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.