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’ find 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?”

He waved away the thought. “Nah. He’s out in the courtyard. I don’t mean to be insensitive to what you’ve gone through, but would you be up to puttin’ in a couple of hours here today? There’s some darkroom work I just gotta get out.”

“I can do that, if you’ll give me an hour to take care of some things.”

“That’s fair.”

Kit went out the back door and called Lucky, who burst out of some weeds as if he’d been launched. She knelt and held out her arms. A foot from reaching her, he jumped, the impact when he hit nearly knocking her over. She lifted him away and laid him on his back.

“Did you miss me, you little curmudgeon?”

She grabbed his ruff with both hands and gently worried it while his mouth hung open in ecstasy. A couple of yards away, Nolen’s dog, Mitzi, sat and watched the action with obvious interest.

Kit rolled Lucky from side to side and scratched his belly. “What a sweet varmint you are.”

Playing with Lucky like this pushed her close call in Snake Bayou further into the past. If it were left to Lucky, this would have gone on much longer. “Okay, that’s all for now.” She gave him a final shake and stood up. Remaining on his back, Lucky wiggled and squirmed.

Kit was six steps up the stairs before he got to his feet and bounded after her. As happy as she was to see him, she didn’t allow him inside, a denial that bothered both of them.

Inside, seeing the x on the carpet, she looked up and saw that the ceiling crack had grown longer, now forming a half circle. She went to the bedroom and took her wallet out of her still-moist handbag. After spreading the wallet’s contents over the bed to dry, she went to the dresser and sorted through a shoe box of warranties and other papers until she found the little booklet the store had given her when she’d bought her bag.

She took the booklet to the phone and punched in the number for customer service. When they answered, she asked for instructions on how to care for a bag that had been submerged. The voice on the other end told her total submersion was not a good idea for a handbag. And things didn’t get any better, so when she hung up a few minutes later, she’d learned nothing, except that “maybe it’ll be okay.”

She called her insurance company next and told them what had happened and gave them the name and address of the garage in Courville where she’d left her car. They said they’d send a local claims adjuster over there to take a look. Meanwhile, her policy would cover the cost of the rental. They promised to call and let her know as soon as the adjuster made a decision.

Now that all the practical things had been addressed, Kit faced a yawning emptiness. Since it had happened, she’d told her story several times, but not yet to anyone who loved her.

She thought of her parents in Speculator, New York, and longed to let her fingers tap in their number . . . just call them up as though she’d never cut them out of her life. She believed they’d welcome the call, but it was not in her to make it.

Instead, she punched in the only other possibility.

“Hi, this is Kit. Is Teddy around? Sure, I’ll hold.”

At the moment and for the foreseeable future, Teddy was the only romantic interest in her life. With so much distance between them, they usually saw each other only on weekends, when Teddy would drive from his alligator farm to New Orleans early Saturday morning and leave early Monday. Before her recent slide into self-insufficiency, she’d generally been satisfied with that arrangement, happy not to have him underfoot all the time. Today, it seemed highly unsatisfactory.

“Hey LaBiche, where were you?”

“Out in the feed shed with one of my local women, quite an affectionate girl.”

“Does she like men in traction?”

“Men in Traction . . . what is that, a rap group?”

“It’s somebody we both know if he doesn’t watch his step.”

“I believe . . . yes, there she goes now, on her way home. I don’t think she’ll be back. Kind of unusual for you to call in the middle of the day. I must be some great guy.”

“It’s your money.”

“I don’t think so. You were hooked before you ever knew I was loaded.”

“So you think.”

“Listen, anybody who won’t let me provide them with a nice place to live rent-free isn’t after money.”

“Maybe I’m just being devious.”

“If you are, it’s working. How about I jump in my pickup and drive over?”

“Can you?”

“I’m the boss, remember?”

“I’d like that.”

“We’ll go to Gautreau’s for some of their great tilapia. I’ll see you about six?”

“I’ll be waiting. And Teddy . . . don’t let ’em get behind you.”

Kit hung up and sat by the phone, feeling much less empty inside, even though she hadn’t gotten around to telling Teddy what had happened. She’d do that tonight.

With her own needs met, her thoughts turned to Beverly Hubly and how her husband had treated her. On impulse, she punched in the number for information. When the operator asked for the city, she said, “Courville,” then “Heath Hubly, I’m not sure what street.”

Fortunately, there was only one Hubly in Courville. She broke the connection to the operator and punched in Hubly’s number, hoping he wouldn’t answer.

He didn’t.

“Beverly? This is Kit Franklyn. . . .”

“Yes, hello. Did you get home all right?”

“I’m there now. Listen, I want to thank you for all you did.”

“There’s no need. I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

“And . . . there’s something else. I like you, so I’m going to be frank. I heard how upset your husband was because you put me in the wrong bedroom. And I heard him slap you.”

She said nothing in reply, and Kit imagined that Beverly’s face was now crimson with embarrassment. “I wanted you to know you don’t have to take that from anybody. You don’t deserve that kind of treatment and it doesn’t have to continue. There are people at your regional Department of Human Services who can help you. I hope you’ll talk to them.”

“It’s not really so bad,” Beverly said. “He just gets like that sometimes.”

“He shouldn’t ever get like that. Make the call.”

“I’ll . . . think about it. Oh . . . there he is. I better go.”

The line went dead.

As she hung up, Kit was sure Beverly wasn’t going to make that call. But maybe she wouldn’t have to. Once the prison board figured out what was going on over there, Hubly himself might be getting some jail time. Then Beverly could easily get free of him. The one thing Kit saw as a possible impediment to that scenario was that this was all happening in the state where corruption and graft had been invented.

STILL FEELING DIRTY AND slimy from her experience in Snake Bayou, Kit was as pleased at the opportunity to get dressed up as she was at the prospect of seeing Teddy. In going through her wardrobe, she found that merely touching her silk dress with the ruby paisley print reminded her of algae sliding over her skin. Once her favorite, she doubted she could ever wear it again. She chose instead a black short-sleeved linen dress with a white yoke and crisp white rickrack trim, accessorizing with spectator heels, a five-strand pearl bracelet, and pearl earrings caged in gold. Looking at herself in the mirror, she felt for the first time completely out of the bayou’s grip.

Teddy buzzed to be let in just as she finished putting a few essentials in her purse. She pressed the button, releasing the gate lock, and went to meet him.

Stepping onto the porch, she saw Lucky bolt across the courtyard, his tongue lolling at the sight of old Teddy, who barely had time to wave at her before Lucky was on him.

Teddy squatted on his haunches and gave Lucky what he wanted—a hard Dutch rub, so Lucky’s eyes rolled back in their sockets in sheer pleasure.

Kit went down the steps. “I think he loves you more than he does me.”

Teddy looked up at her. “Oh, did you want your head rubbed, too?”

“I was talking to you, not Lucky.”

Teddy gave the little dog a final scratch under the chin and stood up.

Teddy’s dress code contained very little latitude, its dictates usually putting him in jeans, a denim shirt, alligator boots, and a rakish straw hat, a look only someone with his lean good looks could pull off. When the occasion required, though, he could adapt. Tonight, he was turned out in pleated Bedford cord slacks of an olive hue that picked up one of the colors in his Algarve checked shirt. A woven cowhide belt and Amalfi loafers ensured he was, at that moment, the most cosmopolitan generator of alligator skins in the state.

Teddy looked Kit over and shook his head. Between visits, he’d often think of her large feline eyes. Sometimes he’d picture her lips, which, despite the little girl spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose, gave her face an elegance that made his whole body ache with pleasure. Sometimes, his memories never reached her face. “Franklyn, you’re a handsome woman.”

She stepped closer and he kissed her lightly on the lips.

“We’d better go,” he said. “Our table is for six-thirty.”

Gautreau’s sits quietly on Soniat Street in the uptown section of the city, the only whisper of its identity a G in the tiles on the front steps. The maître d’ greeted Kit and Teddy by name and showed them to a table back by the oak wine and liquor cabinets that had held medicinals for the half century the place served as a pharmacy. Without being told, the waiter brought two glasses of white wine and withdrew to let them study the menu.

Kit had thought it would be hard to recount to Teddy what had happened to her in Courville, because she’d have to relive it in the telling. But here, with soft piano music in the background, surrounded by dark paneling and gilded ceiling fans turning lazily overhead, it all seemed so improbably far away, the tale began pouring out.

“You know that car I used to have?”

“What do you mean, ‘used to have’?”

Teddy sat speechless for the next ten minutes, his lower jaw dropping farther and his eyes growing wider with each new twist in her story.

“So I ended up losing my car, Andy’s camera, and the print kit. And I never saw any of it coming. Another effective performance . . .”

Teddy shook his head in amazement, then looked into her eyes in silence, something obviously on his mind.

“What?” Kit said.

“I’ve never said anything about the effects those kidnappers had on you, because I figured you needed time to sort out your feelings. But I hate seeing you continue to beat yourself up over it. I was there. I know what you went through. You can’t experience something like that and not be changed by it. But this feeling you have that you alone should have been able to reverse the situation is unrealistic. No matter how competent and self-sufficient we are, sometimes we all need help.” He reached across and took her hand. “We’re a team. With you, I’m stronger than I am by myself. And I’d like to think I make you stronger. We die alone, but life is to be shared.”

“You’re saying I should go back to work for Andy?”

“Actually, I have been thinking that your taking a leave wasn’t a good idea. But . . . I swear, he can get you into more trouble—”

Kit pulled her hand free. “That’s not fair. It wasn’t his fault I got shoved into that bayou.”

“I like Andy a lot, you know that. But whose idea was it to send you up there?”

“He couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

“My point is . . . it’s a dangerous job. Are you thinking of returning to it?”

In Kit’s mind, whether she did or didn’t return was a decision for her to make, not Teddy. But since she wasn’t going back, there was no reason to make an issue of it. “For now, I’m staying at the photo gallery. And to be fair to Nolen, I should work Saturday and Sunday to make up for the time I took off. Would you mind that we won’t be able to spend the weekend together?”

“I’ll miss you, that’s for sure. But as you said, it sounds like the fair thing to do.”

After a wonderful dinner, they returned to her apartment to take Lucky on his usual evening walk with Nolen and Mitzi. Though he could easily afford the best suite in any hotel in the city and surely couldn’t find Kit’s apartment any more agreeable than she did, when Teddy visited, he never pressured her to stay with him at a nice place, but accepted her world as his. Tonight, as she fell asleep in his arms, she thought about his comment that life is to be shared. She had no quarrel with most corollaries to that view, especially agreeing with the one that had brought him into her bed. But when she reviewed her many failures over the last two months, including the Courville fiasco, his words brought her no comfort.