Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(70)

Recalling that security cameras watched every inch of the Heath property, she had parked the cruiser beyond their range. She’d found a spot to be invisible, as she had in the Irish Garden. What she had to decide was what to do next. She wasn’t tucked in a barroom booth, a big sweatshirt hiding her appearance. She was in a police cruiser tonight, in uniform.

Maureen settled deeper into her seat, her arm hanging out the window. She fixed her gaze on the gas lamp’s dancing flame.

She didn’t know what she had expected to discover sitting outside Solomon’s house. Even if the lights were on, what did she hope to see? She felt he needed watching, so she watched. Her thought process hadn’t advanced much beyond that basic instinct. Did she think he’d have a late-night visitor arriving at the back door? Or did she think she’d be able to accost him as he came creeping home in the wee hours from nefarious doings about town, maybe with a young girl or young boy on his arm? She had tailed him on and off for a month and had found no indication of such behavior. If only he would make it that easy, she thought. If only he were that sloppy. That ordinary. But you didn’t get to where he was, and remain where he had managed to stay, by being sloppy. He wasn’t the kind of man to commit common sins.

After weeks of watching his house, of following him to work, she had witnessed no wrongdoing of any kind. She had gained no leverage against him, had none to provide to Atkinson or Detillier. She could sit outside his house a hundred nights in a row and Solomon would give her nothing. Anything useful she got from him, she was going to have to take.





26

Before ending up outside Solomon’s house, Maureen had visited the construction sites of the new jail and then the new hospital. She’d even smoked a couple of cigarettes parked by the demolition site of the Iberville projects. She stared down security guards who stared right back at her, hoping she’d move along so they could go back to sleep or smoke another joint.

As she moved from site to site, she had started wondering—as she stared at the deep holes and the rising structures, at the boards and the bricks and the girders, at the silent enormous machines that tore down and built up, at the placards on the fences with the Heath Design and Construction logo alongside their licenses and permits and their long list of worksite rules—about who was really in charge of the world she lived and worked in. Her house had been shot up, she realized, only days after she’d taken money from Solomon that he’d intended as a bribe, only for her to work against him in the end. Who had really given that first order to kill her weeks ago? Had it come from Caleb? That was hard to imagine. He was a spoiled punk. He had provided the Watchmen her street address, but he hadn’t picked up a gun against her.

A group like the Watchmen—angry, violent people who fancied themselves revolutionaries in their grandest, suicidal fantasies—wouldn’t look to a weak man like Caleb as a leader. He was the rich kid they let hang around the clubhouse because he had money to buy guns, because he knew people who had information and influence. They didn’t embrace him; they tolerated him. They would follow someone else.

Solomon wouldn’t lead the Watchmen directly, wouldn’t dirty his own hands with their particular brand of USA crazy. Were he involved with them, Maureen thought, whether for his son’s sake or for other reasons, he’d exert his authority through a proxy.

Maureen figured Leon Gage, despite his middle-school math teacher looks, was that leader Solomon used. He had the air of the pulpit about him. She could see him raging at a crowd, those blue eyes blazing. She knew she had no evidence connecting Solomon to the doings and dealings of the Watchmen, no proof that Leon took his orders from Solomon.

Light from inside the house suddenly filled the back door’s window and spilled onto the slate steps. Floodlights illuminated the yard and the back door opened. Solomon stepped out of the house. Maureen could see his breath as he pulled the door closed behind him.

He wore, as he always did, khakis and brown loafers. Against the cold he wore a thick down vest over a red flannel shirt. He had a wool snap-brim cap pulled low on his head and wore leather gloves. He carried something in his left hand. Maureen sat up straight for a better look. A thermos. He clutched it to his chest like a football as he walked in her direction.

Maureen zipped up her leather jacket, pulled on her knit cap, and got out of the car. Fuck it, she thought. She unbuckled her weapon. For weeks, you’ve been hoping to stumble into exactly this moment. And now there’s no one else around, no joggers in the park, no construction workers at the worksite. And no Preacher to rein her in and scold her.

Maureen decided as she stepped into the street that Solomon had ordered the hit on Preacher. She had seen Solomon recognize him in the park. And he had revived the kill order on her; she was sure of that, too.

With Caleb safely sequestered in the UAE and the NOPD working overtime to erase Quinn’s dirty history and look the other way at the circumstances surrounding his death, Maureen decided Solomon had convinced Leon Gage that now was the time for starting his war against the NOPD, using Gage to get rid of the cops that threatened his son. Gage was a leader to his men, but he was a weapon for Solomon—as Quinn had been, one of his countless tools.

Maureen figured that Leon, who was mourning a son who had crossed over much more than an ocean, hadn’t needed much prodding.

She closed the cruiser door, keeping her eyes on Heath, who had stopped his approach when Maureen left the car.