Fanelli’s request was a surprise. Considering the many arguments they’d had over Fanelli’s irresponsibility when he was in training, he had to know Broussard didn’t think much of him. The fact he’d managed to get his present position without a letter showed he did know. So why was he asking for help now?
Then his reasoning became clear. Fanelli had to know about the Vanzant trial—Broussard testifying for the prosecution, Harvey flown in for the defense. It had been necessary to destroy Harvey’s analysis from the witness stand and Harvey’d taken it hard. So that now, about the only way Harvey would hire a Broussard trainee was if Broussard had a low opinion of him, all of which would make this an easy letter to write. “Be glad to,” Broussard said pleasantly, thinking that Harvey and Fanelli deserved each other.
Brooks started to say something but was interrupted by Broussard’s pager.
“Hold that thought, Brookie. Zin, I’ll be right back.”
Broussard checked the number displayed on the pager and headed for the cash register, where Grandma O was making change for a couple of well-scrubbed guys in three-piece suits. Without being asked, she brought the phone up from under the register and plopped it on the counter.
He punched in the number he’d been given and reached Gatlin in the middle of the first ring. “Phillip . . . Andy.”
“Anything useful develop on that night clerk?” Gatlin asked, his voice barely audible over the restaurant noise.
“You gonna be free around one-thirty?”
“I could be.”
“Come on by my office and we’ll discuss it.”
Returning to the table, Broussard found only Brooks.
“Fanelli had to leave. He said to give you his thanks. No crisis, I hope.”
“No more than usual. I do need to get back, though.”
“No problem. I’m finished.”
Seeing that Grandma O was being kept busy at the register, they didn’t wait for the check but went to her instead.
“You two tryin’ to get out before Ah see if you ate everything?” she asked, her dark eyes hooded. Not finishing your food at Grandma O’s was a sin worse than any Moses brought down from the mount.
“Our plates are so clean, you might not even have to wash ’em,” Broussard said, getting out his wallet.
Grandma O fished in her apron for the checks. “City Boy, you owe me seven dollars an’ fifty cents.” Looking kindly at Brooks, she added, “Dr. Brooks, Ah don’ seem to have one for you.”
Upon reaching the hotel, Brooks said, “Think I’ll go to my room and look over the program and read some abstracts. Made any plans for dinner?”
“I’ve agreed to go with Leo Fleming. But you’re welcome to come along. In fact, I wish you would.”
Despite the uncomfortable lunch they’d had, Broussard was not about to start ignoring his old friend. Besides, with Leo present, there’d be no long silences.
“Okay, sure, why not.”
“We’re gonna meet here at six.”
“Right . . . see you then.” Brooks took a few steps toward the elevators, then stopped abruptly and came back, his hand going to his inside jacket pocket. “Almost forgot. I brought this for you.”
He handed Broussard a textured white folder. In it was a picture of a younger Crandall Brooks in a tux and, beside him, Susan Brooks, wearing a low-cut black dress, her blond hair softly framing her face. Behind them were some friends, glasses raised in a toast.
“Considering that you knew Susan even before I did, I thought you might like to have this to remember her. It was taken at a party celebrating our twentieth anniversary. I thought she looked particularly beautiful that night.”
Broussard stared at a Susan Brooks that looked so healthy and so vital, it was hard to believe wayward cells could ever get a foothold in her. Swallowing hard, he said, “It was good of you to think of me. I do want it.”
He watched until Brooks disappeared into the elevator alcove. He then opened the folder and looked again at Susan Brooks’s picture. Though he dealt with death every day, he was no more equipped to accept it in relatives and friends than anyone else and he began to tick off a list in his head: Aubry and Miriam, his parents; Estelle Broussard, the grandmother who had raised him after his parents were killed; Alston Bennet, his forensic pathology mentor; Dick Rails, his gross-anatomy partner in med school; Brad Dunbar, the best radiologist he ever knew and the one who had sponsored his membership in the Greater New Orleans Gourmet Society; Claude and Olivia Duhon; Kurt Halliday; Arthur Jordan . . . and now Susan Brooks. The list was growing steadily longer . . . growing too long . . . growing too fast. With each of these deaths, he’d lost a part of himself. How much could a man lose and still have enough left to keep getting out of bed in the morning?
Suddenly, he felt hemmed in . . . by the hotel, by his life, by events he couldn’t control. Finding the atmosphere in the lobby stale and oppressive, he made for one of the front doors and moved out into the fresh air, except under the huge portico, the air wasn’t so fresh, but was tinged with taxi and limo exhaust fumes. He walked down to the edge of the portico and stepped out into the open, breathing deeply, tired of thinking, tired of responsibility, wanting just to be.
For a while, he watched some sparrows coming and going in the shrubs planted along the hotel, envying them their freedom and their small brains that surely did not bother them with old memories. Eventually, unable to ignore matters at hand, he reluctantly returned to the hotel, where, feeling very lonely, he went up the escalator to the Regency Foyer, hoping that Leo had found his note.
His spirits lifted when he saw Leo by the message board, talking to Hugh Greenwood, the ME from Indianapolis, who was also part of the faculty for the aircraft-accident workshop. Greenwood was clean-shaven, with a hairline rapidly going north. More notably, he had a lacework of fine scars over the lower half of his face that pulled the corners of his thin lips into a look of perpetual disapproval that often made people who didn’t know him uncomfortable. It was his personality that made people who did know him uncomfortable.
“Hello, Andrew,” Greenwood said. “I see from the paper you had an interesting day Saturday.”
“You mean that murder?”
“Scrabble letters, the article said. That’s a new twist.”
“And we had another one this mornin’.”
“Same guy?” Fleming asked.
“Looks like it. He left us some more letters.”
“Now you see, it’s just like I was telling Leo before you walked up. You’re a lucky guy.”
“How so?”
“Your jurisdiction is one of the most interesting cities in the country and now you’ve got the rarest of criminals . . . a serial killer with a genuine sense of theater.”
“Why don’t I feel lucky?”
“Because you’re caught up in the moment. If you could step back and view it, you’d appreciate the drama . . . the human spectacle.”
Broussard did not answer right away, but spent a moment trying to figure out if Greenwood was pulling his leg. With him, you could never be sure. Unable to decide, he simply said, “You still gonna be here Wednesday?”
“Sure, why?”
“That’s when the psychiatry and behavioral science folks’ll be havin’ their business meetin’ and I was thinkin’ I’d get ’em to examine you before they got started.”
Greenwood grinned, his scars making it look more like he’d pinched his finger in a car door.
Broussard looked at Fleming. “Leo, I wonder if you’d have time to come over to my office and give me your opinion on somethin’ related to the case?”
“Now?”
“If you’re free.”
“Am I gonna have to come back and testify when it comes to trial?”
“Way too soon to know. I’ll try to keep you out of it, but if the defense wants to challenge your conclusion—whatever that’s gonna be—I . . .”
“No, no. I want to come back. I like this town.”
“You have things to discuss, so I’ll leave you to it,” Green-wood said.
Fearing that Greenwood might feel as though he’d been brushed off, Broussard said, “Hugh, if you don’t have plans, come to dinner with us tonight.”
“I’d like to, but an old college chum of mine lives here and he and his wife are taking me out.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“All right. I’m sure I’ll see you around. We’ll fill in the details later.”
Broussard and Fleming started for the escalator. Green-wood headed for a telephone. As he passed a potted bamboo a few steps from where they’d all been talking, someone without an ID badge stepped out and said, “Excuse me, who was that with Broussard?”
“Leo Fleming,” Greenwood said.
“What does he do?”
“He’s a forensic anthropologist.”
“Thanks.”
Watching him walk away, Greenwood shook his head. A ponytail . . . on a grown man.
5
After leaving the scene of the second murder, Kit went back to her office and called the vet to check on Lucky. She then spent the morning trying to write up a suicide case she’d investigated the previous week, a dentist who had killed himself by shoving a dental drill into his brain through a skull defect he’d had since birth. It was truly incredible some of the ways people chose to do away with themselves. This case would most certainly go into her book. It had taken far longer to write this report than usual because her pen often strayed to the margin of the paper, as it was doing now.
KOJE . . .
What the devil did it mean? And why was the killer leaving fewer letters? Suppose it was all some demented trick, meaningless events intended to drive them as mad as he was. She could picture the killer, hunched over his beer in the dark corner of a sleazy bar, a self-satisfied smile on his ugly kisser.
Except that wasn’t what the evidence suggested. He probably wasn’t ugly. More likely, he was pleasant looking, or at least respectable in appearance. And that wasn’t surprising. The Ted Bundys were more common than the Henry Lee Lucases. “He was a nice man who never bothered anybody” . . . if you don’t count those sixteen mutilated corpses.
KOJE the first time . . . KOJ the second.
Hmmmm.
The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea suggested by Gatlin at the second murder scene—that the killer was leaving fewer letters to indicate he was going to strike two more times. Did that mean KOJE meant nothing? Could he have used any four letters? No . . . Broussard was right: They were taped together to keep them in order, which meant KOJE was a separate message.
She was so deep in thought the sound of the telephone made her start. “Kit Franklyn.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Teddy. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Is something wrong?”
“Why would something have to be wrong for me to call you?”
“It wouldn’t, but we just saw each other a few hours ago.”
“Maybe I missed you.”
“Sure you did. C’mon, LaBiche, what’s this all about?”
“Did you talk to the animal hospital this morning?”
“Yeah, he’s still doing well.”
“I’m glad.”
“But we found another body, and some more letters . . . KOJ this time.”
“That’s awful. So you were right when you predicted it’d happen again. Actually, that’s why I called. I had a thought about those letters.”
“Great. I could use a new slant. It’s a puzzle about to drive me nuts. What have you got?”
“Maybe you’re concentrating on the wrong thing.”
“How so?”
“Those wooden blocks have more than letters on them. They also have the little numbers you use to keep score.”
Kit was surprised she hadn’t thought of the numbers herself or that it hadn’t occurred to either Gatlin or Broussard. But of course, for the most part, they hadn’t been looking at the actual tiles. Saturday, Gatlin had written the letters on a chalkboard, and she’d been looking at them on her legal pad. She felt a brief rush of excitement, then realized four numbers were as puzzling as four letters that didn’t spell anything. Unless . . .
“Is there more?”
“Hey, I’m surprised I came up with that.”
“I don’t suppose you know what the values are for KOJE.”
“Vowels are one each, but I don’t remember the others.”
“I think the J is worth eight. Why is there never a Scrabble set around when you need one?”
“I have to get back to work. Hope I helped.”
“At least you’ve given me a new way to look at the problem. If you come up with anything else, call me.”
“I wouldn’t hang around the phone waiting. One idea a week is about my limit.”
“Don’t let ’em get behind you.”
“I won’t. You be careful, too.”
Kit hung up and quickly wrote on her legal pad:
KOJE ?181
If she was home, it’d be easy to get the value of K and verify the J was an eight. Maybe she should just do that—go home and look. Lot of trouble, though, for something that might not even be a real lead. She put her elbow on the desk, rested her cheek on her hand, and stared at the paper. Probably she’d just wait until tonight, get out the Scrabble set, and look.
Her finger began to twirl a lock of her hair until she caught herself at it and quit. It was hard enough to get her hair to lie right without that.
Her fingers began to drum on the desk. Tonight was hours away. . . .
Drum . . . drum . . . drum.
She could guess at the value for K and see what the entire number looked like. . . . Bad idea. Why waste time thinking about the wrong number?
Drum . . . drum . . . drum.
She stopped drumming, got out the Yellow Pages, and looked up the number of the store where she’d bought the Scrabble set on Saturday, which according to their ad in the phone book, shipped anywhere.
Someone with the voice of a child picked up and said, “Hello” without reciting the store’s name. Kit figured she either had the wrong number or some customer’s kid had gotten to the phone. “Is this Happy Pastimes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is there an adult there?”
“Like, how old a person did you want?”
“Are you a clerk?”
“Uh-huh.”
Kit briefly wondered what the applicant pool was like when this guy got hired. “I wonder if you’d do me a favor. I need to know how many points the K and the J are worth in Scrabble.”
“Gee lady, I don’t have any idea.”
“I didn’t think you’d know without looking. Could you check?”
“Like in some big book?”
“One of the Scrabble sets in stock might be a more direct approach.”
“They’re all sealed up.”
“Could you open one?”
“I’m not supposed to do that. Plastic gets torn, that thing’ll sit on the shelf like it’s diseased. Won’t nobody buy it.”
“Suppose I buy it.”
“Then you can do anything you want with it.”
“Can I make the purchase over the phone?”
“If you got a MasterCard, Visa, or American Express.”
“MasterCard.”
“You want the deluxe model or the regular?”
“Regular, or anything cheaper.”
After the kid took her card number, he said, “Where do you want this sent?”
“I don’t. I just want you to open it and tell me what the point values are for the K and J.” There was a silence on the other end. “Hello . . . you there? Hello . . .”
“You gonna pick it up?” the kid asked.
“No. I really don’t want it.”
“If you’re not gonna come in, I have to ship it.”
“You keep it. You don’t want it, gi
ve it to a friend.”
“Lady, it’s gotta go either in ‘Will call’ or ‘To be shipped.’ You don’t come in, I can’t not send it. We got forms we gotta fill out. I don’t follow procedure and fill out all my forms, I could get canned. I don’t send it anywhere, I got nothin’ to put on one of my forms.”
To get over this impasse, Kit gave the kid her address. “Now will you open it and answer my question?”
“Okay.”
For a minute or two, there was no sound, then she heard the crinkle of plastic wrap, the sound of the lid coming off, then some noise she couldn’t identify. Finally, the kid’s voice came back on.
“The J is worth eight points and the F is worth four.”
“I didn’t want the F, I wanted the K.”
In the background, Kit heard a voice say, “Young man, are you going to be on that phone all day?”
“No ma’am,” the kid said. “I’m finished right now.”
Kit was afraid he was going to hang up, but he came back with the news that the K was worth six points. Before she could say thanks, he was gone. What an ordeal. But she had what she wanted.
KOJE 6181
Now what? She stared at the four letters and four numbers, waiting for a thunderclap of insight.
Automobile license plates.
Except in license plates, the maximum combination of letters and numbers was seven, with the standard pattern, at least for cars, being three numbers, a letter, and three more numbers, an arrangement that didn’t speak to her needs at all.
Vanity plates—they could have any combination of letters and numbers up to seven places.
She reached for the phone and called a friend in motor-vehicle registration who checked the computer and found there were no Louisiana plates with the sequence KOJE or 6181.
She went back to staring at her legal pad and drumming on the desk. Getting nothing out of the numbers, she went back to thinking about the letters. KOJE—that sort of sounded Japanese, like a town maybe. She got up and went down the hall to see Margaret, the senior forensic secretary.
The forensic office had two secretaries, Margaret Thibideaux and Jolanda Sizemore. Margaret had been there even before Broussard. And when Kit had first arrived and begun working around her, Phil Gatlin, and Broussard, with their long history together, she’d imagined herself associating with the human equivalent of old-growth redwoods. Margaret, in fact, fostered this impression by never calling Jolanda, a ten-year veteran of the forensic office, by name, always referring to her instead as “the new girl.”
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