The Easytown Box Set Read online

  “Nope, nothing. The scanner registered a minimal amount of DNA—nothing like what would come up if someone had recently washed off a lot of blood. The computer is still trying to determine if what we did find is from Wolfe.”

  I was at a loss. The ceiling didn’t have any openings and there were no windows in the room. It’s like the killer hovered above the floor…

  “Do you think the killer could have used stilts to avoid the blood?” I asked. It was New Orleans; street performers were everywhere, so it wouldn’t be a far stretch to think someone local had the skills to use them.

  “Hmm, that’d probably be a first,” Sergeant Drake replied.

  “You got any other ideas?”

  “No, sir. I sure don’t.”

  THREE: SATURDAY

  I surveyed the menu even though I knew the damn thing by heart. Besides, my stomach had already told me to order shawarma the moment I walked in. The only choice I had was whether to get lamb or beef.

  The table jostled slightly as my waitress sat across from me. “Hey, Zach. How you doin’?”

  I glanced up. “Hiya, kiddo. I’m good. Elbow deep in another case.”

  She frowned at me. “That’s what you’re always doing.”

  I’d known Teagan Thibodaux for a little over three years now. The waitress was in her final year at Xavier University, majoring in Education—and she hated when I called her kiddo.

  “You work too hard, Zach,” Teagan continued. “When was the last time you went on vacation?”

  I thought about it for a moment. Except for the fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico with Amir a few years ago, I couldn’t remember the last time that I went anywhere outside of New Orleans. “Too long. I’m busy though, y’know?”

  “You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack, old man. You need to relax.”

  I grunted. “You got any recommendations? Somewhere close so I can keep my finger on the pulse of Easytown while I’m off relaxing?”

  “You don’t get it,” she sighed. “When you go on vacation, you’re supposed to let go. Drake can handle your caseload while you take a week or two off. Plus, winter break is coming up, so if you need a travel buddy, I’m always willing to go to the islands…”

  “A week?” I laughed. “I thought a vacation was over a weekend, not an entire week.”

  “You’re hopeless,” Teagan groaned. “What are you having today?” She held up her hand, “Wait. It’s Saturday, lunch, so you’re gonna have a shawarma. Right?”

  Okay, maybe I do need to shake things up a bit. “You don’t know me one bit,” I countered. I glanced at the menu and said, “I’m gonna have the kushari.”

  “Really? You know that’s vegetarian, right?”

  “Dammit, it is? Fine, you got me. I’m a crusty old creature of habit. Gimme the lamb shawarma.”

  She dropped a tanned hand on mine. “You’re not old, Zach.”

  “Well, I sure feel like it sometimes—and you just called me an old man!” I felt every bit of my age. Occasionally my knees would ache in the cursed rain and three times out of four my shoulders throbbed for a few hours after a Krav Maga workout.

  Teagan lifted her hand away from mine and typed my order into the little device she carried. The cooks would have my food ready shortly and I’d be able to wolf it down before I went and spoke to Paxton Himura.

  After the order was in the computer system, she looked up and smiled at me. I liked the way the corners of her eyes tilted up when she smiled. It softened her angular features. She was a cute kid, a little on the thin side, though. Her mixed background lent an exotic look that allowed her to work in the Pharaoh without any of the tourists suspecting that she wasn’t of Middle Eastern decent.

  I’d met Teagan’s parents in a chance encounter at a computer software store the year before. Her mother was a dark-skinned distance runner from Kenya and her father was a Caucasian ultramarathoner from New Orleans who went to Africa seeking additional coaching for the Olympics. They’d met and fallen in love, producing young Miss Thibodaux a few years later.

  “So,” she interrupted my thoughts, “can I hear about your latest case?”

  “You know I can’t discuss it with you, Teagan.”

  “But it’s me, Zach. I won’t tell a soul, promise.”

  “Ah shit, kid. Yeah, okay. There was a murder at one of the sex clubs last night.”

  She wiggled her butt back on the bench so she could lean down closer to the table. “I heard that one of the city councilmen got caught up in some bad stuff down there last night,” Teagan whispered conspiratorially. “Was he killed?”

  Teagan lived in Little Woods, which gave her plenty of opportunity to pick up gossip from the community. Gossip from the streets tended to be good intel that a cop typically couldn’t get. It wasn’t the nicest of neighborhoods, but it’s what she could afford while going to school full time and working at the Pharaoh.

  I’d already figured out why that idiot who got laser burns at the Diva looked familiar. He was a first-term city councilman named Jefferson, and apparently his wife didn’t know he liked to get a little droid strange on the side. Wonder what bullshit story he told her about being out all night.

  “No, the councilman wasn’t killed,” I replied. “It was somebody else.”

  “Anybody special?”

  “Nah, just some store owner from Leonidas. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  She leaned back, obviously disappointed that the gossip wasn’t juicy. “That sucks.”

  I smirked. “Sucks that it wasn’t somebody special or that a man got murdered for no particular reason?”

  “Both. Could you imagine the media circus that would create if somebody like that got killed?”

  “Yeah, but I can also imagine the shitstorm that would brew up down at city hall,” I countered. “I don’t want to get anywhere near something like that.”

  “Hmpf,” she pouted. “You’re no fun, Zach.”

  We had a good relationship. Two or three years ago, if she’d said how entertaining a high-profile murder would have been, I might have gotten pissed off about the misplaced values of the city’s youth. Now, I took it in stride. Regardless of how much she’d grown since I first met her, Teagan was a college kid; of course, the national media rolling into town in force would be exciting for her.

  I glanced around the Pharaoh; the place was almost empty except for me. “How’s school?” I inquired, changing the subject.

  “It’s going okay, you know. I get to begin shadowing teachers this semester and then I’ll graduate a few months after that.”

  I tapped the table idly. “You gonna stay in New Orleans or are you going somewhere with a future?”

  “I’m working on my future.” She stared at a spot over my shoulder.

  I turned around; there wasn’t anyone there. “What is it?” I asked, rotating back around.

  She shook her head. “I’m gonna stay here if I can get a job in the district.”

  “Really? I would have thought you’d want to get away from the city; away from all of the troubles here.”

  She sighed. “I have my reasons. I like the city; my parents and friends are here. There are some other reasons…”

  “Ah, a boy,” I guessed.

  Teagan laughed bitterly. “It always comes down to a boy, doesn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Well, make sure you research the school where the district tries to place you. I can help you if you want.”

  Teagan smiled. “I’d like that, Zach.” Her eyelashes fluttered several times and it looked like her eyes were beginning to water.

  “The pollen is up,” I said, pointing at her eyes. “Bet the school’s doctor could write you a prescription for allergies.”

  The tablet beeped, telling Teagan that my order was ready. She shook her head slightly and stood up. “For a detective, you’re totally oblivious.”

  Huh? I opened my mouth and then closed it as the girl walked toward the counter to get my plate. What’s wrong w
ith her?

  The sky was still pissing rain, so I instructed my Jeep to drop me off at the employee entrance of the NOPD Easytown Precinct station. Giant drops of water splashed against my hat as the car sped off toward my parking spot halfway across the lot. If it’d been any weather except rain, I’d have walked the distance. Lord knows I needed the exercise.

  I wanted to pay a visit to Chuck Wolfe’s spouse. It was important to eliminate her as a suspect—or maybe add her to the top of the list. I wouldn’t have time to drive out there before my scheduled appointment with Paxton Himura, though. They lived all the way out in Leonidas, on the far west side of town. To make better use of my time, after lunch I went to my office at the station to organize my notes and begin typing up my initial report on the case.

  Technically, the NOPD granted me forty-eight hours to turn in the initial report, but Chief Brubaker liked to get the report as early as possible. Given the climate in the precinct regarding the murders surrounding the sex clubs, I figured sooner was better than later.

  The pressure from the mayor’s office made more sense to me now that I knew Councilman Jefferson was one of the johns who got caught up in the lockdown. Teagan had alluded to the fact that it would be a public relations nightmare for everyone down at city hall if something happened to one of their people at the clubs.

  My notes on the case weren’t that in-depth, so I’d be able to write up the initial report quickly. Truth be told, there were more questions than answers. Besides the locations and total lack of usable evidence, we didn’t have much else to go on. The murders didn’t happen on any particular day of the week, so it wasn’t as if the killer was stopping by after work.

  “Hold on,” I said aloud.

  “You got something, Forrest?”

  I glanced up at Alfonso Cruz, the district’s other homicide detective who shared the office with me. He typically worked the short-notice daytime calls and I got the overnight deliveries. Guess which one of us was busier. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Give me a second.”

  I pulled out the reports on the other three recent murders in the Easytown sex clubs. Each of them was in the unsolved and no-motive pile. I placed them on my desk in order from oldest to newest.

  Mark Barilla, the first victim, had died by poisoning three weeks ago. He had a one-man party in his room at The Stud Farm, a sex club that specialized in homosexual intercourse with both sex bots and human prostitutes. After they’d had sex, the victim was smoking marijuana with the robot he’d hired. Somehow, oleander leaves were mixed in with the pot.

  Oleander is a common flowering bush in Louisiana and, as it turned out, worldwide in the milder climates. In the US, they sold it at home improvement stores for homeowners to plant as shrubbery, but all of its parts are deadly. The victim smoked the oleander, which caused respiratory paralysis and then, if the robot’s video recording was to be believed, the john died within five minutes of ingestion. It had originally been ruled an accidental death, but Chief Brubaker ordered the case reopened when the other sex club deaths occurred.

  I flipped through the notes and photos in the second case file. Two weeks ago, Kristin and Robert Silas died at Madame LaLaurie’s. According to the manager, the victims were experimenting with group sex for the first time. Both ended up dead after they’d had sex with the droid and it left for sanitation. The woman stabbed her husband with a serrated kitchen knife and then slit her own throat. Our initial finding was a murder-suicide.

  The third case file was just as puzzling and with as little evidence as the others. Justin Olive had been beaten to death with a table leg at Lipsticks. He’d been murdered before the sex bot reported to the room for the main activity. The club’s video surveillance system had been hacked by perverts looking to get a free show three months before the incident and the NOPD Cyber Crimes Unit had ordered a mandatory shut down of the cameras until tech support could purge the system. As a result, there wasn’t any video evidence and zero witnesses. The table leg came back with no prints and more questions.

  Olive’s murder happened last week. “God dammit!” I mumbled under my breath, slapping the desk.

  “What’d you find?” Alfonso asked.

  “These murders are happening…” I cross-referenced the calendar. “Shit. Three weeks ago, the poisoning was on a Tuesday night. Then, two weeks ago, the murder-suicide at Madame LaLaurie’s was a Wednesday. Last week, the beating death happened on a Thursday.”

  “And last night was Friday,” Alfonso finished my thought.

  I nodded. “That’s either one hell of a coincidence or we’ve got somebody who’s keeping a schedule.”

  “Hmm,” Cruz mumbled. He tapped his teeth with a fingernail; it was one of his annoying habits when he thought. The other was shaking his leg, causing the floor to undulate with the movement. Luckily, we weren’t often in the office together or I’d have been stuck in another one of the department’s sensitivity training courses.

  “I would have thought it was more like somebody was trying to make it seem like the murders were random,” Alfonso stated after a few seconds. “He’s a detail-oriented person who likes to keep to a schedule, but thinks that he’s outsmarting the police by not committing a crime on a specific day of the week.”

  It was an interesting theory. There wasn’t much to link the murders, and the appearance of a biblical verse about prostitution was a new wrinkle which could make last night’s murder a completely separate event. If the cases were related, it would seem like the killer had an obsessive-compulsive disorder. By staggering them on different days of the week, they were trying to hide an accidental discovery. If I hadn’t placed the folders side-by-side on my desk, it’s likely that I wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “If we’re correct… That means we only have a week until the next murder,” I said haltingly. I thought about the severity of the deaths, puzzling it out as we talked. “They’re getting worse; more violent.”

  “Maybe,” he shrugged. “I don’t know if a stabbing death is worse than a beating death, but that’s debatable. Either way, you’d better go talk to the chief.”

  I closed the case files and piled them up. “Yeah, you’re right,” I replied, picking up the folders and heading for the door. The chief was already breathing down my neck to figure these cases out before the FBI got involved. Now that there was a high probability that they were linked, the man would be insufferable.

  FOUR: SATURDAY

  My Jeep changed lanes to the exit off Chef Menteur Highway, the local name for US Route 90. After my discussion with the chief, I was running about ten minutes late for my interview with Miss Himura. I hated being late; it was unprofessional.

  Chief Brubaker was both impressed and skeptical of my discoveries. The idea that we were dealing with a potential serial killer who’d committed four murders in four weeks was a serious problem. If the murders were related, they varied more widely than I’d ever heard of a killer doing, including the addition of a religious message on the latest murder. I’d need to dig deeper to find the killer’s true signature. Poisoning, blunt force trauma, stabbing and now disembowelment; none of them were even close to the same method.

  I needed to go see the department’s psychologist to see if she could help me determine some link between the cases besides the obvious fact that the sex clubs in Easytown were being targeted. The problem was that she worked in the NOPD headquarters downtown, so it would have to wait until tomorrow.

  As the Jeep cruised toward the apartment building where Paxton Himura lived, I dialed Jasmin Jones’ office phone number. I’d called her often enough over the years as I went in and out of the department’s anger management classes that I didn’t have to search for the number. I figured it was best to set up an appointment with her instead of just showing up at her office with a bunch of gruesome photographs.

  The phone rang seven times and then a machine picked up. I was in the middle of leaving her a message when I realized that today was Saturday. She wouldn’t b
e in the office until Monday morning. I tapped a few keys on the dashboard monitor to bring up the department’s phone number list. I searched until I found her and then called her emergency line.

  She answered on the third ring. “This is Dr. Jones.”

  “Hi, Dr. Jones. Zach Forrest from the Easytown Precinct. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, Detective. Yourself?”

  “Good, thanks. Hey, sorry to bother you—” A blood-curdling scream reverberated across my car’s interior.

  “Casey, I’m on the phone with work,” the doctor admonished. “I’m sorry—birthday party for a six-year-old.”

  “I understand.” No, I didn’t. The only person I knew who had children that I interacted with was Amir. His kids were fine, but I couldn’t stand any of the other ones I’d met. Loud, needy, dirty; they were like homeless beggars calling after a pedestrian. No, thank you.

  “I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday,” I continued. “I need to ask you a favor.”

  She laughed and I heard kids yelling in the background. “You need a referral to talk to a psychiatrist?”

  “What? No,” I replied quickly. “Do you think you could look at a few case files for me and tell me if I’m way off base for an initial linkage between four murders? All of them are seemingly unrelated, except that they happened in robo-sex clubs in Easytown?”

  “Excuse me a moment, Detective,” she said. I heard her place a hand over the phone’s microphone and she told someone to hold off on lighting the candles.

  The Jeep parked in front of the Regal Apartments and I eyed the sky dubiously. At least I came over here on a Saturday afternoon when a lot of the residents were gone, so there was parking close to the entrance.

  “Alright, I’m back,” Dr. Jones said. Her voice echoed like she’d gone into a small room. “You said there have been four murders in an Easytown sex club?”