Be it Remembered, THAT ON THIS DAY, to-wit: the eighth of October in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-nine and the seventy-sixth year of the Independence of the United States of America. Before me, John Richard Thomas, duly commissioned and Sworn, RECORDER OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS, in and for the PARISH OF ORLEANS, STATE OF LOUISIANA, Personally Appeared, Jonathon Thiroux, a competent witness, residing in this Parish, and doth declared that Anne Donovan, departed this life on the yesterday at approximately one-thirty a.m., aged about twenty-three years.

“What makes sense about this?”

Gabriel turned away from his computer, where he’d been studying the effects of wormwood in absinthe on users, and turned to Sara, sitting on the couch in his office, her legs crossed and tucked under her long skirt. He could see the palpable frustration on her face.

“Why the hell would John Thiroux be the person submitting the info on Anne’s death? If I’m reading this right, he essentially filed her death with the recorder’s office, and the police had nothing to do with it.”

“He was the person to discover her death.” And would never forget it. Gabriel only wished he could remember what the hell had happened before her death. But it was a blank, just a hazy memory of Anne, and pleasure, then floating off into the abyss. Then blood. Death. “That was normal for the time period.”

“He might have killed her! Why was he filing her death certificate? That’s just weird.”

“Do you think he killed her?” Gabriel asked. He was curious. He wanted, needed, to see that he was innocent. But Sara had no such stake. Maybe she would come to a different conclusion than him, and who was to say who was right? Without DNA confirmation, they could only rationalize. They couldn’t know conclusively. But he wanted to come as close as possible.

“I don’t know,” Sara admitted. “I don’t know enough yet. But I want to investigate John Thiroux a little better. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on him in these papers.”

She wouldn’t find much either. John Thiroux had suddenly appeared in New Orleans in 1847, and had just as suddenly disappeared in 1851. Gabriel had reassumed his true name when it had become apparent he wouldn’t be leaving. That he had been locked out forever, bound to New Orleans for an indefinite amount of time.