"Last Known Victim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spindler Erica)3Patti stared at the computer screen, at the almost two-month-old NOLA.com news story. Decorated NOPD Captain Shot by Looters 9/01/05 8:10 a.m. Captain Sammy O’Shay, thirty-year veteran of the police force, was found shot to death at Audubon Place. His body was discovered by fellow officers Wednesday. Police Chief Eddie Compass believes his murder to have been the work of looters targeting the affluent neighborhood. An investigation is under way. What a joke. There had been no investigation “under way” then; there wasn’t one now. The city and all its agencies, including the NOPD, were in turmoil, their focus on survival. How did one investigate without evidence, equipment or manpower? Without facilities to house them all? Hell, parts of the city still didn’t have safe drinking water. Patti frowned. She wanted answers. Absolutes. She didn’t even know for certain if Sammy had been shot before the storm hit, or after. The chief had decided that Sammy had interrupted looters and been killed. It made sense, considering the neighborhood and timing. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she heard from her husband in the hours between their parting at the cathedral and the time when all forms of communication had been cut off? She massaged her temple, the knot of tension there, as she reviewed what she knew of Sammy’s death. He’d suffered a blunt-force trauma to the back of his head, suggesting that the killer had attacked from behind, catching him by surprise. He’d disarmed him, then used Sammy’s own gun against him, shooting him twice in the back. His cruiser had been unlocked, the keys in it. The vehicle’s interior had been clean. When they found him, both Sammy’s badge and gun had been missing. The scene hadn’t been processed; any evidence that might have been useful was long gone now. “Captain? You okay?” Patti blinked and dragged her gaze from the computer monitor. Detective Spencer Malone stood at the door to what served as her makeshift office. Not only a detective under her command, he was her nephew and godson. He was frowning. “I’m fine. What’s up?” He ignored her question. “You were rubbing your temple.” “Was I?” She dropped her hands to her lap, irritated. It’d been almost two months since Sammy had been killed, and being hovered over had gotten damn old. She hurt enough without being constantly reminded of her loss by people treating her as if she might shatter at any moment. She was part of an NOPD family dynasty that included her father and grandfather, her brother-in-law, three nephews and a niece. But working with so many of her family members meant she had no way to escape the microscope. “Just a little headache, that’s all.” “You’re certain? Before your heart attack-” “I was tired all the time? Rubbing my temples?” “Yes.” She had suffered a minor heart attack the spring before Katrina, but this was completely different. “I’m fine. You needed something?” “We have a situation,” Spencer said. “At one of the refrigerator graveyards.” New Orleanians had evacuated for Hurricane Katrina, leaving behind fully stocked refrigerators and freezers. Now they were returning to those same appliances, which had been without power all these weeks. Most people just strapped the reeking units closed and wheeled them out to the curb. There they were collected and hauled to various dump sites to be cleaned by the Environmental Protection Agency. These sites had earned the nickname “Refrigerator Graveyards.” “A situation?” she repeated. “A big one. EPA made an interesting discovery in one of the units. A half-dozen human hands.” Patti decided she wanted to go on this call with Spencer. The EPA supervisor, a man named Jim Douglas, met them at the car. “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Douglas said. “At first I thought Paul, he’s the one who was cleaning the unit, was pullin’ my leg. When you spend your day doing this-” he motioned around them “-a good gag’s a welcome thing. You know what I mean?” “Absolutely,” Spencer murmured. “I’d say this detail gives new meaning to having a job that stinks.” “You know it. Don’t worry, you get used to the smell.” Patti didn’t bother telling him that one of the first, and most important, lessons a cop learned was to smear some Vicks under the nose before arriving at a scene where there was a “stinker.” She had to admit, this place smelled about as bad as anything she’d ever encountered-and that was saying something. Her eyes watered even though she still stood at the periphery of the site. The man led them to a trailer. “Got a couple HazMat suits and masks for you. You’ll want ’em.” He motioned them inside, then handed them each a white Tyvek jumpsuit, complete with hood and booties, and respirator masks. When they had suited up, they started for the unit in question. Patti found the scene surreal: row after row of discarded refrigerators and freezers, food tombs in this great, stinking graveyard. And like tombs and tombstones, the refrigerators bore messages. New Orleanians had begun to use their discarded appliances as a sounding board, spray-painting messages on them, some of frustration or anger, some of hopelessness. One proclaimed in orange spray paint across its front, “Heck of a job, Brownie,” referring to what President Bush had said to his incompetent FEMA head days after the storm. One in black, “So long, Sir-Stinks-a-Lot,” and another, “Here lies Uncle Fester. Thanks a lot, Katrina.” Interestingly, many of the units were still adorned with calendars, children’s drawings and photos. Each a kind of snapshot of lives upended, time stopped. “These units are classified as containing hazardous waste,” Douglas explained as they walked down a row lined with the ruined appliances. “That’s why the EPA’s here. First we clean out the contents, which, by the way, is when the hands showed up. After the unit’s been pressure-washed, we drain and dispose of freon from the coils and oil from the compressor.” “How many units are here?” Spencer asked. By his tone, Patti suspected he was having the same reaction to this bizarre scene as she. Of course, since August 29, not much about life in New Orleans “Ten thousand,” Douglas answered. “And we’re just getting started. We expect a quarter of a million before it’s all over.” Spencer whistled. “That’s a whole lot of funky Frigidaires.” The man snickered, even though “funky” didn’t cover it. “The good news is, they’re being recycled. When we’re done with ’em, they’re compacted, then sent to a facility where they go through a shredder, then separators. Pretty cool, if you’ll pardon the pun. “Here we are,” Douglas said unnecessarily, as neither Patti nor Spencer could have missed the unit in question; the first officer had encircled it and the immediate area with crime-scene tape. Two men, similarly outfitted in HazMat suits, stood just beyond the tape. Then she saw the hands. Or what was left of them, anyway. Mostly skeletal, laid out on a plastic sheet on the ground. By each sat a plastic zip-type bag. She wondered if they would be able to extract any usable DNA from what remained, either from the hands or what looked like the “gumbo” inside the bags. Patti shifted her gaze to the refrigerator itself. A typical freezer-on-top variety, white and low tech, no ice or water dispenser in the door. It didn’t come from the Taj Mahal, that was for certain. The larger of the two men stepped forward. “Officer Connelly, Captain. I answered the call.” “You set up the perimeter?” “Yes. Verified the find and called it in.” “Good. Contact the department, see if they were able to round us up a crime-scene crew.” She turned to the other man. “Paul, I’m Captain O’Shay and this is Detective Malone. I understand you’re the one who found the hands.” He bobbed his head in agreement. “I suppose I should’ve gotten Jim right away, but I kinda couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure.” “It would anyone, Paul. Why don’t you tell us exactly what happened.” “See, we have a procedure we follow. First, we empty the units. Dump what we can in the bins. By hand or with the help of a grapple machine. When that’s done we pressure-wash ’em. “Most of what’s in these things is sludge. I mean, these babies have been without power for a long time. It’s damn disgusting, I’ll tell you that.” Patti wouldn’t disagree. “How’d you find the hands?” “They were there-” he pointed “-in the freezer. Wouldn’t have found ’em if one of the bags hadn’t broken. Slipped out of my hands and busted open. Act of God, it was.” “But you didn’t go get Mr. Douglas?” “I was kinda blown away, you know? Thought maybe this wasn’t the real thing. That one of the other guys planted it as a joke.” His voice shook slightly, though Patti was uncertain whether from anxiety or excitement. “So I laid that one out to take a real good look at it, and you know it didn’t look like plastic. That’s when I found another one.” He glanced at Douglas. “And went and got Jim.” “And together you removed four more?” He bobbed his head once more. “After we realized what we had, we were real careful.” “We appreciate that.” She glanced at Douglas. “Do we know where this refrigerator came from?” “The Metro New Orleans area.” “You don’t have a street, a neighborhood or-” “Just the Parish. Orleans.” Although frustrated, she wasn’t surprised. The cleanup effort was immense. She’d heard the debris from this storm alone was going to equal thirty-four years’ worth of regular New Orleans debris. Something like one hundred million cubic yards, enough to fill the Superdome twenty-two times over. She turned back to Paul. “Notice anything else different about this unit?” He thought a moment. “Nope. Sorry.” “If you think of anything, let us know.” She held a hand out to Jim Douglas. “We’ll take it from here. When our crime-scene crew arrives, you’ll send them our way?” He said he would, and as he and Paul walked away, she turned back to Spencer. He had crossed to the hands and was squatted down beside them. “They’re all right hands,” he said. “That’s six different victims.” She frowned. “Why right hands?” “Why hands at all?” he countered. “They’re trophies. Obviously.” “Katrina comes into town and our sick bastard here loses his collection.” He fitted on a pair of latex gloves, then held his own hand to the skeletal remains. “Women’s hands. Too small to be a man’s.” She slipped on a pair of gloves and joined him. When she compared, she saw that the hands were a similar size to hers. “Still, they could have belonged to a young male, maybe a teen?” “Maybe.” Spencer cocked his head. “Look at this. These four were very neatly severed.” “But these two,” Patti murmured, “real hack jobs.” “As time passed, he got better at what he did.” “Practice makes perfect.” “Grim thought.” “Well, here’s another.” She stood. “They were all frozen. They all began the decomposition process at the same time-when the power went out.” Spencer took over. “So we’re not going to be able to say when the mutilation occurred. Could have been right before the storm-” “Or years ago.” “Exactly.” “Grim fact number two. No telling how many people have handled this refrigerator or how long it’s been outside, exposed to the elements.” “Finding any trace will be a miracle.” He referred to trace evidence, she knew. Things like hair and fiber. “As will usable prints. We’ve got no way to pinpoint where this refrigerator came from, so no frame of reference to hang our investigation on.” “Grim fact number three,” Spencer offered. “Exactly. And DNA, if we can get an uncontaminated sample, won’t do us jack without something to compare it with.” “Grim fact number four,” Spencer murmured, trying for levity. “Thanks, I needed that.” The crime-scene crew, consisting of one tech, arrived. She recognized him from his gear. Obviously this lone tech would be doing it all, from photography to fingerprint-and-evidence collection. Where they’d scraped him up, Patti could only imagine. Without housing, there was nowhere for people to live, even those who still had jobs. Currently hundreds of NOPD officers were living on the Carnival cruise ship “Yo,” the tech said, setting down the gear. “What do we have?” Spencer pointed. “Somebody’s collection.” The guy made a face and shook his head. “This is so screwed-up. The tipping point for me was them spotting a shark swimming down Veterans Boulevard. I mean, how do you come back from that?” He loaded the camera. “Mom lives in St. Tammany, I evacuated to her place. Lost forty trees on her property, but not one hit her house. Can you believe it?” He didn’t expect an answer and got to work. His story wasn’t new. Patti heard a version of it from everybody she ran into. Nobody connected in this “post-Katrina world” without sharing their storm story. She turned to the other officer. “Connelly, help him out here. Make certain the evidence is collected. Check in with me when it’s done.” She and Spencer started back to their vehicle. They didn’t speak until they had removed their HazMat gear and climbed into Spencer’s vintage Camaro. She turned to him. “We look for a victim. See if the computer turns up a vic that was missing a hand. Have Tony give you a-” She had been about to say “a hand.” He realized it, too, and glanced her way, eyebrow cocked. A grim smile touched her mouth. “Detective Sciame assists. Keep me posted.” He agreed and they fell silent again. As Spencer drove, Patti gazed out at the ravaged landscape, one thought playing through her head: it wasn’t enough the city had Katrina’s devastation and rebuilding process to face, now they had a serial killer to catch as well. |
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