Woolrich, his tan suit now restored to its former tarnished glory, came over to us and offered us the remains of a bag of donuts from his suit pocket. Behind the cordon, I could see his own Chevy, a red ’96 model that shone like new.

“Here, you must be hungry.” Both Morphy and I declined the offer. I still had visions of Remarr in my head and Morphy looked pale and ill.

“You speak to the locals?” asked Woolrich.

We both nodded. We had given lengthy statements to a pair of Homicide detectives from Orleans Parish, one of whom was Morphy’s brother-in-law.

“Then I guess you can go,” said Woolrich. “I’ll want to talk to both of you again, though.” Morphy wandered around to the driver’s side of his car. I moved to open the passenger door but Woolrich held my arm.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“It was a good hunch that Morphy followed, but he shouldn’t have brought you along. Durand’s gonna be on my back when he finds out that you were first on another crime scene.” Durand was the FBI’s special agent in charge in New Orleans. I had never met him but I knew what most SACs were like. They ruled their field offices like kingdoms, assigning agents to squads and giving the go-ahead to operations. The competition for SAC posts was intense. If nothing else, Durand was a tough customer.

“You’re still at the Flaisance?”

“Still there.”

“I’ll drop by. There’s something I want to bounce off you.”

He turned and walked back toward the Stern house. On his way through the gate, he handed the bag of crushed donuts to a pair of patrolmen sitting in their car. They took the bag reluctantly, holding it like it was a bomb. When Woolrich had entered the house, one of them climbed out of the car and threw the donuts in a trash can.

Morphy dropped me at the Flaisance. Before he left, I gave him my cell phone number. He wrote it in a small black notebook, bound tightly with a rubber band. “If you’re free tomorrow, Angie’s cooking dinner. It’s worth the trip. You taste her cooking and you won’t regret it.” The tone of his voice changed. “Besides, there’s some things I think we need to discuss.”

I told him it sounded okay, although part of me wanted never to see Morphy, Woolrich, or another cop again. He was about to pull away when I patted the roof of the car with my palm. Morphy leaned over and rolled down the window.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. Morphy had gone to considerable lengths to involve me, to keep me posted on what was happening. I needed to know why. I think I also needed to know if I could trust him.

He shrugged. “The Aguillards died on my beat. I want to get the guy who killed them. You know something about him. He’s come at you, at your family. The feds are conducting their own investigation and are telling us as little as they can. You’re all I got.”

“Is that it?” I could see something more in his face, something that was almost familiar.

“No. I got a wife. I’m starting a family. You know what I’m sayin’?”

I nodded and let it go, but there was something else in his eyes, something that resonated inside me. I patted the roof of the car once again in farewell and watched as he drove away, wondering how badly Morphy wanted absolution for what he might have done.

38

AS I RETURNED to my room at the Flaisance I felt an overpowering sense of decay, which seemed to creep into my nostrils, almost stopping my breathing. It lodged itself beneath my nails and stained my skin. I felt it in the sweat on my back and saw it in the weeds breaking through the cracks in the pavement beneath my feet. It was as if the city were corroding around me. I went to my room and showered under a hot jet until my skin was red and raw, then changed into a sweater and chinos, called Angel and Louis in their room, and arranged to meet them in Rachel’s room in five minutes.

She answered the door with an ink-stained hand. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear, and a pair of pencils held her red hair back in a bun. There were dark rims under her eyes, which were red from reading.

Her room had been transformed. A Macintosh Power-Book stood open on the room’s only table, surrounded by a mass of paper, books, and notes. On the wall above it were diagrams, yellow Post-it notes, and a series of what appeared to be anatomy sketches. A pile of faxes lay on the floor by her chair, beside a tray of half-eaten sandwiches, a pot of coffee, and a stained cup.

I heard a knock on the door behind me. I opened it to admit Angel and Louis. Angel looked at the wall in disbelief. “Guy on the desk already thinks you’re crazy, with all the shit that’s been comin’ in on his fax. He sees this, he’s gonna call the cops.”

Rachel sat back in her chair and pulled the pencils from her bun, releasing her hair. She shook her tresses out with her left hand and then twisted her neck to ease her knotted muscles.

“So,” she said, “who wants to start?”