Deraux settled into the driver's seat of his unmarked cruiser, tossing another empty paper coffee cup into the mound of caffeinated husks occupying what should, ostensibly, have been his partner's floorboard. He'd had one, back in homicide. Now that he'd been shuffled off to the side like so much unwanted paperwork, chasing down missing kids and vagrants, the coffee was pretty much his only companion.
He made a note of the time, now pushing nine. Thankfully, his route back to the office would only cross the early revelries on Canal once. He was doubly thankful that, at this time of the evening, he would likely be the only investigator there, which suited him fine. He liked the coffee better for company, anyway.
The life support machines were off, but the girl had still been hanging on when he had finally extricated himself from the family, pushing aside the stern insistence of the mother that Padraig should be detained for murder immediately. While he agreed that the boy was not on the level, her claims didn't exactly hold water against the reams of witness testimony patrol had pulled when they arrived on scene.
He had even been informed that cell phone footage had already been loaded to, and subsequently pulled from, several major video hosting sites. Chum for a society of experiential cannibals.
The family was trying to suppress as many details in the media as they could, for their privacy and, he quietly suspected, their shame. While he technically had no power in that world, he was happy to assist them, advise them, put them in touch with the right people to request at least a stay of publication until all the details could be finalized. What was one more death in the city, right? Downplay the newsworthiness, that's what he'd told them. Respect the rights of the victim.
In reality, there were details he didn't want out there in the public eye. Pictures of her limbs and torso were making their way on to fringe websites, the conspiracy nuts soiling themselves over the Masonic Murder, or any number of other crackpot theories. Whatever the truth, there was no denying that someone had carved the shit out of that girl like a human Rosetta stone, all strange symbols and markings intermingled with the work the pavement had done.
He rolled into the 8th Precinct, wound through the dugout buzz of beat cops gearing up for another weekend on Bourbon, and made his way to his office on the second floor. His corner of the world was a mausoleum by comparison, all muted emergency lighting, punctuated only occasionally by the harsh blue glow from the monitors left on overnight by officers with questionable commitment to the department's “green” initiatives.
He'd almost made it to his door when a boisterous voice behind him shattered the stillness.
"Dubya-D! Was beginnin' to think you'd actually gone home on time for a change!"
Deraux turned to see the rotund form of Allen Fontenot barreling down on him, the body matching the voice in every regard. Even in the bad lighting, skewed red by the exit signs, he could see the man's cheeks were flushed with the effort of moving the thirty feet from his own office. Heaven help the suspect that tried to run from Fontenot; he was liable to shoot them in the leg and claim that forced exercise constituted assault. He worked traffic because his car was more mobile than he was.
"Not tonight, Allen," Deraux replied as cordially as he could. He didn't dislike the man, one of the few friendly faces left in the department, but simple greetings tended to mutate into hours long conversations with little of interest to recommend them. Deraux didn't like sports. Fontenot didn't like police work.
"Not any night, you kiddin' me?!" A hard slap on the back almost sent Deraux staggering into his door frame. "Good to see someone around here still takin' it serious though, right?"
Deraux nodded, smiled, tried to find a graceful way to break down his own office door in escape.
"Hey, you go see that girl that took the header off Commerce Park today? She was your case, right?"
"Yeah, they've taken her off life support now. I figured I'd put a few more hours in on it while I waited to hear word."
"Damn skippy, it’s a little more excitin' than just a missing person's case now, eh Dubs?"
Deraux hated himself for thinking it, agreeing with it, but it was the truth. From vice, to homicide, to missing persons; the excitement and satisfaction that had drawn him to the job had diminished in recent years as his contempt for his superiors guaranteed he kept failing downward.
"Hey, you seen the video yet?" Fontenot pressed on. Deraux felt the disgust flash unbidden across his face before he could stop it.
"No, and I don't think I want to, snuff films aren't really my--"
"Naw, naw man, I ain't talkin' about the jump, that one's just grisly, wouldn't be recommendin' that to you. Man, there were a lot of angles on that one, though. Phones these days, huh?"
Department IT had tried to block all the major video sharing sites on the internal network once. Fontenot had advised the network administrator, a late 20-something who enjoyed the power he wielded over people who could barely operate their keyboards, that if those restrictions were quietly lifted from his machine, the narcotics locker where they stored seized marijuana might accidentally be left unlocked on certain nights.
Allen could even get to porn sites now, which he did, frequently, when he thought no one was looking, never quite realizing that his monitor reflected in the glass of the clichéd motivational poster framed on the wall behind him.
"Naw man, I'm talkin' about the one that came in through the tip line. Anyone radio that into you?"
"No Allen, I didn't know we'd gotten anything. I'm sure it…slipped someone's mind."
Fontenot managed what almost passed for a polite smile but threw in too many teeth for it to be convincing, putting Deraux in mind of an alligator pretending he wasn't about to bite off his leg. They both knew no one had "forgotten" anything.
"Awright, well, I emailed it to you when I seen it. Someone recognized her from one of the handouts. Said they saw her actin' squirrely at some club they were at last night, shot some video of her actin' all crazy like. Some e-e-e-e-eerie shit, man."
"What club, do you happen to remember?"
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"Oh, some fancy ass word. Ell…ella…elliesomethin'? Called and asked my daughter if she knew anythin' about it. She said it was where all the ‘goths’ and ‘emos’ hang out. I asked if those were gangs. She laughed at me. Fuckin’ millennials."
Deraux fought back a grin and clapped a hand on Fontenot's shoulder, feeling an odd moment of camaraderie, one laughingstock to another.
"Thank you, Allen. I appreciate you looking out for me."
Fontenot nodded and grinned like a dog who had been informed he was a good boy but made no sign of moving.
"So…I…guess I better get on that video then, eh?"
More awkward silence, which was how most of their conversations ended, really.
"Goodnight, Allen."
"…oh, right! Yeah, I gotta be gettin' home, too, the wife's on the warpath so I figured I'd…file some stuff, or somethin', but I reckon it's close enough to bedtime now, I should be clear, know what I mean?" He gave him a sternum-jarring conspiratorial nudge in the ribs and wandered off, whistling an aimless tune.
"No, I don't suppose I would," Deraux muttered to himself as he let himself into his office at long last.
His space was immaculate, on the surface. Rows of books on criminal law and various city codes perched neatly on shelves, organized by category, then by alphabet. His desk was something straight out of film noir, green-shaded desk lamp with pull chain presiding over blotter, desk calendar, dutifully maintained filing trays.
However, as he settled in, stashing his badge, notepad, and gun in various drawers, the clutter that strained to escape from each spoke to a different story lurking beneath the façade of order. Old receipts and gum wrappers fluttered gently to the floor, to be swept up and thrown away at long last. Tapping his mouse to bring his computer out of its slumber revealed a desktop overrun with icons in no particular order, his very public sense of organization capitulating entirely when it came to his private spaces.
Deraux remembered reading somewhere once, during his internal affairs psych evals, that a person’s environment tended to reflect their mental state. He figured there were worse things in the world to be than a jumbled mess that at least looked like it had its shit together. Like this poor girl, for instance.
He pulled up the link that Fontenot had been so kind to send him. “Girl Looses Her Dam Mind N da club” was the title that greeted him, leading off a description he couldn’t even bring himself to try and translate.
In a surveillance society where all it took to bite off a piece of your fifteen minutes of fame was the right video at the right time, there was almost always footage of anything out of the ordinary. The trick was finding it. Deraux was at least somewhat encouraged that, when the pictures of Morgan had gone out, this person had at least had the decency to come forward with their information. What they lacked in spelling, they could at least make up for in humanity.
The video finished buffering, eardrum rattling bass suddenly escaping his speakers as he frantically fumbled for the volume knob, reminiscent of an artillery strike in the previously still night air. Electronic whistles and warbles that sounded to him like a remix of old school modem noises began screeching on top of the rumbling, as he finally reigned the sound down to an acceptable level.
He watched as people, dressed almost exclusively in black, decked out in glowing jewelry and heroic amounts of eye makeup, danced and whirled and gyrated around one another. Deraux briefly wondered how anyone could even tell if someone was “loosing” their mind in this madness. It all seemed a bit subjective to him.
Then he saw her, the camera zooming in slowly on a widening circle of empty space on the edge of the dance floor with Morgan at its epicenter. She was clawing at her face, punching herself in the head, mouth opening occasionally in a scream silenced against the wall of noise. She twitched, convulsed, collapsed, rolled and writhed like stock footage from an exorcism, then popped back up grasping her head on both sides, as though trying to keep it from exploding.
People, wide-eyed, elbowed and pushed their way backwards, not wanting to be near her, but not wanting to miss anything too interesting, either. Numerous other phones had come out as well, recording the spectacle. Off camera, someone suggested she had gotten a hold of some bad ecstasy. Another voice began to express concern, apparently having bought some at the door, but didn’t get to finish their thought.
At that moment, Morgan vanished. Not for long, and not even entirely. It looked almost like a trick of the light, but Deraux paused, advanced frame by frame, and eventually arrived on a second of footage where she simply was not there. Not entirely. Plumes of black smoke hung in the air, in a shape reminiscent of her, but there was a distinctive lack of person. And then, the very next frame, she was back. She fell to her hands and knees, screaming again.
A collective murmur went through the crowd, struggling with the cognitive dissonance, hushed conversations no longer audible over the ever-present bass. Almost immediately thereafter, two enormous figures in black suits broke through the circle’s perimeter, lifted Morgan up, one under each arm, and carted her off.
A third mountain of a man appeared on frame from the other side of the onlookers and began forcibly confiscating any phone that even appeared to be pointed in their direction. The last thing clearly visible in the recording was the beginnings of a physical altercation when someone resisted, at which point the as-yet-unnoticed videographer quickly and blurrily stashed their own equipment.
Deraux scanned the comments. It was a typical, obscenity laced internet argument between people claiming “Fake” and the submitter swearing he hadn’t done anything to the video, followed by rebuttals about his mother and her activities the previous night. A search for any combination of keywords he thought might bring up some of the other videos that were being shot at the time returned nothing. He presumed they had not been so lucky in hiding their phones.
He changed his focus, going to the source, researching the club itself. Elysium, the word Allen had struggled with so heroically, showed up readily enough, its website filled with the same thrumming bass lines as the video, declaring that it was the hottest gothic rave spot in the southeast. Photo gallery after photo gallery were filled with poorly lit, smoke-filled pictures depicting scenes like the video prior to Morgan’s appearance. Other than not really being his scene, nothing appeared too out of the ordinary.
It was down in the Rope District, an area full of big, spacious, and most importantly, abandoned warehouses and factories from the headier days of commerce in the city. Prior to Katrina, a great deal of time and money had been poured in to converting this empty space in to lofts, concert venues, clubs, the kind of youthful reinvention most urban blight dreamt of.
Afterwards, there simply had not been enough resources to pick up where they left off. Most of the renovations did not survive the hurricane, and those that did sat unfinished, unused, as the shadier aspects of city life crept in to fill the void. Elysium appeared to be an early adopter in the effort to push that back and bring life into an area ravaged first by flood waters and now by crime. Even if it was a unique and specific version of life. Or undeath, as the case may be.
Not even the police records gave him anything substantial to go on. The club had its share of calls, sure, but they were no different than any establishment of its kind; occasional fights, drunk and disorderly, possession with intent to distribute, a spider web of DUI incidents stretching away from it. And there were, no doubt, countless other small infractions going on under the table, but hey, it was New Orleans.
Deraux couldn’t get the image of the man in black confiscating phones out of his mind though. Other than to avoid bad publicity, why open yourself up to that kind of liability for theft or destruction of property? Did they wipe the video and return the phone? And where had his friends taken Morgan?
This was raw footage of her last night on earth, and they very well could have been some of the last people to interact with her in any meaningful way. She was clearly the worse for wear by the following afternoon, even before she stepped off that building. Forensics had theorized that Satanists or a crazed voodoo cult had gotten a hold of her, because that was essentially the go-to whenever strange symbols or dead animals turned up. Deraux wondered if this wasn’t the kind of place that might attract either.
With a resigned sigh, he began gathering his belongings. Not even 11 PM yet. The clubs would just be getting into full swing. There was a decent chance that whoever he needed to talk to, head of security or whoever they were, would be there. Although he made a note to stop and pick some ear plugs up along the way.