Page 83 of The Fourth Option
“Connor was trying to make a difference,” Walker said quietly. “Is that your point?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s my point. He saw his dad fighting for a sinking society. Leigh Ann was doing that too, working in that ER like it was a battlefield hospital. Connor wanted to fight, but he was different. His weapon was a pen, not a gun. And he saw the enemy for what it was: corruption from within. The ODs made it personal. We can finish what he started. You can still make a difference.”
“How old are you again?”
“I’m wise beyond my years,” she said, taking another sip of bourbon.
She leaned toward the fire, elbows on her knees. Her eyes were sharp.
“We’re not going to let these bastards get away with this, are we?” she asked.
“No.”
“What’s next?”
Walker looked at the thin young woman across the flames of the fire, a girl he was now responsible for protecting.
He bent forward and met her gaze.
“We finish Connor’s story.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
AN HOUR AFTERleaving the scene of Leigh Ann Staub’s murder, Lieutenant Cornelius Bates leaned back in his Aeron office chair, cracked his knuckles, and cursed the city manager for the thousandth time. The air-conditioning in the NOPD headquarters on Royal Street had failed again. Typical. The building—a peach-colored Greek Revival wedged between antique shops and tourist traps—was beautiful, historic, and utterly dysfunctional. An uncharitable observer might consider it a metaphor for the city it served.
Bates, however, was not an uncharitable observer. He loved the location. A block from Bourbon Street, across from the famous Café du Monde that served beignets and lattes 24/7. A dedicated parking spot and the Carousel Bar at the Monteleone just steps away.
Tonight, the heat was a slow, sticky crawl. The window was open, the ceiling fan spun lazily, and Bates fanned himself with a manila folder, muttering about bureaucratic sabotage. In New Orleans, even air-conditioning was political currency.
A knock at the door.
“You ready for me?” came the female voice.
“Yeah,” Bates said, rising to shake her hand.
Tilda Marchand, the department’s public relations officer, stepped inside. Sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, and always two steps ahead. She took the seat across from him, smoothing her crisp blouse.
“You can hear the music from here,” she said, nodding toward the window. A trumpet wailed over the humid air, followed by the thump of a bass drum.
“Perks of the downtown office,” Bates replied. “Be nicer if I could close that damn window. Maybe we should leak that to the press.”
“Don’t bother. They’ll just cut the power.”
He forced a smile, but his mind was elsewhere. Bourbon and a sixty-two-degree thermostat were calling.
“All right,” he said. “What are you hearing?”
Tilda tapped her pen against a yellow legal pad. “That reporter, Evan Greer, he’s been calling every ten minutes. Says he’s got sources in the Garden District. Bloodbath, he says. Wants to run with a gang angle. He’s pushing for home invasion. You know how they love that phrase. Sells papers.”
Bates didn’t respond. He reached for his glass of Diet Coke, condensation causing it to weep, took a slow sip, and let the silence stretch.
“Icy’s office called too,” Tilda added. “They’re nervous. This kind of thing, in that neighborhood? Not good for her campaign.”
Bates nodded slowly. Isaacson had built her platform on a cleanup narrative: crime down, streets safer, the city reborn. A massacre in the Garden District didn’t fit the script. He could already see the headline:BLOODBATH IN THE GARDEN. Icy would lose her mind.
“Greer said he’s going to print by two a.m.,” Tilda said.
“Then we don’t have time to clear this with anyone else.”
