The reply was immediate. “Ops center here—”
Another voice interrupted. “Detective Charbou?” The speaker sounded alarmed. “Is Detective Bull the wounded officer?”
“No, it’s Johnson, the FBI agent. He took a slug in the shoulder.”
The radio went silent for several seconds. This time the reply was from the operations center. “Backup is on the way. Hold tight.”
In less than ten minutes, a New Orleans police launch roared up to the point where they’d climbed onto the span. The speed of the police response seemed to reassure Johnson. He was still in pain, but his face had regained some color. He called Amaia and Charbou over as the paramedics tended to his injury.
“You guys have to keep going,” he said, dropping all formality and looking Amaia in the eyes. “They’ve been told to transfer me to the military base. Once they have me stabilized, they’ll evacuate me with the other injured and the last remaining families. You can’t waste time escorting me across the city. Not now that you’re so close.”
Amaia nodded. She’d have made the same call. They couldn’t give up.
The rescue team took good care of him, bandaging the wound and improvising a sling for his useless arm. When they’d finished, Johnson beckoned to Amaia with his good arm.
“Guess it’s only fair,” he said, making an effort to smile. “You tracked him down, he’s yours. Go take him out. But remember, you’ll be on your own. If you report it now, they won’t care that you’re hot on his heels. You’ll get one of two responses: If they even agree to hear you out, they’ll ask for details, evidence, and justification for what you’ve done, and Lenx will be long gone by the time you get to Texas. Or they’ll be too busy to listen to you until it’s too late, and Lenx will get away. The Composer wins either way.”
She nodded.
“And another thing.”
“Dupree,” she anticipated him. “He’s not coming back, is he?”
“No,” Johnson admitted unhappily. “But he knows what he’s doing.”
The paramedics lifted the stretcher to take him to the launch, and Johnson admonished her again. “Remember! Don’t report in until it’s all over!”
Charbou succeeded in convincing the crew to drop them at the edge of the French Quarter on the way to the base. From there it was a simple matter to get to Jackson Square and Chartres Street. She and Charbou went upstairs, looking for the apartment where the Composer had killed a family two days earlier. Just as the operations supervisor had warned them, almost nothing had been done. The door and windows were cordoned off with the familiar crime scene tape and seals marked with the date and time. And there was the orange X advising anyone without a sense of smell there were six corpses inside.
Charbou cut the seals with a razor-sharp switchblade, taking care to damage them as little as possible. He stepped back and looked at Amaia. She nodded. He took a deep breath and pulled up his shirt to cover his nose and mouth. Even before aiming her flashlight into the room, Amaia heard the buzzing of flies swarming over the bodies.
She moved the beam across the corpses, resisting the urge to flail her arms to shoo away the flies trying to settle on her skin. She looked back at the door, yearning for better air. She almost broke and ran to get the reek of decay out of her nostrils, to escape the sight of death and shut out its presence.
She controlled herself. She took a stance at the feet of the victims, bowed her head, and prayed silently for the repose of their souls, something she’d never done before at a murder scene. She had an intuition that this was important because she was now in command. She was responsible to them in a way she couldn’t put into words. She prayed intently and took the time to do it right. And she would do the same for the rest of her life, each time she found herself in the presence of a murder victim, because every individual deserves respect. She needed to comprehend each victim and make that person her own. She would forever establish an intimate relationship with the slain in order to merit the mantle of a righteous avenger of the murdered.
When she’d finished her prayer, she took a deep breath through the blouse fabric over her mouth and sank into contemplation. She allowed the foul odors to fill her nostrils. The air gradually became more bearable, but she kept her face covered. She couldn’t concentrate with flies crawling across her face.
The victims were laid out with their heads toward the north. They were arranged in order of age, and the killer had taken the cord he’d used to tie them up, just as at the earlier crime scenes. But he’d been far less careful. Either that, or some of the family members had struggled against the binding, for at least two of them had dark bruises on their wrists or ankles. The father was the first body lined up in this montage of mortality, and the pistol lay by his right hand. Then, in order, the grandmother, the wife, two teenagers, and a child. A violin had been left against the wall, just beyond the mother’s head. Amaia took out her mobile phone. It showed no connection, but it was still working, because she’d recharged it at the Cajun camp. She took several photos, gesturing silently to instruct Charbou how to light the scene.
Jackson Square was jammed. Crossing it, they saw that the cathedral’s main door was open. Candles at the altar provided the only illumination inside. The flickering light was sufficient to make the elaborate gold decor gleam and reveal the flags of Spanish Castile, England, and France flapping slowly near the door, the Stars and Stripes at the fore. That chronological display honored the colonial settlers of the land. Hundreds of people were inside, completely filling the cathedral.
Charbou saw the direction of her gaze. “Do you want to go in?”
She suddenly felt uncomfortable. “No, no—why would I?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just that I saw you praying for that murdered family.”
“Travis,” she corrected him.
“What?”
“The family’s name is Travis. I hadn’t planned to pray, but I think it was because I knew their name. I was trying to make peace with them, to say goodbye to them, to preserve their name. To keep them from being reduced to anonymity.”
“I meant no disrespect. Praying was the right thing to do, there’s nothing stupid about it. Maybe I’m the one who should go in there to give thanks. The bullet that hit Johnson was meant for me.”
Surprised, Amaia stopped and stared. “You say that because he was hit while turning around?”
“I’m saying it because it’s true. The shooter was a police officer. I’m sure of it.”
Amaia’s jaw dropped. She could hardly believe her ears. She took his arm and pulled him over to the stairs so they could sit down.
“You remember what Robin Hood and his boys told us the other day?” Charbou said. “They said armed groups were shooting at black folks.”
“You think they were targeting you because you’re African American?”
“The boys weren’t just making it up. I’ve been hearing the radio reports. It’s true. Gunfire aimed at unarmed people, always black, on bridges and elevated highways.”
“This city is in pure anarchy. But you were between Johnson and me. They could have hit any one of us.”