The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 Page 5

He followed her instructions. She waited for him to move back and then picked up the document. With one hand she unfolded it and took a glance, taking her eyes off Bosch for no more than a millisecond.

  “I’m not going to be able to read it. What is it?”

  “It’s a no-knock search warrant. I have broken no law by being here. I’m not one of them.”

  She stared at him for a silent thirty seconds and then finally smirked.

  “You have to be kidding me. What judge would sign such a search warrant? You had zero probable cause.”

  “I had your lies and your proximity to two murders. And I had Judge Oscar Ortiz—you remember him?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Back in 1999 he had the McIntyre case. But you took it away from him when you executed McIntyre. Getting him to sign this search warrant wasn’t hard once I reminded him about the case.”

  Anger worked into her face. The muzzle started to come up again.

  “All I have to say is one word,” Bosch said. “A one-syllable word.”

  “And what?”

  “And you’re dead.”

  She froze, and slowly her eyes rose from Bosch’s face to the windows over the file cabinets.

  “You opened the blinds,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Bosch studied the two red laser dots that had played on her face since she had entered the room, one high on her forehead, the other on her chin. Bosch knew that the lasers did not account for bullet drop, but the SWAT sharpshooters on the roof of the house across the street did. The chin dot was the heart shot.

  Gables seemed frozen, unable to choose whether to live or die.

  “There’s a lot you could tell us,” he said. “We could learn from you. Why don’t you just put the gun down and we can get started.”

  He slowly started to lean forward, raising his left hand to take the gun.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  She brought the muzzle up but he didn’t say the word. He didn’t think she’d shoot.

  There were three sounds in immediate succession. The breaking of glass as the bullet passed through the window. A sound like an ice cream cone dropping on the sidewalk as the bullet passed through her chest. And then the thock of the slug hitting the door frame behind her.

  A fine mist of blood started to fill the room.

  Gables took a step backward and looked down at her chest as her arms dropped to her sides. The gun made a dull sound when it hit the carpet.

  She glanced up at Bosch with a confused look. In a strained voice she asked her last question.

  “What was the word?”

  She then dropped to the floor.

  Staying below the level of the file cabinets, Bosch left the desk and came around to her on the floor. He slid the gun out of reach and looked down at her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could do. The bullet had exploded her heart.

  “You bastards!” he yelled. “I didn’t say it! I didn’t say the word!”

  Gables closed her eyes and Bosch thought she was gone.

  “We’re clear!” he said. “Suspect is ten-seven. Repeat, suspect is ten-seven. Weapons, stand down.”

  He started to get up but saw that Gables had opened her eyes.

  “Nine,” she whispered, blood coming up on her lips.

  Bosch leaned down to her.

  “What?”

  “I killed nine.”

  She nodded and then closed her eyes again. He knew that this time she was gone, but he nodded anyway.

  O’NEIL DE NOUX

  Misprision of Felony

  FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  Detective joseph savary counted nineteen people on Felicity Street. Four older men sat on folding chairs outside Ojubi’s Barbershop, two women swept the sidewalk beyond the shop, two others hosed off their stoops while chatting with each other, three boys rode around on bicycles, four girls hovered between a parked blue Chevy and a dark green Pontiac, two young men leaned against the outer wall of the laundromat, another two sat on the loading dock of the long-abandoned warehouse and pretended they weren’t watching the plainclothesman. Savary tapped down his black sunglasses and gleeked the men on the loading dock. No reaction.

  Savary had left his suit coat in his unmarked gray Chevy Impala. He was glad he wore a white shirt today, as the sweat wouldn’t show. He loosened his sky-blue tie and rested a hand atop the grip of the nine-millimeter Glock 17 semiautomatic resting in its Kydex holster on his left hip, next to the gold star-and-crescent NOPD badge clipped to his belt. He stood stiffly in front of the boarded-up door of Jeanfreau’s Grocery and glanced at his watch. Two P.M. exactly. Same time, same day—a Wednesday—as two months ago. On that Wednesday, a lone black male put a bullet into the forehead of Jack Hudson, the owner of Jeanfreau’s. Grainy black-and-white video showed a young, thin African-American male in a white T-shirt and low-riding jeans, pulling out a forty-caliber semiautomatic, pointing it at the gray-haired old man. The weapon was tilted on its side, gangster-style, waving in the right hand of the shooter. Jack Hudson, a man who’d bragged he was part Zulu and once shook Martin Luther King’s hand, exchanged words with the gunman, touched his chin, and the big pistol went off, snapping Hudson’s head back. The shooter went around, had to kick Hudson out of the way to empty the cash register, stuffing cash in his pockets, snatching two candy bars on his way out. Looked like Milky Way bars, maybe Snickers.

  Savary fitted his sunglasses back up and stepped over to Ojubi’s Barbershop. The four men outside, all over fifty, stopped talking. The barber, in a white smock and black pants, stood and stretched.

  “Afternoon,” Savary said.

  The barber nodded.

  “Back again, huh?” The barber was Willie Ellzey, who lived on Terpsichore Street but stayed with his woman on Eurphrosine, as he’d explained. Savary looked at the only man he hadn’t spoken to on his four previous canvasses, twice in the morning, twice in the evening.

  “I’m Joe Savary,” he told the skinny man with blue-black skin as dark as Savary’s. “I’m working on—”

  “Jeanfreau.” The man didn’t look up. “We know.”

  “What’s your name?”

  A pair of bloodshot eyes met his and the man said, “Joe Clay. You wanna see my ID?” The voice was harsh, challenging.

  “That would be nice.” Savary pulled out his notebook as the man reached around for his wallet, took out his driver’s license. Savary copied down the details.

  “You come around here often, Mr. Clay?”

  Savary got the same answers he’d been getting since he took over the case. No one saw anything or heard anything. No matter that Jack Hudson was a neighbor, had run the neighborhood grocery store since old man Jeanfreau died in 1968. It was as obvious as the nose on the detective’s face. A local boy did this, but no one was giving him up to the police. It didn’t even matter if Savary was raised three blocks away on Erato Street. The day he started the police academy was the day he’d left the neighborhood—permanently.

  He moved to the women. He’d spoken to some of them before, the two young men by the laundromat as well. One was the son of a fireman and was actually civil to Savary, the other barely mumbled responses. The two sitting on the dilapidated warehouse loading dock who pretended they weren’t watching Savary would not even look at him as he stepped up.

  “Police,” he said to the taller of the two. Both were maybe twenty, both in white T-shirts and those long shorts with the crotch below the knees. “What’s your name?”

  Nothing.

  “Stand up.”

  “Say what?”

  “Stand up before I yank you up by your ears.”

  The taller one stood slowly and Savary, who towered over the man, patted him down.

  “Man, you can’t just search us,” said the shorter one.

  “I’m not searching your friend. I’m patting him down. Terry versus Ohio. Look it up. If a police officer has reasonable suspicion that a person has committe
d, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, the officer can pat that person down for weapons. For officer safety as well.”

  Savary found something. “That a cell phone and a wallet?”

  The tall man nodded.

  “Take them out. Let’s see some ID.”

  The smaller one stood and raised his hands. Savary patted him down as well.

  “What crime we did?”

  Savary nodded to the large sign nailed to the wall of the warehouse which read POSTED—NO TRESPASSING.

  “I don’t write the laws. I just enforce them.” As Savary jotted down their names, addresses, cell-phone numbers before passing their IDs and cell phones back, he asked about Jeanfreau’s and received the usual information. Nothing. He called in their names, had both run through the police computer. Both had records, but no felonies and nothing around the neighborhood. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  A tan Impala pulled up and Savary went around to the driver’s side to speak with his sergeant. Jodie Kintyre gleeked him over her cat-eyed sunglasses. It tickled Savary, because Jodie had wide-set, hazel, catlike eyes. She claimed Scottish descent, but there had to be some Asian blood in her genes with those eyes.

  “Any luck?”

  He laughed, stood back as she climbed out. Unlike most women cops, Jodie liked wearing skirt suits and wore them well. This one was beige. She left her jacket in the car as well, readjusting her shoulder rig with gold badge affixed. She was a striking woman in her forties with that shock of yellow-blond hair cut in a long pageboy. Jodie stood five-seven, her heels added a good inch, but she had to crane her neck to look up at Savary, who stood six-four.

  “I’ll take this side of the street.” She clicked her ballpoint pen, flipped open her notebook, and moved to the two outside the laundromat. Savary crossed the street. A half-block down he ran into a distant cousin, Eddie Tauzin, who worked as a caretaker at the Audubon Zoo.

  “On my way to work, my man.” Eddie slapped the big detective’s shoulder. “You gettin’ nobody to talk about it?”

  Savary shook his head.

  “Man, I been askin’ but no one sayin’ nothin’.”

  He got a nod in response. “I appreciate your asking around.”

  Eddie moved past, backing as he walked. “You know, I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.” He turned, spied Jodie across the street, and looked back at Savary. “I admire the comp’ny you keep.”

  Reverend Tom Milton stepped out of his chapel with a large sponge in hand, spotted Savary, and gave him a knowing smile. The Sacred Congregation of the Good Lord occupied a two-story brick building two blocks from Jeanfreau’s.

  “Hot enough for you, boy?” The reverend leaned over a bucket, dipped the sponge inside. Savary wiped his brow as Milton took the sponge to the picture window lining the front of his building, slapped it against the glass, and rubbed on the soapy water.

  “Hear anything from your congregation?” It was the same question Savary had been asking.

  “You know if I did, I’d be the first to call. You get any luck at your church?”

  That brought a smile to Savary, a lapsed Catholic who hadn’t been to church, except for weddings and funerals, since he was a teenager.

  “You want a bottle of water?” the reverend asked.

  “No thanks.”

  Milton reached over and patted Savary’s back as the detective went by. Hopefully, the man of the cloth would pass any information to Savary, who had asked the reverend to talk with the children of his congregation about the matter because kids hear and see more than anyone in a neighborhood. When Savary was a patrolman, Milton and some kids had helped him recover two stolen cars. But that was before Katrina.

  Things were different now, AK—after Katrina. The hardcore criminals, who were some of the first to return, had reestablished themselves with a killing vengeance. The murder rate was back up top as new blood carved out drug territories, and the police department, as devastated as the neighborhoods, reeled in turmoil from lack of manpower, lack of leadership, lack of inspiration.

  Savary linked up with Jodie back at her car and she actually had a line of perspiration on her upper lip. The fair-haired sergeant rarely perspired, even in the sweltering summer city.

  “M.F. screwed this one up from the start.” She went on to her repeated diatribe against Detective Maurice Ferdinand, who had done absolutely nothing on the Jeanfreau case beyond overseeing the processing of the crime scene. M.F.’s recent transfer to the reorganized Vice Squad was welcomed by the rank and file of the Homicide Division. M.F. in the Vice Squad, always a joke in decadent New Orleans, was a classic example of the Peter Principle—a worker rising to the level of his incompetence. So much for a man who thought being called M.F. was cute.

  “Know how I know it’s somebody local?” Savary asked.

  Jodie narrowed her left eye as she looked up at him.

  “All these people out here and no one saw anything. No one’s heard anything. You think a ghost flittered in here and shot old man Hudson? If it were a stranger, someone would tell me, ‘I saw him but don’t know who he is.’ But that’s not what we’re getting. No one saw anything because they know who he is.”

  Neither detective had to say the word retaliation. Eyewitnesses, especially inner-city eyewitnesses, were at the top of the endangered species list in New Orleans. So much for the vaunted witness protection program.

  Back at headquarters, Savary sat next to his Macintosh G5, donated by Apple to the department AK, typed in the hundred block of Jeanfreau’s Grocery, and searched the police database for any incidents that had occurred there over the last five years. As a boy, Savary had looked up the definition of felicity, discovering it meant “intense happiness.” Felicity Street was a real-life oxymoron.

  In the five years AK, NOPD had received over one thousand calls along the twenty-four blocks of Felicity Street. In the last two years there had been two murders in the blocks around Jeanfreau’s—nine rapes, twelve aggravated batteries, eight burglaries, seven armed robberies, two carjackings, twenty-nine batteries... the list went on. Savary narrowed the search to Jeanfreau’s Grocery and discovered there were nine thefts, two armed robberies, two simple batteries, four disturbing-the-peace calls, and a peeping Tom reported there.

  The only arrests on-site involved the two simple batteries—fistfights—and the peeping Tom case. A suspicious man standing outside Jeanfreau’s had a warrant out for his arrest for peeping Tom from Tangipahoa Parish. Jack Hudson was the victim of both armed robberies. Of the nine theft cases, five listed young African-American males as the culprits. Two were later arrested after pulling the same shoplifting stunt at other stores.

  Savary stood and stretched. Time to get home, cook something up, and call his girls on the phone. Every night between six and seven, when he wasn’t working, Detective Joseph Savary called his ex-wife’s number and talked to his girls. Emily was nine and Carla four. Carla thought she could show her daddy things through the phone as if he could see what she pointed the receiver at. Last night she was talking about a drawing she’d done and said, “See, Daddy?”

  “Yes, baby. I see it.”

  Savary left headquarters, heading uptown to his small apartment near Audubon Park. He would pass his ex-wife’s house, the one he still paid the mortgage on, but would not stop. Joint custody in Louisiana meant his ex was the custodial parent, but he got his girls every other weekend and every other holiday. He fought for those visits even harder than he fought to solve murders. He barely knew his father. His girls would not suffer this.

  It had been a Sunday morning, just before 6 A.M., January 8, 1815, and the men lined behind the Rodriguez Canal strained to see through the heavy fog. Bagpipes echoed across the plain as the British army came at the quickstep. Major Joseph Savary, commander of the 2nd Battalion of Free Men of Color, stood near the center of the American line, not far from General Andrew Jackson. A rocket rose into the sky near the swamp to their left and the fog lifted to reveal
the enemy columns in all their splendor—red coats, shako hats, steel bayonets atop their muskets.

  The column near the river rushed the exposed redoubt just in front of the American line. The column coming along the swamp, closer to Savary’s position, rolled toward them, sixty men abreast, the column so long its end could not be seen. It was a magnificent spectacle until the American cannons opened up.

  A maelstrom of fire and shells—grapeshot, canister shot, chain shot, and black iron cannonballs—ripped through the British lines. Still they came, and Savary’s men were finally able to join the firing. Major General Sir Edward Pakenham in his black commander-in-chief jacket and his best friend, Major General Samuel Gibbs, were cut down not far from Savary’s position. Later, Andy Jackson would claim it was one of Savary’s men who shot General Pakenham.

  As the British attack faltered, eventually to fail, Major Joseph Savary learned his brother had been killed down the line. Etienne Savary was one of the eight Americans killed that morning. The mighty British army, veterans who had defeated Napoleon’s finest in Spain and Portugal, suffered over two thousand casualties. Major Savary buried his brother in an above-ground tomb in the city they helped save. He had his brother’s name carved into the tombstone above the words “Killed in action at the battle of New Orleans.”

  Nearly two hundred years later, Major Joseph Savary’s descendant and namesake felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he stepped away from a shotgun house in need of a paint job at the corner of Felicity and Freret Streets. The door slammed behind him. Detective Joseph Savary had just eliminated another suspect, Willie Nelson (no relation to the singer), a nineteen-year-old convicted serial purse snatcher just released after serving two years at Hunt Correctional Center. That left one name on his list of those who’d had run-ins with police around Jeanfreau’s, a list Savary had made quick work of, eliminating one dead guy, one in jail in Mississippi, and the others who had fairly solid alibis. What pricked Savary’s goose bumps was the fact that no one had said anything about the last name on the list, Oris Lamont, also nineteen. Every other name had come up in the interviews except Lamont’s. In his short lifetime, Oris Lamont had managed to get arrested five times as a juvenile and seven times as an adult, charged with aggravated burglary, simple burglary, auto theft, simple robbery, carjacking, and a new drug charge. There was a lone conviction. Simple burglary. He served fourteen months of a ten-year sentence. Lamont had spent his entire eighteenth year in prison.