New Orleans Requiem

by D. J. Donaldson

  Not only had he not put the slide in there; he’d never even seen it before. Then he remembered. . . . It was last spring, the day Charlie Franks, the deputy medical examiner, had come over to return the rice cooker he’d let Franks’s wife try before she bought one. Franks must have had a camera with him.

  “Believe me,” Broussard said, embarrassed that his concern for a helpless animal should be displayed so publicly, “I wasn’t the one who put this slide in. But since it is in, you should know that I wasn’t gettin’ the cat down; I was puttin’ him up there.”

  It was exactly the right thing to say and the crowd warmed to him even more than they had before. Near the back of the room, Franks shook his head in admiration of Broussard’s ability to improvise under pressure. Sitting next to him, Kit, too, was impressed. Considering how slow and dull-witted he’d felt all morning, Broussard had even amazed himself.

  Usually, he was so well prepared and so suited to this sort of thing, he could shift into automatic and glide through even an hour talk without a hitch. But today, he felt seconds away from total disaster, his mind sending out warnings of imminent shutdown. When he left one slide and proceeded to the next, he was sorely afraid he might not remember what he intended to say.

  All because of those hairs . . . Something there wasn’t right. Or maybe he wasn’t right. God knows, this talk was going rotten. Somehow, he got to the end, his brain so numb, he barely remembered the trip. Surprisingly, there was much applause. His talk was the last one before the afternoon break and he headed directly for the foyer, wanting to be out of the room.

  “Great save, Andy,” Franks said, following him into the foyer.

  Broussard turned and wagged a finger in Franks’s grinning mug. “Charlie, I’m gonna get you for this.”

  “Apparently, you’re forgetting that letter inviting me to give the plenary lecture at the international Forensic congress in Rio last year.”

  “I stopped you before you ordered your plane ticket.”

  “Now we’re even.”

  “I don’t think so. That letter was just between you and me. You pulled your shenanigan in public. And I was already barely keepin’ my head above water. You nearly sank me.”

  “Didn’t see you in any trouble from where I sat,” Franks said.

  “Me, neither,” Kit echoed. “It was a great talk.”

  “Unprincipled, if you ask me,” a voice said from behind Broussard.

  He turned to confront a hefty fellow in horn-rimmed glasses who had a narrow mustache that he wore low on his lip, except where it rose in a small central triangle to meet his nose. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and vest laced with pinstripes and having lapels so wide, he looked like a Mafia lawyer from the forties. Actually, it was someone far worse: Jason Harvey—accompanied by Zin Fanelli.

  “Unprincipled,” Broussard said coldly. “In what way?”

  “Getting sympathy by using that kitten as a prop. Oh, you’re clever, I’ll give you that. Pretending you had nothing to do with the slide and then putting that reverse spin on it. Clever but, as I said, unprincipled.”

  Charlie Franks stepped forward. “For your information, I—”

  He was interrupted by Broussard’s raised hand. “Guess I should give that some thought,” Broussard said, “comin’ as it does from such an expert on lack of principles.”

  Harvey let him have that one and shifted to another front. “I hear you’re not having much success catching that killer. How many is it now . . . two? Soon to be three, according to the paper. I hope when that third one occurs, you don’t have any trouble sleeping at night. Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time thinking about ways to ingratiate yourself with the membership, you’d have learned something from the bodies the police could use. Unless, of course, you’re in over your head, which I suppose is the case, since you had to call in Fleming for help. Fanelli here says you never were very good with knife wounds.”

  Fanelli’s eyes widened and he began to shake his head in disavowal of Harvey’s remark, but he had to stop when Harvey looked at him.

  “I’ll be interested in your paper Thursday,” Harvey said. “I hope it can stand close scrutiny.”

  Harvey turned and walked away, leaving Franks with his fists clenched. “Where does a forensic whore like that get off criticizing anybody?” Franks said.

  Broussard put his hand on Franks’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Charlie. We’ll just consider the source and forget it. Now I’m goin’ back inside and hear the next talk. You two comin’?”

  Franks nodded, but Kit said, “Can’t. I’ve got an appointment at the newspaper.”

  “We’re gettin’ up a group for dinner,” Broussard said. “You should come.”

  “Where and when?”

  “Lobby, by the escalator, at ten to six. Better be on time, ’cause we’re gonna take the hotel shuttle and it won’t wait.”

  8

  Kit had never been to the newspaper offices and she soon wished she had obtained directions from Terry, for the city’s expressways had chopped up Howard Avenue so badly she could not follow it directly to her destination. When she finally saw the lighthouse-like clock tower with TIMES-PICAYUNE lettered across it, she felt a flood of relief.

  Two things impressed her upon entering the light, airy lobby: the extremely tall escalators against the right and left walls and an unusual sweet smell she concluded was likely printer’s ink. Following Terry’s instructions, she took the escalator to the third floor and found her way to the newsroom, a football-sized space divided into a hundred cubicles by partitions so low you could see the entire operation from any position. It was not particularly noisy, but Kit still felt that she would have trouble concentrating without real walls around her, a longing for the safety of the womb, perhaps.

  She gave her name to the woman at the reception desk, stated the reason for her visit, and was waved inside, where she followed the dirty blue-green carpet through the heart of the newsroom to the library. Happily, she did not run into Nick Lawson.

  Terry Yardley was at her desk going over a pile of file folders with clippings in them. Even women who prefer slacks will occasionally wear a skirt, but to Kit’s recollection, Terry Yardley never did, which led Kit to suspect she was hiding something. But it would have taken a man a long time to catch on to that, so there must have been some other explanation for her perpetual lack of male companionship. A good possibility was her perfume, which was so strong that after a few minutes with her, you could taste it. Seeing Kit, she stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Girl, you look so good.”

  “So do you.”

  Terry patted her tucked hairdo, from which several pencils protruded. “I’m tryin’ the honey blond look. Ash blond got me nothin’.”

  “How have you been?”

  “I’ll sum it up for you. I just about got enough saved for a boob job and now I’m gettin’ afraid to have it done . . . all that stuff on TV.”

  “Can you even get implants anymore?”

  “Some kinds, but I dunno. . . .”

  “So take a trip with your money.”

  “When you come back from a trip, your money’s gone and you still look crappy in a sweater. But I’ve been thinkin’ . . . what do you suppose a boob job looks like when you get old, when you got this wrinkled little body and these big firm headlights? That could look real weird. I mean, I wouldn’t want some mortician callin’ all his friends over for a look.” Her eyes went to Kit’s chest.

  “They’re real,” Kit said, reading Terry’s mind.

  “You’re lucky.” Suddenly, she clapped her hands together. “Enough about tits. You wanted some prints.” She opened a drawer in her desk, took out three photographs, and handed them to Kit, who looked at each of them and said, “Terry, they couldn’t be better. I really owe you.”

  “I like bein’ owed.”

  “Good, then maybe I can add some to my account. What can you tell me about Nick Lawson?”

  Terry’s eyes widened wit
h pleasure at the question. She motioned Kit into the chair beside her desk, leaned over, and said in a conspiratorial voice, “He’s a good-lookin’ guy, you know that, sittin’ in his red two-seater, the top down, Foster Grants tilted onto his head, that ‘go to hell’ ponytail . . . Heady stuff, for some women. Actually, I’m surprised he’s still alive.”

  “Why’s that?” Kit said, Terry’s perfume faintly bitter in her mouth.

  “I figured some female would have shot him or he’d have killed himself with the crazy stuff he does.”

  “Details, Yardley, details.”

  “He’s a real rake, usually stringin’ two or three women along at a time. There’s a couple I could name here at the paper who’d like to put his balls in a nutcracker.”

  “Not you?”

  “Much as I’m attracted to toxic men, that’s one I’ve managed to avoid.”

  “What do you mean, ‘crazy stuff he does’?”

  “He’s an adrenaline junkie. Always jumpin’ out of airplanes or white-water kayakin’ or some other nutty activity. Last year, he was out for a month with an allergic reaction to a shot they gave him when he got bit at a Texas rattlesnake-baggin’ contest. If that happened to any normal person, they’d have learned a lesson. . . . No, that’s not true, any normal person wouldn’t have been baggin’ snakes in the first place.”

  Kit had asked about Lawson out of mild curiosity, her interest piqued by his recent articles on the killer she was chasing and their run-in at the first murder. Now, with what Terry had just said, a crazy idea entered Kit’s head.

  Terry punched at the side of her head with her finger. “Somethin’ very wrong up here with that guy, which I guess explains why he stays in the cop shop.”

  “Cop shop?”

  “Police beat. He could make a lot more money coverin’ business or politics.” Her eyes narrowed and she shifted to a slightly mocking tone. “Why all the interest in Lawson? You wouldn’t be after his bod would you . . . ’cause, like I said, he’s—”

  “Hardly. He’s been putting a lot of privileged information in his articles about those murders and we’d like to know where he’s getting it.”

  Terry’s brow wrinkled. “Can’t help you there, ’cause I don’t know. And I’m glad. ’Cause if I did, it’d put me in kind of a spot, since I work for the paper too, know what I mean?”

  “Sure. I hope you don’t feel I’ve tricked you or anything. That wasn’t my intent. I should have explained the situation before quizzing you. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t say anything that’d hurt the paper, did I?”

  “Not at all. There’s a Forensic convention in town, so I’m going to be pretty busy this week. But how about I take you to lunch next Tuesday . . . and no questions about the paper?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Walking to her car, Kit tried to talk herself out of the wild idea ricocheting through her brain. Lawson was an adrenaline junkie. Where most people hated the racing heart, the flushed face, and the wet palms fear brought on, Lawson loved it. She knew the type. They aren’t suicidal. They don’t want to die. They just can’t live without risk. Was it possible that he . . .

  No. . . . It was ridiculous to think . . .

  But was it ridiculous? Was it really so farfetched to believe Nick Lawson might be the killer? That would explain his presence at both scenes and how he knew so much. Then, too, there were the Scrabble tiles. That clue had led directly to the place where he worked. Maybe he’d run out of dangerous stunts and could no longer get the rush he needed from things he’d already tried. This could be the ultimate risk, playing games with the police with his life at stake. And it wouldn’t be over in a few minutes. Every day, there’d be the possibility he’d be caught. The risk wasn’t confined to a few minutes; it would exist at some level every minute of every day, spiking each time he passed a cop.

  Before leaving the building, Kit stopped at the reception desk in the lobby and spent a few minutes with a phone book. In her car, she pulled her city map from the glove compartment, studied it for several minutes, then drove away, leaving a tiny amount of rubber on the asphalt.

  THE ADDRESS SHE’D FOUND for Nick Lawson turned out to be a small two-story apartment building in Harahan called the Kitura. Lawson’s decision to remain in the cop shop, coupled with his taste for adventure, apparently left him without much housing money, for the Kitura was a drab and desolate place. There were ten apartments: five up and five down. The front doors of the upper five opened onto a covered walkway that functioned as the roof for a similar walk serving the lower apartments.

  At each end of the building, there was a simple black metal staircase leading to the upper level. The building was clothed in a nice old brick with pleasing soft edges, but the trim and the doors were a hideous shade of turquoise. Landscaping was practically nonexistent—a dozen or so tiny boxwoods against the slab foundation and a foot-wide strip of brown grass between the walk in front of the building and its parking lot. Scattered over the grounds were bags and papers from a variety of fast-food joints.

  There were two cars in the parking lot, neither of them red. She followed the drive around to the rear where there were a few more lined parking spaces and a blue Dumpster. Wherever Lawson was, he wasn’t home.

  Kit felt that she’d uncovered some tantalizing stuff and she longed to find Broussard and discuss it. At the same time, she was reluctant to do so, mostly because of the supposedly inspirational Babe Ruth anecdotes he dispensed when he thought you’d made an ass of yourself and needed bucking up. So far, she had been Ruthed twice and she did not want it to happen again. Then, too, she was not unaware that her desire to run to him with some half-developed ideas was that same old desire for a pat on the head. Ugggh.

  “ARE WE ALL TOGETHER?” Kit said, astonished at the number of people gathered by the escalator.

  “Leo invited some of his students and they invited some of their friends,” Broussard explained.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Fleming said.

  “Not at all. It’ll be fun.”

  Charlie Franks was standing by two older men she didn’t recognize. One of them was looking at her as though they knew each other.

  “Hello, Kit,” he said, extending his hand. “How are you liking that house of yours?”

  Ah . . . of course. She took his hand. “Dr. Brooks. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Forget that Dr. stuff. Call me Brookie.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not convinced you can. Show me.”

  It was difficult to call someone she barely knew by such a familiar name, but he gave her no choice. “Brookie . . . As for the house, I love it.” Broussard had told her about Brooks’s recent loss and she considered saying something appropriate. But he seemed in such good spirits, she decided not to bring it up.

  “I don’t believe you know Hugh Greenwood,” Broussard said. “Hugh, this is Kit Franklyn, my suicide investigator.”

  “A pleasure,” Greenwood said, his faintly scarred face giving no indication of pleasure.

  “That’s it . . . everybody’s here,” Fleming announced. “There’s already a full load out by the shuttle, so we’ll have to walk.”

  The students did not wait for the senior members of the party to lead the way, but went for the door in a happy noisy rush. On Poydras, they turned toward the Quarter like lemmings.

  The dozen or so students moved as a unit, hanging together so all could hear whatever was said. The others paired off: Charlie Franks with Hugh Greenwood; Kit and Broussard; Leo Fleming and Crandall Brooks bringing up the rear.

  Kit had obtained three prints of the Heartbeats from Terry Yardley, one for herself, one for Broussard, and one for Gatlin. Despite having already decided it would be wise to keep them to herself until she’d done some more legwork, she’d brought Broussard’s along in her bag, putting it in an envelope with his copy of the newspaper article.

  “You know what tonight is?” Broussard
said.

  “What?”

  “The first murder occurred early Saturday morning and the second, early Monday, a two-day interval. And this is Tuesday. . . .”

  “You think we’re due for number three?”

  “He’s a guy who likes patterns, so if there’s gonna be a third one, I’d say it’s worth considerin’.”

  Kit had been so occupied with the Scrabble puzzle, she hadn’t given any thought to when the killer might strike again. Broussard’s concern seemed reasonable.

  “Gatlin taking any precautions?”

  “He’s got some men out in plainclothes and he’s set up a quick-response plan to blanket any area where they think he’s been.”

  Greenwood turned and began walking backward, his hands in his pockets. “The use of a knife is a real art,” he said. “I once saw some Turkish knife fighters in training, and I swear they were poetry in motion. With guns, there’s no real involvement in what happens. They require nothing of the operator. You can drop it and it’ll go off. But it takes knowledge and skill to use a knife properly. In hand-to-hand combat, when you strike a lethal blow with a knife, it makes you want to throw your head back and howl like an animal. There’s no greater feeling in the world—not sex, not a good bowel movement, nothing.”

  Greenwood faced forward and continued walking, leaving Kit and Charlie to exchange surprised looks. His remark had no effect on Broussard. Kit looked back to see if Fleming and Brooks had heard it, and Brooks said, “If I had to die at the hands of a killer, I’d rather it be by a bullet than a knife. There’s something about being penetrated by a blade . . . I don’t know . . . maybe it’s the comparative size of the invading object, or maybe, like Hugh said, it’s the idea that with a knife there’s an intelligence guiding it all the way, making the whole thing more personal.” He shivered. “Is that a typical reaction or just me? What does everyone else think? . . . Kit?”

  “Great choices. But I agree, a knife is worse.”

  “Andy?”

  “I don’t like either one.”