Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(95)
“Too hot?” Maureen asked.
“I think I got yours,” Atkinson said. They switched cups. “Damn, Maureen, that is a lot of sugar.”
“Enough to stand up the spoon.”
Atkinson raised her coffee cup for a toast. “Here’s to that.”
“Why don’t you want to question Gage about Madison Leary’s murder?” Maureen asked. “He was in town for revenge, no doubt about that. Attacking the cops, trying to murder Heath, and those blueprints for Heath’s projects that Detillier found in the apartment? And bomb-making instructions on top of that?”
Atkinson chuckled. “I’m with Detillier on that. No way Gage doesn’t blow himself to bits building a bomb. I’m glad we got him before he took out half of Harmony Oaks with him.”
She leaned on the cruiser, looked back at the development, picturing, Maureen could tell, the smoking carnage they’d prevented. Atkinson was good at that, Maureen had noticed, imagining horrible things. She’d put in decades on the New Orleans streets, coming up through the ranks, the model of what Maureen wanted to do. Atkinson hadn’t left the city in the days and weeks after Katrina, her own Mid-City house rotting under six feet of water while she slept in the backseat of her unmarked car. Maureen wondered how much of what Atkinson saw was imagination, and how much of it was memory. Was that the price of admission to get where Atkinson was, Maureen wondered, a head full of horrible things? What did it really take to be able to do what the detective could do?
Atkinson turned to Maureen, faking a grin. “I wonder if Solomon’s attitude toward his beloved son will change much when he finds out it was Caleb who got those plans for Gage.”
“It won’t,” Maureen said. “Not in any way that we’ll see. He’ll deny Caleb had anything to do with it. It’s one more reason to leave him overseas. That’s a family that closes ranks against all others. Believe that.” She bumped her shoulder against Atkinson. “You’re really not going to question Gage?”
“Do you believe,” Atkinson said, “that it was Gage going over that graveyard wall with Leary? Carrying wind chimes?”
“He matches the description we got from the witness,” Maureen said. “He’s the right height, the right build. He’s even got the right haircut.”
“In that hat,” Atkinson said, “from far enough away, so do you.”
“That fingerprint you found on the razor,” Maureen said. “I’m guessing it wasn’t his.”
“It was not,” Atkinson said. She set her coffee cup on the trunk of the car and reached into her jacket. “But I found out who it does belong to.”
“That was quick,” Maureen said.
“I told you Detillier did right by me,” Atkinson said. She pulled a folded piece of paper from inside her coat and handed it to Maureen. “He helped with tracking the print. Said it was a Watchmen thing. Which it is, technically.”
Maureen opened the page. It was a copy of a photo. A mug shot of a young woman. Hardly more than a girl. Her bony shoulders were bare. She had a Mohawk haircut. Two red streaks adorned her right cheek. Not blood or bruises, but stage makeup. She’d also painted a red band over her eyes like a bandit’s mask, or like war paint, Maureen thought. Under the face paint bloomed a freshly inflicted black eye. The girl’s bloody top lip curled in a swollen sneer. Maureen wondered if the arresting officers had knocked the girl around. She looked the type who’d resist, not just arrest, but everything.
The girl in the picture looks very familiar, Maureen thought, around the eyes and nose, especially, but she couldn’t place her. Like an actor in a movie, she thought, and you can’t remember where else you’ve seen her before, but that face, you know you know it.
The initials scrawled across the bottom of the photo read “LAPD.” That didn’t help. “California?”
“The photo is a couple of years old,” Atkinson said, nodding, “so you have to use your imagination.”
Maureen looked again. At second glance, the name that went with the face arrived. It clicked. Of course she knew that face. Her mouth fell open and she turned to Atkinson. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Officer Coughlin, meet Natalie Sparrow. You know her as Dice.”
“Wow,” Maureen said, handing Atkinson the paper. “Damn. Her fashion sense has improved somewhat. I wonder if I looked so furious at that age.” She noticed Atkinson was not amused. Something in the air around them had changed, darkened. “Oh, you don’t think…” Maureen grabbed the paper, checked the back for additional information. She looked at Atkinson. “This photo, what was the charge?”
“Multiple.” Atkinson fought back her grin. She restrained all of it except for a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Homicide. Three counts. She crushed three guys against a bus with a stolen car.”
“Allegedly,” Maureen said.
Atkinson laughed. “What? Young Sparrow doesn’t look like that kind of girl to you?”
“We’re all that kind of girl,” Maureen said, “when we have to be.” She blew out a long sigh. “She and Leary were friends. She admitted that to me. It’s why I started working with her in first place. It’s not so outrageous her prints were on the razor.”