by Tim Downs
“We’re not doing SAR anymore—we’re locating bodies now. We’re not recovering them yet, just marking locations for later on.”
“Sure hate to lose you guys,” LaTourneau said. “You’ve almost rescued an entire family in just two days.”
“Have you come across any bodies this morning?”
“Sure, a few.”
“Did you take GPS readings?”
“I’m not as high-tech as you guys—try the National Guard. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m losing daylight.”
He started his engine and roared away. Nick did the same.
Jerry turned and looked at him. “He’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“We need to cut people some slack out here.”
“I just don’t like that guy—I don’t know why.”
“I do,” Jerry said. “He’s just like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“He likes to work alone, he does things his own way, and he never quits. Plus he’s a wise guy—sound familiar? It’s like looking in a mirror, and you don’t like what you see.”
“Please,” Nick groaned. “One psychiatrist is enough.”
They spent the next hour waving down other boats and inquiring about the whereabouts of any deceased. Some of the SAR teams had taken GPS coordinates for the floaters they encountered, but the rescuees were an even better source of information; they had been on the rooftops, they had heard the cries from neighboring attics—and they knew which voices had stopped. Nick and Jerry took down all the information.
The body that interested Nick most was described by a member of a swift-water rescue team from California. “A real gross-out,” he called it, which is what first caught Nick’s attention.
“Was the gut bloated and extended—like this?” he asked, thrusting his own midsection forward.
“Not really,” the man said. “It was sort of like that all over.”
“Was it faceup or facedown?” J.T. asked.
The man ignored him.
“Answer him,” Nick said. “It’s a good question.”
“Faceup,” he said. “What difference does it make?”
J.T. had a follow-up question: “Was he a short guy?”
“Not that I noticed. Why?”
J.T. shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
The man looked at Nick. “Who’s the kid?”
“He’s a grad student,” Nick said. “See you guys later—thanks for the info.”
When the boat pulled away and the roar of its engine finally died down, Nick said, “Sounds like a refloat.”
“A refloat,” Jerry said. “What’s that?”
“A body floats, it sinks, it floats back up again—that’s a refloat. If a body’s been in the water long enough, it’ll release the gas from the gut and sink to the bottom again. Decomposition continues underwater, and the process continues to produce gas—only the gas can’t collect in the gut again, because the gut’s ruptured. This time the gas is distributed throughout the whole body, so when it finally comes to the surface again, it’s more likely to rise faceup. It’s a possible indication of advanced decay. We need to check this one out.”
“Why?” Jerry asked. “If all we’re supposed to do is locate bodies, aren’t we finished here? He gave you the GPS coordinates; why do we need to look?”
“We’re supposed to look for anomalies, Jerry.”
“You’ve got one: advanced decay. Write it down, and let’s get out of here.”
“Where’s your curiosity?”
“That’s what killed the cat.”
“I hate cats.”
Jerry sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
16
“Nick, you’re insane—you’ve completely lost your mind.” Jerry pulled back the corner of a plastic tarp that covered the bottom of the boat, revealing two black body bags resting side by side.
“Put that back,” Nick said. “It’ll be dark in another few minutes—then we’ll go.”
“What if somebody sees us?”
“So what if they do?”
“You heard what LaTourneau said—there’s a curfew now.”
“What are they going to do, arrest us? We’ve got identification, Jerry. If anybody stops us, we’ll just tell them who we are. We’ve got nothing to hide.”
“What about two dead bodies?”
“We’re with DMORT. That’s what we do—we collect bodies.”
“That’s not what we’re supposed to do.”
“They won’t know that. Relax, will you?”
“I don’t get you,” Jerry said. “Denny told you not to collect bodies; the DEA told you not to collect bodies. What does it take to get through to you?”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Nick said. “Denny told me not to collect bodies because it presents the wrong image—that we care more about the dead than we do the living.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“Give me a break, Jerry. Did you ever read the sign over the door at DMORT? ‘Mortui vivis praecipiant ,’ it says—‘Let the dead teach the living.’ How are the dead supposed to teach the living if we won’t let them talk?”
“Denny had his reasons,” Jerry said.
“And I found out what the reasons were when I talked to the DEA—they’re the ones calling the shots here. Denny was just following orders.”
“Now there’s a concept,” Jerry said. “Maybe you should try it some time.”
“I am following orders—in a way.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The DEA knows that some of these people were murdered; they said that recovering bodies would make their identities public and tip off the people who killed them. Okay, we’ll just collect them ourselves; that way, the guilty parties will never know.”
“Do you actually expect me to buy that?”
“I was hoping you would. That’s the best I’ve got.”
“Tell me the truth: Are you doing this so the bad guys won’t know, or so the DEA won’t know?”
Nick paused. “I don’t trust them, Jerry. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Nick, it doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Look—have you ever seen the way an orb web spider spins a web? It begins with a series of long threads that radiate outward from the center, like the spokes of a wheel. Then the spider sits in the center of the web and keeps each leg on one of those radial threads. When an insect flies into the web, the threads carry the vibration to the spider, and he goes right to it.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Did you ever try throwing a stick or a leaf into a spider’s web? Did you notice that the spider didn’t move? That’s because the spider can tell the difference between an insect and an inanimate object—they send back different vibrations across the web.”
“You must have been one sick kid,” Jerry said.
“They can sense the difference, Jerry. A leaf or a stick just doesn’t feel right to the spider—the spider knows.”
Jerry squinted at him. “So we’re smuggling bodies at night because your spider-sense is tingling?”
Nick shrugged. “Something like that. I don’t trust that Turlock guy from the DEA. I don’t buy his explanation. I can’t tell you why yet—it just doesn’t feel right to me.”
“And what are we supposed to do with these bodies?” Jerry asked. “Have you thought about that? You can’t take them back to DMORT—they’ll send us home for sure. And if you can’t take them back to DMORT, what’s the point in collecting them? No DPMU, no pathologists, no autopsies—”
“We don’t need to do autopsies, Jerry. I’m just trying to cut our losses here; in a few more days this water will destroy all forensic evidence. I’m just trying to salvage what I can.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know yet. It depends on what I find.”
Jerry nodded to the boy, who was sound asleep in the bottom of the boat. He was curled up
on two pillows between Nick’s feet and the feet of the two cadavers. “What about the boy? We’re really bending some rules here, Nick—we have no right to keep involving him.”
“You’re right,” Nick said. “I need to take care of that.”
Their boat sat in the water between two houses about fifty yards from the Industrial Canal; directly ahead of them was the two-hundred-foot breach in the concrete floodwall. It was almost completely dark now; the setting sun left only a greenish-blue glow across the western horizon, silhouetting the city beyond.
“We’d better get going while we can still see,” Jerry said.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Nick started the engine and twisted the throttle, guiding the boat through the breach and out into the Industrial Canal. The canal at that point was a hundred yards across, and in the dark expanse of water Nick felt a sudden chill. He had no idea how deep the water was; there were no comforting rooftops to reassure him that land was just a few feet below. He turned around and looked; with no setting sun behind it, the Lower Nine was already one vast sea of blackness. Nick found himself wondering if this was really such a good idea, but he put the thought behind him; he knew from long experience that things always look less certain in the darkness than they do in the light of day.
J.T. sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Somethin’ stinks,” he said.
“I noticed that,” Nick said. “I think it’s Jerry.”
“Where are we?”
“Not far from home,” Nick said, trying to sound as confident as he could. J.T. looked at the broken floodwall behind them and knew immediately where he was. “Never been out this far,” he said.
That’s because you’re a smart guy, Nick thought. “I thought you might like a tour of the city.”
“Cool.”
Nick crossed the canal into the Upper Ninth Ward and followed the flooded streets west across the neighborhoods of Bywater and St. Claude. He tried to keep Claiborne Avenue in sight on his left, remembering from a map that it eventually turned south and followed Interstate 10 into the heart of the downtown.
The trip was less than five miles, but it took them much longer than it would have by car. The boat could only motor along at a few knots, since Nick was hesitant to run the engine at top speed with its earsplitting whine.
“What if we bump into more looters?” Jerry said. “I’d hate to lose the boat at this time of day.”
“Let ’em take it,” Nick said. “How far do you think they’ll go when they find out what we’re carrying?”
Nick was astounded at how dark the city became once the sun finally set. He had taken for granted how much ambient light a neighborhood creates: the street signs, the headlights, the soft glow from kitchens and living room windows—even the faint glow of cell phones or the tips of cigarettes. Each tiny point of light was a reminder of life—but there was no light here. There was at least a partial moon, but even its light seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness. Details were impossible to distinguish; rooftops and billboards rose silently from the water and took on ominous forms.
The water never seemed to end—that was the amazing thing. They were able to travel by boat across an entire city, as if they were living in Venice instead of New Orleans. They were approaching the downtown now, and taller buildings began to loom up ahead—but the water surrounded them all. Nick found himself tipping his head from side to side, as if the entire scene might be a gigantic trompe l’oeil that would disappear if viewed from a different angle. Instead of light, there was darkness; instead of asphalt and concrete, there was water; instead of front doors and awnings, there were buildings that appeared to begin at their second floors.
“Wow,” J.T. said, and it was the only word spoken for several minutes.
Nick caught a glimpse of the Superdome half a mile ahead; its damaged roof looked like a half-peeled orange in the moonlight. He chose a random street and turned left, following it east toward the Mississippi. He knew that the ground would eventually rise as they approached the river, the result of centuries of annual floods that had built up the banks into natural earthen levees. Sure enough, several blocks later, the roadway emerged from the water.
Nick stopped the engine and rocked the motor into the boat. He let the boat cruise forward until they heard a scraping sound against the hull; then Jerry jumped out into ankle-deep water and dragged the boat up onto the dry pavement.
J.T. turned and looked at Nick. “What are we doin’?”
“You’re getting out here,” Nick said.
“What? Why?”
“Jerry and I have to work tonight.”
“We work together,” the boy said.
“Not tonight. We can’t take you with us.”
“How come?”
“It’s for your own good,” Jerry said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t care ’bout that.”
“I know you don’t,” Nick said, “but I do. I’m taking you to an evacuation center—I want you to spend the night there.”
“The Superdome?”
“No, not the Superdome—they’ve already got too many people there. It’s the Convention Center—do you know where it is?”
J.T. nodded.
“Well, I talked to a FEMA guy this morning. He told me there are only a couple thousand people at the Convention Center. They should have food and water there, plus a place for you to sleep.”
“What about my father?” the boy grumbled. “You promised.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Nick said. “Who knows? There’s a chance he’s at the Convention Center—keep an eye out for him while you’re there.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I want you to wait for me at the Convention Center. Hey, you might know some people there. Ask around about your dad; find some friends—have fun.”
The words sounded stupid and empty, but Nick was trying to leave the boy on an upbeat note. It didn’t work; the boy turned without a word and started up the road toward the river.
“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Don’t need no babysitter.”
Nick and Jerry watched him until he reached the end of the street and disappeared around the corner.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Jerry asked.
“He’ll be fine—he’s halfway there already.”
“I hope the place is decent.”
“It was either two thousand at the Convention Center or thirty thousand at the Superdome—it’s the best we could do. He’ll be okay, Jerry—he’s a tough kid.”
“Do you plan to go back for him? Or are we just dumping him off ?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “What do you want, anyway? You didn’t want to bring him along in the first place—you said we were using him. Tonight you said we have no right to keep involving him—and now you’re complaining that we’re dumping him off.”
“You made the kid a promise. You made me a promise too.”
“Why does everybody keep reminding me I made a promise?”
“What do you expect, Nick? You don’t follow orders; do you keep promises?”
“I keep promises,” Nick said. “That’s different. I want to help the kid, Jerry; I just don’t want to put him in harm’s way. And I’ll help him—I just don’t know when. Now, are we going to talk all night or are we going to do this?”
They shoved off in the boat again and followed Canal Street west; when they were a few blocks inland, Nick took out his GPS receiver and retrieved a set of coordinates stored in memory. Most of the street signs were underwater, and Nick knew almost nothing about the city; the only way to find a specific location was by satellite—especially at night.
A few minutes later, they emerged from an alley and into an open area of water that covered half a city block; in drier times it must have been a parking lot. At the far end of the parking lot stood an old, multistory building. Every window in it was dark.
“That’s got to be it,” Nick said. �
��Charity Hospital—the largest public hospital in the city. That giant building across the street—that must be Tulane University Hospital. Charity’s the one we want; we’ll draw less attention there.”
“We’re checking in to a hospital?”
“Sort of. Grab your oar—we’d better row from here.”
They brought the boat up to the back of the building. The water had completely inundated the first floor and covered part of the second. The glass windows were shattered in several places, either from the pressure of the water forcing its way in or from floating debris inside.
They heard gunshots and looked around.
“What do you suppose that is?” Jerry asked.
“Maybe more looters,” Nick said. “Maybe some cops shooting out display cases. Either way, it works to our advantage—nobody will be listening for us.”
Nick took out his flashlight and shone the beam through a shattered opening. It was an office; the water came almost to the top of the desk but stopped short, leaving the desktop still neatly arranged.
“Move down to the next one,” Nick said.
The next window opened into a small common area, followed by a records room with row after row of color-coded file drawers.
“This is all administrative,” Nick said. “Keep going.”
Several windows later, their flashlights illuminated a wide-open laboratory area with work-height counters lining the walls and one large table in the center. The window was almost completely missing, with only occasional shards of glass protruding from the top edges; the counters were almost bare.
“Looters,” Nick said. “Most of the expensive equipment is missing.”
“Maybe the hospital took it upstairs before the flood,” Jerry said.
“Look at the glass—it’s completely broken out. Somebody didn’t want to get cut climbing through the window; he was probably in and out of here several times. At least we should have some privacy; there’s nothing much left to take. Grab the top of the window—watch the glass.”
They slid the boat through the window and into the room; there was just enough space before the center table. Nick swung his legs over the side of the boat and hopped out into the waist-deep water. He reached back into the boat and dragged the tarp off the two black body bags.
