Maureen looked across the lagoon and saw Solomon Heath sitting on a big gray rock on the banks of Bird Island, his right shoulder and hair covered in streaks of white egret shit.
“You can come back now, Mr. Heath. I’ve got things under control.” Smiling, she looked down at Gage. She lowered her gun so it pointed at the spot right between those fierce blue eyes.
“Don’t I, Mr. Gage?”
36
At nine the next night, standing outside the late Clayton Gage’s Harmony Oaks apartment, Maureen watched as the door opened and Atkinson walked out, ducking her tall frame under the yellow crime-scene tape guarding the doorway.
“Anything? Maureen asked.
Atkinson locked the door behind her. She shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets, and shrugged. “Nope. Not that I expected there to be.”
They walked away from the brick building, heading for Maureen’s police cruiser, parked on Louisiana Avenue. While Atkinson searched the apartment, Maureen had made a coffee run. Two large, hot dark roasts awaited them in the cruiser. On the passenger seat sat three Hubig’s pies that she’d have to smuggle to Preacher around Anthony’s vigilant watch.
Atkinson looked over her shoulder. “Couldn’t let it go without checking it out one more time. Thought maybe, with no one else around, I might see things differently. Changing the way you look at things, and I don’t mean that in some deep philosophical way, I mean stand on a chair and look around, change the light, can make a bigger difference than you’d think. You never know. Having the place to myself didn’t make a difference this time, but now I can forget about that apartment as part of the case.”
“Detillier and his guys took everything, huh?” Maureen said. She tucked loose strands of hair up under her NOPD knit cap.
“He let me in with his team this afternoon,” Atkinson said, “once the bomb squad gave us the all clear. He let me get a good look around. He did right by me.”
“He gonna let you have a run at Gage?” Maureen asked.
“Oh, I doubt that,” Atkinson said. “That’s all right.”
“Seriously?”
They’d reached the car. Maureen opened the door, leaned into the front seat for the coffees. She handed one to Atkinson, who winced and spat as soon as she sipped.
“Too hot?” Maureen asked.
“I think I got yours,” Atkinson said. They switched cups. “Damn, Maureen, that is a lot of sugar.”
“Enough to stand up the spoon.”
Atkinson raised her coffee cup for a toast. “Here’s to that.”
“Why don’t you want to question Gage about Madison Leary’s murder?” Maureen asked. “He was in town for revenge, no doubt about that. Attacking the cops, trying to murder Heath, and those blueprints for Heath’s projects that Detillier found in the apartment? And bomb-making instructions on top of that?”
Atkinson chuckled. “I’m with Detillier on that. No way Gage doesn’t blow himself to bits building a bomb. I’m glad we got him before he took out half of Harmony Oaks with him.”
She leaned on the cruiser, looked back at the development, picturing, Maureen could tell, the smoking carnage they’d prevented. Atkinson was good at that, Maureen had noticed, imagining horrible things. She’d put in decades on the New Orleans streets, coming up through the ranks, the model of what Maureen wanted to do. Atkinson hadn’t left the city in the days and weeks after Katrina, her own Mid-City house rotting under six feet of water while she slept in the backseat of her unmarked car. Maureen wondered how much of what Atkinson saw was imagination, and how much of it was memory. Was that the price of admission to get where Atkinson was, Maureen wondered, a head full of horrible things? What did it really take to be able to do what the detective could do?
Atkinson turned to Maureen, faking a grin. “I wonder if Solomon’s attitude toward his beloved son will change much when he finds out it was Caleb who got those plans for Gage.”
“It won’t,” Maureen said. “Not in any way that we’ll see. He’ll deny Caleb had anything to do with it. It’s one more reason to leave him overseas. That’s a family that closes ranks against all others. Believe that.” She bumped her shoulder against Atkinson. “You’re really not going to question Gage?”
“Do you believe,” Atkinson said, “that it was Gage going over that graveyard wall with Leary? Carrying wind chimes?”
“He matches the description we got from the witness,” Maureen said. “He’s the right height, the right build. He’s even got the right haircut.”
“In that hat,” Atkinson said, “from far enough away, so do you.”
“That fingerprint you found on the razor,” Maureen said. “I’m guessing it wasn’t his.”
“It was not,” Atkinson said. She set her coffee cup on the trunk of the car and reached into her jacket. “But I found out who it does belong to.”
“That was quick,” Maureen said.