“Okay, so. A nice guy with no known enemies—and a street fortune of drugs still in front of him—was tortured and killed. Do we know what he did for a living?” Quinn asked.
“Musician,” Larue told him. “Apparently he did so much studio work that money wasn’t an issue.”
Quinn looked over at the body again, shaking his head. “No defensive wounds, right?” he asked Dr. Hubert.
“No. I don’t think he even saw the first blow coming,” Hubert said. “Of course, I don’t like answering too many questions until I’ve completed the autopsy.”
“For now, your best guesstimates are entirely appreciated,” Quinn said.
“So?” Larue asked Quinn as the ME went back to examining the body.
“Hmm,” Quinn murmured. “Even if he made a good living, a drug habit is expensive. I don’t know how far you’ve gotten with this. Do we know if he’d borrowed any money from the wrong people? Or, following a different track, did Lacey Cavanaugh have a jealous ex?”
“She’s in surgery for a badly smashed kneecap at the moment. Those are steep steps, you might have noticed,” Larue said. “The hospital has informed me that we’ll be able to talk to her in a few hours.”
“Good. That could be important information,” Quinn said.
This murder was, beyond a doubt, brutal to the extreme. And while Quinn, like most of the world, wanted to believe that every human life was equal to every other human life, in the workings of any law-enforcement department there were always those that demanded different attention. Larue was usually brought in on high-profile cases, cases that involved multiple victims, and those that involved something...unusual.
This murder, Quinn decided, was bizarre enough to warrant Larue’s interest.
It struck Quinn then that he had missed something he should have seen straight off. He realized that the photos on the walls were all of the same man—undoubtedly the dead man—with different musicians and producers of note.
What he didn’t see anywhere in the photos or the room was a musical instrument. Of course, it was possible Barrett kept his instrument in another room, but...
“What did he play?” Quinn asked. “Do we know that?”
“Half a dozen instruments. The man was multitalented.”
Quinn was surprised to get his answer from above—the top of a narrow stairway on the left side of the room.
He saw Grace Leon up there and knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Jake Larue liked Ron Hubert’s work as an ME, and he liked Grace Leon’s unit of crime scene technicians. Grace was small, about forty, with hair that resembled a steel-wool pad. She was, however, energy in motion, and while detectives liked to do the questioning and theorizing, Grace had a knack for pointing out the piece of evidence that could cement a case—or put cracks the size of the Grand Canyon into a faulty theory. She was swift, thorough and efficient, and her people loved her. Larue had a knack for surrounding himself with the crews he wanted.
“Hey, Grace,” he said. “Thanks. I take it you found a lot of instruments?”
“There’s a room up here filled with them. But more than that—I’ve seen this guy play. He grew up in Houma. I’ve seen him at Jazz Fest—and I’ve seen him a few times on Frenchman Street. He played a mean harmonica, and I’ve seen him play keyboard, guitar, bass—even the drums.”
“This is a competitive town, and he was obviously in demand, but why the hell kill a musician—and so violently?” Larue said thoughtfully.
“Did anything appear to be missing up there?” Quinn asked Grace.
“Not that I can tell,” she said. “But you’re welcome to come up here and look for yourself.”
Quinn intended to.
“He definitely played guitar,” Hubert noted. “I can see the calluses on his fingers.”
“A musician. Tortured, brutally killed,” Quinn said. “Drugs everywhere. And nothing appears to be missing.”
“It’s not the first such murder, either,” Larue said.
“Oh?”
“We had a murder last week—this one is too similar to be a coincidence. A man named Holton Morelli was tortured then bashed to death with one of his own amplifiers,” Larue said.
“He was a musician, too, I take it?” Quinn asked.
Larue nodded.
“What did he play? Was his instrument found in his place?” Quinn asked.
“He was like Barrett. Played all kinds of things. Piano, a couple of guitars, a ukulele—he had a whole studio in his place,” Larue said. “No surprise. This is a city that loves music. Half the people here sing or play at least one instrument.”
Quinn was well aware of that. He loved what he did and considered it as much a calling as a job, but he loved music, too. He played the guitar, though certainly not half as well as most of the guitarists in the city. But whether he was playing or not, he loved living in New Orleans and being surrounded by music pretty much 24/7, from the big names who popped down for Jazz Fest to the performers who made their living playing on the streets.
He forced his attention back to the case. Two musicians were dead, but nothing—including their instruments—appeared to be missing. But they’d both been tortured—which might mean that the killer wanted some kind of information from them before he finished them off. Or that the killer was a psycho who just liked inflicting pain.
“I have a feeling something has to be missing,” Quinn said aloud.
“But what?” Larue asked.
“If not an instrument, maybe a piece of music,” Quinn said. “Two musicians are dead, and there has to be a reason. I can’t believe anyone was so jealous of someone else’s talent that they resorted to murder. There has to be more going on here. If I’m right about something being missing, it’s crucial for us to figure out what.”
Larue nodded. “In Holton Morelli’s case, it’s not going to be easy. He lived alone. He was fifty-six and just lost his wife to cancer. His one son is in the service. He was given leave to come home, but to the best of his knowledge, nothing was missing from the house, but of course he hasn’t been there for a while, so...”
“Same area of the city?” Quinn asked.
Larue shook his head. “Faubourg Marigny.”
“Since I didn’t see the other crime scene,” Quinn said, “what else was similar?”
“Enough to point to there being one killer,” Larue said. “Holton Morelli was bashed in the head after letting his murderer into his house. Then he was tied to a chair with electrical tape, tortured and beaten to a pulp with an amp.”
“Tortured how?” Quinn asked.
“Burns
