Linda Howard: Kill and Tell

He reminded himself that he hadn't come to the Quarter for privacy; he had come precisely because Bourbon Street was so active, and he could lose himself in the foot traffic. All he needed to do was ignore the weird feeling and get on with business. Maybe leave New Orleans entirely, now that Medina was on his trail.

Medina. Dexter thought about it and realized what felt so wrong, what had spooked him. Medina wasn't anybody's dog. The man had principles. Things happened to people over the years, changed them, but it would take a real sea change to turn Rick Medina into a kill-for-hire man. Three alternative possibilities presented themselves. One: Medina had been lied to. That was the easiest explanation but possibly the most implausible because of Medina's personality. He wouldn't take kindly to being used, and if he ever found out, there would be hell to pay. Two: Medina was definitely hunting him, but for a third, unknown party. Perhaps the secret wasn't as well kept as he had thought. God knows it would make great ammunition. This possibility was way out there on the edge of conspiracy, but as someone had said, even paranoids have real enemies. Three: Medina was here for another reason entirely. It was mere chance that Dexter had seen and recognized him.

Yeah, sure.

Dexter reached St. Ann Street and turned down it, not looking in the windows of the voodoo shop as he walked past. That was some weird shit, and he had all the weirdness he could handle right now. Maybe he should have stayed on Bourbon; St. Ann was empty—

Medina stepped out in front of him, silenced .22 in hand.

Dexter stopped, looking into those calm blue eyes. His own pistol was stuck in the back of his waistband, and he knew he'd never be able to get to it in time. Death stared at him, and strangely he thought of Jeanette. He saw her sweet face, clearly remembered how she had hugged him so tightly the last time he'd seen her, and was humbled to realize how much she loved him. And, looking behind Medina, he realized abruptly how it was set up. There was a fourth scenario, one he had overlooked.

"Look ou—" he began, but Medina's finger had already tightened delicately on the trigger, and the bullet punched neatly into his forehead, shutting off thought and speech and life. Rick Medina whirled, going down on one knee, warned by the last words out of Dexter Whitlaw's mouth. He had the strong, lithe grace of a ballet dancer, but he was fifty-six years old, and his reflexes had slowed just a bit. He got off only one shot before two slugs hit him in the chest like sledgehammers. He collapsed on the uneven sidewalk, his body no longer responsive, his eyesight going even as he stared at the three shadowy figures looming over him. Used , he thought savagely. Set up and used . He felt a burst of fury, and then nothing.

A car pulled up to the curb, and the trunk was popped open. Quickly, the three men lifted Medina's body and stuffed it into the trunk. One remembered to scoop up the silenced .22 and toss it into the trunk with the body; one swiftly patted Dexter Whitlaw's pockets and shook his head at the other two. Then they all got into the car and drove sedately away, just as a man and a woman turned the corner from Bourbon Street and began walking toward Dexter Whitlaw's body.

The couple saw the man on the sidewalk, and the woman tugged on her husband's arm. "Let's not walk by that drunk," she said. Mellowed by a couple of Hurricanes, the man agreed, and they crossed the street to avoid coming so close to unpleasantness.

It was another twenty-three seconds before four young women, teetering on high heels, clutching sequined purses so tiny as to be useless, and giggling together over the male stripper they had just watched, wobbled their merry way down St. Ann and made the discovery that the man lying on the sidewalk had a hole in his forehead.

Their shrill screams tore through the music and laughter drifting over from Bourbon. Curious heads turned. A few men broke into a run, responding automatically to the sounds of female distress. More people followed, drawing the attention of a pair of patrolmen on horseback. Had he been alive, Dexter Whitlaw could have told them that when the action is going down, twenty-three seconds is an eon. Witnesses disappear, cars vanish, opportunities are lost, and the wash of time continues its endless scrubbing of the ineffectual marks people made.

Chapter 4

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"Shit."

Detective Marc Chastain rubbed his unshaven face, feeling the bristly whiskers rasping against his hand. He yawned and sipped the hot coffee one of the patrolmen had handed him. It was three o'clock in the morning, which meant he'd had not quite three hours of sleep. He was inclined to feel grumpy but pushed the mood away. He was too controlled to let lack of sleep keep him from giving his full attention to the job. He could catch up on his sleep the next night, or the next; the poor bum lying on the uneven sidewalk didn't have that option.

One of the disadvantages of living in the Quarter—other than ancient wiring and even more ancient plumbing—was that if anything happened there, he was usually first on the scene, which meant it became his case. Hell, he had walked to the scene and still beat the next detective who had shown up, Shannon, by a good two minutes.

As bad as he felt, however, he was better off than the homeless man stiffening on the sidewalk. Blinking his gritty eyes, Marc surveyed the scene, scribbling notes on his pad. The victim was approximately six feet tall, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Age fifty to fifty-five. Gray hair, brown eyes. He lay twisted half onto his right side, his right arm having caught behind him when he fell; the arm braced him, kept him from falling over. There was a small, neat black hole in the center of his forehead but no corresponding wound in the back of his head, meaning the bullet hadn't exited. A .22, Marc thought. Without the power to punch through the skull twice, the lead had wallowed around in the brain, destroying tissue as it went. No blood to speak of, meaning the victim had died instantly. Professionals used .22s, but they were also the cheapest and most readily available handgun, making them the favorites, the "Saturday night specials" used by punk stickup kids. Despite all the outcry to ban guns completely, Marc figured he had a better chance against a poorly aimed .22 bullet than he would against an eight-inch blade or a studded baseball bat, because when a bad guy got close enough to use one of those, he was dead serious and the results far more brutal.

He couldn't rule out drugs as the motive here, but generally pushers, whether individuals or gangs, preferred greater fire power. They liked street-sweepers because they thought it was impressive to throw out all that hot lead in a couple of seconds. A single neat round in the head wasn't their style, wasn't dramatic enough.

Marc lifted his head and looked around. The blindingly bright lights of television cameras glared at him, and he narrowed his eyes to filter out the light as he surveyed the crowd that had gathered. Four young women, dressed for a night on the town, had been segregated from everyone else; one of the women was weeping hysterically, and a medic was trying to calm her. Those four had discovered the body. A patrolman was talking to the three who were coherent, getting names, taking notes. Marc would get to the witnesses in a few minutes.

All the other people had been drawn by the screams of the young women, and the crowd had drawn the television cameras. He sighed. Usually, the murder of a homeless man barely rated a mention in the newspaper, much less television coverage. If a patrolman had discovered the body, there wouldn't be any circus. But New Orleans was a tourist town, and anything that involved tourists was news. Now the newspapers and television stations would be full of more stories about New Orleans's horrific murder rate.