Bad Karma In the Big Easy Read online

  “Oh my God,” Kit said. “It’s a plastic bag. That’s what he used on me.”

  “I don’t like dis game,” Bubba said. Nathan stopped walking, but the girl didn’t.

  “We have to see more,” Broussard said. “I know it’s difficult, but we need you to continue.”

  Bubba took a deep breath and resumed pressing controls on the console. Nathan began moving again. He quickly shifted into a speed walk that closed the distance between him and the girl.

  Now he was only about fifteen feet back. Then ten.... five... As close as he was, the girl didn’t appear to know he was there. It seemed so real Kit wanted to call out and warn her.

  Nathan was now right behind her. He raised the bag. What was wrong with that girl? Why didn’t she hear him coming? Jesus, was she deaf?

  Suddenly, the girl turned and opened fire with a snub nose thirty-eight. Nathan collapsed on the sidewalk and the game screen mushroomed into a red and black cloud. Green letters blazed across the screen.

  GAME OVER. THANKS FOR PLAYING

  Kit felt like cheering at Nathan’s death.

  “Well, dat was da wrong girl,” Bubba said. “Guess you all want a try again?”

  There was a subdued murmur of ascent.

  Bubba started a new game. This time, before Nathan got out of the car, Bubba had him look at the passenger seat. On it sat a knife and a gun. Nathan picked up the gun. Bubba also tried to pick up the knife, but he was allowed only one weapon or the other. Sticking with the gun, Nathan left the car and went after the girl heading to Nathan’s right on the other side of the street.

  The girl turned left at the first intersection. This took her onto a deserted cityscape that seemed like the opportunity Nathan was looking for. He began walking faster. This time, instead of having his plastic bag already out, he had the gun in his hand. He caught up to the girl, grabbed her, and put the gun to her head. She screamed.

  Up ahead, a cop car suddenly pulled out of a side street. It screeched to a stop. A cop piled out and aimed his pistol at Nathan. At the same instant, another cop car squealed to a stop behind Nathan. The girl squirmed away and ducked into a dark alley. Nathan raised his gun and fired at the cop ahead of him. Both cops then began blasting away. Nathan fell to the sidewalk riddled with gunshots.

  The now familiar red and black cloud washed over the screen, followed by the green letters: GAME OVER. THANKS FOR PLAYING.

  Bubba looked at Broussard. “Maybe it’s time we used da cheat sheet.”

  Broussard nodded. “Do that.”

  Bubba pulled a sheaf of stapled papers off the desk beside the monitor. He read through the first page. “So dat’s da secret.” He looked at Broussard. “None a those first girls we saw are safe to follow.”

  Bubba started a new game. This time, he had Nathan stay in the car until the girls who had come out of the brownstone were out of sight. The scene shifted back to the brownstone’s front door, where another girl emerged.

  “Dere’s da one we want,” Bubba said.

  The girl came down the steps and turned to her right, taking her away from Nathan’s car.

  Nathan got out and followed.

  Like the previous two girls, this one quickly reached a dark section of the city. Nathan began to move faster. Soon, he was barely six feet behind her, plastic bag in hand.

  Though it was just a game, Kit felt sick to her stomach knowing there was nothing this girl could do to save herself. In the game avatar, she saw Jennifer Hendrin. And she saw herself.

  Nathan rushed the girl and slipped the bag over her head. She struggled, and just as Kit had done, slid to the ground.

  “It ain’t me,” Bubba said, putting the console in his lap and lifting his hands up so all could see he wasn’t working the controls.

  The girl struggled to live, but Nathan twisted the neck of the bag hard against the back of the girl’s head. She bucked and kicked, emitting muffled screams.

  Kit looked away.

  Then it was over. The girl lay still. Nathan waited for Bubba’s instructions.

  “Do I have to keep goin’?” Bubba pleaded to Broussard.

  Broussard put a chubby hand on Bubba’s shoulder. “We understand it’s not you doin’ this. You’re just demonstratin’ the game to us.”

  Bubba nodded.

  Using the cheat sheet for guidance, Bubba had Nathan drag his victim’s body into a nearby alley. Nathan returned to his car, drove it to the alley, and loaded the victim into his trunk. He then set out for his lair.

  Faced with four different routes he could take, Bubba avoided the one that would have killed Nathan in a collision with a runaway propane truck, another in which he would have drowned when an old bridge collapsed, and a third where he would have been killed by two carjackers.

  When Nathan safely reached his hideaway, an abandoned one-room schoolhouse in the country, the game took away Bubba’s control.

  Nathan carried the body in the back door and put it on a large table with a work light clamped to it. He adjusted the light so it illuminated the victim’s face. He wiped off the victim’s eye make-up, then reached down to a shelf under the table and brought out a bottle labeled, India Ink. Using a large hat pin, he repeatedly drove the ink into the victim’s skin, mimicking eyeliner.

  Astounded by the similarity of the game to their real case, Kit muttered, “Jesus.”

  “I know,” Broussard agreed, unable to take his eyes off the monitor.

  When Nathan was finished tattooing the victim, he undressed her, carried her to a chest freezer and dumped her in. He returned to his car. A fade-out occurred followed by a fade-in that now showed Nathan in his car, cruising a campus parking lot at night. Scattered through the lot, isolated young women were getting out of their cars and heading for the crosswalk that led to the main part of the campus.

  “Can we take a break for a minute?” Bubba asked.

  “It’s pretty gruesome, I agree,” Broussard said. “How does this kind of thing get on store shelves? Is there no sense of decency out there?”

  “Not really,” Bubba replied. “If somebody will buy it, someone will sell it.”

  “There’s no question in my mind, that the guy we’re after knew about this game and modeled his actions on what he saw here,” Kit said. “But that’s all it tells us. It doesn’t bring us any closer to finding him. They could have sold thousands of copies of the game. And who knows how many original owners have given or traded away their copies.”

  “All true,” Broussard said. “But we’re not dealin’ with someone who simply copied what he saw in the game. He added a twist of his own.”

  “All his victims, before he went after me, were surrogates,” Kit said.

  “Exactly. Whatever caused him to choose that class of victim makes him unique.”

  “I still don’t see how knowing about this game helps us find him.”

  “Let’s watch the rest of it before we think about that. Bubba, can you continue?”

  “I think so.”

  Over the next thirty minutes, Nathan collected and tattooed two more women. Like his first victim, he undressed each of them and put them in his freezer.

  After a fade out and fade in, everyone watching got to see Nathan do what Broussard had deduced the real killer had done with his victims.

  He took each cadaver out of the freezer and fit it with a contraption that circled the torso in two places with metal rings connected by a rod along the victims’ spine. Using a loop welded to the rod, he attached each body to a pulley system screwed to the ceiling. He hoisted the bodies until they were suspended with feet barely off the ground. From an adjacent storeroom, he pulled a rack of clothes over to the hanging bodies. While Kit and the others watched with horror, Nathan dressed each of them from the rack. He then sat down in a chair and admired what he’d done.

  The scene abruptly shifted to an exterior shot. Five police cruisers pulled into the schoolyard and fanned out in a line. A pair of cops from the first car in the line
and another pair from the last one jumped out of their cruisers. Weapons drawn, they circled around to the rear of the schoolhouse. The six cops in the other three cars crouched behind their open doors, weapons ready. One of them called out to Nathan over a megaphone.

  “You inside. This is the state police. Come out unarmed with your hands on your head. Do not resist. We are here in numbers. There’s no way out of there, but through us. You have one minute to make your decision.”

  Inside, with Bubba controlling the ensuing events, Nathan went to cache of weapons on a nearby table. Avoiding a grenade launcher that would have exploded in his hands, a machine gun that would have jammed, and a flamethrower whose tank would have been punctured by a police bullet, engulfing him in flames, he chose a pair of semi automatic shotguns with drum-shaped magazines. He shouldered one of the guns using its carrying strap and cradled the other in his left arm. He emptied a box of cartridges into a pocket in his cargo pants.

  The game once again began to play on its own. Grinning smugly, Nathan went to a trapdoor, opened it, and dropped into a prepared tunnel so large he could move through it standing up. He ran down the tunnel to its end and climbed a small ladder.

  The scene shifted to a wide-angle exterior shot of the cops hiding behind their cars. In the woods behind them, a camouflaged trap door on the ground opened. Nathan climbed out. He turned and began blasting at the cops with one of the shotguns.

  Taken by surprise, the cops by their cars were massacred as Nathan emptied the first gun at them, firing so rapidly the scatter shot couldn’t miss.

  Hearing the gunfire, the cops behind the schoolhouse came running. But in the time it took them to reach the action, Nathan had switched to his other gun. In seconds, the last four cops lay dead on the ground.

  Through the trees, Nathan saw two more cop cars turn onto the school drive from the main road. He popped open the magazine of the shotgun in his hand and reloaded. He then ran to the cruiser nearest the drive and hid in front of it. When the two fresh cruisers arrived, Nathan easily killed the four cops in them.

  The game cut to a scene of Nathan listening to the radio in his car, riding happily away from the school. The camera cut to a long shot of Nathan’s car disappearing in the distance. Over the image a message appeared. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU ARE A WINNER. WATCH FOR NIGHT DEMON 2, COMING SOON.

  “I need to wash my hands,” Bubba said, getting out of his chair.

  “Down the hall to your left,” Broussard said. He watched Bubba leave, then said, “That was disappointin’. Watchin’ the rest didn’t help at all.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Kit said suddenly standing and pointing to the screen.

  Broussard turned just in time to see what she meant.

  Chapter 26

  “Game designed and developed by Marion Marshall,” Broussard read from the credits. “Are you thinkin’...?”

  “Go with me a minute,” Kit said excitedly. “Suppose Marion Marshall created this game because he’s always wanted to do what Nathan did. Then, he finally followed those impulses and became Nathan, killing and tattooing the three women from the LeDoux Street freezer. Suppose further, he’s a relative of Jude Marshall, maybe Jude’s brother. Jude knew his brother was unhinged and capable of murder, yet he did nothing about it. Then, Jude learned about the three bodies in the freezer. Feeling responsible and guilty for having let his brother do that, Jude committed suicide.”

  “Quite a string of assumptions.”

  “Where is it weak?”

  “Do Jude and Quentin even have a brother?”

  Kit shook her head. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Why were surrogates chosen?”

  “Work in progress. Doesn’t mean my theory is wrong.”

  Broussard continued probing. “We don’t even know that Marion Marshall is related to Jude.”

  “Let’s get busy and find out, unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “Give me a minute...”

  While Kit mulled that over, Teddy said, “Guess it wouldn’t be a good idea to just ask Quentin Marshall if he has a brother named Marion.”

  “If I’m right, Quentin might also have known what Marion did,” Kit replied. “Asking him anything like that could warn Marion we’re closing in.”

  “Jude’s wife might know if there’s a third brother,” Broussard said. “She likely wouldn’t know anything about him being a killer and therefore would think the question was innocuous.”

  “It’s still risky,” Kit said. “And we didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t think she’d even speak to me again.”

  “What are we talkin’ about?” Bubba asked, returning from the bathroom.

  “Strategy for future action,” Broussard said.

  “We finished with da game?”

  Broussard looked at Kit, who said, “We might need it down the line for evidence, but for now we’re through.”

  “Can I return it?”

  “I’d like to hold on to it for awhile.”

  “I promised I’d have it back by tomorrow mornin’.”

  “Okay, go ahead and return it. If we need it again, we’ll reborrow it or find another copy.”

  While Bubba set about disconnecting the game from the monitor, the others thought about the problem at hand.

  A few seconds later, Broussard said, “Why don’t we...”

  At the same instant, Kit said, “It’s extremely...”

  Broussard deferred. “Go ahead...”

  “It’s extremely likely the killer lived in Louisiana before the hurricane. Let’s call the Baton Rouge PD and see if Marion Marshall has a Louisiana driver’s license.”

  “I was about to suggest the same thing.”

  “Have you got the direct number for dispatch?”

  “I think so.” Broussard reached for his Rolodex.

  “You need me anymore?” Bubba asked.

  “Not at the moment,” Broussard replied. “But you’ve been a big help.”

  “Guess I better get back to dose potatoes den.”

  As Bubba left, Teddy said, “There’s not going to be anybody in my insurance agent’s office on a Sunday morning, but I should call him and leave a message about what happened. Be right back.” He stepped out in the hall.

  “Here’s that number,” Broussard said.

  He called it out and Kit punched it into his phone. After she’d made her request to Baton Rouge and hung up, Broussard said, “How’d you like to call the Hendrins and tell ‘em how and where they can claim Jennifer’s body?”

  “You ready to release it now?”

  “It’s time.”

  “I’m sure that’ll give them a measure of closure. But finding her killer will do more. As for me calling them....” She stepped away from the phone and gestured toward it with both hands. “Your turn.”

  While Broussard called Jennifer’s parents, Kit monitored his e-mail for a reply from Baton Rouge. Considering how slow their response had been to her earlier request on a weekday, she was worried they’d be even slower on the weekend. But barely three minutes after Broussard finished speaking to Mrs. Hendrin, the awaited e-mail arrived.

  “What have we got?” Broussard asked.

  “Marion Marshall does have a Louisiana license.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “In Paradis. Look at his picture.”

  Broussard stepped around to the front of the monitor and leaned down.

  “What’s that on his face?” Kit asked, referring to the dark purple coloration on the left half of Marshall’s face below his eye.

  “Looks like a port wine birth mark.”

  “Can’t they be treated?”

  “Some improve with laser exposure, some don’t.”

  “Be pretty hard to grow up normal having that burden to deal with. Might even cause a latent sociopath to express those tendencies. I’m liking this guy better and better as our killer. Think we got enough to issue a se
arch warrant for his house?”

  “Lookin’ for....”

  Kit shrugged. “Hat pins that have been dipped in India Ink... the ink itself... souvenirs he might have taken from his victims.”

  “Let me call Phillip and ask what he thinks.”

  Broussard picked up the phone and punched in the number of Gatlin’s cell. “Phillip... Andy. I need your advice on somethin’.” Broussard paused, then said, “I might take it or I might not. Depends on how sound it is.” He explained the situation at length. He listened to Gatlin’s reply, then said, “Okay, thanks. We’ll get back to you.” He hung up and looked at Kit. “He said forget it. No judge would issue a warrant on what we have.”

  “Then let’s get more.”

  “How?”

  “We can start by driving over and taking a look at where he lives.”

  “IT CAN’T BE FAR now,” Kit said, thirty minutes later from behind the wheel of her car. She pointed to a tiled roof in the distance. “Bet it’s that next house.”

  They were in a remote area where scattered mansions and manicured estates were separated by huge tracts of swampy wilderness. Broussard was in the passenger seat next to her. Teddy was in the back.

  As they drew near the upcoming home, they could see the estate was surrounded by a tall wrought iron fence that ran between red brick pillars each topped with a granite cap and ball. The house itself, a sprawling structure with a domed portico reminiscent of Monticello, was at least two hundred yards back from the road.

  “Designing computer games must pay pretty well,” Teddy said.

  “Someone is leaving,” Broussard said, remarking on the red car coming down the drive.

  Kit eased up on the gas. “What do we do? I don’t want anybody from the house seeing us.”

  “Maybe they’ll go the other way.”

  The red car came through the gates and turned left so it was coming right at them.

  “If you do anything now, you’ll just draw attention to us,” Broussard said.

  Kit replied, “Pretend like you’re sleeping... turn your head to the side. Teddy, you do the same.”

  While both men did as she asked, Kit flipped down her visor and straightened in her seat so the visor would hide more of her face. This meant she could only see the small section of road just in front of her car.