A Killer Like Me

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Friday, August 3, 8:25 AM

The killer limps into the connecting hallway between the two rooms of his apartment. His bedroom is in front, closest to the street. The kitchen is in back, and there is a tiny bathroom off the hall. The low-slung, shoe box-shaped apartment is built beneath the high side of Mother’s one-and-a-half-story house on South Saint Patrick Street.

The killer’s hip hurts, but the pain in his right knee is worse. He barely slept last night.

That fool and his Lucky Dog cart. The killer had barely taken two steps when he smashed into the cart. The pain wasn’t that bad at first, but by the time he reached Canal Street, he was hobbling.

In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink, he finds an old bottle of aspirin. He pops four into his mouth and gulps them down with two handfuls of water from the tap. As he closes the medicine cabinet, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and wonders about the hot-dog vendor.

How good of a look at me did he get?

Even if the Lucky Dog man couldn’t describe him, staying to watch the fire had been a mistake. Had he walked away, as he intended, the cop would not have noticed him. Which means he would not have had to run. Had he not run, he would not have slammed into the hot-dog cart.

No more mistakes, he promises himself.

He leaves the bathroom and limps into his bedroom. On the far side is a sliding glass door, the only entrance to his apartment. He pulls open the door and steps outside. The pain in his knee grows as he lurches to the end of the short driveway and stoops to pick up Mother’s newspaper. As he turns back, he shoots a glance at the concrete steps leading to the veranda that stretches across the front of Mother’s house, a house to which he-her only child-does not have a key.

He hurries back inside his apartment.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he opens the newspaper and scans the headlines. There is nothing about the fire. At first, he is outraged. Then he realizes the fire was probably after the newspaper’s deadline.

The killer grabs the TV remote and switches on the television. He flips to Channel 15, which plays continuous rebroadcasts of the latest WWL-TV newscast. The fire is the lead story. The gray-haired male anchor, whose solemn face is buried beneath a thick layer of makeup, calls it the Inferno in the French Quarter.

“A six-alarm fire, which investigators are calling intentionally set, began about midnight last night in the French Quarter and killed as many as sixty people, according to fire and police officials.

“Witnesses say that within seconds, fire engulfed the Red Door Lounge on the top floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. Patrons at the popular gay and lesbian nightspot who tried to escape the blaze found the fire exit chained shut, which made escape nearly impossible. About twenty people did manage to get out of the burning building by flinging themselves from windows or squeezing through the partially blocked fire exit.

“WWL’s Jim Hitchcock is on the scene. Jim, what can you tell us?”

The screen cuts to a reporter on the street, who prattles on about the devastating death toll and how shocked everyone is in the tight-knit French Quarter community, especially its gay and lesbian members.

It turns the killer’s stomach to see such fawning respect given to those abominations.

The camera shot widens and shifts slightly, showing the reporter on the right of the screen.

The killer is shocked to see that standing beside the reporter is the hot-dog vendor, his Lucky Dog cart visible in the background.

The news anchor’s voice cuts in. “In a WWL exclusive, reporter Jim Hitchcock is talking to a man who may have seen who started the fire at the Red Door Lounge, a fire that killed at least sixty people. Jim

…”

“Thanks, Bob,” the reporter says into the camera. “I’m here on Iberville Street at the scene of this deadly six-alarm fire with Frank Smith, a Lucky Dog vendor who works in the French Quarter and who says he saw a man running from the scene of the fire moments after it started.”

The reporter then turns to the man standing beside him in his distinctive red-and-white-striped shirt. “Mr. Smith, tell us what happened.”

Smith, if that is his real name, long-haired and tattooed, looks like an old biker. He swallows hard, then says, “I was pushing my cart up the street when I heard all the commotion-fire trucks, police sirens, lots of yelling and stuff. Then this guy came running from that direction and ran smack into my cart.”

“Can you describe the man you saw?” the reporter asks.

“I didn’t get too good a look at him, other than he was a white guy… Caucasian, I mean, probably in his thirties.”

“Have you told the police what you saw?” the reporter asks.

The hot-dog man shakes his head. “They haven’t asked me anything yet.”

The “ LIVE ” graphic in the top left corner of the screen means nothing, the killer knows, because what he is watching is a repeat of the 6:00 AM broadcast.

On the screen, the reporter turns back to the camera. “And there you have it, Bob, a devastating and deadly fire, the situation so chaotic that even this eyewitness hasn’t been able to tell investigators what he saw.”

The anchor thanks the reporter and they exchange some somber yet meaningless chitchat about the fire. Then, on cue, the anchor’s expression gives way to a smile as he transitions to a story about kids beating the dog days of summer at a nearby water park.

The killer thinks about what the hot-dog vendor said: I didn’t get too good a look at him, other than he was a white guy… Caucasian, I mean, probably in his thirties.

If that’s the best the Lucky Dog man can do, the killer knows he has nothing to worry about. As he heads to the shower, he thinks about the promise he made to the newspaper.

… a killing rampage the likes of which this city has never seen.

“What did you say?” Murphy asked.

“I think I saw who set the bar on fire,” the Lucky Dog man said again.

Murphy stared at him for several seconds. The hot-dog vendor got fidgety. He looked down and kicked the toe of a worn-out black sneaker into the sidewalk. Below the short sleeves of his red-and-white-striped shirt, both forearms were covered with tattoos.

“What’s your name?”

“Frank,” the man said.

“Frank what?”

“Smith.”

Murphy shook his head. “Try again.”

“Frank Jensen.”

“If I find out you’re lying I’ll put you in jail.”

The man raised his right hand like he was swearing in court. “Frank Jensen, that’s my real name, sir.”

“All right, Mr. Jensen, what did you see?”

“I’m pretty sure I seen the guy who started the fire.”

“Be specific.”

“Okay,” Jensen said. He pointed toward the corner of Iberville and Royal, where his Lucky Dog cart was parked on the sidewalk. “I was pushing my sled up from Canal, on my way over to Bourbon. Midnight till about four is usually my busiest time, what with all the drunks leaving the bars.”

Murphy made a hurry-up motion with his hand. He wasn’t interested in the ins and outs of the hot-dog-vending business.

Jensen gave a nod of understanding. “So as I’m coming up Royal, I seen a guy standing behind the edge of the building, kind of peeking around the corner. Then right before I get to Iberville, dude spins around and starts to jet off, but he runs into my cart and knocks me ass over teakettle.”

“When was this?”

Jensen held up his left hand. His fingernails were stained with mustard. “I don’t wear a watch.”

“Give me your best guess,” Murphy said.

The hot-dog vendor shrugged. “Probably midnight, maybe a little before.”

“Was the guy actually running, or did he just turn around and bump into you?”

“No, he was running, like he was trying to get away.”

“Was the building already burning?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I could see the flames over the rooftops.”

“Could he have been running to get away from the fire?” Murphy asked.

Jensen shook his head. “No, sir. He looked like he was trying to get away from the policeman.”

“What policeman?”

“A cop… a policeman come around the corner a few seconds later.”

“Was the policeman chasing the guy?”

Jensen shook his head. “I don’t think so, but he sure looked like he wanted to talk to the guy.”

“Back up for a second,” Murphy said. “Did you see where he came from?”

“The policeman?”

Murphy rubbed a hand across his face. When he spoke he struggled to keep his voice under control. “No, not the policeman. The guy who knocked you over. Could you tell if he came from Iberville?”

“No,” Jensen said. He pointed to the building next to his cart. “When I first seen him he was standing by that building, just peeping around it.”

“Okay,” Murphy said. “What did he look like?”

“On account of the dark, I didn’t get too good a look at him.”

Murphy stared at the hot-dog vendor.

Jensen cleared his throat. “He was a white guy was about all I could tell.”

“How tall are you?”

Jensen looked confused. “About five-eight. Why?”

“Was he taller than you?”

“A little bit.”

Murphy straightened. “I’m six feet. Was he taller than me?”

The Lucky Dog man shook his head. “Man, I don’t know. I told you it was dark.”

“It’s important.”

Jensen eyed the top of Murphy’s head. “Maybe a tad shorter than you and not as bulky.”

“How old was he?”

“Thirty, forty. I really couldn’t say.”

“How long was his hair?”

“I don’t remember.” Jensen’s voice was starting to crack.

“Did it go past his ears?” Murphy asked. “Was it down to his collar?”

The hot-dog vendor pressed his palms against his temples and shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I take medication. I was just trying to do the right thing. I can’t give you all the answers you want.”

Murphy took a deep breath. It was always the same with witnesses. You had to coax them into remembering, and even then the details they gave you were rarely reliable.

The human brain is an imperfect recorder. Murphy had seen it a hundred times. When you put a witness’s memory up against a surveillance camera, the camera wins every time. The witnesses aren’t lying, not the cooperative ones anyway, but what they recall has been filtered through the subjective lenses of their own emotions, prejudices, and expectations. Where there are gaps, the brain fills them in the best it can, using old memories and associations.

That’s how you get a witness description of Brad Pitt robbing a tourist on Bourbon Street at two o’clock in the morning.

Jensen was trying to help. Murphy had to remember that. The Lucky Dog man wasn’t a trained observer. He was just a hard-luck guy, loaded on meds, who hawked hot dogs in the French Quarter.

“Look, pal, I’m sorry if I seem a little tense,” Murphy said. Then he turned and pointed to the still-smoldering building a block away. “But I’ve spent all morning up there with dozens of dead bodies, all burned beyond recognition. It’s possible you saw the guy who did this, and so far you’re all I’ve got.”

The hot-dog vendor nodded. “His hair came down to about here.” Jensen reached up to his left ear and drew a finger across the middle. “Best I could see it was light brown or blond, and parted on one side.”

“Anything else?”

“Let me think a second.” Jensen closed his eyes.

The description was generic. It fit thousands of men. At some point it might prove useful, Murphy thought, especially if the task force developed a suspect and the Lucky Dog man could put him running from the fire scene, but it didn’t help much right now.

Jensen opened his eyes. “His hair must have been parted on the right because I seen a scar over his right eye.”

Murphy felt a tingling of excitement. “Tell me about the scar.”

Jensen touched his forehead above his right eyebrow. “Right here. A diagonal line, couple inches long, three at most.”

“What did he do after he ran into your cart?” Murphy said.

“He kind of bounced off. He knocked me over but not my sled.” Jensen nodded toward his Lucky Dog cart. “Thing weighs three hundred pounds.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He called me a name.”

“What name?” Murphy asked.

“An old-fashioned name for a… homosexual.”

“What did he say?”

The hot-dog vendor scratched his head. After several seconds he snapped his fingers. “A sodomite. He called me a sodomite. Like that town in the Bible where everybody was queer.”

Murphy nodded. In the killer’s letter to the newspaper he had used the biblical word harlot to describe his last two victims. The letter also contained other religious references. He sounded like someone who would use an archaic word like sodomite to describe a person he thought was gay.

Murphy pulled out his notebook.

Jensen’s forehead wrinkled with worry, but he wasn’t looking at Murphy’s notebook. He was looking down the street at where the Red Door Lounge had been. “You figure he thought I was gay?”

“I don’t think he meant it personally,” Murphy said.

Jensen looked relieved. “I did some time, but, you know, that was prison. I ain’t queer.”

“Give me a phone number where I can reach you?”

The Lucky Dog man gave Murphy his cell number.

“We have a computer program that develops a composite picture based on witness descriptions,” Murphy said. “I want you to work with us on putting together a picture of the man you saw.”

Jensen shook his head. “I don’t want to go to court, not on something like this.”

“You won’t have to go to court,” Murphy said, knowing it was almost certainly a lie. But witnesses had to be coaxed.

“You sure?” The hot-dog vendor looked skeptical.

Murphy nodded. He knew he had to sound convincing. Jensen was an ex-con and knew the system. “When we catch this guy he’s going to have to plead to avoid the death penalty. There won’t be a trial. No trial, no witnesses.”

“All right, then.” Jensen looked relieved. “Long as I ain’t got to go to court.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Murphy said. “And thanks for your help.”

Jensen nodded and shuffled off. A minute later he was pushing his Lucky Dog cart down Iberville toward the burned-out building, toward a bunch of hungry firemen and cops.