Mean Woman Blues

Though he came from the agency the New Orleans police liked to call Famous But Incompetent, he wasn’t either. Certainly not incompetent. He was one of the best cops she’d ever worked with, and he was a straight shooter. They were as close to being friends as a police officer and an FBI agent possibly could be.
    She played it light. “Hey, Turner. Slow day today?”
    He didn’t return her grin, instead examined the dented door and sidewalk. “He almost got you.”
    “What about the kids?”
    “I’ve sent people to get them. Also Jimmy Dee, Layne, and Steve.”
    “Layne? Even Layne?” He’d only married into the family; it didn’t seem fair to him.
    Shellmire nodded. “Jacomine would go for him.”
    Skip knew it was true. Jacomine played mind games. If he couldn’t get at her through somebody really close, he’d try for someone once removed, knowing that would pile guilt on top of her other emotions— guilt and the outrage of the person closest to the one targeted.
    “What are you going to do with them?”
    He opened his arms in exasperation. “That’s the problem. We can keep them safe for a day, maybe, but they’ve got to have a life.”
    At the end of the day, when all the questions that could possibly be asked had been asked, the life-saver— a man named Rooster Blanchard— had finally been released, and still the sniper hadn’t been found and not a single fact more was known than the kind of gun he’d used and the angle the bullets had come from.
    Skip went to see her sergeant. “A.A., my nerves are shot. I’ve
got
to get the son of a bitch.”
    “You sound like you’re asking for a leave of absence.”
    “Just a transfer. I want to go to Cold Case for a while. Please. Just let me try it.”
    “Skip, he’s a needle in a haystack. And furthermore, you can’t just work on one case.”
    “At least I could work on it some. That’s all I ask.”
    The sergeant’s eyes went shifty on her. “Langdon, you’re not the person to work on this. You know that. Anyway, I can’t spare you.”
    She ignored his last sentence. “Oh, come on. I wouldn’t be working the shooting, just the cold case.”
    “Did you hear me? I can’t do it. I’ve got to have you for the cemetery thefts. I want you to head the task force.”
    Here in the Third District where Skip had been sent when the department was “decentralized” and the Homicide Division disbanded, things were usually pretty quiet. But the cemetery thefts were big, about as high profile as a case that wasn’t a triple murder could get in New Orleans.
    Somebody— probably a ring of professional thieves— was removing cemetery statues and selling them through the lucrative antiques market. In a city that took its saints and angels as seriously as it did its pre-Lent festivities, this was big, bad crime. A department that stopped it was going to be a popular department. Heading the task force was a handsome plum.
    Still, to Skip’s mind, it was trivial compared to getting Jacomine. She said, “A.A., I’m flattered, but…”
    “The superintendent asked for you. Says it’s the mayor’s idea. Two city councilmen have also called— at the mayor’s request, probably.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    He could have made a crack about the price of fame, but Abasolo looked as downcast as she probably did. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Skip. Wrap it up fast, and we’ll see about the transfer.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Terri Whittaker stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how she was going to get through the day without Isaac. And with blue hair.
    She had gone ahead with the hair, anticipating that her boyfriend would act as a buffer between herself and her parents, particularly her mother. Now, with no Isaac for the evening, it was a beacon inviting her mother’s attack. She would just have to hope the barbed-wire-looking thing around her neck and the thorn bracelet tattooed on her upper arm would look so scary no one would comment.
    Now there was a pipe dream.
    Mother’s Day would be Judgment Day, as usual. Her parents were Christians of a sort: the sort who seemed to think they were channeling God with a bug up his butt. She toyed with the idea of saying she was sick.
    But she knew she would go. She always went; to this and all family gatherings, no matter that she felt less kinship with her kin than she did with gibbons and lemurs. She didn’t exactly hate her parents; she merely disliked their company. In fact, she was perfectly aware that they