Maureen caught herself reading the names and the dates and the titles inscribed on the marble slabs on the faces of the crypts. Who had been married, who had been a parent. So many children; New Orleans had proved a hard place for them. Many of them had lived brief lives, only weeks, sometimes only days. Other people had survived into their seventies and eighties, even in the nineteenth century, having lived and died in New Orleans, she thought, before the first of her starving ancestors had ever boarded a ship in an Irish port. She read many Irish names, more than she’d figured she’d see. She both wanted and didn’t want to see Coughlin on one of the nameplates. Or Fagan, her mother’s maiden name.
At the foot of each nameplate was a small marble shelf, and on some of the shelves passing mourners had placed gifts and offerings for the recent and long-ago departed. Coins. Paper flowers. Tall glass candles. A warped and browned paperback copy of King Lear. A filthy white teddy bear tucked into an old urn, Mardi Gras beads placed around his neck, the beads as dull and colorless as the ashen marble tombs. Maureen fought the urge to reach out and touch the bear’s little nose, to scratch its frayed ears.
Even those who were interred under simple headstones lay in graves elevated two or three feet above ground. The graves reminded Maureen—and the thought felt disrespectful but she couldn’t dismiss it—of flower boxes in a garden. Most of them badly neglected flower boxes, she thought, the headstones cracked and crumbling, trash caught in the high grass that surrounded them. Some of the graves were fenced with wrought iron like the gardens and yards of her neighborhood.
Hanging from a leaning segment of iron fence, Maureen spotted the source of the notes she’d heard in the wind. A set of wind chimes. They were cheap, maybe bought in a card store, or from a stall in the French Market, but they looked new. Whether they’d been placed there as a gift for a lost loved one or as a way to lead her to this particular grave, Maureen had no idea. As she got closer, she started suspecting the latter.
On the other side of the fence, a dark form lay sprawled atop a grave. Maureen keyed her mic. “Any sign of our man with the key?”
“Negative,” Preacher said. “You know, I hope dispatch wasn’t thinking we would call him.”
Maureen let that go. Things were certainly getting back to normal. “I may have something here, stand by.”
Slowly, she played her flashlight beam along the figure. Cheap blue Keds, bare ankles, cheap jeans, an oversized and misshapen blue-and-white-striped sweater. Not much protection, really, against the cold. The vic was a woman, definitely. There was something familiar to Maureen about the form. Her heart hammered at her sternum. She moved in closer. Blood, a lot of blood, stained the front of the sweater and had run onto the ground, darkening the gravel around the woman’s head. Another throat slash. Maureen’s stomach turned over. It burned. Oh man, she thought. Oh no.
She shined the light on the victim’s face. Stringy brown hair stuck to the pale cheeks, the cracked lips.
“Holy. Shit.”
Into the mic she said, “Preach, I’ve got our body. I think it’s Madison Leary.”
As if she’d heard Maureen’s voice, the woman’s eyes shot open. One was green, the other was blue. The woman gasped and gurgled. Blood sprayed into the air. Maureen’s hand shook as she held the mic. “It is Madison Leary. And she isn’t dead. Call a fucking ambulance.”
She had nothing to staunch the bleeding. She sprinted for the nearest exit.
15
When Maureen got to the gate, Preacher was already working on prying open the chain and padlock with a tire iron. Over his shoulder, Maureen could see the white-haired man pedaling his way up Washington Avenue. Taking his sweet time with it, too.
Maureen shouted to him, waving her arms. “Would you please hurry the fuck up?”
Swearing, Preacher tossed the tire iron on the sidewalk. He was breathing hard. “Fucking finally. This guy.”
Maureen watched as the man eased his bike to a stop at the curb and climbed off. He walked it to a signpost and began the apparently quite complicated process of locking it to the post. Preacher hurried in his direction. “Listen, guy. Just leave it there.”
“No way,” the man said. “I can’t have this bike stolen. The cemetery won’t buy me a new one. And my name is Mr. Shivers, not ‘guy.’”
Maureen thought she might bite clean through her tongue.
“There’s two cops right here,” Preacher said. “And there’s about to be a bunch more.”
“This bike disappears and I’m holding you two responsible.”
“We have a woman in here bleeding out in the dirt,” Maureen shouted. She shook the gate like it was the door to a cage. “She dies, I’m holding you responsible.” She could hear the ambulance sirens approaching. “Preach, get me gloves and gauze from the car. There’s no time.”
“Ten-four,” Preacher said, and he headed for the car.
Shivers waddled toward the gate, fumbling with a large ring of keys. “Step back from the gate, please.” Maureen took a step back. Shivers adjusted his ball cap. “Farther back, Officer. I can’t have you peeking at what key it is.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Coughlin, do it,” Preacher shouted.
Maureen backed away from the gate. Shivers unlocked the padlock, pulled the chain through the gate. Then he opened the bolt lock and, very slowly, opened up the cemetery gate. Preacher jogged to her, supplies held out in front of him. Maureen grabbed the latex gloves and gauze packets.