“The river. There’s a walkway on the levee, across the streetcar tracks.”
“I know. The Moonwalk.”
She stays at my shoulder as I march to the little streetcar stop at Dumaine, then cross over the tracks and climb to the brick walkway atop the levee. The river is wide here, and the water high for this time of year, a gray-brown flood separating New Orleans from Algiers. Pushboats and tugs churn across the water at surprising speed, gulls dipping and diving around them. We walk toward Jackson Square, and in the distance I see the hotels and department stores of Canal Place, the old Trade Mart building, the Aquarium of the Americas, and the twin bridges arching across to the west bank.
We’re not alone on the walkway. There are tourists with cameras, joggers wearing headphones, buskers with open guitar cases full of change, and restless bums trying to catch the eyes of passersby, searching for likely marks. As we approach and pass each, I feel Wendy tense beside me, then slowly relax.
Below us on the right lie the streetcar tracks and the parking lot that runs the length of the Quarter; to our left the levee slopes twenty-five feet toward the water, an earthen wall lined with riprap, the heavy gray rocks the Corps of Engineers uses for erosion control. Driftwood clogs the riprap at water’s edge, and every forty yards or so stands a fisherman with a cane pole or rod, hoping for a catfish or a gar.
“Wendy, do you remember the big scandal about FBI lab people giving false evidence testimony? Dummying up results to give prosecutors what they needed?”
“Yes,” she says in an inquisitive tone.
“Wasn’t it proved that a lot of the Bureau’s high-tech forensic tests weren’t half as accurate as claimed?”
“In some cases. But Louis Freeh made it a priority to correct all that. You’re thinking about the sable brush hairs?”
“I’m wondering if the four people we’ve been badgering are tied to this case in any way at all.”
“The lab wasn’t aiming for some known result in this case, Jordan. They just came up with a rare type and lot of brush hair, and one of the few places that lot went was New Orleans.”
Her answer is solid, and that reassures me a little. I can hear myself breathing harder from exertion, but Wendy speaks as though we’re sitting across from each other at lunch.
“I’ve never worked a murder case,” she says. “But I have total faith in John and Mr. Baxter.”
I nod, but my faith is far from complete. Down at water’s edge, a huge bearded man in an overcoat looks up the rocky slope as we walk past. He’s far enough away that Wendy doesn’t tense, but I sense that she could have her gun out in a second or less.
“What was Thalia Laveau like?” she asks.
“Really nice. She had a tough childhood. Her father and cousin sexually abused her.”
“Yuck.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“She was gay?”
“She still is, I hope.”
“God, yes.” Wendy’s face colors. “I didn’t mean that to sound like it did.”
“It’s okay.”
As we walk on, she seems to withdraw into her own thoughts. Then out of the blue she says, “I don’t want to offend you or anything, but I heard during the interview with Laveau, you told her you got raped once. Is that true?”
I feel a flash of temper, knowing the story is probably making the rounds of the field office, but it’s hard to be angry at Wendy, whose curiosity seems part of an eternal quest for self-improvement. “It’s true.”
“I really admire you for speaking up like that, knowing those guys could hear you on the wire.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Does it feel like a long time ago?”
“No.”
She nods. “That’s what I figured.”
“Have you ever had trouble like that?”
“Not that bad. A baseball player got really pushy with me in college once, in the backseat of his car. I waited until he exposed himself, and then I made him regret it.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah. But something like this, where they snatch you off the street, someone who’s all prepared with a rape kit-”
“We don’t know the victims are being raped,” I remind her.
“Well, right, except for the woman taken from Dorignac’s.”
A wave of heat comes into my cheeks.
“I shouldn’t assume anything about the others from that,” Wendy goes on. “We don’t know for sure the UNSUB took her.”
Her words stop me dead on the walkway. “The woman taken from Dorignac’s grocery was raped?”
Wendy looks confused. “Well, they found semen inside her. She could have just had sex, of course, but I think the opinion of the pathologist was that she was raped.”
As I stand speechless in the wind, a drop of rain touches my face. I had thought the police took DNA samples from the suspects to compare to skin found under the Dorignac’s woman’s fingernails. But they had more than that. And kept it from me. Turning left, I see a gray line of raindrops advancing across the river with the wind, dimpling the waves like soldiers marching over from the Algiers shore.
“I just put my foot in my mouth, didn’t I?” says Wendy. “They didn’t tell you.”
“They didn’t tell me.”
“I guess they didn’t want you to suffer any more than you had to, with your sister and all.”
My rising anger is dwarfed by hurt at John’s betrayal. How could he hold this back from me? But then come images of Jane suffering terror and rape -
“God, I’m in trouble,” Wendy says. But instead of asking me to keep quiet, she says, “They should have told you.”
I turn and continue along the levee despite the rain, which is light and will probably pass quickly, if my memories of New Orleans are accurate.
“You know it’s raining,” says Wendy.
“Yes.”
The tourists and joggers are moving a little faster, but the fishermen stand their ground, knowing the odds favor a quick blowover.
A clattering racket behind us startles Wendy, but it’s only the streetcar. In a few seconds it trundles past us and stops opposite Jackson Square. To our right is the burnt-orange roof of the Cafe du Monde, and the smell of coffee and frying beignets wafts over the levee, making my mouth water and my stomach ache.
“Pavlov’s dog,” I say quietly.
“Can we talk about something personal for a second?” Wendy asks in a hesitant voice.
“I thought we were.”
“This is different.”
I know what’s coming. “Sure,” I tell her, dreading the questions to follow.
“I think John has a thing for you.”
“He does,” I reply.
“And you have a thing for him?”
“Yes.”
As a tall man in a sock cap approaches, she tenses and waits for him to pass. After he does, she looks back over her shoulder until he’s well away.
“Well, I know you know I like him. John knows, too, I think. I mean, he’d have to be blind, I guess. When I feel something for somebody, I’m not very subtle about it.”
“Nobody is, when they really feel something.”
“I guess I’m just not what he’s looking for,” she says, her voice remarkably free of self-pity. “I mean, I know he likes me and everything, but… you know what I mean.”
