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'There's been another murder,' he told Sams. 'Another hanging murder.' Anne Elo appeared at the open door, and slowly, rhythmically clapped her hands. 'That's great,' she said.
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Chapter Seventy-Eight
I rode to the crime scene alone, feeling increasingly distant and unreal. The wheels in my head were turning slowly and methodically. Where did we go from here? I had no goddamn idea. Jesus, I was beat. The house was an outbuilding for one of the Garden District's historic homes, a small carriage house with a second-story balcony. It looked like it could have been a cute, cozy B&B. Magnolia and banana trees surrounded it on the outside. So did an intricate wrought-iron fence, the kind I had seen everywhere in the French Quarter. About half of the New Orleans Police Department was already at the scene. So were a couple of EMS trucks, their roof lights spinning and blazing. The press was beginning to arrive as we did - the late shift. Detective Sams had gotten to the murder scene a couple of minutes before I did. He met me in the hallway outside the upstairs bedroom where the killing had taken place. The interior of the place had fine detailing on almost every surface - ceilings, banisters, moldings, doors. The owner had cared about the house, and also about Mardi Gras. Feathers and beads, colorful masks, costumes were tacked up on most of the walls. "This is bad, even worse than we thought,' Sams said. 'She's a detective named Maureen Cooke. She's in Vice, but she was helping out on Daniel and Charles. Most of the department was pitching in.' Sams led me into the detective's bedroom. It was small but -------------- 213 --------------
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attractive, with a sky-blue ceiling that someone had once told me was supposed to keep winged insects from nesting there. Maureen Cooke was a redhead, tall and thin, probably in her early thirties. She had been hung by her bare feet from a chandelier. Her nails were painted red. The detective was naked except for a delicate, silver bracelet on her wrist. Blood streaks were all over her body, but there was no sign of blood pooling on the floor or anywhere else. I walked up close to her. 'Sad,' I whispered under my breath. A human life - gone - just like that. Another detective dead. I looked at Mitchell Sams. He was waiting for me to speak first. 'This might not have been done by the same killers,' I said, and shook my head. 'The bite wounds look different to me. They're superficial. Something's changed.' I stepped back from the body of Maureen Cooke and took in her bedroom. There were photographs that I recognized as part of E.J. Bellocq's study of the Storyville prostitutes. Strange, but fitting for the vice detective. A couple of Asian fans had been framed over the bed, which looked like it had been slept in. Or possibly the bed hadn't been made the previous day. My cell phone rang. I hit a button with my thumb. I felt out of it. Numb. I needed sleep. 'Did you find her yet, Dr Cross? What do you think? Give me your best guess on how to stop these terrible murders. You must have it figured out by now.' The Mastermind was on the line. How did he know? Suddenly I was yelling into the phone. 'I'm going to take you down! I've figured that much out, asshole!' I hung up on him, then I shut the phone off. I looked around the bedroom. Kyle Craig was watching me from the doorway. 'Are you all right, Alex?' he whispered.
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Chapter Seventy-Nine
When I got back to the Dauphine Hotel it was almost ten-thirty in the morning. I was too tired and too worked up to sleep. My heart was still racing. There was a message for me: Inspector Hughes had called from San Francisco. I stretched out on the bed and called Jamilla back. I shut my eyes. I wanted to hear a friendly voice, especially hers. 'I might have something good for you/ she said when I reached her at home.'In my spare time, ha-ha, I've been taking a close look at Santa Cruz. Why Santa Cruz, you might ask? There have been several unsolved disappearances there. Too many. I plotted them out myself. Alex, something is happening up there. It fits in with the rest of this case.' 'Santa Cruz was on our original list,'I said. I was trying to focus on what she had just told me. I couldn't remember exactly where Santa Cruz was located. Tou sound tired. Are you all right?' she asked. 'I just got back to the hotel a few minutes ago. Long night.' 'Alex, go to sleepi This can wait. Goodnight.' 'No, I can't sleep anyway. Tell me about Santa Cruz. I want to hear it.' 'All right. I talked to a lieutenant with the Santa Cruz PD. Interesting conversation. Annoying, too. They're aware of the disappearances. The/ve also noted house pets and livestock disappearing in the past year. Lot of ranches in the area. Nobody believes in vampires, of course. But - Santa Cruz has a certain reputation. The -------------- 215 --------------
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kiddies call it the vampire capital of the US. Occasionally, the kids are right.' 'I need to see what you have so far/I told her.'I'm going to try and get a little sleep. But I want to read whatever Santa Cruz sends you. Can you send it to me?' 'My contact at The Examiner promised to send me the relevant files. Meanwhile, today's my day off. I might just take a ride.' I opened my eyes wide. 'If you go, take somebody along. Your contact at The Examiner. I mean it.'I told her about the murder of the vice detective, Maureen Cooke, here in New Orleans.'Don't go there alone. We still don't know what we're dealing with.' 'I'll take somebody along,' she promised, but I didn't know if I could believe her. 'Jamilla, be careful. I don't have a good feeling about this.' 'You're just tired. Get some sleep. I'm a big girl.' We talked for a few more minutes, but I wasn't sure if I had gotten through to her. Like most good homicide detectives, she was stubborn.
I shut my eyes again and started to drift away, then I was gone.
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Chapter Eighty
￥ amilla was remembering a line from a favorite Shirley Jackson | novel. The Haunting of Hill House, which had been made into a really disappointing movie. 'Whatever walked there, walked alone,' Jackson had written. That pretty much summed up how she felt about the murder case. And maybe even about her life lately. She drove her trusty, dusty Saab toward Santa Cruz. She gripped the steering wheel a little too firmly most of the way, and her hands felt numb. The kink in her neck was getting worse. This was a disturbing case, and she just couldn't let it go. The killers were out there somewhere. They were going to keep murdering until somebody stopped them. So maybe she should stop them. She had tried to get Tim to go with her, but he was covering a bicyclists' protest for The Examiner. Besides, she wasn't sure that she wanted to spend the whole day with him. Tim was sweet, but, well, he wasn't Alex Cross. So here she was getting off Route 1, entering Santa Cruz all by her lonesome. All by her damn lonesome again. At least she had alerted Tim to the fact that she was going to Santa Cruz, and of course she was a big girl, and armed to the teeth. Ugh, teeth, she thought. She cringed at the image of fangs, and the horrible deaths of all those who had been bitten. She had always liked Santa Cruz, though. Maybe because it had been practically the epicenter of the Loma Pietra earthquake back in '89 - 6.7 on the Richter scale, fifty-seven dead - but then the area had come back. The gutsy little town and the people there had refused to fold. Lots of earthquake-proof construction, nothing -------------- 217 --------------
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