Mary put down the phone with a little grin. He was working with his back to her, that infernal music blasting in his ears. She crept up on him and ran her chilly hand down his neck.
20
PREACHER
New Orleans, Louisiana
10:00 p.m., Saturday, August 27, 2005
They hadn’t eaten a proper meal all day; they’d scarcely touched the snack the owners of the hotel had brought up while they were studying the case files. The team went downstairs together.
Distant music from the street complemented the bar’s quiet piano medley. They passed through the bar to an indoor patio where sand-colored walls were lit by candles in hurricane lamps.
“That’s the original 1930s paint job,” Bull said. “They say a New Orleans mayor owned the place before it became a bordello.”
Amaia wound up sharing one of the small tables with Dupree, feeling that the team had somehow maneuvered her there. They ordered oysters Bienville and crawfish, which were delicious. “You need to come back in the spring,” Bull said. “Practically every house has a kettle of crawfish boil going over a fire in the yard then.”
They’d been pleased that the judge had authorized the exhumation of the body of Joseph Andrews Sr. They couldn’t do much more until the Galveston police communicated the medical examiner’s results.
Afterward, they set out on a walk through the French Quarter. During their windshield tour of the city earlier that day, Amaia had thought the evacuation orders had cleared out much of the city’s population, but the lengthy stroll on Dauphine Street to Frenchmen proved her wrong. Amaia was astonished by the crowds of beer drinkers lining the streets. They seemed to be celebrating the arrival of the hurricane.
Along Bourbon Street, the usual boozy stink was mixed with cooking smells from the few restaurants still open. The brief illusion of calm that Dupree had seen at noon was swept away by crowds bustling in both directions. Some of the tourists wore party hats.
Maybe two yards away, a ragged man standing on an overturned bucket in the middle of the street howled to the skies and berated the tourists milling in front of a strip joint. “Repent, sinners! The end is near. The Lord is sending his wrath upon you; you devote yourselves to the pleasures of the flesh today, but tomorrow you will cry like babes, and tomorrow it will be too late.”
Amaia gave Dupree a shrug and an ironic glance. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a street preacher or heard warnings about the end of days, but the scene seemed particularly bizarre in a city battening down before the approach of a hurricane.
Bull stepped to Dupree’s side, whispered something, and pointed to a balcony. Dupree looked up at the balcony, the same one from which the crone had addressed him that morning.
The street preacher jumped down from his perch, took two swift strides to Dupree, and jabbed an accusing finger into his chest. Johnson and Amaia were alarmed. Dupree’s stifled groan was followed by a wheeze and a gasp for air. He fumbled in his pocket for the gris-gris Nana had given him, but he’d left it behind when he changed his jacket. Bill Charbou instantly grabbed the preacher’s wrist, twisted his arm up behind his back, and put him in a choke hold. Bill snarled into the man’s ear, “Hands to yourself, buddy! Shout all you want, but keep your hands to yourself!”
God’s self-appointed apostle immediately went limp. Bill pushed him away. “Most of ’em are harmless, but sometimes they get a little carried away with their apocalypse thing. I guess the hurricane has really riled them. Did he hurt you?”
Dupree shook his head. “A twinge in an old wound. It’s been bothering me all day. Probably because of the humidity.”
Amaia lowered her gaze. It wasn’t physical pain she’d seen reflected in Dupree’s eyes. She knew all too well what he’d felt. Without a word, she lifted a hand to her scalp and touched the rough edge of an almost invisible scar. She immediately regretted her reaction. She forgot that hidden scar for months at a time, but her aunt’s phone call and Dupree’s pained expression had awakened and inflamed her own mark.
Bill and Bull suggested a stop for dessert.
Sitting at a café table and spooning up outstanding fig ice cream, Amaia felt her scar still throbbing like an open wound. She again lifted a hand and traced the hidden trail of stitches with her index finger.
Dupree seemed unusually relaxed. “I wasn’t so sure about Bull and Charbou at first.”
Amaia awoke from her reverie. “Sorry?”
“Bill and Bull.” Dupree jerked his thumb toward the bar, where the New Orleans cops were engaged in a lively discussion with Johnson and the bartender. “Those boys have a completely different style and approach. But I’m beginning to see they’re going to be a big help.”
Bill Charbou was urging the barkeeper to raise the volume of the television. The screen displayed the now familiar satellite image of Katrina revolving relentlessly above the Gulf of Mexico. Charbou raised a hand and barked something that silenced everyone in the bar.
The voice of an off-screen commentator accompanied the image of the advancing storm. “Gale-force winds subsided temporarily, but in recent hours, Katrina has doubled in size, and she’s entering a phase of accelerating intensity.”
A murmur of sharp disappointment went through the bar, but that was all. The music resumed. No one made for the door. Charbou and Bull went back to their conversation with Johnson and the bartender.
She nodded pensively, watching them.
Dupree called her out of her musings. “You dream of the dead, Assistant Inspector Salazar?”
She looked at him, bewildered, thinking her ears had deceived her. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Let me try again. Are you haunted by visions of the dead at the foot of your bed, Salazar?”
She moved her lips as if to answer him, but nothing came out. What was this? Some kind of joke?
As if reading her thoughts, he responded, “It’s no joke. I do; I dream of the dead. They follow me and try to tell me things I can’t quite catch. The nightmares don’t go away until I finally manage to understand what they’re trying to say.”
Amaia’s eyes opened wide. “Uh, okay, well, I . . .”
“Oh, I understand. It’s not the sort of thing a person wants to go around talking about, and certainly not to a person in my position. You don’t need to tell me; I know you see them. I read a summary of your report about the kidnapper you tracked down in Spain. I was impressed by your stubborn dedication to the victims. And that explanation you gave. You called it—”
“A hunch,” she completed his sentence.
Dupree nodded slowly. “I’ve known lots of law enforcement agents over the years. I can tell when someone has the gift. And you do.”
Amaia pressed her lips shut. This kind of talk made her uncomfortable.
“You know, lots of people will think you’re odd. They’ll call your hunches some sort of sixth sense. But you can’t fool me. I know where a sixth sense comes from. It develops in those who’ve lived through the kinds of things that would destroy other people. But some of them, rare birds like Sherrington, learn from the experience. He was capable of seeing beyond, intuiting the evil lurking out there in the world, alive and real, disguised by a thin mask of human skin. A disguise like that hides its malevolence from most of us, but not from you.”