Sleeping With the Crawfish Read online

  “We don’t know what it means,” Kit said. “But I wouldn’t think it means that. It’s good to see you, though.”

  Franks turned his attention to Gatlin. “Hey, Phillip. How’s it going?”

  “My blood pressure’s up, I got a case of athlete’s foot I can’t cure, and there’s a varicose vein as big as a sausage sticking out of my ass. Otherwise, great.”

  “And how’s the wife? On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t know.” He turned to Broussard. “We got that body out of the cement.”

  “Didn’t take long.”

  “Once we got started, we were able to follow cleavage planes between the cement and the victim’s clothing. We found the chain saw used to cut him up in there, too. They’re dusting it for prints even as we speak.”

  The buzzer at the door sounded. “There are the remains now.”

  He went to the double doors and unlocked them, then looked back. “You all might want to hold your breath.”

  He opened the doors and two uniformed men wheeled in a gurney with a body bag on it.

  “Room two,” Broussard said. “We’re workin’ in one.”

  Kit held her breath until the gurney had passed through the swinging double doors leading to the autopsy rooms. In doing so, she was transported back to Snake Bayou, back to the moment when the seat belt had her shoe and the bayou was about to pour into her mouth and nose. She gasped for air, drawing curious stares from the two men.

  “You all right?” Broussard asked.

  “I just held my breath too long.”

  Gatlin sat on the sofa against the wall opposite Kit. He stretched his legs out and rubbed his face with his big mitt, fuzzing his eyebrows. He checked his watch.

  Hands in his pockets, Broussard paced.

  “I can’t wait much longer,” Gatlin said.

  “Go on, then. . . . I’ll keep you informed,” Broussard said.

  “A little longer maybe.”

  Five minutes later, Gatlin slapped his thighs and stood up, giving every indication his patience was exhausted. Before he could speak, Guy Minoux’s voice came over the intercom.

  “Dr. Broussard, those X-rays are ready.”

  When they reached the autopsy room, Minoux already had the film clipped to a view box. With Kit close on his heels, Broussard went to the view box and perused the film.

  Amid a hazy background of crushed bone fragments, half a dozen sharp images stood out. In the upper-left corner was a staple Kit recognized as one like those Trip Guillory had said were from the cardboard box the bodies were cremated in. Kit pointed this out and Broussard grunted in reply.

  She saw two more staples, but refrained from saying anything. In the lower-right corner were two round objects that looked metallic.

  “Ha.” Broussard pointed at an image, slightly right of center. “That’s the kind of thing I’m lookin’ for.”

  Kit and Gatlin moved in for a closer look. Broussard was referring to a forked object about three millimeters wide and five long, with one leg shorter than the other.

  Broussard again donned his apron and a pair of rubber gloves. He picked up a pair of forceps from a porcelain tray on the counter, slipped a pair of jeweler’s magnifying lenses over his head, and returned to the X-ray. After a quick refresher on the location of the forked object, he went to the cremains, nudged the magnifying lenses down over his glasses, and began picking through the ashes with the forceps in the general area where the film had located the forked object.

  In less than a minute, he found it and put it in his palm. Moving to where the light was better, he examined the object briefly, nudged his magnifiers up, and looked at Kit and Gatlin, obviously pleased. “This is a pin-and-post castin’—to hold a crown on a multirooted tooth,” he said. “It’s an important find for two reasons: The first is its distinctive shape. No two castin’s from different teeth can be identical. The second is that castin’s are not done much anymore. Most pins these days are little threaded rods commercially made in a variety of sizes that come with matchin’ drill bits. So this was likely done a long time ago.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Gatlin said. “If that casting is on the army X-rays upstairs we’ll have proof that’s Cicero in the can.”

  “Exactly,” Broussard replied.

  “But it can’t be Cicero,” Gatlin continued. “So it won’t be on the X-rays. And what are we to make of that?”

  “Let’s just get the results and worry later about what it means,” Broussard said. He turned to Minoux. “We’re goin’ up to my office. Now that the X-ray machine is workin’ again, I’d appreciate it if you’d get our mystery man out of the fridge and make me a full set of dental films. I’ll want to see ’em soon as they’re ready.”

  Broussard put the casting in a small snap-top vial. He shucked all his gear, put the vial in his pocket, and pulled the X-ray from the view box. “Let’s go.”

  Reaching his office, Broussard went directly to the view box behind his desk and hung the film he’d brought from the morgue. He retrieved the dental files from the military records he’d received and hung them, as well.

  Not wanting Gatlin to see anything before he did, Broussard made sure he blocked Gatlin’s view of the films while he gave them a quick once-over. It took only a few seconds to spot a familiar forked object. Not believing his eyes, he took another look at the film from the morgue, then glanced back at the military dental film. Deep in thought now, he wandered away from the view box and began to pace.

  With him out of the way, Gatlin and Kit studied the films for themselves. Seeing what Broussard had seen, Gatlin said, “I’ll be damned.” He looked at Broussard. “I’d have bet you a hundred bucks we wouldn’t find that casting on the military films.”

  “So the guy who was cremated at Angola really was Ronald Cicero,” Kit said.

  “That would seem to be the case,” Broussard replied.

  “Which means everything is on the up-and-up over there. And your suspicions that my misadventure was choreographed are wrong.”

  Broussard stared at the bookcases on the wall, his thumb under his chin, his finger rubbing the bristly hairs on the tip of his nose. Knowing he was now too far away to reach, Kit looked at Gatlin for a reply. But he just turned his palms to the ceiling and shrugged.

  This little tableau was brought to an end by a knock at the door.

  It was Guy Minoux, looking shell-shocked.

  “You didn’t bring those X-rays,” Broussard said, stating the obvious.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The mystery man’s body is gone.”

  7

  Sam Parker, the night morgue man, couldn’t believe it, either. “You say somebody stole a body from us? What for?”

  Parker had skin the color of lightly creamed coffee. His normally friendly, steady eyes were now jittering in their sockets. When he said, “What for?” his voice slid up two octaves. He looked imploringly at each of his interrogators.

  “We don’t know why,” Broussard said. “Right now, we’re just tryin’ to find out how it happened. There’s so much activity in the morgue durin’ the day, it seems extremely unlikely it was taken then. That’s why we asked you to come in. Was there any time last night when the morgue was unattended?”

  Parker’s forehead became a ridged landscape. “Am I gonna lose my job over this? ’Cause I can’t lose my job. I got two kids an’ another comin’. I can’t lose my job. I can’t. . . .”

  Broussard put a chubby hand on Parker’s shoulder. “Sam, your job is safe. What happened?”

  “I was just tryin’ to be charitable, like First Corinthians says. ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as soundin’ brass or a tinklin’ cymbal.’ I wasn’t tryin’ to promote myself, just do somethin’ for somebody who needed help. An’ look what happens.”

  “Who did you help?”

  “About eight o’clock, I hear the buzzer at the entrance. I go down there an’ f
ind an old lady with her arm in a sling leanin’ on the buzzer with her good hand. I open up an’ she says her car has a flat tire an’ could I change it for her. I ax her couldn’t she call the auto club or somebody, but she don’t belong to one. Don’t have any friends she can call an’ can’t afford to have a service station come an’ do it. So what am I gonna do, tell her no? So I say okay. Wouldn’t you?”

  Broussard nodded. “Probably so.”

  “And her car is far enough away that when you reach it, you’re out of sight of the morgue entrance,” Gatlin offered.

  “Yeah, but at the time, I don’t think she’s tryin’ to lure me away. I just think I’m bein’ charitable, you know? But I guess she had watcha callit . . . accomplices who broke in while I was gone.”

  “I’m sure she did,” Broussard said.

  “You know what the worst kind of crime is?” Parker said. “The kind that takes advantage of charity. I don’t care if she was an old lady, they oughta throw the book at her and whoever helped her. ’Cause when you take advantage of somebody doin’ a charitable thing, you make people afraid to help anybody. And then where are we? You tell me that. Where are we? Not a worse kind of crime. Oughta give ’em the death penalty.” He looked at Gatlin. “What can you get for stealin’ a body, anyway?”

  “Never had a case like that. I’d have to check.”

  Broussard thanked Parker for coming in and assured him again he wasn’t going to lose his job. When he was out the door, Kit was finally able to speak. “I’ve got it figured out,” she said, leaping out of her chair. “When I was at the sheriff’s house, I overheard him and his wife arguing about her putting me in the front bedroom. He wanted me in the back. He was so upset about it, he hit her.”

  “Any man who hits a woman is a danger to the entire fabric of society,” Broussard said. “I’d never trust a man who did that.”

  “Outrage noted,” Gatlin said. “Now can we hear the rest of her story?”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Later, when he came in with a doctor to see about the bump on my head, I noticed the sheriff seemed overly concerned about the drapes being open, kept fiddling with them. And the doctor tried to get me to take some sleeping pills, which I hid in my robe.

  “After they left, I pulled a chair over to the window to learn what it was they didn’t want me to see. I don’t know what time it was because my watch was ruined in the bayou, but I’d guess it was at least eleven o’clock when I saw a hearse and a pickup go into the drive of the funeral home operated by the warden’s brother.”

  “You’re saying the body stolen from the morgue was in that hearse?” Gatlin said.

  “Doesn’t it all fit? The warden never expected me to want Cicero’s cremains, but, like you said, they gave them to me to appear cooperative, except they weren’t Cicero, because he was in the morgue here. Feeling that the cremains they gave me could be used to prove they’d lied about Cicero dying in the prison, Trip Guillory, the owner of the funeral home, disabled my car when he went to call his brother about giving them to me. They had me pushed into the bayou like you said, to separate me from the cremains. Then, during the night, they stole the body from here, ran back to the funeral home with it, cremated it, and switched those cremains for the ones they’d given me.”

  Gatlin looked at Broussard. “It sounds good.”

  “I agree, but before I raise a stink about this, I wish I had a little more proof. Right now, from their point of view, everything is correct. They gave you a set of cremains they said were those of Ronald Cicero. And we just proved they are. We haven’t got much to support our position.”

  “What about the photos and the prints you made of Cicero?” Kit said.

  “There’s certainly that. But I’d like somethin’ more.”

  Kit lapsed into thought. After a few minutes of mental reconstruction, she remembered the patterns she’d seen on the cremation retort’s heat recorder. “I don’t know if this is significant, but when I got to the funeral home, he’d just finished cremating the second body of the day. The first was supposedly Cicero. . . . I noticed the patterns drawn by the retort’s heat recorder weren’t the same.”

  “How’d they differ?” Broussard asked.

  “I need something to draw with.”

  Broussard provided a pencil from a cache of pens, pencils, and probes in an American Academy of Forensic Sciences mug on his desk and gave her a sheet of paper from a stack next to his laser writer.

  “This is the pattern of the cremation that took place immediately after the one they said was Cicero.”

  Leaning over the desk, with Gatlin on one side and Broussard on the other, Kit sketched the butte-shape the recorder had drawn just before she’d arrived at the funeral home, being sure to include the inch-long tight zigzag after the line had turned horizontally. She added vertical dividers indicating elapsed time and horizontal ones marking off temperature, explaining what they meant as she worked.

  “In contrast, the earlier pattern looked like this.” She drew the quickly rising line as before; then her pencil turned to the horizontal leg. She sketched a short stretch of zigzag, then drew a distinct upward bulge that had lasted for about thirty minutes. The rest of the pattern was like the first one.

  She looked at Broussard. “What do you think?”

  “Very interestin’.” He put his thick finger under the zigzag on the first drawing. “This is where the body was actually burnin’—the combustion of the soft tissues caused these temperature fluctuations. This one”—he moved his finger to the other pattern—“obviously burned at a higher temperature.”

  “Any idea why?” Kit asked.

  “Fat. The more fat present, the higher the temperature when the body burns. This was a man carryin’ a lot of weight.”

  “But Cicero was thin,” Kit said excitedly. “You can see that in the morgue pictures. . . .” She thought a moment. “And when I asked the warden what Cicero looked like, he was pretty vague, except he did say Cicero was thin. That couldn’t have been him. We’ve got them.”

  “Don’t know about that. But we have enough to contact the state prison board and ask for an investigation.”

  “Why haven’t we got them?” Kit asked.

  “If they realize the heat recorder is inconsistent with Cicero’s weight, they’ll probably doctor it or substitute a different record for the one you saw.”

  “Sounds like they’re trying to cover up an escape,” Gatlin said.

  “Why cover up something like that?” Kit said.

  “Maybe the warden’s on thin ice. One more screwup and he’s gone,” Broussard suggested.

  Gatlin looked at his watch. “Now I really have to go. Let me know what happens.”

  After Gatlin left, Broussard said, “I better get busy and write this up for the prison board.” He picked up a file folder. “I’ve got a case here we’re pretty sure was a suicide, but I’d feel a lot better if you’d check it out.”

  “I lost the camera and the print kit on my last assignment. I think I’ll pass.”

  “Didn’t we just prove that wasn’t your fault?”

  “If I’d been more alert, maybe I’d have seen it coming.”

  “There was nothin’ to see.”

  “They couldn’t have done to you what they did to me.”

  “Your givin’ me way too much credit.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I had your office repainted.”

  “That was nice.”

  “You ought to go look at it.”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  “Go on, take a look. I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” Wishing she could return to work, but knowing that was impossible, Kit walked to the door and paused.

  Thinking she might have changed her mind, Broussard’s hopes rose. But then she opened the door and was gone.

  For several seconds, Broussard stared at where she’d stood. He then went to the door
, cracked it, and watched her until she stepped onto the elevator. Shaking his head, he walked down to Kit’s office and unlocked it. Inside, on her desk, where he’d put it that morning, was a large bouquet of spring flowers in a cut-glass vase. He crossed to the desk and retrieved the card he’d written: “There’s no one who can do your job better. Please come back.”

  When it had become clear she wasn’t going to look at her office, he should have told her what was on the card, but it was so much easier to write than say. Nuts . . .

  He dropped the card into the empty wastebasket, picked up the flowers, and took them to the main office for his two secretaries to enjoy.

  KIT MOVED HER RENTAL car from the lot near the hospital to Nolen’s garage, then set about reconstructing her life, such as it was. First, she walked over to the five-and-dime on Dauphine Street and bought a pair of tortoiseshell combs to replace those she’d lost in Snake Bayou, paying for them with a still-damp bill. Tired of having her hair hanging in her face, she didn’t wait until she got home, but put them on outside the store, using the front window as a mirror. In the big picture, it was a small accomplishment, but it was surprising how much better it made her feel.

  When she walked into the photo gallery, a well-dressed middle-aged woman was asking Nolen, “What does this mean?” She showed him the back of the picture she’d chosen. “‘Nolen Boyd, intaphotography.’ What’s intaphotography?”

  “It’s what I do,” Nolen said. “I’m into photography.” He saw Kit and his smile at his own cleverness widened to a grin.

  Usually when he told people what the phrase meant, they groaned or shook their heads at how corny he was, but this woman laughed, like bubbles streaming from a child’s soap wand. She paid cash and Nolen bagged her purchase.

  “Thanks a lot. . . . Come back.”

  When she stepped away from the register, Nolen looked at Kit. “Hey, kiddo, how are you?”

  “Still a little frazzled.”

  “How’d you get back? Your car okay?”

  “They think it’s shot. I came back in a rental. Did Lucky give you any trouble?”