Blood on the Bayou

by DJ Donaldson

  “Exactly. Could be we’re dealing with someone out to clean up the Quarter… get rid of all the undesirables. But…”

  “But what?” Gatlin asked.

  “The brutality of the attacks is puzzling. That doesn’t sound like someone carrying out a plan.”

  “So what are we looking for, Doc?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me study the files on the two cases and see what I can come up with.”

  From the look on Gatlin’s face, he had expected more. And why not; she had expected more from herself. But after all, they’d sprung this on her without even giving her a chance to review the available written material. She glanced at Broussard and saw that his face was unreadable.

  “Well, he won’t be getting away with anything tonight,” Gatlin said. “We’ve put everybody on double shifts and practically cleaned the Salvation Army thrift store out of undercover clothes.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It took Kit thirty minutes to read the files on the two murders. There was actually not much to review. The girl’s file included the autopsy findings, Gatlin’s description of the scene and his conversations with the girl’s friends, as well as a stack of photographs that brought the case out of the abstract into gruesome reality. While it was nothing that would help her, she was impressed with Broussard’s thoroughness. At least he was doing his part. The file on the second case was even thinner. So little time had elapsed since the murder that Gatlin had nothing personal on the victim and Broussard had only completed a superficial examination of the body. While she was looking at the scene photographs of the second victim, Broussard came into her office waving a sheet of paper.

  “Well, we know the murderer’s blood type,” he said, plunking the serology report down in front of her. “He’s type B.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  “From saliva traces around the bite on the second victim. Tried it on the first one but couldn’t be absolutely sure of the results because she was an AB secretor. But the musician was type 0, no B antigens to mask what the killer left.”

  Kit only partially understood what he was talking about, but she got the important point.

  “How common is type B?”

  “Ten to fifteen percent of the population.”

  “That’s good. Wish I was doing as well.”

  “But then your job is harder,” Broussard said. “When two objects come together, there’s always a transfer of physical evidence. All I’ve got to do is find it. There isn’t always a piece of the murderer’s psyche left behind.”

  Kit shook her head. “I disagree. It’s there, just like the physical evidence. Unfortunately, I may need to see more of his work before I understand him.”

  “Maybe they’ll catch him tonight and that won’t be necessary.”

  “I pray they do.”

  Unable to glean anything further from the scanty files, Kit decided to see what she could learn about the dead couple found that morning.

  After filling out a requisition in triplicate at the police property room, she was allowed to see the contents of the wallet that had been on the couple’s TV. Among those items was an ID card from the Frigi-King ice cream plant in Kenner.

  *

  When she got to the Frigi-King plant, the receptionist directed her through a wide metal door to the novelty production section. Always having imagined the manufacture of ice cream products to be a quiet process, she was surprised at all the hissing and clanking. Apparently, she didn’t know much about alligators or ice cream.

  Waiting for her next to a massive vat of brine filled with rows of metal forms containing embryonic orange Popsicles was a man in a white jumpsuit—the production foreman. He had long brown flyaway hair that made Kit wonder how much of it had been shipped out in the company’s products over the years. In a glassed-in freezer behind him, a man in a white jumpsuit and a Russian hat was scraping the ice cream from crushed half-gallon cartons into a large galvanized milk can with his fingers.

  “Where’d you say you were from?” the foreman asked over the noise.

  “Orleans Parish Medical Examiner’s Office,” Kit said. The man in the glass freezer dropped a large chunk of ice cream on the floor, picked it up, and threw it in the milk can. “Do you have an employee named Dennis Chapman?”

  A wary look crept over the foreman’s face. “Chapman? Yeah, he’s a manager trainee. And he’s late. Real late.”

  The plant had obviously not been informed of what had happened. “I’m afraid Mr. Chapman won’t be coming in at all. He and his wife were found dead this morning in their home.”

  “Oh well,” the foreman said, shrugging his shoulders. “We’ll just hire another trainee. Ain’t as though they’re hard to get.” He looked expectantly over Kit’s shoulder at the door through which she’d come.

  Thinking that perhaps he hadn’t heard her correctly over the noise, Kit repeated herself. “I don’t think you understand. Mr. Chapman is dead.”

  “Oh I understand,” the foreman said, still looking at the door. “Hope he don’t expect me to come to the funeral. ’Cause I wasn’t that crazy about him when he was alive.” An amused smirk appeared on his face. He pushed past her, opened the metal door, and stuck his head into the next room. “So where is he?” he asked, pulling his head back and letting the door swing shut.

  “I certainly didn’t bring him,” Kit said. “He’s probably in the morgue.”

  A gray pall spread over the foreman’s face. “Then you’re serious? This isn’t another one of Dennis’s pranks?”

  “This is no prank. He and his wife died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.”

  “Jesus… the things I said. I didn’t know. I thought… I mean he’s always pulling crap like this on us.”

  “I’m trying to find out if it was an accident or—”

  “Suicide? No way. He and his wife were taking scuba lessons. They were planning a Caribbean diving trip for their anniversary. Already had the reservations. He talked about it all the time. Like to drive us nuts with it.”

  “Did he carry a remote car starter around with him?”

  “Oh that. Yeah, he used to tell people he could make his car start by whistling for it like it was a horse or something. Used to pull it every chance he got.”

  Before letting the foreman go, she asked him one last question. “By the way, what are you going to do with the ice cream that man is collecting?”

  The foreman shrugged. “Make chocolate.”

  Kit verified with another employee what the foreman had told her and was then satisfied. Chapman’s anticipation of the couple’s forthcoming trip was a major factor in her conclusion that the couple had not taken their own lives. The only things suicidal mentalities look forward to is the day they plan to kill themselves. The men at the plant also had explained why Chapman had the remote control in his pocket. It was simply an accident. Ordinarily, she would have been pleased at being able to reach a decision so quickly. Today, she would have preferred a more complicated case, one she could use as an excuse for not coming up with any bright ideas on the French Quarter murders.

  Late that afternoon, the sun broke through for a few hours and was then obscured again as yet another front pushed into the city, bringing more rain. This time, Gatlin was happy to see it, because he wanted things to be just as they had been the previous two nights when the killer struck.

  Gatlin gave himself the best location, spending the night shuffling around the two-block area where the previous killings had occurred. In the left pocket of a hot old raincoat that smelled like a wet horse, he carried a Handie-Talkie that gave him direct access to the undercover command post in a Winnebago parked in Exchange Alley. Every few minutes, he’d put a Gilbey’s gin bottle filled with water to his lips and pretend to take a long drink. Whether he and the other undercover cops cruising the Quarter were dressed wrong or were too clean-shaven or were just lousy actors was not clear. Whatever the reason, nothing happened that night or the next. Citing the cost, the police c
ommissioner suspended the operation.

  The following day, it occurred to Kit that one reason she was having trouble getting a handle on the murderer’s mental state was that she didn’t have a clear picture of the environment in which the murders had taken place. Sure, there were plenty of photographs, but they could not convey the feel of the place, the intangibles that might have influenced his choice of victims or his decision to act. She could learn that only by visiting the scene, not during the day but at night, around the time each murder had occurred.

  The thought raised gooseflesh on her arms, but that didn’t change her mind. It was something she had to do. But how? She couldn’t go down there unprotected. And she definitely did not want to take Gatlin or any other member of the police with her. That would only cast further doubt on her abilities if she failed to learn anything. Better to keep a low profile. So who could she take? Someone discreet… someone who owned a gun… someone like… Bubba Oustellette.

  *

  When Kit arrived at the NOPD vehicle-impoundment station on Poydras, she saw Bubba through the glass window in the small concrete-block building just inside the lot’s chain-link gates. He was eating a sandwich and reading a comic book.

  She pressed the button like the sign told her to do if she wanted help. The bell caught Bubba by surprise and he nearly fell off his stool. Seeing who it was, he grinned and motioned for her to come around back.

  “Hey, Dr. Franklyn.” He threw the door open and stood aside. “C’mon in here where it’s cool.”

  Bubba was wearing what he usually wore: navy blue coveralls over a blue T-shirt, and a green baseball cap with the Tulane football logo on it—an ocean wave showing its teeth and carrying a football. With his long black hair and bushy black beard, he always reminded Kit of a chipmunk, a comparison called to mind by Bubba’s kind nature and extremely small stature. He was the one that kept Broussard’s fleet of ’57 T-Birds running smoothly.

  Bubba pulled out another stool. “Maybe you wanna siddown.”

  While Kit climbed onto the stool, Bubba dug in his lunch box and brought out half a sandwich.

  Kit shook her head when he offered it to her.

  “Fried baloney,” he said, as if she ought to know what she was missing. Still no sale. “Somethin’ to drink den,” he said, lightly kicking the short refrigerator under the counter. “Ah got Mellow Yellow and Mellow Yellow. Whadda you think?”

  “I had lunch before I came over. I’d like to ask a favor.”

  Bubba slid off his stool and wiped his hands on his coveralls. “Your car actin’ up?”

  “It’s not that. You do a lot of hunting, don’t you?”

  “Allatime.”

  “Then you have a gun?”

  “Pretty hard to shoot ducks with a fishin’ rod. Ah tried it once and didn’ get nowhere near da limit.” He touched her arm. “Sorry for dat. It’s one a mah wors’ habits. Gramma O says Ah’m goin’ to hell if Ah don’ quit it.”

  “Do you have any small guns? Like a pistol, something that you could carry easily?”

  With each question Kit asked, another line appeared on Bubba’s forehead. “Scuse me for sayin’ dis, but when Ah dance with somebody, dere’s usually music playin’.” He wiped the air in front of his face. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I’m the one that should apologize for being so obtuse.”

  “Obtuse?” Bubba’s mind struggled with the word and he said it again. “Obtuse. Nice word. Gotta kinda French sound to it.”

  “It means not getting to the point.”

  “Ahhh. Dat’s why Ah was havin’ trouble figurin’ out what we were talkin’ about. You were jus’ bein’ obtuse.”

  “I guess you’ve read about the two mutilation murders in the French Quarter….”

  “Yeah, sounds like dat guy’s a real animal.”

  “Well, I’m trying to help the police by figuring out what’s going on in the killer’s mind, what kind of person he might be during the day. To help me do that, I want to go to where the murders were committed and get the feel of the place. And I want to go around three A.M., the time when they think both crimes occurred.”

  “An’ you’d like for me to go with you?”

  “If you would.”

  “An’ bring a gun… a small one.”

  Kit nodded, convinced that he was going to refuse to help her.

  “You mean go right down dere where we might meet dis fella face-to-face?”

  “I suppose that’s possible. I certainly hope we don’t.”

  “What time you want me to pick you up?”

  Kit drew Bubba a map of how to get to her place and they agreed to meet at 2:30 A.M. the next morning.

  “Wear dark clothes,” Kit said as she was leaving. “And bring a black umbrella.”

  *

  Though she had not said so back in Bayou Coteau when Teddy LaBiche was telling her how the Duhons liked to turn in early, Kit was not a night person either. Ordinarily, if she didn’t have a date, she’d become drowsy around 10:30 and would barely be able to keep her eyes open during The Tonight Show monologue. Rarely did she ever make it to the first guest.

  Tonight, her adrenaline was flowing so freely that she was still wide awake when David Letterman signed off. Two hours to go before Bubba arrived. She passed that block of time by watching an old black and white musical, marveling at the truly ludicrous routines, which included one in which a chorus line performed on the wing of an airplane for an audience at a posh party on the ground. How those watching below were able to see the dancers through the wing of the plane was a real puzzle.

  Bubba showed up a few minutes early in a battered pickup. He didn’t have to ring the bell because Kit was watching for him through the window. He was dressed as she had requested, in dark clothes—the same ones he’d been wearing when they spoke that afternoon. When she asked if he was armed, he patted a bulky pocket in his coveralls.

  As they drove downtown in Kit’s little Nissan, a light mist drifted onto the windshield. The well-publicized killings and the weather made the French Quarter quieter and more lifeless than Kit had ever seen it, as though the Quarter itself had been mortally stricken. She shivered and was glad that Bubba had agreed to come along.

  The first murder had occurred on Royal, a few doors from its intersection with Dumain. She parked a block away on St. Philip and gave Bubba his instructions.

  “I want to walk by myself. You follow about a block away. Try to look casual.”

  Kit got out of the car and raised her umbrella against the light rain that had seemed to become a permanent resident of the city. As she turned the corner onto Royal, she saw something peculiar: Someone was playing a flashlight over the sidewalk and the doorway where the first body had been found. Wanting to see what this person might do next, Kit stepped into a dark doorway, closed her umbrella, and stole another look.

  Flashlight still in hand but now turned off, the man—and she was sure from the walk that it was a man—was heading down Dumain, toward the French Market. Still curious, Kit decided to follow.

  She went quickly down Royal, past the famous cornstalk fence, and crossed over so she could get a look around the next corner. The man had stopped opposite a partially collapsed building that had dropped away from those on each side to which it had been attached. He sent the beam of his flashlight over the rubble for a minute or two, then closed his umbrella, telescoped the handle, and put it in the pocket of his raincoat. Then he slowly crossed the street, his movements wary and calculated, almost as though he was expecting something to burst from the debris.

  Unexpectedly, he glanced toward the French Market. Kit drew back, fearing that he would look her way next. When she had summoned enough courage to look again, she saw the man leaning forward, his hand cupped to his mouth, saying something over and over into a dark recess between what was left of the first floor of the collapsed building and an old gate that had been nailed over a large hole in the brickwork. After a short time had passed, he ra
ised his umbrella again and moved on toward the French Market. Kit let him get two blocks away before she went after him.

  As soon as Bubba had gotten out of the car, he had become absorbed in a display of knives in a shop window on St. Philip. Now when he looked up, he realized Kit was gone.

  Kit moved slowly down Dumain, not wanting to get too close to the man she was following. He crossed Decatur and walked toward a fountain between the stuccoed market buildings on the other side of the street. After working his flashlight around the trash-collecting area behind the building on his left, he disappeared through the gate in the wall that separated the market from the riverfront.

  Afraid she might lose him, Kit began to walk faster. Suddenly, her legs became tangled and she pitched to the sidewalk. Her umbrella rolled crazily into the gutter. Hands were scrabbling at her clothing. Grasping fingers closed on her flesh and she was dragged into a dark doorway.

  CHAPTER 6

  Before Kit thought to scream, a calloused hand was clapped to her mouth, catching her lip hard against her teeth. The smell of alcohol and urine catalyzed the nausea that fear had already set in motion. She was dimly afraid that she might throw up and, because of the hand at her mouth, aspirate vomitus into her lungs.

  The man holding her had been sitting in the doorway like a spider waiting for something edible to pass. He had tripped Kit with his feet and pulled her onto his lap.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you lady,” he said, his face so close, she couldn’t focus on it. “All I want is money enough to get off the streets until whatever’s down here is caught. That ain’t bein’ unreasonable, is it? Ain’t I got the right to be as safe as you when I sleep?”

  “Maybe you oughtta let da lady go,” a voice said from above and behind the bum’s head. Bubba put the barrel of a huge pistol on the man’s nose.

  The bum’s hand slipped from Kit’s mouth and he slithered out from under her, flattening himself against the iron bars covering the glass door behind him. As Bubba helped Kit up, he never let the pistol waver from the cowering man’s face.