Read Online Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran - Free Book Online Page A

sickening, like organic decay.
    I saw something at the end of the street—a house or a truck or a large animal. When I got there I saw it was a tank, the old-fashioned kind with a long barrel.
    Out from the top popped Vic Willing.
    Mardi Gras beads hung from the tank’s barrel.
Send to Tom Benson
, someone had written along one side.
George Bush’s Lunch Box
was written on the other.
    On Vic’s shoulder was a green parrot, the kind I’d seen in front of his apartment.
    â€œIt’s the end of the road,” Vic said. His voice was different from what I’d imagined: grainier, better, more southern.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I see that.”
    â€œThere used to be a city here,” he said.
    â€œThat was a long time ago,” I said carefully, weighing my words in my hands.
    He nodded.
    â€œShe told me to tell you,” Vic said. “Remind you.”
    â€œRemind me what?”
    â€œThere are no maps here,” he said.
    â€œThen how do I find my way?” I asked.
    Vic smiled at me. “Follow the clues,” he said. “You already missed one. Here.”
    He tossed something at me. It somersaulted through the slow, thick air to my hand. I caught it. It was a copy of
Détection
. The book fell open to page 108. I couldn’t read the text.
    â€œShe told me to tell you,” Vic said. “Believe nothing. Question everything.”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “Who?”
    But Vic just turned his tank around and drove off, chug-a-chug, down the street.
    â€œShe told me to tell you,” I heard him call from the tank. “Follow the clues. Believe nothing. Question everything. That’s the only direction you need.”
    Â 
    When I woke up I rushed to my copy of
Détection
and opened it to 108.
    â€œYou cannot follow another’s footsteps to the truth,” Silette wrote. “A hand can point a way. But the hand is not the teaching. The finger that points the way is not the way. The mystery is a pathless land, and each detective must cut her own trail through a cruel territory.
    â€œBelieve nothing. Question everything. Follow only the clues.”
    I knew the case of Vic Willing wasn’t over yet.

13
    T HE WAITING ROOM off Orleans Parish Prison, famously known as OPP, smelled like fear and disinfectant. Most of the other people in the waiting room were mothers and lawyers. Across the room from me was the boy with dreadlocks who’d been with Andray when he’d peed on my truck. He didn’t recognize me. He flipped through the pages of a
telenovela
someone had left in the waiting room. In the corner of the room two other boys, both white, leaned forward in their chairs, elbows on their knees. They wore big but short pants with long white socks and white undershirts and baseball hats on sideways. They scowled and tried to look frightening. They succeeded in looking a little frightening.
    After waiting an hour and watching other people come and go, I went up to the guard.
    â€œI think you forgot me,” I said. I gave him my name.
    â€œI ain’t forget you,” he said defensively. “You ain’t on the list.”
    â€œI put my name on the list when I got here,” I said.
    â€œIt ain’t here now,” the guard said.
    We put my name back on the list. I had to start all over again. It would be at least half an hour before I was called. I went outside for some air.
    The two white boys were sitting on the steps, smoking. They looked at me. I looked at them. One was brunette, average build.The other was a redhead and rail-thin. Both had tattoos on their arms like the other boys I’d seen—numbers, letters, codes, memorials. The redhead also had a rosary tattooed around his neck.
    There are no coincidences. Only clues you’ve been too blind to see, doors you haven’t found the key to open.
    â€œFor the detective whose eyes have truly been opened,” Silette wrote, “the