Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(27)

“Good for her for making the call,” Maureen said. “She’s a fine citizen. And why would I have heard about this?”

“It happened in your neck of the woods,” Preacher said. “On Philip Street. Only a few blocks from your house. You must’ve heard us coming out, the sirens.”

“I miss the job,” Maureen said. “I’m eager to get back to work tonight, but I haven’t been sitting home listening to the scanner. I hear sirens every night, up and down Magazine, Tchoupitoulas, all over Uptown.”

“The girl with the dog,” Preacher said. “She’d had a few at the Irish Garden. She said the guy was attacked right there in the front yard. He appeared out of the dark. Like he’d been there in the bushes waiting for her to get home.”

“Or like he followed her home,” Maureen said. Nailing the guy had taken strong detective work. Having to hide that part of what she’d done gnawed at her professional pride.

“So this guy appears and then, boom, out of the shadows leaps contestant number two, who then proceeds to kick this guy’s ass six ways to Sunday.” Preacher shrugged. “Girl did say she might’ve walked into a fight that had already started before she got there. She couldn’t say for sure the order of what happened. One of them yelled at her to get inside. She was scared enough to listen. Never got a good look at either the victim or the assailant.”

“If she’d had a couple of drinks,” Maureen said, “her facts might be off. Even so, it’s a shame we couldn’t get any kind of description from her on the guy giving the beating.”

Preacher raised his hands. “Yeah, a shame.”

Maureen reached for her coffee, lifted the lid, and sipped, content to let the subject drop. Where in the hell, she thought, was this FBI stooge?

“It got me thinking,” Preacher said.

Maureen’s stomach dropped. She did not want Preacher thinking about crimes she had committed. “Were you at the scene? Did you work this?”

“I was at the St. Charles Tavern,” Preacher said. “I caught the details on the radio. Figured I might as well swing by. It was you that put the idea in my head. Those calls you were asking me about last week at the park, with the girls getting followed home from the bar. It was that Irish Garden bar, wasn’t it?”

“Is there a point to this?” Maureen asked.

“The address, it was another one not far from the bar.” Preacher rolled out his plump bottom lip. “I wanted to see what I could see. I’m curious, I’m thinking, what if maybe that was our guy? Maybe somebody caught on to him, lit him up on their own.”

“The girl,” Maureen said, “she have a boyfriend? Someone that could’ve seen this guy following her, like from the apartment or the porch or something?”

“No boyfriend,” Preacher said, shaking his head. “He’d dumped her that afternoon.” He rolled his eyes. “I heard plenty of detail about that. Job transfer. He ditched her by text. Anyway, that was why she was out alone in the first place, she said. If anyone saw what happened, we don’t know who they are.”

“So is there anything to move on?” Maureen asked. “Or are we shelving it?”

“I want to see if those calls stop coming,” Preacher said. “Far as I’m concerned, that’ll tell us if Johnny Lungblood is our man.”

“Or maybe the calls stop coming,” Maureen said, “because we never did anything about the first few.”

“Maybe.”

“The guy,” Maureen said, taking a deep breath, “he have any idea who put the hurt on him?”

“Beats me,” Preacher said. “I haven’t heard anything since he got taken to the hospital. They were working on him in the yard when I got there. I don’t think anyone at the scene talked to him much. Wasn’t much he could say. I’m sure the detective will talk to him. Eventually. Maybe when he gets out of the hospital.”

“So no one at the scene questioned this guy?” Maureen asked. “No one asked him what he was doing in that yard? If he knew that girl?”

“Coughlin, somebody caved in the guy’s ribs for him,” Preacher said. “Somebody nearly killed him. Did you miss that part of the story? Because I’m pretty sure I told it. Ambulance guys suspected a weapon like a pipe. Maybe a bat. Guy has a knee that looked like a f*cked-up hamburger cauliflower. EMTs had to cut his pants off him right there in the yard.” He brushed his fingers over his pants, dismissing imaginary crumbs. “We’ll see tonight if there’s any updates when we go in. Anyways, it’ll be easier for you to stay in the loop, now that you’re back on the job.”

“Believe it,” Maureen said.

Preacher puffed out his cheeks, blew out the air in a long sigh. He raised his chin at something over her shoulder. “Hey, look, I bet this is your FBI guy.”





11

Maureen turned her head, rolling her skull along the concrete wall of the coffee shop.

A short, slender, clean-shaven black man in a charcoal suit, his head down, phone at his ear, stood at the nearby corner. His name, as he’d told her on the phone last night, was Clarence Detillier, and he was an FBI agent, domestic terrorism unit. He was going to give her a chance, he had said, to go from being a liability to a commodity. His words. She could tell over the phone that he was proud of them. She’d told him she’d be happy to talk. She even let him name the time and the place. Then she had called Preacher. She knew when to roll with backup.