Drop Dead Crime: Mystery and Suspense from the Leading Ladies of Murder

by Lisa Regan

  The next day was more of the same, only with a much earlier start. With her cell phone freshly charged in her car (it proved to be one of the phones that worked), she got her orders from Cappello—something like “stay downtown and work with any officers you find”—left messages for Jimmy Dee and Steve Steinman, and hit the streets. It was seven a.m., early on a blazing day in New Orleans, never the earliest rising city in the world. Anybody who had a home would be in it. It was a perfect time, she figured, to check on Billy. She was able to walk right in—nobody had locked the house, nor, apparently, returned to it. One thing was different, though; she had to wade to get there. The flooding stopped at Rampart Street, which became St. Claude farther downtown.

  ~~~

  For the next few days, this was her life: sleep a few hours, then hit the streets, and work until it got so dark she couldn’t see. The days ran together, and there was never a break, never time to grieve for the thousands of people who were lost, the neighborhoods destroyed, maybe even a way of life wiped out. How did you take in a loss like this?

  She knew she was too tired at night, too wired in the daytime even to come close. It would probably take her months, maybe years, and many long nights of tears to process it, but it couldn’t happen now. There was too much work to do.

  It was a couple of days before she was able to make it over to the Marigny neighborhood, where Ollie lived. She ran into Dickie Horvath on Frenchmen Street. Happy to see a familiar face, even his, Skip gave him a big hello. “Hey, Dickie! How’d y’all do?” The question everyone was asking everyone else. It meant, “What’s the damage to your house?”

  His answer took her aback. “What the hell do you people think you’re doing? Huh? Don’t think we don’t know about it. Everyone knows. Tell me: How many African Americans have you murdered today, Miss Cop?”

  “It certainly is true about no good deed,” she snapped.

  “Huh?”

  “Shelter. Remember? Your dog peed on the rug. You drank a whole bottle of bourbon and passed out. You didn’t help with the leaks, you even added some—by not bothering to dispose of your damn Depends! And instead of a thank you, I get accused of murder? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  What the hell was wrong with her as well? That was probably the least professional speech she’d ever given.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide, pig!”

  She should have let it go, but she couldn’t. “Dickie, what’s got into you?”

  “Cops are out there killing people, and I’m not supposed to say anything?”

  “What cops? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  She watched his face change from furious to mildly surprised…and a bit sly.

  “You really don’t know, do you? Word on the street’s you’re a girl scout. Maybe it’s even true.”

  She was about over this conversation. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

  “Maybe you’d like to be the one clean cop, the cop who cracked the case. Huh? Huh? What would that do for your career?” She waited. “How much is it worth to you?”

  “Wait! First you accuse me of murder, and now you’re offering to be a confidential informant?” She was almost amused.

  “Hell, no! I’m no snitch. I’m offering to sell you information that’ll make you chief of police.” She couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing.

  The stress was getting to her; and it had obviously gotten to Dickie. Or else Dawn had beaten him with a crazy stick.

  “Nice talking to you, Dickie.” She moved on.

  Music was coming from a balcony at Frenchmen and Chartres streets, someone playing a saxophone. And then a voice. “This is Radio Marigny reporting from Atlantis. The bitch Katrina blew through Monday and now we’re sunk. Also fucked. But we’re dry in the Marigny and the Quarter! Everywhere else is underwater. The water’s still rising, folks—where it stops, nobody knows.

  “But never fear, we are here! This is your neighborhood bulletin board. Here are the latest headlines: There’s a working phone at Jo Ellen Hughes’ house on Dauphine Street, and she’s lending it out to anyone who needs it. You don’t need the address—you’ll know it by the line waiting outside.

  “Mayor Nagin has once again ordered the entire city evacuated. He has also imposed a curfew. Everyone in the Marigny will be observing it. Snarfle. That means YOU! But not me. Johnny White’s Sports Bar remains open. Fuck the curfew.

  “Buses will be leaving from the Superdome as soon as they’re loaded. Better hurry, you don’t want to be the last one left in the Sea of Orleans. Oh, us? Hell, no, we won’t go!

  “All NOPD police have been pulled off search and rescue to…you know…stop looters. And fight crime and all.

  “This concludes your Radio Marigny update. See y’all at Johnny White’s as soon as we can all get there.”

  The broadcast, if you could call it that, made Skip laugh. It was so innocent, so upbeat, so much like the old days when the aftermath of a hurricane involved only a quick clean-up and drinking a toast to dodging a bullet. She had to give these guys A for effort—despite the horror all around her, the incongruous levity lifted her spirits for a moment.

  She found Ollie trying to lift a tree that had fallen in her yard. Without a word, Skip picked up the near end and they carried it out to the street, where someone had already started a neat pile of other debris. “You do all right?” she said when they’d completed their task.

  “My house is fine except for that tree. And Ignatius is thrilled with all the new toys—branches and sticks and hidey-holes. Thanks for the help, by the way. Have you cleaned out Jimmy Dee’s refrigerator?”

  Skip snapped her fingers. “Oh, hell. No. Meant to do it last night, but I didn’t get home until eleven and I was so beat I just fell into bed.”

  “Want me to do it? I’ll do yours too.”

  “You have no idea how much I’d appreciate that! Take anything that looks edible. I think I’ve got some eggs—they’ll be ok at room temp.”

  She gave Ollie a hard look and noticed deep circles under her eyes, a pinching-up of her features. “Hey, you okay? You look like you haven’t been sleeping.”

  “Oh, it’s just all the gunshots and things.” Skip had heard them too. “And the noise from the neutral ground at Rampart and St. Claude. People are camping there.”

  “Yeah. They walked from the Ninth Ward. But they’re not hurting anybody.”

  “You know developers have already divided up the Ninth Ward now that it’s like, destroyed, right? You know that guy owns half the town, has that little coffee place near your house? Right there’s where they did it. They met in his apartment above the coffee joint and they figured out how to build high-rises for rich, white people on Bayou Bienvenue. Know what this whole place is gonna become? A fancy vacation spot for retirees.” She paused, disgusted.

  Ollie did love her neighborhood rumors, and the post-Katrina chaos was proving to be a fertile source of them.

  “Well, hell, everybody’s getting killed, anyhow. The cops are looting along with everyone else. You know that too, right?”

  Skip had no doubt that really was right. Everything was up for grabs, and nobody was watching. A perfect setup for certain of her brother cops.

  But she lifted an eyebrow in protest. “Not all of us.”

  “Well, one thing. At least y’all are getting rid of the gangs.”

  “I wish!”

  “Seriously, Skip. How can you be so far out of the loop? They’re not messing around. They’re systematically rounding up the usual suspects. And gutting them.”

  “Whoa! Gutting them?” This was going pretty far, even for Ollie.

  “Yeah. You know. So they’ll sink. They just throw them in the river and nobody’s the wiser. Neat, huh?”

  Skip shrugged, not giving it much thought. “Aside from being mass murder, sure. That would be a great way to get rid of gangs! If it weren’t illegal, immoral, plain wrong, bad karma, punishable by death—”
/>   “I don’t care, they’re doing it. It’s all over the street. Why don’t you know about it?”

  Oho. So that was what was up with Dickie. “Wait a minute. Did Dickie tell you about this? Because I can hardly think of a less reliable source.”

  “Oh, hell no! Not Dickie. That guy, Trent, you know him? Lives across the park from Kenneth Holditch. Curly haired dude.”

  “You mean on Elysian Fields Avenue?”

  “Just off it—one of those shotguns. Not sure which.”

  “Did Trent actually see anything, or was he just repeating rumors?”

  “If you saw something like that, would you go around telling people?”

  That made Skip’s scalp prickle. Crazy as it sounded, there was a piece of her that knew that, this week, on these lawless streets, anything was possible.

  Well, hell. She had, as Cappello would have it, more sizeable fish to fillet than chasing down rumors. She was on Superdome duty. But Washington Square was a small park. It wouldn’t take a minute to see if Trent was home.

  “Ollie, you have enough food? Get some when you clean the fridges, okay?” As an afterthought, she said. “Better yet, you should evacuate. You know everyone’s been ordered out of the city, right?”

  “Are you kidding me? I just went through a category three hurricane for a cat! You think I’m leaving him now?”

  ~~~

  Skip had to knock on a few doors, but it wasn’t too hard to find Trent. Neighbors—and, despite the evacuation order, quite a few were still around—either loved or hated him right now. As she got closer, she could see why. She’d been given two ways to find him—look for the house with the fence and don’t worry, you’ll know by the smell. Or the noise.

  Inside the fence were dogs— maybe twenty of them, some in crates, some ranging around, and Trent wasn’t doing the greatest job of poop patrol. Also, the dogs probably barked every time anyone passed. They staged a lively concert as soon as they sensed her presence.

  She let herself in the metal gate, hoping the pooches were friendly. A couple were, but most just seemed too dispirited to even get up and give her a sniff.

  “Hey, anybody home?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” A harried-looking guy in filthy, khaki shorts and no shirt stood up from behind one of the crates. His tanned chest was covered with tattoos, and his hair hung to his collarbone in tight curls. It looked as if he was, in fact, on poop patrol right now, scooping odoriferous piles into a plastic garbage bag. But the joke was on him. Garbage collection was so not happening. Unless he figured out a place to dump the bag, it was just going to stick around and stink anyhow.

  “You Trent? I heard you were rescuing dogs.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a generator, so I’ve still got internet. Been watching news reports showing all those sad little furry faces…so I’ve been going into the flood zone and pulling them out. You ever seen such a mess?”

  She didn’t know if he meant his yard or the whole city. She decided on the mega-meaning. “I don’t see how it could get worse. Jeez! The things I’ve heard.” She glided quickly over that for the moment. “Hey, listen, I lost my baby yesterday. You don’t have a long-haired chihuahua in there, do you? Little male, white and brown?”

  “Oh, no, you lost your baby? Aww. I sure wish I had him. What’s his name?”

  She gave him the name of her boyfriend’s long-lost German shepherd. “Napoleon. He’s quite the little dictator.”

  “Well, I’ll sure keep a lookout for him. There’s nothing worse than losing your best friend.”

  “And he’s so much protection! I mean, he’s little, but he warns me if someone’s coming. I keep my gun with me all the time these days. You know how dicey things are right now. Gangs out there killin’ people, thinking they can do anything they want with so few cops on the streets.”

  “Well, they might get a rude awakening. No way the cops are gonna take that kinda action lying down.”

  “Hope you’re right.”

  “Well, let me put it this way. This is an opportunity they ain’t never gon’ get again.”

  Skip played dumb. “Opportunity? What kind of opportunity?”

  Trent shrugged. “To clean house, you know? A lot of bad actors are taking long walks off short piers.”

  She tilted her head, as if she couldn’t be more fascinated. “Why do I get the feeling you mean that literally?”

  “Because I do. I’ve seen it.”

  “You mean…you’ve seen cops…umm…killing people?”

  “Not people. Animals. Worse than that. Pond scum.”

  She decided not to push her luck any further. “Woo.” She shimmied a little, as if shivering. “Remind me to be on my good behavior.”

  “Yeah, it’s a jungle, for sure. We just gotta get you your baby back.”

  “Sure appreciate you keeping an eye out.”

  She gave him a comradely salute and left, closing the gate behind her. But she’d gone only a few steps when she heard someone coming, setting off a new canine concert, and then she heard the gate open again. “Oh, Treeee-ent! Daddy’s home!”

  She didn’t dare look back. There was definitely something going down, and she cordially wished she’d never heard of it. She was obligated to do something if cops were killing people. But she just couldn’t wrap her brain around it.

  She forgot the whole thing for the next few days, and not just because she didn’t want to think about it. Things got hotter and nastier and more stressful on the job, with the massive task of evacuating everyone who was left in the city and feeding them in the meantime. The National Guard moved in. Buses commandeered by the governor from all over the state were moving thousands of people out. The roar of hundreds of Coast Guard helicopters plucking people off rooftops was both ominous and hopeful—and also irritating as hell. Everyone was hungry, thirsty, hot, scared, and worst of all, mad.

  They thought they’d been deserted by the government, and they were losing hope that help was coming. The early panic when they’d realized their predicament had given way to despair and, in many cases, aggression. Skip had her hands full, and so did every cop who bothered to come to work.

  It was several days after her encounter with Trent—she was losing track—that Dawn Horvath arrived pounding on Jimmy Dee’s door and shouting for Skip. Ollie’d cleaned out her refrigerator in addition to Jimmy Dee’s, and Skip had moved back to her slave quarters, but she still couldn’t miss the racket. It was six a.m., she’d worked far into the night, and Dawn was the last person she wanted to see.

  Pulling a pair of baggy shorts over her sleeping outfit—underwear and T-shirt—and slipping into a pair of flip-flops, she padded to the courtyard gate and stepped onto the sidewalk. “What is it, Dawn?”

  “Somebody killed Dickie!”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  Dawn’s too-curly, dark hair looked as if it had been deliberately teased so that it stood up around her head in a monster mane. She’d flung on some kind of raggedy muumuu garment to negotiate she streets and she also wore a pair of red-framed glasses but no makeup, showing a face nearly as red as her glasses. She’d never been Skip’s idea of a poster child for sanity, but at the moment she looked like the Madwoman of Chaillot.

  “Hell, no, I’m not kidding! He went out for a walk and didn’t come back.”

  “Dawn, you’re just upset. That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

  “Somebody found him.”

  Oh, shit! Skip’s first impulse had been to get Dawn inside and settle her down, but this was bad. She figured if Dickie wasn’t dead, he sure as hell needed help.

  “You’ve seen him?”

  Dawn nodded, tears finally starting, fogging her glasses, making her face even redder.

  “Let’s go. I just need to get some shoes.”

  Dawn took her to a flooded area of the Bywater neighborhood, where Dickie lay in the street in curb-deep water, under a blanket someone had tossed over him. “I covered him up,” Dawn muttered, eyes leaki
ng. “I had to.”

  A cursory peek at his face told her he was dead. No wonder people think ghosts are white, she thought, grimacing. He was as white as one and as cold as Hitler’s heart.

  “You mind if I look?” She wanted to give Dawn time to look away if she wanted to. Evidently, she didn’t. She shook her head, but kept staring as Skip removed the now-sodden blanket and had a look at Dickie in death. There were no obvious holes in him, and with the flooding, any blood could have been washed away…but there was a trace, Skip thought. His belly still protruded above his jeans. And his T-shirt, as luck would have it, was red. But she saw a small, very even tear surrounded by a darker red at the bottom right of the mound. She thought it was a stab wound.

  “Dawn? What happened here?”

  Dawn backed away from the body, shaking and holding her hands palms out in front of her chest, as if to ward off an attack if Dickie proved to be Undead. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Oh, God, I don’t know.”

  Quickly, Skip threw the blanket back over the body. “Okay, okay, let me take you home.” She meant walk her home. Some streets were now clear, but you never knew, going into a strange neighborhood.

  “I’ll just be a minute. Can you turn the other way?” Quickly, and with severe revulsion, Skip reached into Dickie’s sodden pockets, coming up with a sad, shrunken wallet.

  Dawn had told her, walking over, that Dickie didn’t come home the night before. He’d gone out to find some necessities, she said. Loot some Depends, Skip translated. That really was a necessity, and no one was selling them, so who was she to judge?

  Well, that made sense, now that she put it all together. Rumor had it that Robert’s, at the corner of Elysian Fields and St. Claude was “open for business,” meaning just open. That’s where he’d most likely have gone, and it was close. She decided to tackle it head-on.

  “Was he going to Robert’s, Dawn?”

  “Probably,” she said. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t want to ask.”

  “How did you find out what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know what happened to him.”

  Skip took a breath, trying to be patient. “How did you know where his body was.”