From "Hoodoo Money" by Sharon Cupp Pennington

He panned his camera left. Many of the burial chambers were large and ostentatious, with friezes sculpted into their deep sides and elaborate statuary embellishing their rooftops. The relentless sun bleached their white marble doors and half-dead grass breached the stone paths leading up to them.

They reminded him of poorly kept yards and poorly kept lives — of long kept secrets at risk of being unraveled.

He tracked the camera forward, where the crypts appeared as shrunken, windowless replicas of local banks and civic buildings, the Garden District’s grand mansions. Others resembled the gallant Bastille, surrounded by garish cast iron grillwork, rust staining their concrete foundations. Still others, low rent efficiencies and walk-ups of handmade brick, crumbling with age, corners jutted out as if to snag the attention of the next passerby.

Panning the camera right, he zoomed in until Simone Dubois’ grave and the two women filled the viewfinder. Killing the arrogant journalist, Dalrymple, had been easy, even pleasurable. But he had never killed a woman.

The prospect of doing so left him both excited and nauseous.