Violets Are Blue

they had been killed. This was a complex and thoroughly annoying murder mess in which anything seemed possible. The killers weren’t necessarily clever, but they were full of surprises.
    “Where do you go from here, Alex?” she asked, as we turned into the airport.
    I laughed. “Oh, now it’s where do
I
go?”
    “You know what I mean. C’mon.”
    “I’ll probably stay down here for another day or two, see if I can help out. Everyone who was in the house, at least the ones who were caught, are being held by the New Orleans police. That’s a lot of freaks to be interviewed. Somebody has to know something.”
    “If you can get anything out of them. You think the New Orleans cops are cooperating now? They sure weren’t before.”
    I smiled. “You know how stubborn local cops can be. We’ll get what we need. It just might take a little longer. I’m sure that’s part of the reason Kyle wants me to stay on.”
    She frowned at the mention of Kyle’s name. I knew she was disappointed to be leaving, though. “I have to get back home, but I’m not going to drop this one. My friend Tim at the
Examiner
is doing another big piece on the California murders. Maybe it all started out there. Think about it.”
    “Eleven years ago, maybe more,” I said. “But who were the first killers? Daniel Erickson and Charles Defoe? Someone else in the cult?
Is
there a cult?”
    She threw her hands up in the air. “I have no idea at this point. I’m practically brain dead. I’m going to get on my plane and sleep all the way home.”
    We talked some more about the weirdness of the case. Then I asked her about Tim at the
Examiner
. “Just a friend,” she said.
    Jamilla and I shook hands at the curbside luggage drop in front of the area marked for American Airlines. Then she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
    I slid my hand behind her neck and held her for a few seconds. It was nice. The two of us had shared a lot of pain and misery in a short time. We had also been in a life-threatening situation.
    “Alex, as always, an honor,” she said as she pulled away. “Thanks for the Krispy Kremes and everything else.”
    “Keep in touch,” I said. “Will you, Jamilla?”
    “Absolutely. I plan to. You can count on it. I mean that, Alex.”
    Then Inspector Jamilla Hughes turned away and walked inside the bustling terminal at New Orleans International. I was definitely going to miss her. I already thought of her as a friend.
    I watched her go, then headed back to the FBI offices in New Orleans to bury my head in some work. I went over everything we had with Kyle. Then we went over everything again, just to be sure it was as fucked up as we thought it was. The two of us agreed that there weren’t even any good theories about what had happened to Daniel and Charles. We just didn’t know. No one was talking so far — or maybe no one had seen anything.
    “Whoever killed them wanted to show us that they were superior. To them. To us. Physically, mentally, in terms of their ruthlessness,” I said. But I wasn’t really sure about that. I was just thinking out loud.
    “I don’t think it was an accident that the whole thing feels a little like a magic trick,” Kyle said. “Doesn’t that strike you, Alex? Some connection to magic?”
    “Yeah, but it wasn’t a magic trick. Daniel and Charles are dead, and so are a lot of other people. Going back a lot of years.”
    “We’re nowhere. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Yeah. And I don’t like it here,” I said.

Chapter 76

    I WORKED late that night in the FBI office. So what else was new? Around nine I was feeling lonely and edgy, all messed up. I had called home, but nobody was there. That worried me a little, until I remembered that it was my aunt Tia’s birthday and Nana was throwing a party at Tia’s new house in Chapel Gate, north of Baltimore.
    I hadn’t bought Tia a present. Damn it. Damn me.
Ever since I had come to Washington as a kid, Tia had never forgotten my birthday. Not once. This year, she had given me the watch that I was wearing now. I called her house in Maryland, and I got to talk to most of my relatives. They teased that I was missing out on some great sock-it-to-me cake. They wanted to know where I was, and when I was coming home.
    I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to give them. “Soon as I can. I miss you all. You have no idea how much I miss being there.”
    I decided I needed to stop in at the magicians’ house before I went back to