All the Devil's Creatures Read Free Page A

consulting anymore. At least for a while. I need to get my head straight.”
    Katrina had blown through nine months before—the Seventeenth Street Canal levee breach had destroyed her Lakeview home, and she was renting a place in the Irish Chanel. Geoff knew he should be impressed Eileen was working at all. But he felt only resignation. He knew he could feel more, but he did not let himself.
    He said, “Okay. But can you stick with me just through the trial? Again, assuming I don’t settle the case. And Lord knows I want to settle. Christ, I want this case to go away.” He tried to meet her gaze over his coffee mug. “Honestly, I only took it to get Kincaid out of my office. He was stinking up the place with his moss and catfish funk.”
    Eileen didn’t smile. Instead, she chewed her lip and looked at the table as if trying to decide how to tell him something.
    “What?”
    She sighed. “There’s one more thing. I don’t think it has anything to do with the lawsuit. Or Dalia’s murder. But she left me a voicemail the day she died …” She fumbled through her purse for her cell phone. “Here, just listen.”
    Eileen called up the voicemail and handed the phone to Geoff. He heard Dalia’s voice: “Eileen, it’s Dalia. I found something at the lake. There’s another facility. With things going on … I probably shouldn’t say much more over the phone, but it’s bigger than pollution. Weird science. I told T-Jacques about it last night. And I left a … sample, leave it at that, in the safe in the lab. I’m on my way back up there now to learn more. Call me.”
    “I tried to call her back but never got through. And I was out of town at a conference, so I didn’t see her between her trips up here.”
    “What’s the sample she left you? And who’s T-Jacques?”
    “Terence Jacques Rubell—T-Jacques. He’s Dalia’s boyfriend. I talked to him yesterday. He’s distraught. He said what Dalia found was big enough to drown a lot of bad people—he was more colorful—’just like they drowned New Orleans.’”
    “What the hell does that mean?” He rubbed his eyes, dreading further complications in this case. He could hear the irritation rising in his own voice but felt powerless to tamp it.
    “Who knows. He’s angry. And grieving. And I never met him before last night, so I don’t know—”
    “And ‘weird science?’ What the fuck is that?”
    “I’m not sure yet.”
    “Come on Eileen. You haven’t answered my first question—what did Dalia leave in the safe?” He gave up trying to keep his annoyance at bay. Eileen had always been secretive by nature, even before the rage and paranoia Katrina had wrought within all New Orleanians to some degree. She liked to act alone as much as possible, to not let others in on her machinations. She was especially protective of her work. But in this case, she was supposed to be working for him.
    “It doesn’t have anything to do with water pollution. But beyond that … I don’t want to discuss it until I understand its significance.” Geoff recognized her solid tone, the hard eyes; nothing he said would budge her.
    He stirred his coffee, watching the dark swirl, feeling her eyes on him.
    “Well then what are you going to tell the sheriff?”
    “Nothing.”
    “
Nothing?
This is a murder investigation, Eileen. You can’t withhold—”
    “Racist rednecks killed Dalia. Whatever she found has nothing to do with the sheriff’s investigation.”
    Geoff stared at her across the table, matching her glare. Her eyes betrayed her recalcitrance. His mind formed the words to prove the absurdity of her intentions.
Make full disclosure—if it’s nothing, no problem; if it’s something, you’ve covered your hide.
Then his stomach lurched and he tasted something sour in his throat and the fight went out of him. He pushed his mug away and shook his head. “Fine. But then what did you tell me for? What do you want from me?”
    “Talk to T-Jacques. He says Dalia