A Killer Like Me

CHAPTER FIVE

Thursday, July 26, 9:30 AM

“How was court?” Murphy said as he stepped into the squad room.

Gaudet swiveled his head away from his computer keyboard. “A waste of time.”

Murphy dropped into the chair behind the desk he shared with a detective on another shift. “They didn’t call you to the stand?”

“I sat there all day and they didn’t even finish picking the jury.”

“Couldn’t the assistant DA put you on standby?”

Gaudet shrugged. “He’s some new tight-ass prick, said he needed me there to help with jury selection.”

Murphy looked at the clock on the wall. “What time do you have to be back?”

“He said he wanted me there by nine.”

“So why are you still here?”

“I told him I had to be at the firing range until noon.”

“We’re not going to the range today,” Murphy said. “I can’t even remember the last time we shot.”

“The DA don’t know that.”

“Good point.” Murphy spun around and started thumbing through the stack of pink message slips on the desk.

“How did it go with the surveillance cameras?” Gaudet asked.

Murphy didn’t see any messages he felt like returning. He threw the entire pile in the wastebasket next to his desk. He looked at Gaudet. “I got a bunch of license-plate numbers from one of the courthouse cameras. The other cameras were pretty much a bust. I also got a few tags off of a security camera at a tire shop.”

“Speedy’s?”

“Yeah,” Murphy said. “You know him?”

Gaudet nodded. “I bought some retreads from him once for my nephew’s car. He did some time back in the day, but he’s straight now.”

“I got that impression.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, while you were wasting time in court-”

“Hey, brother, I’m sorry about that. You know I would have been there if I could. I love walking around in the hot sun for hours on end, sweating my balls off.”

“You probably didn’t even have court. I didn’t get a subpoena.”

“It’s an old case,” Gaudet said. “From back when you were off the job, drinking heavily and trysting with barmaids.”

“Did you say trysting?”

“Damn right, I did. What of it?”

“Do you even know what a tryst is?”

“I used the word correctly, didn’t I,” Gaudet said, his voice loaded with feigned indignation. “Just because I’m black and went to Delgado instead of Notre Dame, don’t mean I’m not ed-u-cated.”

“I only went to Notre Dame for a year.”

“Then you went to Loyola.”

“Yeah, for another year.”

“Still, you’re a white boy and you went to two fancy schools. It’s not my fault you weren’t smart enough to graduate from either one.”

Murphy thought about the winter he spent in South Bend, the coldest he had ever known. Despite the freezing temperature, it had been a good year. His first time away from home. Then a king-size guilt trip from his mother-a Catholic boy’s rite of passage-brought him back. The scholarship wasted. Then a year uptown at Jesuit-run Loyola, until the money ran out.

After that, he spent three years working on a tugboat. He was making good money and figured one day he might earn a skipper’s cap. Then he saw a billboard advertisement for the New Orleans Police Department. He could still remember the exact words: BE A PROFESSIONAL AND PROTECT YOUR COMMUNITY. JOIN THE FIGHT. JOIN THE NOPD.

In the mid-1990s, New Orleans was the most violent city in America. A police recruiter told Murphy he could help bring New Orleans back to its former glory as one of America’s great cities. Murphy had bought that bullshit hook, line, and sinker. He signed up despite the huge pay cut. His uncle had been on the job then and tried to talk him out of joining the department. Murphy was hardheaded.

His partner’s mock condescension snapped Murphy back to the present. “While you were wasting time in college trying to be a jock,” Gaudet said, “I was studying recidivism and probated-spiral-compression theory on my way to earning an associate’s degree in criminal justice from a fine institution of higher learning.”

“Delgado Community College.”

“That’s right,” Gaudet said. “But I like to think of it as Delgado University.”

“It took you four years to get a two-year degree.”

“I read slow.”

“At least you learned the word tryst,” Murphy said. “That’s something.”

“Speaking of tryst, what did you decide to do about that thing you were talking about yesterday?”

“That wasn’t a tryst,” Murphy said. “When you move in together, the tryst is over.”

Gaudet laughed. “That ain’t all that’s over.”

Murphy nodded.

“Besides,” Gaudet said, “I just like saying that word, feeling the way it rolls off my tongue.” He stuck his tongue out and flicked it up and down.

Murphy ignored the urge to throw up. “I’m going to do exactly what I said. I’m going to give the rank one more shot. Then I’m going to do whatever it takes to get some resources for this case.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Murphy shrugged. “Me too.”

By midafternoon, Murphy was only halfway through his list of license-plate numbers.

The process was tedious. He had to run each number through the police department’s ponderous, 1980s-era computer system known as MOTION, which stood for Metropolitan Orleans Total Information Online Network. Some MOTION terminals were so antiquated they looked like 1960s vacuum-tube television sets. The program required users to log in with a social-security number and password for each query. For Murphy that meant more than thirty individual log-ins.

The different programs within the system weren’t integrated. When the registered owner of a vehicle popped up, using a program called SLIX, Murphy had to jot down the owner’s name and date of birth, then exit the vehicle subsystem and log in to the criminal-history subsystem, called MONA, to find out if the vehicle owner had ever been arrested or had an active warrant.

And so it went, back and forth between SLIX and MONA, running tags, then checking for criminal histories.

By five o’clock he was done. Of the twenty-six tags from the courthouse camera, twelve of the registered owners had rap sheets. Of the six license-plate numbers he had pulled off the surveillance tape from Speedy’s tire shop, only one had a record, but Murphy put that record at the top of his list.

Sometime between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM -it was impossible to pinpoint the time, because Murphy wasn’t sure exactly when Speedy had started recording-a Chevy Camaro had driven past the tire shop. Because the security camera was black-and-white, Murphy couldn’t tell the color, but SLIX listed the Camaro’s color as red.

The license plate came back registered to Jonathan Deshotels of New Orleans. Deshotels was a twenty-year-old scumbag with arrests for burglary, felony theft, and rape. In a rare moment of functionality, MONA actually showed the disposition of Deshotels’s rape charge. A year and a half ago, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of sexual battery. He got a suspended sentence and was placed on five years’ probation. A cush deal for a rapist.

As a convicted sex offender, young Deshotels had to keep local law enforcement apprised of his current address or risk having his probation revoked and being sent to prison, where he would likely be raped himself. He also had to stay away from schools, playgrounds, and other places where kids congregated.

Nothing in Deshotels’s record indicated he was a pedophile, but Louisiana’s sex-offender law, like those of most states, didn’t differentiate. All sex offenders got treated like child molesters.

At 9:00 PM, Murphy was parked down the street from Deshotels’s last known address, a small duplex uptown on Octavia Street. He had been watching the place for more than an hour. So far he had not seen the red Camaro.

The architectural design of the house Murphy was watching was known as a shotgun double. Local lore says the houses, which have a simple, rectangular floor plan, got their name because a person could fire a shotgun in the front door and out the back door without hitting anything in between.

Murphy wanted to know why Deshotels had been cruising the backstreets around the courthouse late Tuesday night.

Like most scumbags, Deshotels used several addresses. He had listed this one on Octavia Street as his home address when he was last arrested six months ago. The arrest had been for a probation violation, but the bust had not resulted in Deshotels’s probation being revoked. More than likely he had skipped a meeting, and his probation officer had had an arrest warrant issued just to throw a scare into him.

Murphy could only hope Deshotels hadn’t moved since then.

So he sat in his car, watching the right side of a shotgun double from half a block away, waiting for a red Camaro to drive up, a red Camaro that might never arrive. Surveillance was so much fun.

The handheld police radio lying on the seat beside Murphy squawked. “Twenty-five fifty-five to twenty-five fifty-four.”

It was Gaudet. Murphy picked up his portable radio and keyed the microphone. “Twenty-five fifty-four, go ahead.”

“What’s your twenty?”

Murphy gave him the address, then added, “It’s one way, lake bound. Come up from the river side.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

“Kill your lights before you turn onto the block.”

“Ten four.”

In his rearview mirror, Murphy saw Gaudet turn off his headlights a block away and slid his piece-of-shit Caprice in behind Murphy’s even-bigger-piece-of-shit Taurus.

Murphy watched as Gaudet slipped out of his car and crept up the right side of the Taurus. For a big man, Gaudet could move like a cat, sneaky when he wanted to be. He eased into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. “What’s up?”

“Did you win?”

“What?”

“The case,” Murphy said. “Did the good guys win?”

Gaudet shook his head. “Judge granted a continuance.”

Murphy nodded. It happened all the time. You spent two days in court waiting to testify, then the case was continued.

“What you got?” Gaudet asked.

Murphy pointed through the windshield. “The one with the porch light on. That’s the last known address of a guy who was cruising around the courthouse just before the victim was killed.”

“Who is he?”

“The car came back to a kid named Jonathan Deshotels. He took a fall on a rape charge two years ago.”

“Why isn’t he in prison?”

“He got probation.”

“For rape?”

“He pled to sexual battery.”

Gaudet’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Is his old man Charles Deshotels?”

Murphy shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”

“If so, his old man is a big-shot attorney.”

“I never heard of him.”

“He doesn’t do criminal work. He specializes in contracts. Right now he’s negotiating with the city for a bunch of Katrina contractors. Heavy-duty shit, like hundreds of millions in FEMA money.”

“So he knows people,” Murphy said. “So what?”

“He knows important people, and you can bet he called in all kinds of favors to get his shithead son off of a rape charge.”

Murphy shrugged again. “Fuck him and his dad.”

“What did his record look like before the rape?”

“Arrests for burglary and felony theft, but no convictions.”

“What’s the game plan?” Gaudet said.

“For now just a knock and talk. I want to find out why he was in that area at that time.”

“What if he cops an attitude?”

“We’ll take him to the office and sweat him.”

“He’ll call his old man quicker than shit, I bet.”

“Not if we don’t let him,” Murphy said.

They watched the house. An hour passed. Neither said a word. They were used to it.

Gaudet broke the silence. “You talk to Kirsten yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You going to?”

“I’ll give her a call tomorrow,” Murphy said. “Maybe I’ll go by her house.”

“You know she still hates you.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it,” Gaudet said. “You had sex with her best friend.”

“It wasn’t quite as simple as that.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Janet and I went out a few times before Kirsten and I ever started dating. It was Janet who introduced us.”

Gaudet laughed. “But you screwed Janet after that.”

“I was drunk.”

Kirsten was supposed to have met Murphy at a party at Tipitina’s on Napoleon Street. Janet was bringing a date and was going to join them there. Not long after Murphy showed up, Kirsten called and said she couldn’t make it. She was a reporter for the Times-Picayune and was going to have to work late on a big story for the next morning’s paper.

Even before he made it to Tipitina’s and got Kirsten’s call, Murphy had stopped at the Star amp; Crescent for a couple of beers with the boys. Someone bought a round of car bombs, a pint of Guinness with a shot glass of half-and-half Jameson’s and Bailey’s dropped into it. Murphy was hammered by the time he made it to the party.

Janet’s date had stood her up too. She and Murphy hung out together. Later, Janet said she was too drunk to drive and asked Murphy for a ride home. At her uptown apartment, not two miles from the house Murphy shared with Kirsten, Janet invited him in for coffee. Ten minutes later they were tangled up on the sofa, sweaty and naked.

Afterward, he felt like shit. He just hoped Janet would keep her mouth shut. She didn’t. A week later she blabbed the whole thing to Kirsten. That night Kirsten kicked him out.

That had been a year ago.

“She’s probably over it by now,” Gaudet said.

“Just a minute ago you said she hates me. Now you say she’s probably over it. Make up your mind.”

“I was just trying to make you feel better,” Gaudet said. “She’s definitely not over it.”

“Thanks, partner.”

A couple of minutes later, Murphy said, “It’s a good story. Even if she does still hate me, she won’t be able to pass it up.”

“You think she’ll keep your name out of it?”

Murphy nodded. “For an exclusive like this she will.”

“Because if she doesn’t-”

A red Camaro rolled past them, its aftermarket pipes rumbling and popping. It jerked to a stop half a block away.

C HAPTER S ix

Thursday, July 26, 10:30 PM

“You want me to go old-school on him,” Gaudet said, “snatch him by his hair and pull him out in the yard?”

“Let me talk to him first,” Murphy said as he and Gaudet climbed out of the Taurus and approached the house on foot.

Murphy knocked. He felt exposed standing under the bright porch light.

From the other side of the door a woman’s voice asked, “Who is it?”

Gaudet whispered, “You want me to go around back in case he runs?”

Murphy shook his head.

“Who is it?” the voice said again.

“Police,” Murphy answered.

“Who?”

“Bitch is stalling,” Gaudet whispered.

“Po-lice,” Murphy shouted, splitting the syllables. Some people were just too stupid to understand complex words. “Open the door.”

The knob turned. The door opened a crack. One eye, half framed by stringy blonde hair, peeked out. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk to Jonathan.”

The door opened a little more. The blonde glanced at the red Camaro parked out front.

“He’s, uh…”

Gaudet laid a meaty palm on the door in front of her face. “Open up or go to jail.”

The girl backed away and folded her arms across her chest. The two detectives stepped through the door. Murphy noticed the heat first. The inside of the house was like an oven.

“The AC’s busted,” the girl said. She was stringy like her hair, with hollow cheeks and muddy eyes, wearing a shapeless housecoat.

Murphy heard a baby crying. “Where’s Jonathan?”

“Feeding the baby.”

“We’re not here to arrest him,” Murphy said. “We just want to talk to him.”

The girl disappeared into the back of the house.

Murphy’s eyes swept the living room. It had been furnished from the Fred Sanford collection. Across the room, a banged-up TV sat on an overturned beer crate. Near the front door was a threadbare sofa and a scarred wooden coffee table, on top of which lay a pile of unopened mail.

Murphy took a step toward the table with the intention of thumbing through the mail, when Deshotels strolled in from a back room. The young felon didn’t say anything. He just stopped at the edge of the living room and stared at the two detectives like he was used to cops snooping through his personal belongings and knew better than to mouth off.

“We’re from Homicide,” Murphy said.

“Then I know you got the wrong place because I’m straight. You can ask my PO.”

Murphy nodded toward the sofa. “Have a seat.”

Deshotels glanced over his shoulder at his girlfriend, who had reappeared behind him. “Go finish feeding the baby.”

She shot Murphy and Gaudet a dirty look, then stormed off.

Deshotels was crank-head skinny, wearing a wifebeater and dirty jeans. He walked toward the sofa. Before he sat down, Murphy put a hand on his shoulder. “Just a second.”

Murphy flipped up the nearest seat cushion. Then he took a step forward and raised the middle cushion. He saw the chopped-down stock of a shotgun, wrapped in black electrical tape, sticking up from the crack between the seat and the backrest.

“Got a code four,” he shouted to Gaudet as he pushed Jonathan Deshotels back with his left hand and reached for the shotgun with his right.

Gaudet jumped forward and wrapped a thick forearm around Deshotels’s neck. Then he pivoted and used his 260 pounds to slam the skinny punk face-first into the floor.

The girl came screaming out of the back, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Murphy lifting the sawed-off shotgun from the sofa.

While Gaudet handcuffed Deshotels, Murphy held up the shotgun by the stock, using only his thumb and index finger to avoid leaving fingerprints. The gun was a double-barrel, over-and-under 20-gauge, with the barrels cut down to just over a foot.

Murphy looked down at Deshotels lying on his stomach, wrists cinched tight behind his back. “What is this, Jonathan?”

“I’ve never seen that before.”

“Are you saying this illegal shotgun, the mere possession of which carries a mandatory penalty of five years in federal prison, belongs to your girlfriend?” Murphy said.

The blonde’s mouth hung open as she shook her head.

Gaudet planted his foot on Deshotels’s back.

“I want to talk to my lawyer,” Deshotels mumbled through a mouthful of carpet.

“How about we call your probation officer instead,” Murphy suggested. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to come out here and start your revocation order right now.”

Gaudet jerked Deshotels to his feet.

Careful not to touch the metal parts of the shotgun, Murphy used a pen to open the breech. He dumped two shells of buckshot onto the coffee table. “If it’s not your gun, then your fingerprints won’t be on it, right?” he said.

“I… I might have touched it,” Deshotels said.

Gaudet dragged Deshotels toward the door. “Let’s take a ride.”

Inside a makeshift interview room that doubled as the Homicide Division’s kitchenette, Murphy and Gaudet sat across a beat-up breakfast table from Jonathan Deshotels.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Murphy said. “Where did you get the scattergun?”

“And I’m going to tell you one more time,” Deshotels said. “Blow me.”

Gaudet reached across the table and bitch-slapped him.

“What the fuck!” the kid screamed. “You can’t do that to me.”

Murphy fixed him with a dead stare. “We’re Homicide. We have different rules.”

Deshotels tried to hold the stare. He couldn’t. After a few seconds, he dropped his head.

“What were you doing cruising around Tulane near criminal district court Tuesday night?” Murphy said.

The kid cast a nervous glance at Gaudet. Then he let out a deep sigh, something both detectives recognized as a sign of surrender. The kid was going to admit to something.

“I took Lawrence out to get laid.”

“Who’s Lawrence?” Murphy said.

“A buddy from high school. He’s nineteen, never had a piece of pussy in his life. I think he might be a fag. I thought if I found him a girl I could turn him around.”

“So you were trying to cure your friend’s homosexuality,” Gaudet said, “by renting him a disease-ridden prostitute.”

Deshotels nodded, the irony apparently lost on him.

“Tell me about the gun,” Murphy said.

Deshotels stared down at his hands as he picked at the chipped Formica tabletop. “It’s just for protection. You know my neighborhood. Fucking niggers-” He jerked his face up at Gaudet, eyes wide with terror.

Gaudet shrugged. “I’m half white. I don’t much care for niggers either.”

Deshotels relaxed. “I bought it a while back, sometime after Doreen had the baby.”

“From who?” Murphy said.

“I got it off the street, paid some… some black dude fifty bucks for it.”

“Did you find your potentially gay friend a prostitute?” Gaudet asked.

Deshotels shrugged. “He whooped it up while we were riding around, even hollered at one skank, but in the end he chickened out, even though I offered to pay for it.”

“He must be a close friend,” Gaudet said.

Deshotels shrugged. “We were friends in school, been tight ever since.”

“You don’t mind that maybe he’s a fudgepacker?” Gaudet said. “Maybe you swing that way a little bit yourself.”

“Fuck that.” Deshotels shook his head. “I like pussy.”

“Tell me about the skank,” Murphy said.

“She was just a whore, man.”

“Where was she?”

“On Tulane.”

“Where on Tulane?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think,” Murphy said. “Think hard.”

Gaudet rocked forward in his chair.

Deshotels leaned away. “Next to criminal court.”

Murphy nodded in appreciation. “What did she look like?”

After another glance at Gaudet, Deshotels said, “Just a black whore, big tits, skirt up to her ass, heels.”

“So why didn’t you stop and talk to her,” Gaudet said, “if you were looking for a whore for your friend?”

Deshotels shrugged.

Gaudet leaned closer. “You said your friend hollered at her, right?”

“I told you, he wasn’t serious about it.”

“You mentioned the girl’s skirt,” Murphy said. “What color was it?”

“I don’t know. Some dark color. Black, maybe.”

“Was she short or tall?”

Deshotels’s eyes darted up and to his left.

A good sign, Murphy thought. Neurolinguistic programmers would say the kid was trying to recall facts, not make something up.

“I’d say she was tall,” Deshotels said, “definitely taller than the dude.”

“What dude?” Murphy felt his pulse quicken.

“She was standing next to some loser.”

The detectives looked at each other. Deshotels’s description of the prostitute matched the victim, and he had seen someone with her around the time the coroner estimated she had been killed. You didn’t have to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to figure out that this half-brain-dead meth freak might have gotten a look at the serial killer.

Murphy worked to keep his voice neutral. “Tell me about the guy she was with.”

Deshotels waved his hand in the air. He was smiling. “Fuck you, man. You’re trying to bait me with that gay shit again? I wasn’t looking at the dude. I was looking at the whore.”

“Don’t make me hit you again,” Gaudet said.

Deshotels quit smiling.

“What did he look like?” Murphy said.

Deshotels rolled his eyes. “He was an old dude, man, little shorter than she was.”

“How old?”

“Had to be like thirty-five, forty.”

“Look at me, Jonathan,” Murphy said. “I’m thirty-eight. Detective Gaudet is…”

“Thirty-five,” Gaudet said.

“Did the guy look younger than us, older than us, or about the same as us?”

Deshotels fidgeted in his chair.

Murphy realized they were probably taxing his mental capacity. “This is important, Jonathan.”

Deshotels threw his arms down on the table. “Younger, maybe. Not much, though. I’d say like around thirty.”

“Black or white?”

“White.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Man, I wasn’t paying attention to all that. I told you, I was looking to hook up my boy with some pussy.”

“Did you see his car?” Gaudet said.

“I seen lots of cars, motherfucker. It was a-”

Gaudet rocketed out of his chair and grabbed Deshotels by the throat. “What did you call me, you tweaked-out little cocksucker?”

As Gaudet squeezed, Deshotels’s face turned red and his eyes bugged out.

“Nothing, nothing,” the kid squeaked. “I’m sorry.”

The big detective held him for a few more seconds, then shoved him backward against his chair. “Next time you ‘motherfuck’ me, you’ll leave here in a goddamn ambulance. Understand?”

Deshotels clutched his throat with both hands as he gasped for air.

Gaudet sat down. “I said, do you understand.”

The kid nodded.

“Did you see the guy’s car?” Murphy asked.

Deshotels shook his head. When he spoke his voice cracked. “Guy looked like a dweeb. Lawrence yelled something at him, calling him a loser or something. I didn’t see his car.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I don’t think so. I just saw him for a second, going past at like sixty.”

Gaudet eased his upper body forward across the table. “Think hard. Do you remember anything else about him that could help us identify him?”

Already pressed up against the back of his chair, Deshotels was as far away from Gaudet as he could get, but still he tried to put an extra couple of inches of space between them. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” Gaudet’s question came out as a growl, low and menacing.

“That’s all I know… sir.”