Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  The result had been a good one and he had all the evidence he needed, what with Salvesen having videoed his ‘common law court’ trial, not to mention the T-17 transmitters that Harrison had wired in himself. The suits at headquarters were particularly pleased because this had dealt a massive PR blow to the militia movement in general.

  Katie brought him his beer in a ‘to go’ cup and Harrison squeezed the sides as he drank it. Martinez and his contact were still deep in conversation. Harrison saw Katie looking at them and he leaned forward. ‘Honey, who is that guy with Rene. Face is familiar, you know what I mean?’ She rested both elbows on the counter and freshened his ashtray for him.

  ‘Name’s Manx, Harrison. Alls I know, honey. I only ever seen him with Rene.’

  ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘Baby, I don’t know that. Why, you looking for a job or something? We need a bus boy right here, if you want it.’

  Harrison laughed then, crushed out the Merit and rolled a Marlboro between his fingers.

  He woke to Louisiana rainstorms, the shutters open in his room on Burgundy and Toulouse, and the rain hissing off the asphalt in grey waves. He got up, yawned and leaned his head out of the window, looking left and right. Only the street cleaner was out, done up like some dirty beacon in his yellow ankle-length slicker. Harrison turned his face to the haze of misted cloud which filled up the sky. It would rain all day, and probably all night as well. He looked at the clock by his cot, a little before seven. Switching on the coffee pot, he stuck a cigarette against his lip. He missed Lisa most in the mornings; like now, for instance. He had woken up next to her warm flesh for two years or more and it was hard getting used to being alone again. Still, he had been that way for most of his forty-nine years and he would probably die that way. But he missed her in the morning, especially when he woke up with an aching weight in his loins.

  He dressed in last night’s clothes, except a fresh T-shirt. It was wet but not cold and he would drive over to Poydras in his truck. His FBI car was permanently on the lowest level of the car park. The bosses had parking spaces on the fifth level. The assistant special agent in charge was Kirk Fitzpatrick, who’d been working in the computer support center in Pocatello when Harrison had been up in Idaho. That was part of the reason he had come to New Orleans in the first place. They were looking for a good guy to work with the special operations group, either semi-undercover or at least surveillance. Harrison had all the qualities needed, and he had refused pointedly to cut his hair, so Tom Kovalski had spoken to Fitzpatrick. Harrison brought Lisa down for a week in the quarter and she loved it, but wouldn’t live there. She was old enough to know she would hate the heat and miss the mountains, so she went back to Idaho. Harrison was faced with the same choice he had always been faced with—the woman or the job. Even with only five years till retirement, he chose the job. As he looked now on to the rain-washed street, with thunder crackling over the crescent of the river, he wondered why. The contents of the room and the black ’66 Chevy were all he had in the world.

  He parked in the underground lot below the Mobil building on Poydras and Loyola, next to the humming, red surveillance van used by the NOPD. It had ladders racked on the roof and was plugged into the wall by a yellow cable in order to keep the electronic equipment fully boosted. Harrison took the freight elevator as he always did. With his cover in the quarter, he thought it best. The FBI office was on the twenty-second floor and Charlie Mayer, the special agent in charge, was still trying to get something going on the construction of their own building. There was only a year to go before they had to move out. Being here was totally impractical. Suspects had to be shipped upstairs, via this freight elevator, for interviews in the three rooms on the twenty-first floor, and their holding facilities were non-existent. Not only that, the Department of Justice was pretty unhappy about a major field office being situated in the middle of a commercial building, especially with so many groups apparently gunning for them. Harrison waited for the elevator and smoked a final cigarette before the sanitized environment of upstairs. One of the guys from 7 Squad was doing the same thing, standing over by the two black Suburbans, tactical operations centers used by the SWAT teams.

  On the squad floor he bumped into Penny, his partner, by the open door to the interview room.

  ‘Hey, babe,’ Harrison said. ‘What’s happening?’

  Penny sneezed and indicated the rain. ‘Got me a chill out running is what’s happening.’ He pointed at the all but blacked-out window. Sometimes, when it rained like it was today, you could look down from the floor up here and not see the ground.

  ‘Told you all that exercise was bad for you.’ Harrison took a tin of chew from his pocket. ‘His name’s Manx,’ he said.

  Penny paused, handkerchief to his nose, and looked over his hands at him. ‘You know?’

  ‘I know.’ Harrison told him what had happened last night, and they went through to the long, open-plan squad room and sat down at Penny’s desk.

  Penny was at least fifteen years Harrison’s junior, a marine lieutenant before joining the FBI. He could speak French and had worked in Haiti when the troops were ‘invited’ in. He always joked about the French being helpful down in bayou country, because he could order a beer in Cajun. He worked 10 Squad: drugs; the marine base supply routes, his cover. He was trying to close in on the main operators actually supplying the base, by appearing to set up in opposition. Harrison was being assigned to the SOG, but until that happened he was Penny’s partner.

  Fitzpatrick, the assistant special agent in charge, walked the length of the squad room and paused to speak with Deacon, one of the bean counters who worked with the white-collar crime unit. The Bureau was recruiting accountants and lawyers in droves. The only problem was that when the shit hit the fan, they thought they should be at home with their families. Harrison wondered at it all, as did other old-time ‘kiss my ass’ agents like John Earl Cochrane, whom he had known for years. Cochrane still drove his four-year-old Caprice because he didn’t want to squeeze into a Ford. Goddamn Bureau is hiring dweebs, he would say. Come outta Quantico these days, you got your creds, your gun and a fucking lap-top computer.

  Fitzpatrick wore his gun openly, strapped on his hip. The only agent in the office who did so. Some had shoulder holsters, most had ankle rigs, but Fitzpatrick liked to wear his openly, another throwback to the old days, perhaps. He walked past Penny’s desk and flicked Harrison’s ponytail. ‘Hey, hick. Get a goddamn haircut.’

  ‘Kiss my ass.’

  Fitzpatrick laughed out loud. ‘Cochrane’s looking for you, JB,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Harrison squinted at Penny. ‘What does Cochrane want?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he’s pissed.’

  Harrison sat back. ‘Pissed at me? What the fuck did I do?’

  ‘Not you, Harrison. He’s filling in as media rep again and he thought he’d done with that.’

  ‘Where’s Tomason?’

  ‘Seconded to Hoover High. He’s doing a whole bunch of work on CODIS.’

  Harrison looked blankly at him. ‘What the fuck is CODIS?’

  ‘Jeeze, baby. You been undercover too long. Combined DNA Index System. He’s re-evaluating the data base. Anyways, that’s why Cochrane’s combining his 7 Squad stuff with media rep.’

  Harrison went upstairs, leaving his partner to consider how they should go about either pissing off Manx or getting a meeting with him. Harrison quite liked the idea of direct competition, that would be interesting in the quarter.

  The twenty-second floor housed the senior agents’ offices as well as the media representative. Cochrane, a white-haired man from an old St Charles Parish family, was on the telephone, behind a mountain of paperwork that more than covered his desk. He wore a white shirt and red tie and his stomach was just beginning to bulge at his waistband. He nodded for Harrison to sit down and eased himself forward on his elbows, ploughing a path through the papers. Harrison lifted one boot to his knee and knocked his Zip
po lighter against the heel. Cochrane put down the phone and ran fingers over his face.

  ‘What’s up, John Earl?’

  Cochrane shook his head. ‘Ever spoken to an assignment editor, Johnny?’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.’

  ‘I forgot how they can be sometimes. You know, we’re pretty damn fair with information up here, but some of the young ones.’ He tapped the desk with a red-knuckled finger. ‘The women are the worst. Talk about pushy, or what.’

  ‘You gonna be doing this for a while?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘So who’s VICAP co-ordinator now then?’

  ‘I am.’ Cochrane tapped his chest. ‘As if I haven’t got enough to do. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ He sat forward then. ‘We got a joint task force going, John. Two years back, a gal was found up by the levee off 310, strangled and mutilated. Breast cut up, post-mortem. St Charles Parish sheriff’s office deal. Joe Kinsella is the chief of deputies up there, used to be one of us. New York, Miami, and a while up there at the puzzle palace. Anyways, Joe does his stuff and puts the information on the national computer. The Drug Fire Scheme boys get on it and they come up with a similar murder. Same thing has happened in Desoto Parish, between Mansfield and Shreeveport. Since then, there’s been three more killings, all the victims women, all of them strangled, all of them mutilated in a similar way, post-mortem. They sent the information to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.’

  ‘And they contacted you to set up the task force.’

  ‘Right. The guy is going interstate. They’re gonna need us for a UFAP warrant, anyways.’

  ‘Not if he’s from round here, they won’t. Didn’t you tell me that Louisiana fugitives are easy to locate. What was it: They always come back to momma.’

  The wind drove sheets of rain against the window. Harrison glanced sideways and then looked back at Cochrane. He was restless, having been in the office too long, and he wanted a cigarette. ‘What d’you want from me, John Earl?’

  ‘There’s been another murder.’

  ‘Another one here?’

  Cochrane shook his head and checked the note on his desk. ‘No. Not here. In Georgia. Quantico took a call from an Agent Chaney of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Athens. Apparently, a woman called Mary Poynton was murdered in Royston, Georgia, last weekend. She was strangled and her left titty was cut up, before she was chucked in a dumpster.’ He paused. ‘That’s a factor too; four of the five victims that the CASKU has profiled to our guy were found in dumpsters. Press have nicknamed him “The Garbageman”. All the murders have been within a day’s drive of Shreeveport.’

  ‘You can’t say that about Georgia.’

  ‘No. But somebody needs to go up there and take a look, anyways,’ Cochrane said. ‘I should go as VICAP co-ordinator and the fact that it’s my case.’ He held out his hands. ‘But I can’t, Johnny. I’m up to my neck with all this extra stuff and Maddie’s not good.’

  Harrison’s eyes clouded. ‘She getting worse, John?’

  Cochrane blew the air from his cheeks. ‘Put it this way, buddy, she’s not getting any better. I really don’t want to fly up to Georgia. We’re talking a night away, at least. The kids are all in college and there’s nobody but neighbours. I don’t like to leave her.’

  Cochrane’s wife had leukaemia. Harrison stood up. ‘No problem, John Earl. I’ll go. You got a contact for me at the CASKU? I guess they’re gonna send a profiler down.’

  ‘Special Agent Mallory.’ Cochrane took a business card from his wallet and passed it across the desk.

  The Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit had twenty-nine agents working out of its office at the Quantico complex. Mallory was one of them. Harrison took a flight from the airport in New Orleans to Atlanta and then got a ride with a probationary agent from the Atlanta field office, who had been assigned to cover the killing. They were due to meet Mallory at the crime scene. The agent from Atlanta was young and white and keen. Harrison squatted in the passenger seat with the window rolled down, smoking a cigarette, despite the red ‘No Smoking’ sign that dangled from the rearview mirror. The agent’s name was Collins and he was pissed about the cigarette; that and the way Harrison looked. ‘Goddamn, man,’ he had said as Harrison lit the Marlboro. ‘I couldn’t make the sign much bigger.’

  Harrison squinted sideways at him. ‘What’s your point, bubba?’

  ‘Don’t call me bubba.’

  Harrison blew smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘How long you been graduated?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘So, you’re still a probationer.’

  ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t …’

  Harrison held up a palm. ‘I got you on age. I got you on experience. So quit whining.’ Reaching over, he ripped off the ‘No Smoking’ sign and tossed it into the back.

  They drove in silence after that and Harrison hoped Special Agent Mallory would be better company. Mallory was a woman and they were in Hicksville, Georgia. He shook his head and smiled when he met her and Agent Chaney at the GBI office in Athens, about twenty miles south of the crime scene. Chaney was a big, square-jawed man who chewed cigars to the butt, and had clearly been round the block a few times. He had been the one who informed the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program co-ordinator at Quantico about the crime scene similarities.

  Now, Harrison seemed to find it a little hard listening to Mallory, all of twenty-nine, with her fine bones and clean hands and lap-top computer. She was pretty though, which was a diversion. She had tried to keep her expression clear when Harrison introduced himself, his hair falling over his shoulders, thinning now and grey, face battered about the mouth and eyes, and smelling of cigarettes. He explained that the New Orleans case agent was not able to make it, but he was there to assist. She looked more than a little doubtful, which seemed to amuse Chaney.

  They looked over the evidence that the technicians from the Franklin County sheriff’s office had collected before the GBI evidence response team got there. Harrison studied the plastic bag containing the butt end of the joint and a sheet of white paper, part of a notepad, which had the indented letters TJ CC marked on it.

  ‘What does this mean?’ he asked.

  Chaney shook his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. We thought she might have written it, but she didn’t.’

  Mallory looked thoughtful. ‘The killer wrote it and tore the page off, leaving this here?’

  Chaney nodded. ‘We think so.’

  ‘A person, a place, or what?’ Harrison asked.

  ‘We don’t know. Could mean anything.’

  Mallory sat down and studied the medical examiner’s report, chewing at her lower lip. Harrison stood by the open window with Chaney, smoking. ‘You guys got called in pretty quickly then, huh?’ Harrison said.

  ‘Day one, which is good. Some of those county dicks have a habit of treading on evidence.’

  ‘Find much else?’

  Chaney ran a calloused hand over his hair. ‘The note, the bitty reefer you got there. A couple of bootprints we lifted from the grass. Took some effort to haul her into the dumpster. The print is pretty good, but won’t give us anything distinguishing.’

  Mallory looked over at them, pushing her fine auburn hair behind one ear. ‘I’m going to want to talk to the ME,’ she said. ‘Can you set that up for me?’

  Chaney reached for the phone on his desk. Harrison flipped his cigarette out of the window and moved over to her. He could smell her perfume, and standing over her he could see the soft white skin of her chest, flat above her breasts at the collar bone. He squatted down on his haunches. ‘What you got, Mallory?’

  She showed him the autopsy report. ‘Ligature marks,’ she said. ‘At the throat, indicating a rope or cable, some kind of garrotte.’

  Harrison bit his lip. ‘That doesn’t match. Our boy uses his forearm or something, right?’

  She seemed amazed he had read the file. ‘Big boy,’ Harrison went on. �
�Not too old, between twenty and thirty, you reckon.’

  ‘Nearer twenty.’

  He stood up then, knees creaking a fraction. Collins leaned with his palms behind him on the windowsill. ‘Less planning,’ Mallory went on. ‘The dump sites are dumpsters right by the scene.’

  Harrison nodded. ‘The closer, the younger, huh.’

  ‘Exactly. The more planning used generally suggests an older man. I think our “garbageman” is nearer twenty than thirty.’ She looked again at the report. ‘This victim is at least fifteen years older than the others have been. They were all between thirty and thirty-eight. Mary Poynton was fifty-three.’

  ‘Rape?’ Harrison asked her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But the breast mutilation’s the same.’

  ‘Yes.’ She laid the report down.

  ‘The doc’ll meet you at the sheriff’s office in Carnesville, mam,’ Chaney told them.

  Collins drove, Harrison and Chaney in the back, with Mallory up front, still reading the report. It was about an hour’s drive from Athens to Carnesville. They rode in silence for a while, Harrison looking out the window at the broken-down shacks they passed. ‘Real Deliverance country,’ he muttered. He looked at Chaney again. ‘You come up with any possible perps yet?’

  Chaney scratched the back of his hand with bitten-down fingernails. ‘One black guy. Truck driver from Alabama. He was here three days, had his truck fixed at King’s Auto Line, over by the railroad tracks in Royston. We ran checks on him, truck payment, motel room, usual kinda thing. Credit card was a forged duplicate. He visited the shop, so the husband told us; wanted to look at a necklace. His wife remembered because he was the only customer she had all that day.’ He swallowed tobacco juice. ‘Royston ain’t exactly a heaving metropolis.’