed it and sat down to eat.
Two street musicians were blowing jazz under the awning. Kaddouri leaned over and dropped their change into an upturned bowler hat nestled between the battered instrument cases. The men broke into a jig to thank them and Mas saluted in response.
They ate in silence, Kaddouri giving her time to process her thoughts.
“Eleven victims, all boys, born on Christmas morning,” she finally said. It was exactly what he thought she was chewing on.
“Don’t forget the nurse and the mothers,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, and the priest, too,” she said. “But I think they just got in the way.” She bit into her boudin sandwich, dripping with sauerkraut, hot mustard, roasted peppers and grilled onions. She was careful not to splash anything on her suit. It took some doing.
“Thirty-three years and he’s still on the loose,” he mused, contemplating his sandwich.
Mas glanced at him. “Cajuns are superstitious, so the hospital records were never reassembled.”
Kaddouri simply nodded.
“You know, the more I see of what this guy can do,” she said, “the more I’m convinced that God’s got a part-time job.”
Kaddouri just nodded again, not knowing what to say. It troubled him when she got like this. He wished he knew exactly what to do for her, but she only let him reach so far inside of her world. He learned long ago to let her set the depth gauge of their conversations.
The spicy sausage was making them sweat; it wasn’t for tourists. She opened her expanding file and dug out the autopsy report, scanning the document and ticking off the salient points as they ate.
“Temperature was one oh six post-mortem, CDC was notified; no fingerprints; both eyes were branded; no scorch marks; no residue.”
He just nodded. She slipped the report back in her manila file and patted it with a humorless smile. “We got nothing,” she told him.
They continued their walk, chicory coffees in hand, and stopped at a crowded corner waiting for the light to change.
Mas watched the streetlight as she spoke to him. “The cop on the balcony said his eyes were fine, right before he jumped.”
Kaddouri glanced at her. The light turned green but they didn’t cross. Pedestrians streamed around them. “He also thought he had a bomb,” he said.
He stepped off the curb and she fell in beside them as they crossed to the other side. She window-shopped as they headed down the sidewalk, and he watched her reflection in the plate glass windows.
“Someone must have pushed this guy’s buttons something fierce,” he finally remarked.
“He’s got to be getting help from somewhere!” she said, suddenly angry again.
“Yeah, but still, he’s totally off the hook. Serial killers...” He didn’t bother to finish the thought. She knew a lot more about the subject than he did.
“...leave clues; yeah, I know. It’s like big game hunting for them. But he’s leaving a trail with no scent.”
She stopped and turned to him. “Maybe that’s why Johnson called it quits.”
He stopped and scowled at her, exasperated.
“Who the hell knows,” he grumbled. “The man was a mental case.”
They continued walking in silence. They rarely had spats, and felt uncomfortable from the breach of civility.
“He was at the jump site yesterday,” Mas told him.
Kaddouri shot her a surprised look.
“He’s playing cop,” Mas theorized. “Probably picked it up on a scanner.”
Kaddouri brushed off the news with a dismissive wave of his hand and looked around, not wanting to discuss it any further. Mas just smiled, watching the pavement as they continued. They walked in a circle; City Hall was just up the block. It was time to get back to work.
Her iPhone rang and she dug it out of her purse. “Agent Mas,” she answered.
“It’s me,” Charlene said. “The digits are registered to the Vatican consulate.”
Mas stopped in her tracks and Kaddouri halted beside her, wondering what was up. She had a vivid memory of the Maybach limousine that almost ran her down. It had Vatican City consulate plates.
“Charlene, run a set of Consul plates for me, number two three one five.”
She ended the call. Kaddouri was looking at her, wondering what’s up. “A limo almost ran me over at the jump site,” she explained. “It had Vatican plates.”
He tried to wrap his mind around the implications. “You think the Church is involved in this?”
She shrugged. “Well, if they are, we’re walking into a minefield.”