Sleeping With the Crawfish

by D. J. Donaldson

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so vague, but I don’t know exactly what happened. It’s possible I’d know more if I could see the shoes your husband was wearin’ when he—that mornin’.”

  “His shoes . . . God . . . His shoes?”

  “If we could.”

  Apparently resigned that she’d have to give them what they wanted, she stepped out of the way and Noell and Broussard went inside, where Broussard’s own heart nearly stopped.

  It was like the old adage from the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The house might not have been burned by Sherman, but the Hunters had destroyed it almost as effectively.

  All the heavy molding the original builders had surely put in the house was gone, replaced with simple modern equivalents. There was no plantation mural or elegant French paper on the walls. Instead, almost the entire foyer was painted beige, with black portholes of recessed lighting pock-marking the ceiling. On the wall to the right hung a big cartoonish black-and-beige wooden artwork that had been cut out on a band saw. At the far end of the foyer, the wall was covered in mirrors that made the one life-sized chrome android sculpture in front of it appear to be two. And the poor staircase—they’d ripped out its newel posts and replaced its lovely turned rails and banister, with four curving horizontal tubular rods, each in a different primary color.

  Val gestured to a room on the left. “Have a seat and I’ll get Tony’s shoes.”

  A seat was just what Broussard needed, for what the Hunters had done to their house made him weak in the knees.

  Rocked as he was by what he’d seen, it was doubtful he could have rallied even if the sitting room had been furnished in impeccably correct Louis XIV. But it wasn’t Louis the anything. It was two brown sofas and a chair, all of which resembled tufted sausages, grouped around a glass and chrome coffee table that, like the sausages, stood only eight inches high. On the wall was a massive painting consisting of five swatches of color against a beige ground that matched the walls and carpet.

  The sausages were so low, Broussard was afraid if he sat on one, he might not be able to get up without help. Noell apparently didn’t find the seating inviting, either, so when Val returned carrying a pair of Adidas running shoes, she found both of them still standing.

  “I don’t know why you want them,” she said, crossing to where Broussard waited, “but here.”

  Broussard took the shoes from her and determined left from right. He put the left one down and examined the sole of the other through the bifocal part of his glasses.

  Finding an area of interest, he rummaged in his leather bag for a metal probe, then placed its point against the shoe sole. A few twists of the probe sent the point into the rubber. He moved to the big painting, tilted the shoe in the beam from the track lighting overhead, and looked inside. Turning to Val, he said, “Could I see where your husband put on his joggin’ clothes that mornin’?”

  It was clearly not anything Val wanted to do, but she agreed, signaling that they should follow her. “You’ll have to excuse the mess in our bedroom,” she said, heading for the stairs. “I’ve been too busy to deal with it.”

  After becoming nearly beige-blind from the decor downstairs, Broussard’s retinas were dazzled by the Hunters’ bedroom, whose walls were adorned with massive tree boughs and huge flowers on a silver foil ground. Set into the circular wall opposite the door was a chrome-trimmed glass cabinet with built-in lighting that made the collection of citrinecolored glass inside glow with a rich fire. Underfoot, a sculpted forest green carpet pulled it all together so nicely, the clothing littering the bed and the chaise were hardly noticeable.

  Never having found practical significance in the observation that some good can be found in even the most evil men, this discovery of one attractive room in the Hunter home didn’t suddenly make Broussard a fan. He’d come up here looking for a specific item and had a good idea where it would be. In his quick appraisal of the room, though, he’d failed to spot it. An open door to what appeared to be the master bath pulled him that way.

  In the bathroom, he went directly to the wastebasket and put on a rubber glove from his bag. He then began pulling out the wastebasket’s contents and piling them on the floor: cotton balls with makeup on them, a wadded Kleenex. . . .

  “Must you do that?” Val said from the bathroom doorway, her face flushed.

  Broussard paused in his work. “It could be crucial.”

  “Oh, do what you have to, then.” She left the doorway and crossed to the bedroom windows, allowing Noell to take her place.

  Continuing with his plundering of the wastebasket, Broussard removed a box for a tube of Gleem toothpaste and one for a Clairol hair-coloring kit. Then his own face grew rosy as he gingerly added a Lightdays sanitary napkin to the growing pile of detritus.

  With the removal of that last item, the bottom of the wastebasket was now revealed. On it lay the object he sought. He obtained from his bag a small evidence envelope with a transparent window. From the doorway, Noell saw him pick something small out of the wastebasket and drop it in the envelope.

  He put the envelope in his bag and cleaned up the mess he’d made. When he stood up to leave, he was breathing heavily from being so long in a position that compressed his belly. Noell gave ground and he returned to the bedroom. “Mrs. Hunter, I’m finished.”

  Val turned from the window. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I think so. I’ll need to conduct some tests before I know.”

  “What is it?”

  Crossing to the window, Broussard reached into his bag, removed the envelope, and handed it to her. “Have you ever seen this before?”

  She held it up to the window.

  Curious herself about what Broussard had found, Noell moved in for a look. But before she could get into position, Val returned the envelope to Broussard.

  “It’s not the kind of thing I’d notice.”

  Broussard spoke with her for another minute or so then a voice from the doorway to the hall said, “Val, something’s bitten Mom on the leg.”

  It was a younger version of Val.

  “She’s got a red welt the size of a quarter,” the girl said. “Do you have anything we can put on it?”

  “I’ll find something for her.” Val looked at Broussard, her eyes saying, Please go.

  “I can see you’ve got things to do,” Broussard said. “And we’re finished anyway.”

  Everybody trooped downstairs, where, after Broussard advised Val not to throw out her husband’s jogging shoes, she smoothly turned him and Noell onto the front porch.

  When the blue front door had been shut behind them, Noell said, “Bad enough she had to lose her husband; now she’s gotta put up with a houseful of relatives. What was that you found in there?”

  Broussard opened his bag and handed her the envelope. She shook it to get the object out of the crease in the bottom and pinned it up where she could examine it.

  “It’s a weird kind of nail,” Broussard said, “with barbs on the shank.”

  “And you believe when Hunter put on his jogging shoes, this nail was sticking through the sole.”

  “The facts predicted its existence and suggested it’d be in the nearest wastebasket to where he dressed. And its shape is right. With those barbs holdin’ it in place, it’d puncture the skin before bein’ dislodged from the shoe.”

  “If you’re right, then the nail must be—”

  Falling into the long-standing habit he’d acquired in conversations with Phil Gatlin in which each of them tried to be the first to state the implications of the facts under discussion, Broussard said, “It must be poisoned.”

  When they were once more in the car, Noell said, “Where to now? Toxicology?”

  “Before we get them involved, there’s a test I want to conduct. So we need to stop at a pet store, then the regional forensic center.”

  The car was suddenly filled with a rumbling noise that for a moment made Noell t
hink the transmission was going out. But then the noise came again and she realized it was Broussard’s stomach.

  “Sounds like you could use some food,” she said. “So could I.”

  “No time now. I need to get this test done before Hunter’s buried.” He stiffened against the floorboard and fished some lemon balls out of his pocket. “Try a couple of these. They’ll hold you.”

  Had she not been driving and been able to see the pocket lint and the curly brown hair among the candies, she might have refused. Without this advantage, she took one and put it in her mouth. Broussard popped two himself and they headed back to Memphis.

  Forty-five minutes after leaving Coldwater, Noell parked behind Ruby Begonia’s Pet Emporium.

  “No need for you to come in,” Broussard said, climbing out. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  He disappeared through the pet store’s open back door, returning five minutes later with one of those white containers that usually have Chinese food in them. Stomach still rumbling, he sat cradling the container in his lap as they headed for their next stop.

  After a short drive, Noell turned into a supermarket parking lot and found a slot.

  “I thought we were going to the forensic center,” Broussard said.

  “This time, you stay in the car.”

  The whole time she was gone, which actually wasn’t very long, Broussard counted the minutes, afraid he would lose Hunter’s body to the earth before he could determine if he was right about that nail.

  When Noell came back to the car, she was carrying a plastic sack, which she handed across to him before getting in.

  “The time it’ll take us to eat this isn’t going to make any difference in what you need to do. Dig in.”

  “Diggin’ is just what I’m worried about.”

  “Eat.”

  She’d bought them each a grilled chicken sandwich, some potato salad, and a Snapple iced tea. To Broussard, the theoretical standard for gastronomic barbarity had always been eating in a car. The only food-related activity he rated lower was cooking on the car engine and eating that food in the car. Surprisingly, this, his first experience in automotive dining in thirty years, was not at all unpleasant. So as they pulled out of the parking lot after finishing, he didn’t mind the time he’d lost.

  The Shelby County Regional Forensic Center sits a hefty scalpel throw west of where I-240 pours cars onto Madison Avenue, a situation that forced Noell to blend quickly with the efflux so she could make the right turn into the parking lot.

  It was the first time Broussard had ever seen the place and he liked it immediately, mostly because it wasn’t in a basement. All those windows . . . the light . . . four floors, all for forensics—scandalous and marvelous.

  The parking lot was nearly full and included two patrol cars.

  “Looks like business is boomin’,” Broussard said.

  “Lucky we got in when the price was low.”

  They parked, got out, and Broussard followed Noell up a short flight of steps to a single-story annex of the main building. She put her finger on a bell by the reflective glass door.

  Broussard had already spent far too much of his day standing outside a place he wanted to enter. One thing about working with the dead, they never keep you waiting.

  The door squalled open and a face from hell said, “Sergeant Noell, I wasn’t expecting you. Come on in.”

  Noell stepped inside and Broussard followed.

  “Wasn’t expecting to be here myself,” Noell said. “But that’s what makes life so damn interesting. This is Dr. Broussard, the New Orleans ME. You’ll have to ask him why we’re here. Andy, this is Buddy Harper.”

  Buddy examined his own hand, then trolled for a handshake.

  Broussard found his mitt warm and moist.

  Buddy, of course, had not come from hell, but he had obviously been through it, for the left side of his face and most of his neck were stretched and raw with the aftereffects of burns that had surely been deep enough to expose the fat in his subcutaneous tissue. To his credit, he seemed outgoing and cheerful.

  “Buddy, I’m here in Memphis investigatin’ a possible murder. To do that, I have to carry out a little experiment, for which I’ll need a benchtop and a few disposable supplies. Can you help me?”

  “Question is, is it okay with Doc Graham? I’ll need to check.”

  “Absolutely. You call him and give me the phone.”

  Buddy punched Graham’s extension into a nearby wall phone and once again Broussard found himself standing around doing nothing while Hunter’s funeral inched closer.

  “Dr. Graham . . . Buddy. There’s a Dr. Broussard from New Orleans here. Wants to speak with you. Here he is.”

  Broussard took the receiver. “Gene . . . Why have you never told me what a nice place you have here?”

  “Didn’t want you gettin’ jealous. What are you doin’ in Memphis?”

  “I’m checkin’ out a Tate County, Mississippi, case that may reach into my backyard.”

  “I’ve got a couple of detectives with me at the moment, but I should be finished in ten minutes. We can talk then.”

  “I’m kind of pressed for time. What I need right now is access to your facilities and a few dollars’ worth of supplies to find out if I made the right decision comin’ up here.”

  “Anybody who can learn if he did the right thing for a couple dollars ought to be helped, especially if okayin’ it is all I have to do.”

  “The body in question is at a Memphis funeral home and they’re gonna bury it today at three. If my hunch is right, I’m gonna want to get some samples from that body before the funeral. I’ve already been over there and found that the person in charge doesn’t find me as charmin’ as most folks do. So I’ll need somebody with me who can get ’em to cooperate.”

  “And I suppose that somebody is me.”

  “Nice of you to offer.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. Put Buddy back on.”

  Hearing that Graham gave Broussard’s project his blessing, Buddy nodded and hung up. Motioning for Broussard and Noell to follow him down the hall, he said, “What are you gonna need?”

  “A disposable two-cc syringe, the smallest needle you can find, a two-milliliter test tube with a screw top, a rack to hold it, and some saline. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  Buddy led them to a room with a morgue green cement floor and lined with cabinets and benches, where he pulled out drawers and prowled through rows of bottles until he’d gathered up everything Broussard wanted. Then he and Noell watched to see what Broussard had in mind.

  After donning a pair of rubber gloves from his bag, Broussard withdrew a small amount of saline from its rubberstoppered bottle using the syringe and needle he’d requested. He discharged the saline into the small test tube, then dropped the nail from Hunter’s wastebasket, point-first, into the test tube so about half of it was immersed. He capped the tube and shook it for about thirty seconds. He unscrewed the cap, drew the saline into the syringe, and laid it on the test tube rack so it wouldn’t roll off.

  From the Chinese food container, he produced, as Noell guessed he would, a mouse. More dexterously than she would have predicted, considering how short and thick his fingers were, he immobilized the mouse, belly out, in his left hand. With his right, he injected the contents of the syringe into the animal’s peritoneal cavity. He put the animal on the bench and joined Buddy and Noell in watching every move it made, greatly regretting that he’d had to use a living creature to get the information he needed.

  At first, the mouse mostly sniffed the benchtop, whiskers twitching. Then it stood on its hind legs and took a look around. Dropping again to all fours, it began an erratic tour of the bench-top, nose to the metal. Eventually, it traveled all the way to the end of the bench and Broussard had to reposition it. So far, it was showing no signs of distress.

  This time, it went in the other direction. About halfway to that end of the bench, it took a ninety-degre
e turn, which brought it to the front edge. With Broussard close by in case it decided to jump, it sniffed along the edge.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s having any problems,” Noell remarked.

  The mouse stood up again and stared across the room. It remained that way for several seconds, then, immobile as a rodent statue, toppled off the bench into Broussard’s cupped hands.

  He rolled it from side to side in one palm, which elicited no response. He probed it with his fingers and pushed on its legs.

  “Is it dead?” Noell asked.

  Broussard nodded. “And in full rigor.”

  “YOU HAVEN’T GOT ENOUGH murders in New Orleans, you gotta drum up some in other cities?” Gene Graham said. He was a large, imposing figure with silver hair that crested on his low forehead in a wavy pompadour. An aficionado of string ties like the one he was now wearing, he distrusted all men who wore more traditional neckwear. Broussard’s penchant for bow ties united them in a small but select brotherhood.

  “Whatever that poison is,” Broussard said, “it seems to put skeletal muscle in a state of permanent contraction.”

  “Question is, is that a primary effect or a secondary result from attack on the central nervous system?” Graham said.

  “So you’ve never seen anything like this, either?”

  “I have not. And that annoys me. I have to tell you, I’m not comfortable with takin’ those samples from the deceased before I’ve got written authorization from his wife.”

  Had Hunter’s death occurred in Graham’s jurisdiction, Mrs. Hunter’s permission wouldn’t be needed. Under the circumstances, Graham’s concerns were appropriate.

  “I understand that,” Broussard said. “When we spoke to her earlier today, I told her I might want some samples. She wasn’t happy about it, but said if I did decide I needed ’em, I should leave the papers at the funeral home and she’d sign ’em when she arrives today.”

  “Which is when?”

  Broussard looked at his watch. “In about an hour.”

  Graham lapsed into thought. “If we wait until she shows up, we’ll disrupt the funeral. I don’t want to do that.” He looked at Buddy. “Would you get me what I’ll need to draw vitreous and spinal fluid from this case. I’ll want a bottle for the spinal fluid.”