Out of Body (28 page)

Marley made a few more delicate motions, working the scalpel between the bottom of the house and the board it stood on. Slowly, the gap widened until the green-painted base, with the grounds, separated on three sides and slowly dropped away.

She turned up the lights in her magnifying goggles, not that what she saw needed to be any clearer.

A web of tiny pipes formed a grill beneath the bottom. Marley got a finger and thumb grip on these in two places and pulled gently. They parted and came wide-open in two panels.

“A drain field?” she murmured. “Or something.”

With the two parts of the grill open she looked into the open space behind them.

She was looking at a basement.

The walls inside were gray and were taller on one side than the other. In a square hole cut out in the middle, she saw the bottom of a flight of stairs descending. The stairs continued down and with the base closed would rest on the supposed floor. In one corner of the space a cubicle was walled off and there was a wide door. She pulled it open and jerked her hand back.

What looked like little caskets or ice boxes had fallen to the side of the room. Attached to an overhead pulley system, doll-like bodies in harnesses hung from hooks—like the
hooks she had seen revolving behind Liza and then Amber when she traveled to the place she couldn’t find. The sickening little figures also hung to the side closest to the workbench.

With her heart pounding, Marley righted the house again and set to work on the sealed back. She levered the panel open and hinges long coated with adhesive that had solidified, broke off.

There was no furniture on any of the floors inside, but off a room lined with wooden cabinets that was obviously a kitchen, was a miniature cupboard surrounded with shelves. The shelves were loaded with tiny cans and other goods, glued in place. And on a bottom shelf she saw a group of packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

She also saw another door that opened from the cupboard onto the top of a flight of stairs, the same flight that ran all the way into the basement.

Marley wrapped her arms around herself. She had seen it all before. She had gone down those steps. With her eyes shut, she shuddered violently.

G
ray didn’t much like the atmosphere around Nat’s office. When Gray had arrived, the chief stood in the doorway. As he left, his parting shot to Nat had been, “That’s not possible. You know it, I know it, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. I’m getting crawled all over and if you don’t want to be broken down to patrolman, you get me the answers I need.”

Chief Beauchamp had slammed the door with enough force to cause one of the mortally wounded window shades to fall down inside, then he bumped into Gray, apparently without either recognizing him or noticing he even existed.

The man’s oversize face glowed an intriguing shade of sweaty purple all the way to his retreating hairline.

On the other side of Nat’s door, the mood was just as grim. The grunt the detective aimed at Gray might have meant anything but the most likely interpretation was: “Fuck off and die.”

Gray cleared his throat and Nat paused his pacing to aim a glare at him.

“You asked me to come, Nat.”

Another glare.

Gray shrugged, used a foot to hook a chair against one wall and sat down. He crossed his arms.

“How come it’s always the fools who make it to the top?”
Nat said, but Gray didn’t kid himself he was supposed to have an answer.

Nat pointed at Gray, then in the general direction Beauchamp had taken. “You and I know this case isn’t straightforward.”

Gray laughed.

“Don’t,” Nat said and his expression was tortured enough to wipe the smile off Gray’s face. “We also know we’ve found out a good deal. It just doesn’t want to fit together, is all.”

Gray cleared his throat. “Right.”

“That horse’s ass is believing his own opinion of himself.” He jabbed the air again, clearly referring to Beauchamp. “He thinks he’s God. He thinks he can make something so, just because he says it is.”

“Whoa,” Gray said. “Slow down, Nat. We have found out a lot—much more than I think we had even a day ago. Don’t tell me you tried to tell Beauchamp what happened at River Road.”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t talk about Marley and…you know?”

Nat sighed. “I probably should have. I’d be farther ahead—maybe.”

“Now I know things are bad,” Gray said. “I’ve got a couple of things to pass on, but you start.”

Nat mumbled and went to fall into the chair behind his desk.

“I missed that,” Gray said.

“Beauchamp can’t think outside the box.”

Gray got a sinking feeling. “What exactly did you tell him?”

“I was going to talk to you first, but he showed up here yellin’ about the public. All he thinks about is the public.”

“They do pay the salaries around here and they elect some, remember?”

Nat looked at Gray. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “That fool is going to have people crawling all over my investigation and I don’t think that’s going to help, do you?”

A clear, cool sheath settled over Gray. He understood where Nat was going and what that meant. And he felt the rush and crush of time sucked away. They had to run ahead of the chief and the rest of the posse he would bring in to safeguard his own position. A lot happened in this town and it could be pretty bizarre, but there were limits even here. Four women had gone—one of this second group found immediately, the other three just…gone. Pearl Brite was the latest and he knew the details of how not only the woman but her bike and everything to do with her had gone, too, had been leaked to the press.

And memories of the last and wider swath of disappearances that cut across the city had freshened and raised questions about connections.

In a city where voodoo was a tourist attraction, the natives were looking over their shoulders.

“They don’t know we’ve got the helmet?” Gray said.

Nat’s intelligent eyes bored into Gray’s. “No.”

“Good. Better to let them run around talking about alien abductions. That’s the last snippet I saw on the news.”

“Might as well be aliens,” Nat said. “I gotta settle down. Look, I think we could have something. Pipes Dupuis. I think she’s hiding something.”

Gray felt completely calm. It was as if he had expected Nat to talk about Pipes right out of the box. “Keep going.”

“She’s got a little girl. Five, I think—pretty little thing, anyway. Pipes said she took the kid to her mother because she was nervous having her here with all the business going on around singers.”

“I remember.” He had to be quiet and let Nat finish before spilling the encounter he’d just had with Pipes.

“If Pipes left New Orleans in the relevant period, we can’t find any record of it. We were thinking she must have gone by car, but Bucky Fist says she doesn’t have one. She and the girl lived in a room and they’ve got about nothing.
Pipes doesn’t date and she usually takes Erin everywhere with her. She didn’t fly out of here or take a bus or train that we can find out. But Gray, more than that, we can’t find any family for Pipes Dupuis.”

Gray thought about that. “Including a grandmother for Erin?”

“You’ve got it. Pipes came to New Orleans from New York. She was pregnant with the girl. She had the baby here—apparently in the room where they live. The landlady is the only one worrying about either of them. She helped Pipes with the baby. No insurance, no nothing, but the landlady’s got a friend who came in, a midwife. They managed.”

“God,” Gray said with feeling. “How could that happen?”

“It probably happens every day—somewhere. We don’t have time to start some sort of movement right now. Gray, there is a kid. Her name is Erin. We don’t know where she is but we don’t think she went to some family member of Pipes’s.”

“Have you tried to talk to Pipes?”

“What do you think? She’s sticking to her story and says she doesn’t have to tell us exactly where Erin is and she won’t. She doesn’t know who could be watching to see what moves she makes and she thinks her daughter might be in danger. Pipes is still staying with Sidney Fournier.”

“I don’t get that. Why would Erin be in danger? This joker’s going after adult, female jazz singers, not little kids.”

“She told me she’s been threatened—Pipes, that is.”

Gray stood up. “When, when did she tell you?”

“A couple of hours ago. We waited for when she was leaving Scully’s. This time she said there was nothing to worry about with Erin. She’s safe and will stay safe if we leave her alone—both of them alone.”

“Nat, what she’s really saying is she’s been threatened. That means she’s had contact with our guy. Didn’t she give any idea who he is?”

“She doesn’t know. It was dark, she says, and late.”

Gray thought about it. “But someone threatened to kill Erin if Pipes said anything?”

“That’s not the way I read it. Pipes was personally threatened and she decided that meant Erin needs to be protected.”

“Okay,” Gray said slowly. “What was Pipes threatened with and why?”

Nat threw up his hands. He got up and went to pour two cups of coffee. One of these he gave to Gray. “She won’t say. All I can get out of her is that
someone
told her she was in danger and she’d better not become a problem.”

“That’s it?”

Nat nodded.

“Listen to this,” Gray said. “I think we’ve got our link, but we’ll have to move carefully. I think that little girl is the key we’ve been looking for and I think Pipes knows a lot more than she told you.”

He explained to Nat, word-for-word, exactly what happened after Marley got out of the Volvo and went into J. Clive Millet, Antiques, on Royal Street.

When he finished, Nat had forgotten his coffee and stared from one wall to the next. He drummed his fingers on the desk, made to get up, but changed his mind.

“Great,” he said at last. “Just great. They’ve got the kid. You think so, too, don’t you?”

“I do now. I didn’t when I came in here—I hadn’t even considered it.”

“Stay away from Pipes,” Nat said. “She’s probably being watched. We can’t risk the little girl.”

“I don’t have any plans to dog Pipes’s footsteps,” Gray said.

“Good. I’ve got to wear glass shoes on this one. I want to watch her for a day or two and if we don’t get any useful information, I’ll bring her in for questioning.”

“And that won’t put Erin at risk?”

“She’s at risk now. Take it from me, Gray, we don’t dare
wait long. Why do you think the mother behaved the way she did with you today?”

Gray wished he was sure of the answer to that one. “You tell me if you want me to do something and I’ll do it.” He decided not to lead Nat back to the obvious: Pipes was looking for someone at the antique shop and the only possible candidate was Marley.

He wanted to get back to Royal Street. What he was starting to feel now came with the spikes of cold he had come to dread. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me up to date.”

“I haven’t,” Nat said. “That’s just the minor stuff. I want to talk to you about the best way to get Marley’s cooperation.”

“She is cooperating,” Gray said, not missing a beat. Those shivery spikes made their way up his spine, vertebra by vertebra.

“You like her a lot,” Nat said and Gray wanted to congratulate the man for superunderstatement. “But you hardly know her.”

That’s what you think.

“That piece of T-shirt has changed the whole complexity of our case.” Nat held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt me. You don’t know what I’m going to say. I’ll start by telling you we don’t have any final forensic results. It’s too early. Well, it’s not too early for the obvious stuff, but some things take too damn long for my health.”

Gray rubbed his hands together. Foreboding locked his jaw and he flared his nostrils to breathe. He wanted to be with Marley.

“I’m taking you over to see Blades. He’s going to stay till we can get there.”

That loosened Gray’s tongue. Nat’s announcement sounded like some sort of death sentence. “Why? What does he want with me?”

“He doesn’t want anything to do with you, but he’s agreed to put up with having you there.”

Gray looked at the ceiling. “Dr. Death has no sense of humor.”

“Don’t call him that today, please.”

“I don’t intend to see him today.” He didn’t believe he had time.

“Yes, you will, Gray.” When Nat’s face was expressionless—listen up. “A couple of days ago Blades told me something I didn’t believe. I’m going to tell you now, but if you ever say I did, I’ll find a way to make you wish you hadn’t.”

Gray wanted to tell Nat to keep his secrets to himself. Curiosity got the best of him. “Okay. I don’t have a history of flapping lips.”

“Just listen,” Nat said. He talked about the corpse of Shirley Cooper and the preliminary conclusions Blades had reached about the composition of material found in wounds on the body.

No brilliant comeback came to mind for Gray. He formed one comment after another, only to discard them all as pointless. “Blades has got to be joking,” he said finally.

“You know Blades,” Nat said. “Does he seem like a joker to you? You ever hear him crack even a little funny, or smile, for crying out loud?”

Gray shook his head. “But it’s not possible.”

“Dammit, don’t you do a Beauchamp on me.”

“Maybe what they found had nothing to do with the perp.”

“It did and does. Blades was sure before—even though he’s waiting for final word from Quantico—and I don’t think anyone’s going to move him now.”

Gray swallowed hard.

“That bit of Marley’s T-shirt. Blades is sure he sees traces of the same stuff he found deep in Shirley Cooper’s wounds on the fabric.”

“But—”

“No, Gray. Blades says the composition of the specimen is closest to saliva. Sort of. And most of Shirley’s wounds were inflicted through bites, some were scratches. Blades thinks the bites are the killer’s—I don’t know why. Marley’s arm was scratched—or that’s what I decided. But Blades is sure the owner of the teeth and claws doesn’t have anything resembling DNA—not as we know it. We’re looking for a killer who isn’t human…or anything else we know of.”

“You think Marley…She could have this poison or whatever it is.”

Nat studied Gray. “Blades says he found saliva on the fabric. But Marley doesn’t show signs of any bites. Also, Blades says the victim died pretty quickly after being bitten—within hours. Marley’s going to be okay.”

Gray scrubbed at his face. He felt sick.

“Love hurts sometimes,” Nat said. “I still think it’s worth having.”