Assassination at Bayou Sauvage

by D. J. Donaldson

  She went back to her car, and with her phone, took some pictures of the damage and the message on the hood, then called her insurance company.

  Lucky her. The policy was current. The agent on the line said that if she sent him photos of the shattered window, including one showing both the car’s VIN number and some of the damage, she could proceed immediately with windshield replacement and send the bill to the agency. He also suggested she try to remove the marker with alcohol. If that didn’t work, she should take the car to a collision service and have the writing buffed out with rubbing compound, whatever that was.

  The mobile windshield guy showed up twenty minutes after she called. He appeared fully able and totally professional in his job and instantly gained Kit’s confidence, partly because he didn’t even ask her what the message on the hood was all about.

  “How long you figure this will take?” she asked.

  “Thirty minutes,” the guy said.

  “I’m going to run an errand. I won’t be long.”

  She left the garage and walked briskly back to Toulouse Street. Half a block down Toulouse, she entered the Nolen Boyd gallery. The owner, a corpulent guy with a face so surrounded by flesh he looked like his features had been painted in the center of a dinner plate, was straightening a picture he’d taken of barges on the Mississippi at sunset. He was her landlord and the owner of the garage on Dauphine. Some time back, she’d worked for him briefly after an experience she didn’t really like talking about.

  “Nolen, we’ve got a problem.”

  Turning, he came toward her, a subtext of mild irritation in his otherwise bland expression. “Whatever happened to ‘Hello Nolen. That’s a nice shirt. You look handsome today’?”

  He knew he wasn’t handsome, but had no idea his Hawaiian shirts were all hideous and often food-stained from the Lucky Dogs he loved.

  “A self-assured man like you doesn’t need flattery,” Kit said. “And there are so few of you in the world.”

  “Okay, that’s enough BS,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

  “Someone broke into the garage last night and smashed my windshield. They got in through the window on the right, which they broke. We need to get that fixed and have bars put over both of them.”

  “Okay, I’ll see to it.”

  “When?”

  “Next couple days.”

  “They also damaged the hood of your car climbing down from the broken window.”

  He now became a full member of the club. “The hell you say. We can’t have people just running over us like that. We need those bars ASAP. But I don’t know anybody who could do it today.”

  “I might,” Kit said. “C’mon.”

  She led him outside and through the gate to the back courtyard, where Remy’s father, Zachery was setting up some scaffolding.

  She waved at him. “Morning. Have a minute to talk?”

  As he approached, he took off his hardhat, a gentlemanly act she appreciated.

  “Dr. Franklyn, Mr. Boyd, what can I do for you?” He looked like Remy twenty years in the future; skin rougher, some lines at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead, a man who you could point to as evidence that age often improves a man’s appearance.

  “Someone broke into Nolen’s garage last night and damaged both our cars. I know this is an imposition, but is there any chance you could repair the garage window that was knocked out and put some bars over that window and one other? We’d like to have it done today so whoever did the damage can’t come back tonight.”

  LeBlanc looked at Nolen. “It’ll slow us down back here.”

  “I understand.”

  “Let’s go take a look.”

  As Kit walked down the forensic center’s hallway toward Broussard’s office forty-five minutes later, she wondered how she was going to end the harassment that had so far been directed at her only through her car. Like the message said on her hood; What is next?

  She knocked on Broussard’s door.

  “It’s open.”

  Inside, she found that Gatlin was there too, in his favorite spot; perched on the arm of the green sofa

  “Glad you’re here,” Broussard said from behind his desk. “We need to have a war council about Betty Bergeron.” Each of his cheeks obviously contained a lemon ball. “But I was just about to tell Philip two things. Let me do that then we’ll discuss the Bergeron case.” He turned to Gatlin. “That death in police custody was unavoidable. The guy died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was a walkin’ dead man. No one caused it, it just happened. He couldn’t have been saved even if he was in a hospital bed when it tore.”

  “That’s good,” Gatlin said. “I mean . . . not for him, but for the arresting officers.”

  “Death should never be a good thing for anybody,” Broussard said. “But we don’t live in a world with that kind of purity.”

  “What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”

  “I found out that Uncle Joe left his money equally to each of his four kids; Julien, Amelia, Sara, and Lewis. All of them are financially secure except for Lewis. His business is in trouble and he’s in a lot of debt. Also, I found the birthday card that everyone signed at the picnic. I haven’t finished comparin’ the invitation list to the names on the card, but I can tell you that Lewis didn’t sign the card.”

  “Maybe he was there, but just didn’t sign it,” Gatlin said.

  “Joe’s daughter, Amelia, personally took the card around and made sure she got the signatures of every adult present.”

  “So he could’ve been the shooter.”

  There was a time when Kit would have found it shocking that a man could kill his own father for money. But after working with Broussard as long as she had, she was no longer that person.

  “Now I’ve got two suspects,” Gatlin said. “A guy named Howard Karpis threatened to kill Joe a few months ago. And Karpis’s been sending him threatening notes . . . even admitted it to me.”

  “Why’d he admit it?” Broussard asked.

  “Maybe to make me believe him when he said he wasn’t the shooter. But the alibi he gave me doesn’t check out.”

  “How well do you like him?”

  “Until you told me about Lewis, I loved him. Is that it?”

  “Wish I had more, but I don’t. So let’s talk about Betty Bergeron.”

  Gatlin looked at Kit, “I didn’t have a chance to mention it last night, but that was good work finding her body.”

  “My intent was to find her alive.”

  “That’s always the goal, but in missing persons cases, rarely the result.”

  “I can say with certainty that she was killed between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. Thursday night,” Broussard said.

  “So she was either abducted by someone she didn’t know or met with someone she did know right after work,” Kit said.

  “I forwarded the tissue under her nails to the state crime lab for DNA analysis, which as we’ve discussed could take six weeks,” Broussard said. “But I also sent some over to a lab at Tulane, where they’ve been workin’ on blood typin’ of small samples of saliva and tissue. If they’re able to do it, we should have those results within 24 hours.”

  “Isn’t that kind of old fashioned stuff?” Kit said. “All those types are shared by a lot of people.”

  Gatlin finally stood up. “But potentially it could save us a lot of time. If his blood type excludes one of our suspects, we don’t have to think about him anymore.”

  “Speaking of suspects, that guy who harassed Betty at the bar, Jes DeLeon, served 60 days for sexual battery two years ago,” Kit said.

  “Misdemeanor,” Gatlin replied. “Too bad. If he’d been arrested for a felony his DNA profile would already be on record. And what you have won’t get us a warrant to swab him.”

  His comment reminded Kit why she was there. “Let me see what I can do about that.” She looked at Broussard. “Do you have a couple of spare buccal sample collectors on hand?”

 
“Nothin’ I like better than a person askin’ for somethin’ I don’t even have to leave my chair to get.” He reached down to the desk drawer on his left, removed the items she’d requested, and handed them to her. “Instructions are on the paper sleeves of the swabs.”

  “You’re gonna just talk him into volunteering a sample,” Gatlin said with an inflection indicating he didn’t think that would work.

  “Maybe,” Kit said, putting the collectors in her bag. “Depends on how things go.”

  It appeared to Kit that Gatlin was going to say something more, but he seemed to change his mind. Jumping into the conversational lull, she looked at him and slightly changed the subject, “It could be useful to know where DeLeon went after he left the bar.”

  “Sorry, no recent phone records or tracking data without a subpoena. In most jurisdictions we could probably get it just with what you’ve learned. But here, with the judges we have, they require more.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  “It’s never bothered me.”

  Gatlin was always bantering with Broussard, but rarely with her. She interpreted his sarcastic response as a sign that maybe he was getting used to having her around. “Okay, I’m off to see DeLeon.”

  She left the office and headed for the elevators.

  A moment later, as she stepped forward and pressed the DOWN button, she heard a loud whistle from the direction of Broussard’s office. When she looked that way, she saw Gatlin standing in the hall. “C’mon back,” he said. “They’ve found Betty Bergeron’s car.

  Chapter 20

  Bergeron’s vehicle was sitting in the parking lot of a small shopping center. The area around it was already cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape attached to free-standing poles the crime scene van had brought. As Kit and Gatlin parked their respective cars and approached the patrol cruiser next to the van, the lone cop, a young black guy with a thin mustache, stood a little straighter.

  “You the one who found it?” Gatlin asked.

  “Yes sir,” the cop replied.

  “Good work.”

  Gatlin went to the scene tape and held it so Kit could duck under it. Then he followed.

  Two white-suited crime scene investigators were working the car like pollinating bees. Gatlin called out to the nearest one, who was looking in the glove box. “Anything of interest yet?”

  The guy pulled his head out and turned around. “No blood or weapons, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Either one of those would be start, but we’re also looking for a cell phone.”

  “If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

  Gatlin glanced toward the nearest light pole, then surveyed the others. Following his lead, Kit did the same.

  “That’s not good,” Kit said pointing to the pole ten feet away. “No camera.”

  “But some others have them.”

  “Look how far away they are.”

  “Maybe they’re extremely long range models.”

  Kit gestured at the nearest store, which was actually not close. “It’s a dollar store. What are the chances?”

  “You haven’t been a detective long enough to be so pessimistic. Check it out and let me know.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “It’s basically your case. I’ve got to find out who killed Joe Broussard.” He began to walk away, then paused and turned around. “What’s that writing on your car?”

  “Just some harassment for me helping out.”

  “Sure you can handle it?”

  “Oh, I’ll handle it. Count on it.”

  Broussard sat at his desk with Uncle Joe’s birthday card and the picnic invitation list, fully expecting that he now had time to complete the cross checking he’d started earlier that morning. He worked for about five minutes in which he didn’t find anyone else on the invitation list who hadn’t also signed the card. Then on the list he spotted a name that hit him with only slightly less force than the time he’d been struck by lightning while out fishing with Bubba and Gatlin.

  He reached for the phone, intending to call Amelia Hebert, Uncle Joe’s daughter, and ask why that person was on the list. Then, thinking how this would just be another example of wanting to talk to Amelia only when he needed something, he decided out of respect for their former friendship when they were kids, he should see her in person.

  Not wanting to appear rude by dropping by unannounced, he called her.

  “This is Amelia.”

  “Hello Amelia. Andy Broussard calling. Are you available for a face to face talk?”

  “Not at the moment, but what time is it?”

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “How about one o’clock?”

  “See you then.”

  “What’ll we be talking about?”

  “Let’s wait ‘til I’m there.”

  Kit had been staring non-stop at a video surveillance monitor in the dollar store for the last five minutes. One of the distant cameras she and Gatlin had seen outside was positioned so its field of view included the location where Betty Bergeron’s car was now parked. The footage she was looking at was from last Thursday night.

  Betty had left work at 12:45 a.m. Though the dollar store was ten minutes from Gator Willie’s, Kit had asked the store manager to start the review footage at 12:30 a.m. At that time, the entire lot, including the spot Betty’s car would eventually occupy was empty.

  The lot remained vacant until 12:40, when a broken down pickup truck made an aimless track across the asphalt then drove out of view. At 12:46, a cat in the foreground chased a mouse through the visual field, then both disappeared into the grass and weeds at the edge of the lot. The cat reappeared at 12:50 with the mouse in its mouth. For the next five minutes, Kit had a first-rate view of Darwinian principles in action as the cat dropped to its belly on the blacktop and consumed all of the mouse but its tail.

  Then, headlights appeared in the distance; a car turning into the lot from the street. Kit leaned into the monitor, trying to see more than was possible. The car made a wide turn and parked in Betty’s spot. It was too far away for Kit to see any detail except that the car was white, the same as Betty drove.

  The car sat there alone for three minutes, then another pair of headlights appeared from the street. That car too, made a wide turn.

  “Park on my side,” Kit muttered, thinking that would give her a better chance to learn something other than the fact the car wasn’t light colored. But naturally, it pulled in beside Betty’s car on the passenger side, blocking a clear view of it.

  Almost immediately, Betty got out of her car and went to the other vehicle. Though she couldn’t identify Betty’s face, Kit caught a flash of teal, the color of the pullover she was wearing when they’d found her body.

  Kit wasn’t able to see Betty actually get in the other car, but that’s certainly what took place. For the next three minutes, nothing happened. Then, the other car backed up and sped away, heading for the exit. When it reached the street, it hit a curb and fishtailed before it hurtled out of sight, going the opposite direction from which it entered. It was too far away for her to even see the occupants.

  Kit felt sick to her stomach because she had probably just witnessed Betty Bergeron’s murder.

  Chapter 21

  Kit left the dollar store and walked across the parking lot toward the crime scene team, who was still working on Bergeron’s car. The flash drive in Kit’s handbag contained a copy of the surveillance video she’d just watched. Betty Bergeron had voluntarily left her own car and got in the one that had parked beside her, indicating she knew the driver and they were probably friends. And it was almost a certainty the driver of that car was her killer.

  The friend angle would seem to eliminate Jes DeLeon. But then she remembered Gatlin’s advice about not using circumstantial evidence to eliminate a suspect. She had no proof the driver of the other car was a friend. Maybe DeLeon had some hold over Betty and she got in the car because of a threat he’d made.

 
She ducked under the crime scene tape, walked up to the investigator about to begin vacuuming the trunk of Betty’s car, and said, “Anything significant?”

  “Sometimes you don’t know what’s significant until long after you find it. Still no cell phone.”

  After what she’d seen on the video, it didn’t seem likely the car would produce anything of value, but at this point, who could really say? There was nothing she could contribute by just standing there watching, so she returned to her own car.

  Her next move seemed obvious. As a first step, she reached into the nearest compartment of the drink holder between seats and picked up the plastic aspirin bottle there. She opened it, shook out the one remaining tablet, and put the bottle in her bag.

  Her bag also contained a copy of Jes DeLeon’s driver’s license and last known address, which was different from the one on his license.

  Ten minutes later, Kit drove slowly down Joliet Street, checking the numbers on the houses.

  There . . .

  She stopped in front of a one-story house painted pale green with turquoise trim. A large yucca plant accessorized with other desert plants in beige-colored pots dominated the front yard. Looking at the house, Kit once again was reminded how hard it was to accept the old saying, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ Surely there must be some universal standards for what’s attractive and what isn’t. In fact, she knew of one study presenting evidence that people with symmetric faces are preferred as sexual partners, perhaps an evolutionary holdover from when primitive cultures discovered that symmetry of features was correlated with parasite resistance.

  She shook her head to clear it of these extraneous thoughts, then looked down the driveway, where she saw an empty car port. So if he wasn’t here, where was he?

  Kit showed her badge to the clerk behind the counter at the Tulane registrar’s office. “I’d like to see the class schedule of a student named Jes DeLeon.”

  The clerk, a nicely dressed older woman with stiff, dry hair and wrinkled skin she either couldn’t hide or had long ago accepted, said, “Do you have a subpoena?”