something else on your mind?”
“Little of both, I guess,” he grunted.
“Okay, if you’re finished with your lecture, are you ready to move on to the other?”
“What the hell is that?” he asked, confusion in his voice.
“Ummm…I don’t know. You called me, remember?”
“No, White Man. I mean what’s that fuckin’ noise?”
Apparently my next-door neighbor had another transaction waiting in the wings, either that or one of her co-workers had been in the queue. I’d already identified the voices of two separate bad actresses operating out of the same room. At any rate, it appeared my hoped for fifteen minutes of peace wasn’t going to happen, at least not during this particular hour.
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“Just like you said, it’s fuckin’ noise, Ben,” I told him, echoing his raw terminology. “Let’s just say there is a lot of nightshift work here at the Inn.”
“Jeezus, Row… You aren’t gonna…you know…”
“Come on, I think you know me better than that.”
“Well couldn’t ya’ get a decent room somewhere else?”
“Believe me, I wish I could. Right now I just need to be happy it has a roof and electricity.”
“So you at least got a TV?” he asked.
“Actually, no. I don’t think the people who normally use these rooms are all that interested in TV. Why do you ask?”
“Just wonderin’ what you’re doin’ for entertainment?”
The non sequitur queries were really starting to aggravate me, so I snapped, “I’m not here for entertainment, Ben, and you know that. Now, are you going to tell me whatever it is you had on your mind or not?”
“You sittin’ down?”
“No. There isn’t a chair, and I’m not so sure I want to use the bed from the looks of it. I’m not even sure where I plan to sleep in here now that I think of it.”
“Yeah, great. Well hold on ta’ somethin’ anyway.”
“Come on, Ben. What’s with the melodrama?”
“Payback’s a bitch.”
“What?”
“You kept me waitin’, I’m just returnin’ the favor.”
I shook my head and let out a heavy sigh. “I already said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”
“You gettin’ pissed at me yet?”
“I think you can safely say that I am, yeah. Why?”
“‘Cause that’s what I wanted. Like I said, payback.”
“Then I think you can consider the debt cleared,” I told him. “Now do you actually have something to tell me, or is this all just part of your grand plan?”
“Actually, I do have somethin’. Figured you mighta heard it on the news, but I guess not…”
“I haven’t seen any news since I left Saint Louis, so you guess correctly.”
“Yeah, well like I said, brace yourself. It looks like your evil sis-in-law is at it again.”
CHAPTER 2:
I was suddenly feeling very ill. Under different circumstances I would have blamed the acidic churn in my gut on the healthy dose of aspirin I’d swallowed only a few minutes before. However, the sour nausea was accompanied by hollowness in the pit of my stomach that told me this was a different kind of sick. It was the queasiness that bore its way into your intestines at right about the moment you realized you had seriously screwed up.
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, my impromptu trip here to New Orleans had been born only partly of logic and reason. The majority of the impetus was pure emotion that I had been all too willing to ascribe to gut instinct without really giving it any serious thought. What I realized now was that any of the calculating and planning I had done was probably nothing more than the inner ramblings of someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The truth is, I probably belonged in a hospital bed in the psych ward right next to my wife’s.
Of course, this was nothing new. I had always acted on impulse, and even when I was wrong, fate somehow allowed me to come out on top. But, my luck in that arena couldn’t last forever. It was bound to change at some point, and I feared that time had now arrived. I’d let haste guide my actions and doing so led me here, almost 700 miles due south of where I apparently needed to be, with no one to blame but myself-which is exactly what I was doing at this very moment.
“Okay…” I finally said as I let out a heavy sigh and desperately tried to process everything that was bouncing around inside my skull. “Let me get off here and see if I can find a flight back right away. I’ll call you back as soon as I know when I can be in Saint Louis.”
I received no response. I waited a moment and wondered if I’d lost connection due to problems with cell towers in the area. I even pulled the phone from my ear and glanced at the LCD to check the signal strength. Finding it well within limits, I spoke again, “Ben? Are you still there?”
“Ya’know,” he finally replied, “I could be a total ass and just let ya’ do that.” He let out a heavy breath, which told me he’d been at the other end all along. He’d just been thinking, most likely rocked back in his chair with his free hand massaging his neck as he had a tendency to do whenever pondering something serious. After another brief pause he added, “Hell, I should let ya’ do it ‘cause ya’ had no business goin’ down there anyway.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Ben?” I asked.
“Simple, White Man. Much as I’d prefer your happy ass was in Saint Louis where I can keep an eye on ya’, the murder didn’t happen here. It happened there.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, there. In New Orleans.”
“Where here?” I demanded.
“Ain’t important, Row. It’s bein’ investigated and they’re keepin’ us in the loop.”
“Fine. That’s lovely. I’d expect nothing less. Now, where did it happen?”
“I’m not tellin’ ya’.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause if I do, you’ll try ta’ find a way ta’ get into it.”
“How do you know that?”
He half chuckled. “How? ‘Cause I know you, that’s how. Besides, if that ain’t your plan, whaddaya need to know the particulars for?”
I couldn’t dispute either point, so I asked, “Yeah, so what if I do? Maybe if I check out the crime scene, I can pick up on something they can’t see. You know how that tends to happen with me.”
“Yeah, I do. But, the scene’s a week old.”
“A week?!” I exclaimed. “Why in the hell are we just now hearing about it?”
“NCIC backlog, Row,” he explained. “Not to mention a hurricane and a flood which I’m sure you noticed. NOLA PD is swamped. Too much crime, not enough time or coppers for that matter. It just got entered, and that’s only ‘cause a fresh volunteer from KC is down there, and he remembered somethin’ about one of our bulletins that made ‘im do a little diggin’.”
“Well, I’ve pulled impressions from old crime scenes before. So that’s not really an issue.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
His stonewalling was really pushing me to the edge, but I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with the direct approach, so I changed my plan of attack, “Well, are you certain it’s her?”
“Until they finish processin’ evidence, no. And with things the way they are down there, that could take awhile. But I did talk ta’ the copper workin’ the case myself. The victim was male, found in a room at a no-tell motel
