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rolls off the bed, breathless, expecting another attack and ready for it this time. But Jared doesn't move, just stares blankly at the photograph, at the torn ghost of Benny still trapped inside the remains of the frame.
    The crow silently watches them both from its perch on the headboard.
    "I didn't kill Benny," Jared says, speaking to Lucrece or to no one at all, his anger spent for the moment. The sound of his voice makes her shiver despite the adrenaline hammering through her veins, such a flat and hollow sound, like someone speaking from the bottom of a deep, dry well.
    When she answers him, she speaks as carefully, as soothingly, as she can manage.
    "I know that, Jared."
    "Yeah," Jared says, "I know you do." He starts pulling the photograph out of the broken frame, brushing away powdered glass from the image of his murdered lover, her murdered brother. The crow caws again, flaps its wings loudly, but Jared doesn't look. Instead he stares down at beautiful, lost Benny.
    "Jared, you can understand what it's saying, can't you?"
    His head turns very slowly toward her, as if he's reluctant to look away from the photograph for even a moment, as if he's afraid it might dissolve. His eyes are as far away and empty as the sound of his voice, and she wants to hold him again, wants release from all these months she's spent alone, no company but her own selfish, devouring sorrow. But Lucrece does not move, glances instead at the bird.
    "It's brought you back," she says, "to find out who did do it, and stop them from ever doing it again."
    The crow seems to regard her warily, maybe a glimmer of mistrust in its small and golden eyes, and so she says to it, "Am I wrong?"
    "No, Lucrece," Jared says, answering before the bird has the chance. "You're not wrong. I can hear it too. I don't want to, but I can hear it just fine."
    "I can help you," she says, still watching the crow, the mistrust mutual now. "If I
    can understand what it's saying, then I can help you. I know things about what happened to Benny, things they wouldn't let me say in court."
    The crow flies the short distance to the foot of the bed and perches on the footboard above Jared, looks from him to Lucrece and back to him again, its eyes as sharp as its beak, somehow nervous and confident at the same time.
    "I can't let you get involved in this, Lucrece," Jared says, hugging the photograph to his chest now, stroking its smooth surface as if there is something there more precious than mere paper.
    "Bullshit," she answers. "I'm already involved."
    He can't think of anything to say to that, nothing that would convince her, but he knows well enough that she can't follow where he has to go. So Jared Poe sits quietly on the floor of the room and listens to the rain falling outside on Ursulines and the less comforting rhythm of his Lazarus heart.

two
    Detective Frank Gray has been watching the Weather Channel for the last half hour, too drunk to give a shit that he's seen the same local weather report three times already; too drunk to bother changing it over to something else. He takes another long swallow of Jim Beam directly from the pint bottle and returns it to the safe cradle between his legs. At least the bourbon still feels the way it should, the only thing left in his life that hasn't found some way to betray his trust. It burns reassuringly in his belly, adds its part to the mist he keeps between himself and the world. There's a tropical storm somewhere in the Gulf, a great spinning swirl of white against blue on the satellite photographs. He's managed to understand that much. But the storm and any threat it might represent are far away from him, like everything else, like the rain drumming steadily against the window of his shitty apartment. Frank takes another drink from his bottle, sweet fire in his mouth, blazing down his throat. He closes his eyes when it reaches his stomach, and in the drunken darkness the hustler is there waiting for him.
    The kid said he was