New Orleans Requiem

by D. J. Donaldson

  “When was that?”

  “At the reception.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t say anything about wheels turning when he asked you about Harvey?”

  “Well, I might have.”

  “He took that to mean he had us. So he went from you right to Harvey and told him to watch his step. He thought we’d search Harvey’s room only as a last resort and that we’d probably tail him instead. But if he let that occur, Kit might have stayed up all night keeping tabs on what was happening. He had to make sure it was resolved early in the evening so Kit would go home and turn in. Given Harvey’s personality, he figured Harvey’d confront us and force our hand.”

  “How’d he know for sure Harvey’d be at the meetin’?” Fleming asked.

  “He hasn’t missed one in twenty years,” Broussard said.

  “And Brooks saw his name on an advance copy of the program,” Gatlin added.

  “Who gave Phyllis Merryman that envelope?” Kit asked.

  “An actor,” Gatlin replied. “From one of the talent agencies in town. Brooks said that even with makeup the guy didn’t look exactly like Harvey, but Merryman would have seen him only briefly a month earlier. He didn’t think she’d remember how they differed. And the whole charade only had to hold up for a short while.”

  “I don’t understand his choice of weapon,” Fleming said. “A knife meant he had to find victims who were thinly dressed. And that’d be possible only if the weather was mild, which it has been this year. But I understand that sometimes it’s a lot cooler here in February. If he planned this months ago—and it’s obvious he did—why make the whole thing dependent on warm weather? What would he have done if it had turned chilly and people bundled up?”

  “When he came after me, he also brought a gun,” Kit said. Then to Gatlin, she added, “What was that deodorant can on it, a homemade silencer?”

  “Yeah, packed with sheet rubber. Pretty neat job. The whole thing was light as a feather. He had another one with a silencer in his room. They were his backup. He took one with him each time he went out in case things went wrong. And if the weather turned . . .”

  “Why not use a gun from the beginnin’?” Fleming asked. “Be a lot simpler.”

  “He wanted Kit to die by a knife,” Gatlin said. “He believed that would have made Andy even more miserable. I don’t know exactly what he meant. . . .”

  “It’s a rare woman who doesn’t fear a knife more than a gun,” Broussard said. “The night we all went to dinner, he got Kit to say that’s how she felt. The whole conversation on that issue was for my benefit. ’Course I didn’t realize the significance at the time. In usin’ a knife on the other victims, he had us all thinkin’ and talkin’ knives, so it was a natural topic to bring up. If the weather’d turned, he’d have still gotten the job done. Not with the same continuity, but with the same results.”

  “But if he’d used a gun, there wouldn’t have been any white fibers,” Fleming said. “The fibers are what helped put you on to the fact he was a forensic expert. And he did want you to know that.”

  “The fibers were redundant and most likely left by accident,” Broussard said. “The hairs were to be the clue he was in forensics.”

  “We didn’t locate any pieces of morgue pad in his room because he got rid of them right after that meeting where we discussed the fibers left on the first victim,” Gatlin said. “He didn’t want you finding any of those fibers on his clothing.”

  “Why do you suppose he left the knife on the third victim?” Fleming asked.

  “Not planned,” Broussard said. “And also redundant. Just somethin’ he decided to do to thumb his nose at me. Like puttin’ those eyelids in my slide tray.”

  “I guess if he’d gone with his backup instead of knives in the briefcase at the Y, we’d have found one of the guns,” Kit said.

  “Give one up, keep one,” Gatlin said. “He thought of most everything. We also found a black wig and a phony mustache in his room.”

  Kit’s eyebrows lifted. “So that was him the cop at the third murder saw crossing the street.”

  “Tryin’ to look like Harvey, I guess,” Fleming said. “Couldn’t have been a very close resemblance, though, seein’ how much taller he is.”

  “He didn’t have to look a lot like him,” Gatlin said. “Mostly, he just had not to look like himself; anybody else’d do. But while he was at it, why not take a crack at Harvey? Witnesses never agree on anything—black hair, black mustache. If two people had seen him, one probably would have said he was a dwarf. Found the scalpel he used on the eyelids, too. Had it rigged to a penlight.”

  “What was the point in takin’ eyelids?” Fleming asked.

  “More subterfuge,” Kit said. “To make it look like something it wasn’t.”

  Gatlin turned to Broussard. “Where’d he come by his expertise with a knife?”

  “Not sure,” Broussard said. “But he was an officer in the army reserves. Might have picked it up there.”

  “The time it must have taken to plan this,” Kit mused.

  “Brookie always was a planner,” Broussard said. “Phillip . . . how is he?”

  “Quiet . . . cooperative. Speaking of shoelaces, we took his away from him and his belt, too, so he couldn’t harm himself.”

  Broussard looked at the sheets and shook his head. Then he turned to Kit. “By the way, sorry about your front door.”

  “You break it in anytime you feel it’s necessary. Which reminds me, Lieutenant, how did Brooks get in my house twice?”

  “Locks only keep out the casual trespasser. The serious ones just get delayed. He used an electronic pick gun. Probably took him only about ten seconds. Gives you the willies, doesn’t it?”

  “He’s a man with a lot of talents,” Kit said.

  “Doesn’t take any talent to use a pick gun. He waited until your heat pump came on to mask what little noise it makes. It’s probably in your yard, somewhere near the back door. I been meaning to come by and look for it but haven’t had the chance. Also been meaning to tell you to trim that big holly beside the house. That’s where he went over the fence.”

  “Say, I really appreciate you all visitin’ me,” Broussard said, “but I’m feelin’ kind of bushed.”

  “We’ll get out, then, and let you rest,” Kit replied.

  “Leo, you goin’ back today?” Broussard asked.

  “Plane leaves in two hours.”

  “Thanks for comin’ by and for your help. Glad you weren’t the killer.”

  “Was there ever any doubt?”

  “’Course not,” Broussard said unconvincingly.

  “We get anything Charlie can’t handle, I’ll have it wheeled up here so you can have a look,” Gatlin said.

  “Soon as you leave, I’m gonna have them hide me.”

  “Are you going straight home?” Gatlin asked Kit. “I thought I’d come by and look for that pick gun if it’s okay.”

  “Sure. Come on.”

  Gatlin looked at Fleming. “You need a ride anywhere?”

  “Back to the hotel would be nice.”

  “Oh, by the way,” Fleming said to Broussard, “I saw Hugh Greenwood yesterday as he was checkin’ out and he said to tell you to quit screwin’ around and get back to work. I didn’t know you two were so close.”

  “Good-bye, Leo.”

  When they were gone, Broussard’s shoulders slumped and he let his chin drop to his chest. With all that was on his mind, he’d had to force himself to participate in the conversation.

  He had prevailed. He had solved the puzzle and the killer was caught. His wound, though serious, would heal. But this time, there was no satisfaction, no warmth in his belly, only brass and the realization he’d been responsible for the deaths of three people—and in the process had also lost one more friend.

  And there was Susan. To know he had been in her mind all those years as she had remained in his produced a yawning hole in his center. And now she was
gone . . . and he was adrift with no anchor.

  It was not good to get too close to people. In the end, they always leave you. How could he have forgotten the deaths of his parents so quickly and allowed Susan in? Then she had taken herself a thousand miles away, and now . . . truly gone. And the friends . . . gone . . . Brookie, gone. What illumination had been able to penetrate his clouds of despair during the chase had been growing steadily weaker. Now, suffocating night rolled in, blotting out hope.

  But in the distance, there was light . . . tiny and as yet unseen. In time, possibly a long time, he would see that light and follow it to a new place. Not exactly like the old, but a place where he could live and work and perhaps even be content. But now, he just needed to be left alone.

  Outside the hospital entrance, Gatlin and Fleming went one way and Kit went another. Now that she’d seen how well Broussard was doing, she was eager to get home to Lucky and, of course, Teddy, who had come in as usual early that morning and was now busy repairing the damage Broussard had done to the door and the jamb. There was a lesson for her, she thought, in what had happened to Susan Brooks. Susan had let Broussard go and been sorry the rest of her life. Then there was Phyllis Merryman. In waiting for something better, she had passed on Gene Ochs. And now she, too, was sorry. Kit didn’t know exactly what she and Teddy had together, but whatever it was, it was pretty good, and maybe pretty good is all anybody could expect.

  When she reached her car, there was a red two-seater with the top down, blocking it. The driver tilted his sunglasses onto his head at her approach.

  “How did you find me?” she said.

  “Your office said you’d come over here to see Broussard,” Nick Lawson said. “How is he?”

  “He’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “You know how long I waited near the Praline Connection Thursday night?”

  “You weren’t supposed to go over there.”

  “Well, I did, and I sat there all night. You lied to me.”

  “And you lied to me.”

  He smiled and lowered his sunglasses onto his nose. “I guess we were made for each other. When do you think you’ll see that?”

  “Does a snowstorm and a pitchfork say anything to you?”

  He laughed and started the car. “Kit, my girl, I’m a patient man. And tomorrow is another day.” Then he pulled away, going entirely too fast to make the turn at the end of the lot.

  About the Author

  I grew up in Sylvania, Ohio, a little suburb of Toledo, where the nearby stone quarries produce some of the best fossil trilobites in the country. I know that doesn’t sound like much to be proud of, but we’re simple people in Ohio. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree at the U. of Toledo, I became a teacher of ninth grade general science in Sylvania, occupying the same desk my high school chemistry and physics teacher used when he tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to use a slide rule. I lasted six months as a public school teacher, lured away into pursuit of a Ph.D. by Dr. Katoh, a developmental biologist I met in a program to broaden the biological knowledge of science teachers. Katoh’s lectures were unlike anything I’d ever heard in college. He related his discipline as a series of detective stories that had me on the edge of my chair. Stimulated to seek the master who trained Katoh, I moved to New Orleans and spent five years at Tulane working on a doctorate in human anatomy. Stressed by graduate work, I hated New Orleans. When Mardi Gras would roll around, my wife and I would leave town. It wasn’t until many years later, after the painful memories of graduate school had faded and I’d taught microscopic anatomy to thousands of students at the U. of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis (not all at the same time) and published dozens of papers on wound healing that I suddenly felt the urge to write novels. And there was only one place I wanted to write about . . . mysterious, sleazy, beautiful New Orleans. Okay, so I’m kind of slow to appreciate things.

  Photo by Jennifer Brommer

  Practically from the moment I decided to try my hand at fiction, I wanted to write about a medical examiner. There’s just something appealing about being able to put a killer in the slammer using things like the stomach contents of the victim or teeth impressions left in a bite mark. Contrary to what the publisher’s blurb said on a couple of my books, I’m not a forensic pathologist. To gear up for the first book in the series, I spent a couple of weeks hanging around the county forensic center where Dr. Jim Bell taught me the ropes. Unfortunately, Jim died unexpectedly after falling into a diabetic coma a few months before the first book was published. Though he was an avid reader, he never got to see a word of the book he helped me with. In many ways, Jim lives on as Broussard. Broussard’s brilliant mind, his weight problem, his appreciation of fine food and antiques, his love for Louis L ’ Amour novels . . . that was Jim Bell. When a new book comes out, Jim’s wife always buys an armful and sends them to Jim’s relatives.

  My research occasionally puts me in interesting situations. Some time ago, I accompanied a Memphis homicide detective to a rooming house where we found a man stuck to the floor by a pool of his own blood, his throat cut, and a big knife lying next to the body. Within a few minutes, I found myself straddling the blood, holding a paper bag for the detective to collect the victim’s personal effects. A short time later, after I’d listened to the cops on the scene discuss the conflicting stories they were getting from the occupants, the captain of the general investigation bureau turned to me and said, “What do you think happened?” The house is full of detectives and he’s asking my opinion. I pointed out a discrepancy I’d noticed in the story told by the occupant who found the body and next thing I know, he’s calling all the other detectives over so I can tell them. Later, we took this woman in for questioning. I wish I could say I solved the crime, but it didn’t turn out that glamorous. They eventually ruled it a suicide.

  Forthcoming from Astor + Blue Editions including a brand new Andy Broussard/Kit Franklyn mystery