I lock eyes with him and for long seconds, neither of us moves. I hear the distant beat of war drums echoing in my brain. No, it’s my heart thumping as I look into the eyes of this killer. I clench my fists and fight the urge to wring his neck. I’m reminded of the legend of the leering Cheyenne renegade called Wolf Who Hunts Smiling. I reach around for my knife wanting so badly to eviscerate this monster sitting across the table from me, wipe that smile off the earth, just as my ancestors wiped the Cheyenne renegade from the land of the living. But I let out a deep breath, take another in, and feel the rage in me slowly subside as Gault’s smile fades and he tries a hard look now. My face remains expressionless. A plains warrior never shows emotion, especially to the white-eyes. I leave him in the room with his untouched mug of coffee and chicory.
I can tell from the grin on Borgo’s wide face, as he crosses the squad room, that it went well at the condo. He’s bouncing on his toes as he shows me the ripped and bloody collar from Gault’s gray USCG sweatshirt, then shows me a small plastic bag secured with red evidence tape. Inside is a broken purple fingernail.
“Found it in the dirty clothes hamper with the sweat suit.” Borgo beams. “Did he cop?”
“No. Wants to talk to his lawyer.”
Borgo looks at the closed interview room door and shakes his head. “Like to know why, man. What brought it on. Did she rebuff him? Did he just pounce on her?” He looks back at me now. “Maybe he hates women with tattoos, nose piercings.”
I shrug. “So long as we get the who right, it’s all that matters.”
He bounces again. “Man what a thrill, finding that nail.”
I nod again and have to say it. “Yep. The nail in the coffin.”
“Man, that was fast work. Getting it in the first twenty-four hours, right?”
“Good thing,” I tell him. “I start on vacation tomorrow.”
He laughs. “Where ya’ goin’? Disney World. Get away from all this... funk?”
“No.” I stretch out my back again, fighting off a yawn. “Putting Sad Lisa into dry dock for maintenance. Heading for home.”
“The Dakotas?”
“Vermilion Bay.” I narrow my eyes at him. “That where you go on vacation, Disney World?”
“Naw. I’m a hurricane watcher. Take my vacation days piecemeal. Go where the big storms hit. Went to Florida three times last year.”
The tiredness doesn’t hit me until we walk Gault over to Central Lockup, alongside Police Headquarters on the stretch of cement we call “Hollywood Walk,” where three TV cameras follow us, Borgo leading the way.
Borgo’s telling me about a new tropical depression that’ll probably end up in the Gulf of Mexico. “It’ll have a name starting with K,” he tells me, but I’m not listening.
I haven’t slept for over twenty-four hours, and I smile wearily for the cameras, like my daddy used to smile after a good hunt in the swamp. Of course Borgo was right, the first twenty-four hours of a murder case are the most important.
THURSDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2005
A month to the day after the murder, I stand beneath the live oak where Monique Lewis lost her life. There’s nothing to indicate anything happened here, but everything else is different now. This is the only tree left standing in West End Park. Maxim’s Crab Claw Restaurant, where Monique worked, and all the other restaurants are gone, the boatyards mere shells of buildings, all destroyed by that K storm Borgo first alerted me to. Hurricane Katrina.
Monique’s tree is the only living thing here, even the bushes are dead. A thick coat of gray brown dirt covers the entire area, more like a moonscape than a park. A lingering odor of petroleum permeates the air, mixed with the stench of mildew and death — dead fish, dead cats, dead dogs, probably several humans we haven’t found yet in the wreckage.
The park where Gault claimed he’d tripped is littered with abandoned cars and pickups, along with dozens of sailboats and other pleasure craft flung here, most of the boats in pieces. The sun looks the same as it sets over Lake Pontchartrain. But there are no pelicans gliding above the open water, no gulls dancing over the water beyond the restaurant pilings, no stray cats anywhere to be seen.
I suck in a deep breath of sun-baked air and tell the tree, “We got the results of the DNA test today, and it’s an exact match.” Thankfully, the FBI lab is functioning better than NOPD. I look at the ground where Monique had lain in death. “Just wanted you to know.” I take in another deep breath before going on. “Wish I could tell you why, what brought on his rage. Maybe you already know that, maybe you don’t. But you’re the one who caught him, you know, digging your nails fighting back, drawing blood and skin.” I keep looking at the spot where Monique died and wish there is more to say, but there never is.
A scraping noise turns me around and it’s Borgo walking up behind me. I hadn’t seen him since the storm. We’ve been scattered around, trying to keep the city from dying from the inside after being blown apart from the outside. Borgo nods toward the tree, then tells me the Coast Guard Station’s gone. Blown down.
“I saw it.”
“That other hurricane’s gonna hit us,” he says.
“Rita? I thought she was headed for Houston.”
“She’s a Category Five now, got the third lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, and she’s huge, like Katrina, covers most of the state. We’re on the east side, the bad side. We’ll get the tidal surge again.
Jesus, the words tidal surge ring like a funeral bell in my ears.
“The levees won’t hold,” he adds, and I turn away, wondering how the hell we’ll be able to weather the next blow.
My Life in Crime
by Janice Law
It started the day Billy J showed up at school in a real leather jacket and a pair of Nike Zoom LeBron IIs. The leather was class, man, but LeBron IIs! The coolest shoes on the planet. I’m not the biggest kid on court, but I got a killer outside shot, and I’d sure fly with shoes like those. As I kept telling Mama, all I needed to take my game to the next level was better equipment. But Mama, who wasn’t my mom at all but my grandmother, had old-fashioned ideas and was all the time telling me that Payless sneaks were good enough if they “kept the wet off my feet.”
So there I’m dreaming of LeBron IIs with the special support straps that would lift my game, when in comes Billy J, fresh from a trip to Sportslocker and the top leather shop in the mall. He’s wearing a four hundred — dollar bomber jacket and my LeBron II shoes. Mine. Are me and the guys interested? Do we want to know how this could have happened when Billy J’s so dumb the corner dealers won’t touch him for a runner? Sure we do. Fortunately, Mitch, who lacks the cool and self-restraint that gives me a bigger game than you’d expect from my size, comes right out and asks him.
Billy J, moving and styling like some newborn rap star, says, “It’s the settlement.”
And being that dumb, he tells us the rest, starting with how his cousin knows a guy who knew another guy, plus confusing legal and medical stuff with relatives’ contacts we don’t need to bother with here. Some of my guys are losing interest before Billy J gets to the point, but I still got one eye on the LeBron IIs, and I keep my ears open. The deal was pretty simple once Billy J finally spits it out. The night of the accident, his brother Wesley drives the family car along South Main at eight P.M. “Eight exactly,” says Billy J. “No later, no earlier. Super important.” He goes on about this till we get the picture.
Anyway, Wesley’s on his way to his night shift at McDonald’s, and he has his sister Meghan with him, giving her a lift to a friend’s house. They’re rolling along Main, right at the speed limit, which impressed Billy J, “ ’Cause my brother’s a speed king,” when “Boom! Bang! Crash!”