Let the Devil Out (8 page)

Not ten seconds later, the stalker passed by right behind her, hands in his pockets, silent as smoke. Maureen fell in step behind him, as far from him as he was from the target.

Maureen knew well how vulnerable most people were from behind. Few had the 360-degree radar that was the province of being a small woman with a late-night job. She knew most people couldn't feel the devil himself coming right up on them until he was close enough to plant a hot kiss on the back of their neck. How many times had she already heard in her short career as a cop: “I never saw him, he came from nowhere and took my purse, took my phone, took my wallet, hit me in the head, pulled a knife on me, put a gun in my back. I'm usually so careful.”

The girl continued walking, unsteady and slow on her wedge heels, distracted by her phone. The man kept his distance.

A cold wind blew down Magazine, biting through Maureen's clothes, sending a chill rippling over her skin. She thought of that night with the silver-haired man a year ago. She thought of distractions. Of a red traffic light you watched so hard it took you far too long to notice how fast the headlights in your rearview bore down on you. And before you knew it, because you'd let your guard down for maybe nineteen seconds, the guys who'd rear-ended you, killers you'd dodged for weeks, had you locked in the trunk of their car, your nose full of mold and your mouth leaking blood.

Stay here, she told herself. Stay here in New Orleans. Stay with that oblivious girl.

She reached into her hoodie pocket for her cigarettes; she craved smoke to cover the taste of the trunk of that car, but she stopped herself. She didn't want to illuminate her face for anyone else on the street, and she didn't want to risk the man she was following turning at the flick of the lighter or the smell of the smoke.

She concentrated her vision on the hunched shoulders of the man walking in front of her. Look to the future, she told herself, boring into the space between his shoulder blades with her eyes, to what's ahead of you. Don't give him any reason to turn around. She was counting on the man's own vulnerability, on that unattended and forgotten space a breath-width behind his back.

The blindness she lamented in the girl was Maureen's best advantage over the man a dozen paces ahead of her. Watching him, she thought again of hot smoke in her mouth, of that next cigarette. She'd save it for after her work was done, savor the anticipation of it.

When they had walked three blocks along Magazine, the girl made a wide, slow turn down Philip Street, taking her pursuer and his pursuer toward the river and into the Irish Channel, where the streets got quieter and darker. Fewer porch lights. More broken streetlights. Virtually no car or foot traffic. Maureen thought the girl might on instinct turn and look behind her up Magazine as she turned the corner. She didn't.

The girl did stop half a block down Philip, her back to Magazine Street.

Maureen watched as the man hesitated, slowing almost to a stop.

The girl never sensed him. Never turned. She stuffed her phone in her purse, continued digging around in it as she continued walking. Maybe she's smarter than this guy and I both assume, Maureen thought. Maybe she's reaching for a gun. The purse was big enough to hold a smallish weapon, a .38 or a .22. Maybe she had heard the stalker stories. Maybe she had been waiting to make the turn onto the darker, quieter street because she thought that gave
her
an advantage, or because it reduced the chance of witnesses.

Maureen had a disappointing realization.

If this girl pulls a gun, she thought, and if it looks like she might pull the trigger, I have to intervene on the stalker's behalf. A telltale metallic jingle made the issue moot.

No gun in that purse, only house keys.

The girl walked quicker. The stalker hastened as well, closing the gap between him and the girl. Maureen moved closer, too, convinced that neither player knew of her presence.

Whatever was going to happen was happening very soon. Like in-less-than-a-minute soon. Maureen had waited hours to hit this spot. Now she was down to the final seconds. The girl reached for a wrought-iron gate. Maureen heard the stalker catch his breath.

Here it comes, Maureen thought. Don't miss it.

The gate creaked as the girl swung it open onto a walk leading to a small cottage. No lights were on inside. Not even a fucking porch light burned.

What was wrong with this girl? Maureen thought. Did she know nothing about the city, about the world she lived in? There are people in this world, Maureen remembered, to whom awful things haven't happened yet. And I'm here in the dark, she thought, to keep that true for this dumb girl for one more day.

She pulled the ASP from her back pocket. She gave the man half a moment to acquit himself, to let the girl know he was there, to call out her name. Anything to tell Maureen he wasn't following this girl home with ill intent. Anything. To not be what Maureen knew in her bones he was. Do that, Maureen thought, show me you're not what I think you are and I will walk on by. I will let this go. The man said nothing. He did nothing but reach for the gate. He'd been smart enough to let it bang closed before he opened it, knowing some part of the girl's brain waited to register that sound.

The man slipped up the walk behind the girl, impressively silent, had her within arm's reach. Maureen darted through the gate behind the man. She didn't wait for him to reach for the girl.

She fell on him from behind, kicking out the back of one knee, locking his throat in the crook of her elbow. He lurched forward, gasping, knocking into the back of the girl, who went facedown without a sound onto the brick steps leading up the porch.

Maureen hammered the ASP down on the knee she'd kicked. The joint gave out. As they fell, she and the man she'd pursued, her foot slipped off the edge of the walkway, and she rolled her ankle. Electric pain shot through her ankle and up her calf. The pain made her gasp. Not again, she thought. This fucking ankle will never heal. Forget it, she told herself. Use it. Let it hurt. Use the adrenaline, the anger.

They tumbled into a row of ginger plants, falling to the ground among the stalks. The man landed facedown, Maureen on top of him. He clawed at Maureen's forearm with both hands, trying to pry her arm away from his throat. He yanked at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Her grip wouldn't give. When she felt him weaken under her, she released his throat, letting him breathe. She didn't want to strangle him. Grabbing him by the back of the head, she pushed his face into the dirt. He couldn't be allowed to get a look at her. He flopped under her like a fish. He was a fighter, but not much of one. He was a weak man.

Inside the house, a dog barked, a crazed yippy thing that would wear on the nerves quickly. Maybe panicked enough to get people looking out the window. She'd have to work quickly.

She straddled the small of the man's back. She cocked her arm and thumped him a hard shot to the rib cage with the ASP. The blow made a sound like she'd slapped a pumpkin. He cried out into the dirt, his breath exploding from him.

“Stop fucking moving,” she said, “and lie there.”

“I can't—I can't breathe.”

“Lie still,” Maureen said, “and take it like a man.”

“My fucking ribs. Fuck.” He squirmed and cried out. “I can't—you broke my fucking knee. Christ, it fucking hurts.”

“Let it,” Maureen said. “Let it hurt.”

She tapped the weighted ball of the ASP against his cheek, traced the underside of his eye as if caressing it with her fingertip. Blood stained his teeth. Dirt dusted his hair. She watched his terrified wild blue eye roll around in its socket, searching for her, for her weapon, for an escape. She knew she sat back far enough that he couldn't see her face.

“Lie there and let it hurt,” she said, “and no more talking.”

“What the fuck?” Maureen heard the girl say. “Holy shit, my face is bleeding.”

“Go in the house and clean up,” Maureen said, not turning, not looking up or at the girl, hiding her face with the hood of her sweatshirt. “Go in the house and clean yourself up and don't come back outside. Do not call the police.”

Maureen heard the sniffles as the girl started to cry.

“Everything is fine,” Maureen said, with as much gentleness as she could muster. “Take care of your dog.” She used the voice she'd been taught to use with witnesses at a crime scene, which was exactly what, she realized, this girl had become. Well, better to be the witness, Maureen thought, than the victim. “Go inside.”

The girl did the smartest thing she had done that night. She went inside the house.

Maureen turned her attention back to the panting, bleeding man beneath her.

“Now it's you and me, handsome. Alone in the dark.”

He had stopped struggling. His pain made it impossible for him to lie motionless. There was no comfortable position for him, wouldn't be for months, but he was listening. He was trying to obey her.

Maureen rose up on her knees, lashed down again with the ASP on the man's injured knee. Something shattered in it this time, and something broke in him. He sobbed.

She leaned her face down to his ear. She was hunched over his body as if he were felled prey, which, she supposed, he was. She could smell the cheap vodka on his breath, sweating out of his pores. Her ankle throbbed. She hated him, blamed him, for the pain she felt. She could smell her own whiskey breath on his skin. He cried underneath her, biting his bottom lip to stifle the sound. She could feel his chest pulsing with sobs between her thighs. She'd lose him soon to the pain and the damage she'd done. She was losing her chance to talk to him, to deliver the rest of the message she'd prepared.

“I know you,” she said. “I know what you are. I know what you do. I know what you want, what you think. I
see
you. You ever try this shit again, and I will know. It will come to me like a dream and I will reappear. Things won't go down like this next time. There won't be any pain next time. This time you saw stars. Next time the lights go out.”

She rose to her feet. She glanced up and down the block, gave the cottage windows the once-over. She settled her sore foot on the small of the man's back. She leaned more of her weight on it to increase the pain she felt. She listened for sirens, heard none. No one was coming. Not for him. Not for her. “Stay here. Stay here and count to one hundred before you move a muscle.”

If he'd heard, he didn't acknowledge her. Didn't much matter, Maureen thought. With what she'd done to his knee, he wouldn't be following her, or making an effort to get into that girl's house. Hell, he might be lying there in the crushed ginger in the morning. She didn't much care. She backed away up the walk, collapsing the ASP and slipping it into her back pocket. She'd clean it off when she got home.

She passed through the gate and out into the street. She pulled her hood close around her face. Her rolled ankle would hurt like a bitch in the morning, swell up to grapefruit size if she didn't get ice on it soon. She couldn't exactly load up on Percocets before her sit-down with the district commander. But right then and there, having left a would-be rapist sobbing in the shadows, her insides felt right. The engine that tremored in her belly twenty-four-seven had gone quiet, like it had those other times. She didn't care about anything that had happened before that very moment. She didn't care about the future. What she cared about was the quiet. The past was so very far away. The entirety of her future was her walk home.

The satisfaction was a dangerous feeling. She knew that.

I could do this every day, she thought.

Well, no, she corrected herself. Starting tomorrow, you can't do this ever again. You'll have to find another outlet, another answer, sweet as this one has been.

Her first time really going after someone had just kind of happened. She wasn't looking for it. An opportunity arose in front of her, an accident, even, in the form of some dumb boy. So she did it. To see what it would feel like. And she found she liked it.

*   *   *

She'd been in the Marigny most of that night, skipping dinner, catching a band at the Apple Barrel. She'd had a few during the set, which ran late. After the drinks and the music, she'd stayed out and hung around Frenchmen Street, chatting up the street musicians and the homeless kids, looking for Madison Leary. Maybe for Dice, too.

A few blocks away from Frenchmen, across the wide lanes of Elysian Fields, behind the warehouses, the Marigny neighborhood turned more residential. The narrow streets were dark with the shadows of crepe myrtles and banana trees.

In those shadows, Maureen spotted a drunken kid standing between two cars in the unmistakable wobbly posture of someone trying not to piss on his own shoes.

She'd shouted out to him, “Why don't you go home and piss on your own neighborhood?”

The boy hadn't looked over, hadn't altered his posture or pinched off his stream, but he'd responded, “This
is
my neighborhood,
bitch
.”

That had stopped her in her tracks. “That makes it worse, not better, you asshole,” she said. And then she crossed the street in his direction.

The original plan was to tell him she was a cop, and that she could have him locked up for what he was doing. That he could've used one of the dozen bathrooms available to him only blocks away back on Frenchmen Street. She wanted to intimidate him, maybe shame him for being confronted by a grown woman while he stood there with his limp dick in his hand. But then she thought, as she got closer, her boots crunching on the crackled asphalt, why tell him anything? Why waste her time and her breath? He'd had his chance to do the right thing when she'd yelled at him, and he'd chosen not to. He'd had his chance to be a decent human being, she thought, before he'd ever unzipped his pants, and he had passed.

Now came the consequences.