9

At the hotel, Kit said good night to Charlie Franks, then turned to Broussard. “You’ll call me if anything happens?”

“Absolutely.”

“Gatlin has your number?”

“All taken care of.”

Realizing that Broussard and Gatlin had managed for a long time before she ever arrived on the scene, she said, “Sorry, I’m just really into this one.”

“I know what you mean. Part of me hopes he won’t go out tonight . . . that he’ll just disappear and we’ll be rid of him. But another part of me wants him to go again and give us one more crack at him, ’cause the more he works, the more likely he is to make the mistake that’ll do him in. It won’t even have to be a big mistake. It’s not the big thing that sends you over the cliff, but the untied shoelace. I want him to make that mistake.”

Kit was taken aback by the passion in Broussard’s voice. Obviously, he, too, was into this one.

Heading for her car, Kit congratulated herself for resisting the temptation to give Broussard his copy of the article and picture of the Heartbeats. A scant second or two later, it struck her that she should not be going home. There was a potentially more productive place she should be.

On the way, she thought about what a long shot she was playing. If the killer was going out tonight to do number three, he likely would be nervous, jumpy, unable to sit still— which meant he wouldn’t likely remain at home until the time came, but would be out somewhere already, walking or driving.

The sight of a red sports car in the parking lot of Nick Lawson’s apartment building brought mixed feelings. If she was right about the murderer’s mental state prior to a kill and Lawson was her man, he shouldn’t be home. But all that was guesswork. Maybe he was cooler than she imagined. Then it occurred to her that the car might not even belong to Lawson; after all, she’d never seen him in it. This concern left her when she looked at the plate: NICK 1. There was also a light on in Lawson’s apartment, the third from the left on the upper level.

Across the street from the apartment building, there was an auto-parts store with a tall sign made of a half dozen orange fifty-five-gallon drums welded in a zigzag pattern to a metal pole. Just the thing to spruce up a neighborhood. But its empty parking lot was an ideal place from which to keep an eye on Lawson’s car.

She parked, checked the doors to make sure they were locked, then took her Mace canister off her key ring and put the keys back in the ignition. Then she waited, her finger on the button of the canister in case passersby got any ideas. She had been there only a few minutes when she felt the first small stirrings of her bladder. This was a problem without a good solution. She recalled seeing a Burger King about three blocks away but did not want to leave her post.

A few minutes later, a car pulled into the apartment parking lot and a woman in a white uniform got out and went to the trunk, where she removed two bags of groceries and struggled up the steps with them. At the apartment to the right of Lawson’s, she rang the bell with her elbow and the door was opened by a little girl who hugged the woman’s knees. Most likely, a single mother and her daughter just trying to get by.

Over the next hour, there was a steady procession of visitors to the apartment nearest the left stairs on the lower level. But no one was ever invited in. There was always a brief conversation at the door, what appeared to be a quick handshake, and that was it. They were so obviously drug transactions Kit wondered how they got away with it, but then she realized there were probably far more dealers in the city than cops to catch them.

Surveillance was a huge bore, a fact that made her keenly aware of the increasingly urgent messages from her bladder. Burger King was only three blocks away. She could make a quick run and be back in ten minutes. It was a gamble, but at the moment it didn’t seem—

A scream suddenly filled the car, a shriek from her own throat. In thinking about the Burger King, she’d turned to look in the direction it lay and saw something that almost made the trip unnecessary; a scant few inches away was a face pressed against the side window.

Recoiling as much as possible in a bucket seat, she screamed, “What do you want? Go away.”

Amphibious eyes stared at her from a matt of greasy hair that parted around a pitted nose, permitting lips the color of spoiled meat to flatten against the glass. In the dark space between the lips, yellow chisels tried to gnaw through to her.

She flashed on a childhood incident when her father had bought her an aquarium and put one huge snail in with the goldfish. Her interest had lasted only until the snail had crept onto the front of the tank and she saw its rabbit teeth and rippling mouth. She had fled from it, screaming, and from that moment would not go near it. Now it had come to her.

She held up the Mace. “This is tear gas. I’ll spray you if you don’t leave. Go away!” She pounded on the glass with the palm of her hand, which made the face begin to move. It shifted up to the right corner of the window and slid horizontally across to the other side, lips stretching with the drag.

“Go away!” She pounded again on the glass, aiming her palm at the ugly nose. The face left the glass and she felt better, until it reappeared on the windshield when its owner climbed onto the hood.

She turned on the wipers and the one on the passenger side began to clack over the glass. The other hit the face a frail blow and jammed against it. God. Now he had his tongue pressed against the glass, the pressure flattening it into a grotesque pink spatula.

She shuddered and closed her eyes in disgust, but that was worse. With her eyes closed, there was no telling what he was doing.

She pulled the lever for the windshield washers and a small jet of fluid wet his beard, making him pull back and wipe the spot with his hand. Without waiting to see what he would do next, she started the engine, put it in reverse, and slowly backed up a few feet to let him know he better climb down, which he did, but not before putting his thumb against his nose and wiggling his fingers at her.

Free of him, she backed up quickly and stopped fifteen yards away, from where she watched him stagger off into the darkness. Shifting her eyes from the drunk to the parking lot across the street, she saw that Nick Lawson’s car was gone.

BROUSSARD LAY IN BED, a lemon ball in each cheek, his head propped up with two pillows, a used copy of The Sacketts in front of him. When he finished this one, he’d only have thirty-nine more to go and he’d have read every novel Louis L ’ Amour ever wrote. Considering the day he’d had, it didn’t seem excessive to expect to relax and read a little before going to sleep. But the ruckus next door was making that impossible. Reluctantly, he got up, slipped on his silk bathrobe and his slippers, and went into the hall.

Surprisingly, his knock was answered by Leo Fleming, with a beer in his hand. “Hey, Andy, c’mon in.”

“Anybody else in there wearin’ a bathrobe?” Broussard growled.

“Actually, I’m the only person not in one.”

“You’re probably gonna feel lousy tomorrow.”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Yesterday was your birthday. It just turned tomorrow. How about pullin’ the plug on this shindig?”

“Did I mention that this was the annual anthropology wingding?”

Broussard groaned. Every year, the anthropologists threw a loud party in one of their rooms, usually ignoring all requests to quiet down until they were on the verge of being ejected from the hotel. He had remembered to ask for a room no higher than the seventh floor, the highest a firehouse hook and ladder could reach, but he’d neglected to specify a room at least four away from any anthropologist. To expect them to quiet down simply because they were disturbing him was quite hopeless. “Well, just do what you can to keep the inmates from destroyin’ the asylum,” he said with a sigh, going back to his room.

The melee went on unabated another thirty minutes or so, then miraculously there was silence. Too tired to keep reading, Broussard put his book on the nightstand and clicked off the light.

IT WOULD BE ANOTHER fifteen minutes before Mike Haskins, patrolman with the harbor police, joined him for his meal break, but Tim Bouchet was so hungry, he unscrewed the lid to his thermos and poured some chicken soup into it, wishing he’d not said those things to his wife, Maggie. But Christ, it was just askin’ too much, both of them with full-time jobs and now her and that night course. He never saw her anymore and the house was filthy.

From his truck deep in the shadows, he could clearly see all of the Natchez and the John James Audubon, but his other responsibility, the Cotton Blossom, was anchored upriver about fifty yards, a viewing promontory of the Riverwalk and its railing blocking his view of all but her upper parts.

On most nights, a fair number of tourists wandered down to the Natchez for a look and occasionally a couple might do some making out before they noticed his truck, and that helped the time to pass. But tonight, things were really dead. There had been that gimpy old couple around ten and nobody else. He put the cup to his lips and sampled some soup.

English Lit, for Christ’s sake. What is she ever gonna do with that? She don’t even read anything written by Americans.

Seeing a figure come up the steps to the Riverwalk down by the gazebo, he put his soup on the dash and picked up his binoculars. Through them, he saw a man with a briefcase pause on the Riverwalk, look around, then stroll toward the gazebo. He watched until his view was hindered by the temporary toolshed the city had set up on the near side of the gazebo, then lowered the binoculars and reached for his soup. Some of that stuff she was readin’ didn’t even make sense. Like that crap by John Donne. Whoever heard of poetry that didn’t rhyme?

He went back to the binoculars and watched the man who’d come up onto the Riverwalk go onto the promontory that blocked his view of the Cotton Blossom. The guy leaned on the rail with both hands and stared at the barges pushing their loads through the black water. Bouchet himself liked to do that when he first took the job, but now, except for sometimes when he’d shoot dock rats with a slingshot and ice cubes, he mostly stayed in his truck and listened to the radio.

Another guy, carrying a folded newspaper under his arm, came down the Riverwalk, opposite from the direction Bouchet was facing. He wasn’t strolling, like the first guy, but was moving briskly.

Maybe he should just put his foot down, demand she give it up. ’Course she don’t take to that approach too good. He did that, she’d probably sign up for two courses next time. It was bad the house was dirty, but even worse, she’d been actin’ like she thought he was . . . dull. Dull for Christ’s sake, as if he hadn’t bowled 250 for the first time in his life last week. And she talked like it was nothin’. That simply ain’t normal.

As his view of the fellow who had just passed became partially obscured by the supporting poles of the canopied staging area for the riverboats, Bouchet’s CB radio crackled to life. “Hairless, this is Father Joe. They don’t make a jock that small, so you’ll have to play without one.”

Grinning, Bouchet turned off his portable Sony and reached for the CB mike. “Father Joe, there’s a guy here wants to talk to you about some altar boys in Cleveland. What should I tell him?”

“The truth, son, the truth . . . that Father Joe drowned last year in the baptismal pool. Will be there in ten minutes, so work fast.”

No two ways about it, Bouchet thought, grinning as he hung up the mike, Haskins was plain nuts.

He turned on the Sony and fiddled with the dial, trying to get rid of the hiss it was making whenever a singer used a word with s in it. He didn’t get it perfect, but it improved to where the sound didn’t make him want to smash it on the cement. Probably, he should start thinking about rounding up a replacement.

He looked up and saw the fellow who had been walking fast now coming his way. This time, he wasn’t carrying anything. But he was walking even faster than before. At the little building where they sell riverboat tickets during the day, he turned and headed down the riverfront extension of Toulouse Street, toward Decatur.

Bouchet raised his binoculars and looked toward the promontory. The fellow who was standing there earlier was no longer around. Shit. He should have been paying attention instead of fooling around with Haskins and the radio. And the city needed to get that damn toolshed out of the way. Very unlikely that the guy had gone onto the Cotton Blossom, but he ought to check.

He pulled his flashlight from under the seat, reached for his pistol in the glove compartment, and got out of the truck. Shoving the gun in his back pocket, he set out for the Cotton Blossom. When he reached the gazebo, he saw the fellow he was looking for, bent over, holding his stomach like he was having cramps.

“Hey, buddy, you okay?”

The fellow groaned and Bouchet stepped up and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “You need a doctor?”

He tried to raise himself but could get his eyes no higher than Bouchet’s chest. “Maybe you should lie down so I can—”

Suddenly, the fellow was draped all over him. For a split second, Bouchet thought the guy had collapsed, but then he felt a blow to his midsection, like the guy had slugged him. He felt a peculiar stirring sensation deep inside.

The fellow stepped back and looked at Bouchet, a cool face with no emotion in it. Puzzled, Bouchet’s eyes moved downward, to see why he felt so strange. At practically the same instant that he saw the blue towel wrapped around the fellow’s hand and the knife, its blade a dull red in the dim light, the image began to fog over like a bathroom mirror when the shower’s on. Though he was sinking to the ground, he felt as if a hand was pulling him upward. As his life poured into the sac around his heart, he said one word: “Maggie.”