New Orleans Requiem

by D. J. Donaldson

  Find Waldo. . .

  Clearly this was related to the fact the killer was attending the Forensic meeting. Find Waldo in an obfuscating crowd of people in the same profession. Broussard had already given them that.

  She reviewed her contributions to the case and found them meager indeed. Why was she always merely cleaning up after Broussard? Why couldn’t she just once have a major influence on the direction of an investigation? Second fiddle was getting hard to play.

  She couldn’t sit in Beaton’s parking lot all day, so she started the car and vaguely aimed it for downtown. Checking her watch, she found it was 1:10. She considered stopping somewhere for lunch but had no appetite.

  As much as she regretted having to report to Broussard with so little, it had to be done. Thinking he might still be at the office, she began her search there. But Jolanda said he’d just gone back to the Hyatt. Since he always seemed to be surrounded by an entourage at the hotel, she hurried to catch him en route.

  When Kit stepped onto LaSalle, she saw Broussard’s familiar shape a block away. She caught up with him a few steps beyond the Perdido intersection.

  “You gettin’ as tired of this walk as I am?” he said.

  They would be at the hotel in a few minutes, so Kit launched directly into her report. “Our killer was the one who marked that newspaper article.”

  Broussard stopped walking and looked at her with interest.

  “Remember, I was going to talk to the girl in the picture? Well, a few weeks ago someone gave her an envelope to pass along to anyone who came to her inquiring about the Heartbeats. This is what was in the envelope.”

  She opened it and gave Broussard the page of cartoons. “It’s from a children’s book called The Great Waldo Search. The point is to find Waldo, a little man in a Santa Claus hat and a red-and-white-striped shirt.”

  “That him?” Broussard said, ignoring the hundreds of figures on the page and pointing at Waldo, half-hidden by a gang of executioners.

  “Yes,” Kit said, impressed at how easily he’d found him.

  He turned the page over and looked at the other crowded scene for barely a second and found Waldo again. “Too easy,” he said, handing the page back.

  “And redundant,” Kit replied. “All that work for another clue telling us he’s at the Forensic meeting.”

  They walked for another half a block, with Broussard deep in thought, Kit letting his wheels turn. Finally, he said, “What’d the guy look like who gave Merryman the envelope?”

  Kit’s outlook brightened. In her disappointment at the Waldo clue, she’d forgotten a potentially valuable piece of information.

  “Short, heavyset, thin mustache.”

  Broussard remained in thought the rest of the way to the Hyatt. As they entered the Regency Foyer, they encountered an excited Leo Fleming.

  “Andy, Kit, I was just talking to Brookie and he said something that could be important. The article Kit found—the band—one of the members was an EKG tech, one a lab tech, one a cardiology resident, and the other a respiratory therapist. Wouldn’t they make a good Harvey team?”

  Kit stiffened. Harvey team was what some hospitals called the emergency unit that handled cardiac arrests. “Jason Harvey,” she said breathlessly, her heart tripping.

  “It makes sense, Andy,” Fleming said. “He hates your guts. So he’s doin’ this to embarrass you on your own turf.”

  “We need to find Gatlin,” Kit said, looking at Broussard.

  “He’s in the Waikiki Room,” Broussard said, moving off toward the Regency Conference Center.

  On the way, they passed Jason Harvey, who was talking to another man. Broussard and Fleming ignored him, but out of the corner of her eye, Kit saw Harvey watching them.

  There were two cops in uniform outside the hall leading to the Hawaiian rooms. They nodded at Broussard when he passed and went back to their conversation. In the Waikiki Room, Broussard found Gatlin sitting on a metal chair at a folding table, a small pile of manila folders at one hand, a pitcher of water and a glass at the other. Opposite him, looking very uncomfortable, was a young anthropologist Broussard had met the day before.

  “Sorry to butt in, Phillip, but could I have a word with you in private?”

  Gatlin excused himself and left the anthropologist fidgeting and playing with his tie.

  “What’s up?” Gatlin said, closing the door behind him as he stepped into the hall.

  Broussard took him out to where Kit and Fleming were waiting and related the information that had come their way. When Broussard finished, Gatlin said, “He was in town early enough. In fact, he was the one I interviewed before the guy in there now. Got on a high horse and gave me a lot of lip.” He looked at Kit. “Could you find Phyllis Merryman?”

  Kit shrugged. “I suppose tonight, we could—”

  “Not tonight . . . now.”

  “Why?”

  “What Andy just told me doesn’t amount to spit. I need her to identify Harvey as the guy who gave her the envelope.”

  “I never got her address,” Kit said. “I met her at the bar where she dances. And she wouldn’t be there now because . . .” The art museum. “She said she was going to the art museum after lunch.”

  “Stay right here,” Gatlin said. “In a few minutes, we’re going for a ride.” He went down the hall, stuck his head into the Waikiki Room, and told the anthropologist he could go. After a short conversation with detective Woodsy Newsom, conducting interviews in the Maui Room next door, and another with detective Art Liberal in the Kulima Room, he headed for the Hyatt lobby, motioning for Kit to come along. Fleming looked at his watch.

  “There’s a paper I want to hear in the Anthro session,” he said. “So I’m gonna leave you all to carry on alone. Good luck with that ID. I sure wouldn’t lose any sleep if it turned out to be Harvey.”

  Fleming went up the steps to the mall, and Kit and Broussard hurried after Gatlin. His car was parked at the hotel’s front entrance, under the huge portico. Before going to it, he said to Kit, “It’s gonna be a few minutes before we leave. So you might want to wait in here.”

  “How about I catch a ride with you back to my office?” Broussard said. “There’s somethin’ I need to do.”

  Gatlin went to his car and, through the lobby window, Kit saw him pick up his cell phone. Ten minutes later, a car pulled up beside Gatlin’s Pontiac and Gatlin got out to meet its occupant. They talked briefly and the guy handed Gatlin some papers, which Gatlin examined, then folded and put in his jacket pocket.

  He motioned for Kit and Broussard and they went outside. The guy who gave Gatlin the papers came in by a different door. Since Broussard was going only a short way, he sat in back, leaving the front for Kit.

  “Who was that guy?” she said, buckling up.

  “Dick Kimmel,” Gatlin replied. “He’s gonna finish my interviews for me.”

  “So you don’t have a lot of faith in what we’re doing?”

  “Should I?”

  “Andy does.”

  Gatlin looked in the mirror as he pulled onto Poydras. “That right?”

  “Keep your eye on the road,” Broussard groused. “I haven’t got time to be in a car wreck.”

  They let Broussard out at the corner of LaSalle and Tulane, promised to keep him informed, then set out for the museum.

  “How does Andy seem to you?” Kit said as Gatlin wheeled the Pontiac left onto Tulane.

  “Opinionated, stubborn, obtuse. The usual. Why?”

  “He seems down to me . . . distracted. Like going back to his office. He just came from there. It’s not like him to be so disorganized.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s wired different from the rest of us. It takes some getting used to. I’ve known him for nearly thirty years and I still don’t understand him. Whatever it is, he’ll handle it.”

  “I guess. Was the lab able to tell us anything about the packet with the eyelids?”

  “Nothing that helps me.”

&n
bsp; “What’s going to happen if we find Merryman?”

  “Kimmel brought me a fax of Harvey’s driver’s license. I’ll show her that and some others and we’ll see what she says.”

  “Wouldn’t a lineup be better?”

  “If she actually saw one of the murders, yeah. But what have we got—somebody handed her an envelope with a page of cartoons in it. We’ll need a lot more than that to convict him . . . if, in fact, he did it. Right now, he has no reason to be nervous. Sure, we questioned him, but we’re talking to a lot of people. We put him in a lineup, he’ll know we think it’s him. I don’t want to tell him that.”

  THE MUSEUM LAY AT the end of a long oak-lined avenue divided by a wide, weedy median. It was columned and stepped in tiny lines inspired by the ancient Greeks, but out front it was bound to the present by a sculpture of flying scalpel blades sitting in a reflecting pool full of leaf litter.

  Kit had been with Broussard long enough to know investigations sometimes take perverse turns that help the wrong side. Today, that was not the case, for as she and Gatlin went up the steps of the museum, the door opened and Phyllis Merryman came out on the arm of a beefy male with a short haircut and a well-trimmed mustache. He was wearing gray pants with a knife-sharp crease and a gray-and-white sport coat of rough linen. His shirt was open at the neck and the sun flashed off a thin gold chain at his throat. Merryman did not look happy to see them.

  “Phyllis, I need your help,” Kit said.

  Reading cop all over Gatlin, Merryman looked at her companion. “Kenny, would you mind if I talked to these people alone? It’s some family business and kind of private.”

  Kenny patted Merryman’s arm. “Sure, Phyll, no problem.”

  Respecting her wish to keep Kenny in the dark about who they were, Kit waited until he was out of range, then introduced Gatlin.

  “It’s possible the man who gave you the envelope is the murderer we’re after,” he said. “But we can’t do anything about it without an identification from you. I’d like to show you some pictures to see if he’s among them.”

  “I already did my part by passing along the envelope,” Merryman said.

  “We’re not asking for much,” Gatlin said, “and it’ll only take a minute. Surely you want to see this man put away before he kills again. And there’s every indication he will.”

  Merryman looked anxiously past Gatlin to where Kenny waited in the car. “That guy I’m with . . . he builds shopping malls and he likes me,” she said. Her eyes shifted to Kit. “He’s not really my type, but I’m not making the same mistake I did with Gene Ochs. I’m not letting this one get away. And I don’t want him thinking I’m mixed up in this.”

  “All you’ll be doing is looking at some pictures,” Gatlin said. “The way we’re standing, he won’t even see what’s happening.”

  Merryman glanced again in Kenny’s direction. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

  Gatlin produced the sheaf of papers he’d been given by the detective at the Hyatt. He unfolded them and handed them to Merryman. She barely looked at the first one and said, “Boy, are these crappy!”

  “Just do your best.”

  Clearly impatient to be gone, she hurried through the stack, giving each picture no more than a second or two. Then she paused, cocked her head, and bit her red lip in thought. She checked the last two pictures, flipped back to the one she’d stalled on, and shifted it to the top.

  “That looks like him,” she said, giving the pile to Gatlin. “Now, can I get on with my life?”

  Gatlin glanced at the picture she’d chosen, then gave the stack back to her. “I’d like you to write what you said at the bottom of the page . . . exactly those words—‘That looks like him’— and then add, ‘the man who gave me the envelope,’ and sign it.”

  With a disgusted look, Phyllis took the pictures and the pen Gatlin offered. “You’re determined to drag me into this, aren’t you? I got nothing to write on.”

  Gatlin produced the leather jacket for his badge and slipped it under the last page in the stack. Phyllis scribbled her statement, signed it, and gave everything back.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Gatlin put his badge and the pages in the inside pocket of his jacket and produced his little black book. “I’ll need your address and a phone number where you can be reached.”

  The scowl on Merryman’s pretty face deepened. Reluctantly, she gave Gatlin the requested information.

  “Now, you need to take a vacation for a couple of days,” Gatlin said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t know what this guy’s plans are. Could be you’re on his list. To be safe, take a trip with Kenny. When you get there, give me a call and let me know where you are.” He took out a card and gave it to her.

  Merryman stared helplessly at the card for a couple of seconds, said, “Damn,” and put it in her purse. Then she hurried down the steps to join Kenny.

  “She picked Harvey, right?” Kit asked.

  “Yeah, but I’m not crazy about her choice of words. ‘That looks like him’ isn’t as good as ‘That’s definitely him,’ but she’s right, they are crappy pictures. Let’s go.”

  In the car, Kit took a breath to ask another question, but Gatlin held up a cautioning finger and reached for the car phone. He punched in a number and after a brief wait said, “Hey, Cap, Slick here. What are my chances of getting two teams tonight for a watch-and-see? Yeah, that’s the case. . . . I think so. Great. I’ll spell it out later. Anybody free now? Switch me over, will you. . . . Sweet, this is Slick. Cap says you can’t figure out what to do today, so I thought I’d help you earn your keep. Don’t thank me. I need to know if one Jason Harvey has a car out from any of the local rentals. H-A-R-V-E-Y, like the rabbit. What rabbit? Jesus, Sweet. Who’s President in your world, Coolidge? . . . Soon as possible, buddy. I’ll buy you a beer someday.”

  He broke the connection with his finger and entered another number. “Andy, this is Phillip. You gonna be there a while? I want to run something by you. Good. About fifteen minutes.”

  Gatlin backed up, shifted into drive, and pulled into the street.

  “You really think he’s after Merryman?” Kit asked.

  “Dunno. Better to be careful.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I’m not sure. We’ll hash it over when we see Andy.”

  Broussard was at his desk, rocked back in his chair, hands folded over his belly, a lemon ball in each cheek. On the long table against the wall to his right, the Mr. Coffee gurgled and chugged.

  “Glad to see you’re not overdoing things,” Gatlin said.

  “Sometimes you accomplish the most by sittin’ still,” Broussard replied. “Coffee’s ready. Want some?”

  “About two fingers. Can I use your phone?”

  Broussard went to the coffee maker, filled a guest mug half full, and put it by the phone. Kit declined when he pointed the pot at her. He inspected the interior of his huge cup with the dancing crayfish on it, then filled it to the brim and took it back to his chair.

  “Thanks, Sweet,” Gatlin said, hanging up the phone.

  “That the little woman?” Broussard asked, taking a swig of his coffee.

  Gatlin picked up the mug Broussard had set out for him and looked at Kit. “Someday we’re gonna find him dead in his chair with one of those lemon balls stuck in his windpipe.”

  Gatlin sampled his coffee, then sat on the edge of the long table that held Broussard’s microscopes. “Here’s the deal.”

  Kit moved to the vinyl sofa and sat down, pushing the stack of journals on the cushion next to her back in place when they threatened to topple into her lap.

  “The woman who gave Doc that envelope made a reasonably good ID of Harvey as the guy who gave it to her.”

  Broussard rocked back in his chair with his coffee.

  “Add that to what we’ve already put together and I think we’ve got probable cause to get a search warrant fo
r him and his room. There’s no record of him renting a car in the city, so we don’t have to worry about searching that. But we search his room and come up empty, we’re through. Right now, he has no reason to be concerned. He knows we’ve interviewed a lot of people besides him. But we exercise our warrant, and he’ll know he’s a suspect.”

  “Why not just go up to his room and search it while he’s out?” Kit asked.

  Gatlin shook his head. “We need to search him personally at the same time. Even if we did just do his room, we’d have to leave a copy of the warrant. No—we serve the warrant, we’ve tipped him.”

  “What’s the warrant gonna say you’re lookin’ for?” Broussard asked. “We already got the weapon.”

  “That’s kind of a problem,” Gatlin said. “But if we’ve figured it right, he’s going to do at least one more. And these guys are creatures of habit, right, Doc?”

  Kit nodded.

  “Fleming said the knife is a Walmart cheapie. Chances are he’s got another one just like the first. There should also be at least one more Scrabble letter and what’s left of that newspaper he’s been leaving. We get real lucky, we might even find pieces of morgue pad and a scalpel.”

  “Sounds iffy,” Broussard said.

  “Which is why I’ve lined up a tail for him tonight. He goes again, we’ll be there. Meanwhile, I’m going to get a search warrant and have it in my pocket. If he stays clean tonight, I’ll use the warrant. We’re running out of time. He leaves for home tomorrow at six P.M. We either get him in the next twenty-four hours or we never get him.”

  “So let’s get him,” Kit said, feeling much less like a second fiddle. “Is there any way we can keep up with what’s happening?”

  “I could get you a radio and give you the channel we’ll be communicating on.”

  “Can we listen from the hotel?”

  “Sure, you can sit in Andy’s room and hear everything.” Kit looked at Broussard. “Is that all right?”

  “Could be interestin’.”

  “I’d like to make sure we’re on him when he leaves the hotel for dinner,” Gatlin said, going to the sink in the corner and rinsing out his cup. “’Cause he may not come back.”