“The girl,” Maureen said, “she have a boyfriend? Someone that could’ve seen this guy following her, like from the apartment or the porch or something?”
“No boyfriend,” Preacher said, shaking his head. “He’d dumped her that afternoon.” He rolled his eyes. “I heard plenty of detail about that. Job transfer. He ditched her by text. Anyway, that was why she was out alone in the first place, she said. If anyone saw what happened, we don’t know who they are.”
“So is there anything to move on?” Maureen asked. “Or are we shelving it?”
“I want to see if those calls stop coming,” Preacher said. “Far as I’m concerned, that’ll tell us if Johnny Lungblood is our man.”
“Or maybe the calls stop coming,” Maureen said, “because we never did anything about the first few.”
“Maybe.”
“The guy,” Maureen said, taking a deep breath, “he have any idea who put the hurt on him?”
“Beats me,” Preacher said. “I haven’t heard anything since he got taken to the hospital. They were working on him in the yard when I got there. I don’t think anyone at the scene talked to him much. Wasn’t much he could say. I’m sure the detective will talk to him. Eventually. Maybe when he gets out of the hospital.”
“So no one at the scene questioned this guy?” Maureen asked. “No one asked him what he was doing in that yard? If he knew that girl?”
“Coughlin, somebody caved in the guy’s ribs for him,” Preacher said. “Somebody nearly killed him. Did you miss that part of the story? Because I’m pretty sure I told it. Ambulance guys suspected a weapon like a pipe. Maybe a bat. Guy has a knee that looked like a fucked-up hamburger cauliflower. EMTs had to cut his pants off him right there in the yard.” He brushed his fingers over his pants, dismissing imaginary crumbs. “We’ll see tonight if there’s any updates when we go in. Anyways, it’ll be easier for you to stay in the loop, now that you’re back on the job.”
“Believe it,” Maureen said.
Preacher puffed out his cheeks, blew out the air in a long sigh. He raised his chin at something over her shoulder. “Hey, look, I bet this is your FBI guy.”
11
Maureen turned her head, rolling her skull along the concrete wall of the coffee shop.
A short, slender, clean-shaven black man in a charcoal suit, his head down, phone at his ear, stood at the nearby corner. His name, as he’d told her on the phone last night, was Clarence Detillier, and he was an FBI agent, domestic terrorism unit. He was going to give her a chance, he had said, to go from being a liability to a commodity. His words. She could tell over the phone that he was proud of them. She’d told him she’d be happy to talk. She even let him name the time and the place. Then she had called Preacher. She knew when to roll with backup.
Preacher had worked his web of New Orleans contacts and called Maureen back to vouch for the guy. It was Preacher who’d found out he was in the domestic terrorism unit. So it didn’t seem, as far as Preacher could tell, that Detillier was setting her up for a fall, or worse, looking to somehow use her against her fellow cops in the Gage murder case.
The FBI agent finished his phone call, tucked his phone in his jacket pocket, and headed for Maureen’s table, where an empty chair awaited him. He dusted it off with a handful of paper napkins before he sat. He extended his hand across the table.
“Clarence Detillier, FBI, New Orleans office,” he said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Maureen shook his hand. It was cold and dry. “Maureen Coughlin, NOPD.” She turned toward Preacher, who sat silent and stone-faced, his hands spread on his thighs. “This is Sergeant Preacher Boyd.”
“From the union?” Detillier asked, his eyebrows raised. Maureen could tell he hadn’t expected her to have company. Good, she thought. She’d already thrown the FBI a curve.
“Sergeant Boyd is my current duty sergeant.”
“So you’re no longer suspended?” Detillier said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” As if you didn’t already know, she thought.
“I’m here in an advisory capacity,” Preacher said, watching pigeons work a chunk of bagel in the gutter. Maureen heard protective muscle in his voice. He was advising her, and Detillier, too, that he had her back. “Moral support. Backup. Standard operating procedure.”
“You’ve had bad experiences with the federal government, Officer Coughlin?”
Preacher laughed out loud. “We’re sitting in New Orleans and you ask that?”
Detillier leaned over the table. “Hey, Sergeant Boyd, I’m as ‘from here’ as you are. Born and raised.”