"She"s voodoo."
"Come on, Mamie."
"There"s good, there"s evil. There"s religion, there"s hocus-hocus. All the same."
She sounded disturbingly like Marie. "Well, I"m wearing the cross she gave me, how"s that?"
"You"re going to need it," Mamie a.s.sured him.
"A cross?"
Mamie nodded.
"Crosses scare away bad voodoo?"
"Now, boy, you had best learn to believe that there are forces beyond man. You want some garlic bread?"
He stared at her, frowning. "Mamie, I"m eating a roast beef sandwich."
"Garlic bread would be good for you."
"Mamie, I don"t want any garlic bread. I-"
"You should take her out tonight."
"What?"
"Your girl. Take her out tonight. Nice Italian restaurant. Eat a lot of garlic."
"Do you dislike Maggie, Mamie?"
"No, I like her just fine."
"Then why do you want me to go spoiling a good relationship with breath to kill?"
Mamie shook her head. "Like I said ..."
But she didn"t say. Her voice trailed away.
"Garlic?"
She shrugged.
"Mamie, we"ve been talking about good and evil. Voodoo. Now crosses and garlic. I saw lots of Hammer films with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee when I was a kid. It"s starting to sound as if you think the city is infested with vampires."
"Who are we to know?" Mamie asked innocently.
"Mamie, come on, we"re talking about a flesh and blood killer here. Don"t go getting sidetracked." He slipped off his stool, reaching into his wallet for his money.
"On the house," Mamie said.
"I think I should probably pay," he said with a wink.
"Don"t pay me. It may be your last meal."
He shook his head, leaning toward her, surprised that she was regarding him with such concern and affection. He kissed her cheek. "I"ll be okay. I"m wearing your friend"s cross."
"Sure," she said.
"Okay, now, Mamie, have some faith! I"m wearing Marie"s cross, right? I went to see a voodoo because you wanted me to."
"Right. So?"
Mamie had nice eyes. Wide, dark brown with gold specks. "I want you to wear something for me."
"What?"
He shrugged a bit sheepishly. "I got it from the FBI guy helping out down here. It"s a watch, but if you"re in trouble, you just push down on the face. It"s better than calling me, or paging me, or having anybody get me on the radio. It"s like a beeper, only it"s private, between you and me. You buzz, and it will vibrate on my end."
Mamie laughed, delighted. "Oh, honey, I could buzz you and make things really vibrate, if you gave me half a chance. But then, you"re vibratin" enough as it is, aren"t you?" she demanded. "She"s something special, isn"t she? Your girl?"
"She"s different from anyone else, and that"s a fact."
"Don"t go falling too deeply in love, Lieutenant," Mamie warned.
"You keep your nose clean," Sean warned her, leaving her at last. "Don"t forget, if you"re in trouble ..."
Mamie grinned again. "I"ll be glad to buzz you, sir!" she said, and saluted playfully.
Leaving Mamie"s, Sean put in a call to Maggie"s office from his car. She was concerned, and wanted to know what had been happening. He told her that Callie was gone, and that Rutger had made no appearances to stop her from leaving. "Thankfully, he"s one bad penny that didn"t turn up again."
"What happened at the morgue?"
"Oh, you know the morgue. It"s just full of dead bodies."
"I know, but ..."
He liked the sound of her voice. He missed her. They"d only been apart a few hours, but he missed her. Still, he suddenly felt that it was important to keep a certain distance from her.
Voodoo.
He didn"t believe in voodoo.
Of course, he"d often gone on gut feeling ...
"I"m going to be out kind of late tonight," he told her.
"Oh."
He hesitated, d.a.m.ning himself. "But then again, if you happen to be a night owl ..."
A night owl. Hmm. The city crawled with night owls, people up at all hours. He grinned.
Mamie was suggesting the city was filled with vampires along with voodoos. Well, they liked the night, didn"t they?
The murderer certainly did.
"Call me at any time," Maggie said. "I mean it, Sean, any time."
"Great," he said.
"Sean?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you," she said softly.
Everything inside him seemed to melt a little bit. "I love you, too."
He clicked off, and kept driving. He hadn"t even been sure at first where he was going, but he found himself on his way to Oakville Plantation. When he drove into the driveway, he saw that his father was sitting on the porch, slowly listing back and forth in the big old whitewashed swing.
"Hey, Dad."
"Hey, Son. Glad to see you. What brings you out in the middle of the week like this?"
He joined his father.
"Beer?" Daniel asked, watching him curiously.
"Sure."
His father reached into the ice chest at his side and produced his newest, self-bottled microbrew. Sean grinned, and swigged. It tasted d.a.m.n good.
"Okay, so what"s the problem?" Daniel said.
"I need answers."
"You need fingerprint experts, technologists, those new high-tech lights that show sperm all over like in that Sharon Stone ice-pick movie-"
"I"ve got all that, Dad. Guess what else I have?"
"Don"t know. Tell me."
He told Daniel about the corpse that had been beheaded, and he kept talking, describing Mamie, and even admitting he"d gone down to Jackson Square and that Marie Lescarre had given him a cross to wear.
"Interesting," Daniel said.
"Yeah, it is, isn"t it? Can you give me anything out of history even remotely like what"s going on here?"
"Sure."
"What? Great! Help me."
"Jack the Ripper."
Sean sighed. "Dad, Jack the Ripper"s last murder was in November of 1888-so say the leading Ripperologists, even if a few more victims are thrown in the heap now and then."
"You"ve been reading," Daniel said solemnly.
Sean shrugged. "There"s a task force on this, Dad. Everyone"s been reading."
"All right, so you know about the murders ... dwell on the suspects. Some say Montague John Druitt, an affluent young man who didn"t quite make it through med school, died in the Thames soon after the last murder. Then there was a fellow named Ostrog, wound up in an insane asylum. There"s the school of thought convinced that there might have been a Jill the Ripper-probably a bitter midwife or the like, you know?- and there"s the Royal theory-either the Duke of Clarence himself, Victoria"s grandson, or a court physician, William Gull. There"s the latest, stemming out of the Jack the Ripper Diary, written by Maybrick, who died of gastroenteritis not long after the murder. Now, that was a sad case!
Not for Maybrick, but his wife. Poor thing. She was condemned for murder without much proof, but it was Victorian England and the poor dear had been having an affair while her husband ran around all over the place. I think the chap"s family had a lot to do with the wife winding up condemned. She was to hang- got reprieved at the last minute."
"Dad-none of these people is in New Orleans ripping up hookers and beheading corpses!"
Daniel shrugged, offering him a half-smile. "Well, then, there"s the theory that Jack the Ripper was a true monster. Made out of the mists and dirt and the tawdry poverty of the East End. True evil."
"Great. I can just tell the chief-and the newspapers-that I"m looking for an evil mist."
Daniel grinned. "Tell them you"re looking for a monster. Men are quite capable of being monsters. You asked."
"Is that all you can give me?"
Daniel thought a minute. "Well, it is New Orleans. Supposedly, zombies have walked in the shadows of the old plantations-and in the French Quarter, too, I would imagine."
Sean grunted.
"Then there was that case in the prison in 1909 ..."
Sean frowned. "What case?"
"An interesting one. All the beheadings reminded me of it." "Well?"
"A r.e.t.a.r.ded boy, Josh Jurgen, was condemned to death for the murder of a playmate.
Josh-and his mother-claimed during the trial that a drifter had killed the little girl.
Apparently, a lot of folk thought the boy was telling the truth, but you know how cruel some people can be ... wouldn"t have happened now, I can tell you, but back then ... well, anyway, the mother was hysterical, the boy terrified, crying and carrying on during the days before his execution. He was kept in solitary, waiting for the big day, then-I"m not sure I"ve got this just right."
"Dad! d.a.m.n, now, tell me what you know."
"Probably has nothing to do with anything. The night before he"s due to hang, the boy kills himself."
"Strange," Sean said slowly.
Daniel grinned. "Strange-but why am I telling you this, huh? He hanged himself. And managed somehow to hang himself so tightly and with such force that... well, that, he managed to pop his head right off. Beheaded himself."