“Hi, um, I need to report a death. Probably a murder. Maybe a murder? The lady’s name is Miss Romero.” The young man blurted out the address. “I, uh, I found her. It was Friday evening, maybe seven thirty? And . . . well, I might have touched her body. Okay, yes, I did touch her, but only to lift her off the floor and onto the sofa. I thought I was gonna need to do CPR, but she was already dead. She was a really nice lady. So, please go get her and tell her family. Um, thanks, bye.”

The 911 operator tried to get the man to wait, but he’d already hung up.

André shrugged. “Lots of fingerprints in her apartment, but ninety-nine percent are going to be family and friends. Quill loved to entertain,” he finished wistfully. “She was a sweet lady.”

Rafe asked him to play the recording again, listening for anything that might give him insight into the caller, but all he got was scared kid. “That is not Ephraim Burton, a.k.a. Satan.”

“No,” Gideon murmured. “It’s definitely not. Who else was in New Orleans on Friday?”

“I don’t know.” André accepted a slice of bird’s milk cake with a grateful smile. “I was hoping you guys might know. Quill was found on the sofa and the place was just wrecked, but nothing major was missing. NOPD found ten grand hidden in various places in the house—under the mattress, in the freezer, at the bottom of her unmentionables drawer. It wasn’t hard to find, but her killer didn’t take it.”

“You’re sure it was homicide?” Irina asked. “If she was elderly, it’s possible she died of natural causes.”

“Unlikely.” André hesitated, then blew out a sigh. “I’m not supposed to even know this, but I’ve got friends in all kinds of places and I know you all want this solved as much as we do. Quill showed signs of suffocation. Rigor was starting to fade, so the time the guy says he found her sounds right.”

“Cameras in the building?” Gideon asked. “Please say my sister picked a building with security cameras.”

“I’d like to, but no. It’s not a bad building, and it had a working camera at some point, but it was broken. The residents NOPD talked to were surprised to hear there was a camera at all.”

Rafe drummed his fingers on the table, then, following his gut, did a search on his phone. “What about this guy?” He turned the phone to show the YouTube video he’d pulled up. “The asshole who wrote that damn article about Mercy.”

Gideon’s jaw tightened so hard that his teeth should have been dust. “Jeff Bunker,” he hissed, fury in every line of his body.

Rafe shared the sentiment. “Let’s have a listen to Mr. Bunker.”

“Who looks like he’s sixteen,” Sasha said, “because he is. Dad and I looked him up. Kid’s some kind of genius, already in his second year at Sac State.”