Deadly Decisions

by Kathy Reichs

  “He hopes so.”

  “How does he function?”

  “Extremely well.”

  “I mean, how does he communicate?”

  “Quickwater is one of the quickest studies I’ve ever met. I’m told that he learned to lip-read in no time, and he’s crackerjack. For distance communication he uses e-mail, fax, and TTY.”

  “TTY?”

  “It’s an acronym for teletypewriter. Essentially, it’s a keyboard and acoustic coupler built into one device. At home he has a special modem in his PC that communicates at the same band Baudot code as a regular TTY. He’s got his fax and TTY on the same phone line and uses a switching device that recognizes an incoming fax tone. It sends faxes to the fax machine and all other calls to the TTY. We’ve got the same setup and software at headquarters, so calling back and forth is no problem.”

  “What about when he’s out?”

  “He has a portable TTY. Battery-operated.”

  “How does he talk to someone without a TTY, or to you if you’re not at headquarters?”

  “There’s a relay service that acts as intermediary. The service takes the call, then types what the hearing person says. For someone who’s also mute, they read aloud what the deaf person types. Quickwater speaks fine, so he doesn’t need to type his words.”

  My mind was struggling to take this in. I pictured Quickwater at the Vipers’ clubhouse, then in the conference room at Quantico.

  “But part of his assignment in Quantico was to report back on what he’d learned. How can he take notes and lip-read at the same time? And how does he know what’s being said when the lights are dimmed, or when he can’t see the speaker?”

  “Quickwater explains this a lot better than I. He uses something called CARTT, Computer Assisted Real Time Translation. A reporter transcribes what’s being said into a stenotype machine, then a computerized translation is performed and the words are displayed on a video monitor in real time. It’s the same system used for closed-captioning of live television. The FBI has someone down there that can do it, but a hookup can be made from anywhere, with the reporter in one location and Quickwater in another.”

  “By phone and PC?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what about his other duties?”

  I didn’t voice what I was really thinking. Reporting on a conference or meeting is one thing, but how does a deaf officer cover himself when someone goes for the jugular?

  “Constable Quickwater is a skilled and dedicated officer. He was injured in the line of duty and no one can say if the hearing loss is permanent or not. Obviously he can’t do everything he used to do, but for now, the force is working with it.”

  I was about to circle back to Dorsey when Claudel stood and placed a paper on my desk. I braced myself for more bad news.

  “This is the DNA report on the blood found on Dorsey’s jacket,” he said.

  I didn’t have to look. The expression on his face told me what the form would say.

  WHEN CLAUDEL LEFT I JUST SAT THERE, MY THOUGHTS SLIP-streaming in and out of the conversation just concluded.

  DNA doesn’t lie. The victim’s blood was all over the jacket, meaning Dorsey had killed Cherokee just as Claudel suspected. Or had he? Dorsey had said the jacket was not his.

  The man knew nothing about Savannah Osprey. He’d been scamming me to save himself, and I had fallen for it.

  And my visit to the jail had gotten Dorsey killed. Or had it? Was he killed because he was the killer or because he was not the killer? Either way, he was dead because someone feared what he would tell me.

  I felt burning behind my eyelids.

  Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry. I swallowed hard.

  And there was Quickwater. He hadn’t been glaring, he’d been reading my lips. Who had treated whom badly? But how was I to know?

  And Kit. Were the surveillance shots truly chance encounters as I’d said, or was Kit involved with the Bandidos? Did that explain the Preacher? Was the real reason he’d come here something other than anger with his father? Or fondness for his dim-witted aunt?

  And the eyeball. Did Kit find it on the windshield?

  Claudel had gotten his report. Dammit, where was mine?

  I slammed my palms on the blotter and shot to my feet. Weaving through clerical staff carrying papers and folders and technicians pushing specimen carts, I strode down the hall, took the stairs to the thirteenth floor, and went straight to the DNA section. I spotted my target bending over a test tube at the far end of the lab, and closed in.

  “Bonjour, Tempe. Comment ça va?” Robert Gagné greeted me.

  “Ça va.”

  “Your hair is different.” His own was dark and curly, though graying at the temples. He kept it short and carefully combed.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to let it grow?”

  “It’s difficult to stop it,” I replied.

  “It looks good, of course,” he mumbled, laying down a glass pipette. “So, I guess that jacket will nail this Dorsey character. Claudel actually smiled when I gave him the news. Well, almost. He twitched.”

  “I’m wondering if you’ve had time to do the comparison I requested.”

  “Unnumbered, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Eyeball?”

  I nodded again.

  “To be compared with sequencing from LML 37729.”

  “Yes.” His memory for case numbers always impressed me.

  “Hold on.”

  Gagné walked over to a honeycomb of folders, riffled through those in a middle cell, and pulled one out. I waited as he scanned the contents.

  “The comparison is done, but the report isn’t written.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a match.”

  “Without question?”

  “Mais, oui.” His eyebrows shot up. “The eye and the tissue sample come from the same person.”

  Or persons, I thought, if they happen to be twins. I thanked him and hurried back to my office.

  My suspicion had been right. The eyeball belonged to one of the Vaillancourts. A member of the Vipers had probably found it at the scene and kept it for some macabre reason. But who had placed it on my car?

  I heard the phone before I reached my door, and bolted the last few steps. Marcel Morin was calling from downstairs.

  “We missed you at the morning meeting.”

  “Sorry.”

  He went straight to the point. In the background I could hear voices and the sound of a Stryker saw.

  “A ship arrived at the port two weeks ago and several cargo containers were off-loaded for repair.”

  “The big ones that go onto eighteen-wheelers?”

  “C’est ça. Yesterday workers opened the last of the containers and found a body. The captain thinks the deceased is probably a stowaway, but has no explanation beyond that.”

  “Where is the ship registered?”

  “Malaysia. I’ve begun the autopsy, but the remains are so badly decomposed I’m not going to be able to do much. I’d like you to take a look at them.”

  “I’ll be down shortly.”

  When I hung up and crossed to the lab I found Jocelyn the temp bending over my worktable. Ms. Charm School wore fishnets and a leather skirt that rode high enough to show dark at the top of each stocking. At the sound of the door she straightened and turned.

  “Dr. Morin asked me to give you this.”

  She extended an arm, and her earrings oscillated like tiny school-yard swings. Each hoop was large enough to perch a finch.

  I crossed to her and took the request form, wondering why Morin hadn’t left it on my desk.

  “Killer haircut.” She spoke in a low, monotone voice, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. Her face looked more pallid than normal, her eyes red-rimmed and underlined by dark commas.

  “Thank you, Jocelyn.” I hesitated, not wanting to pry. “Are you all right?”

  She reacted as though the question totall
y confused her. Then she hitched a shoulder and mumbled, “Allergies kick me around in the spring. I’m fine.”

  With one last puzzled look, she scurried out of the lab.

  I reboxed the Osprey remains and spent the rest of the morning with the Malaysian stowaway. Morin had not exaggerated. The bulk of the soft tissue in the body bag belonged to maggots.

  • • •

  At noon I went back upstairs to find Kit seated in my chair, boots crossed on the windowsill, a Frank Sinatra fedora on the back of his head.

  “How’d you get onto this floor?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise. I’d totally forgotten the lunch date we’d arranged via the refrigerator door.

  “I left my driver’s license with the guard and he let me come up.” He flipped the blue visitor’s pass that was clipped to his collar. “I was sitting in the lobby, then a lady took pity and brought me here.”

  He swung his feet down and swiveled toward me.

  “Whooaa! Let me get a bead on that.”

  He must have seen something in my face.

  “Don’t take me wrong. That is one rad haircut.” He leveled two index fingers at me. “Makes you look younger.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, retrieving a sweater from the hall tree. I’d had more than enough comments on my hair.

  Over brasserie subs and fries my nephew described his Sunday with Lyle Crease, the highlight of which had been the purchase of the fedora. No Madonna or fishing lures. After returning to Montreal, they’d dined on smoked meat at Ben’s, then Crease took him to the newsroom.

  “What do you two talk about?”

  “The dude’s really heads-up.” Muffled through cold cuts and cheese. “It’s awesome how much he knows about broadcasting. And he’s pretty tight on cycles, too.”

  “Does he ask you a lot of questions?”

  I wondered how much Crease was using Kit to get information about my cases. The biker war was hot news just now.

  “Some.”

  Kit yanked a paper napkin from a metal box at the end of the table and wiped grease from his chin.

  “About what?”

  He bunched up the napkin and reached for another.

  “All kinds of stuff. Lyle’s amazing. He’s interested in everything.”

  Something in his voice told me my nephew had begun to worship Lyle Crease. O.K., I thought. I can live with that. Oily as the guy is, he beats the Preacher sight unseen.

  After lunch Kit insisted on returning with me to the lab. Though anxious to get back to my skeletal autopsy, I obliged him with a short tour. I could be heads-up, too.

  During our rounds Kit made only two comments. I would recall them later, and chastise myself for taking no notice.

  “Who’s the freak show?” he asked, after passing Jocelyn at the Xerox machine.

  “She works in records.”

  “Bet that’s a head full of slash and burn.”

  “She has allergy problems.”

  “Right. Nasal spray.”

  The other remark was made in the ballistics section. He called their collection of firearms “sweet.”

  When Kit had gone I went back to the stowaway. By four-thirty I’d finished my preliminary examination, concluding that the remains were those of a male in his late twenties. I’d dissected out the bones and sent them upstairs for boiling. Then I’d washed up, changed, and returned to my office.

  I was reaching for my sweater when I noticed a color print centered squarely on my blotter.

  Oh, great, I thought. Here’s something new. I haven’t scoped a photo in at least two hours.

  I reached for the picture, thinking that perhaps it belonged to Claudel.

  It didn’t.

  Though the snapshot was old, and a network of cracks marred its surface, the color and focus were relatively good. It was a group shot, taken in a camping or picnic area. In the foreground a crowd of men and women milled around wooden tables jammed together to form a U. The earth was littered with empty cans and bottles, the tables heaped with backpacks, coolers, bundles, and paper bags. Loblolly pines rose in the background, truncated by the picture’s upper border.

  One large bag lay upright against a table leg, its print square to the camera lens. The logo caught my attention.

  “—ggly Wiggly.”

  I flipped to the back of the print. Nothing.

  I rehung the sweater, dug out a magnifying glass, and sat down to examine the image. Within seconds I found confirmation on a gorilloid oaf in denim vest and fingerless leather gloves. An arm wider than a state highway reached across his chest, displaying swastika, lightning bolts, and the poetic acronym “F.T.W.” While Kong’s upper limb obliterated part of his T-shirt, the bottom words were fully legible.

  “Myrtle Beach.”

  Barely breathing, I began a close inspection of the persons pictured. Slowly, I worked the lens across the image, checking each face as it took form.

  Within seconds I found her. Half hidden in a sea of caps and bushy heads, a frail figure leaned against a tree, little twig arms wrapped around her waist. Her head was tipped, and a ray of sunlight flashed off one of the huge lenses dwarfing her features.

  Savannah Claire Osprey.

  While I couldn’t read her expression I could sense the tension in her body. From what, I wondered. Excitement? Fear? Self-consciousness?

  I moved on.

  The man to Savannah’s right looked like a character from The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald. He had shoulder-length hair and a beard that hung to mid-chest. Cormac was caught with chin raised, a can of Miller pressed to his lips.

  The companion on her other side was very tall, with short hair and scraggly beard and mustache. His face was obscured in shadow, making his belly the most conspicuous trait. It had the tone of a used Ace bandage, hanging in fleshy rolls over a large, oval belt buckle. On it I could see letters. I raised and lowered the lens trying to make out the message, but too much was obscured by paunch.

  Frustrated, I slid the lens up the torso and studied the face, hoping something would click. No go. I dropped back to the buckle and brought my face close to the glass.

  A random synaptic firing, and there it was. Back to the face. Could it be?

  No. This man was much larger.

  But maybe. I couldn’t tell. I’d gotten there too late. Too much damage.

  Yet, there was a resemblance.

  Had George Dorsey known something after all?

  Heart pounding, I reached for the phone.

  WHEN CLAUDEL ANSWERED I IDENTIFIED MYSELF AND DIVED right in.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you. Spider Marcotte wasn’t the only one Dorsey mentioned. He claimed to have information about Savannah Osprey.”

  “The young girl we found in St-Basile-le-Grand?”

  “Yes. I think he may have been telling the truth.”

  “Dorsey’s trademark.”

  I ignored the sarcasm.

  “Did you leave a picture on my desk?”

  “No.”

  “Someone did. It’s an old snapshsot taken at a biker gathering.”

  “Probably a prayer meeting.”

  “It looks like a picnic or camp-out.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I took a deep breath to steady my voice.

  “Savannah Osprey is there.”

  “She is?” His tone told me he didn’t believe it.

  “Absolutely.”

  “What does that have to do with Dor—”

  “The picture was taken in Myrtle Beach.”

  “How do you know?”

  “At least one of the believers is wearing a Myrtle Beach T-shirt.”

  “My son has a Kansas City Chiefs’ shirt.”

  “I know honeysuckle and kudzu when I see it. And I recognized a Piggly Wiggly logo on one of the grocery bags.”

  “What’s a Piggly Wiggly?”

  “It’s a chain of supermarkets, with several in the Myrtle Beach area.”

  “Why would anyone call
a supermarket Piggl—”

  “And one of the picnickers may be Cherokee Desjardins.”

  There was a moment of dead air.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He’s wearing a belt buckle that says ‘Cherokee.’”

  “What does the man look like?”

  “Something Jack Hanna would keep on a chain and pacify with small chunks of meat,” I spat. His skepticism was irritating me.

  “I mean does the man in the buckle resemble Cherokee Desjardins?”

  “His features aren’t clear. Besides, I never got a look at Desjardins when he was wearing a face.”

  There was another moment of silence, then the sound of an exhaled breath.

  “I’ll get photos of Desjardins and come by in the morning.”

  “We can try enhancing the image.”

  “Set it up. But it will have to be quick. We’re expecting difficulties because of the Dorsey murder, and the whole squad is on alert.”

  • • •

  I drove home plagued by feelings of self-doubt.

  I’d been fooled by Dorsey, and my naiveté had gotten him killed.

  What if the man in the photo wasn’t Cherokee? Claudel obviously had reservations. If I was wrong he’d be even more convinced I was an idiot.

  As I had been with regard to his Carcajou partner. I’d entirely misread Quickwater. Had I also misjudged Ryan? My nephew?

  Where had the picture on my desk come from? Why no note, no phone call? It had to be one of the detectives or lab people. No one else would have an opportunity to leave it there.

  I steered and shifted robotically, barely noticing the traffic around me.

  Should I make a surprise call on Ryan? Would he answer the door? Probably not. Ryan had cut himself off because he preferred it that way. But how could it be true? I still couldn’t believe the man was a criminal.

  Was Kit involved with the Bandidos? With drugs? Was he in danger? What had Dorsey been trying to say to the paramedic?

  Was it possible Katy was in danger from the biker gangs thousands of miles away on a ship? Her last letter had come from Penang.

  Who was I kidding? Dorsey had been killed while under armed guard in a provincial prison. If les motards wanted you to be in danger, you were there.