“Come in.”
A grizzled old cop in uniform opened the door. In one hand was a paper evidence bag that looked heavy.
“Dr. Broussard, Lieutenant Gatlin said you wanted this,”
He came forward and put the bag on the desk.
“Appreciate you bringin’ it over, especially under the circumstances.”
“Because of harassment from other uniforms supporting the slowdown?”
“Exactly.”
“I ain’t one to be screwed with.”
“No, I can see that,” Broussard said, reaching for the bag.
“Thought I knew everyone on the force,” Broussard said. “But I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Just moved here from Baton Rouge.” He motioned to the bag. “I was told not to leave it.”
“I’ll only be a few minutes. If you like you can sit over there.” Broussard gestured to a green vinyl sofa with journal articles and books filling all the cushions. “You can put some of that stuff on the floor. Just don’t mix up the piles.”
“What are we talkin’. . .” The cop said. “Five minutes . . . ten . . .?”
“Five minutes, tops.”
The cop went to the sofa and sat on the armrest. From his perch, he said, “They told me it’s still loaded, but there’s no live round under the hammer. If I was you, I’d assume they’re wrong and I wouldn’t point it at yourself or me.”
Broussard snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, opened the bag, and looked in. Grasping the revolver by the grip, where it’s rough texture would have prevented the shooter from leaving a useful print, he withdrew the gun. It was a snub nose Smith and Wesson Airlite .22LR. Keeping the muzzle pointed at the floor, he popped open the cylinder and noted that the cartridge under the hammer had a firing mark denting the rim. There was also a firing dent on the rim of the cartridge just to the left of the first one. None of the remaining six rounds had firing marks. These observations fit perfectly with his growing suspicions about what had really happened at the picnic. Gatlin said the gun hadn’t been completely examined yet, so Broussard didn’t want to remove any of the cartridges. Instead, he just turned the gun around and looked at them through the cylinder openings. All the remaining unfired rounds were hollow points, just as he expected.
He snapped the cylinder back in place. Turning to the flexible LED light on the table behind him, he bent the light down so it illuminated the interior of the gun’s muzzle, which he examined through a swiveling magnifying glass.
From the arm of the sofa, the cop said, “I know you checked, but seeing someone look down the muzzle of a gun gives me the creeps.”
“Some folks think most of what I do is creepy,” Broussard replied. “But I see your point.” From a nearby drawer, he got a cotton-tipped swab and gently ran it around the inside of the muzzle. Then he studied the swab under the magnifying glass. While sliding his chair along the table, he took off his glasses and let them dangle against his chest by the lanyard attached to the temples. He spent the next thirty seconds examining the swab with a dissecting microscope. Satisfied, he put the swab in a plastic tube and screwed a cap on it.
Glasses once again on his face, he carried the gun back to his desk, where he signed and dated the chain of custody form on the evidence bag. He then scribbled a few notes on a yellow pad describing what he’d done with the weapon. After signing and dating the sheet, he tore it off the pad and taped it under the custody form. The gun then went back in the bag.
“Okay, officer . . .?”
“Two thirty one,” the cop said, standing up.
Broussard briefly thought about asking him if now that they knew each other would he mind if Broussard just called him “Two.” Then, thinking the guy might not appreciate it, he handed him the bag and just said, “Thanks for bringin’ it over.”
Now there was one last thing Broussard wanted to do before telling Gatlin what he’d learned. He picked up his phone, hit the call function, scrolled to his contacts, and tapped a number.
“This is Andy. Can you get free for a couple hours? We’ll need a boat.”
Kit and Gatlin found nothing in Martin Hartley’s desk that tied him to Joe Broussard or the events at the picnic.
“I knew this was all a mistake,” Terry Hartley said. “Could you just leave now?”
“Just one more thing, and we’ll go,” Kit said.
“What?”
“Where did Martin work?”
Her expression obviously showing she had no idea why that was important, Terry said, “Courmier furniture rental in Westwego.”
“We may want to speak with you again,” Kit replied, taking a small red notebook and a pen from her bag. “Do you have a cell phone?”
Terry gave her the number and said, “Where exactly is Marty?”
“He’s at the medical examiner’s facilities.” Kit dug again in her purse and produced her business card. Handing it to Terry, she said, “Here’s the address. I’ll call and let you when he’ll be released. Again, I’m so sorry this happened. We’ll see ourselves out. Oh, and don’t forget, you left your bag by the truck.”
Terry didn’t seem to care about her bag. Instead of following them out, she sank into a leather armchair and covered her face with her hands.
Outside in the car, Gatlin said, “Mostly you did okay, but never make contact with a suspect unless you’re frisking them and have them at a physical disadvantage. You hugged the woman. She could have pulled a knife, then we’d have had a problem.”
“She wasn’t a suspect. And I was just showing her some compassion.”
“Yeah, compassion, that’s another word for ‘mistake.’ She and Marty could have been in on this together. You didn’t know what her role was.”
Gatlin had never spoken to her like this before and she didn’t like it. “I thought you brought me along to help judge the psychological status of Martin Hartley.”
“That’s true . . . partly.”
“Well, here’s what I concluded: Something’s very wrong with the scenario you laid out for me. Martin was not a candidate for suicide.”
“Why do you say that? He and wife were on thin ice. That alone could drive a man over the edge.”
“You heard what she said. He didn’t pay any attention to her complaints. He didn’t even know he had a problem with her.”
“Maybe she had nothing to do with it. Could be he knew he couldn’t get away after shooting Uncle Joe and didn’t want to spend time in prison or go through a trial with a needle in a vein waiting for him.”
“I don’t think he’s the one.”
“Well, that’s not in question. There were at least two dozen witnesses that saw him do it.”
“The comment Martin made about guns during that cartoon show . . . there was no audience for that. He didn’t say it for effect. It’s what he believed.”
“Maybe his wife was his audience. He was setting her up so she’d say he hated guns if anyone came around asking.”
“You can’t have it both ways. A moment ago, you suggested he killed himself because he knew he couldn’t get away after killing Uncle Joe. So why would he care if anyone came around later asking if he owned a gun?”
Gatlin fuzzed his eyebrows with his catcher’s mitt of a hand. “We’ve lost the thread of what we came here for. There’s no question he was the shooter. Mostly I wanted to find out why he did it. Maybe we can get a handle on that at what was it . . . Courmier furniture rental.”
Chapter 6
Broussard owned six 1957 T-Birds, all in mint condition; original upholstery, original paint, no replacement parts on any of them. Most people who saw him driving one assumed he’d bought them when he was thin and had gradually put on weight until each of them encased him like a fitted shirt. But they were wrong, because he’d never been thin. And he didn’t care. There were too many other things in his life he did care about: good food, either prepared by him, or any other culinary magician that was his equal, old master paintings with sheep in t
hem, Louis L’Amour novels, and his work.
Today, Broussard was driving his white T-Bird, which now came to a stop in front of the NOPD vehicle impoundment station on Poydras street. In seconds, the door in the little building at the front gate opened and the man he’d called right after examining the revolver came quickly to the car.
He opened the door and got in. “How you doin’ today?” Bubba Oustellette said, grinning, his teeth impossibly white against his bushy black beard. Bubba clearly believed that once a man decides on the right clothes for himself, no further thought on the topic is needed. He was dressed just like yesterday and the day before and the year before that: a green baseball cap with the old Tulane logo on it (an ocean wave baring its teeth and carrying a football), navy coveralls over a navy T-shirt, and brown work shoes.
“I’m disturbed,” Broussard said, responding to Bubba’s greeting. “My Uncle Joe was killed this mornin’ . . . and on his birthday of all things.”
“I heard about dat,” Bubba said. “An’ you watched it all happen?”
Broussard nodded. “I saw the bullet hit Joe and I saw the shooter kill himself. He was in a boat about 200 yards away out in the swamp.”
“Dat would disturb anybody, seein’ a family member go down like dat.”
“I didn’t know Joe very well. He was kind of reclusive, but he was family. That made it personal.”
“What does reclusive mean?”
“It means he didn’t get out much, didn’t like to be around other people.”
“Good word, but a bad way for somebody to be.” Then remembering that Joe was dead, Bubba crossed himself and said, “repose en paix (rest in peace). You said we’d need a boat. You wanna go to where it happened and take a closer look?”
“I do.”
“Because somethin’ ain’t right?”
“Precisely. Did you get us a boat?”
“We could go get mine, but I foun’ a better answer. I gotta friend name a T Roy Dugas. He gonna let us use his an’ his truck an’ trailer too. Bes’ part a dat is he lives on da Chef Highway out near Bayou Sauvage.”
“Is there anyone you don’t know?”
A few minutes later, as they turned onto Canal Street, Bubba pointed at a pedestrian walking toward the river. “I don’ know him.”
They took Canal to North Claiborne and turned right. Accompanied by US10, which ran above and beside them for many blocks, they drove without talking, both completely comfortable with the companionable silence. Just before they took the ramp onto US10 Bubba said, “Da Bird sounds good.”
“It does, but the red one is runnin’ rough.”
“I could come by Tuesday aroun’ five-thirty and tune it up.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Bayou Sauvage consists of 2400 acres of fresh and brackish marshes and lakes just 15 minutes from the French Quarter. All of it is within the city limits, making it the largest urban wildlife refuge in the country. But it’s not accessible from US10. When the exit for the Chef Menteur Highway came up, Broussard took it.
As they followed an old truck loaded with bales of flattened cardboard down the off ramp, a chipmunk came from the grassy strip bordering the ramp and darted in front of the truck. When the truck passed, there was the chipmunk lying unmoving on the pavement.
Broussard swerved to avoid running over the animal, then pulled off the ramp onto the wide shoulder.
Knowing what was coming, Bubba said, “Dis ain’t a good idea.”
“There’s no one behind us,” Broussard said, opening his door. With an agility that defied the laws of physics, the old pathologist slid smoothly from his seat, closed the driver’s door, and hurried back to the furry brown patch on the asphalt.
Through the rear window of the T-Bird, Bubba saw Broussard kneel and pick up the animal.
Returning to the car moments later, Broussard leaned in with the chipmunk cradled in one chubby hand. “He doesn’t look hurt at all,” Broussard said, somehow getting in with only one available hand. “I think he’s just in shock.”
“So am I,” Bubba said. “Don’ dose things sometimes have rabies?”
“Extremely rare in a chipmunk.”
“So why’d he run in front a dat truck?”
“Bad judgment. But it wasn’t because of rabies. If he was sick, he couldn’t have run like that.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
“There’s a vet about three miles ahead. I’ll drop him off there.”
Broussard put the animal between them, on the small shelf behind the seats, and got the T-Bird back on the highway. He then groped around in his shirt pocket for the unwrapped lemon balls he carried when he was driving. He popped one in each cheek then went back to his stash for two more, which he offered to Bubba.
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“You worried because I picked up the chipmunk with my bare hands and then handled these?” Broussard asked.
“Never gave it a thought,” Bubba said, well aware that Broussard knew he was lying.
“Folks these days are way too fastidious,” Broussard said, then thinking that Bubba might not know what fastidious meant, he added, “Too clean. We don’t challenge our immune systems nearly enough. A few germs are good for you.”
“Well, right now I ain’t in da mood for chipmunk germs. But thanks for offerin’.”
As they drove, Bubba kept looking over his shoulder at the striped little creature lying behind him.
For long stretches, the Chef Highway is flanked by a wide plain of scrubby vegetation with very few buildings of any kind. Then, like something in a dream, the Buddhist Meditation Center rises from the desolate surroundings, its red tiled roofs, magnificent landscaping, and huge white Buddhist statue making one doubt their senses. Shortly after they passed the Center, the chipmunk opened its eyes.
Seeing where it was, the little creature hopped to its feet, let out a shrill squeak of surprise, and jumped onto Bubba’s cap. From there, it went on a rampage, ricocheting around the car so fast it seemed like there were a dozen of them. At one point, it knocked Broussard’s glasses sideways, then bounced off the back window and skittered across Bubba’s bare neck.
Broussard got the T-Bird onto the shoulder and Bubba opened his door. In seconds, the animal was out of the car and into the vegetation flanking the asphalt.
“He seems to have recovered,” Broussard said, straightening his glasses.
Bubba shut his door and they once more got underway.
“Oh, by the way,” Broussard said. “That never happened.”
“What never happened?”
“Exactly.”
They drove for a while longer, then Broussard said, “Where’s T Roy live?”
“Jus’ a couple miles on da other side of Sauvage.”
In a few more minutes, the marshes of the wildlife refuge appeared, stretching endlessly away from both sides of the road. Shortly after they crossed the eastern boundary of the preserve, a bayou that connected to Lake Catherine appeared on their right. When they reached the bayou inlet, and the lake suddenly filled the visible horizon, Bubba pointed to a very modest little house up on pilings fifteen feet high. “Dat’s it.”
Broussard carefully navigated the oyster shell driveway and pulled to a stop where the T-Bird wouldn’t block the red Chevy pickup and boat sitting in the space under the house.
“You must be very good friends for T Roy to let you borrow his rig,” Broussard said, gesturing at the truck and boat.
“We are. But even good friends, gotta have collateral.”
“What kind of . . .” Broussard looked down his nose at Bubba. “So we have to leave him my car.”
“He said he wouldn’t drive it while we were gone, and before we leave, I’ll make sure it won’t run.”
Reluctantly, Broussard popped the hood release, then pulled the keys from the ignition and got out of the car. Bubba too, disembarked, raised the hood, and fiddled with the engine for a couple of seconds. Then he s
hut the hood and came around to Broussard for the keys.
“How’d you know I’d go for this deal?” Broussard said.
“I been aroun’ long enough to know dat when you gotta hunch about a murder, ain’t nothin’ gonna stop you.”
Bubba went up the tall set of steps to the door on the side of the house, knocked, and went inside. He reappeared less than a minute later, waving the truck’s keys.
There was no public boat ramp at the picnic area where the assassination of Uncle Joe took place. With Bubba driving, they therefore headed for a ramp as close to the spot as they could get. Another fifteen minutes found them on the water, Bubba working the outboard motor, Broussard sitting amidships, facing forward.
“I’ll bet you da only person to ever be out here in a bow tie,” Bubba said, over the sound of the purring motor, which pushed them forward at a casual pace.
“You seem different today,” Broussard said over his shoulder. “More . . . assertive.”
“I been readin’ dis book dat says short people get more respect if dey take da lead in conversations instead of jus’ hangin’ back an bein’ a follower.”
“You feel like I don’t respect you?”
“Course not. I’m jus’ practicin’. Hope you don’ mind.”
“Not at all. I like it.” Broussard was about to ask him if he knew how to get to the picnic area, but considering what Bubba had just said, decided to keep quiet.
Even though it was now late afternoon, the temperature on the bayou was quite comfortable. On the left, they passed an expanse of water hyacinths with exotic lavender blooms whose beauty belied the danger the prolific plants posed to the bayou, which could eventually become choked with their presence. Leaving the hyacinths behind, they entered a region where the edges of the water contained patches of pickerelweed, their leaves all pointing upward like the spears of a chlorophyll army. Ahead, the fin of some kind of large fish was visible for a moment before the sound of the motor and the waves from the bow sent it out of sight.
Assassination at Bayou Sauvage Page 3