It was a low but effective blow. “I’ll get the book and then we’ll see,” Broussard said. “How long before you’ll have results on the blood?”
“Twenty-four hours, maybe more . . . certainly no less.”
9
When Blackledge was out the door, Broussard called Homicide and left a message for Gatlin to check in. He then got out a catalog, looked up chain-metal autopsy gloves in the index, and turned to the correct page. He carried the catalog into the main office, where Margaret, the senior secretary, turned from her computer screen.
“Any word on Natalie?” she asked.
“Things don’t look good, but we’ve got to keep hopin’.” He put the open catalog on her desk. “Would you order a pair of these gloves for each of our morgue assistants and for Charlie . . . and get ’em here as fast as you can?”
“What about you?”
“I don’t need any.”
The phone on Margaret’s desk rang. “Medical examiner.”
She looked at Broussard. “It’s Lieutenant Gatlin.”
“I’ll take it in my office.”
“Phillip . . . Andy. I just spoke with the person who’ll be workin’ the epidemiological angle on this disease and he wanted me to get that call book you found in Walter Baldwin’s briefcase. Can you drop it by?”
“I expect he’s in a big hurry.”
“Anytime today will do. What do you hear from the hospitals?”
“She’s not in any of them.”
“I don’t know if that’s good news or bad.”
“It’s the best I can do for now. I’ll get the book to you later.”
As he hung up, there was a knock on the door and Charlie Franks came in.
“They’re finished cleaning up downstairs and we’ve got two fresh bodies to do, both gunshot victims, both clearly homicides, but apparently unrelated. Can you take one of them?”
“I’ll do both,” Broussard said.
“No need for that.”
“I’ve ordered chain-metal autopsy gloves for everybody. Until they come in, I’m the only one who’s gonna be doin’ any cuttin’.”
“Andy . . . you’re overreacting.”
“Probably so. But I’m also responsible for all of you. And I can’t take any chances.”
Franks shrugged. “You’re the one who has to do the extra work. If you change your mind, I’m available. How’s Natalie?”
“No good. They think we’re dealin’ with a tropical hemorrhagic fever virus.”
Franks’s face twisted in anguish.
“Yeah, I know. Mark Blackledge took some of her blood to see if he can identify the virus, but whatever it is, there’s no cure.”
“Any word on Kit?”
“She’s not in any of the hospitals.”
Franks looked at the floor. “Boy is this week off to a bad start.”
While Franks was on his way out, Broussard’s stomach rumbled and he checked his watch: 12:30—lunchtime.
Even for a food lover like Broussard, enjoyment of a meal requires the proper state of mind. The way this day had unfolded, his couldn’t have been less receptive. Still, the body must be served, so he bought a limp tuna-salad sandwich, an apple, and a can of orange juice from one of the hospital’s mechanical canteens and ate in his office.
Performance of the actual autopsy by one person was not difficult, but turning the body front to back and moving it from the stainless gurney onto the autopsy table by yourself was tough. Therefore, he waited for Guy to get back from lunch before he started.
Three hours later, as Broussard was finishing with the second body, he took a call on the morgue phone from his secretary.
“Dr. Broussard, there are some people up here to see you.”
“Who are they? I don’t have any appointments scheduled for this afternoon.”
“Teddy LaBiche and Dr. Franklyn’s parents.”
KIT’S PARENTS INSISTED THAT Broussard call them by their first names, Beverly and Howard. Beverly was a handsome woman—long dark hair with gray streaks in it, Kit’s intelligent brown eyes, a fine nose, and a sensitive mouth. Dressed in a navy blue suit with white piping, she sat quietly in a chair in front of Broussard’s desk, her hands resting on the purse in her lap—a proud private woman who didn’t share her emotions with strangers.
More open about his feelings, Howard Franklyn paced. He was tall, trim, and square-jawed, with short sandy hair and a neatly trimmed brown mustache that went well with his tweedy brown suit. They looked like a prosperous and responsible couple, like the parents in TV sitcoms from the fifties.
Dressed as he always was, Teddy sat on the edge of the long table that held Broussard’s microscope.
“Wish I could tell you more,” Broussard said, coming to the end of what had been a distressingly short briefing.
“It isn’t very damn much, is it?” Howard said indignantly.
Beverly gave him a cool look. “Swearing won’t help.”
“Sorry. I’m just . . . not good at handling unexpected adversity, and it makes me angry when it happens. I’m a banker . . . or I was before I retired. Made my living avoiding surprise reversals. And I don’t let it happen in my personal life, either. So . . . this is hard for me.”
Broussard nodded. “I understand.”
“Kit talks about you a great deal,” Beverly said. “About your ability to assess a situation correctly with very little to go on. What do you believe happened to her? Is she sick, do you think?”
“We don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions. Actually, she hasn’t been missin’ all that long. It could mean nothin’. Maybe a friend of hers had some sort of emergency and needed her help.”
“Why isn’t her car missing, too?” Teddy asked.
“Whoever needed her help could have come by and picked her up.”
“Why do that?” Teddy asked.
“Maybe the emergency wasn’t at her friend’s house. It was somewhere else and it was easier to drive Kit there. She could show up at any time, completely healthy and unharmed.”
“Do you really believe that?” Howard Franklyn asked hopefully.
Broussard hesitated. No, he didn’t believe it. Teddy had last seen Kit at 6:00 A.M., so if such an emergency had arisen, Kit would have realized she’d likely be late for work and would have called and left a message on the office answering machine. He glanced at Teddy and saw that he didn’t believe it, either. “All I’m sayin’ is, it’s too soon to accept the worst.”
There was a knock at the hallway door.
It was Phil Gatlin.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, seeing everyone else there. “Andy, I brought that appointment book you wanted. Hey, Teddy . . . guess I know why you’re here.”
He crossed the room and handed the book across Broussard’s desk.
Broussard introduced Gatlin to the Franklyns and they all shook hands.
“Is there any news?” Beverly asked Gatlin.
“Not yet. We’ve got men talking to her neighbors and people calling all the local numbers in her home and office Rolodex files. There are a couple of her friends we haven’t been able to contact yet, but we’ll probably reach them when they get home this evening. And every cop in the city has been alerted to the problem and given her description.”
Howard made a slow rolling motion with his hand. “And . . .”
“Right now, that’s all we can do. Where are you folks staying?”
“We haven’t given it any thought,” Howard said.
“You might as well stay at Kit’s place,” Teddy said. “I’ve got the key.” Then he looked at Broussard. “Or is that a bad idea? I mean, is it safe?”
“There’s no evidence Kit’s even sick. And the house is extremely clean. So it would probably be okay. But why not play it ultracareful and stay elsewhere?”
“Where?” Beverly asked.
“This is a pretty popular time with tourists, but I’ll find us all something,” Teddy said.
“If you’ll tell me where you end up, I’ll let you know if anything happens,” Gatlin said. He produced a card and gave it to Teddy.
Beverly got up, thanked Gatlin and Broussard for their time, and she, Howard, and Teddy gathered at the door, where Beverly turned and said, “This man who sent Kit flowers—the one who died—has he been identified?”
Broussard shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Where are his . . . remains?”
“Downstairs. It doesn’t look promisin’ right now, but I still have hopes we’ll turn up a relative so he can have a decent funeral.”
“And if he stays unidentified?”
“A pauper’s grave.”
“With a headstone that says what?”
“No stone, just a little marker and number that won’t last a year.”
“I see.”
She turned and the little group filed out.
Gatlin stood looking at the door, sucking his teeth in thought. Then he turned to Broussard. “That was odd . . .”
“What . . . Beverly’s interest in the guy who died?”
“Yeah.”
Broussard’s phone rang. He picked it up and was told a small plane with five people on board had gone down in the sparsely populated eastern part of the parish and apparently there were no survivors. Could anything more possibly happen today? he thought.
Learning what had happened, Gatlin left so Broussard could deal with it. Before the door had shut behind the old detective, Broussard had Charlie Franks on the line.
“Charlie, grab your bag and meet me at the elevator. We got a plane crash.”
Knowing he’d probably go home directly from the crash site when they finished, Broussard put Walter Baldwin’s call book in his own bag and stuck his head into the main office. “Margaret, Charlie and I are gonna be at the scene of a plane crash near the space center. Call Mark Blackledge’s office at Tulane and tell him I’ve got the book he wanted but I’ll be tied up for several hours. If he wants to talk, he should call me later at home.”
THE PLANE HAD EXPLODED on impact and the only parts of it still recognizable were the tail and the two engines. The rest was scattered like confetti over an area the size of four football fields, where it lay among the dirt cones pushed up by burrowing crayfish, which were already claiming the smaller pieces of the five victims. The gathering and matching of body parts was a garish, tiring endeavor and when Broussard and Franks were finished, they each felt amid the devastation around them a guilt-ridden tug of pleasure.
Upon arriving home, Broussard went to his study and checked for messages, his cat, Princess, trotting along behind him. Thankfully, the light on his machine glowed steadily.
Exhausted, he dropped into his leather reading chair and Princess jumped into his lap. Too tired to pet her, he let his hand rest on her neck, barely massaging it with one finger. He closed his eyes. But all that did was bring back the worst parts of his day and remind him he needed to check on Natalie. He shifted position to reach for the phone and Princess yowled in displeasure.
His call to the Pulmonary Unit went unanswered for so long he finally hung up in disgust. He sat for a few more minutes, managing to muster enough strength to add another finger to Princess’s massage. Then he began to think of those quail eggs he hadn’t had time to use. My God, was that only this morning? It seemed like days ago.
Heartened by the thought of what he could do with those eggs, he carried Princess to the kitchen and started laying out ingredients, all the problems he’d encountered in the last sixteen hours making the distant consequences of all the cholesterol he seemed to be eating lately of little significance.
Later, comforted by a full stomach, his blood warmed by two glasses of Chevalier-Montrachet, he changed into his pajamas, stretched out on the bed, and picked up the story of Bendigo Shafter where he’d left it.
After only ten pages, the book grew heavy in his hand and he put it aside and turned off the light.
Walter Baldwin’s killer had probed the interior of the dresser for an hour after Broussard had left home following his misfortune with his trousers. In that time, it had not found its way to freedom. With no stimulus, it had grown quiescent and ceased its search. But tonight, when Broussard had opened the dresser to get his pajamas, the carbon dioxide in his breath had roused the little murderer and it had resumed its wanderings.
This time, it eventually found its way down the rear of the dresser’s interior, to a place where a screw securing the back had loosened, allowing an eighth of an inch gap to develop.
And then it was free.
The carbon dioxide was stronger now and though the room had grown warmer during the night, it sensed a focal heat source nearby. Turning toward the bed, it scurried across the carpet.
In the bed, Broussard slept heavily, too tired to dream.
The tiny killer reached the carved legs of the bed and began to climb. At the intersection of the foot with the side rail, it ran along the rail to the dust ruffle and again began to climb.
A ballooned edge of the flannel sheet loomed in its path, but legs that could climb polished wood found this no obstacle, and it moved onto the flannel.
Upward . . .
Then, horizontally, hanging upside down as it traversed an overhang . . .
Around the lip of the overhang . . .
Along a slanting valley and up its edge to the corrugated surface of Broussard’s lightweight green blanket.
A vertical ascent . . .
Then, the summit achieved . . .
Its simple nervous system tingling, legs flitting quietly over the blanket, death ran for Broussard’s right hand.
10
Finally realizing that it had grown too warm for a blanket, Broussard sat up and threw it toward the foot of the bed in two motions, unknowingly catching the little murderer in a double fold. For hours thereafter, the killer tacked back and forth across the fold’s short dimension, tethered by the heat from Broussard’s feet below, so it made no progress toward escape.
At 3:00 A.M., the phone rang.
With effort, Broussard found the receiver and mumbled his name.
“Detective Evans here, NOPD Homicide. We’ve got a body lying in the gutter on Burgundy Street between Frenchmen and Touro. . . .” Suddenly, Broussard was wide awake. Burgundy . . . that was just a few blocks from Kit’s place. “Is it a female?”
“No . . . a male, and he looks to have been strangled.”
“He have a wallet?”
“No.”
“Anything strike you as unusual about the case?”
“Well, he’s wet, but that’s because a street sweeper sprayed him.”
To Broussard, this sounded like a common robberyhomicide. “No need for me there. Get him transported and I’ll look at him in the mornin’.”
Less than a minute after hanging up, Broussard was again asleep.
There was only one day of the week when Broussard made the bed before leaving the house, and that was Friday, the day the maid came. This being Tuesday, Walter Baldwin’s killer was left folded in the blanket.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Broussard went directly to the Pulmonary Unit and headed for Natalie’s room without speaking to anyone at the nurses’ station.
Reaching the isolation ward, he went into Natalie’s staging room and looked through the glass. Her bed was empty.
Heart pounding, he went back into the hall and stopped a pretty young nurse. “The patient in that room . . . is she out for a procedure?”
“What’s her name?”
“D’Souza . . . Natalie D’Souza.”
Her eyes clouded and Broussard’s vision tunneled until he saw only her face. Heart in his throat, he waited for an answer.
“I believe she passed away.”
“You believe,” Broussard said sharply. “That’s somethin’ you say only if you know it for certain.”
Anxiety flashed in the girl’s eyes and she backed up a step. “I’ll check at the desk. . .
.”
Broussard followed her back to the nurses’ station, where the girl beckoned the unit coordinator to the counter. “This man is inquiring about the patient in twelve twelve . . . D’Souza.”
The unit coordinator looked at Broussard and her eyes went soft. “Yes, Dr. Broussard. . . . I’m sorry to have to tell you that Natalie went during the night.”
“Went—” what a quaint way to put it, as if she might be back.
Working with death every day does nothing to harden you against the loss of someone close to you, and when you feel responsible for that death, it’s much worse. When Broussard reached his office, he felt so tired, he wanted to lie down, but two of the seats on his sofa had journals stacked on them and he didn’t have the energy to move them. He went instead to his desk chair, dropped into it, and rocked back.
Fingers laced over his belly, he sat staring at the door to the hall, picturing the last time Natalie had come through it. He sat that way for several minutes, trying to find the strength to face the day. Gradually, his concern for Kit washed over Natalie’s death, temporarily muting its clarity.
He thought about calling Gatlin and checking on Kit, but surely he’d have called if there was news. Lord, if she was dead, too . . .
There was a knock on the door and Charlie Franks came in.
“Morning,” Franks said. “Have you checked on Natalie?”
Broussard nodded. “She didn’t make it.”
“I know. I just called up there.”
They both fell silent, neither of them knowing what to say about Natalie’s death, neither wanting to trivialize it by changing the subject.
“She was one of the best techs I ever worked with,” Franks said finally.
“One of the best,” Broussard echoed.
Another gap appeared in the conversation, eventually flushing the rat gnawing at Broussard’s conscience into the open. “If I’d ordered chain-metal gloves for everybody when they first came out, she’d still be alive.”
Louisiana Fever Page 11