A Killer Like Me

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tuesday, July 31, 4:30 AM

Sergeant Tommy Shelby, the one-armed night supervisor at CE amp;P, pulled a stainless-steel flask from his briefcase and handed it to Murphy. “You probably need this more than I do.”

Murphy unscrewed the top and knocked back a long sip. The cheap liquor burned his throat. He handed the flask back.

“Vodka doesn’t have a smell,” Shelby said.

“You trying to tell me something?”

Shelby nodded. “I hear the rank is trying to fire you.” He raised the flask to his lips and took a deep swallow. “You don’t have to give them a reason.”

“After three nights in here, I’m starting not to care.”

“That’s why I bring this.” Shelby gave the flask a shake. “It takes the edge off.”

“How can you stand this place?”

Shelby waved the stump of his left arm, cut off just above the elbow. “What choice do I have? I’m a forty-five-year-old cop with one arm. I don’t know how to do anything else, and I can’t draw my pension until I’m fifty.”

Murphy looked at the left sleeve of the sergeant’s uniform shirt, folded and pinned just below his stripes. Five years ago, Shelby had lost his arm in a motorcycle crash. Had he been in a police car, he would have been eligible for a 75 percent disability pension for the rest of his life. Since he had been off duty, he was stuck in the property room for the rest of his career.

Murphy reached for the flask and choked down another swallow. He felt the warmth spread through his guts. Shelby was right. It did take the edge off.

Central Evidence and Property was the worst job in the police department. For Murphy, it was hell on earth.

Saturday night, he had shown up for his first graveyard shift at CE amp;P half in the bag, smelling like Moretti and Jameson. Sunday night, he reported for work after three hours at the Star amp; Crescent drinking his favorite energy drink-Budweiser. Last night, he showed up for his third shift sober, but that had been more or less an accident because he had slept until 10:00 PM. He strolled in fifteen minutes late, wearing a badly wrinkled uniform that was missing the collar pins, his name tag, and his commendation medals.

Shelby took one look at Murphy’s uniform and said, “You may have been a good cop on the outside, but in here you’re an absolute fuckup.”

A few hours later they started taking swigs off Shelby’s flask.

Vodka or no vodka, the work at CE amp;P was mind-numbingly tedious. Until at least three or four o’clock in the morning, a steady stream of street cops flowed into the property room, carrying evidence and personal property seized from arrestees that Murphy had to divide and catalog, then heat-seal in plastic bags. For each bag, Murphy had to type an evidence card listing its contents; the date and time the items were taken into custody; the seizing officers names, ranks, badge numbers, and assignments; and the report number under which all future paperwork would be filed. Since CE amp;P didn’t rate a computer, all that typing had to be done on a typewriter.

For Murphy, the worst part was seeing his former colleagues come in with evidence from fresh murder scenes. The homicide cops were constant reminders that Murphy was no longer part of the team, that he was an outsider. Truth was, he didn’t even feel like a cop anymore. Being in CE amp;P made him feel like he had been stripped of his badge and forced into a clerk’s job.

He hated it.

At 6:30 AM, a half hour before shift change, one of the civilian clerks from the day shift showed up carrying a grease-stained McDonald’s bag and a Times-Picayune. She was a heavyset black woman with a pockmarked complexion. “You made the paper again, Murphy,” she said. “You famous.”

Murphy felt the pit of his stomach drop. “What are you talking about?”

She handed him the folded newspaper. “Another story about you from that lady reporter. I think she’s sweet on you.”

Murphy’s stomach landed somewhere around his feet. Was it possible he would read about his own firing? He once knew a cop who read in the newspaper that a grand jury had indicted him. Sheriff’s deputies had been out to the cop’s house the night before to pick him up, but he hadn’t been home.

Murphy unfolded the newspaper and scanned the front page. He didn’t see anything about him.

The day-shift clerk had already spread her breakfast of a sausage and egg biscuit and a large soda on the counter. “It’s in the metro section,” she said through a mouthful of food.

Murphy flipped to the “B” section. There he was on the front page, this time below the fold.

NOPD TRANSFERS “SERIAL KILLER” DETECTIVE

By Kirsten Sparks, The Times-Picayune Still denying there is a serial killer prowling the streets of New Orleans and murdering young women, NOPD officials confirmed yesterday that they have transferred Detective Sean Murphy from the Homicide Division to an administrative post. “Officer Murphy is no longer with this division,” said Captain Michael Donovan, commander of the Homicide Division and Murphy’s former boss. “He is currently under investigation by the Public Integrity Bureau and he has been transferred.” Earlier this week Murphy made headlines when he claimed in an interview with the Times-Picayune that an unidentified serial killer had murdered at least eight women in New Orleans in the past year. Police officials have denied Murphy’s claim. They have also stripped him of his detective’s rank and reassigned him to the property room pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Murphy is accused of violating the department’s policy against unauthorized contact with the media, according to a source within the police department. “Murphy’s getting punished for telling the truth,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. Murphy is the only NOPD homicide detective with experience in serial-killer investigations. In addition to specialized training he received from the FBI, Murphy was part of the attorney general’s task force that captured Rudolph Dominique, who was later convicted of the rape and strangulation murder of 23 men in the Houma and Thibodaux area. Murphy is credited with linking evidence found at several crime scenes to Dominique and identifying him as the killer. In New Orleans, Murphy has worked several of the cases believed to be linked to the person some are already calling the French Quarter Killer. Police Chief Ralph Warren told the Times-Picayune earlier this week that there is no serial killer. “Those cases are not connected,” he said. “Those women were killed by different perpetrators.” Local radio talk-show hosts have picked up on the story and filled the airwaves with speculation and conspiracy theories. “The story won’t die,” said Bud McDougal, an afternoon host on WWL 870 AM. “It’s all people want to talk about. Half my callers think they’ve seen the killer. The other half want to know what Chief Warren was thinking when he got rid of the only detective smart enough to figure out we had a serial killer in the first place.” Police officials would not comment on who they assigned to Murphy’s former cases. “Murphy is a good detective,” the police department source said. “He had nothing to gain by going public with this. In fact-as is obvious now-he had a lot to lose. They’re not really going after him over his serial-killer theory. They’re going after him because of what happened before…”

The rest of the article was a rehash of the facts surrounding Murphy and Gaudet’s arrest four years earlier of the mayor’s brother. Murphy wondered who the anonymous NOPD source was, although he had a pretty good idea.

At eight o’clock in the morning, Murphy was at the Star amp; Crescent, sitting at the bar in his uniform pants and a white undershirt. He was halfway through a plate of scrambled eggs and sipping his second Budweiser, trying to ignore the country singer wailing from the jukebox.

His cell phone rang.

For a few seconds, a verse from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” drowned out the pathetic whining of the country singer who had lost his girlfriend and screwed his dog. Thankful for the reprieve, Murphy was hesitant to answer the call, choosing instead to listen to his favorite dead rocker sing about a werewolf howling at the kitchen door and mutilating a little old lady in the middle of the night.

Angry over once again being named in the newspaper, and with half a buzz on, Murphy had distracted himself during the last half hour of his shift at CE amp;P by talking the civilian clerk into showing him how to download a song ringtone for his cell phone.

When Zevon started the same verse again, Murphy flipped his phone open. The caller ID flashed Restricted. A goddamn police number. He thought about hitting the ignore button. What in the hell could anyone in the department want with an off-duty property clerk? Unless it was someone from PIB. In that case, whoever was calling could go to hell.

Before Murphy could decide what to do, the phone went silent and the call went to voice mail. Murphy thumbed the phone closed and dropped it on the bar. He took a long sip of beer. The country idiot droned on. Probably fucking a sheep by now.

The phone rang again. Zevon’s werewolf howling for another old lady to munch on.

Murphy snatched up the phone and flipped it open. A restricted number. He jammed his thumb down on the green send button.

“Murphy,” he said.

“Did you see the story?” It was Kirsten.

Murphy had forgotten that the newspaper’s telephone numbers didn’t come up on caller ID either. He looked at his watch, a few minutes past eight. Considering she usually worked until nine or ten at night, Kirsten was at the paper awfully early. “I saw it,” he said.

A loud silence hung between them.

Kirsten finally broke it. “I wasn’t trying to wreck your career.”

“What were you trying to do?”

“I don’t know… get even, I guess.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry, Murphy. I was so mad at-”

“I handed you the biggest story of your career because I trusted you.”

“And I trusted you!”

That set him back for a few seconds. “This is my job, my livelihood, you’ve put in jeopardy. What happened before, with us, was personal. Nobody’s career got demolished. It’s not like I have any other job skills. There’s no fallback plan here.”

“That’s why in today’s story I tried to point out how stupid it was for them to transfer you,” Kirsten said. “You’re the only cop with any training or experience in serial-killer investigations.”

Another long silence dragged by.

“Do you think it might help?” Kirsten asked.

“I don’t see how.”

“Soon the department will have to acknowledge you were right and that there is a serial killer.”

“You’re wrong,” Murphy said. “They don’t have to do anything. If it becomes obvious to everyone that the murders are connected, the rank will claim they knew it all along and were trying to keep it quiet because they didn’t want the killer to know they were on to him. Either way, it won’t affect what’s going to happen to me.”

“Why not?”

Murphy rapped his knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention. She was a thin girl with hollow cheeks, sitting on a stool behind the bar and staring up at a TV mounted high on the back wall. The mute was on, but a meteorologist was standing in front of a weather screen pointing to a tropical storm far out in the Atlantic Ocean. When the bartender turned around, Murphy lifted his beer bottle and shook it, the international signal for “bring me another beer.”

Murphy turned his attention back to Kirsten. “The rank has me by the balls for unauthorized contact with the media.”

“They already stuck you in the property room. What else can they do?”

“Fire me.”

“If they fired every cop who spoke to a reporter-”

“It’s not every cop, Kirsten. It’s just me. This time they’re going for a knockout. Thanks to you.”

The bartender popped the top on a fresh Budweiser. She set it down on the bar in front of Murphy and went back to staring up at the TV. Crystals of ice slid down the side of the bottle.

“I have a meeting with the city editor at nine,” Kirsten said. “The bosses want a follow-up to the serial-killer story.”

“You called me for a quote?”

“No. I called because I wanted to… apologize for what happened. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

“So what you’re saying is you meant to stab me in the back, you just didn’t mean for the blade to sink so deep.”

“You’re the one who picked up the knife first-asshole.”

She hung up before Murphy could respond. He slammed his phone down on the bar and washed his anger down with a gulp of beer.

On TV, the news had switched from the weather to a murder. From the looks of it, not a serial-killer case, just a run-of-the-mill shooting in New Orleans East.

Mercifully, the jukebox had run out of quarters.

“Did you hear about the storm?” the bartender asked Murphy.

He shook his head. “I was on the phone.”

“Yesterday it was just a depression. Today it’s a tropical storm. They’re calling it Catherine. I guess it’s the third one this season, but I didn’t hear anything about the first two.”

The satellite imagery had shown the storm off the west coast of Africa.

“It’s too soon to get worked up about a storm that far out,” Murphy said. “And it’s too early in the season. The bad ones always come late.”

“Since Katrina, they all make me nervous.”

Murphy had three more beers, then drove his eight-year-old Toyota to his apartment and went to bed. He couldn’t fall asleep, so for a while he tried to read a Dennis Lehane novel, but he couldn’t concentrate. Not with Kirsten popping in and out of his head every few minutes.

Finally around noon he started to nod. He put the book down on his nightstand, turned out the bedside lamp, and closed his eyes.