Sleeping With the Crawfish Page 15

  When looking for an exotic poison in a fluid sample, it may require many tests to identify the toxin. It’s therefore important to get as much sample as possible. Had Broussard been in charge, he, too, would have asked for a bottle instead of a test tube.

  While Buddy gathered up the necessary items, Graham looked at Broussard. “Just for the record, if the state of Mississippi won’t cover the cost of the tox analysis, who am I gonna bill?”

  “Send it to me.”

  “Anybody audits expenditures for your office, they’re gonna wonder. . . .”

  “I’ll pay for this one myself.”

  14

  Whatever Gene Graham wanted, funeral home Janie was ready to provide, so that minutes after their arrival, the body of Anthony Hunter was back in the embalming room on a gurney, his split suit coat and his tie off, the toothed plastic caps that held his lids in place and ensured his dead eyes had the proper contour removed.

  Graham withdrew as much fluid as he could from the globe of each eye, a process that usually led to ocular collapse. Having been exposed to the firming influence of embalming chemicals, Hunter’s eyes retained their shape fairly well.

  Janie and her bearded assistant carefully rolled the body onto its side so Graham could slip a syringe between the lumbar vertebrae into the subarachnoid space. He withdrew a syringeful of clear liquid and discharged it into the plastic bottle he’d brought. He then went back for more, this time getting less than before.

  They left the authorization for Hunter’s wife with Janie, and Noell and Broussard took Graham back to the forensic center.

  “I’ll get these samples to Toxicology right away,” Graham said, standing by the car and talking to Broussard through the open window. “Obviously, I can’t say how long it’ll take for results”—he raised his eyebrows—“or how much it might cost.”

  “They find that toxin in Hunter, he’ll have to be exhumed and a full autopsy done,” Broussard said.

  “Well . . . it’s always somethin’. When are you goin’ home?”

  “I left it open. Now that it’s pretty certain Hunter was murdered, I’d like to know more about him—what kind of research he did, for one thing. So I’m gonna stick around awhile.”

  “The wife and I are goin’ out tonight to celebrate our fortieth anniversary. Want to come along?”

  “I don’t think she’d appreciate the company.”

  “Might not at that. You’d think after forty years she’d be used to me, but I seem to get on her nerves now more than ever. Tomorrow night, then, you and I will go somewhere. If you’re still here. Let me know. . . .” He bent down and looked at Noell. “Sergeant, you come back again now.”

  Noell drove Broussard to the Peabody, where she parked near the back entrance near a flower bed overflowing with purple and white petunias. “What’s the schedule?”

  “I’m gonna register, then check on the hours at the medical center library. I want to read some of Hunter’s research papers and see what biographical information is available on him.”

  “I can stick around and take you.”

  “No need. If I go, I’ll catch a cab.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “I’d like to visit the Physiology Department at the medical center and talk to the people who knew Hunter. That’ll probably go better if you’re there, too.”

  “I’d start with the wife.”

  “I know that’s the usual way to go, but this isn’t a typical case.”

  Noell waited for him to say more.

  “I wish I could, but I can’t discuss it in any more detail.”

  “Good thing for you he was killed in Mississippi. Otherwise, we’d have a problem. As it is, I’m only a tour guide.”

  “I appreciate your understandin’.”

  “You want to start at UT, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll pick you up right here, then, at . . . nine?”

  “I’ll be waitin’.”

  They went around to the trunk to get Broussard’s bags.

  From a few blocks over on Beale Street, they could hear a funky electric guitar in the hands of a real bluesman, making Broussard feel as though he wasn’t as far from the French Quarter as he thought. His flight bag had tipped over and the paperback he’d stuffed in the side pocket had fallen onto the floor of the trunk. As he retrieved it, Noell said, “Crossfire Trail. I’ve read that. You’re a Louis L’ Amour fan?”

  “Enough to have read eighty-five of ’em.”

  “I’m not far behind you. There’s just something about the way that man tells a story . . . like he’d actually seen everything he writes about.”

  They stood there without speaking, Broussard wondering where to go with this newly discovered common ground. Throughout the day, he’d felt increasingly at ease with her and at one point had directed his attention to her left hand where it rested on the steering wheel, admiring her well-shaped fingers, he told himself, but also noting that she wore a wedding ring.

  Why, then, did he hear himself saying, “Look, you bought lunch, so how about you and your husband joinin’ me for dinner tonight in the hotel, as my guests?”

  “My husband is a minor-league baseball umpire,” Noell said. “Tonight, he’s in Birmingham doing a Stallions game, or whatever that team is called.”

  “What would you think about comin’ without him?”

  He’d clothed his invitation as repayment for a favor, trying to hide its deeper significance even from himself. But a part of him saw through that, so when Noell hesitated, he felt as though everyone with rooms in the back of the hotel were watching and eavesdropping with parabolic listening devices.

  Finally, she said, “What time?”

  “Seven?”

  “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  At the hotel entrance, Broussard declined the bellhop’s solicitation of his bags and went inside, mulling over what had just happened. Noell’s hesitation meant she, too, thought there was some impropriety in the two of them having dinner without her husband. But she’d agreed anyway. Which meant . . . she liked Louis L’ Amour enough to want to talk about his work with another fan over a nice meal. Surely that’s what it was, nothing more. And really, wasn’t that all he wanted?

  Actually, he shouldn’t be thinking about any of this, he reasoned. He needed to get to his room and let Kit and Tabor know Hunter had been murdered. With luck, Kit wouldn’t already be in Thibodaux.

  The hotel lobby was bedlam. There were kids running everywhere, carrying floating balloons. Thickets of people with name tags crowded the bar and stood chatting in small groups, most of them undoubtedly there for the Arnold’s Beauty World convention, which was welcomed by a big red-and-white banner stretched across a line of booths on the mezzanine. At the end of the lobby opposite the bar, a piano with no one at the keyboard cranked out a jazz number, the music mingling with the sound of splashing water from a large fountain where camera flashes were recording the movements of the ducks that swam there.

  He made his way to registration, checked in, and hurried to his room, where he called Kit. Getting only her answering machine, he left the news about Hunter and dialed Tabor’s pager.

  True to his word, Tabor returned the call a few minutes later.

  “Brian . . . Andy Broussard. I’ve got news. Anthony Hunter was murdered.” He recounted his visit to Hunter’s home, his experiments with the mouse, and the trip to the funeral home to draw samples. He then asked where Kit was.

  “Far as I know, she’s working at the institute in Thibodaux.”

  “She needs to be told about Hunter.”

  “I agree. It’s too risky, though, to call her at work and tell her. Someone may overhear. We’ll have to wait until she gets home. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

  “I already left a message on her machine about it. If that institute has anything to do with Hunter’s death, it’s too dangerous for her to be there.”

  “I’ll talk to her tonight.”

  “And pull her out of th
ere?”

  “That could happen.”

  “I hope it does.”

  “When are you coming back to New Orleans?”

  “I don’t know. I want to scout around here some more.”

  “Okay. Keep me informed.”

  “I will.”

  At practically the same moment he hung up, Broussard remembered he’d forgotten to mention the phone number on the back of Tabor’s card. No matter, he’d do it next time. He then called the UT medical library. Learning they were open until 10:00 P.M., he went downstairs and found a cab.

  Broussard had heard that Memphis sat on a major earthquake fault. Apparently, the architects for the medical center library were unaware of this, for the building, a seven-story cement monolith, was perched on pillars like a bayou fishing shanty. As he went inside and rode the elevator up to the library, he felt he should read fast and get out.

  From Hunter’s entry in American Men of Science, he learned Hunter had been forty-two, had received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, had been a three-time grantee from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and had served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology. His entry did not say why anyone would want him dead.

  Reading over the abstracts of Hunter’s work he found in the computer database for Index Medicus, he discovered that Hunter’s research dealt with dietary influences on coronary artery disease. Hunter seemed particularly interested in the French paradox, the fact the French cook with lots of butter and cream yet don’t develop coronary artery disease like we do in this country. For a decade, Hunter had published at least four papers a year. Oddly, he’d published nothing last year or the year before. The index did not contain a list of his enemies.

  Broussard returned to the Peabody at five o’clock, to find a large crowd arranged in two lines facing each other across an open space that ran from the lobby fountain to the elevators. Whatever was going on was taking place to the accompaniment of a Sousa march. Curious as to the meaning of this, he joined the nearest line and found a space he could peek through.

  It was the fountain ducks, being leisurely herded down a red carpet to an open elevator. When they reached it, the ducks and their trainer got on, the doors closed, and the crowd melted away. Always a detail man, Broussard wondered as he waited for his own elevator what the trainer would have done if the ducks had soiled the red carpet.

  Noell wasn’t to arrive for another two hours. Broussard spent most of that time in his room reading Crossfire Trail. Around six, he thought about calling Kit, but didn’t. As much as he wanted her out of harm’s way, it wouldn’t do to pressure her. Do that and she’d probably decide to take the opposite position. He’d passed along the critical information. It was up to her now. A few minutes before seven, he put the book down and changed into fresh clothes.

  Noell walked into the lobby at exactly 7:00 P.M., wearing a black skirt and a sleeveless white jacket with a black orchid design. Her hair looked as soft and light as spun gold. She was, Broussard thought, an uncommonly fine detective.

  Feeling awkward about commenting on her appearance, he greeted her by saying, “You’re very punctual.”

  “It’s my best feature.”

  “Would you like a drink before dinner?”

  “Sounds nice.”

  They found a couple of unoccupied armchairs facing each other over a small table and gave their orders—a strawberry daiquiri for Broussard, a white Russian for Noell—to a young cocktail waitress in a short black dress. As the waitress left them, Noell said, “Did you find anything useful in the library?”

  “Nothin’ jumped out at me. But it’s really too soon to expect that.”

  “I prefer to discover who the killer is right away.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Sometimes he’s still kicking the body when the first cop gets there.”

  “But then there’s no challenge.”

  “I’d rather have a perfect solve rate than a lot of challenges.”

  The waitress soon appeared with their drinks and for the next few minutes they sat quietly, just enjoying the old hotel’s ambience, which had improved greatly with the arrival of a real person to play the piano and the absence of the ducks and the cameras they attracted.

  During this interlude, Broussard’s mind drifted to the past and he imagined himself as William Faulkner, drinking bourbon and sitting there with Faulkner’s writing protégée and Memphis mistress, Joan Williams, the other guests whispering behind their hands about them.

  Noell brought him back to the present. “Have you read Louis L’Amour’s autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man?”

  “I have indeed.”

  They spent the next few minutes talking about the kind of boy who would quit school at fifteen because it was “interfering with his education,” and they speculated on the nature of parents who would let a son of such an age go on the road by himself.

  They moved the discussion into Chez Phillip, the hotel’s premier restaurant and one of the best in the city, where Noell deferred to Broussard’s obviously greater knowledge and experience in these matters, allowing him to order for both of them, a gesture that pleasantly surprised him.

  Over an appetizer of rabbit-leg confit with carrot crostini and coriander-flavored wasabi sauce, they both laughed at Broussard’s observation that even as a boy, he couldn’t have survived on one sandwich a day, as L’ Amour had done while saving up for some books he wanted. As they savored a wonderful red onion bisque with homemade sausage, they discussed the battle of Doubtful Canyon, in which seven white men held off many hundreds of Apaches for three days, killing 150 Indians before most of the seven died of thirst and one killed himself with the last round of ammunition. Noell agreed with Cochise, who later said the seven were the bravest men he’d ever heard of. Broussard believed they merely did what they had to do.

  Appropriately enough, Broussard had ordered for their entrée roasted venison loin à la Choctaw, with smoked sweet potatoes and wild hackberry sauce. During this portion of their dinner, the subject became the battle of Adobe Walls and Billy Dixon’s famous long shot that knocked an Indian off his horse seven-eighths of a mile away.

  Finishing with fig and Armagnac puff pastry with malt and anise ice cream, they speculated on whether the hand and footholds allowing access to the Anasazi cliff dwellings really were placed so if you began on the wrong foot, you became trapped partway up. The conversation ended with a debate over which was Louis L’Amour’s best book, both now so satiated with food, neither could mount a very spirited defense of their choice.

  To Broussard’s disappointment, Noell insisted on paying for her own dinner, which, on a detective’s salary, was not an insignificant sum.

  Later, lying in his bed, Broussard remembered how, on three occasions, when Noell was impatient to speak, she touched his hand, letting it linger a bit longer than necessary.

  EXCEPT FOR LUNCH, WHICH they ate at a nearby restaurant called Thrifty Fifties, a place featuring ninety-nine-cent hamburgers and a jukebox full of vintage rock and roll, Kit and Jenny spent the rest of Kit’s first day preparing fresh electrophoresis samples, finishing at 5:20.

  Kit reached home a little over an hour later, absolutely worn out, mostly from the strain of having spent the day as someone else and worrying that the gun on her ankle was going to come loose and slide onto the floor.

  The first thing she did was listen to the message Broussard had left about Hunter. With that news and the rest of her day tumbling around in her head, she fed Lucky and shed the Ladysmith. She then called Tabor and left her number.

  Ten minutes after she’d put a TV dinner in the oven, Tabor called back.

  “They checked my references,” she said.

  “So I hear.”

  “Your people almost overdid it.”

  “So you got the job.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think I can do what you want.”

  “Because Anthony Hunter
was murdered?”

  “Andy told you?”

  “Right after he left you the message. Is that why you don’t want to continue? If it is, I can respect that.”

  “That’s not why. I thought Hunter had been murdered when we first learned he was dead.”

  “Why then are you having second thoughts?”

  “The director’s lab and office are behind a door that doesn’t even have hinges. It just slides in and out of the wall. And I’m working for someone who doesn’t seem to have any connection with the director. . . . So how am I going to get access to his phone?”

  “You’ve only been there one day. Don’t be so impatient.”

  “What, exactly, do you think is going to happen to make this work?”

  “If you stay, I think you’ll study the situation and come up with a plan.”

  “Me? I thought you were the one with the plan.”

  “Like I told you before, there’s always a certain amount of slippage. Give it a little time. Think about it and we’ll come up with something together . . . if you decide to go back.”

  “I don’t think I’m smart enough to do this.”

  “Kit, I know your record. Intelligence is not an issue. You’re probably the smartest, most resourceful woman I’ve ever worked with.”

  “You can’t know that. We’ve only just met.”

  “I’ve studied you. I’m not wrong. You’ve just lost your way, that’s all. It happens. You’re in a trough where you can’t see yourself properly. Not long ago, I was trying to find a restaurant I’d been to only one time before, in a city I don’t visit very often. I remembered its general location, but didn’t know exactly how to get there. You know how I found it? I simply relaxed and let my instincts guide me.”

  Kit got the point but didn’t want to admit it. “Why didn’t you just look up the address in the phone book and get a map from the hotel?”

  “There, see . . . natural intelligence, just like I said. So what do you think?”