No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  18

  Broussard shifted the lemon ball in his mouth to the other cheek. “Lab report says the bottle on Halliday’s desk contained a saturated solution of potassium chloride.”

  From the green vinyl sofa, Gatlin said, “What exactly is that?”

  “A simple salt. Harmless if taken orally, but injected into the blood, it disrupts the membrane potential of cardiac muscle so the heart stops.”

  “Is it quick?”

  “Very.”

  “So that’s why the syringe was on the floor. He died so fast there wasn’t even time to pull the needle from his arm. The arm dropped; the syringe fell out. This salt, is it hard to get?”

  “Be a rare research laboratory that didn’t have some sittin’ on a shelf.”

  “The bottle is common, too,” Gatlin said. “It’s what they call a scintillation vial. It’s used to hold radioactive liquids when they’re being analyzed in a counter.”

  “Didn’t know you were so science-oriented.”

  “You ask questions, you learn. I stopped by Halliday’s lab and talked to his technicians. Apparently in addition to being a good surgeon, he had a busy research operation going. They also showed me a drawerful of the same kind of syringe he used.” Gatlin shook his head. “Funny, a man dies and all that the people who work for him think about is if they’re going to lose their job.” He sucked his teeth in thought. “Nice logical choice of a way to go, don’t you think? Cardiac surgeon uses something he knows works on the heart… fast and—was it painless?”

  “Probably.”

  “Hey, how about a little skepticism here,” Kit said from one of the chairs in front of Broussard’s desk. “You two aren’t exactly setting new standards for piercing analysis.”

  “Okay, paint us a different picture,” Broussard said.

  “Suppose Halliday was forced to write the note and sign it by a gunman who also made him inject himself.”

  “Kurt Halliday was not a passive man,” Broussard said. “He was quick to anger and a fighter. I don’t believe he would have cooperated to the point of injectin’ himself.”

  “All right, then… a gunman and an accomplice. Halliday types the note and signs it; one of them holds the gun on him while the other restrains him so he can be injected.”

  “Simply holdin’ his arms wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to be held more securely than that, and there was no evidence of restraints on the body.”

  “Drugged, then.”

  “Other than a lethal concentration of potassium, the lab found nothin’ unusual in his blood, and they looked hard.” Since he was playing devil’s advocate, Broussard waited for Kit to mention that an unusual drug could be missed if you didn’t know what you were looking for. Getting no rebuttal, he said, “I should amend my comment about Halliday not injectin’ himself. I don’t believe he would have even signed the note under those circumstances.”

  Kit threw up her hand. “Wait a minute. Haven’t we taken a wrong turn here. The discussion started out with facts and now we’re into guessing how someone might have behaved in a particular situation.”

  “Kind of like what we do when we take your psychological profiles into consideration in a case,” Broussard said.

  “That’s particularly appropriate if you’ve known the person for a long time as Andy has known Halliday,” Gatlin said. “But even without that, I’m leaning toward suicide.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, of all those facts you mentioned, not one of them contradicts that conclusion.” He began to enumerate on his fingers. “The signature on the letter is genuine; the letter was written long enough after Jordan was strangled to allow Halliday to drive to his lab, make up the potassium solution, pick up a syringe, and go home; the position of the body was exactly right for the quick death that Andy says most likely occurred; and we found a good print from Halliday’s left ring finger on the bottle containing the lethal solution. There’s just nothing out of line.”

  “Except enough loose ends to weave a rug,” Kit said.

  “Paul Jarrell?” Gatlin said.

  “And the things that I put in my last report. Have you followed those up?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  Nothing Kit had just heard made her sorry she’d gone to see Isom instead of passing that information along to Gatlin. Nor did she feel any remorse about the trip she had planned for tomorrow. Somebody was going to have to show these two how wrong they were.

  After the meeting, Kit left to talk with some people who knew the young man shot by the police. Gatlin did not say where he was going. For a few minutes after the meeting, Broussard mused about the object he had found earlier in Halliday’s hair and how interesting coincidences really do happen.

  Earlier, when Broussard had sent them pieces of Halliday’s brain for frozen sectioning along with a rush request, the histo lab was having some sort of minor crisis. The sections arrived in Broussard’s office with a note of apology fifteen minutes after Kit and Gatlin left.

  He began with the sections from specimen number four, a small segment of Halliday’s prefrontal cortex. A moment later, he pushed his chair back and shot to his feet.

  They were there. Halliday’s pyramidal cells had even more dumbbell-shaped inclusions in them than Paul Jarrell’s did.

  He began to pace the room. When he’d found those odd structures in Jarrell’s brain, it had been merely interesting. Now it was much more. Now he must remember where he’d previously encountered them.

  He stopped pacing and leaned his rump against his desk. Mentally clearing away all extraneous thoughts, he marshaled his resources into a search for the scrap of information that had so far eluded him. His finger crept to his nose and he began to stroke the stiff hairs on the tip.

  At such times, he imagined himself a visitor in his own mind, transported to the dark pool where old memories hide. He waded in and began to work the bottom, dragging his feet, examining pieces of the past as they broke loose and bobbed to the surface. It was an inefficient method of searching and much remained hidden. Finally, tiring of the effort and realizing that the pool often gives up what you seek after you walk away, he went into the forensic office and informed Margaret that he was going out for about an hour.

  He took the elevator to street level and stepped into the afternoon sun. Unlike Kit and Charlie, he didn’t mind the heat, partly because air conditioning made his joints a little stiff.

  He walked the two blocks to Canal Street and turned toward the river. The trip was a diversion to keep his mind free from heavy matters that might interfere with the process he had set in motion. His destination was the Demouchet Art Gallery on Royal, where a few days earlier he’d seen an excellent sheep painting whose price he found excessive, considering the work was unsigned and Demouchet could say only that it was by the “Scottish School.’”

  Most of Broussard’s paintings were from Epstein Imports, because Joe Epstein wasn’t afraid to discount and would do so while Broussard was still in the shop. Chet Demouchet was a harder nut and it usually took several days and a return visit before he would come down.

  Broussard reached Royal some minutes later and experienced the usual sense of anticipation at the grand clutter of antique shops that stretched in front of him for many blocks. The long walk and the hot sidewalks made him glad he would soon be inside again.

  A block from the art gallery, he passed under a sign for the Express Y’urself T-Shirt shop and remembered how years ago the location had been an excellent little bookshop specializing in old volumes with leather bindings and decorative endpapers. It had been run by a man named… Nathanial Lancon.

  Broussard grinned. It’s working, he thought. It had been at least ten years since Nat Lancon had passed on, and he had called up the name without effort.

  Chet Demouchet was sitting at the bureau plat that he used for a desk. He appeared to be writing out a receipt. Seeing Broussard, he stood up and raised his hands in front of him in a pleading gesture. “D
oc, you blew it. You can’t always expect that something will wait until you can make up your mind. There are other customers in the world.” He came from behind the desk.

  Broussard could not help but notice Demouchet’s flowered tie before all else, because it was loud and long—a good two inches below his belt. The rest of his clothes were in the same vein, pleated olive pants with almost a clownish bagginess and a long-sleeved white shirt with padded shoulders and western stitching. Not yet in his forties, his hair had already retreated a considerable distance from his forehead, which had recently received too much sun. He was clean-shaven and his face had a softness about it that suggested he would behave badly in a crisis.

  “I take it from what you said that the paintin’ I was interested in has been sold,” Broussard said.

  “Not two minutes ago… to that lady back there.”

  Broussard had been aware of another customer in the gallery. Now, he looked directly at her. Hearing herself being discussed, she turned and came toward them.

  She was tall and carried herself proudly. There was pride also in the fact she did nothing to hide the gray in her dark hair, which she wore swept back and tucked cleverly into itself above the nape of her graceful neck. Her features were good and her makeup so delicately applied there was some question in Broussard’s mind as to where it had been used.

  She was dressed simply but well: yellow heels, yellow linen dress and a yellow scarf at her throat, pearls at her ears. Looking at all that yellow, Broussard found himself thinking of lemon sorbet.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said. “Have I just purchased a painting that had also taken your interest?” Her voice was like a soft southern breeze pushing the wind chimes on a long veranda.

  “Looks that way,” Broussard said. “But you musn’t give it a second thought. I had my opportunity and didn’t exercise it.”

  “Well, I do apologize. And I’m so sorry to have practically snatched it from your fingers. It makes me feel awful….”

  “So awful you’d be willin’ to let me have it?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but you see, I’ve already planned where it will hang, and you know how empty a spot looks once you’ve gotten used to seeing a painting there. And I have grown accustomed to the idea.”

  Broussard chuckled to himself. His suggestion had been a test to see whether she was the real article, for no true southern lady would give up so easily something she coveted.

  “Do you have many paintings?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t say many. It’s a relatively recent interest.”

  “I’m afraid that paintings are my weakness. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t purchase an unsigned work, but I’m particularly fond of scenes with sheep in them, and this one is so well done.”

  “Sheep are also my interest,” Broussard replied.

  She smiled and Broussard felt a long-dead part of him stir. The dark pool gave up another memory: Long blond hair… eyes he could drown in… a mind that saw through the tiniest flaw in an argument… residency matching time… him to remain here in forensic pathology, her to anesthesiology in New York… many letters at first, visits when possible… then letters less frequently, heavy work load, too tired to write… finally, the letter that had crushed him… pain… and later, as he recovered, numbness that had never left. This was what made probing the dark pool dangerous. You could not control what came to the surface. Faintly, he heard the woman across from him identify herself.

  “Elizabeth Louvier.”

  He banished the thoughts she had started and took her offered hand. “I’m Andy Broussard.”

  “Dr. Broussard’s the Orleans Parish medical examiner,” Demouchet said. Broussard had almost forgotten that Demouchet was still standing there.

  “Would that be of the Baton Rouge Broussards?” Louvier asked.

  “No, the New Orleans Broussards, except for a brief hiatus when my parents lived in Bayou Coteau.” From the look in her eyes, Broussard saw that it was better not to be a Baton Rouge Broussard.

  “I’m a great admirer of residential stability,” Louvier said. “But I’ll not hold a brief hiatus against you. In fact, I’d like to hear more about your family, your work, and, of course, your paintings, but I really must run.” She reached in her bag and came out with a card that she gave to Broussard. “Call me and we’ll talk sheep.” From the sparkle in her eyes, it was obvious the pun was intended. “And I am sorry about the painting….”

  Broussard dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand.

  She looked at Demouchet. “May I expect delivery tomorrow?”

  “Without fail,” he said. “Let me get your receipt.”

  And then she was gone, leaving the gallery, Broussard thought, cheerless and empty. He looked at her card. Her address was in the best section of St. Charles Avenue.

  “Hey, Doc, you better make your move on that one,” Demouchet said. “She’s between husbands and she’s loaded. You could merge collections… or anything else that occurs to you.”

  Demouchet’s suggestion was not only crude but also ridiculous. Wishing to hear no more about it, he put Louvier’s card in his shirt pocket and told Demouchet to give him a call if any more sheep paintings came in. He left and headed back to the office, trying to clear his head of Elizabeth Louvier, but she was as unwilling to leave his thoughts as she was to give up the painting. The chord she had struck in him went beyond her pleasing appearance, her good mind, and their mutual interest in art. He saw in her, the Old South, the south that he had known as a boy and liked far better than what it was now becoming.

  At Canal and Basin Street, something bobbed to the surface of the dark pool: the dumbbell-shaped inclusions. He remembered.

  *

  * *

  Broussard was a meticulous filer of the records and slides from his own cases, but nothing else that came into his office ever went into a file cabinet, ending up instead in one of the many piles of journals, letters, and papers that sat about the room like African termite mounds. Many who had seen his office had concluded from this that he was hopelessly disorganized. They were wrong. Once he knew what he wanted, he could find it in those piles as quickly as though it had been filed.

  Heart thudding, he went to a mound rising from the floor beside his vinyl sofa and set the upper two-thirds of the stack aside. From the top of what was left, he picked up a fifteen-year-old letter and refreshed his memory.

  Dear Dr. Broussard:

  We would like to obtain a second opinion as to the cause of a death that has recently occurred at our facility. Enclosed is the medical history of the deceased, the autopsy and lab reports, and slides of all the organs.

  I realize that this is an imposition on your busy schedule and want to thank you in advance for helping. There will, of course, be an honorarium provided for your services. When you have finished reviewing the enclosed material, please return it to:

  The Cotswald Institute

  1 Institute Drive

  Sheridan, Wyoming 82801

  Respectfully,

  Bradly Kinard, M.D.

  Asst. Director

  Attached to the letter was Broussard’s reply:

  Dear Dr. Kinard:

  After examining the material you recently sent, I find that I concur with the conclusion reached by the pathologist who performed the autopsy; namely, that death was most likely caused by cardiac arrhythmia secondary to coronary atherosclerosis.

  Sincerely,

  Andy Broussard, M.D.

  Chief Medical Examiner for Orleans Parish,

  Louisiana

  Also attached to Kinard’s letter were some notes Broussard had made to himself, one of which said, “Peculiar dumbbell-shaped inclusions in samples from the rostral poles of the cerebral cortex. Significance???”

  Broussard took the letters to his desk and set about trying to get in touch with Bradly Kinard.

  From whoever it was that answered the phone at the Cotswald Institute, he learne
d that Kinard had retired. Believing that what he sought was more likely in the institute’s files than in Kinard’s possession, he explained what he wanted from Kinard and was placed on hold.

  While waiting, he got a lemon ball from the bowl on his desk and put it in his cheek. Had he ever personally known anyone from Wyoming? He didn’t think so. Was that because people from Wyoming never leave or was it because its small population reduced the odds? What would it be like living in a place where the eyes of the cattle freeze shut in winter? Probably if you were the ME there, you’d need a four-wheel-drive Jeep. A T-Bird wouldn’t cut it. And you’d probably have to cover—

  “Hello, Dr. Broussard. Sorry to keep you waiting. This is Dr. Rutland. What can I do for you?”

  Broussard recited his story one more time and was again placed on hold.

  Wyoming… pretty scenery… probably not enough murders though, to keep a man busy… What would he do to keep his mind sharp—work crossword puzzles? Lot of good trout streams in that part of the country. And they say trout are clever. Could you get crawfish up there? No way he’d want to live there if you—

  “Dr. Broussard… Dr. Rutland again. You are probably unaware of the fact that much of the work at our institute is done under contract to various federal agencies. This greatly restricts the openness with which we can discuss our activities. Having said that, I’m happy to add that most of what you want to know has recently been declassified. I think the best course would be for me to send you a letter and some other material. Then if you still have questions, you can give me a call.”

  “This is pretty important.”

  “I’ll get it out today, with overnight delivery.”

  *

  * *

  Kit did not make much headway that afternoon in her investigation of the police shooting. Following her visit to Iverson and a quick dinner at a West Bank Arby’s, she went home, glad that she was heading into the city rather than being part of the traffic flowing out of it in a maddeningly slow exodus.

  There was so much churning in her head that when she was walking Lucky, she wandered into the range of an oscillating sprinkler whose spray wrecked her hair and allowed her skimpy bra to show through her blouse. Later, half-watching the news with her legs thrown over the side of her armchair, she tried to see Gatlin’s and Broussard’s point of view. But however she looked at it, Halliday’s suicide came up about as palatable as yellow snow.