“You’re not going to like this,” said Hadley, tossing a copy of that morning’s Times-Picayune onto the table.
Lance flipped open the newspaper and found himself staring at a headline that screamed, TULANE PROFESSOR SHOT DEAD. There was even a photo of the blackened ruins of the Psych Annex with the caption, Police suspect fire linked to murder.
He muttered a crude expletive, then said it again when his cell phone rang. He flipped it open. “Palmer here.”
Adelaide Meyer’s voice came through low and lethal. “Half the state of Louisiana consists of nice, out-of-the-way lakes and swamps filled with obligingly hungry alligators, yet you decide to turn this guy into a torch?”
Lance leaned back in his chair, his gaze meeting Hadley’s. Hadley drew a pointed finger across his neck in a slicing motion and grinned.
“There’ve been some unexpected developments,” said Lance. “But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Unexpected developments? You mean, as in arson and murder? You have less than thirty-six hours. Or have you forgotten?”
“It’ll be over by nightfall,” said Lance.
He pushed up from the table and went to stand beside the hotel room’s wide window overlooking the city. “Our girl’s obviously smarter than we gave her credit for,” he said to Hadley. “Get on to headquarters. We’re going to need some more backup down here. I want to see a copy of the last six months of her cell phone usage; let’s get taps put on anyone and everyone she calls regularly. And run her credit card bills for the same period. I want to know where she shops, where she likes to eat. Let’s see if we can find some kind of a pattern.”
Hadley started to turn away but stopped when Lance added, “And start looking at hotels in the city that take cash. She spent last night someplace. I want to know where.”
“I’ll get on it,” said Hadley.
Lance leaned his hands on the windowsill and stared out over the sprawl of the half-ruined city. From here he could see the wide brown coil of the Mississippi River winding its way between the levees. He opened his cell phone and punched in a number.
“Fitzgerald?…Lance here. I’m in New Orleans. When were you planning to fly in?”
Paul Fitzgerald might dress like a Texan, but his voice still carried the flat intonations of his northern childhood. “This afternoon. Why?”
“Better make it this morning. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Trouble?”
“Maybe.”
Lance hung up, then put in another call to his wife. “Hi, honey; it’s me. Looks like I might not make it home for another twenty-four hours. Tell the kids I miss them, would you?”
Tobie was the first customer through the door of her bank when it opened at nine o’clock that morning. She filled out forms to withdraw $650 from her savings account—which essentially cleaned it out—and another hundred dollars from her checking account. Then she waited in line, her throat constricted with anxiety, until a bored teller with ebony skin and bright red hair called out, “Next.”
Tobie stood with her hands gripping the edge of the counter, her gaze darting warily about the bank lobby while the teller typed the account information into her terminal. Tobie half expected the woman to look up and say, “I’m sorry, your accounts have been closed,” or to see burly men with ominous bulges under their coats advancing toward her.
But then the woman was counting out the bills and stuffing them into a long white envelope. It wasn’t until Tobie felt her breath gusting out in a long sigh that she even realized she’d been holding it. She shoved the envelope into her bag, said, “Thank you,” and walked rapidly toward the door.
A minute and a half after October Guinness walked out the double glass doors into the bright sunshine of a cloudless morning, the bank manager received a directive from Washington, D.C., freezing both her accounts.
Hoarding her resources, Tobie bought a bare minimum of toiletries and other necessities from the Rite Aid down the street, then headed for her friend Gunner Eriksson’s antiques store near the corner of Magazine and Felicity.
Gunner called it an antiques store, but most of his business came from his furniture restoration business. The grime of centuries obscured the shop’s front windows, nothing on the floor had prices, and half the stuff piled inside looked as if it’d been picked up off the curb when people were gutting their houses after the hurricane. Tobie had to lean her shoulder into the heavy old timber door and push hard even to get it to open.
A cowbell attached to the top of the door let out a melodious jingle. But the shop was empty.
“Hello?” she called, her voice echoing in the dusty stillness.
Gunner’s El Salvadorian wife, Pia, appeared at the top of a long flight of stairs leading to their second-floor living quarters overhead. An artist, Pia also used the big open space as a potter’s studio.
“Tobie! Thank God!” She clambered down the steps, a small, lithe woman with straight black hair that brushed against her slim shoulders. “We’ve been so worried about you, and you haven’t been answering your phone. Are you all right? The FBI were here this morning looking for you. They said you were missing.”
“They were here?” Tobie spun toward the dusty window, her gaze darting up and down the street, panic clawing at her. How had they known to look for her here?
Pia came up beside her. “They’re gone now. Tobie, what’s going on?”
Tobie’s breath was coming in quick little pants. She rubbed her hands against her face, trying to calm down, trying to think. If they knew who her friends were, where could she go? “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said to Pia. “Some men came to my house last night claiming to be from the FBI and asking questions about Henry Youngbood. Then they tried to shoot me.”
Anyone else might have thought she had finally cracked. But Pia had grown up in a country were people frequently “disappeared” into government prisons, never to be seen again. “Madre de Dios,” she whispered.
“I need to talk to Gunner,” said Tobie. “Is he here?”
“No. He’s at the Save Our Heritage demonstration in the French Quarter—”
“Where in the French Quarter?”
“Jackson Square. It’s one of the few places in the Quarter you can plug in a PA system.” If there was a demonstration in New Orleans about anything, from the latest genocide in sub-Saharan Africa to the recent push to require all purveyors of liquor in the Quarter to put in bathrooms, Gunner was sure to be there with his public address system.
“If anyone else comes looking for me,” said Tobie, turning toward the door, “tell them you haven’t seen me.”
Pia snagged her arm. “Tobie, wait. I don’t understand. Why would the FBI want to kill you?”
“I don’t know if they’re really the FBI or not. It all has something to do with Dr. Youngblood.”
“You think these are the men who killed him?”
“Yes.”
Pia fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone. “Let me call Gunner. He can leave the—”
Tobie touched her friend’s hand, stopping her. “No. I’ll go there.”
Pia looked up, her straight brows twitching together, her soft dark eyes haunted by memories of the war-torn land of her childhood. “Don’t you think you should stay here? If those men are out there looking for you—”
Tobie shook her head. “If they’ve been here once, they could come back.”
Pia reached up to wrap her arm around Tobie’s neck in a quick hug. Tobie had never been hugged much as a child. Her mother was too nondemonstrative, too German. But Pia was always hugging her friends. She held Tobie close in a rush of warmth and affection. “Be careful. You know we’re your friends,” she said. “If there’s anything we can do…”
Tobie’s arms tightened convulsively around her, then let her go. “I know. Thank you, Pia.”