Sleeping With the Crawfish Page 2

  “You’re too kind.”

  Kit’s apartment was Lilliputian: a living room, one bedroom, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen with a counter between it and the living room. Last week, a crack had developed in the center of the living room ceiling, ominously creeping a couple of inches a day, so it now formed a large nasty smile. Uncomforted by Nolen’s assurance that it was just the old building settling and meant nothing, Kit looked up to check its progress, noting with alarm that it was several inches longer than it had been a few hours ago.

  Tired of worrying about the crack, Kit’s mind drifted back to the wonderful old house she’d once owned in the uptown section—its beautiful Victorian beadwork and solid oak columns in the entry foyer, the glistening quarter-sawn oak floors . . . the human remains she’d found buried in the backyard, the intruder who’d attacked her in her own bedroom.

  Reminded of why she’d had to sell, her thoughts shifted to the gorgeous Italianate villa she’d lived in next. But that image, too, was sullied . . . by the faces of the two kidnappers. Trouble, it seems, always knew her address.

  But this was now her home and she’d have to make the best of it. Detouring around the x she’d taped on the carpet to remind her of the danger overhead, she went into the bathroom, where she put on a fresh coat of lip gloss, then brushed her long auburn hair and reset the faux tortoiseshell combs that kept it out of her eyes.

  She paused and studied her reflection, looking for outward evidence of the changes she’d experienced internally. But her eyes were still brown, there were still sixteen freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, and her neck was still one of her nicest features. On the surface, she was still Kit. Inside . . . who knows?

  There simply wasn’t enough room in the French Quarter. This applied particularly to cars, which, if you lived there, were a financial liability of ruinous proportions because of the cost of garage space. This caused many of the Quarter’s residents to give them up. Without convenient transportation, and finding they could satisfy all their needs in the Quarter, a large number of the carless became exiles who rarely, if ever, ventured out of its boundaries. Not so depressed that she was willing to join their number, Kit had taken the job at the gallery mostly because Nolen had thrown in a parking space in a garage three blocks away on Dauphine Street, her next destination.

  It was a beautiful late-spring day in which the slit of sky between the balconied buildings lining Toulouse was blue and cloudless and the temperature was cool enough to keep the Quarter from smelling like an errant compost heap, as it did in summer. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists, street magicians, singers, and mimes, giving the place an aimless energy that made Kit feel as though she lived on the grounds of an insane asylum. At the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse, a mechanical mime in a tuxedo and white gloves offered her a carnation, his every rachety move accompanied by a convincing whirring noise. Leaving the flower for one of the tourists, she stepped over a spilled ice cream cone and kept moving.

  At Dauphine, a dirty old man with a sooty gray beard came around the corner, pushing a grocery cart. Tied to the cart and leading the way was an equally sooty Sheltie, who began straining at his leash when he saw her. Curtis and Jimmy.

  Upon reaching her, Jimmy put his front paws on her shoes and bowed in a doggy greeting. Protocol observed, he then began jumping against her legs, deliriously happy to see her.

  “I’ve told him to play hard to get,” Curtis said. “But he just won’t listen.”

  Kit knelt and pulled on Jimmy’s ruff. “That’s because we’re old friends.”

  “Are you well, then?” Curtis inquired, leaning on the handle of the cart.

  Kit had definitely been better, but she wasn’t about to complain to poor Curtis. “I am well,” she said, giving Jimmy one last rub. “And you?”

  “Not an hour ago, a fine young man from Mobile gave me five dollars, so Jimmy and I have had a grand meal and are feelin’ like we could whip a small polar bear.”

  “We can’t have out-of-towners doing more for our friends than we do,” she said, digging in her purse. She took out a ten she could ill afford to part with and gave it to Curtis, whose eyes told her there had been no man from Mobile.

  “You’re a saint,” Curtis said. “And surely the prettiest of the lot. Give Lucky our regards.” Curtis pushed his cart forward, tightening the leash and pulling Jimmy reluctantly away from her.

  Watching them leave, Kit was heartened that Jimmy didn’t seem to know his master was homeless, which meant Lucky probably wasn’t aware of her own altered circumstances.

  BROUSSARD’S FILING SYSTEM CONSISTED of books and letters and Xeroxed articles stacked around his office in piles that made the place an obstacle course. Kit found him with half of one of those piles in his arms.

  “Kit.”

  He dropped his load onto the only available spot on his green vinyl sofa and steamed toward her, arms spread wide, as if intending to embrace her. But the closer he got, the more his arms sagged, until when he reached her, he touched only her hand, grasping it firmly in his chubby fingers.

  “I . . . everyone’s missed you,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  It had been Kit’s strongest desire since she’d joined his staff to hear Broussard praise her work. A childish need, she knew, but it was there nevertheless. And he had never done it. She’d once believed the fault was his. Now, confidence shattered, she was sure she’d simply never deserved his approval.

  It had been six weeks since she’d last seen him, and outwardly, he hadn’t changed, either—still hugely overweight, his hair and beard no grayer, his small eyes just as clear and bright, glasses still equipped with a lanyard that let them dangle within reach when he worked at the microscope, a real bow tie at his throat, not a clip-on.

  “I see you still have your sweet tooth,” she said, referring to the lemon ball pushing his cheek out.

  Broussard eagerly dug in his pants pocket and produced two cellophane-wrapped lemon balls, which he put in her hand. He folded her fingers over them and covered her hand with both of his.

  When she’d first come aboard, he’d frequently offered her naked lemon balls from his pocket, but she consistently refused them. Realizing she was concerned about the other things he touched during a typical day, he’d begun carrying wrapped ones just for her. Her reference to his sweet tooth had been a test to see if he’d continued the practice. The fact that he had, touched her.

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries and then Kit said, “What is it you wanted me to do?”

  Broussard led her to his desk, where he picked up a stack of Polaroid morgue photos. Shifting through them, he selected one and handed it to her. “Yesterday afternoon, that man stabbed a woman comin’ out of the Walgreens on Gentilly Boulevard. He was shot and killed in the act by an offduty policeman.” He waved her into the wooden chair in front of the desk and went to his own chair behind it.

  “How’s the woman?”

  “In serious condition, but they think she’ll be okay.”

  “Any idea why he did it?”

  “Doesn’t appear to be any rational explanation. She didn’t know him, and he made no move for her purse. I suspect it had somethin’ to do with the degenerative lesions I found in both temporal lobes of his brain.”

  “What kind of lesions?”

  “Nothin’ like I ever saw before.”

  “Where do I come in?”

  “He wasn’t carryin’ any ID. When we ran his prints, it came back that he was servin’ a life term in Angola.”

  “So he was paroled?”

  “Not accordin’ to the Angola warden. When I talked to him half an hour ago, he said this man was still there.”

  Broussard was encouraged that upon hearing this, Kit sat straighter in her chair, indicating she was definitely interested.

  “What is it you want of me?”

  “I’d like you to take a camera and a print kit to Angola and get me some reliable data.”

&n
bsp; “Couldn’t the prison send you that stuff?”

  “The key word in what I just said was reliable. With no direct link to that information, I wouldn’t know what weight to give it. No, I need you to go over there.”

  Kit sat back in her chair, mulling over the situation, Broussard watching her intently, hoping she’d agree and, through this commitment, be drawn back into her old life.

  “How far is Angola?”

  “You could be there in three hours,” Broussard said brightly.

  “I dunno. . . .”

  Broussard hurriedly wrote a number on a scratch pad, tore it off, and handed it to her. “That’s the warden’s number. It’s too late to go today. So I’d suggest you set up an appointment for tomorrow.”

  Kit stared at the number for what seemed to Broussard like a very long time.

  The old pathologist’s heart characteristically thumped along at a glacial fifty beats a minute. But as he waited for Kit’s decision, it seemed to have slipped a flywheel, for he could feel it racing in his chest.

  Kit began to shake her head almost imperceptibly. A look that Broussard interpreted as indicating a negative decision crossed her face.

  She looked up. “So where’s this camera and print kit?”

  2

  Angola lies 125 miles northwest of New Orleans, near the Louisiana-Mississippi border. Calling from home, Kit arranged to meet the warden in his office on prison grounds the next day at 4:00 P.M. The following afternoon, she left New Orleans at one o’clock, heading toward Baton Rouge, wishing she hadn’t agreed to go.

  The city had been without rain for nearly three weeks, so the resurrection ferns growing on the boughs of the biggest oaks looked dead. This was, of course, an illusion. One good deluge and they’d be back again, green and happy. And from the look of the white clouds with promising dark centers filling the sky, that moment might soon be at hand.

  By the time she’d left urban clutter behind and started across the marshy edges of Lake Pontchartrain on the long portion of I-10 resting on piers sunk in mud, the clouds had massed in front of the sun, forming a huge dirty cauliflower with luminous edges. Apparently disturbed by the impending storm and unsure of what to do, dozens of egrets crisscrossed high overhead, their white feathers glowing with cold fire in the diffused light.

  Then, heat lightning began, pulsing and rippling behind the cloud’s folded contours, one jolt after another, with barely a pause between them, the streaks showing a cloudy substructure not previously visible. On and on it went, the actual lightning trails masked by cloud cover, creating the fanciful illusion that the occupants of an extra-terrestrial transport might be back there engaging in high-voltage mischief.

  It was an impressive and diverting performance that lasted for nearly forty miles. Eventually, the cloud dispersed and it became just another day in which the resurrection ferns would sleep awhile longer.

  At 3:10 P.M., on the other side of Baton Rouge, following the directions on a small green sign that pointed to Angola, she turned onto the Tunica Trace Scenic Highway. Twenty miles later, she came to another, larger green sign advising her that anyone entering a Department of Correction facility was subject to a physical search that might include an examination of body cavities. Oddly, this made her reluctant to continue, and she remained for several minutes at the sign, appraising the prison entrance fifty yards ahead.

  On her side of the requisite chain-link fence topped with razor wire, this consisted of a couple of small single-story yellow brick buildings with burgundy trim, a tower of the same color, and a guardhouse that straddled the road. As she sat there, she thought of the scene in The Silence of the Lambs where Jodie Foster walks past all the occupied cells to get her first look at Hannibal Lecter. The recollection made her wish she’d brought a raincoat and an umbrella.

  But this wasn’t getting her job done. She nudged the gas and rolled up to the guardhouse, which disgorged a blue-uniformed trooper type wearing a gray Smokey the Bear hat and sunglasses. His request that she state her business was so cold, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see his breath.

  “I’m Kit Franklyn, from the medical examiner’s office in New Orleans. I have an appointment with Warden Guillory.”

  “Wait here.”

  The trooper went into the guardhouse and picked up the phone.

  While he made his call, an eighteen-wheeler came down the road from inside the prison and stopped at the guardhouse. The other trooper on duty made the driver open the cab door. Satisfied no convict was hiding on the floor, the trooper went around to the rear of the truck, opened the back door, and looked inside. Kit wanted to see if he’d use mirrors to look under the truck, but her attention was diverted by the return of her trooper.

  “Ma’am, the warden said for you to wait out here. He’s on his way. You can park over yonder.” He gestured to a graveled lot in front of the public toilets.

  Kit had expected to be shown in by a guard, so she was surprised at this. Apparently, the warden had overestimated her importance and was giving it the personal touch. She nodded, backed her car up, and put it where the trooper had indicated.

  Because the day had grown warm and the trooper’s manner made her uncomfortable, she elected to wait in her car with the air conditioner running. Five minutes later, the yellow metal arm blocking the prison’s exit lane lifted at the approach of a black Cadillac with tinted windows. It stopped at the guardhouse and the driver exchanged words with the trooper she’d spoken with. Seeing the trooper point at her car, she cut the engine and got out.

  The Cadillac came to meet her, crunching to a stop a few feet away.

  In it were two men. The driver had a broad Cro-Magnon face and dark hair that edged over his forehead in a series of robust commas. The passenger in the backseat was difficult to see.

  The rear window rolled down and his face appeared in the opening, allowing the late-afternoon sun access to a thick head of copper-colored hair that reflected the rays like a new penny. His fleshy face spread in a dentured smile.

  “Dr. Franklyn?”

  Kit moved over to the car, expecting to be invited in and then driven back to the warden’s office. But the door remained closed. Instead, a hand came through the open window. “I’m Warden Guillory. Good to see you.”

  Kit shook the hand as best she could with it so high in the air; then it was drawn back into the car.

  “I’m afraid we’ve encountered a difficulty,” Guillory said, bringing his face back to the window.

  “What kind of difficulty?”

  “Last night, the man you came to see had a heart attack and died.”

  “I can still get a picture and his prints.”

  “Well, you see, that’s the problem. . . . I left clear orders that nothing be done to the body until you arrived. But there was a mix-up and . . . I’m afraid it’s been . . . cremated.”

  “How could you do that so fast? Don’t the relatives have to be notified or something?”

  “He had no living relatives. Hadn’t had a stick of mail in years. I’m afraid no one cared whether he lived or died.”

  “Pretty sad, even for a felon.”

  “In such cases, we’re free to move quickly to dispose of the body, and we usually take full advantage of that.”

  “What do I do now?” Kit said, thinking aloud.

  “There’s nothing you can do but go back to New Orleans and tell Dr. Broussard how sorry I am this happened. If it helps any, I brought this for you.” He turned and picked up a manila envelope, which he handed her through the window. “It contains the photographs of him we took when he arrived, and his fingerprints.”

  Kit opened the envelope and examined its contents. The photo was of a man in his late forties.

  “How long had he spent here?”

  “I believe it was . . . nineteen years.”

  “You don’t have a more recent picture?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Can you tell me how he’d changed?”

&nbs
p; “His hair had a lot of gray in it and his face showed his age and his years here.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I don’t know what else to say. He was an average-looking old con.”

  “Was he thin or heavy?”

  “Thin, I can tell you that.”

  To return home with only the manila envelope would mean her trip had accomplished nothing but to provide Broussard with data he could have obtained by mail. He’d sent her to do more. But what else was possible? “Where are the ashes from the cremation?”

  “At the funeral home where it was done.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I hardly think you can learn anything from those.”

  “Probably not, but I’d like to see them at least.”

  “Of course that’s up to you. The funeral home is about fifteen miles from here in a small town called Courville.” Guillory proceeded to give her directions and she was soon on her way, the warden’s car behind her until, at the road to Courville, they separated.

  Died . . . of a heart attack . . . and then cremated. . . . Oh sure, this assignment is a snap. She should have just politely told Broussard, no thanks, and gone back to the photo gallery when he’d brought it up.

  She was still whipping herself about this when she saw the tasteful green sign for Courville. A HISTORIC COMMUNITY. That’s all it said—no satellite signs advertising the Rotary Club or the Lions Club or the Optimists, no statement about the population.

  About a mile beyond the sign, the houses began—large white structures, mostly wooden, with columned porches and green shutters. They were widely spaced from one another on well-tended grounds dotted with ancient live oaks whose branches curled outward in sweeping arcs, reminding Kit of the trunks on compliant pachyderms.

  It was rumored that Spanish moss was becoming endangered and was slowly disappearing from Louisiana trees. Whatever was causing that situation was obviously not operating in Courville, for its oaks were generously shrouded with it, giving the place a timeless beauty.

  Two miles down the road, she came to the Courville Funeral Home. Under its name on the sign out front, it advised passersby, TAKE YOUR FINAL TRIP WITH TRIP. The sign made no sense until she saw in smaller letters that the proprietor was Trip Guillory. Guillory was a common Louisiana name, but she was prepared to bet heavily that this one and the warden were related.