She hurried on up the stairs to her own room. It was nearly midnight and she really should get some sleep.
But after showering—she felt she had to; somehow death seemed to be clinging to her—she discovered that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking. So she lay awake, hour after hour.
Michael Quinn. He was a celebrity once. But he’d been known for hard living, for dating a different beauty every week and attracting national attention, from sportscasters to pop stars. He’d been escorted out of a few establishments, and he’d been escorted into a few jails. Then there was an accident, and he’d disappeared from public view. For a few years, whenever a wicked football game was on, people would say, “If only Michael Quinn was playing!” and then even those sentiments died away.
Danni rose, turning the lights back on. Her iPhone was on her dresser; she walked over, booted up and keyed in “Michael Quinn.”
At first, it was all football stories—or stories about Quinn at local establishments. It was true that while he was a phenomenon, he promoted his city and its shopkeepers and tourist venues by being photographed in front of them all the time.
There was a picture of him being arrested. He was still smiling, and it was obvious that he couldn’t wave to the crowd because he was cuffed.
His hair had been longer then, falling over one of his eyes.
I died, he had told her.
She searched and searched and finally found an article. At least he hadn’t killed anyone else, nor had he had a passenger in the car when his alcohol level had skyrocketed and he had driven himself off I-10 and into Lake Pontchartrain.
Danni kept going from link to link, site to site.
He survived the crash, although his injuries had been extensive.
She came across a poor YouTube version of the news conference he’d held when he left the hospital. He announced he was leaving football, then thanked his family and a priest named Father Ryan and his doctors for his life. He said he didn’t know what he’d be doing yet, but probably, if the service would take him, he’d be joining the navy. Something warm stirred inside Danni; he was at a point many people came to. He’d nearly destroyed his life—he could straighten up, or go back to his wild ways. But there was a humility in his speech that touched her. There was sorrow in his eyes when he hugged his mother, a blonde woman who showed her age but, even with the aging he’d no doubt caused, had a gentle beauty. His father was tall and had tears in his eyes when he hugged his son.
The next reference she could find was a small news clip when he was accepted into the service and heading off to boot camp.
She found another brief mention when he joined the NOLA police force. And another, with a thumbnail picture beside it, when he left the force to begin his own business in private investigation.
She sat back, studying the screen, her stomach knotting. Her father was next to him in that picture. They were standing outside the station on Royal Street. Her father had one arm around Michael Quinn’s shoulder. She noted an advertising banner behind them for Jazz Fest three years earlier.
Danni sat back, trying to create a time line, trying to figure out how she hadn’t grasped a memory of his name when she’d first seen him in the shop. She’d been gone for four years of college, and she’d spent two years in New York City after that, apprenticing at an advertising company and then creating ads for clients. During summer breaks, she’d traveled with her father. She’d left the agency two years ago to come home and start working on her own projects; she’d done well, she could honestly say that. First, she’d sold watercolors on Jackson Square. Then she’d had work accepted by Colors of the World, a gallery down the street.
Her father had insisted they use the shop as a venue for her. She’d fought the idea at first, not wanting to fall back on family. Besides, it was a curio and antiques shop. And she really wanted to make it on her own. But then her dad had asked her to improve the look of the place—and she’d realized some of her oil paintings and watercolors could help in doing just that.
Michael Quinn was five or six years older than she was. So it seemed he’d come back from the service, joined the force and quit while she’d been gone. Not that she’d ever known him; she’d grown up in the Quarter while he’d been an uptown boy.
She clicked back to the picture of the man standing with her father.
And she thought about Gladys Simon.
It was late by then, but she threw on a robe and left her room, following the low-level emergency lights down to the shop and then to the basement level.
She paused for a minute. She’d never been afraid in the shop, her apartment or even the basement in the old house before. She’d always been surrounded by Egyptian artifacts, sarcophagi, coffins, death masks, antique weapons, ghastly movie props and more. She was as accustomed to these strange things as most children were to sofas, family photos on the wall and wide-screen televisions.
But that night, she was hesitant. The corners of the room appeared darker. A mannequin might have moved; a gorilla from a 1920s movie seemed to be staring at her from out of the shadows. A death mask of an Egyptian queen might have blinked.
“Ridiculous!” she said aloud. This was her home, her playground as a girl. She knew to be careful with these artifacts, but they’d never frightened her.
She turned on the overhead light, dispersing the shadows and the secrets they held.
She reminded herself again that she’d never been afraid of this room. She’d known and appreciated everything in it all her life.
And then there was the book. The Book of Truth.
She started looking through it again.
Chapter Four
NEVER TRUST ANYONE.
That was Leroy Jenkins’s motto; he’d gone by it all his life, and it had never failed him.
Now was not the time to begin trusting people.
He kept driving, wondering what he should do.
As he drove, he went back by the house in the Garden District. To his amazement, there seemed to be cop cars everywhere.
Sure, it was where big money lived. Sure, the cops cared about big money. But he was stunned. He hadn’t figured—in a house with two old ladies—that anyone would even know there’d been a break-in.
He drove quickly by, worried about what was going on.
“You’ve been betrayed.”
Hearing the voice, Leroy nearly went off the road and into the yard of a pretty antebellum house. He straightened the wheel just in time. This was not a good moment to draw the attention of the police.
“They will kill you, Leroy. The cops will kill you. No one is honest. Try to negotiate a deal, and you’ll be killed. Leroy, you’re not lucky in life. If you come from the gutter, people want to put you back in the gutter!”
Where was the voice coming from?
There was no one in the car with him.
No one...
He looked down. The bust he’d taken, the bust he’d planned to get with no muss, no fuss, the bust he could make big bucks on....
It was in a canvas bag, shoved at the foot of the passenger seat.
He dragged it carelessly onto the seat. Hell, the thing had been around for hundreds of years, if what he’d heard was right. It had survived. He wrenched back the canvas so it lay with its cheek on the worn and dirty upholstery. But the eyes were open. It was grinning at him.
“Got your gun, Leroy? Are you ready? They’re all out to get you. They want me—because I have the power. You’ve got to take care, Leroy. You want me to work for you? You want me to get riches for you?”
Leroy sat there in terror. He was ice-cold, paralyzed with fear. A rational part of his brain kicked in.
He’d done too many drugs. Hell, he might just have burned out too many brain cells through alcohol poisoning. He kn
ew the cheap rotgut stuff was giving him headaches these days.
But the damned thing was alive, talking to him.
As he gaped at it, the bust seemed to grow, to become a man. It sat next to him, still grinning.
“It can be yours, Leroy. Money, power, women—everything your heart has ever desired.”
Leroy tried to form words. He heard sirens behind him, all around him.
He didn’t know if he was more terrified of the bust that had become a man and sat beside him—talking to him!—or the police.
“Everything you ever desired, Leroy,” the thing repeated. “And all it will take is a little...spilled blood.”
Leroy looked straight ahead; he hit the gas and cautiously moved back into traffic.
He’d be damned before he let the police get him.
But he heard a voice, somewhere in the back of his head, trying to shout above the thunder that had sounded in his ears when the bust spoke.
You are falling into damnation this minute....
He couldn’t heed the voice.
He kept driving.
* * *
Quinn headed to Digger Duffy’s bar in Central City.
The area was gradually becoming safer; it had been slowly improving from its lowest point in the thirties—and then Katrina had hit. After that, crime had seemed to rise like a swell from the storm. Now, once again, the respectable citizens of the neighborhood were trying to gain control, but Central City still wasn’t filled with streets the casual tourist should wander.
Quinn knew it well enough. He’d been assigned these streets as a cop. He’d had informants in the area and was acquainted with a few junkies who’d happily sell their own mothers for the money to get just one more hit.
Digger Duffy’s was a strange establishment. Digger himself was a businessman who had happened to inherit the bar. He didn’t do drugs; he didn’t even sip on a beer. Two years in prison for knocking over an elderly lady and stealing her watch had given him religion.
He was a good guy. He didn’t try to reform folks and he didn’t turn them away. If they wanted to talk, he talked. If they wanted redemption, he tried to point them in the right direction. If they wanted a beer or a whiskey, he served it.
Drug dealers kept their business out of the bar, but everyone knew what was going down on the streets. They might be conducting business outside or nearby, but they didn’t do it in Digger’s.
Digger eyed Quinn as he walked inside, passing tables where men huddled in conversation and where the occasional loner sat gazing morosely into his beer.
Quinn sat at the bar in front of Digger. Digger kept cleaning glasses, raising a brow. “You here for the margarita special?” he asked doubtfully.
“A soda water. Throw in a lime if you want to get fancy,” Quinn told him.
Digger nodded, preparing the drink. “Who you looking for, Quinn?”
“A thief.”
Digger thought about that for a minute. “Haven’t heard ’bout anything major on the market lately,” he said.
“This isn’t your usual wallet or handbag,” Quinn explained. “This is a lethal object—although not many people would think of it as such.”
Digger was skilled at remaining expressionless but his slight frown made Quinn think he might know something—even if he hadn’t realized it before Quinn’s description.
He leaned close as he set Quinn’s soda on the bar. “Some guys figure they can slip through the police cracks and find collectors...and some of ’em do. Some ‘wind up’ with objects they believe they can cash in on. I did hear some talk earlier about a piece of art.” He lowered his voice. “There’s a collector in the city who likes cemetery art—and is willing to pay a lot for it.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the thief or the buyer, would you?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t really know the guy who was in here. I’d seen him around before. He’s usually into petty stuff—helping himself to a tourist’s purse, hanging around the casino to see who leaves a bag hanging on the back of a chair... He’s never been into violence, hasn’t got that reputation, anyway. Heard him on a cell phone, talking about some house in the Ninth Ward and how if the buyer wanted the piece, he could get down there.”
The Ninth Ward was the easternmost downriver portion of the city—the largest ward in New Orleans. It was where the summer of storms had done their worst damage. Celebrities, Habitat for Humanity and other groups had tried hard to pick up the pieces. The destruction and the destitution, even as the years passed, remained prevalent. Crime was high.
“Can you give me a little more on that?” Quinn asked.
He whirled around, aware of movement behind him as he voiced the question. He was licensed to carry his gun, a no-nonsense Magnum, but he’d learned through his military experience and the academy not to draw until he meant to shoot.
The man standing behind him was as old as Digger and his color was gray. He had rheumy green eyes. Quinn sensed integrity as well as sadness in his manner.
“I heard him talking, too,” he told Quinn. “And I done hear tales about that ‘art piece’ that was nabbed. You go get it back, Mr. Quinn. We have enough crime and death going on here. You go get that bust or statue thing or funerary ornament or whatever it is. Bury it deep so it don’t come up again. Upper Ninth Ward—I heard someone talking about North Robertson Street.”
Quinn thanked him, placed a few bills on the bar and left. Heading for his car, he put through a call to Larue, asking the detective to meet him on North Robertson.
It was late as he drove through the areas of the city he loved; revelers were still out on the streets but in smaller numbers.
The reconstruction since Hurricane Katrina had been spotty and the demographics had changed drastically. Some decent citizens had returned, but some never would. The face of the Ninth Ward was ever-changing. A hard-working waiter might live next to a hastily reconstructed crack house.
Quinn turned down North Robertson Street. In the darkness and shadows alleviated only by a few blinking streetlights, he slowed to a crawl and looked intently at each building he passed.
He came to a pale blue clapboard house. To one side, a new wooden structure was rising. On the other was a derelict building with a sign that was fading and still proclaimed We Will Be Back.
There was something on the ground in front of the blue house.
Quinn pulled to a stop, braked his car and stepped out. He ran over to the object on the ground, hunkering down quickly when he realized it was a man, a youth of mixed race.
The earth beneath him was soggy with blood; there was no help for him.
He’d been riddled with bullets from some kind of semiautomatic weapon.
Cursing softly, Quinn stood.
He saw a scared child peeping out from behind a curtain at the new house next door. A door started to open.
“Stay in! Stay inside!” Quinn shouted.
More gunfire flared from within the blue house. Quinn drew his weapon and moved toward the entry.
He burst in, but too late.
A woman lay on the floor—young, dressed in shorts that left the curves of her buttocks visible, a halter top and five-inch gold-spangled spike heels. She was dressed like a hooker and—living in an obvious crack house—probably was.
For a split second, he felt torn. The killer might still be in the house.
The bust might still be in the house.
But she lay gasping and trying to breathe.
He hurried to her side and crouched down.
“Help me!” she gurgled, large brown eyes staring into his.
“Lie quiet, don’t try to talk,” he told her, ripping his shirt for a bandage to staunch the flow of blood pouring from the bullet hole in her chest.
No good. She gripped his arm with bloody fingers as he pressed on the wound.
He watched the light fade from her eyes.
A door to the rear slammed.
Quinn stood; the hooker was dead.
He followed the sound of the slamming door.
* * *
The book had chapters on all manner of creatures and things.
One of the first sections Danni read was on witches. It wasn’t a bunch of mumbo jumbo about boiling cauldrons and spells; it began with the definition of the word, how witch became an evil creature in medieval Europe, and how there was a fierce difference between the pagan religions that had brought forth the medieval fear of witches and the religious practices then common throughout the colonial America.
She felt as if she’d picked up a history book.
But then, as she came to the end of the section, there were instructions on disabling a “practitioner of black magic and those worshipping the evil creations within satanic churches.”
Danni sat back, staring at the old tome. It went from being an educated treatise to a magician’s manual.
She flipped one beautifully printed and illustrated page after another. There were pages that dealt with ghosts, or “spirits remaining despite the pall of death.”
“Where would I find evil statues—or busts?” she murmured aloud. There were all kinds of ghosts, apparently, and a great deal of information on “intelligent or active” hauntings and “residual” hauntings.
There was a section on banshees.
Nothing in these pages on funerary busts.
But then, of course, the book was huge. There were at least a thousand pages in it.
She yawned, blinking, and realized she was exhausted. The words began to swim before her eyes and she decided to give up for the night.
There was nothing she could do for Gladys Simon now. The book wasn’t going anywhere; she could continue reading in the morning.
But once again, she lay in bed awake. It suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t even know what the bust looked like. She tried to remember how Quinn had described the piece—and as she tried to visualize it, she rose, turned on the lights again and went to her computer.