Bad Karma In the Big Easy

by D. J. Donaldson

  He stopped the car and they both got out.

  The object was a large chest freezer lying on its side, the lid slightly ajar.

  Broussard walked over to the freezer and grabbed hold of a still wet, mud-caked mattress partially covering it. “Help me pull this out of the way.”

  They dragged the mattress into the yard of a yellow shotgun house with a brown watermark on it just below the windows.

  Broussard went back to the freezer. “Let’s get it up on its legs.”

  Sweat glistening on their foreheads, they rocked the freezer back and sat it upright. Broussard lifted the lid and looked inside.

  Empty.

  “It’s definitely big enough to hold three bodies,” he said.

  He turned his attention to the locking mechanism in the lid. After examining that part of it, he briefly studied the half embedded in the upper rim of the chest. Then he looked back at the lid.

  Finally, he turned to Kit. “The lock is ripped loose. Somethin’ hit the lid hard, right here,” he ran his hand along a small dent. “And forced it open. Can’t know for sure, but could be why the bodies fell out. Locked freezer floats into the street, tips over on its side... somethin’ rams into it right under the lid, lock tears loose, bodies roll out into the water.”

  “Other than the broken lock, why should it be this freezer?”

  “Hard to get three bodies into an upright. Chest is the best choice.” He looked farther up the street. “Don’t even see any other freezers. C’mon.”

  Kit followed him back to the car.

  A few minutes later, he stopped the car at a large tree that had fallen across the road. On the other side of it, two cars still on their wheels and another, upside down, were jammed into its branches. With the road and the sidewalk fully blocked by the tree, a garbage dump of debris had piled up on the far side.

  “Not much doubt now that the three bodies originated somewhere between here and where they were found,” Kit said.

  “I’d say between here and that freezer.”

  “What’s next?”

  “We could try to find out from the manufacturer of the freezer who bought it.”

  Kit nodded. “We could. It’s a long shot though. If the buyer didn’t register the warranty, they won’t have the name. And most people these days just throw registration papers away. I do.”

  “Me, too.”

  Kit looked at Broussard. “So I didn’t just tell you anything you weren’t already thinking.”

  “No, but I enjoyed hearin’ you say it.” He turned and studied the desolation around them. “You feel up to pokin’ around out there and see if we can turn up anybody who might know where that freezer came from?”

  “I’m willing. But everyone who lived here is supposed to be evacuated. What are the chances anyone is still around?”

  “Immeasurably small. But we’re not really riskin’ much to try. And the gain, if it pays off, could be huge.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “Get the flashlight out of the glove box. I’ve got another one in the trunk.”

  Broussard popped the trunk lid and they got out of the car. Kit met him at the trunk, where he picked up the second light.

  “Should we split up?” she asked.

  “Got your gun?”

  “Always.”

  “Then I’m stickin’ with you. Might as well start right here.”

  The house in front of them was a dingy blue clapboard shotgun with the door standing open and the usual orange cross spray-painted on the siding beside it. The numeral 1 was spray painted in the quadrant indicating the number of bodies that had been found inside.

  At the walk leading to the porch, Broussard hesitated and looked down. Wondering what he was doing, Kit did the same.

  She saw a lot of footprints in the dried mud going to the house and back.

  “Don’t care for this,” Broussard muttered.

  “Why not? Isn’t that what we’re looking for... someone to talk to?”

  “I count five different shoe treads. The same five are down there where we moved the mattress. They go in and out of that house, too.”

  As many times as Kit had seen the old pathologist demonstrate his ability to observe things others didn’t, she was still surprised he’d managed to gather that information at the other house without her even noticing. “Maybe they belong to the crew that checked the neighborhood for bodies.”

  He gestured to the marker painted on the house. “There’s the date they were here. This area was still flooded then. These footprints have sharp edges. They weren’t made by somebody wadin’ in water. I believe a pack of human jackals has recently been down here huntin’.”

  Kit took a nervous look around. “Think they’re still here?”

  “Don’t know. Stay alert.” He headed for the blue house.

  A moment later, he stepped onto the porch. Under his great weight, the soggy floorboards sank an inch. He looked over his shoulder at Kit. “Better wait there.”

  Worried there might be another body inside, or a band of thugs waiting to jump them, Kit didn’t argue the point.

  Though the boards sagged ominously as he moved across the porch, Broussard reached the front door without falling through. He knocked on the doorframe. “Anybody here? Anyone in there?”

  He waited for a response, but got none. He turned and carefully made his way back to where Kit waited. “You think it smells bad out here, it’s worse in there.”

  Wincing, Kit said, “You don’t think...”

  “It’s not the odor of human decomposition. Believe me, I’d know.”

  Having once seen him locate a submerged body in a lake by simply sniffing the air over the water, Kit had no reason to doubt him.

  Over the next half hour they worked their way down that side of the street until they were just a few houses from the freezer they’d found. The sun, already hot and high in the sky when they’d arrived, had continued heating the air, pushing it into the low 90s. The hotter it got, the worse the area smelled. Kit tried pulling a lock of hair under her nose so the smell of her shampoo would block the stench. That worked for a while, but eventually, in the heat, the hair against her skin became so irritating, she gave that up.

  Though Broussard’s white shirt was now soaked with sweat, he didn’t even bother to loosen his trademark bow tie.

  The odor across the street was every bit as strong as what Kit and Broussard were experiencing and the heat was just as oppressive. But the furtive figure who had been watching them since they’d found the freezer was so absorbed in their movements and what they were doing, he didn’t notice.

  Chapter 11

  Kit and Broussard were now standing in front of the tallest house on the street. It was also the largest. Even above the brown water line, there was almost no paint on the weathered gray clapboards, many of which were split and curled away from their nails. Oddly, the Victorian ball and spindle beadwork that connected the tops of the porch posts was completely intact. The orange x bore a zero in the body discovery quadrant. A large pile of moldy carpeting, upholstered furniture, insulation and broken sheetrock stretched along the gutter in front of the house.

  Kit looked down at the mud on the sidewalk. The usual cluster of footprints they’d seen leading up to all the houses they’d checked so far was missing, replaced by two distinctive sets, different from all the others. One set was very tiny, the other, huge. The big set had come and gone many times while the mud was drying. It was the first home they’d seen in which the door wasn’t gaping open. The lower sashes in all the windows however, were fully raised.

  “Think someone’s in there?”

  “Too hot to speculate,” Broussard said, heading up the sidewalk.

  This porch was sturdy enough that both of them could stand on it at the same time, so they approached the front door together.

  Broussard rapped loudly on the door and swatted at a fly that had landed on his nose.

  He waited a few seconds
and knocked again.

  No response.

  “Guess it’s empty,” Kit said, turning to go.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kit saw Broussard reach for the doorknob. As she turned back toward him, he pushed the door open.

  “Anyone home? I’m Dr. Broussard, the medical examiner. Is this home occupied?”

  Kit suddenly understood why the predators who’d left footprints on the walks to the other houses had avoided this one. The largest man she had ever seen loomed out of the darkness inside and filled the doorway.

  He was seven feet tall if he was an inch and he probably weighed three hundred pounds. He had skin the color of a roasted coffee bean, but with a sheen on it as though he had been lightly varnished. His enormous head was completely bald and he had no eyebrows. He was wearing dirty blue shorts and a dingy gray sleeveless T-shirt that showed upper arms the size of an ordinary man’s thighs. Beads of sweat studded his brow and scalp. In his enormous left hand, he carried a piece of two by four with a hand grip crudely carved into it.

  “What do you want?” His deep voice set the floorboards under Kit’s feet vibrating. He apparently wasn’t happy to see them.

  Showing no sign he was worried about the club in the guy’s hand, Broussard said, “After this area flooded, three female bodies were found in front of a house two blocks east of here. I’m convinced they all were murdered. My colleague, Dr. Franklyn,” he looked at Kit, “...and I want to find the person responsible. We believe the bodies were kept for a time in that freezer on the sidewalk across the street. Do you know where that freezer came from?”

  The guy scowled at Broussard for a few seconds, then turned and gave Kit the same treatment. He looked back at Broussard. “Why do you care what happened to those people? Because it’s your job?”

  “No, I took the job because I care.”

  “What color were they... the victims?”

  “White.”

  “And you’re white.”

  “I’d be just as upset if they were black.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “You want somethin’ and you’d say anything to get it.”

  “I do want something. I want justice. You should want it, too.”

  “Justice...” he snorted with indignation. “Look around you man. You see any justice?” He raised his club. “This is my justice.”

  “It shouldn’t be that way,” Broussard said.

  “Well, it is. And it’s been like that down here long as I been around.”

  “That needs to change.”

  “Well, it won’t... ever.”

  “I can’t accept that. And you shouldn’t either.”

  “I don’t exactly have much choice.”

  “You have one now. I think you know something. You can turn us away without tellin’ us what that is and maintain the same situation you say has always existed here, or you can take a stand and move things a little in the other direction.”

  He scowled at Broussard for an eternity, then raised the club in his hand. “Maybe I’ll just whup you upside the head and call it a day.”

  Without flinching, lips set, Broussard said, “You can try.”

  Thunder clouds rolled across the giant’s face.

  The color drained out of Kit’s cheeks. Jesus, what was Broussard thinking? Fearing for his safety, not to mention her own, she reached down for her gun. Before her hand could find it, a rumble started in the chest of the colossus in the doorway. The rumble became a roar. Kit was afraid the first swing of the club was on its way.

  But her gun was still under the fabric of her pant leg.

  The roar became bellowed laughter. “You just ain’t afraid of pain, are you?” the giant said. He turned his massive head and spoke to someone behind him. “Momma, come and tell this crazy white man what you saw.”

  The monster in the doorway stepped back, and a tiny, sinewy old black woman came out of the darkness. It seemed incomprehensible to Kit that the behemoth with the club had come from her body. She turned her sad, wizened eyes first at Kit and then Broussard. She lifted her hand and pointed a long, thin finger at the old pathologist.

  “What I’m about to tell you, I’m only gonna say this one time. Don’t think someday you can make me go to court and I’ll say it again, cause I’ll not only deny I ever spoke to you, I’ll say I never saw you before. You understan’ me?”

  “I do,” Broussard said.

  The old woman looked at Kit.

  “Message received.”

  “When the water came, we had to go up on the second floor. An’ I spent a lot a time lookin’ out the front windows, tryin’ to figure out how bad it was gonna get. An’ you know, despite how terrible it was, when the wind went away, it was kinda pretty, all that water jus’ sittin’ there quietly with the sun reflectin’ off it. Never seen anything like it before. It was a lot later it got the oil and gasoline slick on it. But that ain’t what you want to know about.

  “We got a gang a hoodlums down here, been givin’ people trouble for a long time. When the water was about two feet deep they come sloshin’ down the street whoopin’ and carryin’ on, generally makin’ fools a themselves and lookin’ for trouble. When they got to that little strip a stores over there across the street, they started kickin’ in doors an’ goin’ inside to see what they could steal.

  “Firs’ they went into that abandoned store. Wasn’t no reason to believe there was anything of value in there, all run down and boarded up like it was. But they go in anyway an’ come out a few minutes later with nothin’ jus’ like you’d expect. Then they go next door to Tookie’s beauty den.

  “They tried to kick her door in, but it’s steel, so it ain’t so easy. One of ‘em gets an idea an’ they all go back to the first store. They come out pushin’ that freezer you asked about. They floated it over to Tookie’s place and started rammin’ it into her front door. But it don’t do them no good, so after a couple tries they give up.”

  “The freezer came out of that first store,” Broussard said.

  “Didn’ I say that?”

  “Thanks very much. You’ve been a big help.”

  The old woman’s thin eyebrows crept together. “Don’t you want to hear the rest? You should.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course. Please go on.”

  “The freezer floats out into the street and bobs around while the water rises. Then the water starts comin’ fast like somethin’ big gave way. The freezer gets caught in a whirlpool and for a long time jus’ spins ‘round and ‘round. Things start hittin’ it an’ it tips over. Then a big limb smacks it hard an’ I see the lid pop open. That’s when them bodies floated out.”

  Chapter 12

  “Do you know who owns that buildin’?” Broussard asked the old woman.

  She shoved out her lower lip and shook her head.

  “Ever see anybody goin’ in and out?”

  “Not through the front door. An’ if they went in the back, couldn’t see that.”

  “Thanks very much. You’ve been a big help.” Broussard reached in his pocket and took out his wallet.

  “What are you doin’?” the big guy said from behind his mother.

  “You helped us, I want to help you.”

  “Then get the damn levees fixed so this don’t happen again.”

  The guy gently pulled his mother back and slammed the door.

  “WHAT ON EARTH WERE you thinking when you challenged that monster to fight?” Kit said, a moment later, hurrying to keep pace with Broussard as he headed for the boarded-up store across the street.

  He glanced back at her. “Figured if I got in trouble you’d shoot him.”

  They reached the store’s kicked-in front door a few seconds later. Flashlight on, Broussard went in first, Kit following closely.

  Inside the store, they played their flashlight beams around the dank interior. At first they saw nothing but mud-caked floorboards and walls pockmarked with starbursts of mold
, then Kit’s light picked up a chain hanging from the ceiling. Following it up, she saw it was attached to a large screw eye. Walking her beam back down the rope, she discovered a large metal hook on the other end. By now, Broussard was looking at it, too.

  “What do you suppose that was used for?” Kit said.

  “Hangin’ somethin’.”

  “What?”

  But Broussard had already turned away to see what else might be found. His light located some twisted chrome rods and a pair of loose wheels that together, were probably once a rolling wardrobe trolley. It didn’t take much detective work to arrive at that conclusion because the chrome wreckage was lying on a clot of muddy clothing. With Kit supplementing his light with hers, Broussard walked over to the clothes, knelt, and began pulling at the matted, muddy mess to see what kind of clothes they were.

  The first piece to come free was apparently a dress. He reached down and worked another edge free.

  A much brighter light than either of the ones they carried suddenly blasted them from the doorway. They both turned to see who was there.

  “Look,” a mocking voice said. “Looters. I don’t think there’s a lower form of humanity than people who would take advantage of a catastrophe for personal gain. We should instruct them and set them on a better path.”

  “The woman’s a major babe,” a second voice said.

  With the light shining in her eyes, it was hard to see through it, but Kit thought there were only two of them.

  Were they carrying guns? She couldn’t tell. If she reached for hers and pointed it at them, the natural response would be for them to start shooting. If she was going to produce the Ladysmith, better to just start blasting away with it. But what if they weren’t armed? And maybe they’re just kids. Could she live with killing an unarmed kid? Damn it.

  The two moved inside. The one with the light shifted it onto Broussard.