John Ames - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

Cruz gave Beau a pained expression when the stories stopped and he had to explain. “The more of this you see, the more you need to laugh. Release the pressure. You should know that.”

Just before dawn, Copeland brought in a third body with a bullet wound in the forehead. He looked at Beau and said with a sly grin, “You been sneaking out and popping these dudes?”

Beau gave him a long, withering stare, the stare of the plains warrior, unsmiling, unemotional. Copeland shuddered, maybe teasing, maybe not, and stepped away. John Raven Beau had a reputation. He was a killer, plain and simple. Since joining NOPD he’d gunned down five men, the most infamous in the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the only living swamp within the city limits of a major American city, 23,000 acres’ worth. Beau tracked a cop killer through the swamp through the night and left his body next to a railroad trestle.

In the eyes of every rookie he met, once they realized who he was, Beau saw the recognition, the morbid fascination, and the distancing, because Beau was a dangerous man, no doubt. It kept Beau on the outside, kept him separate from the brotherhood of cops, kept him isolated and alienated as he’d been his entire life from his first day in kindergarten when the kids stared at him as if he came from an alien world.

Beau moved to the body bag and waited for Dr. Sumner. Cruz came out of the office, carrying her CD player, the taller of the Oregon cops in tow. His name was Al and he seemed smitten with Juanita Cruz or was just simply on the make, big-time. He spent a lot of time schmoozing with her and Beau couldn’t think of a better way to distract her.

She turned on the CD and the wailing guitars and driving beat of the levee-breaking song echoed through the hangar. Dr. Sumner shook his head as he unzipped the body bag, which held a dark-skinned man with long black hair and a bullet wound in his forehead.

“This one’s older.”

Up closer, Beau saw the man had some gray in his hair and obvious age lines on a face flaccid in death. The man was wet, but hadn’t been in the water long. Sumner found a wallet with three Louisiana driver’s licenses with three different names but the same face on them. The oldest license had the man’s real name, one familiar to everyone in the NOPD. Abdon Jeffries, listed as an AA — African American — by NOPD, although Abdon was a mulatto with a white mother. Some things never changed in the South. If you were part African, you were African. A convicted felon with thirteen arrests, Jeffries was number three on NOPd’s Most Wanted list.

“Wound’s perforated, right?” Cruz asked as she stepped closer.

Sumner lifted the head, felt under it, and said, “Yep.”

Through-and-through, like the others, round, neat, clean. “Straight path,” Beau added. “How do you do that?”

“Sniper?” said Cruz.

“Have to be dead-on perfect.”

Beau stepped over to where Copeland sat with one of the triage nurses from the next hangar, where they worked on the injured, and asked the sergeant, “Where?”

“South Shore Harbor. Next to the capsized casino.”

Cops didn’t believe in coincidences, even if the word was in the dictionary.

“I didn’t recognize him,” Copeland said. “Abdon Jeffries, right? That’s the bastard who shot that Seventh District cop. Crippled him, remember?”

Beau closed his eyes for a second. Yeah, he remembered. Jeffries hired a sharp lawyer and then the D.A. went in unprepared and Jeffries walked. He’d seen the crippled cop in a wheelchair getting into the “police only” elevator at headquarters, going up to the radio room where he worked as an operator. A desk job for a paraplegic.

Beau let out a long breath, opened his eyes, and spotted his lieutenant entering the hangar. He went straight to him, about to tell him about the three men with holes in their heads, but Merten shook him off, heading over to a pair of men standing in the far doorway.

Merten came back with the men and introduced them, a third pair of detectives who would work with them examining the bodies. From Philadelphia, these guys were older, both Italian-Americans, both grizzled veterans of the homicide wars. They asked for the midnight shift and Beau quickly gave it up to them. The Oregon guys wanted the evening watch, so Beau and Cruz would take the day watch.

Merten took Beau and Cruz aside. The big man’s eyes were red-rimmed. “It’s bad out there. People on roofs, starving dogs everywhere. Thirty people died in an old-folks home in St. Bernard. The employees left them to drown. We got a full-scale riot at the Convention Center but I gotta go over to the First District. We’re raiding the Iberville Projects in boats. Snipers been shooting at the district station since the storm.” He took in a long breath and let it out, wheezing in fatigue. He gave Beau a long look and said, “No. You know I need you here.”

“You want to hear what we’ve come up with?” asked Cruz.

“Not now.”

Beau went back to Copeland for details and got, “The body was right on top of the levee. Like I told you, South Shore Harbor.”

Beau put it in his notes.

Copeland also said, “It wasn’t Notre Dame that burned. It was the big place across the street.” Beau knew the area well. There were lots of big places but he wasn’t in the mood to ask.

Later, as their shift ended and Beau was in his portioned cubicle, Cruz stepped in from her shower with a towel wrapped around her head. She had on a terry-cloth robe and carried clothes in her hand.

“Why do we want to work the freakin’ day shift?” she asked, leaning her head forward to rub the towel through her hair. Her hair was shiny from the bright overhead light, traces of reddish brown mixed in with dark brown. Juanita was naturally pretty, looking younger now without makeup.

“I want to be free at night,” he said.

“Night? You found some action? Some nurse?”

He almost smiled.

“We’ve been sleeping through the steamiest part of the day, you silly Cajun. Why work in the heat?”

She dropped the towel on the small table next to Beau’s cot where he sat with his notepad. He’d finished consolidating his notes on the killings. Homicide cases were built with paperwork. He was closely examining a city map, checking out the South Shore Harbor area.

“What’s with the map?” Cruz asked. When he looked up, she dropped her robe and picked up a T-shirt. In her bra and panties, she was facing Beau, who blinked twice. She pulled on the T-shirt and climbed into a pair of lightweight gym shorts before looking back at him.

“What the hell is this?” Beau sat up stiffly on the cot.

“What?”

“The little bra-and-panty show. I’m your partner, not your sister.”

She huffed, narrowing her eyes. “Maybe I’m just trying to get your attention.”

Beau tried to keep from getting aroused, an automatic physical response. He glared at her, turning the excitement into anger. “You never fool around with your partner. You know that. A partner’s a partner. Closer than a friend. But not a freakin’ lover.” He stood and walked to the rear of his enclosure.

He turned back to her and she snapped, “I don’t know anything anymore.” She opened her arms. “Everything’s changed. Everything! The whole damn world’s changed!” She stormed out.

Beau went out a few minutes later with her towel and found the Oregon cops sitting next to the empty examining table. Al was reading a Spiderman comic. He dropped the damp towel in Al’s lap. “Go give this to Juanita.”

“Juanita?” Al stood up.

“Yeah. She could use some company.”

“Okay.” Al took off for Cruz’s room.

The other Oregon cop said, “I thought you were her partner.”