“And if I’d scheduled her to work with me that morning instead of with you, she’d still be alive,” Franks said. “If she’d been more careful, she’d still be alive. If that guy had died in Plaquemines instead of here, she’d still be alive. And if—”
Broussard lifted a limp hand. “I get the picture.”
“Sometimes bad things just happen. Not because of oversight or carelessness, or bad judgment. Events occasionally simply converge to produce disasters. And to think you were responsible for Natalie’s death is a pompous piece of horseshit.”
Despite his troubles, Broussard managed a tepid smile. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.”
“I suppose you’ll want the blame for that, too.”
Franks was as worried about Kit as Broussard was, but he quelled the impulse to bring that into the discussion, for fear it would cause the little tapestry of encouragement he’d woven around Broussard’s sagging spirits to unravel. Figuring that more than anything else Broussard needed work to occupy his mind, Franks said, “I see we got a homicide downstairs along with the bodies from the crash. How do you want to divide the effort?”
Broussard did indeed feel a little better, but he still wasn’t about to let Franks work on any body that might be carrying disease. The plane that crashed was coming from Jackson, Mississippi, so all those aboard should be safe to work on. “How about you take crash victims number one, two, and three. I’ll do the rest.”
Franks shook his head. “Not going to let me near that homicide, huh?”
“Not without metal gloves.”
AT THE TOP OF the steps leading to Spanish Plaza, Phil Gatlin nearly collided with a guy in drag walking a pair of matching dalmatians. After they’d sorted out their respective routes, Gatlin watched the three of them depart, marveling at the sight. No sir, you just don’t see that many matching dalmatians.
He then headed for the plaza fountain and the entrance to the Riverwalk, a linear mall that appropriately enough stretched along the river.
Inside, he took the stairs to the Hilton’s Vieux Carre annex, picked his way through a herd of AARP members on their way to the casino, and stepped up to the annex elevators, vowing that when he retired he wouldn’t travel in packs and he sure as hell wouldn’t wear one of those kangaroo pouches in public.
He took the elevator to the third floor and found room 3019. This is going to be interesting, he thought, rapping on the door.
His knock was answered by Beverly Franklyn, wearing a clingy white blouse with wide lapels and pleated white pants with a two-tone brown belt, pearl earrings peeking from beneath her perfectly arranged hair. The woman had taste, no doubt about it. Over her shoulder, he saw that Howard Franklyn looked pretty spiffy, too, in a loose creamcolored pullover with flaps over the pockets, olive pants, and brown loafers.
Beverly wasted no time on small talk. “Have you found her?” she asked, obviously afraid of the answer.
“Do you mind if we don’t do this in the hall?” Gatlin said.
“I’m sorry.” She retreated into the room, allowing Gatlin to step inside and shut the door.
“Have you found her?” Beverly said again.
“No, but I can tell you she’s not missing because she’s sick.”
“How do you know that?”
“We finally got in touch with her maid, who told us that when she arrived yesterday morning at eight o’clock, Kit was gone and the place was a wreck. She got it cleaned up and left before Dr. Broussard got there, which is why we didn’t know about it then.”
“And it never occurred to her to report that to anybody?” Howard asked.
“She just cleans houses, an’ she don’t meddle in other folks’ affairs.”
“When you say the house was a wreck . . . you mean like there was a struggle?” Beverly asked.
“More like someone looking for something.”
“For what?” Howard asked.
“I’ve no idea. But I think whoever it was now has your daughter.”
“I need a cigarette,” Beverly said, going for her purse on the dresser.
“Are they holding her for ransom?” Howard asked.
For a nicely dressed guy, he could sure come up with some dopey questions. “We’ll only know that if they ask for one.”
Beverly came back holding a long cigarette with a filter tip between her fingers. She took a quick, nervous pull on it and turned her head to exhale the smoke. “Kit’s been after me for years to quit,” she said. “But I just don’t have the willpower. Let’s sit down.”
She waved him to one of the chairs at a circular table in front of a broad window whose view of the river was blocked by a big sign on the building. She took the chair opposite him and pulled a nearby ashtray closer. Howard sat on the bed, which looked as though it hadn’t been slept in. Neither had the other. Nor were there any clothes strewn around the room. Neat people.
“What do we do now?” Howard asked.
“Do you have an answering machine on your home phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you access it from here?”
“Of course . . . I should call and see if the kidnappers have contacted us.”
He got up and went to the nightstand between the beds, where he punched in his home number. After a short pause, he added three more numbers, listened, and then hung up. “There’s been no call.”
“Somebody picking up your mail?”
“A neighbor, but there couldn’t be anything there yet. Yesterday’s mail came before we left and”—he looked at his watch—“today’s won’t come for another—”
“Remember, it’s an hour later there,” Gatlin cautioned.
Howard nodded. “It’ll be there in another two hours.”
“When it arrives, you should call and see what’s in it. I’m gonna get the phone company to forward all your home phone calls here and I’ll send somebody by to put a tape recorder on the phone.”
“What do we do if they call?” Howard asked.
“Just listen and act cooperative. We’ll come up with a plan when we hear what they have to say. We’ve contacted the issuers of Kit’s credit cards and they’re gonna flag her accounts, so if anybody tries to use them, they’ll be spotted.”
“I’d like to offer a reward for information about her,” Howard said. “Do you have Crime Stoppers here?”
“We’ve got it, but I’d advise you to hold off on that.”
“Why?”
“They hear there’s a reward, they’re gonna know that every snitch in town’ll be on their trail. If they’re still in the area, that could spook them into running and taking Kit with them. Then it all gets harder. Or they might panic and harm her. Cut us some time on this and let us see what we can do.”
Howard nodded.
“That brings me to a question for you, Mrs. Franklyn,” Gatlin said.
“What’s that?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Kit’s disappearance is related to this fellow who arranged to meet her at Grandma O’s restaurant . . . the guy in the morgue. . . . There’s also no doubt in my mind you know who he is.”
Beverly tried to look innocent, but better actors than she was hadn’t been able to fool Gatlin.
“What makes you think that?”
“When we were all talking yesterday, you were too interested in him.”
“I was simply showing concern for an unfortunate fellow human being.”
“Uh-uh. You know him.”
“This is outrageous.”
“Look, if you want to see your daughter again, you’re gonna have to talk to me.”
Beverly looked at the floor for a while, then at Howard.
Sensing she was on the verge of tipping, Gatlin pushed her a little more. “If I knew who he was, it might help me locate her.”
“It won’t help,” Beverly said. She stared at Gatlin for a couple of seconds, then caved. “He’s my brother, Jack. But I haven’t had contact with him in nearly
fifteen years.”
“Why’d you tell Kit you didn’t know him?”
“He ran off with my parents’ life savings, leaving them penniless. After that, I wanted nothing to do with him. When Kit asked us about him and I learned he was dead, I thought the simplest thing was to deny I knew him. But when we got to Dr. Broussard’s office, I couldn’t forget he was family.”
“He sounds to me like a guy capable of kidnapping his sister’s daughter for money.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” Beverly said.
“Maybe so, but it needs to be pursued. Do you know the names of any of his friends?”
“It’s been too long.”
“No idea what city he lived in?”
“Not recently. Years ago, I got a couple of letters from him postmarked in Yuba City, California.”
Gatlin entered this in his little notebook. “What was your brother’s last name?”
“Hamilton.”
“Any other brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t happen to know his Social Security number, would you?”
“It’s all I can do to remember mine.”
“Mind if I use the phone?”
Howard got up and moved away from the table between the beds.
Gatlin went to the phone and got the number for the Royal Sonesta from the operator. There was no answer in Teddy’s room, so he left his name and office number with the desk clerk. Before leaving, he gave his card to Howard. “If you see Teddy, ask him to call me. And it might be a good idea for one of you to stay close to the phone here.”
BROUSSARD FINISHED WITH HIS two plane crash victims a little after noon and returned to his office, still thinking about Gatlin’s phone call. Kit kidnapped . . . possibly in a plot hatched by her mother’s brother. It was bizarre. And if true, Kit was in double jeopardy. Too many times when kidnap victims were found, it became clear they’d been murdered shortly after being taken. And Beverly’s brother had been in the early stages of a disease that had already killed at least two others, so there was a good chance that whoever was holding Kit might also be infected and contagious. It just kept getting worse. . . .
His eyes fell on Walter Baldwin’s call book on his desk, where he’d put it that morning when he’d come in. There had been no messages from Blackledge and he considered calling him about the book, but the man already knew he had it, so the ball was in Blackledge’s court.
Still feeling guilty over Natalie’s death, and believing he didn’t deserve a decent lunch, he walked over to Canal Street and had the blue plate special at a five-and-dime, where he sat on a stool at the counter, next to a scruffy old man in a tattered army jacket who was nursing a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Finally, after he caught the guy staring at his plate for the third time, he bought one for him.
On the way back to his office, as the door was about to close on the hospital elevator, Nick Lawson, crime reporter for the Times-Picayune, got on.
“Hey, Dr. B. You’re just the guy I was looking for.”
“Obviously, you’re havin’ a better day than I am,” Broussard said, pressing the button for his floor.
“I heard that Kit’s missing, but I don’t have any details. So I thought I’d check with you.”
“Because you and I are so close?”
“You’re not still upset over my story on the body mix-up in the morgue, are you?”
“Upset? No. Eager to grant your every wish . . . no again.” The elevator stopped and the door opened. “Nice talkin’ to you.”
“I’m not asking this as a reporter,” Lawson said, pursuing Broussard down the hall, “but as Kit’s friend. I’m worried about her. And you wouldn’t just be helping me. You’d be helping her.”
Broussard unlocked his office door and turned to Lawson. “Helping Kit how?”
“I have a lot of contacts in this city. Most of them the kind of people you wouldn’t open your door to, but they hear things and they’ll talk to me. I need guidance, though. So how about it . . . for Kit’s sake.”
Broussard mulled this over. “Anything I say will be off the record?”
“I promise.”
“What’s your promise worth?”
“Off the record means I don’t write about anything you tell me . . . ever, unless you say I can.”
“Come on in.”
Not completely comfortable about it, Broussard reluctantly told Lawson all that had happened. Afterward, sitting alone in his office, Broussard hoped he wouldn’t have reason to regret his candor.
There still had been no message from Blackledge, so Broussard moved on to his next order of business, the strangulation victim.
He called downstairs, alerted Guy that he was coming, and headed for the elevator.
When he got to the morgue, Guy was putting the victim’s clothing in a brown paper bag.
That morning when they’d worked on the crash victims, they’d done so without music, Broussard intentionally disrupting the routine as a tribute to Natalie. But everything had become so chaotic, he now longed for the old routines and some stability in the events around him. “I’d like some Mozart this afternoon. Disc four.”
Guy went to the stereo and Broussard stepped over to the box of booties.
As he finished tying the first one over his mesh shoes, Violin Concerto no. 3 began, coming out of the dual speakers with such richness, he could almost touch it, feel it caressing his skin, filling the empty places in his heart, giving him hope. He donned his plastic apron, pulled on two pairs of gloves and a mask, and went to do battle with the other side of man’s nature.
The body was that of a poorly nourished male between thirty and forty years old, with his mouth gaping in silent protest. Around his neck was a discolored band of skin an inch wide that bore no textural imprint, making Broussard suspect he’d been strangled with a belt.
The pressure of the ligature on the corpse’s neck had produced petechiae, small hemorrhages in the whites of the eyes and the skin over the upper cheeks, so that he looked freckled. Broussard had lately become a palatal-mucosa connoisseur, looking at it on every cadaver at the earliest convenience. When the mouth was closed, that meant waiting until the cut along the lower jaw had been made and the tongue pulled down. In this case, there was no need to wait.
He got a dental mirror and a penlight from a nearby drawer and inserted the mirror into the corpse’s mouth. Trying to keep the penlight from obstructing his view, he played its beam into the small, dark cave.
A scant second later, he woofed quietly, as though he’d been struck in the belly.
The palate was covered with red spots.
11
“What is it?” Guy asked as Broussard straightened up and looked off into space.
“He has palatal petechiae, like the body Natalie was workin’ on when she cut herself.”
Guy backed away. “So this one is infectious, too?”
It was a question Broussard couldn’t answer. “Too soon to tell. It’s not common to find petechiae on the palate in a strangulation, but it’s not unknown.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t work on him.”
“He may not be infected. And even if he is, you and I were both in the same room with Natalie’s case and the one after that and we’re fine, so unless I cut myself and some of his fluids get into the cut, there’s no danger. And I’m not gonna cut myself.”
Remembering that the detective who’d called about the case the night before said the victim had no ID, he checked the tips of the fingers to see if Homicide had already printed him. Finding inky evidence they had, he set about obtaining a set of dental X-rays.
When that was accomplished, he continued his external examination, finding nothing further of note until he got to the right hand, which was missing the tip of the index finger. He also recorded the presence of an appendectomy scar and an old wound on the lateral aspect of his right calf, which still looked as though something had taken a divot out of it. The calluses on his
feet were extremely heavy and hard, suggesting he’d had some long-term occupational exposure to arsenic.
After turning the corpse facedown, Broussard noted on its back a mole with irregular edges and variable coloration that, had the man still been alive, would have called for a biopsy.
They turned him faceup again and Guy was made to stand well away from the body while Broussard carefully took blood, urine, and vitreous samples. All these were double-test-tubed and marked as biohazards. Then it was time to look inside.
Guy wheeled the gurney over to the autopsy table and together they lifted the body onto it.
In a strangulation case, it’s important to document damage to the structures of the neck. This is best done in a dry dissection field. To accomplish this, Guy placed a wooden block under the corpse’s shoulders so that when the brain and the organs in the thoracic and abdominal cavities were removed, the blood would drain away from the neck.
“Okay, thanks,” Broussard said. “Now get outta here.”
“You be careful,” Guy said. “I kinda like working with you.”
As Guy left, Broussard found himself wishing he’d told Natalie that when he’d had the chance.
Eager to get a look at organs that rarely if ever showed petechiae in a strangulation case, Broussard did not begin dissection at the chest, but went directly to the abdomen, opening it with a single decisive scalpel stroke from breastbone to pubic bone. Parting the incision, the first organ he saw was the liver.
Through his mask, he woofed again, for it was decorated with tiny pinpoint hemorrhages.
Ninety minutes later, with the autopsy completed, Broussard turned his mind to the consequences of what he’d found. A third case . . . and once again no identification on the body. No way to know where he’d come from, who he’d been with, and how he’d contracted the disease.
Concerned that they might find no match for the prints and knowing that even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily be very helpful, he decided to search for answers to those questions in the victim’s clothing.
After changing gloves, he put a piece of plastic-backed absorbent paper on the gurney and spread the damp clothing out on the paper.
Louisiana Fever Page 12
