Jax found the house at 5815 Patton Street silent and baking in the hot morning sun. It stood on short piers, its weatherboard siding painted yellow with white trim and black shutters.
Pushing open the low gate, he walked up a path edged with liriope and white four o’clocks closed tight against the light. The neighborhood was quiet and smelled faintly of the dampness left by last night’s rain. His footsteps echoed dully as he climbed the two wooden steps to the front porch. He was about to knock, then noticed the door stood slightly ajar. When he touched his knuckles to the panel, the door creaked open about half a foot.
“Hello?” he called, not expecting an answer. Young women living alone in cities with New Orleans’s crime rate didn’t leave their doors unlatched.
He glanced around the covered porch, with its fanciful gingerbread trim and white rocking chairs, to the street beyond. A black Suburban parked at the corner had its windows up and the engine running, probably for the air conditioner. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see the driver, and from this angle he couldn’t get the license number. It probably meant nothing. Just some soccer mom waiting for her kid to finish his piano lesson.
Jax put one hand on the Beretta Cougar he wore shoved in a waistband holster at the small of his back. “Miss Guinness?”
There was no answer. He pushed open the door and went inside.
The house had been efficiently but thoroughly ransacked. Walking through the living and dining rooms into the kitchen beyond, Jax studied the half-emptied grocery bag with an overturned tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that had melted and run down the counter. Across the room, a neat bullet hole showed in the fractured glass of the utility porch door. The door was still open, and the bullet had obviously been fired from the inside.
He made a quick search of the bedroom, then moved to the small side garden. He was expecting a body. He didn’t find one.
Wandering back inside, he put in a call to Matt. “Looks like whoever got your Dr. Youngblood might have also taken out the girl.”
There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Then Matt said, “She’s dead?”
“I don’t know. Someone’s torn her house apart and shot up her side door. There’s a blood smear on one of the kitchen cabinets, but it’s not much. Looks like she ran. She could have got away.”
“Any idea yet who’s doing this?”
“No. But I don’t see anything that links back to the Company.” Jax hesitated. “Although there is a black Suburban parked down the street.”
Matt grunted. “Everyone drives SUVs down there. They need them to evacuate for hurricanes.”
“Do you want me to come in?”
“Not yet. Something is obviously going on. I’ve got some info on the girl I’ll be sending you.”
Jax gazed out the open door at a swaying clump of butterfly iris in the side garden. “I have tickets to the Opera House tonight. Turandot.”
Matt laughed and hung up.
Stepping carefully around a pool of melted ice cream on the floor, Jax walked over to inspect the scarred wood of the back door frame. A bullet had buried itself in the wood. He was fingering the gouge when he heard a soft meow.
He swung around. An orange and white cat stood before the refrigerator, shifting restlessly from one front paw to the other.
“Hey there.” Crouching down, he scratched behind the cat’s ears and smiled as the cat closed its eyes in purring bliss. “Where is she? Hmmm? Do you know?”
From where he was parked down the street, Sal Lopez put in a call to Palmer.
“Our girl’s got company. Some dude in a G6. Late twenties, early thirties.”
“Is he in the house?”
“Affirmative. Want me to check him out?”
“Negative. Get out of there. He’s probably calling the cops.”
Lopez jotted down the G6’s license number. Then he threw the Suburban into gear and hit the gas.