Rusty descended on leaden feet, fighting off the fear that built within him. Each step brought him closer to answers he wasn’t prepared to face.
Is it her? Can it possibly be her? What will I tell Prosper? What will I tell myself?
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, a narrow hallway stretched off in two directions.
Rusty turned left, his pace slowing by degrees. After the manic crosstown drive, he suddenly felt less hurried to reach his destination.
As he passed three closed doors, a band of cold sweat formed along his brow. He reached an open doorway on the right side of the hall. Room 013. A beam of faded white light stretched out into the hallway, creating a parallelogram on the buffed cement by his feet.
He stepped inside.
On first glimpse, the examination room appeared devoid of the living. One side of the room contained row after row of dull gray lockers, built into the wall and reaching from floor to ceiling. How many of them held the newly dead? Rusty had no way of knowing, and didn’t want to ponder it.
“Hello?” he called out. “Anyone here?”
A muffled cough sounded from a darkened corner of the room. Rusty saw a dull green lab coat emerge from behind a column of lacquered wood file cabinets. It hung loosely on the frame of a gaunt man with a bloodless pallor that could have easily belonged to one of the lockers’ inhabitants.
The attendant coughed again, covering his mouth with a balled fist.
“Here for the Jane Doe, I assume.”
“That’s right.”
“Must have some powerful friends in the department.”
“No. I don’t.”
When Rusty didn’t elaborate, the attendant continued, “They hardly ever let civilians down here. Not once at this time of night, far as I can recall.”
“Just show me the body,” Rusty said tersely. He wasn’t about to give any explanation for his appearance here tonight, not that he had any to offer. He really didn’t know why Hubbard had shown him the courtesy, except possibly out of respect for Prosper.
Shrugging as if he’d expected no more than a quick rebuff to his query, the attendant shuffled over to the wall of lockers. He opened a chest-high lateral door marked 2104-A. The door squeaked softly.
The attendant reached inside and grabbed the steel handles of a slab placed on rollers. Bending slightly at the knee, he pulled with a grunt. The slab shuddered out, extending for two feet before halting with a clang.
A body lay there. Visible in outline from the top of the head to the ribcage, the rest hidden within the locker. It was covered in a white sheet pulled up almost to the hairline, totally obscuring the facial features. Rusty could just make out a thin strip of mocha-colored skin between the top of the sheet and the long tufts of wavy black hair spilling out onto the slab.
Was he looking at the remains of Marceline Lavalle? Absolutely impossible to tell.
He could be. He most definitely could be.
“If you’re ready,” the attendant coughed, his face forming an expression that could have been either aloof or sympathetic.
He reached for the sheet, placing his fingers on the edge just below the corpse’s hairline.
“Wait!” Rusty ordered. He laid a restrictive hand on the shoulder of the attendant, who looked at him with alarm.
“Hey, buddy. I can’t let you touch—”
“Just hold on, for Christ’s sake.”
The attendant released his grip on the sheet and retreated half a pace. He casually repositioned himself closer to a security callbox.
“Relax,” Rusty said in a calmer voice. “I won’t cause any problems. Just give me a second, OK?”
The attendant nodded, keeping the callbox within reach.
Rusty leaned closer to the slab. He squinted, trying to pick up some clue that would give him an answer to the mystery of this body’s identity before confirming it with his eyes.
The thin sliver of flesh visible above the top of the sheet looked very much as Marceline’s complexion appeared in his memory. Both the shade and the smooth, unblemished texture struck him as horrifyingly familiar.
He couldn’t recognize any telling clues in the dark, curled tresses spread across the slab. Hell, he didn’t even know what kind of hairstyle Marceline had worn recently. This woman’s hair appeared damp and furiously tangled, as if some terrible struggle had consumed the final moments of her life.
A sick tightness filled Rusty’s chest, constricting his breath to a shallow ebb. Eyes traveling down the sheet, over twin mounds indicating the woman’s breasts, he flinched like he’d been stuck with an electric needle. Clearly visible just where the slab disappeared into the locker, a dark stain spotted the sheet. A complex pattern of dried gore, covering as much of the dead woman’s stomach as he could discern from where he stood.
Hubbard’s voice rang in his head. Worst I’ve ever seen.
Rusty tried in vain to steel himself. He abandoned the effort and gave a terse nod.
“Do it.”
The attendant paused for half a second before he again reached for the sheet. He looked down at the floor, as if rendered unable to behold either the cadaver or the man who’d been summoned at this terrible hour to identify her.
“Do it!” Rusty shouted.
The attendant pulled down the sheet.
12.
It wasn’t Marceline.
Rusty required several seconds before he could process that information. For a protracted moment, he didn’t know what he was seeing. The data did not compute. He stood there, looking down at a face peacefully composed in grotesque contrast to the violence inflicted on the rest of the body.
It’s not her.
He heard those words, and understood their meaning. But he wasn’t sure if he’d verbalized or merely thought them.
Even as reluctant relief flooded his system on a wave of uncorked adrenaline, Rusty wasn’t ready to avert his gaze just yet. It seemed indecent to pay only a moment’s respect to the nameless human being in front of him. A sense of decorum peppered with morbid fascination compelled him to look further.
She bore little resemblance to Marcie. Thicker facial features, a wider jaw and fuller lips. Broader in the shoulders. The concealing sheet had created a false impression in his mind. He forced himself to turn away. The attendant was eyeing him with an expectant look.
“Cover her back up,” Rusty said.
“Positive ID?”
“Never seen her before.”
“Good news for you, then.”
Not bothering to reply, Rusty made for the door. He needed to remove himself from this room as quickly as possible.
He was only semi-aware of traversing the hallway and climbing the staircase. In a kind of waking trance, he reemerged from the gloom of the subterranean level into the overly bright lobby.
He barely registered the presence of the night watchman, who rose with a grumble from his comfortable chair at the front desk to dial the security code and release Rusty from the building.
Restored to the outside night’s muggy air, Rusty allowed his sense of equilibrium to resettle. He crossed the breezeway, sorting out what had just happened, and how it related to his purpose in this town.
A growing sense of relief fought against a stubborn impulse to deny it. Nudging up against his gratitude for that unfortunate woman not being Marceline Lavalle, a larger reality sunk in.
I’m still no closer to finding her than I was twenty-four hours ago.
He made his way toward the parking lot and pulled out his phone to dial the most recent number on the call log. Hubbard answered on the second ring.
“What can you tell me, Diamond?”
“It’s not her. I don’t know that woman.”
“Well,” the detective said with a deep exhalation, “glad to hear it, for your sake. Sorry for the false alarm.”
“That’s OK. I’m glad you called me instead of Prosper. You spared him a terrible moment, and I appreciate it.”
When Hu
bbard didn’t offer any response, Rusty added, “I really hope you catch the motherfucker who did that.”
“We’re working on it.”
“She was found in a dumpster, you said? Behind the Oyster House?”
“That’s right,” Hubbard answered, an audible reticence sinking into his voice.
“That’s on Decatur, isn’t it? Just a block or so from Jackson Square?”
“Uh huh. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“That’s a public spot. Very public, even late at night. You’d have to be unbelievably reckless to dump a body there, don’t you think? Or just stone crazy.”
“Don’t concern yourself with it, Diamond. Just tell Mr. Lavalle to notify us when his daughter turns up.”
“I’ll notify you myself, Detective. I’m not going anywhere till I know she’s safe.”
Hubbard grumbled softly, sounding like that information didn’t necessarily please him.
“Give any more thought to a private eye?” he asked. “I got a name for you. Good man, he knows the Quarter and Uptown as well as anyone. The Marigny, too.”
Rusty hesitated before answering. An ill-defined sense of reservation stopped him. He couldn’t help but suspect that hiring a private detective would render Marceline’s disappearance even less of a priority to the New Orleans Police Department.
“Reasonable rates,” Hubbard continued. “And I’ll vouch for his effectiveness.”
“I appreciate it, really. Can I call you on that tomorrow?”
“Whatever you want, Diamond.”
Hubbard ended the call, sounding annoyed. Rusty figured he probably felt like he’d gone above and beyond by digging up a reference, and was irked to get no appreciation for his efforts.
Hell, I’m probably being stupid about this. Why not call in a professional?
No logical answer arose to that question. Only a strong gut sense that he’d be better off pursuing this himself. At least for the time being, until he’d had a chance to speak with Joseph Abellard in Vacherie. If tomorrow’s effort yielded nothing productive, he would ask Hubbard for the private detective’s number.
Satisfied with that resolution, Rusty hustled down the stone steps in front of the Orleans Parish Forensic Center, offering a whispered plea to whatever deity may be willing to listen that he never lay eyes on this place again.
• • •
At the exact moment Rusty’s rented Mustang roared away from the Forensic Center, another vehicle entered a deserted parking lot behind the JAX brewery. Claude Sherman’s Pontiac station wagon, that of the crappy two-toned paint job he so despised, rolled into a free space in the lot’s southwest corner.
Claude wasn’t sure if he found the exact spot where he had parked in the wee hours two nights ago. He hoped not, because now he needed to make another phone call. To the same man. To impart new information unlikely to generate anything less than fiery disapproval. The previous call hadn’t gone well, and Claude hoped that by placing this one from a different parking spot he might improve his chances.
A stupid notion, he realized. Beyond just stupid, it was flat-out ridiculous. Quite possibly insane.
But Claude wasn’t insane. Now more than ever, it was imperative to keep that clear in his mind. Forget what the faceless shrinks at the psych ward had murmured about him during those five nightmarish years as a teenager. Claude knew he wasn’t crazy. He only did crazy things when left with no other alternative.
Like tonight. He had no choice, so he did was what was necessary. He needed to make Mr. Abellard understand that. Mr. Abellard was the one who’d pushed him up to the cliff’s edge, and he should bear some responsibility for all this.
Claude had spent the past four hours piloting the Pontiac with no purpose or destination. Canvassing large swaths of the city, simply to stay in motion. To create distance from the terrible mess he’d left in the alley behind Decatur.
About an hour ago, he’d stopped at an Esso station in Metarie to fill the tank and realized he couldn’t keep driving aimlessly all night. Mr. Abellard was expecting an update, and Claude couldn’t wait until morning to give it. Daylight would render the details far too vivid and detailed in his memory. He needed to get it all out in the darkness, and then do his best to forget it.
So he’d driven straight from Metarie to this spot. The decision to park within the brewery’s shadow was not random. He felt drawn here by a kind of gravitational force. For reasons unclear, this felt like a safe place.
Retrieving his phone from the glove box, he suddenly understood why. A crystalline shard of long-discarded memory lit up his mind.
Claude’s father, a case-a-day JAX drinker and monstrously abusive felon, brought him here once as a kid. The old man figured a tour of the brewery, complete with plenty of free tasters, would make for a swell outing to celebrate Claude’s twelfth birthday. It was one of the few times he’d felt safe in his father’s company, and the last pleasant recollection he could claim from childhood.
Shortly after that brewery tour, his old man had turned up on a gurney in the downtown morgue, stabbed in the throat by an unknown assailant in the Saturn Bar. Less than a year later, Claude had developed a ravenous taste for arson.
He’d started small—just heaps of twigs and such—but quickly graduated to structure fires. Caught setting a tumbledown shack ablaze and almost killing two sleeping transients inside, he was sent to the state juvenile ward for psychiatric observation. There he’d remained until his eighteenth birthday, when the overcrowded and understaffed facility had to let him go. He’d presented a convincing edifice of conquering the demons that fueled his exploits as an adolescent firebug.
But Claude was far from free of his demons. A quick peek into the Pontiac’s trunk would prove as much. That bloody bundle, and what it signified.
He dialed Abellard’s number with a shaky hand, and didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“You know what time it is, Claude?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. I know it’s late.”
“Tell me you’re calling with good news.”
Claude’s stomach seized up slightly. Could he possibly describe the events of this night as good? Yes, that was possible, if assessed from his employer’s point of view.
“Uh, yeah. We got a fresh batch.”
“Good man, Claude. I knew you’d find a way to deliver, with the right motivation.”
“Yeah, yeah. I delivered.”
“You gonna drive it on out now, or in the morning?”
“I, uh…I can’t do it right now.”
“Alright, you earned some sleep. Get to the casino by eight A.M. sharp. I’ll call Professor Bitch, tell her she can expect a package by noon.”
“No. I need more time than that.”
Claude could hear Abellard breathing hard into the phone as he waited for some clarification.
“The, uh, material,” Claude stammered, “it’s not ready for delivery yet. I gotta see the doc first.”
“What are you saying, man? You didn’t get the package from Roque?”
“No,” Claude said, shaking his head from side to side, trying to dislodge the ugly truth he struggled to articulate. “Roque wasn’t involved. I did it myself.”
Another passage of silence, this one unmarked by the sound of breathing.
“Jesus Fucking Christ.”
Abellard may have said more than that, but Claude didn’t hear him. In his mind, he was occupying a street corner across from the free clinic on Saint Peter, just as he had five hours ago.
He’d watched her leave the clinic, alone, quite possibly the last patient of the day. Long dark hair, wearing a pretty summer dress and attractively plump around the waist. Had to be at least four or five months along, which created complications on the harvesting side of things. But Claude couldn’t afford to be choosy.
He’d followed her for many blocks, away from the busier sections of the Quarter a
nd up towards Congo Square. Each block grew progressively darker, less populated. Waiting beneath a street lamp as he watched her fumble in her pocketbook for a set of keys, he’d struck.
Claude couldn’t bear to think about what happened after that. The surgical knife he’d lifted from Roque’s examination room proved too short for an efficient job. He’d needed to jab and slash many more times than anticipated, and she remained conscious for far too long. Sounds escaped her throat too terrible to recall, though he knew they’d reach out for him from the depths of his nightmares.
Then it was finally over. A last fluttering breath escaped her lungs, and he continued with the necessary work. After that, he faced the task of disposal. If he hadn’t been in such a deranged rush, he might have taken greater care to select a less visible spot. But it worked out fine. Nobody saw him as he hoisted the plastic-wrapped body into a dumpster in the alley behind some seafood place on Decatur. Engine still running, the Pontiac had sped away almost before the dumpster’s heavy plastic lid slammed shut.
Then came the empty, enervating hours. The hours spent driving in an aimless pattern around greater New Orleans. Steering the wagon in a series of pointless loops, hoping in vain that each mile added to the odometer would create some kind of meaningful distance from the shameful, unforgivable crime he’d committed.
“You said any means necessary,” he stuttered into the phone. “That’s what you told me. You said I was deadweight unless I delivered.”
Abellard took so long to respond that Claude started to think he’d terminated the call.
“So I did, Claude. Seems you know how to listen, so listen now. I don’t want to hear one goddamn thing about where this package came from. Not a word. You need to see the doc before you can deliver, see him. Then get your ass out here so we can close this deal.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Claude protested. “I mean today. Anyway, the clinic won’t be open.”
“Fuck that! Call him first thing and tell him to meet you there. Then get out here pronto.”
Blind Shuffle Page 8
