Pounding on the door woke Quinn from an exhausted sleep. He opened his eyes, confused for a moment about where he was. Bryn’s head still lay on his shoulder. A cascade of black hair flowed across one arm. She opened her eyes and stared into his. “It’s for you.”
“Me?”
“Fingle will get it, but indeed, it is for you. A policeman named . . .” she closed her eyes for a moment. “His name is Hennessy, Arthur Hennessy.”
“Devil take me, that’s the Police Chief.” Quinn leaped out of bed and began searching for clothing dropped many hours ago in parts unknown.
Bryn slipped out of bed and donned a purple silk wrapper. She found his trousers and handed them to him. The pounding on the door had stopped. Fingle must have answered it. Bryn handed him his shirt and he shrugged it on. His coat was in the adjoining room where Sam lay sound asleep, her short curly head on a white pillow. Bryn helped him into the coat and he tugged on his boots. “Something must be terribly wrong.”
“He’s here about a murder,” she told him as she followed him to the bedroom door.
“Priest!”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“It has to be. He was here last night and now we have a murder on our hands and it must be very bad if Hennessy is looking for me here. We’re not exactly friends.” They shared one long lingering kiss and he ran down the staircase. Hennessy was standing beside the door in the front hall waiting. “What is it?” Quinn asked.
“Two dead darkies on the waterfront.”
Quinn stopped. “Why is that important?”
“One is a very famous voodoo priest. The darkies are in an uproar about it and the other one is the priest’s woman.”
Hennessy spoke in a broad Southern drawl. Every word was a testament to his heritage. His family owned a plantation in Baton Rouge and farmed it with Negro help they now had to pay. Hennessy’s opinions about Negros were strong. This must indeed be a very famous one to have drawn the interest of the New Orleans Police Department.
A police hack waited in the street. The two men climbed in and the driver took off for the waterfront. The closer they got to the river, the muggier became the air until Quinn felt like he was breathing through a wet towel. They stopped outside a darkie bar called the Salon de Grande-Borie. Quinn climbed out first, followed by Hennessy. A group of policemen stood staring at something on the riverbank. Quinn surmised it was the body and walked across the dirt road and over the embankment.
A large black man wearing a white shirt, black pants and a colorful vest lay on his back. Quinn stepped through the gathered police and bent over him. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, heavily veined with red. His cheeks were also veined. “This man was strangled,” he said to Hennessy.
“Garroted.” Hennessy pointed to a red line cut into the man’s thick neck.
The dead man was beefy, tall and well-muscled. Quinn bent low to further examine his throat. He took a pocket knife out and used it to push the dead man’s shirt further down so he could get a better look. When he did, he noticed something in a bag hanging from a cord around the dead man’s neck. “What would that be?”
“Gris-gris bag,” Hennessy said. “Voodoo.”
“There is a strange mark here.” Quinn pointed and Hennessy leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look.
“It appears to be a cross,” Hennessy said.
“See these round indentations,” Quinn pointed. “This man was strangled with a rosary. The indentations were made by the beads and this mark is from the cross.”
“Infamous,” Hennessy said. “Who would do such a thing?”
Quinn did not answer because he knew exactly who killed using a rosary.
One of the policemen approached Hennessy and held out a piece of brown paper. Something shriveled lay inside it. Quinn stood up and examined the object.
“What do you think it is?” Hennessy asked.
Quinn tilted his head. “That, my good man, is a penis.”
Hennessy gasped. “Whose?”
“My good sir, I cannot tell you. Have you discovered any corpses missing one?”
Hennessy shook his head. “No.”
“Then I think you should look for one. Where is the next dead body?”
They climbed back into the carriage and drove further down the river bank to a deserted area on the outskirts of the city. The dirt track along the river was edged with tumble-down shacks. Garbage and filth of every kind littered the narrow, rutted track. A knot of police and several hacks were gathered on the far side of the shacks. Quinn climbed down and walked across the road to the river bank. This body was naked. The woman’s breasts were missing and a large knife had been inserted into her vagina. The handle was visible between her legs.
“Quite brutal,” Quinn said as he bent to examine the woman. “They appear to have died within hours of each other.” Quinn was now sure Draak Priest had killed these women. The Soho killer was in New Orleans. He’d undoubtedly followed Bryn and her sister. But to what end?
Hennessy pointed to her neck. Quinn bent closer knowing what he’d see. She bore the same ligature marks. She’d been garroted with a rosary.
He stood up and stroked his neatly trimmed goatee. “I believe we are looking for a priest.”
“And why would you think such a thing?” Hennessy demanded.
“Observe,” Quinn said pointing to a mark in the mud next to the woman. Someone knelt here wearing a robe or a gown. I don’t believe a woman did this. Do you? You can see swipes made by fabric where the killer knelt in the mud. Then there’s the rosary. And then there is this.” Quinn pointed to a tiny speck on the dead woman’s lips. “That, my good man, is the remains of a communion wafer.”
Hennessy gasped. “Was there one in the man’s mouth?”
“I did not notice. Perhaps you can send one of your men around to check.”
“This is quite grotesque. I believe you are right. The killer must be a priest. What an abominable thought.”
Quinn stood up, brushed mud off his fawn-colored breeches and straightened his hat. “Or someone who pretends to be a priest.”
“What are you saying?” Hennessy demanded.
“Oh, nothing, mere conjecture, my good man, just conjecture.”
“Why the wafer?”
“I believe this woman was given last rites before she was most cruelly violated and murdered.”
“That’s unthinkable,” Hennessy said with an audible groan.
“Yes I agree, quite grotesque.” Quinn stared at Hennessy for a moment from beneath his brows. Should he share his information with the Police Chief? Quinn decided he was not ready for such a revelation.
* * * *
Priest started awake in his cold monk’s cell. The snakes watching Bryn Sahir and those in her apartment had noticed something odd. He concentrated on their cold minds, forced their slits of eyes to focus as he closed his own, and looked only through theirs.
He saw Quinnten Blade, curse his rotten soul, rise from Bryn’s bed and begin to dress. As he focused on the snakes’ aural senses, he heard Bryn’s servant telling Quinn the New Orleans Police Chief was at the door. Priest nodded. They had discovered the bodies of his most recent victims. Priest urged the snakes forward. One slithered up the bedpost and under the sheets. Priest groaned. Bryn and her lover, Samantha, lay entwined. Both were quite naked. As the snake watched from its hiding place, Bryn rose from the bed and stretched. Priest put his hands through a slit in his priest’s vestments and began stroking himself. He was unable and unwilling to let this opportunity pass.
As he watched through the eyes of his spy, Sam climbed out of bed and embraced Bryn. They kissed and Priest moaned. Bryn fondled Sam’s small breasts, pulling on the nipples with a smile on her lovely face. When Samantha slipped to her knees and began to tongue Bryn’s naked cleft, Priest erupted into his hand and instantly cursed himself for finishing too soon.
“One day,” he vowed as he severed the connection with the snake. “One day, she will be mine. I will teach her what it is like to serve a man.”
Priest had plans for this day. He left his small cell in the cathedral and caught a hack to Toulouse Street and the Maison de Ville. Marie LeVeque lived there and Priest wanted to catch her before she left her rooms. Perhaps he would relieve her of the Couer de Flamme without having to trek into the swamp and attend anything as vulgar and crude as a gathering of savage voodoo worshippers.
Priest paid off the cab and walked boldly into the lobby of the Maison de Ville. He strode across the rich carpet and out the French doors to the courtyard. The three-tiered iron fountain sprayed cool water into the muggy morning as Priest surveyed the carriage house. The walls of the old slave quarters, now guest apartments, were the color of red mud, the ornamental railings of the balconies a contrasting white. The carriage house balcony was small. There was only one guest suite in it and Marie LaVeque resided there.
He stared at it while he imaged her inside sleeping. It was still early. The door was answered after only one knock by an octoroon dressed in a colorful skirt and a red turban. Her creamy breasts rose out of the low-cut white blouse in ripe swells. Priest could see their dark nipples through the fabric. “I’m here to see Mademoiselle LeVeque. Is she available?”
“Non, monsieur, she still sleeps. Would you care to leave a message?”
Priest scanned the suite with his mind and discovered LeVeque was indeed upstairs in bed, but not asleep, and not alone. She was trysting with a giant darkie. When he entered her mind, he was filled with her feminine lust, felt the thrust of the darkie’s huge organ, felt her womanhood moist and swollen, felt her nipples hard against his massive chest. He took a deep breath and severed the mental connection before he became so involved he could not.
The servant touched his arm. “Monsieur, are you sick?”
Her touch startled him. He grabbed her arm as his breathing slowly returned to normal. For one moment, he thought about taking her, but dismissed it. Now was not the time to dally in Marie LeVeque’s apartment. “I’m fine,” he snarled and backed out the door.
“Sir,” she called after him. “Do you not wish to leave a message?”
“No!” Priest waved his arm to dismiss her. “I will contact her later.”
Foiled, Priest stormed across the ornamental courtyard. He breathed deeply of morning air heavy with river moisture and the familiar scents of New Orleans; flowers, frying pastries, garbage and the overpowering smell of the river at low tide. He left the hotel quickly and walked down Bourbon Street toward the Alley Café. A cup of chocolate and a beignet would do wonders for his strained constitution. He would try to gain access to LeVeque’s apartment again tonight. If that failed, he would be forced to attend the voodoo ritual.