by Tim Downs
“We’ve got a problem,” Turlock said.
“What’s that?”
“These bodies that you want to recover—we don’t want them brought in yet.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve identified the first body you recovered. He was a midlevel drug dealer who worked out of the Lower Nine. We think he was trying to improve his station in life, but somebody got to him first.”
“Congratulations. That should save you guys a lot of time.”
“You’re not listening. We don’t just want him—we want the people around him. Once a body is identified, it’s only a matter of time before the information goes public.”
“Keep the victims’ names classified. You guys ought to be able to pull that off.”
“Which names? There are already thousands of people demanding information about lost family members. Which names do we keep under wraps? We don’t even know who these people are yet—that’s what we’re trying to find out. We need time, Dr. Polchak—and right now FEMA is giving it to us. They want to rescue the living first, and that works for us. What we don’t need right now is somebody dragging bodies out of the water when we’re not ready for that to happen.”
“I’m not sure you’re listening,” Nick said. “If you wait to recover these bodies, then whoever’s doing this will get away with it.”
“So what?”
“That doesn’t matter to you?”
“Tell me the truth: The two bodies you recovered—can you tell me who killed them and how? Can you find me a murder weapon? Will anybody at DMORT be able to tell me, even after they do an autopsy?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then I can’t get a conviction—the killer will get away with it anyway. Look at it from my perspective, Dr. Polchak: All you can do is prove that a few men weren’t really hurricane victims; I might be able to bring down an entire DTO. From where I stand, I’ve got a lot more to gain than you do.”
Nick said nothing.
“You’ve got a problem with this, don’t you?”
“I’ve got a big problem,” Nick grumbled.
“I figured. That’s why you’re here, and that’s why you’re a problem for me. I could send you home, Dr. Polchak—I have the authority to do that—but the bodies are eventually going to come in, and DMORT needs everyone they’ve got. I don’t suppose you’d promise not to look for any more bodies?”
“I’m a man of my word,” Nick said. “I just use a lot of vague and slippery ones.”
“In that case, I’d like to suggest a compromise.”
“What sort of compromise?”
“I want you to find bodies—but I want you to find them for me.”
“Meaning what?”
“I want you to look for bodies just like the other two you found—bodies that indicate foul play, bodies that weren’t the result of Hurricane Katrina or the flooding. When you find them, take a GPS reading—but leave the bodies in place. Do you understand what I’m saying? Do not bring the bodies back—let’s see what we can learn from them there. Then, when we think the time is right, we’ll bring them in; we’ll know exactly where they are. Do we have a deal?”
Nick thought for a moment before nodding.
“And just so we avoid any of those vague and slippery words, let me add one more thing: If you recover one more body without my permission, I will send you back to your classroom at NC State. Got it?”
“You really know how to threaten a guy,” Nick said. “Okay, I get the point.”
“Good. I’ll inform your boss about our arrangement.”
“Are we done here?”
“We’re done.”
Nick got up from his chair and smoothed the front of his shirt. He started for the door, then turned back. “What about the second body? Have they identified that one yet?”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s need-to-know only.”
“I have an emotional need to know. Does that count?”
“Good luck, Dr. Polchak. Keep me posted.”
Nick stepped out and the door closed behind him.
When the office door clicked shut, a side door opened and another man stepped into the room. He was slightly taller than Turlock and at least twenty pounds heavier; he carried most of it around his waist. He had sandy red hair cut in a utilitarian flattop that he had probably maintained since high school. His hair was beginning to fade and thin at the same time, causing it to blend almost perfectly with his ruddy complexion. It was cut close on top, leaving an almost bald oval in the center of his head.
“Did you hear all that?” Turlock asked.
“I heard,” the man said. “Do you think he’ll follow orders this time?”
“He never has before.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want you to follow him, John. Take one of the boats—make sure Polchak does what he agreed to and nothing more.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We’ll deal with that if we have to. We can’t let him mess this up.”
“Do you think he could?”
“I think he’s trouble,” Turlock said. “Guys like him always are.”
14
The moon was almost full, giving him just enough light to navigate by—but not nearly enough light to penetrate all the darkness around him. The moon was a night-light, that’s all it was—just a glowing silver disk that kept him from stubbing his toe on the way to the toilet. A stinking toilet—that’s what the whole city had become, and somebody needed to shove the handle and send the whole place to the sewer where it belonged.
He knew the moon had no chance. Even the sun could only penetrate the filth a few inches, searching for something down there that might be worth saving. Even the sun found nothing—what chance did the moon have? The water around him was as black as oil; each time he lifted the oar from the water he expected the blade to be black. The water felt syrupy to him, almost solid. Maybe the city was turning into one massive tar pit, sucking down all the reptiles and rodents so that decent people could finally have a chance to live. He wanted it to happen; he wanted to help.
He looked across the neighborhood at the rooftops angling from the water, and he didn’t understand. Why did the water stop rising? Why didn’t it rise up over the tallest peak and finish the job? Why did it leave some of the reptiles on rooftops and in attics, where they might escape and breed? Didn’t the water know the evil that the creatures did? They were the reason that his daughter was gone; they came by night and took her away.
He knew it was all his fault—he didn’t do his job. He should have been watching; he should have kept the creatures away. He knew the evil that they did—he knew better than anyone else. But he wasn’t watching, and the creatures came and took her from him. They came by night; it was always at night—he should have known.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, and the moon seemed to glow a little brighter. She was there; she was always there, helping him to find his way. He knew because she spoke to him. The notes, the messages scrawled on the bathroom mirror—they all made it seem as if she weren’t so far away. She knew who the creatures were; she knew where they lived, because she could see everything now. She knew—and she told him.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the note again. He unfolded it and read the address. Thank you, sweetheart—thank you for giving me his name. Thank you for telling me where he lives.
“Lonnie Broussard!” he shouted into the darkness. He lifted the oar from the water and listened—nothing. He rowed a few strokes farther and shouted again.
“Lonnie Broussard!”
He heard a faint reply from the rooftop to his left. He rowed up to the attic vent and tried to peer through the slats, but it was as black as pitch inside.
Of course it is. That’s where the creatures live.
He jammed his oar three times against the side of the house.
“I’m in here!” said a dry, rasping voice from inside.
“Are you Lonni
e Broussard?”
“Get me outta here!” The voice was closer now.
“Are you Lonnie Broussard?”
“Yeah, I’m Broussard, and I’m trapped! I been in here for two days!” Now the voice was just on the other side of the wall.
He saw fingertips wriggle out from between the wooden slats like a brood of water moccasins. He jabbed at them with the edge of his oar.
“Ow! What the—”
“Step away from the wall.”
“What? Why?”
“I have to cut through the wall. Step back—do it now.”
He waited until he heard a faint, “Okay.” Then he took one end of a rubber laundry hose and forced it between the slats. He connected the other end to a metal pipe projecting from the side of the boat’s engine; he started the engine and revved it a few times.
“How long will it take?” the voice demanded.
“Not long enough.”
He stretched out in the bottom of the boat and looked up at the moon. He imagined he could see a face in it; he wanted to believe that it was her face, smiling down at him from far away. It was all his fault, and he could never change that. His daughter was gone because he didn’t do his job. He didn’t listen to her before, but he listened to her now. He was finding them for her, and he was sending them back into the darkness where they belonged.
15
Thursday, September 1
Nick took the boat into a more open section of the Lower Nine, where the backyards were slightly larger and tall hedges and sheds just barely poked their tops above the water. Half-starved dogs paced back and forth on some of the rooftops, whining at the boat as it passed. They are the lucky ones, Nick thought; a lot of animals were probably still chained to their houses when the water began to rise.
“See any others?” he shouted over the engine.
“I’ll tell you,” J.T. replied.
“What about you?” he called up to Jerry.
“If he doesn’t see it, I won’t,” Jerry said.
Search-and-rescue teams were finally beginning to arrive in significant numbers. St. Claude Avenue had been crowded that morning, with SAR teams lining up from a dozen different agencies and areas as far away as British Columbia. Boats seemed to be everywhere now, crisscrossing the Lower Nine with boatloads of exhausted-looking rescuees. Some looked grateful; some looked angry; all seemed bewildered as to why the rescue efforts were taking so long.
At eleven o’clock the night before, the National Hurricane Center had announced that Hurricane Katrina had been completely absorbed by a frontal boundary in southeastern Canada, with “no discernible circulation” remaining. The news was little comfort to the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward; Katrina’s effects were still “discernible” there. It had been almost thirty-six hours since the hurricane had passed through—thirty-six long hours that people had been confined to asphalt griddles or tiny attic ovens that reached 130 degrees in the afternoon sun. Many had perished, and Nick was having no trouble finding their bodies today—because at this temperature, thirty-six hours was more than enough time for the sea to surrender her dead.
Nick and Jerry had already found seven bodies that day, and none of them looked unusual. Many of them were older victims with no other marks on them; they had probably died from heart failure, perhaps in the first few minutes of panic. Others had eventually succumbed to exposure or dehydration due to the suffocating heat. Regardless of the cause of death, the accelerating effects of the water had caused all of them to reach the “early floating” stage of decomposition, bringing them slowly to the surface where Nick could easily find them.
They approached a house where the attic vent had been smashed in—or possibly out, by someone escaping from inside. In, Nick thought; below the vent the words “2 bodies” had been spray-painted in red across the siding. Apparently someone had already stopped by for a quick look—maybe a FEMA team doing a primary search.
J.T. pointed to a large white object bobbing in the water like an ice cube. “What’s that thing?”
“Looks like a refrigerator,” Nick said.
“Refrigerators float?”
“They do when they’re full of air.”
J.T. suddenly stiffened. “Over there!” he shouted, his hawklike eyes detecting a dark line in an open expanse of water.
“Looks like a log to me,” Nick said.
“Nope.”
“Maybe it’s a gator,” Jerry said. “Some of this water backed up from the bayous.”
J.T. turned and looked at Nick.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said. “If it’s hungry, it’ll go for Jerry first.”
The boy’s eyes were accurate as usual. Nick brought the boat in for a closer look; it was the body of a man, floating facedown.
“How come most of ’em float facedown?” J.T. asked.
“Physics,” Nick said. “As the body breaks down, it makes gas—things like methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. The gas collects in the torso because that’s where the natural cavity is. So when the body starts to rise, it tends to float torso-first, with the limbs hanging down like ropes from a weather balloon. That makes the body rotate in the water and come up facedown. See?”
“But we saw one faceup,” the boy said.
“That’s right—but he wasn’t very tall, did you notice that? Short people tend to have shorter arms and legs. Shorter limbs mean lighter limbs, and that means less drag. Short people are more likely to come up face-first.” Kids too, he began to say—but quickly decided not to.
Nick looked the body over; there was nothing unusual about it. The color and condition of the tissues were consistent with a Katrina postmortem, and there were no indications of blowfly activity that would suggest death prior to the hurricane.
He reached into his equipment bag and took out a palm-sized electronic device. He checked the battery, switched the unit on, then clipped it securely to the clothing of the floating body.
“What’s that?” the boy asked.
“It’s a transmitter,” Nick said, “sort of like my GPS unit—only that one receives, and this one sends. Once every hour it sends out a signal that tells us where it is. We can pick up the signal on a laptop computer and overlay it on a map; that way, we can find the body again even if it floats all the way across town.”
“Why not just tie it to something like you did the other day?” Jerry asked.
“That seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nick said. “Then I talked to that DEA guy last night. I don’t know how long they’re planning to leave these bodies out here; another week in this water, and we’ll have the problem of—you know.”
“What?”
“Disarticulation,” he said, hoping that he wouldn’t have to spell it out in front of the boy: If he tied one limb to a lamppost, that might be all they would find later on.
They heard the sound of an approaching engine and looked up to see a familiar black rescue boat speeding toward them with Officer LaTourneau at the helm. Nick waved him down, and the Zodiac boat cruised to a stop on the opposite side of the floating corpse.
“You’re slacking off!” Nick called out, nodding to the empty boat. “What’d you do, break for lunch?”
“I don’t break for lunch,” LaTourneau called back. “You need something?”
“Not really—just wanted to say hello.”
“I’m kind of in a hurry here. They put a curfew into effect yesterday, in case you hadn’t heard. We’ve only got a few hours of daylight left.”
“I met one of your colleagues the other day. He was looting a store about half a mile from here.”
LaTourneau glared at him. “What’s your point?”
“He was in uniform and everything. I was just wondering: Is that an official NOPD function—shopping coordinator?”
“Yesterday the mayor ordered the entire NOPD to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and help restore order. One of the first priorities is to control the looting.”
“Good plan,” Nick said. “Steal everything yourself so there won’t be anything left to take.”
“Some of these looters are carrying automatic weapons,” LaTourneau said.
“I noticed that. There was one pointed at my head.”
“What were they taking?”
Nick reviewed the list.
“You’d arrest a man for taking home diapers to his kids?”
“Six cases of beer,” Nick said. “What was he doing, throwing a baby shower?”
“How many men were there?”
“Your friend had four associates.”
“Four—and you say one of them was armed? What’s one lone officer supposed to do, walk up to four men and say, ‘You’re under arrest’? We’re on our own out here—you can’t call for backup.”
“Your officer had his sidearm,” Nick said. “Maybe he could have—I don’t know—pointed it at somebody? Seems like a good idea to me—the other guy sure thought of it.”
“Our instructions are to maintain order, not create more chaos. This may come as a surprise to you, but people are a little frustrated out here. Tempers are short; you better be careful who you go waving a gun at.”
“I thought that’s the point I was making.”
“Look, our people are having to improvise. One of our officers came across five looters in a drugstore the other day—they were trying to break into a glass display case. You know what he did? He smashed the case himself, to keep people from cutting themselves on the glass.”
“Tell him to meet me at the bank,” Nick said. “I’d like to make a withdrawal.”
“We’re first responders out here. A guy slashes his wrist, we’re the ones who have to take care of him. Ever think about that? Sorry to get your blood pressure up, but if you don’t mind me saying so, you look pretty healthy to me. Why don’t you fellas stop whining and get back to work?” LaTourneau looked at J.T. “Is that the same boy I saw you with the other day?”
“It’s his brother,” Nick said. “Well, nice chatting with you. Oh, by the way: We’ve had a change in job assignment.”
“What, you’re not chief of police anymore?”