Bad Karma In the Big Easy

by D. J. Donaldson

  Gatlin grabbed the body under the arms and hauled it off the seat. When the angle allowed, Kit grabbed the corpse’s ankles. Together, they carried the victim well away from the car and carefully laid him on his back on the grass. It was obvious from the way the body moved as they carried it that rigor had not yet set in, a fact consistent with the relatively fresh appearance of all the blood at the scene.

  Gatlin rolled the left side of the body up and glanced at the back pocket. “Can you get that?” he said, referring to the guy’s wallet.

  Kit bent down, clamped the edge of the wallet with two fingers, and pulled it free. In seconds, she found a driver’s license containing a picture of the owner with his head where it ought to be. It took a second for her to reconcile the face in the photo with the head in the grass. She looked at Gatlin, who was shucking off his rubber gloves and placing them on the body. “His name’s Jude Marshall.”

  While Gatlin snapped on a fresh pair of gloves, Kit checked the bill compartment. “He’s carrying eighty-two dollars.”

  “My own personal plan is to be broke when I die,” Gatlin said, heading for the rear of the car.

  “That’s inconsiderate,” Kit said. “When the cops get there, they might think you were robbed.”

  “When wouldn’t that have been true? You checked the price of gas lately and coffee and toilet paper?” He pulled open the passenger door, popped the glove box, and began going through the papers inside. Kit checked the address on the license.

  “He lives just off St. Charles on Octavia,” she said.

  “Yeah, same address on this receipt for an oil change,” Gatlin responded.

  “What’s the date on that?”

  Gatlin looked back at the top sheet in his hand. “August fifth.”

  “If this is a suicide, he obviously wasn’t thinking about killing himself then.”

  “He didn’t know then about Katrina.”

  “I suppose it’d be too much to hope there’s a suicide note in that pile of stuff you’re holding.”

  Gatlin riffled through the remaining papers. He looked at her. “Your stars must not be in the proper alignment.” He put the papers back in the glove box, then reached over and snatched the key from the ignition. He carried the keys to the rear of the car and opened the trunk.

  From where she stood, Kit couldn’t see the contents, so she checked Gatlin’s face for a reaction. He stared inside for a moment, then turned his eyes in her direction, focusing beyond her, his expression inscrutable.

  Thinking he might have found another body, she hurried around to where she could see the trunk for herself.

  Except for a couple of old yellowed newspapers and some dried leaves, it held nothing.

  She nudged Gatlin with her elbow. “Why didn’t you say it was empty?”

  He looked at her again, this time, seeing her. “Guess my mind drifted.” He stared off across the vacant park littered with branches. “I want the city back the way it used to be.”

  Not sure his wish would ever be fulfilled, Kit put a hand gently on his arm. “Everyone does. But that’ll only happen if we all just keep doing our jobs the best we can.”

  He looked down at her and she could see the old Gatlin return. “Of course that’s what it’ll take,” he said. “I’m surprised you ever thought otherwise.”

  Kit suppressed a smile at his comment. It was the first time since the hurricane hit that she’d found anything amusing... a small moment, but it gave her hope that one day everything would be back to normal. A scant second later, she remembered where she was and she felt ashamed that however briefly, she’d forgotten what had happened to Jude Marshall.

  Chapter 3

  Corpse 427 had not died from drowning. Broussard was certain of that, because the lungs were normal in size and shape. When sectioned, they had contained no foam.

  As he had expected even before opening the abdomen, the intestines had been extremely distended with decomposition gases. As he looked now at the uterus, he saw that it too, appeared swollen so its fundus sat well above the pubic symphysis, the line where the two hipbones are fused at the front.

  He recited this finding aloud, and Jeff Lyons wrote it in the autopsy notes.

  Most decomposition gases are produced by Clostridium, a bacterium common in the intestines and other locations, but uncommon in the uterus. For that reason and a sixth sense developed from over four decades of working with the dead, Broussard did not believe the appearance of this uterus had been caused by any postmortem changes.

  He palpated the organ and his touch confirmed his belief that most of the bulk of this enlarged uterus was from a thickened myometrium, the muscle layer. This pointed to an extremely significant fact about the person who once inhabited the earthly vehicle containing this organ. Though convinced the conclusion he had reached was correct, he dissected the uterus free and carried it to the stainless steel work surface beside the sink, where he placed it in the pan for the hanging scales.

  “Five hundred-fifty grams,” he called out. This was nearly eight times larger than a normal uterus.

  He removed the organ from the scales and placed it on the counter. With a long, thin knife shaped like the slim jim thieves use to open locked cars, he divided the organ.

  And sure enough... “Myometrium thickened.” There was absolutely no doubt now... Around three weeks before her death, this woman had given birth.

  Whenever Broussard awakened from those few hours of sleep he managed to squeeze into this long-running hell of an existence, he would pause a moment to repair his fragile state of mind with as much hope and optimism as he could muster so he could do his job. But even on his best days, the results had been little better than trying to repair a cracked engine block in one of his cars with spider silk. Today, the thought that somewhere there was a newborn child whose mother now lay under his knife pulled mightily on the threads of his composure.

  But he carried on. “Uterine appearance consistent with the view that this woman was three weeks postpartum.”

  He next turned to a search for the left ovary, which he found with no difficulty. Despite the deterioration of the rest of the body, the ovary was in fairly decent shape, allowing him to see that the fibrous capsule around the organ was thick and unblemished. The surface of the organ was smooth.

  “Left ovary unremarkable. No sign of a recent ovulation.”

  With his big knife, he divided the ovary into five sections. Though decomposition had begun in the organ, it was not very advanced, so he was able to verify what he had seen from his initial observation: “Internal anatomy shows no evidence of a recent ovulatory cycle.” In layman’s terms, this meant it had been many months since this ovary had sent an egg into her oviduct, exactly what you would expect in a woman who had been pregnant until just three weeks ago.

  “Corpus albicans of pregnancy not present.”

  When the egg that ultimately became this woman’s child ovulated around ten months ago, it left behind, in the ovary of origin, a collection of cells that had grown until it formed a huge structure called a corpus luteum. For a while, this structure produced the hormones to maintain her pregnancy. Around three months after conception, when the embryo had taken over production of those hormones, the corpus luteum had turned into a scar called a corpus albicans. The fact there was no albicans in the left ovary meant he would find it in the other one.

  Broussard placed the sections he’d just made into a small screwtop glass jar filled with formalin and replaced the lid. He returned to the body and began his search for the other ovary. When he found it a few seconds later, his interest in this case, already keen, sharpened, for where this one should have shown some external evidence of the large corpus albicans inside, the surface of the ovary had no bumps on it.

  He relayed this information to Lyons and carried the organ to the counter. There, he sectioned it as he had the first.

  In all his years doing this, he had not encountered such a situation before. “Internal anatomy o
f right ovary bears no evidence of a recent ovulation, nor is there a corpus albicans of pregnancy.”

  Before writing this down, Lyons said, “So she had a kid, but there’s no evidence of that in her ovaries. What’s going on here?”

  Deep in thought, Broussard did not reply. Often, when he turned inward like this he would rub the bristly hairs on the tip of his nose with his index finger to help him think. He tried to do that now, but his finger hit his face protector, jarring him back to an interactive state. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  Lyons repeated his question.

  “Only conclusion I can think of is she was a surrogate. She carried a child for someone else, conceived by in vitro fertilization and implanted into her uterus. Her eggs were never involved.”

  “What kind of woman would do that?”

  “Most likely someone in need of money, or a relative of a couple who needed her.”

  “Is it easy for a woman, do you think... giving up a child she carried inside her for nine months, even if it didn’t come from one of her eggs?”

  “I expect some think it’ll be easy when they agree to do it, but then have problems later with their decision. At least the child she carried is probably in the arms of the family who contracted for her services and not cryin’ somewhere over the loss of his mom.”

  “You said earlier, her lungs indicated she hadn’t drowned. What killed her?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “When will you know?”

  “Maybe after I look at corpse 428.”

  “So we’re finished here?”

  Broussard stood for a moment staring at the corpse of 427. In his life, he had probably autopsied over 500 decomposing bodies. He knew well the feel of tissue losing its architecture as dead cells digest themselves and bacterial enzymes induce putrefaction. But there was something about this body that wasn’t right. He looked at Lyons. “Let’s turn her over.”

  After they had the body turned, Broussard made a rectangular skin incision along the vertebral spines. He dissected the death-toughened hide of the corpse and reflected it, leaving one edge attached. He then dissected away and removed a block of the deteriorating superficial back muscles until he had worked his way down to the paraspinals, which were usually the last muscles to decompose. He cut a block of these fibers free and put it in a jar of formalin. He added another for good measure, then screwed the cap back on the jar.

  Because there were so many bodies, all tissue samples from the St. Gabriel operation were to be sent to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda for processing. But Broussard didn’t want to wait the days it would take for the paraspinal samples to be cut and stained. Fortunately, Bethesda was not Broussard’s only option. There was, on site, the equipment and hands for rapid microwave-assisted tissue processing in case a need arose to move quickly on a few samples. He looked at Lyons. “Let’s turn her again and put her back in the bag.”

  When that was done, Broussard said, “Okay, return her to the cold room if you would and bring out 428.”

  While Lyons did that, Broussard stripped off his gloves and threw them in the discard box. He removed his face protector and put it on a clean part of the counter. He then picked up the paraspinal samples and headed for the admin area to get the processing underway.

  Chapter 4

  For decades, St Charles Avenue in the garden district was one of the most beautiful streets in America... A magical place of huge mansions draped in wedding cake adornments, massive columns, tiered porches and pierced fretwork, manicured lawns and landscapes that would make even an escaped felon find some measure of peace. But its crowning feature was its trees: hundred year-old live oaks lining each side of the street, their massive serpentine branches arching toward their brethren along the wide grassy median so they formed a leafy cathedral along each lane. But those cathedrals had been horribly brutalized by the storm. One after another of the noble trees showed great gaping fissures in their trunks where two-ton branches had been ripped loose. These huge limbs had fallen into the street and made it impassable for days. It was a wonder that with so few city workers available, a lane had now been cleared in each direction from St. Charles to the park. But nothing had been hauled away, so as Kit followed Gatlin to Octavia Street, they drove on asphalt layered with sawdust, and passed through a gauntlet of fallen boughs, their ends blunted by chain saws.

  Though all the physical circumstances surrounding Jude Marshall’s death pointed to suicide, Kit’s report would be complete only if she could document why he would have done such a thing to himself. So after contacting the FEMA central command for body collection and arranging for pick up and transportation of the remains to St. Gabriel, she and Gatlin were heading for Marshall’s home to see what else they might learn about him.

  The oaks lining Octavia Street were not as large as those on St. Charles and they appeared to have suffered less damage. But fifty yards down Octavia, Kit saw one that had blown completely out of the ground and fallen on a car, crushing its roof. Skirting the stubs of that tree’s branches, which had been sawed off to allow traffic to pass, she had to slow way down on the other side and carefully ease past a big metal awning that lay practically in the middle of the roadway.

  Jude Marshall’s home was on the left side of the street, a few doors before the Loyola intersection. It was a splendid one-story with a large porch and a beveled glass fan transom over a set of darkly-stained antique cypress front doors. On that porch were three rag-tag looking men. The tallest was carrying a big tree branch he was about to ram through one of the front windows.

  Gatlin pulled to the curb and jumped out of his car. Gun in one hand, his badge in the other, he advanced on the three men. “Police... drop that limb and get your assess off the porch.”

  For a moment, the men stood looking at Gatlin, expressions of cold hatred on their unshaven faces. They looked so dangerous and desperate Kit thought they might take their chances and rush Gatlin. She stopped her car in the street, reached down, and pulled her Ladysmith from its holster on her calf. Then she got out and joined Gatlin, her gun hand resting along her leg, where the three miscreants could see it.

  The additional firepower didn’t seem to have any effect on the men.

  Good God, Kit thought. Am I going to have to shoot someone?

  The standoff went on for an ice age, then the shortest of the three moved his left hand toward one of the pockets in the cargo pants he was wearing. In that pocket Kit could see the outline of what looked like a gun.

  Gatlin fired a shot into the air. The man’s hand stopped its advance. “Believe me,” Gatlin said. “Nobody could be as honked as I am at what we’re all having to go through because of the storm. Just drop the branch and leave. And we’ll all live to be pissed off another day.”

  No one moved for a couple of seconds during which Kit’s nerves sizzled like frying bacon. Believing that if the three men sensed how riddled with anxiety she was at the situation, it might cause them to take the offensive, she tried to look calm, whatever the hell a calm look was.

  Finally, the guy with the limb threw it aside. “Another time, old man.” He vaulted easily over the porch rail and headed off toward Loyola Street without looking back. The other two hustled down the porch steps and followed their departing comrade.

  When the three thugs were far enough away that they no longer posed a threat, Gatlin looked down at Kit. “Thanks for the back-up. Would you have shot them if they came after us?”

  “The guy who taught me to shoot also taught me that if you aren’t prepared to use it, there’s no point carrying a gun.”

  Gatlin nodded and pinched his lips together in an expression of agreement. “Good teacher.”

  They hadn’t seen a single moving vehicle on the street since arriving. Even so, Kit returned to her car and drove it to the curb. She then joined Gatlin on the porch and rang the bell.

  Already predisposed to believe no one was there, she didn’t bother to press the bell a
gain when no one answered, but opened the door with the house key on Jude Marshall’s key ring.

  Inside, lit by a large skylight directly overhead, an extremely wide, high-ceilinged hallway ran from the front door straight through the house. Under the skylight, in a small floor-level planter, a family of tree ferns and assorted other tropical foliage flourished in the natural light. Kit stepped onto the highly polished dark oak floor and announced herself. “Hellooo... Is anyone here? Hellooo...”

  Receiving no answer, she moved further inside, Gatlin right behind her.

  Beyond the skylight, the hall was dim. Forgetting that very little of the city had power, Gatlin reached for the switch by the door.

  Miraculously, the ceiling came alive with recessed lighting that illuminated the many framed photos hung along each wall. Kit walked over to look at the first picture, which, though extremely colorful and appealing, was of a very unexpected subject.

  “What is that?” Gatlin said from over her shoulder.

  “A stained section of small intestine, I think,” Kit said, drawing on what she’d learned in a long ago college anatomy course. “The kind meant for viewing through a microscope.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I always wanted on my wall... a picture of somebody’s bowels.”

  Moving down to the next photo, Kit saw that this one was a connective tissue stain of the liver. She identified it for Gatlin.

  “I don’t even eat liver,” he said. “So I sure don’t want to see any pictures of it.”

  “I think it’s kind of attractive. You don’t see any beauty in it?”

  “Rhetorical question, right?”

  “Okay...”

  The remaining photos on that wall were sections of other organs. Kit looked at them without comment as she and Gatlin headed for the room at the end, which turned out to be the kitchen. She flicked on the lights and went into a welcoming space done in cherry cabinets and pale green onyx counter tops.

  “This couldn’t have been cheap,” Gatlin said, following her.