Story Excerpt
Courtyard of Villains
by H.K. Slade
Board a streetcar at Decatur and Canal. Ride it north past Bourbon Street, leaving behind the sights and sounds and smells of the French Quarter. Do this at four a.m. on November first, and you are apt to have an interesting ride. For several blocks, you may share a seat with a zombified Elvis or the vampire Lestat. You may brush elbows with Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, and survive the experience with only a bit of body-paint transfer. You might share an aisle with an exhausted dishwasher or waitress, their workaday clothes stained with sweat and the spilt remnants of someone else’s sticky-sweet cocktail. Or you may have the car to yourself and bask in the eerie quiet.
Whichever ride you get, you will eventually arrive at the Lopez Street stop, and there you will find a strange house completely out of keeping with the surrounding neighborhood. A pair of palm trees like Greek columns frame the yellow stucco two-story residence. A flight of crumbling, painted brick steps lead up to an open door beneath a swinging wood placard that reads simply India House.
Rumor has it the original property was a house of negotiable affection, but when the proprietress fell behind on her taxes, the abandoned house was occupied and then bought outright by a young adventurer who turned it into a backpacker’s hostel.
Walking through the front door in the early morning hours, you’ll need to slip past an old Russian man sleeping at the front desk and tiptoe through the living room and kitchen without becoming distracted by the photos and hand-painted murals that cover the walls. Do this, and you will emerge into an open courtyard connecting the main house’s three neighboring structures. You’ll find an above-ground pool to your left and a fenced-off swamp habitat to your right. The placid blue water of the pool may tempt you to slip off whatever you are wearing and go for a relaxing swim, while the hissing alligator in the habitat will have the exact opposite effect.
As the sun creeps over the horizon and paints the courtyard in muted grays, you will quickly see that All Hallows’ Eve has been particularly trying for India House’s current residents. Young men and women, most still in the ragged remains of their costumes, litter the courtyard like fallen soldiers. When there is a lull in the mellow reggae playing over the house’s sound system, you’ll be able to hear the occasional light snore or groggy mutter—just enough to reassure you that everyone is still alive. But don’t be fooled.
In the middle of the courtyard, a young man lies face down among the empty bottles and half-crushed beer cans. He is neither snoring nor muttering. In fact, he is not breathing at all. The heavy iron shears protruding from his neck have seen to that.
Friday Hampton should have been thinking about the squad of NOPD cops swarming over the courtyard, or the hungover, costumed houseguests they’d sequestered in India House’s various nooks and crevasses. She should have been concerned about the body beneath the sheet at the picnic table with the iron shears embedded in his throat, or at least worried that the killer was probably one of the people she’d partied with last night.
But the only thought in her head was, Dad’s going to kill me.
Senior Detective Tony Hampton had told his only child that he didn’t want her going to New Orleans. In fact, he’d expressly forbidden it. But Friday was in college, an adult perfectly capable of making adult decisions. So she’d faked a cold to get out of field-hockey practice and snuck off in the middle of the night with her roommate, Tabatha Mitchell, to spend Halloween in the Big Easy. When her father found out, he was going to blow a gasket, and that was if she managed to hide from him that she’d spent the night with a guy.
The young detective, studiously transcribing her information from her driver’s license, looked up. “Anything else you think we should know?”
Friday accepted her license back and shook her head. She felt ridiculous standing there in her Wednesday Addams costume, but it was all she’d had with her when the screams started. “I came downstairs when I heard my friend freaking out,” she said, summarizing her statement for the benefit of the NOPD. “There were six people already in the courtyard—including Tabatha, but not counting the dead guy. Someone had already called nine-one-one, so I just hung back and tried to keep Tabatha calm until the first-responding officers got here and separated us.”
Before the detective could say anything else, a shriek went up from the other end of the courtyard. Another detective, this one with a combover so bad it looked like it had been painted on with a marker, was walking Tabatha out from the bunkhouse. Friday’s roommate had come unraveled at the sight of the body beneath the sheet. Again. Crying and wailing, the poor girl was practically in hysterics.
“Enough of the stalling tactics,” Detective Combover said as he tried to nudge her forward. “Your little act isn’t fooling anyone. You can give us a statement, or we can take you back to the station and get it in a few hours. Makes no difference to me.”
Friday started forward to comfort her friend, but a uniformed officer intercepted her.
She’d grown up on her father’s knee, eavesdropping during cookouts and parties as Tony Hampton and his buddies swapped tales of cases just like this one. She understood the mechanics of the scene better than most of her criminal justice professors, maybe better than the cop in front of her, and she knew exactly what she needed to say.
“Detective,” she said to Combover, “she’s my friend. I can get her to calm down. Maybe she’ll want to talk to you then.”
Combover looked to the younger detective who’d been dealing with Friday. The two men had a lengthy and complex conversation without speaking a single word. Finally, the younger detective shrugged. “Her alibi checks out. What can it hurt?”
Combover reluctantly waved off the officer blocking Friday path. “Let’s get them inside at least. This girl’s giving me a headache.”
Friday guided Tabatha in through the kitchen door and to a seat at the table, careful not to let her roommate’s Tudor dress touch the sticky surface; so many layers of waxy paint covered India House’s kitchen table that it trapped small items like the La Brea Tar Pits. The two detectives dropped into chairs opposite them. The younger one made the mistake of slapping down his notepad, and it became part of the furnishings.
“Why would someone do that to Johnny?” Tabatha asked once she’d dabbed away her tears with a paper towel. The way she composed herself after such a theatrical outburst must have seemed to the detectives like an act, but Friday had lived with the girl for more than a year and knew the truth of it; Tabatha was sweet and kind, but an adolescence spent starring in high school plays had left her pathologically incapable of doing anything undramatically.
“That’s the guy out back?” the younger detective said as he tried to pry his notepad off the table. “The one in the tartan and the blue face paint?”
“Yes,” Tabatha said, nodding. “He was William Wallace for Halloween.”
The detective continued in a professional tone, “Do you own a pair of old-fashioned scissors? Iron, approximately twelve inches in length?”
Tabatha looked confused by the apparent non sequitur. “I bought some at an antique shop yesterday. They’re shears. For sewing. I make quilts.”
Combover leaned forward, thumping the table with his stiffened index finger and then instantly regretting it. “Enough with the cutesy act,” he said as he surreptitiously wiped his finger on his pant leg. “You’ve got one chance and one chance only to tell us exactly what happened to Braveheart in the courtyard. If you think you’re doing the right thing by lying to us because there was some underage drinking going on or because someone was smoking weed, you’ve got no idea how badly you’ve misjudged your situation. We’re not writing tickets here. Someone’s going to prison for homicide.”
It was a hard line to take, and Friday couldn’t figure out why they were treating Tabatha like a suspect. Either they were bad at their jobs or they knew something she didn’t.
“With all due respect, detective,” she began, trying her best to exude reasonableness, “I don’t see why you are threatening my friend. She’s a witness to a crime, not a suspect.”