No Mardi Gras for the Dead

by D. J. Donaldson

  A sound beside her: the potbellied pig… the damn pig… snorting… giving her away. She pushed its inquisitive snout away from her face. It squealed in protest. She had to move. But where was Iverson?

  The pots that kept him from seeing her also kept her from knowing his position. She squirmed around to where she could peek down the way she’d come. There he was, standing a few feet from the door, apparently trying to locate the pig over the sound of the twittering birds.

  She wiggled to the opposite side and became entangled in some wire. An idea pushed through her terror. She freed herself from the wire and slid her head and shoulders from under the table. The exhaust fans at her end of the greenhouse. Yes… the protective screens still had not been installed. Grabbing the wire, she rolled onto the walkway and crawled toward the fans, ignoring the pain of the rough concrete on her knees. She stopped at the last metal leg that supported the center table and wrapped the wire around it. She pulled the wire tight and secured the other end around the leg on the opposite table.

  Rising into a crouch, she crept back along the center table, looking for... There… Shielded by so much foliage that Iverson couldn’t see her, she climbed onto the table and pushed a huge plant into the right aisle, blocking it. She jumped down and scuttled back to the fan end of the greenhouse. Avoiding the stretched wire, she hid behind the center table to watch and wait.

  Iverson’s feet appeared on the left walkway, her view of the rest of him blocked by overhanging foliage. He advanced slowly, placing his feet carefully. When he was as close as she could stand for him to get, she opened the greenhouse door and rattled it so he’d get the message. Then she darted to the outside and headed toward the house.

  Iverson broke into a run. The wire caught his left ankle and he stumbled forward, arms windmilling, eyes wide with horror as the whirling blades of the exhaust fan waited.

  His right arm caught the edge of the frame that held the fan, keeping him from falling into it. His left hand hit the motor housing and skidded forward, two fingers sliding into the spoked pully for the fan belt, where they were instantly mangled.

  He screamed and cradled his mutilated fingers with his opposite forearm. Dazed by the pain and angry now for what Kit had done to him, he lurched from the greenhouse and saw her running back toward the perennial garden. With no thought of how he would explain her being shot from behind, he raised the gun and fired twice.

  Kit heard the shots and the sound of the bullets slamming into the brick wall ahead of her at almost the same moment. The wire had not worked. She’d come this way vaguely intending to get to the telephone, but Iverson was too close for that.

  Desperately needing to get out of his line of fire, she continued into the walled perennial garden, crossed it, and entered the rose garden, her thoughts fragmented….

  The front door… could go out the front… locked… it could be locked… or he… suppose he went around… was waiting there…

  Her eyes darted over the rose garden, looking for a way out. Seeing a tall wooden door in the back wall. She ran to it, praying that it wasn’t locked.

  The door operated by a latch that gave her no trouble. She slipped out and closed the door behind her. Across the rose garden, Iverson believed that things had finally started to turn his way.

  Kit plunged into the dense forest on the other side of the garden wall, failing to notice the two galvanized tubs by the door and the marks on the bare ground around them. Tree roots seemed to lift out of the spongy ground and grab at her feet. Stiff palmetto fronds lashed at her arms and her eyes burned from the sweat that ran into them. On a tree to her right, too high for her to notice and facing the other direction, was a white sign with red letters: TRESPASSERS BEWARE.

  She ran blindly, changing direction constantly, clusters of skinny Spanish moss-laden trees always in her way, one part of the forest looking like another. Her hair lay against her face like wet draperies. Her clothing stuck to her skin. The wound on her arm burned and she had an ache in her side. Unable to go on, she stopped and sucked at the thick air that was able to nurture the rootless Spanish moss yet gave her no sustenance.

  What was that?

  She turned her head and listened—nothing. But there had been something….

  The forest was so dense that a man standing fifteen feet away might never be seen. On his knees, he could get much closer, because palmetto and ferns formed a visually impenetrable ground cover higher than her waist. She forced herself to move on. Whatever was there, followed.

  Unable to keep the same course for more than a foot or two at a time, she picked her way through the forest, which now seemed even more intent on holding her back. Abruptly, the trees and undergrowth thinned and she dashed across a small clearing. As the foliage on the far side engulfed her, she looked back and all hope fled. Pursuing her was a black humpbacked horror too ugly to exist—a Russian boar, bigger than any she’d seen at the zoo, with tusks that made her frighteningly aware that she was utterly defenceless, had even lost her mace.

  *

  * *

  “This is what I meant when I said you might not be able totally to surprise him,” Broussard said, gesturing at the open bridge. “We’ll have to call on that phone and see if he’ll open up. How ’bout I not mention that you’re with me?”

  “You’re getting to be a deceitful old codger,” Gatlin said.

  *

  * *

  Kit looked for a tree to climb, but there were few large enough to support her, and those that were had no limbs she could reach. The forest thinned again—the bayou…. She ran to the edge and was about to jump in but heard the bellow of a bull alligator close by. Thinking of it waiting for her, she froze. Then thirty yards to her right, across the bayou, she saw Broussard. She cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed for help. Behind her, the boar burst from the undergrowth.

  She turned. Pig sweat glistened on the boar’s snout and its steely little eyes bored holes in her heart. An erect ridge of stiff black hairs bristled along its back and it began to make guttural huffing noises. Kit’s eyes fixed on its two sets of hideous yellow tusks: the shorter, a pair of Arabian daggers curling upward from each side of its snout, frightening enough by themselves but accompanied by a pair of splayed ivory broadswords that jutted skyward from its lower jaw. Faintly, she heard Teddy’s voice: “… they had to put a stop on the lance to keep the boar from running up the lance and gutting the horse.”

  The boar’s mouth never stopped moving, opening and closing, churning its saliva into ropy strands that dangled from its lower jaw, the motion stropping the two pairs of tusks together in a bony clatter. Frantically, Kit looked back at the bayou, where something moved below the duckweed. The boar darted forward in short choppy steps and hesitated. She slowly edged sideways and her foot hit a piece of water-soaked wood. Slowly, she dipped her knees and picked it up, not liking its punky feel.

  On the other side of the bayou, Broussard ran along the bank. Puzzled, Gatlin got out of the car and followed. Broussard drew even with her and saw the boar. He shouted for her to get in the water.

  The boar took a few more short steps and huffed menacingly. Then it charged. Kit stepped to the side and hit it across the forehead with her club. The partially rotted wood crumbled away from a solid core, which cracked as it broke on the boar’s hard skull.

  The animal stumbled and dropped to its knees. Too rattled to think clearly, Kit plunged back into the forest. The boar struggled to its feet, teetered briefly on its spindly legs, and went after her.

  Kit was now far past any normal level of endurance but adrenaline powered her forward, dodging, stumbling. She was close enough now to the house to see the widow’s walk and… Iverson standing on it with something in his hand. There was a shot and a bullet ripped through the palmetto a foot away.

  Dimly, she saw how well things had played out for Iverson. He could kill her now and claim that he was shooting at the boar. She dodged a small tree and a bullet shredded its bark. The
re was another shot with a different sound and Kit heard tinkling glass. Iverson disappeared.

  She came to another clearing and hesitated, afraid to cross it, fearing that Iverson was still up there with his rifle. She was struck in the legs by a heavy weight and went down. The boar continued past her into the clearing, where it turned and stared at her. It made a false charge and stopped, its hairy tail flicking, mouth moving, tusks clattering. Then it came for her. Instinctively, she drew her knees to her chest, put her forearms over her face, and braced for the hit.

  From somewhere nearby she heard the sound of gunfire. The boar squealed and half-turned, staggered a few feet to the left, and fell. It quivered briefly, then lay still.

  The foliage parted and she looked up—into the face of Phil Gatlin, whose clothes were wet and covered with gray slime and duckweed. “You all right, Doc?”

  “I think so,” Kit said, breathing so heavily, she could barely talk.

  He knelt beside her. “You could have made things a lot easier if you hadn’t gone back into the woods at the bayou.”

  “I wasn’t exactly”—her chest heaved and she felt lightheaded—“in full control of the situation. How’d you… find me in here?”

  “Sort of guessed your location by the angle of Iverson’s rifle.”

  “Was it you that chased him off the widow’s walk?”

  “I didn’t know what was happening for sure, but I couldn’t take the chance that he was shooting at you, so I made him quit.”

  “Where…”

  “Hold on. Let’s make sure that thing is dead. I don’t want it getting up after we’ve turned our backs.”

  Gatlin crept slowly across the clearing, his gun aimed at the boar, which showed no movement. He approached it warily and kicked it in the rump. It still did not move. He circled around to the head, pointed the gun, and said, “Just to be sure.”

  Kit winced as he fired.

  “Jesus, look at those tusks,” Gatlin said. “Maybe I should—”

  A blur came out of the undergrowth behind Gatlin and hit him in the back of the legs. As he went down on top of the dead boar, the gun flew from his hand.

  Gatlin rolled off the first boar, and the second, which was a twin of the first, charged again. One of its tusks went into Gatlin’s pant leg and ripped it open, getting some of his flesh, as well. Tacking to the right, it ran across Gatlin’s chest, one sharp hoof kicking him in the mouth. Blood welled from the fallen detective’s split lip.

  Kit struggled to her feet and ran to where she thought the gun had hit the ground. Dropping to her knees, she wiped at the weeds in a wide arc with her arm. Where the hell was it?

  The boar shifted its attention to Kit. It circled to her left, huffing in anger, its mouth churning out saliva. Then it came, full speed, its sharp hooves pummeling the grass. Kit scrambled up and pushed herself, stumbling, toward the forest, but she quickly lost her footing and pitched to the ground again on all fours. The boar, now only a few feet away, turned its head, intending to hook her in the belly and open her up.

  A shot rang out. The boar squealed and went down. It struggled to rise, but another shot thudded into its ugly hide, finishing it. Still on her knees, Kit turned and looked with disbelief at the dead boar. Confused, she glanced at Gatlin, who still lay where the boar had left him. He pointed upward—toward the roof of Iverson’s house, where on the widow’s walk she saw a familiar shape holding a rifle: Broussard.

  21

  “Well, it’s not as bad as it could be,” Broussard said, gently cleaning the blood from the gash in Gatlin’s leg.

  “That supposed to make me feel better?” he said through his swollen and cut lip.

  He and Kit were sitting at Iverson’s kitchen table. “Where’s Iverson?” Kit said, holding a towel soaked in cold water against her forehead.

  “Shortly after all the gunfire started, I saw the bridge swing closed. Then Iverson came barrelin’ down the drive. Nearly hit your car, Phillip. I called it in on the car radio and also asked for an ambulance. You two could use one.”

  “That was nice shooting,” Gatlin said. “Where’d you learn to handle a rifle like that? Thought you didn’t like guns.”

  “I’ll tell you about it someday,” Broussard said. “Lucky for you two that Iverson left his rifle and a box of shells on the roof.”

  They heard the sound of sirens and were soon joined by a couple of paramedics and two uniformed cops.

  “What’s the word on that suspect we called in?” Gatlin said to the cops.

  The older one shook his head. “Hope you didn’t have your heart set on talking to him, ’cause he pulled into the path of an eighteen-wheeler on U.S. Ninety. Trucker’s okay, but your man is dog food.”

  *

  * *

  Kit shifted her weight and the white paper on the examining table crinkled under her. Her arm hurt, but otherwise she was feeling well enough to think about all that had happened, including the things Iverson had said while holding the gun on her in his study—things she didn’t understand. What had he meant when he said he’d tried to keep the cost low? And all that talk about operating only on people who could make a difference? She flashed on her conversation with Lily Lacaze, the part where they’d been talking about Francie O’Connor disappearing and leaving her clothes behind, and Lacaze had said that wasn’t so uncommon….

  Roses planted in plastic containers…

  No one else allowed…

  Oh my God.

  She got off the examining table and ran into the hall, where Broussard was waiting. “I think there’s more,” she said, “buried in his rose garden.”

  *

  * *

  Since the light was fading, the search of Iverson’s rose garden had to be delayed until the following morning. After all she had suffered, Kit slept far later than she intended, so that when she arrived at Iverson’s, there were already two patrol cars, Victoria French’s van, Gatlin’s Pontiac, Broussard’s red T-Bird, and some other cars she didn’t recognize in the drive. Broussard and Gatlin were sitting in Gatlin’s car. She walked over, opened the back door, and put her head in.

  “Have they found anything?”

  Broussard invited her in. “Won’t know the final count for days,” he said, “but it looks bad… real bad. Victoria’s brought in some extra help and they’ve already gotten down to the first one. It’s a young female. My guess is, they’ll all be female.”

  “I think this is going to close a lot of missing persons files,” Gatlin said through his still swollen lip. He looked at Kit. “What’s your take on this? He say anything to help you understand it?”

  “Nearly as I can figure, he’d been doing this for years. He talked a lot about stress, how it builds up, how you have to find an outlet. It’s pretty clear now that killing young women was his outlet. He made a big point about how he operated only on people who could make a difference and how he tried to keep the cost low. I think that ’low cost’ meant prostitutes. Francie O’Connor was just the beginning. And you know, I think that he really believed his position was morally defensible. The frightening thing is how this went on for so long without anyone knowing.”

  “All goes back to bodies, Doc,” Gatlin said. “Without bodies, you don’t know what’s out there, plus hard-core hookers are so transient, they often don’t have anybody who really cares about them. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d tricked the ones he picked up into giving him information about other potential targets.”

  “Tell us again how you happened to be over here yesterday,” Broussard said. “And this time, give us a few more details.”

  Kit recounted what she’d learned from Harry Isom and described how she’d found the lease with Jordan and Halliday’s name on it. She told how Iverson had been drugging her and had taken the lease from her bag.

  While Kit talked, Gatlin made notes in his little black book. When she was finished, he said, “Probably isn’t all that important now, but we’ll take a look for that lease.”
<
br />   “I’d check the armchair on the bookcase side of the fireplace in the study,” Kit said. “I think that’s also where he got the gun… from under the cushion.”

  Gatlin scribbled again in his book and said, “As for you ignoring my orders—”

  “I know I was wrong, but I was so personally involved in this, I couldn’t stop.” She went on to tell them about her part in Leslie Music’s suicide, stressing how much Francie O’Connor resembled Leslie. It was a story that touched both men and she saw from the look on Gatlin’s face that he was willing to forget what she’d done. “What about you two?” Kit said. “How’d you know it was Iverson?”

  “Andy figured it out,” Gatlin said. “Tell her.”

  “Maybe later,” Broussard said.

  “Not later, now,” Kit insisted.

  “Well, the first clue was some peculiar structures I found in the pyramidal cells of Paul Jarrell’s prefrontal cortex. I had the feelin’ I’d seen somethin’ similar before but couldn’t remember where. Arthur Jordan’s brain didn’t have them, so it seemed like maybe it wasn’t significant. Then when I was doin’ the autopsy on Kurt Halliday, I found a little praying mantis in his hair. Struck me as quite a coincidence that I’d picked one off you the day before.”

  “Iverson must have carried it to Halliday’s house on his clothing,” Kit said.

  “Obvious now, but then, it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Shortly after you and Phillip left the day we had our meetin’, I discovered the same odd structures in Halliday’s brain that I’d found in Jarrell’s. Figurin’ it was time I remembered where I’d seen ’em, I did. Years ago, I consulted by mail on an autopsy of someone who died at a place called the Cotswald Institute. I’d seen the same strange structures in slides from that brain, but it didn’t have anything to do with the cause of death.

  “Naturally, I called the institute to see what I could find out about the case and they sent me some material. Seems they were doin’ research on drugs that could be used for interrogation purposes and that the case I consulted on was a volunteer who’d died after bein’ exposed to one of the drugs they were testin’. The package they sent me included a report written a few years before the death they’d contacted me about. That report described the effects of the drug on a dozen volunteers. Didn’t take much gray matter to see how its effects could fit into the deaths of Jarrell and Halliday.”