11. Eleven #2
“Oh.” Charlie clapped her hands. “Did they have a crawfish boil? I love a good crawfish boil. Of course, I can’t tell a good one from a bad one just yet.”
“They had crawfish, along with shrimp and chicken.”
“Chicken?” Charlie wrinkled her nose. “That’s kind of boring.”
“You’ll have to excuse my wife,” Jack said with a chuckle, slinging his arm around Charlie’s shoulders and tugging her to his side to kiss the top of her head.
“She thinks everything about New Orleans is exotic. When we were traveling, this was her favorite stop … and that was despite the zombies. It seemed a natural place for us to settle.”
I had questions about the zombies but pushed them off for now. “Alice was a child when this went down. She heard about it, and said the paranormal community managed to keep it quiet.”
“Because it only happened in the paranormal community?” Jack, all business now, asked.
“I don’t know.” It hadn’t occurred to me to ask.
“She didn’t say. She said she wasn’t surprised that the news hadn’t made it outside of certain circles.
I could go back and ask, but … .” There was no way I was confiding my worries about spending too much time with Knox. I couldn’t even admit it to myself.
“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Jack said, taking pity on me. “I’ll ask Detective Barry.”
As if on cue, the detective appeared at the front door of the Creole cottage. He motioned for us to join him.
Jack held up the tape so that Charlie and I could slip under it. Barry was grim when we got to him.
“It’s not pretty,” he said.
Jack nodded and cast a sidelong look at Charlie. “You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”
She gave him a dark look in return. “I don’t need to be coddled. I can handle it.”
“Sorry.” Jack raised his hands in surrender. “Just a suggestion. You can totally handle it.”
What Charlie didn’t seem to realize was that Jack didn’t want her to have to handle it.
She was so determined to be seen as strong that she didn’t realize he viewed her as if she could hang the moon.
He loved her just the way she was. She didn’t have to act a specific way for him.
He would take her any way he could get her.
“I have a question,” Jack said to Barry as the detective led them into the house. He seemed grateful to have something else to focus on. “We’ve heard that there might have been another incident similar to this one about fifty years ago.”
Barry shook his head. “No, the Axeman thing was a century ago.”
“Not the real Axeman,” Jack clarified. “A copycat roughly fifty years after him.”
Barry stopped. I could make out blood on the wall behind him, but he was blocking us from a clear view. I tamped down my irritation and waited.
“I would have heard about that,” Barry said. “There’s no way they could keep something like that a secret.”
Jack didn’t miss a beat. “Of course not. That’s what I figured. I was just checking.” He cast me a significant look. He didn’t believe Barry. Well, he believed that Barry believed what he was telling us, but that didn’t mean it was the truth.
I nodded, and we walked into the abattoir. My mouth fell open as I looked around.
“Anna and Peter Cormier,” he said. “They were in their fifties. No children. We don’t know that they got the call, but there was a missed call from an unknown number on Anna’s cell about midnight.”
I ran that through my head. “An unknown number?” I asked. “In this day and age?”
He shrugged. “You can block numbers with the right technology. We’ve got a call into the phone company. Normally, they can come up with a name for us. However, if it’s a prepaid cell that they bought with cash, we’re screwed.”
“And that seems what we’re dealing with,” Jack guessed.
“Yeah.” Barry looked resigned. “It’s not good.”
I moved deeper into the living room and avoided the spots that were marked on the floor. The bodies had been discovered in those locations. It was the blood on the wall that garnered my attention. There was something about it that stood out.
“Does this look like a pattern to anybody else?” I asked, gesturing to the arcs and curves that had coalesced together.
“That’s not just blood splatter,” Barry confirmed. “Someone drew on the wall. Unfortunately, we can’t find any prints. It’s likely they wore gloves.”
Or it was a paranormal. I didn’t mention that out loud. Instead, I cocked my head and tried to picture the symbol without the blood spatter all around it. It took me a moment, but ultimately I realized I’d seen the symbol before.
“Wait.” I stood straighter, my eyes going wider.
“Do you recognize the symbol?” Jack asked, looking hopeful.
I had seen it, and recently. “I don’t know what it means.” I took my phone out to photograph it. “I saw it a couple of days ago.”
“Where?” Barry asked, his eyes narrowing.
“In Archie Hayes’s office,” I replied. “It was in the CBD. A statue was being brought in, and that symbol was on the base. I remember because I found the symbol fascinating.”
“What sort of statue?” Charlie asked.
“It was of a naked woman. After meeting him, I wasn’t surprised he was going to decorate with that sort of art. It said liberté on the base, and that symbol was next to the word.”
“You’re sure?” Jack pressed.
“Yup. Positive.”