Page 71 of Phantom
The quicker I move, the less likely I’ll be seen. Granted, once my little friend wakes up, the rumors and tall tales will spark up again. Just how I like it.
Once I get out of the busy alleyway, I pivot quickly to Bourbon Street. Almost immediately, all kinds of smoke, alcohol vapors, and body odors burn my nose. The crowds are in full force tonight and any concern that I might be noticed evaporates with the clean air I once breathed. Revelers are dressed to impress or practically not dressed at all. Everyone on Bourbon tonight is here for, and part of, the spectacle and my plain bone-white mask is child’s play when people are literally in costume.
My skin crawls as the bodies and fluids around me brush against me, and I barely hold back my revulsion. I want to turn back, but I’m on a mission and I must complete it before Scarlett wakes up. It’s one thing for her to joke that I’ve kidnapped her and hold her against her will. It’s quite another to wake up, locked in a dark underground room by yourself. I would die before Scarlett ever felt an ounce of the misery I did.
When I arrive at one of the oldest jazz clubs in the Quarter, I fade into the poorly lit, tightly packed room. The air is sticky with humidity and thick with the music bouncing off the walls. The band on stage in the back is one of the best in New Orleans, and I can’t help but imagine Scarlett up there tearing the house down with her soulful voice, just like she did at Masque earlier tonight.
My gaze flicks to one of the cellists and he nods to me before stomping his booted foot in rhythm next to where the large instrument rests, showing off the rubber skull design underneath the end pin. I nod back before pushing open the wooden doors to the bar’s back alley.
A short line of patrons grumbles in front of a man wearing sunglasses, despite it being the middle of the night. He’s lazily sitting outside a large green slatted door, perfectly acting like he’s not guarding it. But this shadow is one of my best. I’ve never seen him off his game. Raising my hand, I pass by the complainers and show him my ring. His chin barely lifts in acknowledgment and he opens the door behind him.
“Hey, he didn’t have to have a password!” One of the women I passed sneers at my shadow as I round the entry.
“The Phantom doesn’t need one,” he responds simply before closing the door.
I push against a door that is camouflaged to look like the plastered brick wall around it, revealing a hidden open-air staircase. I take the winding red stairs two at a time until I come to the landing that overlooks the courtyard below. The private, password-only lounge is to my right, through the tall white door, but I go left instead onto the skinny balcony outlining the garden square below. I stick to the shadows and when I get to the opposite wall, a woman sidles out from behind a small alcove.
“You’re late.”
With her revealing herself in the faint city light, I can see her eyes flash as they narrow at me, but I doubt she can see much of me beyond my white mask. Her hair is shaved on the sides and the gel on top gleams in the moonlight, as does the government-issued firearm she’s trying to hide underneath her black dress shirt and slacks.
We don’t exchange names. We don’t need to. As a Sixth District officer from the New Orleans Police Department, she covers the Garden District and knows all about who I am. The Chatelains have made sure of it. Technically, she should be on their payroll, but she’s made it very clear to her precinct that she wishes to remain unaffiliated. She’s taking a big risk meeting me, but so am I.
The case I’m interested in happened in the Garden District, and as a Bordeaux, anything that happens on the Chatelains’ side is strictly off-limits. If she were to go back and tell her captain, Rand would have grounds for retaliation or questioning as he sees fit. I’m potentially betting my life on this stranger’s silence.
“Why were you late? Is there something I should know?”
“I had business,” I reply, though I don’t need to.
I need this woman’s information more than she needs me right now. Not to mention that she’s sleeping with my second-in-command, Sabine, so I treat her with a little more cordiality than normal. Sabine’s as loyal as they come but she’s fucking lethal every time she finds out I’ve been “rude” to people she cares about.
“You have them?” I ask.
“Yup, it’s all here for both cases.” She hands me a flash drive and I pull out the USB connector for my phone, plugging both in.
Once the options come up, I thumb through the files. Like Sabine said, there are hundreds of videos from a decade ago. But when I get to the single file about a different incident, I frown.
“This is it?” I ask, pointing at the screen.
“Not much to go off of,” she explains. “That’s why it’s a cold case.”
I scowl and glance at the file briefly, just to verify it’s the correct one. It only takes a few seconds to check the contents and I download them to my phone’s storage service before handing back the thumb drive. I swallow my frustration and focus on asking the right questions, just in case there’s something missing.
“Since you were on the scene that night, is there anything else you remember that might not be in the case file?”
She sucks her teeth while she thinks and ultimately shakes her head. “Not really. Witnesses heard a girl’s scream and several gunshots. Someone from the restaurant nearby called 9-1-1. Vic had two GSWs, one gunshot to the chest and the other in the head.”
“Two shots,” I murmur and she nods.
“Naturally, he was DOA. Shooter was long gone, though. No idea what direction he went because the restaurant’s cameras weren’t working.”
Of course they weren’t. I’d made sure of it.
“And the girl?”
“By the time we arrived, she still had tears on her face, but she wasn’t crying anymore. She seemed… pissed. Which, I guess I don’t blame her. All she kept saying was that the other guy shouldn’t have gotten away. And that he couldn’t have been too far.”
I pause. “Did she say why?”
