New Orleans Requiem

by D. J. Donaldson

  They took Poydras to Tchoupitoulas, crossed Canal on a yellow light, followed North Peters to Decatur, and turned the wrong way onto Madison, a short street just past Jackson Square. Halfway down, the street was blocked by two patrol cars. So far, it was a replay of the scene Saturday morning— a crowd around the crime-scene tape, people gawking from their balconies—except this time it was late enough that she saw no bathrobes, but she did see two detectives she knew mingling with the crowd.

  Broussard parked in the middle of the street and somehow got out of the little car. Seeing them approaching, one of the cops holding the perimeter lifted the tape so they could duck under it. On the far side, Kit saw Nick Lawson talking to a female cop.

  There was no body to be seen, so it could only have been on the other side of the partially open sliding wooden door Kit saw in the stuccoed courtyard wall facing the street. She followed Broussard inside and was surprised to find it was not a courtyard at all but a small parking lot paved with narrow strips of asphalt roofing. There were two cars snugged against the right wall and two against the left, leaving barely a car’s width access to the old doorless brick garage in the rear, where Kit could dimly see two more cars. Gatlin was standing in the middle of the lot, talking to a tall young woman with puffy red eyes who was wringing her hands as she spoke. Seeing Kit and Andy, he broke off his conversation with the woman and pointed to the garage with his pen. “Back there.”

  “You take pictures yet?” Broussard asked.

  “Been here and gone. Ray’s getting to be a real jackrabbit.”

  Though she would have preferred to stay with Gatlin, Kit followed Broussard into the musty garage, where there was a blue Lincoln and a cherry red Cadillac parked side by side, front bumpers practically against the back wall. The body was in a sitting position between the two cars, its back against the Cadillac’s open front door. He was a clean-cut young man neatly dressed in blue slacks and a yellow pullover with a logo above the left pocket that read CHARTRES HOUSE. The shirt had an inch-long tear in it just below his sternum and the fabric there had absorbed a modest amount of blood. His head was tilted to the side. One eye was fully closed; the other was wide open. Having seen enough, Kit turned away.

  Broussard put his bag down, slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, and brought out his padded kneeling block. He got down on one knee and inspected the staring eye with the aid of his penlight. He manipulated the fingers of the corpse’s hand, lifted the arm, then returned to his forensic kit and got two paper bags, which he secured over the victim’s hands with rubber bands. Returning to the open area, they found the woman gone and Gatlin making notes.

  “I’d guess he’s been dead six hours at most,” Broussard said. “Eyelid’s gone, of course. We get letters again?”

  With his pen, Gatlin pointed at the hood of a white Ford behind Broussard. “Over there.”

  He followed Kit and Broussard to the Ford, where, on a folded section of newspaper, there were more Scrabble letters. But instead of four, like last time, there were only three, KOJ, held together with tape as before.

  Broussard turned to Gatlin. “You found the letters on the paper?”

  “Yeah, sitting in the victim’s lap.” Gatlin tilted his head slightly upward and looked at Broussard from the bottoms of his eyes. “And there’s another hair, too.”

  “I noticed. How’d it all happen?”

  Kit bent down for another look at the letters, trying to see the hair.

  “The victim was the night clerk at the Chartres House, a small hotel around the corner,” Gatlin said. “This is where they keep the guests’ cars. If somebody needs their car in the morning, the night man comes over when he has time and moves it close to the entrance. Then, shortly before it’s needed, he brings it around and parks it in front of the hotel. Last night, the hotel was full and so was the lot—there were even two cars in the center here. You can see what a mess this is to get a car out. The victim was after the Cadillac. Apparently, he was killed after he’d moved the cars blocking the Cadillac out onto the street somewhere. We’re checking to make sure the killer didn’t take one of them.”

  “I wouldn’t think he did,” Kit said.

  “Me, neither, but we need to know.”

  “He the only one on duty at night?” Broussard asked.

  “Yeah. Which is why he wasn’t missed until this morning. That girl I was talking to when you arrived is the day clerk. When she came on duty, the guy who wanted the Cadillac was hopping mad ’cause his car wasn’t out front and he couldn’t find anyone to help him. She came for his car and found the body.”

  “The killer must have been out trolling and followed him inside,” Kit said. “Anybody in the neighborhood see anything?”

  “We’re checking that, too,” Gatlin replied. “Guess you were right, Doc.”

  “This is one time I wouldn’t have minded being wrong.”

  “The day clerk swears the victim’s heterosexual. I got the idea she knows from personal experience. I’ll dig some more, but right now, it looks like there’s no gay thread connecting the victims.”

  “Opportunity and the way they were dressed,” Kit said, “those are the connections.”

  “And both male,” Gatlin said.

  “So far. . . .”

  “Random victims,” Gatlin said, shaking his head. “Toughest damn thing in the world for a cop to deal with. But he left only three letters this time. You think he’s telling us there’re only going to be two more . . . that he’s winding down?”

  “They don’t wind down,” Kit said. “So he may be telling us he’s building to something.”

  “What happens, then? He just goes away? Moves to another town and starts over?”

  “A small percentage do.”

  “I’d love to get my hands on him,” Gatlin said. “But if I can’t, I’d settle for him moving on.”

  “Wagon on the way?” Broussard asked.

  “I put in a call right after Ray left. Should be here soon.”

  “I better go back to the office and get ready.”

  “You want to examine the new hair?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll bag the letters for you. And I don’t think you need to worry about fouling up any fingerprints. The last set was clean.”

  The first thing Broussard did after reaching his office was to call down to the morgue to see if the body had arrived. It hadn’t. While waiting for it, he decided to examine the new hair.

  He prepared it the same way he had the first one they’d found and put the slide under the microscope, feeling no anticipation whatever, for this was old ground, his examination this time merely a perfunctory ritual.

  As he dropped his glasses to his chest and leaned toward the microscope eyepieces, the image of Susan Brooks suddenly popped into his head.

  Susan . . . dead . . . in the cold ground somewhere in Albany . . . her body . . .

  He sat back and massaged his eyes through closed lids. This was no good. To dwell on events that couldn’t be changed accomplished nothing. And if indulged, they could destroy a man’s peace of mind and interfere with his work.

  He put his eyes against the microscope eyepieces and twirled the fine focus, bringing the image out of its optical fog.

  Like most professionals who have spent many years honing their skills and accumulating experience, Broussard was seldom surprised by a case that came under his scrutiny. Of course, they all had their unique fine points, but in the main, they were merely modest variations on themes he knew as well as he knew when étouffé had been made with west Louisiana crawfish rather than those from eastern bayous.

  He also knew which restaurants in the city had the best chefs and what their best dishes were. He knew the used bookstores where he would most likely find a Louis L ’ Amour novel he’d not yet added to his collection and he knew where to get the mesh shoes that kept his feet from sweating. He knew how to catch speckled trout and the best bait for Saca-lait. He knew when it was going to rain an
d when clouds would pass by. He could recite the routes of every parade in Mardi Gras and tell you which roses could withstand the city’s terrible summer humidity.

  Knowledge of how to live in the city, knowledge of how one died there, knowledge that led to order . . . personally and professionally. Autopsies produced physical evidence that told you what caused death. Facts . . . one upon the other, leading in an orderly way to a conclusion that would stand up to minute dissection in a courtroom. In such a life, there was no room for error, no place for renegade facts like the hair under his microscope.

  4

  With his autopsy on the second victim completed, Broussard returned to his office. Pausing now by his desk to make sure he wasn’t going to charge off to the Hyatt and forget something he needed, his eye fell on the brochure a salesman had left for chain-metal autopsy gloves. He sniffed in disdain at the thought of what the profession was coming to. Across the country, the autopsy attire adopted by the younger examiners consisted of surgical hood, plastic eye protector, plastic apron over a surgical gown, waterproof sleeve protectors, disposable plastic boots tied closed with twist-’ems and two pairs of disposable latex gloves. Some had even bought the salesman’s metal gloves to keep from cutting themselves.

  Metal gloves.

  If you exercised proper care and had a modicum of coordination, you wouldn’t be cutting yourself. And all that other paraphernalia just encouraged sloppiness. If you knew what you were doing, a plastic apron and two pairs of rubber gloves were enough. He allowed himself these thoughts to give his mind a break from thinking about that blasted hair.

  He glanced at his watch—ten to noon, just enough time to make it to the Hyatt. He put a half dozen lemon balls from the bowl on his desk into his pants pocket and rang his secretary.

  “Margaret, I’m going to the hotel and from there to Grandma O’s for lunch. After that, I’ll be back at the hotel. Anything new comes in, give it to Charlie. If Phil Gatlin calls, beep me on my pager.”

  Usually, he looked forward to his conversations with Gatlin because they consisted largely of Gatlin listening attentively while Broussard dispensed enlightenment. But this time would be different.

  At the Hyatt, he found Crandall Brooks standing by the message board.

  “How was the workshop?” Broussard asked.

  “A little on the elementary side. But I enjoyed it.”

  Broussard scanned the small groups conversing in the foyer.

  “Who you looking for?” Brooks asked.

  “Leo Fleming.”

  “He left with Jason Harvey a few minutes ago.”

  “Guess I’ll have to catch him later,” Broussard said, sorry to have missed Fleming but happy to have avoided Harvey. “Let me just leave him a note.” He scribbled a few lines on a piece of paper provided for messages, folded it, wrote Fleming’s name on the front, and stuck it on the board. “If you don’t mind a little walk, I thought we’d have lunch at Grandma O’s.”

  “Sounds good. How is she? Still as crusty as ever?”

  “That’s a given in a changing world.”

  Brooks took off his meeting ID badge, which had been on a cord around his neck, and put it in his Forensic Academy tote bag. Broussard’s ID was still in his shirt pocket, where he’d put it before the autopsy.

  They left the hotel and set out on foot down Poydras, toward the river. Except for an observation or two from each of them about the weather and Brooks’s comment about Mardi Gras being almost here when he saw some grandstands going up on an intersecting street, they talked very little.

  Grandma O’s was where Broussard ate lunch so regularly, she always held the largest table open for him even if the place was jammed, which it usually was. Today, Broussard saw a number of tables with Forensic Academy tote bags on the floor by the occupants. Grandma O came steaming toward them like an icebreaker, her black taffeta dress rustling like locusts in a wheat field, a broad grin showing the gold star inlay in her front tooth.

  “City Boy, Ah see you brought me somebody Ah don’ get to feed too often.” Her smile faded and her eyes grew sad. “Dr. Brooks, Ah was real sorry to hear ’bout . . . what happened.”

  “Well,” Brooks said, “it’s a fact of life we all have to deal with sometime.”

  “Dat’s sure true . . . but it don’t make it any easier. . . . Come on back.”

  She led them to Broussard’s table and stood with the Cajun shack-on-stilts menus against her large bosom while they got seated. “City Boy, Ah know you don’ need a menu. How ’bout you, Dr. Brooks?”

  “Do you still have alligator chili?”

  “Everyday.”

  “I’ll have a bowl of that, a catfish poor boy, and iced tea.”

  “Same for me,” Broussard said.

  Grandma O went off to the kitchen, leaving the two men to sit in awkward silence, Susan Brooks’s death hovering over the table.

  “Guess you noticed I’ve gained a little weight,” Brooks said finally.

  “It looks good.”

  “After Susan died, I lost interest in running. . . . I don’t eat any more than I ever did, but the pounds keep piling on. Guess my metabolism is different now.”

  “Brookie . . . how are you doing?”

  Brooks looked at Broussard for a moment without answering. In the depths of his eyes, Broussard saw a wistful longing that twisted at his own heart. Finally, Brooks said, “Sometimes I think I’ve got it licked, that it’s all behind me.” He shook his head slowly. “But it’s not gone. It’s just hiding under a thin skin waiting for a weak moment . . . then for a few minutes it’s like the first days again. . . .” He sighed, making a faint sound like a far-off wind blowing across a desolate plain. “But it’s not happening now as often. . . .”

  Searching Brooks’s eyes, Broussard saw behind the longing and the pain a glimmer of something else—a spark of the old Brookie, intense, goal-oriented. . . . Thus, when Brooks said, “So I’m getting there,” Broussard believed him.

  But the conversation lapsed again and Brooks picked up his bread knife and began running it in and out of the tines on his fork, his attention wandering in directions Broussard thought it shouldn’t. Fortunately, the food came and he seemed to rally, to where after he’d made serious inroads into his meal, he even initiated a new topic of conversation. “How’s Kit been doing?”

  “Okay until Saturday.”

  Brooks worried his brow and started to ask what had happened, but Broussard was ahead of him.

  “She came home and found that someone had poisoned her dog.”

  “That’s terrible. I didn’t know she had a dog.”

  “Took him in as a stray some time ago.”

  “I know she’s going to miss him,” Brooks said, the hollow look in his eyes returning.

  Broussard felt like an idiot for bringing up such a subject and he saw that it was going to be tough to keep his comments around Brookie properly edited. “They think he’ll make it,” he said quickly, happy to end the topic on an upbeat note. “But they’re keepin’ him at the vet’s for a few days.”

  “That’s great. I’m glad. And professionally . . . how’s she doing there?”

  “Quite well, although she sometimes doesn’t think so. When she gets a hold of a problem, she’s like a bull alligator, won’t let go until she’s worked it through. And she’s fearless, which sometimes gets her in over her head. One time she—”

  “You like her a lot, don’t you?”

  Above his beard, Broussard’s skin reddened. “I like all my people.”

  “But she’s special.”

  Broussard thought about this a bit and finally said, “If things had been different and I hadn’t . . .” Realizing that this, too, was taking the conversation into a touchy area, Broussard made his point without preamble. “She’s the kind of woman any man would be proud to have as a daughter.” But this didn’t work, either, and Brooks seemed to wilt, probably thinking about the fact he and Susan had never had children.

 
For the next few minutes, they ate in silence so awkward Broussard considered knocking his tea over just to break its grip. In life, Susan Brooks had loved people and the situations that brought them together. Over the years, Broussard had attended numerous dinner parties at the Brooks’s home in Albany. Where some hostesses might strive for common interests in their guests, at Susan’s you might meet an opera star, a farmer, and a manufacturer of disposable diapers all in the same night. And Susan was the spark that made it work, adding the right word here, a question there. So it was ironic that in death she should have made conversation between Broussard and Brookie so difficult.

  Still groping for something to say, Broussard noticed a serious-looking fellow with straight brown hair and a heavy five o’clock shadow heading their way.

  “Andy,” he said, “I’m glad I ran into you. I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

  It was Zin Fanelli, ordinarily someone he’d go out of his way to avoid. But under the circumstances, he’d have welcomed anyone.

  “Zin, my boy. Have a seat.”

  Broussard’s effusive greeting took Fanelli by surprise and he took a small step backward, acting like one of Broussard’s cats when he’d try to get close enough to grab them for a bath.

  “Thanks, but I’m with some people,” Fanelli said warily.

  “Brookie, this is Zin Fanelli. He trained with me a few years ago. Zin . . . Crandall Brooks, ME in Albany.”

  They exchanged a handshake and Fanelli turned back to Broussard. “Hate to bother you while you’re eating, but sometimes you can go for days at these meetings and never see people you’re looking for.”

  Broussard doubted that Fanelli had any misgivings whatever about disturbing his meal. “What can I do for you?”

  “Jason Harvey’s looking for an assistant and I’ve applied for the job. Would you write me a letter of reference and send it to him?”