Another guy, carrying a folded newspaper under his arm, came down the Riverwalk, opposite from the direction Bouchet was facing. He wasn’t strolling, like the first guy, but was moving briskly.
Maybe he should just put his foot down, demand she give it up. ’Course she don’t take to that approach too good. He did that, she’d probably sign up for two courses next time. It was bad the house was dirty, but even worse, she’d been actin’ like she thought he was . . . dull. Dull for Christ’s sake, as if he hadn’t bowled 250 for the first time in his life last week. And she talked like it was nothin’. That simply ain’t normal.
As his view of the fellow who had just passed became partially obscured by the supporting poles of the canopied staging area for the riverboats, Bouchet’s CB radio crackled to life. “Hairless, this is Father Joe. They don’t make a jock that small, so you’ll have to play without one.”
Grinning, Bouchet turned off his portable Sony and reached for the CB mike. “Father Joe, there’s a guy here wants to talk to you about some altar boys in Cleveland. What should I tell him?”
“The truth, son, the truth . . . that Father Joe drowned last year in the baptismal pool. Will be there in ten minutes, so work fast.”
No two ways about it, Bouchet thought, grinning as he hung up the mike, Haskins was plain nuts.
He turned on the Sony and fiddled with the dial, trying to get rid of the hiss it was making whenever a singer used a word with s in it. He didn’t get it perfect, but it improved to where the sound didn’t make him want to smash it on the cement. Probably, he should start thinking about rounding up a replacement.
He looked up and saw the fellow who had been walking fast now coming his way. This time, he wasn’t carrying anything. But he was walking even faster than before. At the little building where they sell riverboat tickets during the day, he turned and headed down the riverfront extension of Toulouse Street, toward Decatur.
Bouchet raised his binoculars and looked toward the promontory. The fellow who was standing there earlier was no longer around. Shit. He should have been paying attention instead of fooling around with Haskins and the radio. And the city needed to get that damn toolshed out of the way. Very unlikely that the guy had gone onto the Cotton Blossom, but he ought to check.
He pulled his flashlight from under the seat, reached for his pistol in the glove compartment, and got out of the truck. Shoving the gun in his back pocket, he set out for the Cotton Blossom. When he reached the gazebo, he saw the fellow he was looking for, bent over, holding his stomach like he was having cramps.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?”
The fellow groaned and Bouchet stepped up and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “You need a doctor?”
He tried to raise himself but could get his eyes no higher than Bouchet’s chest. “Maybe you should lie down so I can—”
Suddenly, the fellow was draped all over him. For a split second, Bouchet thought the guy had collapsed, but then he felt a blow to his midsection, like the guy had slugged him. He felt a peculiar stirring sensation deep inside.
The fellow stepped back and looked at Bouchet, a cool face with no emotion in it. Puzzled, Bouchet’s eyes moved downward, to see why he felt so strange. At practically the same instant that he saw the blue towel wrapped around the fellow’s hand and the knife, its blade a dull red in the dim light, the image began to fog over like a bathroom mirror when the shower’s on. Though he was sinking to the ground, he felt as if a hand was pulling him upward. As his life poured into the sac around his heart, he said one word: “Maggie.”
10
From all appearances, Mike Haskins was a good cop—trim physique, sharp creases in his uniform, well groomed, although Gatlin thought he’d do well to ease up on the shellac or whatever it was that held his hair so stiffly.
“I talked to him on his CB radio at two-twenty,” Haskins said. “And I pulled up at his truck at exactly two-thirty, but he wasn’t there. It couldn’t have been more than another two or three minutes before I found him. . . . I checked his pulse, then I went to my car and called in. . . . Ten lousy minutes . . . how can something like this happen in just ten lousy minutes?”
It was a question Gatlin had often asked himself over the years, but he, too, was still looking for the answer. “I know it doesn’t help much,” he said, “but your quick call-in could help nail the guy who did it.”
Haskins looked up, his eyes swimming. “You’re right. It doesn’t help much.”
From over Haskins’s shoulder, Gatlin saw Broussard coming toward them. “Stick around, will you? I may have a few more questions.”
Haskins nodded and slowly walked back to his patrol car down near the Natchez, head hanging.
“Two letters this time?” Broussard asked, out of breath.
“Take a look. Ray, hold up a minute, will you, so Andy can get in there.”
Jamison, the police photographer, dropped his camera to his chest. “I’m finished anyway, unless you want something exotic. How you doing, Andy?”
“Gettin’ by, Ray, gettin’ by.”
“You two enjoy yourself. I’m going home and play spoons with the wife.”
Gatlin and Broussard exchanged a look of incomprehension at Jamison’s remark and Gatlin stood aside so the old pathologist could see the body, which lay faceup on the bricks of the Riverwalk, one lidless eye examining the low-slung clouds overhead. On the victim’s chest was a section of newspaper with two Scrabble tiles on it; a K and an O . . . and more. Also on the newspaper was a bloody knife.
“Why the gift?” Gatlin asked, echoing the question running through Broussard’s mind.
“If this was the fourth victim,” Broussard said, “I’d guess it was a going-away present. But now, I dunno. . . .”
Broussard put his bag down on the bricks, got out his padded wooden block, and knelt by the body. He felt for a pulse at the neck and said, “He’s officially dead.”
Gatlin looked at his watch and jotted in his little notebook. “We know almost exactly when it happened,” he said. “Friend of his on the harbor police was in radio contact with him ten minutes before he found him like this. Died without ever getting to his gun.”
“He’s armed?”
“Had a pistol in his back pocket. Killer probably never even knew it.”
Broussard played his penlight onto the Scrabble tiles and bent to look at them. What he saw erased the gnawing self-doubts he’d been having. “There’s another hair,” he said, looking up.
“I know,” Gatlin replied. “One hair could be a chance occurrence, two . . . still could be chance, but three?”
“He’s leavin’ ’em on purpose,” Broussard said, shamefully excited over this discovery. “That’s why they haven’t added up to anything.”
“I don’t like being toyed with,” Gatlin said grimly.
Broussard got to his feet, breathing hard. “I do,” he said, “and so should you. Every little thing he does like this is a product of who he is. The more he plays with us, the more he gives us to work with.”
Broussard was no longer tired, but felt energized, for now he saw the killer more clearly. He glanced at the face of the body on the bricks, regretting that it had taken another life to bring him to this better understanding. And he vowed there would not be a number four.
“Which brings us back to the knife,” Gatlin said. “Why leave it if he’s going to need it again?”
“Here’s Kit,” Broussard said. “Let’s ask her.”
“Ask me what?” Kit said, hurrying from the steps leading to the riverfront extension of St. Louis Street. Hesitantly, she looked past the two men, at the body, and her face paled. Another memory to store. “Who is he?”
“Riverboat security guard,” Gatlin said. “We got a break this time. He was found by a harbor cop minutes after it happened. We got men all over the area interviewing and taking names of everybody on foot.”
“Let’s hope he didn’t make it to his car,” Kit said, feeling this de
ath more keenly than either of the others, for had she not let Nick Lawson get away earlier, this might never have happened.
“Doc, you in there?”
Gatlin had said something to her that had been lost in her thoughts about Lawson. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“He left the knife. We were wondering why.”
She looked again at the body and wished she hadn’t. “Did you read Nick Lawson’s article after the second murder?” she asked.
“Every word.”
“Remember how he mentioned that Leo Fleming had been brought in as a consultant?”
Gatlin nodded, wondering where she was going with this.
“It’s almost as if the killer knew what we learned from Fleming . . . that it was a serrated knife. Now, he’s giving us the knife. . . . It is serrated?”
Gatlin nodded.
“He’s given us the knife to show us it won’t help.”
“We got another hair, too.”
“Another one . . . that seems like—”
“He’s leaving them on purpose. Yeah, we noticed.”
“Lieutenant.”
They all turned at the voice.
“Andy, Kit, this is Mike Haskins,” Gatlin said, “the patrolman who found the body. What is it, Mike?”
“I just remembered . . . when I was on Decatur on my way here, I saw a guy cross the street at St. Louis, coming from this direction. He was a little taller than average, with a black mustache and straight black hair. He was wearing a brown-checked sport coat and brown slacks and was carrying an oxblood briefcase. And he was clearly in a hurry.”
Kit relaxed a little. If that had been the killer, she was wrong about Lawson.
“Mind if I take those letters back to my office?” Broussard said.
“Now?”
“No way I can get back to sleep. And I want to see that hair. I’ll take the knife too, if you like and see what Leo makes of it. You can check it for prints later, though I doubt you’ll find any.”
“Do that.”
Broussard put on a pair of rubber gloves, whose pungent odor mixed with the faint smell of creosote in the air. He put the Scrabble tiles and the knife in separate plastic bags from his forensic kit, then secured a paper bag over each of the victim’s hands.
Wearing cotton gloves, Gatlin picked up the newspaper and carefully folded it.
“What paper is it?” Kit asked.
Gatlin held it up to the light filtering down from a pole overhead. “Friday’s. Why?”
“No reason.”
He looked at her curiously for a second, then indicated to the ambulance attendants lounging at the river guardrail that they could load the body.
“What say we get together and kick around whatever we got at ten o’clock?” Gatlin said.
Broussard shook his head. “Can’t. I’m in court tomorrow mornin’ and I’ll need time to get Leo’s opinion of the knife. One-thirty’d be better.”
With some doubt cast over her idea about Lawson, Kit decided to keep it to herself a while longer. There being nothing further for her to do, she went back to her car. While still several yards from it, she saw through the rear window that someone was sitting in the front passenger seat. With a half dozen cops nearby protecting the crime scene, she approached her car more boldly than she would have had they not been there. Instead of going to the driver’s side, she veered to the right to see who the devil it was that thought so little of private property.
She recognized him even before he turned to look at her: Nick Lawson. He rolled down the window.
“You really should lock your car when you leave it.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Waiting for you. Get in.”
“No. You come out here.”
He opened the door and Kit backed up farther than was strictly necessary to get out of the way.
“Why are you so jumpy?” he asked, getting out and closing the door.
“I’m not. Now tell me what you want.”
He looked back at the stretcher being loaded. “Is that number three?”
Kit did not respond.
“Of course it is,” he said. “Why else would you be here?”
“I suppose you were just driving by and saw all the action.”
“Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened this time. Not that I wasn’t expecting something.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Kit said. “So you might as well forget it.”
Lawson gave her a big smile and raised the spiral pad and manila folder in his left hand. From the folder he removed a glossy picture and showed it to her. “What’s this all about?”
Kit felt her jaw drop. It was a copy of the picture Terry Yardley had printed for her. “Where’d you get that?” She reached for it, but Lawson pulled it back, grinning broadly.
“You didn’t think you could come into my territory and get away with something like this without me knowing about it, did you?”
“Actually, I don’t think about you at all,” Kit said, folding her arms in front of her.
“Not even a little?” Lawson coaxed.
“Not at all,” she responded in measured tones.
The sly expression he always wore left his face and Kit was surprised to see that under it, he wasn’t bad-looking. “I don’t enjoy making enemies,” he said, omitting the bantering tone he’d been using. “I’d much rather have friends, and I was hoping we could declare a truce . . . maybe help each other. I’ve got a lot of contacts in the city and I sometimes hear things you might find useful. So I was thinking that we could sort of work together. I wouldn’t expect you to tell me anything you considered sensitive. Just help me out with the other things. And to show you I’m willing to reciprocate, I’ll tell you how I got the picture.”
He waited briefly for Kit to answer, then forged ahead. “I was in the photo lab when Terry called down to inquire about it and ask for some prints. The lab is on speaker phone and she mentioned the ME’s office in connection with the request. Then later, I saw you at Terry’s desk. So I just put two and two together. Does it have anything to do with this case?”
Kit’s mind sorted through the implications of what Lawson had said. If he was the killer, he was simply pumping her to find out how far she’d followed the clues he’d been leaving. If he wasn’t the killer, he was merely being Nick Lawson. Either way, he wasn’t going to get anything.
“You’re a clever man. You figure it out,” she said.
Lawson’s sly look returned. “I’d hoped we could reach an understanding. But apparently that’s not to be. So I guess I’ll just have to be clever. See you in the trenches.”
Kit watched him for a few seconds as he walked toward the cops guarding the Riverwalk. Then she got in the car and started the engine. Heading for home, she began to think about the Heartbeats and Lawson’s interest in them. If he was the killer, or even if he wasn’t, it seemed likely they were the path to follow.
IN HIS OFFICE, WITH the city still sleeping, Broussard twisted the fine focus of his microscope, sharpening the image of the third hair. He moved along the shaft to the root, which had the configuration of an actively growing hair—another plucked specimen. He moved back up the shaft and studied it, varying the setting of the iris diaphragm, fiddling with the condenser. Finally, he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his belly, and lapsed into thought, his finger straying to the top of his nose, where he began to stroke the bristly hairs growing from the tip.
This specimen, brown in color, was from a straight-haired Caucasian, all obvious facts, all disappointing. Where was the clue he was certain the killer had included in the selection of this particular hair? There had to be one, for the person behind this was extremely intelligent, of that he was certain. He was equally certain the killer was following a plan that had been worked out to the smallest detail.
This analysis did not permit the existence of a third meaningless hair. Growling aloud, he applied his e
yes again to the microscope and began a millimeter-by-millimeter appraisal of the new hair.
When he leaned back five minutes later, he knew no more than he had earlier. Frustrated and angry, he got up, paced briefly, then went to his desk and sat down. Getting a lemon ball from the glass bowl, he slipped it into his mouth, tilted his chair back, and laced his fingers over his belly. He closed his eyes, trying to just let his mind run free, concentrating on nothing, thinking of nothing.
His new insight into the killer had partially freed him from the crippling self-pity he’d been experiencing, but enough still remained to drag him down. Unable to think of nothing, he thought of the killer. This was war. . . . His enemy was still faceless, but that did not diminish the personal nature of the conflict between them. The Scrabble tiles, the hairs, the knife—every one was a slap in the face, a . . .
His eyes widened and he rocked forward in his chair. Quickly, he went to his microscope and removed the slide containing the hair. He cleaned away the Protex and stretched the hair flat on a fresh slide, fixing it in place with a strip of Magic Tape at each end. From a drawer near the microscope, he got out a Polaroid picture coater and removed the protective sleeve. He then spread the contents of the coater over the slide.
Now, a twenty-minute wait.
Remembering how Franks had sabotaged his talk the day before, he unlocked his file cabinet, took out the slides for his next talk, and loaded the carrier on his viewer. Rump against his desk, he checked the slides and mentally reviewed what he was going to say about each one. Satisfied that Franks had not meddled with this talk and that it would be okay, he clicked off the viewer, replaced the slides in the file cabinet, and locked it.
His review had lasted only fifteen minutes. The next few, he spent pacing. Finally, the coating was dry enough. Carefully, he freed the hair, placed it in a small plastic dish, and put a cover on it. He then put the coated slide under the microscope and began his examination of the hair’s scale pattern, which had been left as an imprint when the Polaroid coating chemical ran under the hair and dried.
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