NCIS New Orleans, page 1
CONTENTS
Cover
Also available from Titan Books
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also available from Titan Books
NCIS: Los Angeles™: Extremis
by Jerome Preisler
NCIS: Los Angeles™: Bolthole
by Jeff Mariotte
Once again, this one’s for Marcy, with love.
NCIS New Orleans: Crossroads
Print edition ISBN: 9781783296347
E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296354
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: March 2017
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © & ™ 2017 CBS Studios Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
PROLOGUE
When Caydee Spurgeon glanced over at Roger Mitchell, sitting with his back against a brick wall, pale as death, face buried in his hands as if afraid it might fall off, her older sister’s parting pearl of wisdom rang in her head like an ancient prophecy of doom. “When a couple takes their first trip together,” Bree had said, “it’s make or break. Either you come out of it crazy in love, or you want to murder each other. There’s no middle ground.”
That was how it had worked for Bree and Spence. A weeklong climbing and hiking trip to Lake Placid had culminated in a proposal at the top of Mount Marcy, New York’s highest peak. Seven years and two babies later, they were still, in Bree’s words, “deliriously happy.” Bree might have been exaggerating the “delirious” part—they had their ups and downs, as any married couple did. But they were still together, and happy more often than not. Caydee loved her nieces, and was glad the hiking trip had turned into so much more.
But this Mardi Gras trip with Roger was turning out very much the other way—which, in retrospect, she figured her sister had been trying to warn her about. Murder was looking better all the time.
They’d only been here for three days so far. The first day had been nice, walking around, exploring the sights and the shops. But it had gone downhill since, and yesterday had been the worst. Roger hadn’t wanted to leave the French Quarter all day. More specifically, he hadn’t wanted to leave the French Quarter’s bars, and even when he could be persuaded to, he carried a go-cup with him. Increasingly inebriated as afternoon turned into night, he’d become just one more loud, obnoxious drunk among many others. He had pressured Caydee to bare her breasts for some cheap plastic beads offered by a trio of different loud, obnoxious drunks, and when she had refused, he’d sulked and called her a prude. She had pointed out a couple of strip clubs where he could see all the breasts he wanted, and she went back to their hotel alone. He had stumbled in a few hours later, smelling of cheap perfume and vomit—which still flecked his shoes, she noticed—and fell onto the bed, fully dressed.
Now she was wondering if she could exchange her ticket for an earlier flight, so she wouldn’t have to sit next to him all the way back to Ohio. She had already decided to break up with him; the only question remaining was whether it would happen in New Orleans or back home in Dayton.
She turned her attention back to the parade. She was standing under one of the gorgeous shade trees lining St. Charles Avenue, and it was the real, actual Fat Tuesday, and a Mardi Gras parade was passing by right in front of her eyes in all its color and spectacle. Seeing this had been a dream for years, and she wouldn’t let a bad boyfriend decision ruin it for her.
She was astonished by the beauty and complexity of some of the costumes, both in the parade and among the spectators. Music and laughter and cheers filled the air, and her eyes almost ached at the riot of colors—especially the variations on purple, green, and gold, the “official” colors of Mardi Gras, according to the pre-trip research she’d done. This was so different from the seedy scenes in the French Quarter the night before that she could hardly believe she was in the same city.
Across the street, people thronged the balconies of the Buccaneer Hotel, which was where she had wanted to stay when the idea of the trip was initially broached. Roger had dithered, as he so often did—that should have been a sign, she realized now—and the Buccaneer had sold out long before they’d made their reservation. Instead, they were at a dump called the Crescent Palms Motel, in a marginal neighborhood, miles from the parade route. She wasn’t sure whether the cockroaches or the bedbugs would win the war for dominance of the room—the roaches had size and weight, but the bedbugs had strength in numbers. Either way, she knew who the loser was.
She noticed a man sitting by himself on one of the third-floor balconies. He looked like a serviceman, wearing a khaki uniform of some kind. He was African American, slender, maybe in his late thirties, she guessed, and the reason he stood out to her was because it looked like from his chair, he could barely see the parade passing below him. Something else seemed to be on his mind. He looked worried, even afraid. Caydee found herself checking up on him often, hoping that whatever was weighing on him would leave him alone so he could enjoy the hotel room he’d obviously paid a small fortune for.
A gasp coursed through the crowd like an electrical charge as the next float lumbered into view. This parade was put on by the Krewe of Poseidon, and the sea king himself loomed over the float. Poseidon was fifteen or twenty feet tall, she guessed, a papier-mâché giant with shaggy hair and a long, flowing beard made of silvery feathers. That beard looked soft, not like the one Roger had been growing out for the past few months, which sometimes made her feel like she was making out with a Brillo pad. Clutched in Poseidon’s raised fist was a trident that looked like real metal and towered another seven or eight feet above the figure’s head.
People on the float were tossing “throws” to the audience lining both sides of St. Charles: more plastic beads, doubloons, rubber tentacles and sharks, even a few shoes. Caydee had caught a strand of beads earlier, and had got her foot down on a tentacle before anyone else could, but for the sake of her fingers, she hadn’t tried to pick it up until after the people around her had stopped stomping at it themselves. Now it was safe in the pocket of her jeans and the gold beads hung around her neck. No nudity necessary, thank you very much, Roger.
She was watching one of the Krewe dressed as a masked pirate tossing out gold-colored plastic chalices when a sudden motion on the balcony across the street caught her eye. It was the serviceman again, she realized, but he was no longer sitting in that chair, well back from the edge. Instead, he was standing at the railing—no, not standing. Lunging, climbing… she couldn’t even tell. He was a flurry of movement, all khaki and dark skin, and was that someone behind him? Was he trying to escape the balcony, or—
Then Caydee stopped trying to figure out what was happening, because none of it made any logical sense. The man was perched for an instant on the railing, and then he was flying, soaring through the air. But he was airborne for just moments before his course altered again, and then he was plummeting toward the street.
No, not that far. Because the float was passing just beneath him, and the tines of Poseidon’s trident broke his fall. She blew out the breath she’d been holding, but it caught in her throat when the tines erupted out the other side of him. As blood began to drip down onto the float’s passengers, Caydee started to scream.
So did everyone else.
Almost everyone else.
Sitting against the wall, head in his hands and oblivious to the scene in the street, Roger just moaned.
1
Dwayne Cassius Pride—“King” to special friends, and, more often than not, less respectful names to people he had arrested—had enjoyed a lot of Mardi Gras celebrations. A lifetime of them, in fact. He had been to the balls, listened to what seemed like thousands of musicians and bands of every style, size, and degree of talent, and watched parades from every angle: looking down from rooftops or balconies, ridi
The floats could be fun, and most of the millions of people who’d watched the parades and participated in the long stretch of celebrations held between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday would never have a chance to experience riding them. He would always be happy that he had been able to. But the experience was limiting, too—the crowd passed by in a blur, his view partially blocked by the requisite mask; the sound was a ferocious roar in which individual voices, much less the notes played by the float’s musicians, were utterly lost; and the constant motion of dipping into the containers of throws and tossing them overboard made the whole experience into a kind of grueling ordeal. It was nonetheless a blast, of course, and not an experience he would ever regret. Nobody who rode on a float forgot it; in the days immediately following, they remembered every time they tried to lift their hands above chest height, and the ringing in their ears reminded them at every otherwise quiet moment.
This year, Pride was more than content to watch from the sidewalk, like the hundreds of thousands of visitors and locals lining the parade route. He had arrived early and staked out a spot near the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles. The parade made a turn there, enabling the spectators to get a good look at each float from multiple angles. The marching bands slowed for the turn, too, so the crowd got to hear a little more of each performance than they would elsewhere on the route.
The morning was cool; spotty showers the night before had dampened the streets, but fortunately hadn’t lingered past sunrise. Still, Pride had worn a brown leather jacket until the press of bodies and the sun pushing through cloud cover warmed the day. Now he held it slung over his shoulder. He stood with family, by blood and by choice: daughter Laurel and fellow NCIS special agents Chris Lasalle and Sonja Percy, Jefferson Parish medical examiner Doctor Loretta Wade, and forensic agent Sebastian Lund. Investigative computer specialist Patton Plame sat among them in his wheelchair, with purple, green, and gold streamers threaded between the spokes of his wheels. Pride had hoped Tammy Gregorio, his team’s newest addition, could be there, but Washington, in its infinite wisdom and mercy, had chosen Mardi Gras week to summon her to lead some specialized training workshops.
The Krewe of Zulu parade had passed by earlier. The Krewe of Poseidon parade had just finished; next would come the Krewe of Rex. Shrove Tuesday was a legal holiday in Louisiana and, with any luck, the day’s NCIS workload would be light to nonexistent. Over at CFA, the bar Pride owned, manager and bartender Michael Buckley was no doubt already being run ragged. It would only get busier toward evening, so Pride expected he would be helping out there later on.
Then he heard the screams echoing from farther down St. Charles Avenue, and he winced. They didn’t necessarily portend trouble for NCIS, but they assuredly meant that somebody’s day had just gotten a lot worse.
“Come on, folks,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on down there, but whatever it is, I expect NOPD could use a hand.”
“I hope it’s just your hands that are needed, and not mine,” Loretta Wade replied. “Mardi Gras parades should be memorable, not fatal.”
“I think we’re all hoping that,” Pride said. “Only one way to know for sure, though. Let’s go learn things.”
* * *
“He was gigged!” Lasalle said.
“Excuse me?” Sonja said. “What do you mean by that, Country Mouse?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to know, City Mouse,” Lasalle countered. “But gigging is when you go fishing with a multi-pronged spear.”
“Like a trident?”
“Exactly like a trident.”
Sonja shook her head. “The things you learn…”
“Hang with me, Percy. I’ll teach you lots of things.”
“I just bet you will. Only most of them, I probably don’t want to know.”
The police department had cleared St. Charles Avenue and rerouted the later parades, much to the consternation of people who had been lining the street since before sunrise to claim prime spots. Considering the size of the crowd, Pride thought the NOPD had handled the situation as well as they could. There had been complaints and a few scuffles, but most people had complied, especially once the reason for the shift spread through the crowd. Then the problem became the morbidly curious, those more interested in seeing the victim than watching the rest of the parades. The NOPD had pushed them back to the ends of the block, sealing the area with CRIME SCENE tape and as many uniformed officers as could be spared.
EMTs and firefighters had worked together to free the victim from the trident and bring him down to the street, and Loretta was performing a preliminary investigation on the body. Pride stood with Sebastian, who shook his head sadly. “I’ve seen some compromised crime scenes before,” he said, “but never one that probably had five thousand people walk all over it between the crime and the investigation.”
Pride nodded toward the still-bloody trident atop the float. “That’s the crime scene, not this street,” he said. “That float, and that balcony over there.”
“Yeah, on top of that trident? You remember that I’m not great with heights?”
“I won’t make you climb it,” Pride assured him. “You can focus on trying to figure out if this was a homicide, a suicide, or an accident.”
“Yeah, that sounds better,” Sebastian said. “I’ll stay here and work on—well, what you said. Thanks.”
Sebastian wandered off to get a wider view of the overall scene. When he had gone, Pride surveyed the street. The detritus of the spectators remained very obvious: cigarette butts, food wrappers, empty go-cups and broken bottles and dented aluminum cans, dirty disposable diapers, abandoned parade throws everywhere. It was a good thing the victim had never hit the ground, he thought, or Sebastian would have been stuck in the lab for the next ten years, examining every item recovered from the scene for trace evidence.
“Dwayne?”
Pride’s attention snapped back to the medical examiner. “Yes, Miss Loretta?”
She had opened a wallet on a clean spot on the victim’s clothing, and she held a couple of plastic cards out toward Pride. “We knew from the service khaki uniform that the victim was Navy. Here’s his ID. He’s Lieutenant Edouard Alpuente. The address on the driver’s license is in Nicholson, Mississippi.”
“Nicholson?” Pride echoed.
“He must work out at Stennis,” Lasalle suggested.
“That’d be my guess,” Pride said, taking the cards and glancing at them. Stennis Space Center was a NASA field center—primarily a rocket testing facility—but it also served as the home base for various U.S. Navy organizations, including the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, the Naval Oceanographic Office, and a small craft training center.
According to his driver’s license, Alpuente was thirty-four years old. He looked younger. He was an African American man, trim, with a short, military-style haircut. His eyes were set far apart, but his most prominent facial feature was a strong chin with a cleft in it. He had been a handsome man, cut down in his prime.
“Interestingly, I also found this,” Loretta said, interrupting Pride’s review of the victim’s appearance. She raised a small cloth bag, dirty red and tied at the top with string. The fabric was worn almost through in some places, and ragged at the edges.
“What is that?” Lasalle asked.
Pride took it from Loretta’s hand, handing back the lieutenant’s ID cards at the same time. He didn’t have to open the little bag to know the answer to Lasalle’s query. “Gris-gris bag,” he said.
“Gris-gris? As in voodoo?”
“That’s right, Chris.” Pride untied the bag and poured the contents into his palm. He counted eleven items altogether: some tiny plastic bags containing herbs, a piece of root he didn’t recognize, what looked like a desiccated mushroom, a couple of small metal charms, a crystal, what he guessed was a chunk of white bone, and a fragment of heavy, cream-colored paper on which was a hand-drawn sigil. “They’re meant to ward off evil spirits and bad luck.”
“I guess it didn’t work for him,” Sonja said.
“Or somebody else had some stronger juju,” Loretta replied.
