New Orleans Requiem
Page 1
What the critics said about New Orleans Requiem:
“Lots of Louisiana color, pinpoint plotting and two highly likable characters . . . smart, convincing solution.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)
“An . . . accomplished forensic mystery. His New Orleans is worth the trip.”
—NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
“Andy and Kit are a match made in mystery heaven.”
—THE CLARION-LEDGER (Jackson, MS)
“Nicely drawn characters, plenty of action, and an engaging . . . storytelling style.”
—THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL (Memphis)
“Donaldson has established himself as a master of the Gothic mystery.”
—BOOKLIST
“The tension will keep even the most reluctant young adult readers turning the pages . . .”
—SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL
What the critics said about Louisiana Fever:
“Delivers . . . genuinely heart-stopping suspense.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Sleek, fast moving.”
—KIRKUS
“Broussard tracks the virus . . . with a winning combination of common sense and epidemiologic legerdemain.”
—NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
“This series has carved a solid place for itself. Broussard makes a terrific counterpoint to the Dave Robicheaux ragin’ Cajun school of mystery heroes.”
—BOOKLIST
“A dazzling tour de force . . . sheer pulse-pounding reading excitement.”
—THE CLARION-LEDGER (Jackson, MS)
“A novel of . . . terrifying force. . . . utterly fascinating . . . His best work yet.”
—THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL (Memphis)
“The autopsies are detailed enough to make Patricia Cornwell fans move farther south for their forensic fixes. . . . splendidly eccentric local denizens, authentic New Orleans and bayou backgrounds . . . a very suspenseful tale.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A fast moving, . . . suspenseful story. Andy and Kit are quite likeable leads . . . The other attraction is the solid medical background against which their story plays out.”
—DEADLY PLEASURES
“If your skin doesn’t crawl with the step-by-step description of the work of the (medical) examiner and his assistants, it certainly will when Donaldson reveals the carrier of the fever.”
—KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL
“Keep(s) the reader on the edge of his chair and likely to finish in one sitting.”
—BENTON COURIER (Arkansas)
“Exciting reading . . . well planned . . . fast paced.”
—MYSTERY NEWS
“Tight and well-paced . . . Andy (Broussard) is a hugely engaging character . . . (the) writing is frequently inspired.”
—THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE
What the critics said about Sleeping with the Crawfish:
“Streamlined thrills and gripping forensic detail.”
—KIRKUS
“Action-packed, cleverly plotted topnotch thriller. Another fine entry in a consistently outstanding series.”
—BOOKLIST
“With each book, Donaldson peels away a few more layers of these characters and we find ourselves loving the involvement.”
—THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL (Memphis)
“The pace is pell-mell.”
—SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
“Exciting and . . . realistic. Donaldson . . . starts his action early and sustains it until the final pages.”
—BENTON COURIER (Arkansas)
“A roller-coaster ride . . . Thoroughly enjoyable.”
—BRAZOSPORT FACTS
“The latest outing of a fine series which never disappoints.”
—MERITORIOUS MYSTERIES
NEW
ORLEANS
REQUIEM
D.J. Donaldson
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
NEW ORLEANS REQUIEM
Astor + Blue Editions
EBook Copyright © 2012 by D.J. Donaldson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by:
Astor + Blue Editions
New York, NY 10003
www.astorandblue.com
Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Donaldson, D.J. New Orleans Requiem—3rd ed.
Originally publishing in 1994 by St. Martin’s Press
ISBN: 978-1-938231-38-4 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-938231-37-7 (epdf)
ISBN: 978-1-938231-36-0 (epub)
1. Detective Duo—Murder Mystery—Fiction 2. Fiction 3. Police procedural and forensic mystery—Fiction 4. Love Story—Fiction 5. Crime investigation—Fiction 6. American Murder and Suspense Story—Fiction 7. New Orleans (LA) I. Title
Book Design: Bookmasters
Jacket Cover Design: Ervin Serrano
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction to this Edition
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I can’t express strongly enough my appreciation to Dr. O.C. Smith, Assistant Medical Examiner for Shelby County, Tennessee, who invariably points me in productive directions and keeps me on track. I’ve also benefited greatly from the counsel of Dr. Jerry Francisco, Medical Examiner for Shelby County, and Drs. Hugh Berryman and Steve Symes, anthropologists with the Shelby County Regional Forensic Center. Much of my knowledge about hair was obtained during a pleasant chat with Dr. Walter Birkby, anthropologist at the University of Arizona Human Identification Laboratory, as we sat in the New Orleans Hyatt Regency’s Mint Julep Lounge during a recent forensic sciences meeting. The kindness shown me by the Memphis Police Department’s homicide division made the writing of this story considerably easier than it might otherwise have been. I’m particularly grateful to Sgt. Jack Ruby for allowing me to accompany him to a prospective homicide scene one morning well before dawn, and to Sgt. Paul Sheffield, whose enthusiasm, encyclopedic knowledge, and knack for giving me exactly what I need are a writer’s dream. Thanks also to Dr. Frank Minyard, Orleans Parish Coroner, and his secretary, Ann Black; Capt. James Rondell, New Orleans Harbor Police; Dr. Jim Mahan; Dr. Randy Nelson; Dr. Jack Enter; Dr. William Battle; Dr. Bob Burns; Mary Lindsey; Ellen Karle; Les Seago; Lori Krueger, Evelyn Brown; Sal Balsamo; and Nancy Burris. Any mistakes are mine.
Introduction to this Edition
It’s been more years than I want to think about since the last Andy Broussard, Kit Franklyn mystery was published. After writing six books about the overweight, cerebral, complicated New Orleans Medical Examiner, Andy Broussard, and his gorgeous death investigator sidekick, Kit Franklyn, I lost touch with them and the rest of the gang. I expect you can think of people too, who at one time played a major role in your life and then weren’t there anymore . . . not dead . . . just both of you going about your business, not thinking of each other.
During my hiatus from writing about Kit and Andy, the pu
blisher of those books let them go out of print. Kit and Andy certainly didn’t deserve such treatment, so I’m elated that with this new edition by Astor + Blue and their intent to reissue at least two more books in the series, Andy and Kit’s adventures will be available again for a new generation of readers to discover. But will there only be a recounting of tales already told? I’m thrilled to say, the answer to that is, no. After two more reissue editions, . . . where’s that drum roll I asked for . . . ? Astor + Blue will publish a new Andy and Kit novel never before available in any form. More about that, later.
In preparation to write this introduction I noticed that almost none of the characters have a cell phone. Moreover, all the speakers at the Forensic meeting where the book takes place, use old-fashioned slide trays instead of giving computer-based talks with PowerPoint. I thought about modernizing those parts, but that wouldn’t be right. The story should remain as written originally because that’s the way events actually happened. I shouldn’t be altering them now.
I was also touched by Broussard’s willingness to share this story with us. The guilt he felt about the murders that occurred and the recounting of his deep feelings for a long-ago love were things he could have properly kept to himself. But he was man enough to let me write about them. And Kit allowed us into her innermost thoughts. too, even when they concerned her long-time boyfriend, alligator farmer, Teddy LaBiche. Neither Andy nor Kit held anything back. So in addition to a cracking good mystery with tension and danger and puzzles at every turn, you’ll get to see beneath the surface of two very complex and damned clever human beings that I’m proud to call my friends.
—D.J. Donaldson
We should
profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.
Hamlet, act V, scene 1
Prologue
Cissy Spangler woke with a terrible ache slightly off center in the back of her head. She threw off the sheet covering her and slowly sat up, an act that sent the pain in her head to new heights. Elbows on her knees, she lowered her head and held it in her hands, the new position easing the hurt only slightly. She’d heard once that the brain can’t feel pain. Whoever said that should be fired, for hers felt like someone was digging chunks out of it with their thumbs.
Gradually, through the pain, she became aware that she was fighting the mattress, which seemed to be pulling her back into bed. Wincing, she turned and saw a broad back she didn’t recognize. She shot to her feet, a fresh stab of pain radiating down her neck. Without bothering to cover her naked body, she crossed to her dresser and grabbed for her purse. Hands shaking, she flipped the catch and poured the contents onto the dresser, trying to count the foil packets even as they came out mixed with all the crap she carried.
Two, three, four . . .
Thank God. Yesterday, there had been five of them in her purse and now there were only four. She was not going to die. Thus reprieved, her headache rolled back, only to be displaced again by another fear.
She dressed quickly, cursing good-looking men and the way they made you drink too much. With effort, she remembered a little now of what had happened.
She’d decided to call it a day around 5:30 and had packed her umbrella, her canvases, easels, and paints in her locker. She was sure of that much. Then this charming man had come by and struck up a conversation. He had suggested they go for a drink and she’d wandered off without securing her locker.
Damn. Men and alcohol. She was going to have to watch herself better in the future. . . . Hell, if she hadn’t locked up, she might not have a future.
She hurried from her tiny apartment and rushed down the stairs, each step a mule kicking the back of her head. It was mid-February. In Chicago, where she’d attended the Chicago Art Institute, February was always cold and miserable. But here in New Orleans, it was generally mild. This year had been about like April in other years. And that meant lots of foot traffic around the square and lots of business. With Mardi Gras barely a week off, the crowds were only going to get bigger. She’d believed that by the end of the month she’d probably have her back rent all paid off. Now this.
Damn.
She began to sprint toward Jackson Square, dodging the spray from one of the hoses that businesses in the French Quarter bring out each morning to wash the previous night’s broom-elusive debris and body fluids from the flagstone sidewalks. The square was right around the corner and she was there in less than a minute. From Decatur, she couldn’t tell if her locker was secured or not. But as she jogged toward it, her day was ruined, for the lock lay on the ground.
She approached the locker slowly, her second prayer of the day looping through her brain: Please let everything be there. . . . Please let everything . . . She opened the lid reluctantly, her heart fluttering. When she saw the body inside, one eye staring blankly up at her, her scream sent a hundred pigeons into the air.
1
Andy Broussard, chief medical examiner for Orleans Parish, had already been up for several hours, his sleep disturbed by thoughts of the impending annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, which this year his office was hosting. As he sat at the kitchen table sipping his third cup of freshly roasted Kenyan Meru, he mentally went over one more time the long list of preparations he’d made for the meeting, concerned that there might be something he’d overlooked. If this had been simply a regional meeting of medical examiners, he might still be asleep. But it was the national gathering of all the forensic disciplines. Criminalistics, Engineering Sciences, Jurisprudence, Odontology, Physical Anthropology, Pathology-Biology, Psychiatry-Behavioral Science, Questioned Documents, and Toxicology—they’d all be there. And its success would largely depend on his efforts.
Perhaps it was the early hour or maybe it was just a sixth sense he’d developed after so many years as ME, but the moment the phone began to ring, he knew that someone was dead.
Thirty minutes later, Broussard pulled his head out of a deep coffinlike artist’s locker near the iron fence around Jackson Square and put his penlight back in his shirt pocket. With him out of the way, Kit Franklyn, psychologist with the ME’s office, could now see in.
Kit was not religious in the usual sense of the word. She wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as a soul, except that when she looked at a man or woman dead only a few hours, she could find in their faces not the faintest imprint of the decades they’d lived. All traces of who they’d been were already gone—vanished so completely, it seemed that more was missing than could be accounted for in physical terms. Broussard had once advised her to forget the old cases, but she couldn’t, and the victims’ faces remained in her mind, accumulating at a worrisome pace.
Today, the body was that of a slightly built man who had perhaps been in his late thirties. He lay with the back of his head touching the wooden floor of the locker, his knees bent toward his chest. He was wearing poorly ironed cotton slacks, an unzipped poplin windbreaker, and a white crewneck T-shirt whose just-bought freshness was marred by a small slit in the center of a scant sunburst of blood just below his sternum. One eye was almost completely closed, dull cornea showing through the small slit between the upper and lower lids. The other was wide open.
“He’s relatively fresh,” Broussard announced. “Rigor’s barely started.”
“I’d guess it happened sometime after midnight last night,” Lt. Phil Gatlin, senior homicide detective in the NOPD, said. “Before that, there’d have been too many people around.”
Broussard and Gatlin were nearly the same age but had arrived there by different routes. Where Gatlin’s heavily lined face made him look older than he was, Broussard’s made him look younger, most of this effect deriving from the absence of crow’s-feet or other signs of wear around Broussard’s eyes, the rest of his face being largely hidden behind a short beard shot with gray. Gatlin weighed around 230 but didn’t look particularly overweight because he was six foot four. Even if
he’d been Gatlin’s height, instead of five ten, Broussard’s 270 would have seemed excessive.
“Could that little bit of blood have come from a lethal wound?” Gatlin asked.
“It’s possible,” Broussard replied. He shifted the lemon ball in his mouth to the other cheek. “Have to get him to the morgue before I know for sure.”
“Knife?”
“Single-edged.”
“I didn’t see any defensive wounds. You?”
Broussard shook his head.
“What’s with the eye?” Gatlin said. “Never saw anything like that before. Why’s one open?”
“No upper lid,” Broussard replied.
Gatlin’s heavy eyebrows jigged toward the bridge of his big nose. “How come?”
“It’s been removed.”
“When?” he asked warily.
“Right after he was killed.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t I see that?” Gatlin stepped over to the locker and leaned down for another look, playing his flashlight onto the cadaver’s face.
“He’s got deep-set eyes and more fat in his orbit than most folks,” Broussard explained. “Makes it hard to tell if the lid is there or not. And since it was removed postmortem, there wasn’t any bleedin’.”
Gatlin played his flashlight all around the body, then stood up. “Don’t see it in there.” He shifted his attention to the pavement and searched the area where they were standing.
Kit had been wondering why she’d been summoned to the scene. She worked for Broussard doing psychological autopsies in suicide cases and was occasionally brought in by the NOPD as a psychology profiler in unusual cases. A corpse with a missing eyelid certainly fit that criterion, but since Gatlin hadn’t realized it was missing when she was called, there had to be something he hadn’t revealed.
“Why did you want me here?” she asked.
“I’ll show you,” Gatlin said.
Half a dozen cops were spaced evenly along a perimeter that had been marked off by yellow crime-scene tape strung from the fence around Jackson Square to the columns on the Pontalba Apartments across St. Peter Street, which from Chartres to Decatur was usually closed to vehicles. Despite the early hour, quite a crowd had gathered. Most of them were on the sidewalk, but some had come out of their apartments over the shops, onto the balcony overlooking the square, where from that elevation, they likely could see directly into the locker.