The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice Page A

say we’re deciding his fate here.”
    Peyton stamped out the cigarette in a tiny ashtray on the porch rail. The street around them was quiet and oak-shadowed, save for the pinpoint spotlights set within the manicured front lawns of the surrounding mansions. To Marissa, beholding the beauty of the Greek Revival façade was like taking a sip of champagne studded with broken glass; the Doric and Ionic columns and the soaring keyhole doors always appeared edged with the blood of field slaves.
    “I keep having dreams,” Peyton Broyard said, as she studied theirbeautiful surroundings with an expression that said she had come to regard them as threatening. “The same dream, really. About it all just getting washed away . . . But maybe that’s just ’cause of what happened to them. The Delongpres, I mean.”
    “I didn’t think we knew what happened to the Delongpres.”
    “Well, they had to have gone into the bayou, right? I mean . . .” She cut her eyes to the door to make sure no one was listening, then she whispered, “They had to have drowned, right?”
    “A bayou has almost no currents to speak of. If they had drowned, the bodies probably would have turned up by now.”
    “So . . . what? What do you think happened?”
    “I think no one knows.”
    I think they’re on the run for something, something the father did. And I don’t think all of them got to go along for the ride; Noah Delongpre probably decided who would be excess baggage and who wouldn’t be.
    “That won’t be good enough for him,” Peyton said.
    “The only Press Club Award I’ve ever won was for a column about levee protection in St. Bernard Parish. They don’t even like black folks in St. Bernard Parish.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying if your son’s got any real knack for journalism, he’ll have to learn what we all do. You do your best work when you’re not working your own agenda.” Marissa had never put it quite that succinctly before, and now that the words we’re out of her mouth she wasn’t quite sure she believed them. Peyton Broyard didn’t look like she was all that sold on them either.
    “I see . . . okay. Well, good luck, Ms. Hopewell.”
    “Good evening, Ms. Broyard.”
    “Drive safe now.”
    As she slid behind the wheel of her Prius, Marissa gave herself some credit for not firing off her mouth at Peyton Broyard over her recurring flood nightmare. As if anything could wash the Garden District away,perched as it was on the highest, safest ground in the city. If a deluge ever did come, it would be the poor black folks in her neighborhood who’d see their whole lives swept away in an instant.
    But the woman was right; her nightmare probably had more to do with her own dark imaginings of what fate might have befallen the Delongpres. Although there had been a wire story just that afternoon. Apparently the Atlantic storm season that year was poised to produce some of the strongest hurricanes on record.

III
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MARSHALL

11
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    ATLANTA
    MAY 2013
    T he nurse who had saved Marshall Ferriot’s life liked to take long walks in the morning. To the other joggers and bicyclists in Freedom Park, Arthelle Williams probably gave off the unhurried air of a retiree. But if you studied her the way Allen Shire had been hired to do, you could make out her stunned, thousand-yard stare and the white-knuckled grip with which she held her purse on her lap, even though there was no one within striking distance of her favorite bench and the halo of shifting shade offered by the elm branches overhead.
    Movies had filled people’s brains with stupid ideas about private detectives, so when Arthelle saw the short, balding man with knife-slashes for eyes and a broad, ungainly smile take a seat a few feet away from her, she didn’t seem to pay him any notice. A good private detective was not a dapper, sharp-tongued fox; he was the type of guy who you wouldn’t have second thoughts about inviting into your living