Monument to Murder Read Free

snow.”
    “And if you didn’t buy all the secondhand-smoke nonsense, I’d be enjoying a cigarette in my air-conditioned office.”
    He slid behind his desk, called Savannah PD, and asked for Detective St. Pierre. Wayne came on the line.
    “Bob Brixton,” he said.
    “Well, well, well,” St. Pierre said, “a voice from my not-too-distant past. How in hell are you, Bobby?”
    St. Pierre knew that Brixton didn’t like being called Bobby and did it to irritate him. Brixton didn’t bother to correct him the way he used to. “I’m hot,” he said, “patiently waiting for December.”
    “You never did get acclimated to our fine weather, did you, Bobby? If you were back up north you’d—”
    “Yeah, I know, I’d be bitching about the snow. I need some time with you, Wayne. I’ve got a case that goes back a few years. You worked it. Louise Watkins. Did time for manslaughter, a stabbing at that dump Augie’s, and then got herself killed shortly after she was released.”
    “Rings a bell, Bobby. What’s it to you?”
    “I’ll tell you when I see you. I can pop over now.”
    “Oh, no, my man, not this morning. I’ve got a meeting to go to.”
    “Then I’ll buy you lunch, or dinner.”
    “You must have picked yourself up a good-payin’ client. I just happen to be free this evening and have been hankerin’ for some of Huey’s red beans and rice ever since I got back from the Big Easy. How’s that sound?”
    “Sounds all right as long as you don’t expect me to eat grits. Huey’s at seven.”
    The meeting with Eunice Watkins was the only one he had scheduled for the day, and the chances of having another potential client pop in unannounced were as likely as a sudden cold front dropping the temperature thirty degrees. He told Cynthia that he’d be at the Savannah Morning News going through back issues, got in his car, and drove to the paper’s plush headquarters on the city’s rapidly developing western suburb. An old friend, a reporter who covered the crime beat, was there and settled him in the paper’s morgue, where back issues were preserved on microfilm.
    He didn’t find much of interest on Louise Watkins, nor had he expected to. There was a four-paragraph article on the unsolved stabbing in the parking lot of Augie’s, and a follow-up piece a week later when Louise Watkins came forward to admit having wielded the knife. The reporter mentioned that Ms. Watkins was known to be a drug user and had been arrested twice for soliciting.
    He fast-forwarded to four years later, when Louise was released from prison and gunned down on a Saturday afternoon on a street in a less-than-savory part of town. The police characterized it as a drive-by shooting; no suspects had been identified. There was no second story.
    He returned to the office and spent the rest of the day paying bills and catching up on paperwork. Cynthia left at four to take care of some personal business, and he closed up fifteen minutes later, going to his apartment, where he sacked out in front of the TV with a beer before heading back out for dinner.
    St. Pierre was already there when Brixton arrived. The younger detective was a foppish sort of fellow, fond of brightly colored bow ties and pastel sport jackets. Because he was tall and angular, and reed-thin, clothes draped nicely on him. He wore his now-graying hair longer than most cops, swept back at the sides and curling over his shirt collar. That he became a cop was unlikely considering his background. He was the only son of a Savannah couple ensconced in the city’s upper social strata, had gotten a degree in fine arts from SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design—today the nation’s largest art school—and it was assumed that he’d continue his education in that field with an eye toward becoming a museum curator. But he had made an abrupt U-turn and announced that he intended to take the test to become a Savannah cop. According to him, the decision almost killed his