Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(96)

“What if Madison Leary never killed anyone?” Atkinson said. “What if someone else killed Leon Gage’s son, Clayton, and the Watchmen body we found before him, Edgar Cooley? Just consider the possibility Leary didn’t commit those two murders.” She paused. “It’s f*cking genius, if you think about it. The best lies are wrapped around a grain of truth. What if everything Dice told us about Madison Leary was her life story, pieces of it, at least.”

Maureen did think about it. She thought about how Dice was the only person who seemed to know anything about Madison Leary, about her mind and her history. She thought of Dice sneaking up on her on Frenchmen Street. Had she been hiding that razor then, in a pocket of her long coat? “You think Dice, this Natalie Sparrow, killed Leary?”

“I think Sparrow killed Cooley, Gage, and Leary. I think she was Leary’s avenging angel when the Watchmen came to town looking for her.”

“Hell of an angel,” Maureen said, “who cuts the throat of the woman she’s protecting.”

“Leary must’ve weakened,” Atkinson said. “She might’ve become a threat, maybe started talking of getting help. Sparrow might’ve tired of watching her suffer. One thing for sure, she didn’t like doing this one. That’s why she left the razor behind this time.”

“There’s still a ton of evidence that points right at Leary being the Watchmen killer,” Maureen said, but her mind had turned, she’d felt it, from disbelieving Atkinson to simply playing devil’s advocate. “We have everything that Dice said about her, for example.”

“Exactly,” Atkinson said. “We have only the stuff Dice told us. Did anyone talk to Leary about any of it?”

“Talk to Leary?” Maureen said. “How exactly were we going to talk to her? She was a paranoid schizophrenic living on the streets and off her meds.”

“You’re making my point,” Atkinson said. “Think of the condition Leary was in. She ate three meals a week. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds when she died. Maybe. She lived on cheap street drugs and air and whatever electric crazy ran through her brain. And we believe she stalked these backwoods militia guys through the streets of New Orleans, picking them off one at a time with a razor blade? Because some homeless punk rock girl told us so?”

She held up the picture. “A punk rock girl with one terrifying f*cking history. Her first contact with the police was in New Mexico, where we think she was born. There are a lot of gaps in her history. She was twelve. She and a boy, one with a rep at school as a bully, were ‘playing’ on the roof of an abandoned warehouse. The boy fell through a hole in the roof. He died.”

“Accidents happen,” Maureen said. “Sounds more like bad parenting to me.”

“I read the report,” Atkinson said. “Lots of kids played on that roof. None of them remembered that hole being there before that kid fell through it. Two weeks later, Sparrow disappeared from her foster home. She doesn’t pop up anywhere until that day in California.”

“Leary knew the Watchmen,” Maureen said. “She was with them in LaPlace for we don’t know how long. And maybe these Watchmen *s aren’t half the badasses they think they are. Maybe that’s why they shoot when no one else is looking. They’re f*cking cowards.”

“You put it like that,” Atkinson said, “and it sounds like you’re rooting for Sparrow.”

“I was,” Maureen said. “Until five minutes ago.” God, why did she feel so sad? Like someone she knew had died. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We can’t f*cking find her. Six weeks we looked for them both. Though I’m guessing we weren’t looking real hard.”

“We are now,” Atkinson said. “Believe that.”

Maureen reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone. She should’ve saved those messages, the voice mails she’d gotten from Leary, well, no, from Sparrow where she sang Maureen those creepy songs. “You know, I thought, maybe for a little while, I could sleep through the night. Walk the streets without looking over my shoulder. Be a regular cop.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Atkinson said. “She seems to have a type, for killing, I mean, and you’re not it. In fact, she seems to like you.”

“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of,” Maureen said.

“When you saw her,” Atkinson said, “what did she say to you? Anything useful? Think about it again. Look at her differently now.”

“Oh, Lord,” Maureen said. “She told me she couldn’t wait for Mardi Gras. That she was super excited to experience her first one.”

“So you think she’s planning on staying here?” Atkinson asked. “Or maybe she was bullshitting you, blowing smoke. And that was before she killed Leary. That murder may have changed her plans. She may already be long gone. She does know how to disappear.”

Maureen opened the photo again, studying the warrior-painted face, the wild ink-black eyes that stared back at her, into her, across the years. “I think she’s in New Orleans to stay. I think she’s home.”

That makes two of us, Maureen thought. It’s you and me, Sparrow.

She folded the photo, tucked it into her leather jacket.

May the best woman win.