I rode to the crime scene alone, feeling increasingly distant and unreal. The wheels in my head were turning slowly and methodically.  Where did we go from here? I had no goddamn idea. Jesus, I was beat.
The house was an outbuilding for one of the Garden District’s historic homes, a small carriage house with a second-story balcony. It looked like it could have been a cute, cozy B&B. Magnolia and banana trees surrounded it on the outside. So did an intricate wrought-iron fence, the kind I had seen everywhere in the French Quarter.
About half of the New Orleans Police Department was already at the scene. So were a couple of EMS trucks, their roof lights spinning and blazing. The press was beginning to arrive as we did - the late shift.
Detective Sams had gotten to the murder scene a couple of minutes before I did. He met me in the hallway outside the upstairs bedroom where the killing had taken place. The interior of the place had fine detailing on almost every surface - ceilings, banisters, moldings, doors. The owner had cared about the house, and also about Mardi Gras. Feathers and beads, colorful masks, costumes were tacked up on most of the walls.
“This is bad, even worse than we thought,’ Sams said. ‘She’s a detective named Maureen Cooke. She’s in Vice, but she was helping out on Daniel and Charles. Most of the department was pitching in.’
Sams led me into the detective’s bedroom. It was small but attractive, with a sky-blue ceiling that someone had once told me was supposed to keep winged insects from nesting there.  Maureen Cooke was a redhead, tall and thin, probably in her early thirties. She had been hu............