Dangerous Women. Part III

When she’d got it done, she frowned off towards those dust trails. They were headed for the town, all right, and fast. With a better look, she reckoned on about nine or ten, which was two or three better than twelve but still an almighty inconvenience.

Bank agents after the stolen money. Bounty hunters looking to collect her price. Other outlaws who’d got wind of a score. A score that was currently in the bottom of a well, as it happened. Could be anyone. Shy had an uncanny knack for making enemies. She found that she’d looked over at Dodd, facedown in the dust with his bare feet limp behind him. The only thing she had worse luck with was friends.

How had it come to this?

She shook her head, spat through the little gap between her front teeth, and hauled herself up into the saddle of Dodd’s horse. She faced it away from those impending dust clouds, towards which quarter of the compass she knew not.

Shy gave the horse her heels.

Diana Rowland

Hell hath no fury like a woman whose city has been scorned …

Diana Rowland has worked as a bartender, a blackjack dealer, a pit boss, a street cop, a detective, a computer forensics specialist, a crime scene investigator, and a morgue assistant. She won the marksmanship award in her police academy class, has a black belt in hapkido, and has handled numerous dead bodies in various states of decomposition. A graduate of Clarion West, her novels include Mark of the Demon, Blood of the Demon, Secrets of the Demon, Sins of the Demon, and My Life as a White Trash Zombie. Her most recent books are Touch of the Demon and Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues. She has lived her entire life below the Mason-Dixon Line and is deeply grateful for the existence of air-conditioning.

CITY LAZARUS

A grey dawn and low tide revealed the body at the water’s edge, facedown and partially buried in the silt. One arm drifted in the sluggish current as the river plucked at it. A fetid scent drifted to the people standing on the levee, though the odor likely had more to do with illegal sewage than the corpse.

Rain plopped onto the mud in scattered drops as the flatboat inched out to the body, a thick rope dragging in its wake and doled out by workers on firmer ground. Captain Danny Faciane watched from his vantage on the levee and scowled beneath the hood of his raincoat. He fully understood the necessity for the slow progress across the silt, but he still chafed at it. The tide wouldn’t wait for them to complete their business, though at the moment it was more the early hour and the lack of coffee in his system that frustrated him. Yet it paid to be cautious with this river. Since the collapse of the Old River Control Structure, she might not have the teeth she once had, but she still had a few tricks left in her.

Danny’s attention drifted to his right, toward the two bridges that spanned the river. The headlights of cars only crossed along one of them. Not enough traffic anymore to warrant having both. Across the river, a grounded ship leaned drunkenly in the mud. Light flickered from a dozen places, the cutting torches of workers fighting to salvage what they could of the trapped heap. Danny wondered if the salvage workers would attack the unused bridge next, like termites drawn to wood.

“I need to learn how to weld,” a detective grumbled from behind him. Danny glanced back to see that Farber’s attention had also been caught by the crawling lights on the defunct ship.

Danny shook his head. “They’ll be gone as soon as they finish. Only a few ships left to cut up. Probably not even a year’s worth of work left.”

“Maybe so, but in that year those fuckers’ll make three times what we do. Besides, I still think the city’ll have work for ’em. New Orleans has a way of taking care of itself.”

Danny let out a snort. He had little doubt that the welders made more than Farber, but he knew damn well that they didn’t come close to matching his own take. And he sure as hell didn’t share Farber’s bright-eyed optimism about the future of the city. “Filthy work,” he said instead. “And dangerous.”

“What we do is dangerous,” Farber protested. Danny cocked an eyebrow at him, let out a low bark of laughter.

“Only if you’re doing it wrong,” he said, then hunched his shoulders against the gust of wind that sought to drive the sluggish rain into his face. “Like this. Fuck this early morning shit.”

The muttered commands and curses of the men in the flatboat drifted to him as they reached the corpse. They fought the pull of the tenacious mud as the river held on to her prize, but finally managed to get the corpse free of its partial grave. It flopped into the bottom of the boat, one mud-covered foot still on the edge as the workers onshore pulled the flatboat back.

Danny walked over as the men pulled the body from the boat and set it on the ground. “Can you wash his face off?” he asked nobody in particular, waited as someone found a bottle of water and dumped it over the victim’s face. Danny scowled as he crouched by the body, and only part of it was because of the rank smell of the mud. “It’s Jimmy Ernst.”

“Jesus,” one of the men from the flatboat muttered. “We crawled across the stinking mud for that piece of shit?”

Danny’s mouth twisted in sour agreement as he cast a practiced eye over the body. The crime scene tech pulled a pair of gloves out of the side pocket of her pants and held them out for Danny, but he shook his head. He had no intention of touching the corpse and risking getting dirty. Coroner would take care of cleaning the fucking muck off before they did the autopsy.

“Well, that’s damn interesting,” he said, tilting his head.

“Whatcha got?” Farber asked, crouching beside him.

“He was murdered.” Danny pointed to the two scorch marks on the dead guy’s neck. Maybe there were more, hiding beneath the filth, but those alone would’ve been enough. Latest generation of Tasers left that sort of mark, delivering enough punch to paralyze for about half a minute. Long enough to get cuffs on a perp. Or a few licks in. Whichever they deserved more.

Danny straightened, let his gaze drift over what was left of the Mississippi River. This wasn’t the first body to be pulled from the sucking muck and it wouldn’t be the last. The banks were a morass of sinkholes and unpredictable currents. Easy enough to die, especially after a couple of jolts from a Taser.

“I’ve seen enough,” he told the crime scene tech as she snapped her pictures in an aimless, desultory fashion. She didn’t give a shit about Jimmy Ernst any more than he did.

“See you back at the precinct,” Farber said.

Danny nodded, turned away, walked back over the rocks of the now-pointless levee, over the weed-covered train tracks, and up to the street. The rain had paused, and a glance at the sky told him that he had time enough to grab some coffee and finish waking up before the skies opened up again. No pressing need to get back to the precinct station. There sure as hell wasn’t any rush to close this case. He’d give it a week or so and then suspend it for lack of evidence.

Café Du Monde was open and already catering to a few persistent tourists, but he continued past and up North Peters, his footsteps echoing back at him from the many silent storefronts. Three years ago, before the river changed course, the Quarter would already have been bustling at this hour, with vendors making deliveries and shop owners hosing off sidewalks and garbage men calling out to each other as the trucks rumbled their way through the narrow streets.

Near the French Market, he crossed over to Decatur Street, made his way to the coffee shop on the corner of St. Peters. He flashed his badge to get his coffee and croissant for free, then returned outside to sit at a table under the green-and-white-striped awning.

A scrawny dog reeking of wet and sewage and despair slunk along the sidewalk toward him. Grey with one black ear, hope flickered in its eyes that Danny would throw a piece of the croissant its way, drop a crumb. It had probably been a pet at one time. Lots of animals had been left behind after the Switch, when their owners had abandoned their houses and all ties to the area and rushed away in a desperate flight to find new opportunities elsewhere, as any industry in New Orleans that depended on the river dried up.

The dog whined and sat about a foot from Danny. “Go away,” he muttered, shoving the dog carefully away with his foot. To his annoyance, that contact only seemed to encourage the mutt. It came back, and this time put a paw on Danny’s knee. He swore and pulled his leg away, pissed to see a broad smear of who-the-fuck-knew-what left behind. “You fucking mutt!” He shot his foot out again. It wasn’t a savage blow, but he made sure there was enough force behind it to get his message across. The mutt let out a high-pitched yelp and went sprawling back, then crouched, eyes on Danny. For a brief instant, Danny wondered if the dog would attack him. There were plenty of desperate animals in the city, and a smart person stayed alert. His hand twitched to his gun, more than ready to shoot the thing if it came at him, but after a few seconds, it lowered its head and loped unevenly away, taking its stink with it.

Danny let out a sigh of relief as he snatched up napkins and wiped at the grime on his pants. Shooting the dog here would have drawn all sorts of fucked-up attention. Wouldn’t have mattered if the dog had been attacking him; there’d be plenty of people ready to Monday-morning-quarterback the decision, explaining how he should have used less force or found a way to be absolutely certain that the dog intended to cause him harm. There’d even be those who’d insist that, as an officer of the law, he ought to have been willing to suffer a bite or two, and had progressed to lethal force too quickly.

Fuck that, Danny thought grimly. You did what you had to do to survive, especially in this city. You looked out for yourself, because no one else was going to do it for you.

He dropped the soiled napkins onto the table and stood, scowling down at the remaining stain. He picked up his coffee and croissant, began to cross the street, but paused at the sight of a woman on the opposite corner who was holding a folded red umbrella in one hand.

She was beautiful, with dark hair and lighter eyes, and skin a pale brown that made him wonder if she had a touch of Creole blood somewhere down the line. She had on shorts and sandals, paired with a black sleeveless T-shirt that hugged a sleek and toned figure that still held curves in all the right places. Young—early twenties, perhaps. Not rich. That was easy enough to tell. The rich who’d stayed behind were obscenely rich, had found ways to make even more profit from the shift in the river, and were far from subtle about flaunting that wealth and influence. A waitress maybe? A stripper? She sure as hell had the body for it.

But it wasn’t just her looks that caused her to stand out to Danny. It was more that she didn’t have the familiar beat-down look about her, the desperate shift of the eyes, as if seeking any possible escape from this fucked-up shell of a city. She seemed calm, perhaps a touch of worry or sadness in her eyes as they met his. Then she smiled, and he knew it was for him. Daring and coy at the same time, with a whisper of amusement skimming across her features before she broke the gaze, turned away, and continued down the street away from him.

He took a step to follow, then stopped as his phone buzzed in a familiar cadence. He breathed out a curse as he snatched it off his belt, skimmed the text.

Replacing the phone in its holder, he watched the girl continue down the street until she turned a corner. Then he spun and walked the other way to answer the summons.

“You and me, Danny,” Peter Bennett said as he looked out over the dregs of the river. Rain pattered against the broad window of the condo, streaking the view of the deserted Riverwalk and the empty wharves. “We’re a lot alike.” He flicked a glance back at the cop. “We know how to go along with change, find the ways to make it work for us.”

Danny leaned up against the back of the black leather couch, hands stuffed into his pockets as he gave the lanky man an agreeable smile. “I’m cool with doing what needs to be done,” he replied. After the Old River Control Structure crumbled beneath the weight of spring flooding and insufficient funding, Peter was one of those very rich who’d not only stayed in the city but managed to get even richer. Judicious investments in the Atchafalaya Basin had paid off handsomely when the river changed course, but the real money had come from Peter’s uncanny ability to land cleanup contracts. A threefold increase in the amount of water flowing down the Atchafalaya River had, of course, caused a fair amount of destruction, and the man knew there was much to be gained during times of disaster. There’d been plenty of men like Peter who’d made their fortunes after Katrina.

“And that’s the key to it all,” Peter said with a firm nod. “Too many other people want to clutch their chests and worry about rebuilding, get everything back to how it used to be.” He let out a snort. “Did you know the city council is still whining to the governor about having the river dredged so that shipping traffic can resume?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Waste of time. Time to let the old New Orleans die. That river is a toothless whore compared to the badass bitch it used to be, but there’s still a lot that can be done with this city. Gotta change with the times.”

“That’s right,” Danny replied. He didn’t say the first thing that leaped to mind, that even a toothless whore could still shove a knife into you. Jimmy Ernst could testify to that. But Peter didn’t want to hear that sort of thing, and Danny was damn good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut. “So, you got something that needs doing?” That’s what the text had said. Got something I need you to do.

Peter turned away from the dismal view, picked up the cup of coffee from the table by the window, and took a gulp. “Cold.” He grimaced. “Get me a new one, will you, Danny? Get one for yourself too.” He smiled, magnanimous.

Danny nodded and pushed off the couch, headed to the sleek black and chrome of the kitchen. “Glad to. Your coffee’s damn good.” He knew where the mugs were, knew how the man took his coffee.

“It’s a free enterprise thing, see?” Peter said while Danny poured and stirred. “There’s a shop down on Dumaine Street in the Quarter. I bought it about a year ago and rented it out to a guy who sells old books and shit. Dunno how he makes a fucking living with that, but he pays his rent.” He scowled at that last bit, took the mug that Danny handed him.

“You want him out?”

Peter took a sip. Smiled down at the coffee. “That’s damn good.” Looked back up at Danny. “I have plans for that space. Council’s going to vote my way about the poker room. I’ve made sure of that.” His smile widened. “You made sure of that.”

Danny chuckled. Easiest drunk-driving arrest he’d ever made. Helped that he’d been tipped off by Peter that Councilman Walker was leaving the wine tasting to drive the one and a half blocks to his house.

“But there’s a little thing in the guy’s lease that says I can evict him if there’s evidence of criminal activity,” Peter continued.

Danny nodded, took a sip from his own mug. It was bitter, too dark a roast for his liking, and he preferred it with a lot of cream in it. But Peter took his black and Danny didn’t want to nitpick. “I’m sure I can do something about that,” he said.

The bedroom door opened. A young woman with sleep-tousled blond hair, wearing only underwear and a tank top, peered out. Her gaze took in Danny and dismissed him, then settled on Peter. A pout formed on her full lips, or at least that’s the expression Danny thought that she was trying for. There was a little too much uncertainty and not enough confidence, if any, for her to be able to pull it off, and he couldn’t help but think that the girl on the corner would’ve been able to do it and make it alluring and amusing at the same time.

“Hey, babe,” she said to Peter, leaning against the doorframe in what she tried to make a sexy position. “Come back to bed. I need a morning workout.”

Danny took a sip of coffee to hide his grin at the sad display. He’d seen it a dozen times before, watched Peter’s girl-of-the-month pitch a desperate bid to win back his interest, and seen it fail every time. Peter liked the new and shiny, and got rid of anything with too much wear and tear on it. Didn’t matter that he was the one who fucked it up. He was a good-looking man—blue eyed, dark haired, athletic build—as well as being one of the richest men in the city. There was always more new and shiny to be had, more girls convinced that they might become the next Mrs. Peter Bennett.

Peter waved a dismissing hand, eyes on the rain-streaked view. “I’m busy.”

Her pout deepened. “But I’m ready now, sweetie. Come give me some.”

Now Peter looked her way. He took in her expression and her state of partial undress. Annoyance crawled briefly over his face instead of the lust she was surely hoping for, but then it shifted to amusement as Peter jerked his head toward Danny.

“Let him,” he said, eyes on her.

Shock flashed across her face, but only for an instant. Eyes dead, she turned her pouty smile onto Danny. She had nothing to lose, even if it meant buying just a few more days in Peter’s care, such as it was. It was worth it to her, Danny knew.

Danny set his mug down, moved to her, gave her a mild push to precede him into the bedroom.

When he came back out, he closed the door behind him. She wasn’t sniveling, at least. Still, she’d probably be gone by the next day and Peter would be on the prowl for some other chick he could use up and throw away.

“That didn’t take long,” Peter said, without looking up from his laptop.

“I wasn’t trying to make her happy,” Danny replied. He looped his tie back around his neck, knotted it quickly.

A smile twitched across Peter’s mouth as he tapped an envelope on the table. Danny scooped it up and tucked it into his jacket. He didn’t bother counting it.

“I think I’ll go visit a bookstore now,” he said with a grin.

“Tell me if you find anything dirty.”

The aroma of sweat and stale coffee greeted Danny as he entered the station with his arrestee. He kept a hand on the upper arm of the handcuffed man, guided him around the other dregs and the other cops.

“You can’t do this!” his guy kept saying, as if hoping that if he said it enough, it would be true, that a cop couldn’t simply walk into his bookstore and find drugs that were never there before. “Please. Please! I have a family. You can’t do this. Those drugs weren’t mine. You—”

Danny gave him a hard yank, pulled him off-balance. His guy let out a yelp as he struggled for footing and went down on one knee. Danny crouched, making a show of helping him back to his feet while he leaned in close to the guy’s ear.

“You need to settle the fuck down and be a good boy,” he said in a calm, low voice. “This is going to happen whether you behave or not. You want it to be worse?” He met the guy’s eyes. “It can be worse.”

Sweat tracked down the side of the man’s face. Danny watched as a spark of rebellion struggled for life within his eyes.

“There’s a lot of paperwork in an arrest like this,” Danny continued smoothly. “Some of it might get lost. Maybe it’s the part that describes the evidence and the chain of custody. Or maybe it’s the part that says you were booked into jail and need to have a bond set. Which one you want lost? You want to have the case thrown out before it goes to trial? Or you want to spend an extra week or so in central lockup?”

The spark of rebellion died. His head dropped.

“That’s right,” Danny said, helping the unresisting man back up to his feet. “You be a good boy and this’ll all be over soon.”

Danny booked him in, filed the initial paperwork, and was on his way down the hall to his office when he saw her sitting in an interview room. The girl from the corner. She’d changed into jeans and a deep maroon blouse, but he’d have known her no matter what she was wearing. She looked small and scared in the metal chair, her hands clasped around a paper cup of coffee and her eyes on Detective Farber in the opposite chair.

He stepped into the open doorway, knocked on the jamb. She jerked her eyes up to his. A whisper of a smile touched her mouth and he thought that maybe now she didn’t look so scared. “Whatcha got?” he asked Farber without taking his eyes from her.

“She talked to Jimmy Ernst late last night,” the detective explained. “Might’ve been the last one to see him alive. We’re just getting started.”

“I’ll take over,” Danny said, moving into the room. He shifted his gaze, caught Farber’s eye. The other man hesitated, then flicked a glance back at the girl, hid a grin.

“Yeah, sure thing.” He stood and picked up his things. “By the way, Ernst had a gun on him. It’s been sent to the lab.” Ballistics testing was routine. Maybe they could pin some cold cases on Ernst and improve their stats. Farber’s eyes flicked toward the girl, then back to Danny. “Lemme know if you get anything,” he added, the double meaning hanging in the air.

Danny waited for him to leave, closed the door, and took a seat in the empty chair. “I’m Captain Danny Faciane,” he told her. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay.” She paused. “I’m Delia,” she said, releasing her grip on the paper cup.

“Last name?”

She sat back. “Rochon. Delia Rochon. I talked to Jimmy last night. About midnight or so, I guess. He used to come by the club a lot.” Distaste skimmed across her features.

He wrote her name on the pad. “Club?”

“Freddy-Z’s.” Her eyes dropped to the hands in her lap. “I’m a dancer.”

A stripper. Freddy-Z’s was one of the best in what was left of the city. Danny jotted the info down. Not because it was important to the case, but because he wanted her to think it was, that it wasn’t simply important to him that he knew where to find her again.

He went ahead and asked her about her conversation with Jimmy Ernst, went through the motions the same way they did with most other cases like this. She gave him a clear but sparse tale of the encounter. Jimmy had asked her about a girl who’d used to work at the club, wanted to know where she was now. Delia hadn’t told him anything. Nothing too exciting.

She didn’t like the victim. She never came out and said so, but it was clear in her manner, the hardening of her eyes when she spoke of him. Then again, Danny knew that he’d be hard pressed to find anyone who did. Jimmy was a pimp, specializing in girls who looked really young.

Danny finally set the pen down on the pad. She looked at the pen, then to him. “Am I under arrest?” she asked, voice small but steady.

He let out a snort. “For Jimmy? Nah. We don’t give a fuck about him.” No one would ever go to jail for that murder. Not unless they came to the station and made a full confession—and that’s how it was for most of the murders in this city, not only for scum like Ernst. Danny, and everyone else, did just enough to keep from being indicted for malfeasance.

The cops in this city knew how to survive. And a few smart ones, like him, knew how to prosper.

He walked her out, offered to have an officer drive her home, but she merely smiled and shook her head. It was raining again, a steady downpour that would wash all the trash into the streets and clog the drains, but she simply opened her umbrella and walked out into it without a hitch in her stride. He watched the red umbrella grow smaller in the distance until it was lost in the grey haze of the rain.

Danny talked to the bartender at Freddy-Z’s later that day, found out that Delia had started there about a month ago. No one knew much about her. Then again, no one really cared, according to the bartender. They didn’t give a shit about the girls’ personal lives as long as they showed up on time and kept any trouble they were in away from the club. Delia did both.

She was working that night. He made sure he was there to see her. He didn’t even try to convince himself he was checking out a possible witness. He knew damn well that he wanted to see more of her, and not simply the more that happened when she pulled her clothing off.