LITMIR.BIZ

       FOUR

      Three hours of hard driving put me over the Louisiana state line with dawn breaking over my left shoulder and New Orleans seventy miles ahead. The last two hundred miles were a slow-motion strobe of darkness and glaring truck-stop light. On any other night I would have taken Highway 61. Not many people do these days. They choose speed over scenery, as I was forced to do tonight.

      I-55 runs straight as a pipeline, and most travelers on it never give a thought to the older, more indirect arteries that lie just to the west: Highway 61, a blacktop track of history lined with scorched chimneys like sentinels guarding unquiet land; and beyond the levee, the aorta of the continent, the mile-wide tide of river that ran before man set foot here and will run long after he is gone.

      But in this breaking dawn I can afford only the straightest distance between two points. On the passenger seat beside me sits a briefcase full of laser-printed paper—transcripts of the killer seducing his victims—and my best hope of absolution in the matter of the six dead women.

      Seven, I think, remembering Karin Wheat.

      At La Place I jump down onto I-10 for the final twenty-minute run into New Orleans. The August sun is fully up now, past eight o’clock, and the shallow soupy water of the Bonnet Carré spillway simmers under its lidless gaze. Cranking down the Explorer’s windows, I catch an airborne wave of decaying water plants and fish from Lake Pontchartrain.

      During the past four hours, I have recalled every step on the mental path that led me to this physical journey. What the police hope to learn from me I am not sure. But the most sensitive question for me is this: why didn’t I report my suspicions sooner? I am not quite sure myself. I can only hope that what I have to say will shock the police sufficiently to divert them from that question, at least for a while.

      Locating the main New Orleans police station is easy. It’s near Drewe’s alma mater, the Tulane Medical School, just behind the Orleans Parish criminal court building. Locating Detective Michael Mayeux is easier still. Homicide is on the third floor. The moment I mention my name to the desk sergeant—who sits behind a window of armored glass—I am whisked through a heavy door, through a squad room, down a corridor, and into a small office. Mayeux is seated at a scarred and cluttered metal desk, speaking urgently into a wire telephone. The office has no windows. It does have a computer, an overcrowded bookshelf, and, enshrined in the single clearing amid the chaos, a coffeemaker. A torn red sack of Community dark roast with chicory sits on top of it.

      “Help you?” Mayeux asks, hanging up the phone and taking a bite from a sugar-dusted beignet I hadn’t noticed.

      “I’m Harper Cole.”

      He freezes in midbite, then sets down the beignet, stands, and begins chewing quickly as he ushers me back into the hall and to another door. He is five eight or so, with good shoulders, noticeable love handles, and a bald spot on the back of his head. At the door he stops and turns back to me, his dark brown eyes reassuring like those of a coach before an important game.

      “Just tell these people what you know, Mr. Cole. Take your time and don’t leave anything out. If you get hungry or you need to take a leak, nod your head at me and we’ll break. It might get pretty intense. All of a sudden there’s a lot riding on what you have to say about these women.”

      “Hold on,” I say, raising my hands. “I thought I was coming down to talk to you. Who’s in there?”

      He gives me a crooked smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be beside you the whole time. So will my partner, so will the chief.”

      Mayeux meant to reassure me, but he’s accomplished the opposite. “And …?”

      His eyes move off my face. “The other guys will be feds. FBI.”

      “FBI? What for?”

      “These guys are from the Investigative Support Unit. What used to be called Behavioral Science. One special agent and a shrink. Plus two Fibbies from the local office. Remember what I told you. Two of the dead women were killed in California—one in L.A., one in San Francisco. Because their bodies were mutilated in a specific way, and for other reasons, the police out there decided they might be looking at some type of cult murders. They called in the Investigative Support Unit to assist them in coming up with a profile of their UNSUB.”

      “Their what?”

      “UNSUB. Unknown subject. Anyway, soon as I queried the names of those two dead California women, the Unit was on us like you know what. When they heard about you and the other women, they started foaming at the mouth. They think we’re looking at a serial murderer here. Maybe a whole new kind of killer. We got detectives flying in from all over the country right now. This is major-league stuff.”

      “So much for our friendly little chat.”

      Mayeux starts to turn the doorknob, then hesitates. A spark of Cajun mischief twinkles in his eyes. “Don’t take the shitty vibes personally. Chief Tobin officially requested the Unit’s assistance—he knows their chief—but NOPD and the local Bureau office have bad blood from way back. Not your problem. Just tell your story.” Mayeux winks. “Show time, cher.”