The Nimble Man by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski Read Free Book Online Page B

Traviligni,
known to most as Trav. Trav had tended bar at Charmaigne's for seventeen years
and had taken a bullet to the face, crashed into a rack of bottles and died in
a puddle of broken glass and a potpourri of spilled whiskey, vodka, rum and
gin. No liqeuers. Nobody in this part of town drank that shit.
    At the back of the room a fourth uniformed officer sat with
a young black girl who wore too much make up. Old before her time, Jaalisa had
been on her way home after a long night on the only job she'd ever known, a job
her father had first given her, and heard the shots. Saw a car tearing off down
the street. She insisted to the officer that she had seen nothing more.
    The stray took all of this in immediately and it darted
across the room and slide along the base of the bar beneath the lazily whirling
fans. The beer and cigar smells were ingrained in the wood, but the new scent of
fresh blood hung in the air like a fresh coat of hell's own paint. The cat was
skittish at the smell of blood but did not let its instincts turn it away. The
plainclothes cop, a detective, noticed it, and the cat noticed him noticing,
but they ignored one another.
    At the back of the bar the cat went to a corner booth that
was draped in shadows, not far at all from where Jaalisa was being interviewed,
squeezed for some vital detail that might make this crime more than a
statistic. The stray leaped up onto the bench of that booth and sat down.
    And then it changed.
    The only sound was a low rush of air, like a man inhaling
suddenly. Flesh rippled and bone stretched with impossibly fluidity. Where the
cat had been, Clay Smith now sat staring at Sergeant John Brodsky, the
uniformed cop who had called him down here in the first place.
    Déjà vu. Clay had first been in Charmaigne's forty-seven
minutes earlier. He and Brodsky had a passing acquaintance based almost
entirely upon Clay's reputation. He wasn't a private investigator, but for a
wealthy resident of the Quarter he had found himself in the midst of enough
murder investigations in recent years — and was invaluable in solving
nearly all of them — that some of the members of the N.O.P.D. had come to
rely upon him. Other cops, however, detectives in particular, despised him.
    Clay didn't mind. It was never about being liked.
    A call on his mobile phone from Brodsky had brought him to
Charmaigne's before the department had sent a homicide detective down. That was
better for everyone, politics-wise. He had talked to Brodsky, heard about
Jaalisa's 911 call, the deaths of Trav and the kid on the floor, and nodded
once.
    Then he had gone to work.
    Someone had gunned the kid in the doorway while Trav was
getting the place cleaned up for business. The bartender always came in early
to wash the floor, wipe down the tables, all the things that nobody wanted to
do when they were closing up at 3 a.m. The kid — whom no one had
identified yet — had obviously run in through the door and then been shot
in the back. Trav had been a witness, and witnesses have a very short life
expectancy.
    Clay had examined both bodies without touching them. He had
made a show of considering the crime scene. But that was just for the sake of
the cops who were watching him, trying to figure out how he did it.
    They couldn't see the tether.
    The souls of murder victims never passed on to the
afterworld immediately. Always, they clung to their victims for a time, crying
out for vengeance, perhaps hoping someone will hear their anguish. If Clay
reached the victim within the first few hours after their murder he could still
see the tether, an ethereal trail of ectoplasm that stretched from the hollow
shell that had been the victim's flesh all the way to the current location of
the soul.
    The soul that was attached like a lamprey to its killer.
    Clay had followed the tether out the door of Charmaigne's
and then on a twisting path through the French Quarter. Eventually, it had led
him back here.
    The voices of the policemen