The Keepers

Page 32

"There's nothing wrong with Abigail. I just need to speak with you. I'm hoping you can help me, that's all," she said.
"Where?"
"The cemetery where they found the first body," Fiona said.
"Fiona, if there were any clues there that Jagger DeFarge missed, we won't find them," Billy said solemnly.
So innocent. But they had to look past what they saw on the surface. Or did they? Maybe everything was all exactly what it seemed. A vampire was committing the murders. Perhaps that vampire appeared to be honest and aboveboard, and that was the surface she needed to see past. There was still good reason to believe Billy was guilty, and that good reason even had a name: Abigail.
"Please, this is getting worse by the day. I'm afraid we'll have riots in the streets soon. And we all know that no matter how good a detective Jagger may be, we're not looking for a normal murderer, so normal police procedures don't apply," Fiona stressed.
"You are the Keeper," he said softly. "If you tell me to be somewhere, I'll be there."
They'd taken the dead girl's prints but so far there was no match on record.
She had died in the same manner as the others: exsanguination, though the manner was eluding everyone--except Jagger.
Eventually, of course, the marks would be found. But Jagger wasn't really afraid that the city would instantly start believing in vampires. Instead they would start looking even more closely at the cults and the self-proclaimed vampires.
That day, feeling dread and pain unlike anything he had experienced in a very long time, Jagger watched while the beautiful blonde victim was autopsied on the sterile table in the sterile room, the scent of chemicals rising around them, barely hiding the natural release of body gases.
But none of those scents meant anything to him. Nor did it particularly bother him to watch the M.E. make the Y cut on the body, or listen to him drone on into the overhead voice recorder as he listed facts and figures on the healthy young organs, pristine liver--she hadn't been a drinker--clean lungs--she hadn't been a smoker--and perfect heart. Life had stretched ahead of her. She shouldn't have been dead. She should have been joining friends for coffee after work, or attending classes, meeting a lover...living. Somehow, this girl seemed to epitomize the tragedy and the loss present whenever life was stolen from one so young. He knew that professionally he should be keeping his emotions in check. Still, this hurt, almost as much as if he had known her. Or maybe she reminded him of Fiona, and that was why he felt the pain of her death more deeply.
He waited until Craig Dewey had finished, leaving his assistant to sew up the beautiful young woman who would never have a husband or children, never laugh or love again.
Craig shook his head. He had nothing new to offer.
Jagger knew that she was still a mystery woman, and that somewhere, a mother, father, lover, brother or friend was missing her, praying for her safe return.
Not knowing yet that she would never come home.
By day, New Orleans' cities of the dead were unusual places. They were sites of strange and twisted beauty, filled with unique vaults and monuments, their walls often lined with "oven" style graves. Over the years, many tombs had collapsed, and on occasion neglect had interrupted the normal process of natural cremation in "a year and a day," leaving bleached pieces of bone lying atop crumbling masonry.
Not these days, of course. This was the modern world. Care was taken so that the living would not be offended by the dead.
And still...when the day came to an end, when the heat of the sun died away and the great orb began to fall toward the western horizon, the cemeteries were transformed by shadows from something spiritual into--something frightening.
Certainly some of the danger came from the living--those who prowled behind closed gates in to deal drugs--and worse.
Some originated in the mind, because in the darkness and the mist that came when rain and heat collided, monsters rose from the depths of the subconscious to haunt the night.
And some monsters were real.
Fiona arrived just before the gates were closed, and she knew where to hide when the guides urged the last of the day's visitors to leave.
She stood near the Grigsby tomb, watching as twilight came. At first the light was gentle and beautiful. Soft pink rays falling on the serene faces of angels, wrenching the heart as the light darkened to mauve over a monument for a child, an infant sleeping peacefully by a lamb. Then the shadows came in earnest, transforming the mausoleums stretched out in awkward rows, here a grand vault from the eighteenth century, there a more modern mausoleum with touches of bronze. Some had broken windows, as if the dead had sought a way out, and some were still whole, with stained or etched glass windows, opaque, so no one could look in, and--more importantly--no one could look out.
As she was watching the light and the colors fade, she heard someone nearby. It was just a touch against stone, a whisper of movement in the air.
"Billy?" she said quietly, but no one responded. She decided she must have imagined it, so on edge that she was hearing things.
She slipped around the Grigsby tomb and hurried silently along a path that led toward a monument to the Italian workers in the city. She skirted the rusty ironwork fence and paused behind the monument, listening.
Nothing.
She checked her watch, certain that Billy was due any minute. Perhaps the noise had been Billy.
Perhaps he hadn't heard her call his name.
But then she heard something again, and this time it was like the rush of giant wings.
She headed for a grand marble mausoleum owned by a family named Tricliere. She saw that the door--which should have been tightly closed--was open, and she held very still, listening.
The sound of wings slicing the air came again.
Nearer.
She slipped past the slightly open gate in the rusting fence surrounding the small stone building, then into the mausoleum itself, steeling herself to see a corpse lying on a stone coffin in the center of the room.
There was no corpse. No newly deceased victim lying bloodless and still. The vault was old, probably one of the earliest in the cemetery. The mortar used to seal the vaults in the walls had long since crumbled away, and there were gaping dark holes where the bodies of the deceased had lain, and might lie again.
But now, in the darkness, she felt surrounded by the scent of the damp earth. Not death, just the smell of the earth itself, and the dust of the ages. And it was dark. Not a silent or complete darkness, for she could distantly hear the street sounds, unintelligible messages from the world of the living, and a tiny trickle of gray light seeped in through the broken, barred window at the rear of the vault.
Gray dust motes fell in gray air.
She heard the wings again, flapping just outside the mausoleum.
She didn't speak.
She slid into a broken vault, lying on the ash and bone shards of the last Triclieres to be buried there.
And then, just as she pressed herself more tightly against the wall, her hand falling on a broken skull, she heard a sound, and she winced. The gate.
Creaking farther open.
And then she knew.
It had been a trap.
The city had changed so much over the decades, and yet in so many ways it had stayed the same.
Street names and numbers, old houses, awkwardly slanted second-story balconies, filigree and decoration...these were the same as they had always been. Modern storefronts punctuated rows of houses that, by night, looked no different from when they had been built, nearly two hundred years before.
Jagger hardly even noticed all that history as he walked quiet streets where frightened residents had holed up for the night, afraid of a killer who'd already claimed three victims. It had been easy for most residents to feel safe when the first victim had turned out to be a prostitute, but Abigail's death had ruined that illusion of safety. Still, he was certain that plenty of people were feeling safe for different reasons--they weren't female, for one. Or they weren't young. Or blonde.
Some might even have been happy, perhaps for the first time, not to be considered beautiful.
Still, most of the residents of the city were frightened. The most common theory was that some psycho who thought he was a vampire was on a killing spree, so what if he decided that he just desperately needed some blood? He might strike anyone then.
Even Bourbon Street was quiet--though far from shut down.
Walking along, Jagger tried calling Fiona's cell phone for the third time that night.
Once again, it went straight to voice mail.
He headed down toward Esplanade and David Du Lac's club, Underworld.
Walking the streets had done nothing. He had not seen Mateas Grenard, Billy--or any other vampires, who might have fallen under suspicion simply by being out and about. The only vampires he saw at all were those on the force, who were searching as diligently for the truth as he was himself.
Calling the morgue--where there was still no word on an identity for their latest victim--also brought him nothing but frustration. Tests for toxins, for semen, for fibers on the body, threads in the hair--had all revealed nothing of any use.
He was glad, at least, that he hadn't needed to worry about being at the morgue.
Sinner or saint, the latest victim was really, truly dead, not undead, thanks to the fact that all her organs--particularly the heart--had been removed in the course of the autopsy.
He was about to head toward the shop to talk to Fiona's sisters when his phone rang.
It was Tony Miro.
"I'm having trouble with the nightgowns. Celia told me that they're a cotton polyester blend--available at major department stores all around the parish and beyond. Even some of the boutiques carry them. I realized I couldn't cover the city by myself, so I have some of the men questioning sales people, too. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Just at the mall across from Harrah's, they've sold twenty similar gowns in the last week, eighteen through credit card sales, and two for cash. Lord, Jagger, we don't even know how long ago the murderer bought them. He could have been planning ahead for these killings for months."
"I know, Tony, but you and the guys need to stick with it. It's all we've got, and those officers have to be on the streets no matter what."