Down on the Pontchartrain

by O'Neil De Noux

  I can tell this white woman my secret tribe name because the words do not cross my lips. If there is a spirit world, she can hear me and know this plains warrior will track down her killer, no matter how long it takes.

  “What were you mumbling back there?” Borgo asks as we leave.

  “Mumbling?”

  •

  Monique Lewis lived in a garage apartment behind a three-story house in need of a new paint job. The garage could also use a paint-over and new railing for its stairs. The woman in the house, who I hope would be the landlord, says the landlord lives in Mississippi. She gives us the name and address of the landlord as she tells us she’s never seen Monique who must keep odd hours.

  We use Monique’s house key to get in and find a very neat apartment smelling of flowers and incense. Scented candles in small glass jars line the window sills. A search of her closet, chifforobe and dresser drawers reveals she lived alone. No address book however, no computer, plenty of books, a CD player, video tape deck and a TV. No cable. Lots of CDs, rock mostly, and movie tapes, a real variety from musicals like An American in Paris to Scarface, the Pacino version.

  “There were only four Beatles,” Borgo says as he points to the five posters on the bedroom wall. “So who’s this guy?”

  It’s a young, bearded man with soft eyes sandwiched between posters of Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I tell him, “Cat Stevens.”

  “Yeah? The guy who went Muslim, right? Gave up the music.”

  I always wonder if the previous owner of my houseboat named her Sad Lisa from the Cat Stevens song. Or maybe they knew a Lisa who was sad. No way to know, since I bought it at an estate auction. Couple died together in a car wreck. I thought of changing the name, but somebody wanted that name and it seems to fit the boat. Unlike the white-eyes, we Sioux don’t readily change the names of things.

  There’s no granola in the kitchen, just Corn Flakes and Cherrios. Borgo finds an expired driver’s license from Vancouver, Canada. Monique looks like a teen-ager in the picture. There’s no phone in Monique’s apartment, so I call the information in on the radio to have the info forwarded to the coroner’s office. We canvass the neighborhood but come up with nothing useful.

  “You too tired to go on?” I ask Borgo when he yawns.

  “Naw. First twenty-four hours are the most important, ain’t they?”

  So we split up. He’ll search for Cedrick Smith, while I go interview Lieutenant Bruce Addams, United States Coast Guard.

  •

  About a mile and a half from West End Park stands a Coast Guard substation, a two story, white Victorian-style building with a round portico atop, a lighthouse actually, galleries around both stories and a red tin roof. It rests on a point of land jutting into Lake Pontchartrain just as Lakeshore Drive makes a dog-leg turn from north to east. I park in an ‘official business only’ parking spot next to a gray government sedan.

  The lake is dotted with sailboats on this breezy morning. Inshore, a pair of braver guys glide by on parasails, standing on surfboards. The air is rich with the scent of cooking from the restaurants adjacent to the USCG substation.

  Lieutenant Bruce Addams greets me with a friendly handshake. He’s in khakis, short-sleeved, with double silver bars on his collar. He’s about five-ten, one-eighty maybe, with close-cropped reddish hair and brown eyes. Clean shaven, he has no cuts on his face, neck or arms. According to the information the Levee Boards cops secured from his driver’s license when they interviewed him earlier, he’s thirty-six and lives at the Lake Marina Tower across the street from the New Orleans Marina.

  “The name’s spelled with two Ds,” he tells me. “No relation to Gomez and Morticia.” A big smile this time.

  “Who?”

  “The Addams Family. TV show. Movie with Raoul Julia, Angelica Huston?”

  I shrug, then remember and say, “Guy dressed up like Frankenstein?”

  “No, that’s The Munsters.”

  We had a TV when I was a kid, but only three channels. I get that twinge in my gut again, knowing I missed a lot growing up. Guess I’ll never get used to it. I sit in a gray metal government-issue chair across from his desk as he sits and goes over his morning activities, his usual jog, gives me a timeline and maps out his route from Lake Marina Drive over to West End Park, once around the park and up West Roadway to the point and back again. A two mile jog. He never dipped down into the restaurant area.

  “Did you see anyone?”

  He saw two fishermen, one with a young boy.

  “Any other joggers?”

  “No, but Eric jogged the same route this morning.”

  “Eric?”

  “Lt. J.G. Eric Gault, my exec. He called in sick after his run. Fell down. Be in later today.”

  I ask and discover Gault also lives at the Lake Marina Tower in a condo two doors down from Addams.

  “Any other joggers here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What were you wearing on your jog?”

  He tells me he wore standard-issue gray USCG sweats, pants and shirt and white running shoes. Nikes.

  I hear my call sign on my radio, pull it out and respond to Borgo, “Go ahead, 3139.”

  “Got the subject in my unit. Heading to the office.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I leave my card, asking Lt. Addams to call when his exec comes in.

  “No problem.”

  As I stand I ask to see his driver’s license and he tells me he’s from Detroit as he hands me his Michigan license. I take down the necessary information, then ask to see his dog tags. He blinks, shrugs and digs into the open collar of his khakis and pulls his dog tags over his head and tosses them to me. I note his blood type. Like most people, including me, he’s O-Positive.

  Before I leave, he asks, “What’s this all about?”

  “Someone was killed at West End Park this morning.”

  His eyes widen. “Well, if I can help in any way.” He extends his hand and we shake again.

  •

  Cedrick Smith is graying along his temples. He wears a black T-shirt and blue jeans, black boots. He’s sitting in the folding chair next to my desk, and I look at him carefully. There are no scratch marks.

  “Crime lab just called,” Borgo says, handing me a note.

  Preliminary blood typing on the blood from under Monique’s fingernails is AB-Positive. My heart beats a little faster as Borgo goes for coffee for all three of us. I’ll have to look it up on my chart, but as I recall only about four percent of the human population has AB-Positive blood.

  As I settle in the small interview room with Cedrick Smith and our coffees, I ask Borgo to go check Smith’s record again, call his probation officer if he has to, get Smith’s blood type.

  “It’s O-Positive,” Smith tells me. He produces a blood donor card to confirm this.

  I pull out my Miranda Warning card to read Smith his rights. He nods and says he’ll talk because he’s done nothing. Still he looks wary. I ask him why he didn’t show up for work this morning. He gives me an elaborate alibi, how he was at his girlfriend Lucy’s house, gave me the address, said he was with six other people, gave me their names, said he drank too much and didn’t wake up until nine o’clock. He went home and found the detective waiting for him.

  “What’s this about?”

  I watch his eyes carefully as I ask if he knows Monique Lewis.

  “Who?”

  I describe her.

  He nods. “Skinny white girl. Cleans up. Yeah, I seen her. I don’t know her.”

  I tell him she was murdered.

  He closes his eyes and leans back, shaking his head. “No wonder you scooped me up. I’m a registered sex offender in Jefferson Parish.” His eyes snap open. “Man, I tell you, I ain’t raped no body, ain’t done nothin’.” He extends his arm. “Take my DNA. Check it.”

  I turned to Borgo. “Get the crime lab over. Let’s get a swab from his mouth before we let him go.” Smith has no problem with
that and NOPD will have his DNA on file.

  Cedrick Smith squints at me. “You’re lettin’ me go?”

  •

  Lt. Addams calls just as I’m getting off the phone with Monique Lewis’s mother in Canada. Lt. J. G. Gault is at work now. I tell him we’ll be right over. On our way, I give Borgo the low down on what I learned from Monique’s mother. “She sounds old. Her daughter’s been gone fifteen years. Last time she heard from Monique she was in New Mexico or Arizona. Never married. Our victim has two sisters and a brother who’s coming to pick up the body.” Then I tell him how Monique has a daughter being raised by one of her sisters.

  Gault is about four inches shorter than me, around five-ten, but heavier, two hundred pounds at least, mostly muscle. His light brown hair is boxed into a flat-top, looking crisp and hard. He also wears khakis, a single silver bar on his collar. He limps as he moves to shake hands. I was hoping for a bandage or two on his arms or hands, but no luck there.

  As he shakes my hand firmly, I nod at the limp, watching his deep set blue eyes. “What happened?”

  “Fell jogging this morning.”

  “West End, right?” Lt. Addams asks from behind his desk.

  “That little bridge in West End Park.”

  I remember a bridge over a man-made pond.

  “What time was that?” I ask.

  Gault describes the route he took, similar to Addams’s route, but earlier in the morning. No, he didn’t run near the restaurants either. I ask to see his driver’s license which turns out to be from Oklahoma. He’s thirty-three, but looks much younger.

  I let Borgo take over the conversation, as planned, and watch Gault carefully, not that I learn anything from his body language except he’s tense. Very tense. But he looks Borgo in the eye with each answer and looks at me too as he answers each question with no problem.

  “What were you wearing on your jog?” Borgo asks.

  He glances at Addams and shrugs as if we’re boring him and tells us USCG gray sweats and black running shoes.

  “What brand?”

  “Reeboks. And if I remember what color socks, I’ll call you.” He winks as if he’s joking but the bite of his words tells me differently. Addams furrows his brow momentarily. Gault sighs, reaches back to rub the back of his head and says, “Sorry to snap. My leg’s hurting.”

  “Have you seen a doctor about it?” I ask.

  “Naw,” he smiles. “It’s just a sprain. Ace bandage.”

  As we stand to leave, I ask to see his dog tags. He hesitates a moment and Addams says, “I think it’s routine.”

  Gault gives me a hard look, one I’m sure intimidates enlisted men, but has no effect on me and I let him know with an expressionless stare back at him. He stands and reaches into his shirt and I see he has a v-neck white T-shirt under. He doesn’t take the tags off, making me come to look. I watch his eyes as I reach forward to examine the dog tag. I try not to react to Gault having AB-Positive blood.

  I ease around him toward the far wall to some sort of nautical instrument, a ship’s wheel encased in glass with a long glass tube extending beneath it, looking a little like a thermometer, and ask, “What’s this?”

  “Barometer,” Addams says.

  As I turn, I see Gault has backed toward a side wall, so I move that way to a wooden sailing ship atop a small bookcase. The name plate under the man-o-war tells me it’s the U.S.S. Constitution.

  “Old Ironsides,” says Addams.

  As I move between Gault and the bookcase, he shifts quickly and I look down at his injured left leg. He says, without prodding, “Need to work it out.”

  “Any reason why you keep facing me?” I step around him and see a patch of white at the back of his neck. “Is that a bandage?”

  “Yeah. When I tripped this morning, I fell in those bushes by the little bridge. Thorns stuck me.”

  I nod as I ease over and shake Addams’s hand, then thank Gault and lead Borgo out. As we get into our car, I see Borgo can’t hold it in any longer and he asks, “How’d you know about the bandage behind his neck?”

  “Well, she didn’t scratch his arms and they were the same height.”

  I get behind the wheel and Borgo shakes his head. “That’s it? That’s how you came up with it?”

  “You have to be more observant, amigo.”

  “It’s pisano. I’m Italian. So, where to now?”

  “Bridge.”

  It’s a rock and concrete bridge over the edge of a man-made pond at the far end of West End Park. As we examine the bushes, Borgo states the obvious. “Azalea bushes and that’s a camellia bush. No thorns here.” We check each bush carefully, not a branch bent or broken, not a leaf missing, and no human tissue scraped on thornless branches.

  “So what now?” Borgo asks.

  “Search warrants.”

  We climb back into the Chevy and he asks, “Warrants? As in two?”

  “We’ll need a description of his building and the exact location of his condo for the first warrant. You’ll search there for the jogging clothes he wore while I take him to Charity with the other warrant.” He keeps looking at me, so I explain. “Get his blood for typing and DNA testing and get a doctor to look at that thorn injury.”

  As soon as we secure the warrants we call for a marked car to meet us at the Lake Marina Towers. Officer S. Panola, whose platoon switched around to the evening shift, meets us. Her regular partner, who also has corn rows, is male, six-three, two-fifty, with a name plate that reads: E. Hawkins, greets us as we park and go in to find the apartment manager so we don’t have to kick down Gault’s door.

  I ask for another car to meet me at the USCG substation and my buddy, Sidney Tilghman is waiting for me outside the station.

  “Well, well, this is fast work.”

  I give him a quick run down and ask that he put Gault in the back of his unit, in the cage, and follow me to Charity Hospital.

  “Want I should ask him anything, slick like, you know. Maybe he’ll slip up and say something.”

  Yeah. Right. So I tell him, “Sure. See if he’ll tell you he killed her.”

  Tilghman pulls up his uniform pants as I lead the way into the substation. Addams isn’t there but Gault is and I step into his office, pull out my ID folder and read him his Miranda rights before telling him, “We have a search warrant for blood and skin samples. You’ll have to come along with us.”

  He takes his time getting up and I see Tilghman is antsy as he eases around me and says, “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Gault limps around his desk, eyes darting between the sergeant and me, but not meeting my eyes. I show him the warrant. His eyes don’t even blink.

  “Show him your knife,” Tilghman urges me. When I don’t, he tells Gault he’s a lucky man, I usually slice some hair off when I nab a killer. “You behave now,” Tilghman continues, “and I won’t cuff you ‘til we get out to the car. Get feisty and I’ll slap them on and march you out in front of all your men like that.” He pats Gault down.

  I’m sure the enlisted men can see outside as Tilghman cuffs Gault behind his back before slipping him into the rear of the marked police car.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Gault says in a gravely voice.

  “You ride in my car, you get cuffed.” Tilghman shuts the door.

  •

  The ER at Charity is crowded, as usual, and smells of alcohol wipes, pine oil and body odor. We ease through the waiting room and an Orleans Parish sheriff’s deputy comes around to escort Tilghman and his handcuffed prisoner to an alcove, where Tilghman takes off the cuffs and I go hunt down the duty police surgeon.

  Dr. Sam Martinez is short, young and energetic and quickly takes two swabs from inside Gault’s mouth before securing a blood sample from his left arm. As the warrant instructs, the doctor examines the injury at the back of Gault’s neck and nods to me.

  “The wound is consistent with fingernail scratches,” says the doctor after he dresses the wound in a fresh bandage and
steps away. “Can’t be positive, but it’s consistent.

  “Says he fell in some bushes.”

  “Possible,” says the doctor. “But unlikely.”

  I thank him and Tilghman slips the cuffs back on Gault and we leave for the Detective Bureau where we uncuff Gault again before putting him into an interview room to simmer for a half hour.

  “Coffee?” I ask Tilghman, who shakes his head.

  “Hope you got the right guy, Cochise,” he says with a grin on his way out.

  “Cochise was Apache,” I tell him and he waves back over his shoulder.

  •

  After I turn over the swabs and blood sample to a crime lab tech, I take two coffees into the interview room, where Gault stands behind the small table in the room.

  “Sit down,” I say. “Have some coffee.”

  He folds his arms.

  Gault won’t cop out, won’t even talk to me after I read him his rights again and have him put his initials on a waiver-of-rights form. He signs on the line that says he does not waive his rights and wants to speak with a lawyer before answering any questions. He folds his arms and leans back in the chair, ogling me for a long moment. Then he smiles.

  I lock eyes with him and for long seconds, neither of us moves. I hear the distant beat of war drums echoing in my brain. No, it’s my heart thumping as I look into the eyes of this killer. I clench my fists and fight the urge to wring his neck. I’m reminded of the legend of the leering Cheyenne renegade called Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. I reach around for my knife wanting so badly to eviscerate this monster sitting across the table from me, wipe that smile off the earth just as my ancestors wiped the Cheyenne renegade from the land of the living. But I let out a deep breath, take another in and feel the rage in me slowly subside as Gault’s smile fades and he tries a hard look now. My face remains expressionless. A plains warrior never shows emotion, especially to the white eyes. I leave him in the room with his untouched mug of coffee-and-chicory.

  I can tell from the grin on Borgo’s wide face, as he crosses the squad room, that it went well at the condo. He’s bouncing on his toes as he shows me the ripped and bloody collar from Gault’s gray USCG sweat shirt, then shows me a small plastic bag secured with red evidence tape. Inside is a broken purple fingernail.