I turned the thick, clear stream of water on her face and brought the hose to within three inches of her skin. In the sluicing torrent I could see the beginnings of some sort of deep burn, but with her dark skin it was hard to tell how bad it was.

“What can I do?” Mia asked, staring at Keisha with horror.

“Call Drew and tell him we have a severe acid burn, a facial burn. Tell him we’re going to need an ophthalmologist as well.”

“What else?”

“Get Tim over here to cover us. This might not be the end of it.”

Four blocks from Washington Street, Wilma Deen opened the door of a Toyota club cab pickup and climbed into the backseat. Alois Engel hit the gas before she even got the door closed, which told her he was overly keyed up by the proximity to violence, as usual.

“Did you get her?” he asked, glancing back over the seat.

“Watch where you’re going!”

“Goddamn it, did you get her?”

Wilma thought back to the confusion in the young girl’s face when the acid hit her, before she realized how much pain and suffering had been flung from that go-cup. “I got her, all right. She’ll never be the belle of the ball again.”

“Holy shit.”

Wilma felt the truck speed up as they moved toward Canal Street, which would take them to the Louisiana bridge.

“Slow down, Alois. I don’t want to spend ten years in Parchman.”

“I hear you, don’t sweat it. Gimme some details, though. I didn’t get to see shit.”

Wilma slid down until her face was below window level and closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking about Keisha Harvin, but her own brother, Glenn. How he had looked when he realized his sister had sided with Snake and the Double Eagles over her own kin. That decision had been a revelation to Wilma, too, but she hadn’t regretted it. Not often, anyhow.

She’d spent nearly three months in hiding, and truth be told, she’d gotten cabin fever. Living on the run was Shitsville, as her daddy used to say. One of the few things he’d been right about.

“FBI’s gonna go batshit over this,” said Alois. “The mayor, too.”

“Good. I’m tired of hiding every goddamn day. I needed some action.”

Alois nodded and took a long, gradual right turn, which meant he must be following the ramp down to the twin bridges over the Mississippi.

“We’re about to get all the action we can handle,” he said. “It’s about damned time, too.”