Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(8)

Maureen continued running along the track, closing in on the Heath house. She dipped and dodged as people of varied shapes and colors, wearing everything from shiny skintight biking gear to fluffy pink tracksuits, cycled, jogged, power walked, and Rollerbladed around her, talking and talking, those moving mouths always talking, to each other, to their babies, to their dogs, into their phones, or maybe all at the same time, as far as Maureen could tell.

In her own ears, music pounded. Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue. An instrumental track, one of her favorites: “Hurricane Season.” She could hear nothing else around her. She ran lost in a wash of horns so loud she couldn’t think, her preferred state. The sinuous, repeating sequence of notes blasting in her ear worked like the expert combination punches of a boxer. The bass and drums and guitar rolled and thundered underneath the lightning of the horns like a runaway locomotive threatening to jump the track. But the horns were what got her, what held her. She’d never heard anything like those horns until she got to New Orleans.

The infectiousness. The irresistible raw and ecstatic power.

Where was this music when she was growing up?

As if she hadn’t gotten in enough trouble as a teenager, she thought. She could only imagine what would have become of her had she hurtled through adolescence with brass band music percolating her blood and her brain tissue along with everything else drenching her system in those days, both what came naturally and the other chemicals she had added herself.

Maureen ran past the island, putting the noisy birds behind her, and the great house appeared on her right. And there he was standing in the yard, highball glass in one hand, the man himself. Solomon Heath. He was getting nearly as regular as she. Was it he, she wondered, who had dispatched someone to search for Madison Leary? Was Solomon’s agent the man Dice had been talking about? New Orleans would be safer for his son if Leary was behind bars, or in the river. She put neither option past the man.

She kept an eye on Heath while navigating the obstacles around her.

He was looking right at her, watching her as she ran. Even from a distance, she could tell that something about him that evening was off. No smoke rose from the grill. He just stood there, not moving, halfway between his house and where the edge of his property melted into the park. Like he’d been waiting for her. In his right hand was the highball glass, tilted at an angle where it might spill its contents. In his left hand he held a short golf club against his pant leg, the club’s metal shaft glinting in the fading sunlight.

As if whatever signal he’d been waiting for had arrived, he started walking toward the park, toward her, raising his glass to his lips and drinking, never taking his eyes off Maureen. His steps were unsteady. She wouldn’t have to speed up much, she thought, to run right by him. He was in no shape to chase her, not at his age, not with the way she could run.

But she didn’t accelerate; she held that option in reserve. Instead, she slowed down, letting him know, she hoped, that she had clocked his approach.

The golf club, she decided, was a prop. Something he could lean on while he’d waited for her to run past that wasn’t a sign of weakness, like a cane. Not that she’d ever seen him use a cane. Not that he’d ever appeared to her a weak man. She noticed his steps in her direction had quickened. His gait had steadied. He was determined to intercept her.

Okay then, she thought. Let’s do this.

At most the club was an implied threat, she decided, not an actual one. He’d have to do better than that, Maureen thought, considering what his son and his friends had already put her through. She drifted across the track in his direction. She might leave the running track, she decided, but she wouldn’t stray far enough from it to cross from public property onto his. But if Solomon was going to approach her on park property, she wasn’t going to stop him. She welcomed the interaction. She was glad she’d finally reached him, and without her once knocking on his door or invading his private space in any way.

Then, on one of the benches ahead of her, Maureen saw a familiar sandpaper-colored head. The head turned and Maureen saw the full-cheeked, green-eyed, red-pepper-flaked face of Sergeant Preacher Boyd, her former field training officer and her duty sergeant at the Sixth District. He turned on the bench and waved at her. Preacher wore civilian clothes: pressed dark jeans and a black Saints hoodie, and a dark knit hat. A group of white ducks crowded about his feet, complaining, Maureen figured, that they weren’t getting fed. A single massive goose stood off to the side, observing the proceedings. Now this, Preacher being here, Maureen thought, this could f*ck things up with Heath. She slowed to a walk. She looked over at Solomon.

He had stopped, maybe ten yards away from her. Close enough that Maureen could hear the clink of the ice in his glass. He tapped the head of the golf club on the toe of his shoe, watching her. He sees Preacher, too, Maureen thought. But does he know who Preacher is? He must, she decided. The two of them were both so deeply woven into the tapestry of the city, they had to know each other.

Preacher rose from the bench, narrowing his eyes at Solomon, frowning when he realized who he was observing. They knew each other, all right. The three of them stood, looking at one another, the points of a triangle. It wasn’t Solomon putting the frown on Preacher’s face, Maureen realized. It was her.

She felt caught out, embarrassed, as if she’d been busted meeting a boy she’d promised her friends she’d left behind. In reality, she had been caught doing, or been caught about to do, something technically much worse than meeting a bad-for-her boyfriend. According to her superiors at the NOPD, Maureen was banned from having anything to do with Solomon Heath. The excuse that he’d approached her in a public place would never wash. Not with them and not with Preacher.