Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(26)

Amber said, “It all, it seemed so much more over when you left. More final. Like that was really the end of me and you and … him.”

Maureen swallowed hard. “I never knew that.”

“Why would you?” Amber said. “Nothing would’ve changed if you did. And I didn’t even know I’d feel like that until after you were gone.”

“What did you do with the ring?”

“Why, do you want it?” Amber asked, forced brightness in her voice. She was wearying of the topic, Maureen could tell. “I know you don’t have much of his, not since you lost that coat.”

I didn’t quite lose it, Maureen thought. The hospital burned it because they couldn’t get Sebastian’s blood out of the wool. But, she thought, her mother’s point was the same. Her father’s coat was gone and she had nothing left of him but his last name.

“I don’t want that ring,” Maureen said. Except maybe to toss in a volcano. “It’s of no use to me.”

“Oh, okay, then. I guess it’s in a drawer somewhere. I can’t throw it out, I’m sure it’s worth something. Just not to me. Not anymore.”





10

Shortly after nine the following morning, Maureen was down in the Central Business District, sitting at a small table outside the PJ’s coffee shop on the corner of Camp and Girod Streets. Despite the day’s early hour, she felt more calm and clearheaded than she had any number of the past days when she’d slept much later, rolling around sore-legged and headachy in the tangled sheets into the early afternoon.

She lifted the lid off her paper cup and blew on her coffee, the rising steam fogging her sunglasses. She wore boots and jeans, and over a white thermal undershirt she’d pulled on a gray V-neck T-shirt featuring a gas lamp emblazoned with the name Kelcy Mae, a local singer-songwriter. She’d caught the show a couple of weeks ago, a good one, at a small bar in the Riverbend neighborhood called Carrollton Station. She didn’t remember buying the T-shirt after the show, which was fine; she liked the music and the band, and the shirt, but she didn’t remember the drive home, either. She didn’t remember much of anything after the fourth double Jameson, and that was a problem. At least she’d woken up alone that morning. Thank the Lord for small favors. She was looking forward to putting those days behind her.

She tilted her chair back against the building, her face turned up into the sunshine, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses, her back pressed against the warm wall of the coffee shop. The air was cool but the sun warmed her face, the cotton stretched over her chest, and the denim stretched over her thighs. She felt as if she hovered slightly above her own body, lifted skyward, lightened by the autumn sun. Not asleep, but not entirely present. This is what it’s like, she thought, to wake up without a hangover. To wake up not wondering who saw what you did last night. Remember this? This is what it’s like, she thought, to relax. Having that back, even for a few short moments, was serious progress. Maybe now that she was a cop again she’d fight her way back to sane.

At the next table along the wall, not five feet away, sat Preacher. She’d called him last night, told him about the meeting with Skinner. He’d agreed to sit in on her meeting with the FBI before she’d finished asking the question. He wore civvies like Maureen, dressed in an olive Guevara shirt and matching pants, sandals and thick black socks on his feet, a black felt porkpie hat on his head. He sat with his wide face held at the same angle as Maureen’s, soaking up the sun. Taken together they gave the impression of two beach bums wasting away the day, as if the concrete sidewalk they sat on was instead white sand, and the parking garage across Girod Street was a green and rolling ocean that smelled of salt instead of car exhaust.

“You feeling okay?” Maureen heard Preacher ask.

“Never better.”

“Long night?”

“Nope. Quiet. I talked to my mother. I read. Slept like a stone.”

“Sounds nice,” Preacher said. “You look pale, though. Even for you.”

“I’m redheaded Irish, Preach. And a Yankee. Cadaverous is my natural look.”

“I see you’re limping again,” Preacher said.

“It’s that ankle thing. It comes, it goes.”

“I don’t know if you heard,” Preacher said. “I’m guessing you didn’t, but some guy in the Irish Channel had a rough time of it the other night.”

“I’m sure there’s more than one of them out there.”

“Young man took a hell of a beating,” Preacher said. “Got left bleeding in the bushes. Couldn’t talk much since he had a couple of cracked ribs. Punctured lung, as it turned out. Could’ve gone way worse for him. He woulda died there in those bushes if he’d been left there much longer. Wouldn’t have made it to dawn. We’d be calling your buddy Atkinson for him.”

Maureen willed herself not to look at Preacher. Instincts, or was it her guilty conscience, warned her that he was fishing. He had instincts of his own, she recalled, and they were much better than hers.

“What saved him?” she asked.

“Girl who lives in the house where he took the beating, her dog wouldn’t stop barking. She finally went out to check, found the poor bastard in the bushes. Girl called nine-one-one. Turns out she was a witness to the beat-down.”