Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(48)

She paused, weighing what to say next. “I’ve already been that person. It sucks. It’s part of the reason I left New York.”

“Make a new name for yourself,” Atkinson said. “That’s your answer.”

“You say it like it’s easy.”

“No, it’s not easy,” Atkinson said. “And you, you’re always in such a hurry. That’s what upsets you, that you can’t make that new name in a week. I’ve never met anyone less afraid of hard work and who works with so little patience at the same time.”

Patience. Atkinson’s favorite word. There was a reason they called her the Spider. She used time as a weapon, wielding silence like a hammer, like no one Maureen had ever seen. Maureen thought of Preacher’s comments at the PJ’s about going from the shithouse to the penthouse in record time. If there was ever a way to sell her on something, Maureen knew, the promise of a quick trip was it. She remembered that Preacher had said it was Atkinson who’d sent Detillier the FBI agent looking for her. A move that made bringing Maureen back on the job that much more appealing to DC Skinner. Atkinson hadn’t saved her, Maureen thought, but she had helped her.

“The FBI guy, Detillier,” Maureen said. “He’s going to be interested in this. He asked about Leary when I talked to him the other morning. He wanted to meet her.”

“You think he knows she’s dead yet?”

“I doubt it,” Maureen said. “Nobody here knows the FBI cared about her except for me and you and Preacher. He thinks she was the FBI’s best bet for information on the Watchmen. So much for that.”

Atkinson shook her head. “All those resources and chasing the same homeless schizophrenic we were chasing is the best they can do?”

“That’s what I said,” Maureen said. “Though to hear Detillier tell it, their resources aren’t any more plentiful than ours. I told him he was wasting his time with her. That they should be bearing down on the Heaths.”

“Ah. A nonstarter, I’m guessing?”

“What do you think?” Maureen said. “Even Preacher’s telling me to drop the subject. Tomorrow afternoon, I’m having that meeting with Leon Gage, the one that Detillier requested. I’m sure I’ll be talking to Detillier after that. What do you want me to tell him? How do you want me to handle what happened tonight?”

“Don’t worry about me and the FBI,” Atkinson said. “I can handle them. If Leary was nothing but a lead on the Watchmen to Detillier, he’ll lose interest in her. It’s not like she had friends for him to talk to. I’ll have the case to myself, which is how I like it.”

“The case?”

“Let me ask you,” Atkinson said, “what do you think happened here tonight?”

“Suicide, obviously,” Maureen said. “She was mentally unstable and off her meds. At least, she was six weeks ago. I can’t imagine things had improved for her since then, when she’d been killing people. The Watchmen are hunting her. We’re hunting her. God only knows what demons she had chasing her all her life. She had no allies, no family, no money. The razor was right there by her hand.” She paused. “But somebody called it in. We came to the cemetery because somebody reported a body inside. You think someone else was here while she was still alive?”

Atkinson shrugged. “Maybe, probably. People sneak in here three, four nights a week. Somebody unrelated to the incident could’ve seen her, thought she was already dead, called it in. That’s not what bothers me.”

“Why do it up here in the Garden District?” Maureen asked.

Atkinson looked around. “Pretty glorious cemetery. Probably not many paranoid schizophrenics in here.”

“Trust me,” Maureen said, “there’s plenty. They were just rich.”

“Fair point,” Atkinson said. “But think about this. True, from what we know of her, Leary lived downtown, but the killing she did, at least the ones that we know about, she did uptown. Cooley was killed in Central City. And then Gage was killed, what, a mile and a half from here? So she stole in the Quarter, lived in the Bywater and the Marigny, but she did her murder up here. It’s pretty consistent to find her here when you think about it.”

“Except for the fact that this time she was her own victim.”

Atkinson shook her head. “Nope.”

“What is it, then?”

Atkinson raised her hand and touched her cold fingertip to the artery in Maureen’s throat. “That right there? With a blade like Leary carried? That’s a flick of the wrist. Less effort than it takes to toss a bottle cap across the room. The wound she had? It’s vicious. That’s a murder wound if I ever saw one.”

Maureen touched her throat, put her finger where Atkinson’s had been. She could feel her pulse throbbing underneath her skin, still warm where Atkinson had touched it. The detective was right, of course. Seemed obvious now. No matter how much she hated herself, no matter how crazy she was, Leary couldn’t cut herself deep and wide like that, couldn’t open herself up like that without flinching, without collapsing or dropping the razor.

“So who killed her?”

“That question, Officer Coughlin, is why I get out of bed every afternoon.” Atkinson tilted her head back and touched her own jugular. “This. I keep coming back to this. Had to be someone who knew her. Someone who knew how she worked. Someone whose purpose would be served by killing her just this way, the way she killed the others.”