Chapter Sixty-Four
One comforting reality of police work is that you rarely come up against a murder situation that you've never seen or heard about before. But these killings were different: seemingly random, vicious, ongoing for more than eleven years, varying modus operandi. What made the case particularly difficult was the possibility that there were several killers. I met with Kyle the following morning to talk about the case. He was in a foul mood and I couldn't wait to get out of there. We shared our pet theories and whiney complaints, then I joined Jamilla Hughes on the stakeout in the Garden District. I brought a box of Krispy Cremes, which got major chuckles from her, and also from the FBI agents watching the house. Everybody clamored for the tasty, air-shot doughnuts, though. The entire box was gone in a matter of minutes. Turns out they're real homebodies,' she said as she munched on a glazed. 'It's still daylight. They're probably in their coffins,' I said. She grinned and shook her head. Her dark eyes sparkled. 'Not exactly. The shorter one, Charles, was working in the garden out back all morning. He's certainly not afraid of the sun.' 'So maybe Daniel is the real vampire. The Sire. He's supposed to be the force behind the magicians' act.' 'Charles has been on the phone a lot. He's setting up some kind of party at the house. You'll love this - it's a Fetish Ball. Wear your favorite kinky things: leather, rubber, Goth, Victorian, whatever
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you're into. What are you into?' she asked. I laughed, thought about it. 'Mostly denim, corduroy, jeans, a little black leather. I have a leather car coat. It's a little beat up, but it's nasty looking.' She started to laugh. 'I think you'd look dashing as a Gothic prince.' 'How about you? Any fetishes we should know about?' 'Well. .. I'll admit to owning a couple of leather jackets, pants, one pair of long boots that I'm still paying for. I am from San Francisco, you know. A girl has to keep up with the times.' 'Same for us boys.' It was another long day of surveillance. We continued to watch the house until dark. Around nine o'clock, a pair of FBI agents dropped by to relieve us. 'Let's get a bite,' I said to Jamilla. 'Bad choice of words, Alex.'We both laughed a little too hard. We didn't want to venture too far from the magicians'house, so we settled on the Camellia Grill on Carrollton Street at the River Bend. The Camellia looked like a small plantation home on the outside. Inside, it was a neat diner, with a long counter and stools screwed to the floor. A waiter in a crisp white jacket and black tie served us. We ordered coffee and omelets, which were light and fluffy and about the size of rolled-up newspapers. Jamilla had a side order of red beans and rice. When in the Big Easy. The food was good, the coffee even better. The company was nice, too. She and I got along well, maybe even better than that. The lulls in our conversation weren't too uncomfortable, and they were infrequent. A friend of mine once defined love as finding someone you can talk to late into the night. Pretty good. 'Nothing on the beeper,'she said while we loitered over our coffee after the meal. I had heard there were lines outside the Camellia during lunch and dinner, but we had caught a slow time. 'I wonder what the two of them do inside that big, eerie house, Alex? What do psycho murderers do in their spare time?' I had studied enough of them. There was no set pattern. 'Some are married, even happily if you ask the spouses. Gary Soneji had a little girl. Geoffrey Shafer had three children. That's probably the
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scariest thing I can imagine - when a husband, or the person next door, or a dad, turns out to be a stone-cold killer. It happens. I've seen it.' She sipped her coffee refill.'The neighbors seem to like Daniel and Charles. They consider them eccentric but pleasant and, I love this, civic-minded. Daniel owns the house. He inherited it from his father, who was also eccentric - a portrait painter. Rumor has it that the magicians are gay, but they're often seen in the company of young attractive women.' 'Vampires aren't restricted by gender. I learned that from Peter Westin,' I said. "These two are equal-opportunity killers, males and females. Something still isn't matching up for me, though. There's a logic hole I keep trying to fill. A few of them actually.' 'Their magical mystery tour sure matches up with a lot of the murders, Alex.' 'I know it. I can't dispute the evidence we've collected so far.' 'But you have one of your famous feelings.' 'I don't know about famous, but something feels wrong to me. This thing isn't tracking right. The other shoe hasn't dropped. That's what worries me. Why did they get sloppy all of a sudden? They went undetected for years and now several dozen FBI agents are watching their house.' We drank our coffee and lingered in the restaurant, which was only half full, but would be humming again when the bars closed. Nobody pressured us to leave, and we weren't in a hurry to get back to the boredom of the stakeout. Jamilla was interesting to me for a lot of reasons, but the main one was probably that I saw so much of my own experiences in hers. We were both committed to police work. We had full lives - friends and family - and yet, in a way, we were loners. Why was that? 'You okay?' she asked. Her eyes communicated concern. I can usually intuit good people, and she was one of them. No doubt about it. 'I just went away for a minute,' I said. 'I'm back now.' 'Where do you go when you take these little mind excursions?' 'Florence,'! said.'It's probably the most beautiful city on earth. My favorite anyway.'
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And you were just in Florence, Italy?' 'Actually, I was thinking about some of the similarities in our lives.' She nodded. 'I've thought about it. What the heck is to become of us, Alex? Are we both doomed to repeat the same mistakes?' 'Well, hopefully we're going to catch two real bad killers here in New Orleans. How's that?' Jamilla reached over and patted my cheek, then she said ruefully, 'That's what I think too. We are doomed.'
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