Chapter Sixty-Two
T amilla and I watched both magic shows that night. We were | amazed by the calmness and the confidence exuded by Daniel and Charles. Following the second show, the magicians went home. The agents on surveillance there said it appeared the two were settled for the night. I didn't get it, and neither did Jamilla. Eventually, around two in the morning, she and I returned to the Dauphine. Two FBI teams would stay near Daniel and Charles's place until morning. We were becoming frustrated and confused. We had a lot of manpower working their butts off. I wanted to ask Jamilla up for a beer, but I didn't. Too complicated for right now. Or maybe I was just getting chickenshit as I got older. Maybe I was even a little wiser. Nah. I was up again at six, making notes in my hotel room. I was learning some things I didn't want to know, and not just about magic tricks. I now knew that in the vampire underworld, the area surrounding the main home of a Regent or Elder was known as the domain. The FBI and the New Orleans police had staked out the neighborhood in the Garden District, where Daniel Erickson and Charles Defoe were staying. Their house was located on LaSalle near Sixth. It was greystone and probably had as many as twenty rooms. The house sat on a hill, with a high, reinforced stone outer wall similar to the outer curtain of a castle. It also had a large deep cellar, which wouldn't have been possible in the swampy, sea-level terrain without the elevation of the hill. Almost no one in the task force would admit that they believed
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in vampires; but everyone knew that a series of brutal murders had been committed and that Daniel and Charles were the likely killers. Jamilla and I spent the next two days surveying the house, the domain. We worked double shifts, and nothing could relieve the tedium. A scene that sometimes comes to mind when I'm on stakeouts is the one in The French Connection: Gene Hackman standing out in the cold while the French drug dealers eat an elaborate dinner in a New York restaurant. It's like that, just like that, sometimes for sixteen or eighteen hours at a stretch. At least LaSalle Street and the Garden District were pretty to watch. The sugar and cotton barons of the mid-nineteenth century had originally called this home. Most of the hundred- and two- hundred-year-old mansions were beautifully preserved. The majority were kept white, but a few were painted in Mediterranean pastels. Placards informing the frequent 'walking tours' about the esteemed residents were affixed to intricate wrought-iron fences. But it was still surveillance, even sitting side-by-side with Jamilla Hughes.
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