Padraig's respite was brief. Even as he fought to contain the emotions roiling within him, to keep the tears from escaping en masse instead of the one or two fugitives jumping the turnstiles, he could hear Bennie's ominous warning echoing in his mind.
He also heard footsteps echoing through the hall behind him, matching…no, slightly quicker than his own. Heavy-heeled, clicking, almost military in their bearing.
"Excuse me, sir!" a voice called out, authoritative, with a hint of Creole twang. Padraig kept moving forward to the elevator, choosing to hope that was meant for someone else.
"Sir? Excuse me, NOPD, can I have a word with you?"
The footsteps were closer. Padraig did not have this in him right now. He felt the temptation to use alternate methods of escape at his disposal, but knew that there were too many people around, eyes trained directly on him now. There were always repercussions for lapses in judgment like that. His stride quickened, hand reaching for the elevator button, relying on more traditional conveyance but knowing good and well that this wasn't going to end when the doors opened.
"Sir! I'm going to have to insist that you stop and answer a couple of questions!"
Padraig glanced around and saw the man in the brown trench coat rapidly closing. In the background, the big orderly from earlier was beginning to eye him uneasily, coming out of his cocky lean against the nurse's station where he'd been flirting with an attendant, beginning to take lazy but deliberate steps towards them. The hospital rent-a-cop assigned to the floor, coming up from their left on his rounds, reached for his radio.
There was a moment of panic when he felt his grip on reality beginning to slip involuntarily, the edges of his vision beginning to fade and dissolve, but he held it together through sheer force of will. Held himself together, in the very literal sense. Taking a deep breath, Padraig turned to face the police officer.
"I'm sorry," he began in his most placating tone. "It's been a rough day, to say the least, and I guess I was lost inside my own head. Didn't mean for you to have to raise your voice."
The man in the coat gave him an appraising once over as he came to rest a few feet away. Padraig responded with what he hoped was his a genuine smile, the furthest thing from the uncharitable thoughts he was having about the man preventing his escape.
"Of course. And I'm sorry for your loss, truly." He reached into a hidden pocket within his jacket, revealing, if only briefly, the Glock 22 resting in its shoulder holster. After a brief rummage, he produced a flip out wallet containing the trademark Star and Crescent badge.
"I'm Detective William Deraux. I was investigating your wife's disappearance from Oak Grove Psychiatric Hospital two days ago. Just want to go over a few things with you, if you can spare me a moment."
Padraig’s face remained impassive, giving only a slight nod. This was news to him, but now was not the time to appear clueless. It was his experience, or his myriad collection of bad experiences rather, that like a dog must give chase to anything that runs, a cop must pursue ignorance as guilt.
Obviously, he had known she had gotten out, but he didn't know when, or how, and he certainly hadn't known that it had warranted police involvement. He let the detective's statement hang in the air, completely non-committal, until the man felt compelled to continue.
"Based on that scene back there, I'm guessing the family didn’t notify you. And her file at the hospital listed her as single, so you weren't an emergency contact. I know now is certainly not the best of times, but would you mind telling me how you found out your wife had been reporting missing, or how you came to know that she was here?"
Questions like these were exactly why Padraig despised situations like this, being asked to account for his actions and movements. The idea of telling a detective that his otherworldly dispatcher had notified him of an occult distress signal downtown, the spectral trail from which had happened to lead him to his dying wife who was the subject of a missing person’s investigation, seemed like a good way to end up in Oak Grove himself. He resorted, as per usual, to deflection.
"Detective, I appreciate your concern and all you've done for her family, clearly, and will be happy to help in any way I can. But right now, I would like a chance to mourn in my own way. Would it be at all possible for me to come down to the station tomorrow morning?"
Deraux's eyes narrowed, and Padraig knew he had only succeeded in labeling himself a flight risk. Which, to be fair, was exactly his plan. The detective pressed on.
"I respect that there is no easy or delicate way to do this after what you have been through, but this investigation is ongoing and time sensitive. I feel like the best thing you can do for you wife's memory right now is help me piece together precisely what went on these last couple days. Now, how did you come to be here, at this very moment?"
"Time sensitive? I thought this was a suicide, detective?" Padraig countered, avoiding the questions he had no good answers for, buying time to try and fabricate them. "She jumped off a parking garage, and bless her heart, I cared for her deeply and this is going to sound callous as hell, but this wasn't exactly her first rodeo. If she hadn't succeeded, I doubt it would have been her last. Now, are you trying to imply otherwise, because if so, I would like to know what you think may be going on here!"
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
His tone had grown sterner as he had spoken, laying on the rage, the indignant fury of a grieving husband who felt his mourning was being disrespected or infringed upon. It was an anger that he shamefully did not feel. He was sad, and he did grieve, but he was not surprised it had come to this and was as aware as the detective that his presence was suspicious. Doubly aware of the fact that Morgan's flight, and fall, was anything but open and shut. He closed his eyes tightly, only for a moment, to make the images of those hideous red scrawls all over her body fade once more.
"Look, Padraig, was it?" Deraux switched to a more sympathetic voice, playing his own good cop, bad cop routine. "I'm not implying anything. We have hundreds of witnesses and cell phone footage of her stepping off that building. No one is questioning what brought her here. But the family wants, and deserves, answers about how their daughter got to that building in the first place. And for me, for due diligence, I have to cover every angle.
"You clearly loved her very much, so if you'll just tell me when you got here, how you got here, and what brought you here, I can go ahead and scratch you off my to-do list and be on my way, alright?"
Padraig sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, took a few shuddering breaths, and let a sob escape his lips. Externally, he was the picture of an emotional wreck, so much so that Deraux offered him a wad of hastily produced tissue from the depths of his coat before diverting his attention respectfully toward the ceiling.
Internally, Padraig was still trying to decide which cover story from his repertoire the detective would buy, with the limited corroborating evidence on hand.
It was all a familiar dance, keeping the authority figure du jour off balance. A practiced act, hot swapping his genuine emotions for whatever the situation called for. He was possessed of a bard’s gift for talking his way out of situations, wearing other people’s vulnerabilities like a second skin, an emotionless and manipulative routine that Padraig hated himself for in the darker hours of the night. More than once he’d wondered if he had whittled himself into a sociopath. Perhaps even his day-to-day emotions may only be an act now. Would he know? Did he care?
While being arrested and incarcerated did not pose much of a problem for him from a mobility standpoint, the resulting life as a fugitive would certainly threaten to cramp his style. Anonymity was his greatest asset, and he was not going to let this over-zealous prick in a trench coat compromise that.
"Of course, of course," he eventually gasped. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be like this."
"It's understandable, sir. You've been through a lot today, and I know I'm not helping matters."
Padraig shook his head, mopping his face with the proffered tissues. "Not at all, you're just doing your job. Truth be told, the whole thing is a mess of odd timing. I'm an acquisitions officer for a curio house in New York these days.”
"Evelyn had mentioned you worked out of Manhattan. You'll have to forgive my ignorance for a moment, but what exactly is an acquisitions officer, and how does that bring you this far from home?"
"Acquisitions is just a fancy way of saying I'm a gopher. They send me out to estate sales and auctions and, when business is slow, places where oddities tend to turn up on their own."
"Like New Orleans," the detective posited, not looking up from the notepad he had pulled from one of his innumerable pockets.
Padraig nodded enthusiastically.
"Precisely. I was raised here, so they let this be my beat when the rest of the work dies down, since I know where all the good stuff hides. Knowledge is power in my line of work. Something I'm sure you can appreciate as well. But I digress. I arrived today on the company dime, had some beignets at Cafe du Monde, picked up some souvenirs for friends back in the city, you know, playing tourist for a change since it had been a while.
"And then, I was walking down Commerce when I came across the remnants of…of the scene…"
He stopped to struggle with the memory for a moment and, when he felt adequate time had passed, so bravely shouldered on.
"A homeless man there had seen everything. He filled me in for a twenty, and something about the way he described it all, it was…it was too familiar. Ever have one of those gut feelings, detective, that you can't explain, but you know you're right about?"
Deraux stopped scratching away at his notes for a moment, imperceptibly tensed, then continued writing without ever looking up.
"Yes, sir. I'm familiar."
"Well, I had one. I knew it was her. And I knew this was the closest hospital, so…here we are. Fate and logic. I wish I could be more helpful."
Padraig pursed his lips and stared off into the middle distance, partly for appearances, partly out of nerves. It wasn't his best work, but hopefully it would do.
"Then you had no intention of, and had not established contact with, Ms. Sheehy prior to her actions this evening?"
"I'm sorry, no. I'm sure Catherine told you all about how we were estranged."
"She had some very interesting things to say about you, yes."
Interesting sounded ominous in present company, but he had expected no less.
"That estrangement had, sadly, not changed."
"It is then safe to assume, I imagine, that you would have no knowledge of where she might have gone once she was out of the institution?"
"It's been nearly four years, detective. I’m basically a stranger at this point. Until I paid him off, the homeless guy knew more about her recent past than I did."
Deraux nodded slowly, finishing his notes with an exaggerated stab before collecting Padraig's contact information and flipping the pad closed, returning it to the cavernous expanse of his coat's inner lining.
"Well, thank you for your time. I won't detain you any longer. I hate that your visit back to your old haunts started out like this. If you do think of anything else that you feel might be relevant, here's my card," on cue extracted and proffered from yet another pocket. "Don't hesitate to contact me."
"Thank you, detective. And thank you again for what you're trying to do for the family."
Both men turned their respective directions. Padraig reached again for the elevator button, then hesitated, genuinely hesitated, before calling out to the receding back of the brown trench coat.
"I have to ask though, out of my own, morbid curiosity. Do you have any leads? How did she get out? Where did she go for two days? How does something like this happen?"
Deraux turned to face him, regarding him thoughtfully while continuing to slowly backpedal.
"I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, I'm afraid. But if any details are forthcoming, and the family approves, I will let you know."
Padraig smiled and waved, called the elevator, and watched the man in the brown trench coat continue to mull something over as the doors closed. He punched the button for the lobby. The mechanisms hummed to life as he began his descent.
He knew deflection when he heard it. There were pieces missing or being withheld. But at least he had his own leads to follow.
Pulling the folded page from his pocket -- nurse's log on the front, malevolent eldritch chicken scratch on the back -- Padraig reflected once more on Benny’s warning.
When the elevator doors opened on the first floor, a nurse returning from her smoke break stepped into the empty car and went about her night, none the wiser.