Alex Sincebaugh had spent the entire evening in desperate pursuit of a line on a guy named Easy or Big Easy or any variant, such as E-Z. But none of those he came up with who used any of those aliases seemed a likely suspect. So Ben and he had spent a frustrating night-that is, until Alex talked Ben back into pursuing the Davey Gilreath angle. He wanted to put the touch on Gilreath's relative, this Susie Socks.
Ben didn't share Alex's single-minded determination, and they had some words when, after long hours, Ben began to moan, too fatigued, he said. Still, they drove for the Pink Anvil only five blocks riverside from the Blue Heron. At the club, Susie Socks-no doubt her name was an alias-wasn't on duty, but on her night off people were more inclined to talk about her. When Alex learned that she was in fact Gilreath's sister, he became doubly excited. She had been living and working in the area for a little over a year, having come on the scene at about the time of Victor Surette's death-also an interesting wrinkle, thought Detective Sincebaugh.
He and Ben got an address on Susie, Ben admitting that maybe something just might shake out when he said, “Geez, I never knew the weasel had a sister.”
“ You learn something new every day,” Alex replied as they made their way back to the car. From there they started for Susie's place, but there was no rush. When they arrived, they found she was not home. Alex wanted to stake out the place for a while, but Ben argued for letting it go for another day, that they'd find her at the nightclub the next day. Ben followed this with wide, long yawns, stretching and talk of a soft bed and a softer Fiona waiting for him at home.
“ Look, Ben, on the surface, it always appeared that Victor Surette fell from the sky without a background, without people or connections, and I think that was by design. He had no photos when we searched his place, remember? No albums, postcards, not so much as a phone number. It was unnatural then, and it stinks now, that his place was so goddamned clean of information. You remember that?”
“ Sure, but we chalked it up to a spartan life, a guy who didn't want ties or anyone from his past to know his whereabouts.”
“ No high school yearbooks, nothing,” Alex continued. “Unless all such materials were cleaned out before we got to the apartment. Remember the delay between finding and identifying the body?”
“ Yeah, but I don't think there's some conspiracy going on here, Alex.”
“ Well if there's no conspiracy to hide Surette's true identity, then why the hocus-pocus attempt out at the cemetery? And who else'd make off with the man's photos and corre-spondence and papers? His killer?”
“ None of the other victims had their places cleaned out, Alex. It was just how Surette lived.”
“ Maybe…maybe not…”
“ What's that suppose to mean?”
“ What if someone didn't want Surette to have a past?”
“ What if that someone was Surette himself?” Ben countered.
They were getting on each other's nerves, so Alex left the car for the building, to wait on the steps. They had a fair description of Susie, and he believed he'd know her if she showed up. As for the mystery of Surette's past, everyone questioned claimed no knowledge whatever of his childhood or parentage. Perhaps Victor had cut himself off completely from all connections with his childhood.
“ Maybe Davey Gilreath killed Victor Surette in a lovers' quarrel,” said Ben, who'd wandered over to sit alongside his partner. “Outta jealousy, rage. You know how it goes. Love kills…”
“ But that doesn't explain the others.”
“ Yeah, it could… it could,” countered Ben. “They're all the same; they're all interchangeable; he kills them all because they're all extensions of Vicki, get it?”
“ Could be…” Alex gave Ben a nod. They had found threads of information linking the victims: They all belonged to the cross-dressing gay crowd, they frequented the same nightclubs and gay bars, they lived within a twenty-seven-block radius of one another and mutual friends knew more than one of the victims by more than just reputation. Maybe Ben was onto something.
Alex half expected to find that Sue Socks was in fact Pigsty, dressed in women's clothing and acting out the life he'd always wanted, the life of a woman. But the woman who climbed from a cab, draped in the arms of another woman, the two kissing one another passionately here on the street, was not Pigsty.
Alex flashed his badge at the lesbian couple. The painted peroxide-blonde almost spat at them. But beneath her bravado, Alex sensed a deep-seated fear.
“ Susie Socks? We need a word with you.”
She took a moment to plead with her lover to stay, to not leave her alone with the “pigs.” But her lover was equally nervous given the situation, so she begged off, going back to the cab.
“ All right… come on up,” Susie told them, her alcohol breath parting the detectives.
It was a sordid little apartment just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. The walk up was straight and narrow. Once inside, Alex and Ben posed questions amid a bare room without adornment or pictures. They questioned a bare woman adorned in phony makeup and clothes that hearkened back to the flower children of the late sixties.
“ It's a lie,” she told them. “I ain't no relation to that bastard and prick David Gilreath.”
He took note of the fact she called him David.
Susie Socks was a gaunt, rangy lesbian who turned tricks with men for money when she wasn't waitressing at the Pink Anvil, or so their information had told them, and it would appear that their sources were correct. Alex and Ben knew what prostitutes hated more than anything, so they went to work, squeezing her for information, threatening her with daily harassment and arrests if she were not cooperative.
“ What the hell you want from me?”
“ Just a line on Gilreath's whereabouts…”
“ Or it's a trip to night court,” Ben added.
“ He's afraid, and he won't come out of hiding. He doesn't know anything.” Her voice was deep, resonant and thick, like a man's.
“ Then what's he afraid of?”
“ Power.”
“ Oh, really? I would've thought your answer different, that he's afraid of the Queen of Hearts killer.”
“ That is power, sugar… power in its rawest form.”
“ Power, huh?” replied Ben, tired of the games. “Then try this on for power. We bust your ass tonight, sweetie, for prostitution and anything else we find in your place that isn't le-gal-say, crack. Then we exercise our power to do so again tomorrow and the next night and the next.”
“ Why don't you make this easy on yourself, Susie Q,” suggested Alex, a half smile playing on his face. “We just want to question him. That's all, Miss Gilreath.”
“ S-Socks, Susie Socks,” she corrected him. “He's no longer in the city.”
“ Where is he then?”
“ I don't know!”
“ All right,” bellowed Big, “guess we do this the hard way. Want to get a coat, make a better impression on the judge, sweetie?”
Alex escorted her toward the back of the house, both cop and civilian knowing the rules of discovery should he see something illegal in her back room.
“ All right… all right… he's back home, out at the farm.”
“ Where's the farm, honey?”
“ Up-country…”
“ Where exactly up-country!”
“ Palladium… my daddy owns a place up there. Davey went home to hide out. He was afraid when Surette was killed. Something… something about it all scared the hell out of him, and now I know why.”
“ Oh, and why's that, sugar?” pressed Ben.
“ Hell, all of the victims were men of my brother's… persuasion, and he knew most of 'em, and he was close, real close to Surette. He knew whoever was doing the killing would get round to him if he didn't run, so he ran, and so you fools… you think he's the killer because he disappeared from sight, but you don't know jack-shit. It's about power, is what it's about… power.”
“ Are you going to tell me what you mean by that, Jodi?” Alex pressed now, using her real name just to
