“I’m not arresting you, Mr. Albatross-Gomez. At least not yet. You’re simply being detained. Wanna tell me why you were filming me back at my truck?”
“I was just taking some pictures, jeez! I know who you are, man, and I’m gonna sue your ass. Look how many witnesses I got!”
Caleb glances around. About a dozen or so tourists and pedestrians have stopped to watch the confrontation, mumbling among themselves with concern. Ironically, but not surprisingly, nearly all are filming the scene with their cell phones.
Caleb needs a police brutality reprimand like he needs a hole in his head. And he knows that his grounds for keeping Mitchell in custody are shaky at best: taking photos or shooting video in a public place, as well as running from an off-duty police officer, aren’t crimes.
Caleb is dying to question Mitchell further, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. For now, he’ll take what he can get.
He’s got the guy’s name. He can start to do some digging.
“My apologies for the inconvenience, sir,” Caleb says with a grimace, uncuffing Mitchell and handing him back his wallet. He even helps the man to his feet—mostly as a gesture of goodwill for all the cameras.
“You cops are all freakin’ crazy!” Mitchell barks, dusting himself off and quickly backing away. “You’re a bunch of…of…animals!”
What a weird, creepy nut, Caleb thinks as he watches Mitchell disappear back into the crowd, which quickly begins to dissipate when it’s clear the show is over.
What a weird, creepy world.
Chapter 19
“I heard someone went for a little jog last night through the French Quarter?”
Dorothy Fiddler greets Caleb at the door to her darkened office. At sixty-six, with a frizzy bob of gray hair and chunky purple reading glasses, she could easily pass as a librarian, or somebody’s kindly grandmother.
Instead, she’s one of the NOPD’s top digital forensic analysts, a total technical badass.
“Funny stuff, Dorothy. You want the usual bribe I got for you or not?”
With a smile she takes one of the two steaming cups of coffee Caleb is holding, as well as the paper bag of freshly baked beignets. Since she’s a bit too old and cynical to be charmed by Caleb’s flirtations and good looks, he curries favor with her by culinary means. Which works every time.
“Come in and grab a front-row seat, Detective. I’ve got something to show you.”
Dorothy plops down in her desk chair in front of three giant plasma computer screens. Caleb hovers behind her, bobbing from one foot to the next, partly because his ankle is still hurting from last night, but mostly in anticipation.
Dorothy taps the space bar, and numerous synced-up angles of security camera footage taken both inside and outside Café Du Monde begin to play.
Caleb tries to keep tabs on all the feeds at once, but he focuses primarily on Brent and Joanna sitting together, eating and sipping their coffee in silence.
Then, all of a sudden—though the footage is black and white—it’s clear they both start turning blue.
Their eyes bulge. They clutch at their throats and chests. They wave desperately for help. Then they shake, spasm, and collapse. It’s another horrible pair of deaths that eerily resemble the ones at Patsy’s.
“Well, did you see it?” Dorothy asks, taking a sip of her coffee. Her maroon lipstick leaves a giant imprint on the cup’s edge.
“You know I didn’t,” Caleb answers, growing frustrated. “Show me again.”
Dorothy’s wrinkled fingers fly across her keyboard. A digital copy of Mitchell Albatross-Gomez’s Louisiana driver’s license pops up on-screen. So does a booking photo taken a few years ago, in which his hair is a bit longer and scragglier. Next, a flurry of colorful pixels dance across both images, analyzing them.
“I pulled the suspect’s DMV photo and old mug shots, like you asked. Then I ran them through our Centurion facial recognition program. Next, I executed a full metadata scan across every frame of—”
“I get it, Dorothy, you’re a whole lot smarter than me. Just cut to the chase.”
Dorothy smiles as she rewinds all the footage and replays it. A digital yellow halo appears around the face of a young man wearing sunglasses and a Saints cap, sitting alone at a table on the opposite side of the café.
Caleb gasps. “Is that…?”
“It’s him, all right,” Dorothy replies. “Keep watching.”
Again Brent and Joanna start to squirm and shudder. But this time, Caleb notices that Mitchell uses all the commotion as cover—nervously standing, glancing around, then slipping out the side entrance completely unseen.
“I knew it!” Caleb exclaims, clapping Dorothy on the shoulder.
“Unfortunately,” she says with disappointment, “I couldn’t find a single shot of anybody tampering with their food or drinks. And Albatross-Gomez never comes within twenty feet of the two victims or their table. I also reviewed the footage from Patsy’s again, but he wasn’t there that night.”
Dorothy and Caleb share a look. It’s hardly concrete proof that Mitchell is the killer. But it’s a start.
“What do we know about the guy?” Dorothy asks.
Caleb mentally runs through the results of the background check he ran on Mitchell earlier that morning. “Not much. He’s lived in the bayou most of his life. He’s a drifter. A drinker. A user. Did a few months at Dixon for possession, B&E. Nothing violent…but God knows what he’s capable of.”
Caleb looks back at Dorothy’s computer screens. His eyes bore into the back of Mitchell’s head as the man nervously flees the scene.
What’s his involvement in all this? Caleb wonders. Is he the brains behind it? Just an accomplice? Or was he simply in the wrong place at the right time?
Caleb’s thoughts are interrupted by the buzz of his cell phone in his back pocket—followed by the peppy intro to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”
“Sorry, my ex-wife…” Caleb starts to explain to Dorothy, a little embarrassed, but he leaves it at that.
He answers the call, from Janine.
And he nearly drops his phone in shock.
Chapter 20
Caleb doesn’t remember anything Janine told him after she broke the news.
He doesn’t remember racing to his trusty black Charger and speeding across town toward Tulane, siren blaring, almost T-boning a delivery truck along the way.
He doesn’t remember storming through the front entrance of one of his favorite restaurants, Clancy’s—serving incredible classic Creole dishes since the 1940s—startlingly empty for a midday lunch service.
All Caleb remembers is seeing the bodies.
Another professional-looking couple. The man sprawled on the ground, the woman hunched over the table, her face literally planted in the food that just killed them.
Victims five and six.
This time, murdered in broad daylight.
Caleb speaks briefly with Officer Hal Boulet, the nervous, fresh-faced cop who was the first to respond to the 911 call.
“I tried my damnedest to corral as many witnesses as I could,” Boulet says, “but I was on my own. By the time backup arrived, most of ’em had run off. They were terrified. But the owner told me there weren’t that many customers here to begin with.”
Caleb isn’t surprised—that business is down, or that folks freaked out and ran off after another double murder. He reassures the young officer that he did fine. He’s not too concerned right now with interviewing people who likely didn’t see anything anyway.
“I’m gonna be broadcasting a possible suspect photo and description out to every PMC in a five-mile radius,” Caleb says, referring to the Police Mobile Computer system installed inside every cruiser and unmarked car in the department. He’s already got his phone out and is texting the request for an all-points bulletin to Janine, who’ll make it happen.
“Tell the others I want the scene secured,” Caleb continues. “But more important, I want to do a full sweep for
this guy. He’s a tweaker with a rap sheet who was at Café Du Monde two nights ago when the last couple was killed. Then I saw him outside my food truck. Tried to talk to him but he bolted. If he was here today, too, I want to catch the bastard.”
“Yes, sir,” Boulet answers, then moves off to share the instructions.
“Caleb…thank God…this is un-friggin’-believable!”
Mikey Balducci, the husky Sicilian general manager of Clancy’s whom Caleb has known for years, is lumbering toward him. An affectionate and emotional man on an average day, Mikey is practically trembling. He looks like a total wreck. He wraps Caleb in a bear hug that nearly knocks the detective off his feet.
“I saw the whole thing,” Mikey says, wiping away a tear with a finger the size of a sausage link. “They were regulars. Jonah something-or-other. A finance guy. And Charlotte. Taught history at the college. Married. Been comin’ in forever. I’d just set down their crawfish étouffée myself. A second later, I looked back and…and they…”
Mikey trails off, overcome by the unspeakable memory.
“It’s going to be okay, Mikey,” Caleb says. Reaching into his pocket, he grabs a fistful of jalapeños—which he crushes between his fingers in rage. “We’re going to get this son of a bitch. I know we will.”
Caleb is trying to be comforting—for the sake of the manager, but mostly for himself.
Six vicious murders in as many days, targeting New Orleans’ culinary world and upper class.
Un-friggin’-believable is right.
It all feels like a bad dream.
That’s just become a nightmare.
Chapter 21
Normally, Caleb would be tingling with excitement if he was waiting to meet a beautiful woman for cocktails at sunset at a romantic outdoor café.
But the past few days have been anything but normal.
The “Grim Waiter”—as the press has sensationally dubbed whoever is poisoning diners while they eat—is still on the prowl.
And Killer Chef is still miles away from making an arrest.
The APB for Mitchell that Caleb ordered after the last two murders at Clancy’s was a total wash. No witnesses inside the restaurant remembered seeing him before or after the killings. If Mitchell was there that afternoon, he got out lickety-split. Caleb has ordered an unmarked car to stake out his last known address in the Lower Ninth Ward, just in case the guy shows. But he’s not holding his breath.
Otherwise, it’s been a frustrating forty-eight hours of false leads and dead ends. Quincy’s latest autopsies and lab results yielded nothing Caleb didn’t already know. And good old Dorothy, the forensic tech whiz, couldn’t work her magic this time: Clancy’s ancient security camera system died a few weeks ago and the owners hadn’t gotten around to fixing it.
But then Caleb got a message, relayed by Janine.
“Some woman named Andrea,” Janine told him. “She didn’t give a last name. Says it’s urgent and sounded pretty upset. You think it’s about the case?”
“That’s the ex-wife of Martin Feldman, one of the victim’s at Patsy’s. Maybe she remembered something.”
He called Andrea back immediately. Not just because of the chemistry he’d felt—she was also still very much a person of interest in the case. Whatever she wanted to tell him, he was willing to listen. And he wasn’t disappointed. Andrea had something to share—something big, she said—but insisted on meeting in person. Desperate for even the tiniest scrap of new information, Caleb suggested a quiet outdoor café in the Lower Garden District.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says as Andrea takes a seat at his table.
She’s wearing oversized sunglasses, but Caleb can see that her eyes are puffy and her mascara is smudged, as if she’s been crying. Odd. He pretends not to notice.
“It’s lovely to see you again, Mrs. Feldman,” he adds. “How are you doing?”
“I…I’ve been…” Andrea stutters and swallows hard. “These past few days…I can’t even begin to tell you just how…how terrible I…”
Andrea fumbles to light a clove cigarette but drops her lighter on the glass table with a clank. Caleb picks it up and sparks it for her, then gently touches her arm.
“It’s all right. Take your time. You’ve been through a lot.”
The first time Caleb met Andrea at her mansion, she was so cool and collected. She came off as an aloof intellectual, sexy but snooty. Even a little dangerous. She could very well be the Grim Waiter. But now, she seems scared and vulnerable. Somehow, in the glow of the setting sun, Andrea looks even more beautiful than ever.
“Thank you, Detective. It’s true. Eight days ago I lost my ex-husband. Then six days ago, I…I lost my ex-boyfriend.”
Caleb frowns, not sure what she means. She couldn’t possibly be referring to…
“Brent Grassley,” she says. “That’s right. The second man who was poisoned. At Café Du Monde.”
Caleb can turn on the charm, but he’s a godawful actor. His shock is written all over his face.
“Well, ‘boyfriend’ might be the wrong word,” Andrea concedes. “But we dated quite seriously for the better part of four months. Quite secretly as well. Brent is—was—still married to Joanna at the time. They were going through a rough patch, but he refused to leave her. We met through some mutual friends. He asked me out for coffee. At Café Du Monde. One thing led to another. For our one-month ‘anniversary,’ he took me to dinner…at Patsy’s. And now…Brent is dead, too.”
Andrea chokes back a sob. But Caleb is too stunned to make a sound.
If what she’s saying is true, if she really was romantically involved with two of the three male victims poisoned within days of each other…and she admits familiarity with two of the three crime scenes…motive, means, opportunity—she checks all the boxes, and then some.
Andrea is either the unluckiest woman in all of New Orleans, or she might as well sign a complete confession.
“I know what you’re thinking, Detective,” Andrea says. “After I heard Brent died, I couldn’t believe it myself. I knew if I told you about us, you’d be even more suspicious of me than you are already. But I knew if I didn’t tell you…if you found out yourself…”
Andrea sucks the last bit of life from her cigarette and then snuffs it out.
“And, no,” she adds. “The night of Brent’s murder, this time I don’t have an alibi. I poured myself a big glass of Malbec and went to bed early. Alone.”
Caleb simply nods, processing everything Andrea has just told him, trying desperately to make some sense of it all.
He’s still extremely attracted to this sharp, sultry woman sitting across from him.
But now he’s also a little scared of her.
Which makes her even hotter.
Chapter 22
“Surround the house, fall into position, wait to move on my order. Got it?”
A chorus of “Yes, sir!” echoes throughout the speeding van.
Caleb is seated among a dozen men clad in black fatigues and armed with assault rifles. They’re members of the NOPD’s Special Operations Division, otherwise known as New Orleans SWAT.
With the sun just inching over the horizon, they’re on their way to execute a high-risk search warrant on the suspected Grim Waiter.
Clancy’s restaurant may not have had working security cameras the night of the most recent murders. But after crime scene investigators finished combing the place top to bottom, they found a partial fingerprint on a tabletop, probably left days earlier, that belonged to a key suspect.
One Mitchell James Albatross-Gomez.
Caleb finally had enough evidence to convince a magistrate judge to issue an arrest warrant. And after the unmarked unit outside Mitchell’s home spotted the guy stumbling into his building late last night, Caleb called in the cavalry.
The van rumbles along, its siren off to maximize the element of surprise. Caleb tightens the straps of his Kevlar vest. He rechecks the clip of his trusty Glock 22. He pops one
final jalapeño into his mouth.
He’s ready.
The vehicle rolls up in front of a rundown single-story home with discolored paint and a sagging foundation—faint signs of Katrina damage, even after all these years.
Caleb and the others slip out of the van, fan out, and on his signal, breach.
They cry out, “Police!” “Search warrant!” “Get on the ground!”
Within seconds they’ve swept through the entire crummy place. It’s Caleb who actually finds Mitchell—cowering in the hall closet, wearing nothing but a pair of stained white boxer shorts.
Mitchell screams in shock but, wisely, doesn’t try to run away or resist arrest this time. He surrenders and lets himself be put in handcuffs.
As an officer reads him his Miranda rights and leads him outside, Caleb and the others begin the search of his cluttered, filthy little shack.
It’s a total hellhole. Dirty plates are stacked high in the sink. Flies buzz around an overflowing garbage can. Empty liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia—singed spoons, used syringes—are strewn around the bedroom. A loaded .22 revolver, its serial number illegally scratched off, is sitting on top of the dresser.
In addition to six murders, they now have plenty else to charge Mitchell with.
“Detective Rooney? You gotta see this.”
Sergeant Dion Chu, a muscular SWAT team leader with a shaved head as shiny as wet ice, beckons Caleb into the living room.
Pinned on the wall is a map of New Orleans. Sure enough, the three crime scenes are marked.
Mitchell’s laptop is open on the table. A quick glance at the browser shows an array of news bits about the murders.
Most chilling of all are the photographs on the table: each of the six victims…and one of Caleb and Marlene inside the Killer Chef truck. It’s one haunting collage.…
But it fills Caleb with grim satisfaction. They caught the bastard!
Chapter 23
Caleb likes to keep his suspects waiting. He likes to watch them squirm.