Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

Down on the Pontchartrain by O’Neil De Noux

MONDAY, 22 AUGUST 2005

The call comes over my portable police radio just as I step aboard Sad Lisa — Headquarters calling for Homicide... a signal thirty... parking lot... West End Park. I can’t help thinking this is what I get for trying to knock off early on my squad’s last night before we switch from the midnight shift.

Moving to the side of my houseboat, I look across the 17th Street Canal at West End Park. Don’t see much beyond the low seawall except the rear of the elevated wooden restaurants and the tops of oak trees bathed in soft yellow streetlight. I glance at my watch on the way back to my unmarked Chevy parked on Orpheum Avenue alongside Sad Lisa. It’s five A.M. exactly. I lock my briefcase in the trunk but only after taking out my notepad and ballpoint pen, tucking them into the pocket of my navy blue suit coat. The night air is still clammy, still hot from the day’s heat.

My sergeant calls me on the radio as I start across the new pedestrian bridge connecting Bucktown, where Sad Lisa is permanently moored, to Orleans Parish. I tell him I’ll be at West End Park in two minutes. You see, it’s my turn. I’m up for the next murder.

The new bridge is red brick with an iron railing painted dark green, about fifteen feet wide and maybe forty yards long, rising in the center to allow small boats from Lake Pontchartrain. A brisk breeze blows from the lake, and I watch waves slap against the rocky shoreline. They’re not rocks, actually, but large concrete blocks lying at odd angles, keeping the lake from eating away the land. I lick the salty mist from my lips. A large orange cat perched on the bridge railing near the base of the bridge glares at me with yellow eyes as I pass.

Can’t miss the crime scene. Two New Orleans police cars, red and blue lights flashing, headlights illuminating figures standing next to a large live oak and a figure on the ground. Three other police cars are also there, Levee Board cops and a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s unit, drawn to the crime scene like bugs to a lightbulb.

Stepping up, I recognize the big cop just as he turns his flashlight my way and announces, “Well, it’s Sioux time, ladies and gents!”

I shake my head as I move through the assembled officers.

Sidney Tilghman, a sergeant now, continues my introduction. “This here’s Homicide Detective John Raven Beau whose daddy hailed from the swamps of Vermilion Bay and his mama from the Dakotas. Don’t remember which one.” Tilghman sidles next to me as I ease to the right to let the dim streetlight illuminate the body. “How you been, old buddy?” he asks. “See you’re still skinny.” Tilghman has put on a few pounds, more than a few in a couple years. We’re both thirty, but he looks more than a couple years older, with a hint of gray in his curly hair.

We were on the same platoon back in the Second District, the uptown police, both patrolmen before he made sergeant and I moved to the land of murder, suicide, and other negligent homicides. I shrug and turn to the other officer, a tall, thin woman with coal black skin, large brown eyes, and hair parted in cornrows. Her nameplate reads S. PANOLA.

At six two, I’m a good four inches taller than Officer Panola. I nod toward the body and ask her, “Shine your light on it, okay?”

She nods and focuses her bright flashlight on the dead woman lying on her side beneath an oak at the edge of the parking lot. The victim’s skin glows pallid white. Over the radio, I hear a crime lab tech is en route, as well as another homicide detective.

I list the victim’s vital stats in my notes: white female, about thirty, tallish, maybe five ten, thin build, light brown hair styled short, brown eyes, tattoo of pearls around her neck, tattoo of a heart on left forearm. Body pierced with four earring holes in each ear. I describe the silver- and gold-colored earrings as well as the stainless steel rod piercing the right side of her nose. Clothing: green tie-dyed blouse ripped in front, long tan skirt, brown sandals.

“He looks even more Sioux from the side,” Tilghman tells the Levee Board cops. “You know. The profile.” He starts talking about my hawk nose and slightly protruding brow, next will be my straight brown Sioux hair and how a former girlfriend told the guys, outside the district station, of all places, how she liked to trace her fingernails along my square jawline.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I snap.

“Not really.”

I turn to Officer Panola and ask, “No purse?”

She points to a red Nissan parked just beyond the police cars. “In her car.”

“You still carry that bowie knife?” Tilghman asks.

“It isn’t a bowie knife,” I tell him, then ask Panola, “Who found the body?”

“It’s big as a bowie knife.” Tilghman again.

Officer Panola tells me a coworker found the body and points to her police car, where I see a figure seated in the back seat. “Both start working at five. They clean the restaurant before the cooks come in.” She’s looking at her notes now. “Victim is Monique Lewis, spelled like Meriwether Lewis. Witness is Shameka Johnson.” She spells out Shameka for me. “When Shameka arrived, she saw Monique’s car but couldn’t find her in the restaurant, so she stepped out, figuring Monique was taking a smoke, and found her. Didn’t see anyone else around. Went back in and called 911.”

Panola looks up at me, and I ask, “Where’s your partner?” NOPD beat units are usually two-man cars. I look over as another NOPD car joins us.

“He went home sick. Sarge came along in his unit.”

Tilghman puts a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Come on. They don’t believe you carry a backup knife instead of a pistol.” He nods toward the Levee Board cops and the two JPs.

Jesus! I reach under my coat to the scabbard and pull out my black obsidian hunting knife, sharpened on one side only, like the true plains warriors of my ancestry. I slap the buffalo bone handle in Tilghman’s open hand. “Don’t drop it.”

While the men gather around like kids leering at a new toy, I ease Panola closer to the body and ask her to focus her flashlight on the victim’s neck. We both go down on our haunches.

Red marks ring her throat, bluish bruises across her larynx. Her neck seems distorted, swollen, her tongue purple and protruding, a line of blood seeping from her mouth. Death by strangulation. Three of her fingernails, painted light purple, are broken. I find one a couple feet from her, the other a little farther away. Can’t find the third. Looking closely, I see they are real fingernails, not the glue-on type.

“She put up a fight. Probably scratched him.”

I stand and Panola follows and wavers, so I take her elbow.

“You all right?” I whisper.

She nods.

“No ligature,” I tell her as she stands more erect, and I let go of her elbow.

“Huh?”

“No ligature mark. A rope or like instrument wasn’t used. Someone used their hands to strangle her.”

“Damn.”

“Exactly.”

I step back and snatch my knife from one of the Levee Board cops who’s trying to cut a strand of hair with it. Two pair of headlights close in on us, a crime lab van and another unmarked Chevy. I slip my knife back into its scabbard.

“She’s a granola girl,” Tilghman announces, looking at the victim again.

“Granola?”

“Yeah. Tie-dyed blouse. Tattoos. Body piercings. West Coast Oregon sandals. She’s a New Age hippie.”

“Oregon sandals?” I shake my head.

“Birkenstocks,” Panola tells me.

I’ve heard of that brand name.

“Granola girl,” Tilghman repeats. “Eats roots and stuff. Granola.”

“Can you do me a real favor?” I ask my old friend.

“Sure.”

“Go canvass. Take those two with you.” I point at the two newly arrived NOPD guys. “Check if any of these restaurants have outdoor surveillance cameras, but leave Panola with me. I’ll need her and her flashlight. Go see who’s out there, maybe saw something.” I wave at the line of restaurants, the dark parking lot, and the park beyond. “Keep an eye out for a broken purple fingernail.”

“A what?”

The second homicide detective moves through the cops. Mike Borgo, a rookie detective without a permanent partner at the moment, came to our squad earlier this week. He’d been bouncing from scene to scene to get a grasp of what we do. He nods at me, and I ask him to get the names of all these cops — which will run the JPs off pretty quickly.

Then I give Borgo the rundown on the body and the witness in the car. Borgo’s in a black suit, stands about five ten, husky, a big-boned Sicilian with brown eyes even lighter than mine, a thick mane of blackish hair, and a matching mustache.

“Damn,” he says. “Strangled by hand. See this often?”

“Nope.”

Panola gives me a weak smile.

“Which restaurant?” I ask.

She points to the nearest, Maxim’s Crab Claw Restaurant. The crime lab tech arrives with his camera case and evidence bag. I nod to the body, telling him about the fingernails, and then point to the victim’s red Nissan. Borgo will assist him with the measurements, triangulating the body’s position to fixed objects, the oak tree, light posts, while Panola and I go speak with our witness.

Shameka Johnson is twenty-two, five four, one-twenty pounds, brown and brown with caramel-colored skin. She wears a dark green sweat suit and jogging shoes as she sits with her feet up on the seat, knees pressed to her chest, arms holding them close. In a wavering voice she tells me how her boyfriend Eddie dropped her off at Maxim’s and drove away right after. I get his name and contact information for follow-up. They live together on Mazant Street.

The restaurant was locked, but Shameka saw Monique’s car so she went in but didn’t see her inside, so she came back out and found her. No, she saw no one in the area. She knows very little about Monique except she was single, liked boys all right, toked an occasional joint. She knows no one who would have done something like this and no suspicious people in the area. Both had been working for Maxim’s for only a few months. Monique about three months. I list the name of the boss, cooks, everyone she can name.

“What now?” Borgo asks as the strobe from the crime lab’s camera flashes behind us.

I point to the car just arriving. “Those’ll be the cooks for Maxim’s. You know what to do.” I remind him anyway to get their IDs, alibis, check for scratches, how well they knew the victim, if they know who would’ve done this, suspicious people in the area, the usual.

I stretch the kinks in my back as the sky is now purple and pink in the east. Two brown pelicans glide over the lake, dipping toward the water beyond Maxim’s. Standing next to me, Panola tells me she’s part Choctaw, on her father’s side.

I nod and say, “Panola means cotton in Choctaw, doesn’t it?”

She’s surprised and gives me a shaky smile. “It sure does.”

We go back to make certain the crime lab tech photographed the fingernails before dusting them for prints (partials more likely) and that he doesn’t leave them by mistake. As the crime lab finishes, the coroner’s van arrives and the coroner’s investigator pulls on a pair of rubber gloves to touch the body.

“Doesn’t appear to be a sex crime,” Panola says. “Maybe he knew her.”

“Could be a sex crime,” I tell her. “Whatever enraged the killer could be sexual. A sexual hatred. He might have been interrupted before finishing. We have no idea if he knew her. Not yet.”

“Only he knows why,” Borgo adds.

I go on, “We don’t focus on why she was killed. We establish what happened, when, where, and most importantly, who. Who is she and who did this. Sometimes we find out why. Sometimes we don’t.”

After the tech dusts the Nissan for prints, we pull out Monique Lewis’s purse, securing her driver’s license for the coroner for identification purposes before they take her body. We also secure her apartment keys. Monique lived on First Street, right in my old beat in the Second District.

Officer Panola’s shift ends at seven, and she and Tilghman depart. So do the NOPD men. The Levee Board cops and JPs long gone. Borgo and I finish up with the three cooks. All have alibis and seem genuinely shook. None has a scratch mark. We focus our interest on the cook who hasn’t shown up for work this morning. Cedrick Smith lives in the Sixth Police District, better known as the Bloody Sixth, where there are more murders than the rest of the city combined. Smith is described on the police computer as “black male, thirty-eight, five nine, one-eighty, no tattoos, scars, or marks.” A convicted felon, Smith is also a registered sex offender on parole after serving ten years of a twenty-year sentence for violating Louisiana Revised Statute 14:43 — simple rape.

Before departing West End Park, Borgo and I go over the canvass notes. Two fishermen had been located, identified, and interviewed. Both saw a jogger in the area, a white male in a gray running outfit. A six-year-old son of one of the fishermen thought he saw two joggers, both white males. The license plate numbers of all cars parked in a two-mile radius is added to our notes.

At 6:32, Levee Board cops had stopped a jogger with gray clothing along nearby Lake Marina Drive, securing his pertinent data and checking to make sure he hadn’t been scratched. The man lives at the Lake Marina Tower, one of the new high-rise condo complexes overlooking the lake. He’s a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard named Bruce Addams.

“What now?” asks Borgo.

“We search for Cedrick Smith, then go to the autopsy. But coffee is first on the agenda.”

“All right. Where?”

“My houseboat. I’m gonna need my car.”

“Houseboat?”

I tell him about Sad Lisa moored over in Bucktown. He knows how to get to Bucktown, but it’ll take him a good ten minutes, skirting the marina to Old Hammond Highway to cross the 17th Street Canal into Jefferson Parish for a quick run up Orpheum Avenue into Bucktown.

Crossing back over the pedestrian bridge, I see the lake’s calmed down, the gray-brown water not so choppy. White seagulls squawk overhead while pelicans are perched on the remnants of a restaurant battered to pieces by Hurricane Georges a few years back. Three cats prowl the bridge, and I remember the feral cats back home, back along the swampland around Vermilion Bay. I like to see cats around. Cats mean fewer rodents.

My Cajun daddy loved cats, put leftovers out for them. Occasionally, when a coon came for the leftovers, my old man would peek out of our Cajun shack on Bayou Brunet and shoot the coon with his.22 for our supper. He’d shoot the possums, too, but we’d use that greasy meat for fish bait.

I grew up in an old Cajun daubed house my great-grandfather built by hand, its walls filled with swamp mud to keep out the weather. We went hungry some nights, when the hunting and fishing weren’t good, feasted when it was good. We lived off the land, the great bayous, the brown water bay, the bountiful swamp.

Once when I was five, I heard the call of a swamp cat, a bobcat searching for a mate out in the marsh. The howl sent shivers through me, and I ran downstairs to tell my parents there was a swamp monster out there. My daddy laughed and set me straight. Later my mother mimicked the cry of the mountain lion for me, and that astounded me. She could mimic any bird — cardinal, oriole, hawk, even the multicalls of the mockingbird. But that was long ago, my father gone now, my mother back up in South Dakota with my relatives, the Oglala Sioux. You see, we’re direct descendants of Crazy Horse’s younger brother, Little Hawk. At least, that’s what my grandfather tells everyone. To the Sioux, birth records go by word of mouth.

I put on a pot of strong coffee and chicory, warming milk for café au lait. Borgo arrives and I offer Hot Pockets, microwavable ham and cheese wrapped in a flaky crust. I’m so hungry, I eat two. Borgo eats four with three brimming cups of coffee. Looking around Sad Lisa, he tells me I must get plenty women with a setup like this.

“Not really. It’s old, creaky, and drafty. Couple girls got seasick when the lake got choppy and the canal began to rise and fall.”

“Couple? Hope it was one at a time.” Borgo raises his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

Cedrick Smith isn’t home. His neighbors say he lives there all right, but he stays with a woman back-a-town in the Broadmoor section, off Claiborne and Napoleon. That doesn’t narrow it down much, so we leave business cards and head for the coroner’s office.

Getting there early, we position the black body bag containing Monique Lewis at the front of the line so she’ll go first. Sipping coffee we picked up from a nearby CC’s Coffee Stand, pretty good coffee and chicory, we wait in the hall outside the morgue with the reeking smells of formaldehyde, dried blood, and cigarette smoke.

I put the pathologist’s findings in my notes. Monique is exactly five ten in length (cadavers no longer have height, they are prostrate and therefore, long) and weighs one thirty-five. Cause of death, strangulation. Manner of death, homicide. The postmortem exam confirms no evidence of sexual assault. Beneath Monique’s fingernails the pathologist finds blood and skin from her attacker. Monique has five additional tattoos and I list them.

The crime lab tech, who arrives late, will rush the blood from under the fingernails for typing and DNA fingerprinting. I push him on the subject, and he nods nervously. Late for the autopsy, he’s got a lot of catching up to do, starting with breaking out the Duraprint spray to see if he can get fingerprints from Monique’s neck. He tries but can’t.

The Sioux believe in the spirit world, believe in vision quests, ghosts, and communicating with the dead. My Cajun daddy believed in purgatory, heaven, and hell, like a good Catholic. I don’t know what to believe, but I let my mind tell Monique Lewis, as I stand next to her body, that I am Sharp Eyes of the Oglala, and I will catch who did this to her.

I can tell this white woman my secret tribe name because the words do not cross my lips. If there is a spirit world, she can hear me and know this plains warrior will track down her killer, no matter how long it takes.

“What were you mumbling back there?” Borgo asks as we leave.

“Mumbling?”

Monique Lewis lived in a garage apartment behind a three-story house in need of a new paint job. The garage could also use a paint-over and new railing for its stairs. The woman in the house, who I hoped would be the landlord, says the landlord lives in Mississippi. She gives us the name and address of the landlord as she tells us she’s never seen Monique, who must keep odd hours.

We use Monique’s house key to get in and find a very neat apartment smelling of flowers and incense. Scented candles in small glass jars line the window sills. A search of her closet, chifforobe, and dresser drawers reveals she lived alone. No address book, however, and no computer; but plenty of books, a CD player, videotape deck, and a TV. No cable. Lots of CDs, rock mostly, and movie tapes, a variety from musicals like An American in Paris to the crime film Scarface, the Pacino version.

“There were only four Beatles,” Borgo says as he points to the five posters on the bedroom wall. “So who’s this guy?”

It’s a young, bearded man with soft eyes sandwiched between posters of Paul McCartney and George Harrison. I tell him, “Cat Stevens.”

“Yeah? The guy who went Muslim, right? Gave up the music.”

I always wonder if the previous owner of my houseboat named her Sad Lisa from the Cat Stevens song. Or maybe they knew a Lisa who was sad. No way to know, since I bought it at an estate auction. Couple died together in a car wreck. I thought of changing the name, but somebody wanted that name, and it seems to fit the boat. Unlike the white-eyes, we Sioux don’t readily change the names of things.

There’s no granola in the kitchen, just corn flakes and Cheerios. Borgo finds an expired driver’s license from Vancouver, Canada. Monique looks like a teenager in the picture. There’s no phone in Monique’s apartment, so I call the information in on the radio to have it forwarded to the coroner’s office. We canvass the neighborhood but come up with nothing useful.

“You too tired to go on?” I ask Borgo when he yawns.

“Naw. First twenty-four hours are the most important, ain’t they?”

So we split up. He’ll search for Cedrick Smith, while I go interview Lieutenant Bruce Addams, United States Coast Guard.

About a mile and a half from West End Park stands a Coast Guard substation, a two-story, white Victorian-style building with a round portico atop, a lighthouse actually, galleries around both stories, and a red tin roof. It rests on a point of land jutting into Lake Pontchartrain just as Lakeshore Drive makes a dogleg turn from north to east. I park in an “official business only” parking spot next to a gray government sedan.

The lake is dotted with sailboats on this breezy morning. Inshore, a pair of braver guys glide by on parasails, standing on surfboards. The air is rich with the scent of cooking from the restaurants adjacent to the USCG substation.

Lieutenant Bruce Addams greets me with a friendly handshake. He’s in khakis, short sleeved, with double silver bars on his collar. He’s about five ten, one-eighty maybe, with close-cropped reddish hair and brown eyes. Clean shaven, he has no cuts on his face, neck, or arms. According to the information the Levee Boards cops secured from his driver’s license when they interviewed him earlier, he’s thirty-six and lives at the Lake Marina Tower across the street from the New Orleans Marina.

“The name’s spelled with two ds,” he tells me. “No relation to Gomez and Morticia.” A big smile this time.

“Who?”

“The Addams Family. TV show. Movie with Raoul Julia, Angelica Huston?”

I shrug, then remember and say, “Guy dressed up like Frankenstein?”

“No, that’s The Munsters.”

We had a TV when I was a kid, but only three channels. I get that twinge in my gut again, knowing I missed a lot growing up. Guess I’ll never get used to it. I sit in a gray metal government-issue chair across from his desk as he sits and goes over his morning activities, his usual jog, gives me a timeline, and maps out his route from Lake Marina Drive over to West End Park, once around the park and up West Roadway to the point and back again. A two-mile jog. He never dipped down into the restaurant area.

“Did you see anyone?”

He saw two fishermen, one with a young boy.

“Any other joggers?”

“No, but Eric jogged the same route this morning.”

“Eric?”

“Lieutenant J. G. Eric Gault, my exec. He called in sick after his run. Fell down. Be in later today.”

I ask and discover Gault also lives at the Lake Marina Tower in a condo two doors down from Addams.

“Any other joggers here?”

“No, sir.”

“What were you wearing on your jog?”

He tells me he wore standard-issue gray USCG sweats, pants, and shirt and white running shoes. Nikes.

I hear my call sign on my radio, pull it out, and respond to Borgo, “Go ahead, 3139.”

“Got the subject in my unit. Heading to the office.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I leave my card, asking Lieutenant Addams to call when his exec comes in.

“No problem.”

As I stand I ask to see his driver’s license, and he tells me he’s from Detroit as he hands me his Michigan license. I take down the necessary information, then ask to see his dog tags. He blinks, shrugs, digs into the open collar of his khakis, and pulls his dog tags over his head and tosses them to me. I note his blood type. Like most people, including me, he’s O-positive.

Before I leave, he asks, “What’s this all about?”

“Someone was killed at West End Park this morning.”

His eyes widen. “Well, if I can help in any way.” He extends his hand and we shake again.

Cedrick Smith is graying along his temples. He wears a black T-shirt and blue jeans, black boots. He’s sitting in the folding chair next to my desk, and I look at him carefully. There are no scratch marks.

“Crime lab just called,” Borgo says, handing me a note.

Preliminary blood typing on the blood from under Monique’s fingernails is AB-positive. My heart beats a little faster as Borgo goes for coffee for all three of us. I’ll have to look it up on my chart, but as I recall only about four percent of the human population has AB-positive blood.

As I settle in the small interview room with Cedrick Smith and our coffees, I ask Borgo to go check Smith’s record again, call his probation officer if he has to, get Smith’s blood type.

“It’s O-positive,” Smith tells me. He produces a blood donor card to confirm this.

I pull out my Miranda warning card to read Smith his rights. He nods and says he’ll talk because he’s done nothing. Still he looks wary. I ask him why he didn’t show up for work this morning. He gives me an elaborate alibi, how he was at his girlfriend Lucy’s house, gave me the address, said he was with six other people, gave me their names, said he drank too much and didn’t wake up until nine o’clock. He went home and found the detective waiting for him.

“What’s this about?”

I watch his eyes carefully as I ask if he knows Monique Lewis.

“Who?”

I describe her.

He nods. “Skinny white girl. Cleans up. Yeah, I seen her. I don’t know her.”

I tell him she was murdered.

He closes his eyes and leans back, shaking his head. “No wonder you scooped me up. I’m a registered sex offender in Jefferson Parish.” His eyes snap open. “Man, I tell you, I ain’t raped nobody, ain’t done nothin’.” He extends his arm. “Take my DNA. Check it.”

I turned to Borgo. “Get the crime lab over. Let’s get a swab from his mouth before we let him go.” Smith has no problem with that, and NOPD will have his DNA on file.

Cedrick Smith squints at me. “You’re lettin’ me go?”

Lieutenant Addams calls just as I’m getting off the phone with Monique Lewis’s mother in Canada. Lieutenant J. G. Gault is at work now. I tell him we’ll be right over. On our way, I give Borgo the lowdown on what I learned from Monique’s mother. “She sounds old. Her daughter’s been gone fifteen years. Last time she heard from Monique she was in New Mexico or Arizona. Never married. Our victim has two sisters and a brother who’s coming to pick up the body.” Then I tell him how Monique has a daughter being raised by one of her sisters.

Gault is about four inches shorter than me, around five ten, but heavier, two hundred pounds at least, mostly muscle. His light brown hair is boxed into a flattop, looking crisp and hard. He also wears khakis, a single silver bar on his collar. He limps as he moves to shake hands. I was hoping for a bandage or two on his arms or hands, but no luck there.

As he shakes my hand firmly, I nod at the limp, watching his deep-set blue eyes. “What happened?”

“Fell jogging this morning.”

“West End, right?” Lieutenant Addams asks from behind his desk.

“That little bridge in West End Park.”

I remember a bridge over a man-made pond.

“What time was that?” I ask.

Gault describes the route he took, similar to Addams’s route but earlier in the morning. No, he didn’t run near the restaurants either. I ask to see his driver’s license, which turns out to be from Oklahoma. He’s thirty-three but looks much younger.

I let Borgo take over the conversation, as planned, and watch Gault carefully, not that I learn anything from his body language except he’s tense. Very tense. But he looks Borgo in the eye with each answer and looks at me, too, as he answers each question with no problem.

“What were you wearing on your jog?” Borgo asks.

He glances at Addams and shrugs as if we’re boring him and tells us USCG gray sweats and black running shoes.

“What brand?”

“Reeboks. And if I remember what color socks, I’ll call you.” He winks as if he’s joking, but the bite of his words tells me differently. Addams furrows his brow momentarily. Gault sighs, reaches back to rub the back of his head, and says, “Sorry to snap. My leg’s hurting.”

“Have you seen a doctor about it?” I ask.

“Naw,” he smiles. “It’s just a sprain. Ace bandage.”

As we stand to leave, I ask to see his dog tags. He hesitates a moment and Addams says, “I think it’s routine.”

Gault gives me a hard look, one I’m sure intimidates enlisted men, but has no effect on me, and I let him know with an expressionless stare back at him. He stands and reaches into his shirt and I see he has a V-neck white T-shirt under. He doesn’t take the tags off, making me come to look. I watch his eyes as I reach forward to examine the dog tag. I try not to react to Gault having AB-positive blood.

I ease around him toward the far wall to some sort of nautical instrument, a ship’s wheel encased in glass with a long glass tube extending beneath it, looking a little like a thermometer, and ask, “What’s this?”

“Barometer,” Addams says.

As I turn, I see Gault has backed toward a side wall, so I move that way to a wooden sailing ship atop a small bookcase. The name plate under the man-o-war tells me it’s the U.S.S. Constitution.

“Old Ironsides,” says Addams.

As I move between Gault and the bookcase, he shifts quickly and I look down at his injured left leg. He says, without prodding, “Need to work it out.”

“Any reason why you keep facing me?” I step around him and see a patch of white at the back of his neck. “Is that a bandage?”

“Yeah. When I tripped this morning, I fell in those bushes by the little bridge. Thorns stuck me.”

I nod as I ease over and shake Addams’s hand, then thank Gault and lead Borgo out. As we get into our car, I see Borgo can’t hold it in any longer and he asks, “How’d you know about the bandage behind his neck?”

“Well, she didn’t scratch his arms, and they were the same height.”

I get behind the wheel and Borgo shakes his head. “That’s it? That’s how you came up with it?”

“You have to be more observant, amigo.”

“It’s pisano. I’m Italian. So, where to now?”

“Bridge.”

It’s a rock and concrete bridge over the edge of a man-made pond at the far end of West End Park. As we examine the bushes, Borgo states the obvious. “Azalea bushes and that’s a camellia bush. No thorns here.” We check each bush carefully, not a branch bent or broken, not a leaf missing, and no human tissue scraped on thornless branches.

“So what now?” Borgo asks.

“Search warrants.”

We climb back into the Chevy and he asks, “Warrants? As in two?”

“We’ll need a description of his building and the exact location of his condo for the first warrant. You’ll search there for the jogging clothes he wore while I take him to Charity with the other warrant.” He keeps looking at me, so I explain. “Get his blood for typing and DNA testing and get a doctor to look at that thorn injury.”

As soon as we secure the warrants we call for a marked car to meet us at the Lake Marina Tower. Officer S. Panola, whose platoon switched around to the evening shift, meets us. Her regular partner, who also has cornrows, is male, six three, two-fifty, with a nameplate that reads E. HAWKINS, greets us as we park and goes in to find the manager so we don’t have to kick down Gault’s door.

I ask for another car to meet me at the USCG substation, and my buddy Sidney Tilghman is waiting for me outside the station.

“Well, well, this is fast work.”

I give him a quick rundown and ask that he put Gault in the back of his unit, in the cage, and follow me to Charity Hospital.

“Want I should ask him anything, slick like, you know? Maybe he’ll slip up and say something.”

Yeah. Right. So I tell him, “Sure. See if he’ll tell you he killed her.”

Tilghman pulls up his uniform pants as I lead the way into the substation. Addams isn’t there, but Gault is, and I step into his office, pull out my ID folder, and read him his Miranda rights before telling him, “We have a search warrant for blood and skin samples. You’ll have to come along with us.”

He takes his time getting up, and I see Tilghman is antsy as he eases around me and says, “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

Gault limps around his desk, eyes darting between the sergeant and me, but not meeting my eyes. I show him the warrant. His eyes don’t even blink.

“Show him your knife,” Tilghman urges me. When I don’t, he tells Gault he’s a lucky man, I usually slice some hair off when I nab a killer. “You behave now,” Tilghman continues, “and I won’t cuff you till we get out to the car. Get feisty and I’ll slap them on and march you out in front of all your men like that.” He pats Gault down.

I’m sure the enlisted men can see outside as Tilghman cuffs Gault behind his back before slipping him into the back of the marked police car.

“This isn’t necessary,” Gault says in a gravely voice.

“You ride in my car, you get cuffed.” Tilghman shuts the door.

The ER at Charity is crowded, as usual, and smells of alcohol wipes, Pine Sol, and body odor. We ease through the waiting room, and an Orleans Parish sheriff’s deputy comes around to escort Tilghman and his handcuffed prisoner to an alcove, where Tilghman takes off the cuffs, and I go hunt down the duty police surgeon.

Dr. Sam Martinez is short, young, and energetic and quickly takes two swabs from inside Gault’s mouth before securing a blood sample from his left arm. As the warrant instructs, the doctor examines the injury at the back of Gault’s neck and nods to me.

“The wound is consistent with fingernail scratches,” the doctor says after he dresses the wound in a fresh bandage and steps away. “Can’t be positive, but it’s consistent.”

“Says he fell in some bushes.”

“Possible,” says the doctor. “But unlikely.”

I thank him and Tilghman slips the cuffs back on Gault, and we leave for the Detective Bureau, where we uncuff Gault again before putting him into an interview room to simmer for a half hour.

“Coffee?” I ask Tilghman, who shakes his head.

“Hope you got the right guy, Cochise,” he says with a grin on his way out.

“Cochise was Apache,” I tell him, and he waves back over his shoulder.

After I turn over the swabs and blood sample to a crime lab tech, I take two coffees into the interview room, where Gault stands behind the small table in the room.

“Sit down,” I say. “Have some coffee.”

He folds his arms.

Gault won’t cop out, won’t even talk to me after I read him his rights again and have him put his initials on a waiver-of-rights form. He signs on the line that says he does not waive his rights and wants to speak with a lawyer before answering any questions. He folds his arms and leans back in the chair, ogling me for a long moment. Then he smiles.

I lock eyes with him and for long seconds, neither of us moves. I hear the distant beat of war drums echoing in my brain. No, it’s my heart thumping as I look into the eyes of this killer. I clench my fists and fight the urge to wring his neck. I’m reminded of the legend of the leering Cheyenne renegade called Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. I reach around for my knife wanting so badly to eviscerate this monster sitting across the table from me, wipe that smile off the earth, just as my ancestors wiped the Cheyenne renegade from the land of the living. But I let out a deep breath, take another in, and feel the rage in me slowly subside as Gault’s smile fades and he tries a hard look now. My face remains expressionless. A plains warrior never shows emotion, especially to the white-eyes. I leave him in the room with his untouched mug of coffee and chicory.

I can tell from the grin on Borgo’s wide face, as he crosses the squad room, that it went well at the condo. He’s bouncing on his toes as he shows me the ripped and bloody collar from Gault’s gray USCG sweatshirt, then shows me a small plastic bag secured with red evidence tape. Inside is a broken purple fingernail.

“Found it in the dirty clothes hamper with the sweat suit.” Borgo beams. “Did he cop?”

“No. Wants to talk to his lawyer.”

Borgo looks at the closed interview room door and shakes his head. “Like to know why, man. What brought it on. Did she rebuff him? Did he just pounce on her?” He looks back at me now. “Maybe he hates women with tattoos, nose piercings.”

I shrug. “So long as we get the who right, it’s all that matters.”

He bounces again. “Man what a thrill, finding that nail.”

I nod again and have to say it. “Yep. The nail in the coffin.”

“Man, that was fast work. Getting it in the first twenty-four hours, right?”

“Good thing,” I tell him. “I start on vacation tomorrow.”

He laughs. “Where ya’ goin’? Disney World. Get away from all this... funk?”

“No.” I stretch out my back again, fighting off a yawn. “Putting Sad Lisa into dry dock for maintenance. Heading for home.”

“The Dakotas?”

“Vermilion Bay.” I narrow my eyes at him. “That where you go on vacation, Disney World?”

“Naw. I’m a hurricane watcher. Take my vacation days piecemeal. Go where the big storms hit. Went to Florida three times last year.”

The tiredness doesn’t hit me until we walk Gault over to Central Lockup, alongside Police Headquarters on the stretch of cement we call “Hollywood Walk,” where three TV cameras follow us, Borgo leading the way.

Borgo’s telling me about a new tropical depression that’ll probably end up in the Gulf of Mexico. “It’ll have a name starting with K,” he tells me, but I’m not listening.

I haven’t slept for over twenty-four hours, and I smile wearily for the cameras, like my daddy used to smile after a good hunt in the swamp. Of course Borgo was right, the first twenty-four hours of a murder case are the most important.

THURSDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2005

A month to the day after the murder, I stand beneath the live oak where Monique Lewis lost her life. There’s nothing to indicate anything happened here, but everything else is different now. This is the only tree left standing in West End Park. Maxim’s Crab Claw Restaurant, where Monique worked, and all the other restaurants are gone, the boatyards mere shells of buildings, all destroyed by that K storm Borgo first alerted me to. Hurricane Katrina.

Monique’s tree is the only living thing here, even the bushes are dead. A thick coat of gray brown dirt covers the entire area, more like a moonscape than a park. A lingering odor of petroleum permeates the air, mixed with the stench of mildew and death — dead fish, dead cats, dead dogs, probably several humans we haven’t found yet in the wreckage.

The park where Gault claimed he’d tripped is littered with abandoned cars and pickups, along with dozens of sailboats and other pleasure craft flung here, most of the boats in pieces. The sun looks the same as it sets over Lake Pontchartrain. But there are no pelicans gliding above the open water, no gulls dancing over the water beyond the restaurant pilings, no stray cats anywhere to be seen.

I suck in a deep breath of sun-baked air and tell the tree, “We got the results of the DNA test today, and it’s an exact match.” Thankfully, the FBI lab is functioning better than NOPD. I look at the ground where Monique had lain in death. “Just wanted you to know.” I take in another deep breath before going on. “Wish I could tell you why, what brought on his rage. Maybe you already know that, maybe you don’t. But you’re the one who caught him, you know, digging your nails fighting back, drawing blood and skin.” I keep looking at the spot where Monique died and wish there is more to say, but there never is.

A scraping noise turns me around and it’s Borgo walking up behind me. I hadn’t seen him since the storm. We’ve been scattered around, trying to keep the city from dying from the inside after being blown apart from the outside. Borgo nods toward the tree, then tells me the Coast Guard Station’s gone. Blown down.

“I saw it.”

“That other hurricane’s gonna hit us,” he says.

“Rita? I thought she was headed for Houston.”

“She’s a Category Five now, got the third lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, and she’s huge, like Katrina, covers most of the state. We’re on the east side, the bad side. We’ll get the tidal surge again.

Jesus, the words tidal surge ring like a funeral bell in my ears.

“The levees won’t hold,” he adds, and I turn away, wondering how the hell we’ll be able to weather the next blow.