Thursday, September 1
Nick took the boat into a more open section of the Lower Nine, where the backyards were slightly larger and tall hedges and sheds just barely poked their tops above the water. Half-starved dogs paced back and forth on some of the rooftops, whining at the boat as it passed. They are the lucky ones, Nick thought; a lot of animals were probably still chained to their houses when the water began to rise.
“See any others?” he shouted over the engine.
“I’ll tell you,” J.T. replied.
“What about you?” he called up to Jerry.
“If he doesn’t see it, I won’t,” Jerry said.
Search-and-rescue teams were finally beginning to arrive in significant numbers. St. Claude Avenue had been crowded that morning, with SAR teams lining up from a dozen different agencies and areas as far away as British Columbia. Boats seemed to be everywhere now, crisscrossing the Lower Nine with boatloads of exhausted-looking rescuees. Some looked grateful; some looked angry; all seemed bewildered as to why the rescue efforts were taking so long.
At eleven o’clock the night before, the National Hurricane Center had announced that Hurricane Katrina had been completely absorbed by a frontal boundary in southeastern Canada, with “no discernible circulation” remaining. The news was little comfort to the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward; Katrina’s effects were still “discernible” there. It had been almost thirty-six hours since the hurricane had passed through—thirty-six long hours that people had been confined to asphalt griddles or tiny attic ovens that reached 130 degrees in the afternoon sun. Many had perished, and Nick was having no trouble finding their bodies today—because at this temperature, thirty-six hours was more than enough time for the sea to surrender her dead.
Nick and Jerry had already found seven bodies that day, and none of them looked unusual. Many of them were older victims with no other marks on them; they had probably died from heart failure, perhaps in the first few minutes of panic. Others had eventually succumbed to exposure or dehydration due to the suffocating heat. Regardless of the cause of death, the accelerating effects of the water had caused all of them to reach the “early floating” stage of decomposition, bringing them slowly to the surface where Nick could easily find them.
They approached a house where the attic vent had been smashed in—or possibly out, by someone escaping from inside. In, Nick thought; below the vent the words “2 bodies” had been spray-painted in red across the siding. Apparently someone had already stopped by for a quick look—maybe a FEMA team doing a primary search.
J.T. pointed to a large white object bobbing in the water like an ice cube. “What’s that thing?”
“Looks like a refrigerator,” Nick said.
“Refrigerators float?”
“They do when they’re full of air.”
J.T. suddenly stiffened. “Over there!” he shouted, his hawklike eyes detecting a dark line in an open expanse of water.
“Looks like a log to me,” Nick said.
“Nope.”
“Maybe it’s a gator,” Jerry said. “Some of this water backed up from the bayous.”
J.T. turned and looked at Nick.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said. “If it’s hungry, it’ll go for Jerry first.”
The boy’s eyes were accurate as usual. Nick brought the boat in for a closer look; it was the body of a man, floating facedown.
“How come most of ’em float facedown?” J.T. asked.
“Physics,” Nick said. “As the body breaks down, it makes gas—things like methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. The gas collects in the torso because that’s where the natural cavity is. So when the body starts to rise, it tends to float torso-first, with the limbs hanging down like ropes from a weather balloon. That makes the body rotate in the water and come up facedown. See?”
“But we saw one faceup,” the boy said.
“That’s right—but he wasn’t very tall, did you notice that? Short people tend to have shorter arms and legs. Shorter limbs mean lighter limbs, and that means less drag. Short people are more likely to come up face-first.” Kids too, he began to say—but quickly decided not to.
Nick looked the body over; there was nothing unusual about it. The color and condition of the tissues were consistent with a Katrina postmortem, and there were no indications of blowfly activity that would suggest death prior to the hurricane.
He reached into his equipment bag and took out a palm-sized electronic device. He checked the battery, switched the unit on, then clipped it securely to the clothing of the floating body.
“What’s that?” the boy asked.
“It’s a transmitter,” Nick said, “sort of like my GPS unit—only that one receives, and this one sends. Once every hour it sends out a signal that tells us where it is. We can pick up the signal on a laptop computer and overlay it on a map; that way, we can find the body again even if it floats all the way across town.”
“Why not just tie it to something like you did the other day?” Jerry asked.
“That seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nick said. “Then I talked to that DEA guy last night. I don’t know how long they’re planning to leave these bodies out here; another week in this water, and we’ll have the problem of—you know.”
“What?”
“Disarticulation,” he said, hoping that he wouldn’t have to spell it out in front of the boy: If he tied one limb to a lamppost, that might be all they would find later on.
They heard the sound of an approaching engine and looked up to see a familiar black rescue boat speeding toward them with Officer LaTourneau at the helm. Nick waved him down, and the Zodiac boat cruised to a stop on the opposite side of the floating corpse.
“You’re slacking off!” Nick called out, nodding to the empty boat. “What’d you do, break for lunch?”
“I don’t break for lunch,” LaTourneau called back. “You need something?”
“Not really—just wanted to say hello.”
“I’m kind of in a hurry here. They put a curfew into effect yesterday, in case you hadn’t heard. We’ve only got a few hours of daylight left.”
“I met one of your colleagues the other day. He was looting a store about half a mile from here.”
LaTourneau glared at him. “What’s your point?”
“He was in uniform and everything. I was just wondering: Is that an official NOPD function—shopping coordinator?”
“Yesterday the mayor ordered the entire NOPD to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and help restore order. One of the first priorities is to control the looting.”
“Good plan,” Nick said. “Steal everything yourself so there won’t be anything left to take.”
“Some of these looters are carrying automatic weapons,” LaTourneau said.
“I noticed that. There was one pointed at my head.”
“What were they taking?”
Nick reviewed the list.
“You’d arrest a man for taking home diapers to his kids?”
“Six cases of beer,” Nick said. “What was he doing, throwing a baby shower?”
“How many men were there?”
“Your friend had four associates.”
“Four—and you say one of them was armed? What’s one lone officer supposed to do, walk up to four men and say, ‘You’re under arrest’? We’re on our own out here—you can’t call for backup.”
“Your officer had his sidearm,” Nick said. “Maybe he could have—I don’t know—pointed it at somebody? Seems like a good idea to me—the other guy sure thought of it.”
“Our instructions are to maintain order, not create more chaos. This may come as a surprise to you, but people are a little frustrated out here. Tempers are short; you better be careful who you go waving a gun at.”
“I thought that’s the point I was making.”
“Look, our people are having to improvise. One of our officers came across five looters in a drugstore the other day—they were trying to break into a glass display case. You know what he did? He smashed the case himself, to keep people from cutting themselves on the glass.”
“Tell him to meet me at the bank,” Nick said. “I’d like to make a withdrawal.”
“We’re first responders out here. A guy slashes his wrist, we’re the ones who have to take care of him. Ever think about that? Sorry to get your blood pressure up, but if you don’t mind me saying so, you look pretty healthy to me. Why don’t you fellas stop whining and get back to work?” LaTourneau looked at J.T. “Is that the same boy I saw you with the other day?”
“It’s his brother,” Nick said. “Well, nice chatting with you. Oh, by the way: We’ve had a change in job assignment.”
“What, you’re not chief of police anymore?”
“We’re not doing SAR anymore—we’re locating bodies now. We’re not recovering them yet, just marking locations for later on.”
“Sure hate to lose you guys,” LaTourneau said. “You’ve almost rescued an entire family in just two days.”
“Have you come across any bodies this morning?”
“Sure, a few.”
“Did you take GPS readings?”
“I’m not as high-tech as you guys—try the National Guard. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m losing daylight.”
He started his engine and roared away. Nick did the same.
Jerry turned and looked at him. “He’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“We need to cut people some slack out here.”
“I just don’t like that guy—I don’t know why.”
“I do,” Jerry said. “He’s just like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“He likes to work alone, he does things his own way, and he never quits. Plus he’s a wise guy—sound familiar? It’s like looking in a mirror, and you don’t like what you see.”
“Please,” Nick groaned. “One psychiatrist is enough.”
They spent the next hour waving down other boats and inquiring about the whereabouts of any deceased. Some of the SAR teams had taken GPS coordinates for the floaters they encountered, but the rescuees were an even better source of information; they had been on the rooftops, they had heard the cries from neighboring attics—and they knew which voices had stopped. Nick and Jerry took down all the information.
The body that interested Nick most was described by a member of a swift-water rescue team from California. “A real gross-out,” he called it, which is what first caught Nick’s attention.
“Was the gut bloated and extended—like this?” he asked, thrusting his own midsection forward.
“Not really,” the man said. “It was sort of like that all over.”
“Was it faceup or facedown?” J.T. asked.
The man ignored him.
“Answer him,” Nick said. “It’s a good question.”
“Faceup,” he said. “What difference does it make?”
J.T. had a follow-up question: “Was he a short guy?”
“Not that I noticed. Why?”
J.T. shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
The man looked at Nick. “Who’s the kid?”
“He’s a grad student,” Nick said. “See you guys later—thanks for the info.”
When the boat pulled away and the roar of its engine finally died down, Nick said, “Sounds like a refloat.”
“A refloat,” Jerry said. “What’s that?”
“A body floats, it sinks, it floats back up again—that’s a refloat. If a body’s been in the water long enough, it’ll release the gas from the gut and sink to the bottom again. Decomposition continues underwater, and the process continues to produce gas—only the gas can’t collect in the gut again, because the gut’s ruptured. This time the gas is distributed throughout the whole body, so when it finally comes to the surface again, it’s more likely to rise faceup. It’s a possible indication of advanced decay. We need to check this one out.”
“Why?” Jerry asked. “If all we’re supposed to do is locate bodies, aren’t we finished here? He gave you the GPS coordinates; why do we need to look?”
“We’re supposed to look for anomalies, Jerry.”
“You’ve got one: advanced decay. Write it down, and let’s get out of here.”
“Where’s your curiosity?”
“That’s what killed the cat.”
“I hate cats.”
Jerry sighed. “I was afraid of that.”