Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(45)

Even those who were interred under simple headstones lay in graves elevated two or three feet above ground. The graves reminded Maureen—and the thought felt disrespectful but she couldn’t dismiss it—of flower boxes in a garden. Most of them badly neglected flower boxes, she thought, the headstones cracked and crumbling, trash caught in the high grass that surrounded them. Some of the graves were fenced with wrought iron like the gardens and yards of her neighborhood.

Hanging from a leaning segment of iron fence, Maureen spotted the source of the notes she’d heard in the wind. A set of wind chimes. They were cheap, maybe bought in a card store, or from a stall in the French Market, but they looked new. Whether they’d been placed there as a gift for a lost loved one or as a way to lead her to this particular grave, Maureen had no idea. As she got closer, she started suspecting the latter.

On the other side of the fence, a dark form lay sprawled atop a grave. Maureen keyed her mic. “Any sign of our man with the key?”

“Negative,” Preacher said. “You know, I hope dispatch wasn’t thinking we would call him.”

Maureen let that go. Things were certainly getting back to normal. “I may have something here, stand by.”

Slowly, she played her flashlight beam along the figure. Cheap blue Keds, bare ankles, cheap jeans, an oversized and misshapen blue-and-white-striped sweater. Not much protection, really, against the cold. The vic was a woman, definitely. There was something familiar to Maureen about the form. Her heart hammered at her sternum. She moved in closer. Blood, a lot of blood, stained the front of the sweater and had run onto the ground, darkening the gravel around the woman’s head. Another throat slash. Maureen’s stomach turned over. It burned. Oh man, she thought. Oh no.

She shined the light on the victim’s face. Stringy brown hair stuck to the pale cheeks, the cracked lips.

“Holy. Shit.”

Into the mic she said, “Preach, I’ve got our body. I think it’s Madison Leary.”

As if she’d heard Maureen’s voice, the woman’s eyes shot open. One was green, the other was blue. The woman gasped and gurgled. Blood sprayed into the air. Maureen’s hand shook as she held the mic. “It is Madison Leary. And she isn’t dead. Call a f*cking ambulance.”

She had nothing to staunch the bleeding. She sprinted for the nearest exit.





15

When Maureen got to the gate, Preacher was already working on prying open the chain and padlock with a tire iron. Over his shoulder, Maureen could see the white-haired man pedaling his way up Washington Avenue. Taking his sweet time with it, too.

Maureen shouted to him, waving her arms. “Would you please hurry the f*ck up?”

Swearing, Preacher tossed the tire iron on the sidewalk. He was breathing hard. “Fucking finally. This guy.”

Maureen watched as the man eased his bike to a stop at the curb and climbed off. He walked it to a signpost and began the apparently quite complicated process of locking it to the post. Preacher hurried in his direction. “Listen, guy. Just leave it there.”

“No way,” the man said. “I can’t have this bike stolen. The cemetery won’t buy me a new one. And my name is Mr. Shivers, not ‘guy.’”

Maureen thought she might bite clean through her tongue.

“There’s two cops right here,” Preacher said. “And there’s about to be a bunch more.”

“This bike disappears and I’m holding you two responsible.”

“We have a woman in here bleeding out in the dirt,” Maureen shouted. She shook the gate like it was the door to a cage. “She dies, I’m holding you responsible.” She could hear the ambulance sirens approaching. “Preach, get me gloves and gauze from the car. There’s no time.”

“Ten-four,” Preacher said, and he headed for the car.

Shivers waddled toward the gate, fumbling with a large ring of keys. “Step back from the gate, please.” Maureen took a step back. Shivers adjusted his ball cap. “Farther back, Officer. I can’t have you peeking at what key it is.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Coughlin, do it,” Preacher shouted.

Maureen backed away from the gate. Shivers unlocked the padlock, pulled the chain through the gate. Then he opened the bolt lock and, very slowly, opened up the cemetery gate. Preacher jogged to her, supplies held out in front of him. Maureen grabbed the latex gloves and gauze packets.

“Down this grass pathway to the left,” she said, “almost to the end.”

She turned and ran.

*

Leary had not moved. Her eyes remained open. Maureen pulled on the gloves, knelt beside Leary in the gravel, the stones biting into her knees, examining the wound with her flashlight. Leary had been slashed across the throat, shoulder-to-shoulder, above the collarbone. The wound matched those that Madison Leary had inflicted on her victims.

Maureen set the light down, ripping open gauze packets one after the other. She wiped at the blood around the wound, searching for a place to apply pressure. She didn’t know where to begin, everything that carried blood, it seemed, had been opened up by the blade. The cruiser’s first aid kit was meant for minor injuries and the small squares of gauze it contained proved useless. In moments, Maureen had succeeded only in smearing the blood along Leary’s collarbones and chin, as if she were trying to wipe up a gallon of spilled paint with too small a cloth. Leary’s throat now leaked blood in a dying trickle.